Flights have resumed at Heathrow Airport and a full service is expected on Saturday following an “unprecedented” loss of power caused by nearby a substation fire.

About 200,000 passengers were affected as flights were grounded throughout Friday, with inbound planes being diverted to other airports in Europe after flames ripped through the North Hyde plant in Hayes, west London, on Thursday evening.

The airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye apologised to stranded passengers and said the disruption was “as big as it gets for our airport” and that it could not guard itself “100%”.

The Met Police confirmed the fire was not believed to be suspicious.

The investigation will focus on the “electrical distribution equipment”, the force said.

British Airways announced eight of its long-haul flights had been cleared to leave Heathrow during Friday evening and it was “urgently contacting customers to let them know”.

Restrictions on overnight flights have also been temporarily lifted to help ease congestion, the Department of Transport said.

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

Mr Woldbye said that a back-up transformer had failed meaning systems had to be closed down in accordance with safety procedures so that power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations to restore electricity enough to power the airport.

Several airlines announced they would restart scheduled flights both to and from Heathrow, including British Airways, Air Canada and United Airlines.

An airport spokesperson said the first flights were focused on “repatriating the passengers who were diverted to other airports in Europe… and relocating aircraft”.

Mr Woldbye said: “I’d like to stress that this has been an incident of major severity. It’s not a small fire.

“We have lost power equal to that of a mid-sized city and our backup systems have been working as they should but they are not sized to run the entire airport.”

Asked if there is a weak point in Heathrow’s power system, he said: “You can say that but of course contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100% and this is one of them.

“I mean, short of anybody getting hurt, this is as big as it gets for our airport.”

“This is unprecedented,” he added.

Mr Woldbye went on to say the airport expected to return to “100% operation” on Saturday.

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

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.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she believed airport bosses “stood up their resilience plan swiftly, and they’ve collaborated closely with our emergency responders and the airline operators; they do have backup energy supplies, they have generators, diesel generators.

“None of that failed on this occasion because that backup supply is designed to protect the critical key systems within the airport and not to provide power to the whole airport.”

Alexander added that she was in close contact with the energy secretary, the home secretary and with Heathrow to “make sure that any lessons we need to learn from the systems that the airport has in place are learned”.

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

Emergency services were first called to the scene at 23:20 GMT on Thursday.

Some 120 aircraft heading to the airport at that time were forced to either divert or return to their point of origin.

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.

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

A large cordon was put in place as a precaution and about 150 people were evacuated from their homes.

Most of those had returned home by 17:00, according to LFB.

Hillingdon Council said it was assisting 12 people with hotel accommodation until it was safe for them to return to their homes.

More than 65,000 homes in the area were left without power as a result, as well as the airport, although the National Grid said power was restored by 14:00.

Local residents told the BBC they saw a bright flash before their lights went out.

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.

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

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.”

Boxing heavyweight legend George Foreman has died aged 76, according to his family.

Known as Big George in the ring, the American built one of the most remarkable and enduring careers in the sport, winning Olympic gold in 1968 and claiming the world heavyweight title twice, 21 years apart – the second making him the oldest champion in history aged 45.

He lost his first title to Muhammad Ali in their famous Rumble in the Jungle fight in 1974. But Foreman’s professional boxing career boasted an astonishing total of 76 wins including 68 knockouts, almost double that of Ali.

He retired from the sport in 1997 but not before he agreed to put his name to a best-selling grill – a decision that went on to bring him fortunes that dwarfed his boxing earnings.

His family said in a post on Instagram on Friday night: “Our hearts are broken.

“A devout preacher, a devoted husband, a loving father, and a proud grand and great grandfather, he lived a life marked by unwavering faith, humility, and purpose.”

The statement added: “A humanitarian, an Olympian, and two time heavyweight champion of the world, He was deeply respected – a force for good, a man of discipline, conviction, and a protector of his legacy, fighting tirelessly to preserve his good name – for his family.”

Foreman was born in Marshall, Texas, on 10 January 1949, and raised along with six siblings by a single mother in the segregated American South.

He dropped out of school and turned to street robberies before eventually finding his outlet in the ring.

Foreman won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, aged 19, before turning pro and winning 37 consecutive matches. He lost only five bouts over his career.

He beat previously undefeated reigning champion Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973 knocking him down six times in the first two rounds.

His 1974 Rumble in the Jungle against Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, remains one of the most famous boxing matches ever.

Ali, the older man, was the underdog after he was stripped of his crown seven years earlier for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War.

Foreman reflected on the legendary fight 50 years later in an October interview with BBC World Service Newshour, explaining that everyone thought he was going to decimate Ali.

“Oh, he’s not going to last one round,” the boxer said experts were predicting at the time.

Foreman told the BBC he typically would get “real nervous” and have “butterflies” before any boxing match, but that night – it was the “most comfortable” he had felt.

But the wily Ali used a tactic that later became known as “rope-a-dope”, which wore out Foreman, causing him to throw out hundreds of punches before Ali unloaded on him in the eighth round and scored a knockout.

After a second professional loss, Foreman retired in 1977 and became an ordained minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Texas, which he founded and built.

He told the BBC his defeat to Ali became the “best thing that ever happened to me” as it ultimately led him to “get my message out” through preaching.

He recalled that his preaching started small, on street corners and with friends, then grew.

“We began meeting informally at various homes in Houston, and before long, the crowds became too large for most houses to accommodate,” Foreman said on his website.

“Eventually, we bought a piece of land and an old, dilapidated building on the north-east side of Houston.”

Foreman came out of retirement in 1987 to raise money for a youth centre he founded. He won 24 matches before losing to Evander Holyfield after 12 rounds in 1991.

In 1994, Foreman knocked out undefeated Michael Moorer to become the oldest ever heavyweight champion at age 45.

He became ad pitchman for his George Foreman Grill, which millions have purchased since it hit the market in 1994, thanks in part to his memorable catchphrase, the “Lean Mean Grilling Machine”.

Foreman was married five times. He has a dozen children, including five sons who are all named George.

He explained on his website that he named them after himself so they “they would always have something in common”.

“I say to them, ‘If one of us goes up, then we all go up together,” he explained. “And if one goes down, we all go down together!'”

British-American influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have returned from the US to Romania, where they face human trafficking and other charges.

Speaking to the press outside their house in Bucharest, the brothers said they were back because “innocent men don’t run from anything.”

“We’ve come here to prove our innocence because we deserve our day in court,” Andrew Tate added.

The BBC understands the brothers will appear at a police station to register on Monday. They strongly deny the allegations against them.

Andrew Tate earlier told his 10.8 million followers on X that he had spent $185,000 (£143,000) on a private jet alongside his brother to “sign one single piece of paper in Romania.”

The brothers, who are dual US-UK citizens, arrived in the US at the end of February after Romanian prosecutors lifted a two-year travel ban.

They told reporters they loved Romania and were “never going to leave” but would take holidays if and when they felt like it.

Andrew Tate, 38, is a self-proclaimed “misogynist” who claims to have made millions from social media despite being previously banned from platforms for his views.

He and Tristan, 36, are accused of human trafficking and forming an organised group to sexually exploit women in Romania. Andrew Tate is also accused of rape.

The brothers are also the subjects of a separate investigation in the UK into allegations of rape and human trafficking.

In the US they face a civil case from a woman who alleges the brothers coerced her into sex work, and then defamed her after she gave evidence to Romanian authorities. They deny the allegations against them.

Romanian prosecutors stressed the case against the brothers had not been dropped and that they remain “under judicial control” – meaning they have to regularly report to the authorities.

However, their exit sparked concerns that prosecutors felt political pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration. The US president said he knew nothing about the Tate brothers being released from Romania.

When asked about concerns surrounding US influence, the brothers rejected these claims.

“There’s no American pressure, there’s just the rule of law,” the eldest brother told reporters.

The Tates have a large US following and are popular figures among some elements of the American right.

Earlier in February, some of Andrew Tate’s alleged victims said they were “extremely concerned” by reports that US officials had asked for his travel restrictions to be relaxed.

Andrew Tate was put under house arrest in Romania in August 2024 when prosecutors launched a second criminal investigation against him and his brother Tristan, as well as four other suspects. They all deny wrongdoing.

Separately, the brothers are wanted in the UK to face allegations of sexual assault, which they also deny.

The brothers have also been accused of tax evasion in the UK. A British court ruled in December 2024 that police could seize more than £2m ($2.6m) from them for failing to pay tax on £21m in revenue from their online businesses.

Andrew Tate said the ruling was “not justice” and called it a “co-ordinated attack”.

When Donald Trump met President Zelensky in New York last September, the then US presidential candidate exuded confidence he could bring the war in Ukraine to an early end. “If we win, I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” he said.

How quickly he meant varied over time. In a TV debate a few days earlier, Mr Trump had promised he would “get it settled before I even become president”. This was an escalation on his previous commitment in May 2023 to stop the fighting in the first 24 hours of his presidency.

Mr Trump has now been in office for more than two months and the penny may be beginning to drop in the White House that trying to end a conflict as bitter and complex as this may take time.

In a television interview last weekend, the US president admitted that when he promised to end the war in a day, he was “being a little bit sarcastic”.

There are many reasons for the slower progress than Team Trump may have anticipated.

First, the president’s belief in the power of his personal, one-on-one diplomacy may have been misplaced. He has long believed any international problem can be solved if he sits down with another leader and agrees a deal. Mr Trump first spoke to Vladimir Putin on 12 February, an hour-and-a-half conversation he described as “highly productive”. The two leaders spoke again on 18 March.

But it is clear these telephone calls failed to secure the immediate 30-day interim ceasefire Mr Trump wanted. The only substantive concession he squeezed out of Mr Putin was a promise to end Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities, a commitment he is accused by Ukraine of breaking within hours of the call.

Second, the Russian president has made it clear he does not intend to be rushed. His first public comments about the negotiations came last week in a press conference that was a whole month after his telephone call with Mr Trump.

Mr Putin showed he was resolutely opposed to the US two-stage strategy of seeking an interim ceasefire before talking about a longer-term settlement. Instead, he said any talks must address what he sees as “the root causes of the war”, namely his fears an expanding Nato alliance and the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state somehow present a threat to Russia’s security. He also set out detailed questions and conditions that must be answered and met before any deal could be agreed.

Third, the US strategy of directing its initial focus on Ukraine may have been misjudged. The White House came to the belief that President Zelensky was the obstacle to peace. Western diplomats acknowledge the Ukrainian government was slow to realise just how much the world had changed with the arrival of Mr Trump.

But the US pressure on Kyiv that led to the now infamous confrontation in the Oval Office – when Mr Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, harangued the Ukrainian leader – consumed time, effort and political capital.

It also ruptured transatlantic relations, setting Europe and the US at odds, another diplomatic problem that took time to settle. All the while Vladimir Putin sat back and enjoyed the show, biding his time.

Fourth, the sheer complexity of the conflict makes any resolution hard. The Ukrainian offer was initially for an interim ceasefire in the air and at sea. The idea was that this would be relatively straightforward to monitor.

But in last week’s talks in Jeddah, the US insisted any immediate ceasefire should also include the more than 1200km-long front line in the east. Instantly that made the logistics of verifying any ceasefire more complicated. This, of course, was then rejected by Mr Putin.

But even his agreement to the more modest proposal – to end attacks on energy infrastructure – is not without its problems. It is the details about that proposal which will occupy much of the technical negotiations that are expected to take place in Saudi Arabia on Monday. Military and energy experts will draw up detailed lists of potential power plants – nuclear or otherwise – that might be protected.

They will also try to agree which weapons systems should not be used. But agreeing the difference between energy and other civilian infrastructure may take some time. Remember: Ukraine and Russia are not talking to one another; they are engaging separately and bilaterally with the US which is promising to shuttle between both sides. This again adds to the time.

Fifth, the US focus on the economic benefits of a ceasefire distracted attention from the priority of ending the fighting. Mr Trump has spent time trying to agree a framework deal giving US firms access to Ukrainian critical minerals. Some saw this as the US investing in Ukraine’s future – others as it extorting the country’s natural resources.

President Zelensky argued initially he could agree a deal only if the US promised to provide Ukraine with security guarantees to deter future Russian aggression. The White House refused, saying the presence of US mining firms and workers would be deterrent enough. Eventually Mr Zelensky conceded defeat and said he would agree a minerals deal without security guarantees. But despite that, the US has yet to sign the agreement, hoping again to improve the terms, possibly by including access to or even ownership of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

Ending wars can be complex and time consuming. We would not have got to this stage without Trump’s pushing, but progress has not been as quick or simple as he believed. In December 2018, as he campaigned for the presidency, Volodymyr Zelensky suggested negotiations with Vladimir Putin would be quite straightforward. “You need to talk in a very simple way,” he told the Ukrainian journalist, Dmytro Gordon. ‘”What do you want, what are your conditions?” And I’d tell them: ‘Here are our points.’ We would agree somewhere in the middle.”

Well, on the evidence of the last two months, it may be harder than that.

The Trump administration is planning to import eggs from Turkey and South Korea and is in talks with other countries in hopes of easing all-time high prices for the American consumer, officials confirmed.

“We are talking in the hundreds of millions of eggs for the short term,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters at the White House.

It follows the administration’s announcement of a $1bn (£792m) plan to combat a raging bird flu epidemic that has forced US farmers to cull tens of millions of chickens.

Despite President Trump’s campaign promise to reduce prices, the cost of eggs has surged more than 65% over the past year, and it is projected to rise by 41% in 2025.

Rollins said her department was also in talks with other countries to secure new supplies, but did not specify which regions.

“When our chicken populations are repopulated and we’ve got a full egg laying industry going again, hopefully in a couple of months, we then shift back to our internal egg layers and moving those eggs out onto the shelf, ” she said.

Polish and Lithuanian poultry associations said on Friday they had also been approached by US embassies regarding possible egg exports, the AFP reported.

“Back in February, the American embassy in Warsaw asked our organisation whether Poland would be interested in exporting eggs to the US market,” Katarzyna Gawronska, director of the National Chamber of Poultry and Feed Producers, told the news agency.

• Farmers say bird flu a ‘crisis’ as egg prices soar
• 100,000 eggs stolen from one US grocer as bird flu drives up prices

In February, the US Department of Agriculture unveiled a $1bn, five-point plan to tackle the price of eggs, with a budget of $500m for biosecurity measures, roughly $100m for vaccine research and development, and $400m for farmer financial relief programs.

The Trump administration said it will provide commercial egg farms with best practices and consulting services for free, and pay up to 75% of the costs to address vulnerabilities to help prevent the spread of bird flu.

“Our plan was to invest a significant amount of money to do audits across the country to have USDA help these egg laying companies to secure their barns,” Rollins said. “…and since we began doing that most recently, we’ve seen a significant decline in the bird flu.”

Though the avian flu, or H5N1, has circulated among American poultry flocks for years, an outbreak starting in 2022 has wreaked havoc on farms, killing more than 156 million birds and sending egg prices skyrocketing.

Egg prices became a rallying point for Trump in last year’s presidential run as he sought to capitalise on voters’ frustrations with the rising cost of essential items.

During his address to the US Congress earlier this month, he blamed the soaring egg prices on his predecessor Joe Biden.

“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control – and we are working hard to get it back down,” he added.

Egg prices rose as the Biden administration directed millions of egg-laying birds to be culled last year amid a bird flu outbreak, though prices have continued rising during the early stages of Trump’s second presidency.

Kalki Koechlin has acted in blockbuster Bollywood films, modelled for international beauty brands and appeared on the cover of Vogue India. But in a world that puts such a premium on looking young, she says at times she feels “ugly”.

“We live in a social [media] world that has distorted beauty,” the actor, writer and producer tells the award-winning BBC World Service podcast Dear Daughter. “It has tricked us into thinking beauty is a certain size, a certain colour or a certain shape.”

The half-hour programme features letters from parents to their children – in which they pass on the advice and life lessons which matter to them – and a conversation with the show’s host Namulanta Kombo.

Kalki’s letter is addressed to her five-year-old daughter. In it, she offers advice for navigating pressures around body image and describes the ways unrealistic beauty standards have affected her personally.

The actor, who lives in Goa in India with her husband Israeli musician Guy Hershberg and their daughter, says the inspiration for the letter came to her when, one day after school, the child came to her to say she didn’t feel pretty.

“When they’re so young, they’re so perfect and you think, ‘Oh my goodness. How is it possible that you could think you’re not pretty?!'” she says on the podcast.

In the letter, Kalki, who is herself the host of another BBC podcast, My Indian Life, writes that she also feels “ugly sometimes, even though I’m constantly told by the world around me that I’m beautiful”.

She advises her daughter that “beauty standards will change throughout your lifetime, so do not hold too much value to what society deems beautiful currently”.

“Remember that your scars, your wrinkles, your eyes, your lips, your hands, your feet, your hair, your skin are all here as witnesses to your beautiful life. They are here to grow old with you, and carry you through the ups and downs. They are your friends for life,” she writes.

Born in Puducherry, India, to French parents, Kalki describes herself as a “geeky introvert” while growing up. As a teenager, she says, she was uncomfortable with her appearance, and pursuing a career on camera only intensified those feelings.

“Becoming a celebrity, having your face out there and being in front of the camera… There’s another layer of self-consciousness that kicks in.”

• Listen to Kalki’s episode here

Working in the film industry, she says she experienced a particular pressure to maintain a youthful appearance. Once, she says, a producer even suggested over lunch that she get dermal fillers for her wrinkles.

“He said, ‘All you need is a little filler for your laughter lines.’ I smiled and said, ‘Well, I better stop smiling so much.’ So I think my approach has been to deal with it with humour.”

Kalki says this happened when she was in her 30s and that she’d “already lived enough life to not be affected”.

“But I know that 20-year-olds are being told this and they feel the pressure to go and change their face very early on.”

Kalki says she believes this pressure is worsened by the rise of social media. “We all scrutinise [ourselves] and we all have these filters.” And in her letter, she shares her fears of trying to protect her daughter from such scrutiny.

She jokes that she even wondered about moving to Australia when she heard of the country’s plans to ban smartphones for under-16s. “That’s how my mother-brain is working!”

Kalki is not the only celebrity to speak about the pressure to appear young that is faced by women in the public eye.

Stranger Things actor Millie Bobby Brown made headlines earlier this month for calling out journalists who have criticised the way she has aged.

“The fact that adult writers are spending their time dissecting my face, my body, my choices is disturbing,” the 21-year-old said in a three-minute video on her Instagram page.

Dear Daughter podcast is the brainchild of Namulanta Kombo, a mother from Nairobi on a quest to create a “handbook to life” for her daughter, through the advice of parents from all over the world.

Each episode has a guest reading a letter they’ve written to their children, or their future children, or the children they never had, with the advice, life lessons and personal stories they wish to pass on.

In one of the episodes of the current season, Bridgerton actor Adjoa Andoh tells her three children to trust their instincts. In another, wildlife documentary presenter Rae Wynn-Grant offers advice on how to survive self-doubt and encounters with bears.

Dear daughter,

One day after school you told me, “Maman I’m not pretty.” You were only four. I panicked and immediately responded with, “What do you mean, of course you’re pretty, you’re as pretty as a butterfly, as bright as the sun.” And you continued to say angrily, “I’m not, I’m just not.”

In retrospect, I wish I had listened to you and been curious enough to ask you why you didn’t feel pretty? You see I make mistakes too, my own insecurities and need to protect you took over and I didn’t allow you the space to feel what you were feeling. Don’t let others decide who you are. Not even me. You have far more experience at being you than anyone else. And no-one else can be a better you than you.

Thankfully, I get second chances at being a better mother, and when a few weeks later you said “I don’t like myself”, I stopped my impulse to tell you what you were and listened. There was some silence and then you opened up about how you were having a hard time with some other children in school.

I thought about how to ensure you know that beauty is not skin deep. The truth is sometimes you will feel ugly. I feel ugly sometimes even though I’m constantly told by the world around me that I’m beautiful. And so now I have made it a point to tell you how beautiful you are, not when you’re feeling bad about the way you look, and not when you’re dressed your best, but when you are being the best versions of you.

As you grow older I know that you will not always believe that you’re beautiful because we live in a social world that has distorted beauty, that has tricked us into thinking beauty is a certain size, a certain colour, or a certain shape. These beauty standards will change throughout your lifetime, so do not hold too much value to what society deems beautiful currently.

Remember that you are whole and that if you start to pick apart your little nose or your hairy brows or your not quite right ears, you will start to feel ugly, but that is only because you are forgetting the whole. An elephant is a beautiful animal, but pick it apart and it’s got a long wrinkly nose, strange side glancing eyes, huge sticking out ears and a big fat stomach.

Remember that your scars, your wrinkles, your eyes, your lips, your hands, your feet, your hair, your skin are all here as witnesses to your beautiful life, they are here to grow old with you, and carry you through the ups and downs, they are your friends for life.

Dear daughter, do you know when I’ll stop loving you? Never.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has said it will revoke the temporary legal status of more than half a million migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Those migrants have been warned to leave the country before their permits and deportation shield are cancelled on 24 April, according to a notice posted by the federal government.

The 530,000 migrants were brought into the US under a Biden-era sponsorship process known as CHNV that was designed to open legal migration pathways. Trump suspended the programme once he took office.

It is unclear how many of these migrants have been able to secure another status in the interim that would allow them to stay in the US legally.

The programme was launched under Democratic President Joe Biden in 2022, first covering Venezuelans before it was expanded to other countries.

• Judge in migrants deportations case says government lawyers ‘disrespectful’

It allowed the migrants and their immediate family members to fly into the US if they had American sponsors and remain for two years under a temporary immigration status known as parole.

The Biden administration had argued that CHNV would help curb illegal border crossings at the southern US border and allow for better vetting of those entering the country.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday rebuked the prior administration and said the program had failed in its goals.

The agency’s statement said Biden officials “granted them [migrants] opportunities to compete for American jobs and undercut American workers; forced career civil servants to promote the programs even when fraud was identified; and then blamed Republicans in Congress for the chaos that ensued and the crime that followed”.

However, the 35-page notice in the Federal Register said some of those in the US under CHNV might be allowed to remain on a “case-by-case basis”.

Trump is also considering whether to cancel the temporary legal status of some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the US during the conflict with Russia.

CHNV helped a reported 213,000 Haitians enter the US amid deteriorating conditions in the Caribbean country.

More than 120,700 Venezuelans, 110,900 Cubans and over 93,000 Nicaraguans were also allowed into the US under the programme before Trump shut it down.

Last month, DHS announced it would in August end another immigration designation, temporary protected status (TPS), for 500,000 Haitians living in the US.

TPS was granted to nationals of designated countries facing unsafe conditions, such as armed conflict or environmental disasters.

DHS also halted TPS for Venezuelans in the US, although this is facing a legal challenge.

Since taking office in January, Trump’s immigration policies have encountered a number of legal hurdles.

The scenes of jubilant soldiers in Khartoum mark a significant advance in an offensive that has seen Sudan’s army seize back swathes of territory in recent months.

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) lost control of the capital early in the war and have been fighting for two years to recapture it from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Now they have retaken the presidential palace and believe they are on course to win back the rest of the capital. But they are a long way from winning the war.

The complex, which includes the historic Republican Palace, is a symbol of power and sovereignty, important for the military-led government and its narrative as legitimate rulers fighting a “terrorist militia.”

This is also a strategic victory.

After clearing outer districts of greater Khartoum, the army has taken much of the city centre, pushing the RSF fighters out of key sites like government buildings and away from the military’s General Headquarters, according to an army spokesman.

This means the RSF has in effect lost its control of the capital, even though its fighters are still present in Khartoum.

But it is not clear how far the frontline has moved. RSF fighters are still scattered around the city centre and stationed in part of the airport. They also occupy territory to the south of the palace.

Bloody fighting is expected to continue as the army tries to corner remaining RSF units. The paramilitary force has already shown it can strike back despite its weakened position, launching a drone attack at the palace that killed a number of Sudanese journalists and army officers.

A full army victory in the capital could reset the direction of the war or harden the territorial division that divides the country between the two foes.

• Sudan army recaptures presidential palace after two years of war
• Sudan army ends two-year siege of key city
• ‘Rape me, not my daughter’ – women tell BBC of sexual violence in Sudan’s civil war

The RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, controls most of the Darfur region in western Sudan, and parts of the south.

The military-backed government, led by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, controls eastern and northern Sudan.

The two men worked together, and carried out a coup together, before a power struggle between them exploded into civil war in April 2023.

Full control of Khartoum could help the army complete its takeover of central Sudan, where it has wrested back territory from the RSF in recent months.

It may also create momentum for the SAF to challenge General Hemedti in his stronghold of Darfur, especially over the city of El Fasher, which has been under RSF siege for nearly a year.

But many observers believe there is a danger that Sudan will drift into de-facto partition, with the two warring parties and their backers entrenching themselves in their zones of influence.

The RSF is working to set up a parallel government in areas it controls, gathering allied groups to sign a political charter and constitution last month in Nairobi.

Its intention was to show that despite battlefield setbacks, it remains a potent force – and that its desire to take control of the country remains undimmed.

Sudan’s people have borne the brunt of this brutal civil war, which has inflicted massive death, destruction, and human rights violations on civilians.

The United Nations has described the situation in the country as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. More than 12 million people have been forced to flee their homes and millions face acute food shortages, with parts of the country driven into famine.

Khartoum is one of the places expected to reach famine conditions soon, having been subject to widespread looting from RSF soldiers and restrictions on aid by the Sudanese government. So a change of power in the city could make a big difference to humanitarian conditions there.

But for most of the people of Sudan it means that for now little is likely to change.

Both sides have been accused of obstructing emergency aid, in effect using it as a weapon of war, according to UN officials. And both have been accused of war crimes, although critics have singled out the RSF for charges of mass rape and genocide.

The army will be hoping that reclaiming the Presidential Palace proves to be a staging post for a broader ultimate military victory.

But although the SAF have momentum, it is unlikely that either party can achieve a victory which allows them to govern the whole of Sudan, the International Crisis Group said in a recent report.

Still, both sides have vowed to continue fighting for the remainder of the country, and efforts to revive peace talks so far have failed.

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.

One of the most talked-about TV shows of recent years, Netflix’s hard-hitting drama Adolescence, has been the hot topic of discussion this week, from the House of Commons to US talk shows to the gates of the scriptwriter’s son’s school.

Those discussions have been sparked by the fictional story of a 13-year-old boy who is accused of stabbing a girl, and the factors that could have turned him into a killer.

“I’ve had lots of responses from people I haven’t heard from for years, telling me about conversations they’re now having with their children,” writer Jack Thorne says. “That’s really gratifying.

“My son’s headteacher stopped me at the school gates to say, ‘I’d like to talk to you about this, and I’d like to think about what our school can do and what other schools can do’,” Thorne adds.

“The conversations seem to be starting in all sorts of different places.”

Thorne is now calling for the government to take “radical action” to help tackle the issues the programme raises.

Chief among them are social media and the influence of incel (involuntary celibate) ideas, which encourage men to blame women for their lack of relationships and opportunities.

But the drama, which Thorne created with actor Stephen Graham, is not just pointing the finger at incel culture, the writer tells the BBC.

“I really hope this is a drama that suggests that Jamie is like this because of a whole number of complicated factors.”

His parents, school and friends are all shown as playing a part in various ways.

But Jamie, played by Owen Cooper, is bullied on social media to make him feel ugly, and is exposed to incel messaging and skewed views on sexual violence.

“He is this vulnerable kid, and then he hears this stuff which makes sense to him about why he’s isolated, why he’s alone, why he doesn’t belong, and he ingests it. He doesn’t have the filters to understand what’s appropriate,” Thorne says.

“At this age, with all these different pressures on him and with the peculiarities of his society around him, he starts to believe that the only way to reset this balance is through violence.”

The writer went down similar online wormholes himself on sites like 4Chan and Reddit in order to see the world through Jamie’s eyes.

He found that these messages were not simply coming from the obvious places.

“It was far from just Andrew Tate. It was not those big guns of the manosphere,” he says.

“It was the smaller blogs and vlogs and the little bits like people talking about a video game, but then explaining through that video game why women hate you.

“That was the stuff that I found most disturbing.”

These issues aren’t new, but the show has come as others are also discussing the dangerous messages aimed at boys and young men.

On Wednesday, former England football manager Sir Gareth Southgate delivered a speech warning against “callous, manipulative and toxic influencers”.

“They are as far away as you could possibly get from the role models our young men need in their lives,” he said.

Thorne says Sir Gareth is “amazing” – but he believes the solution is about more than having better role models.

“We’ve been having that conversation since I was a kid,” the writer says. “This has got to be a point where we do something a bit more radical than that. It’s not about role models.

“Role models obviously can have a huge impact on people. But truthfully, we’ve got to change the culture that they’re consuming and the means by which our technology is facilitating this culture.

“It was a really interesting speech, but I was hoping he was going to propose more radical things than he did.”

So what could more radical solutions be?

This week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told Parliament he’s been watching the “very good” drama with his teenage children.

Violence carried out by young men who are influenced by what they see online is “abhorrent and we have to tackle it”, and is “also a matter of culture”, he told the Commons.

Thorne hopes the PM will get the message that “there’s a there is a crisis happening in our schools, and we need to think about how to stop boys from harming girls, and each other”.

“That’s going to take a mass of different things to facilitate in schools and in homes, and that requires government help,” he says.

He urges Sir Keir to “rather urgently” consider a smartphone ban in schools and a “digital age of consent”, similar to Australia, which has passed a law banning children under 16 from using social media.

The writer has also suggested extending that to all smartphone use and gaming.

“I think we should be doing what Australia is doing, and separating our children from this pernicious disease of thought that is infecting them,” he says.

A ban would be a tough sell to teenagers, though.

Thorne appeared on BBC Two’s Newsnight this week alongside three men aged 18, 19 and 21.

When asked about a social media ban for under-16s, they had mixed feelings.

One said it was “a great idea, within reason”, another said it would be “quite unfair”, while the third was against the idea, arguing that “social media has brought a lot of good to young generations as well”.

For Thorne, the question about how to police smartphones and social media is about to come very close to home.

His son is eight, and Thorne says he wants to make sure he establishes “a method of communicating with him” as he grows up. Soon, he will want his own phone.

While working on the series, he has been thinking about how to handle his son’s future use of technology. “And I’m still processing how to do it.”

Researching and writing Adolescence has opened his eyes about the challenges facing young people and parents, he says. But how to tackle them? That’s the hardest part.

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.

The situation in the Strip has been described as “gravely, gravely concerning” with “absolutely desperate tragedies occurring all over Gaza” by Sam Rose from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.

Israel and the US have 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.

On Friday, the acting US ambassador to the UN squarely blamed Hamas for the ongoing war and resumption of fighting.

“Every death would have been avoided had Hamas accepted the bridge proposal,” Dorothy Shea told the UN Security Council.

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 Defense 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.

For most people, the idea of a holiday abroad involves packing a suitcase and being away for at least a weekend, if not a week or more.

But for Monica Stott, a single day is enough to fly to another country, explore, and return home before bedtime.

The 37-year-old from Wrexham enjoys taking part in holidays that have become known online as extreme day trips – and has visited Milan, Bergamo, Lisbon, Amsterdam and even Reykjavik for a single day.

“I think people are always surprised that you really do feel like you’ve had a holiday,” said Monica.

Monica, who is a full-time travel blogger, said the idea of an extreme day trip first occurred to her while travelling for work.

“My first few extreme day trips were to Ireland when I had clients over there,” she explained.

“I’d quite often pop over for a one or two-hour meeting and come home. Then I realised I could stay [a bit longer] and make a full day of it.”

Monica then discovered a number of Facebook groups where people were sharing their own experiences of extreme day trips, and became inspired to start booking her own in her spare time.

“There’s research suggesting that most of your best holiday memories are made in the first one or two days. When I thought about it, I agreed. A lot of the best moments happen when you first arrive.

“You arrive in time for breakfast, squeeze as much as you possibly can, and then fly home at night. It’s an intense, busy, crazy day.”

While Monica enjoys busy days in one location, Luka Chijutomi-Ghosh, an 18-year-old student from Cardiff, has taken things a step further.

“It began on Christmas Eve when I found a return flight to Prague for under £15. I booked it immediately, but then I realised the flight landed in Prague at 21:00 and returned to the UK at 09:00,” said Luka.

“So, I thought I could treat it as if it was daytime, sleep in the day and walk around the city at night.”

Luka said he realised that he only needed six hours to explore a city.

A few weeks later, when on holiday in Paris, he decided to see how many neighbouring countries he could travel to within a day by train.

“I went to Luxembourg, Brussels and Amsterdam, and returned to Paris all within the same day,” he said.

Luka’s logic, he said, was that he would probably have spent as much time travelling if he was on a day trip in the UK.

Facebook groups where people share their experiences of taking extreme day trips have acquired hundreds of thousands of members, with some focused specifically on regional UK airports.

Monica and Luka said their trips were efficient, budget-friendly, and helped to break up their routines without needing a week away from home.

“People always say they’d love to visit places like Paris or Rome but don’t have the time or money for a long trip. This is a way around that,” Monica said.

For Luka, it’s also a practical choice.

“I look at how much I spend on a student night out, sometimes up to £60 or £70. If I can get a return flight for under £20 and experience a whole new city instead, why not?”

Despite Monika and Luka’s enthusiasm, extreme day trips have drawn criticism over their environmental impact.

Flying is responsible for 2.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 8% of UK emissions.

These gases warm the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and climate change.

Both Monica and Luka acknowledge this issue.

“I think if it means people are taking way more flights, and airlines are putting on more flights, then I do see that as a negative impact,” Monica said.

“But a lot of people doing extreme day trips are doing it because they either can’t afford to take a longer holiday or don’t have time.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say one person’s holiday is more important than another person’s holiday, because they’re going for longer.”

Luka argued that the flights would often go ahead regardless.

“The seat will be filled by someone,” he said.

“Also, if another form of transport can be used then that would be a good idea. For example, on my trip involving three cities, I didn’t take a single flight.”

Both also said that extreme day trips were appealing due to the high cost of public transport within the UK.

Monica said her trips required careful planning.

“I try to choose destinations that are less than a two-hour flight. Once you get in over two hours, it’s just such a long day of travel.”

She also said she tried to stay calm at the airport to avoid unnecessary stress.

“A lot of people get really excited or anxious at the airport, and that can be exhausting,” she said.

“If you just treat it like getting on a train or a bus, you don’t use up all your energy with that pre-holiday anxiety.”

Mountains of rubbish blight the streets of the UK’s second biggest city with no end in sight to a dispute that has been going on for weeks.

Wherever you stand on the contentious issue of Birmingham’s bin strikes, the reality remains the same.

Almost every residential area is plagued by overflowing bins. Rats and other vermin are taking over the streets, and fly-tippers are exploiting the strike by dumping rubbish in open spaces.

More than a million people have been affected. Some say they are being held to ransom over the fate of a small number of refuse collectors. While others accuse the bankrupt city council of snatching money from essential workers due to its own financial mismanagement.

“The sights are absolutely shocking,” explained Dan O’Brien, who lives in the city centre. “It’s such a terrible situation.”

The 27-year-old said dead rodents mowed down by cars were becoming common, adding he had seen four in just one morning.

Javed Haider, from Sparkhill, also told me he had seen rats around bin bags and believed it had become a “health hazard”.

He added that there was also a problem with fly-tipping.

“There’s spots where people just come out of their cars, dump it and they go away,” he said.

Student Milan Karki, who is originally from Nepal but currently lives in Balsall Heath, likewise said he was afraid the current situation could lead to health problems.

“Where people live, it should be clean,” he said.

Their experiences are not unique and the BBC has heard from dozens of people with similar stories.

Their message is often the same: things can’t carry on like this.

More than 400 bin workers who are members of the Unite union have been striking on and off since the beginning of the year.

The dispute is over Birmingham City Council plans to downgrade some staff and reduce their pay as part of wide-ranging measures to shore up the troubled authority’s finances.

It means neighbourhoods are going weeks without collections, sometimes resulting in 6ft bin bag stacks and “rats the size of cats” scurrying around.

William Timms, the owner of WJ Pest Solutions, told the BBC he had experienced a 75% increase in calls.

“There are rats in front gardens, back, and gaining access because of the bins being left out,” he explained.

A powerful stench is already present in some areas as spring beckons and temperatures begin to increase.

But despite the pleas of residents, a compromise appears some way off, with the most recent round of talks on Friday ending without an agreement.

It means there’s no end in sight for the dispute, which could stretch long into the summer.

The city has been here before.

There were big rows between refuse workers and the local authority in 2017 and 2019.

On both occasions, there were weeks of missed collections and rubbish strewn across city streets.

But some people have told the BBC the current situation is as bad as they’ve ever seen it.

And this time, there appears to be very little goodwill between the two sides.

On Friday 14 March, there were ugly scenes at the council’s Atlas Depot in Tyseley, in the south-east of the city.

A BBC reporter who was present at the scene said five police vehicles and a police helicopter were dispatched following reports of waste trucks being blocked from leaving.

Striking workers on the picket line insisted they were only stopping lorries from leaving if they had safety concerns.

Days earlier, there were separate claims about a bin worker being struck by an object at the site.

It prompted Labour council leader John Cotton to condemn “violence on picket lines”.

He added people had a right to go to work without fear of intimidation, but the union hit back and accused the local authority of trying to “smear” the behaviour of refuse workers.

Elsewhere in the city, there were scenes likened to “binmageddon” when a mobile refuse collection service descended into chaos after being swarmed by people desperate to dispose of their rubbish.

A council refuse truck was approached by so many residents as it attempted to travel along Anderton Park Road in Moseley that a local councillor concerned about safety called police.

An officer at the scene told the BBC it was a waste of resources but said he understood people’s anger, as they had to live in the area.

Follow the BBC’s coverage on the Birmingham bin strikes:

• Rubbish piles high in city as bin strike drags on
• Refunds over abandoned garden waste service
• ‘We cannot move on offer to striking bin workers’
• Residents disposing of waste at tip due to bin strikes

Izzy Knowles, the Liberal Democrat councillor for the ward, spoke to the BBC after the service was called off two hours ahead of schedule.

“People were going to the wagons to put the rubbish in themselves, which you shouldn’t do,” she said.

“Somebody was going to get hurt.”

Later in the week, private security was deployed at another collection service.

It’s not just residents expressing concerns about the impact of rotting rubbish and unruly pests on their health.

A West Midlands Police statement said stopping the collection of waste was considered “a risk for public health and safety in the community” and a matter for all public agencies, including policing.

This language was echoed by local Labour MP Preet Gill, who said she feared a “public health emergency”, while Tory MP Wendy Morton said “squeaky blinders rats” could invade her nearby constituency.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, is pointing the finger at the Labour-run council and using the situation to attack the government ahead of local elections.

A warning that has perhaps attracted less attention, however, is one issued by West Midlands Fire Service.

Area Commander Gemma McSweeney told the BBC there had already been a “small increase” in rubbish fires in recent weeks, and she feared a big blaze outside someone’s home could have “devastating” consequences.

“Our biggest concern at the minute is where we see a build-up of rubbish outside anybody’s property,” she explained.

Administered by the largest local authority in Europe, the UK’s second city has a long history as an industrial and economic powerhouse.

But the past few years have seen Birmingham lurch from crisis to crisis, and its long-documented financial woes are at the heart of this dispute.

As part of massive savings, it wants to remove waste recycling and collection officer (WRCO) roles, something Unite claims is safety critical and would cost affected staff £8,000 a year.

The council disputes the union’s figures, claiming just 17 staff would lose the maximum amount of about £6,000.

The local authority insists 80% of the workforce have already accepted alternative offers, including promotion to driver roles, voluntary redundancy or moving to street cleaning teams – with just 41 still yet to agree terms.

Whichever way you cut the numbers, a solution appears far out of reach.

When violence broke out in Syria’s coastal area recently, including mass killings of civilians allegedly carried out as revenge for attacks on Syrian security forces, volunteer rescuers quickly came to help.

They were part of the Syrian civil defence group known as the White Helmets, which had operated in rebel-held areas during the civil war.

After the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December, the White Helmets arrived in Syria’s capital, Damascus, welcomed as heroes by those who had supported the opposition.

Since then, they have started operating in more areas of the war-ravaged country.

Most of those killed in the recent attacks, which occurred over a period of days earlier this month, were Alawites – an offshoot of Shia Islam, and Assad’s minority sect.

Abdulkafi Kayal, head of operations for the White Helmets in Syria’s coastal region, told the BBC that the group’s work transcended politics: “When we go to rescue someone in need, we don’t ask them about their religion or political opinion… Our mandate is to help those in need”.

Throughout the civil war, Assad had branded the White Helmets a terrorist group, alleging it worked for armed rebels. But the group always said it was a neutral, humanitarian organisation and has been praised around the world for its work.

“We are Syrians, and we can’t separate our care for one area more than the others,” Mr Kayal said. “It is our homeland, and we consider ourselves as an umbrella to serve all Syrians.”

The recent outburst of violence was the worst in Syria since interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa led the lightning rebel offensive that overthrew Assad.

Tensions had been brewing since December, when supporters of Assad killed 14 interior ministry troops in an ambush, two weeks after the former president was overthrown.

In early March, fighting broke out between security forces and fighters loyal to the previous regime, with dozens reportedly killed on both sides.

Syrian security forces were then accused of carrying out revenge killings of Alawites in the coastal province of Latakia – the sect’s heartland.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group, has since said more than 1,400 civilians were killed in Latakia and its neighbouring provinces Tartous, Hama and Homs.

BBC News has not been able to verify whether the killings were committed by the forces of Syria’s new rulers.

The White Helmets, responding to such incidents, said they were conducting around 30 response calls a day at the height of the attacks – including the retrieval of more than 100 bodies.

“We are here to serve everyone without any differentiation,” Mr Kayal said.

“Our slogan is ‘To Save one life is to save all of the humanity’. It doesn’t matter if it is a Muslim, Sunni, Alawite, Christian, Druze or even an atheist. Those families are our families.”

Last week, BBC News joined the White Helmets as volunteers got to work in Tartous following reports of a massacre in the village of Barmada.

The team retrieved 10 bodies of government fighters, which all appeared to have been thrown from a hillside into a valley. Their hands and legs were tied, suggesting they had been caught by the opposing side.

Saber, a state security officer who was at the scene, accused Assad loyalists of being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of his colleagues. BBC News could not independently verify this claim.

“When Syria was liberated from the Assad regime, we tried hard to keep everything under control, to unite Syria, with all its governorates and components, to rebuild a new Syria that we want to be proud of in the Middle East,” he said.

But he added that this had been difficult, because “when we took control of the country, we had a personal problem with the [anti-Assad] militia because the majority of them were victims of chemical attacks, bombs, massacres and many crimes that caused a devastating psychological impact on them”.

Images and video online appear to show soldiers killing civilians, including children, in the coastal areas where the Alawite killings took place.

One man, Maen, told BBC News his son and aunt had been killed by security forces. He buried them in his courtyard so they could remain close.

“We suffered under Assad and now we are prosecuted under this new government,” he said.

Maen’s wife wept as she looked at her son’s photo. “What did he do?” she asked. “He was 20 years old and did nothing to harm anyone.”

Al-Sharaa, Syria’s interim president, has set up an independent committee to investigate the killings and has insisted the perpetrators would be held accountable.

But if his government wants to prevent a new civil war, many feel it must prove it can protect the Alawites and ensure the rights of all citizens in the new Syria.

“If you’re not comfortable, don’t let your kids be on Roblox”: with that advice in an exclusive BBC interview, the hugely popular gaming platform’s CEO Dave Baszucki ignited a fierce debate among parents.

Mr Baszucki also stressed the company took protecting its users extremely seriously and pointed out that “tens of millions” of people have “amazing experiences” on what is the UK’s most popular gaming site for children aged eight to 12.

Hundreds of people got in touch with the BBC after reading his comments: many said parents needed to take more responsibility, or highlighted how safe and enjoyable Roblox was for their children.

Others painted a much darker picture – accusations of grooming, addiction and a company that failed to respond to their concerns.

Here are some of their stories. The BBC has changed the names of some people to protect the identities of young people.

For Amir, from Leeds, Mr Baszucki’s comments were “ridiculous”, and the course of action he suggested was “much easier said than done”.

“Roblox is ruining my son”, he told the BBC – and he feels powerless to stop it.

A user since he was eight or nine, he says the 15-year-old is “addicted” and can now use the site for up to 14 hours a day.

“He is a single child and both parents are so busy working. I feel guilty we haven’t been able to give him quality time. That’s been robbed by Roblox,” Amir told the BBC.

The son’s account is linked to the father’s email address, and Amir has received “hundreds” of emails over the years from Roblox about the violation of the ‘terms of use’.

He says his son has been given temporary bans, but finds a way to play on – using multiple accounts and the accounts of others.

Amir hopes he can reduce his son’s time on the platform by “playing cards, talking and watching YouTube together” rather than forcing him off the platform completely.

In response, Roblox highlighted to BBC News the screen time limit feature on the platform that gives parents the ability to restrict the amount of time children are allowed to spend on Roblox each day.

Sally, from the north of Scotland, told the BBC she “fully takes responsibility” as a parent – but questioned whether Roblox was doing the same.

She told the BBC her nine-year-old daughter was being groomed on Roblox and – despite reporting it to the platform – did not get a response, leaving her “enraged”.

The mother said last December her child was chatting to someone in a game where you can “mimic real life”. This user coerced her child to role play “marriage”. They told the girl they were touching themselves, and asked Sally’s daughter to touch herself and take a photo.

They offered Roblox’s in-game currency in exchange for the picture. The child didn’t do it, and told her mother days later.

“When she approached me, it was with a lot of tears, and feeling very, very shameful with what had happened. I assured my child that it’s not their fault that they have done everything correct – to tell me.

“This is unacceptable for a platform that’s advertised towards young children. It seems like the company isn’t taking any responsibility and clearly their filters are not working.”

Sally said companies that created platforms should be liable for any issues with them, rather than telling its users “‘well, don’t use it’.”

In his BBC interview, Mr Baszucki said building a “trust and safety system” had been an important part of Roblox ever since it launched.

He added: “We do, in the company, take the attitude that any bad – even one bad incident – is one too many.

“We watch for bullying, we watch for harassment, we filter all of those kinds of things, and I would say behind the scenes, the analysis goes on all the way to, if necessary, reaching out to law enforcement.”

He said he remained confident in Roblox’s safety tools and insisted the firm went above and beyond to keep its users safe.

Roblox also says it analyses all communications that pass between members on the platform, increasingly using more advanced AI systems and other tech to do so – and anything flagged is sent for further investigation.

It stressed to BBC News that users cannot share images with each other on the platform.

Concerns about children being exposed to sexual content on Roblox have been aired before.

In November last year, under 13s were banned on the platform from sending direct messages, and also from playing in “hangout experiences” which features chat between players. Other parental controls were also introduced.

Many people have also contacted the BBC to endorse what the Roblox CEO said.

Kathryn Foley said she was “impressed” with Mr Baszuki’s “honesty” in his interview, and highlighted ongoing conversations she has with her nine-year-old daughter, Helene, about the platform.

• Gaming Empire: The Roblox story

Helene is a big fan of the animal game Adopt Me.

“I would say on the whole the Roblox experience has been a very positive one with Adopt Me being a very kind and safe place for her to have fun with her friends,” Kathryn said.

Meanwhile, Kirsty Solman spoke to the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 about her 13-year-old son Kyle, who has ADHD, autism and severe anxiety.

“He really struggles with social interactions and small talk. Being on Roblox and other gaming platforms, he is then able to play with his classmates.

“That stress and anxiety is taken away, and he has ended up with a really good group of friends.”

Kirsty said she spoke to her son about online safety and checks his devices every day.

Phil from London agreed parents needed to take the initiative when it came to online safety.

“There is a danger in thinking the internet is a crèche,” he commented on the BBC website.

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.

The Trump administration is planning to import eggs from Turkey and South Korea and is in talks with other countries in hopes of easing all-time high prices for the American consumer, officials confirmed.

“We are talking in the hundreds of millions of eggs for the short term,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters at the White House.

It follows the administration’s announcement of a $1bn (£792m) plan to combat a raging bird flu epidemic that has forced US farmers to cull tens of millions of chickens.

Despite President Trump’s campaign promise to reduce prices, the cost of eggs has surged more than 65% over the past year, and it is projected to rise by 41% in 2025.

Rollins said her department was also in talks with other countries to secure new supplies, but did not specify which regions.

“When our chicken populations are repopulated and we’ve got a full egg laying industry going again, hopefully in a couple of months, we then shift back to our internal egg layers and moving those eggs out onto the shelf, ” she said.

Polish and Lithuanian poultry associations said on Friday they had also been approached by US embassies regarding possible egg exports, the AFP reported.

“Back in February, the American embassy in Warsaw asked our organisation whether Poland would be interested in exporting eggs to the US market,” Katarzyna Gawronska, director of the National Chamber of Poultry and Feed Producers, told the news agency.

• Farmers say bird flu a ‘crisis’ as egg prices soar
• 100,000 eggs stolen from one US grocer as bird flu drives up prices

In February, the US Department of Agriculture unveiled a $1bn, five-point plan to tackle the price of eggs, with a budget of $500m for biosecurity measures, roughly $100m for vaccine research and development, and $400m for farmer financial relief programs.

The Trump administration said it will provide commercial egg farms with best practices and consulting services for free, and pay up to 75% of the costs to address vulnerabilities to help prevent the spread of bird flu.

“Our plan was to invest a significant amount of money to do audits across the country to have USDA help these egg laying companies to secure their barns,” Rollins said. “…and since we began doing that most recently, we’ve seen a significant decline in the bird flu.”

Though the avian flu, or H5N1, has circulated among American poultry flocks for years, an outbreak starting in 2022 has wreaked havoc on farms, killing more than 156 million birds and sending egg prices skyrocketing.

Egg prices became a rallying point for Trump in last year’s presidential run as he sought to capitalise on voters’ frustrations with the rising cost of essential items.

During his address to the US Congress earlier this month, he blamed the soaring egg prices on his predecessor Joe Biden.

“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control – and we are working hard to get it back down,” he added.

Egg prices rose as the Biden administration directed millions of egg-laying birds to be culled last year amid a bird flu outbreak, though prices have continued rising during the early stages of Trump’s second presidency.

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”.

Oleg Gordievsky, the long-standing KGB double agent who defected to Britain, has died aged 86.

Gordievsky was said to be Britain’s most valuable spy in living memory inside Russia’s intelligence agencies.

Counter-terrorism police are assisting the coroner, but his death is not being treated as suspicious.

He died peacefully at his home in Surrey, the BBC understands.

Gordievsky, a colonel in Russia’s KGB, spent many years as a double agent, passing vital intelligence to both Britain’s MI6 and MI5.

He has lived in Godalming under police protection since Moscow became suspicious of him in 1985 and he narrowly escaped arrest, trial and a firing squad by getting smuggled across the border into Finland in the boot of a car.

Two years earlier, as the KGB resident in London at the height of the Cold War, he warned his British handlers that Moscow had become so paranoid about an imaginary surprise attack by the West that the Soviet Union began making preparations to strike first.

As a result of his tip-off, NATO curtailed its military exercise codenamed Able Archer, and the crisis was averted.

In 2007, Gordievsky was honoured by the Queen with the Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George.

The honour is the same title bestowed on fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond.

Information passed on by Gordievsky led to the expulsion of 25 Soviet agents working undercover in the UK.

At the time of his work as a double agent, his defection was hailed by then Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe as “a very substantial coup for our security forces”.

Gordievsky has since written a number of books about the operations of the KGB.

Every Uber driver in the UK will be eligible for 20 hours of free childcare under a new scheme intended to get more women driving taxis.

They will be able to use the allowance through a nannying and babysitting app for the rest of 2025.

“We really, really would like to attract more female drivers onto the Uber platform,” said Uber UK General Manager Andrew Brem.

But the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which represents drivers, said “anyone can see through” what it called a “cynical PR stunt”.

“If Uber really wanted to support families, they would pay drivers enough money so that they could afford time off to be with their children,” it told the BBC in a statement.

“Instead Uber’s insultingly low fees force drivers to spend so long on the roads that in many cases relationships rupture and families are broken up,” it added.

Uber said it trialled free childcare with 1,000 drivers and had an overwhelmingly positive response – with 96% of those who took part saying it made it easier to take on work.

Now, the scheme will be extended to the more than 100,000 Uber drivers in the UK.

“Like some other occupations, [Uber driving] happens to be predominantly male – that’s not something that we’d like,” Mr Brem told BBC News.

He expects the free childcare to initially be used by existing drivers rather than new ones, “but it’s more, I think, to get drivers into the habit of doing this.”

He adds: “By testing it at no cost, you have the experience, and you see the ease of getting childcare through this particular route.”

Uber UK will keep the scheme open for the rest of the year and then “see how it goes,” in terms of extending it further, Mr Brem said.

The firm will hope the move may help assuage drivers who have taken strike action in recent months over what they say is unfair pay.

In October, Uber drivers in Glasgow told the BBC their wages had fallen in 2024, despite price increases being passed on to customers.

Then in January, striking drivers said they were working “too many hours” despite having families at home.

“I haven’t yet come across an employee survey, including our own, where people don’t say that they want to earn more,” said Mr Brem.

“I do understand that our main role in helping them more, though, is to is to keep the platform super busy, so our focus is on actually growth of demand,” he said.

Mr Brem said drivers could now see a weekly breakdown of how much money they earned compared to how much of the fare Uber takes.

He added that, coming out of lockdowns, there was a period of “unusually higher earnings” for drivers, as demand outstripped supply of available rides.

“We’re more in a sort of normal situation now, but that probably affects some of the experiences that [drivers] have had,” he says.

Uber has also highlighted the experience of one mother of three who participated in its childcare pilot and said it had been a “massive boost”.

Tania Naseer said she used the childcare during work and also to go out with friends.

“As a mother, it’s important for me to have my own batteries charged in order to be there for my children,” she told BBC News.

“Now, I can hire a sitter for the weekend and then I can work the weekend, and they are the busiest hours.”

She added: “Ideally, yes, a pay rise would be great, but right now it seems to be working how it is.”

The childcare will be offered through a babysitting and nannying app called Bubble, which matches parents with childminders.

Drivers can use the free hours whenever they want, not just when they are working for Uber.

Mr Brem says he hopes drivers using the childcare scheme will “recognise this is a valuable thing that they wish to carry on themselves” after they have used their free hours.

Boxing heavyweight legend George Foreman has died aged 76, according to his family.

Known as Big George in the ring, the American built one of the most remarkable and enduring careers in the sport, winning Olympic gold in 1968 and claiming the world heavyweight title twice, 21 years apart – the second making him the oldest champion in history aged 45.

He lost his first title to Muhammad Ali in their famous Rumble in the Jungle fight in 1974. But Foreman’s professional boxing career boasted an astonishing total of 76 wins including 68 knockouts, almost double that of Ali.

He retired from the sport in 1997 but not before he agreed to put his name to a best-selling grill – a decision that went on to bring him fortunes that dwarfed his boxing earnings.

His family said in a post on Instagram on Friday night: “Our hearts are broken.

“A devout preacher, a devoted husband, a loving father, and a proud grand and great grandfather, he lived a life marked by unwavering faith, humility, and purpose.”

The statement added: “A humanitarian, an Olympian, and two time heavyweight champion of the world, He was deeply respected – a force for good, a man of discipline, conviction, and a protector of his legacy, fighting tirelessly to preserve his good name – for his family.”

Foreman was born in Marshall, Texas, on 10 January 1949, and raised along with six siblings by a single mother in the segregated American South.

He dropped out of school and turned to street robberies before eventually finding his outlet in the ring.

Foreman won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, aged 19, before turning pro and winning 37 consecutive matches. He lost only five bouts over his career.

He beat previously undefeated reigning champion Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973 knocking him down six times in the first two rounds.

His 1974 Rumble in the Jungle against Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, remains one of the most famous boxing matches ever.

Ali, the older man, was the underdog after he was stripped of his crown seven years earlier for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War.

Foreman reflected on the legendary fight 50 years later in an October interview with BBC World Service Newshour, explaining that everyone thought he was going to decimate Ali.

“Oh, he’s not going to last one round,” the boxer said experts were predicting at the time.

Foreman told the BBC he typically would get “real nervous” and have “butterflies” before any boxing match, but that night – it was the “most comfortable” he had felt.

But the wily Ali used a tactic that later became known as “rope-a-dope”, which wore out Foreman, causing him to throw out hundreds of punches before Ali unloaded on him in the eighth round and scored a knockout.

After a second professional loss, Foreman retired in 1977 and became an ordained minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Texas, which he founded and built.

He told the BBC his defeat to Ali became the “best thing that ever happened to me” as it ultimately led him to “get my message out” through preaching.

He recalled that his preaching started small, on street corners and with friends, then grew.

“We began meeting informally at various homes in Houston, and before long, the crowds became too large for most houses to accommodate,” Foreman said on his website.

“Eventually, we bought a piece of land and an old, dilapidated building on the north-east side of Houston.”

Foreman came out of retirement in 1987 to raise money for a youth centre he founded. He won 24 matches before losing to Evander Holyfield after 12 rounds in 1991.

In 1994, Foreman knocked out undefeated Michael Moorer to become the oldest ever heavyweight champion at age 45.

He became ad pitchman for his George Foreman Grill, which millions have purchased since it hit the market in 1994, thanks in part to his memorable catchphrase, the “Lean Mean Grilling Machine”.

Foreman was married five times. He has a dozen children, including five sons who are all named George.

He explained on his website that he named them after himself so they “they would always have something in common”.

“I say to them, ‘If one of us goes up, then we all go up together,” he explained. “And if one goes down, we all go down together!'”

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.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has said it will revoke the temporary legal status of more than half a million migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Those migrants have been warned to leave the country before their permits and deportation shield are cancelled on 24 April, according to a notice posted by the federal government.

The 530,000 migrants were brought into the US under a Biden-era sponsorship process known as CHNV that was designed to open legal migration pathways. Trump suspended the programme once he took office.

It is unclear how many of these migrants have been able to secure another status in the interim that would allow them to stay in the US legally.

The programme was launched under Democratic President Joe Biden in 2022, first covering Venezuelans before it was expanded to other countries.

• Judge in migrants deportations case says government lawyers ‘disrespectful’

It allowed the migrants and their immediate family members to fly into the US if they had American sponsors and remain for two years under a temporary immigration status known as parole.

The Biden administration had argued that CHNV would help curb illegal border crossings at the southern US border and allow for better vetting of those entering the country.

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday rebuked the prior administration and said the program had failed in its goals.

The agency’s statement said Biden officials “granted them [migrants] opportunities to compete for American jobs and undercut American workers; forced career civil servants to promote the programs even when fraud was identified; and then blamed Republicans in Congress for the chaos that ensued and the crime that followed”.

However, the 35-page notice in the Federal Register said some of those in the US under CHNV might be allowed to remain on a “case-by-case basis”.

Trump is also considering whether to cancel the temporary legal status of some 240,000 Ukrainians who fled to the US during the conflict with Russia.

CHNV helped a reported 213,000 Haitians enter the US amid deteriorating conditions in the Caribbean country.

More than 120,700 Venezuelans, 110,900 Cubans and over 93,000 Nicaraguans were also allowed into the US under the programme before Trump shut it down.

Last month, DHS announced it would in August end another immigration designation, temporary protected status (TPS), for 500,000 Haitians living in the US.

TPS was granted to nationals of designated countries facing unsafe conditions, such as armed conflict or environmental disasters.

DHS also halted TPS for Venezuelans in the US, although this is facing a legal challenge.

Since taking office in January, Trump’s immigration policies have encountered a number of legal hurdles.

Flights have resumed at Heathrow Airport and a full service is expected on Saturday following an “unprecedented” loss of power caused by nearby a substation fire.

About 200,000 passengers were affected as flights were grounded throughout Friday, with inbound planes being diverted to other airports in Europe after flames ripped through the North Hyde plant in Hayes, west London, on Thursday evening.

The airport’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye apologised to stranded passengers and said the disruption was “as big as it gets for our airport” and that it could not guard itself “100%”.

The Met Police confirmed the fire was not believed to be suspicious.

The investigation will focus on the “electrical distribution equipment”, the force said.

British Airways announced eight of its long-haul flights had been cleared to leave Heathrow during Friday evening and it was “urgently contacting customers to let them know”.

Restrictions on overnight flights have also been temporarily lifted to help ease congestion, the Department of Transport said.

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

Mr Woldbye said that a back-up transformer had failed meaning systems had to be closed down in accordance with safety procedures so that power supplies could be restructured from two remaining substations to restore electricity enough to power the airport.

Several airlines announced they would restart scheduled flights both to and from Heathrow, including British Airways, Air Canada and United Airlines.

An airport spokesperson said the first flights were focused on “repatriating the passengers who were diverted to other airports in Europe… and relocating aircraft”.

Mr Woldbye said: “I’d like to stress that this has been an incident of major severity. It’s not a small fire.

“We have lost power equal to that of a mid-sized city and our backup systems have been working as they should but they are not sized to run the entire airport.”

Asked if there is a weak point in Heathrow’s power system, he said: “You can say that but of course contingencies of certain sizes we cannot guard ourselves against 100% and this is one of them.

“I mean, short of anybody getting hurt, this is as big as it gets for our airport.”

“This is unprecedented,” he added.

Mr Woldbye went on to say the airport expected to return to “100% operation” on Saturday.

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

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.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she believed airport bosses “stood up their resilience plan swiftly, and they’ve collaborated closely with our emergency responders and the airline operators; they do have backup energy supplies, they have generators, diesel generators.

“None of that failed on this occasion because that backup supply is designed to protect the critical key systems within the airport and not to provide power to the whole airport.”

Alexander added that she was in close contact with the energy secretary, the home secretary and with Heathrow to “make sure that any lessons we need to learn from the systems that the airport has in place are learned”.

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

Emergency services were first called to the scene at 23:20 GMT on Thursday.

Some 120 aircraft heading to the airport at that time were forced to either divert or return to their point of origin.

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.

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

A large cordon was put in place as a precaution and about 150 people were evacuated from their homes.

Most of those had returned home by 17:00, according to LFB.

Hillingdon Council said it was assisting 12 people with hotel accommodation until it was safe for them to return to their homes.

More than 65,000 homes in the area were left without power as a result, as well as the airport, although the National Grid said power was restored by 14:00.

Local residents told the BBC they saw a bright flash before their lights went out.

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.

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

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.”

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.

When Donald Trump met President Zelensky in New York last September, the then US presidential candidate exuded confidence he could bring the war in Ukraine to an early end. “If we win, I think we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” he said.

How quickly he meant varied over time. In a TV debate a few days earlier, Mr Trump had promised he would “get it settled before I even become president”. This was an escalation on his previous commitment in May 2023 to stop the fighting in the first 24 hours of his presidency.

Mr Trump has now been in office for more than two months and the penny may be beginning to drop in the White House that trying to end a conflict as bitter and complex as this may take time.

In a television interview last weekend, the US president admitted that when he promised to end the war in a day, he was “being a little bit sarcastic”.

There are many reasons for the slower progress than Team Trump may have anticipated.

First, the president’s belief in the power of his personal, one-on-one diplomacy may have been misplaced. He has long believed any international problem can be solved if he sits down with another leader and agrees a deal. Mr Trump first spoke to Vladimir Putin on 12 February, an hour-and-a-half conversation he described as “highly productive”. The two leaders spoke again on 18 March.

But it is clear these telephone calls failed to secure the immediate 30-day interim ceasefire Mr Trump wanted. The only substantive concession he squeezed out of Mr Putin was a promise to end Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities, a commitment he is accused by Ukraine of breaking within hours of the call.

Second, the Russian president has made it clear he does not intend to be rushed. His first public comments about the negotiations came last week in a press conference that was a whole month after his telephone call with Mr Trump.

Mr Putin showed he was resolutely opposed to the US two-stage strategy of seeking an interim ceasefire before talking about a longer-term settlement. Instead, he said any talks must address what he sees as “the root causes of the war”, namely his fears an expanding Nato alliance and the very existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state somehow present a threat to Russia’s security. He also set out detailed questions and conditions that must be answered and met before any deal could be agreed.

Third, the US strategy of directing its initial focus on Ukraine may have been misjudged. The White House came to the belief that President Zelensky was the obstacle to peace. Western diplomats acknowledge the Ukrainian government was slow to realise just how much the world had changed with the arrival of Mr Trump.

But the US pressure on Kyiv that led to the now infamous confrontation in the Oval Office – when Mr Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, harangued the Ukrainian leader – consumed time, effort and political capital.

It also ruptured transatlantic relations, setting Europe and the US at odds, another diplomatic problem that took time to settle. All the while Vladimir Putin sat back and enjoyed the show, biding his time.

Fourth, the sheer complexity of the conflict makes any resolution hard. The Ukrainian offer was initially for an interim ceasefire in the air and at sea. The idea was that this would be relatively straightforward to monitor.

But in last week’s talks in Jeddah, the US insisted any immediate ceasefire should also include the more than 1200km-long front line in the east. Instantly that made the logistics of verifying any ceasefire more complicated. This, of course, was then rejected by Mr Putin.

But even his agreement to the more modest proposal – to end attacks on energy infrastructure – is not without its problems. It is the details about that proposal which will occupy much of the technical negotiations that are expected to take place in Saudi Arabia on Monday. Military and energy experts will draw up detailed lists of potential power plants – nuclear or otherwise – that might be protected.

They will also try to agree which weapons systems should not be used. But agreeing the difference between energy and other civilian infrastructure may take some time. Remember: Ukraine and Russia are not talking to one another; they are engaging separately and bilaterally with the US which is promising to shuttle between both sides. This again adds to the time.

Fifth, the US focus on the economic benefits of a ceasefire distracted attention from the priority of ending the fighting. Mr Trump has spent time trying to agree a framework deal giving US firms access to Ukrainian critical minerals. Some saw this as the US investing in Ukraine’s future – others as it extorting the country’s natural resources.

President Zelensky argued initially he could agree a deal only if the US promised to provide Ukraine with security guarantees to deter future Russian aggression. The White House refused, saying the presence of US mining firms and workers would be deterrent enough. Eventually Mr Zelensky conceded defeat and said he would agree a minerals deal without security guarantees. But despite that, the US has yet to sign the agreement, hoping again to improve the terms, possibly by including access to or even ownership of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

Ending wars can be complex and time consuming. We would not have got to this stage without Trump’s pushing, but progress has not been as quick or simple as he believed. In December 2018, as he campaigned for the presidency, Volodymyr Zelensky suggested negotiations with Vladimir Putin would be quite straightforward. “You need to talk in a very simple way,” he told the Ukrainian journalist, Dmytro Gordon. ‘”What do you want, what are your conditions?” And I’d tell them: ‘Here are our points.’ We would agree somewhere in the middle.”

Well, on the evidence of the last two months, it may be harder than that.

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.”

The Trump administration is planning to import eggs from Turkey and South Korea and is in talks with other countries in hopes of easing all-time high prices for the American consumer, officials confirmed.

“We are talking in the hundreds of millions of eggs for the short term,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters at the White House.

It follows the administration’s announcement of a $1bn (£792m) plan to combat a raging bird flu epidemic that has forced US farmers to cull tens of millions of chickens.

Despite President Trump’s campaign promise to reduce prices, the cost of eggs has surged more than 65% over the past year, and it is projected to rise by 41% in 2025.

Rollins said her department was also in talks with other countries to secure new supplies, but did not specify which regions.

“When our chicken populations are repopulated and we’ve got a full egg laying industry going again, hopefully in a couple of months, we then shift back to our internal egg layers and moving those eggs out onto the shelf, ” she said.

Polish and Lithuanian poultry associations said on Friday they had also been approached by US embassies regarding possible egg exports, the AFP reported.

“Back in February, the American embassy in Warsaw asked our organisation whether Poland would be interested in exporting eggs to the US market,” Katarzyna Gawronska, director of the National Chamber of Poultry and Feed Producers, told the news agency.

• Farmers say bird flu a ‘crisis’ as egg prices soar
• 100,000 eggs stolen from one US grocer as bird flu drives up prices

In February, the US Department of Agriculture unveiled a $1bn, five-point plan to tackle the price of eggs, with a budget of $500m for biosecurity measures, roughly $100m for vaccine research and development, and $400m for farmer financial relief programs.

The Trump administration said it will provide commercial egg farms with best practices and consulting services for free, and pay up to 75% of the costs to address vulnerabilities to help prevent the spread of bird flu.

“Our plan was to invest a significant amount of money to do audits across the country to have USDA help these egg laying companies to secure their barns,” Rollins said. “…and since we began doing that most recently, we’ve seen a significant decline in the bird flu.”

Though the avian flu, or H5N1, has circulated among American poultry flocks for years, an outbreak starting in 2022 has wreaked havoc on farms, killing more than 156 million birds and sending egg prices skyrocketing.

Egg prices became a rallying point for Trump in last year’s presidential run as he sought to capitalise on voters’ frustrations with the rising cost of essential items.

During his address to the US Congress earlier this month, he blamed the soaring egg prices on his predecessor Joe Biden.

“Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control – and we are working hard to get it back down,” he added.

Egg prices rose as the Biden administration directed millions of egg-laying birds to be culled last year amid a bird flu outbreak, though prices have continued rising during the early stages of Trump’s second presidency.

President Donald Trump has rescinded an executive order targeting a prestigious international law firm after it promised to abandon diversity policies and provide $40m (£31m) worth of free legal work to support White House initiatives.

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is a multinational law firm headquartered in New York that has many high-profile clients.

Trump’s 14 March order had terminated federal contracts with the firm and suspended security clearances for its lawyers, saying it was undermining the US judicial system.

The firm is now facing blowback from many in the legal community, including a top lawyer for Democrats, even as some lawyers said it faced few other options.

Trump has issued similar executive orders against the law firms Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling.

The White House rescinded the order on Thursday after a meeting between Trump and Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison & Wharton.

In a post on Truth Social, the president said the firm had agreed to a series of concessions, including the promise to provide “the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives”.

It added that Paul Weiss would commit to “merit-based” hiring and promotion, and “will not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies”.

Trump’s order last week had cancelled contracts with the firms citing Trump’s orders to wipe out any initiatives aimed at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) within the federal government.

The Truth Social post also included a statement from Mr Karp, who said: “We are gratified that the President has agreed to withdraw the Executive Order concerning Paul, Weiss. We look forward to an engaged and constructive relationship with the President and his Administration.”

Many in the legal community have expressed outrage over the deal, which one lawyer said was a “sad day for the legal industry”.

Marc Elias, a former Perkins Coie partner and a top lawyer for Democrats, assailed the agreement in a post on social media platform Bluesky.

“Paul Weiss, didn’t just bend a knee, it set a new standard for shameful capitulation,” he wrote. “This is a stain on the firm, every one of its partners, and the entire legal profession.”

Soon after Trump made the announcement, Rachel Cohen, an associate at the Skadden Arps legal firm, resigned in a blistering company-wide email condemning the agreement.

“Please consider this email my two week notice, revocable if the firm comes up with a satisfactory response to the current moment,” she wrote. Cohen had asked Skadden to sign onto a brief supporting another firm that has sued the Trump administration.

She had helped organise the open letter criticising the Trump administration for attempting to “bully corporate law firms out of engaging in any representation that challenges the administration’s aims”. More than 300 associates have anonymously signed the letter since it went live about a week ago, Politico reported.

In an internal email to its lawyers, Mr Karp defended the agreement, saying it was in line with the firm’s principles, including a commitment to remaining politically independent, Reuters reported.

The firm brought in more than $2bn in annual revenues in 2023, and employed more than 1,000 attorneys, according to American Lawyer Magazine. Revoking its security clearance, which allows its lawyers to see some sensitive information, could have created hurdles to its work with its many corporate, security and Wall Street clients.

In the original executive order, Trump had accused the firm of playing “an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles”.

It had cited “a Paul Weiss partner” who had filed a pro bono lawsuit against the perpetrators of the 6 January 2021 riots at the Capitol. Trump has released all and pardoned many of those known as “J6ers”.

It also took direct aim at Mark Pomerantz – a former partner who had worked with the Manhattan District Attorney on the case involving hush-money payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump was convicted by a jury last year of having committed a felony in the case.

The order had also alleged that the firm “discriminates against its own employees on the basis of race and other categories prohibited by civil rights laws”.

Law firm Perkins Coie has sued in court over the similar order.

It seems astounding that a single fire at an electricity source shut down one of the world’s busiest airports.

The disruption to the journeys of thousands of passengers and millions of tonnes of trade goods on Friday has prompted a series of questions over the resilience of the UK’s major infrastructure.

Disaster recovery plans keep the top brass of many organisations awake at night.

Banks, data centres, stock exchanges, hospitals, all have contingency plans.

“How is it that critical infrastructure – of national and global importance – is totally dependent on a single power source without an alternative?”, said Willie Walsh, the director general of the International Air Transport Association, which represents airlines.

He said the shutdown was the result of a “clear planning failure”.

Heathrow does in fact have more than one source of electricity, however, as one National Grid insider told the BBC, but the fire that broke out damaged a “particularly important bit”.

That meant the back-up systems in place for a scenario like this proved ineffective when the blaze ripped through the substation, which is used by the National Grid to transform high voltage electricity to a lower and safer voltage for use.

This is a process which generates a lot of heat which is dissipated using flammable cooling oils. This is what caught light in this instance. The exact cause is not yet known, but counter terrorism police are looking into whether there was any foul play.

Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, so it is not possible for it to have the back-up power by itself to run its operation safely.

A source at Heathrow said it did however have back-up options for certain key systems, but kickstarting the alternative power supplies for the whole airport took time.

The systems need to be checked to ensure they are working properly.

A Heathrow source said its back-up diesel generators and uninterruptable power supplies in place all operated as expected.

The problem lay with the National Grid, the source said, pointing out thousands of homes had been left without power, not just the airport.

There are two National Grid substations close to Heathrow: one at North Hyde, north of the airport, and one at Laleham, south of the airport, according to energy analysis firm Montel Group.

It appears that only the North Hyde substation is connected to Heathrow through the local distribution network, said Phil Hewitt, director at the firm.

“This potential lack of resilience at a critical national and international infrastructure site is worrying,” he said. “An airport as large and as important as Heathrow should not be vulnerable to a single point of failure.”

However, Robin Potter, a research fellow at Chatham House, said Heathrow was one of only two UK airports – Gatwick is the other – that has any level of regulation around its resilience standards.

“These are actually the better airports in the UK for how their resilience is assessed and regulated,” he said.

In 2023, the National Infrastructure Commission recommended to the government that it should set standards for some key sectors of infrastructure such as telecoms, water, transport and energy by 2025.

It followed up with a further report at the end of last year detailing how the government could do that for those sectors.

“Those have effectively been on the government’s desk since October 2023,” he added.

A Heathrow source said questions over why its back-up system failed would be investigated.

Sometimes – like now – a chain is only important as its weakest link. The cost of having a whole extra power supply to run the airport just in case would cost huge amounts of money and resources for a privately-owned business like Heathrow.

Questions over whether additional back-ups are worth the additional cost will continue long after the passengers and cargo delayed by Friday’s disruptive, and internationally embarrassing, failure have got where they are going.

Boxing heavyweight legend George Foreman has died aged 76, according to his family.

Known as Big George in the ring, the American built one of the most remarkable and enduring careers in the sport, winning Olympic gold in 1968 and claiming the world heavyweight title twice, 21 years apart – the second making him the oldest champion in history aged 45.

He lost his first title to Muhammad Ali in their famous Rumble in the Jungle fight in 1974. But Foreman’s professional boxing career boasted an astonishing total of 76 wins including 68 knockouts, almost double that of Ali.

He retired from the sport in 1997 but not before he agreed to put his name to a best-selling grill – a decision that went on to bring him fortunes that dwarfed his boxing earnings.

His family said in a post on Instagram on Friday night: “Our hearts are broken.

“A devout preacher, a devoted husband, a loving father, and a proud grand and great grandfather, he lived a life marked by unwavering faith, humility, and purpose.”

The statement added: “A humanitarian, an Olympian, and two time heavyweight champion of the world, He was deeply respected – a force for good, a man of discipline, conviction, and a protector of his legacy, fighting tirelessly to preserve his good name – for his family.”

Foreman was born in Marshall, Texas, on 10 January 1949, and raised along with six siblings by a single mother in the segregated American South.

He dropped out of school and turned to street robberies before eventually finding his outlet in the ring.

Foreman won the heavyweight gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, aged 19, before turning pro and winning 37 consecutive matches. He lost only five bouts over his career.

He beat previously undefeated reigning champion Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973 knocking him down six times in the first two rounds.

His 1974 Rumble in the Jungle against Ali in Kinshasa, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, remains one of the most famous boxing matches ever.

Ali, the older man, was the underdog after he was stripped of his crown seven years earlier for refusing to be drafted into the Vietnam War.

Foreman reflected on the legendary fight 50 years later in an October interview with BBC World Service Newshour, explaining that everyone thought he was going to decimate Ali.

“Oh, he’s not going to last one round,” the boxer said experts were predicting at the time.

Foreman told the BBC he typically would get “real nervous” and have “butterflies” before any boxing match, but that night – it was the “most comfortable” he had felt.

But the wily Ali used a tactic that later became known as “rope-a-dope”, which wore out Foreman, causing him to throw out hundreds of punches before Ali unloaded on him in the eighth round and scored a knockout.

After a second professional loss, Foreman retired in 1977 and became an ordained minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Texas, which he founded and built.

He told the BBC his defeat to Ali became the “best thing that ever happened to me” as it ultimately led him to “get my message out” through preaching.

He recalled that his preaching started small, on street corners and with friends, then grew.

“We began meeting informally at various homes in Houston, and before long, the crowds became too large for most houses to accommodate,” Foreman said on his website.

“Eventually, we bought a piece of land and an old, dilapidated building on the north-east side of Houston.”

Foreman came out of retirement in 1987 to raise money for a youth centre he founded. He won 24 matches before losing to Evander Holyfield after 12 rounds in 1991.

In 1994, Foreman knocked out undefeated Michael Moorer to become the oldest ever heavyweight champion at age 45.

He became ad pitchman for his George Foreman Grill, which millions have purchased since it hit the market in 1994, thanks in part to his memorable catchphrase, the “Lean Mean Grilling Machine”.

Foreman was married five times. He has a dozen children, including five sons who are all named George.

He explained on his website that he named them after himself so they “they would always have something in common”.

“I say to them, ‘If one of us goes up, then we all go up together,” he explained. “And if one goes down, we all go down together!'”