The main rival to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been formally arrested and charged with corruption.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, is expected to be selected as the opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) 2028 presidential candidate in a ballot on Sunday.

He denies the allegations and says they are politically motivated. “I will never bow,” he wrote on X before he was remanded in custody.

His detention sparked some of Turkey’s largest protests in more than a decade. Erdogan has condemned the demonstrations and accused the CHP of trying to “disturb the peace and polarise our people”.

Imamoglu was one of more than 100 people, including other politicians, journalists and businessmen, detained as part of an investigation on Wednesday, triggering four consecutive nights of demonstrations.

On Sunday, he was formally arrested and charged with “establishing and managing a criminal organisation, taking bribes, extortion, unlawfully recording personal data and rigging a tender”.

He was remanded in custody pending trial. Local media reported he had been taken to Marmara Prison in Silivri.

In social media posts, Imamoglu criticised his arrest as a “black stain on our democracy”, and said judicial procedure was not being followed.

He urged people across the country to join protests and to take part in Sunday’s vote. Imamoglu is the only person running in the CHP’s presidential candidate selection.

• Who is Turkish opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu?
• Protests erupt in Turkey after Erdogan rival arrested

Prosecutors want to charge him with “aiding an armed terrorist organisation”, but the Turkish court said it was “not deemed necessary at this stage” to do so.

The CHP had a de facto alliance with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) in connection with last year’s local elections.

DEM has been accused of being affiliated with the PKK – or Kurdistan Workers’ Party – which it denies.

The PKK declared a ceasefire early this month, after waging an insurgency against Turkey for more than 40 years. It is proscribed as a terrorist group in Turkey, the EU, UK and US.

Imamoglu is seen as one of Erdogan’s most formidable political rivals.

The arrest does not prevent his candidacy and election as president. However, if he is convicted of any of the charges against him he would not be able to run.

A day before his arrest, Istanbul University announced it was revoking Imamoglu’s degree due to alleged irregularities, a measure – which if upheld – would put his ability to run as president into doubt.

According to the Turkish constitution, presidents must have completed higher education to hold office.

Imamoglu’s lawyers said they would appeal the decision to revoke his degree to the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

The Supreme Election Council will decide whether Imamoglu is qualified to be a candidate.

Erdogan has held office for the past 22 years, as both prime minister and president of Turkey.

However, due to term limits, he cannot run for office again in 2028 unless he changes the constitution.

Opposition figures say the arrests are politically motivated. But the Ministry of Justice has criticised those who link Erdogan to the arrests, and insist on its judicial independence.

Thousands have taken to the streets across Turkey in largely peaceful demonstrations.

Authorities tried to stifle demonstrations with a four-day ban on all gatherings in Istanbul, which was extended to Ankara and Izmir as the protests spread.

Riot police have repeatedly clashed with protesters and could be seen firing pepper gas and water cannons towards crowds of demonstrators.

Turkish authorities said 343 people were arrested on Friday night.

On Saturday, tear gas hung in the air outside the mayor’s office in Istanbul before the protests had even properly begun.

As the crowds had grown throughout the evening, it became hard to breathe as round after round was fired to disperse demonstrators.

Chanting “rights, law, justice”, people of all ages defied the government ban to protest against what they see as an unlawful detention.

One young woman, dressed in black and wearing a face mask, told the BBC she was not protesting for political reasons or because she supported the opposition, but instead to defend democracy.

“I’m here for justice, I’m here for liberty. We’re free people and Turkish people cannot accept this. This is against our behaviour and culture.”

Another woman, who had brought her 11-year-old son to the protests, said she wanted to include him because she is worried about his future.

“It’s getting harder to live in Turkey day by day, we can’t control our lives, we can’t choose who we want and there is no real justice here,” she said.

More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry has announced.

That number – 50,021 – equates to about 2.1% of the 2.3 million pre-war population of the territory, or around 1 in 46 people.

A total of 113,274 others had been injured in the same period, the health ministry said.

Figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) have been widely used throughout the war and are seen as reliable by the United Nations (UN) and international institutions. But Israel has consistently refuted data published by Gaza’s authorities.

International journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza independently, so are unable to verify figures from either side.

The figures released by the MoH for the number of people killed do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

In November, the UN’s Human Rights Office said its analysis showed close to 70% of verified victims over a six-month period were women and children.

In January, The Lancet medical journal published a study which suggested the death toll could in fact be substantially higher than official figures reported by MoH – by up to 41%.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, were killed and 251 other taken hostage.

Israel responded to the 7 October attack with a massive military offensive, which has caused vast destruction to homes and infrastructure, in addition to those killed or injured.

The MoH also reported on Sunday at least 39 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of people killed to 673 since Israel resumed its military operations in the territory on Tuesday.

Pope Francis has appeared at his window of the Gemelli hospital in Rome and offered a blessing for the first time since being admitted on 14 February.

The 88-year-old pontiff was discharged minutes later and doctors say he will need at least two months of rest at the Vatican.

During the past five weeks, he presented “two very critical episodes” where his “life was in danger”, Dr Sergio Alfieri, one of the doctors treating the Pope, said.

Pope Francis was never intubated and always remained alert and oriented, Dr Alfieri said. Even though the Pope is not completely healed, he no longer has pneumonia and will return to work as soon as possible, if the trend continues, doctors say.

A crowd of people gathered outside the hospital on Sunday, waiting for the Pope to appear.

“When I saw him I felt, to be honest, a little relieved,” said Bishop Larry Kulick, from the Diocese of Greensburg in the US state of Pennsylvania. “I felt just overjoyed to see him.”

“I cried all the time because the love we breathe in this little square of this hospital was like heaven,” said Ilaria Della Bidia, a singer from Rome.

Ana Matos from Brazil said she “just arrived from Brazil today” and arrived outside the hospital “30 seconds before he appeared”. She said that “it was an amazing feeling, like when I had my son. I was so happy to see him healthy and I could see him smile”.

The Pope had only previously been seen by the public once since he was admitted to hospital, in a photograph released by the Vatican last week, which showed him praying in a hospital chapel.

Earlier this month, an audio recording of Pope Francis was played in St Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

His voice was breathless as he thanked the Catholic faithful for their prayers.

Pope Francis has spent 12 years as leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

He has suffered a number of health issues throughout his life, including having part of one of his lungs removed at age 21, making him more prone to infections.

Sir Keir Starmer’s plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been dismissed as “a posture and a pose” by Donald Trump’s special envoy.

Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a “simplistic” notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill”.

In an interview with pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin, saying he “liked” the Russian president.

“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” he said. “He’s super smart.”

Witkoff, who met Putin 10 days ago, said the Russian president had been “gracious” and “straight up” with him. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year. He also said Putin had commissioned a portrait of the US president as a gift and Trump was “clearly touched by it”.

During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was “a false country” and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.

Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.

He said: “The largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names and there are two others.”

The five regions – or oblasts – are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes much of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Witkoff made several assertions that are either not true or disputed:

• He said Ukrainian troops in Kursk were surrounded, something denied by Ukraine’s government and uncorroborated by any open-source data
• He said the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine had held “referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule”. There were referendums only in some of the occupied parts of Ukraine at different times and the methodology and results were widely discredited and disputed
• He said the four partially occupied oblasts were Russian-speaking. There are many Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine but this has never indicated support for Russia.

The US is set to hold separate talks in Saudi Arabia with Ukraine and Russia about a ceasefire at meetings over Sunday and Monday.

Ahead of that, Ukrainian authorities said Russia had launched drone attacks on Kyiv overnight, resulting in deaths of three people, including a five-year-old child.

Officials said that eight people had been injured.

Russia also struck the southern city of Zaporizhzhia on Friday, killing a family of three.

Meanwhile, on Sunday Russia’s ministry of defence said it had shot down 59 Ukrainian drones across a number of regions in the south as well as in Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

During his interview, Witkoff also repeated several Kremlin talking points about the cause of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

He said it was “correct” that from the Russian perspective the partially occupied territories were now part of Russia: “The elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?”

He added: “There’s a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is just a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that’s what is the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War Two, and that’s something nobody wants to talk about.”

Putin has repeatedly said that the “root causes” of his invasion were the threat posed to Russia by an expanded Nato and the sheer existence of Ukraine as an independent country.

Witkoff said in the Tucker Carlson interview: “Why would they want to absorb Ukraine? For what purpose? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine… They have reclaimed these five regions. They have Crimea and they have gotten what they want. So why do they need more?”

Asked about Keir Starmer’s plans to forge a “coalition of the willing” to provide military security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine, Witkoff said: “I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like [British wartime prime minister] Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous by the way. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two.”

He said a ceasefire in the Black Sea would be “implemented over the next week or so” and “we are not far away” from a full 30-day ceasefire.

He also gave details of how Trump wanted to co-operate with Russia after relations had been normalised. “Who doesn’t want to have a world where Russia and the US are doing collaboratively good things together, thinking about how to integrate their energy polices in the Arctic, share sea lines maybe, send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together?”

As Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 unfolds, all eyes are on MS Dhoni who continues to command superstar status in Indian cricket despite retiring from the international game in 2020.

Dhoni continues to be a key figure in the world’s richest cricket league.

Alongside him are veterans like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, pace bowler Jasprit Bumrah, and emerging stars like Shubman Gill, Yashaswi Jaiswal, and Rishabh Pant. They are among the players who led India to two ICC titles in the past nine months – the T20 World Cup in June and the Champions Trophy last month.

Yet it is Dhoni who still commands unrivalled attention, with his leadership and presence in the league continuing to captivate fans.

The cricketer, who turns 44 in July, is playing his 18th straight IPL season, 16 of these representing Chennai Super Kings (CSK). He is the oldest player in the tournament this year, though not the oldest to have played in the IPL.

Australian spin bowler Brad Hogg was 45 years and 92 days old when he last played in the IPL in 2016, representing Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Leg-spinner Pravin Tambe, the oldest debutant at 41 years and 212 days for Rajasthan Royals, played his final match in 2019 at 44 years and 219 days, capping an astonishing career.

Whether Dhoni will surpass Tambe and Hogg remains to be seen. Three seasons ago, when he gave up the CSK captaincy, his retirement seemed imminent. Last year, his infrequent appearances suggested the same. However, CSK used the retention clause in the IPL mega-auction to keep Dhoni for the 2025 season as an uncapped player, given his five-year absence from international cricket.

In 18 IPL seasons, Dhoni has scored 5,243 runs, placing him sixth on the all-time run list, currently topped by Kohli.

His career batting average of 39.12 is higher than both Rohit Sharma and Kohli, and trails only David Warner (40.52) and AB de Villiers (39.70) among players with more than 5,000 runs in the league.

Among players with over 5,000 runs, Dhoni’s strike rate of 137.53 ranks behind only de Villiers (151.68) and Warner (139.77).

In sixes, Dhoni (252) trails only Gayle (357), Sharma (280) and Kohli (272).

These batting stats highlight just one aspect of Dhoni’s prowess. As a wicketkeeper, he boasts 180 dismissals (141 catches, 39 stumpings), a record unmatched by anyone. His quick reflexes and deft glovework earned him the nickname “pickpocket” from former Indian coach Ravi Shastri.

The “helicopter shot”, a flick-drive played over mid-wicket with a wrist-flex of the bottom hand, became the signature stroke of his batting brilliance.

The other notable aspect of his batting was his ability to control the match, taking the innings deep, virtually to the end, with a remarkable control of nerves, and interspersed with explosive strokes. He also ran like a hare between wickets, making him India’s best match-winner in his prime years.

Dhoni holds the record for most IPL matches as captain (210) and most wins (123), leading CSK to five IPL titles and two Champions League titles.

He also captained India to three ICC titles: the T20 World Cup (2007), ODI World Cup (2011) and Champions Trophy (2013).

Additionally, his impact in Test cricket is immense, having played 90 Tests and guiding India to the No1 ICC ranking before his sudden retirement mid-series in 2014-15.

Former Indian captains Sunil Gavaskar and Shastri have frequently hailed him as India’s finest cricketer ever. While this is open to debate, that Dhoni belongs to the same cluster as Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev is now widely acknowledged.

So what does the current season hold for him?

Advancing age has taken a physical toll on Dhoni, though he remains mentally tough and highly competitive. Last season, he stepped away from his finisher role, which he’d held since the league’s inception, and adapted his approach to provide valuable cameos that could impact the outcome.

With the impact player rule – which allows teams to pick an extra specialist batter or bowler based on the game situation – now an integral part of the IPL, Dhoni could well settle into this role, while continuing to be a sounding board for the captain and mentor to the squad in a non-designated informal manner.

For CSK, keeping Dhoni in the squad is a no-brainer. His appeal extends beyond CSK fans, offering massive commercial and branding benefits to both the franchise and the IPL. As CSK puts it, an IPL without Dhoni is “unthinkable”.

This may limit opportunities for young players, both Indian and overseas, but Ravi Shastri dismisses this argument. “The league operates on free-market dynamics. Franchise owners aren’t sentimental – they know what’s best for them, on and off the field,” he says.

Meanwhile, former India opener Robin Uthappa, who played under Dhoni for both India and CSK, warns rivals: “Write off Dhoni at your own risk. We could still see some old magic.”

Saira Baloch was 15 when she stepped into a morgue for the first time.

All she heard in the dimly-lit room were sobs, whispered prayers and shuffling feet. The first body she saw was a man who appeared to have been tortured.

His eyes were missing, his teeth had been pulled out and there were burn marks on his chest.

“I couldn’t look at the other bodies. I walked out,” she recalled.

But she was relieved. It wasn’t her brother – a police officer who had been missing for nearly a year since he was arrested in 2018 in a counter-terrorism operation in Balochistan, one of Pakistan’s most restive regions.

Inside the morgue, others continued their desperate search, scanning rows of unclaimed corpses. Saira would soon adopt this grim routine, revisiting one morgue after another. They were all the same: tube lights flickering, the air thick with the stench of decay and antiseptic.

On every visit, she hoped she would not find what she was looking for – seven years on, she still hasn’t.

Activists say thousands of ethnic Baloch people have been disappeared by Pakistan’s security forces in the last two decades – allegedly detained without due legal process, or abducted, tortured and killed in operations against a decades-old separatist insurgency.

The Pakistan government denies the allegations, insisting that many of the missing have joined separatist groups or fled the country.

Some return after years, traumatised and broken – but many never come back. Others are found in unmarked graves that have appeared across Balochistan, their bodies so disfigured they cannot be identified.

And then there are the women across generations whose lives are being defined by waiting.

Young and old, they take part in protests, their faces lined with grief, holding up fading photographs of men no longer in their lives. When the BBC met them at their homes, they offered us black tea – Sulemani chai – in chipped cups as they spoke in voices worn down by sorrow.

Many of them insist their fathers, brothers and sons are innocent and have been targeted for speaking out against state policies or were taken as a form of collective punishment.

Saira is one of them.

She says she started going to protests after asking the police and pleading with politicians yielded no answers about her brother’s whereabouts.

Muhammad Asif Baloch was arrested in August 2018 along with 10 others in Nushki, a city along the border with Afghanistan. His family found out when they saw him on TV the next day, looking scared and dishevelled.

Authorities said the men were “terrorists fleeing to Afghanistan”. Muhammad’s family said he was having a picnic with friends.

Saira says Muhammad was her “best friend”, funny and always cheerful – “My mother worries that she’s forgetting his smile.”

The day he went missing, Saira had aced a school exam and was excited to tell her brother, her “biggest supporter”. Muhammad had encouraged her to attend universty in Quetta, the provincial capital.

“I didn’t know back then that the first time I’d go to Quetta, it would be for a protest demanding his release,” Saira says.

Three of the men who were detained along with her brother were released in 2021, but they have not spoken about what happened.

Muhammad never came home.

The journey into Balochistan, in Pakistan’s south-west, feels like you are stepping into another world.

It is vast – covering about 44% of the country, the largest of Pakistan’s provinces – and the land is rich with gas, coal, copper and gold. It stretches along the Arabian Sea, across the water from places like Dubai, which has risen from the sands into glittering, monied skyscrapers.

But Balochistan remains stuck in time. Access to many parts is restricted for security reasons and foreign journalists are often denied access.

It’s also difficult to travel around. The roads are long and lonely, cutting through barren hills and desert. As the infrastructure thins out the further you travel, roads are replaced by dirt tracks created by the few vehicles that pass.

Electricity is sporadic, water even scarcer. Schools and hospitals are dismal.

In the markets, men sit outside mud shops waiting for customers who rarely come. Boys, who elsewhere in Pakistan may dream of a career, only talk of escape: fleeing to Karachi, to the Gulf, to anywhere that offers a way out of this slow suffocation.

Balochistan became a part of Pakistan in 1948, in the upheaval that followed the partition of British India – and in spite of opposition from some influential tribal leaders, who sought an independent state.

Some of the resistance turned militant and, over the years, it has been stoked by accusations that Pakistan has exploited the resource-rich region without investing in its development.

Militant groups like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), designated a terrorist group by Pakistan and other nations, have intensified their attacks: bombings, assassinations and ambushes against security forces have become more frequent.

Earlier this month, the BLA hijacked a train in Bolan Pass, seizing hundreds of passengers. They demanded the release of missing people in Balochistan in return for freeing hostages.

The siege lasted over 30 hours. According to authorities, 33 BLA militants, 21 civilian hostages and four military personnel were killed. But conflicting figures suggest many passengers remain unaccounted for.

The disappearances in the province are widely believed to be part of Islamabad’s strategy to crush the insurgency – but also to suppress dissent, weaken nationalist sentiment and support for an independent Balochistan.

Many of the missing are suspected members or sympathisers of Baloch nationalist groups that demand more autonomy or independence. But a significant number are ordinary people with no known political affiliations.

Balochistan’s Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti told the BBC that enforced disappearances are an issue but dismissed the idea that they were happening on a large scale as “systematic propaganda”.

“Every child in Balochistan has been made to hear ‘missing persons, missing persons’. But who will determine who disappeared whom?

“Self-disappearances exist too. How can I prove if someone was taken by intelligence agencies, police, FC, or anyone else or me or you?”

Pakistan’s military spokesperson Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif recently said in a press conference that the “state is solving the issue of missing persons in a systematic manner”.

He repeated the official statistic often shared by the government – of the more than 2,900 cases of enforced disappearances reported from Balochistan since 2011, 80% had been resolved.

Activists put the figure higher – at around 7,000 – but there is no single reliable source of data and no way to verify either side’s claims.

Women like Jannat Bibi refuse to accept the official number.

She continues to search for her son, Nazar Muhammad, who she claims was taken in 2012 while eating breakfast at a hotel.

“I went everywhere looking for him. I even went to Islamabad,” she says. “All I got were beatings and rejection.”

The 70-year-old lives in a small mud house on the outskirts of Quetta, not far from a symbolic graveyard dedicated to the missing.

Jannat, who runs a tiny shop selling biscuits and milk cartons, often can’t afford the bus fare to attend protests demanding information about the missing. But she borrows what she can so she can keep going.

“Silence is not an option,” she says.

Most of these men – including those whose families we spoke to – disappeared after 2006.

That was the year a key Baloch leader, Nawab Akbar Bugti, was killed in a military operation, leading to a rise in anti-state protests and armed insurgent activities.

The government cracked down in response – enforced disappearances increased, as did the number of bodies found on the streets.

In 2014, mass graves of missing people were discovered in Tootak – a small town near the city of Khuzdar, where Saira lives, 275km (170 miles) south of Quetta.

The bodies were disfigured beyond identification. The images from Tootak shook the country – but the horror was no stranger to people in Balochistan.

Mahrang Baloch’s father, a famous nationalist leader who fought for Baloch rights, had disappeared in early 2009. Abdul Gaffar Langove had worked for the Pakistani government but left the job to advocate for what he believed would be a safer Balochistan.

Three years later Mahrang received a phone call that his body had been found in Lasbela district in the south of the province.

“When my father’s body arrived, he was wearing the same clothes, now torn. He had been badly tortured,” she says. For five years, she had nightmares about his final days. She visited his grave “to convince myself that he was no longer alive and that he was not being tortured”.

She hugged his grave “hoping to feel him, but it didn’t happen”.

When he was arrested, Mahrang used to write him letters – “lots of letters and I would draw greeting cards and send them to him on Eid”. But he returned the cards, saying his prison cell was no place for such “beautiful” cards. He wanted her to keep them at home.

“I still miss his hugs,” she says.

After her father’s death, Mahrang says, her family’s world “collapsed”.

And then in 2017, her brother was picked up by security forces, according to the family, and detained for nearly three months.

“It was terrifying. I made my mother believe that what happened to my father wouldn’t happen to my brother. But it did,” Mahrang says. “I was scared of looking at my phone, because it might be news of my brother’s body being found somewhere.”

She says her mother and she found strength in each other: “Our tiny house was our safest place, where we would sometimes sit and cry for hours. But outside, we were two strong women who couldn’t be crushed.”

It was then that Mahrang decided to fight against enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Today, the 32-year-old leads the protest movement despite death threats, legal cases and travel bans.

“We want the right to live on our own land without persecution. We want our resources, our rights. We want this rule of fear and violence to end.”

Mahrang warns that enforced disappearances fuel more resistance, rather than silence it.

“They think dumping bodies will end this. But how can anyone forget losing their loved one this way? No human can endure this.”

She demands institutional reforms, ensuring that no mother has to send her child away in fear. “We don’t want our children growing up in protest camps. Is that too much to ask?”

Mahrang was arrested on Saturday morning, a few weeks after her interview with the BBC.

She was leading a protest in Quetta after 13 unclaimed bodies – feared to be missing persons – were buried in the city. Authorities claimed they were militants killed after the Bolan Pass train hijacking, though this could not be independently verified.

Earlier Mahrang had said: “I could be arrested anytime. But I don’t fear it. This is nothing new for us.”

And even as she fights for the future she wants, a new generation is already on the streets.

Masooma, 10, clutches her school bag tightly as she weaves through the crowd of protesters, her eyes scanning every face, searching for one that looks like her father’s.

“Once, I saw a man and thought he was my father. I ran to him and then realised he was someone else,” she says.

“Everyone’s father comes home after work. I have never found mine.”

Masooma was just three months old when security forces allegedly took her father away during a late-night raid in Quetta.

Her mother was told he would return in a few hours. He never did.

Today, Masooma spends more time at protests than in the classroom. Her father’s photograph is always with her, tucked safely in her school bag.

Before every lesson begins, she takes it out and looks at it.

“I always wonder if my father will come home today.”

She stands outside the protest camp, chanting slogans with the others, her small frame lost in the crowd of grieving families.

As the protest comes to an end she sits cross-legged on a thin mat in a quiet corner. The noise of slogans and traffic fades as she pulls out her folded letters – letters she has written but could never send.

Her fingers tremble as she smooths out the creases, and in a fumbling, uncertain voice, she begins to read them.

“Dear Baba Jan, when will you come back? Whenever I eat or drink water, I miss you. Baba, where are you? I miss you so much. I am alone. Without you, I cannot sleep. I just want to meet you and see your face.”

The South African ambassador who was expelled from the US after a row with Donald Trump’s government has said he has “no regrets”.

Ebrahim Rasool arrived back home on Sunday and was welcomed by hundreds of raucous supporters at Cape Town International Airport.

Tensions between South Africa and the US have been on a downward spiral since Trump came into office in January.

Rasool, 62, was declared unwelcome in the US after Secretary of State Marco Rubio called him a “race-baiting politician who hates America”. It followed a statement by the ambassador that Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” as the States’ white population faced becoming a minority.

Rasool defended his comments on Sunday morning after touching down in Cape Town.

The remarks, made during a webinar organised by a South African think tank, were meant to “alert” South African intellectuals and political leaders “to a change of the way we live, to a change of the way we are positioned in the United States, that the old way of doing business with the US was not a good one”, Rasool said.

While waiting for Rasool to arrive at the airport, members of the African National Congress, South African Communist Party and trade unionists sang and danced.

Some held placards reading “Ebrahim Rasool, you have served our country with honour!!!”

Rasool’s expulsion marked a rare move by the US – lower-ranking diplomats are sometimes expelled, but it is highly unusual for it to happen to a more senior official.

But ties with South Africa have been deteriorating for months.

In January, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a bill allowing the state to seize land without compensation, provided it was in the “public interest”.

The move followed years of calls for land reform, with activists and politicians seeking to redistribute farmland from the white minority.

In response to the law, Washington cut aid to South Africa. An executive order cited “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who first arrived in the 17th Century.

South Africa has strongly denied this claim.

On Sunday, Rasool lamented that he had not been able to challenge the Trump administration’s views.

He was appointed as ambassador to the US just last year, because of his experience and extensive network of Washington contacts.

He had previously served as US ambassador from 2010 to 2015, when Barack Obama was president.

Former Radio 1 DJ Andy Peebles, one of the last people to interview John Lennon, has died at the age of 76, his family has confirmed.

He presented on BBC Radio 1 from 1978 to 1992 and also hosted a number of editions of Top of the Pops in the 1970s and 80s.

Peebles interviewed Lennon two days before the musician’s murder in December 1980.

Friends and former colleagues have paid tribute, calling him “a lovely man and a great broadcaster”.

Born in 1948, Peebles spent the late 1960s as a nightclub DJ, before turning his hand to radio.

He began his illustrious broadcasting career at BBC Radio Manchester in 1973, before going on to help found the independent radio station Piccadilly Radio a year later, where he first presented his Soul Train show.

In 1978 he moved to BBC Radio 1 where he would spend the next 14 years. He also presented on BBC Radio Lancashire.

It was during this tenure that Peebles interviewed John Lennon – one of the last that the former Beatle would do before he was shot and killed in New York in 1980.

Following Lennon’s death, Peebles maintained a friendship with the musician’s wife Yoko Ono and interviewed her again in 1983, in Tokyo, Japan.

Speaking on CBS about the interview with Lennon, Peebles said “I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous in my life.

“I’d grown-up not just idolising him but the group [The Beatles] and everything they’d done.”

Peebles was also one of the presenters at Wembley Stadium for the Live Aid concert in 1985, introducing artists including David Bowie, Spandau Ballet and Paul Young.

He would go on to broadcast for the British Forces Broadcasting Service and the BBC World Service.

His former Radio 1 colleague Mike Read paid tribute on social media saying he was “devastated” by the news.

Read said Peebles “knew his music & cricket inside out. Raise your bat & enjoy a long rest in the pavilion”.

BBC broadcaster Tony Blackburn also expressed his sadness at the news, calling him “a lovely man and a great broadcaster”.

Having a chip in your brain that can translate your thoughts into computer commands may sound like science fiction – but it is a reality for Noland Arbaugh.

In January 2024 – eight years after he was paralysed – the 30-year-old became the first person to get such a device from the US neurotechnology firm, Neuralink.

It was not the first such chip – a handful of other companies have also developed and implanted them – but Noland’s inevitably attracts more attention because of Neuralink’s founder: Elon Musk.

But Noland says the important thing is neither him nor Musk – but the science.

He told the BBC he knew the risks of what he was doing – but “good or bad, whatever may be, I would be helping”.

“If everything worked out, then I could help being a participant of Neuralink,” he said.

“If something terrible happened, I knew they would learn from it.”

Noland, who is from Arizona, was paralysed below the shoulders in a diving accident in 2016.

His injuries were so severe he feared he might not be able to study, work or even play games again.

“You just have no control, no privacy, and it’s hard,” he said.

“You have to learn that you have to rely on other people for everything.”

The Neuralink chip looks to restore a fraction of his previous independence, by allowing him to control a computer with his mind.

It is what is known as a brain computer interface (BCI) – which works by detecting the tiny electrical impulses generated when humans think about moving, and translating these into digital command, such as moving a cursor on a screen.

It is a complex subject that scientists have been working on for several decades.

Inevitably, Elon Musk’s involvement in the field has catapulted the tech – and Noland Arbaugh – into the headlines.

It’s helped Neuralink attract lots of investment – as well as scrutiny over the safety and significance of what is an extremely invasive procedure.

When Noland’s implant was announced, experts hailed it as a “significant milestone”, while also cautioning that it would take time to really assess – especially given Musk’s adeptness at “generating publicity for his company.”

Musk was cagey in public at the time, simply writing in a social media post: “Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.”

In reality, Noland said, the billionaire – who he spoke to before and after his surgery – was far more optimistic.

“I think he was just as excited as I was to get started,” he said.

Nonetheless, he stresses that Neuralink is about more than its owner, and claims he does not consider it “an Elon Musk device”.

Whether the rest of the world sees it that way – especially given his increasingly controversial role in the US government – remains to be seen.

But there is no questioning the impact the device has had on Noland’s life.

When Noland awoke from the surgery which installed the device, he said he was initially able to control a cursor on a screen by thinking about wiggling his fingers.

“Honestly I didn’t know what to expect – it sounds so sci-fi,” he said.

But after seeing his neurons spike on a screen – all the while surrounded by excited Neuralink employees – he said “it all sort of sunk in” that he could control his computer with just his thoughts.

And – even better – over time his ability to use the implant has grown to the point he can now play chess and video games.

“I grew up playing games,” he said – adding it was something he “had to let go of” when he became disabled.

“Now I’m beating my friends at games, which really shouldn’t be possible but it is.”

Noland is a powerful demonstration of the tech’s potential to change lives – but there may be drawbacks too.

“One of the main problems is privacy,” said Anil Seth, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Sussex.

“So if we are exporting our brain activity […] then we are kind of allowing access to not just what we do but potentially what we think, what we believe and what we feel,” he told the BBC.

“Once you’ve got access to stuff inside your head, there really is no other barrier to personal privacy left.”

But these aren’t concerns for Noland – instead he wants to see the chips go further in terms of what they can do.

He told the BBC he hoped the device could eventually allow him to control his wheelchair, or even a futuristic humanoid robot.

Even with the tech in its current, more limited state, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing though.

At one point, an issue with the device caused him to lose control of his computer altogether, when it partially disconnected from his brain.

“That was really upsetting to say the least,” he said.

“I didn’t know if I would be able to use Neuralink ever again.”

The connection was repaired – and subsequently improved – when engineers adjusted the software, but it highlighted a concern frequently voiced by experts over the technology’s limitations.

Neuralink is just one of many companies exploring how to digitally tap into our brain power.

Synchron is one such firm, which says its Stentrode device aimed at helping people with motor neurone disease requires a less invasive surgery to implant.

Rather than requiring open brain surgery, it is installed into a person’s jugular vein in their neck, then moved up to their brain through a blood vessel.

Like Neuralink, the device ultimately connects to the motor region of the brain.

“It picks up when someone is thinking of tapping or not tapping their finger,” said chief technology officer Riki Bannerjee.

“By being able to pick up those differences it can create what we call a digital motor output.”

That output is then turned into computer signals, where it is currently being used by 10 people.

One such person, who did not want his last name to be used, told the BBC he was the first person in the world to use the device with Apple’s Vision Pro headset.

Mark said this has allowed him to virtually holiday in far-flung locations – from standing in waterfalls in Australia to strolling across mountains in New Zealand.

“I can see down the road in the future a world where this technology could really, really make a difference for someone that has this or any paralysis,” he said.

But for Noland there is one caveat with his Neuralink chip – he agreed to be part of a study which installed it for six years, after which point the future is less clear.

Whatever happens to him, he believes his experience may be merely scratching the surface of what might one day become a reality.

“We know so little about the brain and this is allowing us to learn so much more,” he said.

Readers have told the BBC about strangers’ random acts of kindness, following research that found people underestimated the good intentions of others.

In an experiment by the University of British Columbia, researchers deliberately lost wallets to see how many would be returned. Almost twice as many were handed in than was predicted by people who had been surveyed for the World Happiness Report.

Athena Rowley, 40, who lives in Ipswich with her four-year-old son Robert, was among readers who got in touch to say they’d benefitted from a random act of kindness.

During Halloween last year they went trick or treating in the Suffolk town and filled up a small bucket with sweets. Robert – whose cheery demeanour means he “makes friends everywhere he goes” – went dressed as the CBeebies character Hey Duggee.

After returning to their home, groups of older children came knocking asking for sweets. The last group, Athena tells us, were six teenagers who had dressed up and “looked very scary”.

Robert offered them the last of the sweets that were in the bucket. He also hugged each of them. Five minutes later, the teenagers returned.

“I thought, ‘oh no – I don’t have anything left,'” Athena says. “I opened the door and the kids were stood there with bags of candy.

“And then they handed them to my child because they thought that he might not have any more candy.”

She adds: “It was absolutely wonderful because teenagers get such a bad rap nowadays.”

Athena says their behaviour just reaffirms her faith in humanity and young people in particular. “The next generation has so much kindness and empathy… at some point, the world is going to be in really good hands.”

Her positive view of young people is shared by Jocelyn Tress, 88, and her husband Mark, 89.

The couple were on their way to the airport from their home in Fulham, southwest London when one of their tyres was punctured on the M25.

Given their age and the speed of the traffic, they didn’t dare change the tyre themselves, and rang the AA. They were told someone might be there in around half an hour. They feared they would miss their flight to Portugal, where they were supposed to be going on holiday.

Ten minutes later, however, a young man in a white van pulled up behind them on the hard shoulder. He said he had noticed them parked there after initially driving past them, so he turned off the motorway and came back to see if they needed any help.

“He quickly changed our tyre,” says Jocelyn. In the hurry she forgot to find out his name but did ask why he had stopped.

Jocelyn recalls him saying: “When I went past and saw you were in trouble, I thought, suppose they were my granny and grandpa?”

She adds: “He would accept nothing for his kindness.”

Jocelyn says there have been occasions when she has fallen on the pavement, only to be helped up by a young person nearby. “I think on the whole young people are very, very helpful,” she says.

The stranger who helped Sarah Marten, 66, was older but intervened at a similar time of need. Her story is from 25 years ago, but the impression it left on her remains today.

She was in the John Lewis store in Brent Cross, west London with her children to find a leotard, tutu and tights for her three-year-old daughter Emily, who was about to start ballet lessons.

Finding the right size and style had taken quite a long time. Her son Joel, who is 19 months younger than his sister, was not enjoying himself. “Because he was so young, it had been quite a stressful morning to be honest,” Sarah tells us. “He was ready to get back in the car.”

At the till, Sarah’s debit card was declined by her bank. She had neither a credit card nor enough cash with her to make the purchase. After such a trying morning, and with her children now desperate to go home, Sarah became upset.

Then a man behind her in the queue stepped forward and asked her how much money she needed.

He opened his wallet and insisted he pay for the ballerina clothes.

He gave her £40. “That was quite a lot back then,” says Sarah. “I was very surprised that somebody would do something like that and not expect the money back.”

The man did not want to be repaid but Sarah insisted and took his business card. She sent him the money shortly afterwards.

“I remember him being really charming and very kind,” she says. “I have actually told other people that he was an angel for me in those circumstances.”

Sarah, whose children now work in food and music, says remembering that act of kindness and hearing of similar deeds helps restore her faith in human nature.

The Sudanese army has regained control of key areas of the capital, Khartoum, from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary faction seeking to overthrow the overthrow the UN-recognised government.

On Friday, jubilant army soldiers took photos of themselves in front of the battle-scarred entrance to the presidential palace in the heart of the city.

Fighting in Sudan broke out in April 2023, when the RSF launched attacks on Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) bases throughout Sudan, capturing significant territory, including key parts of the capital city and its airport.

Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict, millions have been forced from their homes and many have been left facing famine in what the UN has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

BBC Verify has been analysing videos and images posted during the conflict, frequently by fighters on both sides, to build a picture of the army’s push to take back control of Khartoum.

• Sudan war: A simple guide

The city is bounded by two great rivers, the Blue and White Nile, and the army’s fight to regain control has been defined by these geographical constraints.

The offensive to retake the capital began in earnest on 26 September when the army launched air strikes against RSF-held areas in Khartoum.

Then in January, the beginning of the dry season saw fresh pushes by the army – bolstered by a new alliance with Islamists and ethnic militias – leading to a string of strategic victories.

We’ve identified video and photographs from key moments in the retaking of the city.

The army headquarters in central Khartoum had been encircled by RSF forces for 21 months, trapping soldiers unable to link up with other army units closing in on the city.

Then in late January, following military advances further north, the army was able to send reinforcements to break through RSF lines and end the siege.

Verified social media footage posted on 25 January shows soldiers celebrating in the grounds of the army HQ.

The following day, the army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, visited the army HQ saying his forces would “eradicate” the RSF and pursue them to the corners of the country.

Many RSF fighters attempted to withdraw across the White Nile River to safer areas on the western side as pressure mounted on their positions.

They found their escape route blocked following a reported air strike by the SAF on the main bridge across the river.

Footage posted on 6 February shows this crossing point at Jebel Awliya dam about 40 km south of Khartoum, blocked by badly damaged vehicles, with black smoke visible in the distance.

BBC Verify has been able to confirm the location of this footage using satellite imagery which also shows black smoke rising at that location on the bridge.

Army forces approaching Khartoum attempted to take control of the Manshiya Bridge, the last major crossing under RSF control.

On 3 March, the SAF posted drone footage from the battle for control of the bridge.

In it we can see the army targeting RSF vehicles and fighters trying to flee. A truck, carrying some men, and others running alongside, can be seen going up in flames as it is hit on the bridge.

Further drone footage shows more than a dozen men scampering through shrubs towards the bridge.

In the following days the army was able to hold its position at the bridge and to close in on the remaining RSF fighters trapped in the area.

BBC Verify has identified dramatic footage, posted on 16 March, of what appears to be an RSF fighter caught in an army ambush as they flee the SAF advance towards the city centre.

Along a tarmac street, a speeding motorcycle comes under a hail of bullets and suddenly flips over throwing off its rider.

The men firing – identifiable as belonging to the army from their uniform and yellow headbands – can be heard in the footage congratulating themselves following the attack.

By matching the buildings and the trees we see in the videos to satellite imagery, we have established the incident took place at a location about 2 km (1.2 miles) south of the presidential palace.

We’ve identified video of the army striking a convoy of vehicles travelling along al-Qasr Avenue, moving away from the palace, posted online early on the morning of 20 March.

The footage shows a huge fire erupting, with multiple explosions and projectiles emerging from within the fire, suggesting the detonation of munitions being carried on the vehicles.

The video is accompanied by voices, speaking in Arabic, describing the attack on the RSF convoy vehicles containing weaponry.

We have managed to establish the location from two buildings seen in the footage which match buildings we see on Google Maps at a junction just over 1km from the presidential palace.

Just a few hours later, jubilant Sudan army soldiers posed for pictures in front of the palace building, their arms raised in victory.

The RSF still hold control over significant parts of the city as well as large areas of western Sudan. But the taking of the palace by the army is hugely symbolic moment in the conflict.

In an old gun barrel factory in Sheffield’s industrial heartland, hundreds of people are raving under the fluorescent lights of Hope Works club for one of the last times before it closes. One young woman has dressed all in black to signify the loss of her “favourite place”.

“This is a landmark of Sheffield,” says one reveller. “It’s the reason a lot of people come to university here,” adds another.

Its owner Liam O’Shea believes that nightlife venues like this are “the vital underbelly of everything”.

“It’s where people find themselves,” he says. “It’s where people find their tribe.”

Mr O’Shea, who calls himself a child of the “rave generation”, started Hope Works because he wanted to tap into that original spirit. Only now, Hope Works has gone. It closed its doors permanently in February after 13 years.

And according to Mr O’Shea, grassroots clubs in the UK – places where up and coming artists often perform live – are “dropping like flies”.

In the last five years, around 400 clubs have closed in Britain – more than a third of the total number.

In London, a dedicated taskforce is being launched by the mayor’s office to help boost nightlife and save venues at risk of closing.

“A complex matrix of factors are all conspiring against and placing pressure on the sector, making for a perfect storm for nightclubs,” says Tony Rigg, music industry advisor and programme leader at the University of Central Lancashire.

There are many factors that could be at play – among them, rising costs, less disposable income and changing lifestyle choices.

But the closures prompt broader questions too. Some experts have suggested, for example, that the lasting impact of the Covid-19 lockdowns may have led to people going out less than they once did

And if that is the case, could the closure of so many clubs nod to a wider cultural shift, particularly among Generation Z?

For several years during the pandemic, young people were unable to experience nightlife in the same way previous generations had, so perhaps it is not surprising that there have since been shifts in the way they socialise.

A recent Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) study of more than 2,000 people aged between 18 and 30 found that nearly two thirds were going out less frequently than the year before.

Psychologist Dr Elizabeth Feigin of Dr Elizabeth Consultancy says Gen Z is being driven by a number of factors – both offline and online. Part of this seems to be a rising consciousness around health, both physical and mental – and “we are seeing less of a drinking culture”.

A YouGov survey of 18 to 24-year-olds shows Gen Z continue to be the most sober group overall, with 39% of them not drinking alcohol at all.

Dr Meg Jay, author of The Defining Decade, suggests there are several factors driving this change. “Although some might imagine that young people are going out less post-Covid because depressed Gen Zers are still sitting around in their rooms, I don’t think this is the case.”

There is more awareness about the dangers of substances as well as messaging on social media around healthy lifestyles, she says.

When lockdown restrictions were in place, Dr Jay recalls some young clients saying they’d have to find new ways to have a good time. “[I had] clients telling me how much happier they were as they spent less time feeling drunk, hungover, or broke and more time feeling in charge of their lives.”

Of course social media is also playing a role in how people socialise. For some, “social media and texting with friends scratches some of the itch of meeting up”.

This rings true with Mr Rigg. “We have a massive dependence on social media that has taken us away from more social pastimes,” he argues.

But Dr Feigin believes that the lag in social communication across the younger generations predates the lockdowns. “I think it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic. But I think it was already declining on the back of social media and technology and also helicopter parents.”

There might be some healthy reasons for the decline in night life, she points out – but she also thinks that there’s “some damage as well”.

“[This is] potentially around mental health, of social anxiety, loneliness and people actually not having the skills – not even bravery – to go out and socialise anymore because so much has become dependent online.”

“It’s getting harder and harder for young people to socialise face to face… I do think that we are seeing higher rates of social anxiety and high rates of loneliness”.

Not everyone is convinced that this is the reason for the club closures. Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, thinks that finances play a big role. “The reality is, is people can’t afford it”.

Entry fees vary depending on the club. Early release tickets in some city centres can be around £10, while on-the-door entry or last-minute tickets will likely be more. Then comes the cost of any drinks, taxis, late-night trips to the kebab shop.

In an NTIA study, 68% of people reported that the current economic climate had reduced how much they go out.

“Clubbing is becoming a luxury, and that’s just crazy,” says Sherelle Thomas, DJ on BBC 6 Music. “You should be able to enter a club and be with friends at any time you want because it’s something that makes you happy.”

Mr Rigg suggests there is a “storm” coming for clubs, as a result of new economic challenges such as national insurance hikes.

If clubs cannot absorb economic challenges and so put prices up, this could make them less affordable and a less attractive proposition still, argues Mr Rigg – particularly at a time when consumers are burdened with rising living costs.

In 2024, the company which owned Pryzm and Atik, two well-known nightlife chains, went into administration. It closed 17 and sold 11 venues (which included clubs and bars), citing changing student habits as the reason for closures.

Russell Quelch, CEO of Neos, which runs the remaining venues, believes students have less money than they used to. “People really care about how they spend their money,” he argues. “Gone are the days of students going out four or five nights a week”.

The company now has several “party bars” which are open in the day too, meaning the trading window is longer. Many are themed, with events such as bingo, and they are not as alcohol orientated.

The Acapulco in Halifax has seen thousands of people on its dancefloor since it opened in 1961. It is thought to be the UK’s oldest nightclub. Its bar is lit in red and blue, and the beat of the music ebbs through its doors as people spill in to dance, often several nights in a row.

But its owner Simon Jackson has noticed some shifts in the way people go clubbing. Some will come before the night properly begins and film themselves dancing for TikTok, he explains.

The Acca, as it is known locally, is defying its environment. In Yorkshire, 40 percent of clubs have shut down since 2020 – the most out of any region in Britain. Mr Jackson attributes the club’s longevity – in a challenging market – to, among other things, “value for money”.

There are also other models of clubbing that are seeing some success.

Gut Level, a queer-led community project in Sheffield that runs inclusive club nights, is built on a membership model with reduced prices for those on low incomes.

Co-founder Katie Matthews says: “The music scene was run a lot by guys and it maybe didn’t think about the safety of people like women and queer people as much.”

Then there is the safety aspect. In 2023, more incidents of drink spiking occurred in bars (41%) and clubs (28%) than anywhere else, and many people say they have experienced sexual violence during a night out.

“It’s about safety of members,” says Katie Matthews – at Gut Level, people have to sign up in advance.

Ultimately, though, many clubs that continue to thrive do so because they are built around a sense of community. DJ Ahad Elley (known as Ahadadream), who moved to the UK from Pakistan at the age of 12, believes that this is a valuable aspect of many clubs.

“For some people it’s almost the only place they’ve got where they can go and feel a sense of belonging and real community,” he says.

Cat Rossi has spent years researching the creative significance of nightclubs, in her capacity as a design historian and professor of architecture at University for the Creative Arts Canterbury. “Since the dawn of civilisation we’ve needed to go out and dance and be together at night,” she says. “Social gathering is a core part of our social fabric.

“I think that nightclubs are really undervalued as these hugely creative forms of architecture and design, but also nightclubs and club culture more generally are these huge engines of creativity.”

Many fashion labels have been born in clubs, she points out, making them part of a “bigger creative ecosystem” along with theatres, opera houses and television studios.

In 2016, a German court officially designated Berghain, a famous Berlin nightclub, as a cultural institution, which gave it the same tax status as the city’s opera houses and theatres.

The following year, Zurich recognised techno culture as part of its “intangible cultural heritage” in partnership with Unesco.

It is a sentiment is shared by some in Britain too. As Mr Kill puts it: “They are a British institution. There’s no two ways about it.”

And the key to preserving this, and ensuring the future of nightclubs, is evolution, argues Mr Rigg.

“Nightclubs do need to evolve to maintain relevance due to the cultural behavioural shifts and also modify the business model to mitigate some of the other economic pressures.”

But without that transformation, the UK risks losing more of them.

The Romanian village of Poeni has a couple of shops, a kebab grill and a pack of stray dogs.

It also has a fair few voters who wanted a far-right candidate to become president.

Poeni, just over an hour’s drive from the capital, is not alone in that.

Last November, Calin Georgescu – who admires Vladimir Putin and is no fan of Nato – came from the extremist fringe to win the first round of Romania’s presidential election with 23% of the vote.

In Poeni he did even better, with 24%.

Then the constitutional court scrapped the entire election in an unprecedented move, citing intelligence that Georgescu’s online campaign had been boosted by Russia.

In Poeni, a young voter called those claims “lies”, angry at the cancelled vote. “They should have let him run to see what happens,” Maria argues.

A new ballot will be held in May but Georgescu has been barred from participating.

In Bucharest, supporters who took to the streets yelled that the judges were destroying democracy. A handful clashed briefly with police, who used tear gas.

Now nationalist politician George Simion has stepped into the race and is polling strongly instead.

Many Romanians fear their country’s core European values, and its global alliances, are still in danger.

“We are in the middle of a battle of ideas. We don’t have options here,” is how one democracy activist describes the mood. “The fight is now.”

In Poeni village there’s less talk of values and of Russian meddling, more about the money in their pockets. Or rather the lack of it.

By the side of the main road, where the traffic alternates between heavy trucks and horses and carts, men buy charred chunks of kebab and pensioners chat on dusty benches.

A metal public phone box is bent out of shape, its sign dangling as it probably has for years.

Incomes here are small, prices are climbing and life is tough as in much of Romania.

“I want Georgescu to straighten everyone out. They tricked us. They promised us more pension money,” a middle-aged woman speaks quietly at first, then becomes bolder. “The others have done nothing for us here!”

In the village store, Ionela is just as disenchanted.

“Young people finish college here and can’t get work, so they go abroad. That isn’t normal. We need our young people to have places here to work,” she complains from behind the shop counter.

Millions of Romanians work elsewhere in the EU and send money home to their families. In Poeni you can see where some of that ends up, in all the half-done new homes.

Ionela’s whole family voted for Georgescu. He promised to cut taxes, she thinks, but she doesn’t seem to have registered his far-right ideology.

A man who’s praised extremist figures from Romania’s past, he’s now under investigation for suspected links to a group with “fascist, racist or xenophobic characteristics”.

Emerging after questioning, the politician was filmed giving a fascist-style salute.

Other villagers in Poeni did see that and do know all about the murky characters Georgescu has been linked to.

On hearing his name, one pensioner grabs her crutch and wields it like a machine gun, shouting that he is dangerous.

Another told me people were suspicious of someone who surged to prominence from nowhere and of his focus on sovereignty over economic sense.

“He tells us we don’t need Europe to help us with money. So how are we going to live? Let’s face it: Europe feeds us!” she says.

Romania’s vote has become the topic of talk far beyond the streets of Poeni, or even Bucharest.

When US Vice President JD Vance shocked Europe with a speech in Munich, claiming that the EU’s greatest threat came from within and not from Russia, he cited Romania several times.

He declared that the country’s election had been cancelled on “flimsy suspicions” under “enormous pressure” from the EU. Then Elon Musk slammed the court’s move as “‘crazy” on X.

Moscow would have enjoyed that.

Russia’s external intelligence agency came out in full agreement with the US that the “liberal mainstream” in Europe was suppressing dissent.

This from an authoritarian regime.

“It’s the new world we are living in. It’s Maga ideology. They try to find partners and their partners are far-right parties in all Europe,” is how journalist Ion Ionita sees the US-Russia alignment.

To him, annulling the presidential elections was not only constitutional but justified.

“We are living through a hybrid war, democracy is under pressure,” he argues. The threat is real.

But Romania, which borders Ukraine and hosts a big Nato base, now has to deal with US hostility too.

“It’s a dramatic change. America is our ally, the biggest one, and the most important security provider for Romania,” Ion Ionis points out. “We need this partnership to go further and to be stronger.

“People are worried.”

For Florin Buhuceanu the dispute isn’t only political – it’s personal.

His Bucharest flat, a modernist gem, is a mini museum “dedicated to gay memory”.

On one wall there’s a large photograph from the 1930s of three gay men under arrest. In the next room is a wooden cabinet that once displayed Romanian fascist-era memorabilia in an antique store. Now it contains pictures of gay icons.

Romania only decriminalised homosexuality in 2001.

“No state museum would take such donations,” Florin says, so he and his partner display the exhibits at home for invited guests.

A prominent LGBT activist, he’s had so many threats in the heat of this election campaign that the security services have warned him to be careful.

Even with Georgescu disappearing as swiftly as he appeared, the atmosphere is febrile.

George Simion, now considered a frontrunner, has been investigated after calling for election officials to be “skinned alive” for barring Georgescu from the race.

He describes his nationalist AUR as a “patriotic party of conservative essence” whose pillars are “Faith, Nation, Family and Freedom.”

LGBT rights group Mozaiq has warned of a surge in anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic rhetoric in recent weeks. It had to alert police after social media messages urging attacks on its office.

So Florin Buhuceanu fears his country is being thrown back to the past.

“Before 2001, it was absolutely impossible for us to breathe. Now we hear again and again the same rhetoric,” he says.

Worse still, the US, Russia and the Romanian far right now coincide.

“It’s obvious that our rights are fragile and the world is regrouping, so we have to continue this battle,” the activist warns. “It’s not just for our community. It’s for the soul of Romanian democracy.”

Maria’s life has been reduced to waiting for the next phone call from her husband – never knowing if it might be the last.

Ivan, a 31-year-old Ukrainian fighter pilot, began defending the skies from the very first hours of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, and has now flown more than 200 perilous missions in his old Soviet-era Mig-29 warplane.

The squadron commander has lost several comrades in the war. Some were close friends. Others were godfathers to each other’s children. The location of his current air base in western Ukraine cannot be revealed for security reasons.

But as US-led efforts to negotiate a ceasefire gather pace – and fresh talks with Russia and Ukraine planned on Monday – things have changed.

“If any ceasefire comes [about], we will feel safer,” says Maria.

Across Ukraine, more and more people are openly talking about war fatigue. They’re calling for an end to the most brutal fighting in Europe since World War Two, and for firm guarantees of Western protection to ensure Russia can’t attack again.

At the same time, Maria fears that any deal could involve accepting the loss of four Ukrainian regions in the south-east partially seized by Russia, as well as Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. “Nobody will give us back our lost territories”, the 29-year-old says. “They will stay under Russian occupation.”

She asks: “What [did] so many men, our heroes, sacrifice their lives for if Ukraine can’t fight for them, and is forced to make concessions?”

When Maria and Ivan met, the prospect of a full-scale war in Ukraine seemed impossible.

Maria was an English teacher at a local children’s club in western Ukraine attended by the daughter of one of Ivan’s comrades. The comrade offered to set Ivan up with Maria, who he described as “a very nice teacher”.

At first Ivan felt pressured by the arrangement – but he eventually agreed to come.

He was glad he did. They soon started seeing each other.

On one of their first dates, Ivan warned Maria he had a dangerous job. She said it wouldn’t be a problem. Ivan was courageous, caring and protective, and Maria was falling in love.

He soon had to go on a long-term deployment far from home. They lost touch for a year, and it seemed like their relationship might be over.

But then he returned with a giant bouquet of flowers and promised her he didn’t want to waste her time. Within a year, the two were married and they were soon expecting their first child.

It was only once Russia launched its full-scale invasion that Maria understood what he’d meant about the harsh realities of his work.

Their daughter Yaroslava was only three months old at the time. Ivan missed her early milestones: helping her take her first steps, seeing her first teeth come through and comforting her during her first illness.

“When Ivan is deployed far away from home, I send him thousands of our daughter’s photos to help him feel that at least virtually he is spending the day with us,” says Maria.

On one nearby mission, Maria put her daughter in a pram and rushed to a checkpoint where he could run out to catch them for five minutes.

She brought him home-made food. They talked. And found that every minute together was worth the months they’d spent waiting.

Before Yaroslava could even speak, she would use her tiny hands to gesture that her dad was flying through the skies.

“Our daughter knows that her dad is a pilot,” she says. “When she had a birthday and her father ate a birthday cake over a video call, we explained to her that he couldn’t be with us as he was defending Ukraine from the Russians.”

The family now have a professional photo taken of them every six months. “It’s very hard for me to say but I have to be completely honest. We never know if it [will be] our final call or meeting,” Maria says, on the brink of tears.

She feels she has to be ready for “everything, including the worst-case scenario”.

During the first year of the war, she would regularly hear about casualties among friends. “You call their wives and can’t find the words to say. And you fear that one day, you may find yourself in the same situation.”

Ukrainians are seeking concrete guarantees of protection by the US and Europe, and an increased supply of Western fighter jets, to deter Russian aggression.

The country has received a number of US-made F-16s and French Mirage fighter jets, but the country’s air force still largely relies on old Soviet-era warplanes – hardly a match for more advanced Russian aircraft.

Maria is cautiously hoping for a ceasefire. It might “freeze” the conflict at best, she says, but finds it difficult to rely on as she doesn’t trust Russia.

Vladimir Putin wants an end to Western military aid to Kyiv and intelligence-sharing with the Ukrainians, as well as a halt to mobilisation in Ukraine.

Many experts say that his demands are simply a pretext to continue the war he launched, in spite of heavy Russian casualties.

There are also fears that Donald Trump – who has publicly stated that ending the war is one of his top priorities – could be preparing a behind-the-scenes deal with Russia which would force Ukraine to accept painful concessions.

Even after a ceasefire, Maria will still be waiting for calls and rare meetings, as the Ukrainian air force will have to stay alert for a long time.

And while there may be peace in Ukraine, she wonders if her husband will ever be at peace again. Maria says Ivan, who has been deeply affected by the fighting on the front line, has a “patriotic soul” and will continue serving even after the war.

Maria feels it is important for him to not feel the casualties were in vain, and remains hopeful that the Russian-held parts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk will one day be returned.

The priority for Maria now is to reassure her husband and offer him optimism. She dreams of a future where her young family can finally start to rebuild their life in a home of their own, in their own country.

“My husband needs to know that we are always waiting for him.”

We asked our readers to send in their best pictures on the theme of “my best photo”. Here is a selection of the photographs we received from around the world.

All photographs subject to copyright.

Scenes playing out in Nigeria during holiday periods could be in a movie: emotional reunions at airport terminals, champagne flowing like water in high-end clubs and A-list Afrobeats performers dominating stages to packed audiences nationwide.

This is when Nigerians abroad return for a visit to the home country. They are nicknamed I Just Got Back (IJGB) and bring with them more than full suitcases.

Their Western accents dip in and out of Pidgin, their wallets are boosted by the exchange rate, and their presence fuels the economy.

But it also highlights an uncomfortable truth.

Those who live in Nigeria, earning in the local naira currency, feel shut out of their own cities, especially in the economic hub of Lagos and the capital, Abuja, as prices go up during festive periods.

Residents say this is particularly the case for “Detty December”, a term used to refer the celebrations around Christmas and New Year.

Detty December makes Lagos almost unliveable for locals – traffic is horrible, prices inflate and businesses stop prioritising their regular customers, a radio presenter based in Lagos tells the BBC.

The popular media personality asked not to be named for voicing what some might consider controversial opinions.

But he is not the only one to hold these views and has some are pondering, with Easter and the diaspora summer holiday season approaching, whether the IJGBs are helping bridge Nigeria’s class divide or are making it even wider.

“Nigeria is very classist. Ironically, we’re a poor country, so it’s a bit silly,” the radio presenter adds.

“The wealth gap is massive. It’s almost like we’re worlds apart.”

It is true that despite oil-rich Nigeria being one of Africa’s biggest economies and the continent’s most populous country, its more than 230 million citizens face huge challenges and limited opportunities.

At the beginning of the year, the charity Oxfam warned the wealth gap in Nigeria was reaching a “crisis level”.

Statistics from 2023 are startling.

According to the World Inequality Database more than 10% of the population owned more than 60% of Nigeria’s wealth. For those with jobs, 10% of the population took home 42% of the income.

The World Bank says the figure of those living below the poverty line is 87 million – “the world’s second-largest poor population after India“.

Martins Ifeanacho, professor of sociology at the University of Port Harcourt, says this gap and resulting class divide has grown since Nigeria’s independence from the UK in 1960.

“We’ve gone through so much economic hardship,” the academic, who returned to Nigeria after studying in Ireland in the 1990s, tells the BBC.

He points the finger at the greed of those who are in position of political power – be it at a federal or state level.

“We have a political elite that bases its calculations on how to acquire power, amass wealth for the purpose of capturing more power.

“The ordinary people are left out of the equation, and that’s why there is a lot of hardship.”

But it is not just about money in the bank account.

Wealth, real or perceived, can dictate access, status and opportunity – and the presence of the diaspora can magnify the class divide.

“Nigeria’s class system is hard to pinpoint. It’s not just about money, it’s about perception,” explains the radio presenter.

He gives the example of going out for a meal in Lagos and how peacocking is so important.

At restaurants, those arriving in a Range Rover are quickly attended to, while those in a Kia may be ignored, says the radio presenter.

Social mobility is difficult when the nation’s wealth remains within a small elite.

With odds stacked against those trying to climb the ladder, for many Nigerians the only realistic path to a better life is to leave.

The World Bank blames “weak job creation and entrepreneurial prospects” that stifle the absorption of “the 3.5 million Nigerians entering the labour force every year”.

“Many workers choose to emigrate in search of better opportunities,” it says.

Since the 1980s, middle-class Nigerians have sought opportunities abroad, but in recent years, the urgency has intensified, especially among Gen Z and millennials.

This mass exodus has been dubbed “japa”, a Yoruba word meaning “to escape”.

A 2022 survey found that at least 70% of young Nigerians would relocate if they could.

But for many, leaving is not simple. Studying abroad, the most common route, can cost tens of thousands of dollars, not including travel, accommodation and visa expenses.

“Japa creates this aspirational culture where people now want to leave the country,” says Lulu Okwara, a 28-year-old recruitment officer.

She went the UK to study finance in 2021 – and is one of the IJGBs, having returned to Nigeria at least three times since moving.

Ms Okwara notes that in Nigeria there is a pressure to succeed. A culture where achievement is expected.

“It’s success or nothing,” she tells the BBC. “There is no room for failure.”

This deeply embedded sentiment makes people feel they must do anything to succeed.

Especially for those who come from more working-class backgrounds. The IJGBs have a point to prove.

“When people go out there, their dream is always to come back as heroes, mostly during Christmas or other festivities,” says Prof Ifeanacho.

“You come back home and you mix with your people that you’ve missed for a long time.

“The type of welcome they will give to you, the children that will be running to you, is something that you love and cherish.”

Success is chased at any cost and putting on a foreign accent can help you climb Nigeria’s social ladder – even if you have not been abroad.

“People fake accents to get access. The more you sound British, the higher your social status,” says Prof Ifeanacho.

He recalls a story about a pastor who preached every Sunday on the radio.

“When they told me that this man had not left Nigeria, I said, ‘No, that’s not possible.’ Because when you hear him speak, everything is American,” he says in disbelief.

American and British accents, especially, act as a different kind of currency, smoothing paths in both professional and social settings.

Pushback on social media suggests some IJGBs are all front – they may lap up the returning hero adulation but in fact lack financial clout.

Bizzle Osikoya, the owner at The Plug Entertainment, a business that hosts live music events in West Africa, says he has encountered some issues that reflect this.

He tells the BBC about how several IJGBs have attended his events – but who have gone on to try and get their money back.

“They went back to the US and Canada and put a dispute on their payments,” he says.

This may reflect the desperate effort to maintain a façade of success in a society where every display of wealth is scrutinised.

In Nigeria, it seems, performance is key – and the IJGBs who are able to show off will certainly be able to climb the class ladder.

US President Donald Trump revoked security clearances from his previously defeated Democratic election rivals, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, as well as a number of other former officials and critics.

Trump said in February he was revoking security clearance for his predecessor Joe Biden. His order confirmed that decision, adding that he was also revoking the security clearance of “any other member” of the Biden family.

“I have determined that it is no longer in the national interest for the following individuals to access classified information,” Trump’s memorandum read.

Former US presidents and top security officials usually keep their security clearance as a courtesy.

Trump ordered department and agency leaders to “revoke unescorted access to secure United States government facilities for these individuals.”

“This action includes, but is not limited to, receipt of classified briefings, such as the President’s Daily Brief, and access to classified information held by any member of the intelligence community by virtue of the named individuals’ previous tenure in the Congress,” the order stated.

For several named figures, the loss of access to classified material and spaces will have a more symbolic impact.

It may limit the materials they are able to review, or restrict access to some government buildings or secure facilities.

The lawyers and prosecutors named by Trump, however, could potentially face roadblocks in accessing or reviewing information for their cases or clients.

Trump’s revocations focus on top Biden administration officials, as well as prominent political critics and attorneys who have challenged Trump or his allies in court.

Biden’s secretary of state Antony Blinken, national security advisor Jake Sullivan, and deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco all lost their clearances.

Trump also targeted two of his own former officials from his first term: Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman, who testified during his first impeachment trial that began in 2019.

Trump also revoked access for high-profile Republican critics, former Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

They were the only two Republican lawmakers who joined a US House investigation into Trump’s role in the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress.

Both also voted to charge Trump in his second impeachment, which a Democratic-led US House of Representatives instigated after the riot. Trump was acquitted by the Senate on the charge of inciting the 6 January riot.

Trump has also singled out top legal opponents in his latest decision on security access. His order revoked clearance for New York attorney general Letitia James, who brought multiple lawsuits against Trump and his businesses.

In a civil fraud lawsuit that concluded in 2024, a judge found Trump liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Trump is appealing the decision.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted and won Trump’s criminal hush money case last year, also lost his clearance.

Trump’s legal targets went beyond elected prosecutors. He withdrew security clearance for Norm Eisen, an attorney leading multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce.

Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor who joined an investigation of Trump during his first term and later provided media commentary about the hush money trial, also lost his clearance.

Previous media reports had indicated that the administration had pulled the security clearance for a top whistleblower attorney in Washington, Mark Zaid.

Friday’s order listed him among the individuals who would lose access.

However, Mr Zaid told the BBC that “despite being told three times that my clearance has been revoked, I still have not received anything formally.”

He claimed losing his security clearance would harm “the federal employees, including Trump supporters, who count on me to handle cases few other lawyers could.”

Several of the individuals chosen by Trump derided his order in social media statements.

“I don’t care what noises Donald Trump makes about a security clearance that hasn’t been active for five years,” Mr Vindman wrote on X.

Mr Eisen wrote on X that being targeted by Trump’s order “just makes me file even more lawsuits!”

Trump had earlier pulled security clearances of more than four dozen former intelligence officials whom he accused of meddling in the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favour. He provided no evidence for these claims.

In February, Trump announced he was revoking Biden’s security access. In a social media post, Trump said Biden “set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents”.

In 2021, Biden – serving as president at the time – barred his defeated rival Trump from having access to intelligence briefings citing his “erratic behaviour”.

A 2024 Justice Department special counsel report found Biden had improperly retained classified documents from his time as vice president. The report noted that Biden had cooperated with federal investigators and returned the discovered documents.

In 2023, Justice Department special prosecutor Jack Smith indicted Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents following his first term in office and obstructing their return to the government.

Trump pleaded not guilty and a Florida federal judge dismissed the case in July 2024. Smith officially dropped the case that December after Trump won re-election.

The Searchers will end nearly 70 years of touring with their debut at the Glastonbury Festival.

The Merseybeat band, formed by Mike Pender and John McNally, have performed with different line-ups since its formation in 1957.

Known as the “longest-running band in pop history”, the Liverpool band had three UK number ones, including with their version of The Drifters’ hit Sweets For My Sweet.

The Searchers’ Final Farewell Tour will conclude at Glastonbury on 27 June, which the band said will be its “last ever show”.

McNally said: “A Glastonbury debut at 83, can anyone top that? I don’t think life gets any better, does it?

“There will be a few nerves, but in a good way, and we’ll be nicely warmed up from our shows in June. We can’t wait to see our fans again for this incredible final farewell.”

Bassist and singer Frank Allen, who joined the group in 1964, said: “I have played shows across the world with The Searchers for over 60 years; Glastonbury has always been an ambition that has eluded us – until now.

“The Searchers are finally performing at the greatest music festival of them all.

“What a way to round off a tour and a career. I can’t wait to get up on stage and give our fans one final blast.”

The Searchers’ hits also include Sugar And Spice, Needles And Pins and Don’t Throw Your Love Away.

They have sold more than 50 million records and performed worldwide, while drawing praise from artists such as Bruce Springsteen.

The band’s Final Farewell Tour runs from 14 June and will end with a performance on the Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury on 27 June.

Sounds

The director of acclaimed period drama Wolf Hall says filming of last year’s second series was nearly called off weeks before it was due to begin because of budget pressures.

Peter Kosminsky told BBC Two’s Newsnight they eventually opted to axe costly exterior scenes in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and The Light, meaning almost everything in the Tudor drama, screened by the BBC, became “conversations in rooms” instead.

He argues public service broadcasters including the BBC and ITV can no longer afford to make high-end British drama.

The Bafta and Golden Globe-winning director is calling for a 5% levy on UK subscription streaming revenues, with the proceeds collected for a British cultural fund.

Kosminsky told the BBC that six weeks before shooting began, having already cut certain props, locations, costumes and cast members, he and the producer decided the gap was still “too great” to go ahead with making The Mirror and The Light.

“That’s not something that has ever happened to me before, in all the years I’ve been making programmes, that you actually have to stop six weeks from production.”

Kosminsky has previously revealed that he – alongside Sir Mark Rylance, who played Thomas Cromwell, executive producer Colin Callender and Oscar-winning writer Peter Straughan – took significant pay cuts to get the programme over the line.

He said the original script “had many scenes set outside, many scenes involving horses, we had a whole joust, an extraordinary scene as conceived by Hilary Mantel, the original novelist – and we had to cut everything”.

He said he was still “incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved, and the response overwhelmed us all”.

But the original concept was a programme with “more fresh air in it, where you got more of a sense of Tudor society out in the world, and the lives these people lived when they weren’t in the throne rooms, palaces and beautiful dining rooms”.

Kosminsky said things had got worse since he filmed the drama, which was broadcast in November.

Now, he argues, public service broadcasters would not be able to afford to commission Wolf Hall or Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the landmark ITV drama about the Post Office scandal.

One day in the not too distant future, he warns, British audiences will notice these types of programmes are “gone”.

Kosminsky also believes there is “no way” the BBC or ITV could afford to make Adolescence, the current hit show from Netflix about a teenager accused of murder.

Adolescence writer Jack Thorne thinks traditional broadcasters could have made the drama, but they would have had to cut some of the most expensive scenes.

“It would have been a slightly different version of it,” Thorne told the BBC.

“In episode two, I wrote a fire drill that involved 300 extras. Those 300 extras had to be employed for 10 days. That is an awful lot of money. So all these things would have been difficult on a public service budget.

“I think we could have done it, it just would have been very different. And truthfully, it probably would have needed co-finance from abroad, and the problem at the moment is that finance has disappeared.”

The impact of Covid and the 2023 US actors’ and writers’ strikes, as well as higher energy costs, are some of the reasons often given for the increasing costs of TV production.

And Kosminsky is not alone in arguing that the advent of streaming platforms has inflated prices so dramatically that the public service broadcasters have been unable to keep up.

Patrick Spence, the executive producer behind Mr Bates vs the Post Office, told the BBC this was “a serious issue”.

“Not only would Mr Bates not get funded today, but I wouldn’t even have started developing it,” he said.

Former subpostmaster Sir Alan Bates, whose story was central to the programme named after him, said it would be “a real shame” if these kinds of dramas could no longer be made.

Mr Bates vs the Post Office meant “a lot of people saw for the first time the sort of hell going on in the background in the Post Office, the real miscarriage of justice going on right across the country”, he said.

Spence said the price of making dramas had risen at the same time as the international funding model had dried up for these types of shows. Later this year, his ITV drama The Hack, about the phone hacking scandal, by Adolescence writer Jack Thorne, will air in the UK.

Spence said there was “no way” he could raise the money to fund that programme now.

Figures out last month from the BFI showed £5.6bn was spent on high end TV and film production in the UK in 2024. But domestic UK programmes accounted for £598m, down 22% on the previous year.

Kosminsky argues that a levy on the streamers would put the UK in line with some other European countries that use the proceeds to fund domestic content, such as France and Denmark.

But with many streamers based in the US, would the UK government take on Donald Trump’s administration?

In February, a White House memorandum referenced levies on US streaming services, calling them “one-sided, anti-competitive policies” that “violate American sovereignty”.

On Thursday, as she accepted an award from the Broadcasting Press Guild, Jayne Featherstone, executive producer of Netflix’s Black Doves, said the UK was “at risk of losing the very stories that define us”.

“We are in the 45th minute of the pilot episode, and we’ve got five minutes left to stop the bomb from going off,” she said.

She recently told a House of Commons committee she would like to see an uplift in tax relief for high end television, similar to the one already given to the film sector.

Venezuela will resume flights for its nationals deported by the US, after reaching an agreement with the Trump administration.

Venezuela, which does not have diplomatic relations with the US, had initially agreed to accept deportees in February. But President Nicolás Maduro halted flights in March after a dispute with the Trump administration.

“Tomorrow, thanks to the government’s perseverance, we’ll resume flights to continue rescuing and freeing migrants from prisons in the United States,” Maduro said in a televised address on Saturday, Reuters reports.

The White House and US State Department did not respond to BBC requests for comment.

Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, had initially brokered a deal with Venezuela’s government to take back its citizens deported from the US.

“Venezuela has agreed to receive, back into their Country, all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the US, including gang members of Tren de Aragua,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time. “Venezuela has further agreed to supply the transportation back.”

But Maduro halted deportation flights from the US on 8 March, after the US Treasury Department suspended the energy giant Chevron’s permission to export oil from Venezuela, the AP reported.

On 15 March, the Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelans, who they alleged belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, to El Salvador, where they were detained at a mega-prison.

The administration has not named the individuals deported, or provided details of their alleged criminal behaviour

In a statement issued on Saturday, Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s national assembly, appeared to address the matter of the Venezuelan nationals currently held in El Salvador.

He said Venezuela accepted a deal to assure “the return of our compatriots to their nation with the safeguard of their Human Rights,” the AP reported.

“Migrating isn’t a crime, and we won’t rest until everyone who wants to return is back and we rescue our kidnapped brothers in El Salvador.”

Trump has used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as a legal basis for removing 137 of those Venezuelan deportees, which immediately prompted a legal challenge.

A federal judge in Washington, DC sought to block the deportation flights to El Salvador via a verbal order.

However, the planes landed in El Salvador, and the country’s president Nayib Bukele posted on social media that the intervention came “too late”.

The White House has faced allegations of defying the judge’s order, which it refutes.

The judge, James Boesberg, demanded more details from a government lawyer at a hearing on Friday.

Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly has told the BBC she believes Canada can win the trade war which was sparked by a series of tariffs ordered by US President Donald Trump.

“We are the biggest customer of the US,” Joly told the BBC’s World Service Weekend programme. “We buy more from the Americans than China, Japan, the UK and France combined.”

Joly said tariffs and increased prices are a priority for Canadians as voters prepare to head to the polls to elect a new prime minister later this year.

The US president has imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from Canada. Trump has also vowed to impose a sweeping range of “reciprocal” tariffs on 2 April.

Joly said that because the US and Canadian economies are so intertwined, “we have the most leverage in the world when it comes to the US”.

She noted it is not just Canadians feeling the pain from tariffs, but “hardworking Americans” too.

But Joly said it could be Americans who are the most successful in urging an end to the trade war.

“We think that ultimately the only ones that will be able to help us win this war… are the Americans themselves because they’re the ones that can send a message to their lawmakers,” she told the BBC.

“We can win the hearts and minds of Americans, because ultimately they’re the ones paying for this” she added, noting that both American and Canadian jobs are at risk because of the tariffs.

The trade war is expected to be at the forefront of Canadians’ minds when they head to the polls in their first federal election in nearly a decade.

Reports suggest Prime Minister Carney could call for a snap election on Sunday. That election is expected to be held on 28 April.

And it is not just the Liberals making the case against US tariffs, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has also been on the trade war. He has argued he is best equipped to take on Trump.

“There is no good reason to do this to these good people,” Poilievre said earlier this week. “Stop the tariffs, stop the chaos.”

Trump has vowed to impose further tariffs Canada, and other countries around the world, on 2 April – calling these tariffs “the big one”.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to impose reciprocal tariffs if Trump’s tariff threats come to fruition.

It will bring to head a weeks-long back and forth between the North American countries.

The frustration over trade war has led some Canadians to start protesting.

In Toronto on Saturday, Canadians held an “elbows up” protest to push back against President Trump’s stated desire of making Canada the 51st state of the US, and the ongoing trade war.

The phrase, used in hockey to describe defending oneself or fighting back, has been repurposed by protesters in Canada.

In the BBC World Service Weekend interview, Joly was also asked about the upcoming federal election.

She said the Liberal party is “very keen” to make sure Canadians give the party “a clear mandate” to deal with Trump and the threat of tariffs.

Joly said Canadians are “preoccupied” by what is happening in the White House and they are looking for a prime minister who has “strong values”.

The race will likely come down to a choice between Carney and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

Tariffs are a central part of Trump’s overall economic vision.

He says tariffs will boost US manufacturing and protect jobs, raising tax revenue and growing the domestic economy.

He also wants to restore America’s trade balance with its foreign partners – reducing the gap that exists between how much the US imports from and exports to individual countries.

But he has refused to rule out the prospect of a recession as a result of his trade policies, which sent US stocks sharply down in the days before the metal tariffs took effect.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later said the tariffs were “worth it” even if they did lead to an economic downturn.

Trump’s tariffs initially targeted goods from China, Mexico and Canada.

These accounted for more than 40% of imports into the US in 2024.

But Trump has accused the three countries of not doing enough to end the flow of migrants and illegal drugs such as fentanyl into the US.

All three countries have rejected the accusations.

An Israeli air strike on the southern city of Khan Younis in Gaza has killed top Hamas political leader Salah al-Bardaweel, a Hamas official has told the BBC.

Locals say the air strike killed both Bardaweel, regarded as Hamas’s highest-ranking political leader, and his wife. Israeli officials had no immediate comment.

The total death toll in Gaza since the war began surpassed 50,000 on Sunday, its Hamas-run health authorities said, with least 30 people killed in Khan Yunis and Rafah so far on Sunday.

Israel resumed heavy strikes on Gaza earlier this week – in effect ending the first phase of a ceasefire that lasted almost two months. It blamed Hamas for rejecting a new US proposal to extend the truce.

Hamas, in turn, accused Israel of abandoning the original deal – mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US. It envisaged the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the subsequent release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners – in addition to negotiations to end the war entirely and reconstruct Gaza.

In a statement on Sunday, Hamas said Bardaweel, 66, had been praying along with his wife when an Israeli missile struck their tent.

A father of eight, Bardaweel was one of Hamas’s most prominent political figures.

Born in Khan Younis refugee camp, he was known to be close to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and is considered part of the second generation of Hamas leadership, following the movement’s founders.

He headed the political wing of Hamas’s parliamentary bloc and was re-elected to the group’s political bureau in 2021.

Following the killing of Sinwar and Rawhi Mushtaha during the ongoing war, Bardaweel was regarded as Hamas’s highest-ranking political leader.

The air strike that killed Bardaweel was part of one of the most intense waves of aerial bombardment in southern Gaza since the collapse of the ceasefire agreement last Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told the BBC that Israeli forces were surrounding several of the organisation’s ambulances as they attempted to reach an area hit by an Israeli strike in Rafah.

He added that several paramedics were wounded, and contact had been lost with one of the trapped teams, which has been besieged for hours.

The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for residents of the Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood in western Rafah after the area was hit by heavy shelling and a limited ground assault.

The attack included tank fire from Israeli forces positioned along the Philadelphi Corridor on the border with Egypt, and helicopters also took part in the assault.

Alaa al-Din Sabah, a resident of the neighbourhood, said in a voice message to the BBC: “Bullets are raining down on us like it’s pouring. A woman was shot and is bleeding. Ambulances couldn’t reach her.”

“I can see one of the paramedics lying on the ground, screaming.”

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.

As Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 unfolds, all eyes are on MS Dhoni who continues to command superstar status in Indian cricket despite retiring from the international game in 2020.

Dhoni continues to be a key figure in the world’s richest cricket league.

Alongside him are veterans like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma, pace bowler Jasprit Bumrah, and emerging stars like Shubman Gill, Yashaswi Jaiswal, and Rishabh Pant. They are among the players who led India to two ICC titles in the past nine months – the T20 World Cup in June and the Champions Trophy last month.

Yet it is Dhoni who still commands unrivalled attention, with his leadership and presence in the league continuing to captivate fans.

The cricketer, who turns 44 in July, is playing his 18th straight IPL season, 16 of these representing Chennai Super Kings (CSK). He is the oldest player in the tournament this year, though not the oldest to have played in the IPL.

Australian spin bowler Brad Hogg was 45 years and 92 days old when he last played in the IPL in 2016, representing Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Leg-spinner Pravin Tambe, the oldest debutant at 41 years and 212 days for Rajasthan Royals, played his final match in 2019 at 44 years and 219 days, capping an astonishing career.

Whether Dhoni will surpass Tambe and Hogg remains to be seen. Three seasons ago, when he gave up the CSK captaincy, his retirement seemed imminent. Last year, his infrequent appearances suggested the same. However, CSK used the retention clause in the IPL mega-auction to keep Dhoni for the 2025 season as an uncapped player, given his five-year absence from international cricket.

In 18 IPL seasons, Dhoni has scored 5,243 runs, placing him sixth on the all-time run list, currently topped by Kohli.

His career batting average of 39.12 is higher than both Rohit Sharma and Kohli, and trails only David Warner (40.52) and AB de Villiers (39.70) among players with more than 5,000 runs in the league.

Among players with over 5,000 runs, Dhoni’s strike rate of 137.53 ranks behind only de Villiers (151.68) and Warner (139.77).

In sixes, Dhoni (252) trails only Gayle (357), Sharma (280) and Kohli (272).

These batting stats highlight just one aspect of Dhoni’s prowess. As a wicketkeeper, he boasts 180 dismissals (141 catches, 39 stumpings), a record unmatched by anyone. His quick reflexes and deft glovework earned him the nickname “pickpocket” from former Indian coach Ravi Shastri.

The “helicopter shot”, a flick-drive played over mid-wicket with a wrist-flex of the bottom hand, became the signature stroke of his batting brilliance.

The other notable aspect of his batting was his ability to control the match, taking the innings deep, virtually to the end, with a remarkable control of nerves, and interspersed with explosive strokes. He also ran like a hare between wickets, making him India’s best match-winner in his prime years.

Dhoni holds the record for most IPL matches as captain (210) and most wins (123), leading CSK to five IPL titles and two Champions League titles.

He also captained India to three ICC titles: the T20 World Cup (2007), ODI World Cup (2011) and Champions Trophy (2013).

Additionally, his impact in Test cricket is immense, having played 90 Tests and guiding India to the No1 ICC ranking before his sudden retirement mid-series in 2014-15.

Former Indian captains Sunil Gavaskar and Shastri have frequently hailed him as India’s finest cricketer ever. While this is open to debate, that Dhoni belongs to the same cluster as Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and Kapil Dev is now widely acknowledged.

So what does the current season hold for him?

Advancing age has taken a physical toll on Dhoni, though he remains mentally tough and highly competitive. Last season, he stepped away from his finisher role, which he’d held since the league’s inception, and adapted his approach to provide valuable cameos that could impact the outcome.

With the impact player rule – which allows teams to pick an extra specialist batter or bowler based on the game situation – now an integral part of the IPL, Dhoni could well settle into this role, while continuing to be a sounding board for the captain and mentor to the squad in a non-designated informal manner.

For CSK, keeping Dhoni in the squad is a no-brainer. His appeal extends beyond CSK fans, offering massive commercial and branding benefits to both the franchise and the IPL. As CSK puts it, an IPL without Dhoni is “unthinkable”.

This may limit opportunities for young players, both Indian and overseas, but Ravi Shastri dismisses this argument. “The league operates on free-market dynamics. Franchise owners aren’t sentimental – they know what’s best for them, on and off the field,” he says.

Meanwhile, former India opener Robin Uthappa, who played under Dhoni for both India and CSK, warns rivals: “Write off Dhoni at your own risk. We could still see some old magic.”

Sir Keir Starmer’s plan for an international force to support a ceasefire in Ukraine has been dismissed as “a posture and a pose” by Donald Trump’s special envoy.

Steve Witkoff said the idea was based on a “simplistic” notion of the UK prime minister and other European leaders thinking “we have all got to be like Winston Churchill”.

In an interview with pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised Vladimir Putin, saying he “liked” the Russian president.

“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” he said. “He’s super smart.”

Witkoff, who met Putin 10 days ago, said the Russian president had been “gracious” and “straight up” with him. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year. He also said Putin had commissioned a portrait of the US president as a gift and Trump was “clearly touched by it”.

During the interview, Witkoff repeated various Russian arguments, including that Ukraine was “a false country” and asked when the world would recognise occupied Ukrainian territory as Russian.

Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with both Russia and Ukraine but he was unable to name the five regions of Ukraine either annexed or partially occupied by Russian forces.

He said: “The largest issue in that conflict are these so-called four regions, Donbas, Crimea, you know the names and there are two others.”

The five regions – or oblasts – are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Crimea. Donbas refers to an industrial region in the east that includes much of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Witkoff made several assertions that are either not true or disputed:

• He said Ukrainian troops in Kursk were surrounded, something denied by Ukraine’s government and uncorroborated by any open-source data
• He said the four partially occupied regions of Ukraine had held “referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule”. There were referendums only in some of the occupied parts of Ukraine at different times and the methodology and results were widely discredited and disputed
• He said the four partially occupied oblasts were Russian-speaking. There are many Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine but this has never indicated support for Russia.

The US is set to hold separate talks in Saudi Arabia with Ukraine and Russia about a ceasefire at meetings over Sunday and Monday.

Ahead of that, Ukrainian authorities said Russia had launched drone attacks on Kyiv overnight, resulting in deaths of three people, including a five-year-old child.

Officials said that eight people had been injured.

Russia also struck the southern city of Zaporizhzhia on Friday, killing a family of three.

Meanwhile, on Sunday Russia’s ministry of defence said it had shot down 59 Ukrainian drones across a number of regions in the south as well as in Crimea, the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

During his interview, Witkoff also repeated several Kremlin talking points about the cause of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

He said it was “correct” that from the Russian perspective the partially occupied territories were now part of Russia: “The elephant in the room is, there are constitutional issues within Ukraine as to what they can concede to with regard to giving up territory. The Russians are de facto in control of these territories. The question is: will the world acknowledge that those are Russian territories?”

He added: “There’s a sensibility in Russia that Ukraine is just a false country, that they just patched together in this sort of mosaic, these regions, and that’s what is the root cause, in my opinion, of this war, that Russia regards those five regions as rightfully theirs since World War Two, and that’s something nobody wants to talk about.”

Putin has repeatedly said that the “root causes” of his invasion were the threat posed to Russia by an expanded Nato and the sheer existence of Ukraine as an independent country.

Witkoff said in the Tucker Carlson interview: “Why would they want to absorb Ukraine? For what purpose? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine… They have reclaimed these five regions. They have Crimea and they have gotten what they want. So why do they need more?”

Asked about Keir Starmer’s plans to forge a “coalition of the willing” to provide military security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine, Witkoff said: “I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like [British wartime prime minister] Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous by the way. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two.”

He said a ceasefire in the Black Sea would be “implemented over the next week or so” and “we are not far away” from a full 30-day ceasefire.

He also gave details of how Trump wanted to co-operate with Russia after relations had been normalised. “Who doesn’t want to have a world where Russia and the US are doing collaboratively good things together, thinking about how to integrate their energy polices in the Arctic, share sea lines maybe, send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on AI together?”

The main rival to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been formally arrested and charged with corruption.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, is expected to be selected as the opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) 2028 presidential candidate in a ballot on Sunday.

He denies the allegations and says they are politically motivated. “I will never bow,” he wrote on X before he was remanded in custody.

His detention sparked some of Turkey’s largest protests in more than a decade. Erdogan has condemned the demonstrations and accused the CHP of trying to “disturb the peace and polarise our people”.

Imamoglu was one of more than 100 people, including other politicians, journalists and businessmen, detained as part of an investigation on Wednesday, triggering four consecutive nights of demonstrations.

On Sunday, he was formally arrested and charged with “establishing and managing a criminal organisation, taking bribes, extortion, unlawfully recording personal data and rigging a tender”.

He was remanded in custody pending trial. Local media reported he had been taken to Marmara Prison in Silivri.

In social media posts, Imamoglu criticised his arrest as a “black stain on our democracy”, and said judicial procedure was not being followed.

He urged people across the country to join protests and to take part in Sunday’s vote. Imamoglu is the only person running in the CHP’s presidential candidate selection.

• Who is Turkish opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu?
• Protests erupt in Turkey after Erdogan rival arrested

Prosecutors want to charge him with “aiding an armed terrorist organisation”, but the Turkish court said it was “not deemed necessary at this stage” to do so.

The CHP had a de facto alliance with the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) in connection with last year’s local elections.

DEM has been accused of being affiliated with the PKK – or Kurdistan Workers’ Party – which it denies.

The PKK declared a ceasefire early this month, after waging an insurgency against Turkey for more than 40 years. It is proscribed as a terrorist group in Turkey, the EU, UK and US.

Imamoglu is seen as one of Erdogan’s most formidable political rivals.

The arrest does not prevent his candidacy and election as president. However, if he is convicted of any of the charges against him he would not be able to run.

A day before his arrest, Istanbul University announced it was revoking Imamoglu’s degree due to alleged irregularities, a measure – which if upheld – would put his ability to run as president into doubt.

According to the Turkish constitution, presidents must have completed higher education to hold office.

Imamoglu’s lawyers said they would appeal the decision to revoke his degree to the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

The Supreme Election Council will decide whether Imamoglu is qualified to be a candidate.

Erdogan has held office for the past 22 years, as both prime minister and president of Turkey.

However, due to term limits, he cannot run for office again in 2028 unless he changes the constitution.

Opposition figures say the arrests are politically motivated. But the Ministry of Justice has criticised those who link Erdogan to the arrests, and insist on its judicial independence.

Thousands have taken to the streets across Turkey in largely peaceful demonstrations.

Authorities tried to stifle demonstrations with a four-day ban on all gatherings in Istanbul, which was extended to Ankara and Izmir as the protests spread.

Riot police have repeatedly clashed with protesters and could be seen firing pepper gas and water cannons towards crowds of demonstrators.

Turkish authorities said 343 people were arrested on Friday night.

On Saturday, tear gas hung in the air outside the mayor’s office in Istanbul before the protests had even properly begun.

As the crowds had grown throughout the evening, it became hard to breathe as round after round was fired to disperse demonstrators.

Chanting “rights, law, justice”, people of all ages defied the government ban to protest against what they see as an unlawful detention.

One young woman, dressed in black and wearing a face mask, told the BBC she was not protesting for political reasons or because she supported the opposition, but instead to defend democracy.

“I’m here for justice, I’m here for liberty. We’re free people and Turkish people cannot accept this. This is against our behaviour and culture.”

Another woman, who had brought her 11-year-old son to the protests, said she wanted to include him because she is worried about his future.

“It’s getting harder to live in Turkey day by day, we can’t control our lives, we can’t choose who we want and there is no real justice here,” she said.

US President Donald Trump revoked security clearances from his previously defeated Democratic election rivals, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, as well as a number of other former officials and critics.

Trump said in February he was revoking security clearance for his predecessor Joe Biden. His order confirmed that decision, adding that he was also revoking the security clearance of “any other member” of the Biden family.

“I have determined that it is no longer in the national interest for the following individuals to access classified information,” Trump’s memorandum read.

Former US presidents and top security officials usually keep their security clearance as a courtesy.

Trump ordered department and agency leaders to “revoke unescorted access to secure United States government facilities for these individuals.”

“This action includes, but is not limited to, receipt of classified briefings, such as the President’s Daily Brief, and access to classified information held by any member of the intelligence community by virtue of the named individuals’ previous tenure in the Congress,” the order stated.

For several named figures, the loss of access to classified material and spaces will have a more symbolic impact.

It may limit the materials they are able to review, or restrict access to some government buildings or secure facilities.

The lawyers and prosecutors named by Trump, however, could potentially face roadblocks in accessing or reviewing information for their cases or clients.

Trump’s revocations focus on top Biden administration officials, as well as prominent political critics and attorneys who have challenged Trump or his allies in court.

Biden’s secretary of state Antony Blinken, national security advisor Jake Sullivan, and deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco all lost their clearances.

Trump also targeted two of his own former officials from his first term: Fiona Hill and Alexander Vindman, who testified during his first impeachment trial that began in 2019.

Trump also revoked access for high-profile Republican critics, former Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

They were the only two Republican lawmakers who joined a US House investigation into Trump’s role in the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress.

Both also voted to charge Trump in his second impeachment, which a Democratic-led US House of Representatives instigated after the riot. Trump was acquitted by the Senate on the charge of inciting the 6 January riot.

Trump has also singled out top legal opponents in his latest decision on security access. His order revoked clearance for New York attorney general Letitia James, who brought multiple lawsuits against Trump and his businesses.

In a civil fraud lawsuit that concluded in 2024, a judge found Trump liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Trump is appealing the decision.

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted and won Trump’s criminal hush money case last year, also lost his clearance.

Trump’s legal targets went beyond elected prosecutors. He withdrew security clearance for Norm Eisen, an attorney leading multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce.

Andrew Weissmann, a former federal prosecutor who joined an investigation of Trump during his first term and later provided media commentary about the hush money trial, also lost his clearance.

Previous media reports had indicated that the administration had pulled the security clearance for a top whistleblower attorney in Washington, Mark Zaid.

Friday’s order listed him among the individuals who would lose access.

However, Mr Zaid told the BBC that “despite being told three times that my clearance has been revoked, I still have not received anything formally.”

He claimed losing his security clearance would harm “the federal employees, including Trump supporters, who count on me to handle cases few other lawyers could.”

Several of the individuals chosen by Trump derided his order in social media statements.

“I don’t care what noises Donald Trump makes about a security clearance that hasn’t been active for five years,” Mr Vindman wrote on X.

Mr Eisen wrote on X that being targeted by Trump’s order “just makes me file even more lawsuits!”

Trump had earlier pulled security clearances of more than four dozen former intelligence officials whom he accused of meddling in the 2020 election in Joe Biden’s favour. He provided no evidence for these claims.

In February, Trump announced he was revoking Biden’s security access. In a social media post, Trump said Biden “set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on National Security, a courtesy provided to former Presidents”.

In 2021, Biden – serving as president at the time – barred his defeated rival Trump from having access to intelligence briefings citing his “erratic behaviour”.

A 2024 Justice Department special counsel report found Biden had improperly retained classified documents from his time as vice president. The report noted that Biden had cooperated with federal investigators and returned the discovered documents.

In 2023, Justice Department special prosecutor Jack Smith indicted Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents following his first term in office and obstructing their return to the government.

Trump pleaded not guilty and a Florida federal judge dismissed the case in July 2024. Smith officially dropped the case that December after Trump won re-election.

Having a chip in your brain that can translate your thoughts into computer commands may sound like science fiction – but it is a reality for Noland Arbaugh.

In January 2024 – eight years after he was paralysed – the 30-year-old became the first person to get such a device from the US neurotechnology firm, Neuralink.

It was not the first such chip – a handful of other companies have also developed and implanted them – but Noland’s inevitably attracts more attention because of Neuralink’s founder: Elon Musk.

But Noland says the important thing is neither him nor Musk – but the science.

He told the BBC he knew the risks of what he was doing – but “good or bad, whatever may be, I would be helping”.

“If everything worked out, then I could help being a participant of Neuralink,” he said.

“If something terrible happened, I knew they would learn from it.”

Noland, who is from Arizona, was paralysed below the shoulders in a diving accident in 2016.

His injuries were so severe he feared he might not be able to study, work or even play games again.

“You just have no control, no privacy, and it’s hard,” he said.

“You have to learn that you have to rely on other people for everything.”

The Neuralink chip looks to restore a fraction of his previous independence, by allowing him to control a computer with his mind.

It is what is known as a brain computer interface (BCI) – which works by detecting the tiny electrical impulses generated when humans think about moving, and translating these into digital command, such as moving a cursor on a screen.

It is a complex subject that scientists have been working on for several decades.

Inevitably, Elon Musk’s involvement in the field has catapulted the tech – and Noland Arbaugh – into the headlines.

It’s helped Neuralink attract lots of investment – as well as scrutiny over the safety and significance of what is an extremely invasive procedure.

When Noland’s implant was announced, experts hailed it as a “significant milestone”, while also cautioning that it would take time to really assess – especially given Musk’s adeptness at “generating publicity for his company.”

Musk was cagey in public at the time, simply writing in a social media post: “Initial results show promising neuron spike detection.”

In reality, Noland said, the billionaire – who he spoke to before and after his surgery – was far more optimistic.

“I think he was just as excited as I was to get started,” he said.

Nonetheless, he stresses that Neuralink is about more than its owner, and claims he does not consider it “an Elon Musk device”.

Whether the rest of the world sees it that way – especially given his increasingly controversial role in the US government – remains to be seen.

But there is no questioning the impact the device has had on Noland’s life.

When Noland awoke from the surgery which installed the device, he said he was initially able to control a cursor on a screen by thinking about wiggling his fingers.

“Honestly I didn’t know what to expect – it sounds so sci-fi,” he said.

But after seeing his neurons spike on a screen – all the while surrounded by excited Neuralink employees – he said “it all sort of sunk in” that he could control his computer with just his thoughts.

And – even better – over time his ability to use the implant has grown to the point he can now play chess and video games.

“I grew up playing games,” he said – adding it was something he “had to let go of” when he became disabled.

“Now I’m beating my friends at games, which really shouldn’t be possible but it is.”

Noland is a powerful demonstration of the tech’s potential to change lives – but there may be drawbacks too.

“One of the main problems is privacy,” said Anil Seth, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Sussex.

“So if we are exporting our brain activity […] then we are kind of allowing access to not just what we do but potentially what we think, what we believe and what we feel,” he told the BBC.

“Once you’ve got access to stuff inside your head, there really is no other barrier to personal privacy left.”

But these aren’t concerns for Noland – instead he wants to see the chips go further in terms of what they can do.

He told the BBC he hoped the device could eventually allow him to control his wheelchair, or even a futuristic humanoid robot.

Even with the tech in its current, more limited state, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing though.

At one point, an issue with the device caused him to lose control of his computer altogether, when it partially disconnected from his brain.

“That was really upsetting to say the least,” he said.

“I didn’t know if I would be able to use Neuralink ever again.”

The connection was repaired – and subsequently improved – when engineers adjusted the software, but it highlighted a concern frequently voiced by experts over the technology’s limitations.

Neuralink is just one of many companies exploring how to digitally tap into our brain power.

Synchron is one such firm, which says its Stentrode device aimed at helping people with motor neurone disease requires a less invasive surgery to implant.

Rather than requiring open brain surgery, it is installed into a person’s jugular vein in their neck, then moved up to their brain through a blood vessel.

Like Neuralink, the device ultimately connects to the motor region of the brain.

“It picks up when someone is thinking of tapping or not tapping their finger,” said chief technology officer Riki Bannerjee.

“By being able to pick up those differences it can create what we call a digital motor output.”

That output is then turned into computer signals, where it is currently being used by 10 people.

One such person, who did not want his last name to be used, told the BBC he was the first person in the world to use the device with Apple’s Vision Pro headset.

Mark said this has allowed him to virtually holiday in far-flung locations – from standing in waterfalls in Australia to strolling across mountains in New Zealand.

“I can see down the road in the future a world where this technology could really, really make a difference for someone that has this or any paralysis,” he said.

But for Noland there is one caveat with his Neuralink chip – he agreed to be part of a study which installed it for six years, after which point the future is less clear.

Whatever happens to him, he believes his experience may be merely scratching the surface of what might one day become a reality.

“We know so little about the brain and this is allowing us to learn so much more,” he said.

An Israeli air strike on the southern city of Khan Younis in Gaza has killed top Hamas political leader Salah al-Bardaweel, a Hamas official has told the BBC.

Locals say the air strike killed both Bardaweel, regarded as Hamas’s highest-ranking political leader, and his wife. Israeli officials had no immediate comment.

The total death toll in Gaza since the war began surpassed 50,000 on Sunday, its Hamas-run health authorities said, with least 30 people killed in Khan Yunis and Rafah so far on Sunday.

Israel resumed heavy strikes on Gaza earlier this week – in effect ending the first phase of a ceasefire that lasted almost two months. It blamed Hamas for rejecting a new US proposal to extend the truce.

Hamas, in turn, accused Israel of abandoning the original deal – mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US. It envisaged the withdrawal of Israeli troops and the subsequent release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners – in addition to negotiations to end the war entirely and reconstruct Gaza.

In a statement on Sunday, Hamas said Bardaweel, 66, had been praying along with his wife when an Israeli missile struck their tent.

A father of eight, Bardaweel was one of Hamas’s most prominent political figures.

Born in Khan Younis refugee camp, he was known to be close to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and is considered part of the second generation of Hamas leadership, following the movement’s founders.

He headed the political wing of Hamas’s parliamentary bloc and was re-elected to the group’s political bureau in 2021.

Following the killing of Sinwar and Rawhi Mushtaha during the ongoing war, Bardaweel was regarded as Hamas’s highest-ranking political leader.

The air strike that killed Bardaweel was part of one of the most intense waves of aerial bombardment in southern Gaza since the collapse of the ceasefire agreement last Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told the BBC that Israeli forces were surrounding several of the organisation’s ambulances as they attempted to reach an area hit by an Israeli strike in Rafah.

He added that several paramedics were wounded, and contact had been lost with one of the trapped teams, which has been besieged for hours.

The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for residents of the Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood in western Rafah after the area was hit by heavy shelling and a limited ground assault.

The attack included tank fire from Israeli forces positioned along the Philadelphi Corridor on the border with Egypt, and helicopters also took part in the assault.

Alaa al-Din Sabah, a resident of the neighbourhood, said in a voice message to the BBC: “Bullets are raining down on us like it’s pouring. A woman was shot and is bleeding. Ambulances couldn’t reach her.”

“I can see one of the paramedics lying on the ground, screaming.”

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.

The South African ambassador who was expelled from the US after a row with Donald Trump’s government has said he has “no regrets”.

Ebrahim Rasool arrived back home on Sunday and was welcomed by hundreds of raucous supporters at Cape Town International Airport.

Tensions between South Africa and the US have been on a downward spiral since Trump came into office in January.

Rasool, 62, was declared unwelcome in the US after Secretary of State Marco Rubio called him a “race-baiting politician who hates America”. It followed a statement by the ambassador that Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” as the States’ white population faced becoming a minority.

Rasool defended his comments on Sunday morning after touching down in Cape Town.

The remarks, made during a webinar organised by a South African think tank, were meant to “alert” South African intellectuals and political leaders “to a change of the way we live, to a change of the way we are positioned in the United States, that the old way of doing business with the US was not a good one”, Rasool said.

While waiting for Rasool to arrive at the airport, members of the African National Congress, South African Communist Party and trade unionists sang and danced.

Some held placards reading “Ebrahim Rasool, you have served our country with honour!!!”

Rasool’s expulsion marked a rare move by the US – lower-ranking diplomats are sometimes expelled, but it is highly unusual for it to happen to a more senior official.

But ties with South Africa have been deteriorating for months.

In January, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a bill allowing the state to seize land without compensation, provided it was in the “public interest”.

The move followed years of calls for land reform, with activists and politicians seeking to redistribute farmland from the white minority.

In response to the law, Washington cut aid to South Africa. An executive order cited “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners – descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who first arrived in the 17th Century.

South Africa has strongly denied this claim.

On Sunday, Rasool lamented that he had not been able to challenge the Trump administration’s views.

He was appointed as ambassador to the US just last year, because of his experience and extensive network of Washington contacts.

He had previously served as US ambassador from 2010 to 2015, when Barack Obama was president.

More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry has announced.

That number – 50,021 – equates to about 2.1% of the 2.3 million pre-war population of the territory, or around 1 in 46 people.

A total of 113,274 others had been injured in the same period, the health ministry said.

Figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) have been widely used throughout the war and are seen as reliable by the United Nations (UN) and international institutions. But Israel has consistently refuted data published by Gaza’s authorities.

International journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza independently, so are unable to verify figures from either side.

The figures released by the MoH for the number of people killed do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

In November, the UN’s Human Rights Office said its analysis showed close to 70% of verified victims over a six-month period were women and children.

In January, The Lancet medical journal published a study which suggested the death toll could in fact be substantially higher than official figures reported by MoH – by up to 41%.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, were killed and 251 other taken hostage.

Israel responded to the 7 October attack with a massive military offensive, which has caused vast destruction to homes and infrastructure, in addition to those killed or injured.

The MoH also reported on Sunday at least 39 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of people killed to 673 since Israel resumed its military operations in the territory on Tuesday.

In an old gun barrel factory in Sheffield’s industrial heartland, hundreds of people are raving under the fluorescent lights of Hope Works club for one of the last times before it closes. One young woman has dressed all in black to signify the loss of her “favourite place”.

“This is a landmark of Sheffield,” says one reveller. “It’s the reason a lot of people come to university here,” adds another.

Its owner Liam O’Shea believes that nightlife venues like this are “the vital underbelly of everything”.

“It’s where people find themselves,” he says. “It’s where people find their tribe.”

Mr O’Shea, who calls himself a child of the “rave generation”, started Hope Works because he wanted to tap into that original spirit. Only now, Hope Works has gone. It closed its doors permanently in February after 13 years.

And according to Mr O’Shea, grassroots clubs in the UK – places where up and coming artists often perform live – are “dropping like flies”.

In the last five years, around 400 clubs have closed in Britain – more than a third of the total number.

In London, a dedicated taskforce is being launched by the mayor’s office to help boost nightlife and save venues at risk of closing.

“A complex matrix of factors are all conspiring against and placing pressure on the sector, making for a perfect storm for nightclubs,” says Tony Rigg, music industry advisor and programme leader at the University of Central Lancashire.

There are many factors that could be at play – among them, rising costs, less disposable income and changing lifestyle choices.

But the closures prompt broader questions too. Some experts have suggested, for example, that the lasting impact of the Covid-19 lockdowns may have led to people going out less than they once did

And if that is the case, could the closure of so many clubs nod to a wider cultural shift, particularly among Generation Z?

For several years during the pandemic, young people were unable to experience nightlife in the same way previous generations had, so perhaps it is not surprising that there have since been shifts in the way they socialise.

A recent Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) study of more than 2,000 people aged between 18 and 30 found that nearly two thirds were going out less frequently than the year before.

Psychologist Dr Elizabeth Feigin of Dr Elizabeth Consultancy says Gen Z is being driven by a number of factors – both offline and online. Part of this seems to be a rising consciousness around health, both physical and mental – and “we are seeing less of a drinking culture”.

A YouGov survey of 18 to 24-year-olds shows Gen Z continue to be the most sober group overall, with 39% of them not drinking alcohol at all.

Dr Meg Jay, author of The Defining Decade, suggests there are several factors driving this change. “Although some might imagine that young people are going out less post-Covid because depressed Gen Zers are still sitting around in their rooms, I don’t think this is the case.”

There is more awareness about the dangers of substances as well as messaging on social media around healthy lifestyles, she says.

When lockdown restrictions were in place, Dr Jay recalls some young clients saying they’d have to find new ways to have a good time. “[I had] clients telling me how much happier they were as they spent less time feeling drunk, hungover, or broke and more time feeling in charge of their lives.”

Of course social media is also playing a role in how people socialise. For some, “social media and texting with friends scratches some of the itch of meeting up”.

This rings true with Mr Rigg. “We have a massive dependence on social media that has taken us away from more social pastimes,” he argues.

But Dr Feigin believes that the lag in social communication across the younger generations predates the lockdowns. “I think it’s been exacerbated by the pandemic. But I think it was already declining on the back of social media and technology and also helicopter parents.”

There might be some healthy reasons for the decline in night life, she points out – but she also thinks that there’s “some damage as well”.

“[This is] potentially around mental health, of social anxiety, loneliness and people actually not having the skills – not even bravery – to go out and socialise anymore because so much has become dependent online.”

“It’s getting harder and harder for young people to socialise face to face… I do think that we are seeing higher rates of social anxiety and high rates of loneliness”.

Not everyone is convinced that this is the reason for the club closures. Michael Kill, chief executive of the Night Time Industries Association, thinks that finances play a big role. “The reality is, is people can’t afford it”.

Entry fees vary depending on the club. Early release tickets in some city centres can be around £10, while on-the-door entry or last-minute tickets will likely be more. Then comes the cost of any drinks, taxis, late-night trips to the kebab shop.

In an NTIA study, 68% of people reported that the current economic climate had reduced how much they go out.

“Clubbing is becoming a luxury, and that’s just crazy,” says Sherelle Thomas, DJ on BBC 6 Music. “You should be able to enter a club and be with friends at any time you want because it’s something that makes you happy.”

Mr Rigg suggests there is a “storm” coming for clubs, as a result of new economic challenges such as national insurance hikes.

If clubs cannot absorb economic challenges and so put prices up, this could make them less affordable and a less attractive proposition still, argues Mr Rigg – particularly at a time when consumers are burdened with rising living costs.

In 2024, the company which owned Pryzm and Atik, two well-known nightlife chains, went into administration. It closed 17 and sold 11 venues (which included clubs and bars), citing changing student habits as the reason for closures.

Russell Quelch, CEO of Neos, which runs the remaining venues, believes students have less money than they used to. “People really care about how they spend their money,” he argues. “Gone are the days of students going out four or five nights a week”.

The company now has several “party bars” which are open in the day too, meaning the trading window is longer. Many are themed, with events such as bingo, and they are not as alcohol orientated.

The Acapulco in Halifax has seen thousands of people on its dancefloor since it opened in 1961. It is thought to be the UK’s oldest nightclub. Its bar is lit in red and blue, and the beat of the music ebbs through its doors as people spill in to dance, often several nights in a row.

But its owner Simon Jackson has noticed some shifts in the way people go clubbing. Some will come before the night properly begins and film themselves dancing for TikTok, he explains.

The Acca, as it is known locally, is defying its environment. In Yorkshire, 40 percent of clubs have shut down since 2020 – the most out of any region in Britain. Mr Jackson attributes the club’s longevity – in a challenging market – to, among other things, “value for money”.

There are also other models of clubbing that are seeing some success.

Gut Level, a queer-led community project in Sheffield that runs inclusive club nights, is built on a membership model with reduced prices for those on low incomes.

Co-founder Katie Matthews says: “The music scene was run a lot by guys and it maybe didn’t think about the safety of people like women and queer people as much.”

Then there is the safety aspect. In 2023, more incidents of drink spiking occurred in bars (41%) and clubs (28%) than anywhere else, and many people say they have experienced sexual violence during a night out.

“It’s about safety of members,” says Katie Matthews – at Gut Level, people have to sign up in advance.

Ultimately, though, many clubs that continue to thrive do so because they are built around a sense of community. DJ Ahad Elley (known as Ahadadream), who moved to the UK from Pakistan at the age of 12, believes that this is a valuable aspect of many clubs.

“For some people it’s almost the only place they’ve got where they can go and feel a sense of belonging and real community,” he says.

Cat Rossi has spent years researching the creative significance of nightclubs, in her capacity as a design historian and professor of architecture at University for the Creative Arts Canterbury. “Since the dawn of civilisation we’ve needed to go out and dance and be together at night,” she says. “Social gathering is a core part of our social fabric.

“I think that nightclubs are really undervalued as these hugely creative forms of architecture and design, but also nightclubs and club culture more generally are these huge engines of creativity.”

Many fashion labels have been born in clubs, she points out, making them part of a “bigger creative ecosystem” along with theatres, opera houses and television studios.

In 2016, a German court officially designated Berghain, a famous Berlin nightclub, as a cultural institution, which gave it the same tax status as the city’s opera houses and theatres.

The following year, Zurich recognised techno culture as part of its “intangible cultural heritage” in partnership with Unesco.

It is a sentiment is shared by some in Britain too. As Mr Kill puts it: “They are a British institution. There’s no two ways about it.”

And the key to preserving this, and ensuring the future of nightclubs, is evolution, argues Mr Rigg.

“Nightclubs do need to evolve to maintain relevance due to the cultural behavioural shifts and also modify the business model to mitigate some of the other economic pressures.”

But without that transformation, the UK risks losing more of them.

Pope Francis has appeared at his window of the Gemelli hospital in Rome and offered a blessing for the first time since being admitted on 14 February.

The 88-year-old pontiff was discharged minutes later and doctors say he will need at least two months of rest at the Vatican.

During the past five weeks, he presented “two very critical episodes” where his “life was in danger”, Dr Sergio Alfieri, one of the doctors treating the Pope, said.

Pope Francis was never intubated and always remained alert and oriented, Dr Alfieri said. Even though the Pope is not completely healed, he no longer has pneumonia and will return to work as soon as possible, if the trend continues, doctors say.

A crowd of people gathered outside the hospital on Sunday, waiting for the Pope to appear.

“When I saw him I felt, to be honest, a little relieved,” said Bishop Larry Kulick, from the Diocese of Greensburg in the US state of Pennsylvania. “I felt just overjoyed to see him.”

“I cried all the time because the love we breathe in this little square of this hospital was like heaven,” said Ilaria Della Bidia, a singer from Rome.

Ana Matos from Brazil said she “just arrived from Brazil today” and arrived outside the hospital “30 seconds before he appeared”. She said that “it was an amazing feeling, like when I had my son. I was so happy to see him healthy and I could see him smile”.

The Pope had only previously been seen by the public once since he was admitted to hospital, in a photograph released by the Vatican last week, which showed him praying in a hospital chapel.

Earlier this month, an audio recording of Pope Francis was played in St Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

His voice was breathless as he thanked the Catholic faithful for their prayers.

Pope Francis has spent 12 years as leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

He has suffered a number of health issues throughout his life, including having part of one of his lungs removed at age 21, making him more prone to infections.