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

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, was due to be selected as the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) 2028 presidential nominee in a vote on Sunday.

He has denied the allegations and said 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 five 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. AFP and local media reported he had been taken to a prison in Silivri.

Imamoglu has also been suspended from his post as mayor, Turkey’s interior ministry said in a statement.

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 take part in Sunday’s vote.

In a message shared on X through his lawyers late on Sunday, Imamoglu sent his greetings to those protesting and said that voters had showed Turkey had “enough” of Erdogan.

Protests continued for a fifth night on Sunday, despite a ban on gatherings.

Crowds had amassed near Istanbul’s city hall by early evening, and could be seen waving Turkish flags and chanting in front of a row of riot police.

Officers were seen firing water cannons at some protesters and using pepper spray.

Imamoglu was the only person running in the CHP’s presidential candidate selection.

The arrest does not prevent Imamoglu’s candidacy and election as president, but if he is convicted of any of the charges against him, he will not be able to run.

Imamoglu’s CHP party said nearly 15 million people cast a ballot on Sunday.

The CHP said some 1.6 million votes came from its members, while the rest were cast by non-members at separate ballot boxes for those who wished to show solidarity with Imamoglu.

The BBC cannot independently verify these figures.

The jailed politician is seen as one of the most formidable rivals of Erdogan, who has held office in Turkey for 22 years as both prime minister and president.

However, due to term limits, Erdogan 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 connecting Erdogan to the arrests, and insist on its judicial independence.

On Sunday, X’s Global Government Affairs department said it objected to “multiple court orders” from Turkey’s communications regulator to block over 700 accounts on the platform, including those of Turkish political figures and journalists.

X said the move was “not only unlawful, it hinders millions of Turkish users from news and political discourse in their country”.

Meanwhile, Istanbul University announced on Tuesday it was revoking Imamoglu’s degree due to alleged irregularities.

If upheld, this would put his ability to run as president into doubt, since the Turkish constitution says 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.

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Prosecutors also want to charge Imamoglu with “aiding an armed terrorist organisation”, but the Turkish court said it was not currently necessary.

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.

Thousands have taken to the streets across Turkey in largely peaceful demonstrations since Imamoglu’s detention on Wednesday.

More than 700 arrests have been made since the protests began, according to Turkish authorities.

On Saturday, one young woman outside the mayor’s office, 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 was 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.

Canada’s newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a snap election, sending the country to the polls on 28 April.

The election comes as Canada faces a trade war with the US and calls from President Donald Trump for it to become the 51st American state, issues which are expected to be top of mind for voters.

It also comes nine days after Carney, a Liberal, was sworn in as Canada’s prime minister following Justin Trudeau’s resignation.

Carney must now face Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party had been leading in national polls since mid-2023, though recent polls suggest the race is now neck-and-neck.

Speaking in Ottawa on Sunday, Carney said he needed a clear, positive mandate to deal with Trump.

“We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes because of President Trump’s unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty,” he said.

The Liberals – once written off for this election – now have a chance of forming a government for the fourth consecutive time under Carney.

Carney, 60, the former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, has never served as an MP and is untested politically.

Carney made the most of his short days in office, meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron and stopping in Canada’s Arctic to announce a partnership with Australia to develop a new northern radar system.

He also ended Trudeau’s signature carbon tax climate policy, which had faced heavy criticism by the Conservatives.

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Now he will face the general electorate, which is concerned about Canada’s rapidly shifting relationship with the US, its historically close ally, as well as the country’s high cost of living.

In a campaign launch shortly before the election call, Conservative leader Poilievre, 45, sought to link Carney to the Liberals under Trudeau, who left office as a deeply unpopular leader.

He called Trudeau’s time in office a “lost Liberal decade”.

He accused the party of weakening the country by blocking resource development, failing to fund the military, and mismanaging immigration and the economy, saying its “post-national globalist ideology” made Canada more vulnerable to Trump’s trade war.

President Trump’s current and threatened tariffs on Canadian goods could usher in economic instability in the country and push Canada towards a recession.

Trump placed 25% tariffs on Canadian goods on 2 March before partially pausing them for a month. On 12 March, a blanket 25% duty on all aluminium and steel imports went into effect, hitting Canadian importers.

The Trump administration plans further global tariffs on 2 April, in the campaign’s second week.

Canada has retaliated so far with tariffs on about C$60bn ($42bn; £32bn) worth of US goods.

Carney on Sunday called the trade war with the US one of the “most significant threats of our lifetimes”.

Referring to Trump, he said: “He wants to break us so America will own us. We will not let that happen.”

Carney has promised further retaliation, though he has conceded there is a limit to Canada’s tariff response given the different size of the two economies.

Poilievre said that Canada must respond firmly to threats from the White House.

“We have to convert our anger and our anxiety into action,” he said. “We have to become strong, self-reliant and sovereign to stand up to the Americans.”

The campaign will last just five weeks – the shortest allowed. Besides the US-Canada relationship, much of the focus will be on the economy, including cost-of-living issues.

In the Canadian federal election, voters do not cast a ballot directly for a prime minister. Instead, the leader of the party with the most members of parliament traditionally becomes PM.

Four main parties will contest the election – the Liberals, the Conservatives, the New Democrats (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois, who only run candidates in the French-speaking province of Quebec with a focus on their regional interests.

The Green Party and the People’s Party of Canada are also in the running.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said on Sunday that neither Carney nor Poilievre are the right choices for Canada, accusing them of protecting the wealthy, not ordinary Canadians.

“You deserve a prime minister you can trust to make decisions in your best interest,” he said.

The Bloc is facing pressure from a surge of support for the Liberals in Quebec.

Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet pitched his party as a voice for industries in Trump’s sights – from aluminium to dairy and lumber – that are all significant in the province.

The Greens for the first time are running with co-leaders: Jonathan Pedneault and Elizabeth May.

“We must vote now as though our country depends on it, because more than ever before, it does,” said Pedneault on Sunday.

At dissolution of Parliament at the time the election was called, the Liberals held 153 seats in the House of Commons. The Conservatives were the official opposition with 120 seats. The Bloc had 33 seats, the NDP had 24 and the Green Party held two.

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 family of a British couple in their seventies who have been detained in Afghanistan have expressed fears for their health after a court appearance was delayed.

Peter Reynolds, 79, and his wife Barbie, 75, were arrested on 1 February while returning to their home in Bamiyan province.

They were taken out of jail for court proceedings on Saturday and spent four hours sitting on the floor, chained to other prisoners before being returned to prison, according to their daughter.

Sarah Entwistle added that her mother was “collapsing due to malnutrition” and that her father’s health was “declining”, saying that they have “no charges against them”.

She said that on Saturday, the couple had been informed “at the last minute” that they would not be seen by the judge.

“The guards indicated that a different judge would now be handling the case, and we continue to hope they will receive a fair hearing in the coming week,” she said.

The couple are being held separately and did not see each other on Saturday.

Before their arrest, Mr and Mrs Reynolds, who married in the Afghan capital Kabul in 1970, had been running training projects in Afghanistan for 18 years – including one that involved training mothers and children.

Their work had apparently been approved by the local authorities despite the Taliban banning education for girls over 12-years-old and not allowing women to work.

The Taliban announced women would be banned from working for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in 2022, and in December 2024, it said it would close any NGOs employing women.

Mrs Reynolds is only being given one meal a day and needed help to climb the four flights of stairs to the room where the judge sits, according to her daughter.

“Mum’s health is rapidly deteriorating, and she is collapsing due to malnutrition,” she said. “She and the other women are provided only one meal a day, while the men receive three.”

She added: “Dad’s health is also still declining, and he’s experiencing tremors in his head and left arm.”

The family appealed last week to the Taliban to release them as a goodwill gesture during Ramadan.

Their daughter said there are “still no charges against them and no evidence of any crime has been submitted”.

“We are, of course, devastated by this delay,” she said. “It makes little sense, especially given that the Taliban have repeatedly stated that this situation is due to misunderstandings, and that they will be released ‘soon’.”

In a statement to the BBC on 24 February, Taliban official Abdul Mateen Qani said: “A series of considerations is being taken into account, and after evaluation, we will endeavour to release them as soon as possible.”

The UK has shut its embassy in Kabul and withdrew its diplomats from the country after the Taliban returned to power.

The Foreign Office says the government’s ability to help British nationals in Afghanistan is therefore “extremely limited” and advises against all travel to the country.

Canada’s general election campaign is underway, a 36-day sprint taking place in unprecedented circumstances.

Voters will consider which party should govern the country just as the US – its neighbour and largest economic partner – launches a trade war and President Donald Trump muses about making Canada the 51st US state.

Domestic issues like housing and immigration will still be important, of course, but for the first time in decades, Canadians will also be grappling with fundamental questions about the country’s future when they head to the ballot box on 28 April.

Here are five things to watch as the campaign unfolds.

Canada and the US share deeply integrated economies, a long-standing security partnership and the longest “undefended” border in the world.

So when President Donald Trump says he wants to use “economic force” against America’s neighbour, calls the border an “artificially drawn line” and imposes steep tariffs, it marks a profound shift in the relationship between the two allies.

“It is impossible to overstate the impact of the president’s actions on Canadian politics, on Canadian psyche, on Canadian business,” said Marci Surkes, chief strategy officer at public affairs firm Compass Rose and a former policy director to ex-prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Trump’s interventions have already reshaped politics in Canada, helping transform what seemed like a certain Conservative victory into a too-close-to-call battle with the Liberals.

And on Sunday, as campaigning began, all the party leaders focused their launch messages heavily on the US threats.

What the US president says and does over the next few weeks will inevitably factor into the race. On April 2, for example, in just the second week of campaigning, the White House is expected to announce more global tariffs.

He has already started to make his views on the election known, telling Fox News host Laura Ingraham on 18 March that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is “stupidly, no friend of mine” and that it may be “easier to deal actually with a Liberal”.

Ultimately, he added, who wins “doesn’t matter to me at all”.

• Who’s who in Canada’s federal election

Canadians know their next PM will have no choice but to deal with Donald Trump.

So the question on many voters’ minds is: Who can most capably handle the unpredictable US president?

The contest essentially boils down to the new Liberal leader Mark Carney and Poilievre, who has led the Conservatives since 2022.

Two other major parties will be contesting seats in Parliament – the left-leaning New Democrats (NDP) and the the Bloc Québécois – but Canadians have historically elected Conservative or Liberal governments.

Carney, 60, is a former central banker who is new to politics – after taking over from Justin Trudeau earlier this month, he became the first prime minister in Canada never elected to Parliament.

He brings experience on the world stage – he governed the Bank of England from 2013-2020 – but lacks time spent in the cut and thrust of political campaigning, and will get his first real test in this general election.

If the Liberals fail to win the election, he could have the shortest tenure of any PM in the country’s history.

At 45, Poilievre may be significantly younger, but he is a political veteran. First elected to the House of Commons at age 25, he has two decades of experience in federal politics, including time in cabinet, and is known for his political acumen.

As party leader, he was quick to highlight the pain that inflation was inflicting on Canadian families, and capitalise on broader anger at Trudeau and the Liberals on issues like immigration.

His tag line “Canada is broken” has in recent weeks become “Canada first”. The shift in message from a country in decline to one of patriotism and strength comes as he presents himself as able to stand up to Trump.

He is “the consummate retail politician”, Ms Surkes said, but “suffers from having – right now – a brand and a narrative that no longer fits the moment”.

It will be the first time in decades that a Canadian election is not focused mostly on domestic issues.

Instead, this election is about the big, national questions: Canada’s sovereignty and what the country must do to face an uncertain future with uncertain allies.

Ms Surkes compared the situation to the 1988 elecftion, when Canada’s relationship with the US also took centre stage as the country mulled joining the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“The same types of questions were being asked in terms of whether there would be a forfeiture of Canadian sovereignty, economic sovereignty, economic independence,” she said.

This time, both main parties are pushing a vision of growth and independence – building much-needed housing, moving forward on major energy and resource projects, retaliating against US tariffs and bolstering Canada’s defence capabilities.

So where are the differences?

Carney has moved the Liberals more towards the political centre as he seeks to distance himself from Trudeau, who left office deeply unpopular.

He has promised to “spend less and invest more” and to boost capital investments in things like housing, and military infrastructure and computing resources.

Poilievre, a fiscal hawk, pitches cutting red tape and taxes to boost industry and spur infrastructure investment and home building.

The Conservatives have also focused more sharply on issues like crime.

The core domestic concerns that Canadians have had in recent years – affordability, housing, healthcare – haven’t gone away.

But pollster David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, says they have been subsumed by the “existential threat” of the trade war with the US.

“Even if the cost of living is still the top issue, it may not be as powerful a motivator to drive voting behavior,” he adds.

So the parties will be challenged to come up with convincing policies to address these concerns – but frame them in the context of the wider economic threat.

The US tariffs, the uncertainty caused by their on-again-off-again nature, and Canada’s C$60bn in counter-tariffs, are already being felt by businesses and communities across the country.

This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development more than halved its economic growth outlook for Canada this year and next.

National opinion polls have seen a stunning reversal in recent weeks, with the Conservatives losing the 20-point lead they had over the Liberals for the better part of a year.

As the race officially begins, it’s a toss-up.

Mr Coletto said three factors led to the “perfect storm” in polling: the resignation of the deeply unpopular Trudeau, the Liberal leadership race which that sparked, and the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

Both candidates now are trying to “bring their enemies to the battlefield” to eke out an advantage, he added. Carney is seeking to paint Poilievre as “Trump-light”, while Poilievre suggests Carney is “just like Justin”.

Each campaign enjoys natural advantages, he says.

The Conservatives have “an animated base who desperately want a change in government”, along with a well-funded political machine.

The Liberals currently “have the advantage on narrative” that has helped shift the polls more in their favour.

The other two official parties – the NDP and the Bloc – have both seen their popularity diminish.

The left-leaning NDP, which had 24 seats in the last Parliament, helped prop up the Liberal minority government in recent years in exchange for support for progressive policies like dental care for low-income Canadians.

But leader Jagmeet Singh has been pushing hard against Carney, seeking to frame him as someone who will “protect billionaires and big business”.

Bloc leader Blanchet said on Sunday he would fight for Quebec companies and workers struggling under US tariffs, especially in the aluminium industry.

In a recent interview, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke positively about India’s relationship with long-time rival China. He said normalcy had returned to the disputed India-China border and called for stronger ties.

These are striking comments, because tensions have been high since a nasty border clash in the northern Ladakh region in 2020 – the deadliest since a 1962 war.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning expressed appreciation for Modi’s words and declared that “the two countries should be partners that contribute to each other’s success”.

Modi’s pitch for closer partnership isn’t actually as big of a leap as it may seem, given recent improvements in bilateral ties. But the relationship remains strained, and much will need to fall into place – bilaterally and more broadly geopolitically – for it to enjoy a true rapprochement.

India-China ties have many bright spots.

Bilateral trade is consistently robust; even after the Ladakh clash, China has been India’s top trade partner. They co-operate multilaterally, from Brics, the alliance of major developing countries, to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. They share interests in advancing non-Western economic models, countering Islamist terrorism and rejecting what they deem US moral crusading.

Even after the Ladakh clash sunk ties to their lowest level in decades, the two militaries continued to hold high-level dialogues, which resulted in a deal in October to resume border patrols. Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping at a Brics summit in Russia that month and they pledged further co-operation. In January, the two sides agreed to resume direct flights.

Still, the relationship remains troubled.

Each side has close security ties with the other’s main competitor: India with the US and China with Pakistan.

China opposes Indian policies in the disputed Kashmir region. Beijing frustrates India’s great power ambitions by blocking its membership in influential groupings like the Nuclear Suppliers Group and permanent membership on the UN Security Council.

China has a large naval presence, and its only overseas military base, in India’s broader maritime backyard.

The Belt and Road Initiative, the connectivity corridor through which Beijing has expanded its footprint in India’s neighbourhood, is categorically rejected by Delhi for passing through India-claimed territory.

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Meanwhile, India is deepening ties with Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province. It hosts the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader. Beijing regards him as a dangerous separatist.

India is negotiating sales of supersonic missiles to Southeast Asian states that could be used to deter Chinese provocations in the South China Sea. China views several global forums to which India belongs, such as the Indo-Pacific Quad and the Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, as attempts to counter it.

There are several signposts to watch to get a better sense of the relationship’s future trajectory.

One is border talks. Fifty thousand squares miles of the 2,100-mile (3,380km)-long frontier – an area equal to the size of Greece – remain disputed.

The situation on the border is the biggest bellwether of the relationship. The Ladakh clash shattered trust; last year’s patrolling deal helped restore it. If the two sides can produce more confidence-building measures, this would bode well for relations.

Future high-level engagement is also important. If Modi and Xi, both of whom place a premium on personal diplomacy, meet this year, this would bolster recent momentum in bilateral ties. They’ll have opportunities on the sidelines of leaders summits for Brics in July, G20 in November and the Shanghai Co-operation Group (SCO) sometime later this year.

Another key signpost is Chinese investment, which would bring critical capital to key Indian industries from manufacturing to renewables and help ease India’s $85bn (£65.7bn) trade deficit with China.

An increase in such investme ts would give India a timely economic boost and China more access to the world’s fastest-growing major economy. Stronger commercial co-operation would provide more incentives to keep broader tensions down.

Regional and global developments are also worth watching.

Four of India’s neighbours – Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka – recently had new leaders take office who are more pro-China than their predecessors. But so far, they’ve sought to balance ties with Beijing and Delhi, not align with China.

If this continues, Delhi’s concerns about Beijing’s influence in India’s neighbourhood could lessen a bit. Additionally, if China were to pull back from its growing partnership with India’s close friend Russia – a more likely outcome if there’s an end to the war in Ukraine, which has deepened Moscow’s dependence on Beijing – this could help India-China ties.

The Trump factor looms large, too.

US President Donald Trump, despite slapping tariffs on China, has telegraphed a desire to ease tensions with Beijing.

If he does, and Delhi fears Washington may not be as committed to helping India counter China, then India would want to ensure its own ties with China are in a better place.

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Additionally, if Trump’s impending reciprocal tariff policy hits India hard – and given the 10% average tariff differentials between the US and India, it certainly could – India will have another incentive to strengthen commercial cooperation with Beijing.

India and China are Asia’s two largest countries, and both view themselves as proud civilisation states.

They’re natural competitors. But recent positive developments in ties, coupled with the potential for bilateral progress on other fronts, could bring more stability to the relationship – and ensure Modi’s conciliatory language isn’t mere rhetoric.

US negotiators are holding talks in the Saudi capital Riyadh with their Ukrainian counterparts and separately with the Russians on Monday.

Washington’s aim is to bring about an immediate partial ceasefire to the war in Ukraine, followed by a comprehensive peace deal.

So could these Riyadh talks produce the breakthrough so many are hoping for?

It depends who you listen to.

“I feel that he (Putin) wants peace,” said President Trump’s personal envoy Steve Witkoff, adding: “I think that you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress.”

Yet Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman has dampened expectations. “We are only at the beginning of this path,” he told Russian state TV.

Kyiv suffered one of its heaviest attacks from Russian drones on Saturday night, with three people killed, including a five-year-old girl.

“We need to push Putin to give a real order to stop the strikes,” said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in his evening address on Sunday. “The one who brought this war must take it away.”

The Kremlin, meanwhile, seems to be in no rush to sign up to a ceasefire, with Vladimir Putin adding on numerous “nuances”, or preconditions, before agreeing to the 30-day ceasefire proposed by Washington and agreed to by Kyiv.

In Riyadh the US-Ukraine talks began soon after nightfall on Sunday, behind closed doors in one of Saudi Arabia’s many luxury establishments, with the Ukrainian delegation headed by the country’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov.

These, he said, were “technical” discussions, focusing on how best to safeguard energy facilities and critical infrastructure.

Black Sea shipping lanes are also under discussion, with Russia reportedly keen to revive a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain from its ports without being attacked, in exchange for relief on sanctions.

Both sides, Russia and Ukraine, have carried out hugely destructive attacks on each other’s infrastructure.

Moscow has sought to plunge Ukraine’s population into cold and darkness by targeting its electricity generation, while Kyiv has become increasingly successful in its long-range drone strikes that have struck Russian oil facilities critical to its war effort.

President Trump wants a quick end to this war, Europe’s worst since 1945 and one which has led to combined casualties on both sides of hundreds of thousands of killed, captured, wounded or missing men.

Ukraine’s leadership, still bruised from that catastrophic row in the Oval Office last month, is trying hard to convince Washington it is not the obstacle to peace.

When the Americans proposed a comprehensive 30-day ceasefire on land, sea and in the air at talks in Jeddah this month, Ukraine quickly agreed to the terms.

The ball, said the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the time, was now in Russia’s court.

But despite the US failure to get Moscow to agree to that ceasefire, the Trump administration is putting little or no pressure, at least not in public, on Russia to fall into line. In fact, quite the opposite.

In an interview this weekend with the pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Steve Witkoff, the man spearheading the US drive for a ceasefire, appeared to take a stance totally at odds with that of Europe.

Ukraine, he suggested, was “a false country”, Russia had been provoked and Putin was a man of his word who could be trusted.

Witkoff, a former New York real estate developer and golfing partner of Donald Trump, also dismissed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to put together a military force to help safeguard an eventual peace deal in Ukraine, calling it “a posture and a pose”.

An Israeli air strike on a hospital in Gaza killed a senior Hamas leader and an aide on Sunday evening, a Hamas official told the BBC.

Ismail Barhoum, the head of the group’s financial affairs, was killed in the strike on Nasser Hospital, the main medical facility in Khan Younis.

He was receiving treatment at the hospital after being wounded in an air strike four days ago, the official said.

Israel’s military said it had struck a key Hamas member operating inside the hospital compound following “an extensive intelligence-gathering process” and said that “precise munitions” had been used to mitigate harm.

The Hamas-run health ministry said “many others”, including medical personnel, were injured.

The hospital department hit was evacuated after a large portion was destroyed, the ministry said.

Footage verified by the BBC showed people attempting to extinguish a fire after the strike.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals as hiding places for weapons and command centres, which the group denies.

Another Hamas leader, Salah al-Bardaweel, was killed by a separate Israeli air strike in Khan Younis on Sunday, an official told the BBC.

At least 30 people were killed in Khan Younis and Rafah as of Sunday morning, before the strike on the hospital in the evening, the health ministry said.

Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on 18 March, ending a ceasefire that lasted almost two months. Hundreds of people have been killed in strikes since then.

Israel blamed Hamas for rejecting a new US proposal to extend the truce. Hamas, in turn, accused Israel of abandoning the original deal agreed in January.

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 others taken hostage.

Israel responded to the 7 October attack with a military offensive in Gaza to destroy Hamas, which has killed more than 50,000 people, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

A mother in northern Nigeria is visibly upset as she clutches her two-year-old child, who has burns and discoloured skin on his face and legs.

The 32-year-old used skin-whitening products on all six of her children, under pressure from her family, with results that she now deeply regrets.

Fatima, whose name has been changed to protect her family’s identity, says one of her daughters covers her face whenever she goes out in order to hide her burns.

Another was left with darker skin than before – with a pale circle around her eyes, while a third has whitish scars on her lips and knees.

Her toddler still has weeping wounds – his skin is taking a long time to heal.

“My sister gave birth to light-skinned children but my children are darker skinned. I noticed that my mother favours my sister’s children over mine due to their skin tone and it hurt my feelings a lot,” Fatima says.

She says she used creams she bought at her local supermarket in the city of Kano, without a doctor’s prescription.

At first it seemed to work. The grandmother warmed towards Fatima’s children, who were aged between two and 16 at the time.

But then the burns and scars appeared.

Skin-whitening or lightening, also known as bleaching in Nigeria, is used in different parts of the world for cosmetic reasons, though these often have deep cultural roots.

Women in Nigeria use skin-whitening products more than in any other African country – 77% use them regularly, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

In Congo-Brazzaville the figure is 66%, in Senegal 50% and in Ghana 39%.

The creams may contain corticosteroids or hydroquinone, which can be harmful if used in high quantities, and in many countries are only obtainable with a doctor’s prescription.

Other ingredients sometimes used are the poisonous metal, mercury, and kojic acid – a by-product from the manufacture of the Japanese alcoholic drink, sake.

Dermatitis, acne and skin discolouration are possible consequences, but also inflammatory disorders, mercury poisoning and kidney damage.

The skin may become thinner, with the result that wounds take longer to heal, and are more likely to become infected, the WHO says.

The situation is so bad that Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (Nafdac) declared a state of emergency in 2023.

It is also becoming more common for women to bleach their children, like Fatima did.

“A lot of people link light skin to beauty or wealth. Women tend to shield, as they call it, their children from that discrimination by bleaching them from childbirth,” Zainab Bashir Yau, the owner of a dermatology spa in the capital, Abuja, tells the BBC.

She estimates that 80% of the women she has met have bleached their children, or plan to do so.

Some were bleached themselves as babies, she says, so are just continuing the practice.

One of the most common ways to tell whether someone is using skin-whitening products in Nigeria is by the darkness of their knuckles. Other parts of people’s hands or feet get lighter, but knuckles tend to remain dark.

However, smokers and drug users also sometimes have dark patches on their hands, due to the smoke.

So users of skin-lightening products are sometimes mistakenly assumed to belong to this group.

Fatima says that is what happened to her daughters, aged 16 and 14.

“They faced discrimination from society – they all point fingers at them and call them drug addicts. This has affected them a lot,” she says.

They have both lost potential fiancés because men do not want to be associated with women who might be thought to take drugs.

I visited a popular market in Kano, where people who call themselves “mixologists” create skin-whitening creams from scratch.

The market has a whole row of shops where thousands of these creams are sold.

Some pre-mixed varieties are arranged on shelves, but customers can also select raw ingredients and ask for the cream to be mixed in front of them.

I noticed that many bleaching creams, with labels saying they were for babies, contained regulated substances.

Other sellers admitted using regulated ingredients such as kojic acid, hydroquinone and a powerful antioxidant, glutathione, which may cause rashes and other side-effects.

I also witnessed teenage girls buying bleaching creams for themselves and in bulk so that they could sell them to their peers.

One woman, who had discoloured hands, insisted that a seller add a lightening agent to a cream that was being mixed for her children, even though it was a regulated substance for adults and illegal to use on children.

“Even though my hands are discoloured, I am here to buy creams for my kids so they can be light-skinned. I believe my hands are this way just because I used the wrong one. Nothing will happen to my children,” she said.

One seller said most of his customers were buying creams to make their babies “glow”, or to look “radiant and shiny”.

Most seemed to be unaware of the approved dosages.

One salesman said he used “a lot of kojic” – well over the prescribed limit – if someone wanted light skin and a smaller quantity if they wanted a subtler change.

The approved dosage of kojic acid in creams in Nigeria is 1%, according to Nafdac.

I even saw salesmen giving women injections.

Dr Leonard Omokpariola, a director at Nafdac, says attempts are being made to educate people about the risks.

He also says markets are being raided, and there are efforts to seize skin-lightening ingredients at Nigeria’s borders as they are brought into the country.

But he says it was sometimes hard for law-enforcement officials to identify these substances.

“Some of them are just being transported in unlabelled containers, so if you do not take them to the labs for evaluation, you can’t tell what is inside.”

Fatima says her actions will haunt her forever, especially if her children’s scars do not fade.

“When I confided in my mum about what I did, due to her behaviour, and when she heard the dangers of the cream and what stigma her grandchildren are facing, she was sad that they had to go through that and apologised,” she says.

Fatima is determined to help other parents avoid making the same mistake.

“Even though I have stopped… the side-effects are still here, I beg other parents to use my situation as an example.”

Disney’s live-action version of the classic fairy-tale Snow White has topped the North American box office chart despite a slew of underwhelming reviews.

The movie has taken an estimated $87.3m (£67.5m) globally during its opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. Almost half of that figure came from North America.

But that is at the low end of expectations for a film which reportedly cost more than $270m.

The reworking of the 1937 feature length animation had seemed like a surefire hit before running into a series of controversies ahead of its release.

The revamp of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became a flashpoint for social and political divisions, even before its global release.

That included some criticism of the casting of Rachel Zegler, who is of Colombian descent, as the heroine.

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There was also a backlash about Zegler’s pro-Palestinian comments and about pro-Israel comments by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who plays Snow White’s stepmother, the Evil Queen.

And there is an ongoing debate about whether there should have been dwarfs in the film at all, live or CGI.

On the reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Snow White has a critics’ score of just 44%, although the audience reaction ‘Popcornometer’ stands at 73%.

Chief film critic for The Times, Kevin Maher, said: “Believe the anti-hype, it’s that bad”, but the Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called the film “mostly captivating”.

With its creepy CGI dwarfs and muddled tone, Disney’s latest live-action remake is “not calamitous” but is “a mind-boggling mash-up”, the BBC’s Nicholas Barber said.

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.

Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri told the BBC he felt “a really great joy, great emotion to see Pope Francis leaving the hospital”.

“It’s a great gift to the city and to the world… we support him and feel really close to him,” the mayor said.

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.

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 disputed 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.

Rum is a key part of Jamaica’s cultural identity, but what exactly makes a rum Jamaican?

That question is at the centre of a dispute that is continuing to rumble on the Caribbean island, as some producers wish to strengthen rules on what can, and cannot, be called “Jamaica rum”.

In October of last year, Jamaica’s Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) approved amendments to the geographical indication (GI) designation for Jamaica Rum that was originally set up in 2016. The biggest change is that ageing the rum overseas is now prohibited.

The amendment was called for by the Spirits Pool Association (SPA), the trade organisation that seeks to speak as a single voice for Jamaica’s six rum distilleries – Appleton (which is owned by J Wray and Nephew), Clarendon, Hampden Estate, Long Pond, New Yarmouth and Worthy Park Estate.

The SPO’s argument is that a stronger GI is needed for the appellation to be officially recognised in its two key export markets – the EU and the US.

It says this would give Jamaican rum better protection against competitors, and lead to more drinkers recognising it as a premium product made to high specifications in a certain geographic location.

But the amendment has caused quite a stir in Jamaica, because one of the biggest producers claims it would put it out of business.

This company, National Rums of Jamaica (NRJ), owns Long Pond and 73% of Clarendon. NRJ is comprised of three shareholders – the government of Jamaica, Demerara Distillers of Guyana and the Barbados-based West Indies Rum Distillery (Wird).

The key factor is that Wird has since 2017 been owned by French spirits firm Maison Ferrand. Its business model relies heavily on exporting rum in bulk and ageing overseas – something not allowed under Jamaica’s new GI.

It argues that rum aged outside of Jamaica is still Jamaican rum, and that the island has exported and aged rum abroad for centuries.

And so, the NRJ is appealing the ruling of JIPO, with a hearing scheduled for 28 April.

The Spirits Pool Association says that Wird only started to have issues with the geographical indication after its takeover by Maison Ferrard.

“What we’re saying is, if you truly believe in Jamaica rum, age it in Jamaica,” says Christopher Gentles, general manager of the SPA.

Rum is typically made by fermenting and then distilling sugarcane molasses, the thick treacle-like substance leftover after refined sugar has been produced from the harvested plants.

Mr Gentles says that ageing the rum before it is sold is of paramount importance, and that doing so outside of Jamaica invalidates the products authenticity and uniqueness. And so, he adds that “we were a little bit puzzled” by the NRJ’s objection.

The SPA also points out that exporting and ageing spirits overseas means Jamaica misses out on the value-added processes like refining, bottling, labelling and distributing as well as other secondary benefits to the local economy like rum tourism.

Both the NRJ and Maison Ferrard declined to comment.

The use of GIs makes a product distinctive, and opens up three potential sources of value, according to Dev Gangjee, professor of intellectual property law at the University of Oxford.

“The first is simply a price premium. Research shows products can charge a price that is 1.5 to 2.7 times more than standard.”

This isn’t always reflected in profit as GI products are often more expensive to make, he adds.

The second reason is “they anchor production in that region”. This stops a product from becoming generic and losing its value – like cheddar cheese, which was originally from a specific part of the UK but is now a by-word for a generalised type of cheese.

Lastly, Prof Gangjee says GIs help to advertise the region and “opens up other aspects of history and geography”, citing France’s successful wine tourism industry.

Examples of successful and longstanding GIs are Scotch whisky, champagne, and Parma ham.

Another Caribbean country similarly embroiled in a dispute over GI and rum is Barbados. Currently the island doesn’t have a scheme.

Barbados has five distilleries and four agreed on the wording of a proposed Barbados rum GI. The sole objector was Wird, which owns brands such as Cockspur.

Similarly to the situation in Jamaica, it objects to the proposed rules against ageing overseas.

The failure by Barbados to obtain a GI has frustrated the other producers, including Richard Seale, owner of the island’s Foursquare distillery. “We need to have intrinsic industries that are rooted here, tied here, that cannot be separated from here,” he says.

Back in Jamaica, the SPA wants the country’s rum to apply for the EU’s Protected Geographical Indication classification, but this cannot happen until the proceedings at the JIPO have concluded.

Mr Gentles hopes that a compromise can be reached, even if it means that both sides are not totally happy. “It is my firm believe that one day we will put this behind us,” he says.

And while the SPA hopes that a stronger GI will boost acclaim and business, it is also about pride in a product intimately linked to Jamaica’s history.

In the days following the October ruling Jamaican newspaper, The Gleaner, endorsed the JIPO decision, saying there were many examples of firms “with no association to Jamaica attempting to appropriate the mystique of the island’s brand”.

It concluded: “When foreign entities become owners of uniquely Jamaican products, there should be a commitment to robustly maintain the integrity of the brand.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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 benefited 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.

Prime Minister and Liberal leader Mark Carney has called an election in Canada, kickstarting five weeks of campaigning before Canadians head to the polls.

Voting day will officially be on Monday 28 April.

It will be the first election in a decade without former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the ballot, and the two major parties in Canada – the Conservatives and the Liberals – are neck-and-neck in the polls, making it a race to watch.

While Canadians don’t vote for prime minister directly, the leader of the party that wins the most seats will traditionally become head of government.

Here is a breakdown of the leaders of Canada’s major parties.

Carney, 60, is the incumbent prime minister of Canada, but he has only been on the job for a few days.

His party overwhelmingly chose him – with more than 85% of the vote – to succeed Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader earlier this month. He became prime minister shortly after, following Trudeau’s resignation.

For many in Canada and the UK, Carney is a familiar face. He was head of both the Banks of Canada and England, serving at the former during the 2008 financial crash and the latter during Brexit.

He was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, making him the first Canadian prime minister from the north. Carney later grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, before he attended Harvard University and then Oxford, where he studied economics.

Carney is hailed for his financial expertise. He has also taken a defiant stance against US President Donald Trump, vowing retaliation against his tariffs and stating that Canada will never become the 51st US state.

But Carney is politically untested. He has never been elected to public office in Canada, and this general election will be his very first. His French is also weak, which could be a liability among voters who feel strongly about preserving Canada’s French-speaking heritage, especially in the province of Quebec.

Recent polls show his party is slightly trailing behind the Conservatives, but more Canadians say they think Carney would be a better prime minister than his opponent Pierre Poilievre.

Poilievre, 45, originally hails from Calgary, Alberta. He has been in Canadian politics for nearly two decades – first elected to the House of Commons at age 25, making him one of the youngest MPs at the time.

Since then, he has consistently advocated for a low-tax, small government in Canada.

He is known for his confrontational style of politics. In recent years, Poilievre has tirelessly attacked the Liberals and Trudeau, saying that their “disastrous” and “woke” policies have worsened the quality of life in Canada, while promising a return to “common sense politics” if his party were to form government.

It is a message that has resonated with many Canadians who have been worried about the country’s housing crisis, stagnant wages and high cost of living. Poilievre has led in national polls since mid-2023, and analysts had projected a near-certain win for his party in the upcoming election.

But the Liberal Party has since caught up to him in the polls, following Trudeau’s resignation and the rise of Carney as Liberal leader.

Poilievre has been criticised for his populist style of politics and has drawn comparisons to Trump at a time when Canadians have rejected the US President’s tariffs and his rhetoric that Canada should become the “51st state”.

Poilievre has sought to shift his messaging since, distancing himself from Trump and vowing to put “Canada first.”

Trump himself has said that Poilievre is not “MAGA enough”, though the Conservative leader has been praised by Trump ally and tech titan Elon Musk.

The Bloc Québécois is a Quebec nationalist party that only runs candidates in the French-speaking province, meaning its leader is unlikely to become Canada’s next prime minister.

Still, they are a key player in Canadian elections, and their popularity in Quebec could determine the fate of the other major parties looking to form government.

Blanchet has led the party since 2019. He is known for his frankness, calling Trump’s 51st state rhetoric nonsense.

“It’s enough jibber-jabber,” Blanchet said during an address on Trump’s tariffs earlier this month in Montreal. “We can say whatever we want, but that doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want.”

He has also dismissed Trump’s tariffs, saying: “I’m sure there will be somebody on his plane between a basketball game and a baseball game to tell him, don’t do that, because it’s bad for us. I’m sure that at the end of the day, the voice of reason will prevail.”

On domestic issues, Blanchet has pushed for Quebec to diversify its trade partners, and has asked for a prominent seat at Canada’s economic planning table, noting that his province is home to the largest aluminium sector in the country – a commodity that has been targeted by US tariffs.

Blanchet has also suggested that the appetite for an independent Quebec will “come roaring back” when and if the US-Canada relationship stabilises.

Polling shows the Bloc – who are going into the election with 33 seats in Parliament – have been trailing behind the Liberal Party in Quebec.

Singh, 46, is leader of the NDP, a left-leaning party that traditionally focuses on worker and labour issues. He made history in 2017 when he became the first ethnic minority and practising Sikh to lead a major political party in Canada.

In 2019, the former criminal defence lawyer was elected as an MP in a British Columbia riding, where he has served in public office since.

The NDP had helped the Trudeau Liberal government keep its hold on power since 2021, providing needed votes in Parliament in exchange for support on progressive legislation like dental benefits for lower-income families and a national pharmacare programme covering birth control and insulin.

But in late 2024, Singh tore up that “supply and confidence” agreement, after Trudeau’s cabinet directed its industrial relations board to impose binding arbitration to end a work stoppage at Canada’s two largest railways.

At the time, Singh had said that the Liberals “let people down” and didn’t “deserve another chance from Canadians”.

But his party has struggled to shore up support. Polls show that only 9% of Canadians intend to vote for them as of mid-March, with their ground shrinking while support for the Liberals has risen.

A big question will be whether the NDP will be able to grow the number of seats they occupy in the House of Commons and maintain official party status.

In the early 2010s, the party had enough support to form the official opposition, meaning it was the party with the second-most seats in Parliament. By 2021, their seat number had shrunk to 24 out of 338.

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.

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.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he will not step down, as anger and pressure builds among his fellow Democrats over his decision not to block a Republican-led government funding measure.

“Look, I’m not stepping down,” Schumer told NBC News’ Meet the Press programme on Sunday.

Some Democrats wanted Schumer to block the most recent government funding bill, which they believed enabled President Donald Trump’s agenda, but Schumer decided to allow a full vote.

He and a handful of other Senate Democrats voted to advance the measure to a final vote, but voted against the funding bill’s ultimate passage.

Schumer told Meet the Press he made his decisions “out of pure conviction as to what a leader should do and what the right thing for America and my party was”.

The Senate’s top Democrat argued that blocking the bill would have caused the government to shut down, a scenario that would have handed Trump increased power to slash federal jobs and social and public services.

The government funding measure was “certainly bad,” Schumer said. “But a shutdown would be 15 or 20 times worse.”

Yet many powerful members of his party have openly criticised Schumer’s decision, arguing he threw away their limited leverage against Trump.

Schumer’s decision has publicly exposed a rift in the Democratic Party about how they should oppose the Trump administration.

“I myself don’t give away anything for nothing,” former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at an event in San Francisco last week. “I think that’s what happened the other day.”

Pelosi speculated that Schumer could have tried to get Republicans to agree to a “third way.”

“They may not have agreed to it, but at least the public would have seen they’re not agreeing to it,” Pelosi said. She acknowledged such pushback could have resulted in a government shutdown.

Speaking to ABC News, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent, said he believed the issue was with the Democratic Party writ large.

He alleged the party was “dominated by billionaires” and was “out of touch” with its constituents.

Democratic voters have voiced their frustration with their party’s leadership in recent town halls held throughout the country.

“When will you be calling for [Schumer] to be replaced as minority leader?” a constituent asked Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, at a recent town hall.

At the end of his response, Bennet said: “And in dodging your question, let me just say, it’s important for people to know when it’s time to go… We’re going to have conversations, I’m sure, in the foreseeable future, about all the Democratic leadership.”

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.

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?”

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.

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.

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”.

Jessica Aber, the former US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was found dead at a residence on Saturday morning.

Police in Alexandria, Virginia, responded to reports of an unresponsive woman at about 09:18 local time (13:00 GMT) , the department said in a statement.

Officers then located a deceased woman, who they later identified as Ms Aber, police said.

Ms Aber, 43, was appointed by former President Joe Biden in 2021. She stepped down in January when Donald Trump took office.

Police said an investigation into her death was underway and Virginia’s chief medical examiner will determine the cause.

A friend of the family told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that Aber’s death is “believed to be the result of a longstanding medical issue”.

Ms Aber graduated from the University of Richmond in Virginia in 2003, before attending William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia. She clerked for then-Magistrate Judge M. Hannah Lauck of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia from 2006 to 2007.

She started in the Eastern District of Virginia in 2009 as an assistant US attorney, and worked on cases involving financial fraud, public corruption, and child exploitation cases, according to the Department of Justice website.

In 2016, Ms Aber was promoted to the district’s deputy chief of the criminal division.

Biden nominated her to lead the Eastern District of Virginia in August 2021, and she was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate.

As the district’s top prosecutor, she oversaw a staff about 300 prosecutors, litigators and support staff.

She stepped down from the position in early 2025 when Donald Trump took office.

US attorneys are appointed by the president. It is common for sitting US attorneys to step down when new presidential administration arrives, or for new presidents to later choose a new top prosecutor.

In statement, her successor, interim US Attorney Erik S Siebert said the office was “heartbroken beyond words”.

“She was unmatched as a leader, mentor, and prosecutor, and she is simply irreplaceable as a human being,” said Mr Siebert, who joined the division in 2010, the year after Ms Aber.

US Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, called Ms Aber an “exceptional public servant who dedicated her life to serving her fellow Virginians”.

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

A mother in northern Nigeria is visibly upset as she clutches her two-year-old child, who has burns and discoloured skin on his face and legs.

The 32-year-old used skin-whitening products on all six of her children, under pressure from her family, with results that she now deeply regrets.

Fatima, whose name has been changed to protect her family’s identity, says one of her daughters covers her face whenever she goes out in order to hide her burns.

Another was left with darker skin than before – with a pale circle around her eyes, while a third has whitish scars on her lips and knees.

Her toddler still has weeping wounds – his skin is taking a long time to heal.

“My sister gave birth to light-skinned children but my children are darker skinned. I noticed that my mother favours my sister’s children over mine due to their skin tone and it hurt my feelings a lot,” Fatima says.

She says she used creams she bought at her local supermarket in the city of Kano, without a doctor’s prescription.

At first it seemed to work. The grandmother warmed towards Fatima’s children, who were aged between two and 16 at the time.

But then the burns and scars appeared.

Skin-whitening or lightening, also known as bleaching in Nigeria, is used in different parts of the world for cosmetic reasons, though these often have deep cultural roots.

Women in Nigeria use skin-whitening products more than in any other African country – 77% use them regularly, according to the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

In Congo-Brazzaville the figure is 66%, in Senegal 50% and in Ghana 39%.

The creams may contain corticosteroids or hydroquinone, which can be harmful if used in high quantities, and in many countries are only obtainable with a doctor’s prescription.

Other ingredients sometimes used are the poisonous metal, mercury, and kojic acid – a by-product from the manufacture of the Japanese alcoholic drink, sake.

Dermatitis, acne and skin discolouration are possible consequences, but also inflammatory disorders, mercury poisoning and kidney damage.

The skin may become thinner, with the result that wounds take longer to heal, and are more likely to become infected, the WHO says.

The situation is so bad that Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (Nafdac) declared a state of emergency in 2023.

It is also becoming more common for women to bleach their children, like Fatima did.

“A lot of people link light skin to beauty or wealth. Women tend to shield, as they call it, their children from that discrimination by bleaching them from childbirth,” Zainab Bashir Yau, the owner of a dermatology spa in the capital, Abuja, tells the BBC.

She estimates that 80% of the women she has met have bleached their children, or plan to do so.

Some were bleached themselves as babies, she says, so are just continuing the practice.

One of the most common ways to tell whether someone is using skin-whitening products in Nigeria is by the darkness of their knuckles. Other parts of people’s hands or feet get lighter, but knuckles tend to remain dark.

However, smokers and drug users also sometimes have dark patches on their hands, due to the smoke.

So users of skin-lightening products are sometimes mistakenly assumed to belong to this group.

Fatima says that is what happened to her daughters, aged 16 and 14.

“They faced discrimination from society – they all point fingers at them and call them drug addicts. This has affected them a lot,” she says.

They have both lost potential fiancés because men do not want to be associated with women who might be thought to take drugs.

I visited a popular market in Kano, where people who call themselves “mixologists” create skin-whitening creams from scratch.

The market has a whole row of shops where thousands of these creams are sold.

Some pre-mixed varieties are arranged on shelves, but customers can also select raw ingredients and ask for the cream to be mixed in front of them.

I noticed that many bleaching creams, with labels saying they were for babies, contained regulated substances.

Other sellers admitted using regulated ingredients such as kojic acid, hydroquinone and a powerful antioxidant, glutathione, which may cause rashes and other side-effects.

I also witnessed teenage girls buying bleaching creams for themselves and in bulk so that they could sell them to their peers.

One woman, who had discoloured hands, insisted that a seller add a lightening agent to a cream that was being mixed for her children, even though it was a regulated substance for adults and illegal to use on children.

“Even though my hands are discoloured, I am here to buy creams for my kids so they can be light-skinned. I believe my hands are this way just because I used the wrong one. Nothing will happen to my children,” she said.

One seller said most of his customers were buying creams to make their babies “glow”, or to look “radiant and shiny”.

Most seemed to be unaware of the approved dosages.

One salesman said he used “a lot of kojic” – well over the prescribed limit – if someone wanted light skin and a smaller quantity if they wanted a subtler change.

The approved dosage of kojic acid in creams in Nigeria is 1%, according to Nafdac.

I even saw salesmen giving women injections.

Dr Leonard Omokpariola, a director at Nafdac, says attempts are being made to educate people about the risks.

He also says markets are being raided, and there are efforts to seize skin-lightening ingredients at Nigeria’s borders as they are brought into the country.

But he says it was sometimes hard for law-enforcement officials to identify these substances.

“Some of them are just being transported in unlabelled containers, so if you do not take them to the labs for evaluation, you can’t tell what is inside.”

Fatima says her actions will haunt her forever, especially if her children’s scars do not fade.

“When I confided in my mum about what I did, due to her behaviour, and when she heard the dangers of the cream and what stigma her grandchildren are facing, she was sad that they had to go through that and apologised,” she says.

Fatima is determined to help other parents avoid making the same mistake.

“Even though I have stopped… the side-effects are still here, I beg other parents to use my situation as an example.”

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

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, was due to be selected as the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) 2028 presidential nominee in a vote on Sunday.

He has denied the allegations and said 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 five 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. AFP and local media reported he had been taken to a prison in Silivri.

Imamoglu has also been suspended from his post as mayor, Turkey’s interior ministry said in a statement.

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 take part in Sunday’s vote.

In a message shared on X through his lawyers late on Sunday, Imamoglu sent his greetings to those protesting and said that voters had showed Turkey had “enough” of Erdogan.

Protests continued for a fifth night on Sunday, despite a ban on gatherings.

Crowds had amassed near Istanbul’s city hall by early evening, and could be seen waving Turkish flags and chanting in front of a row of riot police.

Officers were seen firing water cannons at some protesters and using pepper spray.

Imamoglu was the only person running in the CHP’s presidential candidate selection.

The arrest does not prevent Imamoglu’s candidacy and election as president, but if he is convicted of any of the charges against him, he will not be able to run.

Imamoglu’s CHP party said nearly 15 million people cast a ballot on Sunday.

The CHP said some 1.6 million votes came from its members, while the rest were cast by non-members at separate ballot boxes for those who wished to show solidarity with Imamoglu.

The BBC cannot independently verify these figures.

The jailed politician is seen as one of the most formidable rivals of Erdogan, who has held office in Turkey for 22 years as both prime minister and president.

However, due to term limits, Erdogan 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 connecting Erdogan to the arrests, and insist on its judicial independence.

On Sunday, X’s Global Government Affairs department said it objected to “multiple court orders” from Turkey’s communications regulator to block over 700 accounts on the platform, including those of Turkish political figures and journalists.

X said the move was “not only unlawful, it hinders millions of Turkish users from news and political discourse in their country”.

Meanwhile, Istanbul University announced on Tuesday it was revoking Imamoglu’s degree due to alleged irregularities.

If upheld, this would put his ability to run as president into doubt, since the Turkish constitution says 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.

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

Prosecutors also want to charge Imamoglu with “aiding an armed terrorist organisation”, but the Turkish court said it was not currently necessary.

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.

Thousands have taken to the streets across Turkey in largely peaceful demonstrations since Imamoglu’s detention on Wednesday.

More than 700 arrests have been made since the protests began, according to Turkish authorities.

On Saturday, one young woman outside the mayor’s office, 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 was 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.

Canada’s newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney has called a snap election, sending the country to the polls on 28 April.

The election comes as Canada faces a trade war with the US and calls from President Donald Trump for it to become the 51st American state, issues which are expected to be top of mind for voters.

It also comes nine days after Carney, a Liberal, was sworn in as Canada’s prime minister following Justin Trudeau’s resignation.

Carney must now face Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party had been leading in national polls since mid-2023, though recent polls suggest the race is now neck-and-neck.

Speaking in Ottawa on Sunday, Carney said he needed a clear, positive mandate to deal with Trump.

“We are facing the most significant crisis of our lifetimes because of President Trump’s unjustified trade actions and his threats to our sovereignty,” he said.

The Liberals – once written off for this election – now have a chance of forming a government for the fourth consecutive time under Carney.

Carney, 60, the former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, has never served as an MP and is untested politically.

Carney made the most of his short days in office, meeting with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron and stopping in Canada’s Arctic to announce a partnership with Australia to develop a new northern radar system.

He also ended Trudeau’s signature carbon tax climate policy, which had faced heavy criticism by the Conservatives.

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Now he will face the general electorate, which is concerned about Canada’s rapidly shifting relationship with the US, its historically close ally, as well as the country’s high cost of living.

In a campaign launch shortly before the election call, Conservative leader Poilievre, 45, sought to link Carney to the Liberals under Trudeau, who left office as a deeply unpopular leader.

He called Trudeau’s time in office a “lost Liberal decade”.

He accused the party of weakening the country by blocking resource development, failing to fund the military, and mismanaging immigration and the economy, saying its “post-national globalist ideology” made Canada more vulnerable to Trump’s trade war.

President Trump’s current and threatened tariffs on Canadian goods could usher in economic instability in the country and push Canada towards a recession.

Trump placed 25% tariffs on Canadian goods on 2 March before partially pausing them for a month. On 12 March, a blanket 25% duty on all aluminium and steel imports went into effect, hitting Canadian importers.

The Trump administration plans further global tariffs on 2 April, in the campaign’s second week.

Canada has retaliated so far with tariffs on about C$60bn ($42bn; £32bn) worth of US goods.

Carney on Sunday called the trade war with the US one of the “most significant threats of our lifetimes”.

Referring to Trump, he said: “He wants to break us so America will own us. We will not let that happen.”

Carney has promised further retaliation, though he has conceded there is a limit to Canada’s tariff response given the different size of the two economies.

Poilievre said that Canada must respond firmly to threats from the White House.

“We have to convert our anger and our anxiety into action,” he said. “We have to become strong, self-reliant and sovereign to stand up to the Americans.”

The campaign will last just five weeks – the shortest allowed. Besides the US-Canada relationship, much of the focus will be on the economy, including cost-of-living issues.

In the Canadian federal election, voters do not cast a ballot directly for a prime minister. Instead, the leader of the party with the most members of parliament traditionally becomes PM.

Four main parties will contest the election – the Liberals, the Conservatives, the New Democrats (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois, who only run candidates in the French-speaking province of Quebec with a focus on their regional interests.

The Green Party and the People’s Party of Canada are also in the running.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said on Sunday that neither Carney nor Poilievre are the right choices for Canada, accusing them of protecting the wealthy, not ordinary Canadians.

“You deserve a prime minister you can trust to make decisions in your best interest,” he said.

The Bloc is facing pressure from a surge of support for the Liberals in Quebec.

Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet pitched his party as a voice for industries in Trump’s sights – from aluminium to dairy and lumber – that are all significant in the province.

The Greens for the first time are running with co-leaders: Jonathan Pedneault and Elizabeth May.

“We must vote now as though our country depends on it, because more than ever before, it does,” said Pedneault on Sunday.

At dissolution of Parliament at the time the election was called, the Liberals held 153 seats in the House of Commons. The Conservatives were the official opposition with 120 seats. The Bloc had 33 seats, the NDP had 24 and the Green Party held two.

In a recent interview, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke positively about India’s relationship with long-time rival China. He said normalcy had returned to the disputed India-China border and called for stronger ties.

These are striking comments, because tensions have been high since a nasty border clash in the northern Ladakh region in 2020 – the deadliest since a 1962 war.

Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning expressed appreciation for Modi’s words and declared that “the two countries should be partners that contribute to each other’s success”.

Modi’s pitch for closer partnership isn’t actually as big of a leap as it may seem, given recent improvements in bilateral ties. But the relationship remains strained, and much will need to fall into place – bilaterally and more broadly geopolitically – for it to enjoy a true rapprochement.

India-China ties have many bright spots.

Bilateral trade is consistently robust; even after the Ladakh clash, China has been India’s top trade partner. They co-operate multilaterally, from Brics, the alliance of major developing countries, to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. They share interests in advancing non-Western economic models, countering Islamist terrorism and rejecting what they deem US moral crusading.

Even after the Ladakh clash sunk ties to their lowest level in decades, the two militaries continued to hold high-level dialogues, which resulted in a deal in October to resume border patrols. Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping at a Brics summit in Russia that month and they pledged further co-operation. In January, the two sides agreed to resume direct flights.

Still, the relationship remains troubled.

Each side has close security ties with the other’s main competitor: India with the US and China with Pakistan.

China opposes Indian policies in the disputed Kashmir region. Beijing frustrates India’s great power ambitions by blocking its membership in influential groupings like the Nuclear Suppliers Group and permanent membership on the UN Security Council.

China has a large naval presence, and its only overseas military base, in India’s broader maritime backyard.

The Belt and Road Initiative, the connectivity corridor through which Beijing has expanded its footprint in India’s neighbourhood, is categorically rejected by Delhi for passing through India-claimed territory.

• Bangladesh wooed by China as ties with India fray
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Meanwhile, India is deepening ties with Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province. It hosts the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader. Beijing regards him as a dangerous separatist.

India is negotiating sales of supersonic missiles to Southeast Asian states that could be used to deter Chinese provocations in the South China Sea. China views several global forums to which India belongs, such as the Indo-Pacific Quad and the Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, as attempts to counter it.

There are several signposts to watch to get a better sense of the relationship’s future trajectory.

One is border talks. Fifty thousand squares miles of the 2,100-mile (3,380km)-long frontier – an area equal to the size of Greece – remain disputed.

The situation on the border is the biggest bellwether of the relationship. The Ladakh clash shattered trust; last year’s patrolling deal helped restore it. If the two sides can produce more confidence-building measures, this would bode well for relations.

Future high-level engagement is also important. If Modi and Xi, both of whom place a premium on personal diplomacy, meet this year, this would bolster recent momentum in bilateral ties. They’ll have opportunities on the sidelines of leaders summits for Brics in July, G20 in November and the Shanghai Co-operation Group (SCO) sometime later this year.

Another key signpost is Chinese investment, which would bring critical capital to key Indian industries from manufacturing to renewables and help ease India’s $85bn (£65.7bn) trade deficit with China.

An increase in such investme ts would give India a timely economic boost and China more access to the world’s fastest-growing major economy. Stronger commercial co-operation would provide more incentives to keep broader tensions down.

Regional and global developments are also worth watching.

Four of India’s neighbours – Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka – recently had new leaders take office who are more pro-China than their predecessors. But so far, they’ve sought to balance ties with Beijing and Delhi, not align with China.

If this continues, Delhi’s concerns about Beijing’s influence in India’s neighbourhood could lessen a bit. Additionally, if China were to pull back from its growing partnership with India’s close friend Russia – a more likely outcome if there’s an end to the war in Ukraine, which has deepened Moscow’s dependence on Beijing – this could help India-China ties.

The Trump factor looms large, too.

US President Donald Trump, despite slapping tariffs on China, has telegraphed a desire to ease tensions with Beijing.

If he does, and Delhi fears Washington may not be as committed to helping India counter China, then India would want to ensure its own ties with China are in a better place.

• India’s balancing act with West as Brics flexes new muscles
• India-China border row explained in 400 words

Additionally, if Trump’s impending reciprocal tariff policy hits India hard – and given the 10% average tariff differentials between the US and India, it certainly could – India will have another incentive to strengthen commercial cooperation with Beijing.

India and China are Asia’s two largest countries, and both view themselves as proud civilisation states.

They’re natural competitors. But recent positive developments in ties, coupled with the potential for bilateral progress on other fronts, could bring more stability to the relationship – and ensure Modi’s conciliatory language isn’t mere rhetoric.

US negotiators are holding talks in the Saudi capital Riyadh with their Ukrainian counterparts and separately with the Russians on Monday.

Washington’s aim is to bring about an immediate partial ceasefire to the war in Ukraine, followed by a comprehensive peace deal.

So could these Riyadh talks produce the breakthrough so many are hoping for?

It depends who you listen to.

“I feel that he (Putin) wants peace,” said President Trump’s personal envoy Steve Witkoff, adding: “I think that you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress.”

Yet Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman has dampened expectations. “We are only at the beginning of this path,” he told Russian state TV.

Kyiv suffered one of its heaviest attacks from Russian drones on Saturday night, with three people killed, including a five-year-old girl.

“We need to push Putin to give a real order to stop the strikes,” said Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in his evening address on Sunday. “The one who brought this war must take it away.”

The Kremlin, meanwhile, seems to be in no rush to sign up to a ceasefire, with Vladimir Putin adding on numerous “nuances”, or preconditions, before agreeing to the 30-day ceasefire proposed by Washington and agreed to by Kyiv.

In Riyadh the US-Ukraine talks began soon after nightfall on Sunday, behind closed doors in one of Saudi Arabia’s many luxury establishments, with the Ukrainian delegation headed by the country’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov.

These, he said, were “technical” discussions, focusing on how best to safeguard energy facilities and critical infrastructure.

Black Sea shipping lanes are also under discussion, with Russia reportedly keen to revive a deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain from its ports without being attacked, in exchange for relief on sanctions.

Both sides, Russia and Ukraine, have carried out hugely destructive attacks on each other’s infrastructure.

Moscow has sought to plunge Ukraine’s population into cold and darkness by targeting its electricity generation, while Kyiv has become increasingly successful in its long-range drone strikes that have struck Russian oil facilities critical to its war effort.

President Trump wants a quick end to this war, Europe’s worst since 1945 and one which has led to combined casualties on both sides of hundreds of thousands of killed, captured, wounded or missing men.

Ukraine’s leadership, still bruised from that catastrophic row in the Oval Office last month, is trying hard to convince Washington it is not the obstacle to peace.

When the Americans proposed a comprehensive 30-day ceasefire on land, sea and in the air at talks in Jeddah this month, Ukraine quickly agreed to the terms.

The ball, said the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the time, was now in Russia’s court.

But despite the US failure to get Moscow to agree to that ceasefire, the Trump administration is putting little or no pressure, at least not in public, on Russia to fall into line. In fact, quite the opposite.

In an interview this weekend with the pro-Trump journalist Tucker Carlson, Steve Witkoff, the man spearheading the US drive for a ceasefire, appeared to take a stance totally at odds with that of Europe.

Ukraine, he suggested, was “a false country”, Russia had been provoked and Putin was a man of his word who could be trusted.

Witkoff, a former New York real estate developer and golfing partner of Donald Trump, also dismissed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s efforts to put together a military force to help safeguard an eventual peace deal in Ukraine, calling it “a posture and a pose”.

Disney’s live-action version of the classic fairy-tale Snow White has topped the North American box office chart despite a slew of underwhelming reviews.

The movie has taken an estimated $87.3m (£67.5m) globally during its opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. Almost half of that figure came from North America.

But that is at the low end of expectations for a film which reportedly cost more than $270m.

The reworking of the 1937 feature length animation had seemed like a surefire hit before running into a series of controversies ahead of its release.

The revamp of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs became a flashpoint for social and political divisions, even before its global release.

That included some criticism of the casting of Rachel Zegler, who is of Colombian descent, as the heroine.

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There was also a backlash about Zegler’s pro-Palestinian comments and about pro-Israel comments by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who plays Snow White’s stepmother, the Evil Queen.

And there is an ongoing debate about whether there should have been dwarfs in the film at all, live or CGI.

On the reviews aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Snow White has a critics’ score of just 44%, although the audience reaction ‘Popcornometer’ stands at 73%.

Chief film critic for The Times, Kevin Maher, said: “Believe the anti-hype, it’s that bad”, but the Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney called the film “mostly captivating”.

With its creepy CGI dwarfs and muddled tone, Disney’s latest live-action remake is “not calamitous” but is “a mind-boggling mash-up”, the BBC’s Nicholas Barber said.

Jessica Aber, the former US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was found dead at a residence on Saturday morning.

Police in Alexandria, Virginia, responded to reports of an unresponsive woman at about 09:18 local time (13:00 GMT) , the department said in a statement.

Officers then located a deceased woman, who they later identified as Ms Aber, police said.

Ms Aber, 43, was appointed by former President Joe Biden in 2021. She stepped down in January when Donald Trump took office.

Police said an investigation into her death was underway and Virginia’s chief medical examiner will determine the cause.

A friend of the family told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that Aber’s death is “believed to be the result of a longstanding medical issue”.

Ms Aber graduated from the University of Richmond in Virginia in 2003, before attending William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia. She clerked for then-Magistrate Judge M. Hannah Lauck of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia from 2006 to 2007.

She started in the Eastern District of Virginia in 2009 as an assistant US attorney, and worked on cases involving financial fraud, public corruption, and child exploitation cases, according to the Department of Justice website.

In 2016, Ms Aber was promoted to the district’s deputy chief of the criminal division.

Biden nominated her to lead the Eastern District of Virginia in August 2021, and she was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate.

As the district’s top prosecutor, she oversaw a staff about 300 prosecutors, litigators and support staff.

She stepped down from the position in early 2025 when Donald Trump took office.

US attorneys are appointed by the president. It is common for sitting US attorneys to step down when new presidential administration arrives, or for new presidents to later choose a new top prosecutor.

In statement, her successor, interim US Attorney Erik S Siebert said the office was “heartbroken beyond words”.

“She was unmatched as a leader, mentor, and prosecutor, and she is simply irreplaceable as a human being,” said Mr Siebert, who joined the division in 2010, the year after Ms Aber.

US Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, called Ms Aber an “exceptional public servant who dedicated her life to serving her fellow Virginians”.

An Israeli air strike on a hospital in Gaza killed a senior Hamas leader and an aide on Sunday evening, a Hamas official told the BBC.

Ismail Barhoum, the head of the group’s financial affairs, was killed in the strike on Nasser Hospital, the main medical facility in Khan Younis.

He was receiving treatment at the hospital after being wounded in an air strike four days ago, the official said.

Israel’s military said it had struck a key Hamas member operating inside the hospital compound following “an extensive intelligence-gathering process” and said that “precise munitions” had been used to mitigate harm.

The Hamas-run health ministry said “many others”, including medical personnel, were injured.

The hospital department hit was evacuated after a large portion was destroyed, the ministry said.

Footage verified by the BBC showed people attempting to extinguish a fire after the strike.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals as hiding places for weapons and command centres, which the group denies.

Another Hamas leader, Salah al-Bardaweel, was killed by a separate Israeli air strike in Khan Younis on Sunday, an official told the BBC.

At least 30 people were killed in Khan Younis and Rafah as of Sunday morning, before the strike on the hospital in the evening, the health ministry said.

Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on 18 March, ending a ceasefire that lasted almost two months. Hundreds of people have been killed in strikes since then.

Israel blamed Hamas for rejecting a new US proposal to extend the truce. Hamas, in turn, accused Israel of abandoning the original deal agreed in January.

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 others taken hostage.

Israel responded to the 7 October attack with a military offensive in Gaza to destroy Hamas, which has killed more than 50,000 people, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

Canada’s general election campaign is underway, a 36-day sprint taking place in unprecedented circumstances.

Voters will consider which party should govern the country just as the US – its neighbour and largest economic partner – launches a trade war and President Donald Trump muses about making Canada the 51st US state.

Domestic issues like housing and immigration will still be important, of course, but for the first time in decades, Canadians will also be grappling with fundamental questions about the country’s future when they head to the ballot box on 28 April.

Here are five things to watch as the campaign unfolds.

Canada and the US share deeply integrated economies, a long-standing security partnership and the longest “undefended” border in the world.

So when President Donald Trump says he wants to use “economic force” against America’s neighbour, calls the border an “artificially drawn line” and imposes steep tariffs, it marks a profound shift in the relationship between the two allies.

“It is impossible to overstate the impact of the president’s actions on Canadian politics, on Canadian psyche, on Canadian business,” said Marci Surkes, chief strategy officer at public affairs firm Compass Rose and a former policy director to ex-prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Trump’s interventions have already reshaped politics in Canada, helping transform what seemed like a certain Conservative victory into a too-close-to-call battle with the Liberals.

And on Sunday, as campaigning began, all the party leaders focused their launch messages heavily on the US threats.

What the US president says and does over the next few weeks will inevitably factor into the race. On April 2, for example, in just the second week of campaigning, the White House is expected to announce more global tariffs.

He has already started to make his views on the election known, telling Fox News host Laura Ingraham on 18 March that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is “stupidly, no friend of mine” and that it may be “easier to deal actually with a Liberal”.

Ultimately, he added, who wins “doesn’t matter to me at all”.

• Who’s who in Canada’s federal election

Canadians know their next PM will have no choice but to deal with Donald Trump.

So the question on many voters’ minds is: Who can most capably handle the unpredictable US president?

The contest essentially boils down to the new Liberal leader Mark Carney and Poilievre, who has led the Conservatives since 2022.

Two other major parties will be contesting seats in Parliament – the left-leaning New Democrats (NDP) and the the Bloc Québécois – but Canadians have historically elected Conservative or Liberal governments.

Carney, 60, is a former central banker who is new to politics – after taking over from Justin Trudeau earlier this month, he became the first prime minister in Canada never elected to Parliament.

He brings experience on the world stage – he governed the Bank of England from 2013-2020 – but lacks time spent in the cut and thrust of political campaigning, and will get his first real test in this general election.

If the Liberals fail to win the election, he could have the shortest tenure of any PM in the country’s history.

At 45, Poilievre may be significantly younger, but he is a political veteran. First elected to the House of Commons at age 25, he has two decades of experience in federal politics, including time in cabinet, and is known for his political acumen.

As party leader, he was quick to highlight the pain that inflation was inflicting on Canadian families, and capitalise on broader anger at Trudeau and the Liberals on issues like immigration.

His tag line “Canada is broken” has in recent weeks become “Canada first”. The shift in message from a country in decline to one of patriotism and strength comes as he presents himself as able to stand up to Trump.

He is “the consummate retail politician”, Ms Surkes said, but “suffers from having – right now – a brand and a narrative that no longer fits the moment”.

It will be the first time in decades that a Canadian election is not focused mostly on domestic issues.

Instead, this election is about the big, national questions: Canada’s sovereignty and what the country must do to face an uncertain future with uncertain allies.

Ms Surkes compared the situation to the 1988 elecftion, when Canada’s relationship with the US also took centre stage as the country mulled joining the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“The same types of questions were being asked in terms of whether there would be a forfeiture of Canadian sovereignty, economic sovereignty, economic independence,” she said.

This time, both main parties are pushing a vision of growth and independence – building much-needed housing, moving forward on major energy and resource projects, retaliating against US tariffs and bolstering Canada’s defence capabilities.

So where are the differences?

Carney has moved the Liberals more towards the political centre as he seeks to distance himself from Trudeau, who left office deeply unpopular.

He has promised to “spend less and invest more” and to boost capital investments in things like housing, and military infrastructure and computing resources.

Poilievre, a fiscal hawk, pitches cutting red tape and taxes to boost industry and spur infrastructure investment and home building.

The Conservatives have also focused more sharply on issues like crime.

The core domestic concerns that Canadians have had in recent years – affordability, housing, healthcare – haven’t gone away.

But pollster David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, says they have been subsumed by the “existential threat” of the trade war with the US.

“Even if the cost of living is still the top issue, it may not be as powerful a motivator to drive voting behavior,” he adds.

So the parties will be challenged to come up with convincing policies to address these concerns – but frame them in the context of the wider economic threat.

The US tariffs, the uncertainty caused by their on-again-off-again nature, and Canada’s C$60bn in counter-tariffs, are already being felt by businesses and communities across the country.

This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development more than halved its economic growth outlook for Canada this year and next.

National opinion polls have seen a stunning reversal in recent weeks, with the Conservatives losing the 20-point lead they had over the Liberals for the better part of a year.

As the race officially begins, it’s a toss-up.

Mr Coletto said three factors led to the “perfect storm” in polling: the resignation of the deeply unpopular Trudeau, the Liberal leadership race which that sparked, and the return of Donald Trump to the White House.

Both candidates now are trying to “bring their enemies to the battlefield” to eke out an advantage, he added. Carney is seeking to paint Poilievre as “Trump-light”, while Poilievre suggests Carney is “just like Justin”.

Each campaign enjoys natural advantages, he says.

The Conservatives have “an animated base who desperately want a change in government”, along with a well-funded political machine.

The Liberals currently “have the advantage on narrative” that has helped shift the polls more in their favour.

The other two official parties – the NDP and the Bloc – have both seen their popularity diminish.

The left-leaning NDP, which had 24 seats in the last Parliament, helped prop up the Liberal minority government in recent years in exchange for support for progressive policies like dental care for low-income Canadians.

But leader Jagmeet Singh has been pushing hard against Carney, seeking to frame him as someone who will “protect billionaires and big business”.

Bloc leader Blanchet said on Sunday he would fight for Quebec companies and workers struggling under US tariffs, especially in the aluminium industry.

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.