At least 34 people have been killed and 117 injured, including 15 children, after a Russian attack on the centre of Sumy, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Two Iskander-variant ballistic missiles struck at around 10:15 local time (08:15 BST), both hitting the area around Sumy State University and its congress centre.

Images and videos of the aftermath show bloodied bodies scattered in the streets around the impact of the missiles. At least two children were killed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said among the injured was a girl born this year, adding that medics were doing “everything they can” to save as many lives as possible.

“The strike hit right in the heart of the city on Palm Sunday,” he said in his evening video message. “Only completely deranged scum can do something like this.”

Moscow has not yet publicly commented on the attack.

Ukrainian authorities told the BBC that 20 buildings were damaged, including four educational institutions, as well as cafes, shops and five apartment buildings. Ten cars and trams were also hit.

Zelensky called for a “tough” response from other nations, adding that “talks have never stopped ballistic missiles and air bombs”.

“Russia wants exactly this kind of terror and is dragging out this war. Without pressure on the aggressor, peace is impossible,” he said.

The university’s congress centre is often used for children’s classes, according to BBC Ukrainian, with local residents saying that the space is an “educational hub for the entire city” and “very actively rented out for various courses, clubs, and master classes”.

Officials in Sumy have told the BBC that the missiles were packed with cluster munitions, which can kill indiscriminately over a wide area.

They have caused burning vehicles and bent trees where the deaths seem to have been concentrated.

Nataliia, who gave only her first name, had been taking her child and other children to a shelter when the second strike hit her car.

“If we hadn’t moved to the shelter on time we would have been in the car and we would be dead,” she told the BBC.

Svitlana Smirnova, 51, told the BBC she had run for shelter when the strike took place, after attending church with her friends on Palm Sunday.

“A friend of mine was injured in a bus which was hit here. She is seriously injured, she is in the hospital, was operated on, she is still unconscious. She was riding with her son who was also injured,” she said.

Sunday’s strikes have been widely condemned by world leaders.

Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy to Ukraine, said the attack “crosses any line of decency” and was why US President Donald Trump “is working hard to end this war”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has also condemned the attack as “horrific”.

“President Zelensky has shown his commitment to peace, President Putin must now agree to a full and immediate ceasefire without conditions – as Ukraine has done,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the Sumy strikes highlighted the urgent need to impose a ceasefire on Russia.

“Everyone knows: this war was initiated by Russia alone. And today, it is clear that Russia alone chooses to continue it – with blatant disregard for human lives, international law, and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump,” the French President posted on X.

Both Starmer and Macron have been working together on plans for a so-called “coalition of the willing” to enforce any peace deal in Ukraine.

The attack comes after US envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday.

The Kremlin said the meeting lasted more than four hours and focused on “aspects of a Ukrainian settlement”. The meeting, Witkoff’s third with Putin this year, was described by Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as “productive”.

Popstars sneaked into the audience at Coachella to watch each other perform this weekend – as Lady Gaga wowed festivalgoers with a dramatic main stage set.

Fans swarmed to catch the Poker Face singer perform songs from her new album Mayhem, delivering a visual spectacle by opening her set with what can only be described as a satanic ritual to her 2011 song Bloody Mary.

Spotted watching on were South Korean pop group Blackpink, whose member Lisa was also seen dancing to K-pop boy band Enhypen after performing herself.

Meanwhile, Beautiful Things singer Benson Boone surprised the crowd by bringing out Sir Brian May for a rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody while executing a trademark front flip.

Actor Timothee Chalamet and partner Kylie Jenner were seen mingling with the crowd on the second day of the music festival, which is taking place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.

Blackpink’s Lisa, who recently starred in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus, was supported during her set by co-star Patrick Schwarzenegger, who posted a clip of himself singing along to her hit Money.

Meanwhile, Justin and Hailey Bieber, singer Tate McRae and Austrailian rapper The Kid Laroi were spotted dancing at Yeat’s set on Friday night.

Headline acts this year include Megan Thee Stallion, rapper Post Malone and US punk-rock band Green Day at the 100,000-attendees-a-day event.

Fresh from her five wins at the 2025 Brit Awards in March, Charli XCX had fans reliving their “brat summer” on Saturday, performing such hits as Von Dutch and 360 to a bumper crowd.

The British singer also brought out a number of guests during her set, including Troye Sivan, Lorde and Billie Eilish, who appeared on the chart topping hit Guess.

Before the performances could even begin, however, there was chaos at the gates, with ticket holders queuing in heavy traffic to get into the festival.

This year Coachella replaced its first come first-served system for campers with a reservation-style programme, forcing attendees to wait up to 12 hours in their vehicles in scorching desert temperatures with limited facilities.

Most music festivals are never short of political activism and this year’s Coachella was no different.

Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders took the stage before singer songwriter Clairo’s Saturday set to attack US President Donald Trump’s administration.

“This country faces some very difficult challenges,” he told the crowd. “The future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation.”

Green Day also reworded lyrics from some of their hits during the band’s headline performance, referencing the war in Gaza and railing against what frontman Billy Joe Armstong has repeatedly called “the Maga agenda”.

Following their success at the Bafta awards for their self titled feature film, Irish rap group Kneecap took to the Sonora stage and had the crowd chanting about former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The online livestream of the performance cut out at the exact moment the band made their political remarks.

Coachella has come under scrutiny in recent years, with one survey reporting in 2024 that 75% of 3,000 US respondents thought the festival was being overshadowed by influencers.

The festival also suffered a number of talent-related incidents last year.

Blur frontman Damon Albarn berrated the crowd in 2024, accusing them of being “lacklustre” in their singing.

“You’re never seeing us again so you might as well sing it,” he said. “Know what I’m saying?”

Grimes was also forced to apologise for “major technical difficulties” during her Coachella DJ set.

Fans watched the singer scream in frustration after a string of problems including songs playing at double speed.

The festival will continue on Sunday and resume next weekend.

US President Donald Trump is in “excellent cognitive and physical health”, says his White House physician.

In the first annual physical of his second presidential term at a Washington DC-area hospital, Trump was also found to have scarring “on the right ear from a gunshot wound”, after an assassination attempt last July.

“President Trump remains in excellent health, exhibiting robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and general physical function,” his doctor, Captain Sean Barbabella, said in a memo.

At 78, Trump was the oldest president to take office in January, though his predecessor, Joe Biden, was older at 82 by the time he left.

As a part of Friday’s nearly five-hour medical examination at the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, Trump received several blood tests, a cardiac examination and ultrasounds, said his doctor, a US Navy emergency physician who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“His active lifestyle continues to contribute significantly to his well-being,” Dr Barbabella wrote in the memo released by the White House on Sunday.

“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the Commander-in-Chief and Head of State.”

The president received neurological tests on his mental status, nerves, motor and sensory function and reflexes and showed no signs of depression or anxiety, according to the memo.

Trump was also given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and scored 30 out of 30, said Dr Barbabella. The test is commonly used to detect cognitive decline and early signs of dementia and has tasks such as naming animals, drawing a clock and repeating words back five minutes later.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said he “got every answer right” on the cognitive test.

“Overall, I felt I was in very good shape,” Trump said. “A good heart, a good soul, a very good soul.”

He added that doctors had given him “a little bit” of advice on lifestyle changes to improve his health, though he did not provide details.

Dr Barbabella also said Trump had “minor sun damage” and a few “benign skin lesions”.

The president takes several medications to control his cholesterol – Rosuvastatin and Ezetimibe – as well as Aspirin for cardiac prevention and Mometasone cream for a skin condition, said the memo.

Trump’s cardiac examination showed “no abnormalities”, wrote Dr Barbabella.

The examination noted the president’s medical history of “well-controlled hypercholesterolemia”, a condition which can increase a patient’s risk of a heart attack.

Other conditions noted in his medical history included a past Covid infection, rosacea, which is a skin condition often causing redness in the face, and a benign colon polyp.

The president weighs 224lb (101kg) and stands 6ft 2.5in tall, according to the records from Dr Barbabella. Trump has shed some pounds since February 2019, when he weighed 243lb.

Under the Body Mass Index calculator, he would currently be categorised within the overweight range, and not obese.

The memo noted that the president’s “joints and muscles have a full range of motion”, while crediting his good health to an active lifestyle, including “frequent victories in golf events”.

It is the first medical report on Trump released to the public since a gunman tried to kill him at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, grazing his ear with a bullet.

At the time, Trump’s former White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, released a report saying his injuries from the incident were superficial.

During Trump’s first term in office, a White House doctor said he was in good health but needed to lose weight and exercise.

On the campaign trail, Trump frequently attacked his rival, Biden, over his cognitive and physical health.

After a poor debate performance last year against Trump, Biden declined to commit to taking a cognitive test, which he said he had not undergone while in office.

Chinese officials are calling on US President Donald Trump to “completely cancel” his so-called reciprocal tariffs, as a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies grinds on.

This week, Trump announced a 90-day pause on a host of global tariffs he had planned, but increased levies on Chinese imports to 145%.

“We urge the US to take a big step to correct its mistakes, completely cancel the wrong practice of ‘reciprocal tariffs’ and return to the right path of mutual respect,” China’s commerce ministry said in a statement.

The Trump administration seemed ready to offer a concession on Friday by announcing that some electronic products – including those produced in China – would be exempt.

But US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told ABC News on Sunday that such exemptions would only be temporary.

He said the administration planned to impose such levies in a separate “semiconductor tariff”, which he said would be announced at a later date.

“We need to have these things made in America,” Lutnick said.

President Trump chimed in on social media, saying there was no exemption for these products and called such reports false. Instead, he said that “they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket'”.

Trump added: “We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.”

The comments inject uncertainty into the just-announced tariff exemptions for technology products such as smartphones, computers and semiconductors.

• Trump’s iPhone olive branch is a significant trade war retreat
• Trump’s changing tariffs leave shoppers feeling paralysed

The Chinese commerce ministry had called the exemptions a “small step” by the US, and said that Beijing was “evaluating the impact” of the move.

But the suggestion by Trump administration officials of plans for future levies may dampen hopes of a thaw in the two rivals’ protectionist posture.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was asked on Sunday whether there were any plans for Trump to speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

“Right now we don’t have any plans on that,” he said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Trump imposed a tariff amounting to 54% on imports of products from China at the beginning of April, before escalating to the current 145% rate.

In its own tit-for-tat tariffs, China imposed levies of 34% on US goods, before increasing it to 84% and then 125%, which took effect on Saturday.

In announcing its latest tariffs, China’s commerce ministry said last week that it would “fight to the end” if the US “insists on provoking a tariff war or trade war”.

Late on Saturday, while travelling to Miami, Florida, Trump said he would give more details of the exemptions at the start of next week.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• US coffee shops worried about bitter price hike after tariffs

The White House has argued that it is using tariffs as a negotiating tactic to extract more favourable trade terms from other countries.

Trump has said his policy will redress unfairness in the global trading system, as well as bring jobs and factories back to the US.

However, his interventions have seen massive fluctuations in the stock market and raised fears of a decrease in global trade that could have a knock-on effect on jobs and individual economies.

Bangladeshi authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the British MP and former Labour minister Tulip Siddiq.

The country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has been investigating allegations Siddiq illegally received land as part of its wider probe of the regime of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed as prime minister in August.

The Hampstead and Highgate MP, who quit as economic secretary to the Treasury in January, was named in the arrest warrant alongside more than 50 others.

Lawyers acting for Siddiq denied the charges, which they said were “politically motivated”.

The ACC had not presented any evidence or informed Siddiq about an arrest warrant, the lawyers added.

The UK lists Bangladesh as a 2B extradition country – meaning clear evidence must be presented before ministers and judges make a decision.

The ACC is examining claims Sheikh Hasina and her family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh.

The investigation is based on a series of allegations made by Bobby Hajjaj, a political opponent of Hasina.

Court documents seen by the BBC show Hajjaj has accused Siddiq of helping to broker a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of a new nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

In a statement seen by the BBC, Siddiq’s lawyers Stephenson Harwood said: “The allegations are completely false and have been dealt with in writing by Siddiq’s lawyers.

“The ACC has not responded to Siddiq or put any allegations to her directly or through her lawyers.

“Siddiq knows nothing about a hearing in Dhaka relating to her and she has no knowledge of any arrest warrant that is said to have been issued.

“To be clear, there is no basis at all for any charges to be made against her, and there is absolutely no truth in any allegation that she received a plot of land in Dhaka through illegal means.

“She has never had a plot of land in Bangladesh, and she has never influenced any allocation of plots of land to her family members or anyone else.

“No evidence has been provided by the ACC to support this or any other allegation made against Siddiq, and it is clear to us that the charges are politically motivated.”

Before resigning, Siddiq had referred herself to the PM’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus when the corruption allegations first surfaced.

Sir Laurie said in his report that he had “not identified evidence of improprieties”.

But he added it was “regrettable” that Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt Sheikh Hasina, the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh and leader of Awami League party.

ACC chairman Mohammad Abdul Momen has previously told the BBC the allegations “are by no means ‘targeted and baseless'” and its investigation was “based on documentary evidence of corruption”.

“Tulip Siddiq must not shy away from the court proceedings in Bangladesh.

“I would welcome Siddiq come and defend her case and with the best possible legal support accompanying her,” he added.

He also rejected her lawyer’s claims that the ACC was interfering in UK politics, adding: “ACC briefing to the media is a regular phenomenon, it is delivered professionally and with all accuracy.”

The Indian pot belly – once a badge of prosperity, indulgence and aging respectability – has long been a target of satire and social commentary.

In literature, it quietly signalled comfort or complacency; in films, it became a shorthand for the lazy official, gluttonous uncle, or a corrupt policeman. Cartoons exaggerated it to mock politicians. In rural settings, it was once considered a status symbol – a sign that “this man eats well”.

But what was once dismissed or even celebrated is now raising alarm bells. The obesity crisis in India is ballooning – and the seemingly harmless pot belly may be a far bigger villain than we think.

India had the second-highest number of overweight or obese adults in 2021, with 180 million affected – behind only China. A new Lancet study warns this number could soar to 450 million by 2050, nearly a third of the country’s projected population.

Globally, more than half of all adults and a third of children and adolescents are expected to face the same fate.

At the heart of this issue in India lies the pot belly, or in medical terms, abdominal obesity.

This form of obesity refers to the accumulation of excess fat around the belly and doctors say it’s more than a cosmetic concern. As far back as the 1990s, studies showed a clear link between belly fat and chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Obesity isn’t just abdominal. It appears in different patterns, depending on fat distribution: peripheral obesity affects the hips, thighs, and buttocks, while generalised obesity involves fat spread more evenly across the body.

The numbers on abdominal obesity in India are already troubling. According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) – which, for the first time, measured waist and hip sizes – about 40% of women and 12% of men in India have abdominal obesity.

Abdominal obesity, based on Indian guidelines, means a waist over 90cm (35 inches) for men and 80cm (31 inches) for women. Among women aged 30 to 49, nearly one in two already show signs of it. Urban populations were found to be more affected than rural ones, with high waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratios emerging as a key red flag.

• Indians are getting fatter – and it’s a big problem
• Why are Indian children getting fatter?

So why is belly fat such a big deal?

One reason is insulin resistance – a condition where the body stops responding properly to insulin, the hormone that helps regulate blood sugar. Abdominal fat disrupts how the body uses insulin, making it harder to control blood sugar.

Studies have found South Asians, including Indians, tend to have more body fat than white Caucasians at the same Body Mass Index. (BMI is a simple measure that assesses a person’s weight in relation to their height.)

It’s not just how much fat you have – it’s where it goes. In South Asians, fat tends to collect around the trunk and under the skin, but not always deep in the abdomen as visceral fat.

Though South Asians may have less of the more harmful deep abdominal fat around organs like the liver and pancreas, studies show their larger, less efficient fat cells struggle to store fat under the skin. As a result, excess fat spills into vital organs that regulate metabolism – like the liver and pancreas – raising the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Scientists still don’t fully understand the biological reasons behind the fat distribution patterns. Though numerous genetic studies have been conducted, no single gene has consistently explained this tendency.

One theory offers an evolutionary root. India, for centuries, was racked by famines and chronic food shortages, leaving generations to survive on meagre nutrition.

In such conditions, the human body adapted for survival in extreme scarcity.

The body needed a depot for this energy and the abdomen, being the most expandable area, became the prime storage site. Over time, as food became more plentiful, this fat store continued to grow – eventually to harmful levels.

“It’s a conjectural but plausible evolutionary theory – one that can’t be proven, but makes sense,” says Anoop Misra, who heads Delhi’s Fortis-C-DOC Centre of Excellence for Diabetes, Metabolic Diseases and Endocrinology.

Last year, in a paper doctors belonging to the Indian Obesity Commission redefined obesity guidelines for Asian Indians, moving beyond BMI to better reflect how body fat relates to early health risks.

They created a two-stage clinical system that considers fat distribution, related diseases and physical function.

Stage one involves a high BMI, but without abdominal obesity, metabolic disease, or physical dysfunction. In such cases, lifestyle changes like diet, exercise and sometimes medication are usually enough.

Stage two includes abdominal obesity – the harmful visceral fat – and is often accompanied by health issues like diabetes, knee pain or palpitations. This stage signals higher risk and calls for more intensive management.

This classification guides treatment intensity. Once belly fat appears, early action is key – new weight loss drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide are proving effective at targeting it, doctors say.

“As shocking as it may sound, even people with a normal weight can have dangerous levels of belly fat,” says Dr Misra.

Indian physicians say abdominal obesity is rising due to lifestyle changes – more junk food, takeaways, instant meals and greasy home cooking. Between 2009 and 2019, Cameroon, India and Vietnam saw the fastest growth in per capita sales of ultra-processed foods and beverages, studies found.

So, what needs to be done?

Experts say Indians need tougher lifestyle changes than Western norms recommend. While 150 minutes of weekly exercise may suffice for their European men, their South Asians counterparts need around 250–300 minutes to offset slower metabolism and less efficient fat storage, studies show.

“Our bodies simply aren’t as good at handling excess fat,” says Dr Misra.

In short, the pot belly isn’t just a punchline – it’s a warning sign. And India is sitting on a ticking health time bomb.

An Israeli air strike has destroyed part of al Ahli Arab Hospital, the last fully functional hospital in Gaza City.

Witnesses said the strike destroyed the intensive care and surgery departments of the hospital.

Video posted online appeared to show huge flames and smoke rising after missiles hit a two-storey building. People, including some patients still in hospital beds, were filmed rushing away from the site.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted the hospital because it contained a “command and control centre used by Hamas”. No casualties were reported, according to Gaza’s civil emergency service.

However, one child, who previously suffered a head injury, died as a result of “the rushed evacuation process”, according to a statement from the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, part of the Anglican Church, which runs the hospital.

Surrounding buildings, including St Philip’s church, were also damaged, the diocese said.

It added that it was “appalled” at the bombing of the hospital “on the morning of Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week”.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said al Ahli Arab Hospital’s building was “completely destroyed”, leading to the “forced displacement of patients and hospital staff”.

The IDF said it had taken steps “to mitigate harm to civilians or to the hospital compound, including issuing advanced warnings in the area of the terror infrastructure, the use of precise munitions, and aerial surveillance”.

A local journalist, who was working at the hospital, said the IDF had phoned a doctor who was operating in the emergency department and asked them to evacuate the hospital immediately.

“All patients and displaced people must go out to a safe distance,” the officer reportedly said.

“You have only 20 minutes to leave.”

Footage on social media showed staff and patients leaving the building while it was still dark outside.

Dozens of Palestinians, including women and children, were also seen fleeing from a courtyard inside the hospital where they had been seeking shelter.

Khalil Bakr told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline programme that he and his three injured daughters had fled the hospital with only a couple of minutes to spare before it was bombed.

“It was terrifying,” he said. “The whole situation was difficult because I have already been injured. And as for my three daughters, one had her leg amputated, the other had her hand amputated, and the third had her body full of platinum plates.”

He added: “Only two minutes separated us from death.”

Al Ahli Arab – a small medical facility before the war – was the only fully functional hospital in Gaza City, following the destruction of Al-Shifa medical complex and other hospitals in the northern part of the Strip.

World Health Organization director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the hospital was out of service following the evacuation order and attack, according to an update he received from the hospital’s director.

Dr Ghebreyesus highlighted how a child had died after a disruption to care, and said the hospital had been forced to move 50 patients to other hospitals, but was unable to move 40 critical patients and could not receive new patients until repairs are carried out.

“Hospitals are protected under international humanitarian law. Attacks on health care must stop,” he stated.

In its statement, the Hamas-run government media office condemned the attack.

Israel was “committing a horrific crime by targeting al Ahli Arab, which houses hundreds of patients and medical staff”, it said.

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy said such “deplorable attacks must end”, adding: “Israel’s attacks on medical facilities have comprehensively degraded access to healthcare in Gaza.”

The Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said in a statement: “For the only Christian hospital in Gaza to be attacked on Palm Sunday is especially appalling.

“I share in the grief of our Palestinian brothers and sisters in the Diocese of Jerusalem. I pray for the staff and patients of the hospital, and for the family of the boy who tragically died during the evacuation.”

In October 2023, an explosion at the same hospital killed hundreds of people.

Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli strike for the blast. Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which denied responsibility.

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

More than 50,933 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Of those, 1,563 have been killed since 18 March, when Israel restarted its offensive in the Gaza Strip, the ministry said.

A Liberal Democrat MP barred from entering Hong Kong has told the BBC she believes it was to “shut me up and to silence me”.

Wera Hobhouse flew to Hong Kong with her husband on Thursday to visit her son and newborn grandson. However she was detained at the airport, questioned and deported.

The MP for Bath, one of more than 40 parliamentarians of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) which criticises Beijing’s handling of human rights, said she was given no reason for being refused entry.

Speaking on the BBC’s Newscast show on Sunday, she said she wants “some answers”, and said she was not very “outspoken about China”.

Hobhouse told Newscast she and her husband had been “looking forward” to visiting their son, who has lived in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, since 2019.

While her husband “got processed quite quickly” and was allowed entry, she was taken aside for questioning, held for five hours and then put on a return flight.

Asked by presenter Laura Kuenssberg what the authorities said about why she was being detained, Hobhouse responded: “Nothing.”

“They said not to worry at first, just a few questions to answer.”

In response to the suggestion it could be due to her involvement in Ipac, which scrutinises Beijing’s human rights record, Hobhouse said she was not very “outspoken about China”.

“I was only standing up for our values,” she said.

“It would be terrible if China uses this now to intimidate me, to stop me from speaking out for human rights and liberty and democracy.

“That is the last thing that should happen, but that is, of course probably the intention, to shut me up and to silence me.”

Hobhouse said she had experienced huge amount of solidarity from “very worried” MPs.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has promised to “urgently” raise the issue with authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing and “demand an explanation”

He added it would be “unacceptable for an MP to be denied entry for simply expressing their views as a parliamentarian”.

Lib Dem Leader Sir Ed Davey has called for Lammy to summon the Chinese ambassador, adding the Chinese government cannot be allowed to “undermine our democracy by intimidating our parliamentarians.”

“I want some answers,” Hobhouse said, calling for Lammy to “reassure parliamentarians that this is not the way the Chinese communist parties can treat [them]”.

It comes a week after two Labour MPs were denied entry to Israel while on a trip to visit the occupied West Bank.

“It is very chilling that authoritarian countries can treat us in this way,” said Hobhouse, adding the “diplomatic understanding” in which we allow politicians into each other’s countries seemed to be “collapsing”.

She has ruled out approaching the Chinese embassy for permission enter Hong Kong, saying they will see their relatives elsewhere.

Asked about the timing of the incident in the week the UK government sought to take control of the Chinese-owned British Steel plant in Scunthorpe, Lincs, Hobhouse said she could only speculate.

She called for a “clear-eyed” approach to what China wants from Britain, saying “it’s not just fluffy, friendly relationships”.

“They want something from us. They use us and we must not be naïve about giving them access to too much, for example our critical national infrastructure.”

The Chinese Embassy has been approached for comment.

Gabon’s military leader Gen Brice Oligui Nguema – who in 2023 led a coup that ended a near-60-year dynasty – has won Saturday’s presidential election with more than 90% of the vote, provisional results show.

Ahead of the vote, critics argued that the new constitution and electoral code were designed to give Oligui Nguema a comfortable pathway to the top job.

Some opposition heavyweights who could have posed a serious political challenge were excluded from the race.

His election victory consolidates his grip on power, nearly two years after he masterminded the demise of President Ali Bongo, whose family had been in power in Gabon since 1967.

Oligui Nguema, 50, faced seven other candidates, including former Prime Minister Alain Claude Bilie-by-Nze, who served under the Bongo regime, and two stalwarts of the former ruling PDG party, Stéphane Germain Iloko and Alain Simplice Boungouères.

• Who is Gen Brice Oligui Nguema?
• Why Gabon’s coup leader is bucking a trend by embracing democracy

“Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema is elected [president] by absolute majority of votes cast, with 575,222 votes,” Interior Minister Hermann Immongault announced.

His main challenger, Bilie-by-Nze, received just over 3% of the votes.

More than seven out of 10 registered voters took part in the poll, which the authorities and some observers hailed as signifying the election took place transparently and peacefully.

There were complaints of instances of irregularities in the process, however.

At some polling stations the vote was delayed, while some voters on the electoral roll were not able to find where they were meant to cast their ballot.

Bilie-by-Nze said he was particularly concerned by claims that in some places unmarked ballot papers were not kept in a secure location, and that he feared they could be used to stuff ballot boxes.

Oligui Nguema’s victory brings him a seven-year mandate and the resources to tackle the corruption and bad governance that characterised the Bongos’ time in power.

The highly articulate former commander of the elite Republican Guard proved to be very popular among a population relieved to be rid of dynastic rule, promising to rid the country of the ill that had tainted Gabon’s image.

The small oil- and timber-rich central African nation is home to just 2.5 million people.

Despite its resources, about 35% of the population still live below the poverty line of $2 (£1.50) a day.

• Why does France have military bases in Africa?
• Self-medicating gorillas may hold new drugs clues
• Gabon’s predators on the pitch: Inside a paedophile football scandal

Hundreds of homes and roads on Lanzarote have been flooded, after torrential rainfall swept across the Canary Island on Saturday.

Lanzarote’s government declared a state of emergency overnight after 6cm (2.4 inches) of rain poured down on the popular holiday destination in just two hours.

No injuries have been reported by the Spanish authorities – and the state of emergency was lifted on Sunday morning.

The head of Lanzarote’s emergency services told local media some homes had been submerged, with floodwaters leaving behind a “great quantity of mud”.

“We have been working all night, attending 300 calls overnight, many of them in Arrecife and Teguise,” Enrique Espinosa said on Sunday.

Emergency services attended more than 150 incidents in Costa Teguise and in excess of 70 in Arrecife, local media reports.

The area of San Bartolomé was badly hit, according to Lanzarote’s government.

Dramatic footage circulating on social media shows a large surge of floodwater flowing rapidly under a bridge, leaving cars stranded on flooded roads.

The Canaries are particularly vulnerable to floods when hit with intense rain, as their dry climate and volcanic rock mean the ground does not absorb large volumes of water well.

The torrential rain came off the back of Storm Olivier, which swept over the Canaries, mainland Spain and Portugal in recent days – triggering several weather alerts.

Spain’s meteorological service has issued weather warnings for many areas of the country from Sunday to Tuesday – including storms in the north east, rain in the Balearic islands and wind in parts of both the north and south coast.

A high school student from Wisconsin killed his parents as part of a larger plot to assassinate US President Donald Trump, the FBI has said.

Nikita Casap, 17, has been charged with the killing of his mother, Tatiana Casap, 35, and his stepfather Donald Mayer, 51, who were found dead at their home on 28 February.

A newly unsealed search warrant also alleges that the suspect’s phone contained material relating to a neo-Nazi group called the Order of Nine Angles and praise for Adolf Hitler.

Investigators also discovered antisemitic writings in which the accused allegedly detailed his plans to kill Trump as a part of a broader goal to overthrow the government, according to the court document.

The suspect is accused of first-degree intentional homicide and seven other felony counts, including hiding a corpse and identity theft.

The parents were found dead when local officials visited their home in the village of Waukesha, near Milwaukee, after the boy failed to attend school for two weeks.

Mr Mayer had died from a gunshot wound to the head, while Ms Casap died from multiple gunshot wounds on or about 11 February, according to a criminal complaint concerning the teenager.

The same day their bodies were discovered, the defendant was pulled over by police in the state of Kansas while driving a 2018 Volkswagen Atlas belonging to Mr Mayer, investigators said.

In the car was Mr Mayer’s Smith & Wesson .357 pistol, four credit cards belonging to the couple, “multiple pieces” of valuable jewelry, a pried-open safe and $14,000 (£10,700) in currency, most of which was inside a Bible, said the criminal complaint.

In writings found by investigators, the suspect expressed white supremacist beliefs and called for Trump’s assassination to start a political revolution, according to the search warrant.

The alleged double murder “appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carrying out his plan”, investigators wrote.

The court documents allege the suspect was speaking with people in Russia about plans to kill his parents.

Authorities said the teenager paid for a drone and explosives to use in an attack – and had plans to escape to Ukraine.

“He was in touch with other parties about his plan to kill the president and overthrow the government of the Unites States,” investigators wrote.

The suspect had a preliminary court hearing on 9 April. He has not entered a plea to the charges.

He is next due to appear in court for an arraignment – where he will be formally given the charges against him – on 7 May, according to the Waukesha County Court. He is being held on a $1m (£764,000) bond.

Well, well, well.

In a US customs messaging note quietly slipped out in the early hours of Saturday, a series of numbers were listed as exempt from the 125% tariff on goods entering the country from China.

The code “8517.13.00.00” means very little to most of the world, but in the US customs list it represents smartphones.

The inclusion meant the number one Chinese export to America by value last year was exempted from the import taxes, alongside other electronic devices and components, including semiconductors, solar cells and memory cards.

In the context of the US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just days ago announcing that part of the point of escalating tariffs on China was to bring back iPhone production to the US, this was a stunning about-turn.

The US has now excluded the single biggest Chinese export, and certainly the most high-profile finished good from tariffs, without publicly announcing it at first.

It is worth considering what would have happened in the absence of this exemption.

The effect of 125% tariffs on Apple’s Zhengzhou manufacturing facility in eastern China would have started to show in weeks at most American Apple stores. It would have been a totemic “sticker shock” for the White House’s tumultuous tariff push.

According to Counterpoint, a global technology market research firm, as much as 80% of Apple’s iPhones intended for US sale are made in China.

The tech giant’s manufacturing profit margins are estimated to be between 40-60%. Typical iPhone prices might have moved closer to $2,000 (£1,528) than $1,000. The other option for Apple could have been to spread the cost across all of its global prices, but would the rest of the world accept paying a Trump tariff tax?

A very public repricing of iPhones has been avoided, but still may occur if, as the White House has said, the previously imposed 20% tariffs on China related to the powerful opioid fentanyl, remain in place.

Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, is a key player here. He can walk into a meeting with both US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. It is not an outlandish prediction to suggest that, if it comes, any peace in the US-China trade war could be brokered by Mr Cook.

That’s based on his deep fundamental role in connecting the two economies. He was hand-selected by Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs for his unrivalled expertise in just-in-time supply logistics.

This is all moving rather quickly now. Weekend reports in the US press claim White House trade hawk Pete Navarro is being sidelined too, in favour of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Navarro was the author of the infamous equation that set so-called reciprocal tariff rates in proportion to the size of a country’s trade surplus with the US, calling it “the sum of all cheating”.

Bessent is now leading negotiations with trade partners seeking to avoid the reapplication of those rates after the 90-day pause.

There is a big question after 10 days of chaos. What is the incentive for other nations to offer much here? The Trump administration is clearly spooked by the bond market reaction to the president’s trade plans, and questions surrounding the safe haven status of US debt for investors.

In trying to stave off effective interest rates on bonds rising to 5%, the US needs deals more than just those in surplus countries.

Indeed this weekend’s broad range of exemptions are in and of themselves an astonishing U-turn on the principle embodied in the notorious tariff chart held up by Trump in the Rose Garden.

Just under a quarter of China’s total exports are now exempt from the 125% tariff, according to Capital Economics.

The consultancy suggests there are other big winners from the exemptions, with 64% of exports to the US from Taiwan, 44% from Malaysia, and just under 30% from both Vietnam and Thailand now also exempt.

The 10% universal tariff is now riddled with exemptions, and the biggest carve outs are for many nations with massive trade surpluses from electronics manufacturing.

The new tariff equation is to give an effective discount from the universal 10% (through exemptions) to those with the biggest surpluses. For example, Taiwan has a $74bn surplus with the US, and Vietnam a $124bn surplus.

This is the exact opposite of the infamous Navarro calculation from last week. In 10 days we’ve gone from the “looters and pillagers” will be hit the hardest, to (apart from China) those with big surpluses getting the biggest exemptions.

Meanwhile an ally such as the UK, which according to US figures has a $12bn deficit – i.e. the US sells more to the UK than the other way round, has a 25% tariff on cars, its biggest goods exports, with number two, medicines, in line for similar charges.

The White House has gone from clearly suggesting there would be no negotiation on the baseline 10% tariffs to offering exemptions to the very products causing the deficit the entire policy was supposed to solve.

This is a lot more than a “row back”. Some have called it the “Art of the Repeal”. The 4D chess has been replaced by someone playing one dimensional checkers, but unable to tell the difference between opposing pieces.

The US is now negotiating with the bond markets, and itself. The rest of the world will just see how this plays out now.

The Indian pot belly – once a badge of prosperity, indulgence and aging respectability – has long been a target of satire and social commentary.

In literature, it quietly signalled comfort or complacency; in films, it became a shorthand for the lazy official, gluttonous uncle, or a corrupt policeman. Cartoons exaggerated it to mock politicians. In rural settings, it was once considered a status symbol – a sign that “this man eats well”.

But what was once dismissed or even celebrated is now raising alarm bells. The obesity crisis in India is ballooning – and the seemingly harmless pot belly may be a far bigger villain than we think.

India had the second-highest number of overweight or obese adults in 2021, with 180 million affected – behind only China. A new Lancet study warns this number could soar to 450 million by 2050, nearly a third of the country’s projected population.

Globally, more than half of all adults and a third of children and adolescents are expected to face the same fate.

At the heart of this issue in India lies the pot belly, or in medical terms, abdominal obesity.

This form of obesity refers to the accumulation of excess fat around the belly and doctors say it’s more than a cosmetic concern. As far back as the 1990s, studies showed a clear link between belly fat and chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Obesity isn’t just abdominal. It appears in different patterns, depending on fat distribution: peripheral obesity affects the hips, thighs, and buttocks, while generalised obesity involves fat spread more evenly across the body.

The numbers on abdominal obesity in India are already troubling. According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) – which, for the first time, measured waist and hip sizes – about 40% of women and 12% of men in India have abdominal obesity.

Abdominal obesity, based on Indian guidelines, means a waist over 90cm (35 inches) for men and 80cm (31 inches) for women. Among women aged 30 to 49, nearly one in two already show signs of it. Urban populations were found to be more affected than rural ones, with high waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratios emerging as a key red flag.

• Indians are getting fatter – and it’s a big problem
• Why are Indian children getting fatter?

So why is belly fat such a big deal?

One reason is insulin resistance – a condition where the body stops responding properly to insulin, the hormone that helps regulate blood sugar. Abdominal fat disrupts how the body uses insulin, making it harder to control blood sugar.

Studies have found South Asians, including Indians, tend to have more body fat than white Caucasians at the same Body Mass Index. (BMI is a simple measure that assesses a person’s weight in relation to their height.)

It’s not just how much fat you have – it’s where it goes. In South Asians, fat tends to collect around the trunk and under the skin, but not always deep in the abdomen as visceral fat.

Though South Asians may have less of the more harmful deep abdominal fat around organs like the liver and pancreas, studies show their larger, less efficient fat cells struggle to store fat under the skin. As a result, excess fat spills into vital organs that regulate metabolism – like the liver and pancreas – raising the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Scientists still don’t fully understand the biological reasons behind the fat distribution patterns. Though numerous genetic studies have been conducted, no single gene has consistently explained this tendency.

One theory offers an evolutionary root. India, for centuries, was racked by famines and chronic food shortages, leaving generations to survive on meagre nutrition.

In such conditions, the human body adapted for survival in extreme scarcity.

The body needed a depot for this energy and the abdomen, being the most expandable area, became the prime storage site. Over time, as food became more plentiful, this fat store continued to grow – eventually to harmful levels.

“It’s a conjectural but plausible evolutionary theory – one that can’t be proven, but makes sense,” says Anoop Misra, who heads Delhi’s Fortis-C-DOC Centre of Excellence for Diabetes, Metabolic Diseases and Endocrinology.

Last year, in a paper doctors belonging to the Indian Obesity Commission redefined obesity guidelines for Asian Indians, moving beyond BMI to better reflect how body fat relates to early health risks.

They created a two-stage clinical system that considers fat distribution, related diseases and physical function.

Stage one involves a high BMI, but without abdominal obesity, metabolic disease, or physical dysfunction. In such cases, lifestyle changes like diet, exercise and sometimes medication are usually enough.

Stage two includes abdominal obesity – the harmful visceral fat – and is often accompanied by health issues like diabetes, knee pain or palpitations. This stage signals higher risk and calls for more intensive management.

This classification guides treatment intensity. Once belly fat appears, early action is key – new weight loss drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide are proving effective at targeting it, doctors say.

“As shocking as it may sound, even people with a normal weight can have dangerous levels of belly fat,” says Dr Misra.

Indian physicians say abdominal obesity is rising due to lifestyle changes – more junk food, takeaways, instant meals and greasy home cooking. Between 2009 and 2019, Cameroon, India and Vietnam saw the fastest growth in per capita sales of ultra-processed foods and beverages, studies found.

So, what needs to be done?

Experts say Indians need tougher lifestyle changes than Western norms recommend. While 150 minutes of weekly exercise may suffice for their European men, their South Asians counterparts need around 250–300 minutes to offset slower metabolism and less efficient fat storage, studies show.

“Our bodies simply aren’t as good at handling excess fat,” says Dr Misra.

In short, the pot belly isn’t just a punchline – it’s a warning sign. And India is sitting on a ticking health time bomb.

This week, The Last of Us returns to our screens – two years after the drama won over critics and fans alike.

But that’s not all the week has in store.

It’s The Apprentice final on BBC One, Alex Garland’s new film Warfare is out, and gaming fans have Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to look forward to.

Read on for what’s coming up this week…

The first season of The Last of Us was haunting, terrifying, and moving in equal measure.

So there’s a lot to live up to when season two kicks off on Monday.

The TV adaptation of the hit video game stars Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal as lead characters Ellie and Joel.

Having dodged zombies and ruthless militia in an arduous journey across America in season one, they are now living in Jackson, Wyoming – but danger is never far away.

I’ve had a sneak preview, and can tell you that the first episode alone is fraught with tension.

And the reviews, so far, have been glowing.

Empire gives it five stars, calling it “television at its peak”, while The Telegraph – which also gives it five stars – says it is “superb”.

A pizza company boss and the owner of an air conditioning firm walk into a boardroom…

Not the start of a bad joke, but something you can actually expect to see in the final of BBC One’s The Apprentice, which takes place on Thursday at 9pm.

There were 18 candidates at the start of season 19. Now, after weeks of tasks, firings and cringe-inducing moments, there are just two.

Anisa Khan and Dean Franklin have one last chance to impress business tycoon Lord Sugar, and to win the £250,000 investment.

Anisa said winning wouldn’t just be for her, but also “a win for people who feel like I represent them as well”.

Meanwhile, Dean said he wanted to make his kids proud: “For them to go into school the next morning and say, “My dad’s won The Apprentice.”

It’s an intense, immersive experience watching Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s latest film Warfare, which plunges you almost immediately into the thick of a US military surveillance mission which goes wrong, in Iraq in 2006.

The film’s ensemble cast includes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3’s Will Poulter and Heartstopper’s Kit Connor. They told the BBC they bonded at a tough military bootcamp, where they learned military jargon, gun safety and were pushed beyond their limits.

The cast also shaved each other’s heads before filming and got shared tattoos afterwards, speaking about how they wanted to mark what had been a “formative” experience, building lasting friendships.

Based on the memories of soldiers on the surveillance mission in Ramadi, an area controlled by Al Qaeda, the cast also includes Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Shōgun’s Cosmo Jarvis, Stranger Things and the forthcoming Beatles biopic’s Joseph Quinn, and Riverdale’s Charles Melton.

Warfare is out in cinemas on Friday.

Gaming. Waiting. Two things that often go hand in hand when it comes to new releases (GTA 6, anyone?).

But one wait comes to an end this week with the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PlayStation 5. First released on Xbox and PC last December, it was one of 2024’s best-reviewed games.

It was praised for its compelling stealth gameplay, puzzling and immersive environments, as well as an uncanny performance from celebrated video game actor Troy Baker in the main role. His portrayal of the world’s luckiest archaeologist even got the seal of approval from original Indy Harrison Ford.

PlayStation fans had to hold out because The Great Circle’s Swedish developer MachineGames is part of ZeniMax, one of the many gaming companies bought up by Microsoft. The formerly bitter rival has softened its stance on exclusivity of late – a move which has upset some Xbox fans but pleased PS5 owners.

Also out this week is Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 2, the concluding part of the Yellowjackets-meets-Stranger-Things narrative adventure from the original makers of the Life is Strange series. There’s no platform-exclusive shenanigans with this one – it lands on PS5, Xbox and PC from Tuesday.

• Krapp’s Last Tape, starring Gary Oldman, opens at York Theatre Royal on Monday
• My Master Builder, starring Ewan McGregor and Elizabeth Debicki, opens at Wyndham’s Theatre on Thursday
• The London International Ska Festival starts on Thursday
• Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, hits cinemas on Friday
• The Penguin Lessons also hits cinemas on Friday
• The Fever, starring Cate Blanchett, drops on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday

A new Universal theme park near Bedford – the first in Europe – was announced to much fanfare earlier this week.

Set to open in 2031, construction is to begin at the 476-acre (1.9-sq-km) site, where attractions are likely to feature James Bond, Paddington and The Lord of the Rings.

But from deciding how many loops to include on a coaster, to making sure even the trees blend in seamlessly with an area’s design, building a dream world is a painstaking task.

To find out what planning lies behind the thrills, and what sort of things we could expect when the new Universal park finally arrives, BBC News spoke to some rollercoaster experts.

Of course, any good theme park needs some good rides – but maybe it’s an understatement to say that’s a tall order.

While “at least two or three iconic rides” are needed, these need not necessarily be the fastest, tallest or most innovative to stand out, explains Andy Sinclair-Harris, creative director at Katapult, which has designed attractions for the likes of Legoland and Alton Towers.

“What is more important is the depth of storytelling,” he says, so that you’re fully immersed in the experience of the ride.

A good example, says Robbie Jones, insights director at Katapult, is a Harry-Potter-themed rollercoaster called Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure, located at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal’s Orlando resort. Riders sit in replicas of Hagrid’s motorbike and zoom through recreations of settings from the popular film series.

“There’s nothing particularly brand new or absolutely amazing about that ride, other than it tells a story amazingly well,” he adds.

If the rumours that there’s going to be a Back to the Future ride at Universal’s UK venture are true, those behind it will be ensuring that the DeLorean time machine is included, he says.

During the brainstorming stage of building a resort, rides are often “developed as storytelling tools” in a “specific genre or world”, says Joseph Bright, CEO at Scruffy Dog, which provides creative project management for theme parks.

While an iconic ride might help to “anchor” a zone of a park, “it’s never developed in isolation” – rather “cohesion is critical [and] every element… must serve the wider guest story”.

Dennis Speigel, founder of International Theme Park Services, says meticulous planning goes into the most immersive rides.

He adds that the size of a rollercoaster is partly dictated by the number of guests its designers hope to get on board – “between 1,500 and 2,000 an hour” at popular parks.

Usually, that means a coaster that is over 3,000ft (914m) long, with the first dip “somewhere in the 150ft (45m) range”.

Mr Speigel says that while an upcoming coaster at Six Flags Qiddiya in Saudi Arabia is set to break records when it sends riders speeding at over 150mph (240 km/h) around the tracks, most coasters today reach between 70-90mph (110-145 km/h) on their first drop.

Once the larger rides are planned out, theme park designers then consider what he describes as “flat rides”, which cater to less thrill-seeking crowds.

“Those are your smaller rides that take people around and around, like a merry-go-round or a monster,” he says. “[They’re] rides that can often be bought off the shelf from a manufacturer.”

When you step foot in a theme park, you’re probably thinking about the rides you’ll be going on – but you might think less about how you get there.

During the design phase, you have to let your imagination run wild, says Mr Sinclair-Harris. “Budget is a thing, but when you have those first initial discussions, you shouldn’t be tempered by anything,” he says.

The “story” of your park is crucial, he adds. “It’s knowing the story, the characters and being true to that world.”

Discussions about potential ride dimensions and manufacturers soon follow, as well as a masterplan, which configures how attractions, pathways and amenities all fit into the space. It often determines how long people will end up queuing for.

An artist’s conception of the Universal UK park depicts a huge lake in middle of what appears to be different themed areas. Far from just looking pretty, it can allow crowds to fan out to multiple rides without congestion forming around one.

Alton Towers has a lake too. Theme park vlogger and fanatic Charlotte Branford – known as Diary of a RollerCoaster Girl – believes it means other visitors often choose to go left around it (to the Wicker Man ride), or right around it (towards the Smiler). She heads to the back of the park to try to avoid the crowds.

At the back of parks designed in this way you’ll often find a show with set times “to try and stop people running around to the back of the park to get to some big attraction”, says Justin Garvanovic, founder of the European Coaster Club, who has been involved in rollercoaster designs.

“Without realising it, they’re trying to make you do roughly what they want you to do when you’re in the park.”

Another tried and tested layout is the “hub and spoke” often seen at Disneyland resorts, says Mr Sinclair-Harris.

“In a sense you’ve got that central gathering point… like the castle in the Magic Kingdom… with different lands like spokes on a wheel, radiating out.”

Universal’s new Epic Universe theme park in Orlando will follow a version of this – allowing you to venture into different lands through portals.

So the stories behind the rollercoasters are intertwined with the story of the theme park layout itself.

Then come the finishing touches – to maintain your sense of being in a futuristic or fantasy world while you’re there.

Trees, artificial rock or even other buildings are often used to obscure unsightly but necessary objects, Mr Sinclair-Harris says. “If you’re in an amazing world with castles and dragons, seeing a telephone pole removes you from that story”.

Even the audio playing out, scent of a park and queue lines are considered because they “play a role in that illusion,” says Mr Bright.

As Mr Garvanovic puts it, “there’s tons of subtle stuff going on in the background” in a well thought-out theme park.

The sign of success, perhaps, is when you barely even notice it.

The celebratory pints have been flowing freely in a Scottish town after a historic pub was saved for the community.

The former Plough Inn in Wigtown was at risk of being turned into flats until local residents stepped in and took it over.

Now it has reopened, providing a major boost for an area which can sometimes feel like “a forgotten place in Scotland”.

Craig Hamnett, who chairs the Wigtown Community Inn community benefit society, said it was a relief not to lose the centuries-old hostelry.

The pub in Wigtown had been in continuous use for more than 200 years.

Its first licence was granted in 1795.

Unfortunately the business closed shortly after the Covid pandemic.

Craig said the prospects had not looked good for it remaining in use as a local bar and gathering place.

“It closed in 2022 and was in good condition, but market conditions meant that there wasn’t much interest in privately purchasing or leasing the pub,” he said.

“Plans were being drawn up to convert it into flats and that would’ve meant being lost as a community asset.”

Originally from Stockport, Craig moved to the town from Edinburgh about seven years ago and got involved in community efforts to save the pub.

“In that time I have seen the ebbs and flows of business but in recent times there has been more closures than openings,” he said.

“I wanted to try to commit time to a project that would help turn that tide and be of a net benefit to the community.”

He said that was not just to see the pub – now The Wigtown Ploughman – succeed but to help “all the local businesses that work so hard to keep the lights on” to benefit from an increased footfall to the town.

“The Machars often feels like a forgotten place in Scotland,” he said.

It has been a long battle but thanks to support from South of Scotland Enterprise the group was able to purchase the building for £330,000 and got the keys on Valentines Day this year.

Thanks to an army of volunteers – and more than £30,000 from a community share offer – it recently reopened its doors to great acclaim.

“The feedback has been great so far, but we know that we’re just at the start of a very long road,” he said.

“Work is under way to get the accommodation ready for the busy season and then we also have the task of renovating the kitchen to ensure we can provide an excellent food offering.”

He said their first couple of weeks had been an “incredible success”.

“Listening to locals saying that this is the first time they’ve been out to a pub for socialising in four years is exactly why we have committed so much time into the project – to bring people together again and rekindle connections,” he said.

“Our hopes for the future is to be open seven days a week, 364 days of the year and to entice people from all over the country to come and visit Wigtown, Scotland’s national book town.

“It’s pretty easy to find us from down south, head north, turn left at Gretna, turn left at Newton Stewart, and the whole of the Machars peninsula awaits you.”

The facility, the community project says, is “more than just a pub”.

The same building will be used as a community hub which they hope to open later this month.

They also intend to announce their first employees soon and bring the accommodation in the building back into use.

“This community-led project is just getting started, and we plan to be here in the heart of Wigtown for generations to come,” said Craig.

The UK government has taken control of British Steel’s plant in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, after it was put at risk of imminent closure.

MPs were called back to Parliament on Saturday from their Easter break to pass an emergency law that handed control of the Chinese-owned site to the government, in order to keep its two blast furnaces operating.

British Steel’s plant in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, employs 2,700 people, about three-quarters of the company’s entire workforce.

It is the last plant in the UK capable of producing virgin steel, which is used in major construction projects like new buildings and railways.

Two huge blast furnaces are used to produce the steel, which has fewer imperfections than the recycled steel made elsewhere in the country.

Were the plant to cease producing virgin steel, the UK would become the only member of the G7 group of leading economies without the ability to make it – a prospect the government views as a risk to the country’s long-term economic security.

The company was founded in 2016 when Tata Steel sold its loss-making long products division in Scunthorpe to private investment firm Greybull Capital for a token £1.

The new owners renamed the business British Steel.

Following a period of financial instability, British Steel was taken over by the government’s insolvency service in 2019 and then acquired by Chinese steel-making firm Jingye the following year.

In late March 2025, Jingye said the plant was losing around £700,000 a day and launched a consultation on its closure.

The government held talks with Jingye aimed at keeping the plant operational.

After these appeared to have largely broken down, emergency legislation was fast-tracked through Parliament in a single day on Saturday – handing control of the plant to the government.

Jingye still owns the site, but the business secretary now has sweeping powers to control management and workers to make sure production continues.

This means British Steel has not been nationalised – which is when a government takes ownership and control of a company.

But Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds acknowledged that public ownership was “the likely option”.

While the government hopes to secure private investment to save the plant, ministers admit there are currently no companies willing to buy it.

The supplies needed to keep the blast furnaces running – coking coal and iron pellets – are running low at the Scunthorpe plant.

This added time pressure to the talks, because once a blast furnace shuts down it is a costly and complex process to restart it.

Unions said the situation was on a “cliff-edge,” while the Community Union described the lack of supplies as an “extreme emergency”.

The government offered to buy the raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running earlier this week, but Jingye did not agree to that proposal.

In the Commons on Saturday, the business secretary said Jingye had wanted “an excessive amount” of money.

He said it had become clear during negotiations that the company intended to “refuse” to buy enough material to keep the furnaces running, and “to cancel and refuse to pay for existing orders”.

“The company would therefore have irrevocably and unilaterally closed down primary steel making at British Steel,” he added.

The emergency law gives the government the ability to order raw materials to keep the furnaces running, and to direct the company’s workforce and board.

The government has told the company’s UK management to keep the site operational, and the new law will ensure that any employees who are sacked by the Chinese owners can be reinstated.

Jingye said the blast furnaces were “no longer financially sustainable,” blaming “highly challenging” market conditions, tariffs and costs associated with transitioning to lower-carbon production techniques.

UK steel production has been falling for several decades and the financial pressures facing the industry were heightened in March when the US imposed a 25% tariff on any steel it imports.

Global over-production of steel has created “a glut of steel on the international market”, according to a UK government briefing on the industry, which has pushed prices down. British manufacturers also face higher costs, particularly on electricity, than elsewhere.

There are 1,160 businesses in the UK steel industry, directly supporting 40,000 other firms across the country, according to government figures.

Tata Steel at Port Talbot in Wales was once the UK’s largest virgin steel producer but it turned off its blast furnace in September 2024, saying it was losing £1.7m a day.

An agreement with the UK government was reached which saw it commit £500m to help the company move to greener forms of steelmaking.

Other steelmakers in the UK include Liberty Steel, Celsa, Marcegaglia and Outokumpu.

Liberty Steel also has a plant in Scunthorpe which is facing closure. More than 120 jobs are at risk, with bosses blaming high energy costs.

In 2023 the UK steel industry contributed £2.3 billion to the UK economy – equivalent to 0.1% of total UK economic output and 1.0% of manufacturing output.

In the same year, the UK produced 5.6 million tonnes of crude steel, or 0.3% of the world’s total. In comparison, China produced more than 1,000 million tonnes, 54% of global production.

The EU produced 126 million tonnes of steel in 2023, 7% of the world’s total. Compared with EU countries, the UK ranked as the eighth largest steel producer, after Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Poland and Belgium.

“Russians are trying to ban everything Ukrainian here: language, and also traditions. Even Ukrainian holidays are forbidden.”

This is the sorrow and fear of a rarely heard voice from within Ukraine – that of someone living in one of the Russian-occupied areas of the country. We are calling her Maria.

As the US leads efforts to negotiate peace in Ukraine, those living under Russian occupation face a brutal, repressive future.

Already, the Kremlin has put in place severe restrictions designed to stamp out Ukrainian identity, including harsh punishments for anyone who dares to disagree.

Now, there are fears that Kyiv could be forced to give up at least some of the territory occupied by Russia as part of a potential ceasefire or peace deal.

Ukrainian officials reject this, but Moscow says that at the very least it wants to fully capture four Ukrainian regions it partly controls – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – in addition to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Due to repression by the Russian authorities, speaking to the media and even your own relatives in occupied territories can be fraught with danger.

The Kremlin has also launched a wide-ranging campaign to force Ukrainians in occupied territories to take Russian passports. Evidence suggests that Ukrainians are being denied healthcare and free movement unless they take up Russian citizenship.

Maria (not her real name) said she was a member of an all-female underground resistance group waging a campaign of peaceful resistance in those territories, mainly by distributing leaflets and newsletters.

In an interview with the BBC’s Today programme, she used a Ukrainian proverb to describe the danger she is facing: “You have fear in your eyes, but your hands are still doing it. Of course it’s scary.”

The BBC cannot reveal her real name or location so as not to put her in danger.

The atmosphere of fear and suspicion is such that when I was trying to contact residents of occupied Mariupol, I was accused of being a Russian journalist.

“You won’t like what I’ve got to say. People like you kill if you tell them the truth,” one person told me via direct message on social media. They claimed to be from the port city, captured by the Russians in May 2022 after a bloody siege that left it in ruins.

Later, I asked some Ukrainian friends if I could speak to their relatives living in occupied areas. All said no – that would be too dangerous.

Sofia (also not her real name) is from a village in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region. It was occupied at the start of the full-scale invasion of 2022.

Sofia is now in the UK but her parents are still in her village and she told me about the care she needs to take when talking to them.

“About a year ago, my parents were searched by the [Russian security service] FSB. They confiscated their phones, accusing them of telling the Ukrainian army about where Russian troops were stationed. That wasn’t true, and later the Russian military told my parents that they had been reported by their neighbours. That’s why I try not to provoke anything like that,” Sofia tells me.

“I have to read between the lines when they tell me about what’s going on.”

And just speaking to them at all is becoming more difficult. Sofia says that her parents are unable even to top up their mobile phones or insure their car because they refuse to take Russian passports.

“It’s getting really awkward living without Russian IDs,” she says.

Yeva, whose name we have also changed, has a sister working at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station.

“Whenever we move from the weather or our children on to our subjects, her tone changes,” Yeva says. “She tells me: ‘You don’t understand!'”

“What I do understand is that being a nuclear power plant worker, her phone is likely to be bugged,” Yeva tells me. She also says that her sister often repeats pro-Russian narratives when speaking to her.

Another friend, Kateryna, tells me that someone she knows in the occupied part of Kherson region was thrown into a punishment cellar for talking to her brother who had been helping the Ukrainian army. “I can’t put them at risk,” Kateryna told me when I asked to be put in touch with her friend.

According to Maria, Russian administrations have been installing surveillance systems to monitor any manifestations of dissent. “They are putting up a lot of CCTV cameras to control everybody, to find all the activists,” she says.

Numerous Ukrainian activists have been killed or disappeared under Russian occupation. According to the Ukrainian rights group Zmina, at least 121 activists, volunteers and journalists have been killed during the full-scale invasion, most of them during its first year.

Prior to the invasion, Russia had drawn up lists of activists to be arrested or killed, the group says.

More recently, Russia-installed authorities have been applying a host of repressive laws against dissenters. They can be penalised for alleged transgressions such as spreading “false information”, “discrediting” the Russian army or supporting “extremism”.

In Crimea alone, 1,279 cases have been launched so far on charges of “discrediting” the Russian armed forces, says the Ukrainian government office for Crimea. According to it, 224 people have been jailed in the occupied Ukrainian region for expressing dissent, most of them members of the indigenous Crimean Tatar community.

Despite the dangers, a number of underground resistance groups are active in occupied parts of Ukraine.

Zla Mavka, which takes its name from a Ukrainian mythical creature, is a non-violent all-female movement mostly focused on distributing posters and leaflets across occupied regions.

In Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia region, partisans have been targeting occupation troops and their transport while the Crimean Tatar group Atesh has been involved in reconnaissance and subversion.

Meanwhile, the Yellow Ribbon movement distributes Ukrainian symbols in occupied territories.

Because of the absence of independent media in occupied parts of Ukraine, it is hard to verify the impact of such activities. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that they have caused significant disruption for occupation forces.

Maria says whole streets are lined with Russian propaganda.

“In city centres, everything is covered with Russian propaganda: billboards with Putin’s face, Putin’s quotes, people they call heroes of the special military operation. There are flags everywhere,” she tells the BBC.

The Kremlin has banned Ukrainian and independent media including the BBC, and propagandists have been despatched from Russia to set up friendly media in the occupied territories. After many professional journalists fled, they have been forced to employ local teenagers to spread Moscow’s narratives.

Pro-Russian propaganda starts early at school, where children are forced to attend classes glorifying the Russian army and join quasi-military groups such as Yunarmia (Youth Army).

One Russian schoolbook even justifies the invasion of Ukraine by falsely portraying it as an aggressive state run by nationalist extremists and manipulated by the West.

Devastating attacks on a camp hosting hundreds of thousands of people who had fled Sudan’s civil war have continued for a third day, residents have told the BBC.

One person in the Zamzam camp described the situation as “extremely catastrophic” while another said things were “dire”.

More than 100 civilians, among them at least 20 children and a medical team, have been killed in a series of assaults that began late last week in Sudan’s western Darfur region, the UN has said.

The attacks – on the city of el-Fasher and two nearby camps – have been blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It has said reports of atrocities were fabricated.

The camps, Zamzam and Abu Shouk, provide temporary homes to more than 700,000 people, many of whom are facing famine-like conditions.

News of the attacks comes on the eve of the second anniversary of the start of the civil war between the RSF and the army.

Contacting the BBC on Sunday morning, one Zamzam resident who works at a community kitchen providing food for those in the camp, said “a large number of young people” had been killed.

“Those who were working in the community kitchen have been killed, and the doctors who were part of the initiative to reopen the hospital were also killed,” Mustafa, 34, said in a WhatsApp audio message.

“My uncle and my cousin were killed. People are wounded, and there is no medicine or hospital to save them – they are dying from bleeding.

“The shelling is still ongoing, and we are expecting more attacks in the morning.”

He added that all routes out of the camp were closed and it was “surrounded from all four directions”.

• BBC finds fear, loss and hope in Sudan’s ruined capital
• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening
• Fear and prayers in Sudan city under siege

Another resident, Wasir, said that “nothing [was] left in Zamzam”.

“A large number of civilians have fled, and we are still trying to leave, but we haven’t succeeded, all the roads are blocked, and we have children with us.

“Death is everywhere. As I speak to you now from inside the trench, there is shelling happening.”

Some camp residents have got out and made the 15km (nine mile) journey to el-Fasher, according to North Darfur’s Health Minister Ibrahim Khater.

“I am observing many people walking from Zamzam – mostly children, women and the elderly,” he said in a message to the BBC.

“Some were injured, tired and saying they lost their family – dead on the streets. The situation is catastrophic.”

The UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said she was “appalled and gravely alarmed” by reports from Darfur.

“This represents yet another deadly and unacceptable escalation in a series of brutal attacks on displaced people and aid workers,” she added in a statement.

The US State Department also said it was “deeply alarmed by reports of attacks by the RSF on Zamzam and Abu Shouk”, adding: “We condemn the RSF’s attacks on the most vulnerable of civilians.”

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who is hosting a conference on Sudan on Tuesday, described the reports of “indiscriminate RSF attacks” as “shocking”.

Aid organisation Relief International said nine of its workers “were mercilessly killed including doctors, referral drivers and a team leader” in the attack on Zamzam.

The charity, which said it was the last provider of critical health services in the camp, alleged RSF fighters were to blame.

“We understand that this was a targeted attack on all health infrastructure in the region to prevent access to healthcare for internally displaced people.

“We are horrified that one of our clinics was also part of this attack – along with other health facilities in el-Fasher.”

Kashif Shafique, the charity’s Sudan director, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that what happened was not random.

Relaying what two surviving female members of staff had described, he said RSF fighters went into a safety bunker and shot the nine victims in the head and chest.

In a statement released on Saturday, the RSF said it was not responsible for attacks on civilians and that scenes of killing in Zamzam were staged to discredit its forces.

Assessing satellite images, a team of specialists at Yale University in the US said on Friday that “this attack conservatively represents the most significant ground-based attack on Zamzam… since fighting erupted in the el-Fasher area in spring of 2024”.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab said it had observed that “arson attacks have burned multiple structures and significant areas of the camp in the center, south, and southeast portions of the camp”.

The war – a power struggle between the army and the RSF – has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, forcing more than 12 million people from their homes and pushing communities into hunger.

It began on 15 April 2023, after the leaders of the army and RSF fell out over the political future of the country.

El-Fasher is the last major town in Darfur under army control and has been under siege by the RSF for a year.

• The children living between starvation and death in Darfur
• Civil war survivors tell of killings and rapes
• Thousands flee fresh ethnic killings in Darfur
• ‘I saw bodies dumped in Darfur mass grave’

Upstairs Downstairs co-creator and actress Jean Marsh has died aged 90, her agent has confirmed.

The British screen and stage star won an Emmy in 1975 for her portrayal of hard-bitten but ultimately kind-hearted maid Rose Buck in the TV drama about class in Edwardian England.

Marsh also had roles in Hollywood films including Cleopatra, Willow and Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy and on TV in Doctor Who.

In a statement, Marsh’s friend the film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg paid tribute to her as “wise and funny… very pretty and kind, and talented both as an actress and writer”, adding she died “peacefully in bed looked after by one of her very loving carers”.

Marsh came up with the idea of a period drama involving the servants of a wealthy family while house sitting in France with her friend Dame Eileen Atkins, she later told the New York Times.

She went on to co-create the series, which told the story of the Bellamy family and their servant staff who lived underneath them, alongside John Hawkesworth and John Whitney.

The 1970s ITV series was a critical and popular success and also found a fond audience in the United States, where it aired on PBS.

Upstairs Downstairs is said to have partly inspired the Downton Abbey series and was later reimagined by the BBC in 2010. Marsh became the only original cast member to return, portraying the same role in five episodes.

Asked by the Daily Telegraph in 2010 why viewers appeared to be so interested in master-and-servant dramas, Marsh said: “We still seem to want it because if you rose out of your class, you knew you had done well. And we like it because the past is not as worrying as the news.”

She was later forced to scale back her acting commitments following a stroke.

Other notable TV credits during her long career included roles in The Twilight Zone and Grantchester. Her stage credits include plays by Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw.

Marsh, who was married for five years to Dr Who actor Jon Pertwee, also co-created the BBC costume drama The House of Elliott in 1991.

In 2012, she was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to drama.

In his statement, Lindsay-Hogg described almost daily phone conversations with Marsh over the past 40 years. She was, he said, an “instinctively empathetic person who was loved by everyone who met her”.

Counter-terrorism police are leading the investigation into an attack on three prison officers by Hashem Abedi, one of the men responsible for the Manchester Arena bombing.

The Prison Service said three officers have been treated in hospital after Saturday’s attack at HMP Frankland in County Durham, as the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) said the life-threatening injuries included burns and stab wounds.

Abedi, 28, who was jailed for life for helping his brother carry out the 2017 suicide bombing, threw hot cooking oil over the officers and used “home made weapons” to stab them, the POA said.

The Ministry of Justice said there will be a full review.

The female officer was discharged by 16:00 BST on Saturday. Her two male colleagues suffered “severe stab wounds” and remain in hospital where their conditions have “stabilised”, Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the POA, said on Sunday.

Saturday’s attack took place in a separation centre at HMP Frankland where Abedi has been a long-term inmate.

That centre, which holds fewer than 10 inmates, is used to house prisoners regarded as the most dangerous and extremist.

Fairhurst said separation centres are “very well resourced – for obvious reasons” but “to allow that type of prisoner to access the kitchen and use utensils that can be used as weapons… [that policy] needs to be removed immediately”.

“We are demanding that with immediate effect they restrict and remove cooking facilities from separation centres,” he said.

“We are worried about the knock-on effects and copycat incidents.”

The separation model was introduced in 2017 with the aim of separating and controlling prisoners who present a risk that cannot be managed in a mainstream location, according to the Ministry of Justice.

Fairhurst, who is due to visit the prison on Monday, told the BBC he was “appalled” that offenders in these locations were being “allowed the same privileges as normal location prisoners”.

“A separation centre is there for a reason,” he said. “All we need to do with those types of prisoners is give them their basic entitlements.

“Separation centres should be for control and containment because these people are not going to change their ideologies and they are intent on inflicting harm on everyone they come into contact with.”

Later on Sunday, Fairhurst added the POA will be writing to Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood to request an urgent meeting around the levels of protection for staff working with these category of prisoners.

He said the organisation had been asking for “several years” for the government and employers to provide stab-proof vests for frontline staff.

“Now is the time to issue staff with the appropriate levels of protection they need when dealing with prisoners who pose such a risk and such a threat,” he said.

A prison officer at HMP Frankland told BBC News “staff are shaken by what’s happened”.

“You can’t help asking yourself why you do this job when something like this happens.”

Abedi’s brother Salman Abedi carried out the Manchester Arena suicide bombing which killed 22 people.

Hashem Abedi was found guilty in 2020 of 22 counts of murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion likely to endanger life and sentenced to a minimum term of at least 55 years before he could be considered for parole.

The sentence was a record for a determinate prison term.

In 2022, Abedi, along with two others, was found guilty of a previous attack on two prison officers at Belmarsh Prison in south-east London.

A sentence of three years and 10 months for this attack was added to his previous minimum term.

Counter-terrorism policing (CTP)’s Cdr Dom Murphy said: “Given the nature of the incident [on Saturday], it has been agreed that CTP North East will lead the investigation, supported by Durham Constabulary.

“This is an ongoing investigation which is in its early stages, and we are working hard to establish the facts. Therefore, we are unable to comment further at this time.”

Following the incident, former prison governor John Podmore told the BBC this incident was a “catastrophic security failure” as he underlined this unit holds the “most violent and dangerous” offenders.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “I am appalled by the attack of three brave officers at HMP Frankland today. My thoughts are with them and their families.

“The police are now investigating. I will be pushing for the strongest possible punishment. Violence against our staff will never be tolerated.”

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick called the attack “extremely concerning”.

“There are serious concerns about the prison leadership’s ability to contain the threat from Islamist extremist inmates,” he said.

“This deeply serious security failure must be a turning point,” he added as he referenced a previous social media post of his titled “Britain’s prisons are being overrun by Islamist gangs”.

A spokesperson for the Prison Service said violence in prisons “will not be tolerated”.

“We will always push for the strongest punishment for attacks on our hardworking staff,” they said.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said on Sunday their thoughts are with the two officers who remain in hospital.

“There will be a full review into how this attack was able to happen, alongside the separate police inquiry,” the spokesperson added.

“The government will do whatever it takes to keep our hardworking staff safe.”

More than three million children around the world are thought to have died in 2022 as a result of infections that are resistant to antibiotics, according to a study by two leading experts in child health.

Children in Africa and South East Asia were found to be most at risk.

Antimicrobial resistance – known as AMR – develops when the microbes that cause infections evolve in such a way that antibiotic drugs no longer work.

It has been identified as one of the biggest public health threats facing the world’s population.

A new study now reveals the toll that AMR is taking on children.

Using data from multiple sources, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, the report’s authors have calculated there were more than three million child deaths in 2022 linked to drug-resistant infections.

Experts say this new study highlights a more than tenfold increase in AMR-related infections in children in just three years.

The number could have been made worse by the impact of the Covid pandemic.

Antibiotics are used to treat or prevent a huge range of bacterial infections – everything from skin infections to pneumonia.

They are also sometimes given as a precaution to prevent, rather than treat, an infection – for example if someone is having an operation or receiving chemotherapy treatment for cancer.

Antibiotics have no impact on viral infections, though – illnesses such as the common cold, flu or Covid.

But some bacteria have now evolved resistance to some drugs, due to their overuse and inappropriate use, while the production of new antibiotics – a lengthy and costly process – has slowed right down.

The report’s lead authors, Doctor Yanhong Jessika Hu of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia and Professor Herb Harwell of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, point to a significant growth in the use of antibiotics that are meant to only be held back for the most serious infections.

Between 2019 and 2021 the use of “watch antibiotics”, drugs with a high risk of resistance, increased by 160% in South East Asia and 126% in Africa.

Over the same period, “reserve antibiotics” – last-resort treatments for severe, multidrug-resistant infections – rose by 45% in South East Asia and 125% in Africa.

The authors warn that if bacteria develop resistance to these antibiotics, there will be few, if any, alternatives for treating multidrug-resistant infections.

Prof Harwell is presenting the findings at the Congress of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Vienna later this month.

“AMR is a global problem. It affects everyone. We did this work really to focus on the disproportionate way in which AMR affects children,” he said ahead of the event.

“We estimate three million deaths of children worldwide associated with antimicrobial resistance.”

The WHO describes AMR as one of the most serious global health threats we face, but speaking from Vienna, Prof Harwell warns that there are no easy answers.

“It’s a multi-faceted problem that extends into all aspects of medicine and really, human life,” he said.

“Antibiotics are ubiquitous around us, they end up in our food and the environment and so coming up with a single solution is not easy.”

The best way to avoid a resistant infection is to avoid infection altogether, which means higher levels of immunisation, water sanitation and hygiene are needed, he adds.

“There’s going to be more antibiotics use because there’s more people who need them, but we need to make sure that they are used appropriately and the correct medicines are used.”

Dr Lindsey Edwards, a senior lecturer in microbiology at King’s College London, said the new study “marks a significant and alarming increase compared to previous data”.

“These findings should serve as a wake-up call for global health leaders. Without decisive action, AMR could undermine decades of progress in child health, particularly in the world’s most vulnerable regions.”

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has said he and his family had to evacuate his official residence after it was set ablaze by a suspected arsonist.

The Democrat, often touted as a future White House contender, said he woke up in the middle of the night to authorities banging on the door of the home as a fire spread.

“Thank God no one was injured and the fire was extinguished,” Shapiro said in a statement on X on Sunday morning.

The governor and state authorities say the fire was the act of an arsonist, though no arrests have been announced. No one was injured, Shapiro added.

The fire happened after Shapiro and his family celebrated the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover at the Harrisburg home in the state capital.

State authorities said while the blaze was extinguished, it caused “a significant amount of damage to a portion of the residence”.

The governor and his family were in a different part of the brick home when the fire was set, police said.

The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire worked to put out the blaze while police evacuated Shapiro and his family, the governor said.

Authorities are offering a $10,000 (£7,600) reward for information that leads to any arrest in the case.

Shapiro and his wife, Lori, have four children together: Sophia, Jonah, Max and Reuben.

The governor was considered as a possible running mate for former Vice-President Kamala Harris during her run for president in 2024. Instead, she chose former Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

The Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence, in Harrisburg, is a 29,000 sq ft Georgian-style home from 1968 that has housed eight governors.

Shapiro has served as Pennsylvania governor since 2023, after working as the state’s attorney general.

A man who was mistakenly deported from the state of Maryland to a mega-jail in El Salvador is “alive and secure”, a US official has told a judge.

The update on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s condition came days after the US Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration should facilitate his release and return to the US.

“It is my understanding, based on official reporting from our embassy in San Salvador, that Abrego Garcia is being held in the Terrorism Confinement Centre in El Salvador,” State Department official Michael Kozak said.

President Donald Trump is due to sit down on Monday with his counterpart from El Salvador, where he has sent more than 200 migrants who he alleges are gang members.

The US government has conceded Mr Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error”, though it also claims he is a member of the MS-13 gang, something his lawyer denies.

He was one of the 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans the Trump administration deported last month to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Centre (Cecot) under an arrangement between the two countries.

“He is alive and secure in that facility,” Mr Kozak said on Saturday.

An immigration judge had granted Mr Garcia, a Salvadoran, legal protection from deportation in 2019.

Trump’s administration fought against helping Mr Garcia return to the US, and argued Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis had exceeded her authority when she ordered the action.

However the US Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, weighed in on the case this week and unanimously backed the order to help facilitate his release.

On Friday, Judge Xinis directed the Trump administration to provide her with daily updates on what steps were being taken to bring Mr Garcia back to the US.

In court documents, Mr Garcia’s lawyers accused the US government of trying to “delay, obfuscate and flout court orders, while a man’s life and safety is at risk”.

Mr Garcia, 29, entered the US from El Salvador illegally as a teenager. In 2019, he was arrested with three other men in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities.

He was subsequently granted protection from deportation on the grounds that he might be at risk of persecution from local gangs in his home country.

Trump told reporters this week that if the Supreme Court said “bring somebody back, I would do that”.

“I respect the Supreme Court,” he said.

His meeting with El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele is due to take place at the White House on Monday.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he was looking forward to it and thanked Bukele for accepting “some of the most violent alien enemies of the World” – referring to those being deported as “barbarians”.

“Their future is up to President B and his Government,” Trump added. “They will never threaten or menace our Citizens again!”

Chinese officials are calling on US President Donald Trump to “completely cancel” his so-called reciprocal tariffs, as a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies grinds on.

This week, Trump announced a 90-day pause on a host of global tariffs he had planned, but increased levies on Chinese imports to 145%.

“We urge the US to take a big step to correct its mistakes, completely cancel the wrong practice of ‘reciprocal tariffs’ and return to the right path of mutual respect,” China’s commerce ministry said in a statement.

The Trump administration seemed ready to offer a concession on Friday by announcing that some electronic products – including those produced in China – would be exempt.

But US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told ABC News on Sunday that such exemptions would only be temporary.

He said the administration planned to impose such levies in a separate “semiconductor tariff”, which he said would be announced at a later date.

“We need to have these things made in America,” Lutnick said.

President Trump chimed in on social media, saying there was no exemption for these products and called such reports false. Instead, he said that “they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket'”.

Trump added: “We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.”

The comments inject uncertainty into the just-announced tariff exemptions for technology products such as smartphones, computers and semiconductors.

• Trump’s iPhone olive branch is a significant trade war retreat
• Trump’s changing tariffs leave shoppers feeling paralysed

The Chinese commerce ministry had called the exemptions a “small step” by the US, and said that Beijing was “evaluating the impact” of the move.

But the suggestion by Trump administration officials of plans for future levies may dampen hopes of a thaw in the two rivals’ protectionist posture.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was asked on Sunday whether there were any plans for Trump to speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

“Right now we don’t have any plans on that,” he said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Trump imposed a tariff amounting to 54% on imports of products from China at the beginning of April, before escalating to the current 145% rate.

In its own tit-for-tat tariffs, China imposed levies of 34% on US goods, before increasing it to 84% and then 125%, which took effect on Saturday.

In announcing its latest tariffs, China’s commerce ministry said last week that it would “fight to the end” if the US “insists on provoking a tariff war or trade war”.

Late on Saturday, while travelling to Miami, Florida, Trump said he would give more details of the exemptions at the start of next week.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• US coffee shops worried about bitter price hike after tariffs

The White House has argued that it is using tariffs as a negotiating tactic to extract more favourable trade terms from other countries.

Trump has said his policy will redress unfairness in the global trading system, as well as bring jobs and factories back to the US.

However, his interventions have seen massive fluctuations in the stock market and raised fears of a decrease in global trade that could have a knock-on effect on jobs and individual economies.

At least 34 people have been killed and 117 injured, including 15 children, after a Russian attack on the centre of Sumy, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Two Iskander-variant ballistic missiles struck at around 10:15 local time (08:15 BST), both hitting the area around Sumy State University and its congress centre.

Images and videos of the aftermath show bloodied bodies scattered in the streets around the impact of the missiles. At least two children were killed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said among the injured was a girl born this year, adding that medics were doing “everything they can” to save as many lives as possible.

“The strike hit right in the heart of the city on Palm Sunday,” he said in his evening video message. “Only completely deranged scum can do something like this.”

Moscow has not yet publicly commented on the attack.

Ukrainian authorities told the BBC that 20 buildings were damaged, including four educational institutions, as well as cafes, shops and five apartment buildings. Ten cars and trams were also hit.

Zelensky called for a “tough” response from other nations, adding that “talks have never stopped ballistic missiles and air bombs”.

“Russia wants exactly this kind of terror and is dragging out this war. Without pressure on the aggressor, peace is impossible,” he said.

The university’s congress centre is often used for children’s classes, according to BBC Ukrainian, with local residents saying that the space is an “educational hub for the entire city” and “very actively rented out for various courses, clubs, and master classes”.

Officials in Sumy have told the BBC that the missiles were packed with cluster munitions, which can kill indiscriminately over a wide area.

They have caused burning vehicles and bent trees where the deaths seem to have been concentrated.

Nataliia, who gave only her first name, had been taking her child and other children to a shelter when the second strike hit her car.

“If we hadn’t moved to the shelter on time we would have been in the car and we would be dead,” she told the BBC.

Svitlana Smirnova, 51, told the BBC she had run for shelter when the strike took place, after attending church with her friends on Palm Sunday.

“A friend of mine was injured in a bus which was hit here. She is seriously injured, she is in the hospital, was operated on, she is still unconscious. She was riding with her son who was also injured,” she said.

Sunday’s strikes have been widely condemned by world leaders.

Keith Kellogg, the US special envoy to Ukraine, said the attack “crosses any line of decency” and was why US President Donald Trump “is working hard to end this war”.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has also condemned the attack as “horrific”.

“President Zelensky has shown his commitment to peace, President Putin must now agree to a full and immediate ceasefire without conditions – as Ukraine has done,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the Sumy strikes highlighted the urgent need to impose a ceasefire on Russia.

“Everyone knows: this war was initiated by Russia alone. And today, it is clear that Russia alone chooses to continue it – with blatant disregard for human lives, international law, and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump,” the French President posted on X.

Both Starmer and Macron have been working together on plans for a so-called “coalition of the willing” to enforce any peace deal in Ukraine.

The attack comes after US envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday.

The Kremlin said the meeting lasted more than four hours and focused on “aspects of a Ukrainian settlement”. The meeting, Witkoff’s third with Putin this year, was described by Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev as “productive”.

Well, well, well.

In a US customs messaging note quietly slipped out in the early hours of Saturday, a series of numbers were listed as exempt from the 125% tariff on goods entering the country from China.

The code “8517.13.00.00” means very little to most of the world, but in the US customs list it represents smartphones.

The inclusion meant the number one Chinese export to America by value last year was exempted from the import taxes, alongside other electronic devices and components, including semiconductors, solar cells and memory cards.

In the context of the US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just days ago announcing that part of the point of escalating tariffs on China was to bring back iPhone production to the US, this was a stunning about-turn.

The US has now excluded the single biggest Chinese export, and certainly the most high-profile finished good from tariffs, without publicly announcing it at first.

It is worth considering what would have happened in the absence of this exemption.

The effect of 125% tariffs on Apple’s Zhengzhou manufacturing facility in eastern China would have started to show in weeks at most American Apple stores. It would have been a totemic “sticker shock” for the White House’s tumultuous tariff push.

According to Counterpoint, a global technology market research firm, as much as 80% of Apple’s iPhones intended for US sale are made in China.

The tech giant’s manufacturing profit margins are estimated to be between 40-60%. Typical iPhone prices might have moved closer to $2,000 (£1,528) than $1,000. The other option for Apple could have been to spread the cost across all of its global prices, but would the rest of the world accept paying a Trump tariff tax?

A very public repricing of iPhones has been avoided, but still may occur if, as the White House has said, the previously imposed 20% tariffs on China related to the powerful opioid fentanyl, remain in place.

Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, is a key player here. He can walk into a meeting with both US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. It is not an outlandish prediction to suggest that, if it comes, any peace in the US-China trade war could be brokered by Mr Cook.

That’s based on his deep fundamental role in connecting the two economies. He was hand-selected by Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs for his unrivalled expertise in just-in-time supply logistics.

This is all moving rather quickly now. Weekend reports in the US press claim White House trade hawk Pete Navarro is being sidelined too, in favour of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Navarro was the author of the infamous equation that set so-called reciprocal tariff rates in proportion to the size of a country’s trade surplus with the US, calling it “the sum of all cheating”.

Bessent is now leading negotiations with trade partners seeking to avoid the reapplication of those rates after the 90-day pause.

There is a big question after 10 days of chaos. What is the incentive for other nations to offer much here? The Trump administration is clearly spooked by the bond market reaction to the president’s trade plans, and questions surrounding the safe haven status of US debt for investors.

In trying to stave off effective interest rates on bonds rising to 5%, the US needs deals more than just those in surplus countries.

Indeed this weekend’s broad range of exemptions are in and of themselves an astonishing U-turn on the principle embodied in the notorious tariff chart held up by Trump in the Rose Garden.

Just under a quarter of China’s total exports are now exempt from the 125% tariff, according to Capital Economics.

The consultancy suggests there are other big winners from the exemptions, with 64% of exports to the US from Taiwan, 44% from Malaysia, and just under 30% from both Vietnam and Thailand now also exempt.

The 10% universal tariff is now riddled with exemptions, and the biggest carve outs are for many nations with massive trade surpluses from electronics manufacturing.

The new tariff equation is to give an effective discount from the universal 10% (through exemptions) to those with the biggest surpluses. For example, Taiwan has a $74bn surplus with the US, and Vietnam a $124bn surplus.

This is the exact opposite of the infamous Navarro calculation from last week. In 10 days we’ve gone from the “looters and pillagers” will be hit the hardest, to (apart from China) those with big surpluses getting the biggest exemptions.

Meanwhile an ally such as the UK, which according to US figures has a $12bn deficit – i.e. the US sells more to the UK than the other way round, has a 25% tariff on cars, its biggest goods exports, with number two, medicines, in line for similar charges.

The White House has gone from clearly suggesting there would be no negotiation on the baseline 10% tariffs to offering exemptions to the very products causing the deficit the entire policy was supposed to solve.

This is a lot more than a “row back”. Some have called it the “Art of the Repeal”. The 4D chess has been replaced by someone playing one dimensional checkers, but unable to tell the difference between opposing pieces.

The US is now negotiating with the bond markets, and itself. The rest of the world will just see how this plays out now.

US President Donald Trump is in “excellent cognitive and physical health”, says his White House physician.

In the first annual physical of his second presidential term at a Washington DC-area hospital, Trump was also found to have scarring “on the right ear from a gunshot wound”, after an assassination attempt last July.

“President Trump remains in excellent health, exhibiting robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and general physical function,” his doctor, Captain Sean Barbabella, said in a memo.

At 78, Trump was the oldest president to take office in January, though his predecessor, Joe Biden, was older at 82 by the time he left.

As a part of Friday’s nearly five-hour medical examination at the Walter Reed hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, Trump received several blood tests, a cardiac examination and ultrasounds, said his doctor, a US Navy emergency physician who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“His active lifestyle continues to contribute significantly to his well-being,” Dr Barbabella wrote in the memo released by the White House on Sunday.

“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the Commander-in-Chief and Head of State.”

The president received neurological tests on his mental status, nerves, motor and sensory function and reflexes and showed no signs of depression or anxiety, according to the memo.

Trump was also given the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and scored 30 out of 30, said Dr Barbabella. The test is commonly used to detect cognitive decline and early signs of dementia and has tasks such as naming animals, drawing a clock and repeating words back five minutes later.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said he “got every answer right” on the cognitive test.

“Overall, I felt I was in very good shape,” Trump said. “A good heart, a good soul, a very good soul.”

He added that doctors had given him “a little bit” of advice on lifestyle changes to improve his health, though he did not provide details.

Dr Barbabella also said Trump had “minor sun damage” and a few “benign skin lesions”.

The president takes several medications to control his cholesterol – Rosuvastatin and Ezetimibe – as well as Aspirin for cardiac prevention and Mometasone cream for a skin condition, said the memo.

Trump’s cardiac examination showed “no abnormalities”, wrote Dr Barbabella.

The examination noted the president’s medical history of “well-controlled hypercholesterolemia”, a condition which can increase a patient’s risk of a heart attack.

Other conditions noted in his medical history included a past Covid infection, rosacea, which is a skin condition often causing redness in the face, and a benign colon polyp.

The president weighs 224lb (101kg) and stands 6ft 2.5in tall, according to the records from Dr Barbabella. Trump has shed some pounds since February 2019, when he weighed 243lb.

Under the Body Mass Index calculator, he would currently be categorised within the overweight range, and not obese.

The memo noted that the president’s “joints and muscles have a full range of motion”, while crediting his good health to an active lifestyle, including “frequent victories in golf events”.

It is the first medical report on Trump released to the public since a gunman tried to kill him at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, grazing his ear with a bullet.

At the time, Trump’s former White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, released a report saying his injuries from the incident were superficial.

During Trump’s first term in office, a White House doctor said he was in good health but needed to lose weight and exercise.

On the campaign trail, Trump frequently attacked his rival, Biden, over his cognitive and physical health.

After a poor debate performance last year against Trump, Biden declined to commit to taking a cognitive test, which he said he had not undergone while in office.

Bangladeshi authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the British MP and former Labour minister Tulip Siddiq.

The country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has been investigating allegations Siddiq illegally received land as part of its wider probe of the regime of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed as prime minister in August.

The Hampstead and Highgate MP, who quit as economic secretary to the Treasury in January, was named in the arrest warrant alongside more than 50 others.

Lawyers acting for Siddiq denied the charges, which they said were “politically motivated”.

The ACC had not presented any evidence or informed Siddiq about an arrest warrant, the lawyers added.

The UK lists Bangladesh as a 2B extradition country – meaning clear evidence must be presented before ministers and judges make a decision.

The ACC is examining claims Sheikh Hasina and her family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh.

The investigation is based on a series of allegations made by Bobby Hajjaj, a political opponent of Hasina.

Court documents seen by the BBC show Hajjaj has accused Siddiq of helping to broker a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of a new nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

In a statement seen by the BBC, Siddiq’s lawyers Stephenson Harwood said: “The allegations are completely false and have been dealt with in writing by Siddiq’s lawyers.

“The ACC has not responded to Siddiq or put any allegations to her directly or through her lawyers.

“Siddiq knows nothing about a hearing in Dhaka relating to her and she has no knowledge of any arrest warrant that is said to have been issued.

“To be clear, there is no basis at all for any charges to be made against her, and there is absolutely no truth in any allegation that she received a plot of land in Dhaka through illegal means.

“She has never had a plot of land in Bangladesh, and she has never influenced any allocation of plots of land to her family members or anyone else.

“No evidence has been provided by the ACC to support this or any other allegation made against Siddiq, and it is clear to us that the charges are politically motivated.”

Before resigning, Siddiq had referred herself to the PM’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus when the corruption allegations first surfaced.

Sir Laurie said in his report that he had “not identified evidence of improprieties”.

But he added it was “regrettable” that Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt Sheikh Hasina, the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh and leader of Awami League party.

ACC chairman Mohammad Abdul Momen has previously told the BBC the allegations “are by no means ‘targeted and baseless'” and its investigation was “based on documentary evidence of corruption”.

“Tulip Siddiq must not shy away from the court proceedings in Bangladesh.

“I would welcome Siddiq come and defend her case and with the best possible legal support accompanying her,” he added.

He also rejected her lawyer’s claims that the ACC was interfering in UK politics, adding: “ACC briefing to the media is a regular phenomenon, it is delivered professionally and with all accuracy.”

A high school student from Wisconsin killed his parents as part of a larger plot to assassinate US President Donald Trump, the FBI has said.

Nikita Casap, 17, has been charged with the killing of his mother, Tatiana Casap, 35, and his stepfather Donald Mayer, 51, who were found dead at their home on 28 February.

A newly unsealed search warrant also alleges that the suspect’s phone contained material relating to a neo-Nazi group called the Order of Nine Angles and praise for Adolf Hitler.

Investigators also discovered antisemitic writings in which the accused allegedly detailed his plans to kill Trump as a part of a broader goal to overthrow the government, according to the court document.

The suspect is accused of first-degree intentional homicide and seven other felony counts, including hiding a corpse and identity theft.

The parents were found dead when local officials visited their home in the village of Waukesha, near Milwaukee, after the boy failed to attend school for two weeks.

Mr Mayer had died from a gunshot wound to the head, while Ms Casap died from multiple gunshot wounds on or about 11 February, according to a criminal complaint concerning the teenager.

The same day their bodies were discovered, the defendant was pulled over by police in the state of Kansas while driving a 2018 Volkswagen Atlas belonging to Mr Mayer, investigators said.

In the car was Mr Mayer’s Smith & Wesson .357 pistol, four credit cards belonging to the couple, “multiple pieces” of valuable jewelry, a pried-open safe and $14,000 (£10,700) in currency, most of which was inside a Bible, said the criminal complaint.

In writings found by investigators, the suspect expressed white supremacist beliefs and called for Trump’s assassination to start a political revolution, according to the search warrant.

The alleged double murder “appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carrying out his plan”, investigators wrote.

The court documents allege the suspect was speaking with people in Russia about plans to kill his parents.

Authorities said the teenager paid for a drone and explosives to use in an attack – and had plans to escape to Ukraine.

“He was in touch with other parties about his plan to kill the president and overthrow the government of the Unites States,” investigators wrote.

The suspect had a preliminary court hearing on 9 April. He has not entered a plea to the charges.

He is next due to appear in court for an arraignment – where he will be formally given the charges against him – on 7 May, according to the Waukesha County Court. He is being held on a $1m (£764,000) bond.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has said he and his family had to evacuate his official residence after it was set ablaze by a suspected arsonist.

The Democrat, often touted as a future White House contender, said he woke up in the middle of the night to authorities banging on the door of the home as a fire spread.

“Thank God no one was injured and the fire was extinguished,” Shapiro said in a statement on X on Sunday morning.

The governor and state authorities say the fire was the act of an arsonist, though no arrests have been announced. No one was injured, Shapiro added.

The fire happened after Shapiro and his family celebrated the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover at the Harrisburg home in the state capital.

State authorities said while the blaze was extinguished, it caused “a significant amount of damage to a portion of the residence”.

The governor and his family were in a different part of the brick home when the fire was set, police said.

The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire worked to put out the blaze while police evacuated Shapiro and his family, the governor said.

Authorities are offering a $10,000 (£7,600) reward for information that leads to any arrest in the case.

Shapiro and his wife, Lori, have four children together: Sophia, Jonah, Max and Reuben.

The governor was considered as a possible running mate for former Vice-President Kamala Harris during her run for president in 2024. Instead, she chose former Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

The Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence, in Harrisburg, is a 29,000 sq ft Georgian-style home from 1968 that has housed eight governors.

Shapiro has served as Pennsylvania governor since 2023, after working as the state’s attorney general.

The Indian pot belly – once a badge of prosperity, indulgence and aging respectability – has long been a target of satire and social commentary.

In literature, it quietly signalled comfort or complacency; in films, it became a shorthand for the lazy official, gluttonous uncle, or a corrupt policeman. Cartoons exaggerated it to mock politicians. In rural settings, it was once considered a status symbol – a sign that “this man eats well”.

But what was once dismissed or even celebrated is now raising alarm bells. The obesity crisis in India is ballooning – and the seemingly harmless pot belly may be a far bigger villain than we think.

India had the second-highest number of overweight or obese adults in 2021, with 180 million affected – behind only China. A new Lancet study warns this number could soar to 450 million by 2050, nearly a third of the country’s projected population.

Globally, more than half of all adults and a third of children and adolescents are expected to face the same fate.

At the heart of this issue in India lies the pot belly, or in medical terms, abdominal obesity.

This form of obesity refers to the accumulation of excess fat around the belly and doctors say it’s more than a cosmetic concern. As far back as the 1990s, studies showed a clear link between belly fat and chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Obesity isn’t just abdominal. It appears in different patterns, depending on fat distribution: peripheral obesity affects the hips, thighs, and buttocks, while generalised obesity involves fat spread more evenly across the body.

The numbers on abdominal obesity in India are already troubling. According to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) – which, for the first time, measured waist and hip sizes – about 40% of women and 12% of men in India have abdominal obesity.

Abdominal obesity, based on Indian guidelines, means a waist over 90cm (35 inches) for men and 80cm (31 inches) for women. Among women aged 30 to 49, nearly one in two already show signs of it. Urban populations were found to be more affected than rural ones, with high waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratios emerging as a key red flag.

• Indians are getting fatter – and it’s a big problem
• Why are Indian children getting fatter?

So why is belly fat such a big deal?

One reason is insulin resistance – a condition where the body stops responding properly to insulin, the hormone that helps regulate blood sugar. Abdominal fat disrupts how the body uses insulin, making it harder to control blood sugar.

Studies have found South Asians, including Indians, tend to have more body fat than white Caucasians at the same Body Mass Index. (BMI is a simple measure that assesses a person’s weight in relation to their height.)

It’s not just how much fat you have – it’s where it goes. In South Asians, fat tends to collect around the trunk and under the skin, but not always deep in the abdomen as visceral fat.

Though South Asians may have less of the more harmful deep abdominal fat around organs like the liver and pancreas, studies show their larger, less efficient fat cells struggle to store fat under the skin. As a result, excess fat spills into vital organs that regulate metabolism – like the liver and pancreas – raising the risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Scientists still don’t fully understand the biological reasons behind the fat distribution patterns. Though numerous genetic studies have been conducted, no single gene has consistently explained this tendency.

One theory offers an evolutionary root. India, for centuries, was racked by famines and chronic food shortages, leaving generations to survive on meagre nutrition.

In such conditions, the human body adapted for survival in extreme scarcity.

The body needed a depot for this energy and the abdomen, being the most expandable area, became the prime storage site. Over time, as food became more plentiful, this fat store continued to grow – eventually to harmful levels.

“It’s a conjectural but plausible evolutionary theory – one that can’t be proven, but makes sense,” says Anoop Misra, who heads Delhi’s Fortis-C-DOC Centre of Excellence for Diabetes, Metabolic Diseases and Endocrinology.

Last year, in a paper doctors belonging to the Indian Obesity Commission redefined obesity guidelines for Asian Indians, moving beyond BMI to better reflect how body fat relates to early health risks.

They created a two-stage clinical system that considers fat distribution, related diseases and physical function.

Stage one involves a high BMI, but without abdominal obesity, metabolic disease, or physical dysfunction. In such cases, lifestyle changes like diet, exercise and sometimes medication are usually enough.

Stage two includes abdominal obesity – the harmful visceral fat – and is often accompanied by health issues like diabetes, knee pain or palpitations. This stage signals higher risk and calls for more intensive management.

This classification guides treatment intensity. Once belly fat appears, early action is key – new weight loss drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide are proving effective at targeting it, doctors say.

“As shocking as it may sound, even people with a normal weight can have dangerous levels of belly fat,” says Dr Misra.

Indian physicians say abdominal obesity is rising due to lifestyle changes – more junk food, takeaways, instant meals and greasy home cooking. Between 2009 and 2019, Cameroon, India and Vietnam saw the fastest growth in per capita sales of ultra-processed foods and beverages, studies found.

So, what needs to be done?

Experts say Indians need tougher lifestyle changes than Western norms recommend. While 150 minutes of weekly exercise may suffice for their European men, their South Asians counterparts need around 250–300 minutes to offset slower metabolism and less efficient fat storage, studies show.

“Our bodies simply aren’t as good at handling excess fat,” says Dr Misra.

In short, the pot belly isn’t just a punchline – it’s a warning sign. And India is sitting on a ticking health time bomb.

Popstars sneaked into the audience at Coachella to watch each other perform this weekend – as Lady Gaga wowed festivalgoers with a dramatic main stage set.

Fans swarmed to catch the Poker Face singer perform songs from her new album Mayhem, delivering a visual spectacle by opening her set with what can only be described as a satanic ritual to her 2011 song Bloody Mary.

Spotted watching on were South Korean pop group Blackpink, whose member Lisa was also seen dancing to K-pop boy band Enhypen after performing herself.

Meanwhile, Beautiful Things singer Benson Boone surprised the crowd by bringing out Sir Brian May for a rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody while executing a trademark front flip.

Actor Timothee Chalamet and partner Kylie Jenner were seen mingling with the crowd on the second day of the music festival, which is taking place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.

Blackpink’s Lisa, who recently starred in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus, was supported during her set by co-star Patrick Schwarzenegger, who posted a clip of himself singing along to her hit Money.

Meanwhile, Justin and Hailey Bieber, singer Tate McRae and Austrailian rapper The Kid Laroi were spotted dancing at Yeat’s set on Friday night.

Headline acts this year include Megan Thee Stallion, rapper Post Malone and US punk-rock band Green Day at the 100,000-attendees-a-day event.

Fresh from her five wins at the 2025 Brit Awards in March, Charli XCX had fans reliving their “brat summer” on Saturday, performing such hits as Von Dutch and 360 to a bumper crowd.

The British singer also brought out a number of guests during her set, including Troye Sivan, Lorde and Billie Eilish, who appeared on the chart topping hit Guess.

Before the performances could even begin, however, there was chaos at the gates, with ticket holders queuing in heavy traffic to get into the festival.

This year Coachella replaced its first come first-served system for campers with a reservation-style programme, forcing attendees to wait up to 12 hours in their vehicles in scorching desert temperatures with limited facilities.

Most music festivals are never short of political activism and this year’s Coachella was no different.

Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders took the stage before singer songwriter Clairo’s Saturday set to attack US President Donald Trump’s administration.

“This country faces some very difficult challenges,” he told the crowd. “The future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation.”

Green Day also reworded lyrics from some of their hits during the band’s headline performance, referencing the war in Gaza and railing against what frontman Billy Joe Armstong has repeatedly called “the Maga agenda”.

Following their success at the Bafta awards for their self titled feature film, Irish rap group Kneecap took to the Sonora stage and had the crowd chanting about former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The online livestream of the performance cut out at the exact moment the band made their political remarks.

Coachella has come under scrutiny in recent years, with one survey reporting in 2024 that 75% of 3,000 US respondents thought the festival was being overshadowed by influencers.

The festival also suffered a number of talent-related incidents last year.

Blur frontman Damon Albarn berrated the crowd in 2024, accusing them of being “lacklustre” in their singing.

“You’re never seeing us again so you might as well sing it,” he said. “Know what I’m saying?”

Grimes was also forced to apologise for “major technical difficulties” during her Coachella DJ set.

Fans watched the singer scream in frustration after a string of problems including songs playing at double speed.

The festival will continue on Sunday and resume next weekend.

Military planners have been called in to help tackle mounting piles of rubbish on Birmingham’s streets following a month-long strike by refuse workers.

Unite union members have been on an all-out strike since 11 March is a row over pay, leading to thousands of tonnes of uncollected rubbish and the city council declaring a major incident.

Birmingham City Council has already appealed to neighbouring authorities to help and now the government has asked for help from the Army in tackling the crisis.

The move will see a small number of office-based planners providing logistical support for a short period. Soldiers are not being deployed to collect rubbish.

A government spokesperson said: “The government has already provided a number of staff to support the council with logistics and make sure the response on the ground is swift to address the associated public health risks.

“In light of the ongoing public health risk, a small number of office-based military personnel with operational planning expertise have been made available to Birmingham City Council to further support in this area.”

The spokesperson added this built on a range of measures on which it had supported the council, including opening household waste centres.

Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner urged striking bin workers to accept a new deal to end the dispute.

She said a “significantly improved” offer had been made and the council had “moved significantly to meet the demands of the workers so we can see an end to this dispute”.

However, Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said the deal represented “a partial deal on pay protection for a few” and the striking bin workers were “in the driving seat around what they wish to accept”.

At the end of March, the Labour-run city council declared a major incident, citing an estimated 17,000 tonnes of rubbish across Birmingham over the first four weeks of the strike.