At midday on Monday, church bells across Italy began to toll. Pope Francis was dead.

Not even 24 hours had passed since he had made a surprise appearance on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square, blessing the 35,000 people gathered to celebrate Easter at the Vatican.

The Pope was breathing on his own, without oxygen tubes, despite being told by his doctors to spend two months convalescing after 38 days in hospital with double pneumonia.

Over the past two weeks Francis had done what he had always done, received visitors and met people from every walk of life.

When he appeared on Easter Sunday, the crowd below erupted in cheers as he appeared; then it fell silent.

“Dear brothers and sisters, I wish you a happy Easter,” he said, his voice heavy with effort.

They were to be his final words in public.

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“I think people could feel something – as if they could tell it was the last time they’d see him,” said Mauro, a Rome resident who was in St Peter’s Square for Easter Mass and had now returned to pay his respects.

“Usually everyone shouts ‘Long live the Pope!’… this time it was much quieter than usual, there was maybe more respect for his suffering.”

“He blessed us but his voice was a husk,” a man called Alberto told the BBC. “I think he was giving us his last goodbye.”

Doctors who treated Francis at Rome’s Gemelli hospital had prescribed a regimen of complete rest – but it was never likely that a typically active Pope who spent much of his papacy meeting people would keep to that.

Francis had already made it clear he wanted to be back in the Vatican in time for Easter, as soon as the specialists treating him explained that his health issues would not be resolved quickly.

For Christians, Easter is even more important than Christmas as it symbolises a core tenet of their faith – the resurrection of Christ, three days after his nailing to the cross.

Before he was discharged on 23 March, Francis waved to crowds from the hospital too, and then headed back to his quarters in the Casa Santa Marta guest house he had made his home.

His medical team said all he needed was oxygen, and convalescing there was better than hospital with all its infections.

Easter was just three weeks away and, as it approached, the Pope’s schedule became increasingly busy.

He met King Charles and Queen Camilla at the Casa San Marta and then appeared on the Vatican balcony for Palm Sunday four days later on 13 April, mingling with a crowd of 20,000 people in St Peter’s Square, against doctors’ advice.

But for the Pope, Easter was most important time of all.

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Last Thursday, as he had done many times previously and as he used to do in his native Argentina before becoming Pope, he made a visit to the Regina Coeli jail in Rome where he spent half an hour meeting prisoners and he was greeted by applause from staff and guards as he arrived in a wheelchair.

In previous years he had washed inmates’ feet, mirroring what Jesus is said to have done with his disciples the night before his death.

“This year I’m unable to do that, but I can and want to still be near you,” he said in a feeble voice to the dozens of prisoners who had come to see him, and who cheered him on as he toured the jail.

“We are so lucky. Those on the outside don’t get to see him and we do,” one man told Italian media.

As he was leaving the prison, Francis was asked by a journalist how he would experience Easter this year.

“Whichever way I can,” he replied.

And, on Sunday, he kept his promise.

He held a short meeting with US Vice-President JD Vance before appearing before the crowds in St Peter’s Square as the crowd below erupted in cheers.

He made his final blessing – the Urbi et Orbi address in Latin, meaning “to the city and to the world”. Then, Archbishop Diego Ravelli read out a speech written by the Pope as Francis sat silently beside him.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, he descended down to St Peter’s Square, where he was driven around in an open-top popemobile – the distinctive little white Mercedes-Benz used by popes to meet crowds.

A camera followed him around as he raised his arm to bless the faithful lining the sunny square, and a few babies were brought up closer to him. It was the last time the world saw him alive.

Watching Francis’s blessing on Sunday, Alberto from Rome felt he would not last much longer, although the Pope’s death still came as a shock.

“I didn’t feel happy seeing him, I could tell he was in pain,” he said. “But it was an honour to see him one last time.”

Francis died early on Monday in his beloved Casa Santa Marta – a residenceof 100-odd simple rooms, run by nuns and open to pilgrims and visitors.

A little over two hours later, the cardinal chamberlain, or camerlengo, stood in the Casa Santa Marta and made the news public.

The Vatican said on Monday evening he had died of a stroke and irreversible heart failure.

The Pope’s rooms were a far cry from the opulence of the Vatican quarters typically destined to pontiffs, which Francis had turned down at the start of his papacy saying he felt the need to “live among people”.

“If I lived by myself, maybe even a bit in isolation, it would be of no use to me,” he said back then.

In the coming days, cardinals from across the world will be staying at Casa Santa Marta as they gather in Rome for the conclave that will choose Francis’ successor.

Outside, in the bright sunshine in St Peter’s Square, people mingled with priests and friars under the imposing basilica.

A group of nuns clad in grey and white glared at a man who, headphones in, was dancing around the square. “No respect,” they tutted.

The same large screens that broadcast the Pope’s blessing for Easter now displayed a photo of Francis smiling and a notice that a special rosary was being held for him 12 hours after his death.

It would allow Catholics near and far to pray for their Pope – and thank him for celebrating one last Easter with them.

From the Vatican to the Philippines, Catholics are spending their Easter Monday saying goodbye to their spiritual leader Pope Francis.

His death comes at one of the most important times of the year for followers of the Roman Catholic Church, and less than 24 hours after the ailing Pope addressed worshipers in St Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday.

That timing is not lost on Catholics.

“He [God] chose the most beautiful day for the Christian Church – he couldn’t have chosen a better day,” said Father Sergio Codera, a Salesian priest from Spain.

He continued: “It [Easter] is the most important occasion Christians celebrate, when we celebrate that death does not have the final word.

“And it has been this day that God has chosen for Pope Francis to meet him.”

In the Vatican, there is shock from those who saw Francis perform his final public duty.

“It was very shocking – we just saw him yesterday for the Easter celebration and we received a blessing,” one man in St Peter’s Square told the BBC.

One woman who heard his address said: “He took his duty to the people so seriously – even when he was so unwell yesterday, he still came out, he was still part of the Easter mass, he still got to speak to us.”

Church bells have been ringing out across Manila, the capital of the Philippines, where worshippers have gathered in churches to pray and reflect on the Pope’s death.

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Around 85% of the nation’s population of 110 million are Roman Catholic, making it the church’s stronghold in Asia.

Among them is Jude Aquino, an altar server who reflected on the Pope’s influence on young Catholics shortly after his death was confirmed.

He told Reuters news agency: “It’s a big hit against the Catholic Church because for the youth like us, he’s such a big role model – a role model whom we follow since he’s a vicar of Christ.”

Catholics in rebel-held Bukavu, a city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, have gathered at Notre-Dame de la Paix Cathedral to mourn.

Around half of DR Congo’s population is Catholic, the largest such community in Africa.

Francis addressed half a million worshipers in the capital Kinshasa in 2023, becoming the first Pope to visit the conflict-ridden country in more than three decades. During his final address on Easter Sunday, the pope called for an end to violence in the country.

“Pope Francis was a pope who loved our country, the DRC, very much,” Sifa Albertina said outside the cathedral.

“He even decided to come to DRC despite his health condition, to meet the Congolese people and share their difficulties.

“I saw him come to Congo. May God welcome his soul, because the pope really cared about us.”

Seven days of mourning have been declared in Brazil, which is home to the largest Catholic population in the world.

Speaking outside the Church of our Lady of Lourdes in Rio de Janeiro, worshipper Rosane Ribeiro said: “I thought he was a unique and extraordinary person, also during [the pandemic].

“As a priest, he got up every day to pray for the world… and died at a marvellous and beautiful time [Easter], worthy of him.”

During his time as Pope, Francis faced criticism at times over his handling of child sex abuse scandals, but was praised by some for speaking with victims and putting in place new rules to hold clergy to account.

Juan Carlos Cruz Chellew, who was abused by a cleric in Chile when he was a boy, said one of the few people in the Church willing to listen to him was Pope Francis.

He said the Pope became “a real father to me” and changed the Church’s attitudes to sexual abuse.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newshour programme, he continued: “He realised he had made a mistake, he was ill-informed, so he invited me and two friends to come over and I spent a week with him in Santa Marta [the Pope’s Vatican residence] and he and I talked long hours about the situation.

“And ever since he started changing the attitude towards sexual abuse in the church – he was an extraordinary person.

“It was incredible to feel listened to… through the years I’ve told him I feel like Lazarus: you were dead, nobody hears you, nobody cares, and suddenly the most important person does care, and sincerely cares, and makes a big change.”

The faithful arrived in droves at Mexico City’s main religious centre, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to attend a mass for the pontiff and hear the bells ring out in his name – an act which was repeated in churches across Mexico.

Some arrived at the church on their knees, dragging their bodies to the church door in an act of contrition and suffering among the most devout.

Others simply stood with their heads bowed in quiet remembrance of a man who had stood with Mexico’s poorest, including its migrants and victims of violence, on numerous occasions.

“He led us by the hand, and he will always be in our hearts”, Jonathan Solis told the BBC, speaking in hushed tones at the back of the church.

He had brought his daughter with him to pay their respects as a family, he said, and underlined that it was a source of great pride to have a Latin American Pope.

“He was so important to Latinos. We can never forget him. That’s why so many families have turned out, like him – with their hearts on their sleeves – to support each other through this difficult moment.”

Elsewhere, mourners gathered for mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, a US city sometimes dubbed the most Catholic in the country.

Mary, 70, and Tom, 71, were visiting from Chicago when they learned of the Pope’s death and made their way to the cathedral to pray for him.

“He was just such a wonderful man, so human, like a normal person – you feel like you could be his friend almost,” Mary said.

In Spain, where Catholics make up more than half of the population, three days of national mourning have been declared.

Nuria Ortega, a civil servant from Madrid, said: “I think he was a person that was accepted by all by Catholic and [non] Catholics and I think he was a person that was open to dialogue.”

As the search for a successor to Francis began, student Javier Herratia said the church must become more “humble” and appeal to a young generation.

He continued: “We will have faith in the Holy Spirit and hope that the next Pope is as good as the rest.”

Over 12 profoundly consequential years for the Catholic Church, Pope Francis steered it into uncharted territory and did so in ways that will resonate long into the future.

The pontiff worked to soften the face of the Catholic Church for many, loosened the Vatican’s grip on power and intervened in some of the major social questions of our time.

Within Catholicism, he certainly had his critics; some traditionalists in particular were often enraged by actions they felt were a radical departure from Church teaching.

Despite him being a vocal pacifist and critic of actions by major nations that he perceived as harmful, there were also those who felt he should have been more progressive.

But from the moment he was elected in 2013, Pope Francis came with an informality and a smile that put the people he met at their ease. It was symbolic of a principle that guided his belief that the Church should reach people in their daily lives, wherever in the world they happened to be.

“At the beginning of my papacy I had the feeling that it would be brief: no more than three or four years, I thought,” Pope Francis said in his autobiography Hope, released in January 2025, a book that gives us insight into the Pope’s own reflections on his legacy.

One of his first acts as pope was to give up the papal apartment on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, instead choosing to live in the same guesthouse in which he had stayed as a cardinal.

Some saw this as a sign he was giving up the ostentatious trappings of papacy, and of the humility he would certainly become known for – he had, after all, taken the name of a saint who championed the cause of the poor.

But the main reason for surrendering the papal apartment, as he later explained it, pointed to another of his characteristics: that he loved being around people.

To him, the apartment felt detached and a difficult place in which to welcome guests. At the guesthouse he was surrounded by clergy and rarely alone for long.

On foreign trips to more than 60 countries, in his audiences at the Vatican and during countless events, it was very clear that being close to people, and particularly the young, was his lifeblood.

Within Catholicism, he signalled a radical change in tone on some social issues.

“Everyone in the Church is invited, including people who are divorced, including people who are homosexual, including people who are transgender,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Given that the Church did not recognise divorce in its canon law and that previous popes had talked of homosexuality as a disorder not “a human fact”, as Pope Francis did, this was a departure that again concerned traditionalists.

But the Pope appeared to want the Church to explore and understand people’s every day struggles in a fresh light. He acknowledged his own journey in seeing things differently to the way he had done in the past.

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Progressives welcomed the Pope’s compassion for what he called “imperfect Catholics”, but there was also a recognition more broadly that words of acceptance from a pontiff could have an effect on those outside the Church too.

“The first time that a group of transgender people came to the Vatican, they left in tears, moved because I had taken their hands, had kissed them… as if I had done something exceptional for them! But they are daughters of God,” he wrote in Hope.

Pope Francis roundly condemned countries that consider homosexuality a crime, and he talked of divorce sometimes being “morally necessary”, citing cases of domestic abuse.

However, there are those who suggest the Pope could have gone further to encourage change in Church teaching.

Homosexual “acts” remain a sin in Catholicism, marriage can still only be between a man and a woman, divorce is still not officially recognised and the Pope himself remained very firmly against gender reassignment and surrogacy.

Throughout his papacy, and long before that, Pope Francis also always remained firm in his own belief that women should not be priests.

He did however describe the Church as “female” and encouraged parishes around the world to find more leadership roles for women in ways that were consistent with the Catholic teaching that does not currently allow women to be ordained.

In 2021 Sister Raffaella Petrini was appointed secretary general of the papal state and under Pope Francis the Vatican did start an ongoing process of exploring whether women could take up the role of deacon, assisting in worship services.

Nevertheless, some reformists were left disappointed that more progress was not made regarding equality for women, in a faith where the majority of churchgoers are women.

During the latter part of his papacy, the Pope launched an ambitious three-year consultation process aimed at gauging the opinion of as many of the world’s more-than-a-billion Catholics as possible.

There were tens of thousands of listening sessions across the globe, meant to tease out the issues that Catholics most cared about. It transpired that roles for women and ways in which the Church could become more inclusive to LGBT+ Catholics were high on the list.

While the process itself did not lead to decisive action on either front, it did speak volumes about Pope Francis’ desire that his pontificate was rooted not in Rome and in clerics but in the lives of believers around the world.

Throughout his papacy, there was a particular focus on reaching out to those on the economic and political margins, his words and actions encouraging his priests to be closer to the disadvantaged.

The issue of dignity for migrants was hugely important to him throughout his papacy, but so too was building bridges with other Christian denominations, other religions and those of no faith.

On occasions, to some Catholic traditionalists, the Pope’s outreach appeared inappropriate for someone of his position, like his visit to a centre for asylum seekers outside Rome in spring 2016 when he washed and kissed the feet of refugees that included Muslims, Hindus and Coptic Christians.

As well as becoming a passionate voice for migrants – once going to lay a wreath on the waters where many had died on their perilous journeys – he also linked the impact of climate change to poverty.

In speeches, including one to US Congress, and in one of his most important pieces of work, the decree Laudato Si, Pope Francis talked of environmental damage amounting to rich countries inflicting harm on poor ones.

Vehemently anti-war, the Pope frequently talked of conflict itself equating to failure.

He called the war in Gaza “terrorism” and from early on he implored that there be a ceasefire.

He met the families of the Israelis abducted by Hamas on 7 October 2023, but also spoke passionately about the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, particularly children, and made daily calls to the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.

But sometimes a longing to build bridges was seen by some observers as getting in the way of Pope Francis taking a firm stance against wrongdoing.

In the eyes of many, he failed to unequivocally call out Russian aggression in Ukraine or tackle China’s surveillance and persecution of its Catholics.

From the very start of his papacy, he also faced huge tasks confronting misconduct much closer to home.

The scourge of corruption had long dogged the upper echelons of the Catholic Church. Early on, Pope Francis closed thousands of unauthorised Vatican bank accounts, and in the latter half of his time he introduced new rules on financial transparency.

It was in the way he dealt with the horrors of child sexual abuse by those associated with the Catholic Church that made it clear he knew it was something he would be judged by.

“From the very start of my papacy, I felt I was being called to take responsibility for all the evil committed by certain priests,” he wrote in Hope.

As an illustration of the scale of the problem that remains, in 2020 the Catholic Church released lists of living members of clergy in the US alone found to have been accused of sexual abuses – these included clergy linked to child pornography and rape. There were around 2,000.

“With shame and repentance, the Church must seek pardon for the terrible damage that those clergy have caused with their sexual abuse of children, a crime that causes deep wounds of pain,” he recently wrote.

Among other initiatives, Pope Francis introduced rules that meant members of the Church had a responsibility to report on abuse if they had knowledge of it, otherwise they risked being removed from their positions.

Though he made errors of judgement, on occasions publicly supporting clergy even though they were alleged to have failed to deal with abuse, Pope Francis was quick to apologise for his own mistakes and for the deep failings of the Church.

Both at the Vatican and abroad he would frequently meet with Church abuse victims. Saying “sorry” for abuse was the prime focus of some foreign trips.

A huge part of Pope Francis’ legacy is the way in which he changed the face of the upper echelons of the Catholic Church through his selection of new cardinals.

In fact, about 80% of the cardinals that will select the next pope were appointed by Pope Francis. What is striking about those selections is their diversity, with many coming from South America, Africa and Asia.

It was part of Pope Francis’ mission to consolidate a change in the centre of gravity of Catholicism away from Europe, where it was in decline, towards the places it was thriving, and to reflect that in Church leadership.

The posthumous outpouring of tributes to him from across the globe is perhaps one sign that shift is working.

Millions of African Catholics, as well as the continent’s leaders, are mourning a man who they felt spoke for Africa.

Home to nearly a fifth of the Church’s followers, or 272 million people, Africa is becoming increasingly important in the Catholic world, and observers say Pope Francis did a lot to raise the profile of the continent within the institution.

Heads of state reflected the sentiments of many describing how the late Pope spoke out for the marginalised.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu called him a “tireless champion of the poor” and his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa highlighted his “world view of inclusion [and] equality”.

The Vatican says that over the past year, seven million Africans have converted to Catholicism, making the continent one of the fastest-growing regions for the Church.

“This Pope has made a lot of efforts to make our faith inclusive… I remember him with joy,” Ghanaian Catholic Aba Amissah Quainoo told the BBC in the capital, Accra.

“He was really loved by all because of his stance on the poor and the marginalised,” Rev George Obeng Appah added.

At the Holy Family Basilica in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, Rosemary Muthui said worshippers there will remember the Pope as a man who brought change to the Church, especially in promoting equality.

“His love for the African Church was great, and we will miss him,” she told the BBC.

She said she met him when he went to Kenya a decade ago on the first of his five visits to the continent which took in 10 African countries in all.

His last in 2023 was to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, Kitsita Ndongo Rachel did not hesitate when she broke protocol to personally meet the Pope.

“My heart was beating, I was less than 100 metres away. I slipped between the security agents; knelt down and asked the Pope for his blessing,” the journalist remembers.

“He blessed me, and he blessed my rosary.”

She says her actions were influenced by the Pope’s teachings which spoke to her about what can be done in her conflict-ridden country.

“When we listen to him, we feel that he wanted or he wants justice for the Democratic Republic of Congo, he knows that millions of people have died.”

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Nigeria and Kenya have among the highest weekly church attendance rates globally, while DR Congo, Cameroon, Uganda and Angola also have strong Catholic communities.

“One of the biggest things Pope Francis did for Africa was to bring global attention to the continent’s importance in the Catholic Church,” said Charles Collins, managing editor of Crux, a leading Catholic news website covering Vatican affairs and Catholicism.

“He has not only spoken about Africa’s struggles but has physically gone to marginalised areas, showing solidarity with victims of war, displacement and injustice,” said Father Stan Chu Ilo, president of the Pan-African Catholic Theological Network.

During his 2015 trip to the Central African Republic, the Pope pressed home a message of peace amid conflict there.

In 2019, in a highly symbolic moment at the Vatican, the Pope knelt down and kissed the feet of South Sudan’s rival leaders. His trip to the country four years later was a special peace mission that included then Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

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And in a letter sent in the last week of March, Pope Francis urged President Salva Kiir and First Vice-President Riek Machar “to prioritise peace, reconciliation and development for the benefits of their people – South Sudanese”.

But the need to make that plea speaks to the limits of the Pope’s power, as there are now fears the country could be on the brink of another civil war.

Despite the remarkable growth of the Church on the continent and the creation of new African cardinals, Africa remains underrepresented in high-ranking Vatican positions.

“The Catholic Church’s future is African, but it hasn’t yet translated into real influence at the Vatican. That shift is still to come,” Mr Collins said.

Now attention starts to turn to who will succeed him and whether an African could take the helm for the first time in 1,500 years.

“An African Pope is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ – because the Catholic Church in Africa is now a theological, spiritual, and demographic powerhouse,” Father Ilo said.

A senior Palestinian official familiar with Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations has told the BBC that Qatari and Egyptian mediators have proposed a new formula to end the war in Gaza.

According to the official, it envisages a truce lasting between five and seven years, the release of all Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, a formal end to the war, and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

A senior Hamas delegation was due to arrive in Cairo for consultations.

The last ceasefire collapsed a month ago when Israel resumed bombing Gaza, with both sides blaming each other for the failure to keep it going.

Israel has not commented on the mediators’ plan.

Hamas will be represented at discussions in Cairo by the head of its political council, Mohammed Darwish, and its lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya.

It comes days after the movement rejected Israel’s latest proposal, which included a demand for Hamas to disarm in return for a six-week truce.

On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not end the war before Hamas was destroyed and all the hostages returned. Hamas has demanded Israel commit to ending the war before the hostages are freed.

The Palestinian official familiar with the talks told the BBC that Hamas has signalled its readiness to hand over governance of Gaza to any Palestinian entity agreed upon “at the national and regional level”. The official said this could be the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) or a newly formed administrative body.

Netanyahu has ruled out any role for the PA in the future governance of Gaza, which has been ruled by Hamas since 2007.

While it is still too early to assess the likelihood of success, the source described the current mediation effort as serious and said Hamas had shown “unprecedented flexibility”.

Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages. Israel launched a massive military offensive in response, which has killed 51,240 Palestinians – mainly civilians – according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Elsewhere, the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo has instructed its staff – who had been co-ordinating medical evacuations from Gaza to Egyptian hospitals and facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid – to relocate with their families to the Egyptian city of Arish, near the Gaza border.

China has warned it will hit back at countries that make deals with the US that hurt Beijing’s interests, as the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies threatens to drag in other nations.

The comments come after reports that the US plans to pressure governments to restrict trade with China in exchange for exemptions to US tariffs.

The Trump administration has started talks with trading partners over tariffs, with a Japanese delegation visiting Washington last week and South Korea is set to start negotiations this week.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has imposed hefty taxes on Chinese imports, while other countries have also been hit with levies on their goods.

“Appeasement cannot bring peace, and compromise cannot earn one respect,” a Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson said.

“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests. If this happens, China will never accept it and will resolutely take countermeasures”.

The remarks echoed an editorial last week in the state-controlled China Daily, which warned the European Union against trying to “appease” the US.

The comments came after reports that the US plans to use tariff negotiations to pressure dozens of countries into imposing new barriers on trade with China.

The BBC has asked the US Treasury Department and the US Trade Representative for responses to the reports.

Trump has said more than 70 countries have reached out to start negotiations since the tariffs were announced.

“If you put the numbers on it, about 20% of Japan’s profitability comes from the United States, about 15% comes from the People’s Republic of China,” said Jesper Koll, from Japanese online trading platform operator Monex Group.

“Certainly, Japan doesn’t want to [have to] choose between America and the People’s Republic of China.”

Japan kicked off negotiations with the US last week when its top tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, met the US President in Washington DC.

South Korea’s acting president, Han Duck-soo, has said his country will begin trade talks with the US later this week.

Meanwhile, US Vice President, JD Vance, is expected to meet India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to the country this week. India faces a tariff rate of 26% if it is unable to agree a trade deal with the Trump administration.

Last week, Vance said there was a “good chance” a trade deal could be reached with the UK.

“We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government,” he said in an interview with the UnHerd website.

Since Trump’s inauguration, there has been a flurry of announcements on tariffs.

The US president has said the import taxes will encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised, and lead to major investments in the country.

But critics have said bringing manufacturing back to the US is complicated and could take decades and that the economy will struggle in the meantime.

Trump has also backtracked on many of his announcements.

Just hours after steep levies on dozens of America’s trading partners kicked in earlier this month, he announced a 90-day pause on those tariffs to all countries bar China, in the face of mounting opposition from politicians and the markets.

Trump has imposed taxes of up to 145% on imports from China. Other countries are now facing a blanket US tariff of 10% until July.

His administration said last week that when the new tariffs are added on to existing ones, the levies on some Chinese goods could reach 245%.

China has hit back with a 125% tax on products from the US and vowed to “fight to the end”.

The trade war between the world’s two biggest economies sent shockwaves through the global financial markets earlier this month.

Ukraine’s military has reported Russian drone attacks on several regions overnight, just hours after the end of a 30-hour “Easter truce” declared by Moscow.

Air raid alerts were issued by Ukraine’s air force for the Kyiv region, as well as Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia.

In the southern city of Mykolaiv, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych said “explosions were heard”. It was not immediately clear whether there were any casualties.

Russia’s defence ministry confirmed it has resumed fighting, adding that its military had “strictly observed the ceasefire and remained at the previously occupied lines and positions”.

The truce declared by President Vladimir Putin expired at midnight on Sunday Moscow time (21:00 GMT). Both sides accused each other of violating the ceasefire thousands of times.

Early on Monday residents in several Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, were urged by local authorities to go immediately to nearby shelters due to the threat of drone strikes.

In the Kyiv region, local officials said air defence forces were “working on targets”.

Ukraine’s air force also reported a “rocket danger” for central regions, and said Russian aircraft were “active in the north-eastern and eastern directions”.

In an update on Telegram, the air force said Russia launched 96 drones overnight, as well as striking the southern region of Mykolaiv two missiles and Kherson with a third missile.

In Mykolaiv, regional head Vitaliy Kim said shortly afterwards that the city had been attacked by missiles. “There were no casualties or damage,” he added.

Several hours before the truce expired, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin had not given an order to extend it, Russia’s state-run news agency Tass reported.

The BBC has not independently verified the claims by Ukraine and Russia.

US President Donald Trump – who has been pushing for an end to the war – said late on Sunday that “hopefully Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week”. He gave no further details.

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Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and currently controls about 20% Ukraine’s territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides since 2022.

Last month, Moscow came up with a long list of conditions in response to a full and unconditional ceasefire that had been agreed by the US and Ukraine.

On Saturday, President Putin said there would be an end to all hostilities from 18:00 Moscow time (15:00 GMT) on Saturday until midnight on Sunday. Kyiv said it would also adhere.

“For this period, I order all military actions to cease,” Putin said in his announcement.

“We assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example. At the same time, our troops must be ready to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations from the enemy, any of its aggressive actions.”

However, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said late on Sunday there had been a total of 1,882 cases of Russian shelling, 812 of which involved heavy weaponry, according to a report from Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi.

The president said the heaviest shelling and assaults were in eastern Ukraine near the besieged city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region.

“The nature of Ukrainian actions will continue to be mirrored: we will respond to silence with silence, our strikes will be to protect against Russian strikes,” Zelensky said.

Earlier on Sunday, he said “there were no air raid alerts today”, referring to Russia’s daily drone and missile strikes against Ukraine.

He proposed “to cease any strikes using long-range drones and missiles on civilian infrastructure for a period of at least 30 days, with the possibility of extension”.

Zelensky also said Putin’s declaration of a truce amounted to a “PR” exercise and his words were “empty”. He accused the Kremlin of trying to create “a general impression of a ceasefire”.

“This Easter has clearly demonstrated that the only source of this war, and the reason it drags on, is Russia,” the president said.

The Russian defence ministry insisted its troops had “strictly observed the ceasefire”.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of using US-supplied Himars missiles during the ceasefire.

The surprise ceasefire announcement came shortly after Trump threatened to “take a pass” on brokering further Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

However, a state department spokesperson said on Sunday Washington remained “committed to achieving a full and comprehensive ceasefire”.

“It is long past time to stop the death and destruction and end this war,” the spokesperson added.

Snow leopards cannot growl. So when we step towards one of these fierce predators, she’s purring.

“Lovely,” as she’s called, was orphaned and rescued 12 years ago in Pakistan-administered Gilgit-Baltistan.

After years of relying on staff to feed her, she does not know how to hunt in the wild – and cannot be set free.

“If we release her, she would just go attack a farmer’s sheep and get killed,” Lovely’s caretaker, Tehzeeb Hussain, tells us.

Despite laws protecting them, between 221 to 450 snow leopards are killed each year, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) says, which has contributed to a 20% decline in the global population over the past two decades.

More than half of these deaths were in retaliation for the loss of livestock.

Now, scientists estimate that just 4,000 to 6,000 snow leopards are left in the wild – with roughly 300 of these in Pakistan, the third-largest population in the world.

To try and reverse these worrying trends, the WWF – with the help of Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) – has developed cameras powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Their aim is to detect a snow leopard’s presence and warn villagers via text message to move their livestock to safety.

Tall, with a solar panel mounted on top, the cameras are positioned high among barren and rugged mountains at nearly 3,000m (9,843ft).

“Snow leopard territory,” says Asif Iqbal, a conservationist from WWF Pakistan. He walks us a few more steps and points to tracks on the ground: “These are pretty new.”

Asif hopes this means the camera has recorded more evidence that the AI software – which allows it to differentiate between humans, other animals and snow leopards – is working.

The WWF is currently testing 10 cameras, deployed across three villages in Gilgit-Baltistan. It has taken three years to train the AI model to detect these categories with impressive – if not perfect – accuracy.

Once we’re back down the mountain, Asif pulls up his computer and shows me a dashboard. There I am, in a series of GIFs. It correctly detects I’m a human. But as we scroll down the list, I come up again, and this time I’m listed as both a human and an animal. I’m wearing a thick white fleece, so I forgive the programme.

Then, Asif shows me the money shot. It’s a snow leopard, recorded a few nights prior, in night-vision. He pulls up another one from the week before. It’s a snow leopard raising its tail against a nearby rock. “It’s a mother leopard, looks like she’s marking her territory,” Asif says.

Setting up the cameras in rocky, high-altitude areas took a lot of trial and error. The WWF went through several types of batteries until it found one that could withstand the harsh winters. A specific paint was chosen to avoid reflecting light as animals pass by.

If the cellular service fails in the mountains, the device continues recording and capturing data locally. But the team has had to accept there are some problems they simply cannot solve.

While the camera lens is protected by a metallic box, they’ve had to replace solar panels damaged by landslides.

It is not just the technology that has caused problems. Getting the local community’s buy-in has also been a challenge. At first, some were suspicious and doubted whether the project could help them or the snow leopards.

“We noticed some of the wires had been cut,” Asif says. “People had thrown blankets over the cameras.”

The team also had to be mindful of the local culture and the emphasis on women’s privacy. Cameras had to be moved because women were walking by too often.

Some villages still have yet to sign consent and privacy forms, which means the technology cannot be rolled out in their area just yet. The WWF wants a binding promise that local farmers will not give poachers access to the footage.

Sitara lost all six of her sheep in January. She says she had taken them to graze on land above her home but that a snow leopard attacked them.

“It was three to four years of hard work raising those animals, and it all ended in one day,” she says.

The loss of her livelihood left her bedridden for several days. When asked if she is hopeful the AI cameras could help in the future, she replies: “My phone barely gets any service during the day, how can a text help?”

At a gathering of village elders, leaders of the Khyber village explain how attitudes have changed over the years, and that a growing proportion of their village understands the importance of snow leopards and their impact on the ecosystem.

According to the WWF, snow leopards hunt ibex and blue sheep, which stops these animals from overgrazing and helps to preserve grasslands so villagers can feed their livestock.

But not all are convinced. One local farmer questions the benefits of the animals.

“We used to have 40 to 50 sheep, now we’ve only got four or five, and the reason is the threat from snow leopards and from ibex eating the grass,” he says.

Climate change also has a part to play in why some feel threatened by snow leopards. Scientists say warming temperatures have led villagers to move their crops and livestock to higher areas in the mountains, encroaching on snow leopards’ own habitat, making livestock more of a target.

Whether the villagers are convinced by the conservation message or not, the WWF tells us legal penalties have served as a strong deterrent in recent years. Three men were jailed in 2020 after killing a snow leopard in Hoper valley, about a two-hour drive from Khyber. One of them had posted photos of himself with the dead animal on social media.

While those involved in the camera project are hopeful their AI devices can have an impact, they know they cannot be the sole solution.

In September, they are going to start trialling smells, sounds and lights at the camera sites to try to deter snow leopards from moving onto nearby villages, putting themselves and livestock in jeopardy.

Their work tracking these “ghosts of the mountains” is not over yet.

US stocks and the dollar plunged again as President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on US central bank boss calling him “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.

In a social media post, Trump called on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates “pre-emptively” to help boost the economy, saying Powell had been consistently too slow to respond to economic developments.

“There can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW,” he wrote.

Trump’s criticism of Powell’s handling of the US economy comes as his own plans for tariffs have driven a stock market sell-off and raised fears of economic recession.

The president’s intensifying clash with Powell, whom he named to lead the Fed during his first term, has added to the market turmoil.

The S&P 500, which tracks 500 of the biggest US companies, fell roughly 2.4% on Monday. It has lost roughly 12% of its value since the start of the year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2.5% and has dropped about 10% so far this year, while the Nasdaq fell more than 2.5% and is down roughly 18% since January.

Though the dollar and US government bonds are typically considered safe assets in times of market turmoil, they have not escaped the recent turbulence.

The dollar index – which measures the strength of the dollar against a set of currencies including the Euro – on Monday fell to its lowest level since 2022.

Interest rates on US government debt also rose, as investors demanded higher returns for holding Treasuries.

Trump’s criticism of Powell dates back to his first term in office, when he also reportedly discussed firing him. Since winning the election, he has urged Powell to lower borrowing costs.

The latest criticism follows Powell’s warnings that Trump’s import taxes were likely to drive up prices and slow the economy.

Trump last week called publicly for Powell to be fired, writing on social media on Thursday: “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough,”.

Such a move would be controversial – and legally questionable – given a tradition of independence at the bank.

Powell last year told reporters he did not believe the president had the legal authority to remove him.

But one of Trump’s top economic advisers confirmed that officials were studying the option on Friday, when the stock market in the US was closed for trading.

The Vatican has named 167 people who died in the 2019 Easter bombings in Sri Lanka as “heroes of faith”.

The country’s cardinal, Malcolm Ranjith, made the announcement at an event to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the suicide attacks which targeted Catholic churches and five star hotels during Easter Sunday mass, killing 269 people.

Those recognised by the Vatican were Catholic faithful attending mass at the churches that were attacked.

The bombings shook the country, which had not seen such levels of violence since the end of a civil war in 2009. However, since then investigations into the attacks have been controversial.

Muslim extremists claimed the attacks, but there has been public criticism from families of the victims and from the island’s minority Christian community, who accuse the government of dragging their feet in taking action against those suspected of carrying out the bombings.

Anger grew as information emerged that intelligence warnings about the attacks were not acted upon by security heads or the government of the time. The country’s Supreme Court has since directed then president Maithripala Sirisena to pay compensation to the victims of the bombings for “ignoring actionable intelligence” that could have prevented the attacks.

A trial was opened against 25 people accused of masterminding the attacks in 2021. However, with 23,000 charges filed against the men, lawyers involved in the case warned that the sheer number of charges and staggering witness list could mean the trial dragging on for years.

The Catholic community led by Cardinal Ranjith has repeatedly alleged that the government at the time covered up investigations “to protect the brains behind the attacks”.

A 2023 investigation by Channel 4, which raised questions about links between the government, military and the group blamed for the attacks, also prompted public anger. It alleged that the attacks were allowed to happen for political power.

Presidential elections held soon after the attacks saw Gotabaya Rajapaksa sweep to power, after campaigning on a national security platform.

He made a statement in parliament denying all the allegations raised in the documentary.

The issue gained new currency when Sri Lanka elected a new president and parliament in 2024. The newly-elected government has since alleged that the attacks were a conspiracy by a “certain group” to seize political power at the time.

They have also reopened investigations into the attacks, with a report of a presidential inquiry commission officially handed over to the country’s central investigative agency for further inquiry.

“As a government, we reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that justice is served. Ongoing efforts to investigate the attacks and uncover all truths without obstruction or delay remain a top priority. Accountability, transparency, and genuine justice are essential to honouring the memory of the victims and restoring public trust,” Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya said in a statement to mark the anniversary.

A nine-year-old boy who got trapped between rocks at a New South Wales beach on Sunday has become the seventh person to drown in Australia over the Easter weekend.

The majority of deaths were caused by strong swells washing people into the ocean from rocks. Two people remain missing.

Steven Pearce, the CEO of Surf Life Saving in New South Wales, where most of the fatalities occurred, told the ABC it was the “worst” spate of drownings on record for the Easter long weekend.

“It has just been horrendous on a weekend that’s supposed to be joyous and religious,” Pearce told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Emergency teams were able to retrieve the boy at South West Rocks, about 400 kilometres north of Sydney, but he died at the scene.

Earlier on Sunday, a helicopter spotted a father and son floating in the water near Wattamolla Beach, south of Sydney. The 14-year-old son was resuscitated, but the father was later pronounced dead.

Meanwhile, Police in Victoria are continuing to search for a 41-year-old man who went missing near San Remo on Friday.

Surf Life Saving New South Wales said it has carried out more than 150 rescues since Good Friday.

Mr Pearce said a “perfect combination” of high temperatures, the holiday weekend, and dangerous ocean swells across much of New South Wales and Victoria caused the spike in deaths.

Although conditions are set to improve on Monday, authorities urged those visiting the coastline to exercise caution.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese expressed sympathy to the victims’ families. “Please, everyone, be careful. Families in particular, be careful of your kids,” he said.

According to Royal Life Saving Australia, 323 people drowned across the country in the year to June 2024.

That figure includes those who died in rivers and creeks, as well as at beaches. Nearly 40% of the deaths were recorded in New South Wales.

Every morning, India’s newspapers are filled with reports of road accidents – passenger buses plunging into mountain gorges, drunk drivers mowing down pedestrians, cars crashing into stationary trucks and two-wheelers being knocked down by larger vehicles.

These daily tragedies underscore a silent crisis: in 2023 alone, more than 172,000 people lost their lives on Indian roads, averaging 474 deaths each day or nearly one every three minutes.

Although the official crash report for 2023 has yet to be released, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari cited the data to paint a grim picture at a road safety event in December.

Among the dead that year were 10,000 children. Accidents near schools and colleges accounted for another 10,000 fatalities, while 35,000 pedestrians lost their lives. Two-wheeler riders also bore the brunt of fatalities. Over-speeding typically emerged as the single biggest cause.

A lack of basic safety precautions also proved deadly: 54,000 people died due to not wearing helmets and 16,000 from not wearing seatbelts.

Other major causes included overloading, which led to 12,000 deaths, and driving without a valid licence, which factored in 34,000 crashes. Driving on the wrong side also contributed to fatalities.

In 2021, 13% of accidents involved drivers with a learner permit or no valid licence. Many vehicles on the road are old and missing basic safety features like seatbelts – let alone airbags.

This hazardous road environment is further complicated by India’s chaotic traffic mix.

A bewildering array of users crowds India’s roads. There are motorised vehicles like cars, buses and motorcycles vying for space with non-motorised transport such as bicycles, cycle rickshaws and handcarts, animal-drawn carts, pedestrians and stray animals. Hawkers encroach upon roads and footpaths to sell their wares, forcing pedestrians onto busy roads and further complicating traffic flow.

Despite efforts and investments, India’s roads remain among the most unsafe in the world. Experts say this is a crisis rooted not just in infrastructure, but in human behaviour, enforcement gaps and systemic neglect. ​Road crashes impose a significant economic burden, costing India 3% of its annual GDP.

India has the world’s second-largest road network, spanning 6.6m kilometres (4.1m miles), just after the US. National and state highways together make up about 5% of the total network, while other roads – including gleaming access-controlled expressways – account for the rest. There are an estimated 350 million registered vehicles.

Gadkari told the road safety meeting that many road accidents happen because people lack respect and fear for the law.

“There are several reasons for accidents, but the biggest is human behaviour,” he said.

Yet that’s only part of the picture. Just last month, Gadkari pointed to poor civil engineering practices – flawed road design, substandard construction and weak management – along with inadequate signage and markings, as key contributors to the alarmingly high road accident rate.

“The most important culprits are civil engineers… Even small things like the road signages and marking system are very poor in the country,” he said.

​Since 2019, his ministry reported 59 major deficiencies in national highways, including cave-ins, Gadkari told the parliament last month. Of the 13,795 identified accident-prone “black spots”, only 5,036 have undergone long-term rectification.

Over the years, road safety audits, conducted by the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre (TRIPP) at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, have uncovered serious flaws in India’s road infrastructure.

Take crash barriers. These are meant to safely stop vehicles that stray off the road – without flipping them over. But in many places, they’re doing the opposite.

Despite clear standards for height, spacing and installation, on-ground reality often tells a different story: the metal barriers at the wrong height, mounted on concrete bases, or poorly placed. These flaws can cause a vehicle, especially a truck or bus, to flip over instead of being safely stopped.

“Unless installed exactly as specified, crash barriers can do more harm than good,” Geetam Tiwari, emeritus professor of civil engineering at IIT Delhi, told the BBC.

Then there are the tall medians – or road dividers, as they are locally called. On high-speed roads, medians are supposed to gently separate traffic moving in the opposite direction. They shouldn’t be taller than 10cm (3.9in) but, audits show, many are.

When a high-speed vehicle’s tyre hits a vertical median, it generates heat, risks a tyre burst, or even lifts the vehicle off the ground – leading to dangerous rollovers. Many medians in India are simply not designed keeping this threat in mind.

A stretch of a highway near the capital, Delhi, stands as a stark example – a road slicing through dense settlements on both sides without safety measures to protect residents. Throngs of people precariously stand on the medians as high-speed traffic whizzes by.

And then there are the raised carriageways. On many rural roads, repeated resurfacing has left the main road towering six to eight inches above the shoulder.

That sudden drop can be deadly – especially if a driver swerves to avoid an obstacle. Two-wheelers are most at risk, but even cars can skid, tip, or flip. With every layer added, the danger just keeps rising, experts say.

Clearly, India’s road design standards are solid on paper – but poorly enforced on the ground.

“One key issue is that non-compliance with safety standards attracts minimal penalties. Contracts often don’t clearly spell out these requirements, and payments are typically linked to kilometres constructed – not to adherence to safety norms,” says Prof Tiwari.

Minister Gadkari recently announced an ambitious plan to upgrade 25,000km of two-lane highways to four lanes. “It will help reduce accidents on the roads significantly,” he said.

Experts like Kavi Bhalla of the University of Chicago are sceptical. Mr Bhalla, who has worked on road safety in low and middle-income countries, argues that India’s road designs often mimic Western models, ignoring the country’s unique traffic and infrastructure needs.

“There is no reason to believe that road widening will lead to fewer traffic deaths. There is a lot of evidence that road upgradation in India results in higher traffic speeds, which is lethal to pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists,” he says.

“A key issue is that new roads in India simply copy road designs used in the US and Europe, where the traffic environment is very different. India is trying to build US-style highway infrastructure but not investing in US-style highway safety engineering research and crash data systems,” Mr Bhalla adds.

To tackle the escalating road safety crisis, the government is “implementing” the “5Es” strategy: engineering of roads, engineering of vehicles, education, enforcement and emergency care, says KK Kapila of the International Road Federation. (​According to a report by the Law Commission of India, timely emergency medical care could have saved 50% of road crash fatalities.)

Mr Kapila is helping the federal government with a road safety plan. He says seven key states were asked to identify their most accident-prone stretches. After implementing targeted interventions based on the 5Es framework, these stretches “have become the safest” in their states, he told me.

Most economists agree building more roads is key to India’s growth, but it must be sustainable and not take priority over the lives of pedestrians and cyclists.

“The price of development shouldn’t be borne by the poorest segments of society. The only way to learn how to build such roads is to try to do interventions, evaluate if they improved safety and, if they didn’t help, modify them and evaluate again,” says Mr Bhalla. If that doesn’t happen, roads will only get smoother, cars faster – and more people will die.

Every morning, India’s newspapers are filled with reports of road accidents – passenger buses plunging into mountain gorges, drunk drivers mowing down pedestrians, cars crashing into stationary trucks and two-wheelers being knocked down by larger vehicles.

These daily tragedies underscore a silent crisis: in 2023 alone, more than 172,000 people lost their lives on Indian roads, averaging 474 deaths each day or nearly one every three minutes.

Although the official crash report for 2023 has yet to be released, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari cited the data to paint a grim picture at a road safety event in December.

Among the dead that year were 10,000 children. Accidents near schools and colleges accounted for another 10,000 fatalities, while 35,000 pedestrians lost their lives. Two-wheeler riders also bore the brunt of fatalities. Over-speeding typically emerged as the single biggest cause.

A lack of basic safety precautions also proved deadly: 54,000 people died due to not wearing helmets and 16,000 from not wearing seatbelts.

Other major causes included overloading, which led to 12,000 deaths, and driving without a valid licence, which factored in 34,000 crashes. Driving on the wrong side also contributed to fatalities.

In 2021, 13% of accidents involved drivers with a learner permit or no valid licence. Many vehicles on the road are old and missing basic safety features like seatbelts – let alone airbags.

This hazardous road environment is further complicated by India’s chaotic traffic mix.

A bewildering array of users crowds India’s roads. There are motorised vehicles like cars, buses and motorcycles vying for space with non-motorised transport such as bicycles, cycle rickshaws and handcarts, animal-drawn carts, pedestrians and stray animals. Hawkers encroach upon roads and footpaths to sell their wares, forcing pedestrians onto busy roads and further complicating traffic flow.

Despite efforts and investments, India’s roads remain among the most unsafe in the world. Experts say this is a crisis rooted not just in infrastructure, but in human behaviour, enforcement gaps and systemic neglect. ​Road crashes impose a significant economic burden, costing India 3% of its annual GDP.

India has the world’s second-largest road network, spanning 6.6m kilometres (4.1m miles), just after the US. National and state highways together make up about 5% of the total network, while other roads – including gleaming access-controlled expressways – account for the rest. There are an estimated 350 million registered vehicles.

Gadkari told the road safety meeting that many road accidents happen because people lack respect and fear for the law.

“There are several reasons for accidents, but the biggest is human behaviour,” he said.

Yet that’s only part of the picture. Just last month, Gadkari pointed to poor civil engineering practices – flawed road design, substandard construction and weak management – along with inadequate signage and markings, as key contributors to the alarmingly high road accident rate.

“The most important culprits are civil engineers… Even small things like the road signages and marking system are very poor in the country,” he said.

​Since 2019, his ministry reported 59 major deficiencies in national highways, including cave-ins, Gadkari told the parliament last month. Of the 13,795 identified accident-prone “black spots”, only 5,036 have undergone long-term rectification.

Over the years, road safety audits, conducted by the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre (TRIPP) at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, have uncovered serious flaws in India’s road infrastructure.

Take crash barriers. These are meant to safely stop vehicles that stray off the road – without flipping them over. But in many places, they’re doing the opposite.

Despite clear standards for height, spacing and installation, on-ground reality often tells a different story: the metal barriers at the wrong height, mounted on concrete bases, or poorly placed. These flaws can cause a vehicle, especially a truck or bus, to flip over instead of being safely stopped.

“Unless installed exactly as specified, crash barriers can do more harm than good,” Geetam Tiwari, emeritus professor of civil engineering at IIT Delhi, told the BBC.

Then there are the tall medians – or road dividers, as they are locally called. On high-speed roads, medians are supposed to gently separate traffic moving in the opposite direction. They shouldn’t be taller than 10cm (3.9in) but, audits show, many are.

When a high-speed vehicle’s tyre hits a vertical median, it generates heat, risks a tyre burst, or even lifts the vehicle off the ground – leading to dangerous rollovers. Many medians in India are simply not designed keeping this threat in mind.

A stretch of a highway near the capital, Delhi, stands as a stark example – a road slicing through dense settlements on both sides without safety measures to protect residents. Throngs of people precariously stand on the medians as high-speed traffic whizzes by.

And then there are the raised carriageways. On many rural roads, repeated resurfacing has left the main road towering six to eight inches above the shoulder.

That sudden drop can be deadly – especially if a driver swerves to avoid an obstacle. Two-wheelers are most at risk, but even cars can skid, tip, or flip. With every layer added, the danger just keeps rising, experts say.

Clearly, India’s road design standards are solid on paper – but poorly enforced on the ground.

“One key issue is that non-compliance with safety standards attracts minimal penalties. Contracts often don’t clearly spell out these requirements, and payments are typically linked to kilometres constructed – not to adherence to safety norms,” says Prof Tiwari.

Minister Gadkari recently announced an ambitious plan to upgrade 25,000km of two-lane highways to four lanes. “It will help reduce accidents on the roads significantly,” he said.

Experts like Kavi Bhalla of the University of Chicago are sceptical. Mr Bhalla, who has worked on road safety in low and middle-income countries, argues that India’s road designs often mimic Western models, ignoring the country’s unique traffic and infrastructure needs.

“There is no reason to believe that road widening will lead to fewer traffic deaths. There is a lot of evidence that road upgradation in India results in higher traffic speeds, which is lethal to pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists,” he says.

“A key issue is that new roads in India simply copy road designs used in the US and Europe, where the traffic environment is very different. India is trying to build US-style highway infrastructure but not investing in US-style highway safety engineering research and crash data systems,” Mr Bhalla adds.

To tackle the escalating road safety crisis, the government is “implementing” the “5Es” strategy: engineering of roads, engineering of vehicles, education, enforcement and emergency care, says KK Kapila of the International Road Federation. (​According to a report by the Law Commission of India, timely emergency medical care could have saved 50% of road crash fatalities.)

Mr Kapila is helping the federal government with a road safety plan. He says seven key states were asked to identify their most accident-prone stretches. After implementing targeted interventions based on the 5Es framework, these stretches “have become the safest” in their states, he told me.

Most economists agree building more roads is key to India’s growth, but it must be sustainable and not take priority over the lives of pedestrians and cyclists.

“The price of development shouldn’t be borne by the poorest segments of society. The only way to learn how to build such roads is to try to do interventions, evaluate if they improved safety and, if they didn’t help, modify them and evaluate again,” says Mr Bhalla. If that doesn’t happen, roads will only get smoother, cars faster – and more people will die.

An 82-year-old woman who teaches the ancient Indian martial art of Kalaripayattu says she has no plans to retire.

“I’ll probably practise Kalari until the day I die,” says Meenakshi Raghavan, widely thought to be the oldest woman in the world to practise the art form.

Kalaripayattu – kalari means battleground and payattu means fight – is believed to have originated at least 3,000 years back in the southern state of Kerala and is regarded as India’s oldest martial art.

It is not solely practised for combat or fighting; it also serves to instil discipline, build strength and develop self-defence skills.

Ms Raghavan is fondly known as Meenakshi Amma – Amma means mother in the Malayalam language – in Kerala’s Vadakara, where she lives. The town is also home to other renowned exponents of the art like Unniyarcha, Aromal Chekavar and Thacholi Othenan.

Meenakshi Amma occasionally performs in other cities but mainly runs her own Kalari school, founded by her husband in 1950. Her days are busy, with classes from five in the morning to noon.

“I teach about 50 students daily. My four children were also trained [in the art form] by me and my husband. They started learning from the age of six,” she says.

Kalaripayattu has four stages and it requires patience to learn the art form.

Training begins with meypattu – an oil massage followed by exercises to condition the body.

After about two years, students progress to kolthari (stick fighting), then to angathari (weapon combat), and finally to verumkai – the highest level, involving unarmed combat. It typically takes up to five years to master Kalaripayattu.

Kung fu is believed to have adapted principles like breathing techniques and marmashastra (stimulating vital points to optimise energy flow) from Kalaripayattu, according to Vinod Kadangal, another Kalari teacher.

Legend has it that around the 6th Century, Indian Buddhist monk Bodhidharma introduced these techniques to the Shaolin monks, influencing the more famous Chinese martial art.

Meenakshi Amma still recalls the first time she stepped into a Kalari – the red-earth arena where the art is practised – 75 years ago.

“I was seven and quite good at dancing. So my guru – VP Raghavan – approached my father and suggested that I learn Kalaripayattu. Just like dance, the art form requires you to be flexible,” she says.

Hailing from Kerala’s Thiyya community, Meenakshi Amma’s guru was 15 when he and his brothers opened their own Kalaripayattu school after being denied admission elsewhere because of their low social caste.

“There was no bias when it came to girls enrolling to study Kalari – in fact, physical education was compulsory in all Kerala schools at that time. But we were expected to stop after attaining puberty,” she says.

Unlike others, Meenakshi Amma’s father encouraged her training into her late teens. At 17, she fell in love with Raghavan, and they soon married. Together, they went on to train hundreds of students, often for free.

“At the time, a lot of children came from poor families. The only money he [Raghavan] accepted was in the form of or a tribute paid to the teacher,” she says.

Donations sustained the school, while Raghavan later took a teaching job for extra income. After his death in 2007, Meenakshi Amma formally took charge.

While she has no plans to retire at the moment, she hopes to hand over the school one day to her eldest son Sanjeev.

The 62-year-old, who is also an instructor at the school, says he is lucky to have learnt from the best – his mother. But being her son earns no favours; he says she’s still his toughest opponent.

Meenakshi Amma is a local celebrity. During our interview, three politicians drop by to invite her to an awards ceremony.

“Amma, you must grace us with your presence,” one of them says with folded hands.

“Thank you for considering me, I’ll attend,” she replies.

Her students speak of “fierce admiration” for her. Many have opened their own Kalari schools across the state, a source of great pride for Meenakshi Amma.

“She’s an inspiration to women everywhere – a rare person who shows love and affection to her students, yet remains a strict disciplinarian when it comes to Kalari,” says KF Thomas, a former student.

After fleeing Silicon Valley for political and business reasons, Elon Musk is building a corporate campus in rural Texas – but his new neighbours have mixed views.

Half an hour east of Austin, past the airport, the clogged-up traffic starts to melt away and the plains of Central Texas open up, leaving the booming city behind.

Somewhere along the main two-lane highway, a left turn takes drivers down Farm-to-Market Road 1209. It seems like an unlikely address for a high-tech hub, but that’s exactly what Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies, hopes it will become.

Court filings indicate that a large metal building finished in the last few months will be the new headquarters of X, his social media platform.

A short distance away, a large logo of the Boring Company, Musk’s infrastructure company, is plastered on the side of another headquarters. And across FM 1209 is a rapidly growing SpaceX facility which manufactures Starlink satellite internet equipment.

Like most technology tycoons, Musk had long made Silicon Valley his home and headquarters. Once a supporter of the Democrats, his move to Texas is part of a larger tech world trend and also appears to reflect his own transformed ideological views.

Here the land is (relatively) cheap, skilled tech workers from nearby Austin are plentiful, and local laws are favourable to development.

Of course, there are also specific political angles to the move.

In July 2024, Musk said he was quitting California after the state passed a law prohibiting teachers from enforcing rules about notifying families when students’ gender identity changes.

Musk has an estranged transgender daughter and has spoken out against what he calls “woke mind virus” – which he describes in interviews as divisive identity politics – along with anti-meritocratic and anti-free speech ideas.

And so Musk upped sticks and headed to Texas, a Republican stronghold and the fastest-growing state in the US.

In addition to the cluster of buildings near Bastrop in central Texas, he has built a SpaceX facility in Cameron County, on the southern tip of Texas near the border with Mexico. SpaceX employees there have filed a petition to create a new town called Starbase. The measure will go to a vote in May.

Locals in Bastrop have mixed feelings about the development.

“It’s almost like we have a split personality,” says Sylvia Carrillo, city manager of Bastrop, which has a growing population of more than 12,000. “Residents are happy that their children and grandchildren will have jobs in the area.

“On the other hand it can feel like we are being overwhelmed by a third party and that the development will quickly urbanise our area,” she says.

Although the Musk development is technically outside of the city’s limits, it’s close enough that Texas laws give Bastrop’s government sway over development. And, Ms Carrillo stresses, the Musk buildings are just one example of many developments springing up in a booming area.

“He’s faced a backlash that is not entirely of his own creating,” she says.

“But now that he’s here and things are changing quickly, it’s a matter of managing” issues like house and land prices and the environment, she says.

The Musk compound is still fairly bare-bones. The grandly named Hyperloop Plaza sits in the middle of the corporate buildings, and is home to the company-owned Boring Bodega, a bar, coffee shop, hairdresser and gift shop.

On a recent windy Sunday afternoon, a video game console sat unplayed in front of a couch near a display of company T-shirts, while a few children scurried back and forth to a playground outside.

The developments in Bastrop fit right into the quickening pace of activity across central Texas, where cranes perpetually loom above the Austin skyline and the housing market is a perpetual topic of conversation.

The area has gone through various industry booms and busts over the years, including lumber and coal mining, says Judy Enis, a volunteer guide at the Bastrop Museum and Visitor Center.

During World War Two, tens of thousands of soldiers – and around 10,000 German prisoners of war – poured in to Camp Swift, a US Army facility north of the town.

“That probably had more of an impact than Elon Musk,” Ms Enis notes.

Views of the tycoon are mixed, to say the least, and inseparable not only from his politics but also opinions on economic development, in what still is a predominately rural area.

Judah Ross, a local real estate agent, says the development has supercharged population growth that started as a result of the Austin boom and accelerated during the Covid pandemic.

“I’m always going to be biased because I want the growth,” Mr Ross says. “But I love it here and I want to be part of it.

“If nothing else, what’s good is the amount of jobs that this is bringing in,” he says. “In the past year, I’ve sold to people working at Boring and SpaceX.”

Alfonso Lopez, a Texan who returned to the state after working in tech in Seattle, says he initially picked Bastrop figuring he would make a quick buck on a house purchase and move on.

Instead, he quickly became enamoured with the town, its mix of local businesses and friendly people, and wants to stay.

Mr Lopez is no big fan of Musk and is critical of some of his management practices and politics, but admires the technology his companies have built and is happy to live nearby as long as the companies are good neighbours.

“As long as they don’t ruin my water or dig a tunnel beneath my house and create a sinkhole, this isn’t bad,” he says, gesturing around the metal shed housing the bodega, coffee shop and bar. “I’ll come here and watch a game.”

His concerns about water are more than theoretical. Last year The Boring Company was fined $11,876 (£8,950) by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality after being cited for water pollution violations.

The Boring Company initially planned to dump wastewater in the nearby Colorado River but, after local pressure, signed a deal to send the sludge to a Bastrop wastewater treatment plant.

The water issues appear to have delayed housebuilding, which reportedly could include more than 100 homes for Musk employees. The planned development of homes has so far failed to materialise, however. For now, the extent of living quarters is a handful of temporary trailers behind the bodega building, surrounded by a wall, acres of Texas plain and a few horses munching grass. Ms Carrillo, the city manager, says any large-scale home building is at least a year off.

In November, SpaceX applied for a free trade zone designation, which would allow it to move materials and finished products in and out of the Bastrop factory without being subject to tariffs – one of Donald Trump’s signature policies.

It’s a common practice for manufacturers, and there are hundreds of similar zones across the country.

Local officials in Texas have endorsed the proposal, saying it will boost the local economy, despite costing the county an estimated $45,000 (£34,800) in revenue this year.

The company is also getting an injection of $17.3m (£13.4m) from the Texas government to develop the site, a grant that officials say is expected to create more than 400 jobs and $280m in capital investment in Bastrop.

Few local residents wanted to directly criticise Musk when standing face-to-face with a visiting reporter. But it’s a different story online, where sharper feelings shine through.

“They will ruin everything nearby,” one resident posted on a local online forum. “Nothing good comes with him.”

The BBC contacted SpaceX, The Boring Company and X for comment.

Ms Carrillo, the city manager, says she hasn’t picked up on much personal anger on the part of locals prompted by Musk’s activities in Washington.

But to protect Bastrop, she says, the city has recently enacted laws limiting housing density and providing for public parks – measures that she says will keep the “historic nature” of the well-preserved downtown while allowing for growth on the outskirts.

Bastrop, she says, is a conservative, traditionally Republican place.

“His national stuff doesn’t really register,” she says. “His companies have been good corporate citizens, and we hope it can stay that way.”

“Are they going to think I’m going to steal stuff from here?”

That’s the question Chantelle remembers asking herself after starting a new job and wondering whether or not to share her Romany heritage.

Chantelle, 23 from Bedfordshire, says she’s proud of her background but has sometimes been “nervous” to share it because of negative portrayals of her community in the media.

“When you watch films, it’s always like, ‘Oh, these are the Gypsies, they’re the bad guys,'” she explains.

Chantelle features in Stacey Dooley’s BBC documentary Growing Up Gypsy, which follows three young Romany women as they navigate everyday life.

The show comes as the charity Friends, Families and Travellers (FFT) – an organisation working to end discrimination against the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community – says it regularly hears from Romany Gypsy women who feel pressure to hide their identity in professional or public spaces to avoid discrimination and hate.

Ebony, 23 from Nottinghamshire, works as a beautician and recalls a client at a previous job, who didn’t know about her heritage, telling her she didn’t want to park in a certain area because there were Gypsies living near there.

“And I was sat there, painting her nails, like: ‘Little do you know’,” she recalls thinking.

Romany Gypsies are one of the three ethnic groups within the GRT community. Some in the community prefer to refer to themselves as travellers, while others prefer to use the term Gypsy.

Presenter Dooley says she felt privileged to be invited into the community but that being with the women and their families has shown her “how unwelcome they can sometimes be made to feel”.

It’s something that as a Romany Gypsy myself, I’ve had conflicting feelings about.

Now 26, I’m incredibly proud of my heritage – it’s often one of the first things I’ll share about myself and I have incredible memories of summers spent in the cherry orchard where my family worked.

However, I didn’t always feel that way. At school, I was reluctant to tell people about my identity for fear of being called a derogatory name and when I applied for university, my parents told me not to tick the GRT ethnicity box on the entrance form in case it hurt my chances of getting in.

I filled it in anyway, and have grown more confident in talking about my heritage but the hesitation is still there and is shared by many in the community today.

“There is a lot of hate and discrimination against travellers, and people don’t get jobs because they’re travellers,” says Ebony, on why she’s hidden her heritage in the past.

A spokesperson for the FFT says prejudice against the GRT community “remains widespread” and “too often goes unchallenged”.

And in 2021, a YouGov poll organised by the FFT suggested that 22% of people surveyed would be uncomfortable employing a Gypsy or traveller.

However, Ebony also says she’s had positive interactions with her employers when she did share her heritage and loves where she currently works.

Chantelle now enjoys working as a content creator, with more than 400,000 followers on TikTok, and is more open in speaking about her culture, explaining people online were really “interested” to learn more about her heritage.

Her content includes answering followers’ questions about her community and making traditional dishes, like bacon pudding, which she learned to make from her grandmother.

However, she still sees negative comments, with some even claiming those who live in a house are not Gypsies, which Chantelle says shows a misunderstanding of how her culture works.

“It goes back in your generations and it’s in your blood,” she says.

Despite the comments, Chantelle continues to make videos and appreciates her heritage, explaining: “I know we get talked bad about and things like that, but I’m proud of it.”

Ebony, meanwhile, hopes that people watching the documentary learn more about the GRT community and aren’t so prejudiced towards them.

“I don’t look at every non-traveller like you’re a bad person,” she says, adding that the community does experience that type of prejudice.

“That’s what I would like people to sort of open their eyes to,” she adds.

James’ reaction as he unboxes a rare, limited edition Labubu toy can only be described as pure, unadulterated joy.

The YouTuber delightedly holds up a brown plush monster, which has been described by collectors as “cute”, “ugly”, “creepy” and everything in between.

Labubus are furry snaggletoothed gremlins, which are designed by Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung and sold by Chinese toy company Pop Mart.

They’re almost always sold out online and long queues often form outside the selected shops that stock them.

Labubus are also primarily sold in the blind box format, meaning customers never know what version they’ll get until they open them – a fact collectors have said adds to their appeal.

While it’s difficult to pin their recent rise in popularity to one particular ingredient, celebrity endorsement, social media unboxing videos and their ability to stir up nostalgia are all contributing factors.

James Welsh, from Hampshire, sees his Labubu collectable as an investment, which he tells the BBC “could probably earn a fair bit of money two or three years down the line”.

He has just shy of 30 Labubus which retail at around £25 for an individual toy or £153 for a box of six.

He says he has “spent hundreds and hundreds but not quite thousands” on the dolls.

Labubu maker Pop Mart has doubled its profits in the last year and is eying up global expansion in 2025.

The company, which started 15 years ago, has been described as “elevating toy buying to an act of trendy connoisseurship” and praised for embracing non-traditional designs, which have made them a hit with collectors.

Artist Kasing Lung is behind some of their popular toys including The Monsters series and Labubu.

He credits living in The Netherlands as the inspiration behind the dolls and told Hypbeast “I liked to read storybooks and was influenced by ancient European elf legends”.

Lung added that during his childhood, “there were no game consoles or computers, so I had to draw dolls with a pen, so I had the idea of painting fairy tales since I was a child”.

He first came up with the designs in 2015 and signed a licensing agreement with Pop Mart in 2019 to make them into toys.

Labubu as a name has no specific meaning, it is a fictional character based around an elf-like creature.

James says his first thought when he saw the one of the toys was, “they’re creepy but they’re also really cute and I need as many of them as I can get, I need them in every colour”.

The 36-year-old adds, “I think they [provide] some real escapism for millennials as it’s like reverting back to your youth with these toys and collectables.”

A former stylist, he now primarily creates beauty and skincare content, but has recently gained thousands of views on his channel from Labubu unboxing videos.

He tells the BBC: “there is a strong link between these plush pendants and the fashion community as well.”

“They’re a way to express who you are, you can show that through the different characters, which add a pop of colour and fashion is fun, it’s not serious at the end of the day, it’s reflective of who you are.”

There are several iterations of Labubu – from vinyl figures to plush toys – but the keychain versions have become most popular recently.

Labubu’s ascent into mainstream culture has been steady – but was elevated last year by BLACKPINK star Lisa.

The K-pop singer was seen with a Labubu creature hanging from her handbag and also called the toys “her secret obsession” in an interview.

Rihanna was also spotted with one of the toys attached to her bag in recent weeks, which has led to fashion fans replicating her look.

But for collectors such as 22-year-old Chulie, who shares her purchases on TikTok, she says Labubu becoming a “fashion trend” misses the point of why they’re so loved.

“For me, it’s all about the nostalgia and the surprise aspect,” she tells the BBC.

One of Pop Mart’s biggest selling points for collectors is the way their toys are packaged in what’s known as blind boxes, which make the experience of getting one like a lucky dip.

You don’t know what character you are getting until you unseal the package, so it’s always a gamble for collectors.

“You know it’s fun, it’s a dopamine hit”, James says.

“It’s gambling for some of us – kind of like a happy meal, you don’t know what toy you’re getting until you open it up.”

It also makes the toy perfect for the world of social media, as creators can catch their genuine surprise on camera and share it with other fans – something James says provides comfort and “escapism from the real world”.

Chulie says, as a child, she would collect Pokemon trading cards, so collecting another surprise item “triggered memories for me”.

“When you’re having a rough time, especially for me personally, it’s a big serotonin boost to not only buy a collectable and keep it, but share the experience with other people as well,” she adds.

Others have compared Labubus to Beanie Babies, which were popular in the 1990s and 2000s, and say collecting Labubus evokes feelings of childhood nostalgia.

For some fans, just documenting the experience of getting a Labubu is a talking point, with many showing the long queues and hours of research required to find out where new collections are being stocked.

It’s prompted backlash on some social media channels, with users criticising collectors that have bought large numbers of items.

“Just because you don’t understand someone’s hobby, doesn’t mean it’s not valid in any way,” James says.

While James hasn’t spent hours and hours queuing to build his collection, he says he “has gone out of my way” to source authentic dolls online. As with any popular item, counterfeits have made their way onto the market.

“I spend a fair bit of money on my hobby, but it’s my adult money,” he jokes.

Chulie says she currently has 10 Labubus, but has sold some to other fans when she’s ended up with the same toy twice.

“When I first got exposed to them, I wasn’t sure why people were spending money on them, because in the US they start at around $21 [£16], which is minimum wage for a lot of people.

“But it’s so addictive getting one, and it’s really hard to stop buying once you start,” she adds.

Boy meets girl. Girl falls for boy. Girl fends off love rivals and boy – finally – declares his affection for her.

If you are a fan of reality TV dating shows, you will have seen several variations of this plot – it is a well-worn storyline that has played out on the likes of Love Island, Love is Blind and The Bachelor.

But in Ethiopia, this romantic scenario has broken convention.

Content creator Bethel Getahun won over insurance agent Messiah Hailemeskel in Latey: Looking for Love – a reality TV show that ignited debates about dating norms in the conservative East African country.

Latey’s premise mirrored that of the aforementioned hit US show, The Bachelor (in fact, Latey is Amharic for bachelor/bachelorette).

Ten women had to compete for the affection of Mr Messiah, a 38-year-old Ethiopian-American who grew up and lives in Dallas.

Throughout the series, the women battled it out in boxing matches, basketball contests and even a bizarre task where they had to devise a TV advert for a mattress, à la The Apprentice.

Broadcast on YouTube, Latey is a rare dating programme in a country where courtship is traditionally a private affair.

Winning such a ground-breaking show felt “surreal”, 25-year-old Ms Bethel told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast. Weeks on from the finale, which racked up more than 620,000 views, her victory still “feels like a badge of honour”.

Of course, not everyone feels the same way.

“The concept of a dating show is entirely [a] Western idea,” says Ethiopian vlogger Semere Kassaye.

“Dating in Ethiopia has always been a private matter, something that is nurtured carefully and only brought to the attention of family or society when it reaches a level of maturity.”

Mr Semere, 41, also feels that the show devalues women, treating them as objects to be acquired.

Several viewers voiced the same opinion – one commenter on YouTube wrote: “Ladies, you are not an object that the one with money can easily pick you up.”

Another asked: “Lots of creativity on the production but if it is against the culture, what is the point?”

Ms Bethel agrees that the concept of women openly competing for a man clashes with Ethiopian traditions, but insists that the show is more than its central premise.

“The whole point of the show is to represent different kinds of women,” she says.

“If you have seen the episodes, you can see every woman in that episode has a lot of different struggles, backgrounds, and all different kinds of stuff that hasn’t really been expressed or represented in media in Ethiopia.”

Arguably, Latey succeeds in this respect. The women – who include hotel managers, flight attendants and accountants – swiftly bond, sharing their personal stories with each other and the viewers.

In one of the more heart-breaking scenes, actress Vivian divulges that she fled to Ethiopia from Eritrea, a neighbouring country that enforces indefinite military conscription for all able-bodied citizens. It has also been widely accused of human rights violations.

Vivian travelled alone to Ethiopia and has not seen her mother in five years.

“I miss her so much,” she says tearfully.

Elsewhere, Rahel, a model, explains that she dropped out of school to take on multiple jobs and provide for her siblings, while other women have emotional conversations about grief and their reverence for those who raised them.

By baring these women’s realities – and their romantic desires – Latey cemented its place as the “content of its times”, producer Metasebia Yoseph tells the BBC.

Ms Metasebia, co-founder of D!nkTV, Latey’s production company, says the show “rocked the boat”, but is far from an affront to Ethiopian culture.

“Number one – it is not hyper-sexualised,” she says.

“We leave it on the more innocent, get-to-know-you, stages of dating.”

She says the show also asks its viewers to interrogate the concept of culture, “sparking dialogue about ‘What is our culture? Are we a monolith?'”

Adapting a universal reality TV formula to Ethiopia has delighted many, with one fan commenting: “I totally love the risk-taking, considering how reserved we are as a society… I have always wanted to see other shows in Ethiopian version. This is a ground-breaking moment.”

A second viewer wrote: “I never imagined watching The Bachelor in Ethiopia, but you have done an excellent job bringing it to life.”

Off the back of this success, D!nk TV is planning a second series.

This time, Ms Metasebia says, a single woman could be the one picking her match from 10 male hopefuls.

“We’re getting a lot of feedback from the audience, people want to see the roles reversed,” she explains.

As for Ms Bethel and Mr Messiah? Sadly, their love story has come to a halt.

“It is long distance because he’s in America right now with his son. So it’s really difficult… I don’t know where it’s going to go, basically,” she says.

But Ms Bethel is still close to some of her fellow contestants, who she fondly refers to as her “sorority”.

She is proud that Latey showcased “the romantic side of Ethiopia” and believes the show will lead to better representations of women in Ethiopian media.

“It is a new way of showcasing women and how they express themselves,” she says.

“It is a new way of seeing.”

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Christians around the world are celebrating Easter.

All Christians, from Orthodox and Western churches, are observing the holiday on the same day this year – not often the case because the churches use different calendars.

In Greece, the sky lit up with fireworks, while worshippers in Jerusalem lit candles at the church where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried. Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead, which is remembered at Easter.

Here is a look at how some have been celebrating the holiday as days of festivities culminate in Easter Sunday.

A nine-year-old boy who got trapped between rocks at a New South Wales beach on Sunday has become the seventh person to drown in Australia over the Easter weekend.

The majority of deaths were caused by strong swells washing people into the ocean from rocks. Two people remain missing.

Steven Pearce, the CEO of Surf Life Saving in New South Wales, where most of the fatalities occurred, told the ABC it was the “worst” spate of drownings on record for the Easter long weekend.

“It has just been horrendous on a weekend that’s supposed to be joyous and religious,” Pearce told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Emergency teams were able to retrieve the boy at South West Rocks, about 400 kilometres north of Sydney, but he died at the scene.

Earlier on Sunday, a helicopter spotted a father and son floating in the water near Wattamolla Beach, south of Sydney. The 14-year-old son was resuscitated, but the father was later pronounced dead.

Meanwhile, Police in Victoria are continuing to search for a 41-year-old man who went missing near San Remo on Friday.

Surf Life Saving New South Wales said it has carried out more than 150 rescues since Good Friday.

Mr Pearce said a “perfect combination” of high temperatures, the holiday weekend, and dangerous ocean swells across much of New South Wales and Victoria caused the spike in deaths.

Although conditions are set to improve on Monday, authorities urged those visiting the coastline to exercise caution.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese expressed sympathy to the victims’ families. “Please, everyone, be careful. Families in particular, be careful of your kids,” he said.

According to Royal Life Saving Australia, 323 people drowned across the country in the year to June 2024.

That figure includes those who died in rivers and creeks, as well as at beaches. Nearly 40% of the deaths were recorded in New South Wales.

Two Russian aircraft flying close to Nato airspace were detected by British fighter jets in separate incidents earlier this week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said.

A pair of RAF Typhoons were scrambled to intercept a Russian Ilyushin Il-20M “Coot-A” intelligence aircraft over the Baltic Sea on 15 April, while another two Typhoons intercepted an unknown aircraft leaving the Kaliningrad airspace on 17 April.

The two intercepts, which took off from Malbork Air Base in Poland, were part of the UK’s contribution to Nato’s enhanced air policing.

They were the RAF’s first intercepts since aircraft arrived in the region to begin the defence of Nato’s eastern flank, working alongside Sweden.

The UK’s involvement in Nato’s enhanced air policing is called Operation Chessman and sees personnel from across the RAF deployed to Malbork alongside Sweden, Nato’s newest member.

The undertaking follows Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s commitment to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP.

Minister for the Armed Forces Luke Pollard said that the UK was “unshakable” in its commitment to Nato.

“With Russian aggression growing and security threats on the rise, we are stepping up to reassure our Allies, deter adversaries and protect our national security through our Plan for Change,” he said.

Mr Pollard added that the “mission shows our ability to operate side by side with NATO’s newest member Sweden and to defend the Alliance’s airspace wherever and whenever needed, keeping us safe at home and strong abroad”.

This is not the first time RAF jets have been used to intercept Russian aircraft.

Last year, two Typhoons based at RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland were scrambled after a Russian Bear-F bomber flew over the North Sea.

At the time, the MoD said the Russian reconnaissance plane had been detected in the UK’s “area of interest”, but had not been able to enter UK sovereign airspace.

Fifty Russian aircraft were also intercepted by RAF pilots based at Lossiemouth in 2023, when 21 aircraft were intercepted in a 21-day period.

In a separate incident in 2023, Typhoon fighters and a Norwegian F-35A fighter aircraft were launched as part of Nato’s response to a Russian aircraft near Uk airspace.

Incidents like this – known as quick reaction alerts – are not uncommon and involve RAF crews shadowing Russian military aircraft near UK airspace and during operations further afield, if necessary. They have occurred since the Cold War era.

Intercepts are not just used to track Russian aircraft, though. In October 2024, RAF fighters were scrambled to intercept a civilian airliner which had reported a bomb on board.

Afterwards, an RAF spokesman said the alert ended without incident, and the Boeing 777-300 “was released to continue to its original destination”.

The layout of Myanmar’s capital city Nay Pyi Taw will be redrawn after the devastating earthquake last month, the country’s military ruler has said.

During a government meeting, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said that buildings which collapsed during the earthquake were so badly affected because they were built on soft soil.

Office buildings will be rebuilt and must be resistant to future earthquakes, he said, with tests on soil also being conducted before any rebuilding is done.

The BBC has seen evidence indicating about 70% of government buildings were damaged by the quake in the capital, and some offices have reportedly been moved to Yangon.

Myanmar was devastated by a huge earthquake which hit the country on 28 March. The 7.7 magnitude quake was so strong it was felt in Thailand and south-west China.

According to state media, over 3,500 people were killed and 5,012 were injured in Myanmar as a result of the quake.

The city of Nay Pyi Taw covers at least four times the area of London, but with only a fraction of the people. Its history is short: it has only existed since 2005, raised out of the flatlands by the then military rulers of Myanmar, which was previously known as Burma.

The name Nay Pyi Taw means “seat of the king”. The reasons for moving the capital some 370km inland from the largest city, Yangon, have never been entirely clear.

The city bears all the hallmarks of a planned capital: the road leading from parliament to the presidential palace is 20 lanes wide, but carries hardly any traffic. Shiny shopping malls and empty luxury hotels line the boulevards. There’s a safari park, a zoo, and at least three stadiums.

Since 2021, Myanmar has been plagued by civil war between the junta, which seized power in a military coup, and ethnic militias and resistance forces across the country.

A 20-day ceasefire was declared by the military council on 2 April, following the announcement of a pause in hostilities by an alliance made up of three rebel groups.

The ceasefires were announced to help relief efforts, but the military has reportedly continued to attack rebel-held areas.

The military council’s photo archives show that several government buildings, including the Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Planning and the Court of the Union were severely damaged in the earthquake.

Most of the buildings are still in ruins as repair work on them has not yet started.

The removal of important government documents has reportedly been ordered, along with equipment and other moveable items.

Reconstruction of the buildings could take years, and as a result, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Tourism have reportedly moved their offices to the former capital Yangon – 366km (228m) away.

Other departments are relocating their offices to open air halls called “hotai” in Nay Pyi Taw, which are built with steel frames.

Social media posts written by staff at the National Museum in Nay Pyi Taw say they have moved inscriptions and manuscripts and are trying to save as many as possible of the tens of thousands of books, along with literature and computers.

Trading cryptocurrency was just a bit of fun for Tzoni Raykov, but losing $1,500 worth to an administrative error has left him with serious concerns about his treatment by the industry.

The oil engineer has held an account with Revolut for several years – using its app to split bills with friends after going out for dinner or drinks. They would pay each other using traditional currency, like the pound sterling or US dollar.

But after seeing the e-money firm advertise its cryptocurrency services, he decided to give it a try.

What Tzoni thought would be a straightforward transfer of cryptocurrency coins has left the Bulgarian national angry and out of pocket.

His experience highlights some of the frustrations people have had using cryptocurrency where many of the customer safeguards which underpin standard online banking transactions, some mandated by law, do not apply.

“When they treat you like this, it makes you feel like you can’t do anything,” he told BBC News. “Like you are powerless.”

While the cryptocurrency market is dominated by Bitcoin, there is a plethora of other digital currencies, including USDC – which Tzoni had already amassed in a separate crypto account.

His frustrations began in February when he decided to transfer some of his USDC coins to his Revolut account.

As a precaution – which Revolut suggests doing – he first sent 10 of the coins, worth $10. It was a success and the funds were credited to his Revolut account.

Days later he tried to make a larger transfer of what he thought was 1,500 USDC. The transfer was completed but, this time, the funds were not credited to his account.

Tzoni says the problem occurred because Revolut’s deposit instructions were unclear.

When you transfer cryptocurrency from one account to another, you have to select a network to send it through – like choosing which courier service to use when sending a parcel.

Revolut’s deposit instructions say to transfer USDC to it, you have to use a network called Polygon. In his first, successful, deposit Tzoni selected one called “Polygon PoS”.

In the second deposit, when he tried to transfer 1,500 USDC, he selected a different network – “Polygon (bridged)”.

He thought it would work just as well but says instead it caused the coins to be converted into USDC.e – a different cryptocurrency.

This is what Revolut received. The company does not handle USDC.e coins.

After seeing his Revolut account had not been credited with the 1,500 coins, Tzoni contacted the Revolut support team.

In messages seen by BBC News, they told him the issue seemed to be with “the specific type of Polygon network used, which led to the conversion”.

In another, he was told: “The app currently specifies ‘Polygon’ without differentiating between standard and bridged options. I’ll note your feedback for future improvements.”

Tzoni thinks if Revolut’s deposit instructions had been more specific, his problem would have been avoided.

When approached by BBC News about this case, Revolut gave a different answer.

The firm said the problem was not because Tzoni had used the wrong Polygon network – which he claimed turned his coins into USDC.e.

The deposit failure was “not because the network itself had ‘converted’ the token”, it said, without explaining why its support team had suggested to Tzoni that it was.

Revolut told us the deposit ultimately failed because the USDC.e coins it received were not supported by the company’s technology.

It said: “As is standard industry practice due to the significant technical challenges involved in supporting every combination of token and chain, the recovery of these unsupported assets does not sit within Revolut’s scope.”

It means the 1,500 USDC.e coins have not been credited to Tzoni’s account or sent back to him.

To Tzoni’s mind, this isn’t acceptable treatment from a company of Revolut’s size and reputation, which handles normal banking deposits as well as cryptocurrency, stocks and commodities.

Revolut says it has 10 million users in the UK while last year it was granted a provisional banking licence, paving the way for it to become a fully fledged UK bank.

When using a High Street bank, a mistaken transfer of traditional currency would usually be resolved with the money being reverted back to the customer.

This was established in 2014 in a voluntary code of practice that most UK banks signed up to. There is no such equivalent in the cryptocurrency industry.

After contacting Revolut several times in recent weeks, Tzoni has been told the coins are effectively lost.

“They are waiting for me to get bored and give up, to accept the money is gone. But I won’t,” Tzoni said, pointing out the coins are in the Revolut system. “It is ridiculous that they can behave like this.”

While Tzoni’s loss of cryptocurrency is significant to him, the sum is tiny compared with the size of the industry, which has risen sharply in value over the past 18 months.

The global market peaked in value at $3.9tn last December, following the re-election of Donald Trump. Since then it has fallen by $1.1tn, according to tracking website CoinGecko.

Government policies in the US and other countries are also changing to favour the cryptocurrency industry, even though it has suffered several scandals.

FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency firms, went bankrupt in 2022. Sam Bankman-Fried, its chief executive, was sentenced to 25 years in prison last year for defrauding customers of billions of dollars.

Investigators also found FTX was using QuickBooks, a popular accounting software designed for individuals and small businesses, to manage the money.

John Ray III, a lawyer tasked with recovering funds from FTX for defrauded customers, told a bankruptcy court: “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”

He later told a congressional hearing: “Nothing against QuickBooks. It’s a very nice tool, just not for a multibillion-dollar company.”

A couple of months ago Bybit, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange by some estimates, was tricked out of $1.5bn worth of coins by hackers thought to be working for North Korea.

The firm had been using Safe, a free digital storage software popular with individuals who want to store cryptocurrency on their own devices, as part of their business operations.

Following the theft, Bybit’s chief executive said they “should have upgraded and moved away from Safe” earlier.

One of the problems with cryptocurrency firms, says Prof Mark Button, who researches cybercrime, is they can grow very quickly, which means they don’t always keep up with the accounting and security challenges of managing so much money.

“For me it illustrates that if we are going to be serious about cryptocurrencies in the future… there needs to be some kind of regulation.”

In Tzoni’s case, it might have been easier for him to get his cryptocurrency back or be compensated if there were laws stating what firms need to do if they are sent a coin they don’t handle.

Higher industry standards might also have prevented him making such a transaction in the first place.

Mykhailo Tiutin is chief technology officer at AMLBot, a company that analyses how risky cryptocurrency transactions are.

Their service runs checks similar to those supported by banks, where details for a transfer, such as the account holder’s name, sort code and account number, are verified.

He says cryptocurrency is safe enough for the average person to use but that they should be careful about which products and services they choose. He says he has also lost cryptocurrency after making an administrative mistake.

“You have to do your own research,” he told us. “The successes and the losses are ultimately at your own risk.”

Prison officers are to demand that staff be immediately given electric stun guns to protect themselves while guarding the UK’s most dangerous jails when they meet the justice secretary on Wednesday.

The meeting with Shabana Mahmood comes after Hashem Abedi, one of the men responsible for the Manchester Arena bombing, threw hot oil at officers and stabbed them with makeshift weapons at HMP Frankland in County Durham.

Mark Fairhurst, national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA), told the BBC that they are “calling for the tactical use of taser”.

In a statement, Mahmood said “we must do better to protect our prison officers in the future”.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Mr Fairhurst said: “My concerns are that when we face life threatening situations, we no longer have tactical options.

“If extendible batons and incapacitant spray fail to work adequately, we have no other options available.”

“That’s why we are calling for the tactical use of taser. We want specially trained staff on site who respond to incidents with the ability to deploy taser to neutralise that threat.

“At the moment we haven’t got that.”

Prison officers currently only carry an extendable baton and Pava incapacitant spray – synthetic pepper spray.

The POA will also renew calls for all staff to have stab vests.

Mr Fairhurst has also called for American “Supermax”-style rules imposed on the UK’s most dangerous inmates.

This would mean selected high-risk inmates would leave their cell only when handcuffed and escorted by three staff, he told the Guardian newspaper.

There would also be no mixing with other prisoners, and they would be restricted to their basic entitlement of rights and privileges.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has said there will be a full, independent review into the incident, which has drawn criticism from survivors and the families of victims of the Manchester Arena bombing.

Former prison governor Ian Acheson said the current protective equipment issued to prison officers, particularly those that deal with the most dangerous prisoners, is inadequate compared to the “level of threat” they face.

“We need some urgent action by the Ministry of Justice to protect frontline staff or we are very close to having a frontline prison officer murdered on duty,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Security measures at the separation centre did allow prisoners access to kitchens – where Abedi carried out his attack – but this has been suspended by the MoJ following the incident.

Mahmood said the review would “provide recommendations and findings that highlight whether there are any changes in process or policies that can be implemented at HMP Frankland and more broadly across the High Security Estate”.

An internal review into protective body armour will be also carried out, she said.

There was no mention of electric stun guns in the statement.

Abedi, who helped his older brother Salman plan the Manchester Arena bombing, was jailed for life with a minimum 55 years in prison after being convicted of murdering 22 people.

He had been held in a separation centre – which holds a small number of inmates deemed to be dangerous and extremist – at Frankland.

He moved to Frankland after carrying out an earlier attack on prison officers in London’s Belmarsh prison in 2020, for which three years and 10 months was added to his sentence.

Abedi has since been returned to Belmarsh.

The winners of the 2024 Sony World Photography Awards have been announced, with Zed Nelson named as Photographer of the Year for , a project exploring the fractured relationship between humans and the natural world.

Nelson’s project takes its name from the term Anthropocene – the current geological epoch where human activity has become the dominant force shaping the Earth’s environment.

The project explores the tension between the human desire to connect with nature and ongoing environmental degradation.

Nelson’s constructed environments highlight the growing gap between conservation efforts and ecological destruction.

The Anthropocene Illusion goes beyond a documentary, offering a thought-provoking exploration of modern human life in an era shaped by human impact.

Nelson’s work, selected from the 10 professional competition category winners, triumphed in the wildlife and nature category.

Here are the other category winners.

The Tokyo Toilet Project by Ulana Switucha (Canada)

The Tokyo Toilet Project in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan, is an urban redevelopment initiative aimed at creating modern public restrooms that encourage use.

These images are part of a larger series documenting the architectural design of these structures within their urban setting.

Rhi-Entry by Rhiannon Adam (United Kingdom)

In 2018, Japanese billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa launched a global search for eight artists to join him on a week-long lunar mission aboard SpaceX’s Starship, the first civilian deep space flight.

The mission would follow a path similar to Apollo 8’s 1968 journey, which inspired astronaut Bill Anders to suggest NASA should have sent poets to capture the awe of space.

In 2021, Rhiannon Adam was chosen as the only female crew member from one million applicants and for three years she immersed herself in the space industry.

Maezawa abruptly cancelled the mission, leaving the crew to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives – the experience informed Adam’s thought provoking project.

Divided Youth of Belfast by Toby Binder (Germany)

For years, Toby Binder has been documenting the experiences of young people born after the peace agreement in Northern Ireland, capturing what it means to grow up amid the intergenerational tensions in both Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods.

Alquimia Textil by Nicolás Garrido Huguet (Peru)

Alquimia Textil is a collaborative project by Nicolás Garrido Huguet and fashion designer María Lucía Muñoz, highlighting the natural dyeing techniques of Pumaqwasin artisans in Chinchero, Cusco, Peru.

The project seeks to raise awareness and preserve these ancestral practices, which involve hours of meticulous work often overlooked in the textile industry.

The Strata of Time by Seido Kino (Japan)

This project invites viewers to consider what it means for a country to grow, and the advantages and disadvantages linked to that growth, by overlaying archival photographs from the 1940s-60s within current scenes.

The Journey Home from School by Laura Pannack (United Kingdom)

Laura Pannack’s project explores the tumultuous public lives of young people in the gang-governed Cape Flats area of Cape Town, South Africa, where their daily commute carries the risk of death.

Using handmade, lo-fi experimental techniques, this project explores how young people have to walk to and from school avoiding the daily threat of gang crossfire.

M’kumba by Gui Christ (Brazil)

M’kumba is an ongoing project that illustrates the resilience of Afro-Brazilian communities in the face of local religious intolerance.

Gui Christ wanted to photograph a proud, young generation representing African deities and mythological tales.

Shred the Patriarchy by Chantal Pinzi (Italy)

India, the world’s most populous country, only has a handful of female skaters.

Through the art of falling and getting back up, these women challenge stereotypes, fight marginalisation and reclaim public spaces in both urban and rural areas.

Still Waiting by Peter Franck (Germany)

Still Waiting presents collages that capture moments of pause, of waiting.

Tbourida La Chute by Olivier Unia

The Open competition celebrates the power and dynamism of a single photograph.

Olivier Unia was chosen for his photograph Tbourida La Chute.

Many of the photographs taken during a traditional Moroccan ‘tbourida’ show the riders firing their rifles.

With this image, the photographer wanted to share another side of the event, and show how dangerous it can be when a rider is thrown from their mount.

The Last Day We Saw the Mountains and the Sea by Micaela Valdivia Medina (Peru)

Medina’s project explores female prison spaces across Chile, and the dynamics that shape the lives of incarcerated women and their families.

For the 2025 Youth competition, photographers aged 19 and under were invited to respond to an Open Call and enter their best images from the last year.

The winner, chosen from a shortlist of 11 photographers, was Daniel Dian-Ji Wu, Taiwan, 16 years old, for his image of a skateboarder doing a trick, silhouetted against a sunset in Venice Beach, Los Angeles.

The prestigious Outstanding Contribution to Photography 2025 was awarded to acclaimed documentary photographer Susan Meiselas.

For more than five decades, photographer Susan Meiselas has focused her lens on capturing compelling stories from diverse communities.

From documenting the lives of women performing striptease at rural American fairs to chronicling the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, her work provides an intimate portrait of resilience and humanity.

All photos courtesy of Sony World Photography Awards 2025. Exhibition at Somerset House, London, 17 April – 5 May 2025.

US stocks and the dollar plunged again as President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on US central bank boss calling him “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.

In a social media post, Trump called on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates “pre-emptively” to help boost the economy, saying Powell had been consistently too slow to respond to economic developments.

“There can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW,” he wrote.

Trump’s criticism of Powell’s handling of the US economy comes as his own plans for tariffs have driven a stock market sell-off and raised fears of economic recession.

The president’s intensifying clash with Powell, whom he named to lead the Fed during his first term, has added to the market turmoil.

The S&P 500, which tracks 500 of the biggest US companies, fell roughly 2.4% on Monday. It has lost roughly 12% of its value since the start of the year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2.5% and has dropped about 10% so far this year, while the Nasdaq fell more than 2.5% and is down roughly 18% since January.

Though the dollar and US government bonds are typically considered safe assets in times of market turmoil, they have not escaped the recent turbulence.

The dollar index – which measures the strength of the dollar against a set of currencies including the Euro – on Monday fell to its lowest level since 2022.

Interest rates on US government debt also rose, as investors demanded higher returns for holding Treasuries.

Trump’s criticism of Powell dates back to his first term in office, when he also reportedly discussed firing him. Since winning the election, he has urged Powell to lower borrowing costs.

The latest criticism follows Powell’s warnings that Trump’s import taxes were likely to drive up prices and slow the economy.

Trump last week called publicly for Powell to be fired, writing on social media on Thursday: “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough,”.

Such a move would be controversial – and legally questionable – given a tradition of independence at the bank.

Powell last year told reporters he did not believe the president had the legal authority to remove him.

But one of Trump’s top economic advisers confirmed that officials were studying the option on Friday, when the stock market in the US was closed for trading.

President Donald Trump has backed US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth after reports that military attack details were shared in a group chat that included Hegseth’s wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

The controversy comes a month after a journalist was added to a Signal group chat in which US cabinet officials, including Hegseth, discussed plans to attack Houthi rebels in Yemen.

In the second Signal chat, Hegseth shared information about air strikes against Yemen, the BBC’s US news partner CBS confirmed, citing sources familiar with the messages.

“Pete’s doing a great job,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “Everybody’s happy with him.”

White House officials have played down reports of military plans being shared in a second Signal group chat, but have not denied it.

Trump told reporters he has “great confidence” in his defence secretary.

“Are you bringing up Signal again? I thought they gave that up two weeks ago. It’s the same old stuff from the media,” he said. “Try finding something new,” he said.

Trump said the source of the story “sounds like disgruntled employees”, an idea also floated by Hegseth earlier on Monday when he claimed the news media was “full of hoaxsters” who “try to slash and burn people”.

Hegseth did not directly respond to reports of a second Signal chat, which were initially covered by the New York Times.

In a statement to the newspaper, the White House said no classified information was shared.

The messages in the second chat, sent on 15 March, included flight schedules for American F/A-18 Hornets carrying out strikes on Houthi targets.

Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer Rauchet, is a former Fox News producer and holds no official position within the Pentagon. Hegseth has previously been criticised for reportedly including his wife in meetings with foreign leaders.

His brother, Phil, and personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore, both hold positions at the Department of Defense. But it is not clear why any of the three would require advanced warnings of sensitive US strike plans.

Unlike the first Signal group, the second one – called “Defense | Team Huddle” – was created by Hegseth, according to the New York Times. But it too appeared to share details of military operations against Yemen.

The existence of the earlier Signal group was revealed by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic magazine, who was accidentally included in it by Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser.

Although the White House has also denied that classified information was discussed in the first group, Hegseth’s critics – including former US defence officials – have said such discussions could jeopardise US military personnel.

Signal uses end-to-end encryption, meaning only a message’s sender and recipients can view its contents. Despite this high level of security, experts say there are still ways for the information to be viewed or shared with the wrong people, which is why classified communications normally take place in secure, government-controlled locations rather than on private devices.

• Five takeaways from first leaked US military chat group
• Pentagon watchdog probing Hegseth’s Signal app use
• Four lingering questions about ‘Signalgate’
• What is messaging app Signal and how secure is it?

The second Signal chat surfaced as controversy swirls around the head of the Pentagon, who this year is controlling a budget of $892bn (£670bn).

Hegseth last week fired three top officials for an “unauthorised disclosure” – an accusation the officials said was “baseless”.

In a testy exchange outside the White House ahead of an annual Easter event, Hegseth appeared to attribute the latest story to the officials he fired.

“What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out,” he said.

Hegseth criticised the media and denounced the reports. He also said he has spoken to the president and that they were “on the same page all the way”.

In an op-ed for Politico magazine published on Sunday, John Ullyot, the top Pentagon spokesperson who resigned last week, wrote that the department was in “total chaos”.

He added: “The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership.”

Ullyot said it was not true that the three fired officials were leaking information and wrote: “Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.”

However, in a statement on X, Sean Parnell, current chief spokesman for the Pentagon, said the “Trump-hating media” was “destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda”.

He echoed the White House by saying that “there was no classified information in any Signal chat”.

Washington says its strikes in Yemen are punishment for Houthi attacks on cargo vessels transiting through the Red Sea, a critical waterway for international trade.

Since November 2023, the Houthis have targeted dozens of merchant vessels with missiles, drones and small boat attacks in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, saying they are acting in support of the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza . They have sunk two vessels, seized a third, and killed four crew members.

US air strikes on an oil terminal in north-western Yemen this week killed at least 74 people and wounded 171 others, according to the Houthi-run health ministry.

A nine-year-old boy who got trapped between rocks at a New South Wales beach on Sunday has become the seventh person to drown in Australia over the Easter weekend.

The majority of deaths were caused by strong swells washing people into the ocean from rocks. Two people remain missing.

Steven Pearce, the CEO of Surf Life Saving in New South Wales, where most of the fatalities occurred, told the ABC it was the “worst” spate of drownings on record for the Easter long weekend.

“It has just been horrendous on a weekend that’s supposed to be joyous and religious,” Pearce told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Emergency teams were able to retrieve the boy at South West Rocks, about 400 kilometres north of Sydney, but he died at the scene.

Earlier on Sunday, a helicopter spotted a father and son floating in the water near Wattamolla Beach, south of Sydney. The 14-year-old son was resuscitated, but the father was later pronounced dead.

Meanwhile, Police in Victoria are continuing to search for a 41-year-old man who went missing near San Remo on Friday.

Surf Life Saving New South Wales said it has carried out more than 150 rescues since Good Friday.

Mr Pearce said a “perfect combination” of high temperatures, the holiday weekend, and dangerous ocean swells across much of New South Wales and Victoria caused the spike in deaths.

Although conditions are set to improve on Monday, authorities urged those visiting the coastline to exercise caution.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese expressed sympathy to the victims’ families. “Please, everyone, be careful. Families in particular, be careful of your kids,” he said.

According to Royal Life Saving Australia, 323 people drowned across the country in the year to June 2024.

That figure includes those who died in rivers and creeks, as well as at beaches. Nearly 40% of the deaths were recorded in New South Wales.

His ascension to the papacy heralded many firsts.

Francis was the first Pope from the Americas or the Southern Hemisphere. Not since Syrian-born Gregory III died in 741 had there been a non-European Bishop of Rome.

He was also the first Jesuit to be elected to the throne of St Peter – Jesuits were historically looked on with suspicion by Rome.

His predecessor, Benedict XVI, was the first Pope to retire voluntarily in almost 600 years and for almost a decade the Vatican Gardens hosted two popes.

Many Catholics had assumed the new pontiff would be a younger man – but Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina was already in his seventies when he became Pope in 2013.

He had presented himself as a compromise candidate: appealing to conservatives with orthodox views on sexual matters while attracting the reformers with his liberal stance on social justice.

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It was hoped his unorthodox background would help rejuvenate the Vatican and reinvigorate its holy mission.

But within the Vatican bureaucracy some of Francis’s attempts at reform met with resistance and his predecessor, who died in 2022, remained popular among traditionalists.

From the moment of his election, Francis indicated he would do things differently. He received his cardinals informally and standing – rather than seated on the papal throne.

On 13 March 2013, Pope Francis emerged on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square.

Clad simply in white, he bore a new name which paid homage to St Francis of Assisi, the 13th Century preacher and animal lover.

He was determined to favour humility over pomp and grandeur. He shunned the papal limousine and insisted on sharing the bus taking other cardinals home.

The new Pope set a moral mission for the 1.2 billion-strong flock. “Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor,” he remarked.

His last act as head of the Catholic Church was to appear on Easter Sunday on the balcony of St Peter’s Square, waving at thousands of worshippers after weeks in hospital with double pneumonia.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 17 December 1936 – the eldest of five children. His parents had fled their native Italy to escape the evils of fascism.

He enjoyed tango dancing and became a supporter of his local football club, San Lorenzo.

He was lucky to escape with his life after an initial and serious bout of pneumonia, undergoing an operation to remove part of a lung. It would leave him susceptible to infection throughout his life.

As an elderly man he also suffered from pain in his right knee, which he described as a “physical humiliation”.

The young Bergoglio worked as a nightclub bouncer and floor sweeper, before graduating as a chemist.

At a local factory, he worked closely with Esther Ballestrino, who campaigned against Argentina’s military dictatorship. She was tortured, her body never found.

He became a Jesuit, studied philosophy and taught literature and psychology. Ordained a decade later, he won swift promotion, becoming provincial superior for Argentina in 1973.

Some felt he failed to do enough to oppose the generals of Argentina’s brutal military regime.

He was accused of involvement in the military kidnapping of two priests during Argentina’s Dirty War, a period when thousands of people were tortured or killed, or disappeared, from 1976 to 1983.

The two priests were tortured but eventually found alive – heavily sedated and semi-naked.

Bergoglio faced charges of failing to inform the authorities that their work in poor neighbourhoods had been endorsed by the Church. This, if true, had abandoned them to the death squads. It was an accusation he flatly denied, insisting he had worked behind the scenes to free them.

Asked why he did not speak out, he reportedly said it was too difficult. In truth – at 36 years old – he found himself in a chaos that would have tried the most seasoned leader. He certainly helped many who tried to flee the country.

He also had differences with fellow Jesuits who believed Bergoglio lacked interest in liberation theology – that synthesis of Christian thought and Marxist sociology which sought to overthrow injustice. He, by contrast, preferred a gentler form of pastoral support.

At times, the relationship bordered on estrangement. When he sought initially to become Pope in 2005 some Jesuits breathed a sigh of relief.

He was named Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and then became Archbishop.

Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal in 2001 and he took up posts in the Church’s civil service, the Curia.

He cultivated a reputation as a man of simple tastes, eschewing many of the trappings of a senior cleric. He usually flew economy and preferred to wear the black gown of a priest – rather than the red and purple of his new position.

In his sermons, he called for social inclusion and criticised governments that failed to pay attention to the poorest in society.

“We live in the most unequal part of the world,” he said, “which has grown the most, yet reduced misery the least.”

As Pope, he made great efforts to heal the thousand-year rift with the Eastern Orthodox Church. In recognition, for the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the Patriarch of Constantinople attended the installation of a new Bishop of Rome.

Francis worked with Anglicans, Lutherans and Methodists and persuaded the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to join him to pray for peace.

After attacks by Muslim militants, he said it was not right to identify Islam with violence. “If I speak of Islamic violence, then I have to speak of Catholic violence too,” he declared.

Politically, he allied himself with the Argentine government’s claim on the Falklands, telling a service: “We come to pray for those who have fallen, sons of the homeland who set out to defend their mother, the homeland, to claim the country that is theirs.”

And, as a Spanish-speaking Latin American, he provided a crucial service as mediator when the US government edged towards historic rapprochement with Cuba. It is difficult to imagine a European Pope playing such a critical diplomatic role.

On many of the Church’s teachings, Pope Francis was a traditionalist.

He was “as uncompromising as Pope John Paul II… on euthanasia, the death penalty, abortion, the right to life, human rights and the celibacy of priests”, according to Monsignor Osvaldo Musto, who was at seminary with him.

He said the Church should welcome people regardless of their sexual orientation, but insisted gay adoption was a form of discrimination against children.

There were warm words in favour of some kind of same-sex unions for gay couples, but Francis did not favour calling it marriage. This, he said, would be “an attempt to destroy God’s plan”.

Shortly after becoming Pope in 2013, he took part in an anti-abortion march in Rome – calling for rights of the unborn “from the moment of conception”.

He called on gynaecologists to invoke their consciences and sent a message to Ireland – as it held a referendum on the subject – begging people there to protect the vulnerable.

He resisted the ordination of women, declaring that Pope John Paul II had once and for all ruled out the possibility.

And, although he seemed at first to allow that contraception might be used to prevent disease, he praised Paul VI’s teaching on the subject – which warned it might reduce women to instruments of male satisfaction.

In 2015, Pope Francis told an audience in the Philippines that contraception involved “the destruction of the family through the privation of children”. It was not the absence of children itself that he saw as so damaging, but the wilful decision to avoid them.

The greatest challenge to his papacy, however, came on two fronts: from those who accused him of failing to tackle child abuse and from conservative critics who felt that he was diluting the faith. In particular, they had in mind his moves to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to take Communion.

Conservatives also adopted the issue of child abuse as a weapon in their long-running campaign.

In August 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Apostolic Nuncio to the US, published an 11-page declaration of war. He released a letter describing a series of warnings made to the Vatican about the behaviour of a former cardinal, Thomas McCarrick.

It was alleged that McCarrick had been a serial abuser who attacked both adults and minors. The Pope, Archbishop Viganò said, had made him a “trusted councillor” despite knowing he was deeply corrupted. The solution was clear, he said: Pope Francis should resign.

“These homosexual networks,” the archbishop claimed, “act under the concealment of secrecy and lie with the power of octopus tentacles… and are strangling the entire Church.”

The ensuing row threatened to engulf the Church. McCarrick was eventually defrocked in February 2019, after an investigation by the Vatican.

During the Covid pandemic, Francis cancelled his regular appearances in St Peter’s Square – to prevent the virus circulating. In an important example of moral leadership, he also declared that being vaccinated was a universal obligation.

In 2022, he became the first Pope for more than a century to bury his predecessor – after Benedict’s death at the age of 95.

By now, he had his own health problems – with several hospitalisations. But Francis was determined to continue with his efforts to promote global peace and inter-religious dialogue.

In 2023, he made a pilgrimage to South Sudan, pleading with the country’s leaders to end conflict.

He appealed for an end to the “absurd and cruel war” in Ukraine, although he disappointed Ukrainians by appearing to swallow Russia’s propaganda message of having been provoked into its invasion.

And a year later, he embarked on an ambitious four-country, two-continent odyssey; with stops in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore.

In recent months, Francis had struggled with his health. In March 2025, he spent five weeks in hospital with pneumonia in both lungs.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio came to the throne of St Peter determined to change it.

There will be some who would have preferred a more liberal leader, and critics will point to his perceived weakness in confronting the institution’s legacy of clerical sexual abuse.

But change it, he did.

He appointed more than 140 cardinals from non-European countries and bequeaths his successor a Church that is far more global in outlook than the one he inherited.

And, to set an example, he was the no-frills Pope who elected not to live in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace – complete with Sistine Chapel – but in the modern block next door (which Pope John Paul II had built as a guest house).

He believed anything else would be vanity. “Look at the peacock,” he said, “it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth.”

He also hoped he could shake up the institution itself, enhancing the Church’s historic mission by cutting through internal strife, focusing on the poor and returning the Church to the people.

“We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a Church that is wrapped up in its own world,” he said shortly after his election.

“If I had to choose between a wounded Church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn Church, I would choose the first.”

At midday on Monday, church bells across Italy began to toll. Pope Francis was dead.

Not even 24 hours had passed since he had made a surprise appearance on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square, blessing the 35,000 people gathered to celebrate Easter at the Vatican.

The Pope was breathing on his own, without oxygen tubes, despite being told by his doctors to spend two months convalescing after 38 days in hospital with double pneumonia.

Over the past two weeks Francis had done what he had always done, received visitors and met people from every walk of life.

When he appeared on Easter Sunday, the crowd below erupted in cheers as he appeared; then it fell silent.

“Dear brothers and sisters, I wish you a happy Easter,” he said, his voice heavy with effort.

They were to be his final words in public.

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“I think people could feel something – as if they could tell it was the last time they’d see him,” said Mauro, a Rome resident who was in St Peter’s Square for Easter Mass and had now returned to pay his respects.

“Usually everyone shouts ‘Long live the Pope!’… this time it was much quieter than usual, there was maybe more respect for his suffering.”

“He blessed us but his voice was a husk,” a man called Alberto told the BBC. “I think he was giving us his last goodbye.”

Doctors who treated Francis at Rome’s Gemelli hospital had prescribed a regimen of complete rest – but it was never likely that a typically active Pope who spent much of his papacy meeting people would keep to that.

Francis had already made it clear he wanted to be back in the Vatican in time for Easter, as soon as the specialists treating him explained that his health issues would not be resolved quickly.

For Christians, Easter is even more important than Christmas as it symbolises a core tenet of their faith – the resurrection of Christ, three days after his nailing to the cross.

Before he was discharged on 23 March, Francis waved to crowds from the hospital too, and then headed back to his quarters in the Casa Santa Marta guest house he had made his home.

His medical team said all he needed was oxygen, and convalescing there was better than hospital with all its infections.

Easter was just three weeks away and, as it approached, the Pope’s schedule became increasingly busy.

He met King Charles and Queen Camilla at the Casa San Marta and then appeared on the Vatican balcony for Palm Sunday four days later on 13 April, mingling with a crowd of 20,000 people in St Peter’s Square, against doctors’ advice.

But for the Pope, Easter was most important time of all.

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Last Thursday, as he had done many times previously and as he used to do in his native Argentina before becoming Pope, he made a visit to the Regina Coeli jail in Rome where he spent half an hour meeting prisoners and he was greeted by applause from staff and guards as he arrived in a wheelchair.

In previous years he had washed inmates’ feet, mirroring what Jesus is said to have done with his disciples the night before his death.

“This year I’m unable to do that, but I can and want to still be near you,” he said in a feeble voice to the dozens of prisoners who had come to see him, and who cheered him on as he toured the jail.

“We are so lucky. Those on the outside don’t get to see him and we do,” one man told Italian media.

As he was leaving the prison, Francis was asked by a journalist how he would experience Easter this year.

“Whichever way I can,” he replied.

And, on Sunday, he kept his promise.

He held a short meeting with US Vice-President JD Vance before appearing before the crowds in St Peter’s Square as the crowd below erupted in cheers.

He made his final blessing – the Urbi et Orbi address in Latin, meaning “to the city and to the world”. Then, Archbishop Diego Ravelli read out a speech written by the Pope as Francis sat silently beside him.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, he descended down to St Peter’s Square, where he was driven around in an open-top popemobile – the distinctive little white Mercedes-Benz used by popes to meet crowds.

A camera followed him around as he raised his arm to bless the faithful lining the sunny square, and a few babies were brought up closer to him. It was the last time the world saw him alive.

Watching Francis’s blessing on Sunday, Alberto from Rome felt he would not last much longer, although the Pope’s death still came as a shock.

“I didn’t feel happy seeing him, I could tell he was in pain,” he said. “But it was an honour to see him one last time.”

Francis died early on Monday in his beloved Casa Santa Marta – a residenceof 100-odd simple rooms, run by nuns and open to pilgrims and visitors.

A little over two hours later, the cardinal chamberlain, or camerlengo, stood in the Casa Santa Marta and made the news public.

The Vatican said on Monday evening he had died of a stroke and irreversible heart failure.

The Pope’s rooms were a far cry from the opulence of the Vatican quarters typically destined to pontiffs, which Francis had turned down at the start of his papacy saying he felt the need to “live among people”.

“If I lived by myself, maybe even a bit in isolation, it would be of no use to me,” he said back then.

In the coming days, cardinals from across the world will be staying at Casa Santa Marta as they gather in Rome for the conclave that will choose Francis’ successor.

Outside, in the bright sunshine in St Peter’s Square, people mingled with priests and friars under the imposing basilica.

A group of nuns clad in grey and white glared at a man who, headphones in, was dancing around the square. “No respect,” they tutted.

The same large screens that broadcast the Pope’s blessing for Easter now displayed a photo of Francis smiling and a notice that a special rosary was being held for him 12 hours after his death.

It would allow Catholics near and far to pray for their Pope – and thank him for celebrating one last Easter with them.

US Vice-President JD Vance has paid tribute to the late Pope Francis – having been one of the final people to meet him, on the day before the pontiff’s death.

“My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him,” Vance wrote on social media: “I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill.”

Vance, who converted to Catholicism as an adult, met Vatican officials over the weekend – including the Pope himself on Easter Sunday – before heading to India.

President Donald Trump gave his own reaction to Monday’s news, posting to say: “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!” He has been joined by former US presidents.

Vance followed his statement with a link to his favourite homily by the late Pope – a March 2020 address on fear and faith that was given during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The meeting with Pope Francis was not originally on Vance’s schedule for the trip to Italy. But sources had said Vance was hoping he could secure even a brief moment with the Pope – a personal goal for him as a Catholic, as well as a political one.

Vance’s visit was also aimed at thawing relations, insiders said. The pontiff was a long-time critic of US President Donald Trump. In 2016, he questioned then-presidential candidate Trump’s faith, saying “a person who thinks only about building walls… and not of building bridges, is not Christian”.

Recently, he referred to Trump’s immigration views as “an ugly thing”, and his plans to ramp up deportations as a “disgrace”. Caring for migrants was a signature issue for the Pope.

In February, the Pope appeared to criticise Vance, too – without naming him, but by implicitly questioning the vice-president’s interpretation of the ordo amoris (order of love), a Christian concept.

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On Saturday, Vance also met the Vatican’s secretary of state and secretary for relations with states and international organisation.

In a statement, the Vatican described “cordial talks” on Saturday that affirmed “good existing bilateral relations” and a “common commitment” to protect freedom of religion.

On Sunday, Vance’s office confirmed a visit to the Pope that lasted about 15 minutes. Vance “expressed his gratitude to Pope Francis for inviting him to meet on Easter Sunday and for the hospitality the Vatican has extended to his family”.

Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, then in his mid-30s. He wrote that he found the family and social values of the Catholic Church appealing and of a part with his view of conservative politics.

Still, amid his disagreements with Pope Francis on immigration, he acknowledged that his faith was newer and may differ from Pope Francis’s, even as he revered the Pope. The US Catholic Church has at times clashed with Pope Francis, taking a more conservative approach to social issues.

At the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington in February, Vance referred to himself as a “baby Catholic” and said there were “things about the faith that I don’t know”.

The death of Pope Francis, the first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church, was announced on Monday. He was 88.

“This morning at 07:35 local time (05:35 GMT) the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell said in the statement, which was published by the Vatican on its Telegram channel.

Also on Sunday, Francis appeared at the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square to wish thousands of worshippers a happy Easter.

He had been discharged from hospital last month, after five weeks of treatment for an infection that led to double pneumonia.

Former US presidents added their own tributes.

Joe Biden said the Pope was “unlike any who came before him” and would be remembered as among the most “consequential leaders of our time”.

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama said he was a “rare leader who made us want to be better people” and “shook us out of our complacency”.

China has warned it will hit back at countries that make deals with the US that hurt Beijing’s interests, as the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies threatens to drag in other nations.

The comments come after reports that the US plans to pressure governments to restrict trade with China in exchange for exemptions to US tariffs.

The Trump administration has started talks with trading partners over tariffs, with a Japanese delegation visiting Washington last week and South Korea is set to start negotiations this week.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has imposed hefty taxes on Chinese imports, while other countries have also been hit with levies on their goods.

“Appeasement cannot bring peace, and compromise cannot earn one respect,” a Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson said.

“China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of China’s interests. If this happens, China will never accept it and will resolutely take countermeasures”.

The remarks echoed an editorial last week in the state-controlled China Daily, which warned the European Union against trying to “appease” the US.

The comments came after reports that the US plans to use tariff negotiations to pressure dozens of countries into imposing new barriers on trade with China.

The BBC has asked the US Treasury Department and the US Trade Representative for responses to the reports.

Trump has said more than 70 countries have reached out to start negotiations since the tariffs were announced.

“If you put the numbers on it, about 20% of Japan’s profitability comes from the United States, about 15% comes from the People’s Republic of China,” said Jesper Koll, from Japanese online trading platform operator Monex Group.

“Certainly, Japan doesn’t want to [have to] choose between America and the People’s Republic of China.”

Japan kicked off negotiations with the US last week when its top tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, met the US President in Washington DC.

South Korea’s acting president, Han Duck-soo, has said his country will begin trade talks with the US later this week.

Meanwhile, US Vice President, JD Vance, is expected to meet India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to the country this week. India faces a tariff rate of 26% if it is unable to agree a trade deal with the Trump administration.

Last week, Vance said there was a “good chance” a trade deal could be reached with the UK.

“We’re certainly working very hard with Keir Starmer’s government,” he said in an interview with the UnHerd website.

Since Trump’s inauguration, there has been a flurry of announcements on tariffs.

The US president has said the import taxes will encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised, and lead to major investments in the country.

But critics have said bringing manufacturing back to the US is complicated and could take decades and that the economy will struggle in the meantime.

Trump has also backtracked on many of his announcements.

Just hours after steep levies on dozens of America’s trading partners kicked in earlier this month, he announced a 90-day pause on those tariffs to all countries bar China, in the face of mounting opposition from politicians and the markets.

Trump has imposed taxes of up to 145% on imports from China. Other countries are now facing a blanket US tariff of 10% until July.

His administration said last week that when the new tariffs are added on to existing ones, the levies on some Chinese goods could reach 245%.

China has hit back with a 125% tax on products from the US and vowed to “fight to the end”.

The trade war between the world’s two biggest economies sent shockwaves through the global financial markets earlier this month.

A senior Palestinian official familiar with Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations has told the BBC that Qatari and Egyptian mediators have proposed a new formula to end the war in Gaza.

According to the official, it envisages a truce lasting between five and seven years, the release of all Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, a formal end to the war, and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

A senior Hamas delegation was due to arrive in Cairo for consultations.

The last ceasefire collapsed a month ago when Israel resumed bombing Gaza, with both sides blaming each other for the failure to keep it going.

Israel has not commented on the mediators’ plan.

Hamas will be represented at discussions in Cairo by the head of its political council, Mohammed Darwish, and its lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya.

It comes days after the movement rejected Israel’s latest proposal, which included a demand for Hamas to disarm in return for a six-week truce.

On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not end the war before Hamas was destroyed and all the hostages returned. Hamas has demanded Israel commit to ending the war before the hostages are freed.

The Palestinian official familiar with the talks told the BBC that Hamas has signalled its readiness to hand over governance of Gaza to any Palestinian entity agreed upon “at the national and regional level”. The official said this could be the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) or a newly formed administrative body.

Netanyahu has ruled out any role for the PA in the future governance of Gaza, which has been ruled by Hamas since 2007.

While it is still too early to assess the likelihood of success, the source described the current mediation effort as serious and said Hamas had shown “unprecedented flexibility”.

Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages. Israel launched a massive military offensive in response, which has killed 51,240 Palestinians – mainly civilians – according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Elsewhere, the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo has instructed its staff – who had been co-ordinating medical evacuations from Gaza to Egyptian hospitals and facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid – to relocate with their families to the Egyptian city of Arish, near the Gaza border.

Perched on top of Santorini’s sheer cliffs is a world-famous tourist industry worth millions. Underneath is the fizzing risk of an almighty explosion.

A huge ancient eruption created the dreamy Greek island, leaving a vast crater and a horse-shoe shaped rim.

Now scientists are investigating for the first time how dangerous the next big one could be.

BBC News spent a day on board the British royal research ship the Discovery as they searched for clues.

Just weeks before, nearly half of Santorini’s 11,000 residents had fled for safety when the island shut down in a series of earthquakes.

It was a harsh reminder that under the idyllic white villages dotted with gyros restaurants, hot tubs in AirBnB rentals, and vineyards on rich volcanic soil, two tectonic plates grind in the Earth’s crust.

Prof Isobel Yeo, an expert on highly dangerous submarine volcanoes with Britain’s National Oceanography Centre, is leading the mission. Around two-thirds of the world’s volcanoes are underwater, but they are hardly monitored.

“It’s a bit like ‘out of sight, out of mind’ in terms of understanding their danger, compared to more famous ones like Vesuvius,” she says on deck, as we watch two engineers winching a robot the size of a car off the ship’s side.

This work, coming so soon after the earthquakes, will help scientists understand what type of seismic unrest could indicate a volcanic eruption is imminent.

Santorini’s last eruption was in 1950, but as recently as 2012 there was a “period of unrest”, says Isobel. Magma flowed into the volcanoes’ chambers and the islands “swelled up”.

“Underwater volcanoes are capable of really big, really destructive eruptions,” she says.

“We are lulled into a sense of false security if you’re used to small eruptions and the volcano acting safe. You assume the next will be the same – but it might not,” she says.

The Hunga Tunga eruption in 2022 in the Pacific produced the largest underwater explosion ever recorded, and created a tsunami in the Atlantic with shockwaves felt in the UK. Some islands in Tonga, near the volcano, were so devastated that their people have never returned.

Beneath our feet on the ship, 300m (984ft) down, are bubbling hot vents. These cracks in the Earth turn the seafloor into a bright orange world of protruding rocks and gas clouds.

“We know more about the surface of some planets than what’s down there,” Isobel says.

The robot descends to the seabed to collect fluids, gases and snap off chunks of rock.

Those vents are hydrothermal, meaning hot water pours out from cracks, and they often form near volcanoes.

They are why Isobel and 22 scientists from around the world are on this ship for a month.

So far, no-one has been able to work out if a volcano becomes more or less explosive when sea water in these vents mixes with magma.

“We are trying to map the hydrothermal system,” Isobel explains. It’s not like making a map on land. “We have to look inside the earth,” she says.

The Discovery is investigating Santorini’s caldera and sailing out to Kolombo, the other major volcano in this area, about 7km (4.3 miles) north-east of the island.

The two volcanoes are not expected to erupt imminently, but it is only a matter of time.

The expedition will create data sets and geohazard maps for Greece’s Civil Protection Agency, explains Prof Paraskevi Nomikou, a member of the government emergency group that met daily during the earthquake crisis.

She is from Santorini, and grew up hearing about past earthquakes and eruptions from her grandfather. The volcano inspired her to become a geologist.

“This research is very important because it will inform local people how active the volcanoes are, and it will map the area that will be forbidden to access during an eruption,” she says.

It will reveal which parts of the Santorini sea floor are the most hazardous, she adds.

These missions are incredibly expensive, so Isobel crams in experiments night and day as the scientists work in 12-hour shifts.

John Jamieson, a professor at Canada’s Memorial University in Newfoundland, shows us volcanic rocks extracted from the vents.

“Don’t pick that one up,” he warns. “It’s full of arsenic.”

Pointing to another that looks like a black and orange meringue with gold dusting, he explains: “This is a real mystery – we don’t even know what it is made of.”

These rocks tell the history of the fluid, temperature and material inside the volcano. “This is a geological environment different to most others – it’s really exciting,” he says.

But the mission’s beating heart is a dark shipping container on deck where four people stare at screens mounted on a wall.

Using a joystick that wouldn’t look out of a place on a gaming console, two engineers drive the underwater robot. Isobel and Paraskevi trade theories about what is in a pool of fluid that the robot has found.

They have recorded very small earthquakes around the volcano, caused by fluid moving through the system and causing fractures. Isobel plays us an audio recording of the fractures reverberating. It sounds like the bass in a nightclub being amped up and down.

They identify how fluid moves through rocks by pulsing an electromagnetic field into the earth.

This is creating a 3D map that shows how the hydrothermal system is connected to the volcano’s magma chamber where an eruption is generated.

“We are doing science for the people, not science for the scientists. We are here to make people feel safe,” Paraskevi says.

The recent earthquake crisis in Santorini highlighted how exposed the island’s residents are to the seismic threats and how reliant they are on tourism.

Back on dry land, photographer Eva Rendl meets me in her favourite location for wedding shoots. When the so-called swarm of earthquakes hit in February, she left the island with her daughter.

“It was really scary, as it got more and more intense,” she says.

She’s back now but business is slower. “People have cancelled bookings. Normally I start shoots in April but my first job isn’t until May,” Eva says.

In the main square of Santorini’s upmarket town Oia, British-Canadian tourist Janet tells us six of her group of 10 cancelled their holiday.

She believes more accurate scientific information about the likelihood of earthquakes and volcanoes would help others feel more reassured about visiting.

“I get the Google alerts, I get the scientists’ alerts, and it helps me feel safe,” she said.

But Santorini will always be a dream destination. In Imerovigli, we see two people climbing onto the curved rooftops to get the perfect shot.

The couple – married for just 15 minutes – travelled from Latvia and were not put off by the island’s underwater risks.

“Actually we wanted to get married by a volcano,” Tom says, his bride Kristina by his side.

Over 12 profoundly consequential years for the Catholic Church, Pope Francis steered it into uncharted territory and did so in ways that will resonate long into the future.

The pontiff worked to soften the face of the Catholic Church for many, loosened the Vatican’s grip on power and intervened in some of the major social questions of our time.

Within Catholicism, he certainly had his critics; some traditionalists in particular were often enraged by actions they felt were a radical departure from Church teaching.

Despite him being a vocal pacifist and critic of actions by major nations that he perceived as harmful, there were also those who felt he should have been more progressive.

But from the moment he was elected in 2013, Pope Francis came with an informality and a smile that put the people he met at their ease. It was symbolic of a principle that guided his belief that the Church should reach people in their daily lives, wherever in the world they happened to be.

“At the beginning of my papacy I had the feeling that it would be brief: no more than three or four years, I thought,” Pope Francis said in his autobiography Hope, released in January 2025, a book that gives us insight into the Pope’s own reflections on his legacy.

One of his first acts as pope was to give up the papal apartment on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, instead choosing to live in the same guesthouse in which he had stayed as a cardinal.

Some saw this as a sign he was giving up the ostentatious trappings of papacy, and of the humility he would certainly become known for – he had, after all, taken the name of a saint who championed the cause of the poor.

But the main reason for surrendering the papal apartment, as he later explained it, pointed to another of his characteristics: that he loved being around people.

To him, the apartment felt detached and a difficult place in which to welcome guests. At the guesthouse he was surrounded by clergy and rarely alone for long.

On foreign trips to more than 60 countries, in his audiences at the Vatican and during countless events, it was very clear that being close to people, and particularly the young, was his lifeblood.

Within Catholicism, he signalled a radical change in tone on some social issues.

“Everyone in the Church is invited, including people who are divorced, including people who are homosexual, including people who are transgender,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Given that the Church did not recognise divorce in its canon law and that previous popes had talked of homosexuality as a disorder not “a human fact”, as Pope Francis did, this was a departure that again concerned traditionalists.

But the Pope appeared to want the Church to explore and understand people’s every day struggles in a fresh light. He acknowledged his own journey in seeing things differently to the way he had done in the past.

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Progressives welcomed the Pope’s compassion for what he called “imperfect Catholics”, but there was also a recognition more broadly that words of acceptance from a pontiff could have an effect on those outside the Church too.

“The first time that a group of transgender people came to the Vatican, they left in tears, moved because I had taken their hands, had kissed them… as if I had done something exceptional for them! But they are daughters of God,” he wrote in Hope.

Pope Francis roundly condemned countries that consider homosexuality a crime, and he talked of divorce sometimes being “morally necessary”, citing cases of domestic abuse.

However, there are those who suggest the Pope could have gone further to encourage change in Church teaching.

Homosexual “acts” remain a sin in Catholicism, marriage can still only be between a man and a woman, divorce is still not officially recognised and the Pope himself remained very firmly against gender reassignment and surrogacy.

Throughout his papacy, and long before that, Pope Francis also always remained firm in his own belief that women should not be priests.

He did however describe the Church as “female” and encouraged parishes around the world to find more leadership roles for women in ways that were consistent with the Catholic teaching that does not currently allow women to be ordained.

In 2021 Sister Raffaella Petrini was appointed secretary general of the papal state and under Pope Francis the Vatican did start an ongoing process of exploring whether women could take up the role of deacon, assisting in worship services.

Nevertheless, some reformists were left disappointed that more progress was not made regarding equality for women, in a faith where the majority of churchgoers are women.

During the latter part of his papacy, the Pope launched an ambitious three-year consultation process aimed at gauging the opinion of as many of the world’s more-than-a-billion Catholics as possible.

There were tens of thousands of listening sessions across the globe, meant to tease out the issues that Catholics most cared about. It transpired that roles for women and ways in which the Church could become more inclusive to LGBT+ Catholics were high on the list.

While the process itself did not lead to decisive action on either front, it did speak volumes about Pope Francis’ desire that his pontificate was rooted not in Rome and in clerics but in the lives of believers around the world.

Throughout his papacy, there was a particular focus on reaching out to those on the economic and political margins, his words and actions encouraging his priests to be closer to the disadvantaged.

The issue of dignity for migrants was hugely important to him throughout his papacy, but so too was building bridges with other Christian denominations, other religions and those of no faith.

On occasions, to some Catholic traditionalists, the Pope’s outreach appeared inappropriate for someone of his position, like his visit to a centre for asylum seekers outside Rome in spring 2016 when he washed and kissed the feet of refugees that included Muslims, Hindus and Coptic Christians.

As well as becoming a passionate voice for migrants – once going to lay a wreath on the waters where many had died on their perilous journeys – he also linked the impact of climate change to poverty.

In speeches, including one to US Congress, and in one of his most important pieces of work, the decree Laudato Si, Pope Francis talked of environmental damage amounting to rich countries inflicting harm on poor ones.

Vehemently anti-war, the Pope frequently talked of conflict itself equating to failure.

He called the war in Gaza “terrorism” and from early on he implored that there be a ceasefire.

He met the families of the Israelis abducted by Hamas on 7 October 2023, but also spoke passionately about the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, particularly children, and made daily calls to the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.

But sometimes a longing to build bridges was seen by some observers as getting in the way of Pope Francis taking a firm stance against wrongdoing.

In the eyes of many, he failed to unequivocally call out Russian aggression in Ukraine or tackle China’s surveillance and persecution of its Catholics.

From the very start of his papacy, he also faced huge tasks confronting misconduct much closer to home.

The scourge of corruption had long dogged the upper echelons of the Catholic Church. Early on, Pope Francis closed thousands of unauthorised Vatican bank accounts, and in the latter half of his time he introduced new rules on financial transparency.

It was in the way he dealt with the horrors of child sexual abuse by those associated with the Catholic Church that made it clear he knew it was something he would be judged by.

“From the very start of my papacy, I felt I was being called to take responsibility for all the evil committed by certain priests,” he wrote in Hope.

As an illustration of the scale of the problem that remains, in 2020 the Catholic Church released lists of living members of clergy in the US alone found to have been accused of sexual abuses – these included clergy linked to child pornography and rape. There were around 2,000.

“With shame and repentance, the Church must seek pardon for the terrible damage that those clergy have caused with their sexual abuse of children, a crime that causes deep wounds of pain,” he recently wrote.

Among other initiatives, Pope Francis introduced rules that meant members of the Church had a responsibility to report on abuse if they had knowledge of it, otherwise they risked being removed from their positions.

Though he made errors of judgement, on occasions publicly supporting clergy even though they were alleged to have failed to deal with abuse, Pope Francis was quick to apologise for his own mistakes and for the deep failings of the Church.

Both at the Vatican and abroad he would frequently meet with Church abuse victims. Saying “sorry” for abuse was the prime focus of some foreign trips.

A huge part of Pope Francis’ legacy is the way in which he changed the face of the upper echelons of the Catholic Church through his selection of new cardinals.

In fact, about 80% of the cardinals that will select the next pope were appointed by Pope Francis. What is striking about those selections is their diversity, with many coming from South America, Africa and Asia.

It was part of Pope Francis’ mission to consolidate a change in the centre of gravity of Catholicism away from Europe, where it was in decline, towards the places it was thriving, and to reflect that in Church leadership.

The posthumous outpouring of tributes to him from across the globe is perhaps one sign that shift is working.