When the world learned of Pope Francis’ death on Monday morning, an Irish-American cardinal, little known in the wider world, was the one to break the news.

After announcing that the pope had “returned to the home of the Father”, Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell took on one of his biggest roles yet: the “camerlengo”, or the person who runs the Vatican after the death or resignation of a pope.

Pope Francis nominated the cardinal for the role in 2019. The cardinal will remain in the position during the “Apostolica Sedes Vacans”, the period between the death or resignation of a pope until the election of the next pontiff.

He also will play an important role in the centuries-old ceremonies to mourn Pope Francis.

Born in 1947 in Dublin, Farrell attended the University of Salamanca in Spain and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, according to the Vatican.

He held roles in churches around the world, serving as a chaplain at the University of Monterrey in Mexico as well as at a parish in Bethesda, Maryland.

All told, the 77-year-old spent more than 30 years working for churches in the US.

Farrell was appointed Bishop of Dallas in 2007 until Pope Francis asked him in 2016 to serve as the leader of the Vatican’s new department responsible for the pastoral care of families, raising him to the rank of cardinal.

Years after naming him as camerlengo, in 2023, Francis chose Farrell as president of the Supreme Court of Vatican City State. He was also named president of the Commission for Confidential Matters.

• How the next Pope is chosen

As camerlengo, Cardinal Farrell will be tasked with making arrangements for the conclave, the process through which the next pontiff is selected.

Technically, a camerlengo can become pope, as has happened twice in history: Gioacchino Pecci (Pope Leo XIII) in 1878 and Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) in 1939.

The cardinal also will preside over the certification of Francis’s death, laying his body into the coffin. After that, the cardinal is expected to lead a procession moving the pope’s body from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta to St Peter’s Basilica.

The ceremony could take place as soon as Wednesday morning, according to the Vatican.

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.”

• Live coverage of reaction to the Pope’s death
• Francis: Pope from Latin America who changed Catholic Church
• Pope Francis’s life in pictures
• What happens next?

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.

• Pope in South Sudan tells clergy to raise voices against injustice

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.

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.

• LIVE UPDATES: Pope Francis dies aged 88
• ANALYSIS: The Pope from Latin America who changed Catholic Church
• EXPLAINER: What next after the death of Pope Francis?
• WATCH: The pontiff’s last public appearance on Easter Sunday
• IN PICTURES: Defining images of the first Latin American pope

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.”

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.

Follow latest updates here

“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.

• How the next Pope is chosen
• A vocal critic of the powerful whose influence was felt far beyond faith

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.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

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.

• LIVE UPDATES: Pope Francis dies aged 88
• ANALYSIS: The Pope from Latin America who changed Catholic Church
• EXPLAINER: How the next pope is chosen
• WATCH: The pontiff’s last public appearance on Easter Sunday
• IN PICTURES: Defining images of the first Latin American pope

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.

China has executed a man for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese boy last September, the Japanese embassy in China has told the BBC.

Zhong Changchun was sentenced to death in January for attacking the boy, who had been walking to a Japanese school in south-eastern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The case had sent shockwaves through both countries and fuelled diplomatic tensions amid allegations of it being a xenophobic attack.

“The Government of Japan considers the murder of a completely innocent child to be an unforgivable crime, and we take this execution with the utmost solemnity,” the Japanese embassy said in its statement to the BBC.

“In light of this incident, the Japanese government will continue to take all possible safety measures and strongly urge the Chinese side to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in China.”

It said that it had been informed of the execution by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The incident heightened fears among Japanese living in China and prompted Japanese companies including Toyota to ask their staff to take precautions. Others, like Panasonic, offered employees free flights home.

The verdict on Zhong’s case made no mention of Japan, Japanese officials previously said. Kenji Kanasugi, Japan’s ambassador to China said Zhong had requested to speak to the victim’s family, but did not say if he had been targeting Japanese nationals.

The incident has also shone a light on the unchecked nationalism on Chinese social media, which has fuelled anti-foreigner sentiment in recent years.

Online commentators noted that the schoolboy’s killing happened on a politically sensitive date – 18 September, the anniversary of an incident that led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in China in the early 1930s.

Historical grievances have long overshadowed political tensions between China and Japan. China has long demanded an apology from Japan for its colonial and wartime aggression in the early and mid 20 Century. It has also accused Japan of glossing over its brutal military actions in China in its history textbooks.

The stabbing also came amid a spate of high-profile attacks on foreigners in China, including the stabbing of four American teachers in Jilin.

Last June, a man attacked a Japanese mother and her child at a bus stop in Suzhou but ended up killing a Chinese woman trying to protect them. The man has also been executed, Japanese officials said last week.

US stocks and the dollar plunged again as President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on the 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.

Trading on most major stock indexes in the Asia-Pacific region was subdued on Tuesday afternoon.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 and the ASX 200 in Sydney were around 0.1% lower. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was about 0.2% higher.

Meanwhile, the price of gold hit a new record high as investors seek out so-called “safe-haven” assets.

Spot gold crossed the $3,400 (£2,563) per ounce mark for the first time on Monday.

The precious metal is viewed as a safer place to put money during times of economic uncertainty.

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.

Trump’s latest comments come as top economic policymakers are gathering in Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

Christopher Meissner, a professor of economics at University of California, Davis, and who formerly worked with the IMF, told the BBC’s Today programme that before the 1970s there was “significant” political pressure on the Federal Reserve from time to time.

“However, the past 30 or 40 years what we’ve learned is that central bank independence is the key to financial stability and low inflation. And I think this is a major reversal and we have to watch out for it,” he added.

The IMF will publish its latest growth forecasts for individual countries later, and last week it said these projections would include “notable markdowns”.

Mr Meissner said: “They used to say ‘When the US sneezed, the rest of the world caught a cold’. It’ll be really curious to see if that continues.

“However, I think people are expecting a pretty significant downturn in the US in the coming months… and that can’t be good for the rest of the world.”

Steak, mashed potatoes and deserts for astronauts could soon be grown from individual cells in space if an experiment launched into orbit today is successful.

A European Space Agency (ESA) project is assessing the viability of growing so-called lab-grown food in the low gravity and higher radiation in orbit and on other worlds.

ESA is funding the research to explore new ways of reducing the cost of feeding an astronaut, which can cost up to £20,000 per day.

The team involved say the experiment is a first step to developing a small pilot food production plant on the International Space Station in two years’ time.

Lab-grown food will be essential if Nasa’s objective of making humanity a multi-planetary species were to be realised, claims Dr Aqeel Shamsul, CEO and founder of Bedford-based Frontier Space, which is developing the concept with researchers at Imperial College, London.

“Our dream is to have factories in orbit and on the Moon,” he told BBC News.

“We need to build manufacturing facilities off world if we are to provide the infrastructure to enable humans to live and work in space”.

Lab-grown food involves growing food ingredients, such as protein, fat and carbohydrates in test tubes and vats and then processing them to make them look and taste like normal food.

Lab-grown chicken is already on sale in the US and Singapore and lab grown steak is awaiting approval in the UK and Israel. On Earth, there are claimed environmental benefits for the technology over traditional agricultural food production methods, such as less land use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. But in space the primary driver is to reduce costs.

The researchers are doing the experiment because it costs so much to send astronauts food on the ISS – up to £20,000 per astronaut per day, they estimate.

Nasa, other space agencies and private sector firms plan to have a long-term presence on the Moon, in orbiting space stations and maybe one day on Mars. That will mean sending up food for tens and eventually hundreds of astronauts living and working in space – something that would be prohibitively expensive if it were sent up by rockets, according to Dr Shamsul.

Growing food in space would make much more sense, he suggests.

“We could start off simply with protein-enhanced mashed potatoes on to more complex foods which we could put together in space,” he tells me.

“But in the longer term we could put the lab-grown ingredients into a 3D printer and print off whatever you want on the space station, such as a steak!”

This sounds like the replicator machines on Star Trek, which are able to produce food and drink from pure energy. But it is no longer the stuff of science fiction, says Dr Shamsul.

He showed me a set-up, called a bioreactor, at Imperial College’s Bezos Centre for Sustainable Proteins in west London. It comprised a brick-coloured concoction bubbling away in a test tube. The process is known as precision fermentation, which is like the fermentation used to make beer, but different: “precision” is a rebranding word for genetically engineered.

In this case a gene has been added to yeast to produce extra vitamins, but all sorts of ingredients can be produced in this way, according to Dr Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, Director of the Bezos Centre.

“We can make all the elements to make food,” says Dr Ledesma-Amaro proudly.

“We can make proteins, fats, carbohydrates, fibres and they can be combined to make different dishes.”

A much smaller, simpler version of the biorector has been sent into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the ESA mission. There is plenty of evidence that foods can be successfully grown from cells on Earth, but can the process be repeated in the weightlessness and higher radiation of space?

Drs Ledesma-Amaro and Shamsul have sent small amounts of the yeast concoction to orbit the Earth in a small cube satellite on board Europe’s first commercial returnable spacecraft, Phoenix. If all goes to plan, it will orbit the Earth for around three hours before falling back to Earth off the coast of Portugal. The experiment will be retrieved by a recovery vessel and sent back to the lab in London to be examined.

The data they gather will inform the construction of a larger, better bioreactor which the scientists will send into space next year, according to Dr Ledesma-Amaro.

The problem, though, is that the brick-coloured goo, which is dried into a powder, looks distinctly unappetising – even less appetising than the freeze-dried fare that astronauts currently have to put up with.

That is where Imperial College’s master chef comes in. Jakub Radzikowski is the culinary education designer tasked with turning chemistry into cuisine.

He isn’t allowed to use lab grown ingredients to make dishes for people just yet, because regulatory approval is still pending. But he’s getting a head start. For now, instead of lab-grown ingredients, Jakub is using starches and proteins from naturally occurring fungi to develop his recipes. He tells me all sorts of dishes will be possible, once he gets the go-ahead to use lab-grown ingredients.

“We want to create food that is familiar to astronauts who are from different parts of the world so that it can provide comfort.

“We can create anything from French, Chinese, Indian. It will be possible to replicate any kind of cuisine in space.”

Today, Jakub is trying out a new recipe of spicy dumplings and dipping sauce. He tells me that I am allowed to try them out, but taster-in-chief is someone far more qualified: Helen Sharman, the UK’s first astronaut, who also has a PhD in chemistry.

We tasted the steaming dumplings together.

My view: “They are absolutely gorgeous!”

Dr Sharman’s expert view, not dissimilar: “You get a really strong blast from the flavour. It is really delicious and very moreish,” she beamed.

“I would love to have had something like this. When I was in space, I had really long-life stuff: tins, freeze dried packets, tubes of stuff. It was fine, but not tasty.”

Dr Sharman’s more important observation was about the science. Lab-grown food, she said, could potentially be better for astronauts, as well as reduce costs to the levels required to make long-term off-world habitation viable.

Research on the ISS has shown that the biochemistry of astronauts’ bodies changes during long duration space missions: their hormone balance and iron levels alter, and they lose calcium from their bones. Astronauts take supplements to compensate, but lab-grown food could in principle be tweaked with the extra ingredients already built in, says Dr Sharman.

“Astronauts tend to lose weight because they are not eating as much because they don’t have the variety and interest in their diet,” she told me.

“So, astronauts might be more open to having something that has been cooked from scratch and a feeling that you are really eating wholesome food.”

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

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 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.

Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop billions of dollars in proposed cuts.

The suit filed Monday is part of a feud that escalated last week when the elite institution rejected a list of demands that the Trump administration said was designed to curb diversity initiatives and fight anti-semitism at the school.

President Donald Trump froze $2.2bn (£1.7bn) of federal funding and also threatened the university’s tax-exempt status.

“The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,” Harvard’s president Alan M. Garber said in a letter to the university on Monday.

The White House responded later Monday night in a statement.

“The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end. Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege”, said White House spokesman Harrison Fields.

Mr Garber said the funding freeze affected critical research including studies on pediatric cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

“In recent weeks, the federal Government has launched a broad attack on the critical funding partnerships that make this invaluable research possible,” the school’s lawsuit said.

“This case involves the Government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard.”

Aside from funding, the Trump administration days ago also threatened Harvard’s ability to enroll international students.

Mr Garber, who is Jewish, acknowledged Harvard’s campus has had issues with anti-semitism but said he had established task forces to work with the problem. He said the university would release the report of two task forces that looked into anti-semitism and anti-Muslim bias.

The prominent US university, located in Massachusetts, is not the only institution faced with withholding of federal dollars, which play an outsized role in funding new scientific breakthroughs.

The administration has targeted other private Ivy League institutions including suspending $1bn at Cornell University and $510 million at Brown University.

Others such as Columbia University, the epicentre of pro-Palestinian campus protests last year, have agreed to some demands after $400 million of federal funds was threatened.

The demands to Harvard included agreeing to government-approved external audits of the university’s curriculum as well as hiring and admission data. In response, Harvard released a blistering letter rejecting them.

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard’s lawyers told the administration on April 14.

“Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government. Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle.”

Former US President Barack Obama, a Harvard alum, said he supported the university.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signalled he is open to bilateral talks with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since the early stages of the war.

Speaking to Russian state TV on Monday, Putin said Russia has “always looked positively on any peace initiatives. We hope that representatives of the Kyiv regime will feel the same way”.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s comments indicated a willingness to engage in direct talks with Ukraine about not striking civilian targets.

Zelensky did not respond directly to Putin’s comments, but said Ukraine was “ready for any conversation” that would ensure the safety of civilians.

There have been no direct talks between the two sides since February 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In comments to the Interfax news agency, Peskov said: “When the president said that it was possible to discuss the issue of not striking civilian targets, including bilaterally, the president had in mind negotiations and discussions with the Ukrainian side.”

In his nightly video address, Zelensky said Ukraine needs a “clear answer from Moscow” on whether it will agree to stop attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Meanwhile, fighting continued overnight with reports of drone strikes in the port city of Odessa.

Local authorities said three people were injured in the raid, with fires breaking out and damage to residential buildings.

Ukraine is scheduled to participate in talks with US and European countries this week in London, following a meeting in Paris last week where leaders discussed pathways to end the war.

Putin’s proposal for direct talks comes after both sides have accused each other of breaching a 30-hour “Easter truce” announced by Putin on Saturday, which has now expired.

Zelensky said Russian troops had violated the ceasefire nearly 3,000 times since the start of Sunday, while Russia accused Ukraine of launching hundreds of drones and shells. The BBC has not independently verified these claims.

Both sides have been facing increasing pressure from the US, where Donald Trump has threatened to “take a pass” on further peace negotiations if no progress is made.

The US Commerce Department has announced plans to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from four South East Asian countries.

It comes after an investigation that began a year ago when several major solar equipment producers asked then-President Joe Biden administration to protect their US operations.

The proposed levies – targeting companies in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam – are in response to allegations of subsidies from China and the dumping of unfairly cheap products in the US market.

A separate US government agency, the International Trade Commission, is due to reach a final decision on the new tariffs in June.

The countervailing and anti-dumping duties, as these tariffs are known, vary between companies and the countries their products are made in.

Some solar equipment exporters in Cambodia face the highest duties of 3,521% because of what was seen as a lack of cooperation with the Commerce Department investigation.

Products made in Malaysia by Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar faced some of the lowest duties of just over 41%.

Another China-based firm, Trina Solar, faces tariffs of 375% for the products it makes in Thailand.

Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment from BBC News.

In recent years, many Chinese firms have moved operations to South East Asia in a bid to avoid tariffs imposed since the start of US President Donald Trump’s first term.

The US Commerce Department’s findings were welcomed by the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee – a group of manufacturers that called on the US government to launch the investigation.

“This is a decisive victory for American manufacturing and confirms what we’ve long known: that Chinese-headquartered solar companies have been cheating the system,” said Tim Brightbill, lead counsel to the Alliance.

In 2023, America imported almost $12bn (£8.9bn) in solar equipment from the four countries, according to US Census Bureau figures.

While the planned tariffs are likely to help US solar panel manufacturers, they could also mean extra costs for businesses and consumers who have benefited from the availability of cheaper solar products.

The levies would be imposed on top of other tariffs already rolled out by the Trump administration.

They planned tariffs were announced just days after Chinese President Xi Jinping, completed a tour of Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia.

The trip was aimed to boost ties with the region and encourage those nations to resist what he called “unilateral bullying” by the US.

Trump has so far 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”.

As the threat posed by US President Donald Trump tops Canada’s federal election agenda, the issue of the country’s contribution to global warming has been largely overshadowed.

The two main contenders are pushing plans for new energy infrastructure as the country seeks to pivot away from its reliance on the US.

Mark Carney’s Liberals are promising to make Canada a global superpower in both conventional and green energy. The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre want to invigorate the oil and gas sector and scrap the industrial carbon tax.

It’s a big shift from the 2021 election, when the environment topped the list of voter concerns.

In that vote, there was a consensus between the two major parties that Canada should rapidly transition to a green economy, with a net-zero emissions law passed in June of that year.

That sense of unity is now long gone.

Carney, who became leader of the Liberals and prime minister in early March, has a long track record as an international champion of climate change.

As well as being a governor of the Bank of England, he was a UN Special Envoy on climate action and finance and was co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, one of the big outcomes of COP26.

However, his first action as prime minister was to repeal the consumer carbon levy.

The tax – a signature climate policy of the governing Liberals – was introduced in 2019, and placed an added charge on consumers using coal, oil or gas products.

It was unpopular, and for the Conservatives it became an easy target of blame for the rising cost of living in recent years. Poilievre even sought to paint his rival as “Carbon Tax Carney”.

• ‘My home is worth millions – but my own kids are priced out of this city’
• What Trump really wants from Canada
• Who’s who in Canada’s federal election
• A simple guide to Canada’s federal election

Some observers believe that cancelling the tax was a smart political move, others feel it was a mistake.

“By making one of your first moves the removal of the carbon price, you’re accepting this narrative that climate change policy costs us too much money and isn’t good for us, when, in fact, that is not the case,” said Catherine Abreu, who is director of the International Climate Politics Hub and a member of Canada’s Net Zero Advisory Body.

“I think there’s a missed opportunity here to set a new narrative framework around this in the election.”

Carney’s election pitch on energy is to turn Canada into “a world leading superpower in both clean and conventional energy”.

He is emphasising his pragmatic approach, and his campaign talks about fast-tracking green energy projects and encouraging green transport and buildings, without giving too many details. He has also called for investment in technologies like carbon capture.

There are other important factors that have helped cool some of the Carney climate rhetoric.

Opinion polls indicate that, since late 2023, Canadian concerns over the climate fell as worries over rising prices, energy and housing costs came to the fore.

The war in Ukraine has also put new emphasis on the country’s bountiful natural resources in oil, gas and critical minerals.

“We have had a parade of geopolitical allies turning up on our doorstep saying, we want your rocks, we want Canada to be the geopolitically secure primary resource commodity provider, in place of Russia,” said Mark Winfield, a professor in the faculty of environmental and urban change at Toronto’s York University.

“And that’s created another sort of dynamic in all of this, which was not present in previous elections.”

Pierre Poilievre is the man seeking to replace Carney as PM.

He is running on cost of living issues, and advocating for tougher policies on law and order and what he considers “woke” cultural issues.

Poilievre, whose party has a strong voter base in energy-rich regions of the country, is pushing for a major expansion of the oil and gas industries and the removal of the carbon tax on industry.

While he has remained tight-lipped on whether he supports Canada’s net-zero goals, he has argued that it would be better for the world if India and other Asian countries were to replace “dirty coal” with cleaner Canadian oil and gas.

According to Prof Winfield, the Conservative proposals to boost oil and gas is likely to prove attractive to voters, even if the merits of expanding production don’t stand up to scrutiny.

He told the BBC it’s more “at the in-principal level as a response to Trump, as opposed to any real thinking through of what are the implications on climate, and whether this is actually economically viable”.

Regardless of climate or energy, the key question in the minds of voters in this election is which leader is best placed to deal with the combative US president.

That is especially important when it comes to the oil and gas industry.

Canada is America’s largest foreign supplier of oil, with around 90% of crude production heading south of the border, and the impact of energy tariffs could well be disastrous for jobs and the economy.

“Our relationship with the US has completely changed,” Carney said last week in the first of two election debates.

“The pipelines are a national security problem for us.”

That concern over US dependence has revived interest in pipelines that would move oil and gas from the western provinces, where they are mainly produced, to the east, where they could be exported to new overseas markets.

A previous attempt called the Energy East pipeline was shelved in 2017 due to a number of factors, including fierce opposition from some regions of the country and regulatory hurdles.

In this campaign, both the Liberals and Conservatives have promised to fast track “energy corridors”, though Carney has flip-flopped on his support for pipelines, knowing they are deeply unpopular with environmentalists.

He is trying to walk a fine line between defending Canada as a nation under threat from Trump, and taking action on a warming climate.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada reported that in 2024, there were C$8.5bn ($6.1bn; £4.6bn) in weather-related insured losses, triple the figure for 2023.

And while the two election frontrunners are advocating a major role for fossil fuels in Canada’s economy, this approach will clash head on with the country’s climate commitments.

Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québécois, a federal party based in Quebec, has accused the pair of being in a “denial situation about climate change”.

“I’m sorry to crash your party guys, but you are telling fairy tales” about clean oil and gas, he said in last week’s debates.

Canada has promised on the international stage to curb carbon emissions by 40-45% by 2030 based on the levels in 2005.

As of 2023, carbon output was only down 8.5%.

Whoever wins the election will have a real challenge to square that circle.

Canadians go to the polls on 28 April.

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.

Russia’s ceasefire in Ukraine lasted only 30 hours, and even then it appears to have been very limited in scope, with accusations of violations on both sides.

Kyiv said there had been no “air raids alerts” on Sunday during Vladimir Putin’s “Easter truce” and President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested this could be the “easiest” format to extend for 30 days and possibly more.

The US had tried to organise a 30-day ceasefire but that never took hold, and this latest chapter underscores the difficulty in achieving even a brief pause in fighting,

Russia insisted on a number of conditions, including a halt to Ukraine re-arming and recruiting new fighters as well as “underlying causes of the conflict”.

One major factor hampering the talks’ progress is the long history of broken ceasefire deals, resulting in deep mistrust between the two neighbours.

During his tempestuous meeting with Donald Trump in February, Zelensky accused Russia of violating 25 ceasefire agreements since 2014, and argued that no such deal would hold without security guarantees.

In turn, Russia accuses the Ukrainian president of being “incapable” of implementing any such agreements.

Independent experts say Russia bears the brunt of the blame for broken truces, even though Ukraine bears some responsibility, too.

Statements by current and former Russian officials also indicate that Moscow would be prepared to cease hostilities, only if its original objectives are achieved – namely a demilitarised, neutral and non-nuclear Ukraine.

By invading Ukraine in 2014, Russia violated the Agreement on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between the two countries signed in 1997. Article 2 said the sides “respect each other’s territorial integrity and confirm the inviolability of existing borders between them”.

The war has been rife with accusations of treachery from the very beginning.

Gen Viktor Muzhenko, the chief of Ukraine’s General Staff at the time, accuses Russia of going back on agreements allowing Ukrainian troops to pull out from the eastern town of Ilovaysk in August 2014.

As a result, withdrawing convoys came under fire, and at least 366 Ukrainian fighters were killed.

• Why did Putin’s Russia invade Ukraine?

The first major ceasefire agreement, signed on 5 September 2014 in Minsk, was broken within hours of being signed, with Ukrainian sources reporting attacks by Russian proxy forces on Donetsk airport. Attacks on other Ukrainian towns in the region, such as Debaltseve, continued, too.

This prompted the second attempted truce, known as Minsk-2, but it was even shorter.

Within minutes of it going into effect on 15 February 2015, observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported mortar and artillery fire in Donetsk. They were deployed to the war zone at Ukraine’s request to monitor the security situation including any ceasefire violations, but they did not explicitly say who committed them.

What followed was a string of other failed ceasefire attempts. Again, some were broken within minutes of coming into force.

They included Easter truces in 2016, 2017 and 2018, the “school ceasefires” of 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 which were meant to allow schoolchildren near the frontline to go back to school in September, Christmas and New Year ceasefires in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, and the “bread ceasefires” of 2017, 2018 and 2019 to allow the harvesting of grain, and others.

A “comprehensive ceasefire” that went into effect on 27 July 2020 only lasted 20 minutes, according to Kyiv. Still, it had an effect on the fighting, halving the number of fatalities among Ukrainian soldiers in the following year.

Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, argues that Russia has never entered ceasefire talks in good faith.

“Russia has never been sincere about removing or ending the risk of the use of force in seeking its objectives,” he says.

Because of various ceasefire agreements between Ukraine and Russia, “the level of fighting has ebbed and flowed, and Ukraine bears some responsibility for part of that”, he tells the BBC.

“But the underlying challenge has been that there has always been a Russian or Russian-backed military threat, and that informs things.”

John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Kyiv who now works for the Washington-based think-tank Atlantic Council, argues that Russia, not Ukraine was the “serial violator” of the Minsk ceasefire accords, the first and still one of the most comprehensive attempts to broker a truce in Ukraine.

Verifying claims of ceasefire violations is not easy because almost all independent journalists are banned from Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine.

BBC journalist Olga Ivshina, who was on the ground in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region reporting about the earlier stages of the war, says there were reports of Ukraine retaking villages in 2016-19, a successful Ukrainian offensive outside Mariupol, and Ukrainian tanks were spotted too close to the frontline, where they should not have been under the ceasefire deals.

“All of these were proclaimed as violations by Moscow. But of course they forgot to mention that their capture of Debaltseve in 2015 was the biggest violation of all,” Ivshina says.

Despite the Minsk accords, Russian-controlled forces launched an offensive against the town of Debaltseve, claiming that it was not covered by the ceasefire deal.

Zelensky has described the Minsk accords as a “trap” for Ukraine which allowed Russia to prepare for the full-scale invasion.

Putin says neither Ukraine nor its Western backers had intended to implement the Minsk deals. Their fate was sealed when Russia declared the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” – separatist entities it had helped to set up – as independent states.

Putin’s “Easter truce” was never more than a lull, but President Trump said “hopefully Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week”.

So far there has been no indication that the Kremlin will accept the US call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, agreed to by Ukraine.

Trump has already warned that if either party makes ceasefire talks difficult, “we’re just gonna take a pass” and walk away.

Russia’s demand for “the underlying causes of the conflict” to be resolved suggest it has not moved from its original objective of undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty – through negotiations as well as military means.

Vladislav Surkov, a former close adviser to Vladimir Putin who was known as the “grey cardinal” of Russian politics, celebrates the Minsk accords last year as a way of “legitimising” Ukraine’s initial partition.

The very idea of peace, he said, wass “nothing but a continuation of war by other means”.

Two years ago, Dan Somers started to experience a series of strange and unexplained symptoms. He had severe chest pain, was unable to keep food or even water down and kept “chucking up bile”.

Though he had a sense that something might be wrong, Dan was reluctant to seek medical help. “I’m really stubborn when it comes down to going to the doctors,” the 43-year-old from Ipswich tells the BBC. “I didn’t want to be a burden.”

Dan’s pain continued to get worse, until he was “near enough screaming on the floor in pain” and had to take time off work. It was the worst pain he’s ever experienced, he says upon reflection.

But “I honestly thought I could try and fix it,” Dan recalls.

It was his wife who finally managed to push Dan to see the doctor.

His GP sent him straight to hospital, where he was diagnosed with a gallbladder infection and spent a week recovering. He was told he had been close to getting sepsis.

Dan’s story mirrors those of other men who’ve told the BBC they’ve also put off seeking medical treatment – often until their symptoms became unbearable or until a loved one pushed them to get help.

It’s well known that men go to the doctors less than women, and data backs this up.

The NHS told the BBC it doesn’t release demographic data about GP appointments. But according to the ONS Health Insight Survey from February, commissioned by NHS England, 45.8% of women compared to just 33.5% of men had attempted to make contact with their GP practice for themselves or someone else in their household in the last 28 days.

Men were more likely to say they weren’t registered at a dental practice and “rarely or never” used a pharmacy, too.

They also make up considerably fewer hospital outpatient appointments than women, even when pregnancy-related appointments are discounted.

Men are “less likely to attend routine appointments and more likely to delay help-seeking until symptoms interfere with daily function,” says Paul Galdas, professor of men’s health at the University of York.

This all affects men’s health outcomes.

Experts say there’s a long list of reasons why men might put off seeking medical help, and new survey data from the NHS suggests that concerns about how they are perceived come into play.

In the survey, 48% of male respondents agreed they felt a degree of pressure to “tough it out” when it came to potential health issues, while a third agreed they felt talking about potential health concerns might make others see them as weak. The poll heard from almost 1,000 men in England in November and December 2024.

Society associates masculinity with traits like self-reliance, independence and not showing vulnerability, says social psychologist Prof Brendan Gough of Leeds Beckett University. “Men are traditionally supposed to sort things out themselves”.

“It’s worrying to see just how many men still feel unable to talk about their health concerns,” says Dr Claire Fuller, NHS medical director for primary care. She notes that men can be reluctant to seek medical support for mental health and for changes in their bodies that could be signs of cancer.

“GPs are often the best way to access the help they need,” she adds.

Kevin McMullan says he’s learned from working for men’s mental health charity ManHealth that men want to solve their own problems. He says he struggled with his mental health for years before he finally got help.

“You want to fix it yourself. Men are inherent problem-solvers and how you are feeling is a problem in the same way that having a flat tyre is a problem,” says Kevin, 44, from Sedgefield in County Durham.

This is something that the Health Insights Survey indicates, too. The data suggests that when people were unable to contact their GP practice, men were significantly more likely than women to report “self-managing” their condition, while women were more likely than men to go to a pharmacy or call 111.

“Many men feel that help-seeking threatens their sense of independence or competence,” Prof Galdas says.

Prof Galdas points to other factors deterring men from going to the doctors, like appointment systems that don’t fit around their working patterns.

Services also rely on talking openly about problems, he suggests, which doesn’t reflect how men speak about health concerns – and there are no fixed check-ups targeting younger men.

Women, in contrast, are “sort of forced to engage in the health system” because they might seek appointments related to menstruation, contraception, cervical screenings or pregnancy, says Seb Pillon, a GP in Bolton.

And they’re largely in control of organising their family’s healthcare, too. For example, roughly 90% of the people who contacted the children’s sleep charity Sleep Action for help in the last six months were mums, grandmothers and other women in the children’s lives, its head of service Alyson O’Brien says.

Because women are more integrated in the healthcare system – through seeking support for both themselves and their children – they’re more health-literate and are often the driving force behind their partners seeking medical help, according to Prof Galdas.

And men just have a different attitude towards healthcare, Dr Pillon says. He believes many see it solely as treatment – solving their problems – rather than preventative. Men are, for example, less likely to take part in the NHS’s bowel cancer screening programme. As Prof Galdas says: “men often seek help when symptoms disrupt their ability to function.”

For Jonathan Anstee, 54, from Surrey, it took his symptoms getting drastically worse for him to book a doctors appointment, after months of stomach aches and blood in his stool.

“The pain got a lot worse and the blood got a lot worse,” Jonathan says. “But even when I went to the doctors, I was sat in the waiting room thinking ‘this is a massive waste of time’.”

He was diagnosed with bowel cancer in September 2022.

Throughout his life he’d generally avoided doctors appointments, Jonathan says. And as a father, “you’re used to worrying about your kids and not yourself,” he says. Going to the doctors for himself, not his children, seemed “a bit sort of indulgent”, he says.

Last year, Jonathan was told his bowel cancer was stage four.

Having blood in his stool had felt too embarrassing to talk to his friends and family about at the time. Jonathan’s advice to other men is: “There is absolutely no need to be embarrassed. The alternative could kill you – literally.”

In recent years, support groups for men with cancer and mental health conditions have sprung up.

Matthew Wiltshire started the men’s charity the Cancer Club after being diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2015. He died in 2023.

Matthew felt there wasn’t a space “where men were openly talking about what it’s like to go through cancer,” his son, Oliver Wiltshire, says. “He also noticed how much of the emotional load was being carried by the women around him.”

Through the Cancer Club, men can message online and attend sports events together.

“Whether it’s practical advice, honest chat or just knowing someone else gets it, that connection can make a big difference,” Oliver adds.

Experts say that while men’s attitudes towards healthcare are gradually changing for the better, more work still needs to be done.

Prof Galdas believes men will engage more if services are redesigned to meet their needs – proactively offering support, having flexible access and focusing on practical action to improve mental health issues.

“There’s good evidence from gender-responsive programmes in mental health, cancer care, and health checks showing this consistently,” he says.

For Dr Pillon, it’s adding general health checks for men in their 20s to get them more used to accessing medical care.

They’re already available through the NHS for people aged 40 to 74, but introducing them for younger men who might not otherwise go to the doctors would “embed the idea that you can come and use health services”, he says.

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.

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.”

• Netflix’s Young, Famous & African creator on African success
• Love Island: South Africa’s reality show is ‘too white’ – BBC
• Real Housewives of Lagos: Meet the Nigerian stars

India and the US are making progress in negotiating a bilateral trade deal, the countries said after a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Vice-President JD Vance in Delhi.

Vance is currently on a four-day visit to India with his wife and three children.

“We are committed to mutually beneficial cooperation, including in trade, technology, defence, energy and people-to-people exchanges,” Modi wrote on X after the meeting on Monday night. He also hosted a dinner for Vance and his family at his residence.

India is among a number of countries negotiating trade deals with the US during President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on higher tariffs, which ends on 9 July.

India was set to face 27% US tariffs before the pause was announced. Since then, Delhi and Washington have been working towards an early conclusion of trade negotiations.

Modi and Trump share a warm personal relationship – the Indian prime minister was among the first global leaders to visit Trump after his second term began. But the US president has repeatedly taken aim at India’s high tariffs, branding it a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties.

Even in the statement issued on Monday after Vance’s meeting, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer highlighted the “serious lack of reciprocity in the trade relationship with India”.

India has already cut tariffs on a number of goods in the past few months and is reportedly considering more wide-ranging cuts to pacify Trump. But sectors like agriculture – Washington wants greater access to it but India fiercely protects it – are still sticking points.

• Trump wants India to buy US corn – but here’s why it probably won’t
• China warns nations against ‘appeasing’ US in trade deals

In addition to trade, the two leaders also discussed cooperation in defence, strategic technologies and energy, Modi’s office said.

The Indian prime minister also said that he was looking forward to welcoming Trump to India this year. Delhi is hosting the Quad summit later this year and the US president is expected to attend it.

The bilateral meeting was followed by delegation-level talks and the dinner hosted by Modi.

Vance arrived in India on Monday, accompanied by his wife Usha and their three children. Usha Vance’s parents migrated to the US from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, and some media reports have said that Vance and his wife are keen to introduce their children to their Indian heritage.

Photographs of the three children wearing Indian-style outfits – the two boys in kurta-pyjamas and three-year-old Mirabel wearing a lehenga – on their arrival in India were splashed across Indian newspapers and websites.

The rest of Vance’s visit is largely personal. After the meeting with Modi, the family left for Jaipur city, where they visited the historic Amer Fort on Tuesday. Vance is also expected to deliver a speech on US-India relations in Jaipur.

The family is also set to visit the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra city on Wednesday before flying to the US the next day.

El Salvador’s president has offered to repatriate 252 Venezuelans deported by the US and imprisoned in his country – if Venezuela releases the same number of political prisoners.

Nayib Bukele appealed directly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a post on social media.

He said many of the Venezuelan deportees had committed “rape and murder”, while Venezuelan political prisoners were jailed only because they opposed Maduro, whose re-election last year is widely disputed.

Later Venezuela’s chief prosecutor Tarek William Saab criticised Bukele’s proposal. He demanded to know what crimes the deportees were accused of, whether they had appeared before a judge or had access to legal counsel.

The Venezuelan government argues that it has no political prisoners – a claim rejected by rights groups.

In a post on X, Bukele wrote: “I want to propose you [Maduro] a humanitarian agreement calling for the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release… of the identical number from among the thousands of political prisoners that you hold”.

He also mentioned nearly 50 prisoners of other nationalities, including US citizens, as part of the proposed swap.

​In recent weeks, more than 200 Venezuelans were sent from the US to El Salvador.

President Donald Trump’s administration accuses them of being members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang.

Washington pays El Salvador to keep those deported in its notorious high-security Terrorism Confinement Center.

Bukele calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator” and won re-election last year riding a wave of popularity for a sweeping anti-gang crackdown.

Maduro has condemned the US deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador, describing it as “kidnapping” and a “massive abuse” of human rights.

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

In the latest development, the US Supreme Court on Saturday ordered Washington to pause the deportation of another group of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The White House has called challenges to using the law for mass deportations “meritless litigation”.

Trump has sent accused Venezuelan gang members under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which gives the president power to detain and deport natives or citizens of “enemy” nations without usual processes.

The act was previously used only three times, all during war.

Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is set to announce a ban on certain artificial food dyes in the US, according to a statement from the health agency.

Kennedy plans to announce the phasing out of petroleum-based synthetic dyes as a “major step forward in the Administration’s efforts to Make America Healthy Again” the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Monday.

No exact dates for the changes were provided, but HHS said Kennedy would announce more details at a news conference on Tuesday.

The dyes – which are found in dozens of foods, including breakfast cereals, candy, snacks and beverages – have been linked to neurological problems in some children.

On the campaign trail alongside Donald Trump, Kennedy last year pledged to take on artificial food dyes as well as ultra-processed foods as a whole once confirmed to lead to top US health agency.

The move comes after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) earlier this year banned one dye, Red Dye 3, from US food and pharmaceuticals starting in 2027, citing its link to cancer in animal studies. California banned the dye in 2023.

Most artificially coloured foods are made with synthetic petroleum-based chemicals, according to nutrition nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Some of the petroleum-based food dyes include Blue 1, used in candy and baked goods; Red 40, used in soda, candy, pastries and pet food; and Yellow 6, also used in baked goods and drinks. Synthetic food dyes are found in dozens of popular foods including M&M’s, Gatorade, Kool-Aid and Skittles.

The only purpose of the artificial food dyes is to “make food companies money”, said Dr Peter Lurie, a former FDA official and the president of CSPI.

“Food dyes help make ultra-processed foods more attractive, especially to children, often by masking the absence of a colorful ingredient, like fruit,” he said. “We don’t need synthetic dyes in the food supply, and no one will be harmed by their absence.”

Companies have found ways to eliminate many of the dyes in other countries, including Britain and New Zealand, said former New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle.

For example, in Canada, Kellogg uses natural food dyes like carrot and watermelon juice to colour Froot Loops cereal, despite using artificial dyes in the US.

How harmful the synthetic dyes are is debatable, said Ms Nestle.

“They clearly cause behavioural problems for some – but by no means all – children, and are associated with cancer and other diseases in animal studies,” she said.

“Enough questions have been raised about their safety to justify getting rid of them, especially because it’s no big deal to do so,” she added. “Plenty of non-petroleum alternative dyes exist and are in use.”

In 2008, British health ministers agreed to phase out six artificial food colourings by 2009, while the European Union bans some colourings and requires warning labels on others.

In recent months, Kennedy’s food-dye ban has found momentum in several state legislatures. West Virginia banned synthetic dyes and preservatives in food last month, while similar bills have been introduced in other states.

A New York jury has found the wife of a former New Jersey senator guilty for her role in a years-long bribery scheme that included stacks of cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz.

Nadine Menendez, 58, was found guilty on all 15 counts, including bribery and obstruction of justice, for aiding her husband, ex-Sen Robert Menendez, who received lavish gifts in exchange for political favours.

She was indicted with her husband in September 2023 but had her trial delayed for breast cancer treatments.

A sentencing date for Menendez has been set for 12 June. Her husband was convicted in July 2024 and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

In a statement, the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said the couple were “partners in crime” who participated in “corrupt official acts”.

“Today’s verdict sends the clear message that the power of government officials may not be put up for sale,” the statement said.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that Menendez was an indispensable part of her husband’s bribery scheme, telling the jury it was she who often accepted the cash and other gifts on behalf of the former senator.

Her husband, at the time, was the top-ranking Democrat on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than five years, a position that gave him significant influence over US foreign policy.

“She was keeping him in the loop every step of the way,” Paul M Monteleoni, a prosecutor, said in a closing argument, the New York Times reported.

Menendez’s lawyers said the government failed to prove a link between the gold and stacks of cash found in the couple’s home to any “official act” taken by her husband.

Her lawyer Barry Coburn said he was “devastated by the verdict”, standing outside the New York courthouse on Monday afternoon.

“We fought hard and it hurts,” Mr Coburn said. “This is a very rough day for us.”

Menendez and her husband were convicted of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to secretly aid the Egyptian government using the former senator’s perch in Washington, prosecutors had said.

The government backed up its claims with evidence from a 2022 FBI search at the couple’s New Jersey home that included over $100,000 (£80,000) worth of gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in envelopes or hidden in clothes.

They also showed digital evidence that included text messages between the couple and their associates, and a Google search by the former senator that said: “How much is one kilo of gold worth?”

Fred Daibes, a New Jersey property developer, and Wael Hana, the Egyptian-born operator of a halal certification company, were also charged and convicted for their roles.

Insurance broker Jose Uribe pleaded guilty in March 2024 to charges related to the corrupt scheme.

The US Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against Uber, alleging the ride hailing and delivery company engaged in deceptive billing and cancellation practices.

The consumer protection watchdog accused Uber of charging customers for its Uber One subscription service without getting their consent and making it hard for users to cancel.

“The Trump-Vance FTC is fighting back on behalf of the American people,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, a Trump appointee, said in a statement.

An Uber spokesperson denied the allegations, and it was “disappointed” that the FTC chose to move forward with the lawsuit.

Launched in 2021, the Uber One subscription service promises users perks including no-fee delivery and discounts on some rides and orders. The service can be purchased for $9.99 a month or $96 a year.

In its complaint filed on Monday, the FTC said that Uber has made suspending subscriptions “extremely difficult” for consumers, who can be subjected to navigating as many as 23 screens and taking up to 32 actions if they try to cancel.

In a point-by-point response, Uber disputed that allegation.

“[C]ancellations can now be done anytime in-app and take most people 20 seconds or less,” Uber spokesman Ryan Thornton said in a statement.

• Uber probed by US regulator over subscription plan

Uber said that previously, to cancel, the consumer had to contact support within 48 hours of their next billing period but said that is no longer the case and customers can cancel at any time.

The FTC also alleges that many consumers said they were enrolled in Uber One without giving their consent. The complaint cites one consumer who claimed they were charged despite not having an Uber account.

Uber said in its response that it “does not sign up or charge consumers without their consent.”

The legal action against Uber marks the FTC’s first lawsuit filed against a major US tech company since President Donald Trump took office for his second term in January.

The agency’s case against Meta – initiated during the first Trump administration – is now in its second week on trial.

The FTC alleges the company, which was previously known as Facebook, secured a social media monopoly with its acquisitions of photosharing app Instagram in 2012 and messaging service WhatsApp in 2014.

Meta has said the lawsuit from the FTC, which reviewed and approved those acquisitions, is “misguided.”

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.

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.”

US stocks and the dollar plunged again as President Donald Trump intensified his attacks on the 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.

Trading on most major stock indexes in the Asia-Pacific region was subdued on Tuesday afternoon.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 and the ASX 200 in Sydney were around 0.1% lower. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was about 0.2% higher.

Meanwhile, the price of gold hit a new record high as investors seek out so-called “safe-haven” assets.

Spot gold crossed the $3,400 (£2,563) per ounce mark for the first time on Monday.

The precious metal is viewed as a safer place to put money during times of economic uncertainty.

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.

Trump’s latest comments come as top economic policymakers are gathering in Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

Christopher Meissner, a professor of economics at University of California, Davis, and who formerly worked with the IMF, told the BBC’s Today programme that before the 1970s there was “significant” political pressure on the Federal Reserve from time to time.

“However, the past 30 or 40 years what we’ve learned is that central bank independence is the key to financial stability and low inflation. And I think this is a major reversal and we have to watch out for it,” he added.

The IMF will publish its latest growth forecasts for individual countries later, and last week it said these projections would include “notable markdowns”.

Mr Meissner said: “They used to say ‘When the US sneezed, the rest of the world caught a cold’. It’ll be really curious to see if that continues.

“However, I think people are expecting a pretty significant downturn in the US in the coming months… and that can’t be good for the rest of the world.”

When the world learned of Pope Francis’ death on Monday morning, an Irish-American cardinal, little known in the wider world, was the one to break the news.

After announcing that the pope had “returned to the home of the Father”, Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell took on one of his biggest roles yet: the “camerlengo”, or the person who runs the Vatican after the death or resignation of a pope.

Pope Francis nominated the cardinal for the role in 2019. The cardinal will remain in the position during the “Apostolica Sedes Vacans”, the period between the death or resignation of a pope until the election of the next pontiff.

He also will play an important role in the centuries-old ceremonies to mourn Pope Francis.

Born in 1947 in Dublin, Farrell attended the University of Salamanca in Spain and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, according to the Vatican.

He held roles in churches around the world, serving as a chaplain at the University of Monterrey in Mexico as well as at a parish in Bethesda, Maryland.

All told, the 77-year-old spent more than 30 years working for churches in the US.

Farrell was appointed Bishop of Dallas in 2007 until Pope Francis asked him in 2016 to serve as the leader of the Vatican’s new department responsible for the pastoral care of families, raising him to the rank of cardinal.

Years after naming him as camerlengo, in 2023, Francis chose Farrell as president of the Supreme Court of Vatican City State. He was also named president of the Commission for Confidential Matters.

• How the next Pope is chosen

As camerlengo, Cardinal Farrell will be tasked with making arrangements for the conclave, the process through which the next pontiff is selected.

Technically, a camerlengo can become pope, as has happened twice in history: Gioacchino Pecci (Pope Leo XIII) in 1878 and Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) in 1939.

The cardinal also will preside over the certification of Francis’s death, laying his body into the coffin. After that, the cardinal is expected to lead a procession moving the pope’s body from the chapel of the Domus Santa Marta to St Peter’s Basilica.

The ceremony could take place as soon as Wednesday morning, according to the Vatican.

China has executed a man for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese boy last September, the Japanese embassy in China has told the BBC.

Zhong Changchun was sentenced to death in January for attacking the boy, who had been walking to a Japanese school in south-eastern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The case had sent shockwaves through both countries and fuelled diplomatic tensions amid allegations of it being a xenophobic attack.

“The Government of Japan considers the murder of a completely innocent child to be an unforgivable crime, and we take this execution with the utmost solemnity,” the Japanese embassy said in its statement to the BBC.

“In light of this incident, the Japanese government will continue to take all possible safety measures and strongly urge the Chinese side to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in China.”

It said that it had been informed of the execution by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The incident heightened fears among Japanese living in China and prompted Japanese companies including Toyota to ask their staff to take precautions. Others, like Panasonic, offered employees free flights home.

The verdict on Zhong’s case made no mention of Japan, Japanese officials previously said. Kenji Kanasugi, Japan’s ambassador to China said Zhong had requested to speak to the victim’s family, but did not say if he had been targeting Japanese nationals.

The incident has also shone a light on the unchecked nationalism on Chinese social media, which has fuelled anti-foreigner sentiment in recent years.

Online commentators noted that the schoolboy’s killing happened on a politically sensitive date – 18 September, the anniversary of an incident that led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in China in the early 1930s.

Historical grievances have long overshadowed political tensions between China and Japan. China has long demanded an apology from Japan for its colonial and wartime aggression in the early and mid 20 Century. It has also accused Japan of glossing over its brutal military actions in China in its history textbooks.

The stabbing also came amid a spate of high-profile attacks on foreigners in China, including the stabbing of four American teachers in Jilin.

Last June, a man attacked a Japanese mother and her child at a bus stop in Suzhou but ended up killing a Chinese woman trying to protect them. The man has also been executed, Japanese officials said last week.

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.

Follow latest updates here

“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.

• How the next Pope is chosen
• A vocal critic of the powerful whose influence was felt far beyond faith

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.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

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.

• Follow our live updates

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, Theodore 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.”

Gary Lineker has said he believes the BBC wanted him to leave Match of the Day as he was negotiating a new contract last year.

The presenter and the BBC jointly announced in November that he would be stepping down from the flagship football programme, although he will still host World Cup and FA Cup coverage.

Asked by the BBC’s Amol Rajan why he would choose to leave given his successful tenure, Lineker said: “Well, perhaps they want me to leave. There was the sense of that.”

The BBC didn’t comment on that suggestion, but at the time Lineker’s exit was announced, the corporation’s director of sport described him as a “world-class presenter”.

However, the BBC noted in the same statement that Match of the Day “continually evolves for changing viewing habits”.

A new trio of presenters – Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan – was announced in January.

Reflecting on his departure from Match of the Day, Lineker told Rajan: “It’s time. I’ve done it for a long time, it’s been brilliant.”

However, asked why he’d want to leave when the ratings were still high and it was a job Lineker still enjoyed, the former footballer said he “had the sense” the BBC had wanted him to step down.

“I always wanted one more contract, and I was umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether to do three years [more],” Lineker explained.

But, he continued, the matter of how long to sign for was complicated by the cycle of broadcasting rights for matches.

“In the end, I think there was a feeling that, because it was a new rights period, it was a chance to change the programme,” he said.

“I think it was their preference that I didn’t do Match of the Day for one more year, so they could bring in new people. So it’s slightly unusual that I would do the FA Cup and the World Cup, but to be honest, it’s a scenario that suits me perfectly.”

Lineker added that he was pleased his football podcasts had been picked up by BBC Sounds as part of a deal with the corporation.

Lineker was also asked about comments he posted on social media in March 2023, criticising the then-government’s immigration policy.

The remarks led to his suspension from the BBC, prompting other sports presenters to down tools in solidarity, something Lineker said he felt “moved” by.

Reflecting on his tweets, Lineker said he did not regret taking the position he did, but that he would not do it again because of the “damage” it did to the BBC.

“I don’t regret saying them publicly, because I was right – what I said, it was accurate – so not at all in that sense.

“Would I, in hindsight, do it again? No I wouldn’t, because of all the nonsense that came with it… It was a ridiculous overreaction that was just a reply to someone that was being very rude. And I wasn’t particularly rude back.”

He continued: “But I wouldn’t do it again because of all the kerfuffle that followed, and I love the BBC, and I didn’t like the damage that it did to the BBC… But do I regret it and do I think it was the wrong thing to do? No.”

The row erupted when Lineker called a government asylum policy “immeasurably cruel”, and said a video promoting it used language that was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.

The home secretary at the time, Suella Braverman, who appeared in the video, called his criticism “offensive” and “lazy”, while Downing Street said it was “not acceptable”.

Lineker’s post reignited the debate about the BBC’s impartiality guidance on social media and how it applied to presenters.

While staff working in news and current affairs are expected to remain impartial on social platforms, there had been questions over how much the rules extended to BBC personalities in other areas such as entertainment and sport.

Lineker argued that the previous set of rules “were for people in news and current affairs”.

“They have subsequently changed,” he acknowledged. “But that left people like me, who has always given his honest opinions about things, then they suddenly changed them and you have to go, ‘Oh, I’ve got to be impartial now’. It doesn’t make any sense.”

He added: “I’ve always been strong on humanitarian issues and always will be, and that’s me.”

Lineker said that, following his tweets, “the goalposts were massively moved because it was never an issue until, suddenly, this point”.

The BBC updated its social media guidance in 2023 following a review that was commissioned in the wake of the fallout over Lineker’s tweets.

The corporation said presenters of flagship programmes, such as Match of the Day, “carry a particular responsibility to respect the BBC’s impartiality, because of their profile on the BBC”.

Asked if he understood that his comments gave ammunition to the BBC’s critics, Lineker said: “Yes of course, I understand that, but does it make it wrong what I did? I don’t think so. Would I do it if I knew what would’ve happened and transpired? Of course I wouldn’t.”

Lineker hit the headlines again recently when he, along with 500 other high-profile figures, signed an open later urging the BBC to reinstate a documentary about Gaza to iPlayer.

The documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, was pulled from the streaming service in February after it emerged its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official.

Lineker told Rajan he would “100%” support the documentary being made available again, arguing: “I think you let people make their own minds up. We’re adults. We’re allowed to see things like that. It’s incredibly moving.”

He added that, although the 13-year-old was narrating the programme, the script had “not been written by [the child], it’s been written by the people who produced the show”.

“I think [the BBC] just capitulated to lobbying that they get a lot,” he said.

After concerns were raised, the BBC took down the programme while it carried out further due diligence. The matter is currently still being investigated by the corporation.

The BBC said it had identified serious flaws in the making of the documentary. The BBC board said the mistakes were “significant and damaging”.

In the wide-ranging interview, which will be broadcast on Tuesday, Lineker also discussed his footballing career, his son’s leukemia battle as a baby, and his views on gambling sponsorship in sports.

Lineker said the football industry should rethink its responsibility when it comes to taking money from gambling firms.

“I know people [for whom] it becomes an addiction, it can completely destroy their lives,” he said.

“There’s talk about taking [logos] off the shirts, but you see it on the boards around the ground everywhere.

“I think football needs a long, hard look at itself about that, I really do.”

On top of his presenting roles, Lineker is also the co-founder of Goalhanger Podcasts, which make the successful The Rest is History series and its spin-offs about Politics, Football, Entertainment and Money.

The 64-year-old indicated to Rajan his next career move “won’t be more telly”, adding: “I think I’ll step back from that now.

“I think I’ll probably focus more on the podcast world, because it’s such a fun business and it’s just been so incredible.”

is on BBC iPlayer from 06:00

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signalled he is open to bilateral talks with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since the early stages of the war.

Speaking to Russian state TV on Monday, Putin said Russia has “always looked positively on any peace initiatives. We hope that representatives of the Kyiv regime will feel the same way”.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s comments indicated a willingness to engage in direct talks with Ukraine about not striking civilian targets.

Zelensky did not respond directly to Putin’s comments, but said Ukraine was “ready for any conversation” that would ensure the safety of civilians.

There have been no direct talks between the two sides since February 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In comments to the Interfax news agency, Peskov said: “When the president said that it was possible to discuss the issue of not striking civilian targets, including bilaterally, the president had in mind negotiations and discussions with the Ukrainian side.”

In his nightly video address, Zelensky said Ukraine needs a “clear answer from Moscow” on whether it will agree to stop attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Meanwhile, fighting continued overnight with reports of drone strikes in the port city of Odessa.

Local authorities said three people were injured in the raid, with fires breaking out and damage to residential buildings.

Ukraine is scheduled to participate in talks with US and European countries this week in London, following a meeting in Paris last week where leaders discussed pathways to end the war.

Putin’s proposal for direct talks comes after both sides have accused each other of breaching a 30-hour “Easter truce” announced by Putin on Saturday, which has now expired.

Zelensky said Russian troops had violated the ceasefire nearly 3,000 times since the start of Sunday, while Russia accused Ukraine of launching hundreds of drones and shells. The BBC has not independently verified these claims.

Both sides have been facing increasing pressure from the US, where Donald Trump has threatened to “take a pass” on further peace negotiations if no progress is made.

Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop billions of dollars in proposed cuts.

The suit filed Monday is part of a feud that escalated last week when the elite institution rejected a list of demands that the Trump administration said was designed to curb diversity initiatives and fight anti-semitism at the school.

President Donald Trump froze $2.2bn (£1.7bn) of federal funding and also threatened the university’s tax-exempt status.

“The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,” Harvard’s president Alan M. Garber said in a letter to the university on Monday.

The White House responded later Monday night in a statement.

“The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end. Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege”, said White House spokesman Harrison Fields.

Mr Garber said the funding freeze affected critical research including studies on pediatric cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

“In recent weeks, the federal Government has launched a broad attack on the critical funding partnerships that make this invaluable research possible,” the school’s lawsuit said.

“This case involves the Government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard.”

Aside from funding, the Trump administration days ago also threatened Harvard’s ability to enroll international students.

Mr Garber, who is Jewish, acknowledged Harvard’s campus has had issues with anti-semitism but said he had established task forces to work with the problem. He said the university would release the report of two task forces that looked into anti-semitism and anti-Muslim bias.

The prominent US university, located in Massachusetts, is not the only institution faced with withholding of federal dollars, which play an outsized role in funding new scientific breakthroughs.

The administration has targeted other private Ivy League institutions including suspending $1bn at Cornell University and $510 million at Brown University.

Others such as Columbia University, the epicentre of pro-Palestinian campus protests last year, have agreed to some demands after $400 million of federal funds was threatened.

The demands to Harvard included agreeing to government-approved external audits of the university’s curriculum as well as hiring and admission data. In response, Harvard released a blistering letter rejecting them.

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard’s lawyers told the administration on April 14.

“Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government. Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle.”

Former US President Barack Obama, a Harvard alum, said he supported the university.

The US Commerce Department has announced plans to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from four South East Asian countries.

It comes after an investigation that began a year ago when several major solar equipment producers asked then-President Joe Biden administration to protect their US operations.

The proposed levies – targeting companies in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam – are in response to allegations of subsidies from China and the dumping of unfairly cheap products in the US market.

A separate US government agency, the International Trade Commission, is due to reach a final decision on the new tariffs in June.

The countervailing and anti-dumping duties, as these tariffs are known, vary between companies and the countries their products are made in.

Some solar equipment exporters in Cambodia face the highest duties of 3,521% because of what was seen as a lack of cooperation with the Commerce Department investigation.

Products made in Malaysia by Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar faced some of the lowest duties of just over 41%.

Another China-based firm, Trina Solar, faces tariffs of 375% for the products it makes in Thailand.

Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment from BBC News.

In recent years, many Chinese firms have moved operations to South East Asia in a bid to avoid tariffs imposed since the start of US President Donald Trump’s first term.

The US Commerce Department’s findings were welcomed by the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee – a group of manufacturers that called on the US government to launch the investigation.

“This is a decisive victory for American manufacturing and confirms what we’ve long known: that Chinese-headquartered solar companies have been cheating the system,” said Tim Brightbill, lead counsel to the Alliance.

In 2023, America imported almost $12bn (£8.9bn) in solar equipment from the four countries, according to US Census Bureau figures.

While the planned tariffs are likely to help US solar panel manufacturers, they could also mean extra costs for businesses and consumers who have benefited from the availability of cheaper solar products.

The levies would be imposed on top of other tariffs already rolled out by the Trump administration.

They planned tariffs were announced just days after Chinese President Xi Jinping, completed a tour of Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia.

The trip was aimed to boost ties with the region and encourage those nations to resist what he called “unilateral bullying” by the US.

Trump has so far 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”.

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.

Gary Lineker has said he believes the BBC wanted him to leave Match of the Day as he was negotiating a new contract last year.

The presenter and the BBC jointly announced in November that he would be stepping down from the flagship football programme, although he will still host World Cup and FA Cup coverage.

Asked by the BBC’s Amol Rajan why he would choose to leave given his successful tenure, Lineker said: “Well, perhaps they want me to leave. There was the sense of that.”

The BBC didn’t comment on that suggestion, but at the time Lineker’s exit was announced, the corporation’s director of sport described him as a “world-class presenter”.

However, the BBC noted in the same statement that Match of the Day “continually evolves for changing viewing habits”.

A new trio of presenters – Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan – was announced in January.

Reflecting on his departure from Match of the Day, Lineker told Rajan: “It’s time. I’ve done it for a long time, it’s been brilliant.”

However, asked why he’d want to leave when the ratings were still high and it was a job Lineker still enjoyed, the former footballer said he “had the sense” the BBC had wanted him to step down.

“I always wanted one more contract, and I was umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether to do three years [more],” Lineker explained.

But, he continued, the matter of how long to sign for was complicated by the cycle of broadcasting rights for matches.

“In the end, I think there was a feeling that, because it was a new rights period, it was a chance to change the programme,” he said.

“I think it was their preference that I didn’t do Match of the Day for one more year, so they could bring in new people. So it’s slightly unusual that I would do the FA Cup and the World Cup, but to be honest, it’s a scenario that suits me perfectly.”

Lineker added that he was pleased his football podcasts had been picked up by BBC Sounds as part of a deal with the corporation.

Lineker was also asked about comments he posted on social media in March 2023, criticising the then-government’s immigration policy.

The remarks led to his suspension from the BBC, prompting other sports presenters to down tools in solidarity, something Lineker said he felt “moved” by.

Reflecting on his tweets, Lineker said he did not regret taking the position he did, but that he would not do it again because of the “damage” it did to the BBC.

“I don’t regret saying them publicly, because I was right – what I said, it was accurate – so not at all in that sense.

“Would I, in hindsight, do it again? No I wouldn’t, because of all the nonsense that came with it… It was a ridiculous overreaction that was just a reply to someone that was being very rude. And I wasn’t particularly rude back.”

He continued: “But I wouldn’t do it again because of all the kerfuffle that followed, and I love the BBC, and I didn’t like the damage that it did to the BBC… But do I regret it and do I think it was the wrong thing to do? No.”

The row erupted when Lineker called a government asylum policy “immeasurably cruel”, and said a video promoting it used language that was “not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”.

The home secretary at the time, Suella Braverman, who appeared in the video, called his criticism “offensive” and “lazy”, while Downing Street said it was “not acceptable”.

Lineker’s post reignited the debate about the BBC’s impartiality guidance on social media and how it applied to presenters.

While staff working in news and current affairs are expected to remain impartial on social platforms, there had been questions over how much the rules extended to BBC personalities in other areas such as entertainment and sport.

Lineker argued that the previous set of rules “were for people in news and current affairs”.

“They have subsequently changed,” he acknowledged. “But that left people like me, who has always given his honest opinions about things, then they suddenly changed them and you have to go, ‘Oh, I’ve got to be impartial now’. It doesn’t make any sense.”

He added: “I’ve always been strong on humanitarian issues and always will be, and that’s me.”

Lineker said that, following his tweets, “the goalposts were massively moved because it was never an issue until, suddenly, this point”.

The BBC updated its social media guidance in 2023 following a review that was commissioned in the wake of the fallout over Lineker’s tweets.

The corporation said presenters of flagship programmes, such as Match of the Day, “carry a particular responsibility to respect the BBC’s impartiality, because of their profile on the BBC”.

Asked if he understood that his comments gave ammunition to the BBC’s critics, Lineker said: “Yes of course, I understand that, but does it make it wrong what I did? I don’t think so. Would I do it if I knew what would’ve happened and transpired? Of course I wouldn’t.”

Lineker hit the headlines again recently when he, along with 500 other high-profile figures, signed an open later urging the BBC to reinstate a documentary about Gaza to iPlayer.

The documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, was pulled from the streaming service in February after it emerged its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official.

Lineker told Rajan he would “100%” support the documentary being made available again, arguing: “I think you let people make their own minds up. We’re adults. We’re allowed to see things like that. It’s incredibly moving.”

He added that, although the 13-year-old was narrating the programme, the script had “not been written by [the child], it’s been written by the people who produced the show”.

“I think [the BBC] just capitulated to lobbying that they get a lot,” he said.

After concerns were raised, the BBC took down the programme while it carried out further due diligence. The matter is currently still being investigated by the corporation.

The BBC said it had identified serious flaws in the making of the documentary. The BBC board said the mistakes were “significant and damaging”.

In the wide-ranging interview, which will be broadcast on Tuesday, Lineker also discussed his footballing career, his son’s leukemia battle as a baby, and his views on gambling sponsorship in sports.

Lineker said the football industry should rethink its responsibility when it comes to taking money from gambling firms.

“I know people [for whom] it becomes an addiction, it can completely destroy their lives,” he said.

“There’s talk about taking [logos] off the shirts, but you see it on the boards around the ground everywhere.

“I think football needs a long, hard look at itself about that, I really do.”

On top of his presenting roles, Lineker is also the co-founder of Goalhanger Podcasts, which make the successful The Rest is History series and its spin-offs about Politics, Football, Entertainment and Money.

The 64-year-old indicated to Rajan his next career move “won’t be more telly”, adding: “I think I’ll step back from that now.

“I think I’ll probably focus more on the podcast world, because it’s such a fun business and it’s just been so incredible.”

is on BBC iPlayer from 06:00