In a dramatic overnight operation, India said it launched missile and air strikes on nine sites across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, targeting what it called militant positions based on “credible intelligence”.

The strikes, lasting just 25 minutes between 01:05 and 01:30 India time (19:35 and 20:00 GMT on Tuesday), sent shockwaves through the region, with residents jolted awake by thunderous explosions.

Pakistan said only six locations were hit and claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets and a drone – a claim India has not confirmed.

Islamabad said 26 people were killed and 46 injured in Indian air strikes and shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) – the de facto border between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, India’s army reported that 10 civilians were killed by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

• Follow the latest updates
• What we know about the air strikes

This sharp escalation comes after last month’s deadly militant attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, pushing tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to dangerous new heights. India says it has clear evidence linking Pakistan-based terrorists and external actors to the attack – a claim Pakistan flatly denies. Islamabad has also pointed out that India has not offered any evidence to support its claim.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the LoC.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Experts say the retaliation for the Pahalgam attack stands out for its broader scope, targeting the infrastructure of three major Pakistan-based militant groups simultaneously.

India says it struck nine militant targets across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, hitting deep into key hubs of Lashkar-e- Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen.

Among the closest targets were two camps in Sialkot, just 6-18km from the border, according to an Indian spokesperson.

The deepest hit, says India, was a Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur, 100km inside Pakistan. A LeT camp in Muzaffarabad, 30km from the LoC and capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, was linked to recent attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir, the spokesperson said.

Pakistan says six locations have been hit, but denies allegations of there being terror camps.

“What’s striking this time is the expansion of India’s targets beyond past patterns. Previously, strikes like Balakot focused on Pakistan-administered Kashmir across the Line of Control – a militarised boundary,” Srinath Raghavan, a Delhi-based historian, told the BBC.

“This time, India has hit into Pakistan’s Punjab, across the International Border, targeting terrorist infrastructure, headquarters, and known locations in Bahawalpur and Muridke linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba. They’ve also struck Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen assets. This suggests a broader, more geographically expansive response, signalling that multiple groups are now in India’s crosshairs – and sending a wider message,” he says.

The India-Pakistan International Border is the officially recognised boundary separating the two countries, stretching from Gujarat to Jammu.

Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, told the BBC that what India did was a “Balakot plus response meant to establish deterrence, targeting known terrorist hubs, but accompanied by a strong de-escalatory message”.

“These strikes were more precise, targeted and more visible than in the past. Therefore, [they are] less deniable by Pakistan,” Mr Bisaria says.

Indian sources say the strikes were aimed at “re-establishing deterrence”.

“The Indian government thinks that the deterrence established in 2019 has worn thin and needs to be re-established,” says Prof Raghavan.

“This seems to mirror Israel’s doctrine that deterrence requires periodic, repeated strikes. But if we assume that hitting back alone will deter terrorism, we risk giving Pakistan every incentive to retaliate – and that can quickly spiral out of control.”

The majority of experts agree that a retaliation from Pakistan is inevitable – and diplomacy will come into play.

“Pakistan’s response is sure to come. The challenge would be to manage the next level of escalation. This is where crisis diplomacy will matter,” says Mr Bisaria.

“Pakistan will be getting advice to exercise restraint. But the key will be the diplomacy after the Pakistani response to ensure that both countries don’t rapidly climb the ladder of escalation.”

• India and Pakistan are in crisis again – here’s how they de-escalated in the past

Pakistan-based experts like Ejaz Hussain, a Lahore-based political and military analyst, say Indian surgical strikes targeting locations such as Muridke and Bahawalpur were “largely anticipated given the prevailing tensions”.

Dr Hussain believes retaliatory strikes are likely.

“Given the Pakistani military’s media rhetoric and stated resolve to settle the scores, retaliatory action, possibly in the form of surgical strikes across the border, appears likely in the coming days,” he told the BBC.

But Dr Hussain worries that surgical strikes on both sides could “escalate into a limited conventional war”.

Christopher Clary of the University at Albany in the US believes given the scale of India’s strikes, “visible damage at key sites”, and reported casualties, Pakistan is highly likely to retaliate.

“Doing otherwise essentially would give India permission to strike Pakistan whenever Delhi feels aggrieved and would run contrary to the Pakistan military’s commitment to retaliating with ‘quid pro quo plus’,” Mr Clary, who studies the politics of South Asia, told the BBC.

“Given India’s stated targets of groups and facilities associated with terrorism and militancy in India, I think it is likely – but far from certain – that Pakistan will confine itself to attacks on Indian military targets,” he said.

Despite the rising tensions, some experts still hold out hope for de-escalation.

“There is a decent chance we escape this crisis with just one round of reciprocal standoff strikes and a period of heightened firing along the Line of Control,” says Mr Clary.

However, the risk of further escalation remains high, making this the “most dangerous” India-Pakistan crisis since 2002 – and even more perilous than the 2016 and 2019 standoffs, he adds.

Experts in Pakistan note that despite a lack of war hysteria leading up to India’s strike, the situation could quickly shift.

“We have a deeply fractured political society, with the country’s most popular leader behind bars. Imran Khan’s imprisonment triggered a strong anti-military public backlash,” says Umer Farooq, an Islamabad-based analyst and a former correspondent of Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“Today, the Pakistani public is far less eager to support the military compared to 2016 or 2019 – the usual wave of war hysteria is noticeably absent. But if public opinion shifts in central Punjab where anti-India feelings are more prevalent, we could see increased civilian pressure on the military to take action. And the military will regain popularity because of this conflict.”

Dr Hussain echoes a similar sentiment.

“I believe the current standoff with India presents an opportunity for the Pakistani military to regain public support, particularly from the urban middle classes who have recently criticised it for perceived political interference,” he says.

“The military’s active defence posture is already being amplified through mainstream and social media, with some outlets claiming that six or seven Indian jets were shot down.

“Although these claims warrant independent verification, they serve to bolster the military’s image among segments of the public that conventionally rally around national defence narratives in times of external threat.”

India is once again walking a fine line between escalation and restraint.

Shortly after the attack in Pahalgam, India swiftly retaliated by closing the main border crossing, suspending a water-sharing treaty, expelling diplomats and halting most visas for Pakistani nationals. Troops on both sides have exchanged small-arms fire, and India barred all Pakistani aircraft from its airspace, mirroring Pakistan’s earlier move. In response, Pakistan suspended a 1972 peace treaty and took its own retaliatory measures.

This mirrors India’s actions after the 2019 Pulwama attack, when it swiftly revoked Pakistan’s most-favoured-nation status, imposed heavy tariffs and suspended key trade and transport links.

The crisis had escalated when India launched air strikes on Balakot, followed by retaliatory Pakistani air raids and the capture of Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, further heightening tensions. However, diplomatic channels eventually led to a de-escalation, with Pakistan releasing the pilot in a goodwill gesture.

“India was willing to give old-fashioned diplomacy another chance…. This, with India having achieved a strategic and military objective and Pakistan having claimed a notion of victory for its domestic audience,” Mr Bisaria told me last week.

Two weeks after a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, India has launched a series of strikes on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The Indian defence ministry said the strikes – named “Operation Sindoor” – were part of a “commitment” to hold “accountable” those responsible for the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead.

But Pakistan, which has denied any involvement in that attack, described the strikes as “unprovoked”, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saying the “heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished”.

Sharif on Wednesday said the Pahalgam attack “wasn’t related” to Pakistan, and that his country was “accused for the wrong” reasons.

• Follow the latest updates
• Why India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir
• BBC reports from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir

Pakistan’s military said at least 31 people were killed and 57 injured in the strikes on Tuesday night. India’s army said at least 15 civilians were killed and 43 injured by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

Pakistan’s military says it shot down five Indian aircraft and a drone. India has yet to respond to these claims.

Late on Wednesday, Sharif said the air force made its defence – which was a “reply from our side to them”.

Delhi said in the early hours of Wednesday morning that nine different locations had been targeted in both Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan.

It said these sites were “terrorist infrastructure” – places where attacks were “planned and directed”.

It emphasised that it had not hit any Pakistani military facilities, saying its “actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”.

In the initial aftermath of the attacks, Pakistan said three different areas were hit: Muzaffarabad and Kotli in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Bahawalpur in the Pakistani province of Punjab. Pakistan’s military spokesperson, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif, later said six locations had been hit.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told GeoTV in the early hours of Wednesday that the strikes hit civilian areas, adding that India’s claim of “targeting terrorist camps” was false.

The strikes come after weeks of rising tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours over the shootings in the picturesque resort town of Pahalgam.

The 22 April attack by a group of militants saw 26 people killed, with survivors saying the militants were singling out Hindu men.

It was the worst attack on civilians in the region in two decades, and the first major attack on civilians since India revoked Article 370, which gave Kashmir semi-autonomous status, in 2019.

Following the decision, the region saw protests but also witnessed militancy wane and a huge increase in the number of tourists.

The killings have sparked widespread anger in India, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the country would hunt the suspects “till the ends of the Earth” and that those who planned and carried it out “will be punished beyond their imagination”.

However, India initially did not name any group it believed was behind the attack in Pahalgam.

But Indian police alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, with Delhi accusing Pakistan of supporting militants – a charge Islamabad denies. It says it has nothing to do with the 22 April attacks.

On 7 May, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group carried out the attack.

In the two weeks since, both sides had taken tit-for-tat measures against each other – including expelling diplomats, suspending visas and closing border crossings.

But many expected it would escalate to some sort of cross-border strike – as seen after the Pulwama attacks which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead in 2019.

Kashmir is claimed in full by India and Pakistan, but administered only in part by each since they were partitioned following independence from Britain in 1947.

The countries have fought two wars over it.

But more recently, it has been attacks by militants which have brought the two countries to the brink. Indian-administered Kashmir has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, with militants targeting security forces and civilians alike.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control – the de facto border between India and Pakistan – targeting militant bases.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Neither spiralled, but the wider world remains alert to the danger of what could happen if it did. Attempts have been made by various nations and diplomats around the world to prevent this.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres quickly called for “maximum restraint” – a sentiment echoed by the European Union and numerous countries, including Bangladesh.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged “dialogue” and “de-escalation”.

US President Donald Trump – who was one of the first to respond – told reporters at the White House that he hoped the fighting “ends very quickly”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, said he was keeping a close eye on developments.

Mohammed Waheed was fast asleep at his home in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the early hours of Wednesday morning when a huge blast shook his home.

“Before we could even process what was happening, more missiles struck, causing widespread panic and chaos,” he told the BBC, adding that he had jumped out of bed and run outside along with his family and neighbours.

“Children were crying, women were running around, trying to find safety.”

Mr Waheed lives in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir – it is one of at least three places that were hit by Indian missile strikes on Wednesday.

The Indian military said it carried out the strikes in response to a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 civilians. It has blamed Pakistan-based militant groups for the attacks, accusing Islamabad of tacitly supporting them – a charge Pakistan has consistently denied.

The BBC spoke to witnesses in both Indian and Pakistan administered Kashmir who described the strikes by India as well as the aftermath of shelling by Pakistan.

• Follow the latest updates
• What we know about the air strikes
• Why India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir
• BBC reports from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir

Pakistan said eight civilians were killed and 35 others injured as a result of the strikes this morning, according to Islamabad.

India’s army has also said that at least seven civilians have been killed by Pakistani shelling on its side of the Line of Control (LoC) – the de facto border between both countries.

Ruby Kaur, who lived in India’s Poonch district along the LoC has been identified as one of the Indians who has been killed.

Her uncle, Buava Singh, told the BBC that a mortar shell struck near Ms Kaur’s house around 1:45 am, killing her on the spot and injuring her daughter.

“Her husband was not keeping well. She woke up to make tea for him when the mortar shell landed close to her house,” he said.

He added that the heavy shelling on Wednesday morning was something “we have never seen so far”. Singh says that there were no community bunkers in the area, which meant residents were forced to take shelter in their homes.

“The shrapnel hit her head. She was bleeding heavily. We rushed her to a nearby hospital, but she was declared dead,” Mr Singh said.

Another resident from Poonch said they heard “loud explosions for hours on Wednesday night”.

“It was a panicky situation across the city and other areas close to the Line of Control (LoC),” Dr Zamrood Mughal said over phone.

“People couldn’t sleep the entire night. People abandoned their homes and ran for safer places. A shell hit the main town near the forest office and damaged the nearby structure.”

Muhammad Younis Shah in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, described how four missiles fired by India landed on an educational complex in the Nangal Sahadan suburb, destroying a mosque in the process.

“There is a school and college for children, a hostel, and a medical complex here,” he says. “The first three missiles came in succession, while the fourth missile came with an interval of five to seven minutes.”

While rescue operations in the are underway, locals say they are anticipating further escalation of the violence, and terrified of what may come next.

“We’re terrified, and we don’t know what to do,” says Mr Waheed. “People are fleeing their homes and the sense of uncertainty is overwhelming.””

His fellow Muzaffarabad resident Shahnawaz echoes this, saying he and his family were now “desperately searching for safe locations”.

“We were anticipating something would happen, and now we’re gripped with fear of further escalations.”

Delhi emphasised its actions on Wednesday were “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”, but locals in the targeted areas in Pakistan-administered Kashmir say that their mosques and residential complexes were among the sites hit.

Mr Waheed told the BBC he could not fathom why his local mosque was hit in the strike which he claims injured “dozens of men and women” in his neighbourhood in Muzaffarabad.

“It’s hard to understand,” he says. “It was a normal street mosque where we prayed five times a day. We never saw any suspicious activity around it.”

Delhi emphasised its actions on Wednesday targeted terrorist infrastructure and said thee were chosen “based on credible intelligence inputs”.

But locals in the targeted areas in Pakistan-administered Kashmir say that their mosques and residential complexes were among the sites hit.

Mr Waheed cannot fathom why his local mosque was hit, which injured “dozens of men and women” in his neighbourhood in Muzaffarabad.

“It’s hard to understand,” he says. “It was a normal street mosque where we prayed five times a day. We never saw any suspicious activity around it.”

Last week’s deadly militant attack in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, which claimed 26 civilian lives, has reignited a grim sense of déjà vu for India’s security forces and diplomats.

This is familiar ground. In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control – the de facto border between India and Pakistan – targeting militant bases.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

And before that, the horrific 2008 Mumbai attacks – a 60-hour siege on hotels, a railway station, and a Jewish centre – claimed 166 lives.

Each time, India has held Pakistan-based militant groups responsible for the attacks, accusing Islamabad of tacitly supporting them – a charge Pakistan has consistently denied.

Since 2016, and especially after the 2019 airstrikes, the threshold for escalation has shifted dramatically. Cross-border and aerial strikes by India have become the new norm, provoking retaliation from Pakistan. This has further intensified an already volatile situation.

Once again, experts say, India finds itself walking the tightrope between escalation and restraint – a fragile balance of response and deterrence. One person who understands this recurring cycle is Ajay Bisaria, India’s former high commissioner to Pakistan during the Pulwama attack, who captured its aftermath in his memoir, Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan.

“There are striking parallels between the aftermath of the Pulwama bombing and the killings in Pahalgam,” Mr Bisaria told me on Thursday, 10 days after the latest attack.

Yet, he notes, Pahalgam marks a shift. Unlike Pulwama and Uri, which targeted security forces, this attack struck civilians – tourists from across India – evoking memories of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. “This attack carries elements of Pulwama, but much more of Mumbai,” he explains.

“We’re once again in a conflict situation, and the story is unfolding in much the same way,” Mr Bisaria says.

A week after the latest attack, Delhi moved quickly with retaliatory measures: closing the main border crossing, suspending a key water-sharing treaty, expelling diplomats, and halting most visas for Pakistani nationals – who were given days to leave. Troops on both sides have exchanged intermittent small-arms fire across the border in recent days.

Delhi also barred all Pakistani aircraft – commercial and military – from its airspace, mirroring Islamabad’s earlier move. Pakistan retaliated with its own visa suspensions and suspended a 1972 peace treaty with India. (Kashmir, claimed in full by both India and Pakistan but administered in parts by each, has been a flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed nations since their partition in 1947.)

In his memoir, Mr Bisaria recounts India’s response after the Pulwama attack on 14 February 2019.

He was summoned to Delhi the morning after, as the government moved quickly to halt trade – revoking Pakistan’s most-favoured-nation status, granted in 1996. In the following days, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) imposed a 200% customs duty on Pakistani goods, effectively ending imports, and suspended trade at the land border at Wagah.

Mr Bisaria notes that a broader set of measures was also proposed to scale down engagement with Pakistan, most of which were subsequently implemented.

They included suspending a cross-border train known as the Samjhauta Express, and a bus service linking Delhi and Lahore; deferring talks between border guards on both sides and negotiations over the historic Kartarpur corridor to one of Sikhism’s holiest shrines, halting visa issuance, ceasing cross border, banning Indian travel to Pakistan, and suspending flights between the two countries.

“How hard it was to build trust, I thought. And how easy was it to break it,” Mr Bisaria writes.

“All the confidence-building measures planned, negotiated, and implemented over years in this difficult relationship, could be slashed off on a yellow notepad in minutes.”

The strength of the Indian high commission in Islamabad was reduced from 110 to 55 only in June 2020 after a separate diplomatic incident. (It now stands at 30 after the Pahalgam attack.) India also launched a diplomatic offensive.

A day after the attack, then foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale briefed envoys from 25 countries – including the US, UK, China, Russia, and France – on the role of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the Pakistan-based militant group behind the bombing, and accused Pakistan of using terrorism as state policy. JeM, designated a terrorist organisation by India, the UN, the UK, and the US, had claimed responsibility for the bombing.

India’s diplomatic offensive continued on 25 February, 10 days after the attack, pushing for JeM chief Masood Azhar‘s designation as a terrorist by the UN sanctions committee and inclusion on the EU’s “autonomous terror list”.

While there was pressure to abrogate the Indus Waters Treaty – a key river water sharing agreement – India opted instead to withhold any data beyond treaty obligations, Mr Bisaria writes. A total of 48 bilateral agreements were reviewed for possible suspension. An all-party meeting was convened in Delhi, resulting in a unanimous resolution.

At the same time, communication channels remained open – including the hotline between the two countries’ Directors General of Military Operations (DGMO), a key link for military-to-military contact, as well as both high commissions. In 2019, as now, Pakistan said the attack was a “false-flag operation”.

Much like this time a crackdown in Kashmir saw the arrest of over 80 “overground workers” – local supporters who may have provided logistical help, shelter, and intelligence to militants from the Pakistan-based group. Rajnath Singh, then Indian home minister, visited Jammu and Kashmir, and dossiers on the attack and suspected perpetrators were prepared.

In a meeting with the external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, Mr Bisaria told her that “that India’s diplomatic options in dealing with a terrorist attack of this nature was limited”.

“She gave me the impression that some tough action was round the corner, after which, I should expect the role of diplomacy to expand,” Mr Bisaria writes.

On 26 February, Indian airstrikes – its first across the international border since 1971 – targeted JeM’s training camp in Balakot.

Six hours later, the Indian foreign secretary announced the strikes had killed “a very large number” of militants and commanders. Pakistan swiftly denied the claim. More high-level meetings followed in Delhi.

The crisis escalated dramatically the next morning, 27 February, when Pakistan launched retaliatory air raids.

In the ensuing dogfight, an Indian fighter jet was shot down, and its pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, ejected and landed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Captured by Pakistani forces, his detention in enemy territory triggered a wave of national concern and further heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

Mr Bisaria writes India activated multiple diplomatic channels, with US and UK envoys pressing Islamabad. The Indian message was “any attempt by Pakistan to escalate situation further or to cause harm to the pilot would lead to escalation by India.”

Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan announced the pilot’s release on 28 February, with the handover occurring on 1 March under prisoner of war protocol. Pakistan presented the move as a “goodwill gesture” aimed at de-escalating tensions.

By 5 March, with the dust settling from Pulwama, Balakot, and the pilot’s return, India’s political temperature had cooled. The Cabinet Committee on Security decided to send India’s high commissioner back to Pakistan, signalling a shift towards diplomacy.

“I arrived in Islamabad on 10 March, 22 days after leaving in the wake of Pulwama. The most serious military exchange since Kargil had run its course in less than a month,” Mr Bisaria writes,

“India was willing to give old-fashioned diplomacy another chance…. This, with India having achieved a strategic and military objective and Pakistan having claimed a notion of victory for its domestic audience.”

Mr Bisaria described it as a “testing and fascinating time” to be a diplomat. This time, he notes, the key difference is that the targets were Indian civilians, and the attack occurred “ironically, when the situation in Kashmir had dramatically improved”.

He views escalation as inevitable, but notes there’s also a “de-escalation instinct alongside the escalation instinct”. When the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meets during such conflicts, he says, their decisions weigh the conflict’s economic impact and seek measures that hurt Pakistan without triggering a backlash against India.

“The body language and optics are similar [this time],” he says, but highlights what he sees as the most significant move: India’s threat to annul the Indus Waters Treaty. “If India acts on this, it would have long-term, serious consequences for Pakistan.”

“Remember, we’re still in the middle of a crisis,” says Mr Bisaria. “We haven’t yet seen any kinetic [military] action.”

Joe Biden has told the BBC that pressure from the Trump administration on Ukraine to give up territory to Russia is “modern-day appeasement” in an exclusive interview, his first since leaving the White House.

Speaking in Delaware on Monday, he said Russian President Vladimir Putin believed Ukraine was part of Russia and “anybody that thinks he’s going to stop” if some territory is conceded as part of a peace deal “is just foolish”.

Biden, who spoke as Allied nations mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day this week, said he was concerned about US-Europe relations breaking down under President Donald Trump, which he said “would change the modern history of the world”.

In a wide-ranging interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Biden was challenged on his own record on Ukraine as well as his decision to end his 2024 re-election bid late in the race after a stumbling debate performance stoked concerns over his fitness and plunged the Democratic Party into crisis.

White House communications director Steven Cheung posted a link to the BBC’s exclusive Biden interview on social media, blasting the former president.

“Joe Biden is a complete disgrace to this country and the office he occupied. He has clearly lost all mental faculties and his handlers thought it’d be a good idea for him to do an interview and incoherently mumble his way through every answer,” Cheung said.

“Sadly, this feels like abuse.”

Biden dropped out less than four months before the November election, and when pushed on whether he should have left sooner and allowed more time for a replacement to be chosen, he said: “I don’t think it would have mattered. We left at a time when we had a good candidate.”

“Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away. And it was a hard decision,” he said. “I think it was the right decision. I think that… it was just a difficult decision.”

Asked about the current administration’s treatment of US allies, the former president condemned Trump’s calls for the US to take back the Panama Canal, to acquire Greenland and to make Canada the 51st state.

“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are,” he said. “We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”

• Joe Biden on Trump: ‘What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are’
• Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: Listen to the full interview on BBC Sounds, or watch on BBC iPlayer or on YouTube
• Five key takeaways from the interview

On Ukraine, Biden was challenged on whether he gave enough support to Kyiv to ensure they could win the war as opposed to just resist Russia’s full-scale invasion. During three years of fighting, his White House shifted its position on the use of US-supplied weapons and lifted some restrictions over time.

“We gave them everything they needed to provide for their independence, and we were prepared to respond, more aggressively, if Putin moved again,” he said.

Biden was also asked about comments from the Trump administration suggesting Kyiv must give up some territory in order to secure a peace deal that would put an end to fighting.

US Vice-President JD Vance recently laid out the US vision for a peace plan in Ukraine, saying it would “freeze the territorial lines… close to where they are today”.

He said Ukraine and Russia “are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own”. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has echoed that message, saying a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is “unrealistic”.

“It is modern-day appeasement,” Biden said on Monday, a reference to the policy of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who sought in the late 1930s to appease Adolf Hitler’s demands in a failed attempt to avoid a catastrophic all-out war in Europe.

He also expressed concern that “Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America”.

The continent’s leaders, he added, were “wondering, well, what do I do now?… Can I rely on the United States? Are they going to be there?”

Trump has said he expects Russia to keep the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, and last month he accused Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky of harming peace negotiations when Zelensky rejected the suggestion.

Reports suggest recent US proposals for a truce settlement not only include formal US recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, but also de facto US recognition of Russian control of other occupied areas in Ukraine. The White House has not publicly confirmed the details.

“I have no favourites. I don’t want to have any favourites. I want to have a deal done,” Trump said last month when asked about recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

“Yes, of course, [the Ukrainians] are angry that they were invaded,” VP Vance told Fox News last week. “But are we going to continue to lose thousands and thousands of soldiers over a few miles of territory this or that way?”

The pressure to cede land is not just coming from Washington, with the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, telling the BBC last month that Ukraine may have to temporarily give up territory.

Discussing Putin, Biden said: “I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him. I don’t quite understand.”

He also said he feared some countries in the Nato alliance that border Russia may “just say we’ve got to make an accommodation” to Putin if Ukraine ultimately gives up land.

Trump has long resisted continuing the level of US military support that Biden gave to Ukraine, arguing that his ultimate aim is to end the bloodshed. He has previously said Zelensky played Biden “like a fiddle”.

Tensions between the White House and the Ukrainian leader exploded into public view in February, when Trump and Vance berated Zelensky and demanded he show more gratitude for years of US support during an extraordinary televised meeting in the Oval Office.

“I found it sort of beneath America in the way that took place,” Biden said of the meeting.

Trump and his top officials have repeatedly criticised European countries for not spending enough on their own defence and relying too heavily on US support.

The US is by some margin the largest single donor to Ukraine, but European countries combined have spent more money, according to the Kiel Institute, a German-based think tank tracking support for Kyiv.

“I don’t understand how they fail to understand that there’s strength in alliances,” Biden said of the Trump administration on Monday. “There’s benefits… It saves us money overall.”

When asked about President Trump’s first 100 days in office, which has seen a whirlwind of executive actions as well as sweeping cuts to the size and spending of the federal government, Biden touted his own record and sought to draw a stark contrast between when he left office and now.

“Our economy was growing. We were moving in a direction where the stock market was way up. We were in a situation where we were expanding our influence around the world in a positive way, increasing trade” he said of state of the country when he left the White House in January.

Trump, meanwhile, says he is driving a needed overhaul of the world’s relationship with the US, rebalancing trade, controlling illegal immigration and making government more efficient. He celebrated the 100-day milestone with a triumphant speech last week. What does Biden make of the start to Trump 2.0?

“I’ll let history judge that,” he said. “I don’t see anything that was triumphant.”

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

In a dramatic overnight operation, India said it launched missile and air strikes on nine sites across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, targeting what it called militant positions based on “credible intelligence”.

The strikes, lasting just 25 minutes between 01:05 and 01:30 India time (19:35 and 20:00 GMT on Tuesday), sent shockwaves through the region, with residents jolted awake by thunderous explosions.

Pakistan said only six locations were hit and claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets and a drone – a claim India has not confirmed.

Islamabad said 26 people were killed and 46 injured in Indian air strikes and shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) – the de facto border between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, India’s army reported that 10 civilians were killed by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

• Follow the latest updates
• What we know about the air strikes

This sharp escalation comes after last month’s deadly militant attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, pushing tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to dangerous new heights. India says it has clear evidence linking Pakistan-based terrorists and external actors to the attack – a claim Pakistan flatly denies. Islamabad has also pointed out that India has not offered any evidence to support its claim.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the LoC.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Experts say the retaliation for the Pahalgam attack stands out for its broader scope, targeting the infrastructure of three major Pakistan-based militant groups simultaneously.

India says it struck nine militant targets across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, hitting deep into key hubs of Lashkar-e- Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen.

Among the closest targets were two camps in Sialkot, just 6-18km from the border, according to an Indian spokesperson.

The deepest hit, says India, was a Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur, 100km inside Pakistan. A LeT camp in Muzaffarabad, 30km from the LoC and capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, was linked to recent attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir, the spokesperson said.

Pakistan says six locations have been hit, but denies allegations of there being terror camps.

“What’s striking this time is the expansion of India’s targets beyond past patterns. Previously, strikes like Balakot focused on Pakistan-administered Kashmir across the Line of Control – a militarised boundary,” Srinath Raghavan, a Delhi-based historian, told the BBC.

“This time, India has hit into Pakistan’s Punjab, across the International Border, targeting terrorist infrastructure, headquarters, and known locations in Bahawalpur and Muridke linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba. They’ve also struck Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen assets. This suggests a broader, more geographically expansive response, signalling that multiple groups are now in India’s crosshairs – and sending a wider message,” he says.

The India-Pakistan International Border is the officially recognised boundary separating the two countries, stretching from Gujarat to Jammu.

Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, told the BBC that what India did was a “Balakot plus response meant to establish deterrence, targeting known terrorist hubs, but accompanied by a strong de-escalatory message”.

“These strikes were more precise, targeted and more visible than in the past. Therefore, [they are] less deniable by Pakistan,” Mr Bisaria says.

Indian sources say the strikes were aimed at “re-establishing deterrence”.

“The Indian government thinks that the deterrence established in 2019 has worn thin and needs to be re-established,” says Prof Raghavan.

“This seems to mirror Israel’s doctrine that deterrence requires periodic, repeated strikes. But if we assume that hitting back alone will deter terrorism, we risk giving Pakistan every incentive to retaliate – and that can quickly spiral out of control.”

The majority of experts agree that a retaliation from Pakistan is inevitable – and diplomacy will come into play.

“Pakistan’s response is sure to come. The challenge would be to manage the next level of escalation. This is where crisis diplomacy will matter,” says Mr Bisaria.

“Pakistan will be getting advice to exercise restraint. But the key will be the diplomacy after the Pakistani response to ensure that both countries don’t rapidly climb the ladder of escalation.”

• India and Pakistan are in crisis again – here’s how they de-escalated in the past

Pakistan-based experts like Ejaz Hussain, a Lahore-based political and military analyst, say Indian surgical strikes targeting locations such as Muridke and Bahawalpur were “largely anticipated given the prevailing tensions”.

Dr Hussain believes retaliatory strikes are likely.

“Given the Pakistani military’s media rhetoric and stated resolve to settle the scores, retaliatory action, possibly in the form of surgical strikes across the border, appears likely in the coming days,” he told the BBC.

But Dr Hussain worries that surgical strikes on both sides could “escalate into a limited conventional war”.

Christopher Clary of the University at Albany in the US believes given the scale of India’s strikes, “visible damage at key sites”, and reported casualties, Pakistan is highly likely to retaliate.

“Doing otherwise essentially would give India permission to strike Pakistan whenever Delhi feels aggrieved and would run contrary to the Pakistan military’s commitment to retaliating with ‘quid pro quo plus’,” Mr Clary, who studies the politics of South Asia, told the BBC.

“Given India’s stated targets of groups and facilities associated with terrorism and militancy in India, I think it is likely – but far from certain – that Pakistan will confine itself to attacks on Indian military targets,” he said.

Despite the rising tensions, some experts still hold out hope for de-escalation.

“There is a decent chance we escape this crisis with just one round of reciprocal standoff strikes and a period of heightened firing along the Line of Control,” says Mr Clary.

However, the risk of further escalation remains high, making this the “most dangerous” India-Pakistan crisis since 2002 – and even more perilous than the 2016 and 2019 standoffs, he adds.

Experts in Pakistan note that despite a lack of war hysteria leading up to India’s strike, the situation could quickly shift.

“We have a deeply fractured political society, with the country’s most popular leader behind bars. Imran Khan’s imprisonment triggered a strong anti-military public backlash,” says Umer Farooq, an Islamabad-based analyst and a former correspondent of Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“Today, the Pakistani public is far less eager to support the military compared to 2016 or 2019 – the usual wave of war hysteria is noticeably absent. But if public opinion shifts in central Punjab where anti-India feelings are more prevalent, we could see increased civilian pressure on the military to take action. And the military will regain popularity because of this conflict.”

Dr Hussain echoes a similar sentiment.

“I believe the current standoff with India presents an opportunity for the Pakistani military to regain public support, particularly from the urban middle classes who have recently criticised it for perceived political interference,” he says.

“The military’s active defence posture is already being amplified through mainstream and social media, with some outlets claiming that six or seven Indian jets were shot down.

“Although these claims warrant independent verification, they serve to bolster the military’s image among segments of the public that conventionally rally around national defence narratives in times of external threat.”

India is once again walking a fine line between escalation and restraint.

Shortly after the attack in Pahalgam, India swiftly retaliated by closing the main border crossing, suspending a water-sharing treaty, expelling diplomats and halting most visas for Pakistani nationals. Troops on both sides have exchanged small-arms fire, and India barred all Pakistani aircraft from its airspace, mirroring Pakistan’s earlier move. In response, Pakistan suspended a 1972 peace treaty and took its own retaliatory measures.

This mirrors India’s actions after the 2019 Pulwama attack, when it swiftly revoked Pakistan’s most-favoured-nation status, imposed heavy tariffs and suspended key trade and transport links.

The crisis had escalated when India launched air strikes on Balakot, followed by retaliatory Pakistani air raids and the capture of Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, further heightening tensions. However, diplomatic channels eventually led to a de-escalation, with Pakistan releasing the pilot in a goodwill gesture.

“India was willing to give old-fashioned diplomacy another chance…. This, with India having achieved a strategic and military objective and Pakistan having claimed a notion of victory for its domestic audience,” Mr Bisaria told me last week.

WeightWatchers has filed for bankruptcy in the US as it struggles with debt and fierce competition from fat-loss jabs like Ozempic and Mounjaro.

The legal process will see $1.15bn (£860mn) of the 60-year-old diet brand’s debt written off while it agrees new terms for paying back its lenders.

WeightWatchers said it will remain “fully operational” during the process with “no impact to members”.

It follows the meteoric rise in popularity of weight loss injections in what the firm said was a “rapidly changing weight management landscape”.

“For more than 62 years, WeightWatchers has empowered millions of members to make informed, healthy choices, staying resilient as trends have come and gone,” said chief executive Tara Comonte.

The plans have “the overwhelming support of our lenders”, she said.

In a statement, the brand said its weight-loss programme, “telehealth” scheme, and weight-loss workshops will continue.

The company vowed that it was “here to stay” and that it was not going out of business.

It said it had a “significant amount of debt on its balance sheet, some of it dating back decades” and that filing for bankruptcy would allow it to restructure its balance sheet.

Some customers would get court notifications as part of the process, but they shouldn’t need to take any action, the firm added.

WeightWatchers began as weekly weight-loss support group meeting with 400 attendees, and eventually gained millions of members across the globe.

But demand for its programmes has dropped while the popularity of weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound has risen – although the brand does sell weight medications as part of its programmes.

In February Ms Comonte said WeightWatchers could help people looking for “sustainable” weight loss after coming off medication.

“At the same time, WeightWatchers is in a period of significant transition as we navigate industry shifts and reposition our business for long-term growth,” she said at the time.

The brand reported a net loss of $346m (£260m) last year, while its subscription revenues fell 5.6% compared with the year before.

On Tuesday, it reported that subscription revenues in the first three months of 2025 were down 9.3% – although its clinical business, which includes weight-loss medication, saw revenues up more than 57%.

The brand’s total liabilities of $1.88bn are greater than the value of its assets. It said it “expects [the] reorganisation plan to be confirmed in approximately 40 days and to emerge as a publicly traded company.”

WeightWatchers renamed itself “WW” in 2018 as it shifted to focus on promoting health beyond weight-loss.

Australia has announced a National Rugby League (NRL) team will be established in Western Australia (WA) for the first time.

The WA state government will invest A$65m (£31m; $42m) to set up and support the new club over the next seven years.

WA premier Roger Cook said the announcement is “great news for sports fans” in the state, which is has traditionally been Aussie Rules country, and will also benefit it’s economy.

The news comes as the NRL has been trying to broaden its appeal – both in Australia and globally – by expanding to new markets, including hosting exhibition matches in the US and inviting Papua New Guinea (PNG) to join the league full-time.

The new team, the name and colours of which are yet to be announced, is expected to compete in the NRL Premiership competition in 2027 or 2028.

Cook said all funding from the state government will be spent in WA and the club will be chaired by a local Western Australian.

“Not only will this be great news for sports fans, it will be great news for our economy and great news for jobs,” he said in a social media video.

Negotiations between the WA state government and the Australian Rugby League Commission had persisted for months before Wednesday’s announcement.

It is estimated the new club will deliver A$28m annually in economic value once it begins competing, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The NRL has been trying to broaden its reach and attract new audiences for years.

Last year, the Australian government, in partnership with the league, announced it will invest A$600m over ten years to set up a new team in PNG – a deal that required the Pacific nation to shun security ties with China.

The league has also partnered with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to expand the Australian sport’s appeal in the US, this year for the second time opening the season with marquee matches in Las Vegas.

US and Chinese officials are set to start talks this week to try to deescalate a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng will attend the talks in Switzerland from 9 to 12 May, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer will represent Washington at the meeting, their offices announced.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has imposed new import taxes on Chinese goods of up to 145%. Beijing has hit back with levies on some goods from the US of 125%.

But global trade experts have told the BBC that they expect negotiations to take several months.

It will be the first high-level interaction between the two countries since Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng attended Trump’s inauguration in January.

Mr Bessent said he looked forward to rebalancing the international economic system to better serve the interests of the US.

“My sense is that this will be about de-escalation, not about the big trade deal, but we’ve got to de-escalate before we can move forward,” he said in an interview with Fox News.

“If the United States wants to resolve the issue through negotiations, it must face up to the serious negative impact of unilateral tariff measures on itself and the world,” a Chinese commerce ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday morning.

Chinese state media reported that Beijing had decided to engage with the US after fully considering global expectations, the country’s interests and appeals from American businesses.

The report added that China is open to talks but reiterated that if the country decides to continue to fight this trade war – it will fight to the end.

The trade war has triggered turmoil in financial markets and sent shockwaves across global trade.

Two trade experts told the BBC that they were not particularly optimistic about the talks, at least in the initial phase.

“You have to start somewhere, so I’m not saying it isn’t worthwhile. Just unlikely to be the launch event people are hoping to see,” said Deborah Elms, Head of Trade Policy at the Hinrich Foundation.

“We should expect to see a lot of back and forth, just like what happened last time in 2018,” Henry Gao, Professor of Law at Singapore Management University and a former Chinese lawyer on the World Trade Organization secretariat said.

“I would expect the talks to drag on for several months or even more than a year”.

Financial markets in mainland China and Hong Kong rose on Wednesday as investors reacted to the news as well as announcements by Chinese authorities of measures to support the economy.

US stock futures were also higher. Futures are contracts to buy or sell an underlying asset at a future date and are an indication of how markets will trade when they open.

Investors are also waiting for the US central bank to make its latest announcement on interest rates on Wednesday afternoon.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

The UK and India have agreed a trade deal that will make it easier for UK firms to export whisky, cars and other products to India, and cut taxes on India’s clothing and footwear exports.

The British government said the “landmark” agreement, which took three years to reach, did not include any change in immigration policy, including towards Indian students studying in the UK.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the deal would boost the economy and “deliver for British people and business”.

Last year, trade between the UK and India totalled £42.6bn and was already forecast to grow, but the government said the deal would boost that trade by an additional £25.5bn a year by 2040.

• India trade deal could undercut UK business, opposition parties say

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, described the agreement as an historic milestone that was “ambitious and mutually beneficial”.

The pact would help “catalyse trade, investment, growth, job creation, and innovation in both our economies”, he said in a post on social media platform X.

Once it comes into force, which could take up to a year, UK consumers are likely to benefit from the reduction in tariffs on goods coming into the country from India, the Department for Business and Trade said.

That includes lower tariffs on:

• clothing and footwear
• cars
• foodstuffs including frozen prawns
• jewellery and gems

The government also emphasised the benefit to economic growth and job creation from UK firms expanding exports to India.

UK exports that will see levies fall include:

• gin and whisky
• aerospace, electricals and medical devices
• cosmetics
• lamb, salmon, chocolates and biscuits
• higher value cars

The British government said the deal was the “biggest and most economically significant” bilateral trade agreement the UK had signed since leaving the European Union in 2020.

UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the benefits for UK businesses and consumers were “massive”.

Tariffs on gin and whisky, a key sticking point in negotiations previously, will be halved to 75%, with further reductions taking effect in later years.

Tariffs of 100% on more expensive UK-made cars exported to India will fall to 10%, subject to a quota limiting the total number.

The deal also includes provisions on the services sector and procurement allowing British firms to compete for more contracts.

Under the terms of the deal, some Indian and British workers will also gain from a three-year exemption from social security payments, which the Indian government called “an unprecedented achievement”.

The exemption applies to the staff of Indian companies temporarily transferred to the UK, and to UK firms’ workers transferred to India. Social security contributions will be paid by employers and employees in their home country only, rather than in both places.

The UK already has similar reciprocal “double contribution convention” agreements with 17 other countries including the EU, the US and South Korea, the government said.

However, leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch described the agreement as “two-tier taxes from two-tier Keir”, with Labour’s increase in employer NI contributions from the Budget coming into force last month.

Shadow trade secretary Andrew Griffith said: “Every time Labour negotiates, Britain loses”.

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said it was “very worrying to hear concerns that Indian workers coming over here, companies may not have to pay taxes on those workers” and called for MPs to be allowed to vote on the deal.

The government said the National Insurance exemption would not affect NHS funding, since Indians working in the UK would still be required to pay the immigration health surcharge.

India, currently the fifth largest economy in the world, is forecast to become the third-largest within a few years, making it a desirable trading partner for the UK, currently the world’s sixth largest economy.

The UK is also a high priority trading partner for Prime Minister Modi’s government, which has an ambitious target to increase exports by $1 trillion by 2030.

The deal is a win for free trade at a time when US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff campaign has put the idea on the defensive and raised fears of tit-for-tat trade wars.

It appears to have increased the impetus to strike this trade deal.

Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of business lobby group, the CBI, welcomed the deal saying it provided a “beacon of hope amidst the spectre of protectionism” following Trump’s wave of tariffs.

UK businesses saw “myriad” opportunities in the Indian market, she added.

Allie Renison, from communications firm SEC Newgate, and a former government trade adviser, said the deal was potentially “transformational” due to India’s size, growth rate and relatively high existing barriers to accessing its market.

Walt Disney has announced plans to open its first theme park in the Middle East.

The resort, which will be in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, is a collaboration between Walt Disney and local leisure and entertainment company Miral.

Disney already has six theme parks spanning North America, Europe and Asia. Its most recent opening was in 2016 in Shanghai.

Miral is responsible for the development of Yas Island as a tourist destination and already operates SeaWorld and Warner Bros World where it is developing a Harry Potter-themed park.

In a statement announcing the new facility, Disney said the UAE was located within a four-hour flight of one-third of the world’s population, making it a “significant gateway for tourism”.

It added that 120 million passengers travel through Abu Dhabi and Dubai every year, making the Emirates the biggest global airline hub in the world.

Disney chief executive Robert Iger described the plans for the new park as a “thrilling” moment for the company and said Disneyland Abu Dhabi would be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati”.

The 10-sq-mile (25-sq-km) Yas Island is 20 minutes from downtown Abu Dhabi and 50 minutes from Dubai.

Miral’s boss Mohamed Abdalla Al Zaabi said bringing a Disney theme park resort to the area marked a “milestone in our journey to further advance the island’s position as a global destination for exceptional entertainment and leisure”.

He said the development would “support sustained economic growth in Abu Dhabi and beyond”.

The company’s first theme park, Disneyland, opened in Anaheim, California in 1955. It was followed in 1971 by Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

International expansion began in 1983 with a park in Tokyo; Disneyland Paris opened in 1992, then came Hong Kong in 2005 and, most recently, Shanghai in 2016.

Also on Wednesday, Disney announced better than expected results for the first three months of 2025, with revenue up by 7% to $23.6bn (£17.7bn).

The Disney+ streaming business added 1.4 million customers. Previously Disney had predicted a slight decline in subscribers due to a price increase.

Attendance rose at US parks with visitors spending more and there was also a rise in cruise ship bookings following the launch of the new ship Disney Treasure.

“Despite questions around any macroeconomic uncertainty or the impact of competition, I’m encouraged by the strength and resilience of our business,” said Mr Iger.

Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell said at a time when so many businesses in the US were “worried about the potential impact of tariffs on consumer spending, on household budgets, Disney is feeling confident”.

At least 33 Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded in two Israeli strikes on a crowded restaurant and market on the same street in Gaza City, medics and the Hamas-run health ministry say.

Graphic videos posted on social media showed bodies slumped at tables the Thailandy restaurant, in the northern Rimal neighbourhood, which was also operating as a community kitchen.

Footage from the nearby marketplace showed a small child with a rucksack lying dead in the street.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.

Earlier, hospitals said at least 59 people had been killed in attacks since Tuesday night, most of them at two schools serving as shelters for displaced families.

The strikes come as Israel says it is preparing to intensify and expand its military campaign against Hamas after 19 months of war.

The two strikes on al-Wahda street in Rimal – one of Gaza’s busiest commercial hubs – happened almost simultaneously on Wednesday afternoon, about 100m (330ft) apart.

Footage from the scene shortly afterwards showed wounded people being transported on chairs and in the backs of cars.

A woman carrying a baby in her arms and accompanied by two other children told Reuters news agency that they were inside the Thailandy restaurant when it was struck.

“Everyone died,” she said. “The blood was like a lake, oh my baby, pools of blood.”

Photos shared by local activists, which could not immediately be verified, showed a number of bodies. They appeared to include a boy selling coffee, two parents and their young son, and a market vendor sitting by his small stall.

Palestinian journalist Yahya Sobeih was also killed, colleagues said, only hours after his wife gave birth to their first child.

In another video, the owner of the nearby Palmyra restaurant, Abu Saleh Abdu, said many children, elderly people and passersby were killed.

Addressing the Israeli military, he asked: “What do [you] want to achieve? You haven’t bombed any fighters or any weapons. You’ve only hit civilians.”

The Thailandy restaurant was destroyed during last year’s Israeli ground operation at the nearby al-Shifa hospital, but it had been rebuilt recently using tents and makeshift structures.

In addition to selling basic meals, the restaurant was also preparing hundreds of hot meals daily for humanitarian organisations to distribute to poor and displaced people.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Government Media Office accused the Israeli military of committing war crimes by “deliberately targeting gatherings of civilians and displaced people” in four separate incidents over 24 hours.

Women and children were among 33 people who were killed when the UN-run Abu Humeisa school in Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza, was bombed twice on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency.

Witness Ali al-Shaqra said on Wednesday that 300 families had been staying at the school and that the effect of the strike was like an “earthquake”.

The Israeli military said it struck “terrorists who were operating within a Hamas command-and-control centre”.

The military has not yet commented on a strike on the al-Karama school in the eastern Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City on Wednesday morning, which the Civil Defence said killed another 15 people.

It comes amid international condemnation of Israel’s plans to expand and intensify its ground offensive against Hamas.

Israeli officials have said they include seizing all of the territory indefinitely, forcibly displacing Palestinians to the south, and taking over aid distribution with private companies despite protests from the UN and its humanitarian partners.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that his security cabinet had decided on a “forceful operation” to destroy Hamas and rescue its remaining hostages. He said Gaza’s 2.1 million population “will be moved, to protect it”, and that troops “will not enter and come out”.

Israel cut off all supplies to Gaza on 2 March and resumed its offensive two weeks later after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire, saying it was putting pressure on Hamas to release its 59 remaining hostages.

The renewed Israeli strikes and ground operations have already resulted in hundreds of casualties and the displacement of an estimated 423,000 people, with about 70% of Gaza placed under Israeli evacuation orders, within an Israel-designated “no-go” zone, or both, according to the UN.

Aid agencies have also warned that mass starvation is imminent unless the blockade ends.

The UN has said Israel is obliged under international law to ensure food and medical supplies for Gaza’s population. Israel has said it is complying with international law and that there is no aid shortage because thousands of lorry loads entered Gaza during the ceasefire.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, who is based in the occupied West Bank, told the BBC that the situation in Gaza was “a real catastrophe”.

“This cannot continue. It’s a siege, famine. No water, no electricity, no hope,” he said.

Mustafa urged the international community to step up efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas as quickly as possible, warning: “People are dying every day in Gaza, and this should not happen anymore.”

An Israeli official said on Monday that the expanded offensive would not begin until after US President Donald Trump’s visit to the region next week, providing what he called “a window of opportunity” to Hamas to agree a deal.

However, a senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said on Tuesday that there was “no point” to negotiations while Israel continued what he called a “starvation war”.

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

At least 52,653 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 2,545 since the Israeli offensive resumed, according to the territory’s health ministry.

The government will make it a crime to climb on Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square, it will be announced today.

Offenders could face up to three months in prison and a £1,000 fine for desecrating the monument to Britain’s wartime leader.

The Churchill statue is not officially classified as one of the UK’s war memorials, but Home Secretary Yvette Cooper plans to add it to the list of statues and monuments which it will soon become a criminal offence to climb.

These will include the Cenotaph in Whitehall, the Royal Artillery Memorial in Hyde Park, and many other famous structures across Britain commemorating the service of the armed forces in the First and Second World Wars.

The new law is contained in the flagship Crime and Policing Bill currently progressing through Parliament.

Announcing Churchill’s addition to the list of protected memorials, Cooper said: “As the country comes together to celebrate VE Day, it is only right that we ensure Winston Churchill’s statue is treated with the respect it deserves, along with the other sacred war memorials around our country.”

Churchill was said to have personally picked the spot where he wanted his statue to stand when approving plans for the redevelopment of Parliament Square in the 1950s.

The bronze, 12-foot statue of the former prime minister was unveiled in Westminster Square in November 1973 by his widow Clementine, eight years after her husband’s death.

Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother were in attendance at the ceremony.

Giving his backing to the new protection, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “Sir Winston Churchill stands at the summit of our country’s greatest heroes, and has been an inspiration to every prime minister that has followed him.

“The justifiable fury that is provoked when people use his statue as a platform for their protests speaks to the deep and enduring love that all decent British people have for Sir Winston.

“It is the least we owe him, and the rest of the greatest generation, to make those acts criminal.”

In recent years, the statue has become a regular target for demonstrators.

In 2014, a man was arrested after spending 48 hours on the statue plinth as part of Occupy Democracy protests in Westminster, but was subsequently acquitted of all charges.

The statue was infamously sprayed with red paint and adorned with a green turf Mohican during May Day protests in 2000, for which the perpetrator received a 30-day jail sentence.

The statue was also daubed with graffiti during Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in 2020, for which an 18-year-old protester was given a £200 fine and told to pay £1,200 in compensation.

During the Black Lives Matter protests earlier that year, the statue was again sprayed with graffiti, and was eventually boarded up and ringed by police officers to protect it from demonstrators.

Most recently, trans rights campaigners who occupied Parliament Square in late April in protest at the Supreme Court decision on the legal definition of a woman, climbed the Churchill statue and waved placards from its plinth, as well as daubing slogans on other statues in the square.

Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to read top political analysis, gain insight from across the UK and stay up to speed with the big moments. It’ll be delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

Five Venezuelan political figures holed up at the Argentinian Embassy in Caracas to avoid arrest have been brought to the US after a “successful rescue” mission, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

“The US welcomes the successful rescue of all hostages held by the Maduro regime at the Argentinian Embassy in Caracas,” Rubio wrote in a post on X. “Following a precise operation, all hostages are now safely on US soil.”

Venezuelan forces had surrounded the embassy since last year, where the five politicians opposed to President Nicolás Maduro had been taking refuge.

Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said she was thankful “to all those who made it possible”.

Machado hailed their escape as “an impeccable and epic operation for the freedom of five heroes”.

They were given permission to stay there by the government of Argentine President Javier Milei, whose country is among several that have disputed the results of Venezuela’s last election in July that gave Maduro a third term.

The Argentine foreign ministry thanked Rubio and the US government “for the successful operation that secured the freedom of the Venezuelan asylum seekers at our Embassy in Caracas”.

Last year, the opposition figures posted images and videos of officers from the country’s intelligence service surrounding the embassy complex, saying they were under “siege”.

They also accused the Venezuelan government of cutting electricity and water services to the compound.

The Venezuelan government said at the time that it had been forced to take action after it supposedly uncovered evidence of “terrorist activities and assassination attempts” against Maduro and his deputy.

In November, the US called the security operations outside the embassy a serious violation of international law.

“We demand that the Venezuelan regime respect its international obligations, cease these intimidating actions and guarantee safe passage for asylum seekers,” the US embassy in Venezuela said at the time.

Rubio did not confirm the names of those who were rescued, but the five opposition members who had been sheltering at the Argentine embassy are Magalli Meda, Pedro Urruchurtu, Omar Gonzalez, Humberto Villalobos and Claudia Macero.

It is unclear how the five managed to leave the compound, and what role the US played in their escape.

The embassy they sheltered in had been represented and guarded by Brazil since diplomatic relations between Argentina and Venezuela broke down last summer due to the outcome of Venezuela’s presidential election.

But in September, the Venezuelan government revoked Brazil’s custody of the embassy in an apparent attempt to remove its diplomatic protection.

Denmark’s foreign minister says he will summon the US ambassador to address a report that Washington’s spy agencies have been told to focus on Greenland amid Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island.

“It worries me greatly because we do not spy on friends,” Lars Løkke Rasmussen said, responding to the report in The Wall Street Journal.

According to the newspaper, US spy agencies were told to focus efforts on the semi-autonomous country’s independence movement, and American goals to extract mineral resources there.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused the Journal of attempts to “undermine” President Trump “by politicizing and leaking classified information”.

While not denying the report, she accused the newspaper of “breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy”.

Rasmussen, who was attending an EU ministers meeting in Warsaw, said the report was “somewhat disturbing”.

“We are going to call in the US acting ambassador for a discussion at the foreign ministry to see if we can confirm this information,” Rasmussen said.

“It doesn’t seem to be strongly rejected by those who speak out. That worries me.”

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) declined to comment on the article, but told Danish media that it had “naturally” taken note of US interest in Greenland.

Based on international interest in Greenland in general, the agency said, there was an increased espionage threat against it and Denmark.

President Trump has repeatedly vowed to take control of Greenland, most recently telling NBC News on Sunday that he had not ruled out using military force to seize the arctic island.

“I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything,” he said. “We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security.”

• Greenland’s politicians unite against Trump
• In Depth: Greenland’s dark history – and does it want Trump?

During a speech to Congress in March, Trump told US lawmakers that “one way or the other, we’re going to get it.”

Danish officials also condemned a visit to Greenland by Vice-President JD Vance in March.

Danish PM Mette Frederiksen said the visit to a remote US military base “completely unacceptable pressure on Greenland, Greenlandic politicians and the Greenlandic population”.

Former President Joe Biden, speaking to BBC News in his first interview since leaving office in January, condemned Trump’s calls for the US to take back the Panama Canal, to acquire Greenland and to make Canada the 51st state.

“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are,” Biden told the BBC’s Nick Robinson.

“We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”

Greenland, the world’s largest island, has been controlled by Denmark for about 300 years. The island governs its own domestic affairs, but foreign and defence policy decisions are made in Copenhagen.

The US has long had a security interest in the island. It has had a military base there since World War Two, and Trump may also have an interest in the rare earth minerals that could be mined.

Polls show that the vast majority of Greenlanders want to become independent from Denmark but do not wish to become part of the US.

The younger half brother of US vice-president JD Vance will face off with the Democratic incumbent in Cincinnati’s mayoral race in November, after finishing second in a primary on Tuesday.

Cory Bowman, 36, who shares a father with the vice-president, is running as a Republican in the Ohio city.

The political newcomer received an endorsement earlier on Tuesday from Vance, who wrote on X that Bowman is “a good guy with a heart for serving his community.”

Bowman, a pastor at an evangelical church in Cincinnati, will now run against current mayor Aftab Pureval in November’s general election.

Results indicate he received around 13% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary, well below Pureval who got around 83%.

But it was enough to have Bowman finish second ahead of another Republican candidate, Brian Frank. The two candidates with the most votes go on to run for mayor in the fall.

Bowman, who also co-owns a coffee shop in Cincinnati, said he was inspired to run after attending Trump and Vance’s inauguration.

But he has told the Associated Press that his political journey is separate from his brother’s.

“As far as the relationship with JD, I tell people he’s my brother, he’s not a political counsellor to me,” Bowman said. “He is not somebody that planted me here in this city.”

“There was nobody that pushed me into it, nobody that told me that this is a pathway I should go,” he added. “But I just thought this would be a great way to help impact the city in another realm as well, because that’s always been the focus.”

The Republican has campaigned on removing Cincinnati’s designation as a sanctuary city – a term used for cities that shield migrants from federal law enforcement. He also has spoken about tackling “financial corruption” and bolstering safety.

Despite the notoriety of his older brother, political watchers note that November’s race will be uphill for Bowman.

Cincinnati has traditionally been run by Democratic mayors, making it a difficult campaign for any Republican. The city has not elected a Republican mayor in over 50 years.

In an exclusive and remarkably candid interview – the first since he left office – Joe Biden discusses what he really thinks of his successor’s first 100 days, plus his fears for the future if the Atlantic Alliance collapses

It is hard to believe that the man I greet in the Delaware hotel where he launched his political career more than half a century ago was the “leader of the free world” little over 100 days ago.

Joe Biden is still surrounded by all the trappings of power – the black SUVs, the security guys with curly earpieces, the sniffer dogs sent ahead to sweep the room for explosives. And yet he has spent the last three months watching much of what he believes in being swept away by his successor.

Donald Trump has deployed the name Biden again and again – it is his political weapon of choice. One recent analysis showed that Trump said or wrote the name Biden at least 580 times in those first 100 days in office. Having claimed that rises in share prices were “Trump’s stock market” at work, he later blamed sharp falls in share prices on “Biden’s stock market”.

Until this week, President Biden himself (former presidents keep their titles after they leave office) has largely observed the convention that former presidents do not criticise their successors at the start of their time in office. But from the moment we shake hands it is clear that he is determined to have his say too.

In a dark blue suit, the former president arrives smiling and relaxed but with the determined air of a man on a mission. It’s his first interview since leaving the White House, and he seems most angry about Donald Trump’s treatment of America’s allies – in particular Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

• Trump appeasing Putin with pressure on Ukraine, Biden tells BBC
• Five key takeaways from the interview
• Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: Listen to the full interview on BBC Sounds, or watch on BBC iPlayer or on YouTube

“I found it beneath America, the way that took place,” he says of the explosive Oval Office row between Trump and Zelensky in February. “And the way we talk about now that, ‘it’s the Gulf of America’, ‘maybe we’re going to have to take back Panama’, ‘maybe we need to acquire Greenland, ‘maybe Canada should be a [51st state].’ What the hell’s going on here?

“What President ever talks like that? That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity – not about confiscation.”

After just over 100 action-packed days of Trump there was no shortage of targets for President Biden to choose from.

But his main concern appears to be on the international stage, rather than the domestic one: that is, the threat he believes now faces the alliance between the United States and Europe which, as he puts it, secured peace, freedom and democracy for eight decades.

Just before our interview, which took place days before the 80th anniversary of VE Day, Biden took a large gold coin out of his pocket and pressed it into my hand. It was a souvenir of last year’s D-Day commemoration. Biden believes that the speech he delivered on that beach in Normandy is one of his most important. In it, he declared that the men who fought and died “knew – beyond any doubt – that there are things worth fighting and dying for”.

I ask him whether he feels that message about sacrifice is in danger of being forgotten in America. Not by the people, he replies but, yes, by the leadership. It is, he says, a “grave concern” that the Atlantic Alliance is seen to be dying.

“I think it would change the modern history of the world if that occurs,” he argues.

“We’re the only nation in a position to have the capacity to bring people together, [to] lead the world. Otherwise you’re going to have China and the former Soviet Union, Russia, stepping up.”

Now more than ever before that Alliance is being questioned. One leading former NATO figure told the BBC this week that the VE Day celebrations felt more like a funeral. President Trump has complained that the United States is being “ripped off” by her allies, Vice President JD Vance has said that America is “bailing out” Europe whilst Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted that Europe is “free-loading”.

Biden calls the pledge all members of Nato – the Atlantic Alliance – make “to defend each and every inch of Nato territory with the full force of our collective power” a “sacred obligation”.

“I fear that our allies around the world are going to begin to doubt whether we’re going to stay where we’ve always been for the last 80 years,” Biden says.

Under his presidency, both Finland and Sweden joined Nato – something he thinks made the alliance stronger. “We did all that – and in four years we’ve got a guy who wants to walk away from it all.

“I’m worried that Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America, and the leadership of America in the world, to deal with not only Nato, but other matters that are of consequence.”

I meet President Biden in the place he has called home since he was a boy, the city of Wilmington in Delaware. It is an hour and a half Amtrak train ride from Washington DC, a journey he has been making for 50 years since becoming a Senator at the age of just 30. He has spent more years in government than any other president.

He was 82 when he left the Oval Office. His age has invited no end of scrutiny – an “at times addled old man” is how the journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson describe him in their book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

His calamitous live TV debate performance last June prompted further questions, as Biden stumbled over his words, lost his thread mid-sentence and boasted, somewhat bafflingly, that “We finally beat Medicare!”. He withdrew from the election campaign soon after.

Today, Biden is still warm and charismatic, with the folksy charm that made him an election winner but he is a much slower, quieter and more hesitant version of the leader he was once. Meeting with him in person, I found it hard to imagine he could have served for another four years in the White House, taking him closer to the age of 90.

I ask Biden if he’s now had to think again about his decisions last year. He pulled out of the presidential race just 107 days before election day, leaving Kamala Harris limited time to put together her own campaign.

“I don’t think it would have mattered,” he says. “We left at a time when we had a good candidate, she was fully funded.

“What we had set out to do, no-one thought we could do,” he continues. “And we had become so successful in our agenda, it was hard to say, ‘No, I’m going to stop now’… It was a hard decision.”

One he regrets? Surely withdrawing earlier could have given someone else a greater chance?

“No, I think it was the right decision.” He pauses. “I think that… Well, it was just a difficult decision.”

Biden says he went into politics to fight injustice and to this day has lost none of his appetite for the fight. Last year at the D-Day celebrations he warned: “We’re living in a time when democracy is more at risk across the world than at any point since the end of World War Two.”

Today, he expands on this: “Look at the number of European leaders and European countries that are wondering, Well what do I do now? What’s the best route for me to take? Can I rely on the United States? Are they going to be there?”

“Instead of democracy expanding around the world, [it’s] receding. Democracy – every generation has to fight for it.”

Speaking in Chicago recently, Biden declared that “nobody’s king” in America. I asked him if he thinks President Trump is behaving more like a monarch than a constitutionally limited president.

He chooses his reply carefully. “He’s not behaving like a Republican president,” he says.

Though later in our interview, Biden admits he’s less worried about the future of US democracy than he used to be, “because I think the Republican Party is waking up to what Trump is about”.

President Biden relished his role as the leading figure in Nato, deploying normally top secret intelligence to tell a sceptical world back in 2022 that Vladimir Putin was about to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Since taking office President Trump has charted a different course, telling Ukraine that it must consider giving up territory to Russia if it wants the war to end.

“It is modern day appeasement,” Biden says of Trump’s approach.

Putin, he says, sees Ukraine as “part of Mother Russia. He believes he has historical rights to Ukraine… He can’t stand the fact that […] the Soviet Union has collapsed. And anybody who thinks he’s going to stop is just foolish.”

He fears that Trump’s approach might signal to other European countries that it’s time to give in to Russia.

Yet Biden has faced accusations against him concerning the Ukraine War. Some in Kyiv and her allies, as well as some in the UK, claim that he gave President Zelensky just enough support to resist invasion but not enough to defeat Russia, perhaps out of fear that Putin would consider using nuclear weapons if cornered.

When Putin was asked point blank on TV this week whether he would use nuclear weapons to win the war, he declared that he hoped that they would “not be necessary,” adding that he had the means to bring the war to what he called his “logical conclusion”.

I point out to Biden that it has been argued that he didn’t have the courage to go all the way to give Ukraine the weapons it needed – to let Ukraine win.

“We gave them [Ukraine] everything they needed to provide for their independence,” Biden argues. “And we were prepared to respond more aggressively if in fact Putin moved again.”

He says he was keen to avoid the prospect of “World War Three, with nuclear powers,” adding: “And we did avoid it.

“What would Putin do if things got really tough for him?” he continues. “Threaten the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This is not a game or roulette.”

Biden’s belief in the Atlantic Alliance – as the last living President born during World War Two – is clearly undiminished.

When he first arrived in the Oval Office, Biden hung a portrait of America’s wartime leader Franklin D. Roosevelt on the wall. He was born two and a half years before the defeat of the Nazis, into the world FDR helped to create – a world of American global leadership and solidarity. But the United States voted to reject Biden’s policies and values and instead to endorse Donald Trump’s call to put America First.

The world is changing from what people like Joe Biden have taken for granted.

“Every generation has to fight to maintain democracy, every one,” Biden says. “Every one’s going to be challenged.

“We’ve done it well for the last 80 years. And I’m worried there’s the loss of understanding of the consequences of that.”

The day Germany’s new leader entered office will now forever be remembered for a very public failure.

Friedrich Merz’s initial, shock defeat – in his bid to become chancellor – sparked hours of chaotic uncertainty.

A man who’d been working to project strength and purpose instead became mired in political intrigue and division.

Merz may have won on the second try, but today’s messy path to power raises serious questions about the future government.

If he couldn’t muster the votes amongst coalition colleagues – at such a key moment – how will he fare when trying to push through any contentious legislation?

It comes as Germany faces a prolonged recession, fractious arguments on immigration, potentially seismic decisions on defence spending and a surging far-right political force.

But Merz’s allies insist the situation can quickly be recovered and reject the idea that Merz emerges irreparably damaged.

“Now we are looking in front and forward,” says Gunther Krichbaum, a veteran of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and Germany’s new Europe Minister.

“So I think we will have a very, very good and also stable government,” he told the BBC.

“This is not only necessary for Germany but also Europe.”

Berlin’s allies have been impatient to see an effective administration, after the bickering that characterised the last, collapsed coalition government.

But Merz now heads off for his planned trips to Warsaw and Paris on Wednesday in the shadow of a tumultuous Tuesday.

There’s speculation aplenty as to which MPs, in the secret ballot, didn’t back Merz on the first round – and why.

Disgruntled people, passed over for government jobs, is one theory.

Did members within the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) decide that they had to protest at the political compromises struck with Merz’s centre-right party?

Or did the forthright Merz – and ambitious SPD Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil – struggle to rally their own ranks?

Figures from both sides were quickly keen to suggest that the other was chiefly to blame.

Whichever MPs did the deed they were, it seems, willing to risk making Merz and his acolytes sweat.

Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), who are suing Germany’s domestic intelligence service for classing the party as extremist, had a ringside seat for the whole show.

Following February’s election, the AfD is the main opposition party and pounced on events as evidence of the fundamental weaknesses within a coalition made up of the centre-right CDU/CSU parties and centre-left SPD.

“It is very clear that this government… will be a very, very unstable one,” says Beatrix von Storch, the AfD’s deputy group leader.

She also echoed claims that it was all further proof that the so-called “firewall” of non-cooperation with her party will not last.

“This has shown that this firewall has to fall if you want to have a shift in politics in Germany,” von Storch told the BBC.

Also watching on from the Reichstag’s visitors’ gallery was Merz’s old political rival from within the CDU, former chancellor Angela Merkel.

He once lost out to her in a power struggle but returned later to politics – to try and realise his long-held dream of taking the top job.

This can’t have been the way in which Merz envisioned entering office.

But, more importantly, the spectacle leaves his claims of being ready to provide firm government, significantly undermined on day one.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Israelis that “we are on the eve of an intense entry into Gaza.” Israel would, he said, capture territory and hold it: “They will not enter and come out.”

The new offensive is calculated, according to the spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Brigadier-General Effie Defrin, to bring back the remaining hostages. After that, he told Israeli radio, “comes the collapse of the Hamas regime, its defeat, its submission”.

The offensive will not start, Israel says, until after Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar next week. Assuming Trump does not dissuade Israel from going ahead, Israel will need a military and political miracle to pull off the results described by Brig-Gen Defrin.

It is more likely that the offensive will sharpen everything that makes the Gaza war so controversial. The war, starting with the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, has taken the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis to a point as dangerous as any in its long history. Prolonging the war divides Israelis, kills even more Palestinian civilians and horrifies millions around the world, including many who describe themselves as friends of Israel.

While the IDF attacks Hamas in Gaza, the government’s plan is that its soldiers will force some or all of the more than two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza into a small area in the ruins of the south. Humanitarian aid would be distributed, perhaps by contractors including American private security firms. The United Nations humanitarian agencies have said they will not cooperate, condemning the plan as a violation of the principles of humanitarian aid.

They have also warned of starvation in Gaza caused by Israel’s decision more than two months ago to block all humanitarian deliveries. Israel’s blockade, which continues, has been widely condemned, not just by the UN and Arab countries.

Now, Britain and the European Union both say they are against a new Israeli offensive. A fortnight ago, the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France and Germany, all allies of Israel who regard Hamas as a terrorist group, warned that the “intolerable” blockade put Palestinian civilians, including one million children, at “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death”.

The ministers also warned, implicitly, that their ally was violating international law.

“Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change”, they insisted. “Israel is bound under international law to allow the unhindered passage of humanitarian aid.”

Israel denies it violates international humanitarian law and the laws of war in Gaza. But at the same time its own ministers’ words suggest otherwise. One of many examples: the defence minister Israel Katz has described the blockade as a “main pressure lever” against Hamas. That sounds like an admission that the blockade is a weapon, even though it starves civilians, which amounts to a war crime.

Countries and organisations that believe Israel systematically violates its legal obligations, committing a series of war crimes, will scour any new offensive for more evidence. Extreme language used by ministers will have been noted by the South African lawyers arguing the case at the International Court of Justice alleging Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Much of it has come from ultra-nationalists who prop up the Netanyahu government. They see the new offensive as another step towards expelling Palestinians from Gaza and replacing them with Jewish settlers.

One of the most vocal extremists, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister said that in six months Gaza would be “totally destroyed”. Palestinians in the territory would be “despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places”.

“Relocation”, the word used by Smotrich, will be seen both by his supporters and political enemies as another reference to “transfer”, an idea discussed since the earliest days of Zionism to force Arabs out of the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

Netanyahu’s Israeli critics say prolonging the war with a new offensive instead of ending it with a ceasefire is about his own political survival, not Israel’s safety or the return of its hostages. In the days after the 7 October attacks there were lines of cars hurriedly parked outside military bases as Israelis rushed to volunteer for reserve duty to fight Hamas.

Now thousands of them (some estimates from the Israeli left are higher) are refusing to do any more reserve duty. They argue the prime minister is continuing the war because if he doesn’t his hard right will bring down the government and bring on the day of reckoning for mistakes and miscalculations Netanyahu made that gave Hamas an opportunity to attack.

Inside Israel, the sharpest criticism of the planned offensive has come from the families of the hostages who fear they have been abandoned by the government that claims to be rescuing them. Hamas still has 24 living hostages in the Gaza Strip, according to Israel, and is holding the bodies of another 35 of the 251 taken on 7 October. The Netanyahu government has claimed repeatedly that only as much military pressure as possible will get the survivors home and return the bodies of the dead to their families.

In reality, the biggest releases of hostages have come during ceasefires. The last ceasefire deal, which Trump insisted Israel sign in the final days of the Biden administration, included a planned second phase which was supposed to lead to the release of all the hostages and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Netanyahu’s extremist allies told him they would bring down his government if he agreed to a second phase of the ceasefire. First, Israel blocked humanitarian aid to put pressure, it said, on Hamas to agree to a renegotiated deal that would give Israel the option of going back to war even after the hostages were released. When Hamas refused, Israel went on the offensive again with a massive air attack on the night of 18 March.

Since then, Israel has put unrelenting pressure on Palestinians in Gaza. A new offensive will kill many more Palestinian civilians, deepen the misery of the survivors and bereaved inside Gaza and widen the toxic rifts within Israel. On its own, without a ceasefire deal, it is unlikely on past form to force Hamas to free the remaining hostages.

The carnage inflicted by Israel inside Gaza has been a recruiting sergeant for Hamas and other armed groups, according to President Joe Biden’s administration just before it left office in January of this year. It is worth repeating the words used by Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in a speech in Washington on 14 January.

“We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost,” Blinken said. “That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.”

When he spoke, Israel was claiming that it had killed around 18,000 Palestinian fighters inside Gaza. More have been killed since then, and many more civilians.

Israel’s massive onslaught broke the back of Hamas as a structured military organisation more than a year ago. Now Israel faces an insurgency, which history shows can go for as long as recruits are prepared to fight and die to beat their enemy.

Eighty miles from Moscow, a park echoes to the sound of explosions and gunfire.

As plumes of thick grey smoke rise into the air, the Red Army storms across a bridge and battles for control of a tiny island. More Soviet soldiers are arriving by boat from across a lake.

Once on the island they tear down a swastika and replace it with the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union. Victory.

A large crowd is watching from the safety of the shore. What they’re witnessing is an historical re-enactment of one of the final battles for Berlin in 1945. It led to the capitulation of Nazi Germany and what Moscow still refers to as The Great Victory.

The battle for Berlin, unfolding in front of me in the town of Dubna, is one of many events in Russia for the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War Two.

The anniversary is receiving enormous attention in a country where the national idea is built very much around the notion of Russia as victor and victim.

“I’m here because my grandfather fought in this war,” one of the spectators, Katya, tells me.

“He went missing near Berlin. Much later we found out he’d been killed in January 1945.”

Eighty years on Katya’s son is fighting in Ukraine.

“My son is in a war now. He’s in the ‘special military operation’,” she tells me. “He volunteered. I tried to talk him out of it. But he hasn’t listened to anyone since he was a kid.

‘I’m my own tsar,’ he told me. ‘Go fight, then, if you’re a tsar,’ I replied. He and his friend went together. His friend was killed.”

Katya’s family history is a story of different generations fighting on the front line.

But in very different circumstances.

In 1941, Hitler’s Germany invaded the Soviet Union to try to conquer the world’s largest country and secure world domination. Soviet soldiers (Katya’s grandfather among them) fought to liberate their country from the Nazis. Victory for Moscow came at an enormous human cost: more than 27 million Soviet citizens were killed in what is known here as the Great Fatherland or Great Patriotic War.

But in 2022 it was Russia that launched a large-scale invasion – of its neighbour. What the Kremlin still calls a “special military operation” was widely seen as an attempt to force Ukraine back into Russia’s geo-political orbit. In March 2022, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution condemning Russia’s “aggression.”

And yet the Russian authorities portray the war in Ukraine as a continuation of World War Two. The official narrative here creates a parallel reality, in which Russia once again is fighting Nazism and fascism, in Ukraine and across Europe. Russia, the country which invaded Ukraine, presents itself as the victim of external aggression.

“Historically and sociologically, victory in the Great Patriotic War was always a cornerstone of Russian united consciousness,” Novaya Gazeta columnist Andrei Kolesnikov explains, “because there is no glue for the nation: only this event. It was always so, from Brezhnev’s time until now.

“But what’s happening now is something special. Now the Great Patriotic War is presented as just the first step in our permanent war with the West, against ‘Eurofascism.’ The Special Military Operation as the continuation of the Great Patriotic War: this is something new.”

In Russia, television plays a key role in spreading the official message that Europe couldn’t be trusted then and cannot be trusted now. Recently, on Russian TV, I saw a documentary entitled “Europe Against Russia. Hitler’s Crusaders”. It was about how European countries had collaborated with the Nazis during World War Two.

No mention of the 1939 non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin: under its secret protocol Germany and the USSR had carved up spheres of influence in eastern Europe.

Last month a Russian TV presenter launched a tirade against German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a staunch supporter of military support to Ukraine. The talk show host called Germany’s leader “a Nazi scumbag” for comments about Russia. Addressing the Chancellor directly, the anchor said that Russians “hold you and your comrades responsible for the killing of 27 million Soviet citizens.”

Iconography underpins the ideology. In the town of Khimki, near Moscow, a recently unveiled monument depicts a Red Army soldier side by side with a Russian who is fighting in Ukraine. Framed photos of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine have been placed below the two fighter figures.

An inscription reads: “By preserving the past we defend the future!”

Wars past and present: brought together in bronze.

In the run up to Victory Day, Russia has been awash with reminders of The Great Victory. Last month a Soyuz rocket decorated to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome.

Back down on earth, at a maternity hospital in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, newborn babies are being dressed in miniature Red Army caps and capes.

On its Telegram channel, the hospital explained that battle clothes for babies served “as a reminder of links between the generations, the courage of the defenders of the Fatherland and of how even the tiniest Russian citizen is part of a big history.”

In Moscow, the Russian word for ‘Victory’ – ‘Pobeda’ – is everywhere: on giant billboards, on posters in shop windows, even stuck to the side of road-sweepers. Underground, special “victory trains” on the Moscow Metro have been decked out with World War Two imagery and the words: “Be proud!” and “Remember!”

Tanks have been rolling down Moscow’s main street, Tverskaya, at rehearsals for the big 9 May parade on Red Square. In Soviet times, after 1945, military parades on Victory Day were rare. Under Vladimir Putin they have become a key element of what is now Russia’s most sacred national holiday – a day not only for remembering the victims of World War Two, but for showcasing Russian military power and to unite the people around the idea of Russia as an unbeatable nation.

The USSR was, indeed, victorious in the Great Patriotic War. But eighty years on, and despite confident pronouncements by Russian officials, victory eludes Moscow in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s “special military operation” was only expected to last a few days, a few weeks maximum. After more than three years of war – and huge casualties on both sides – it’s still unclear how and when the fighting will end.

The Kremlin says 29 world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, will be attending the Victory Day parade. According to Moscow, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will be visiting Russia for the commemorations. Ensuring security for the military parade and guests on Red Square will already have been a top priority for the Kremlin. Even more so after two consecutive nights of Ukrainian drone attacks targeting Moscow.

Back in Dubna, German resistance has crumbled and the Red Army is in full control. The re-enactment is over.

Some of the spectators here believe the official portrayal of Russia as a besieged fortress threatened by the West.

“Both Britain and America have betrayed us and threaten us,” Lidiya tells me. “But we are resilient. You cannot defeat Russia.”

When I talk to 98-year-old Fyodor Melnikov, he doesn’t get into politics. The military show has sparked painful memories for him. Fyodor’s brother was killed in the Great Patriotic War.

“War is a terrifying thing,” Fyodor tells me. “People should be allowed to live freely. Let them work, let them live their lives, let them die naturally.”

Fyodor has written a poem about his late brother, about war. He recites it for me. In translation it sounds like this:

On Friday, along with the whole of Russia, Fyodor Melnikov will be celebrating the 80th anniversary of The Great Victory of 1945.

But it will be a day for remembering, too: friends and family who never returned.

A day for acknowledging the cost of war.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: VE Day moments so far – and what’s still to come
• IN PICTURES: Red Arrows, royals, veterans and tea
• WATCH: Unseen royal moments from VE Day commemorations
• 360 VIDEO: Experience the flypast from inside a Red Arrows cockpit
• EXPLORE: More on VE Day

Former US President Joe Biden has given his first in-depth interview since he left the White House in January, speaking to the BBC about his legacy, foreign policy and his view of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days.

He said that he had few regrets, but he offered grave warnings about global affairs as Europe marks 80 years since the end of World War Two on the continent.

Biden spent much of his time in public office – as a senator, vice-president and president – focusing on US foreign policy, and it remains a top concern.

The former president also reflected on his decision to drop out of the 2024 election race – but he had less to say about any mistakes he and the Democrats may have made along the way.

Here are five key takeaways from his interview with Nick Robinson for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Biden’s ill-fated decision to seek a second presidential term may haunt Democrats for a generation. Three months removed from power, however, the former president said he didn’t think “it would have mattered” if he had abandoned his re-election ambitions earlier, before a disastrous debate forced his hand in July 2024.

Kamala Harris, who became the nominee after Biden dropped out just four months before the election, was a “good candidate” who was “fully funded”, he said.

Democratic strategists have lamented that the last-minute handover left their campaign flat-footed, ultimately aiding Trump’s path to the White House, even as Democrats held a financial advantage in the 2024 race.

Biden boasted of being “so successful on our agenda” – a reference to the major legislation enacted in his first two years in office on the environment, infrastructure and social spending, as well as the better-than-expected Democratic performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

“It was hard to say now I’m going to stop,” he said. “Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away.”

Ultimately, quitting was “the right decision”, he said, but it was “just a difficult decision”.

• Trump appeasing Putin with pressure on Ukraine, Biden tells BBC
• Biden on Trump: ‘What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are’
• Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: Listen to the full interview on BBC Sounds, or watch on BBC iPlayer or on YouTube

Biden described the Trump administration’s suggestion that Ukraine give up territory as part of a peace deal with Russia as “modern-day appeasement” – a reference to European allies that allowed Adolf Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia in the 1930s in an ill-fated attempt to prevent a continent-wide conflict.

“I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him. I don’t quite understand,” Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The term “appeasement” gets kicked around a lot in American politics, and the list of foreign leaders compared with modern-day “Hitlers” is a long one.

Though Biden’s repeated assertion that Russian tanks would be rolling through central Europe if America and its allies didn’t support Ukraine is impossible to prove, he views the threat posed by Putin as serious and worthy of the comparison.

Biden also said that if the US allowed a peace deal that favoured Russia, Putin’s neighbours would be under economic, military and political pressure to accommodate Moscow’s will in other ways. In his view, the promise of American support to European allies becomes less believable and less of a deterrent.

Under Biden, the US helped expand the Nato to include Finland and Sweden – one of the former president’s signature foreign policy achievements. Now, he says Trump is turning his back on America’s European allies and threatening the very foundations of Nato and its mutual defence agreement.

The former president described the thought of Nato breaking apart as a “grave concern”. Already, he warned, US allies were doubting American leadership.

“I think it would change the modern history of the world if that occurs,” he said. “We are not the essential nation, but we are the only nation in position to have the capacity to bring people together to lead the world.”

There are some in Trump’s circle – perhaps including the president himself – who believe that a more restrained America, less concerned with global security and more focused on regional self-sufficiency, is best way to ensure long-term prosperity in a world of competing global powers. They argue that America’s post-Cold War dominance was a historical anomaly.

Biden, whose political career spans those decades of American supremacy, disagrees.

In his interview, Biden sounded like most modern American presidents before him. He used words like freedom, democracy and opportunity to describe American principles.

But in Biden’s view, those principles also include a sense of decorum, especially towards long-standing allies.

He said Trump’s February meeting-turned-argument with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office was “sort of beneath America”. He argued Trump’s territorial designs on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal were “not who we are”.

“What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation,” he said.

When asked about Trump’s first 100 days in office – which included dramatic attempts to expand presidential power – Biden said he would let history judge his successor, but “I don’t see anything that’s triumphant”.

It was the kind of understatement that surely will irk some on the left. Since the start of Trump’s second term, rank-and-file Democrats have been clamouring for their party to do more to resist the president’s agenda.

Biden said he didn’t think Trump would succeed in flouting courts or the law, or diminishing congressional power, in part because the president’s fellow Republicans are “waking up to what Trump is about”.

“I don’t think he’ll succeed in that effort,” he said.

The idea that members of Trump’s own party will turn on him is a recurring one for Biden. In 2019, he predicted there would be an “epiphany” among Republicans once Trump was out of the White House, ushering in a new era of bipartisanship.

It didn’t exactly work out that way in 2024.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

There’s a strong chance you will have seen Alicia Vikander on screen in the past decade, thanks to performances in films such as Tomb Raider, Ex Machina and her Oscar-winning role in The Danish Girl.

One place you won’t have seen her during that time, however, is on stage.

The Swedish actress hasn’t appeared in the theatre for 17 years, when she was a teenager. But that’s about to change.

Vikander will star in a new West End production of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, which will also be her UK theatre debut.

Speaking to BBC News, Vikander, 36, said she was “thrilled” to be returning to the stage, but added it was a “daunting thing to do… it’s my first time on stage as an adult”.

The production will play at London’s Bridge Theatre for eight weeks from 10 September, organisers announced on Wednesday.

“I grew up being at the theatre a lot, my mother [Maria Fahl] was a stage actress, and I think even when I was dreaming of becoming an actress myself, being on stage was the journey that I kind of visualised,” Vikander said.

“Back in Sweden, where I’m from, if you’re an actor then really what you are is on stage. And you’re lucky to maybe have a TV show or film every couple of years, because that’s how small the industry is in Sweden.

“So I think that’s what I always saw in front of me. And then life happened, and throughout the years [theatre] has always been something I’ve been waiting for and thinking ‘it will happen’.”

The play has been adapted and directed by Simon Stone, and will also star The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln.

Vikander will play lead character Ellida, the sea-loving daughter of a lighthouse-keeper.

Ellida is married to a Norwegian doctor, but when a sailor she used to be engaged to suddenly returns, she is forced to choose between her current and former lover.

The play marks the introduction of the character Hilde Wangel, one of the doctor’s daughters from a previous marriage.

Hilde goes on to appear in one of Ibsen’s later plays, The Master Builder, a new adaptation of which is coincidentally also currently in the West End, starring Ewan McGregor.

An adaptation of another Ibsen play, Enemy of the People, opened in London last year starring Doctor Who actor Matt Smith.

Director Stone has previously helmed films such as The Dig and The Daughter, while his extensive theatre credits include productions of Yerma, Phaedra, Medea and Angels in America.

“He once again is going to take a classic and reinvent it and make it be something that is relatable to our modern audience today,” Vikander said.

“And when I was told he was doing Ibsen and The Lady from the Sea, I guess that going back to my Scandinavian and Swedish heritage, it kind of felt like a perfect match.”

Vikander said she felt the reason many of the classics are still being performed in the West End is they tackle many of the same subjects society still grapples with today.

“I have discussions with my friends, I just passed 35, I’m getting close to my 40s soon and I have my kids, but I still feel extremely young. Really young. Sometimes I’m like, ‘I’m 25 still!’

“But then I also realise I’m entering this very new chapter which is really exciting, but I think if you are in a place where you feel like you haven’t fulfilled certain dreams or tried things, you’re still wondering where these choices or action would have led you, then I think it’s extremely human thing.

“Women throughout history have been held back, maybe because they didn’t have the same opportunities, or they financially couldn’t do some things, or ended up in situations where it was harder to break away from the role of being a mother.

“So therefore when I read it, I feel like I totally understand the turmoil this woman goes through, and I don’t think humans have changed that much from a core, emotional point of view. And I think that’s why we’re interested in these stories.”

She added: “It’s incredible that the big universal questions are something we’re still battling in the same way.”

Vikander said she was “super excited and wonderfully nervous” to begin the workshopping process with Stone in the coming weeks, out of which he will begin to produce the final script.

As the show is still being developed, it has not yet been confirmed what the setting will be for this production.

Another UK adaptation of The Lady from the Sea performed in 2017 at the Donmar Theatre moved the story to the Caribbean in the 1950s.

The new adaptation is billed as her UK stage debut, but Vikander notes it’s actually her first theatre of any kind since she was 19.

“I did theatre for my teens for a lot of years, like a child actor, and then the last thing I did was when I was a dancer for the Stockholm Opera House,” she explained.

“I grew up watching my mother doing theatre, and I ‘d always watch from afar, and I can’t wait to try and do it myself.

“It’s a daunting thing to do, obviously, it’s my first time on stage as an adult, and it’s on the London stage, and obviously I want to make sure people get their ticket money’s worth! But I’m really excited.”

A final shortlist of five proposed designs for the national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II has been revealed by the government.

The memorial, commemorating the life of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch who died in September 2022, will be built in St James’s Park in central London.

Illustrations of the design concepts are being put online by the Cabinet Office and the public will be invited to have their say about the ideas for the major new monument.

Three of the five proposed designs feature the late Queen riding a horse, reflecting her lifelong enthusiasm for equestrianism.

There are other features proposed by the competing teams of artists and architects, such as incorporating recordings of the late Queen’s voice into a memorial, and large sculptures of lilies around a figure of the late Queen.

One of the proposed designs uses an oak tree to represent Queen Elizabeth’s strength and resilience. Another suggests building symbolic pathways and a pair of bridges over the lake in the park.

The winning entry will be chosen later this year, but there is no date yet set for when the finished memorial will be unveiled. The construction budget will be between £23m and £46m, depending on the selected design, says the Cabinet Office.

The public will get a chance to say whether they want a more traditional representation of the late Queen, or something more experimental, in what will become an important London landmark.

The new memorial will be placed not too far from statues of the late Queen’s parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Also nearby is the memorial to Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace.

The location for the monument will be a section of St James’s Park close to the Mall and across to a bridge over a lake in the park. The entries include plans to landscape and redesign this area and the construction process is expected to mean replacing the current bridge.

The memorial scheme will also provide community projects and facilities around the country.

This will follow in the tradition of legacy schemes such as the King George V Playing Fields, which saw almost 500 sports grounds opened in memory of the monarch who died in 1936.

Many of those playing fields are still in use, dotted around the country.

The public is being encouraged to contribute ideas about the memorial and to give feedback on the shortlisted designs.

“We want public engagement, we want the public to comment on these proposals, because we want them to feel part of it,” said Baroness Amos, a member of the committee which will select the design to be built.

“So much of what the late Queen was about was meeting people and engaging with them,” she said.

Baroness Amos, a former leader of the House of Lords, said the memorial should be a fitting tribute to the late Queen, who died at the age of 96 after seven decades on the throne.

“This is about an extraordinary woman and an extraordinary reign, about her commitment to public service, her duty, her commitment to the community, to the nation and the Commonwealth,” she said.

The five final teams are:

• Foster + Partners with Yinka Shonibare and Michel Desvigne Paysagiste
• Heatherwick Studio with Halima Cassell, MRG Studio, Webb Yates and Arup
• J&L Gibbons with Michael Levine RDI, William Matthews Associates, Structure Workshop and Arup
• Tom Stuart-Smith with Jamie Fobert Architects, Adam Lowe (Factum Arte) and Structure Workshop
• WilkinsonEyre with Lisa Vandy and Fiona Clark, Andy Sturgeon Design, Atelier One and Hilson Moran

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

For the second time in just eight days, a US fighter jet has been lost to the Red Sea after falling from the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, US officials say.

An F/A-18F Super Hornet was attempting to land on the Truman’s flight deck on Tuesday when a manoeuvre failed, “causing the aircraft to go overboard”, an official told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The two crew members inside the aircraft ejected, and sustained minor injuries in the incident. The jets themselves are reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars each.

“Both aviators safely ejected and were rescued by a helicopter assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 11,” the official told CBS.

It comes after another Super Hornet went overboard into the same sea last Monday in a separate incident.

It was “under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft”, a US Navy statement said. A sailor sustained minor injuries, and a tractor that had been towing the aircraft was also pulled into the water.

During the second incident, officials said there was a failure of an arrestment – referring to a cable that is used to help slow down a jet as it lands.

The incident is still under investigation, and the aircraft has yet to be recovered.

The jet may have tipped overboard after the aircraft carrier made a sharp turn while taking evasive action against Houthi militants in Yemen, US officials told CBS.

Just hours earlier on Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that the US would stop attacking the Iran-backed Houthis if the group stopped targeting shipping in the Red Sea.

The Truman has been involved in several incidents in its Red Sea deployment, including last December, when the USS Gettysburg mistakenly shot down another F/A-18 fighter jet that was operating from the carrier. Both crew members survived.

Joe Biden has told the BBC that pressure from the Trump administration on Ukraine to give up territory to Russia is “modern-day appeasement” in an exclusive interview, his first since leaving the White House.

Speaking in Delaware on Monday, he said Russian President Vladimir Putin believed Ukraine was part of Russia and “anybody that thinks he’s going to stop” if some territory is conceded as part of a peace deal “is just foolish”.

Biden, who spoke as Allied nations mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day this week, said he was concerned about US-Europe relations breaking down under President Donald Trump, which he said “would change the modern history of the world”.

In a wide-ranging interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Biden was challenged on his own record on Ukraine as well as his decision to end his 2024 re-election bid late in the race after a stumbling debate performance stoked concerns over his fitness and plunged the Democratic Party into crisis.

White House communications director Steven Cheung posted a link to the BBC’s exclusive Biden interview on social media, blasting the former president.

“Joe Biden is a complete disgrace to this country and the office he occupied. He has clearly lost all mental faculties and his handlers thought it’d be a good idea for him to do an interview and incoherently mumble his way through every answer,” Cheung said.

“Sadly, this feels like abuse.”

Biden dropped out less than four months before the November election, and when pushed on whether he should have left sooner and allowed more time for a replacement to be chosen, he said: “I don’t think it would have mattered. We left at a time when we had a good candidate.”

“Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away. And it was a hard decision,” he said. “I think it was the right decision. I think that… it was just a difficult decision.”

Asked about the current administration’s treatment of US allies, the former president condemned Trump’s calls for the US to take back the Panama Canal, to acquire Greenland and to make Canada the 51st state.

“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are,” he said. “We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”

• Joe Biden on Trump: ‘What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are’
• Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: Listen to the full interview on BBC Sounds, or watch on BBC iPlayer or on YouTube
• Five key takeaways from the interview

On Ukraine, Biden was challenged on whether he gave enough support to Kyiv to ensure they could win the war as opposed to just resist Russia’s full-scale invasion. During three years of fighting, his White House shifted its position on the use of US-supplied weapons and lifted some restrictions over time.

“We gave them everything they needed to provide for their independence, and we were prepared to respond, more aggressively, if Putin moved again,” he said.

Biden was also asked about comments from the Trump administration suggesting Kyiv must give up some territory in order to secure a peace deal that would put an end to fighting.

US Vice-President JD Vance recently laid out the US vision for a peace plan in Ukraine, saying it would “freeze the territorial lines… close to where they are today”.

He said Ukraine and Russia “are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own”. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has echoed that message, saying a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is “unrealistic”.

“It is modern-day appeasement,” Biden said on Monday, a reference to the policy of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who sought in the late 1930s to appease Adolf Hitler’s demands in a failed attempt to avoid a catastrophic all-out war in Europe.

He also expressed concern that “Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America”.

The continent’s leaders, he added, were “wondering, well, what do I do now?… Can I rely on the United States? Are they going to be there?”

Trump has said he expects Russia to keep the Crimean peninsula, which was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, and last month he accused Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky of harming peace negotiations when Zelensky rejected the suggestion.

Reports suggest recent US proposals for a truce settlement not only include formal US recognition of Crimea as part of Russia, but also de facto US recognition of Russian control of other occupied areas in Ukraine. The White House has not publicly confirmed the details.

“I have no favourites. I don’t want to have any favourites. I want to have a deal done,” Trump said last month when asked about recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea.

“Yes, of course, [the Ukrainians] are angry that they were invaded,” VP Vance told Fox News last week. “But are we going to continue to lose thousands and thousands of soldiers over a few miles of territory this or that way?”

The pressure to cede land is not just coming from Washington, with the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, telling the BBC last month that Ukraine may have to temporarily give up territory.

Discussing Putin, Biden said: “I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him. I don’t quite understand.”

He also said he feared some countries in the Nato alliance that border Russia may “just say we’ve got to make an accommodation” to Putin if Ukraine ultimately gives up land.

Trump has long resisted continuing the level of US military support that Biden gave to Ukraine, arguing that his ultimate aim is to end the bloodshed. He has previously said Zelensky played Biden “like a fiddle”.

Tensions between the White House and the Ukrainian leader exploded into public view in February, when Trump and Vance berated Zelensky and demanded he show more gratitude for years of US support during an extraordinary televised meeting in the Oval Office.

“I found it sort of beneath America in the way that took place,” Biden said of the meeting.

Trump and his top officials have repeatedly criticised European countries for not spending enough on their own defence and relying too heavily on US support.

The US is by some margin the largest single donor to Ukraine, but European countries combined have spent more money, according to the Kiel Institute, a German-based think tank tracking support for Kyiv.

“I don’t understand how they fail to understand that there’s strength in alliances,” Biden said of the Trump administration on Monday. “There’s benefits… It saves us money overall.”

When asked about President Trump’s first 100 days in office, which has seen a whirlwind of executive actions as well as sweeping cuts to the size and spending of the federal government, Biden touted his own record and sought to draw a stark contrast between when he left office and now.

“Our economy was growing. We were moving in a direction where the stock market was way up. We were in a situation where we were expanding our influence around the world in a positive way, increasing trade” he said of state of the country when he left the White House in January.

Trump, meanwhile, says he is driving a needed overhaul of the world’s relationship with the US, rebalancing trade, controlling illegal immigration and making government more efficient. He celebrated the 100-day milestone with a triumphant speech last week. What does Biden make of the start to Trump 2.0?

“I’ll let history judge that,” he said. “I don’t see anything that was triumphant.”

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

A Kenyan court has sentenced four men to one year in prison or pay a fine of $7,700 (£5,800) for trying to smuggle thousands of live queen ants out of the country.

The four suspects – two Belgians, a Vietnamese and a Kenyan – were arrested last month with live ants suspected to have been destined for collectors in Europe and Asia.

They had pleaded guilty to the charges, with the Belgians telling the court that they were collecting the highly sought-after ants as a hobby and didn’t think it was illegal.

But delivering the sentence on Wednesday, the judge said the particular species of ants collected was valuable and they had thousands of them — not just a few.

“While collecting a few ants might be considered a hobby, being found with 5,000 queen ants is beyond a hobby,” said Magistrate Njeri Thuku.

“Already the world has lost a number of species due in part to greed. It is time to stem this tide.”

She added: “This court will do what it can to protect all creatures great and small.”

The contraband included giant African harvester ants, which are valued by some UK dealers at up to £170 ($220) each.

Belgian nationals Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19, Vietnamese national Duh Hung Nguyen and Kenyan Dennis Ng’ang’a, were handed similar terms after the magistrate considered their mitigation arguments.

The Belgians were found with 5,000 ants while the other two were found with more than 300 ants in their apartments.

The ants were packed in more than 2,000 test tubes filled with cotton wool to help them survive for months, authorities said.

The Belgian teens had entered Kenya on a tourist visa and were staying in Naivasha, a town popular with tourists for its animal parks and lakes.

Nguyen, 23, was described by the court as a “mule or courier” as he was just sent to pick up the ants and the person who sent him paid for his ticket.

The court said Ng’ang’a, 26, acted as a “broker” due to his knowledge of the ants that are found in his rural home.

While sentencing Nguyen and Ng’ang’a, Ms Thuku said they were involved in what she described as “illegal wildlife trade and possibly bio-piracy”.

David, an ant enthusiast with 10 colonies of ants at home in Belgium, belongs to a Facebook group called “Ant Gang”, the court heard.

The Belgian teen, who first visited Kenya five years ago, said he had bought 2,500 queen ants for $200 when he was arrested looking for more.

While pleading for leniency, David told the court he did not know his actions, which he regretted, were illegal.

For his part, Lodewijckx said he had only offered to buy the ants for his entomology interest but his intention was not to traffic them.

The court ordered the three foreigners to be repatriated to their country of origin upon payment of the fine or completion of the prison term.

The men have 14 days to appeal against the ruling.

In a statement, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) hailed the ruling as a “testament to Kenya’s zero-tolerance stance on wildlife trafficking”.

It also highlighted the ecological importance of the giant African harvester ants, noting that their removal from the ecosystem could disrupt soil health and biodiversity.

The agency said the case sent a clear message that Kenya would “relentlessly pursue and prosecute anyone involved in the illegal wildlife trade, regardless of the species involved”.

“Traffickers often underestimate the ecological value of smaller species, but their role in our ecosystems is irreplaceable,” it added.

The KWS, which is more used to protecting larger creatures, such as lions and elephants, had earlier described this as a “landmark case”, warning that the demand for rare insect species was growing.

In Kenya, the ants are protected by international bio-diversity treaties and their trade is highly regulated.

• The snipers trained to protect rhinos
• Northern white rhinos: The audacious plan that could save a species
• Kenya receives 17 rare antelopes from the US

The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey has voiced support for awards shows keeping separate categories for male and female performers.

The British star, who identifies as non-binary and asks to be referred to with they/them pronouns, said it was important that “recognition for women in the industry is preserved”.

“But then, where do non-binary or gender non-conforming people fit into that? I don’t know,” Ramsey added.

Ramsey has been nominated for best actress at the Baftas and Emmys. Other ceremonies such the MTV and Brit Awards have switched to all-encompassing gender-neutral prizes as the entertainment industry grapples with how non-binary actors should be treated by awards shows.

Organisers of the Oscars said last year they were “exploring” the idea of merging the best actor and actress categories.

Ramsey told Louis Theroux’s podcast: “If people call me an actress, I have a guttural ‘ugh, that’s not quite right’ instinct to it.

“But I just don’t take it too seriously. It doesn’t feel like an attack on my identity. It’s just a funny thing that doesn’t really fit.”

Ramsey said they “didn’t find it insulting” to be nominated for best actress at the Emmys.

Theroux suggested that having a single category would mean “basically a lot of women wouldn’t get nominated” – as happened when the Brits scrapped their best male and female categories in favour of a best artist award, and no women were nominated in 2023.

Ramsey responded: “I think it’s so important that that’s preserved – that the recognition for women in this industry is preserved.

“I think the gendered categories conversation’s a really interesting one and I don’t have the answer. I wish that there was something that was an easy way around it.

“I think that it is really important that we have a female category and a male category – but then, where do non-binary and gender con-conforming people fit into that? I don’t know.

“I’ve literally sat and tried to think my way to the answer, and haven’t got there.

“You could do it for the character portrayed – like, best performance in a female character. But then, what about when there are non-binary characters on screen? Which is few and far between at the moment. But where does a non-binary person playing a non-binary character fit in? I don’t know. It’s really complicated.”

There has also been a move towards referring to all performers as actors rather than using the term actress, but Ramsey said many people prefer to be called an actress “and are really comfortable in that”.

“I’ve always just called myself an actor, but I don’t think that those words [like actress] have to be taken away.”

The 21-year-old said they didn’t think about the use of pronouns until The Last of Us started in 2023, “and it was a question that I had and suddenly I had to choose”.

“I was so stressed out about it because I didn’t know, and I didn’t really care.”

Ramsey said they rejected the term non-binary “for so long” because they didn’t want to be seen as being “trendy”.

“It was just something that had been very obvious since I was young. I’d always call myself a tomboy, but it wasn’t that I was like a boyish girl. I was always a bit of an inbetween, leaning more to the boy’s side to be honest.

“I feel like I grew up more as a little boy than I did a little girl. I always felt more masculine or… yeah, more on that side of the spectrum, I guess.”

The question of how to categorise awards has been a long-running debate in the entertainment industry.

Currently, most awards shows invite actors to submit themselves for the category they feel comfortable in.

In 2022, The Crown’s Emma Corrin, who identifies as non-binary, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t think the categories are inclusive enough at the moment. It’s about everyone being able to feel acknowledged and represented.”

In 2023, Yellowjackets star Liv Hewson, also non-binary, didn’t enter the Emmys, saying: “There’s not a place for me in the acting categories. It would be inaccurate for me to submit myself as an actress. It neither makes sense for me to be lumped in with the boys.”

Others worry that gender-neutral categories would lead to women being underrepresented. After having all-male nominees for best artist in 2023, the Brits expanded the prize’s shortlist from five to 10 acts.

Trans actors are not affected by the issue, with Elliot Page being eligible for best actor and Karla Sofía Gascón for best actress.

The US may soon start deporting migrants to Libya as part of its crackdown on immigration, two US officials have told BBC partner CBS News.

The officials, who requested anonymity, said the US military could fly migrants to the North African country as early as this week.

The move is likely to spark controversy – Libya has been mired in conflict for more than a decade and the US state department advises Americans not to travel there due to factors like crime, terrorism and civil unrest.

The BBC has approached the US state department for comment.

Libya is thought to be one of several countries asked to accept migrant deportations by Donald Trump’s administration.

This week Rwanda confirmed it was in the “early stage” of talks with the US, while Benin, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, and Moldova have all been named in media reports.

• Migrants on edge as Trump administration ramps up raids and arrests
• Trump’s first 100 days – in numbers

It is not clear how many people the US hopes to deport to Libya, or which part of Libya the migrants would be sent to.

Since the overthrow of former ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the country has been divided into two – the west is ruled by a UN-backed government, while military strongman Gen Khalifa Haftar controls the east.

Haftar’s son met US officials in Washington last Monday, but the US state department and a Libyan spokesperson said the meeting was not about deportations.

Since returning to office in January, President Trump has launched a mass deportation campaign – at times relying on controversial tactics such as the invocation of a centuries-old wartime law.

Earlier this week, the government offered migrants who are in the US illegally a sum worth $1,000 (£751) to leave the country.

• Why is Libya so lawless?
• Joe Biden on Trump: ‘What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are’
• How much has Elon Musk’s Doge cut from US government spending?

A senior Houthi official has rejected US President Donald Trump’s claim the Yemeni armed group “capitulated” when agreeing a ceasefire deal, saying the US “backed down” instead.

“What changed is the American position, but our position remains firm,” chief negotiator Mohammed Abdul Salam told Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV.

Mediator Oman said the US and Houthis had agreed to “no longer target each other”, after seven weeks of intensified US strikes on Yemen in response to Houthi missile and drone attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea.

Abdul Salam also said the deal did not include an end to attacks on Israel, which has conducted two rounds of retaliatory strikes on Yemen this week.

The Houthis’ support for the Palestinian people in Gaza “will not change”, he added.

The Iran-backed group has controlled much of north-western Yemen since 2014, when they ousted the internationally-recognised government from the capital, Sanaa, and sparked a devastating civil war.

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. They have sunk two vessels, seized a third, and killed four crew members.

They have said they are acting in support of the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and have claimed – often falsely – that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

The Houthis were not deterred by the deployment of Western warships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden to protect merchant vessels last year, or by multiple rounds of US strikes on military targets ordered by former President Joe Biden.

On 15 March, Trump ordered an intensification of the air campaign against the Houthis and threatened that they would be “completely annihilated”.

At the end of April, the US military said it had struck more than 800 targets, including command-and-control facilities, air defence systems and advanced weapons manufacturing and storage facilities. It also said the strikes had killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and “numerous Houthi leaders”, without naming them.

Houthi-run authorities have said the strikes have killed dozens of civilians, but they have reported few casualties among the group’s members.

At the White House on Tuesday, Trump announced that the Houthis had said they “don’t want to fight anymore”.

“They just don’t want to fight, and we will honour that and we will stop the bombings, and they have capitulated,” he said. “But, more importantly, we will take their word.”

“They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore and that’s what the purpose of what we were doing.”

Later, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi wrote on X: “In the future, neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping.”

On Wednesday, Mohammed Abdul Salam said Trump’s remarks were “a reflection of Washington’s frustration after failing to protect Israeli ships and contain the fallout of its involvement”.

He also told Reuters news agency that the “the agreement does not include Israel in any way, shape or form”.

Israel has also carried out air strikes against the Houthis since July 2024 in response to hundreds of missiles and drones that the Israeli military says have been launched at the country from Yemen.

Most of them have been shot down, but on Sunday a Houthi missile landed near Israel’s main international airport, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion, leaving six people with minor injuries.

The attack has prompted Israel to carry out two rounds of air strikes on what the military called “Houthi terrorist infrastructure”.

The first on Monday targeted the Red Sea port of Hudaydah, reportedly destroying docks, warehouses and the customs area. The Houthi-run government’s health ministry said four people were killed.

On Tuesday, Israeli jets bombed Yemen’s main airport in Sanaa and several power stations.

Sources told Reuters that the runway, three aircraft, the departures hall and a military base were destroyed. Three people were killed, according to the health ministry.

“I have said many times that whoever attacks the State of Israel will pay the price,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

US and Chinese officials are set to start talks this week to try to deescalate a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.

Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng will attend the talks in Switzerland from 9 to 12 May, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer will represent Washington at the meeting, their offices announced.

Since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has imposed new import taxes on Chinese goods of up to 145%. Beijing has hit back with levies on some goods from the US of 125%.

But global trade experts have told the BBC that they expect negotiations to take several months.

It will be the first high-level interaction between the two countries since Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng attended Trump’s inauguration in January.

Mr Bessent said he looked forward to rebalancing the international economic system to better serve the interests of the US.

“My sense is that this will be about de-escalation, not about the big trade deal, but we’ve got to de-escalate before we can move forward,” he said in an interview with Fox News.

“If the United States wants to resolve the issue through negotiations, it must face up to the serious negative impact of unilateral tariff measures on itself and the world,” a Chinese commerce ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday morning.

Chinese state media reported that Beijing had decided to engage with the US after fully considering global expectations, the country’s interests and appeals from American businesses.

The report added that China is open to talks but reiterated that if the country decides to continue to fight this trade war – it will fight to the end.

The trade war has triggered turmoil in financial markets and sent shockwaves across global trade.

Two trade experts told the BBC that they were not particularly optimistic about the talks, at least in the initial phase.

“You have to start somewhere, so I’m not saying it isn’t worthwhile. Just unlikely to be the launch event people are hoping to see,” said Deborah Elms, Head of Trade Policy at the Hinrich Foundation.

“We should expect to see a lot of back and forth, just like what happened last time in 2018,” Henry Gao, Professor of Law at Singapore Management University and a former Chinese lawyer on the World Trade Organization secretariat said.

“I would expect the talks to drag on for several months or even more than a year”.

Financial markets in mainland China and Hong Kong rose on Wednesday as investors reacted to the news as well as announcements by Chinese authorities of measures to support the economy.

US stock futures were also higher. Futures are contracts to buy or sell an underlying asset at a future date and are an indication of how markets will trade when they open.

Investors are also waiting for the US central bank to make its latest announcement on interest rates on Wednesday afternoon.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

In a dramatic overnight operation, India said it launched missile and air strikes on nine sites across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, targeting what it called militant positions based on “credible intelligence”.

The strikes, lasting just 25 minutes between 01:05 and 01:30 India time (19:35 and 20:00 GMT on Tuesday), sent shockwaves through the region, with residents jolted awake by thunderous explosions.

Pakistan said only six locations were hit and claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets and a drone – a claim India has not confirmed.

Islamabad said 26 people were killed and 46 injured in Indian air strikes and shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) – the de facto border between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, India’s army reported that 10 civilians were killed by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

• Follow the latest updates
• What we know about the air strikes

This sharp escalation comes after last month’s deadly militant attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, pushing tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to dangerous new heights. India says it has clear evidence linking Pakistan-based terrorists and external actors to the attack – a claim Pakistan flatly denies. Islamabad has also pointed out that India has not offered any evidence to support its claim.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the LoC.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Experts say the retaliation for the Pahalgam attack stands out for its broader scope, targeting the infrastructure of three major Pakistan-based militant groups simultaneously.

India says it struck nine militant targets across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, hitting deep into key hubs of Lashkar-e- Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen.

Among the closest targets were two camps in Sialkot, just 6-18km from the border, according to an Indian spokesperson.

The deepest hit, says India, was a Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur, 100km inside Pakistan. A LeT camp in Muzaffarabad, 30km from the LoC and capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, was linked to recent attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir, the spokesperson said.

Pakistan says six locations have been hit, but denies allegations of there being terror camps.

“What’s striking this time is the expansion of India’s targets beyond past patterns. Previously, strikes like Balakot focused on Pakistan-administered Kashmir across the Line of Control – a militarised boundary,” Srinath Raghavan, a Delhi-based historian, told the BBC.

“This time, India has hit into Pakistan’s Punjab, across the International Border, targeting terrorist infrastructure, headquarters, and known locations in Bahawalpur and Muridke linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba. They’ve also struck Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen assets. This suggests a broader, more geographically expansive response, signalling that multiple groups are now in India’s crosshairs – and sending a wider message,” he says.

The India-Pakistan International Border is the officially recognised boundary separating the two countries, stretching from Gujarat to Jammu.

Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, told the BBC that what India did was a “Balakot plus response meant to establish deterrence, targeting known terrorist hubs, but accompanied by a strong de-escalatory message”.

“These strikes were more precise, targeted and more visible than in the past. Therefore, [they are] less deniable by Pakistan,” Mr Bisaria says.

Indian sources say the strikes were aimed at “re-establishing deterrence”.

“The Indian government thinks that the deterrence established in 2019 has worn thin and needs to be re-established,” says Prof Raghavan.

“This seems to mirror Israel’s doctrine that deterrence requires periodic, repeated strikes. But if we assume that hitting back alone will deter terrorism, we risk giving Pakistan every incentive to retaliate – and that can quickly spiral out of control.”

The majority of experts agree that a retaliation from Pakistan is inevitable – and diplomacy will come into play.

“Pakistan’s response is sure to come. The challenge would be to manage the next level of escalation. This is where crisis diplomacy will matter,” says Mr Bisaria.

“Pakistan will be getting advice to exercise restraint. But the key will be the diplomacy after the Pakistani response to ensure that both countries don’t rapidly climb the ladder of escalation.”

• India and Pakistan are in crisis again – here’s how they de-escalated in the past

Pakistan-based experts like Ejaz Hussain, a Lahore-based political and military analyst, say Indian surgical strikes targeting locations such as Muridke and Bahawalpur were “largely anticipated given the prevailing tensions”.

Dr Hussain believes retaliatory strikes are likely.

“Given the Pakistani military’s media rhetoric and stated resolve to settle the scores, retaliatory action, possibly in the form of surgical strikes across the border, appears likely in the coming days,” he told the BBC.

But Dr Hussain worries that surgical strikes on both sides could “escalate into a limited conventional war”.

Christopher Clary of the University at Albany in the US believes given the scale of India’s strikes, “visible damage at key sites”, and reported casualties, Pakistan is highly likely to retaliate.

“Doing otherwise essentially would give India permission to strike Pakistan whenever Delhi feels aggrieved and would run contrary to the Pakistan military’s commitment to retaliating with ‘quid pro quo plus’,” Mr Clary, who studies the politics of South Asia, told the BBC.

“Given India’s stated targets of groups and facilities associated with terrorism and militancy in India, I think it is likely – but far from certain – that Pakistan will confine itself to attacks on Indian military targets,” he said.

Despite the rising tensions, some experts still hold out hope for de-escalation.

“There is a decent chance we escape this crisis with just one round of reciprocal standoff strikes and a period of heightened firing along the Line of Control,” says Mr Clary.

However, the risk of further escalation remains high, making this the “most dangerous” India-Pakistan crisis since 2002 – and even more perilous than the 2016 and 2019 standoffs, he adds.

Experts in Pakistan note that despite a lack of war hysteria leading up to India’s strike, the situation could quickly shift.

“We have a deeply fractured political society, with the country’s most popular leader behind bars. Imran Khan’s imprisonment triggered a strong anti-military public backlash,” says Umer Farooq, an Islamabad-based analyst and a former correspondent of Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“Today, the Pakistani public is far less eager to support the military compared to 2016 or 2019 – the usual wave of war hysteria is noticeably absent. But if public opinion shifts in central Punjab where anti-India feelings are more prevalent, we could see increased civilian pressure on the military to take action. And the military will regain popularity because of this conflict.”

Dr Hussain echoes a similar sentiment.

“I believe the current standoff with India presents an opportunity for the Pakistani military to regain public support, particularly from the urban middle classes who have recently criticised it for perceived political interference,” he says.

“The military’s active defence posture is already being amplified through mainstream and social media, with some outlets claiming that six or seven Indian jets were shot down.

“Although these claims warrant independent verification, they serve to bolster the military’s image among segments of the public that conventionally rally around national defence narratives in times of external threat.”

India is once again walking a fine line between escalation and restraint.

Shortly after the attack in Pahalgam, India swiftly retaliated by closing the main border crossing, suspending a water-sharing treaty, expelling diplomats and halting most visas for Pakistani nationals. Troops on both sides have exchanged small-arms fire, and India barred all Pakistani aircraft from its airspace, mirroring Pakistan’s earlier move. In response, Pakistan suspended a 1972 peace treaty and took its own retaliatory measures.

This mirrors India’s actions after the 2019 Pulwama attack, when it swiftly revoked Pakistan’s most-favoured-nation status, imposed heavy tariffs and suspended key trade and transport links.

The crisis had escalated when India launched air strikes on Balakot, followed by retaliatory Pakistani air raids and the capture of Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, further heightening tensions. However, diplomatic channels eventually led to a de-escalation, with Pakistan releasing the pilot in a goodwill gesture.

“India was willing to give old-fashioned diplomacy another chance…. This, with India having achieved a strategic and military objective and Pakistan having claimed a notion of victory for its domestic audience,” Mr Bisaria told me last week.

Two weeks after a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, India has launched a series of strikes on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The Indian defence ministry said the strikes – named “Operation Sindoor” – were part of a “commitment” to hold “accountable” those responsible for the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead.

But Pakistan, which has denied any involvement in that attack, described the strikes as “unprovoked”, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saying the “heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished”.

Sharif on Wednesday said the Pahalgam attack “wasn’t related” to Pakistan, and that his country was “accused for the wrong” reasons.

• Follow the latest updates
• Why India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir
• BBC reports from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir

Pakistan’s military said at least 31 people were killed and 57 injured in the strikes on Tuesday night. India’s army said at least 15 civilians were killed and 43 injured by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

Pakistan’s military says it shot down five Indian aircraft and a drone. India has yet to respond to these claims.

Late on Wednesday, Sharif said the air force made its defence – which was a “reply from our side to them”.

Delhi said in the early hours of Wednesday morning that nine different locations had been targeted in both Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan.

It said these sites were “terrorist infrastructure” – places where attacks were “planned and directed”.

It emphasised that it had not hit any Pakistani military facilities, saying its “actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”.

In the initial aftermath of the attacks, Pakistan said three different areas were hit: Muzaffarabad and Kotli in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Bahawalpur in the Pakistani province of Punjab. Pakistan’s military spokesperson, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif, later said six locations had been hit.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told GeoTV in the early hours of Wednesday that the strikes hit civilian areas, adding that India’s claim of “targeting terrorist camps” was false.

The strikes come after weeks of rising tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours over the shootings in the picturesque resort town of Pahalgam.

The 22 April attack by a group of militants saw 26 people killed, with survivors saying the militants were singling out Hindu men.

It was the worst attack on civilians in the region in two decades, and the first major attack on civilians since India revoked Article 370, which gave Kashmir semi-autonomous status, in 2019.

Following the decision, the region saw protests but also witnessed militancy wane and a huge increase in the number of tourists.

The killings have sparked widespread anger in India, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the country would hunt the suspects “till the ends of the Earth” and that those who planned and carried it out “will be punished beyond their imagination”.

However, India initially did not name any group it believed was behind the attack in Pahalgam.

But Indian police alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, with Delhi accusing Pakistan of supporting militants – a charge Islamabad denies. It says it has nothing to do with the 22 April attacks.

On 7 May, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group carried out the attack.

In the two weeks since, both sides had taken tit-for-tat measures against each other – including expelling diplomats, suspending visas and closing border crossings.

But many expected it would escalate to some sort of cross-border strike – as seen after the Pulwama attacks which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead in 2019.

Kashmir is claimed in full by India and Pakistan, but administered only in part by each since they were partitioned following independence from Britain in 1947.

The countries have fought two wars over it.

But more recently, it has been attacks by militants which have brought the two countries to the brink. Indian-administered Kashmir has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, with militants targeting security forces and civilians alike.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control – the de facto border between India and Pakistan – targeting militant bases.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Neither spiralled, but the wider world remains alert to the danger of what could happen if it did. Attempts have been made by various nations and diplomats around the world to prevent this.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres quickly called for “maximum restraint” – a sentiment echoed by the European Union and numerous countries, including Bangladesh.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged “dialogue” and “de-escalation”.

US President Donald Trump – who was one of the first to respond – told reporters at the White House that he hoped the fighting “ends very quickly”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, said he was keeping a close eye on developments.

In an exclusive and remarkably candid interview – the first since he left office – Joe Biden discusses what he really thinks of his successor’s first 100 days, plus his fears for the future if the Atlantic Alliance collapses

It is hard to believe that the man I greet in the Delaware hotel where he launched his political career more than half a century ago was the “leader of the free world” little over 100 days ago.

Joe Biden is still surrounded by all the trappings of power – the black SUVs, the security guys with curly earpieces, the sniffer dogs sent ahead to sweep the room for explosives. And yet he has spent the last three months watching much of what he believes in being swept away by his successor.

Donald Trump has deployed the name Biden again and again – it is his political weapon of choice. One recent analysis showed that Trump said or wrote the name Biden at least 580 times in those first 100 days in office. Having claimed that rises in share prices were “Trump’s stock market” at work, he later blamed sharp falls in share prices on “Biden’s stock market”.

Until this week, President Biden himself (former presidents keep their titles after they leave office) has largely observed the convention that former presidents do not criticise their successors at the start of their time in office. But from the moment we shake hands it is clear that he is determined to have his say too.

In a dark blue suit, the former president arrives smiling and relaxed but with the determined air of a man on a mission. It’s his first interview since leaving the White House, and he seems most angry about Donald Trump’s treatment of America’s allies – in particular Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

• Trump appeasing Putin with pressure on Ukraine, Biden tells BBC
• Five key takeaways from the interview
• Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: Listen to the full interview on BBC Sounds, or watch on BBC iPlayer or on YouTube

“I found it beneath America, the way that took place,” he says of the explosive Oval Office row between Trump and Zelensky in February. “And the way we talk about now that, ‘it’s the Gulf of America’, ‘maybe we’re going to have to take back Panama’, ‘maybe we need to acquire Greenland, ‘maybe Canada should be a [51st state].’ What the hell’s going on here?

“What President ever talks like that? That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity – not about confiscation.”

After just over 100 action-packed days of Trump there was no shortage of targets for President Biden to choose from.

But his main concern appears to be on the international stage, rather than the domestic one: that is, the threat he believes now faces the alliance between the United States and Europe which, as he puts it, secured peace, freedom and democracy for eight decades.

Just before our interview, which took place days before the 80th anniversary of VE Day, Biden took a large gold coin out of his pocket and pressed it into my hand. It was a souvenir of last year’s D-Day commemoration. Biden believes that the speech he delivered on that beach in Normandy is one of his most important. In it, he declared that the men who fought and died “knew – beyond any doubt – that there are things worth fighting and dying for”.

I ask him whether he feels that message about sacrifice is in danger of being forgotten in America. Not by the people, he replies but, yes, by the leadership. It is, he says, a “grave concern” that the Atlantic Alliance is seen to be dying.

“I think it would change the modern history of the world if that occurs,” he argues.

“We’re the only nation in a position to have the capacity to bring people together, [to] lead the world. Otherwise you’re going to have China and the former Soviet Union, Russia, stepping up.”

Now more than ever before that Alliance is being questioned. One leading former NATO figure told the BBC this week that the VE Day celebrations felt more like a funeral. President Trump has complained that the United States is being “ripped off” by her allies, Vice President JD Vance has said that America is “bailing out” Europe whilst Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has insisted that Europe is “free-loading”.

Biden calls the pledge all members of Nato – the Atlantic Alliance – make “to defend each and every inch of Nato territory with the full force of our collective power” a “sacred obligation”.

“I fear that our allies around the world are going to begin to doubt whether we’re going to stay where we’ve always been for the last 80 years,” Biden says.

Under his presidency, both Finland and Sweden joined Nato – something he thinks made the alliance stronger. “We did all that – and in four years we’ve got a guy who wants to walk away from it all.

“I’m worried that Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America, and the leadership of America in the world, to deal with not only Nato, but other matters that are of consequence.”

I meet President Biden in the place he has called home since he was a boy, the city of Wilmington in Delaware. It is an hour and a half Amtrak train ride from Washington DC, a journey he has been making for 50 years since becoming a Senator at the age of just 30. He has spent more years in government than any other president.

He was 82 when he left the Oval Office. His age has invited no end of scrutiny – an “at times addled old man” is how the journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson describe him in their book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.

His calamitous live TV debate performance last June prompted further questions, as Biden stumbled over his words, lost his thread mid-sentence and boasted, somewhat bafflingly, that “We finally beat Medicare!”. He withdrew from the election campaign soon after.

Today, Biden is still warm and charismatic, with the folksy charm that made him an election winner but he is a much slower, quieter and more hesitant version of the leader he was once. Meeting with him in person, I found it hard to imagine he could have served for another four years in the White House, taking him closer to the age of 90.

I ask Biden if he’s now had to think again about his decisions last year. He pulled out of the presidential race just 107 days before election day, leaving Kamala Harris limited time to put together her own campaign.

“I don’t think it would have mattered,” he says. “We left at a time when we had a good candidate, she was fully funded.

“What we had set out to do, no-one thought we could do,” he continues. “And we had become so successful in our agenda, it was hard to say, ‘No, I’m going to stop now’… It was a hard decision.”

One he regrets? Surely withdrawing earlier could have given someone else a greater chance?

“No, I think it was the right decision.” He pauses. “I think that… Well, it was just a difficult decision.”

Biden says he went into politics to fight injustice and to this day has lost none of his appetite for the fight. Last year at the D-Day celebrations he warned: “We’re living in a time when democracy is more at risk across the world than at any point since the end of World War Two.”

Today, he expands on this: “Look at the number of European leaders and European countries that are wondering, Well what do I do now? What’s the best route for me to take? Can I rely on the United States? Are they going to be there?”

“Instead of democracy expanding around the world, [it’s] receding. Democracy – every generation has to fight for it.”

Speaking in Chicago recently, Biden declared that “nobody’s king” in America. I asked him if he thinks President Trump is behaving more like a monarch than a constitutionally limited president.

He chooses his reply carefully. “He’s not behaving like a Republican president,” he says.

Though later in our interview, Biden admits he’s less worried about the future of US democracy than he used to be, “because I think the Republican Party is waking up to what Trump is about”.

President Biden relished his role as the leading figure in Nato, deploying normally top secret intelligence to tell a sceptical world back in 2022 that Vladimir Putin was about to launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine.

Since taking office President Trump has charted a different course, telling Ukraine that it must consider giving up territory to Russia if it wants the war to end.

“It is modern day appeasement,” Biden says of Trump’s approach.

Putin, he says, sees Ukraine as “part of Mother Russia. He believes he has historical rights to Ukraine… He can’t stand the fact that […] the Soviet Union has collapsed. And anybody who thinks he’s going to stop is just foolish.”

He fears that Trump’s approach might signal to other European countries that it’s time to give in to Russia.

Yet Biden has faced accusations against him concerning the Ukraine War. Some in Kyiv and her allies, as well as some in the UK, claim that he gave President Zelensky just enough support to resist invasion but not enough to defeat Russia, perhaps out of fear that Putin would consider using nuclear weapons if cornered.

When Putin was asked point blank on TV this week whether he would use nuclear weapons to win the war, he declared that he hoped that they would “not be necessary,” adding that he had the means to bring the war to what he called his “logical conclusion”.

I point out to Biden that it has been argued that he didn’t have the courage to go all the way to give Ukraine the weapons it needed – to let Ukraine win.

“We gave them [Ukraine] everything they needed to provide for their independence,” Biden argues. “And we were prepared to respond more aggressively if in fact Putin moved again.”

He says he was keen to avoid the prospect of “World War Three, with nuclear powers,” adding: “And we did avoid it.

“What would Putin do if things got really tough for him?” he continues. “Threaten the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This is not a game or roulette.”

Biden’s belief in the Atlantic Alliance – as the last living President born during World War Two – is clearly undiminished.

When he first arrived in the Oval Office, Biden hung a portrait of America’s wartime leader Franklin D. Roosevelt on the wall. He was born two and a half years before the defeat of the Nazis, into the world FDR helped to create – a world of American global leadership and solidarity. But the United States voted to reject Biden’s policies and values and instead to endorse Donald Trump’s call to put America First.

The world is changing from what people like Joe Biden have taken for granted.

“Every generation has to fight to maintain democracy, every one,” Biden says. “Every one’s going to be challenged.

“We’ve done it well for the last 80 years. And I’m worried there’s the loss of understanding of the consequences of that.”

For the second time in just eight days, a US fighter jet has been lost to the Red Sea after falling from the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier, US officials say.

An F/A-18F Super Hornet was attempting to land on the Truman’s flight deck on Tuesday when a manoeuvre failed, “causing the aircraft to go overboard”, an official told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The two crew members inside the aircraft ejected, and sustained minor injuries in the incident. The jets themselves are reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars each.

“Both aviators safely ejected and were rescued by a helicopter assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 11,” the official told CBS.

It comes after another Super Hornet went overboard into the same sea last Monday in a separate incident.

It was “under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft”, a US Navy statement said. A sailor sustained minor injuries, and a tractor that had been towing the aircraft was also pulled into the water.

During the second incident, officials said there was a failure of an arrestment – referring to a cable that is used to help slow down a jet as it lands.

The incident is still under investigation, and the aircraft has yet to be recovered.

The jet may have tipped overboard after the aircraft carrier made a sharp turn while taking evasive action against Houthi militants in Yemen, US officials told CBS.

Just hours earlier on Tuesday, President Donald Trump announced that the US would stop attacking the Iran-backed Houthis if the group stopped targeting shipping in the Red Sea.

The Truman has been involved in several incidents in its Red Sea deployment, including last December, when the USS Gettysburg mistakenly shot down another F/A-18 fighter jet that was operating from the carrier. Both crew members survived.

Three former officers charged with murder in the fatal beating of a black man that triggered nationwide protests against police brutality have been acquitted by a state jury in Memphis, Tennessee.

Tyre Nichols, who was beaten during a traffic stop in 2023, died three days after sustaining numerous blows to the head, according to a post-mortem report.

Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, Jr were found not guilty on all charges on Wednesday, including second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression.

All three have been convicted of separate federal charges, and still face long prison sentences.

Two other officers involved in the death, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills, have pleaded guilty to federal charges, avoiding trial.

Federal charges are ones that violate federal laws enacted by Congress. They are brought by the Department of Justice and usually carry stiff sentences.

The five officers, who are all black, were members of the Memphis police department’s Scorpion Task Force, a since-disbanded street unit that was tasked with bringing down crime levels in the city.

• Who was Tyre Nichols?
• Five key questions raised by Tyre Nichols video

Video footage of the incident shows Mr Nichols being pulled over by police for alleged reckless driving.

A scuffle develops and officers use pepper spray and a Taser on Mr Nichols as he breaks free.

The five policemen caught up with him about a block away and began to assault him as he cried out for his mother.

He died three days later, with a post-mortem examination ruling it a homicide from blunt-force trauma.

On Wednesday, the state jury o took over eight hours to reach their verdict, following an emotional nine-day trial.

The proceedings took place in Hamilton County, over 300 miles (480km) away from Memphis after the judge ruled that the trial should take place outside of the city.

Defence lawyers had argued that it would be difficult to find an impartial jury in the city.

But the verdict in the state trial was in sharp contrast with the defendants’ federal trial in 2024, when the officers were found guilty of witness tampering charges in the case.

Haley was also found guilty of deprivation of civil rights and deliberate indifference resulting in serious bodily injury.

Bean and Smith each face up to 20 years in jail, while Haley faces a life sentence in the federal trial.

Federal sentencing hearings had been delayed until the conclusion of the state trial.

The US Justice Department in December 2024 found that the Memphis Police Department regularly used excessive force against black residents.

The findings were released after a 17-month investigation.

India’s strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir have unleashed a wave of misinformation online, with unrelated videos purporting to be from the strikes gaining millions of views.

Dramatic clips debunked by BBC Verify have claimed to show attacks on an Indian army base and an Indian fighter jet shot down in Pakistan.

One video, which had more than 400,000 views on X at the time of writing, claiming to show an explosion caused by a Pakistani response was actually from the 2020 Beirut Port explosion in Lebanon.

An expert told BBC Verify that in moments of heightened tension or dramatic events, misinformation is more likely to spread and fuel distrust and hostility.

“It’s very common to see recycled footage during any significant event, not just conflict,” Eliot Higgins, the founder of the Bellingcat investigations website, said.

“Algorithmic engagement rewards people who post engaging content, not truthful content, and footage of conflict and disasters is particularly engaging, no matter the truth behind it.”

One of the most viral clips, which gained over 3 million views on X in a matter of hours, claimed to show blasts caused by the Indian strikes on Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A search for screengrabs from the video on Google found the footage actually showed Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip on 13 October 2023.

• Follow live: Tensions escalate as Pakistan vows response to Indian strikes
• What we know about India’s strike on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir
• Why India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir

While much of the debunked footage has purported to show the immediate aftermath of the Indian strikes, some clips analysed by BBC Verify appeared to be trying to portray the Pakistani response as being more severe than it actually was.

One video, which has racked up almost 600,000 views on X, claimed to show that the “Pakistan army blew up the Indian Brigade headquarters”. The clip, which shows blasts in the darkness, is actually from an unrelated video circulating on YouTube as early as last month.

Elsewhere, one set of photos purported to show an operation carried out by the Pakistan Air Force targeting “Indian forward air-bases in the early hours of 6 May 2025”. The images – which appeared to be captured by a drone – were actually screengrabs taken from the video game Battlefield 3.

The Pakistani military says it destroyed five jets on Wednesday morning local time. That announcement has led to some users sharing unrelated clips which they claimed showed the wreckage of Indian fighter jets. Some of these videos have obtained millions of views.

But two widely shared images actually showed previous Indian air force jet crashes – one from an incident in Rajasthan in 2024 and another in the Punjab state in 2021. Both crashes were widely reported.

Prof Indrajit Roy of York University said that the images “are being generated with a view to get support for the military in Pakistan”. One clip circulated by the Pakistani military itself was later withdrawn by news agencies after it turned out to be from an unrelated event.

“We have jingoists on both sides of the border, and they have a huge platform on Twitter (X). You can see how fake news, as well as some real news, gets amplified, distorted and presented in ways designed to generate hostility, animosity and hatred for the other side.”

The conflict in Kashmir has long attracted a high degree of misinformation online. In the aftermath of the deadly militant attack on Indian tourists in Pahalgam last month, AI images circulated – with some seeking to dramatise actual scenes from the attack.

Vedika Bahl, a journalist with France 24, said the Pahalgam attacks had prompted a sharp “uptake in misinformation from both sides surrounding the conflict”.

“Lots of this misinformation begins on X,” she said. “Eventually this trickles down over time from X to WhatsApp which is the communication tool which is most used in South Asian communities.”

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Former US President Joe Biden has given his first in-depth interview since he left the White House in January, speaking to the BBC about his legacy, foreign policy and his view of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days.

He said that he had few regrets, but he offered grave warnings about global affairs as Europe marks 80 years since the end of World War Two on the continent.

Biden spent much of his time in public office – as a senator, vice-president and president – focusing on US foreign policy, and it remains a top concern.

The former president also reflected on his decision to drop out of the 2024 election race – but he had less to say about any mistakes he and the Democrats may have made along the way.

Here are five key takeaways from his interview with Nick Robinson for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Biden’s ill-fated decision to seek a second presidential term may haunt Democrats for a generation. Three months removed from power, however, the former president said he didn’t think “it would have mattered” if he had abandoned his re-election ambitions earlier, before a disastrous debate forced his hand in July 2024.

Kamala Harris, who became the nominee after Biden dropped out just four months before the election, was a “good candidate” who was “fully funded”, he said.

Democratic strategists have lamented that the last-minute handover left their campaign flat-footed, ultimately aiding Trump’s path to the White House, even as Democrats held a financial advantage in the 2024 race.

Biden boasted of being “so successful on our agenda” – a reference to the major legislation enacted in his first two years in office on the environment, infrastructure and social spending, as well as the better-than-expected Democratic performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

“It was hard to say now I’m going to stop,” he said. “Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away.”

Ultimately, quitting was “the right decision”, he said, but it was “just a difficult decision”.

• Trump appeasing Putin with pressure on Ukraine, Biden tells BBC
• Biden on Trump: ‘What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are’
• Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: Listen to the full interview on BBC Sounds, or watch on BBC iPlayer or on YouTube

Biden described the Trump administration’s suggestion that Ukraine give up territory as part of a peace deal with Russia as “modern-day appeasement” – a reference to European allies that allowed Adolf Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia in the 1930s in an ill-fated attempt to prevent a continent-wide conflict.

“I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him. I don’t quite understand,” Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The term “appeasement” gets kicked around a lot in American politics, and the list of foreign leaders compared with modern-day “Hitlers” is a long one.

Though Biden’s repeated assertion that Russian tanks would be rolling through central Europe if America and its allies didn’t support Ukraine is impossible to prove, he views the threat posed by Putin as serious and worthy of the comparison.

Biden also said that if the US allowed a peace deal that favoured Russia, Putin’s neighbours would be under economic, military and political pressure to accommodate Moscow’s will in other ways. In his view, the promise of American support to European allies becomes less believable and less of a deterrent.

Under Biden, the US helped expand the Nato to include Finland and Sweden – one of the former president’s signature foreign policy achievements. Now, he says Trump is turning his back on America’s European allies and threatening the very foundations of Nato and its mutual defence agreement.

The former president described the thought of Nato breaking apart as a “grave concern”. Already, he warned, US allies were doubting American leadership.

“I think it would change the modern history of the world if that occurs,” he said. “We are not the essential nation, but we are the only nation in position to have the capacity to bring people together to lead the world.”

There are some in Trump’s circle – perhaps including the president himself – who believe that a more restrained America, less concerned with global security and more focused on regional self-sufficiency, is best way to ensure long-term prosperity in a world of competing global powers. They argue that America’s post-Cold War dominance was a historical anomaly.

Biden, whose political career spans those decades of American supremacy, disagrees.

In his interview, Biden sounded like most modern American presidents before him. He used words like freedom, democracy and opportunity to describe American principles.

But in Biden’s view, those principles also include a sense of decorum, especially towards long-standing allies.

He said Trump’s February meeting-turned-argument with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office was “sort of beneath America”. He argued Trump’s territorial designs on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal were “not who we are”.

“What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation,” he said.

When asked about Trump’s first 100 days in office – which included dramatic attempts to expand presidential power – Biden said he would let history judge his successor, but “I don’t see anything that’s triumphant”.

It was the kind of understatement that surely will irk some on the left. Since the start of Trump’s second term, rank-and-file Democrats have been clamouring for their party to do more to resist the president’s agenda.

Biden said he didn’t think Trump would succeed in flouting courts or the law, or diminishing congressional power, in part because the president’s fellow Republicans are “waking up to what Trump is about”.

“I don’t think he’ll succeed in that effort,” he said.

The idea that members of Trump’s own party will turn on him is a recurring one for Biden. In 2019, he predicted there would be an “epiphany” among Republicans once Trump was out of the White House, ushering in a new era of bipartisanship.

It didn’t exactly work out that way in 2024.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

WeightWatchers has filed for bankruptcy in the US as it struggles with debt and fierce competition from fat-loss jabs like Ozempic and Mounjaro.

The legal process will see $1.15bn (£860mn) of the 60-year-old diet brand’s debt written off while it agrees new terms for paying back its lenders.

WeightWatchers said it will remain “fully operational” during the process with “no impact to members”.

It follows the meteoric rise in popularity of weight loss injections in what the firm said was a “rapidly changing weight management landscape”.

“For more than 62 years, WeightWatchers has empowered millions of members to make informed, healthy choices, staying resilient as trends have come and gone,” said chief executive Tara Comonte.

The plans have “the overwhelming support of our lenders”, she said.

In a statement, the brand said its weight-loss programme, “telehealth” scheme, and weight-loss workshops will continue.

The company vowed that it was “here to stay” and that it was not going out of business.

It said it had a “significant amount of debt on its balance sheet, some of it dating back decades” and that filing for bankruptcy would allow it to restructure its balance sheet.

Some customers would get court notifications as part of the process, but they shouldn’t need to take any action, the firm added.

WeightWatchers began as weekly weight-loss support group meeting with 400 attendees, and eventually gained millions of members across the globe.

But demand for its programmes has dropped while the popularity of weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound has risen – although the brand does sell weight medications as part of its programmes.

In February Ms Comonte said WeightWatchers could help people looking for “sustainable” weight loss after coming off medication.

“At the same time, WeightWatchers is in a period of significant transition as we navigate industry shifts and reposition our business for long-term growth,” she said at the time.

The brand reported a net loss of $346m (£260m) last year, while its subscription revenues fell 5.6% compared with the year before.

On Tuesday, it reported that subscription revenues in the first three months of 2025 were down 9.3% – although its clinical business, which includes weight-loss medication, saw revenues up more than 57%.

The brand’s total liabilities of $1.88bn are greater than the value of its assets. It said it “expects [the] reorganisation plan to be confirmed in approximately 40 days and to emerge as a publicly traded company.”

WeightWatchers renamed itself “WW” in 2018 as it shifted to focus on promoting health beyond weight-loss.

Walt Disney has announced plans to open its first theme park in the Middle East.

The resort, which will be in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, is a collaboration between Walt Disney and local leisure and entertainment company Miral.

Disney already has six theme parks spanning North America, Europe and Asia. Its most recent opening was in 2016 in Shanghai.

Miral is responsible for the development of Yas Island as a tourist destination and already operates SeaWorld and Warner Bros World where it is developing a Harry Potter-themed park.

In a statement announcing the new facility, Disney said the UAE was located within a four-hour flight of one-third of the world’s population, making it a “significant gateway for tourism”.

It added that 120 million passengers travel through Abu Dhabi and Dubai every year, making the Emirates the biggest global airline hub in the world.

Disney chief executive Robert Iger described the plans for the new park as a “thrilling” moment for the company and said Disneyland Abu Dhabi would be “authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati”.

The 10-sq-mile (25-sq-km) Yas Island is 20 minutes from downtown Abu Dhabi and 50 minutes from Dubai.

Miral’s boss Mohamed Abdalla Al Zaabi said bringing a Disney theme park resort to the area marked a “milestone in our journey to further advance the island’s position as a global destination for exceptional entertainment and leisure”.

He said the development would “support sustained economic growth in Abu Dhabi and beyond”.

The company’s first theme park, Disneyland, opened in Anaheim, California in 1955. It was followed in 1971 by Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

International expansion began in 1983 with a park in Tokyo; Disneyland Paris opened in 1992, then came Hong Kong in 2005 and, most recently, Shanghai in 2016.

Also on Wednesday, Disney announced better than expected results for the first three months of 2025, with revenue up by 7% to $23.6bn (£17.7bn).

The Disney+ streaming business added 1.4 million customers. Previously Disney had predicted a slight decline in subscribers due to a price increase.

Attendance rose at US parks with visitors spending more and there was also a rise in cruise ship bookings following the launch of the new ship Disney Treasure.

“Despite questions around any macroeconomic uncertainty or the impact of competition, I’m encouraged by the strength and resilience of our business,” said Mr Iger.

Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at AJ Bell said at a time when so many businesses in the US were “worried about the potential impact of tariffs on consumer spending, on household budgets, Disney is feeling confident”.

The Pakistan-based leader of a militant group has said 10 of his relatives have been killed in a missile strike by India.

Masood Azhar, chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), said his older sister and her husband, his nephew and his nephew’s wife, his niece and five children from his family were killed in a strike on a mosque in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

India launched strikes on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Tuesday night. Islamabad called the strikes a “heinous act of aggression”.

India said it acted in response to a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago that killed 25 Indians and one Nepali. Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack.

Indian police alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, with Delhi accusing Pakistan of supporting militants – a charge Islamabad denies.

India said it targeted sites on Tuesday night “from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed”.

Pakistan said six locations have been hit, but denies India’s allegations of these being terrorist infrastructure.

India said JeM’s headquarters in Bahawalpur, 100km inside Pakistan, was hit.

Video footage of the mosque, assessed by BBC Verify, showed one of its domes had collapsed and extensive damage occurred inside, including two holes in the roof and one in the ground.

In Bahawalpur on Wednesday, crowds were mourning those killed in the strikes overnight in funeral processions through the streets.

Local residents told the BBC they were angry about the attack, but also worried about Pakistan’s potential response.

• Follow the latest updates
• What we know about the air strikes

• Indian and Pakistani civilians describe aftermath

Azhar founded JeM in 1999 upon his release from prison in India. JeM has been linked to al Qaeda and the Taliban, the UN Security Council has said. The UN designated Azhar as a terrorist in 2019.

India blamed an attack on Indian parliament in 2001 on JeM – a claim JeM denies. Pakistan banned the group soon after that.

JeM said it carried out a bomb attack in February 2019 that killed 40 paramilitary police in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Pakistani authorities said India’s strikes on Tuesday night killed 31 people. Indian authorities said at least 15 civilians were killed by Pakistani shelling.

The escalation between the nuclear-armed neighbours has prompted urgent calls for restraint from the international community.