The US has agreed to reduce import taxes on a set number of British cars and allow some steel and aluminium into the country tariff-free, as part of a new agreement between the US and UK.

The announcement offers relief for key UK industries from some of the new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump since entering office in January.

But it will leave a 10% duty in place on most goods from the UK.

Though hailed by leaders in the two countries as significant, analysts said it did not appear to meaningfully alter the terms of trade between the countries, as they stood before the changes introduced by Trump this year.

No formal deal was signed on Thursday and the governments were light on details.

Speaking from a Jaguar Land Rover factory in the West Midlands, Sir Keir Starmer described the agreement as a “fantastic platform”.

At the White House, Trump called it a “great deal” and pushed back against criticism that he was overstating its importance.

“This is a maxed out deal that we’re going to make bigger,” he said.

The two sides said the US had agreed to reduce the import tax on cars – which Trump had raised by 25% last month – to 10% for 100,000 cars a year.

That will help luxury carmakers such as Jaguar Land Rover and Rolls Royce, but could limit growth in the years ahead, as it amounts to roughly what the UK exported last year.

Tariffs on steel and aluminium, which Trump had also raised earlier this year to 25%, have also been slashed, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

The office also said the two sides had agreed to “reciprocal access” for beef exports, with a quota of 13,000 metric tonnes for UK farmers.

Those figures were not confirmed by the White House, though it said it expected to expand its sales of beef and ethanol to the UK, a longstanding demand on the part of the US.

The US said the deal would create a $5bn “opportunity” for exports, including $700m in ethanol and $250m in other agricultural products.

“It can’t be understated how important this deal is,” US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.

UK Steel Director General Gareth Stace welcomed the agreement saying it would offer “major relief” to the steel sector.

“The UK Government’s cool-headed approach and perseverance in negotiating with the US clearly paid off,” he said.

Other business groups expressed more uncertainty.

“It’s better than yesterday but it’s definitely not better than five weeks ago,” said Duncan Edwards, chief executive of BritishAmerican Business, which represents firms in the two countries and supports free trade.

“I’m trying to be excited but I’m struggling a bit.”

In the House of Commons, Conservative Shadow Trade Secretary Andrew Griffith dismissed the announcement as “a Diet Coke deal, not the real thing”.

Trade Minister Douglas Alexander stressed that the deal was “jobs saved, not job done”.

The US and UK have been discussing a trade deal since Trump’s first term. They came close to signing a mini-agreement at that time.

But the US has long pushed for changes to benefit its farmers and pharmaceutical issues, which had been non-starters politically for the UK.

It was not clear how much those issues had advanced.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said the agreement in-principle had delivered a “tremendous win” for American ranchers but the US Meat Export Federation, which tracks trade barriers for farmers in the US, said it was still trying to pin down information about the changes.

The UK said there would be no weakening in food standards for imports.

While the UK appears to have made some commitments, “the devil will be in the details,” said Michael Pearce, deputy chief economist at Oxford Economics, which said it was making no change to its economic forecasts as a result of the announcement.

Other issues loom.

Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to tax imports of pharmaceuticals, in a bid to ensure the US has a strong manufacturing base for critical medicines.

The UK said the US had agreed to give British firms “preferential treatment”.

But Ewan Townsend, a lawyer at Arnold & Porter, who works with health care firms, said the industry was now “left waiting to see exactly what this preferential treatment will mean”.

The auction house Sotheby’s has postponed its sale in Hong Kong of hundreds of sacred jewels linked to the Buddha’s remains, after a threat of legal action by the Indian government.

The sale of the collection – described as one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era – had drawn criticism from Buddhist academics and monastic leaders. India had said it offended the global Buddhist community.

Sotheby’s said the suspension would allow for discussions between the parties.

A British official named William Claxton Peppé unearthed the relics in northern India nearly 130 years ago, alongside bone fragments identified as belonging to the Buddha himself.

The auction of the collection, known as the Piprahwa Gems of the Historical Buddha Mauryan Empire, Ashokan Era, circa 240-200 BCE, was due to take place on 7 May.

In a letter to the auction house two days earlier, the Indian government said that the relics constituted “inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community. Their sale violates Indian and international laws, as well as United Nations conventions”.

A high-level Indian government delegation then held discussions with Sotheby’s representatives on Tuesday.

In an emailed statement, Sotheby’s said that in light of the matters raised by India’s government “and with the agreement of the consignors, the auction … has been postponed”.

It said updates on the discussions would be shared “as appropriate”.

Notice of the gems sale had been removed from its auction house by Wednesday and the website page promoting the auction is no longer available.

William Claxton Peppé was an English estate manager who excavated a stupa at Piprahwa, just south of Lumbini, the believed birthplace of Buddha. He uncovered relics inscribed and consecrated nearly 2,000 years ago.

The findings included nearly 1,800 gems, including rubies, topaz, sapphires and patterned gold sheets, stored inside a brick chamber. This site is now in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Sotheby’s had said in February that the 1898 discovery ranked “among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time”.

The UK and the US have reached a deal over tariffs on some goods traded between the countries.

President Donald Trump’s blanket 10% tariffs on imports from countries around the world remains in place and still applies to most UK goods entering the US.

But the deal has reduced or removed tariffs on some of the UK’s exports, including cars, steel and aluminium.

Here’s an at-a-glance look at what’s in the deal.

Trump declared on social media this announcement would be a “major trade deal” – it’s not.

He does not have the authority to sign the type of free-trade agreement India and the UK finalised earlier this week – this lies with Congress.

Congress would need to approve a trade agreement, which would take longer than the 90-day pause in place on some of Trump’s tariffs.

This is an agreement which has reversed or cut some of those tariffs on specific goods.

What was announced today is only the bare bones of a narrow agreement.

There will be months of negotiations and legal paperwork to follow.

Trump had placed import taxes of 25% on cars and car parts coming into the US on top of the existing 2.5%.

This has been cut to 10% for a maximum of 100,000 UK cars, which matches the number of cars the UK exported last year.

But any cars exported above that 100,000 will be subject to a 27.5% import tax.

Cars are the UK’s biggest export to the US – worth about £9bn last year.

Car industry leaders have told the BBC the quota could effectively put a ceiling on the number they can export competitively.

The UK currently imposes a 10% on US car imports, but it is not yet clear if there had been any change to this.

The US has previously demanded the import tax be cut to 2.5%, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves has indicated she is open to such a cut.

Trump also announced that Rolls Royce engines and plane parts will be able to be exported from the UK to the US tariff-free.

He also said the UK was buying $10bn worth of Boeing planes from the US.

A 25% tariff on steel and aluminium imports into the US that came into effect in March has been scrapped as part of this deal.

This is huge news for firms such as British Steel which was brought under government control as it struggled to stay operational.

The UK exports a relatively small amount of steel and aluminium to the US, around £700m in total.

However the tariffs also cover products made with steel and aluminium, including things such as gym equipment, furniture and machinery.

These are worth much more, about £2.2bn, or about 5% of UK exports to the US last year.

It is not yet clear whether the scrapping of tariffs will apply to steel derivative products and whether only steel melted and poured in the UK will benefit.

What will be agreed on pharmaceuticals is still unknown.

“Work will continue on the remaining sectors – such as pharmaceuticals and remaining reciprocal tariffs,” a statement from the UK government said.

Most countries, including the US, imposed few or no tariffs on finished drugs, as part of an agreement aimed at keeping medicines affordable.

Pharmaceuticals are a major export for the UK when it comes to US trade – last year sales of medicinal and pharmaceutical products were worth £6.6bn ($8.76bn) making it the UK’s second-biggest export to the US.

It’s also America’s fourth biggest export to the UK, valued at £4bn ($5.3bn) last year.

The president has not announced any trade restrictions on medicines yet.

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There was no change to the UK’s 2% digital services tax on US firms in this deal, despite reports there could be.

Businesses that run social media, search engines or online marketplaces pay this tax which applies to revenues derived from UK users.

Firms only have to pay it if they raise more than £500m in global revenues and £25m from UK users annually.

But this is a threshold easily met by US tech giants like Meta, Google, Apple.

The UK reportedly netted nearly £360m from American tech firms via the tax in its first year.

Instead of any change to the digital services tax the UK and US had “agreed to work on a digital trade deal”, the UK government said.

It said this would “strip back paperwork for British firms trying to export to the US – opening the UK up to a huge market that will put rocket boosters on the UK economy”.

The UK has removed tariffs on American beef and other agricultural products, Trump said.

UK farmers have also been given a tariff free quota for 13,000 metric tonnes of exports, which trade ministers said was the “first time” British farmers had been given this kind of deal.

There will be no weakening of UK food standards on imports, the UK government statement said.

Many American farmers use growth hormones as a standard part of their beef production, something that was banned in the UK and the European Union in the 1980s.

The US has previously pushed for a relaxation of rules for its agricultural products, including beef from cattle that have been given growth hormones.

This is an area where the UK has chosen alignment with EU – and the forthcoming “Brexit reset” with the EU – over the US.

The tariff on ethanol which is used to produce beer coming into the UK from the US has also been scrapped.

“They’ll also be fast tracking American goods through their customs process, so our exports go to a very, very quick form of approval, and there won’t be any red tape,” Trump said.

Two men have been found guilty of the murder of Cassius Turvey, an Aboriginal schoolboy who was chased down by a vigilante gang and beaten, in a case which outraged Australia.

The 15-year-old Noongar Yamatji boy died of head injuries in October 2022, 10 days after he was brutally assaulted on the outskirts of Perth – prompting vigils and protests nationwide.

Four people were charged with his murder and Jack Steven James Brearley, 24, and Brodie Lee Palmer, 29, were on Thursday found guilty after a 12-week trial.

Mitchell Colin Forth, 27, was instead found guilty of manslaughter, and a woman who was with the trio in the moments before the attack was acquitted.

Speaking outside court, Cassius’ mum Mechelle Turvey said she was “numb with relief” at the verdict after “three months of hell”.

But she added that “justice, to me, will never be served because I don’t have my son, and he’s not coming back”.

The trial was told the attack on Cassius was the culmination of a complex series of tit-for-tat events “that had absolutely nothing to do with him”, according to the Australian Associated Press.

The group had been “hunting for kids” because somebody had damaged Brearley’s car windows, prosecutors said.

“Somebody smashed my car, they’re about to die,” Brearley was heard saying on CCTV footage captured shortly before the incident and played to the court.

There is no suggestion Cassius had any involvement in what happened to the car, but he was among a throng of kids who were confronted by the trio of men while walking along a suburban street after school.

A boy on crutches was assaulted, sending the others scattering through nearby bushland to escape.

Prosecutors alleged the trio caught Cassius and knocked him to the ground, where he was hit on the head at least twice with a short metal pole, leaving him with a brain bleed.

In the days after the attack, Cassius underwent surgeries in hospital, aimed at relieving the pressure on his brain and saving his life. Meanwhile, Brearley was caught on camera boasting about beating the child.

“He was laying in the field and I was just smacking him with a trolley pole so hard, he learnt his lesson,” he was heard saying on a phone call played at the trial, according to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Brearley told the court his assault on Cassius was self-defence, and claimed it was Palmer who had hit him with the metal pole. Palmer said the opposite, blaming Brearley.

Ultimately the jury found both responsible for his murder, and Forth guilty of manslaughter.

The men are due to return to court for sentencing hearing on 26 June.

Outside court, Mrs Turvey embarked on a list of thank yous, including for the trial witnesses, most of whom were “young children that are scarred for life”.

“I’d like to thank all of Australia, people that know us, for all of their love and support,” she added.

Speaking to the BBC the month after his death, Mrs Turvey said her son was beloved in the local community.

Along with two of his friends, he had set up a small business in order to reach out to neighbours and mow lawns. He wanted to change the negative stereotypes about Aboriginal youth in Australia.

“He was funny. He loved posing,” Mechelle Turvey said, showing photos of Cassius smiling.

His killing in 2022 sparked national grief and anger. Thousands of people attended vigils for Cassius in more than two dozen places across the country, with events also being held in the US and New Zealand.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed the attack was “clearly” racially motivated – though this was not advanced as a motive in court – and it reopened a national debate about racial discrimination.

“Australia does have a shocking reputation around the world for this kind of violence,” Human rights lawyer Hannah McGlade told the BBC at the time.

“Not even in my wildest imagination did I think this would happen,” said Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, describing the day he found out that he had been appointed a cardinal.

He was speaking to the BBC at his cathedral in Caloocan, on the outskirts of the Philippine capital Manila. He was leaving the next day for Rome to join the conclave, one of three cardinals from the country who will take part in choosing the next pope.

“Normally you would expect archbishops to become cardinals, but I am only a humble bishop of a little diocese where the majority of the people are slum dwellers, urban poor, you know.

“But I thought just maybe, for Pope Francis, it mattered that we had more cardinals who are really grounded there.”

Cardinal David has only been in the job for five months, after his surprise elevation last December. But in some ways he personifies the late pontiff’s legacy in his country.

Pope Francis had set himself the goal of bringing a Catholic church he believed had lost its common touch, back closer to the people.

“Apu Ambo”, as Cardinal David is affectionately called by his congregation, fits that mission well, having spent his life campaigning for the poor and marginalised.

The Philippines has the largest Roman Catholic population in Asia, nearly 80% of its 100 million people, and the third-largest in the world.

It’s one reason why Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is believed to be a papabile, or frontrunner to replace Pope Francis – Tagle was also talked of as a contender in the last papal conclave 12 years ago.

The country is considered a bright spot for the Roman Catholic church, where faith is strong, its rituals woven into the fabric of society.

Yet the church is facing headwinds there. Its doctrines on divorce and family planning are being challenged by politicians, and newer charismatic churches are winning converts.

Pope Francis helped restore morale in the Philippines church, though he did not offer answers to these challenges beyond being more welcoming of diversity and urging the clergy to be more responsive to the needs of the poor.

But those on the activist wing of the church did feel encouraged by his support.

For Cardinal David that support was critical when he faced his greatest test, during the war on drugs declared by former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.

He took me to see a plaque he had erected in front of his cathedral in memory of Kian Delos Santos, a 17 year-old boy from his diocese who was gunned down by police in August 2017.

Kian was just one of many thousands who died in Duterte’s campaign – estimates range from 6,300 to 30,000. What made his case different from most was that the usual police justification, that he was armed and had resisted arrest, was contradicted by eyewitnesses and security camera videos.

The police officers had murdered him as he pleaded for his life. Three officers were eventually convicted of the murder, a rare instance of accountability in the drug war.

The cardinal is still visibly affected by the hundreds of killings that happened in his diocese – a cluster of low-income neighbourhoods typical of the areas targeted by the police in their notorious tokhang, or “knock and plead” raids, against alleged drug dealers and users.

“It was just too much seeing dead bodies left and right,” Cardinal David says.

“And you know, when I would ask people what they thought, you know, why these people were targeted. They said they’re drug users. I said, so what? So what? Who told you that just because people use drugs, they deserve to die?”

He began offering sanctuary to those who feared they were on police hit lists, and then drug-rehabilitation programmes, in the hope this might protect them.

He also did something the church as a whole did not do for several months: he openly criticised the drug war as illegal and immoral.

As a result, he received many death threats. President Duterte accused him of taking drugs, and talked about decapitating him. The government also filed sedition charges against him, though these were eventually dropped.

In those difficult years Cardinal David found he had a powerful backer, in Rome.

On a visit to the city in 2019 Pope Francis had taken him aside to give him a special blessing, saying he knew what was happening in his diocese and urging him to stay safe.

When they met again in 2023, and he reminded the Pope that he was still alive, he says the pontiff laughed and told him: “You have not been called to martyrdom yet!”

The role of the Roman Catholic church in the Philippines has changed over its 500-year history in the archipelago.

It was closely associated with the Spanish conquest, Spanish friars acting as de facto colonial administrators and the church becoming a big landowner. When the US replaced Spain as the colonial ruler in 1898, enforcing a separation of church and state, the political influence of the Catholic clergy waned.

But the church retained the allegiance of most of the population; even today, after inroads made by charismatic protestant churches, nearly 80% of Filipinos identify as Roman Catholic.

Since independence in 1946 the church has had an uneasy relationship with power. Its deep roots and establishment status have made it an influential player, wooed by political factions but also needing their support to protect its interests.

Attitudes began changing in the 1970s and 80s, the time when a young Pablo David and many other senior church figures today were studying to enter the priesthood.

This was the era of “liberation theology”, which came out of Latin America and argued that it was the duty of the clergy to fight against the pervasive poverty and injustice all around them.

When then-President Marcos, father of the current president of the Philippines, declared martial law in 1972 and began jailing and killing his critics, some priests even went underground to join the armed resistance.

But the church hierarchy continued what it called “critical collaboration” with the Marcos dictatorship.

That changed dramatically in February 1986, when the then-Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jaime Sin, called on people to come out on the streets and oppose Marcos, sparking the famous “people power” uprising which deposed the president.

Cardinal Sin would reprise that role in 2001 when he helped overthrow another beleaguered president, Joseph Estrada.

After that, though, church leaders were accused of cosying up to Estrada’s successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, partly to gain her support in opposing growing political and social pressure to expand access to family planning and legalise divorce.

And they were reluctant to condemn President Duterte’s drug war because, despite the appalling human cost, it remained popular with the Filipino public, at least away from the poorer areas where the killings took place.

Nearly 40 years after its pivotal role in overthrowing the Marcos regime, the church’s influence once again seems to be waning, as it did a century ago.

For instance, the Church’s fervent opposition could not prevent the Philippines Congress from passing the Reproductive Health Law of 2012 that made family planning easily accessible.

This is despite the fact that many Filipino Catholics remain conservative on issues like gender and divorce, says Jayeel Cornelio, a sociologist who has written extensively on Catholicism in the Philippines.

The church’s defeat over family planning, he says, is indicative of its diminished sway over national politics.

“The Catholic church was practically sidelined during the Duterte presidency. When Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos ran for president in 2022, many Catholic leaders and institutions expressed their dissent and even endorsed the opposition. But Marcos still won.”

Many Filipinos welcome this, including, it seems, Cardinal David.

“It is not the business of the church to govern, neither is it the business of government to run a church”, he said.

“But we can complement one another – I cannot say we will be apolitical. So long as we stick to our role as a moral and spiritual leader, we can give guidance, even about political and economic matters.”

Even that more limited view of the church’s proper role, though, has run into opposition.

Thirteen years after overcoming ecclesiastical objections to the Reproductive Health Bill, the Philippines Congress is now trying to get a bill passed which would legalise divorce, something else the church disagrees with.

“I do not expect them to change their official doctrine, but in my job as a lawmaker, I try to address the problems that Filipinos face, and I don’t want them to meddle in my work. It is against our constitution to legislate in favour of any religion,” says Geraldine Roman, the first transgender member of Congress in the Philippines.

A practicing Catholic, she credits Pope Francis with creating a more welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ people with his “who am I to judge” statement.

“Nobody misgenders me in my church now,” she says.

But she objects to the Catholic church lobbying against the divorce bill, which she argues will free thousands of Filipino women trapped in abusive marriages.

“The church is free to try to indoctrinate Catholics into sticking it out in their marriages. But in the end, it is the decision of the couple, and not even the church can meddle in that decision.”

Other challenges include a congregation which is increasingly disengaged. While the number of Roman Catholics has fallen only slightly in the past three decades, the number attending mass at least once a week has dropped by half, to just over one third of those surveyed recently.

Then there are the various scandals associated with the Catholic church, especially the sexual abuse of minors, which critics say Pope Francis, while he did tackle the issue, did not do enough to address.

Cardinal David recalled how President Duterte “loved to wave” a book called “Altar of Secrets”, an expose of alleged scandals in the Filipino church, and how he would say, “oh, those hypocrites. Don’t listen to them. They don’t practice what they what they preach. They are abusers. I must say some people swallowed it hook, line and sinker. So I am not surprised that our moral credibility has been challenged.”

But, he adds, defensiveness is not the way the Church can win back its credibility.

“It should be humility. As Pope Francis advised, dare to be vulnerable. Dare to be criticised. Try not to remain on that pedestal where people cannot reach you, show your humanity.”

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India has accused Pakistan of attacking three of its military bases with drones and missiles, a claim which has been denied by Islamabad.

The Indian Army said it had foiled Pakistan’s attempts to attack its bases in Jammu and Udhampur, in Indian-administered Kashmir, and Pathankot, in India’s Punjab state.

Blasts were reported on Thursday evening in Jammu city in Indian-administered Kashmir as the region went into a blackout.

Pakistan’s defence minister told the BBC they were not behind the attack.

“We deny it, we have not mounted anything so far,” Khawaja Asif told the BBC, adding: “We will not strike and then deny”.

Earlier on Thursday, India said it had struck Pakistan’s air defences and “neutralised” Islamabad’s attempts to hit military targets in India on Wednesday night.

Pakistan called that action another “act of aggression”, following Indian missile strikes on Wednesday on targets in Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

India’s strikes on Wednesday sparked a chorus of calls for de-escalation from the international community with the UN and world leaders calling for calm.

The attacks and incidents of shelling along the border have fanned fears of wider conflict erupting between the nuclear-armed states.

It is being viewed as the worst confrontation between the two countries in more than two decades.

India said it hit nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites on Wednesday in retaliation for a militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

Pakistan has strongly denied Indian claims that it backed the militants who killed 26 civilians in the mountainous town of Pahalgam.

It was the bloodiest attack on civilians in the region for years, sending tensions soaring. Most of the victims were Indian tourists.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a decades-long insurgency against Indian rule which has claimed thousands of lives.

Kashmir has been a flashpoint between the countries since they became independent after British India was partitioned in 1947. Both claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over it.

There were calls for restraint from around the world after India launched “Operation Sindoor” early on Wednesday.

But on Thursday both sides accused each other of further military action.

Pakistan’s military spokesman said drones sent by India had been engaged in multiple locations.

“Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said. “These locations are Lahore, Gujranwala, Chakwal, Rawalpindi, Attock, Bahawalpur, Miano, Chor and near Karachi.”

He said one civilian had been killed in Sindh province and four troops injured in Lahore.

The US consulate in Lahore told its staff to shelter in the building.

India said its latest action had been taken in response to Pakistan’s attempts to “engage a number of military targets in northern and western India” overnight.

“It has been reliably learnt that an Air Defence system at Lahore has been neutralised,” a Defence Ministry statement said. Pakistan denied the claim.

There was no independent confirmation of the two countries’ versions of events.

Later in the day India’s foreign secretary Vikram Misri told a news conference in Delhi: “Our intention has not been to escalate matters, we are only responding to the original escalation.”

Meanwhile, casualty numbers continue to rise. Pakistan says 31 people have been killed and 57 injured by Indian air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and firing along the Line of Control, since Wednesday morning.

India’s army said the number of people killed by Pakistani firing in the disputed Kashmir region had risen to 16, including three women and five children.

India initially did not name any group it believed was behind the attack in Pahalgam but on 7 May it accused the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group of carrying it out.

Indian police have alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, a claim denied by Islamabad. It says it has nothing to do with the 22 April attacks.

In a late-night address on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to avenge those killed in India’s strikes.

He repeated Pakistan’s claim that it had shot down five Indian fighter jets, saying that was a “crushing response”. India has not commented on that claim.

Following the reports of Thursday’s explosions in Jammu, local media cited Indian military sources on Thursday in reporting that blasts across the Jammu region were also reported in the towns of Akhnoor, Samba and Kathua.

For the past three years, when peers of Australia’s former Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton were grilled over his divisive persona, they’d often profess his celebrity status in the north.

“Peter is one of us… He’s very popular in Queensland,” said the leader of the Nationals, the Liberal’s coalition partner, earlier this year.

But on election night, it was Dutton’s home state that delivered Labor its election win, with the red landslide ousting the veteran MP from his own seat of Dickson.

While votes are still being counted, Labor could pick up as many electorates in Queensland as it did across every other state and territory combined.

And that’s thanks, in no small part, to a new bloc of young voters and women who are disillusioned with the Coalition, and attribute the party’s emphatic loss to the “Dutton effect”.

As 65-year-old coalition voter Sue, who didn’t share her last name, bluntly puts it: “This is where [Dutton’s] from… People know him and they don’t like him.”

The Moreton Bay region, about an hour north of Brisbane, is supposed to be Dutton heartland. Before Australia’s federal election on 3 May, all three seats here were Liberal-held – though only by small leads, with Dutton’s electorate of Dickson having the narrowest in the state.

Dutton’s family have deep roots here, with his dairy farming great-grandparents having settled in the area in the 1860s.

When he first entered parliament 24 years ago, the region was made up of urban pockets and industrial estates surrounded by swathes of semi-rural land. Not quite metropolitan or rural, is how the former police officer described it in his maiden speech as MP.

Now Brisbane is one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, and these outer northern suburbs are one of the main places it is squeezing people in. Residential development has exploded, and more families, priced out of locations closer to the city, have moved in to Moreton Bay.

Full of the “quiet Australians” Dutton said would deliver him the election, outer-suburban neighbourhoods like these were at the heart of the Coalition’s strategy.

The average household in Moreton Bay earns less than both the state and national average, with many of them relying on the health, trade and hospitality sectors for work. The Coalition hoped promises to cut fuel expenses, improve housing affordability and back small businesses would woo voters concerned about the cost of living.

Many Moreton Bay residents, like campaign volunteer Kenneth King, also felt Dutton’s links to the area would give them a boost.

“I’ve known Peter Dutton for a lot of years,” the Dickson local told the BBC on polling day. “He’s always been someone of high character, serious about effective policies and a lot of empathy for ordinary Australians.”

“He’s very well respected in the community… People know him.”

But there’s a difference between being well known and well liked, says Aleysha, a swing voter in the neighbouring electorate of Petrie, who declined to give her surname.

“I don’t know whether he appeals to the everyday person,” the 26-year-old nurse says. “He doesn’t put himself in the people’s shoes.”

Her vote over the years has gone to a range of parties from right across the political spectrum – except the Greens, she adds with a quick laugh.

“I don’t sit with any party. Being a Christian, it’s whatever party aligns closest to my values,” she says, adding that the future of her two young children is the other major consideration.

This election, that meant her vote went to Coalition incumbent Luke Howarth, who she knows personally from her church.

But while she’s praying for a miracle, with the final votes still being counted, she’s not surprised to find Howarth may be on his way out.

She says Labor ran very visible campaigns in the area, but tells the BBC that it was driving past the image of Howarth and his leader on billboards which stuck in her mind.

“Unfortunately I think that’s what did it,” she says.

“Peter Dutton’s face behind him was a huge turnoff – for me personally too.”

Sue, who lives in the same electorate and is generally a conservative voter, says this election she was torn at the ballot box.

“I had a huge hesitation over it,” she says. “I don’t like Albanese; I think he’s like, weak.

“[But] Dutton’s an unattractive personality… He thinks he’s presenting himself as strong, but he presents himself as a bit of a bully.”

“Way back when, he seemed like a really good local member, but as he climbed the ladder, I don’t know, something changed.”

Ultimately Sue also voted for Howarth – and she’s similarly convinced Dutton lost him the seat.

“I spoke to a few friends… some did change their votes because of Peter Dutton,” she says. “People, rightly or wrongly, aligned Dutton with Trump. And that’s very negative for just about any sane person.”

Many of the constituents the BBC spoke to stressed they did not want American style politics here.

Drew Cutler grew up in the seat of Longman, which shares borders with both Dickson and Petrie – and though he no longer lives in the area, the 28-year-old was so invested in the outcome he came back to campaign for Labor.

Won by Coalition MP Terry Young on a margin of 3% last election, it is now too close to call.

Mr Cutler, a former Labor party staffer, believes Labor ran very strong local campaigns. But he also thinks Dutton’s policy flip-flopping and the aura of instability that projected was potent.

That included announcing, and then walking back, public service job cuts and plans to end work-from-home arrangements, as well as a fluctuating stance on electric vehicle taxes.

Such optics were especially damaging, Mr Cutler argues, when contrasted with the image of strong, decisive leadership Dutton tries to convey.

“I almost think the Australian people would have respected him more if he stuck to it… and said, ‘This is what I’m putting forward – if you don’t like it, don’t vote for it’,” Mr Cutler tells the BBC.

Back in Dickson, Rick – a retiree and fresh Liberal Party member – said on election night that he also felt confusion played a role in the party’s defeat, particularly among young people.

“I think people couldn’t understand Dutton’s policies,” he said.

But 30-year-old April, who didn’t provide her last name, says it is Dutton who didn’t understand.

She can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in power in Dickson, and feels that over time he has lost touch with his own constituents and the country more broadly.

For her, the last straw was his instrumental role in the defeat of the Voice to Parliament referendum, which sought to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the constitution and simultaneously establish a parliamentary advisory body for them.

“I think he has caused a lot of harm to a lot of minority groups across the scale,” she says.

For others in the electorate though, the last straw was watching Dutton fly to a fundraiser in Sydney as the area in and around Dickson was hit by Cyclone Alfred in February.

April didn’t feel like Labor Party’s offering was strong either, especially on climate action, so she decided to campaign for Ellie Smith, the so-called ‘teal’ independent running in the seat.

Disappointment – borderline embarrassment – that Dutton was from her local area had crystallised into determination: “I felt like it was a duty in a way… our responsibility to get him out.”

Ultimately, the Coalition lost at least six seats to Labor in Queensland – all bar one in Brisbane. And while they are a few votes ahead in Longman as the count continues, they could still lose that too.

Queensland has long been a bit of a political wildcard, and often finds itself in the “spotlight” at federal elections, says Frank Mols.

The University of Queensland politics lecturer points out the state helped deliver Kevin Rudd’s historic election win in 2007 and Scott Morrison’s “miracle” victory in 2019. Last election, as a record number of people across the nation voted for candidates outside the two major parties, Queensland surprised the nation by giving the Greens three seats – up from none.

There are a couple of factors that make the state more “volatile” and likely to deliver upsets, Dr Mols says.

Firstly, it is the only state or territory, except for the island of Tasmania, where more than half of the population live outside the capital city of Brisbane.

“We talk about Queensland always being two elections, one in the south-east corner, and then the rest – and they often get very different patterns.”

There’s also more political fragmentation in the state, Dr Mols says, which combined with Australia’s preferential voting system can make political equations here tighter, and trends harder to predict.

But he – like many of the voters the BBC spoke to – largely puts last weekend’s surprise for the Coalition down to Dutton and his broadly-criticised campaign performance.

While there’s a tendency to attribute success or failure to policy issues, more often its really about voters’ emotional response to candidates and leaders, Dr Mols says.

“If you do the barbecue test, is Dutton a person you would walk up to? Is he somebody you would warm to or gravitate towards?

“You can wonder: was Peter Dutton, in hindsight, the Labor Party’s best asset?”

But Dutton may have had the opposite effect for the Greens Party, which has lost at least two of the three seats it gained in Brisbane in 2022. Their party leader, Adam Bandt, also appears to have been defeated in Melbourne, an electorate he’d held for 15 years.

“Perhaps in desperation, [Dutton] was gravitating towards culture war issues, sort of echoing Trumpian themes, if you like, and that has been punished,” Dr Mols says. “But also the Greens… who were perhaps seen as being at the other end of that shouting match, have not done well.”

Dr Mols also believes that desperation to keep Dutton out may have seen some former Greens voters prioritise Labor this time – though he points out more centrist Teal independents appear to have bucked that trend.

In any case, he doesn’t see the result in Queensland as a groundswell of love for Labor. The state was still the only jurisdiction in Australia where there were more first preference votes for the Coalition than Labor.

“There has to be enough of a swing towards a party, but it’s often that preferencing that actually tilts it over the line,” he says.

“This is more of a Liberal loss.”

For many Coalition voters, that loss is deeply felt. Rick describes it as a “real rout”.

But among others, like Aleysha, there is an inexplicable element of mirth.

“I think it’s quite funny, that he slipped as much as he did,” she says. “And I can’t tell you why.”

The leader of Australia’s third-largest political party, the Greens, has conceded his seat in Melbourne after a tight electoral vote count that lasted several days.

Adam Bandt, who had safely held the seat of Melbourne since 2010, told reporters on Thursday afternoon that he had called Labor candidate Sarah Witty to congratulate her on her victory.

Australia’s centre-left Labor party won Saturday’s federal election by a landslide, decimating the conservative Liberal-National Coalition while also gutting the left-leaning Greens.

While the Greens got the highest vote in Melbourne, Bandt said the main reason for their loss was the preference votes for Liberal and the far-right One Nation party.

Australia uses a preferential voting system, where candidates are ranked in order of preference.

If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the first tally, the votes from the least popular candidates are redistributed, and that process is repeated until someone secures a majority.

“To win in Melbourne we needed to overcome Liberal, Labor and One Nation combined, and it’s an Everest we’ve climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short,” Bandt said.

“We came very close,” he added, “but we couldn’t quite get there.”

Bandt also cited the so-called Trump effect as a “key defining feature of the election” – the Coalition’s PM candidate Peter Dutton was often compared to the US President, which he rejected but it stuck.

Bandt said that contributed to a five-week “riptide” that saw votes swing away from Liberal and Dutton, and towards Labor.

This same effect also pulled votes away from the Greens, he added: “The riptide from Liberal to Labor had an effect on us as well.”

“People in Melbourne hate Peter Dutton, and with very good reason. They’ve seen his brand of toxic racism for many years… and like me, many wanted him as far away from power as possible.

“My initial take is some votes leaked away from us, as people saw Labor as the best option to stop Dutton.”

Like Bandt, Dutton also lost his seat in the election, adding to his resounding defeat at the polls by incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Bandt, who has been leader of the Greens since 2020, said he wanted to thank the Melbourne community for “regularly giving me the highest vote, including this election, and to thank you for the last 15 years and the chance to do some amazing things together”.

He listed off a string of achievements by the Greens under his leadership, including the party’s pivotal role in the marriage equality plebiscite, the First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum, and advancing “world-leading climate legislation”.

“Fighting the climate crisis is the reason I got into politics, and I want to thank everyone in Melbourne for helping us make a difference,” Bandt said.

He also thanked his party colleagues, noting that he leaves the party with “the vote for the Greens higher than when i started, and our biggest ever representation in parliament”.

Bandt thanked the African and Muslim communities in Melbourne, as well as “everyone that had the courage to speak up against the invasion of Gaza, and spoke up for peace in Palestine”.

Finally, he thanked his wife, Claudia.

“Not only could I have not done this without her, we’ve done it together,” he said.

In his closing remarks, Bandt offered some “free advice to the media”.

“We’re in a climate crisis,” he said. “I really want the media to stop reporting on climate as a political issue, and start thinking of it as if our country were being invaded. We should treat the climate crisis as if there was a war on.”

“Please, please start taking the climate crisis seriously, and holding this government and any future government to account.”

Armed Israeli security forces have forced the closure of three schools run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

Hundreds of Palestinian students were sent home from the schools in Shuafat refugee camp just after classes began on Thursday morning.

Unrwa’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, said Israeli authorities were denying children their basic right to learn and accused them of a “blatant disregard of international law”.

An Israeli ban on Unrwa took effect earlier this year and Israel accuses the agency of being infiltrated by Hamas. Unrwa denies this claim and insists on its impartiality.

Videos showed girls in uniform hugging each other outside one school in Shuafat following the arrival of Israeli forces outside.

A closure order fixed to the wall of the school read: “It will be prohibited to operate educational institutions, or employ teachers, teaching staff or any other staff, and it will be forbidden to accommodate students or allow the entry of students into this institution.”

Unrwa said that more than 550 pupils aged six to 15 were present and that one of its staff members was detained, in what its director in the occupied West Bank called “a traumatising experience for young children who are at immediate risk of losing their access to education”.

The agency said that Israeli police were also deployed at three other schools in East Jerusalem, forcing them to send their students home too.

“Storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. “These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations.”

He added: “By enforcing closure orders issued last month, the Israeli authorities are denying Palestinian children their basic right to learn.

“Unrwa schools must continue to be open to safeguard an entire generation of children.”

The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank not under Israeli control, said the move was a “violation of children’s right to education”.

The British consulate in Jerusalem said the UK, EU, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and Japan strongly opposed the closure orders issued against the Unrwa schools and stood “in solidarity with students, parents, and teachers”.

“Unrwa has operated in East Jerusalem under its UN General Assembly mandate since 1950. Israel is obliged under international humanitarian law to facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the education of children,” they added.

Last year, Israel’s parliament passed laws forbidding contact between Israeli officials and Unrwa, as well as banning activity by the agency in Israeli territory.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the rest of the West Bank, in the 1967 Middle East war.

It effectively annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 in a move not recognised by most of the international community, and sees the whole city as its capital.

Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for future state.

Approximately 230,000 Israeli settlers currently live in East Jerusalem alongside 390,000 Palestinians.

Most of the international community considers the settlements built there and elsewhere in the West Bank to be illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last year – although Israel disputes this.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said he intends to give away 99% of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.

Gates said he would accelerate his giving via his foundation, with plans to end its operations in 2045.

“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” he wrote in a blog post Thursday.

Mr Gates, 69, said his eponymous foundation has already given $100bn (£75bn) towards health and development projects, and that he expects it will spend another $200bn, depending on markets and inflation, over the next two decades.

In his blog post, Mr Gates cited a 1889 essay by tycoon Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth, which argues that wealthy people have a duty to return their fortunes to society.

Mr Gates quoted Mr Carnegie, who wrote: “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”

His latest pledge represents an acceleration in charitable giving. Initially he and his ex-wife Melinda had planned for the Gates Foundation to continue working for several decades after their deaths.

Giving away 99% of his fortune could still leave Mr Gates a billionaire – according to Bloomberg, the Microsoft founder is the fifth-richest person in the world.

In the post, he shared a timeline of his wealth that showed his current net worth at $108bn and a large hand-drawn arrow going down to close to zero in 2045.

Mr Gates also said the foundation would draw from its endowment to give away $200 bn.

Along with Paul Allen, Mr Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, and the company became a dominant force in computer software and other tech industries. Mr Gates has gradually stepped back from the company this century, resigning as chief executive in 2000 and as chairman in 2014.

Mr Gates said he has been inspired to give away money by investor Warren Buffett and other philanthropists, however critics of his foundation say Mr Gates uses its charitable status to avoid tax and that it has undue influence over the global health system.

In his blog post, he outlined three main goals for his foundation: eliminating preventable diseases which kill mothers and children; eliminating infectious diseases including malaria and measles; and eliminating poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

Mr Gates criticised the US, UK and France for cutting their foreign aid budgets.

“It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people,” he wrote. “But the one thing we can guarantee is that, in all of our work, the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries pull themselves out of poverty.”

He was more pointed in an interview with the Financial Times, accusing Tesla CEO and Department of Government Efficiency boss Elon Musk of being personally responsible for the deaths of children through his cuts to the US aid budget, including the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development.

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Mr Gates said.

Mr Gates raised the issue of cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, which Donald Trump erroneously claimed was funding condoms “for Hamas” in the Gaza Strip. Mr Musk later acknowledged the claim was wrong and said “we will make mistakes”, however the cost-cutting continued.

“I’d love for [Musk] to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Mr Gates told the FT.

The BBC contacted Mr Musk for comment.

The Gates Foundation is a donor to BBC Media Action, the BBC’s charitable arm which is separate from the Corporation’s news operations.

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 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.

In the village of Salamabad in Indian-administered Kashmir on Wednesday morning, ruined homes were still smouldering.

This small settlement lies close to the Line of Control which separates Indian-administered and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the scene of rapidly escalating tensions in recent weeks that led to strikes from India on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Tuesday night.

The streets of Salamabad were almost completely empty the next morning. Locals said the village was struck by Pakistani shelling.

Most of the residents had fled the bombardment, leaving chickens pecking in their cages in gardens.

Bashir Ahmad, a local shopkeeper who witnessed the destruction, told the BBC that around 02:00 local time (20:30 GMT), “while we were fast asleep, a loud explosion jolted us awake.

Mortar shells had landed near a water dam, and by 03:00 more shells struck several houses, setting them ablaze.

The government issued no warning or advisory about the cross-border shelling, and we have no safety bunkers to take shelter in.”

Salamabad is no stranger to this kind of shelling: until 2021, incidents of cross-border fire were reported regularly.

However, a ceasefire agreement signed between the militaries of both countries saw the number of attacks sharply decrease.

Life returned to normal for most, free of fear – that was, until Wednesday morning.

Uncertainty now hangs over the villages scattered along the Line of Control once more.

Mr Ahmad estimated that only a handful of Salamabad’s 100 or so residents had remained, the rest having left in search of safety from what he described as the most intense shelling in years.

In the village, two homes had been torn apart by mortars.

Through a hole in the wall of one house, some crockery had remained impossibly upright on a shelf – while everything else around lay shattered or burned.

The small homes were no match for the scale of the firepower they encountered overnight.

They had been entirely hollowed out by explosions and fire, their tin roofs buckled above them.

At a hospital 40km away, Badrudin said he was injured in the shelling, along with this eight-year-old son and sister-in-law.

He identified one of the destroyed houses in a picture as his.

He said: “We were all in deep sleep when… a mortar shell landed near our homes. The children were also asleep.

The shelling was intense, we somehow managed to flee.”

Badrudin said he had taken out a loan of ₹3 lakh ($3,540 ; £2,653) to build his home in Salamabad.

“Everything is gone now,” he said. “We’re too afraid to return.”

He continued: “Rebuilding the house will be incredibly difficult—we need the government to step in and help.

We want peace, not war.”

On Wednesday morning, dozens of people gathered on the perimeter of a sprawling complex in the Pakistani city of Muridke to see the damage for themselves.

Overnight, Indian missiles had pounded buildings at this site, which lies not far from the border with India in Pakistan’s Punjab region, and just a short drive from the major city of Lahore.

No one was being allowed into the complex – but even from a distance as BBC reporters peered through the barbed wire fence surrounding it, the damage was unmistakable.

The BBC spoke to people on the ground who witnessed the bombardment first-hand.

“It was the main mosque that got targeted,” one man said. “The sky lit up and it felt like the sky turned red.”

Another said: “A sudden missile appeared and there was a blast. I immediately got out the house.

“I had only reached the mosque near my house when there were three more consecutive blasts. I heard all three, they were really loud.”

When a BBC team arrived in Muridke, security service personnel were closely controlling access to the site.

From a road surrounded by dense housing, the BBC’s team could see a partially collapsed building and rubble spread over a huge area.

Emergency workers were still searching the wreckage for any injured or dead.

This complex houses a hospital, school and mosque, while India said it had hit sites linked to what it calls terror organisations – so why was it targeted? The answer appears to lie in its past.

Until a few years ago, it was originally used by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group which is designated as a terror organisation by the United Nations.

It was later used by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which observers have described as a front group for LeT.

Both groups have been banned by the Pakistani government, which has since taken over the facilities in Muridke.

But on Tuesday night, this complex was in the crosshairs of an Indian military which has vowed to respond to the killing of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

India’s government says its strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir targeted what it described as terrorist infrastructure. Pakistan’s government has denied any links to the Pahalgam attack.

One man told us the Muridke complex usually houses children from miles around who come to study at the madrasa, though it was largely evacuated a week ago.

Later in the day, camera crews were allowed to access the site and see the damage up close.

The roof of one building had crumpled under the force of an explosion.

Holes had been torn through the walls of another and a large amount of debris was scattered across the ground.

Across this region, people are hoping there is not more debris before long.

Nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan have fought two wars and a limited conflict over Kashmir.

But why do they dispute the territory – and how did it start?

• What we know about India’s strike on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir
• Indian air strikes – how will Pakistan respond? Four key questions
• LIVE: Tensions escalate as Pakistan vows response to Indian strikes after Pahalgam killings

Kashmir is an ethnically diverse Himalayan region famed for the beauty of its lakes, meadows and snow-capped mountains.

Even before India and Pakistan won their independence from Britain in August 1947, the area was hotly contested.

Under the partition plan provided by the Indian Independence Act, Muslim-majority Kashmir was free to accede to either India or Pakistan.

The maharaja (local ruler), Hari Singh, initially wanted Kashmir to become independent – but in October 1947 chose to join India, in return for its help against an invasion of tribesmen from Pakistan.

• Kashmir profile – Timeline

A war erupted and India asked the United Nations to intervene. The UN recommended holding a plebiscite to settle the question of whether the state would join India or Pakistan. However, the two countries could not agree to a deal to demilitarise the region before the referendum could be held.

In July 1949, India and Pakistan signed an agreement to establish a ceasefire line as recommended by the UN and the region became divided.

A second war followed in 1965. Then in 1999, India fought a brief but bitter conflict with Pakistani-backed forces.

By that time, India and Pakistan were declared nuclear powers. Today, Delhi and Islamabad both claim Kashmir in full, but control only parts of it.

Within Indian-administered Kashmir, opinions about the territory’s rightful allegiance are diverse and strongly held. Many do not want it to be governed by India, or prefer a return to the semi-autonomous status that they had until 2019. Some also want outright independence.

Religion is also an important factor: Indian-administered Kashmir is more than 60% Muslim, making it the only part of India where Muslims are in the majority.

An armed revolt has been waged against Indian rule in the region since 1989, claiming tens of thousands of lives.

India accuses Pakistan of backing militants in Kashmir – a charge its neighbour denies.

In 2019, Indian-administered Kashmir was stripped of its semi-autonomous status by the government in Delhi amid a huge security crackdown.

For several years after the revocation of the region’s special status, militancy waned and tourist visits soared.

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 alleged militant bases.

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

Tensions rose again in April 2025 after years of relative calm when militants killed 26 people in an attack on tourists near the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. It was the deadliest attack on civilians in two decades.

India responded two weeks later with missile strikes on targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, once again raising fears of further escalation and calls for restraint.

Kashmir remains one of the most militarised zones in the world.

India and Pakistan did agree a ceasefire in 2003.

In 2014, India’s current Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power promising a tough line on Pakistan, but also showed interest in holding peace talks.

Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister of Pakistan, attended Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in Delhi.

But a year later, India blamed Pakistan-based groups for an attack on its airbase in Pathankot in the northern state of Punjab. Modi also cancelled a scheduled visit to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, for a regional summit in 2017.

Since then, there hasn’t been any progress in talks between the neighbours.

Events are taking place across the UK to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe.

The King and Queen, as well as the prime minister and other senior royals, attended a service of thanksgiving and remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

The service was preceded by a two-minute national silence to remember those who served in World War Two.

King Charles and the Prince of Wales laid wreaths at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier.

The Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, the dean of Westminster, led the service with a tribute to those “who have died the death of honour”.

Alexander Churchill, the 10-year-old great-great-grandson of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill lit a Candle of Peace, whilst young members of the congregation handed out flowers to veterans.

Artefacts from the Second World War were processed through Westminster Abbey by members of the Armed Services.

The Princess of Wales placed flowers at the Innocent Victims’ Memorial, following a Service of Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey.

MPs and peers walked in procession from the Palace of Westminster to Westminster Abbey, re-enacting the historic walk MPs did from Parliament on VE Day in 1945.

Speaker Lindsay Hoyle was towards the front of the procession, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, a little way behind.

Some 1,800 guests attended the service including many veterans.

Among the politicians attending today’s service, were several former PMs, including Lord David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Sir John Major.

Members of the public observed the two-minute national silence.

Earlier, Scotland’s National Piper, Louise Marshall, played a lament at dawn to the fallen on Portobello Beach in Edinburgh.

Even a stellar international business career cannot prepare you for the hard realities of politics in Ivory Coast, where some are questioning the democratic credentials of the West African nation most famous for being the producer of much of the world’s cocoa and some of its finest footballers.

That is the painful lesson Tidjane Thiam is learning as he waits to see whether deal-making in the corridors of power and popular pressure from the street can rescue his bid to become president of Ivory Coast.

Seemingly relentless progress towards the election set for this October came to a juddering halt on 22 April when a judge ruled that the 62-year-old had lost his Ivorian citizenship by taking French nationality decades previously and not revoking it until too late to qualify for this year’s vote.

Moving back to Ivory Coast in 2022 after more than two decades in global finance, Thiam had immediately been seen as a potential contender to succeed current head of state Alassane Ouattara who, at 83, is now in the final year of his third term of office.

A scion of a traditional noble family and a great nephew of the country’s revered founding President, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, he had impressed as a top government official and minister in the 1990s, overseeing infrastructure development and radical economic reforms.

A military coup then pushed Thiam to seek a fresh career abroad, which culminated in high-profile stints as chief executive of UK insurance giant Prudential and then the banking group Credit Suisse.

But returning home at last, three years ago, he embarked on a steady advance towards the next Ivorian presidential election.

After the death in 2023 of former President Henri Konan Bédié, long-serving leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), Thiam was perfectly positioned to take his place and then on 17 April this year he was chosen as the party’s candidate for the upcoming presidential race.

That was no guarantee of victory, and especially if – as seems quite plausible Ouattara opts to run for a fourth term, backed by all the assets and advantages of incumbency and a track record of four successive years of annual economic growth above 6%.

However, Thiam stood out as the prime alternative.

As an opponent of the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), he offered Ivorian voters the chance to change their government.

Yet with his centrist politics and solid technocratic credentials, his candidacy offered reassuring competence and the prospect of continuing the impressive economic progress that Ouattara has piloted since 2011.

Now that potential trajectory is blocked. If the court decision stands – and Ivorian law offers no option of appeal for this particular issue – Thiam will be out of October’s contest.

It is a race from which past court convictions have already excluded three other prominent opposition figures – former President Laurent Gbagbo, former Prime Minister Guillaume Soro and a former minister, Charles Blé Goudé – all central actors in the political crises and civil conflicts that brutally paralysed the progress of Ivory Coast between 1999 and 2011.

The prospect now is that Ouattara or any chosen RHDP successor candidate will approach the election without facing any heavyweight political challenge.

That can only deepen Ivorians’ already widespread popular disillusionment with the country’s political establishment.

This is against the wider context of a West Africa where the radical anti-politics rhetoric of the soldiers who have seized power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger already finds a sympathetic audience among many disenchanted young people.

That really matters in societies where, typically, three-quarters of the population is under 35.

Amidst this crisis for West African democracy, there have been some moments of encouragement.

In Liberia in 2023 and in Senegal and Ghana last year, incumbent governments were voted out, in free and fair elections whose results were accepted by all contestants without argument.

The Senegalese result, in particular, owed much to the massive enthusiastic mobilisation of young people.

Many hoped that Ivory Coast could offer a further positive example of democratic choice and the offer of change, and an example that might be all the more influential because the country is a prosperous regional powerhouse.

It is the economic engine of the CFA franc single currency bloc and besides the cocoa industry, it is also a key hub for business services and finance and a leading political voice in the regional grouping, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).

What happens in Ivory Coast really matters and is widely noticed, across West Africa and indeed, also right across francophone Africa more generally.

Ouattara is one of the continent’s most prominent statesmen, commanding broad respect internationally too.

And yet now the run-up to the country’s crucial next presidential election has become ensnared in a return version of the identity politics that so soured the bitter disputes and instability of the 1990s and 2000s.

Back then, the governments of first Bédié and then Gbagbo used the contentious “ivoirité”, meaning “Ivorian-ness” law to shut Ouattara out of standing for the presidency on the grounds that his family allegedly had foreign origins.

It was only in 2007 that the government scrapped the ban on his candidacy and only in 2016 – when he was already in office – that a new constitution at last ended the requirement that the stated parents of presidential candidates be native-born Ivorians.

The poisonous mobilisation of identity issues had been a major contributing factor to the civil wars, street violence and northern separatist partition that brutally scarred Ivory Coast for more than a decade, up to 2011, at a cost of thousands of lives.

Today the country feels far from such large-scale conflict.

There is no popular appetite for a return to confrontation and politicians are staying well away from the incendiary rhetoric of the past.

But the Thiam saga shows how identity issues, even in a more legalistic form and in this hopefully more peaceful era, can still weigh heavily.

Ivory Coast only permits dual nationality under certain limited conditions.

So in its 22 April ruling, an Abidjan court declared that, under the terms of a little-used post-independence law, Thiam had automatically lost his Ivorian citizenship almost four decades ago when he acquired French nationality – after several years’ study in Paris.

Although he officially surrendered that this February, and thus automatically recovered his original citizenship, this was too late for inclusion on this year’s register of eligible voters or candidates.

In vain, his lawyers had argued that, through his father, Thiam had French nationality from birth – which, if accepted, would exempt him from the dual nationality ban.

Seeking to highlight the absurdity and inconsistencies of the situation, he argued that, logically, the country should now hand back its prized 2024 Africa Cup of Nations football title because many of the players also have French nationality.

“If we apply the law the way [that] they just applied it to me, we have to give the cup back to Nigeria – because half of the team was not Ivorian,” he told the BBC.

And Thursday could bring yet another setback in a scheduled court hearing where a judge may now rule that Thiam cannot, as a non-national, lead the PDCI.

The past two weeks have seen continuing political and legal debate over this whole saga, with the Thiam camp hoping that a combination of popular pressure and discreet political negotiation will lead to a compromise that lets him back into the presidential race, perhaps along with the other excluded contenders.

And Ouattara, should he chose not to run, might want to safeguard his impressive track record and secure his international reputation by intervening with some kind of deal that allows Thiam to run.

With months to go before the polls, there is still time for that. But no-one is counting on it.

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“These,” says Dr Anas al-Hourani, “are from a mixed mass grave.”

The head of the newly-opened Syrian Identification Centre is standing next to two tables, covered in femurs. There are 32 of the human thigh bones on each laminated white tablecloth. They have been neatly aligned and numbered.

Sorting is the first task for this new link in the long chain from crime to justice in Syria. A “mixed mass grave” means that corpses were thrown one on top of another.

The chances are, these bones belong to some of the hundreds of thousands believed to have been killed by the regimes of the ousted president Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez, who together ruled Syria for more than five decades.

If so, says Dr al-Hourani, they were among the more recent victims: they died no more than a year ago.

Dr al-Hourani is a forensic odontologist: teeth can tell you so much more about a body, he says, at least when it comes to identifying who the person was.

But with a femur the lab workers in the basement of this squat grey office building in Damascus can begin the task: they can learn the height, the sex, the age, what sort of job they had; they might also be able to see whether the victim was tortured.

The gold standard in identification is of course DNA analysis. But, he says, there is just one DNA testing centre in Syria. Many were destroyed during the country’s civil war. And “because of sanctions, a lot of the precursor chemicals that we need for the tests are currently not available”.

They’ve also been informed that “parts of the instruments could be used for aviation and so for military purposes”. In other words, they could be deemed “dual use”, and so proscribed by many Western countries from export to Syria.

Add to that, the cost: $250 (£187) for a single test. And, says Dr al-Hourani, “in a mixed mass grave, you have to do about 20 tests to gather all the parts of one body”. The lab relies entirely on funding from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The new government of Islamist rebels-turned-rulers says that what they call “transitional justice” is one of their priorities.

Many Syrians who have lost relatives, and lost all trace of them, have told the BBC that they remain unimpressed and frustrated: they want to see more effort from the people who finally chased Bashar al-Assad from power last December after 13 years of war.

During those long years of conflict, hundreds of thousands were killed, and millions displaced. And, by one estimate, more than 130,000 people were forcibly disappeared.

At the current rate, it can take months to identify just one victim from a mixed mass grave. “This,” says Dr al-Hourani, “will be the work of many, many years.”

Eleven of those “mixed mass graves” are slung around a beautiful, barren hilltop outside Damascus. The BBC are the first international media to see this site. The graves are quite visible now. In the years since they were dug, their surface has sunk into the dry, stony earth.

Accompanying us is Hussein Alawi al-Manfi, or Abu Ali, as he also calls himself. He was a driver in the Syrian military. “My cargo,” says Abu Ali, “was human bodies.”

This compact man with a salt and pepper beard was tracked down thanks to the tireless investigative work of Mouaz Mustafa, the Syrian-American executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based advocacy group. He had persuaded Abu Ali to join us, to bear witness to what Mouaz calls “the worst crimes of the 21st Century”.

Abu Ali transported lorry loads of corpses to multiple sites for more than 10 years. At this location, he came, on average, twice a week for roughly two years at the start of the demonstrations and then the war, between 2011 and 2013.

The routine was always the same. He’d head to a military or security installation. “I had a 16m (52ft) trailer. It wasn’t always filled to the brim. But I’d have, I guess, an average of 150 to 200 bodies in each load.”

Of his cargo, he says he is convinced they were civilians. Their bodies were “mangled and tortured”. The only identification he could see were numbers written on the cadaver or stuck to the chest or forehead. The numbers identified where they had died.

There were a lot, he said, from “215” – a notorious military intelligence detention centre in Damascus known as “Branch 215”. It is a place we will re-visit in this story.

Abu Ali’s trailer did not have a hydraulic lift to tip and dump his load. When he backed up to a trench, soldiers would pull the bodies into the hole one after another. Then a front-loader tractor would “flatten them out, compress them in, fill in the grave.”

Three men with weathered faces from a neighbouring village have arrived. They corroborate the story of the regular visits by military lorries to this remote spot.

And as for the man behind the wheel: how could he do this for week after week, year after year? What was he telling himself each time he climbed into his cab?

Abu Ali says he learned to be a mute servant of the state. “You can’t say anything good or bad.”

As the soldiers dumped the corpses into the freshly excavated pits, “I would just walk away and look at the stars. Or look down towards Damascus.”

Damascus is where Malak Aoude has recently returned, after years as a refugee in Turkey. Syria may have been freed of the chokehold of the Assads’ dynastic dictatorship. Malak is still serving a life sentence.

For the past 13 years, she has been locked into a daily routine of pain and longing. It was 2012, a year after some of the people of Syria had dared to raise a protest against their president, that her two boys were disappeared.

Mohammed was still a teenager when he was conscripted into Assad’s army, as the demonstrations spread and the regime’s deadly crackdown sparked a full-blown war.

He hated what he was seeing, his mother says. Mohammed started absconding, and even went on the demos himself. But he was tracked down.

“They broke his arms and beat his back,” says his mother. “He spent three days unconscious in hospital.”

Mohammed went AWOL again. “I reported him missing,” says Malak. “But I was hiding him.”

In May 2012, 19-year-old’s Mohammed luck ran out. He was caught along with a group of friends. They were shot. Malak says there was no formal notification. But she has always assumed he was killed.

Six months later, Mohammed’s younger brother Maher was dragged from school by officers. It was Maher’s second arrest. He’d gone to the protests in 2011, aged 14. That had led to his first arrest. When he was let out of detention, a month later, he was in his underwear, covered, says his mother, in cigarette burns, wounds and lice. “He was terrified.”

Malak thinks Maher was disappeared from school in 2012 because the authorities had found that she had been hiding his older brother. Now, for the first time in 13 years, Malak returns to that school, desperate to get any clue about what happened to Maher.

The new headteacher produces a couple of battered red ledgers. Malak traces the rows of names with her finger, and then finds her son’s name. December 2012, the record flatly states: Maher has been excluded from school because he has failed to turn up for lessons for two weeks.

There is no explanation that it is the state which has disappeared him. There is something else, though: a folder with Maher’s school records has been found. Its cover is adorned with a photograph of a wise Bashar al-Assad, gazing thoughtfully into the distance. Malak picks up a pen from the headteacher’s desk and scribbles over the photo. Six months ago, that gesture could have been lethal.

For years, the only scraps Malak had to cling to were two men who say they saw Maher in “Branch 215” – that same military detention centre which produced so many corpses for Abu Ali to transport.

One of the witnesses told Malak that her boy had told him something about his parents that, his mother says, only he could have known. It was definitely him. “He asked this man to tell me he was doing fine.” Malak heaves and leaks tears, stuffs a tattered tissue into the corners of her eyes.

For Malak, like so many Syrians, the fall of Assad was not just a day of joy, but of hope. “I thought there was a 90% chance Maher would walk out of prison. I was waiting for him.”

But she has not even been able to find her son’s name on the prison lists. And so the throb of pain continues to course through her. “I feel lost and confused,” she says.

Her own younger brother, Mahmoud, had been killed by a tank firing on civilians in 2013.

“At least he had a funeral.”

Within moments of the briefing with the business secretary beginning, Jonathan Reynolds described it to us as a case study in the government’s claim to be going further and faster in doing what it can to improve living standards.

Little wonder ministers want to lean into this deal with Delhi, grappling as they are with political heat at home from their own side and their opponents.

The latest intervention comes from a caucus of Labour MPs known as the Red Wall Group, primarily representing seats in the north of England and the Midlands.

In response to last week’s elections, they are publicly critical of the government, including its handling of the removal of the Winter Fuel Payment from millions of pensioners.

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Jonathan Reynolds wants to point to what he sees as the “tangible benefits” of making it easier for the fifth and sixth largest economies in the world to trade and made a point of claiming it would be the north of England, the Midlands and Scotland that would be the primary economic beneficiaries.

But remember this is the “conclusion of talks moment,” as it is described in government, not the conclusion of the deal.

Thousands of pages of text still need to be pored over and vast amounts of detail scrutinised.

And there will, in time, be a signature moment, hinted at by the prime minister in publicly accepting an invitation to visit India.

It is thought it could be another year before this is done.

The domestic political reaction to this deal has focused on one element of it: an agreement that India workers transferred to the UK and their employers won’t have to pay national insurance in the UK in their first three years here.

This, the Conservative leader and former business secretary Kemi Badenoch argued, is “lop sided” and why she didn’t sign off on the deal when she was in government.

The Liberal Democrats and Reform UK have also criticised this part of the agreement.

British officials acknowledge this is an element of the deal India really wanted, but they argue it is worth it in the round and standard practice in deals like this.

And, strikingly, the Conservative reaction isn’t consistent: Sir Oliver Dowden, who sat around the same cabinet table as Kemi Badenoch as deputy prime minister, welcomed it.

There are a few key bits of context to this deal and one final observation I would make.

The context is this: the ongoing turbulence of President Trump’s tariffs and the ongoing negotiations with both the United States and the European Union over improving trade deals with both.

Progress on both is expected soon – a summit with the EU will take place in the UK later this month.

And that one last thing.

Sir Keir Starmer voted against Brexit and campaigned for another referendum in the hope of stopping it.

And yet, in a twist of fate and timing, he is the first post-Brexit British prime minister to have the political space and time to grapple with the tools leaving the EU gave whoever occupies his office, with the trade-offs and arguments that brings.

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A woman has been killed in an axe attack at the University of Warsaw in Poland, police said.

The university said she was a staff member and had come under attack in the main campus building on Wednesday evening. A university guard who came to her aid was seriously injured.

A 22-year-old Polish man has been arrested. His motives remain unclear although a local prosecutor said he was a third-year law student who was Polish but not from Warsaw.

The university described the attack as a “huge tragedy”. It declared a day of mourning on Thursday with no classes taking place.

The attacker entered the college campus shortly after 18:40 local time (16:40 GMT).

From there he moved on to the university’s biggest lecture hall, the Auditorium Maximum building.

Polish reports said the woman killed in the attack was a 53-year-old porter who died at the scene. The security guard who came to her help is 39.

The university said that everyone had been shocked by the murder.

“We express our great sorrow and sympathy to the family and loved ones,” the rector, Alojzy Nowak, said in a statement.

Justice Minister Adam Bodnar was taking part in a panel discussion in a nearby lecture theatre. He said he had not seen the attack but was told by his state protection officers what had happened.

He praised one of his officers who he said ran to the scene to help the university guard who tackled the attacker.

Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski also expressed his shock at what he described as a “macabre crime” on the campus. “This brutal attack must be severely punished,” he added.

The university had been due to host its annual music festival, Juwenalia, on Friday and Saturday but that has also been cancelled.

Brad Arnold, the singer with US rock band 3 Doors Down, has revealed he has been diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer.

The 46-year-old said in an Instagram video that he has “clear cell renal carcinoma that had metastasised into my lung”, adding: “And that’s stage four, and that’s not real good.”

The band made it big in the early 2000s with hits like Kryptonite, Here Without You and It’s Not My Time, and have sold more than 13 million albums in the US.

“Now, I believe It’s Not My Time is really my song,” Arnold wrote to fans in an accompanying caption. “This’ll be a battle so we need our prayers warriors!”

3 Doors Down emerged from Mississippi to break through with their hit Kryptonite, which reached number three in the US in 2000.

Their debut album The Better Life was the 11th biggest-selling album of the year in their home country.

They returned to the top five with the 2002 singles Here Without You and When I’m Gone, and scored US number one albums with Seventeen Days in 2005 and a self-titled LP in 2008.

They also performed at President Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.

In his video, the singer and drummer said: “You know what, we serve almighty God, and he can overcome anything. So I have no fear. I am really, sincerely not scared of it at all.

“But it is going to force us to cancel our tour this summer, and we’re sorry for that.

“And I’d love for you to lift me up in prayer every chance you get, and I think it’s time for me to maybe go listen to It’s Not My Time a little bit, right?”

Clear cell renal carcinoma is the most common type of kidney cancer, and stage four is the most serious, meaning it has spread to another part of the body.

Israel’s prime minister has said there is “uncertainty” about the condition of three of 24 hostages previously believed to be alive in Hamas captivity in Gaza.

Benjamin Netanyahu said he knew “with certainty” that 21 hostages were alive but the status of “three more” was unclear.

His comments came after US President Donald Trump said 24 hostages were alive a week ago but the figure was now 21. He made the comments while speaking at an event at the White House on Tuesday and did not cite a source or provide further details.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum had demanded information.

The forum also urged Netanyahu to halt his plans to expand Israel’s offensive in Gaza and to instead agree a deal with Hamas to return its remaining 59 living and dead hostages.

A spokesperson called on the prime minister “to stop the war until the return of the last abductee”, adding: “This is the most urgent and important national task.”

Speaking in a video on Wednesday following Trump’s remarks, Netanyahu said: “We know with certainty that 21 hostages are alive. There are three more regarding whom there’s uncertainty about whether they are alive.”

Last week, Netanyahu said rescuing hostages was a “very important goal” of the war, but that “the supreme goal is to achieve victory over our enemies”.

Israel’s chief military spokesman Brig-Gen Effie Defrin appeared to contradict the prime minister on Monday when he stated: “The objective of the operation is the return of our hostages, the dismantling and decisive defeat of the Hamas regime.”

Despite that statement, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reports that the military’s chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, presented operational orders to commanders this week that put “returning the hostages” bottom of a six-point list, with “defeating Hamas” at the top.

Israeli officials have said the plans for the expanded offensive 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.

About 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage during the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which triggered the Gaza war.

Another four people, two of them dead, were already being held captive in Gaza before the conflict.

So far, Israel has secured the return of 196 hostages, 147 of them alive, mostly through two temporary ceasefire deals with Hamas.

At least 52,653 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

More than 2,500 have died since Israel ended a two-month ceasefire on 18 March and resumed its offensive, saying it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release hostages.

Israel has also blocked all deliveries of humanitarian aid and other supplies for nine weeks, which the UN says has caused severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel.

Apple is asking an appeals court to pause a US district judge’s recent ruling in a case which could determine the future of its highly lucrative App Store.

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found last week the tech giant wilfully violated an order she had previously made in a case filed by Fortnite-maker Epic Games.

That order – handed down in 2021 – demanded Apple refrain from anti-competitive conduct and pricing and allow outside payment options in the App Store.

Last week she determined Apple was flouting that demand – a finding Apple has now called “extraordinary.”

The iPhone maker has alleged in a court filing that her order unlawfully prevents the company from controlling “core aspects of its business operations.”

“A federal court cannot force Apple to permanently give away free access to its products and services, including intellectual property,” the company’s lawyers wrote.

Both of Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ judgements stem from an antitrust case filed by Epic Games.

In 2020, Epic accused the iPhone-maker of possessing an illegal monopoly with its App Store, which collected commissions of between 15% and 30% on in-app purchases.

The judge rejected Epic’s monopoly claims, but found Apple was stopping developers from giving users alternative payment options in violation of California competition rules.

She ordered Apple to make changes that would help developers steer customers to cheaper payment options outside of the Apple ecosystem.

Last year, Epic accused Apple of failing to comply by creating a new set of fees for developers instead.

In a contempt order last week, Judge Gonzalez Rogers found that Apple continued to interfere with competition, saying that internal company documents showed Apple deliberately violated her 2021 injunction.

On Wednesday, Apple requested an appeals court take action, including by lifting a ban that stops it from charging developers fees on purchases made outside the App Store.

The company wrote that such restrictions “will cost Apple substantial sums annually” and are based on conduct that has not been found unlawful.

“Rather, they were imposed to punish Apple for purported non-compliance with an earlier state-law Injunction that is itself invalid,” Apple wrote.

In response, Epic Games said Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ contempt order last week was already benefitting consumers.

“Apple has faced a surge of genuine competition as developers have updated their apps with better payment methods, better deals, and better consumer choice,” Epic wrote in a post on the social media platform X.

The company criticized Apple’s motion as “a last ditch effort to block competition and extract massive junk fees at the expense of consumers and developers.”

Epic says it is on track with plans to bring Fortnite back to iPhones and iPads.

Apple removed Fortnite from its App Store in 2020 after Epic unveiled an in-app payment system into the game.

The move led to the current court battle between the two companies.

Apple did not directly addresses Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ stunning rebuke of company executives in its court filing.

In her most recent order, she said CEO Tim Cook ignored executive Phillip Schiller’s urging to have Apple comply with her injunction, and allowed then-Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri to convince him not to.

“Cook chose poorly,” she wrote.

The company documents she reviewed reveal “that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option”, she wrote.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers said she would refer the matter to the US Attorney for Northern District of California to investigate if a criminal contempt proceeding against Apple is appropriate.

Apple said last week it would comply with the court’s order while it appeals.

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Even before his name was announced from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, the crowds below were chanting “Viva il Papa” – Long live the Pope.

Robert Prevost, 69, will be the 267th occupant of the throne of St Peter and he will be known as Leo XIV.

He is the first American to fill the role of Pope, although he is considered as much a cardinal from Latin America because of the many years he spent as a missionary in Peru, before becoming a bishop there.

Born in Chicago in 1955 to parents of Spanish and Franco-Italian descent, Prevost served as an altar boy and was ordained as a priest in 1982. Although he moved to Peru three years later, he returned regularly to the US to serve as a pastor and a prior in his home city.

He has Peruvian nationality and is fondly remembered as a figure who worked with marginalised communities and helped build bridges.

He spent 10 years as a local parish pastor and as a teacher at a seminary in Trujillo in northwestern Peru.

• LIVE UPDATES: New Pope speaks from Vatican
• Pope Leo XIV’s first speech in full

In his first words as Pope, Leo XIV spoke fondly of his predecessor Francis.

“We still hear in our ears the weak but always courageous voice of Pope Francis who blessed us,” he said.

“United and hand in hand with God, let us advance together,” he told cheering crowds.

He also spoke of his role in the Augustinian Order. He was 30 when he moved to Peru as part of an Augustinian mission.

Francis made him Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru a year after becoming Pope.

He is well known to cardinals because of his high-profile role as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Latin America which has the important task of selecting and supervising bishops.

He became archbishop at the same time in January 2023 and within a few months Francis made him a cardinal.

As 80% of the cardinals who took part in the conclave were appointed by Francis, it is not all that surprising that someone like Prevost was elected, even if he was only recently appointed.

He will be seen as a figure who favoured the continuity of Francis’ reforms in the Catholic Church.

Prevost is believed to have shared Francis’ views on migrants, the poor and the environment.

As cardinal, he has not shied away from challenging the views of US Vice-President JD Vance.

He reposted a post on social media platform X which was critical of the Trump administration’s deportation of a US resident to El Salvador, and shared a critical comment piece written about a TV interview given by Vance to Fox News.

“JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” read the post, repeating the headline from the commentary on the National Catholic Reporter website.

Although he is an American, and will be fully aware of the divisions within the Catholic Church, his Latin American background also represents continuity after a Pope who came from Argentina.

The Vatican described him as the second pope from the Americas, after Pope Francis, as well as the the first Augustinian pope.

During his time in Peru he has not escaped the sexual abuse scandals that have clouded the Church, however his diocese fervently denied he had been involved in any attempted cover-up.

Before the conclave, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said that during gatherings of the College of Cardinals in the days before the conclave they emphasised the need for a pope with “a prophetic spirit capable of leading a Church that does not close in on itself but knows how to go out and bring light to a world marked by despair”.

India has accused Pakistan of attacking three of its military bases with drones and missiles, a claim which has been denied by Islamabad.

The Indian Army said it had foiled Pakistan’s attempts to attack its bases in Jammu and Udhampur, in Indian-administered Kashmir, and Pathankot, in India’s Punjab state.

Blasts were reported on Thursday evening in Jammu city in Indian-administered Kashmir as the region went into a blackout.

Pakistan’s defence minister told the BBC they were not behind the attack.

“We deny it, we have not mounted anything so far,” Khawaja Asif told the BBC, adding: “We will not strike and then deny”.

Earlier on Thursday, India said it had struck Pakistan’s air defences and “neutralised” Islamabad’s attempts to hit military targets in India on Wednesday night.

Pakistan called that action another “act of aggression”, following Indian missile strikes on Wednesday on targets in Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

India’s strikes on Wednesday sparked a chorus of calls for de-escalation from the international community with the UN and world leaders calling for calm.

The attacks and incidents of shelling along the border have fanned fears of wider conflict erupting between the nuclear-armed states.

It is being viewed as the worst confrontation between the two countries in more than two decades.

India said it hit nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites on Wednesday in retaliation for a militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

Pakistan has strongly denied Indian claims that it backed the militants who killed 26 civilians in the mountainous town of Pahalgam.

It was the bloodiest attack on civilians in the region for years, sending tensions soaring. Most of the victims were Indian tourists.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a decades-long insurgency against Indian rule which has claimed thousands of lives.

Kashmir has been a flashpoint between the countries since they became independent after British India was partitioned in 1947. Both claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over it.

There were calls for restraint from around the world after India launched “Operation Sindoor” early on Wednesday.

But on Thursday both sides accused each other of further military action.

Pakistan’s military spokesman said drones sent by India had been engaged in multiple locations.

“Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said. “These locations are Lahore, Gujranwala, Chakwal, Rawalpindi, Attock, Bahawalpur, Miano, Chor and near Karachi.”

He said one civilian had been killed in Sindh province and four troops injured in Lahore.

The US consulate in Lahore told its staff to shelter in the building.

India said its latest action had been taken in response to Pakistan’s attempts to “engage a number of military targets in northern and western India” overnight.

“It has been reliably learnt that an Air Defence system at Lahore has been neutralised,” a Defence Ministry statement said. Pakistan denied the claim.

There was no independent confirmation of the two countries’ versions of events.

Later in the day India’s foreign secretary Vikram Misri told a news conference in Delhi: “Our intention has not been to escalate matters, we are only responding to the original escalation.”

Meanwhile, casualty numbers continue to rise. Pakistan says 31 people have been killed and 57 injured by Indian air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and firing along the Line of Control, since Wednesday morning.

India’s army said the number of people killed by Pakistani firing in the disputed Kashmir region had risen to 16, including three women and five children.

India initially did not name any group it believed was behind the attack in Pahalgam but on 7 May it accused the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group of carrying it out.

Indian police have alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, a claim denied by Islamabad. It says it has nothing to do with the 22 April attacks.

In a late-night address on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to avenge those killed in India’s strikes.

He repeated Pakistan’s claim that it had shot down five Indian fighter jets, saying that was a “crushing response”. India has not commented on that claim.

Following the reports of Thursday’s explosions in Jammu, local media cited Indian military sources on Thursday in reporting that blasts across the Jammu region were also reported in the towns of Akhnoor, Samba and Kathua.

The US has agreed to reduce import taxes on a set number of British cars and allow some steel and aluminium into the country tariff-free, as part of a new agreement between the US and UK.

The announcement offers relief for key UK industries from some of the new tariffs announced by President Donald Trump since entering office in January.

But it will leave a 10% duty in place on most goods from the UK.

Though hailed by leaders in the two countries as significant, analysts said it did not appear to meaningfully alter the terms of trade between the countries, as they stood before the changes introduced by Trump this year.

No formal deal was signed on Thursday and the governments were light on details.

Speaking from a Jaguar Land Rover factory in the West Midlands, Sir Keir Starmer described the agreement as a “fantastic platform”.

“This historic deal delivers for British business and British workers protecting thousands of British jobs in key sectors including car manufacturing and steel,” he said, adding that the “the UK has no greater ally than the United States”.

At the White House, Trump called it a “great deal” and pushed back against criticism that he was overstating its importance.

“This is a maxed out deal that we’re going to make bigger,” he said.

The two sides said the US had agreed to reduce the import tax on cars – which Trump had raised by 25% last month – to 10% for 100,000 cars a year.

That will help luxury carmakers such as Jaguar Land Rover and Rolls Royce, but could limit growth in the years ahead, as it amounts to roughly what the UK exported last year.

Tariffs on steel and aluminium, which Trump had also raised earlier this year to 25%, have also been slashed, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.

The office also said the two sides had agreed to “reciprocal access” for beef exports, with a quota of 13,000 metric tonnes for UK farmers.

Those figures were not confirmed by the White House, though it said it expected to expand its sales of beef and ethanol to the UK, a longstanding demand on the part of the US.

The US said the deal would create a $5bn “opportunity” for exports, including $700m in ethanol and $250m in other agricultural products.

“It can’t be understated how important this deal is,” US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.

UK Steel director General Gareth Stace welcomed the agreement, saying it would offer “major relief” to the steel sector.

“The UK government’s cool-headed approach and perseverance in negotiating with the US clearly paid off,” he said.

Other business groups expressed more uncertainty.

“It’s better than yesterday but it’s definitely not better than five weeks ago,” said Duncan Edwards, chief executive of BritishAmerican Business, which represents firms in the two countries and supports free trade.

“I’m trying to be excited but I’m struggling a bit.”

While Labour MPs praised the deal, opposition parties asked for more detail and scrutiny in Parliament.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch criticised the deal, saying it amounted to tariffs being lowered by the UK, while being hiked in the US.

“This is not a historic deal with the US,” she said. “We’ve been shafted.”

The Liberal Democrats demanded a vote on the deal in Parliament, saying it would show “complete disrespect to the public” if MPs were denied a say.

Sir Ed Davey said: “When it comes to any trade deal – and especially one with someone as unreliable as Donald Trump – the devil will be in the detail.

“One thing is clear, Trump’s trade tariffs are still hitting key British industries, threatening the livelihoods of people across the UK.”

Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage said the deal was a “step in the right direction”.

He told the BBC there was more detail to come but in the round it was a welcome development.

“The important point is that we are doing stuff, we are making a move,” he said. “It’s a Brexit benefit we were able to do this.”

The US and UK have been discussing a trade deal since Trump’s first term. They came close to signing a mini-agreement at that time.

But the US has long pushed for changes to benefit its farmers and pharmaceutical issues, which had been non-starters politically for the UK.

It was not clear how much those issues had advanced.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said the agreement in-principle had delivered a “tremendous win” for American ranchers but the US Meat Export Federation, which tracks trade barriers for farmers in the US, said it was still trying to pin down information about the changes.

The UK said there would be no weakening in food standards for imports.

While the UK appears to have made some commitments, “the devil will be in the details,” said Michael Pearce, deputy chief economist at Oxford Economics, which said it was making no change to its economic forecasts as a result of the announcement.

Other issues loom.

Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to tax imports of pharmaceuticals, in a bid to ensure the US has a strong manufacturing base for critical medicines.

The UK said the US had agreed to give British firms “preferential treatment”.

But Ewan Townsend, a lawyer at Arnold & Porter, who works with health care firms, said the industry was now “left waiting to see exactly what this preferential treatment will mean”.

The UK and the US have reached a deal over tariffs on some goods traded between the countries.

President Donald Trump’s blanket 10% tariffs on imports from countries around the world remains in place and still applies to most UK goods entering the US.

But the deal has reduced or removed tariffs on some of the UK’s exports, including cars, steel and aluminium.

Here’s an at-a-glance look at what’s in the deal.

Trump declared on social media this announcement would be a “major trade deal” – it’s not.

He does not have the authority to sign the type of free-trade agreement India and the UK finalised earlier this week – this lies with Congress.

Congress would need to approve a trade agreement, which would take longer than the 90-day pause in place on some of Trump’s tariffs.

This is an agreement which has reversed or cut some of those tariffs on specific goods.

What was announced today is only the bare bones of a narrow agreement.

There will be months of negotiations and legal paperwork to follow.

Trump had placed import taxes of 25% on cars and car parts coming into the US on top of the existing 2.5%.

This has been cut to 10% for a maximum of 100,000 UK cars, which matches the number of cars the UK exported last year.

But any cars exported above that 100,000 will be subject to a 27.5% import tax.

Cars are the UK’s biggest export to the US – worth about £9bn last year.

Car industry leaders have told the BBC the quota could effectively put a ceiling on the number they can export competitively.

The UK currently imposes a 10% on US car imports, but it is not yet clear if there had been any change to this.

The US has previously demanded the import tax be cut to 2.5%, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves has indicated she is open to such a cut.

Trump also announced that Rolls Royce engines and plane parts will be able to be exported from the UK to the US tariff-free.

He also said the UK was buying $10bn worth of Boeing planes from the US.

A 25% tariff on steel and aluminium imports into the US that came into effect in March has been scrapped as part of this deal.

This is huge news for firms such as British Steel which was brought under government control as it struggled to stay operational.

The UK exports a relatively small amount of steel and aluminium to the US, around £700m in total.

However the tariffs also cover products made with steel and aluminium, including things such as gym equipment, furniture and machinery.

These are worth much more, about £2.2bn, or about 5% of UK exports to the US last year.

It is not yet clear whether the scrapping of tariffs will apply to steel derivative products and whether only steel melted and poured in the UK will benefit.

What will be agreed on pharmaceuticals is still unknown.

“Work will continue on the remaining sectors – such as pharmaceuticals and remaining reciprocal tariffs,” a statement from the UK government said.

Most countries, including the US, imposed few or no tariffs on finished drugs, as part of an agreement aimed at keeping medicines affordable.

Pharmaceuticals are a major export for the UK when it comes to US trade – last year sales of medicinal and pharmaceutical products were worth £6.6bn ($8.76bn) making it the UK’s second-biggest export to the US.

It’s also America’s fourth biggest export to the UK, valued at £4bn ($5.3bn) last year.

The president has not announced any trade restrictions on medicines yet.

• FOLLOW LIVE: US and UK to announce deal to reduce tariffs today
• QUICK GUIDE: What tariffs has Trump announced and why?
• ANALYSIS: Trump deal is a significant achievement for Starmer

There was no change to the UK’s 2% digital services tax on US firms in this deal, despite reports there could be.

Businesses that run social media, search engines or online marketplaces pay this tax which applies to revenues derived from UK users.

Firms only have to pay it if they raise more than £500m in global revenues and £25m from UK users annually.

But this is a threshold easily met by US tech giants like Meta, Google, Apple.

The UK reportedly netted nearly £360m from American tech firms via the tax in its first year.

Instead of any change to the digital services tax the UK and US had “agreed to work on a digital trade deal”, the UK government said.

It said this would “strip back paperwork for British firms trying to export to the US – opening the UK up to a huge market that will put rocket boosters on the UK economy”.

The UK has removed tariffs on American beef and other agricultural products, Trump said.

UK farmers have also been given a tariff free quota for 13,000 metric tonnes of exports, which trade ministers said was the “first time” British farmers had been given this kind of deal.

There will be no weakening of UK food standards on imports, the UK government statement said.

Many American farmers use growth hormones as a standard part of their beef production, something that was banned in the UK and the European Union in the 1980s.

The US has previously pushed for a relaxation of rules for its agricultural products, including beef from cattle that have been given growth hormones.

This is an area where the UK has chosen alignment with EU – and the forthcoming “Brexit reset” with the EU – over the US.

The tariff on ethanol which is used to produce beer coming into the UK from the US has also been scrapped.

“They’ll also be fast tracking American goods through their customs process, so our exports go to a very, very quick form of approval, and there won’t be any red tape,” Trump said.

“Not even in my wildest imagination did I think this would happen,” said Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, describing the day he found out that he had been appointed a cardinal.

He was speaking to the BBC at his cathedral in Caloocan, on the outskirts of the Philippine capital Manila. He was leaving the next day for Rome to join the conclave, one of three cardinals from the country who will take part in choosing the next pope.

“Normally you would expect archbishops to become cardinals, but I am only a humble bishop of a little diocese where the majority of the people are slum dwellers, urban poor, you know.

“But I thought just maybe, for Pope Francis, it mattered that we had more cardinals who are really grounded there.”

Cardinal David has only been in the job for five months, after his surprise elevation last December. But in some ways he personifies the late pontiff’s legacy in his country.

Pope Francis had set himself the goal of bringing a Catholic church he believed had lost its common touch, back closer to the people.

“Apu Ambo”, as Cardinal David is affectionately called by his congregation, fits that mission well, having spent his life campaigning for the poor and marginalised.

The Philippines has the largest Roman Catholic population in Asia, nearly 80% of its 100 million people, and the third-largest in the world.

It’s one reason why Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle is believed to be a papabile, or frontrunner to replace Pope Francis – Tagle was also talked of as a contender in the last papal conclave 12 years ago.

The country is considered a bright spot for the Roman Catholic church, where faith is strong, its rituals woven into the fabric of society.

Yet the church is facing headwinds there. Its doctrines on divorce and family planning are being challenged by politicians, and newer charismatic churches are winning converts.

Pope Francis helped restore morale in the Philippines church, though he did not offer answers to these challenges beyond being more welcoming of diversity and urging the clergy to be more responsive to the needs of the poor.

But those on the activist wing of the church did feel encouraged by his support.

For Cardinal David that support was critical when he faced his greatest test, during the war on drugs declared by former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.

He took me to see a plaque he had erected in front of his cathedral in memory of Kian Delos Santos, a 17 year-old boy from his diocese who was gunned down by police in August 2017.

Kian was just one of many thousands who died in Duterte’s campaign – estimates range from 6,300 to 30,000. What made his case different from most was that the usual police justification, that he was armed and had resisted arrest, was contradicted by eyewitnesses and security camera videos.

The police officers had murdered him as he pleaded for his life. Three officers were eventually convicted of the murder, a rare instance of accountability in the drug war.

The cardinal is still visibly affected by the hundreds of killings that happened in his diocese – a cluster of low-income neighbourhoods typical of the areas targeted by the police in their notorious tokhang, or “knock and plead” raids, against alleged drug dealers and users.

“It was just too much seeing dead bodies left and right,” Cardinal David says.

“And you know, when I would ask people what they thought, you know, why these people were targeted. They said they’re drug users. I said, so what? So what? Who told you that just because people use drugs, they deserve to die?”

He began offering sanctuary to those who feared they were on police hit lists, and then drug-rehabilitation programmes, in the hope this might protect them.

He also did something the church as a whole did not do for several months: he openly criticised the drug war as illegal and immoral.

As a result, he received many death threats. President Duterte accused him of taking drugs, and talked about decapitating him. The government also filed sedition charges against him, though these were eventually dropped.

In those difficult years Cardinal David found he had a powerful backer, in Rome.

On a visit to the city in 2019 Pope Francis had taken him aside to give him a special blessing, saying he knew what was happening in his diocese and urging him to stay safe.

When they met again in 2023, and he reminded the Pope that he was still alive, he says the pontiff laughed and told him: “You have not been called to martyrdom yet!”

The role of the Roman Catholic church in the Philippines has changed over its 500-year history in the archipelago.

It was closely associated with the Spanish conquest, Spanish friars acting as de facto colonial administrators and the church becoming a big landowner. When the US replaced Spain as the colonial ruler in 1898, enforcing a separation of church and state, the political influence of the Catholic clergy waned.

But the church retained the allegiance of most of the population; even today, after inroads made by charismatic protestant churches, nearly 80% of Filipinos identify as Roman Catholic.

Since independence in 1946 the church has had an uneasy relationship with power. Its deep roots and establishment status have made it an influential player, wooed by political factions but also needing their support to protect its interests.

Attitudes began changing in the 1970s and 80s, the time when a young Pablo David and many other senior church figures today were studying to enter the priesthood.

This was the era of “liberation theology”, which came out of Latin America and argued that it was the duty of the clergy to fight against the pervasive poverty and injustice all around them.

When then-President Marcos, father of the current president of the Philippines, declared martial law in 1972 and began jailing and killing his critics, some priests even went underground to join the armed resistance.

But the church hierarchy continued what it called “critical collaboration” with the Marcos dictatorship.

That changed dramatically in February 1986, when the then-Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jaime Sin, called on people to come out on the streets and oppose Marcos, sparking the famous “people power” uprising which deposed the president.

Cardinal Sin would reprise that role in 2001 when he helped overthrow another beleaguered president, Joseph Estrada.

After that, though, church leaders were accused of cosying up to Estrada’s successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, partly to gain her support in opposing growing political and social pressure to expand access to family planning and legalise divorce.

And they were reluctant to condemn President Duterte’s drug war because, despite the appalling human cost, it remained popular with the Filipino public, at least away from the poorer areas where the killings took place.

Nearly 40 years after its pivotal role in overthrowing the Marcos regime, the church’s influence once again seems to be waning, as it did a century ago.

For instance, the Church’s fervent opposition could not prevent the Philippines Congress from passing the Reproductive Health Law of 2012 that made family planning easily accessible.

This is despite the fact that many Filipino Catholics remain conservative on issues like gender and divorce, says Jayeel Cornelio, a sociologist who has written extensively on Catholicism in the Philippines.

The church’s defeat over family planning, he says, is indicative of its diminished sway over national politics.

“The Catholic church was practically sidelined during the Duterte presidency. When Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos ran for president in 2022, many Catholic leaders and institutions expressed their dissent and even endorsed the opposition. But Marcos still won.”

Many Filipinos welcome this, including, it seems, Cardinal David.

“It is not the business of the church to govern, neither is it the business of government to run a church”, he said.

“But we can complement one another – I cannot say we will be apolitical. So long as we stick to our role as a moral and spiritual leader, we can give guidance, even about political and economic matters.”

Even that more limited view of the church’s proper role, though, has run into opposition.

Thirteen years after overcoming ecclesiastical objections to the Reproductive Health Bill, the Philippines Congress is now trying to get a bill passed which would legalise divorce, something else the church disagrees with.

“I do not expect them to change their official doctrine, but in my job as a lawmaker, I try to address the problems that Filipinos face, and I don’t want them to meddle in my work. It is against our constitution to legislate in favour of any religion,” says Geraldine Roman, the first transgender member of Congress in the Philippines.

A practicing Catholic, she credits Pope Francis with creating a more welcoming environment for LGBTQ+ people with his “who am I to judge” statement.

“Nobody misgenders me in my church now,” she says.

But she objects to the Catholic church lobbying against the divorce bill, which she argues will free thousands of Filipino women trapped in abusive marriages.

“The church is free to try to indoctrinate Catholics into sticking it out in their marriages. But in the end, it is the decision of the couple, and not even the church can meddle in that decision.”

Other challenges include a congregation which is increasingly disengaged. While the number of Roman Catholics has fallen only slightly in the past three decades, the number attending mass at least once a week has dropped by half, to just over one third of those surveyed recently.

Then there are the various scandals associated with the Catholic church, especially the sexual abuse of minors, which critics say Pope Francis, while he did tackle the issue, did not do enough to address.

Cardinal David recalled how President Duterte “loved to wave” a book called “Altar of Secrets”, an expose of alleged scandals in the Filipino church, and how he would say, “oh, those hypocrites. Don’t listen to them. They don’t practice what they what they preach. They are abusers. I must say some people swallowed it hook, line and sinker. So I am not surprised that our moral credibility has been challenged.”

But, he adds, defensiveness is not the way the Church can win back its credibility.

“It should be humility. As Pope Francis advised, dare to be vulnerable. Dare to be criticised. Try not to remain on that pedestal where people cannot reach you, show your humanity.”

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Two men have been found guilty of the murder of Cassius Turvey, an Aboriginal schoolboy who was chased down by a vigilante gang and beaten, in a case which outraged Australia.

The 15-year-old Noongar Yamatji boy died of head injuries in October 2022, 10 days after he was brutally assaulted on the outskirts of Perth – prompting vigils and protests nationwide.

Four people were charged with his murder and Jack Steven James Brearley, 24, and Brodie Lee Palmer, 29, were on Thursday found guilty after a 12-week trial.

Mitchell Colin Forth, 27, was instead found guilty of manslaughter, and a woman who was with the trio in the moments before the attack was acquitted.

Speaking outside court, Cassius’ mum Mechelle Turvey said she was “numb with relief” at the verdict after “three months of hell”.

But she added that “justice, to me, will never be served because I don’t have my son, and he’s not coming back”.

The trial was told the attack on Cassius was the culmination of a complex series of tit-for-tat events “that had absolutely nothing to do with him”, according to the Australian Associated Press.

The group had been “hunting for kids” because somebody had damaged Brearley’s car windows, prosecutors said.

“Somebody smashed my car, they’re about to die,” Brearley was heard saying on CCTV footage captured shortly before the incident and played to the court.

There is no suggestion Cassius had any involvement in what happened to the car, but he was among a throng of kids who were confronted by the trio of men while walking along a suburban street after school.

A boy on crutches was assaulted, sending the others scattering through nearby bushland to escape.

Prosecutors alleged the trio caught Cassius and knocked him to the ground, where he was hit on the head at least twice with a short metal pole, leaving him with a brain bleed.

In the days after the attack, Cassius underwent surgeries in hospital, aimed at relieving the pressure on his brain and saving his life. Meanwhile, Brearley was caught on camera boasting about beating the child.

“He was laying in the field and I was just smacking him with a trolley pole so hard, he learnt his lesson,” he was heard saying on a phone call played at the trial, according to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Brearley told the court his assault on Cassius was self-defence, and claimed it was Palmer who had hit him with the metal pole. Palmer said the opposite, blaming Brearley.

Ultimately the jury found both responsible for his murder, and Forth guilty of manslaughter.

The men are due to return to court for sentencing hearing on 26 June.

Outside court, Mrs Turvey embarked on a list of thank yous, including for the trial witnesses, most of whom were “young children that are scarred for life”.

“I’d like to thank all of Australia, people that know us, for all of their love and support,” she added.

Speaking to the BBC the month after his death, Mrs Turvey said her son was beloved in the local community.

Along with two of his friends, he had set up a small business in order to reach out to neighbours and mow lawns. He wanted to change the negative stereotypes about Aboriginal youth in Australia.

“He was funny. He loved posing,” Mechelle Turvey said, showing photos of Cassius smiling.

His killing in 2022 sparked national grief and anger. Thousands of people attended vigils for Cassius in more than two dozen places across the country, with events also being held in the US and New Zealand.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed the attack was “clearly” racially motivated – though this was not advanced as a motive in court – and it reopened a national debate about racial discrimination.

“Australia does have a shocking reputation around the world for this kind of violence,” Human rights lawyer Hannah McGlade told the BBC at the time.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said he intends to give away 99% of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.

Gates said he would accelerate his giving via his foundation, with plans to end its operations in 2045.

“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” he wrote in a blog post Thursday.

Mr Gates, 69, said his eponymous foundation has already given $100bn (£75bn) towards health and development projects, and that he expects it will spend another $200bn, depending on markets and inflation, over the next two decades.

In his blog post, Mr Gates cited a 1889 essay by tycoon Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth, which argues that wealthy people have a duty to return their fortunes to society.

Mr Gates quoted Mr Carnegie, who wrote: “the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”

His latest pledge represents an acceleration in charitable giving. Initially he and his ex-wife Melinda had planned for the Gates Foundation to continue working for several decades after their deaths.

Giving away 99% of his fortune could still leave Mr Gates a billionaire – according to Bloomberg, the Microsoft founder is the fifth-richest person in the world.

In the post, he shared a timeline of his wealth that showed his current net worth at $108bn and a large hand-drawn arrow going down to close to zero in 2045.

Mr Gates also said the foundation would draw from its endowment to give away $200 bn.

Along with Paul Allen, Mr Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, and the company became a dominant force in computer software and other tech industries. Mr Gates has gradually stepped back from the company this century, resigning as chief executive in 2000 and as chairman in 2014.

Mr Gates said he has been inspired to give away money by investor Warren Buffett and other philanthropists, however critics of his foundation say Mr Gates uses its charitable status to avoid tax and that it has undue influence over the global health system.

In his blog post, he outlined three main goals for his foundation: eliminating preventable diseases which kill mothers and children; eliminating infectious diseases including malaria and measles; and eliminating poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

Mr Gates criticised the US, UK and France for cutting their foreign aid budgets.

“It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people,” he wrote. “But the one thing we can guarantee is that, in all of our work, the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries pull themselves out of poverty.”

He was more pointed in an interview with the Financial Times, accusing Tesla CEO and Department of Government Efficiency boss Elon Musk of being personally responsible for the deaths of children through his cuts to the US aid budget, including the dismantling of the US Agency for International Development.

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Mr Gates said.

Mr Gates raised the issue of cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, which Donald Trump erroneously claimed was funding condoms “for Hamas” in the Gaza Strip. Mr Musk later acknowledged the claim was wrong and said “we will make mistakes”, however the cost-cutting continued.

“I’d love for [Musk] to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Mr Gates told the FT.

The BBC contacted Mr Musk for comment.

The Gates Foundation is a donor to BBC Media Action, the BBC’s charitable arm which is separate from the Corporation’s news operations.

US President Donald Trump has called the election of the first American pope, Robert Francis Prevost, who will be known as Pope Leo XIV, a “great honour” for the country and said he looks forward to meeting him.

Trump is among the many American political figures applauding the historic appointment of the 69-year-old native Chicagoan to lead the Catholic Church.

“To have the Pope from America is a great honour,” Trump said later when asked for reaction to the news.

Pope Leo was born in Chicago and attended university outside Philadelphia, before becoming a missionary in Peru.

Trump’s Republican colleague, House Speaker Mike Johnson also congratulated the new pope and wrote on social media: “May God bless the first American papacy in these historic days.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Catholic, also extended his congratulations.

“This is a moment of profound significance for the Catholic Church, offering renewed hope and continuity amid the 2025 Jubilee Year to over a billion faithful worldwide,” Rubio said.

“The United States looks forward to deepening our enduring relationship with the Holy See with the first American pontiff.”

• Who is Robert Prevost, the new Pope?
• Watch Pope Leo XIV being unveiled as new pontiff
• Pope Leo’s first public address from the Vatican balcony – watch in full

The US has the fourth largest number of Catholics.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson also offered a note of congratulations on social media.

“Everything dope, including the Pope, comes from Chicago! Congratulations to the first American Pope Leo XIV! We hope to welcome you back home soon.”

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called the moment “historic”.

“Hailing from Chicago, Pope Leo XIV ushers in a new chapter that I join those in our state welcoming in at a time when we need compassion, unity, and peace,” he wrote on social media.

Vice-President JD Vance, a Catholic himself, praised the pope’s election.

“I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the Church,” Vance wrote on X.

As cardinal, the new pontiff has not shied away from challenging the views of US Vice-President JD Vance.

He reposted a post on social media platform X which was critical of the Trump administration’s deportation of a US resident to El Salvador, and shared a critical comment piece written about a TV interview given by Vance to Fox News.

“JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” read the post, repeating the headline from the commentary on the National Catholic Reporter website.

Former presidents Barak Obama and Joe Biden also offered their congratulations.

“Habemus papam – May God bless Pope Leo XIV of Illinois,” Biden wrote on social media.

The auction house Sotheby’s has postponed its sale in Hong Kong of hundreds of sacred jewels linked to the Buddha’s remains, after a threat of legal action by the Indian government.

The sale of the collection – described as one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era – had drawn criticism from Buddhist academics and monastic leaders. India had said it offended the global Buddhist community.

Sotheby’s said the suspension would allow for discussions between the parties.

A British official named William Claxton Peppé unearthed the relics in northern India nearly 130 years ago, alongside bone fragments identified as belonging to the Buddha himself.

The auction of the collection, known as the Piprahwa Gems of the Historical Buddha Mauryan Empire, Ashokan Era, circa 240-200 BCE, was due to take place on 7 May.

In a letter to the auction house two days earlier, the Indian government said that the relics constituted “inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community. Their sale violates Indian and international laws, as well as United Nations conventions”.

A high-level Indian government delegation then held discussions with Sotheby’s representatives on Tuesday.

In an emailed statement, Sotheby’s said that in light of the matters raised by India’s government “and with the agreement of the consignors, the auction … has been postponed”.

It said updates on the discussions would be shared “as appropriate”.

Notice of the gems sale had been removed from its auction house by Wednesday and the website page promoting the auction is no longer available.

William Claxton Peppé was an English estate manager who excavated a stupa at Piprahwa, just south of Lumbini, the believed birthplace of Buddha. He uncovered relics inscribed and consecrated nearly 2,000 years ago.

The findings included nearly 1,800 gems, including rubies, topaz, sapphires and patterned gold sheets, stored inside a brick chamber. This site is now in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Sotheby’s had said in February that the 1898 discovery ranked “among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time”.

Robert Prevost, 69, has been elected as the new pope and will be known as Leo XIV.

In his first address from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica on Thursday evening, Leo XIV spoke warmly about his predecessor and thanked the cardinals who had elected him to succeed the late Pope Francis.

Here is a translation of the speech which he delivered in Italian and Spanish: