Hamas has released an Israeli-American hostage held captive for 19 months to Israeli forces as part of efforts to reach a new ceasefire deal, the group said.

Edan Alexander, 21, had been serving in the Israeli army on the border of Gaza when he was captured by Hamas militants on 7 October 2023.

On Monday, Israel paused its military operations in Gaza for a few hours to facilitate the transfer. A senior Hamas official told the BBC the release was intended as a goodwill gesture ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East on Tuesday.

Mr Alexander is thought to be the last US citizen held by Hamas who was still alive. Trump offered “congratulations” to his family on his release.

In a statement, his family thanked the US president but also urged the Israeli government and negotiators to continue working to free the 58 remaining hostages.

Mr Alexander is the first to be freed by Hamas since Israel restarted its military offensive on 18 March, after a two-month ceasefire came to an end.

On Monday, he was seen with masked Hamas fighters as they handed him over to Red Cross workers in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

He was then transferred to Israeli authorities in Gaza before being reunited with his family in southern Israel. The Israeli military said it provided a “safe corridor” for Mr Alexander’s release.

A video shared on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s X account showed Yael Alexander speaking to her son over the phone.

“You are strong. You are protected. You are home,” she said in the video.

Netanyahu called Mr Alexander’s return a “very moving moment” – and thanked Trump for his support.

The release had been made possible because of military pressure on Hamas and “the political pressure exerted by President Trump”, Netanyahu said.

He added that Israel intended to continue with plans to intensify its military actions in Gaza and that there would be no ceasefire.

Hamas had earlier said Mr Alexander’s release was intended to facilitate a deal for the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.

Israel has blocked the entry of all food, medication and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza for 70 days, which aid agencies say amounts to a policy of starvation and could be a war crime, and renewed its aerial bombardment and other military operations there in mid-March.

Hamas has previously said it will only agree to a deal that includes the end of the war. This has been repeatedly rejected by Netanyahu.

Trump is due to arrive in the Middle East on Tuesday, and Israel has vowed to expand its military offensive against Hamas if no deal is reached by the end of his visit.

Israeli officials have said the plans for their expanded offensive include seizing all of Gaza indefinitely, forcibly displacing Palestinians to the south, and taking over aid distribution with private companies despite opposition from the UN and its humanitarian partners, who say they will not co-operate because it appears to “weaponise” aid.

Israel is due to send representatives to Qatar on Thursday to discuss a proposal on further hostage releases.

Qatar and Egypt said that Mr Alexander’s release was an encouraging sign of potential new truce talks.

Born in Tel Aviv but raised in New Jersey, Mr Alexander had been serving in an elite infantry unit on the Gaza border when he was captured by Hamas militants during the 7 October 2003 attack.

About 1,200 people were killed and 251 hostages taken. Some 58 hostages remain, up to 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

Five of the captives held in Gaza are believed to have US citizenship. Mr Alexander is thought to be the last American still alive.

Israel’s military campaign has killed 52,829 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, including 2,720 Palestinians killed since March.

China’s defiance as it faced down US President Donald Trump’s tariffs has been a defining image of this trade war.

It has prompted viral memes of Trump waiting for the Chinese leader to call.

“We will not back down,” has been an almost daily message from Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As the tariffs and the rhetoric from Washington escalated, China dug its heels in.

Even as Chinese officials headed to Switzerland for talks, a state-run social media account published a cartoon of the US Treasury secretary pushing an empty shopping trolley.

There were even conflicting versions of who initiated the talks in Geneva.

But after two days of “robust” talks, the situation appears to have changed.

So, is this a major turning point for Washington and Beijing? The answer is yes and no.

• Faisal Islam: US and China step back from beyond brink
• ‘We don’t care’: A defiant China looks beyond Trump’s America

“The consensus from both delegations this weekend is neither side wants a decoupling,” said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a press conference in Geneva.

“And what had occurred with these very high tariffs… was the equivalent of an embargo, and neither side wants that. We do want trade.”

Economists admit that this agreement is better than expected.

“I thought tariffs would be cut to somewhere around 50%,” Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management in Hong Kong, told Reuters news agency.

But in fact, US tariffs on Chinese imports will now fall to 30%, while Chinese tariffs on US goods will drop to 10%.

“Obviously, this is very positive news for economies in both countries and for the global economy, and makes investors much less concerned about the damage to global supply chains in the short term,” he added.

Trump hailed the progress on Sunday on his Truth Social site: “Many things discussed, much agreed to. A total reset negotiated in a friendly, but constructive, manner.”

Beijing has also softened its tone considerably– and perhaps for good reason.

China can take the pain of an economic war with America – to an extent. It is the lead trade partner for more than 100 other countries.

But officials have become increasingly concerned about the impact the tariffs could have on an economy that is already struggling to deal with a property crisis, stubbornly high youth unemployment and low consumer confidence.

Factory output has slowed and there are reports that some companies are having to lay off workers as production lines of US-bound goods grind to a halt, bringing trade to a standstill.

Data on Saturday showed China’s consumer price index dropped 0.1 percent in April, the third month in a row of decline as consumers hold back from spending and businesses drop prices to compete for customers.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry said on Monday that the agreement reached with the US was an important step to “resolve differences” and “lay the foundation to bridge differences and deepen cooperation”.

Such a positive statement from Beijing would have seemed inconceivable just a month ago.

The two sides have also agreed to more talks, or an “economic and trade consultation mechanism”, as Beijing puts it.

But Trump’s characterisation of a “total reset” in relations may be overly optimistic as there is a slight sting in the tail in Beijing’s statement.

The Commerce Ministry ended with a reminder of who it sees as being in the wrong.

“We hope that the US will continue to work with China to meet each other halfway based on this meeting, thoroughly correct the wrong practice of unilateral tariff increases,” said the spokesperson.

Chinese state media also had a warning for Washington. Xinhua News Agency’s commentary claimed China’s “goodwill and patience has its limits, and it will never be used on those who repress and blackmail us without pause or have no qualms about going back on their word”.

Leaders in Beijing will want to portray an image of strength both to its own people and to the international community. They will want to appear as if they have not budged an inch. The message from China is that it is being responsible and rational and doing what it can to avoid a global recession.

• Xi’s real test is not Trump’s trade war

“This is a victory for conscience and rationality,” said Zhang Yun from the School of International Relations at Nanjing University.

“The talks also established the necessary framework for continued dialogue and negotiations in the future.”

This “victory” is only for 90 days. The tariffs are only paused temporarily to allow for negotiations.

It will allow some trade to flow, and it will soothe worried markets.

But the root of the problem still exists. China still sells far more to the United States than it buys. And there are other, far thornier differences to unpick, from Chinese government subsidies, to key industries, to geopolitical tensions in the Taiwan Strait and beyond.

The fight for a more balanced trade relationship is far from over – it has simply moved.

The frontline has shifted from China’s factory floors and American supermarkets to negotiating tables in both Beijing and Washington.

The US and China have agreed a truce to lower import taxes on goods being traded between the two countries.

The agreement marks a major de-escalation of the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, which has sent shockwaves impacting countless other countries, including the UK.

Here’s what it all means.

Both the US and China have confirmed a reduction in the tariffs they imposed on each other following the initial escalation by President Donald Trump earlier this year.

The deal involves both nations cancelling some tariffs altogether and suspending others for 90 days, by 14 May.

The result is that additional US tariffs on Chinese imports – that’s the extra tariffs imposed in this recent stand-off – will fall to from 145% to 30%, while recently-hiked Chinese tariffs on some US imports will fall from 125% to 10%.

China has also halted and scrapped other non-tariff countermeasures, such as the export of critical minerals to the US, which it put in place in response to the initial escalation.

The US measures still include an extra 20% component aimed at putting pressure on Beijing to do more to curb the illegal trade in fentanyl, a powerful opioid drug.

The announcement came after the two countries held talks in Switzerland, the first between the two countries since Trump sparked the latest tariff war.

Trying to predict the next steps in this ongoing trade war between the US and China these past few months has been difficult to say the least.

But this is a major agreement between the world’s two powerhouse economies and has been broadly welcomed.

Even if the suspended tariffs are reinstated after 90 days, because the vast majority of the tariffs that were announced after Liberation Day have been cancelled, US tariffs on China would only rise to 54% and Chinese tariffs on the US would rise to 34%.

However, talks between both governments are set to continue, so a further deal might be struck.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the consensus from both countries was that “neither side wants a decoupling”, while China’s commerce ministry said the agreement was a step to “lay the foundation to bridge differences and deepen co-operation”.

So relations between the US and China are sounding more friendly, but as we’ve seen so far during this Trump presidency, things can change quickly.

In a word – lots.

In 2024, the biggest category of goods exported from the US to China were soybeans – primarily used to feed China’s estimated 440 million pigs. The US also sent pharmaceuticals and petroleum.

Meanwhile, China exported large volumes of electronics, computers and toys.

The biggest category of US imports from China is smartphones, accounting for 9% of the total. A large proportion of these smartphones Apple iPhones made in China.

However, the US buys much more from China ($440bn) than it sells to it ($145bn), which is something Trump has long been unhappy with.

His reasoning in part for introducing tariffs, and higher ones on countries which sell more to the US than they buy, is to encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised and boost manufacturing jobs.

The escalating trade war in recent months has led to a collapse in the amount of goods being shipped across the Pacific Ocean, but investors believe the truce will lead to a rebound, with shares up for some of the world’s biggest shipping firms.

Politicians on both sides have started and will no doubt continue to claim victory over this truce.

Despite the US and China calling this a joint agreement, people in Beijing will interpret it as the Trump administration walking back from the tariffs, according to Janka Oertel, director of the Asia programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“We are back to square one, now negotiating can begin. The outcome is uncertain but China is in a psychologically stronger position now than before,” she said.

The US will argue its tariff rate on Chinese imports, although lower, is still hefty at 30%.

“This trade deal is a win for the United States, demonstrating President Trump’s unparalleled expertise in securing deals that benefit the American people,” a White House statement said.

Economists at Deutsche Bank have suggested the lowering of tariffs, and last week’s UK-US deal on them, means there’s both “a likely cap and floor” to Trump’s rates.

“The UK has one of the least imbalanced relationships with the US and now has a universal tariff rate of 10%. China has one of the most imbalanced relationships and now has a tariff rate of 30%,” said George Saravelos, head of FX research at the investment bank.

“It is reasonable that these two numbers now set the bounds of where American tariffs will end up this year.”

A top general who failed to report evidence of alleged SAS war crimes in Afghanistan later oversaw the rejection of hundreds of UK resettlement applications from Afghan commandos who served with the elite regiment, BBC Panorama can reveal.

Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins led UK Special Forces (UKSF) in Afghanistan at a time when alleged war crimes were committed. He later appointed a UKSF officer under his command, who had also served in Afghanistan, to assess the Afghan commando applications after special forces headquarters was given a controversial veto over them.

Thousands of applications from individuals with credible evidence of service with Afghan Special Forces, including the units known as the Triples, were then rejected, leaving many of the former commandos at the mercy of the Taliban.

The rejections are controversial because they came at a time when a judge-led public inquiry in the UK had begun investigating the SAS for alleged war crimes on operations on which the Triples were present.

If the Afghan commandos were in the UK, they could be called as witnesses – but the inquiry has no power to compel testimony from foreign nationals who are overseas.

Some of those denied visas were subsequently tortured and killed by the Taliban, according to former colleagues, family members and lawyers.

According to internal emails and testimony from within the Ministry of Defence (MoD), obtained by Panorama, the UK Special Forces officer appointed by Gen Jenkins stood over civil service caseworkers from the resettlement scheme and instructed them to reject the Triples applications, one after another, on what sources described as spurious grounds.

A senior government source close to the process told the BBC that the UK Special Forces officer “would never have acted without direction”, adding that “everything would have gone through Gwyn Jenkins”.

At the time, in 2021-22, Gen Jenkins was the head of all UK Special Forces. He is now the chief strategic adviser to the Defence Secretary John Healey and is tipped to take over as First Sea Lord – the head of the Royal Navy.

Gen Jenkins was made aware of allegations that the SAS was committing extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan, but he failed to report the allegations to military police – Panorama has previously revealed – despite a legal obligation to do so. The suspected unlawful killings continued.

Panorama has now heard eyewitness testimony from veterans who served in UK Special Forces detailing alleged war crimes stretching over more than a decade and involving the SBS as well as the SAS.

Gen Jenkins did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment on this story. The MoD responded on his behalf. It said in a statement that there is no evidence it has tried to prevent former Afghan troops giving evidence to the Inquiry and that “anyone can provide evidence… no matter where in the world they are”.

The MoD added that it was “fully committed to delivering on our pledge to relocate and resettle eligible Afghans and their families to the UK”.

“Each resettlement application is decided on its own merits against the criteria outlined in the ARAP [Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy] and immigration rules,” the statement said.

The rejections of the Triples applications left caseworkers from the ARAP scheme questioning the validity of the process, given that many of the applications contained compelling evidence of service alongside British special forces.

One applicant was rejected even though they had submitted photos of themselves serving alongside Gen Jenkins.

Hundreds of rejections have since been overturned following a government review.

A letter obtained by Panorama shows that concerns were raised among cabinet ministers in January 2024 over the existence of the UK Special Forces’ veto over the Triples applications.

The then Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer wrote to senior Conservatives to say the role of UKSF in denying the applications was “deeply inappropriate” and “a significant conflict of interest, that should be obvious to all”.

He had been compelled to write, he added, because he had been shown evidence “that 5 members of these units have been killed having been rejected for resettlement”.

Mr Mercer, who served alongside the SBS in Afghanistan before becoming an MP, went on to warn that the role of UKSF in the process had a “very high chance of being exposed by the Afghan Inquiry”, which could “lead to serious questions of all those Ministers involved in the process”.

The Triples units – so-called because their designations were CF 333 and ATF 444 – were set up, trained, and paid by UK Special Forces and supported the SAS and SBS on operations targeting Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.

When the country fell to the Taliban in 2021, they were judged to be in grave danger of reprisal and were entitled to apply for resettlement to the UK.

But, according to MoD documents obtained by Panorama, thousands of ARAP applications containing credible evidence of service alongside UK Special Forces were subsequently rejected.

BBC Panorama first revealed last year that it had been UK Special Forces – the very force that trained and served with the Triples – that rejected them.

“We heard some of our Triples were already killed by the Taliban,” said Jumakhan Joya, a former Afghan special forces commanding officer. “Some of them are in jail in a Taliban prison. Some of them have already been disabled by the Taliban. They’re breaking their hands, their legs, their head,” he said.

Mr Joya told the BBC he believed that the existence of the public inquiry was the “only reason” their applications had been vetoed.

The rejections and reported reprisals have outraged some former members of British special forces. “What’s happened is horrendous. It is a betrayal and it shames us all,” one former UK Special Forces officer told Panorama.

Asked by Panorama about the government’s rejection of Triples’ applications, Bruce Houlder KC, who as a former director of service prosecutions was responsible for bringing charges against members of the armed forces, said the government must have known the Triples would have “highly relevant” evidence that would be “much easier to obtain” if they were in the UK.

“I can’t think of any fair reason why we should exclude people from their right to live in this country, which is extended to others, simply because they might be in possession of information which would embarrass special forces,” Mr Houlder said.

“If that is the reason, it’s disreputable and it can’t be supported in any way.”

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is detained at The Hague over his drug war that killed thousands, has been elected mayor of his family’s stronghold, according to early, partial results.

Two of his most loyal aides – long-time assistant Christopher “Bong” Go and Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the one-time police chief in charge of enforcing his drug war – have been re-elected to the country’s senate.

But the midterm election, dominated by a spectacular feud between the Duterte and Marcos dynasties, has also thrown up some unexpected results.

The fate of Duterte’s daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte, remains in the balance as counting continues.

Sara Duterte – who is widely expected to run for president in 2028 – is facing the prospect of a ban from politics should a jury made up of the country’s senate vote to impeach her.

It meant the midterms – which saw 18,000 seats contested, from local officials to governors and senators – became a proxy war between her supporters and her one-time ally, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

Candidates supporting either dynasty went head-to-head, with Duterte’s camp seeking the nine senate votes she needs to avoid impeachment.

But an unofficial tally of 68% of the vote suggests it is unclear which way it has gone.

Marcos Jr’s endorsements appear to not have worked as predicted by opinion polls – only one of his candidates, broadcaster Erwin Tulfo, made the top five in the unofficial count.

The rest of the top five was made up of the two Duterte aides and two independents while there is a tight race for the rest of the winning circle of 12.

Instead, the seats appear to have gone to independents.

The vice-president, meanwhile, remains widely popular despite her political troubles, and the president will be leaving office in 2028.

Results so far show the Duterte’s have managed to retain their powerbase in the south of the country – just two months after the 80-year-old populist leader was arrested at Manila Airport and flown to the Netherlands on the same day to face the International Criminal Court.

It was his arrest – approved by Marcos Jr – which pushed the rivalry between his daughter and the current president to boiling point, a few weeks after the president’s allies in the House of Representatives voted to impeach Vice-President Duterte.

The older Duterte was widely expected to win as mayor, given the family has held the post since the mid-1980s.

Duterte himself led Davao, a sprawling southern metropolis, for two decades before he was elected president in 2016. There, he showcased his drug war that he credited for the city’s success, and won him the support of millions far beyond its borders.

His youngest son, Sebastian, the incumbent mayor, was elected vice-mayor, meaning he can discharge his father’s duties in his absence. Another Duterte son, Paolo, was re-elected as congressman. His grandchildren won local posts.

Duterte’s name remained on the ballot as he has not been convicted of any crime. He beat the scion of a smaller rival political family.

Maintaining a political base in Davao city in the south is crucial for the Dutertes – it is where they get the most voter support.

The election was not just a battle between the two families, however.

Monday’s vote saw long queues under temperatures of 33C (91F) and sporadic reports of violence and vote machines malfunctioning.

Like past elections, song-and-dance, showbusiness-style campaigns played out on stage and on social media, underscoring the country’s personality and celebrity politics that sometimes overshadow more pressing issues such as corruption, high cost of living and creaking infrastructure.

Share markets jumped on Monday after President Trump said weekend talks had resulted in a “total reset” in trade terms between the US and China, a move which goes some way to defuse the high stakes stand-off between the two countries.

The talks in Switzerland resulted in significant cuts to the tit-for-tat tariffs that had been stacked up since January on both sides.

The US will lower those tariffs from 145% to 30%, while China’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods will drop to 10% from 125%.

President Trump told reporters, that, as some of the levies have been suspended rather than cancelled altogether, they might rise again in three months time, if no further progress was made.

However, he said he did not expect them to return to the previous 145% peak.

“We’re not looking to hurt China,” Trump said after the agreement was announced, adding that China was “being hurt very badly”.

“They were closing up factories. They were having a lot of unrest, and they were very happy to be able to do something with us.”

He said he expected to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping “maybe at the end of the week”.

• What does the US-China tariff deal mean?

Investors welcomed the de-escalation. The S&P 500 index jumped more than 3.2% after the announcement, while the Dow climbed 2.8% and the Nasdaq had surged 4.3% by the end of the day.

The gains left the indexes roughly where they started the year, fully recovered from the losses they sustained in the aftermath of the 2 April tariffs announcement, dubbed “Liberation Day” by the Trump administration.

Framed as a campaign to give Americans a fairer deal from international trade, the US announced a universal baseline tariff on all imports to the US.

Around 60 trading partners, which the White House described as the “worst offenders”, were subjected to higher rates than others, and this included China.

Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, which led to levies being ratcheted up on both sides, sending shares sharply lower.

Under the new agreement, the US is reducing the “reciprocal” tariff on Chinese goods that it announced on “Liberation day” to 10%. But it said the higher levy rate was being suspended for 90 days, rather than removed permanently.

The US is also keeping in place the extra 20% tariff aimed at putting pressure on Beijing to do more to curb the illegal trade in fentanyl, a powerful opioid drug.

For its part, China is also reducing to 10% the retaliation tariffs they put in place in response to Trump’s “Liberation day” announcement, again suspended for three months.

China has also agreed to “suspend or remove” all non-tariff measures against the US.

Pre-existing tariffs, including higher sector-specific tariffs on things like steel and cars, remain in place.

However, additional retaliatory tariffs, that were added subsequently, have been cancelled altogether on both sides.

The retreat comes as the first impacts from the tariff-war were beginning to show, with US ports reporting a sharp drop in the number of ships scheduled to arrive from China.

Factory output has slowed in China, and there are reports of firms laying off workers, as US orders dried up.

China’s commerce ministry said the agreement was an important step to “resolve differences” which would help to “deepen co-operation”.

• Faisal Islam: US and China step back from brink
• Laura Bicker: China has come to the table – but this fight is far from over

Tat Kei, a Chinese exporter of personal care appliances to the US, whose factory employs 200 people in Shenzhen, welcomed the announcement, but said he still feared what else might be to come.

“President Trump is going to be here for the next three-and-a-half years. I don’t think this is going to be the end of it… not by a long shot,” he told the BBC.

Elaine Li, head of Greater China at Atlas Ways, which offers services for Chinese enterprises’ global development, also said she believed many Chinese firms would treat the reprieve as temporary.

“For businesses, the best they can do is build a moat around their company before the next round of tariffs arrives,” she said.

On Wall Street Target, Home Depot and Nike were among companies that saw their share price rise sharply on the news. Tech firms including Nvidia, Amazon, Apple and Facebook-owner Meta also moved sharply higher.

European stocks rose on Monday, and earlier Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index had ended the day up 3%.

The deal has boosted shares in shipping companies, with Denmark’s Maersk up more than 12% and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd jumping 14%.

Maersk told the BBC the US-China agreement was “a step in the right direction” and that it now hoped for “a permanent deal that can create the long-term predictability our customers need.”

In the US, the National Retail Federation (NRF) said it was encouraged by the “constructive” negotiations.

“This temporary pause is a critical first step to provide some short-term relief for retailers and other businesses that are in the midst of ordering merchandise for the winter holiday season,” said NRF president Matthew Shay.

The International Chamber of Commerce said the deal sent a clear signal that the US and China both wanted to avoid a “hard decoupling”.

“Ultimately, we hope this weekend’s agreement lays the foundation to lift the cloud of trade policy uncertainty that continues to weigh on investment, hiring, and demand across the world,” said deputy secretary-general, Andrew Wilson.

The gold price – which has benefited from its safe-haven status in recent weeks given the disruption caused by the tariffs – fell 3.1% to $3,223.57 an ounce.

For Maria Khan, the ceasefire this weekend between India and Pakistan came too late.

Maria, who lives in Indian-administered Kashmir, lost her nephew and niece – 12-year-old twins Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima – to cross-border shelling on 7 May. Their parents, her sister Urusa and brother-in-law Rameez Khan, were also injured and are still in hospital.

Hours earlier that day, India had launched a series of strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in retaliation for an earlier militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 tourists.

The strikes were followed by a series of military actions from Islamabad and Delhi that went on till Saturday, including heavy cross-border shelling and drone strikes.

People living along the Line of Control (LoC), the de-factor border between India and Pakistan, were the most vulnerable as shells fell near their homes.

Maria, who lives in Poonch, a town in Indian-administered Kashmir near the LoC, is among dozens of people who lost family members in the conflict.

India has said that 16 people were killed on the morning of 7 May in the shelling by Pakistan. Pakistan has said that at least 30 civilians have died since India launched its retaliatory strikes in the early hours of 7 May.

On 6 May, like every other day, Zain and Urwa came back from school, did their homework, played a bit, had dinner and then went to sleep.

It wasn’t yet dawn when the Khan family heard the sound of gunfire just a few kilometres away from their home.

Terrified, they hunkered down at home and waited for a relative to come pick them up, Maria says.

“My sister was holding Urwa’s hand and my brother-in-law was holding Zain’s hand. They had just left the house when suddenly a shell exploded [nearby]. The splinters hit them – Urva died right there and Zain was flung somewhere in the force of the explosion,” Maria says.

She adds that her sister kept calling out to Zain. When she finally spotted him, a stranger was performing CPR on the boy, trying to revive him. But he was unsuccessful.

• India-Pakistan ceasefire appears to hold after accusations of violations
• How backchannels and US mediators pulled India and Pakistan back from the brink

Meanwhile, Rameez, who lay bleeding and unconscious, was rushed to hospital – first a local one in Poonch and later to a bigger hospital in Rajouri, about four hours away.

Since his injuries were serious, he was shifted again to a hospital in Jammu city, another four-hour journey.

Maria says that Urwa and Zain were the centre of their parents’ lives. Rameez, a teacher, wanted to give them the best education they could get and hence, they shifted to a house that was closer to the children’s school, called Christ School.

On 9 May, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in a press briefing that during heavy shelling along the LoC, a Pakistani shell had fallen behind Christ School in Poonch town and exploded.

Rameez, Maria says, still doesn’t know about the deaths of his children as the family doesn’t want to upset him.

After the shelling on 7 May, hundreds of people left Poonch and other border towns to escape to safer areas. They are slowly returning after the ceasefire.

“The government should have informed people living near border areas earlier, so that they could leave from there and go to a safe place. Perhaps then our children would have been with us today,” she says.

“If war is necessary for the country’s security, we support it,” says Maria.

“We are also saddened by the Pahalgam attack, but we should also think about the lives of those living near the border. Are we not humans?” she asks.

“Now, whether there is a war or ceasefire, our children will not come back.”

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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said his country will respond strongly to what he describes as a future “terrorist attack”, after four days of military exchanges with neighbouring Pakistan.

“This is not an era of war, but this is also not an era of terror,” Modi said in his first public address since days of intense shelling and aerial incursions, carried out by both sides, began.

These followed a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people, for which India blamed a Pakistan-based group. Islamabad has strongly denied backing the group in question.

The US-brokered ceasefire agreed between the nuclear-armed neighbours at the weekend appears to have held so far.

Both nations say they remain vigilant.

“If another terrorist attack against India is carried out, a strong response will be given,” Modi said in his speech on Monday.

• ANALYSIS: How backchannels and US mediators pulled India and Pakistan back from the brink

“Terror and trade talks cannot happen together,” he remarked. This was most likely a reference to comments from US President Donald Trump, who said he had told India and Pakistan his administration would only trade with them if they end the conflict.

“Water and blood cannot flow together,” Modi added, this time referring to the suspension of a water treaty between India and Pakistan.

His comments come after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday said that his country had “acted as a responsible state”, adding: “Our honour, our dignity and our self-respect are more precious to us than our lives.”

He said he believed the water issue with India would be resolved through peaceful negotiations.

Earlier on Monday, top military officials from India and Pakistan discussed finer details of the ceasefire agreed between them over the weekend.

According to the Indian army, the two sides spoke about the need to refrain from any aggressive action.

“It was also agreed that both sides consider immediate measures to ensure troop reduction from the borders and forward areas,” it said in a statement.

India also announced it was reopening 32 airports for civilians that it had earlier said would remain closed until Thursday due to safety concerns.

The recent tensions were the latest in the decades-long rivalry between India and Pakistan, who have fought two wars over Kashmir, a Himalayan region which they claim in full but administer in part.

The hostilities threatened to turn into a fully-fledged war as they appeared unwilling to back down for days.

Both countries have said that dozens of people from both sides died over the four days of fighting last week, partly due to heavy shelling near the de facto border.

Announcing the ceasefire on Saturday, Trump said “it was time to stop the current aggression that could have led to the death and destruction of so many, and so much”.

Both India and Pakistan declared military victory after it came into effect.

On 7 May, India reported striking nine targets inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in response to the 22 April deadly militant attack in the picturesque Pahalgam valley.

In the days after the first strike, India and Pakistan accused each other of cross-border shelling and claimed to have shot down rival drones and aircraft in their airspace.

As the conflict escalated, both nations said they had struck the rival’s military bases.

Indian officials reported striking 11 Pakistan Air Force bases, including one in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad. India also claimed Pakistan lost 35-40 men at the Line of Control – the de facto border – during the conflict and that its air force lost a few aircraft.

Pakistan has accepted that some Indian projectiles landed at its air force bases.

Indian defence forces have also said that they struck nine armed group training facilities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing more than 100 militants.

The Pakistan military, in turn, claims it targeted about 26 military facilities in India and that its drones hovered over the capital, Delhi.

India has confirmed that some Pakistani projectiles landed up at its air force bases, though it did not comment on the claim about Delhi.

Pakistan also claims to have shot down five Indian aircraft, including three French Rafales – India has not acknowledged this or commented on the number, though it said on Sunday that “losses are a part of combat”.

Pakistan denied the claims that an Indian pilot was in its custody after she ejected following an aircraft crash. India has also said that “all our pilots are back home”.

A US-funded flight carrying the first group of 59 white South Africans has landed in Washington where the Trump administration is to grant them refugee status.

President Donald Trump has said the refugee applications for the country’s Afrikaner minority had been expedited as they were victims of “racial discrimination”.

The South African government has denied this saying any allegations of persecution would not meet the threshold required under “refugee law”.

Immigrant rights activists have criticised the fast-track refugee initiative, describing it as “unfair” for the “most vulnerable”. The Trump administration has halted almost all refugee admissions including those coming from countries at war.

The group of white South African refugees, who landed in Washington DC on Monday, received a warm welcome from US authorities at the airport.

Some held young children and waved small American flags in the arrival area adorned with red, white and blue balloons on the walls.

Usually the processing of refugees in the US takes months, even years, but this group has been fast tracked. UNHCR – the United Nations refugee agency – confirmed to the BBC it wasn’t involved in the vetting, as is usually the case.

Asked directly on Monday why Afrikaners’ refugee applications had been expedited compared with other groups, Trump said a “genocide” was taking place and that “white farmers” specifically were being targeted.

“Farmers are being killed, they happen to be white, but whether they’re white or black makes no difference to me.”

The US has criticised domestic South African policy, accusing the government of seizing land from white farmers without any compensation – something the southern African nation says has not happened.

In January President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a controversial law which allows the government to seize privately owned land without compensation in certain circumstances, when it is deemed “equitable and in the public interest”.

There had been anger in South Africa over the slow pace of land reform in the three decades since the end of the racist apartheid system.

White South Africans make up 7.3% of the population, but own the vast majority of privately held farmland, according to a 2017 government report.

One of Trump’s closest advisers, South African-born Elon Musk, has previously said there was a “genocide of white people” in South Africa and accused the government of passing “racist ownership laws”.

The claims of a genocide of white people have been widely discredited.

On Monday, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen described the resettlement as “baffling” given the “indefinite suspension for thousands of legitimate asylum seekers” from other countries.

In a statement sent to the BBC, Gregory Meeks, ranking Democratic member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Trump administration’s refugee resettlement was “not just a racist dog whistle, it’s a politically motivated rewrite of history”.

“Refugee policy should protect the vulnerable, not serve an extremist agenda,” he said.

Melissa Keaney, a lawyer with the International Refugee Assistance project, said the White House’s decision to fast-track the Afrikaners’ arrival amounted to “a lot of hypocrisy and unequal treatment”.

“The speed at which that [the Afrikaners] were processed is remarkable and unprecedented, and required, I think, a lot of sort of bending rules by the state department and changing procedure,” she told the BBC.

Her organisation is suing the Trump administration after it indefinitely suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) in January. She said that policy had left over 120,000 conditionally approved refugees in limbo.

Afrikaner author Max du Preez told the BBC’s Newsday radio programme that claims of persecution of white South Africans were a “total absurdity” and “based on nothing”.

Figures from the South African police show that in 2024, 44 murders were recorded on farms and smaller plots of agricultural land, with eight of those killed being farmers.

South Africa does not report on crime statistics broken down by race but a majority of the country’s farmers are white, while other people living on farms, such as workers, are mostly black.

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Bilateral relations between the US and South Africa have been strained since President Trump first tasked his administration with resettling Afrikaners, a group with mostly Dutch ancestry, in the US.

In March, South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled after accusing President Trump of using “white victimhood as a dog whistle”, leading to the US accusing Mr Rasool of “race-baiting”.

The US has also criticised South Africa for taking an “aggressive” position against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Pretoria has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of genocide against Palestinians – a claim the Israelis strongly reject.

President Trump’s openness to accepting Afrikaner refugees comes as the US has engaged in a wider crackdown on migrants and asylum seekers from other countries.

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Pope Leo XIV has called for the release of imprisoned journalists in his first address to members of the media at the Vatican.

He expressed solidarity with journalists who were jailed “for seeking and reporting the truth” and said their suffering “challenges the conscience of nations and the international community”.

Press freedom must be defended, he said. The media must ensure that the “precious gift” of free speech is protected.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said 361 journalists were in jail in 2024.

Pope Leo, who was chosen as the new leader of the Catholic Church on Thursday, also highlighted the role journalists can play in bringing attention to injustice and poverty in the world.

He urged the media to focus on reporting the truth instead of taking part in partisan divisions, and not to give space to “fanaticism and hatred.”

Speaking in the Vatican’s Paul VI audience hall, he said “the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.”

“We do not need loud, forceful communication,” he said, “but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice.”

The new pope also raised concerns about artificial intelligence, telling the assembled media they should use AI with “responsibility and discernment.”

Reporters should ensure that AI can be used for the “benefit of all of humanity,” he said.

Leo XIV spoke mainly in Italian, but opened with a quip in English about the huge round of applause he received when he walked into the room.

“Thank you for this wonderful reception,” he said.

“They say that when they clap at the beginning, it doesn’t matter much. If you’re still awake at the end and still want to applaud, thank you very much.”

Outlawed Kurdish group the PKK, which has waged a 40-year insurgency against Turkey, has announced it is laying down its arms and disbanding.

The move followed a call in February by the group’s jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, for it to disband.

The PKK insurgency initially aimed to create an independent homeland for Kurds, who account for about 20% of Turkey’s population. But it has since moved away from its separatist goals, focusing instead on more autonomy and greater Kurdish rights.

More than 40,000 people have been killed since the insurgency began.

The PKK – which is banned as a terrorist group in Turkey, the EU, UK and US – said it has “completed its historical mission” and would “end the method of armed struggle.”

From now on, the Kurdish issue “can be resolved through democratic politics”, the group said in a statement published on the PKK-affiliated news agency ANF.

In February, Ocalan, 76, called on his movement to lay down its arms and dissolve itself. The PKK leader has been in solitary confinement in prison on an island in the Sea of Marmara, south-west of Istanbul, since 1999.

Ocalan wrote a letter from prison in February saying “there is no alternative to democracy in the pursuit and realisation of a political system. Democratic consensus is the fundamental way.”

It is unclear what Ocalan and his supporters will get in return for disbanding but there is speculation that he may be paroled.

Kurdish politicians will be hoping for a new political dialogue, and a pathway towards greater Kurdish rights.

Both sides had reasons to do a deal now.

The PKK has been hit hard by the Turkish military in recent years, and regional changes have made it harder for them and their affiliates to operate in Iraq and Syria.

President Erdogan needs the support of pro Kurdish political parties if he is to be able to run again in Turkey’s next presidential election, due in 2028.

The decision to disband was an important step towards a “terror-free Turkey”, and the process would be monitored by state institutions, a spokesperson for President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party said, according to Reuters news agency.

Winthrop Rodgers, from the international affairs think tank Chatham House, said it would take “a major democratic transition by Turkey” to accommodate demands from Kurdish political parties.

There has been “some goodwill” from some Turkish leaders in recent months, Mr Rodgers said, which allowed the PKK disbandment to play out.

He added: “But whether that extends to the major changes needed to ensure full Kurdish participation in politics and society is far less clear.

“In a lot of ways, the ball is in Turkey’s court.”

A UN-backed assessment has said that Gaza’s population of around 2.1 million Palestinians is at “critical risk” of famine and faces “extreme levels of food insecurity” as an Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid continues.

The latest report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said there had been a “major deterioration” since October 2024, but concluded famine was not currently occurring.

The two-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas “led to a temporary reprieve” in Gaza, the report said, but renewed hostilities and an Israeli blockade on aid – ongoing since early March – had “reversed” any improvements.

Some 244,000 people were currently experiencing the most severe, or “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity, it said, and called for urgent action to prevent the “increasingly likely” risk of famine.

Israel renewed its military operations in Gaza in mid-March and has prevented food, medication and other aid from entering Gaza for 70 days, saying it is putting pressure on Hamas to release its remaining hostages.

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There has been international condemnation of the blockade, including from the UN which has said it has supplies at Gaza’s border crossings, ready to enter if Israel allows. Aid agencies have said the blockade could be a war crime and amounts to a policy of starvation.

The IPC assessment, released on Monday, found half a million people – or one in five – were facing starvation in Gaza. It said nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months to April 2026.

It added: “Many households are resorting to extreme measures to find food, including begging, and collecting garbage to sell to buy something to eat.”

The report said the current situation, compared to its October 2024 analysis, represented “a major deterioration in one of the world’s most severe food and nutrition crises driven by conflict and characterised by untold human suffering”.

Its analysis found that 1.95 million people, or 93% of Gaza’s population, were living through high levels of acute food insecurity, including 244,000 experiencing “catastrophic” levels.

The IPC – a global initiative by UN agencies, aid groups and governments – is the primary mechanism the international community uses to conclude whether a famine is happening.

Israeli officials have denied there is a hunger crisis in Gaza because of the quantity of aid that entered during the ceasefire.

It comes as Hamas said it would release Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander as part of efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement. The group said it was also intended to facilitate a deal for the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The Israeli PM’s office said it had not committed to any ceasefire but only to a “safe corridor” for Mr Alexander’s release.

US President Donald Trump arrives in the Middle East on Tuesday, and Israel has vowed to expand its military offensive against Hamas if no deal is reached by the end of his visit.

Israeli officials have said the plans for their expanded offensive include seizing all of the territory indefinitely, forcibly displacing Palestinians to the south, and taking over aid distribution with private companies despite opposition from the UN and its humanitarian partners, who say they will not co-operate because it appears to “weaponise” aid.

In its report, the IPC said the aid distribution plans were estimated to be “highly insufficient” and it was expected that large parts of the population would “face significant issues in accessing the proposed distribution sites”.

The war was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which saw about 1,200 people killed and more than 250 taken hostage. Some 59 hostages remain in Gaza, up to 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel’s military campaign has killed 52,862 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

After 40 years, with 40,000 people killed, and without securing a Kurdish homeland, the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, the PKK, is ending its war against the Turkish state.

This signals the end of one of the longest conflicts in the world – a historic moment for Turkey, its Kurdish minority, and neighbouring countries into which the conflict has spilled over.

A spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party said it was an important step towards a country free of terror.

But what will the PKK get for disarming and disbanding? So far the government has made no promises – publicly at least.

Sheltering inside a tea shop from a sudden violent hail storm that battered the ancient city of Diyabakir, Necmettin Bilmez, 65, a driver, was sceptical about what might follow.

“They [the government] have been tricking us for thousands of years,” he said.

“When I get an ID card in my pocket saying I am Kurdish, I will believe everything will be solved. Otherwise, I don’t believe in this.”

Sitting nearby on a small woven stool, Mehmet Ek, 80, had a different view.

“This has come late,” he said.

“I wish it had happened ten years ago. But still anyone from any side who will stop this bloodshed, I salute them,” he said, tipping the top of his flat cap.

“This conflict is brother on brother. The one who dies in the mountains [PKK] is ours and the soldier [from the government] is ours.

“We are all losing, Turks and Kurds.”

He wants an amnesty for PKK fighters – like many here – and the release of jailed Kurdish politicians.

“If all that happens it will be a beautiful peace,” he said.

In this majority Kurdish city in south-eastern Turkey – the de facto Kurdish capital – we found a muted response to PKK’s announcement.

The city has been scarred and reshaped by the conflict.

Turkish forces and the PKK battled in the heart of Diyarbakir in 2015. You can still see the rubble of buildings flattened by the Turkish army.

Many local people told us they welcomed peace, or the idea of it, and wanted no more deaths – Turkish or Kurdish.

“No one has achieved anything,” said Ibrahim Nazlican, 63, drinking tea in the shade of the towering city walls, which have guarded Diyarbakir since Roman times.

“There is nothing but harm and loss, on this side and on that side. There are no winners.”

The conflict has ranged from the mountains of northern Iraq – which became PKK headquarters in recent years – to Turkey’s biggest cities.

Outside an Istanbul football stadium in 2016, a PKK affiliate carried out a double bombing killing 38 police officers and 8 civilians. Many Kurds and Turks are hoping this is the end of a dark chapter, which has claimed 40,000 lives

The PKK decision lay down its arms followed a call in February by its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who said there was “no alternative to democracy”.

For now, the 76-year-old remains in his cell in an island prison off of Istanbul, where he has been held since 1999.

To his supporters, he remains a heroic figure who has put their cause on a global agenda. They want him released.

Menice, 47, is among them. She insisted his release was the key to a new dawn for the Kurds, who account for up to 20% of the Turkish population.

“We want peace, but if our leader is not free, we will never be free,” she said.

“If he is free, we will all be free and the Kurdish problem will be solved.”

She is surrounded by family photos of loved ones who have died fighting for the PKK – which is classed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the UK, the US and the EU.

She has lost five relatives including her brother and her oldest son Zindan.

He joined the PKK at 17, and was dead at 25, killed in a Turkish airstrike three years ago.

Menice’s eyes fill with tears as she tells us how he used to help her with the housework.

His path may have been mapped out from birth.

“We named him Zindan [meaning cell] because his father was in prison when he was born,” she told us.

One large photograph hangs on the wall shows Zindan alongside his brother, Berxwendan, who followed his footsteps “up the mountain” to the PKK, when he reached the age of 17.

Berxwenden is now 23. His mother did not know if he was alive or dead until he sent his family a photo of himself during Ramadan in March.

Menice is hoping her surviving son may now come back.

“I hope Berxwendan and his friends will come home. As a mother, I want peace. Let there be no killings. Hasn’t there been enough suffering for everyone?”

But does she believe that there can be peace between Turkey and the Kurds?

“I believe in us, in Ocalan, and our nation [the Kurds],” she said firmly.

“The enemy [the Turkish authorities] has forced us not to believe in them.”

However, pro-Kurdish political parties have some leverage.

Erdogan needs their support to enable him to run for a third term as president in elections due in 2028.

For its part, the PKK has been hit hard by the Turkish military in recent years with leaders and fighters hunted down in drone warfare.

And regional change, in Iran and Syria, means the militant group and its affiliates have less freedom to operate.

Both sides have their reasons for doing a deal now. That may be grounds for hope.

The jury in the trial of American music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who is accused of running a sprawling sex trafficking operation, will be sworn in on Monday before opening statements are delivered by lawyers for both sides.

The 55-year-old was arrested last September and faces charges including racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He could face life in prison if convicted.

Mr Combs has pleaded not guilty and denied all allegations against him.

Dozens of prospective jurors were screened before being whittled down to 12 – and six alternates – ahead of Monday.

The first week of testimony will include two witnesses who are expected to speak briefly, prosecutors said, followed by a third witness who will see more time on the stand.

Mr Combs also faces dozens of civil lawsuits from individuals who accuse him of using his power to drug, assault, rape, intimidate and silence people. He has said the individual lawsuits are attempts “for a quick payday”.

The court is expected to be open to the public, but proceedings will not be televised or streamed online.

Cameras, phones and electronic devices are normally not allowed in US federal courtrooms.

The BBC will bring you live updates as the jury is seated and opening statements begin on Monday straight from the court.

• LIVE: Opening statements begin in the sex-trafficking trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

The trial proceedings began with jury selection on Monday 5 May in front of US District Judge Arun Subramanian, at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan courthouse in lower Manhattan.

The judge told jurors the trial itself could last around eight weeks.

Dozens of potential jurors were vetted by the court.

The process included potential jurors looking through a long list of places and people that could be mentioned during trial, with names like Kanye West and Kid Cudi.

The “People and Places” list was so long that Judge Subramanian said she “felt like I was reading an appendix for Lord of the Rings”.

Potential jurors also had to fill out questionnaires that asked whether they had “views about hip hop artists” or “feelings concerning violence, sexual assault”.

The judge reminded the court several times of the importance of choosing a fair and impartial jury.

Nearly all the potential jurors had read news reports of the allegations in the case and many had seen footage of Mr Combs kicking his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura in a hotel hallway.

In the federal criminal case being heard in New York, Mr Combs is charged with racketeering conspiracy, two charges of sex trafficking and two charges of transportation to engage in prostitution.

Many of the most severe allegations relate to the racketeering conspiracy charge.

This includes accusations of kidnapping, drugging, and coercing women into sexual activities, sometimes using firearms or threats of violence.

In a raid on his Los Angeles mansion, police found supplies that they said were intended for use in orgies known as “freak offs”, including drugs and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil.

Separately, Mr Combs faces a number of lawsuits accusing him of rape and assault.

Tony Buzbee, a Texas lawyer handling some of these cases, said that more than 100 women and men from across the US had either filed lawsuits against the rap mogul or intended to do so.

In December 2023, a woman known in court papers as Jane Doe alleged that she was “gang raped” by Mr Combs and others in 2003, when she was 17. She said she was given “copious amounts of drugs and alcohol” before the attack.

Mr Combs’ legal team dismissed the flurry of lawsuits as “clear attempts to garner publicity.”

Mr Combs’ current legal issues began in late 2023 when he was sued by Ms Ventura, also known as Cassie, for violent abuse and rape.

That lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount a day after it was filed, with Mr Combs maintaining his innocence.

Since then, dozens of other people have filed lawsuits accusing Mr Combs of sexual assault, with accusations dating back to 1991. He denies all the claims.

His controversial history with Ms Ventura resurfaced in 2024, when CNN leaked CCTV footage from 2016 showing Mr Combs kicking his ex-girlfriend as she lay on a hotel hallway floor.

He apologised for his behaviour, saying: “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”

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In a statement to the BBC about the federal criminal charges, Mr Combs’ lawyer said: “Mr Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts and the integrity of the judicial process.

“In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone – man or woman, adult or minor.”

Diddy’s lawyers later filed a motion to dismiss one part of the federal indictment in which he is accused of transportation to engage in prostitution. His team argued he was being unfairly targeted due to his race.

In a hearing in New York a week before the trial officially began, his attorneys told the court that the rapper led the “lifestyle” of a “swinger” and was not a criminal.

They said he thought it was “appropriate” to have multiple sex partners, including sex workers.

At the same hearing, prosecutors revealed that Mr Combs had rejected a plea deal.

Mr Combs’ lawyers have consistently denied the allegations made against him in the civil lawsuits, describing them as “sickening” and suggesting they were made by “individuals looking for a quick payday”.

If convicted on the racketeering charge, Mr Combs faces up to life in prison.

He faces another statutory minimum sentence of 15 years if he is found guilty of sex trafficking.

Transportation for purposes of prostitution carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Mr Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, since his arrest on 16 September 2024.

Critics describe the prison as overcrowded and understaffed, with a culture of violence.

His lawyers argued for his release, citing the jail’s “horrific” conditions, but a New York federal judge denied the bail request, describing Mr Combs as a “serious flight risk”.

Prosecutors previously alleged that Mr Combs had broken prison rules by contacting potential witnesses.

They accused him of “relentless efforts” to “corruptly influence witness testimony”.

A judge granted Mr Combs permission to wear non-prison clothing during his trial rather than the jumpsuits he wears in jail.

When he appeared in court for jury selection, the rapper wore a blue sweater and white shirt with glasses on his head.

Mr Combs – who has also gone by the names Puffy, Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Love, and Brother Love – emerged in the hip-hop scene in the 1990s.

His early music career success included helping launch the careers of Mary J Blige and Christopher Wallace – aka Biggie Smalls, or The Notorious B.I.G.

His music label Bad Boy Records became one of the most important labels in rap and expanded to include Faith Evans, Ma$e, 112, Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez.

Mr Combs also had a prolific business career outside of music, including a deal with British drinks company Diageo to promote the French vodka brand Cîroc.

In 2023, he released his fifth record The Love Album: Off The Grid and earned his first solo nomination at the Grammy awards. He also was named a Global Icon at the MTV Awards.

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A charismatic 37-year-old, Burkina Faso’s military ruler Capt Ibrahim Traoré has skilfully built the persona of a pan-Africanist leader determined to free his nation from what he regards as the clutches of Western imperialism and neo-colonialism.

His message has resonated across Africa and beyond, with his admirers seeing him as following in the footsteps of African heroes like Burkina Faso’s very own Thomas Sankara – a Marxist revolutionary who is sometimes referred to as “Africa’s Che Guevara”.

“Traoré’s impact is huge. I have even heard politicians and authors in countries like Kenya [in East Africa] say: ‘This is it. He is the man’,” Beverly Ochieng, a senior researcher at global consultancy firm Control Risks, told the BBC.

“His messages reflect the age we are living in, when many Africans are questioning the relationship with the West, and why there is still so much poverty in such a resource-rich continent,” she said.

After seizing power in a coup in 2022, Traoré’s regime ditched former colonial power France in favour of a strong alliance with Russia, that has included the deployment of a Russian paramilitary brigade, and adopted left-wing economic policies.

This included setting up a state-owned mining company, requiring foreign firms to give it a 15% stake in their local operations and to transfer skills to Burkinabé people.

The rule also applied to Russian miner Nordgold, which was given a licence in late April for its latest investment in Burkina Faso’s gold industry.

As part of what Traoré calls a “revolution” to ensure Burkina Faso benefits from its mineral wealth, the junta is also building a gold refinery and establishing national gold reserves for the first time in the nation’s history.

However, Western-owned firms appear to be facing a tough time, with Australia-headquartered Sarama Resources launching arbitration proceedings against Burkina Faso in late 2024 following the withdrawal of an exploration licence.

The junta has also nationalised two gold mines previously owned by a London-listed firm, and said last month that it planned to take control of more foreign-owned mines.

Enoch Randy Aikins, a researcher at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, told the BBC that Traoré’s radical reforms had increased his popularity in Africa.

“He is now arguably Africa’s most popular, if not favourite, president,” Mr Aikins said.

His popularity has been fuelled through social media, including many misleading posts intended to bolster his revolutionary image.

AI-generated videos of music stars like R Kelly, Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Beyoncé are seen immortalising him through song – though they have done nothing of the sort.

Ms Ochieng said that Traoré first caught the attention of Africans when he spoke at the Russia-Africa summit in 2023, telling African leaders to “stop behaving like puppets who dance every time the imperialists pull the strings”.

This speech was heavily publicised by Russian media, which has become a major player in promoting Traoré’s pan-Africanist image.

Traoré attended commemorations in Russia last week to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. He posted on X that he, along with military leaders from neighbouring Mali and Niger, were inspired by it “to winning the war against terrorism and imperialism at all costs”.

Thanks to his rhetoric and pushed by a slick social media campaign, his appeal has spread around the world, including among African-Americans and Black Britons, Ms Ochieng noted.

“Everyone who has experienced racism, colonialism and slavery can relate to his messages,” Ms Ochieng said, pointing out that African-American rapper Meek Mill had posted about him on X late last year, saying how much he liked his “energy and heart” – though he was ridiculed for mixing up names by referring to Traoré as Burkina Faso and later deleted the post.

But France’s president is not a fan, describing Traoré as part of a “baroque alliance between self-proclaimed pan-Africans and neo-imperialists”.

Emmanuel Macron was also referring to Russia and China whom he accused, in a 2023 speech, of provoking coups in Africa’s former French colonies, and hypocritically stirring up old arguments over sovereignty and colonial exploitation.

Traoré’s popularity comes despite the fact that he has failed to fulfil his pledge to quell a 10-year Islamist insurgency that has fuelled ethnic divisions and has now spread to once-peaceful neighbours like Benin.

His junta has also cracked down on dissent, including the opposition, media and civil society groups and punished critics, among them medics and magistrates, by sending them to the front-lines of the war against the jihadists.

For Rinaldo Depagne, the Africa deputy director of the International Crisis Group think-tank, Traoré commands such support because “he is young in a country with a young population” – the median age is 17.7 years.

“He is media-savvy, and uses the past to build his popularity as a reincarnation of Sankara,” he told the BBC.

“And he knows the art of politics – how to make a nation completely traumatised by war feel there is a better future. He is really good at that game.”

Sankara rose to power in a coup in 1983 at the age of 33, rallied the nation under the motto “Fatherland or death, we will win!”, and was killed four years later in another coup that put Burkina Faso back in France’s political orbit until Traoré’s seizure of power.

Ghanaian security analyst Prof Kwesi Aning, who previously worked at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, said the popularity of the military leader reflected a political shift taking place on the continent, especially in West Africa.

A 2024 survey in 39 countries by Afrobarometer showed a drop in support for democracy, although it remained the most popular form of government.

“Democracy has failed to give hope to the youth. It has not delivered jobs or better education and health,” Prof Aning told the BBC.

He said Traoré was “offering an alternative, and re-capturing the spirit of two historic epochs”:

• The post-independence era, when there were leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia
• And a later era with Sankara and Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings, whose coup in 1979 “was also very popular at the time”.

It was Traoré who stole the show at the inauguration of Ghana’s President John Mahama in January, when he arrived wearing battle fatigues with a pistol in his holster.

“There were already 21 heads of state there, but when Traoré walked in, the place lit up. Even my president’s bodyguards were running after him,” Prof Aning said.

Traoré offered a sharply contrasting image to some of the continent’s other leaders, who struggled to walk but clung to power by rigging elections, he said.

“Traoré is stylish and confident, with a very open face and a small smile. He is also a powerful orator, and presents himself as a man of the people.”

In a sign that his Russian-allied junta has made some progress on the economic front, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have given a generally upbeat assessment.

In a statement in early April, the IMF said that despite a “challenging humanitarian and security” environment, the economy was expected to remain “robust” in 2025, and the regime had made “commendable progress” in raising domestic revenue, containing the public wage bill, and increasing spending on education, health and social protection.

As for the World Bank, it said that inflation had surged from 0.7% in 2023 to 4.2% in 2024, but the extreme poverty rate, which refers to people living on less than $2.15 [£1.61] a day, had fallen by almost two percentage points to 24.9% because of “robust growth” in the agriculture and services sectors.

Despite these reports from US-based financial institutions, relations with both France and America have been frosty.

A recent example being the claim by the head of the US Africa Command, Gen Michael Langley, that Traoré was using Burkina Faso’s gold reserves for his junta’s protection rather than the nation’s benefit.

This appeared to be a reference to the long-standing view of the US, and some of its African allies, that Russian forces were propping up Traoré in exchange for a stake in Burkina Faso’s gold industry – undermining the military ruler’s image as a leader who expelled French troops in 2023 to reclaim the country’s sovereignty.

Gen Langley’s comments, made in early April during a US Senate committee hearing, triggered an uproar among the captain’s supporters, who felt their hero was being smeared.

This was further inflamed when shortly afterwards, the Burkinabé junta said it had foiled a coup plot, alleging the plotters were based in neighbouring Ivory Coast – where Gen Langley then made a visit.

Ivory Coast denied being involved in any plot, while the US Africa Command said Gen Langley’s visit had focused on addressing “common security challenges” – including “violent extremism”.

But the junta took the opportunity to organise one of its biggest rallies in Burkina Faso’s capital over fears that “imperialists” and their “lackeys” were trying to depose the captain.

“Because Colin Powell lied, Iraq was destroyed. Barack Obama lied, Gaddafi was killed. But this time, their lies won’t affect us,” one protester, musician Ocibi Johann, told the Associated Press news agency.

Rallies in solidarity with Traoré were also held abroad, including in London, on the same day.

He took to social media afterwards, posting in French and English, to express his gratitude to them for sharing his vision “for a new Burkina Faso and a new Africa”, adding: “Together, in solidarity, we will defeat imperialism and neo-colonialism for a free, dignified and sovereign Africa.”

It is impossible to say how things will end for the young captain, but he – along with military leaders in Mali and Niger – have certainly shaken up West Africa, and other states have followed their example by ordering French forces to leave.

The three military-ruled neighbours have also pulled out of the regional trade and security grouping Ecowas, formed their own alliance, and have ended free trade in the region by announcing the imposition of a 0.5% tariff on goods coming into their countries.

Mr Aikins said Traoré could learn from others, pointing out that when Rawlings took power in Ghana at the age of 32, he was known as “Junior Jesus” but after 19 years he left a mixed legacy – he had been unable to stem corruption despite helping to create an “enduring” democracy.

For a “lasting legacy”, Mr Aikins said, Traoré should focus on achieving peace and building strong state institutions to bring about good governance rather than “personalising” power and cracking down on dissent.

• Capt Ibrahim Traoré: From shy schoolboy to military leader
• Why France faces so much anger in West Africa
• Why young Africans are celebrating military takeovers

When the Philippines voted on Monday, Sara Duterte’s name was not on the ballot.

But the results of the election, which includes 12 senate races, impacts her political future.

It affects both her role as the Philippines’ current vice-president and any hopes she might have of running for the country’s presidency one day, as she faces the prospect of a ban from politics – decided by lawmakers in the Senate.

The 46-year-old is the eldest daughter of the Philippines’ former President Rodrigo Duterte. She trained as a lawyer before entering politics in 2007, when she was elected as her father’s vice-mayor in their family’s hometown Davao.

Rodrigo Duterte has described her as the “alpha” character of the family, who always gets her way.

The younger Duterte was filmed in 2011 punching a court official in the face after he refused her request, leading one local news outlet to bestow the nickname of “the slugger” upon her.

She and her father are known to share similar traits, as well as a passion for riding big motorbikes. Sara is said to be her father’s favourite child, though she has also said they share a “love-hate relationship”.

One cable from the US embassy in Manila in 2009, leaked by Wikileaks, described her as “a tough-minded individual who, like her father, is difficult to engage”.

• Follow live updates: Millions vote in Philippines midterms as Marcos-Duterte feud heats up

Born in 1978, Sara is Rodrigo Duterte’s second child with his first wife, flight attendant Elizabeth Zimmerman.

In 1999 she graduated with a major in BS Respiratory Therapy. During her inauguration as vice-president in 2022, she said that in her youth she was “consumed by a dream to become a doctor” but was “directed toward another way”.

In 2005 she graduated with a law degree and passed the Philippine Bar Examination. But it wasn’t long before her father expressed his wish for her to enter politics as his running mate in mayoral elections – hoping that if and when he ran for president, Sara would help protect his mayoral legacy.

Rodrigo would only go ahead with his presidential bid once Sara had agreed to succeed him as mayor of Davao – and in 2010, at 32, she succeeded her father to become the city’s first female mayor.

In response to many people’s apparent confusion as to how they should address her, Sara Duterte ended her inaugural address with a specific appeal: “call me Inday Sara”.

“Inday”, an honorific in the south, means a respected elder woman. It also played into the Duterte’s optics: of a family from the regional south facing off against imperial Manila.

In Manila, “inday” was previously used to refer to house help from the south – but Sara reclaimed the term. Now even her father calls her by that name.

It was in 2021 that Sara decided to make her way to national politics.

The next year she ran on a joint ticket with the scion of another political dynasty – Ferdinand Marcos Jr. He was going for the top job, with Duterte as his deputy.

The assumption was that she would then be in a prime position to contest the next presidential election in 2028, as presidents are limited only to one six-year term in the Philippines.

The strategy proved effective and the duo won by a landslide. But then it quickly started to unravel.

Cracks started to emerge in their alliance even before the euphoria of their election win faded. Duterte publicly expressed her preference to be defence secretary but she was instead handed the education portfolio.

The House of Representatives soon after scrutinised Duterte’s request for confidential funds – millions of pesos that she could spend without stringent documentation.

Then, Rodrigo Duterte spoke at a late night rally, accusing President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos of being a junkie and a weak leader.

Soon after, First Lady Liza Marcos snubbed Sara Duterte at an event, in full view of news cameras. She admitted that it was intentional, saying Duterte should not have stayed silent in the background while her father accused the president of drug use.

After Duterte resigned from the cabinet in July last year, her language became increasingly inflammatory.

She said she had “talked to someone” to “go kill” Marcos, his wife and his cousin, who is also the speaker of the House. She also told reporters her relationship with Marcos had become toxic and she dreamed of cutting off his head.

Such remarks are shocking for someone who is not acquainted with Philippine politics. But Duterte’s strong personality has only endeared her to the public and she remains popular in the south, as well as among the millions of overseas Filipino workers.

But in February this year, lawmakers in the lower house of parliament voted to impeach Duterte, accusing her of misusing public funds and threatening to have President Marcos assassinated.

She will be tried by the Senate and, if found guilty, removed from office and banned from running in future elections.

Duterte has denied the charges and alleges she is the victim of a political vendetta.

Another blow came in March when her father was arrested and extradited to the Hague over the thousands of killings during his war on drugs. She then flew to the Netherlands to meet him while he was in custody.

He is still in jail, awaiting trial, but has been elected mayor of Davao in one of several local races that also took place on Monday.

Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest was a big part of his daughter’s campaign for her senate picks, with Sara and the candidates often chanting “bring him home”.

Those candidates included two key family loyalists who look set to win their seats, according to early, partial results.

This would be an important victory for Sara, because the composition of the house determines whether or not she will be impeached.

For her to be impeached, two-thirds of the Senate would need to vote for it.

But Monday’s results, which include some surprise wins, make it harder to predict the outcome of the trial.

For now, Sara Duterte’s fate hangs in the balance.

For Maria Khan, the ceasefire this weekend between India and Pakistan came too late.

Maria, who lives in Indian-administered Kashmir, lost her nephew and niece – 12-year-old twins Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima – to cross-border shelling on 7 May. Their parents, her sister Urusa and brother-in-law Rameez Khan, were also injured and are still in hospital.

Hours earlier that day, India had launched a series of strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in retaliation for an earlier militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 tourists.

The strikes were followed by a series of military actions from Islamabad and Delhi that went on till Saturday, including heavy cross-border shelling and drone strikes.

People living along the Line of Control (LoC), the de-factor border between India and Pakistan, were the most vulnerable as shells fell near their homes.

Maria, who lives in Poonch, a town in Indian-administered Kashmir near the LoC, is among dozens of people who lost family members in the conflict.

India has said that 16 people were killed on the morning of 7 May in the shelling by Pakistan. Pakistan has said that at least 30 civilians have died since India launched its retaliatory strikes in the early hours of 7 May.

On 6 May, like every other day, Zain and Urwa came back from school, did their homework, played a bit, had dinner and then went to sleep.

It wasn’t yet dawn when the Khan family heard the sound of gunfire just a few kilometres away from their home.

Terrified, they hunkered down at home and waited for a relative to come pick them up, Maria says.

“My sister was holding Urwa’s hand and my brother-in-law was holding Zain’s hand. They had just left the house when suddenly a shell exploded [nearby]. The splinters hit them – Urva died right there and Zain was flung somewhere in the force of the explosion,” Maria says.

She adds that her sister kept calling out to Zain. When she finally spotted him, a stranger was performing CPR on the boy, trying to revive him. But he was unsuccessful.

• India-Pakistan ceasefire appears to hold after accusations of violations
• How backchannels and US mediators pulled India and Pakistan back from the brink

Meanwhile, Rameez, who lay bleeding and unconscious, was rushed to hospital – first a local one in Poonch and later to a bigger hospital in Rajouri, about four hours away.

Since his injuries were serious, he was shifted again to a hospital in Jammu city, another four-hour journey.

Maria says that Urwa and Zain were the centre of their parents’ lives. Rameez, a teacher, wanted to give them the best education they could get and hence, they shifted to a house that was closer to the children’s school, called Christ School.

On 9 May, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in a press briefing that during heavy shelling along the LoC, a Pakistani shell had fallen behind Christ School in Poonch town and exploded.

Rameez, Maria says, still doesn’t know about the deaths of his children as the family doesn’t want to upset him.

After the shelling on 7 May, hundreds of people left Poonch and other border towns to escape to safer areas. They are slowly returning after the ceasefire.

“The government should have informed people living near border areas earlier, so that they could leave from there and go to a safe place. Perhaps then our children would have been with us today,” she says.

“If war is necessary for the country’s security, we support it,” says Maria.

“We are also saddened by the Pahalgam attack, but we should also think about the lives of those living near the border. Are we not humans?” she asks.

“Now, whether there is a war or ceasefire, our children will not come back.”

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• Watch: How tensions escalated between India and Pakistan
• ‘It felt like the sky turned red’, says witness to India strike in Pakistan
• Villagers tell BBC they survived shelling in Indian-administered Kashmir

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has been dealt an unexpected blow in the midterms, with his Senate candidates set to pick up fewer seats than expected, according to early results.

The election was a showdown between Marcos and his Vice-President Sara Duterte, daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte.

The pair, who represent the country’s most powerful families, won the 2022 election together – but their alliance has since collapsed.

Monday’s election, which included multiple races from the council to the Congress, was an important test for 67-year-old Marcos, the son of an ousted dictator who rebranded his father’s reign to make a comeback in the 2022 election.

Born in 1957 to Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Bongbong was just eight years old when his father became president. He was the second of three children, and the only son. The couple later adopted another girl.

Bongbong’s father, a former lawyer, served in the Congress and Senate, while his mother was a singer and former beauty pageant winner. Both would achieve notoriety – as the family amassed enormous wealth under a brutal regime, they became synonymous with excess and corruption.

During his first term between 1965 and 1969, Ferdinand Marcos Sr was fairly popular, and was re-elected by a landslide. But in 1972, a year before his second term was due to end, he declared martial law.

What followed was more than a decade of dictatorship, during which the country’s foreign debt grew, prices soared and ordinary Filipinos struggled to make ends meet. It was also a period of repression as opposition figures and critics were jailed, disappeared or killed.

Through it all, Marcos Sr was grooming his son for leadership.

Bongbong’s childhood bedroom in llocos Norte, the family’s stronghold in the north, which is now a museum, has a portrait of him wearing a golden crown and riding a white stallion.

But the elder Marcos was also worried about whether his son would step up to the role. A diary entry from 1972 read: “Bongbong is our principal worry. He is too carefree and lazy”.

Marcos enrolled in Oxford University to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics, but it was later revealed that he did not graduate with a bachelor’s degree as he claimed.

Oxford said in 2021 that he was awarded a special diploma in social studies in 1978. That too, local media reports alleged, was the result of lobbying by Philippine diplomats in the UK after Marcos Jr failed his exams.

He returned home and joined politics, becoming the vice-governor and then governor of Ilocos Norte.

But the political career his parents had envisioned for him would be cut short by a revolution in 1986.

An economic crisis had already triggered unrest – but the assassination of a prominent opposition leader brought tens of thousands onto the streets.

A sustained campaign eventually convinced a significant faction of the army to withdraw its support for the Marcos regime, and hastened its downfall.

The family fled to Hawaii with whatever valuables they could bring, but left behind enough proof of the lavish lives they had led.

Protesters who stormed the presidential palace found fanciful oil portraits of the family, a jacuzzi with gold-plated fixtures and the now-infamous 3,000 pairs of designer shoes owned by Imelda Marcos.

The family is accused of plundering an estimated $10bn of public money while in power. By the time Marcos Sr died in exile in 1989, his was a tarnished name.

And yet, some three decades later, his son was able to whitewash that past enough to win the presidential election.

After they returned to the Philippines in the 1990s, Marcos became a provincial governor, congressman and senator, before running – and winning – the presidential race in 2022.

Social media was a big part of this rebranding, winning Marcos new supporters – especially among the younger generation in a country where the median age is around 25.

On Facebook, the Marcos family legacy has been rewritten, with propaganda posts claiming that Marcos Sr’s regime was actually a “golden period” for the country.

On TikTok, a martial law anthem from the Marcos Sr era became the soundtrack to a cute challenge for Gen Z users, who would record older family members marching to the beat.

As his popularity grew, Marcos launched his presidential bid with Sara Duterte running for vice-president. She vowed to work with Bongbong to unify the country and make it “rise again”.

They called themselves the “uniTeam”, and combined the two families’ powerful bases: the Dutertes in the south, and the Marcos’s in the north.

It paid off. Marcos won with a thumping 31 million votes, more than double the total of his closest rival.

“Judge me not by my ancestors, but by my actions,” Marcos said as victory became apparent, vowing to “be a president for all Filipinos”.

Three years into his presidency, Marcos has brought Manila closer to the US and increasingly confronted an assertive China in the South China Sea – a key departure from Duterte’s presidency.

That wasn’t the only thing that caused a crack in his alliance with Sara Duterte, which eventually descended into a public spat.

He gave her the Education portfolio, when she had openly sought the more powerful Defence portfolio. His allies in Congress then initiated impeachment proceedings against her over alleged misuse of state funds.

And Marcos cleared the way for her father to be arrested and taken to the Hague for his role in a deadly war on drugs that killed thousands.

Marcos, experts say, took a big risk by picking a fight with the Dutertes – for it to pay off, control of the senate was crucial.

But the midterm results complicate his chances – and his political future.

The Swiss city of Basel is going into party mode this weekend, as it prepares to welcome the Eurovision Song Contest.

It’s been 36 years since Switzerland last hosted the contest, after Celine Dion won in 1988, so the wait to roll out Eurovision’s famous turquoise carpet has been long.

Switzerland hosted the first ever Eurovision at Lugano in 1956, but its record since Dion’s victory in Dublin has been mixed.

Between 2007 and 2010, and again between 2015 and 2018, its entries failed to even qualify for the final. Swiss singer Nemo finally won last year with The Code.

Perhaps because of that, Basel is determined to make this contest memorable for all the right reasons. At 1.3km (0.8 miles), its turquoise carpet will be Eurovision’s longest ever, stretching from Basel town hall, across the river Rhine all the way to the Eurovision village.

The head of Basel’s government, Conradin Cramer, believes his city of just 175,000 residents is the natural home for Eurovision’s estimated half a million visitors.

Because of its borders with both France and Germany, Basel is “the heart of Europe”, he says. What’s more, he points out, the city has a long humanist tradition; when other cities in medieval Europe were cracking down on free thinkers, Basel welcomed them.

So Basel, with its geographic location and its history of tolerance, and Eurovision with its tradition of inclusivity and diversity are, he says “the perfect match”.

Last year’s contest in Malmo attracted thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and further protests against the war in Gaza are expected in Basel too.

Police have not yet released their plans to manage this, but have said that everyone should have the right to express their opinion, as long they stay within the law, and do not risk the safety of others.

Throughout the contest they say 1,300 officers will be on duty. Basel has also unveiled a security operation to ensure visitors can enjoy the song contest safely. They are promising “mobile awareness teams”, safe retreats for victims of violence or hostility and a 24-hour hotline. The concept, which Basel officials describe as unique, aims to prevent violence, sexual assault or harassment, and racist aggression and insults.

The awareness teams, recognisable by their pink jackets, will be available 24 hours a day across the city. Basel’s security director Stephanie Eymann said the teams were a “low-threshold” measure to give visitors a chance to report harassment or assaults, and seek protection, even if some might not want to approach the police.

The entire town appears to have embraced the event, with turquoise welcome flags now waving from every lamp post. Tickets for the contest itself sold out in minutes, but Basel is promising that there will be “something for everyone”, ticket or no ticket, and most of it will be free.

“There will be concerts all over the city, there will be art projects,” says tourism director Letizia Elia. Basel has 40 museums and galleries in a space of just 37 square kilometres, a record for a European city, and they are all getting involved.

An exhibition featuring works by Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Wassily Kandinsky, and Pablo Picasso has opened at the Beyeler Foundation, where Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone’s We are Poems rainbow sculpture sits on the roof. There’s also a Glitz and Glam exhibition at Basel’s museum of natural history.

The celebrations have spread across Switzerland, with competitions across the country for the best school band – the top four will get a spot on stage in Basel.

But hosting an event like Eurovision is never hitch-free, and this one is no exception. The final choice of Basel as a venue was only made at the end of August last year, allowing just over seven months to organise everything.

Then came objections from evangelical Christian groups, who claimed Eurovision undermined traditional family values and that performers regularly sang about satanism and the occult. They gathered enough signatures to force a referendum aimed at banning public money for the event.

But on 24 November voters gave a huge yes to the song contest; with 66.6% approving Basel’s budget of almost $40m. Conradin Cramer had expected a referendum, because “that’s how Switzerland works, it’s perfectly fine.” But he was still delighted at the size of the vote in favour: “It shows this is a city where people really want to do this.”

He is very conscious that the global debate around diversity and inclusion has changed in the year since Swiss singer Nemo became the first non-binary person to win Eurovision.

The overriding message of Basel, Mr Cramer says, is “everyone is welcome”.

On-stage and in the dressing rooms though, things are stricter. EBU, which runs the contest itself, has stuck to its rules saying performers can only bring their own national flags onstage or into the green rooms. This means that they will not be able to fly the Pride flag or that of any other gender identity or sexuality.

Fans, however, will be able to bring whatever flags they like into the arena.

Last year Swiss winner Nemo did wave a non-binary flag during the performance, but said they had to ‘smuggle’ the flag in. This year LGBTQ+ groups say they are disappointed the EBU has not relaxed the rules.

“Banning our symbols is a slap in the face for the LGBTIQ community’, said Swiss group Pink Cross. “It sends the wrong message at a time when queer communities across Europe are facing increasing hostility.”

EBU has said that the guidelines were designed to create clarity and balance explaining: “Eurovision needs no flag to demonstrate its alliance and celebration of the LGBTQ+ community.”

Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump’s administration is actively removing government support for diversity and inclusion measures, and he is asking partnered European institutions (including some Swiss universities) to do the same.

That’s why Basel, says Mr Cramer, should take a stand, even if the EBU will not.

“These are our European values. People and nations are coming together in a friendly championship. Whoever you are, if you are young, if you are not that young, if you are straight, if you are gay, if you are female, male, or if you are non-binary, this is all perfectly fine. And I think this is not just what Basel stands for, this is what Europe should stand for.”

So if everyone is welcome, how do they get there? The host country being Switzerland, punctual transport is catered for. Swiss railways is laying on hundreds of extra trains. In Basel, the trams will run 24 hours a day.

And, for those who are really in Eurovision mode, there is even a karaoke tram, where passengers can take a free 90-minute journey right across town, all the while singing their hearts out.

At least 130 civilians were killed by Burkina Faso government forces and allied militia in March near the western town of Solenzo, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says in a new report.

It says the “massacre”, following an operation led by Burkinabè special forces, resulted in widespread civilian deaths and displacement of ethnic Fulanis.

The Fulani are a pastoralist, largely Muslim community who the government has often accused of backing Islamist militants – an allegation denied by community leaders.

About 40% of Burkina Faso is under the control of groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State operating in West Africa’s Sahel region.

The attacks, in which thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced, have continued despite promises by the country’s military leaders to deal with the insurgency.

Ahead of the release of the HRW findings on Monday, there were reports of more militant attacks over the weekend with dozens of military and civilian casualties.

The BBC has not been able to confirm these reports and the authorities do not routinely comment on reported jihadist attacks.

The BBC has approached the Burkina Faso government for comment on the HRW report.

Last year, the government described as “baseless” another HRW report that had accused soldiers of a “massacre” in which 223 villagers were killed.

It also said that any allegations of human rights abuses committed “in the fight against terrorism” were systematically investigated.

• Why Burkina Faso’s junta leader has captured hearts and minds around the world
• Why West Africa has more ‘terror deaths’ than rest of world combined

The rights group says it interviewed witnesses, militia members, journalists and the civil society and analysed videos shared on social media to make the findings regarding the army’s involvement in the March killings.

HRW previously said the army was “implicated” in the killings, based on videos that were being shared online showing dozens of dead and injured people, although the findings were not definitive.

It now says further research has “uncovered that Burkina Faso’s military was responsible for these mass killings of Fulani civilians”.

It adds that least 100 more civilians were killed last month in reprisal attacks by jihadist groups against those seen as helping the military.

“Mass killings of civilians by government security forces, militias, and Islamist armed groups amount to war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes,” it says.

The rights group has urged the government to investigate and prosecute all those responsible for the crimes.

This came as junta leader Capt Ibrahim Traoré returned from Moscow after a Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin on cooperation and security in the Sahel.

Since the military seized power, Burkina Faso has turned away from colonial power France and towards Russia for help in tacking the Islamist insurgency.

• Freed captive tells BBC of life in West African jihadist base
• Why some Ghanaians are fighting in insurgency-hit Burkina Faso
• Burkina Faso outcry over ‘conscription used to punish junta critics’
• Mali and Burkina Faso: Did the coups halt jihadist attacks?

Counter-terrorism police are leading an investigation into a “suspicious” fire at Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s house in north London in the early hours of Monday.

There was damage to the property’s entrance but nobody was hurt, the Metropolitan Police said. A cordon is in place outside the house in Kentish Town.

The prime minister – who resides at his official residence in Downing Street – is understood to still own the property which has been rented out.

Police said counter-terrorism officers were leading the probe “as a precaution and due to the property having previous connections with a high-profile public figure”.

They added: “The cause of the fire continues to be investigated but at this stage is being treated as suspicious.”

Sir Keir has thanked the emergency services for their work, his official spokesman said.

He added the matter was “subject to a live investigation so I can’t comment further”, and declined to provide any further details when asked whether any members of Sir Keir’s family were in the house when the fire started.

The London Fire Brigade said it had been called to a “small fire” at 01:11 BST which was under control about 20 minutes later.

It said about 10 firefighters and two fire engines from Kentish Town Fire Station attended the scene.

The police said they were alerted by the fire brigade at 01:35: BST.

“Officers attended the scene. Damage was caused to the property’s entrance, nobody was hurt.

“The fire is being investigated and cordons remain in place while enquiries continue.”

On Monday afternoon, investigators could still be seen outside the property with local residents being allowed through the tape as they returned home from work.

The house has previously been targeted by protesters. Last year, three people were found guilty of public order offences after staging a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside it.

Crates containing documents from Nazi Germany have been rediscovered in the basement of Argentina’s Supreme Court.

The unusual find was made as workers were clearing the building’s basement ahead of its archives being moved to a newly created museum.

The documents were sent by the German embassy in Tokyo and arrived in Argentina on 20 June 1941 inside 83 diplomatic pouches aboard a Japanese steamship, according to information gathered by court officials.

They ended up in the Supreme Court that same year after they were confiscated by Argentine customs officials who had opened five pouches at random and found Nazi propaganda material inside.

They were rediscovered last week by workers who were intrigued by a number of wooden champagne crates they stumbled upon while moving archival material from the Supreme Court’s basement.

“Upon opening one of the boxes, we identified material intended to consolidate and propagate Adolf Hitler’s ideology in Argentina during [World War Two],” the court said about the find.

The crates were quickly moved to a secure office in the building and court officials alerted the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum to their existence and asked for its help in creating an inventory of all their contents.

Photos published by the court show the experts sifting through black-and-white photos and membership booklets bearing swastikas on their covers.

Historians hope the documents will yield clues to the Nazis’ financial networks and their international ties.

In a statement, Argentina’s Supreme Court revealed the information it had managed to piece together so far.

It said the documents, which arrived in Argentina on board the Nan-a-Maru steamship from Tokyo in June 1941, had been declared as “personal effects” by the German embassy in Buenos Aires at the time.

However, Argentine custom officials were suspicious because of the size of the shipment and alerted the Argentine foreign minister, fearing it could contain material which could endanger Argentina’s neutral stance in World War Two at the time.

Five of the pouches were opened at random and found to contain postcards, photographs and Nazi propaganda material.

The German embassy in Buenos Aires requested that the pouches be sent back to its embassy in Tokyo – from where they had been sent in the first place – but an Argentine judge ordered in September 1941 that all of the 83 pouches be seized.

Argentina’s Supreme Court was tasked with the decision as to what to do with them next but it appears no decision was made before 1944 – when Argentina broke relations with the Axis powers – explaining how the crates ended up gathering dust in the court’s basement for decades.

After the end of World War Two, Argentina – under the leadership of Juan Perón – became a place of refuge for a number of high-ranking Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele.

In 2000, President Fernando de la Rúa officially apologised for his country’s role in harbouring Nazi war criminals.

A US-funded flight carrying the first group of 59 white South Africans has landed in Washington where the Trump administration is to grant them refugee status.

President Donald Trump has said the refugee applications for the country’s Afrikaner minority had been expedited as they were victims of “racial discrimination”.

The South African government has denied this saying any allegations of persecution would not meet the threshold required under “refugee law”.

Immigrant rights activists have criticised the fast-track refugee initiative, describing it as “unfair” for the “most vulnerable”. The Trump administration has halted almost all refugee admissions including those coming from countries at war.

The group of white South African refugees, who landed in Washington DC on Monday, received a warm welcome from US authorities at the airport.

Some held young children and waved small American flags in the arrival area adorned with red, white and blue balloons on the walls.

Usually the processing of refugees in the US takes months, even years, but this group has been fast tracked. UNHCR – the United Nations refugee agency – confirmed to the BBC it wasn’t involved in the vetting, as is usually the case.

Asked directly on Monday why Afrikaners’ refugee applications had been expedited compared with other groups, Trump said a “genocide” was taking place and that “white farmers” specifically were being targeted.

“Farmers are being killed, they happen to be white, but whether they’re white or black makes no difference to me.”

The US has criticised domestic South African policy, accusing the government of seizing land from white farmers without any compensation – something the southern African nation says has not happened.

In January President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a controversial law which allows the government to seize privately owned land without compensation in certain circumstances, when it is deemed “equitable and in the public interest”.

There had been anger in South Africa over the slow pace of land reform in the three decades since the end of the racist apartheid system.

White South Africans make up 7.3% of the population, but own the vast majority of privately held farmland, according to a 2017 government report.

One of Trump’s closest advisers, South African-born Elon Musk, has previously said there was a “genocide of white people” in South Africa and accused the government of passing “racist ownership laws”.

The claims of a genocide of white people have been widely discredited.

On Monday, Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen described the resettlement as “baffling” given the “indefinite suspension for thousands of legitimate asylum seekers” from other countries.

In a statement sent to the BBC, Gregory Meeks, ranking Democratic member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Trump administration’s refugee resettlement was “not just a racist dog whistle, it’s a politically motivated rewrite of history”.

“Refugee policy should protect the vulnerable, not serve an extremist agenda,” he said.

Melissa Keaney, a lawyer with the International Refugee Assistance project, said the White House’s decision to fast-track the Afrikaners’ arrival amounted to “a lot of hypocrisy and unequal treatment”.

“The speed at which that [the Afrikaners] were processed is remarkable and unprecedented, and required, I think, a lot of sort of bending rules by the state department and changing procedure,” she told the BBC.

Her organisation is suing the Trump administration after it indefinitely suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) in January. She said that policy had left over 120,000 conditionally approved refugees in limbo.

Afrikaner author Max du Preez told the BBC’s Newsday radio programme that claims of persecution of white South Africans were a “total absurdity” and “based on nothing”.

Figures from the South African police show that in 2024, 44 murders were recorded on farms and smaller plots of agricultural land, with eight of those killed being farmers.

South Africa does not report on crime statistics broken down by race but a majority of the country’s farmers are white, while other people living on farms, such as workers, are mostly black.

• Racially charged row between Musk and South Africa over Starlink
• What’s really driving Trump’s fury with South Africa?

Bilateral relations between the US and South Africa have been strained since President Trump first tasked his administration with resettling Afrikaners, a group with mostly Dutch ancestry, in the US.

In March, South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled after accusing President Trump of using “white victimhood as a dog whistle”, leading to the US accusing Mr Rasool of “race-baiting”.

The US has also criticised South Africa for taking an “aggressive” position against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Pretoria has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of genocide against Palestinians – a claim the Israelis strongly reject.

President Trump’s openness to accepting Afrikaner refugees comes as the US has engaged in a wider crackdown on migrants and asylum seekers from other countries.

• Almost 70,000 South Africans interested in US asylum
• Is it checkmate for South Africa after Trump threats?
• US cuts send South Africa’s HIV treatment ‘off a cliff’

Share markets jumped on Monday after President Trump said weekend talks had resulted in a “total reset” in trade terms between the US and China, a move which goes some way to defuse the high stakes stand-off between the two countries.

The talks in Switzerland resulted in significant cuts to the tit-for-tat tariffs that had been stacked up since January on both sides.

The US will lower those tariffs from 145% to 30%, while China’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods will drop to 10% from 125%.

President Trump told reporters, that, as some of the levies have been suspended rather than cancelled altogether, they might rise again in three months time, if no further progress was made.

However, he said he did not expect them to return to the previous 145% peak.

“We’re not looking to hurt China,” Trump said after the agreement was announced, adding that China was “being hurt very badly”.

“They were closing up factories. They were having a lot of unrest, and they were very happy to be able to do something with us.”

He said he expected to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping “maybe at the end of the week”.

• What does the US-China tariff deal mean?

Investors welcomed the de-escalation. The S&P 500 index jumped more than 3.2% after the announcement, while the Dow climbed 2.8% and the Nasdaq had surged 4.3% by the end of the day.

The gains left the indexes roughly where they started the year, fully recovered from the losses they sustained in the aftermath of the 2 April tariffs announcement, dubbed “Liberation Day” by the Trump administration.

Framed as a campaign to give Americans a fairer deal from international trade, the US announced a universal baseline tariff on all imports to the US.

Around 60 trading partners, which the White House described as the “worst offenders”, were subjected to higher rates than others, and this included China.

Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, which led to levies being ratcheted up on both sides, sending shares sharply lower.

Under the new agreement, the US is reducing the “reciprocal” tariff on Chinese goods that it announced on “Liberation day” to 10%. But it said the higher levy rate was being suspended for 90 days, rather than removed permanently.

The US is also keeping in place the extra 20% tariff aimed at putting pressure on Beijing to do more to curb the illegal trade in fentanyl, a powerful opioid drug.

For its part, China is also reducing to 10% the retaliation tariffs they put in place in response to Trump’s “Liberation day” announcement, again suspended for three months.

China has also agreed to “suspend or remove” all non-tariff measures against the US.

Pre-existing tariffs, including higher sector-specific tariffs on things like steel and cars, remain in place.

However, additional retaliatory tariffs, that were added subsequently, have been cancelled altogether on both sides.

The retreat comes as the first impacts from the tariff-war were beginning to show, with US ports reporting a sharp drop in the number of ships scheduled to arrive from China.

Factory output has slowed in China, and there are reports of firms laying off workers, as US orders dried up.

China’s commerce ministry said the agreement was an important step to “resolve differences” which would help to “deepen co-operation”.

• Faisal Islam: US and China step back from brink
• Laura Bicker: China has come to the table – but this fight is far from over

Tat Kei, a Chinese exporter of personal care appliances to the US, whose factory employs 200 people in Shenzhen, welcomed the announcement, but said he still feared what else might be to come.

“President Trump is going to be here for the next three-and-a-half years. I don’t think this is going to be the end of it… not by a long shot,” he told the BBC.

Elaine Li, head of Greater China at Atlas Ways, which offers services for Chinese enterprises’ global development, also said she believed many Chinese firms would treat the reprieve as temporary.

“For businesses, the best they can do is build a moat around their company before the next round of tariffs arrives,” she said.

On Wall Street Target, Home Depot and Nike were among companies that saw their share price rise sharply on the news. Tech firms including Nvidia, Amazon, Apple and Facebook-owner Meta also moved sharply higher.

European stocks rose on Monday, and earlier Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index had ended the day up 3%.

The deal has boosted shares in shipping companies, with Denmark’s Maersk up more than 12% and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd jumping 14%.

Maersk told the BBC the US-China agreement was “a step in the right direction” and that it now hoped for “a permanent deal that can create the long-term predictability our customers need.”

In the US, the National Retail Federation (NRF) said it was encouraged by the “constructive” negotiations.

“This temporary pause is a critical first step to provide some short-term relief for retailers and other businesses that are in the midst of ordering merchandise for the winter holiday season,” said NRF president Matthew Shay.

The International Chamber of Commerce said the deal sent a clear signal that the US and China both wanted to avoid a “hard decoupling”.

“Ultimately, we hope this weekend’s agreement lays the foundation to lift the cloud of trade policy uncertainty that continues to weigh on investment, hiring, and demand across the world,” said deputy secretary-general, Andrew Wilson.

The gold price – which has benefited from its safe-haven status in recent weeks given the disruption caused by the tariffs – fell 3.1% to $3,223.57 an ounce.

Hamas has released an Israeli-American hostage held captive for 19 months to Israeli forces as part of efforts to reach a new ceasefire deal, the group said.

Edan Alexander, 21, had been serving in the Israeli army on the border of Gaza when he was captured by Hamas militants on 7 October 2023.

On Monday, Israel paused its military operations in Gaza for a few hours to facilitate the transfer. A senior Hamas official told the BBC the release was intended as a goodwill gesture ahead of US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East on Tuesday.

Mr Alexander is thought to be the last US citizen held by Hamas who was still alive. Trump offered “congratulations” to his family on his release.

In a statement, his family thanked the US president but also urged the Israeli government and negotiators to continue working to free the 58 remaining hostages.

Mr Alexander is the first to be freed by Hamas since Israel restarted its military offensive on 18 March, after a two-month ceasefire came to an end.

On Monday, he was seen with masked Hamas fighters as they handed him over to Red Cross workers in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

He was then transferred to Israeli authorities in Gaza before being reunited with his family in southern Israel. The Israeli military said it provided a “safe corridor” for Mr Alexander’s release.

A video shared on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s X account showed Yael Alexander speaking to her son over the phone.

“You are strong. You are protected. You are home,” she said in the video.

Netanyahu called Mr Alexander’s return a “very moving moment” – and thanked Trump for his support.

The release had been made possible because of military pressure on Hamas and “the political pressure exerted by President Trump”, Netanyahu said.

He added that Israel intended to continue with plans to intensify its military actions in Gaza and that there would be no ceasefire.

Hamas had earlier said Mr Alexander’s release was intended to facilitate a deal for the entry of humanitarian aid into the enclave.

Israel has blocked the entry of all food, medication and other humanitarian supplies into Gaza for 70 days, which aid agencies say amounts to a policy of starvation and could be a war crime, and renewed its aerial bombardment and other military operations there in mid-March.

Hamas has previously said it will only agree to a deal that includes the end of the war. This has been repeatedly rejected by Netanyahu.

Trump is due to arrive in the Middle East on Tuesday, and Israel has vowed to expand its military offensive against Hamas if no deal is reached by the end of his visit.

Israeli officials have said the plans for their expanded offensive include seizing all of Gaza indefinitely, forcibly displacing Palestinians to the south, and taking over aid distribution with private companies despite opposition from the UN and its humanitarian partners, who say they will not co-operate because it appears to “weaponise” aid.

Israel is due to send representatives to Qatar on Thursday to discuss a proposal on further hostage releases.

Qatar and Egypt said that Mr Alexander’s release was an encouraging sign of potential new truce talks.

Born in Tel Aviv but raised in New Jersey, Mr Alexander had been serving in an elite infantry unit on the Gaza border when he was captured by Hamas militants during the 7 October 2003 attack.

About 1,200 people were killed and 251 hostages taken. Some 58 hostages remain, up to 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

Five of the captives held in Gaza are believed to have US citizenship. Mr Alexander is thought to be the last American still alive.

Israel’s military campaign has killed 52,829 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, including 2,720 Palestinians killed since March.

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is detained at The Hague over his drug war that killed thousands, has been elected mayor of his family’s stronghold, according to early, partial results.

Two of his most loyal aides – long-time assistant Christopher “Bong” Go and Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the one-time police chief in charge of enforcing his drug war – have been re-elected to the country’s senate.

But the midterm election, dominated by a spectacular feud between the Duterte and Marcos dynasties, has also thrown up some unexpected results.

The fate of Duterte’s daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte, remains in the balance as counting continues.

Sara Duterte – who is widely expected to run for president in 2028 – is facing the prospect of a ban from politics should a jury made up of the country’s senate vote to impeach her.

It meant the midterms – which saw 18,000 seats contested, from local officials to governors and senators – became a proxy war between her supporters and her one-time ally, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

Candidates supporting either dynasty went head-to-head, with Duterte’s camp seeking the nine senate votes she needs to avoid impeachment.

But an unofficial tally of 68% of the vote suggests it is unclear which way it has gone.

Marcos Jr’s endorsements appear to not have worked as predicted by opinion polls – only one of his candidates, broadcaster Erwin Tulfo, made the top five in the unofficial count.

The rest of the top five was made up of the two Duterte aides and two independents while there is a tight race for the rest of the winning circle of 12.

Instead, the seats appear to have gone to independents.

The vice-president, meanwhile, remains widely popular despite her political troubles, and the president will be leaving office in 2028.

Results so far show the Duterte’s have managed to retain their powerbase in the south of the country – just two months after the 80-year-old populist leader was arrested at Manila Airport and flown to the Netherlands on the same day to face the International Criminal Court.

It was his arrest – approved by Marcos Jr – which pushed the rivalry between his daughter and the current president to boiling point, a few weeks after the president’s allies in the House of Representatives voted to impeach Vice-President Duterte.

The older Duterte was widely expected to win as mayor, given the family has held the post since the mid-1980s.

Duterte himself led Davao, a sprawling southern metropolis, for two decades before he was elected president in 2016. There, he showcased his drug war that he credited for the city’s success, and won him the support of millions far beyond its borders.

His youngest son, Sebastian, the incumbent mayor, was elected vice-mayor, meaning he can discharge his father’s duties in his absence. Another Duterte son, Paolo, was re-elected as congressman. His grandchildren won local posts.

Duterte’s name remained on the ballot as he has not been convicted of any crime. He beat the scion of a smaller rival political family.

Maintaining a political base in Davao city in the south is crucial for the Dutertes – it is where they get the most voter support.

The election was not just a battle between the two families, however.

Monday’s vote saw long queues under temperatures of 33C (91F) and sporadic reports of violence and vote machines malfunctioning.

Like past elections, song-and-dance, showbusiness-style campaigns played out on stage and on social media, underscoring the country’s personality and celebrity politics that sometimes overshadow more pressing issues such as corruption, high cost of living and creaking infrastructure.

A top general who failed to report evidence of alleged SAS war crimes in Afghanistan later oversaw the rejection of hundreds of UK resettlement applications from Afghan commandos who served with the elite regiment, BBC Panorama can reveal.

Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins led UK Special Forces (UKSF) in Afghanistan at a time when alleged war crimes were committed. He later appointed a UKSF officer under his command, who had also served in Afghanistan, to assess the Afghan commando applications after special forces headquarters was given a controversial veto over them.

Thousands of applications from individuals with credible evidence of service with Afghan Special Forces, including the units known as the Triples, were then rejected, leaving many of the former commandos at the mercy of the Taliban.

The rejections are controversial because they came at a time when a judge-led public inquiry in the UK had begun investigating the SAS for alleged war crimes on operations on which the Triples were present.

If the Afghan commandos were in the UK, they could be called as witnesses – but the inquiry has no power to compel testimony from foreign nationals who are overseas.

Some of those denied visas were subsequently tortured and killed by the Taliban, according to former colleagues, family members and lawyers.

According to internal emails and testimony from within the Ministry of Defence (MoD), obtained by Panorama, the UK Special Forces officer appointed by Gen Jenkins stood over civil service caseworkers from the resettlement scheme and instructed them to reject the Triples applications, one after another, on what sources described as spurious grounds.

A senior government source close to the process told the BBC that the UK Special Forces officer “would never have acted without direction”, adding that “everything would have gone through Gwyn Jenkins”.

At the time, in 2021-22, Gen Jenkins was the head of all UK Special Forces. He is now the chief strategic adviser to the Defence Secretary John Healey and is tipped to take over as First Sea Lord – the head of the Royal Navy.

Gen Jenkins was made aware of allegations that the SAS was committing extrajudicial killings in Afghanistan, but he failed to report the allegations to military police – Panorama has previously revealed – despite a legal obligation to do so. The suspected unlawful killings continued.

Panorama has now heard eyewitness testimony from veterans who served in UK Special Forces detailing alleged war crimes stretching over more than a decade and involving the SBS as well as the SAS.

Gen Jenkins did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment on this story. The MoD responded on his behalf. It said in a statement that there is no evidence it has tried to prevent former Afghan troops giving evidence to the Inquiry and that “anyone can provide evidence… no matter where in the world they are”.

The MoD added that it was “fully committed to delivering on our pledge to relocate and resettle eligible Afghans and their families to the UK”.

“Each resettlement application is decided on its own merits against the criteria outlined in the ARAP [Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy] and immigration rules,” the statement said.

The rejections of the Triples applications left caseworkers from the ARAP scheme questioning the validity of the process, given that many of the applications contained compelling evidence of service alongside British special forces.

One applicant was rejected even though they had submitted photos of themselves serving alongside Gen Jenkins.

Hundreds of rejections have since been overturned following a government review.

A letter obtained by Panorama shows that concerns were raised among cabinet ministers in January 2024 over the existence of the UK Special Forces’ veto over the Triples applications.

The then Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer wrote to senior Conservatives to say the role of UKSF in denying the applications was “deeply inappropriate” and “a significant conflict of interest, that should be obvious to all”.

He had been compelled to write, he added, because he had been shown evidence “that 5 members of these units have been killed having been rejected for resettlement”.

Mr Mercer, who served alongside the SBS in Afghanistan before becoming an MP, went on to warn that the role of UKSF in the process had a “very high chance of being exposed by the Afghan Inquiry”, which could “lead to serious questions of all those Ministers involved in the process”.

The Triples units – so-called because their designations were CF 333 and ATF 444 – were set up, trained, and paid by UK Special Forces and supported the SAS and SBS on operations targeting Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.

When the country fell to the Taliban in 2021, they were judged to be in grave danger of reprisal and were entitled to apply for resettlement to the UK.

But, according to MoD documents obtained by Panorama, thousands of ARAP applications containing credible evidence of service alongside UK Special Forces were subsequently rejected.

BBC Panorama first revealed last year that it had been UK Special Forces – the very force that trained and served with the Triples – that rejected them.

“We heard some of our Triples were already killed by the Taliban,” said Jumakhan Joya, a former Afghan special forces commanding officer. “Some of them are in jail in a Taliban prison. Some of them have already been disabled by the Taliban. They’re breaking their hands, their legs, their head,” he said.

Mr Joya told the BBC he believed that the existence of the public inquiry was the “only reason” their applications had been vetoed.

The rejections and reported reprisals have outraged some former members of British special forces. “What’s happened is horrendous. It is a betrayal and it shames us all,” one former UK Special Forces officer told Panorama.

Asked by Panorama about the government’s rejection of Triples’ applications, Bruce Houlder KC, who as a former director of service prosecutions was responsible for bringing charges against members of the armed forces, said the government must have known the Triples would have “highly relevant” evidence that would be “much easier to obtain” if they were in the UK.

“I can’t think of any fair reason why we should exclude people from their right to live in this country, which is extended to others, simply because they might be in possession of information which would embarrass special forces,” Mr Houlder said.

“If that is the reason, it’s disreputable and it can’t be supported in any way.”

The US and China have agreed a truce to lower import taxes on goods being traded between the two countries.

The agreement marks a major de-escalation of the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, which has sent shockwaves impacting countless other countries, including the UK.

Here’s what it all means.

Both the US and China have confirmed a reduction in the tariffs they imposed on each other following the initial escalation by President Donald Trump earlier this year.

The deal involves both nations cancelling some tariffs altogether and suspending others for 90 days, by 14 May.

The result is that additional US tariffs on Chinese imports – that’s the extra tariffs imposed in this recent stand-off – will fall to from 145% to 30%, while recently-hiked Chinese tariffs on some US imports will fall from 125% to 10%.

China has also halted and scrapped other non-tariff countermeasures, such as the export of critical minerals to the US, which it put in place in response to the initial escalation.

The US measures still include an extra 20% component aimed at putting pressure on Beijing to do more to curb the illegal trade in fentanyl, a powerful opioid drug.

The announcement came after the two countries held talks in Switzerland, the first between the two countries since Trump sparked the latest tariff war.

Trying to predict the next steps in this ongoing trade war between the US and China these past few months has been difficult to say the least.

But this is a major agreement between the world’s two powerhouse economies and has been broadly welcomed.

Even if the suspended tariffs are reinstated after 90 days, because the vast majority of the tariffs that were announced after Liberation Day have been cancelled, US tariffs on China would only rise to 54% and Chinese tariffs on the US would rise to 34%.

However, talks between both governments are set to continue, so a further deal might be struck.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the consensus from both countries was that “neither side wants a decoupling”, while China’s commerce ministry said the agreement was a step to “lay the foundation to bridge differences and deepen co-operation”.

So relations between the US and China are sounding more friendly, but as we’ve seen so far during this Trump presidency, things can change quickly.

In a word – lots.

In 2024, the biggest category of goods exported from the US to China were soybeans – primarily used to feed China’s estimated 440 million pigs. The US also sent pharmaceuticals and petroleum.

Meanwhile, China exported large volumes of electronics, computers and toys.

The biggest category of US imports from China is smartphones, accounting for 9% of the total. A large proportion of these smartphones Apple iPhones made in China.

However, the US buys much more from China ($440bn) than it sells to it ($145bn), which is something Trump has long been unhappy with.

His reasoning in part for introducing tariffs, and higher ones on countries which sell more to the US than they buy, is to encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, increase the amount of tax raised and boost manufacturing jobs.

The escalating trade war in recent months has led to a collapse in the amount of goods being shipped across the Pacific Ocean, but investors believe the truce will lead to a rebound, with shares up for some of the world’s biggest shipping firms.

Politicians on both sides have started and will no doubt continue to claim victory over this truce.

Despite the US and China calling this a joint agreement, people in Beijing will interpret it as the Trump administration walking back from the tariffs, according to Janka Oertel, director of the Asia programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“We are back to square one, now negotiating can begin. The outcome is uncertain but China is in a psychologically stronger position now than before,” she said.

The US will argue its tariff rate on Chinese imports, although lower, is still hefty at 30%.

“This trade deal is a win for the United States, demonstrating President Trump’s unparalleled expertise in securing deals that benefit the American people,” a White House statement said.

Economists at Deutsche Bank have suggested the lowering of tariffs, and last week’s UK-US deal on them, means there’s both “a likely cap and floor” to Trump’s rates.

“The UK has one of the least imbalanced relationships with the US and now has a universal tariff rate of 10%. China has one of the most imbalanced relationships and now has a tariff rate of 30%,” said George Saravelos, head of FX research at the investment bank.

“It is reasonable that these two numbers now set the bounds of where American tariffs will end up this year.”

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said his country will respond strongly to what he describes as a future “terrorist attack”, after four days of military exchanges with neighbouring Pakistan.

“This is not an era of war, but this is also not an era of terror,” Modi said in his first public address since days of intense shelling and aerial incursions, carried out by both sides, began.

These followed a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people, for which India blamed a Pakistan-based group. Islamabad has strongly denied backing the group in question.

The US-brokered ceasefire agreed between the nuclear-armed neighbours at the weekend appears to have held so far.

Both nations say they remain vigilant.

“If another terrorist attack against India is carried out, a strong response will be given,” Modi said in his speech on Monday.

• ANALYSIS: How backchannels and US mediators pulled India and Pakistan back from the brink

“Terror and trade talks cannot happen together,” he remarked. This was most likely a reference to comments from US President Donald Trump, who said he had told India and Pakistan his administration would only trade with them if they end the conflict.

“Water and blood cannot flow together,” Modi added, this time referring to the suspension of a water treaty between India and Pakistan.

His comments come after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday said that his country had “acted as a responsible state”, adding: “Our honour, our dignity and our self-respect are more precious to us than our lives.”

He said he believed the water issue with India would be resolved through peaceful negotiations.

Earlier on Monday, top military officials from India and Pakistan discussed finer details of the ceasefire agreed between them over the weekend.

According to the Indian army, the two sides spoke about the need to refrain from any aggressive action.

“It was also agreed that both sides consider immediate measures to ensure troop reduction from the borders and forward areas,” it said in a statement.

India also announced it was reopening 32 airports for civilians that it had earlier said would remain closed until Thursday due to safety concerns.

The recent tensions were the latest in the decades-long rivalry between India and Pakistan, who have fought two wars over Kashmir, a Himalayan region which they claim in full but administer in part.

The hostilities threatened to turn into a fully-fledged war as they appeared unwilling to back down for days.

Both countries have said that dozens of people from both sides died over the four days of fighting last week, partly due to heavy shelling near the de facto border.

Announcing the ceasefire on Saturday, Trump said “it was time to stop the current aggression that could have led to the death and destruction of so many, and so much”.

Both India and Pakistan declared military victory after it came into effect.

On 7 May, India reported striking nine targets inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in response to the 22 April deadly militant attack in the picturesque Pahalgam valley.

In the days after the first strike, India and Pakistan accused each other of cross-border shelling and claimed to have shot down rival drones and aircraft in their airspace.

As the conflict escalated, both nations said they had struck the rival’s military bases.

Indian officials reported striking 11 Pakistan Air Force bases, including one in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad. India also claimed Pakistan lost 35-40 men at the Line of Control – the de facto border – during the conflict and that its air force lost a few aircraft.

Pakistan has accepted that some Indian projectiles landed at its air force bases.

Indian defence forces have also said that they struck nine armed group training facilities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing more than 100 militants.

The Pakistan military, in turn, claims it targeted about 26 military facilities in India and that its drones hovered over the capital, Delhi.

India has confirmed that some Pakistani projectiles landed up at its air force bases, though it did not comment on the claim about Delhi.

Pakistan also claims to have shot down five Indian aircraft, including three French Rafales – India has not acknowledged this or commented on the number, though it said on Sunday that “losses are a part of combat”.

Pakistan denied the claims that an Indian pilot was in its custody after she ejected following an aircraft crash. India has also said that “all our pilots are back home”.

Ofcom has launched investigations into two pornographic websites it believes may be falling foul of the UK’s newly introduced child safety rules.

The regulator said Itai Tech Ltd – which operates a so-called “nudifying” site – and Score Internet Group LLC had failed to detail how they were preventing children from accessing their platforms.

Ofcom announced in January that, in order to comply with the Online Safety Act, all websites on which pornographic material could be found must introduce “robust” age-checking techniques from July.

It said the two services it was investigating did not appear to have any effective age checking mechanisms.

Firms found to be in breach of the Act face huge fines.

The regulator said on Friday that many services publishing their own porn content had, as required, provided details of “highly effective age assurance methods” they were planning to implement.

• What the Online Safety Act is – and how to keep children safe online

They added that this “reassuringly” included some of the largest services that fall under the rules.

It said a small number of services had also blocked UK users entirely to prevent children accessing them.

Itai Tech Ltd and Score Internet Group LLC did not respond to its request for information or show they had plans to introduce age checks, it added.

The “nudifying” technology that one of the company’s platforms features involves the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create the impression of having removed a person’s clothing in an image or video.

The Children’s Commissioner recently called on the government to introduce a total ban on such AI apps that could be used to create sexually explicit images of children.

Under the Online Safety Act, platforms that publish their own pornographic content were required to take steps to implement age checks from January.

These can include requiring UK users to provide photo ID or running credit card checks.

But all websites where a user might encounter pornographic material are also required to demonstrate the robustness of the measures they are taking to verify the age of users.

These could even apply to some social media platforms, Ofcom told the BBC in January.

The rules are expected to change the way many UK adults will use or encounter some digital services, such as porn sites.

“As age checks start to roll out in the coming months, adults will start to notice a difference in how they access certain online services,” said Dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, in January.

In April, Discord said it would start testing face-scanning as a way to verify some users’ ages in the UK and Australia.

Experts said it marked “the start of a bigger shift” for platforms as lawmakers worldwide look to impose strict internet safety rules.

Critics suggest such measures risk pushing young people to “darker corners” of the internet where there are smaller, less regulated sites hosting more violent or explicit material.

China’s defiance as it faced down US President Donald Trump’s tariffs has been a defining image of this trade war.

It has prompted viral memes of Trump waiting for the Chinese leader to call.

“We will not back down,” has been an almost daily message from Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As the tariffs and the rhetoric from Washington escalated, China dug its heels in.

Even as Chinese officials headed to Switzerland for talks, a state-run social media account published a cartoon of the US Treasury secretary pushing an empty shopping trolley.

There were even conflicting versions of who initiated the talks in Geneva.

But after two days of “robust” talks, the situation appears to have changed.

So, is this a major turning point for Washington and Beijing? The answer is yes and no.

• Faisal Islam: US and China step back from beyond brink
• ‘We don’t care’: A defiant China looks beyond Trump’s America

“The consensus from both delegations this weekend is neither side wants a decoupling,” said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a press conference in Geneva.

“And what had occurred with these very high tariffs… was the equivalent of an embargo, and neither side wants that. We do want trade.”

Economists admit that this agreement is better than expected.

“I thought tariffs would be cut to somewhere around 50%,” Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management in Hong Kong, told Reuters news agency.

But in fact, US tariffs on Chinese imports will now fall to 30%, while Chinese tariffs on US goods will drop to 10%.

“Obviously, this is very positive news for economies in both countries and for the global economy, and makes investors much less concerned about the damage to global supply chains in the short term,” he added.

Trump hailed the progress on Sunday on his Truth Social site: “Many things discussed, much agreed to. A total reset negotiated in a friendly, but constructive, manner.”

Beijing has also softened its tone considerably– and perhaps for good reason.

China can take the pain of an economic war with America – to an extent. It is the lead trade partner for more than 100 other countries.

But officials have become increasingly concerned about the impact the tariffs could have on an economy that is already struggling to deal with a property crisis, stubbornly high youth unemployment and low consumer confidence.

Factory output has slowed and there are reports that some companies are having to lay off workers as production lines of US-bound goods grind to a halt, bringing trade to a standstill.

Data on Saturday showed China’s consumer price index dropped 0.1 percent in April, the third month in a row of decline as consumers hold back from spending and businesses drop prices to compete for customers.

The Chinese Commerce Ministry said on Monday that the agreement reached with the US was an important step to “resolve differences” and “lay the foundation to bridge differences and deepen cooperation”.

Such a positive statement from Beijing would have seemed inconceivable just a month ago.

The two sides have also agreed to more talks, or an “economic and trade consultation mechanism”, as Beijing puts it.

But Trump’s characterisation of a “total reset” in relations may be overly optimistic as there is a slight sting in the tail in Beijing’s statement.

The Commerce Ministry ended with a reminder of who it sees as being in the wrong.

“We hope that the US will continue to work with China to meet each other halfway based on this meeting, thoroughly correct the wrong practice of unilateral tariff increases,” said the spokesperson.

Chinese state media also had a warning for Washington. Xinhua News Agency’s commentary claimed China’s “goodwill and patience has its limits, and it will never be used on those who repress and blackmail us without pause or have no qualms about going back on their word”.

Leaders in Beijing will want to portray an image of strength both to its own people and to the international community. They will want to appear as if they have not budged an inch. The message from China is that it is being responsible and rational and doing what it can to avoid a global recession.

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“This is a victory for conscience and rationality,” said Zhang Yun from the School of International Relations at Nanjing University.

“The talks also established the necessary framework for continued dialogue and negotiations in the future.”

This “victory” is only for 90 days. The tariffs are only paused temporarily to allow for negotiations.

It will allow some trade to flow, and it will soothe worried markets.

But the root of the problem still exists. China still sells far more to the United States than it buys. And there are other, far thornier differences to unpick, from Chinese government subsidies, to key industries, to geopolitical tensions in the Taiwan Strait and beyond.

The fight for a more balanced trade relationship is far from over – it has simply moved.

The frontline has shifted from China’s factory floors and American supermarkets to negotiating tables in both Beijing and Washington.

For Maria Khan, the ceasefire this weekend between India and Pakistan came too late.

Maria, who lives in Indian-administered Kashmir, lost her nephew and niece – 12-year-old twins Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima – to cross-border shelling on 7 May. Their parents, her sister Urusa and brother-in-law Rameez Khan, were also injured and are still in hospital.

Hours earlier that day, India had launched a series of strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in retaliation for an earlier militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 tourists.

The strikes were followed by a series of military actions from Islamabad and Delhi that went on till Saturday, including heavy cross-border shelling and drone strikes.

People living along the Line of Control (LoC), the de-factor border between India and Pakistan, were the most vulnerable as shells fell near their homes.

Maria, who lives in Poonch, a town in Indian-administered Kashmir near the LoC, is among dozens of people who lost family members in the conflict.

India has said that 16 people were killed on the morning of 7 May in the shelling by Pakistan. Pakistan has said that at least 30 civilians have died since India launched its retaliatory strikes in the early hours of 7 May.

On 6 May, like every other day, Zain and Urwa came back from school, did their homework, played a bit, had dinner and then went to sleep.

It wasn’t yet dawn when the Khan family heard the sound of gunfire just a few kilometres away from their home.

Terrified, they hunkered down at home and waited for a relative to come pick them up, Maria says.

“My sister was holding Urwa’s hand and my brother-in-law was holding Zain’s hand. They had just left the house when suddenly a shell exploded [nearby]. The splinters hit them – Urva died right there and Zain was flung somewhere in the force of the explosion,” Maria says.

She adds that her sister kept calling out to Zain. When she finally spotted him, a stranger was performing CPR on the boy, trying to revive him. But he was unsuccessful.

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Meanwhile, Rameez, who lay bleeding and unconscious, was rushed to hospital – first a local one in Poonch and later to a bigger hospital in Rajouri, about four hours away.

Since his injuries were serious, he was shifted again to a hospital in Jammu city, another four-hour journey.

Maria says that Urwa and Zain were the centre of their parents’ lives. Rameez, a teacher, wanted to give them the best education they could get and hence, they shifted to a house that was closer to the children’s school, called Christ School.

On 9 May, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in a press briefing that during heavy shelling along the LoC, a Pakistani shell had fallen behind Christ School in Poonch town and exploded.

Rameez, Maria says, still doesn’t know about the deaths of his children as the family doesn’t want to upset him.

After the shelling on 7 May, hundreds of people left Poonch and other border towns to escape to safer areas. They are slowly returning after the ceasefire.

“The government should have informed people living near border areas earlier, so that they could leave from there and go to a safe place. Perhaps then our children would have been with us today,” she says.

“If war is necessary for the country’s security, we support it,” says Maria.

“We are also saddened by the Pahalgam attack, but we should also think about the lives of those living near the border. Are we not humans?” she asks.

“Now, whether there is a war or ceasefire, our children will not come back.”

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