Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a blistering attack on UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Canada – saying that they had “effectively said they want Hamas to remain in power”.

He also accused Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.

Netanyahu was speaking after Thursday’s deadly attack on Israeli embassy staff in Washington. Days earlier, the UK, France and Canada had condemned Israel’s expanded offensive in Gaza as “disproportionate” and described the humanitarian situation as “intolerable”.

Downing Street has pointed to Sir Keir’s condemnation of the Washington attack.

In that post, Sir Keir called antisemitism an “evil we must stamp out”.

All three countries denounced the Washington killings, which saw embassy workers Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, shot dead at an event hosted by the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, repeatedly shouted “free Palestine” as he was arrested, police said.

The UK, France and Canada – close allies of Israel – also came out in strong support of Israel following the deadly Hamas-led attacks 19 months ago.

Their statement demanding Israel halt its latest offensive was widely viewed as the strongest criticism of Israel’s military action since the war in Gaza began. It threatened concrete actions if Israel did not change course.

On Wednesday Sir Keir added that Israel’s decision to allow only a small amount of aid into Gaza was “utterly inadequate” and the UK suspended talks over a possible trade deal.

In his video, Netanyahu said Hamas wanted to destroy Israel and annihilate the Jewish people. He said the Palestinian armed group had welcomed the joint UK, French and Canadian criticism of Israel’s war conduct.

Some of Israel’s closest allies wanted Israel to “stand down and accept that Hamas’s army of mass murderers will survive”, he said.

“I say to President Macron, Prime Minister Carney and Prime Minister Starmer, when mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you’re on the wrong side of justice,” he added.

“You’re on the wrong side of humanity, and you’re on the wrong side of history.”

Netanyahu went on to blame a recent claim by UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher that thousands of babies would imminently die in Gaza if Israel did not immediately let in aid for the attack in Washington.

“A few days ago, a top UN official said that 14,000 Palestinian babies would die in 48 hours. You see many international institutions are complicit in spreading this lie,” he said.

“The press repeats it. The mob believed it. And a young couple is then brutally gunned down in Washington.”

When asked at the time for clarification on Fletcher’s statement, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke said “there are babies who are in urgent life-saving need of these supplements… and if they do not get those, they will be in mortal danger”.

Also on Thursday, an Israeli minister, Amichai Chikli, accused Sir Keir and other leaders of “emboldening the forces of terror”.

On Friday, UK armed forces minister Luke Pollard condemned the killings in Washington but rejected Netanyahu’s strong criticism of the British prime minister.

He said: “We stand in support of Israel’s right to self-defence as long as they conduct that within international humanitarian law – a position we’ve had since those appalling attacks on 7 October.

“We are also very clear we need to see aid get to the people who are genuinely suffering in Gaza.”

French foreign ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine also reiterated his criticism of Israel’s “escalation” in Gaza following Netanyahu’s statement.

He told FranceInfo radio: “Israel has to let the aid in. Access has to be massive and free.”

On Thursday, more than 90 lorries carrying aid supplies were allowed to cross into Gaza but the UN said that level was “nowhere near enough” to meet the needs of Palestinians living there.

The trickle of aid follows an 11-week total blockade, which humanitarian groups said risked widespread famine. Israel resumed air strikes in March which have since killed 3,613 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

In an interview for BBC World Service’s Newshour programme, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the current Israeli administration as a “gang of thugs”.

He was asked about remarks by the Israeli education minister, who had said Olmert should be ashamed of a previous interview with the BBC, where he argued that what Israel was doing in Gaza was “close to a war crime”.

“This is nonsense, they are a group of thugs that are running the state of Israel these days and the head of the gang is Netanyahu – this is a gang of thugs,” Olmert said.

“Of course they are criticising me, they are defaming me, I accept it, and it will not stop me from criticising and opposing these atrocious policies.”

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 53,762 people, including 16,500 children, have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A man in Norway woke up to find a huge container ship had run aground and crashed into his front garden.

The 135m-ship (443ft) missed Johan Helberg’s house by metres at about 05:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday.

Mr Helberg was only alerted to the commotion by his panicked neighbour who had watched the ship as it headed straight for shore, in Byneset, near Trondheim.

“The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Mr Helberg told television channel TV2.

“I went to the window and was quite astonished to see a big ship,” he added, in an interview with the Guardian.

“I had to bend my neck to see the top of it. It was so unreal.”

“Five metres further south and it would have entered the bedroom,” he added to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. “I didn’t hear anything.”

Neighbour Jostein Jorgensen said he was woken by the sound of the ship as it headed at full speed towards land, and ran to Mr Helberg’s house.

“I was sure that he was already outside, but no, there was no sign of life. I rang the doorbell many times and nothing,” said Mr Jorgensen.

“And it was only when I called him on the phone that I managed to contact him,” he told TV2.

The Cypriot-flagged cargo ship, the NCL Salten, had 16 people on board and was travelling south-west through the Trondheim Fjord to Orkanger when it went off course.

No-one was injured in the incident.

It is not known what caused the crash and Norwegian police are said to be investigating.

“It’s a very bulky new neighbour but it will soon go away,” Mr Helberg added.

The head of NCL, which chartered the ship, said it was a “serious incident” and “we are grateful that nobody was injured”.

“At present time, we do not know what caused the incident and are awaiting the conclusion of the ongoing investigation by the relevant authorities,” said managing director Bente Hetland.

According to reports, the ship had previously run aground in 2023 but got free under its own power.

Four people have died and several were missing as major flooding in New South Wales (NSW) left about 50,000 people isolated by floodwaters.

The record rainfall, now declared a natural disaster, has been caused by a slow-moving area of low pressure and is greater than any in living memory for some residents, according to local authorities.

Heavy rains moved south overnight affecting Sydney and Newcastle, with the Bureau of Meteorology issuing warnings for southern parts of the state.

“Tragically, we’re seeing more extreme weather events,” said Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a visit to flood-hit areas, adding “they’re occurring more frequently and they’re more intense”.

“Our thoughts are with communities that are cut off…we’re here to basically say – very clearly and explicitly – you are not alone.”

Albanese thanked the emergency services for responding to hundreds of rescue calls, saying “at the worse of times, we see the best of the Australian character”.

The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) said it had responded to more than 535 flood rescues in the 24 hours to 05:00 local time (19:00 GMT) – and more than 670 rescues since the flooding began.

There are more than 150 flood warnings in place with 40 of those at emergency level and authorities have re-issued earlier advice for people not to drive or enter floodwaters.

More than 100 schools have been closed because of the floods, which have left thousands of homes and businesses without power. Evacuation centres have been opened for those fleeing the flooding.

Taree, a city on the Mid North Coast, has been among the worst affected. On Wednesday, flooding at a major river in the area surpassed 6.3m (20.6ft), beating an almost century old record for its highest level.

Authorities have confirmed the fourth death due to the floods after they recovered the body of a man in his late 70s in the early hours of Friday after it appeared he drove into floodwaters near Coffs Harbour.

Earlier, the body of a 63-year-old man was recovered on Wednesday afternoon at a property in Moto, near Taree. The fatality was later identified in an ABC News report as David Knowles. Local police have started an investigation into the incident.

On Thursday morning, the body of a man in his 30s was found in floodwaters near Rosewood on the Mid North Coast. It followed earlier reports of a man stuck in floodwaters while driving in the area.

On Thursday afternoon, NSW police said its officers had recovered the body of a 60-year-old woman who got into trouble in her car in floodwaters at Brooklana, about 30km (18 miles) from the city of Coffs Harbour.

Police said there were a number of people missing with searches continuing for a 49-year-old man from Nymbodia who did not return home several nights ago and was last seen crossing a flooded area.

Nearly 10,000 homes are at risk of flooding in the state’s Mid North Coast.

“We are bracing for more bad news,” NSW Premier Chris Minns told reporters at a press conference yesterday.

“It’s very difficult to get supplies into some of these isolated communities,” Minns said, adding that the prime minister has pledged his support for any help needed from the federal government.

Minns also urged those who are in “prepare to evacuate” areas to leave if they can, while acknowledging some won’t be able to.

“They may be elderly, they might be infirm, they might have young children. But if we can get the majority of people out of harm’s way, it makes everybody’s job a lot easier.”

Jihad Dib, NSW Minister for Emergency Services, said that the state government continued to “throw every single thing we’ve got” toward rescue operations.

“These aren’t the records that you want to break, but we’ve seen more rain and more flooding in the mid and the north coast than we’ve ever seen before,” he said.

When Shreya Mishra Reddy was admitted to Harvard University in 2023, her parents were “ecstatic”.

It is “the ultimate school that anybody in India wants to get into,” she tells the BBC.

Now, with graduation around the corner, she has had to break the bad news to her family: she may not graduate in July from the executive leadership programme after the Trump administration moved to stop Harvard from enrolling international students “as a result of their failure to adhere to the law”.

“It has been very difficult for my family to hear. They’re still trying to process it,” she said.

Ms Reddy is one of around 6,800 international students at Harvard, who make up more than 27% of its enrolments this year. They are a crucial source of revenue for the Ivy League school. About a third of its foreign students are from China, and more than 700 are Indian, such as Ms Reddy.

All of them are now unsure of what to expect next. Harvard has called the move “unlawful”, which could lead to a legal challenge.

But that leaves the students’ futures in limbo, be it those who are waiting to enrol this summer, or are halfway through college, or even those awaiting graduation whose work opportunities are tied to their student visas.

Those who are already at Harvard would have to transfer to other American universities to remain in the US and retain their visas.

“I hope Harvard will stand for us and some solution can be worked out,” Ms Reddy says.

The university has said it is “fully committed to maintaining [its] ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably”.

The move against Harvard has huge implications for the million or so international students in the US. And it follows a growing crackdown by the Trump administration on institutes of higher learning, especially those that witnessed major pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

Dozens of them are facing investigations, as the government attempts to overhaul their accreditation process and reshape the way they are run.

The White House first threatened to bar foreign students from Harvard in April, after the university refused to make changes to its hiring, admissions and teaching practices. And it also froze nearly $3bn in federal grants, which Harvard is challenging in court.

Still, Thursday’s announcement left students reeling.

Chinese student Kat Xie, who is in her second year in a STEM programme, says she is “in shock”.

“I had almost forgotten about [the earlier threat of a ban] and then Thursday’s announcement suddenly came.”

But she adds a part of her had expected “the worst”, so she had spent the last few weeks seeking professional advice on how to continue staying in the US.

But the options are “all very troublesome and expensive”, she says.

The Trump administration seemed to single China out when it accused Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party” in its statement.

Beijing responded on Friday by criticising the “politicisation” of education.

It said the move would “only harm the image and international standing of the United States”, urging for the ban to be withdrawn “as soon as possible”.

“None of this is what we’ve signed up for,” says 20-year-old Abdullah Shahid Sial from Pakistan, a very vocal student activist.

A junior majoring in applied mathematics and economics, he was one of only two Pakistani undergraduate students admitted to Harvard in 2023.

He was also the first person in his family to study abroad. It was a “massive” moment for them, he says.

The situation he now finds himself in, he adds, is “ridiculous and dehumanising”.

Both Ms Reddy and Mr Sial said foreign students apply to go to college in the US because they see it as a welcoming place where opportunities abound.

“You have so much to learn from different cultures, from people of different backgrounds. And everybody really valued that,” Ms Reddy says, adding that this had been her experience at Harvard so far.

But Mr Sial says that has changed more recently and foreign students no longer feel welcome – the Trump administration has revoked hundreds of student visas and even detained students on campuses across the country. Many of them were linked to pro-Palestinian protests.

Now, Mr Sial adds, there is a lot of fear and uncertainty in the international student community.

That has only been exacerbated by the latest development. A postgraduate student from South Korea says she is having second thoughts about going home for the summer because she fears she won’t be able to re-enter the US.

She did not want to reveal her name because she is worried that might affect her chances of staying in the US. She is one year away from graduating.

She said she had a gruelling semester and had been looking forward to “reuniting with friends and family” – until now.

The anxiety among foreign students is palpable, says Jiang Fangzhou, who is reading public administration in Harvard Kennedy School.

“We might have to leave immediately but people have their lives here – apartments, leases, classes and community. These are not things you can walk away from overnight.”

And the ban doesn’t just affect current students, the 30-year-old New Zealander says.

“Think about the incoming ones, people who already turned down offers from other schools and planned their lives around Harvard. They’re totally stuck now.”

The moment that Oceangate’s Titan submersible was lost has been revealed in footage recorded on the sub’s support ship.

Titan imploded about 90 minutes into a descent to see the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023, killing all five people on board.

The passengers had paid Oceangate to see the ship, which lies 3,800m down.

On board were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

The BBC has had unprecedented access to the US Coast Guard’s (USCG) investigation for a documentary, Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster.

The footage was recently obtained by the USCG and shows Wendy Rush, the wife of Mr Rush, hearing the sound of the implosion while watching on from the sub’s support ship and asking: “What was that bang?”

The video has been presented as evidence to the USCG Marine Board of Investigation, which has spent the last two years looking into the sub’s catastrophic failure.

The documentary also reveals the carbon fibre used to build the submersible started to break apart a year before the fatal dive.

Titan’s support ship was with the sub while it was diving in the Atlantic Ocean. The video shows Mrs Rush, who was a director of Oceangate with her husband, sitting in front of a computer that was used to send and receive text messages from Titan.

When the sub reaches a depth of about 3,300m, a noise that sounds like a door slamming is heard. Mrs Rush is seen to pause then look up and ask other Oceangate crew members what the noise was.

Within moments she then receives a text message from the sub saying it had dropped two weights, which seems to have led her to mistakenly think the dive was proceeding as expected.

The USCG says the noise was in fact the sound of Titan imploding. However, the text message, which must have been sent just before the sub failed, took longer to reach the ship than the sound of the implosion.

All five people on board Titan died instantly.

Prior to the fatal dive, warnings had been raised by deep sea experts and some former Oceangate employees about Titan’s design. One described it as an “abomination” and said the disaster was “inevitable”.

Titan had never undergone an independent safety assessment, known as certification, and a key concern was that its hull – the main body of the sub where the passengers sat – was made of layers of carbon fibre mixed with resin.

The USCG says it has now identified the moment the hull started to fail.

Carbon fibre is a highly unusual material for a deep sea submersible because it is unreliable under pressure. A known problem is that the layers of carbon fibre can separate, a process called delamination.

The USCG believes that the carbon fibre layers of the hull started to break apart during a dive to the Titanic, which took place a year before the disaster – the 80th dive that Titan had made.

Passengers on board reported hearing a loud bang as the sub made its way back to the surface. They said that at the time Mr Rush said that this noise was the sub shifting in its frame.

But the USCG says the data collected from sensors fitted to Titan shows that the bang was caused by delamination.

“Delamination at dive 80 was the beginning of the end,” said Lieutenant Commander Katie Williams from USCG.

“And everyone that stepped onboard the Titan after dive 80 was risking their life.”

Titan took passengers on three more dives in the summer of 2022 – two to the Titanic and one to a nearby reef, before it failed on its next deep dive, in June 2023.

Businessman Oisin Fanning was onboard Titan for the last two dives before the disaster.

“If you’re asking a simple question: ‘Would I go again knowing what I know now?’ – the answer is no,” he told BBC News.

“A lot of people would not have gone. Very intelligent people who lost their lives, who, had they had all the facts, would not have made that journey.”

Deep sea explorer Victor Vescovo said he had grave misgivings about Titan and that he had told people that diving in the sub was like playing Russian roulette.

“I myself warned people away from getting into that submersible. I specifically told them that it was simply a matter of time before it failed catastrophically. I told Stockton Rush himself that I believed that.”

After the sub imploded, its mangled wreckage was discovered scattered across the sea floor of the Atlantic.

The USCG has described the process of sifting through the recovered debris – and said clothing from Mr Rush had been found, as well as business cards and stickers of the Titanic.

Later this year, the US Coast Guard will publish a final report of the findings from its investigation, which aims to establish what went wrong and prevent a disaster like this from ever happening again.

Speaking to the BBC’s documentary team, Christine Dawood, who lost her husband Shahzada and son Suleman in the disaster, said it had changed her forever.

“I don’t think that anybody who goes through loss and such a trauma can ever be the same,” she said.

The ripples from the Oceangate disaster are likely to continue for years – some private lawsuits have already been filed and criminal prosecutions may follow.

Oceangate told the BBC: “We again offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who died on June 18, 2023, and to all those impacted by the tragic accident.

“Since the tragedy occurred, Oceangate permanently wound down its operations and focused its resources on fully cooperating with the investigations. It would be inappropriate to respond further while we await the agencies’ reports.”

You can watch Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster on 9pm on Tuesday 27 May on BBC Two. It will also be available on the BBC iPlayer.

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Satellite images have for the first time shown the extent of a shipyard accident in North Korea that damaged a new warship in the presence of the secretive state’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

The image shows the warship lying on its side, covered by large blue tarpaulins. A portion of the vessel appears to be on land.

An official investigation into the accident – which Kim described as a “criminal act” – has begun, state media reported on Friday.

None of the reports mentioned any casualties or injuries as a result of Thursday’s incident in the eastern port city of Chongjin.

KCNA, North Korea’s official news agency, downplayed the damage in a report on Friday, saying it was “not serious” and that, contrary to initial reports, there were no holes on the ship’s bottom.

“The hull starboard was scratched and a certain amount of seawater flowed into the stern section through the rescue channel,” KCNA reported.

The manager of the shipyard, Hong Kil Ho, has been summoned by law enforcers, it said.

It would take around 10 days to restore the destroyer’s side, according to KCNA.

Kim said on Thursday that the accident was caused by “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism”.

He added that those who made “irresponsible errors” will be dealt with at a plenary meeting next month.

It’s not clear what punishment they might face, but the authoritarian state has a woeful human rights record.

It is uncommon for North Korea to publicly disclose local accidents – though it has done this a handful of times in the past.

This particular accident comes weeks after North Korea unveiled a similar 5,000-ton destroyer, the Choe Hyon.

Kim had called that warship a “breakthrough” in modernising North Korea’s navy and said it would be deployed early next year.

A Royal Bengal tiger was killed and dismembered by a mob in India’s north eastern state of Assam, a forest official has said.

Angry residents from a village in the Golaghat district reportedly took the step because the tiger had killed livestock in the area and posed a threat to their lives.

The state’s forest department has registered a case.

Instances of man-animal conflict are not new to Assam. This is the third tiger killing that has been reported this year.

Top forest official Gunadeep Das told Times of India newspaper that the tiger had died from sharp wounds and not gunshots.

The carcass was later recovered in the presence of a magistrate, reports say.

Mr Das told a local newspaper that “around a thousand people had gathered to kill the tiger” and that some of them attacked the tiger with machetes. He added that the tiger’s carcass had been sent for an autopsy.

Mrinal Saikia, a lawmaker from Assam state condemned the killing on X. He shared a video that showed the purported dead body of the tiger with parts of its skin, face and legs missing.

The BBC has not independently verified the video.

“This is a very painful act. The Earth is not only for humans, it is for animals as well,” he said in the post, adding that strict action will be taken against those involved in the killing.

Another forest official, Sonali Ghosh told local media that the origins of the tiger were unclear. According to reports, the animal was killed about 20km (12 miles) away from the Kaziranga National Park.

Latest data by Assam’s forest department shows the population of tigers in the state has steadily increased from just 70 in 2006 to 190 in 2019 due to various conservation efforts.

However, instances of tigers being killed due to conflict with villagers have been often reported in the media, which could be because of shrinking habitat and lack of protection of tiger corridors between different national parks in the state.

Tigers are a protected species under India’s Wildlife Protection Act (1972), which prohibits poaching, hunting and trade of tiger parts.

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For the last five years, a loud hum has been a continual backdrop to birdsong and the occasional barking dog in the village of Dresden, New York state.

Coming from the nearby Greenidge Generation power plant, which had been mothballed for years before, the sound has angered some local people.

“It’s an annoyance,” says Ellen Campbell, who owns a house on Seneca Lake a short distance away. “If I sit out by the lake, I would rather not hear that.

“We didn’t sign up for the constant hum.”

The issue here in Dresden, a village of about 300 people surrounded by winding country roads, single-track rail lines and farms growing grapes and hops, sounds like a familiar story about the tension between nature-loving locals and economic development.

But their annoyance is also a signal of something less expected – policies of US President Donald Trump meeting resistance from people in the rural areas whose votes drove his return to the White House.

And the cause? Bitcoin mining.

An energy-intensive process that relies on powerful computers to create and protect the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin mining has grown rapidly in the country over recent years. The current administration, unlike Joe Biden’s, is intent on encouraging the industry.

Trump has said he wants to turn the US into the crypto-mining capital of the world, announcing in June 2024 that “we want all the remaining Bitcoin to be made in the USA”. This has implications for rural communities throughout the US – many of whom voted for Trump.

Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.

The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.

But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.

“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”

Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.

The conflict in Seneca Lake is being played out nationwide, which could pose problems for a White House intent on pursuing a pro-cryptocurrency agenda.

A little over 100 miles west of Dresden, a backlash in the US border town of Niagara Falls prompted the local Mayor Robert Restaino – a Democrat – to issue a moratorium on new mining activity in December 2021, and the following year noise limits of 40 to 50 decibels near residential areas were imposed. He said: “The noise pollution of this industry is like nothing else.”

Locals described the sound as similar to that of a 747 jet, or as grating as having a toothache 24 hours a day, claiming that the noise drowned out the sound of the nearby waterfalls.

And in Granbury, Texas, a 24ft-high sound barrier was erected in 2023 at a mining site after residents complained to public officials that the nonstop roar was keeping them awake and giving them migraines.

All these Bitcoin operations opened before Trump’s return to the White House. But the opposition they have generated suggests public officials in Republican-voting areas are likely to find themselves coming under continued pressure from local people who oppose further Bitcoin mining expansion.

If this happens, could Trump’s crypto dreams be derailed in his own backyard?

Less than four years ago, Trump said Bitcoin “just seems like a scam”. Yet those reservations have now gone: the Trump family has since started the crypto firm World Liberty Financial, and Trump launched his own cryptocurrency, $TRUMP – 220 of its top buyers were invited to a private gala dinner with the president on Thursday.

Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr are behind a crypto mining venture called American Bitcoin, which plans to trade on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and aims to build one of the world’s largest and most efficient Bitcoin mining platforms, rooted in American soil.

Bitcoin mining has boomed in the US partly because of a crackdown in China in 2021, which was due to concerns over its environmental damage. Alexander Neumueller, an expert at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Alternative Finance, says that although it’s hard to trace every last mine, it’s clear that the US is now the leading Bitcoin producer, mining about 40% of the world’s supply.

Dresden is in New York’s Finger Lakes region – a rural area sliced through with deep glacial lakes, which attracts tourists drawn by its wineries, breweries and outdoor pursuits. In Yates County, home to Dresden and the Greenidge plant, around 60% of voters picked Trump last November.

According to the owners of the mine, Greenidge Generation, anywhere from 40 to 120 Bitcoin a month are being produced at the plant, along with some energy that flows back to the grid.

The company – which turned down requests for an interview – has argued that they converted a coal-burning operation into a relatively cleaner gas-fired power installation that complies with state environmental laws.

But amid public concern, New York state and Greenidge are currently engaged in a protracted legal battle over the plant’s future. With some of the strictest environmental laws in the country, New York officials are challenging whether the gas-fired plant is permitted under the regulations that allowed the old coal plant. Power generation – and Bitcoin mining – has been allowed to continue during appeal proceedings.

Abi Buddington, who owns a house in Dresden and has been at the forefront of the fight against the crypto mine, says it has become a big issue locally.

“The climate changed, both environmentally as well as in our quiet little community,” she says, recalling raised voices at contentious town hall meetings.

Ms Buddington is trying to change minds in Dresden and, through her network, elsewhere around the country.

“There are some who are environmentally concerned, and who may be Republican-leaning,” she says. “What we’ve found nationally is even in red states, once elected officials are educated properly and know the harms, they are very opposed.”

But not all are convinced. “They’ve been a good corporate neighbour,” says Dresden’s recently elected mayor, Brian Flynn, about the mine. “I’m pro-business, whether it be Greenidge or local agriculture… I think it’s important to have a mix of both industry and recreation.”

Legal battles like the one in Seneca Lake are bringing home the realities of an industry that at first glance might seem contained to banks of data servers, removed from the real world.

Bitcoin “miners” – who are not actually extracting anything from the earth – verify transactions by solving extremely difficult cryptographic problems that require powerful computers. In return, they are rewarded with Bitcoin.

As the price of Bitcoin has shot up to its current value of around $100,000 (£75,000), ever-increasing amounts of computing power have been needed to win crypto rewards, shutting out smaller miners in favour of large collectives and companies.

As well as the hum, mining’s energy use has environmental impacts. A Harvard study published in March in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature Communications found that Bitcoin mining exposes millions of Americans to harmful air pollution each year – and that 34 Bitcoin mines consumed a third more electricity than the city of LA. (There was some pushback from the crypto industry to the study, which was called The environmental burden of the United States’ Bitcoin mining boom.)

According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, mining globally uses approximately 0.7% of global electricity consumption.

That has a knock-on effect on local energy prices, which is also provoking a backlash in some areas.

In 2017, Bitcoin miners flooded into Plattsburgh, New York – a city of about 20,000 people a couple of hours to the north of Dresden – because of cheap hydroelectricity rates. “We were getting Bitcoin applications from operators all around the world,” says the city’s mayor at the time, Colin Read.

Yet they used so much power that electricity rates shot up. Within a year, some residents were paying up to 40% more during winter months, Read says.

The following year, he and other local lawmakers passed rules against buildings blasting out hot air.

“Fortunately we put a stop to it,” he says, noting that all but one Bitcoin mining operation left the city.

Resistance to Bitcoin mines extends to places with the biggest Trump support.

Cyndie Roberson was retired and unaware of the crypto industry until a Bitcoin mining operation moved to her small town in North Carolina in 2021. The locals banded together and managed to ban new Bitcoin developments in their area – but the existing one was allowed to stay and the bitterness of the fight made her decide to move south, to Gilmer County in Georgia.

There, Ms Roberson has campaigned against crypto mining in a region that is solidly pro-Republican. In the county where she lives, she says that around 1,000 people came to a public meeting to oppose a mine, which then wasn’t allowed to operate.

Just north of Gilmer, the Fannin County Commission has enacted a ban on crypto mining, while a Georgian commission representing 18 primarily rural counties has published advice on how to restrict the development of Bitcoin mines.

“When you’re in my backyard, when you’re in my town, trying to wreck our property and our peace, people will tell you, it’s a hard ‘no’,” says Ms Roberson.

Although 80% of local people backed Trump last November, that support doesn’t appear to stop people opposing one of his key crypto goals.

The Trump administration is not planning to do away with all regulations around crypto mining – but it is ready to actively help companies open power plants next to the mines.

In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine in April, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said: “We’re going to make it so that if you want to mine Bitcoin, and you find the right place to do it, you can build your own power plant next to it,” going on to argue that such projects would stop “these stories about ‘You’re taking too much power and now the cost of operating my refrigerator is higher’.”

“The next generation of miners in America will be able to control their destiny, control the cost of power, and I think that is going to turbocharge Bitcoin mining in America,” Lutnick told the magazine.

According to Zack Shapiro, head of policy at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a US think tank that researches emerging monetary networks, that process has already begun. “There are states that are passing laws specifically prohibiting municipalities from banning Bitcoin mines,” he says. “It’s a mechanism by which mining companies can fight back.”

And the nature of Bitcoin mining means that, if it meets resistance, it can quickly move on to somewhere more favourable.

When Colin Read tackled the mines in Plattsburgh, he saw how easily they could change location.

“This industry is really footloose,” he said. “When we told these companies they couldn’t have more power without going through hoops, they packed up and went to a community where they didn’t have such strict requirements.”

Local opposition is not Trump’s only challenge. Could the sea, for example, be a better location for Bitcoin mining?

Mr Shapiro believes that, with miners looking for the lowest cost, they could turn to leftover renewable energy that can’t be used by other applications. “Wind power in the ocean can’t be used to power a city, but you can set up an offshore platform that captures offshore wind and tidal energy, and use that to mine Bitcoin – because there’s not another buyer to use that energy, it’s probably ultimately where Bitcoin mining operations move.”

It could also be that in the cryptocurrency race, Bitcoin might not be the best bet. Read – who is an energy economist – is sceptical about the staying power of energy-intensive Bitcoin because he believes other more efficient alternatives are going to emerge.

With the White House egging on the industry, fights over Bitcoin mining will inevitably play out in smaller forums, in state and local governments and tiny places like Dresden.

But one constant in the short history of Bitcoin has been volatility. It might be boom times now – yet a downturn in the price, shifts in energy sources and changing crypto needs could fundamentally reshape the Bitcoin mining landscape, no matter how much Trump wants to keep it in the US.

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

Fans of viral Labubu dolls have reacted angrily online after its maker pulled the toys from all UK stores following reports of customers fighting over them.

Pop Mart, which makes the monster bag charms, told the BBC it had paused selling them in all 16 of its shops until June to “prevent any potential safety issues”.

Labubu fan Victoria Calvert said she witnessed chaos in the Stratford store in London. “It was just getting ridiculous to be in that situation where people were fighting and shouting and you felt scared.”

The soft toys became a TikTok trend after being worn by celebrities like Rihanna and Dua Lipa. Now some retail experts are warning the stop on stock will only heighten demand.

Labubu is a quirky monster character created by Hong Kong-born artist Kasing Lung, and popularised through a collaboration with toy store Pop Mart.

Since gaining celebrity status they’ve gone viral as a fashion accessory.

In the UK, prices can range from £13.50 to £50, with rare editions going for hundreds of pounds on resale sites such as Vinted and eBay.

Pop Mart said it was working on a fairer system for when the toys return to its shelves.

But fans on social media were not happy at the decision to pull the dolls.

“It’s your fault for drip feeding stock to us that’s caused this hype,” one commented on Pop Mart’s Instagram post.

Others vented their anger at resellers.

“Buyers are re-selling them for £100 for one Labubu, which is unacceptable. How come they get to buy and other people can’t?!” one said.

“Sooo upset that resellers ruin everything,” replied another.

Victoria said when she arrived at the store she met other customers who had been outside since 03:00 BST and others that had camped overnight.

“When I got there there were big crowds of people hovering around the shop and there was this really negative vibe,” she said.

“People were shouting, basically saying there were no more Labubus left. I even witnessed a fight between a worker and a customer.”

She said she left after feeling unsafe. “It was a pretty bad experience, it was really scary,” she said.

The store told the BBC: “Although no Pop Mart employees have been injured, we’ve chosen to act early and prevent any potential safety issues from occurring.”

Victoria said “it’s probably for the best” that Pop Mart paused in-store sales.

She believes some people at the front of the queue were resellers because “as soon as they got their ticket, apparently they were selling it for £150 and the ticket allowed you to get a Labubu.”

Jaydee, a marketing executive who posts Labubu unboxing videos on TikTok, blames resellers for ruining the fun of the Labubu trend.

“I’ve lived in London my whole life and there is a resale crowd who do this,” she told the BBC.

“It’s really unfortunate but for the real fans this is great news and the right decision,” she said. “Now I can go into Pop Mart without having to queue.”

Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Pop Mart’s restricting stock and selling the dolls in blind boxes had led to the fan frenzy.

“But the big crowds building on stock drop days have clearly become a costly headache to manage,” she said.

“Out-of-control crowds could affect ultimately the brand’s playful and fun appeal which is likely to be why sales have been paused,” she said.

She warned the suspension would probably lead to demand building up and more attempts to buy the dolls online – but they sell out within seconds.

“It could also push more fans to resale sites, but counterfeit Labubus are being sold, so there is a risk customers could be duped into buying fakes.”

Sarah Johnson, the founder of consultancy Flourish Retail, said suspending sales was “a strategic decision”.

Collectible brands like Labubu use scarcity as “a powerful tool”, she added.

Pop Mart told the BBC there had been large queues with some fans arriving the night before and said this was “not the kind of customer experience it aimed to offer”.

“Labubu will return to physical stores in June, and we are currently working on a new release mechanism that is better structured and more equitable for everyone involved.”

An Amazonian tribe has sued the New York Times (NYT) over a report about the community gaining access to high-speed internet, which it claims led to its members being labelled as porn addicts.

The defamation lawsuit said the US newspaper’s report portrayed the Marubo tribe as “unable to handle basic exposure to the internet” and highlighted “allegations that their youth had become consumed by pornography”.

The lawsuit also named TMZ and Yahoo as defendants, and said their news stories “mocked their youth” and “misrepresented their traditions”.

The NYT said its report did not say any of the tribe’s members were addicted to porn. TMZ and Yahoo have been contacted for comment.

The Marubo, an Indigenous community of about 2,000 people, is seeking at least $180m (£133m) in damages.

The NYT’s story, written nine months after the Marubo gained access to Starlink, a satellite-internet service from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, said the tribe was “already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years”.

This included “teenagers glued to phones”, “violent video games” and “minors watching pornography”, the report said.

It stated that a community leader and vocal critic of the internet was “most unsettled by the pornography”, and had been told of “more aggressive sexual behaviour” from young men.

The report also noted the perceived benefits of the internet among the tribe, including the ability to alert authorities to health issues and environmental destruction and stay in touch with faraway family.

The lawsuit claims other news outlets sensationalised the NYT’s report, including a headline from TMZ referencing porn addiction.

The response led the NYT to run a follow-up report around a week after its original story, with the headline: “No, A Remote Amazon Tribe Did Not Get Addicted to Porn”.

The report said “more than 100 websites around the world” had “published headlines that falsely claim the Marubo have become addicted to porn”.

But the lawsuit claimed the NYT’s original story had “portrayed the Marubo people as a community unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations that their youth had become consumed by pornography”.

The named plaintiffs, community leader Enoque Marubo and Brazillian activist Flora Dutra, who helped to distribute the 20 $15,000 Starlink antennas to the tribe, said the NYT story helped fuel “a global media storm”, according to the Courthouse News Service.

This, they said, subjected them to “humiliation, harassment and irreparable harm to their reputations and safety”.

The TMZ story included video footage of Marubo and Dutra distributing the antennas, which they said “created the unmistakable impression [they] had introduced harmful, sexually explicit material into the community and facilitated the alleged moral and social decay”.

A spokesperson for the New York Times said: “Any fair reading of this piece shows a sensitive and nuanced exploration of the benefits and complications of new technology in a remote Indigenous village with a proud history and preserved culture.

“We intend to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”

US President Donald Trump has hosted top purchasers of the cryptocurrency that bears his name at a gala dinner, in an event that protesters and his Democrat opponents branded as “corrupt”.

$TRUMP was launched shortly before his inauguration in January, initially rocketing in value before falling sharply afterwards.

“It’s fundamentally corrupt – a way to buy access to the President,” Democrat senator Chris Murphy wrote on X.

Protesters gathered outside the event on Thursday night, which was held at a golf course near Washington DC, some carrying signs reading “stop crypto corruption” and “no kings.”

The White House has rejected the accusations, and in a video of the dinner posted on social media, Trump is seen saying “I always put the country way ahead of the business.”

“The Biden administration persecuted crypto innovators and we’re bringing them back into the USA where they belong,” Trump is also recorded as saying.

The event took place as Bitcoin – the leading cryptocurrency – was hitting a fresh record high price of almost $112,000 (£83,000) per coin before falling back slightly.

$TRUMP is what is known as a meme coin – a type of cryptocurrency inspired by internet memes or viral online trends.

Its price peaked at $75 in January before plummeting to less than $8 in April – it was trading at around $12.50 at the time of writing.

“This is something that doesn’t have obvious utility. It’s not being used for payments. It’s not being used as a store of value,” said Rob Hadick, General Partner of Dragonfly, a crypto venture fund.

The dinner was advertised on the website gettrumpmemes.com as “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World.”

The top 220 purchasers of the meme coin, viewable on a leaderboard, received invitations to the “black-tie optional” event.

The top investor in the $TRUMP meme coin is billionaire crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun who was charged with fraud and market manipulation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration.

In February, the Trump administration paused the case.

Sun said this week on the social media platform X that he planned to attend the dinner, calling himself Trump’s “TOP fan!”

Sun then made a series of posts on Thursday night on X, including one that said it was an “honour” to attend the dinner.

Earlier in the day, Democrat senators held a press conference to denounce the event and to call for disclosure of who would be attending.

Calling the dinner “an orgy of corruption,” Senator Elizabeth Warren slammed Trump for “using the presidency of the United States to make himself richer through crypto.”

Trump’s views on cryptocurrency have undergone radical change in recent years.

In 2021, he called Bitcoin a “scam.”

Now, he’s not just in charge of regulating cryptocurrencies in the US – he and his family are active industry participants.

In addition to the meme coin, the Trump family also holds a majority stake in the crypto exchange World Liberty Financial, which was launched just prior to the election.

Trump expressed his desire to be the nation’s first “Crypto President” while campaigning for his second term, and was a major beneficiary of campaign contributions from the crypto industry in the 2024 election.

According to a report by the group State Democracy Defenders Action, Trump’s investments in crypto have helped boost his net worth by as much as $2.9bn.

“As a stakeholder in crypto assets, President Trump will likely profit from the very policies he is pursuing,” the report states.

Three days into his term, Trump issued an executive order to establish a regulatory framework that promotes the growth of digital currencies.

A Trump administration official told the BBC that the meme coin has nothing to do with the White House.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly pushed back on concerns about potential conflicts.

“The President is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself,” Kelly said in a statement.

But one former financial regulator likened the meme coin to gambling.

“It’s like selling membership cards for his personal fan club which are then traded,” said Timothy Massad, Director of the Digital Asset Policy Project at Harvard.

“They have no value. But people speculate on the price and those purchases and that trading enriches him.”

At a Senate committee hearing this week, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy grilled Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the lack of transparency regarding who would attend Thursday night’s dinner.

Murphy cited reports that many of the attendees at the invite-only event were expected to be foreigners.

“There’s clearly a way around the State Department for foreign individuals of significant influence and wealth to be able to directly lobby the president of the United States,” he said.

“I don’t have any concern that the president having dinner with someone is going to contravene the security of the United States,” Rubio responded, adding that he was unaware of the dinner.

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The US will impose new sanctions on Sudan after finding it used chemical weapons last year in the ongoing civil war against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the state department has said.

US exports to the country will be restricted and financial borrowing limits put in place from 6 June, a statement from spokesperson Tammy Bruce read.

A Sudanese government spokesperson described the accusations as “baseless claims with no supporting evidence”.

Both the Sudanese military and the paramilitary group the RSF have previously been accused of war crimes during the conflict, which they have denied.

More than 150,000 people have been killed during the conflict, which began two years ago when Sudan’s army and the RSF began a vicious struggle for power.

In recent months, Sudan’s military has recaptured the capital of Khartoum, but fighting continues elsewhere.

No detail was provided about which chemical weapons the US said it found, but the New York Times reported in January that Sudan used chlorine gas on two occasions, which causes a range of painful and damaging effects and can be fatal.

This was said to have been in remote areas which were not named. No visual evidence has been shared so far as proof of the weapons having been used in the current war in Sudan.

“The United States calls on the government of Sudan to cease all chemical weapons use and uphold its obligations under the CWC,” the statement read, referring to the Chemical Weapons Convention under which signatories have committed to destroy their stockpiles of the weapons.

In a strongly worded statement, Sudan’s Culture and Information Minister Khalid Al-Ayesir described the US’s actions as “political blackmail”, adding that they further eroded US “credibility” and eliminated “any remaining influence it may have in Sudan”.

He said it was a “fabricated narrative… to mislead international opinion and offer political cover to illegitimate actors complicit in crimes against the Sudanese people”.

Nearly every country in the world – including Sudan – has agreed to the CWC, apart from Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan according to the Arms Control Association, a US-based non-partisan membership organisation. Israel has signed the agreement but not ratified its signature, meaning it has not legally confirmed its involvement in the treaty, the ACA adds.

“The United States remains fully committed to hold to account those responsible for contributing to chemical weapons proliferation,” Bruce added.

This is not the first time the US has imposed sanctions in Sudan. In January, they were issued against leaders of both parties embroiled in the conflict.

Sudan’s military leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan was accused of “destabilising Sudan and undermining the goal of a democratic transition” by the US, which the country’s foreign ministry condemned as “strange and troubling”.

Meanwhile, the head of the RSF Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemedti, was determined to have perpetrated genocide in the country by former secretary of state Antony Blinken. The RSF has denied these charges.

The rival forces have been struggling for power for the past two years, displacing around 12 million people and leaving 25 million needing food aid, more than double the population of London.

New sanctions will have little effect on the country as a result of these prior measures, according to the AFP news agency.

This latest US move comes amid tensions over the alleged involvement of the United Arab Emirates in the conflict. The UAE and Sudan had maintained diplomatic ties until earlier this month when the Sudanese government alleged the UAE provided arms to the RSF, an allegation the UAE denies.

Following US President Donald Trump’s warm reception in the Gulf state last week, Democrats in Congress sought to block the sale of arms from the US to the UAE in part due to its alleged involvement in the conflict.

A Sudanese diplomatic source told news agency Reuters that the US had imposed the new sanctions “to distract from the recent campaign in Congress against the UAE”.

Earlier this month, a top UN court rejected Sudan’s bid to sue the UAE for genocide.

Walk into any Starbucks in South Korea right now, and there are some names you definitely won’t be hearing.

Six to be exact – and they happen to be the names of the candidates running in the upcoming presidential race.

That’s because Starbucks has temporarily blocked customers who are ordering drinks from using these names, which would be called out by baristas.

The company said it needed to “maintain political neutrality during election season”, adding that this would be lifted after the election on 3 June.

South Korean businesses and celebrities usually strive to be seen as neutral. But it has become more crucial in recent months, as political turmoil triggered by former president Yoon Suk Yeol left the country more divided than ever.

Now, as South Korea gears up to pick its new president following Yoon’s impeachment, even the most mundane things can become politicised – a lesson Starbucks has learnt the hard way.

In recent months, it has seen an increasing number of customers ordering drinks through their app and keying in phrases such as “arrest Yoon Suk Yeol” or “[opposition leader] Lee Jae-myung is a spy” as their nicknames.

Starbucks baristas had little choice but to yell out these names once the drinks were ready for collection.

“Our goal is to make sure every customer has a great experience in our coffeehouses,” Starbucks said in a statement about its new move to ban the six presidential candidates’ names.

“To help with that, we sometimes block certain phrases that could be misunderstood by our employees or customers — like names of political candidates with messages of support or opposition during election season to maintain neutrality.”

But this marks the first time it has banned the names of all the candidates running in an election. Besides Lee, the other names are Kim Moon-soo, Lee Jun-seok, Kwon Young-kook, Hwang Kyo-ahn and Song Jin-ho.

Some think the coffee giant is taking things a bit too far.

“I think people are being too sensitive. What if your real name is the same as a candidate’s?” said 33-year-old Jang Hye-mi.

Ji Seok-bin, a 27-year-old who is a regular at Starbucks, said he thought the rule was “too trivial”, though he said he understood the logic behind it given the country’s heightened political tensions.

“After [Yoon’s impeachment] I don’t really talk about politics anymore. It feels like the ideological divide has grown so much that conversations often turn into arguments.”

Starbucks is not alone. The country’s biggest search engine, Naver, has disabled autocomplete and related search suggestions for candidates, as it usually does during election season.

A search on Google for Lee, who is widely tipped to win the election, yields phrases like “Lee Jae-myung trial” – a reference to the fact that he is currently embroiled in several criminal trials.

A search for the country’s conservative presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo brings up a related suggestion for “conversion”, as he is widely seen to have “converted” from being a fervent labour activist to a conservative politician.

Naver said it decided to do this to “provide more accurate and fair information during the election campaign”.

Celebrities and public figures are also being extra careful, as they are held to high standards of political impartiality. Even the clothes they wear during election time would be highly scrutinised.

Wearing colours like blue and red – which represent the country’s liberal Democratic Party (DP) and conservative People’s Power Party (PPP) respectively – has in the past been enough to trigger online backlash.

Sometimes, even a baseball cap or necktie alone is enough to spark accusations of partisan support.

During the last presidential election in 2022, Kim Hee-chul of K-pop group Super Junior was accused of being a PPP supporter when he was spotted wearing red slippers and a pink mask.

Last year, Shinji, lead vocalist of the popular trio Koyote, posted a black and white workout photo on Instagram a day before the general election, with the caption that she “made the photo black and white… [after] seeing the colour of my sweatpants.”

“Funny and sad at the same time,” she added.

Some celebrities go even further, deliberately wearing a mix of red and blue.

One makeup artist with over a decade of experience working with K-pop stars and actors told the BBC that during elections, styling teams steer clear of politically symbolic colours.

“We usually stick to neutral tones like black, white, or grey,” said the make-up artist, who declined to be named.

Celebrities even have to be careful when striking a pose, she added.

Flashing the peace sign for a photo? That could be read as the number two – and thus an endorsement of a political candidate. In South Korea, election candidates are each assigned a number.

Dr Cho Jin-man, of Duksung Women’s University, says it is “important to be able to talk about different things without crossing the line, and to be able to recognise and understand differences”.

But with so much division in the country, he adds that many are choosing to “remain silent to remain politically neutral”.

In 2010, Indian filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan made a striking debut at Cannes with Masaan – a poignant tale of love, loss, and the oppressive grip of the caste system, set against the holy city of Varanasi.

The main lead in the film (Vicky Kaushal) performed a job assigned to one of the lowest castes in the rigid Hindu caste hierarchy – cremating dead bodies along the Ganges. Masaan played in the “Un Certain Regard” section at the festival, which looks at films with unusual styles and or that tells non-traditional stories. It won the FIPRESCI and the Avenir – also known as the Promising Future Prize – prizes.

Since then, Ghaywan was in search of a story about India’s marginalised communities. Five years ago in the middle of the pandemic, a friend, Somen Mishra – the head of creative development at Dharma Productions in Mumbai – recommended an opinion piece called Taking Amrit Home, published in The New York Times. It was written by the journalist Basharat Peer.

What drew Ghaywan to Peer’s article was that it tracked the journeys – sometimes of hundreds or even thousands of miles – taken by millions of Indians who travelled on foot to get home during the nation’s strict lockdown during the pandemic. But he was also drawn to the core of the story, which focused on the childhood friendship between two men – one Muslim and the other Dalit (formerly known as the untouchables).

Ghaywan’s new film Homebound, inspired by Peer’s article, premiered at Cannes Film Festival’s “Un Certain Regard” section this week, ending with a nine-minute long standing ovation.

Many in the audience were seen wiping away tears. Ghaywan gave the lead producer Karan Johar a tight hug, while he and his young lead actors – Ishan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor – came together in a larger group hug later.

Since this was the biggest South Asian event at Cannes 2025, other film luminaries showed up to support the screening. India’s Mira Nair (who won the Camera d’Or in 1988 for Salaam Bombay) leaned across two rows of seats to reach out to Johar. Pakistan’s Siam Sadiq (who won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize in 2022 for Joyland) was seen making a reel of the mood inside the theatre that he later posted on Instagram.

The film also received backing from a rather unexpected quarter. Its main producer is Johar, the leading Indian commercial filmmaker (known for blockbuster films like Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham and the recent Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani). But last month Martin Scorsese stepped in as the executive producer after he was introduced to the film by the French producer Mélita Toscan du Plantier.

This is the first time Scorsese has stepped in to support a contemporary Indian film. Until now he has only backed restored classic Indian films.

“I have seen Neeraj’s first film Masaan in 2015 and I loved it, so when Mélita Toscan du Plantier sent me the project of his second film, I was curious,” Scorsese said in a statement last month.

“I loved the story, the culture and was willing to help. Neeraj has made a beautifully crafted film that’s a significant contribution to Indian cinema.”

According to Ghaywan, Scorsese helped nurture the film by mentoring the team through a number of rounds of edits. But he also tried to understand the cultural context which helped the exchange of ideas.

The context was important to Ghaywan, since he had been trying to capture the right spirit of the subject he was tackling.

The film’s two lead characters – Mohammed Shoaib Ali (Khatter) and Chandan Kumar (Jethwa) have shared histories – the weight of centuries of discrimination at the hand of upper caste Hindus, but also similar goals to rise above the barriers imposed on them – in this case by joining their state’s police force.

Ghaywan has openly shared that he was born into a Dalit family – a reality that has cast a long shadow over his life, haunting him since childhood.

As an adult, he went on to study business administration and then worked in a corporate job in Gurgaon outside the capital, Delhi. He said he never faced discrimination but was acutely aware of his position in the caste hierarchy and still lives with the weight of where he was born.

“I am the only acknowledged person from the community who is there behind and in the front of camera in all of Hindi cinema history. That is the kind of gap we are living with,” he says.

A majority of India lives in its villages, but Hindi filmmakers rarely talk about bringing the villages to their stories, says Ghaywan. What also offends him is that marginalised communities are only talked about as statistics.

“What if we pick one person out of that statistic and see what happened in their lives?” he says. “How did they get to this point? I felt it was worth narrating a story.”

When he sat down to write the script, he tried to fictionalise the backstories of the two protagonists until the point that they took the journey during Covid – which is the beginning of Peer’s article.

As a child in Hyderabad, Ghaywan had a close Muslim friend, Asghar, so he felt deeply connected to Ali and Kumar’s lived experiences in the film.

“What appealed to me more was the humanity behind it, the interpersonal, the interiority of the relationship,” he says, that took him back to his childhood in Hyderabad.

In Ghaywan’s hands, Homebound has the wonderful glow and warmth of the winter sun. It is gorgeously shot in India’s rural North, capturing simple joys and the daily struggles of its Muslim and Dalit protagonists. The two men, the woman one of them loves (Kapoor and Jethwa both portray Dalit characters), and their interactions offer much to reflect on and understand.

For the most part, Ghaywan’s script keeps viewers on the edge. Back in 2019, none of us truly grasped the scale of the coming pandemic – but the film subtly foreshadows a shift, reminding us that a crisis can cut across class, caste, and ethnicity, touching everyone.

Homebound’s seamless blend of fiction and reality has produced a powerful public document, grounding its characters in authenticity. More than just moving its audience to tears, the film is bound to spark meaningful conversations – and, one hopes, a deeper understanding of those who live in the shadows.

It’s official. U2 are back in the studio making new music, after a gap of eight years.

The four-piece had been on an extended break, as drummer Larry Mullen Jr recovered from neck surgery.

Pompted by years of onstage damage to his “elbows, knees and neck”, it stopped him recording new material (2023’s Atomic City aside), and saw U2 hiring Dutch musician Bram van den Berg for last year’s Las Vegas residency.

“It was difficult being away because of injury,” says Mullen Jr, “so I’m thrilled to be back in a creative environment, even if I’m not 100% there and I’ve got some bits falling off.”

“It’s just the most extraordinary thing,” he adds. “When I was away from the band, I missed it, but I didn’t realise how much I missed it.”

The band are speaking backstage at the Ivor Novello Awards, where they’ve just become the first Irish Group to be given fellowship of the Ivors’ songwriting academy.

• ‘I’m hardly Bob Dylan’: Charli XCX wins songwriter of the year

It’s the body’s highest accolade, placing them alongside former recipients like Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Kate Bush and Joan Armatrading.

Bono, perennially laid back and loquacious, suddenly becomes energised when he talks about U2’s recent writing sessions.

“It was just the four of us in a room, trying a new song and going, ‘What’s that feeling? Oh right, that’s chemistry’.

“We had it when we were 17. We’ve had it over the years but you lose it sometimes, [especially because] the way music is assembled these days is not friendly to that chemistry.

“But isn’t it strange that it’s just got to the moment when just bass, drums, guitar and a loudmouth singer sounds like an original idea.

“That’s where we’re at in 2025.”

The band have been in reflective mode for almost the last decade.

In 2017, they set off on a stadium tour celebrating their career-defining Joshua Tree album. Bono spent the pandemic writing his memoir, Surrender, prompting the band to revisit and re-record some of their biggest hits on the mostly acoustic Songs Of Surrender album.

Last year’s Vegas shows recreated their 1990s Berlin reinvention on Achtung Baby and they capped that off with an archival album of unreleased material from 2004’s How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

“We spent a moment thinking about the past – but you do that because you need to understand where that desire to be heard came from,” says Bono.

“And then you can get to the present and to the future – because the sound of the future is what we’re most interested in.

“It doesn’t exist yet. It’s ours to make, and that’s what we have the chance to do.”

Attending the Ivor Novellos gives the band another opportunity to retrace their story, for an audience that includes Bruce Springsteen, Charli XCX, Ed Sheeran, Brian Eno and Lola Young.

“When we gathered in Larry Mullen’s kitchen in 1976, this was unimaginable,” says bassist Adam Clayton.

“We never thought the band could be this old!”

Mullen Jr recalls the record company executive who advised the rest of the group to ditch his services, while guitar legend The Edge sings a modified version of My Way, to illustrate how he always gets the last word.

Bono isn’t impressed.

“I’d like to remind the room that The Edge the first one to break up this band,” he deadpans.

“We’ve all had it go since but in 1982, aged 21, that man there decided that he had enough of the music business with its inflamed egos and pumped up personality.

“I asked him, ‘Will you make an exception for me?'”

Presumably, the answer was yes.

Backstage, they talk about their beginnings in Dublin’s punk scene and how it gave four untrained, untested musicians permission to pursue their dreams.

“We don’t come from a tradition of great songwriters,” says Mullen Jr. “We didn’t have any of those blues chops, so we were starting from scratch, all of us.”

“A lot of early influences for us were bands like The Ramones, who were doing these three-minute pop songs, and Patti Smith, who was a bit more poetic, and had a bit more of a social conscience,” says bassist Adam Clayton.

“We knew that the bar was high, but we were just getting in at the bottom level.”

“Punk rock was like year zero for us,” picks up Bono.

“We didn’t really want to know, or be beholden to, the past. So we started with a blank page, really, which was just as well because we couldn’t play anyone else’s songs. We just started writing our own.”

Over the years, the honed and finessed those skills. Inspired by Bob Marley – their label-mate on Island Records – they realised that rock music could be more than sex and attitude.

“Bob could sing about anything he wanted to,” says Bono.

“He’d sing to God, he’d sing to his lovers, he’d sing to the people on the street. There were no rules for Bob Marley – so that was exactly the right influence for us, because that’s where we wanted to go.”

“Any songwriter knows that they have to write about things that they care about,” agrees The Edge.

“That’s when it connects and when it means something. Otherwise, it’s artifice.”

Throughout the Ivors ceremony, U2’s decades-long friendship is apparent – albeit through relentless, good-natured taunting.

They try to goad The Edge into dancing for the BBC’s TV crew. Mullen reminds his bandmates of their 1990s penchant for cross-dressing. Bono dredges up Paul Weller’s scathing critique of their band.

“When asked, ‘Why don’t you like U2′, he said, “Because they wear cowboy boots.’

“‘I rest my case.'”

Thankfully, the cowboy boot era is ancient history (tonight Bono wears Cuban heels) and, Weller’s opprobrium aside, U2 became one of rock’s biggest bands, selling more than 175 milllion albums worldwide.

There were missteps along the way – Clayton famously disappeared on a drinking bender during the New Zealand leg of the colossal two-year Zoo TV tour (he’s now sober and appearing on Gardener’s World), while the band have repeatedly apologised for the misguided decision to pre-load their 2014 album, Songs of Innocence, on to people’s iPhones.

“The free U2 album is overpriced,” wrote one disgruntled user.

In his autobiography, Bono said he took “full responsibility” for the stunt.

“I’d thought if we could just put our music within reach of people, they might choose to reach out toward it,” he wrote.

“Not quite.”

But as they enter their fifth decade, the band are ready to “re-apply for the job of best band in the world”, as they memorably put it in 2001.

A year ago, Bono expressed his desire to release “a noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album”, citing AC/DC as an influence.

At the Ivors, I accidentally misquote this back to him as “an unassailable guitar record”.

“I’m really pleased with that adjective – ,” he says, trying it on for size.

“I think he said, ‘un-sellable’,” shoots back Mullen Jr.

“But listen,” says Bono. “We have a guitar genius in our band, and the only person who doesn’t know it is him.

“We tell him every day, but he insists on playing the piano… and sometimes the spoons.”

“It’s blackmail,” insists The Edge, the famously unflappable guitarist seeming temporarily flapped.

“The fellas are all on about this guitar album we’re making, and I’m at home, going, ‘Okay, I’d better get on with it'”

The clock is ticking…

The P39-1 is an anonymous stretch of thinly tarred highway connecting the small towns of Newcastle and Normandien in South Africa, a four-hour drive from Johannesburg.

This week the single carriageway road, which runs mainly along the edge of farms nestled in the remote hills of the country’s KwaZulu-Natal province, has found itself unexpectedly the subject of global attention.

On Wednesday many South Africans were among those watching live around the world as US President Donald Trump ambushed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa with a video making the case that white people were being persecuted. He had previously said that a “genocide” was taking place.

The most striking scene in the video was an aerial shot of thousands of white crosses by the side of the road – a “burial site” President Trump repeatedly said, of more than a thousand Afrikaners murdered in recent years.

The president did not mention where the road was although the film was quickly linked to Normandien.

• WATCH: ‘Turn the lights down’ – Trump confronts Ramaphosa with video
• FACT-CHECK: Trump’s Oval Office confrontation with Ramaphosa
• US ANALYSIS: Ramaphosa keeps cool in Trump’s choreographed onslaught
• SOUTH AFRICAN VIEW: How Trump-Ramaphosa confrontation went down

But the people who live nearby know better than anyone that his claim is not true.

The BBC visited the area on Thursday, the day after the Oval Office showdown, to find that the P39-1’s crosses have long since disappeared.

There is no burial site, and the road looks like any other. A new grain mill has been built along one stretch where the crosses once briefly stood.

What we found was a community shocked to find itself under the spotlight, and a truth about the crosses that reveals much about the delicate balance of race relations in South Africa.

Roland Collyer is a man who understands both.

A farmer from South Africa’s Afrikaner community, it was the murder of his aunt and uncle Glen and Vida Rafferty, bludgeoned to death in their home five years ago, which led to the erection of the crosses.

Their deaths at their farm, by attackers who stole valuables from their home, led to a public outcry by the farming community, and the temporary planting of the crosses by fellow Afrikaners keen to highlight their murders among those of other farmers who have been killed across South Africa.

“So the video that you guys have been seeing,” he tells me as we stand together by the roadside, “happened along this section of the road.”

Pointing down the hill, towards a village where many black families live in mud huts, he explains: “There were crosses planted on both sides of the road, representing lives that have been taken on farms, farm murders. All the way from the bridge down below, up to where we’re standing at the moment.

“The crosses were symbolic, to what was happening in the country.”

One of the Raffertys’ neighbours, businessman Rob Hoatson, told the BBC how he organised the crosses to capture public attention, such was the shock over the couple’s deaths.

“It’s not a burial site,” he explained, saying Trump was prone to “exaggeration”, adding though that he did not mind the image of the crosses being used. “It was a memorial. It was not a permanent memorial that was erected. It was a temporary memorial.”

Mr Collyer continues to farm in the area but says the Raffertys’ two sons left after their parents’ murders. The younger, he explains, has moved to Australia while the elder has sold up and left farming to relocate to the city.

Many people remain scared for their future in South Africa, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

In 2022, two local men Doctor Fikane Ngwenya and Sibongiseni Madondo were convicted for the murders of the Raffertys, as well as robbery, and sentenced to life and 21 years imprisonment respectively.

For many in the local community it was a rare act of justice, with thousands of murders remaining unsolved across a country which President Ramaphosa told President Trump has yet to get a grip of its soaring crime rate.

The Raffertys’ murders sparked a period of heightened racial tension in the area.

South Africa’s police minister was forced to visit to try to bring calm, with protests from Afrikaners mirrored by claims from some members of the local black community of mistreatment by white farmers.

Amid it all, Mr Collyer tells me that despite the misleading use of the video of his family’s memorial, he is pleased that President Trump is highlighting attacks on white farmers.

“The whole procession was to raise international media coverage of the whole thing,” he reflects. “And for them to understand what we’re actually going through and the lives that we have to live here at the moment in South Africa.

“A person has to go into a house before dark, you’re living behind electric fences. That’s the life we’re living at the moment and you don’t want to live a life like that.”

His fears would chime with many, of all races, in a country which suffered more than 26,000 murders last year. The vast majority of victims are black, according to security experts.

President Trump has made an offer of asylum for all Afrikaners, with a first group of 49 arriving in Washington earlier this month.

But Mr Collyer tells me he will stay in Normandien and has no intention of leaving South Africa.

“It’s not easy just for me to leave what my father, what my grandfather, what my great-grandfather worked for, and how hard they worked, to be able to gather what I can contribute to towards today,” he says.

“That’s the difficult thing, just packing up after many generations and trying to leave the country.

“Unfortunately white Afrikaners bear the brunt of being a ‘boer’ (farmer) in South Africa… but at this stage I definitely would not think of going, I still love this country too much.”

And as we part ways, Mr Collyer offers a note of optimism about the future.

“I think if we can just join hands, and I think there’s more than enough people in this country – black and white – who are willing to join hands and to try to make this country a success.”

There are many others in the local community for whom farming goes back generations.

Along the road, towards Normandien town, we meet Bethuel Mabaso.

The 63-year-old grew up in the area and tells us he was surprised to learn that his community had made international news – even more so that it was being cited by the US president as “evidence” of the targeting of white farmers.

“Nothing like that is happening here,” he says in his native Zulu language. “We were shocked as a community when the murders happened and sad for that family.

“I’ve lived here since I was a little boy and this is a peaceful area. Nothing like that has happened here since.”

In the years since the Raffertys died there have been reports of allegations from some black farm dwellers that local police had failed to attend to cases involving black people with the same urgency as they did the deaths of the couple.

I ask another local farm worker, 40-year-old Mbongiseni Shibe, what relations were like now between farmers and their mostly black staff.

“We manage whatever issues come up through discussions, if that doesn’t work we ask the police to step in,” he says. “It’s usually incidents like our livestock going into their fields and the police help us retrieve it and vice versa.”

South Africa’s violent past of racial segregation is not lost on Mr Shibe and how delicate racial matters can be here.

“We come from a difficult past in this country with white people, I remember those times of abuse even as a young boy especially on the farms here,” he tells me.

“But we’ve let it go, we don’t use that to punish anyone.”

• Is there a genocide of white South Africans as Trump claims?
• Do Afrikaners want to take Trump up on his South African refugee offer?
• Racially charged row between Musk and South Africa over Starlink
• Is it checkmate for South Africa after Trump threats?
• What’s really driving Trump’s fury with South Africa?

This week saw Donald Trump unveil plans for a “Golden Dome” missile defence system over the US, the UK government do a U-turn on its controversial winter fuel payment policy, and comedy fans say goodbye to Cheers actor George Wendt.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world?

Quiz collated by Ben Fell.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

The Nigerian government has pressed charges against a senator who accused one of the country’s top politicians of plotting to kill her.

In April, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan alleged that Godswill Akpabio, the Senate president, and Yahaya Bello, a former state governor, wanted to “eliminate” her. Both have denied the accusation.

Weeks before, Akpoti-Uduaghan had accused the Senate president of sexually harassing her – an allegation he has also denied.

The government has now filed charges with the High Court, saying Akpoti-Uduaghan’s assassination allegation defamed Akpabio and Bello.

In the charge sheet, seen by the BBC, Nigeria’s attorney general referenced a live interview broadcast by Nigeria’s Channels TV last month.

In the interview, Akpoti-Uduaghan spoke of “discussions that Akpabio had with Yahaya Bello… to eliminate me”.

The attorney general said this statement, and others made in the same broadcast, could harm Bello and Akpabio’s reputations.

Akpoti-Uduaghan has not responded publicly to the charges against her and no date has been set for her to appear in court.

The case marks the latest twist in a row that has engrossed Nigeria, raising questions about gender equality in the socially conservative nation.

Akpoti-Uduaghan is one of just four women out of 109 senators.

After accusing Akabio of sexual harassment in February, she was suspended from the Senate for six months without pay.

The Senate’s ethics committee said the suspension was for her “unruly and disruptive” behaviour while the Senate was debating her allegations.

However, Akpoti-Uduaghan and her supporters argued that the committee was targeting her because of the allegations she had made against the senate president.

In March, she told the BBC she felt the Senate “operates like a cult”. She also said that because her security detail had been removed, she feared for the safety of her two-year-old child.

• ‘Nigerian Senate is run like a cult’, suspended MP tells BBC
• How some Nigerian women are being cut out of their parents’ inheritance
• Nigeria’s fierce political rivals share joke at pope’s inaugural mass

Rapper Kid Cudi, the biggest star yet to take the witness stand in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ trial, alleged that the rap mogul threatened him and was behind a Molotov cocktail attack that damaged his Porsche.

Cudi, whose legal name is Scott Mescudi, testified for about two hours on Thursday, answering questions about his relationship with Combs’ ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura, who testified last week.

The star told the court he also believed Combs was involved in a break-in at his home; later, Combs’ lawyer emphasised that there was no evidence of Combs’ involvement with either.

Mr Mescudi was among several witnesses who testified Thursday as the third week of the trial ended before the long Memorial Day weekend.

Combs is facing possible life in prison if convicted on charges of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has denied the charges and pleaded not guilty.

The rapper separately denied accusations in a barrage of civil lawsuits that echo some of the claims made in his criminal case.

Mr Mescudi told the court he and Ms Ventura dated for a few months in 2011 after Combs asked him to record music with her. Mr Mescudi testified about a series of incidents involving Combs.

The first happened in December 2011, when Mr Mescudi said he got a frantic call from Ms Ventura, who said Combs found out the two were seeing each other.

Mr Mescudi testified that he took Mrs Ventura to a hotel for safety, then got a call from a mutual friend, who said Combs and an another person were inside Mr Mescudi’s Los Angeles home.

Mr Mescudi told the court he immediately got into his car and drove to his home, calling Combs on the way.

Combs answered the phone, he testified.

“(Expletive) are you in my house?” Mr Mescudi recalled asking Combs.

He alleged that Combs told him he wanted to talk and responded, “I’m over here waiting for you.”

Mr Mescudi said he arrived at his home to find his security cameras facing the wrong way and unopened Christmas presents for his family rifled through. His dog also was locked in the bathroom and was acting “jittery and on edge”.

He tried to call Combs again. “I wanted to confront him, I wanted to fight him,” Mr Mescudi said on the stand.

He said he reported the incident to police.

Mr Mescudi also told the court that shortly after his relationship with Ventura ended, in January 2012, his car was bombed with a Molotov cocktail.

Mr Mescudi testified that he got a call from his dogsitter who said his car was on fire. He told the court that he came home to find a hole cut in the roof of his Porche and an explosive inside.

Prosecutors showed the jury photos of the interior of the car, which was charred.

Mr Mescudi accuses Combs of being behind the incident, though the mogul denied any involvement at a later meeting.

The jury also heard from makeup artist Mylah Morales, who told the court that she “feared for her life” after witnessing Mrs Ventura with a black eye, split lip and knots in her head on one occasion.

Frederic Zemmour, the general manager of a hotel where Combs often booked, also testified about deep cleaning after Combs stayed there. The front desk noted that the guest “always spills candle wax on everything” and uses excessive amounts of oil.

When the trial resumes on Tuesday next week, the jury is expected to hear from Capricorn Clark, the woman who called Mr Mescudi when Combs was allegedly breaking into his home.

American buyout firm RedBird has agreed a deal to take control of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph after a two-year ownership vacuum.

RedBird Capital will buy the stake owned by Emirati royal Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Sultan al-Nahyan who had bankrolled an earlier bid.

That bid was rejected by the previous government, which passed a law preventing foreign governments owning British newspapers or news magazines.

The current proposed deal will need regulatory approval.

Both Telegraph titles and the Spectator magazine were put up for auction by Lloyds Bank, who seized them from the Barclay family for non-payment of outstanding debts.

In a bold but ultimately unsuccessful move, a consortium of RedBird and Sheikh Mansour’s IMI paid off the Barclay brothers’ debts in full hoping to shortcut the auction process.

However, the fact that the consortium was almost entirely funded by IMI saw the government intervene and prevent it taking majority ownership.

It is thought that IMI will retain a minority stake of less than 15% in the two papers.

Meanwhile, the Spectator was sold to hedge fund billionaire Sir Paul Marshall last year for £100m.

The BBC understands the purchase price will see RedBird IMI get its money back in full.

It brings to an end a two-year limbo period which the Telegraph staff found unsettling and left them concerned that sufficient investment and direction was lacking.

RedBird founder Gerry Cardinale told the BBC he has plans to expand the Telegraph’s reach and subscriber base in the US, believing there to be a gap in the market.

Among other investments, RedBird Capital owns the Italian football team AC Milan.

A self-deprecating Charli XCX downplayed her talents as a songwriter, as she was named songwriter of the year at the Ivor Novello Awards.

Accepting the award in London, the star illustrated her “songwriting genius” by quoting the lyrics to her 2024 song Club Classics: “.”

“I’m sure you all agree, I am hardly Bob Dylan,” she joked to an audience that included Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Williams, “but one thing I certainly do is commit to the bit”.

The ceremony also saw awards for rising stars Lola Young and Myles Smith, while U2 became the first Irish band to win the fellowship of the Ivor Novello songwriting academy.

The award recognised almost 50 years of hits, including With Or Without You, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Even Better Than The Real Thing, I Will Follow, Vertigo and One.

Speaking on stage, the band’s frontman, Bono, paid tribute to the power of music. “Songs can be arrows through time if they come from the right place,” he said.

“They can fly higher and farther, last longer, hit harder. They can pierce the hardest armour of the human heart.

“I don’t know if they can change the world, but they changed us.”

Each band member gave their own acceptance speech, with drummer Larry Mullen, Jr, recalling the group’s first rejection letter, from the head of CBS Records, Muff Winwood.

“He heard the song and offered us a record deal, but only if the band fired the drummer,” he said.

“I humbly concede that on every musical break, I may have counted to three instead of four – but from where I’m standing right now having trouble counting makes some of us look like musical geniuses.”

And as they played an acoustic version of Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bono called for peace in the Middle East.

“Hamas release the hostages. Stop the war,” he said. “Israel be released from Benjamin Netanyahu.

“All of you protect our aid workers, they are the best of us.”

The Killers won the special international prize, with Bruce Springsteen handing over the trophy to frontman Brandon Flowers.

The singer joked that “the only downside” of the award was that “it feels one giant step away from fulfilling my original dream of becoming the most sought-after valet on the Las Vegas strip”.

Backstage, Flowers was somewhat overwhelmed by Springsteen’s presence.

“That was really cool,” he told BBC News. “He went out of his way to come here. I love him.

Lola Young won the rising star award, recognising the success of her breakthrough single, Messy.

“This is such a big moment for the kid in my bedroom that was 10 years old, writing songs on her guitar,” the 24-year-old musician told the BBC.

“To be here now is such an honor, and such a gives me such a warm feeling.”

Young also revealed she’d recently finished her next album, and “shot 12 music videos in one day” to accompany her new songs.

Myles Smith’s Stargazing was named the most-played song on UK radio last year.

“The first time I heard it on the radio was actually in New York,” he said. “I remember it so specifically. I was in an Uber and the song came on, and I told the driver, ‘This is me’ and he could not care less.

“It was the best way to be humbled, and it really kept me grounded from year one.”

Charli XCX was recognised for her ground-breaking Brat album, which she described as “chaos and emotional turmoil set to a club soundtrack”.

But it’s a carefully crafted and nuanced record, where hedonism gives way to vulnerability, as she describes the doubts she has over friendships, motherhood and commercial success.

Marketed with laser-focused zeal, the album became the soundtrack to summer 2024, with its in-your-face “Brat green” cover art quickly becoming a meme.

On stage, Charli explained that the music could only ever be a starting point.

“‘I’ve never particularly believed the idea that everything starts from a great song,” she said.

“In my head, a great song alone has never actually been enough to captivate an audience.

“Instead, a song with a distinct identity coupled with a point of view… and above all, conviction is what can catapult a songwriter from being technically good to globally renowned.”

Robbie Williams’ won the icon award, in recognition of his 34-year career – from boyband hits like Could It Be Magic and Back For Good with Take That, to his record-breaking solo work on songs including Angels, Rock DJ, Feel and Come Undone.

Coming undone might also an apt description of his reaction to the award.

“When momentous things like this happen, it’s just a hodge-podge of things coming at you from the universe,” he said backstage.

“It’s self-doubt and self-hatred mixed with ego and delusion and audacity.

“So it’s very difficult to put your finger on what it feels like in the moment, other than you’re supposed to say, ‘I’m very grateful’. And I am.”

2000s indie heroes Bloc Party won the outstanding song collection prize, while Berwyn’s fierce and personal debut Who Am I, was named best album.

Best contemporary song was won by Sans Soucis for Circumnavigating Georgia, while best song musically and lyrically was won by Orla Gartland for Mine, beating the likes of Lola Young, Raye and Fontaines DC.

Mine is a quiet but hopeful ballad about overcoming a traumatic experience that Orla said “really affected my relationship with intimacy”.

Accepting the prize, the Irish singer said she was proud to be an independent artist, because “I’m not sure what a boardroom of old guys would have known what to do with this song about bodily autonomy and reclaiming it”.

Taking a similar approach was pop artist Self Esteem, who was given the visionary award.

She used her speech to implore the music industry to do more to protect young women from misogyny and online abuse.

“People are foaming at the mouth to ridicule you,” she said. “People hate women, and sometimes [those comments] get in and stay there.”

But she also took the opportunity to thank her mum and dad, Janet and Andy, who’d finally seen her win an award, “after coming down to see me lose the Mercury [Prize] twice”.

“I’m so sorry about how much I swear and how many of my songs are about shagging,” she added.

Songwriter of the year

• Charli XCX

Academy Fellowship

• U2

Music icon award

• Robbie Williams

Best album

• Berwyn – Who Am I

Best contemporary song

• Sans Soucis – Circumnavigating Georgia

Best song musically and lyrically

• Orla Gartland – Mine

Most performed work

• Myles Smith – Stargazing

Rising star

• Lola Young

Best original film score

• The Substance – Raffertie

Best original video game score

• Farewell North – John Konsolakis

Best television soundtrack

• True Detective: Night Country – Vince Pope

Outstanding song collection

• Bloc Party

Special international

• Brandon Flowers

Visionary award

• Self Esteem

A 165-year-old pocket watch found in an American shipwreck has been returned to its home town in the UK.

The timepiece belonged to Herbert Ingram – a British politician and journalist from Boston, Lincolnshire.

Ingram was recognised for his role in bringing fresh water, gas and the railways to the town, but died during a trip to the US in 1860 when the steamship Lady Elgin sank on Lake Michigan.

Councillor Sarah Sharpe, from Boston Borough Council, said: “The fact that this small part of him is coming back to his home town to be displayed is really special and important.”

The pocket watch, its chain and fob was found by divers at the bottom of the lake, in Wisconsin, in September 1992.

But it remained in the US for more than 30 years until it was offered to an archaeologist who was curating an exhibition about the wreck of the Lady Elgin.

Ingram was sailing on the ship with his son when a violent storm broke out on the night of 8 September 1860. The ship collided with another vessel and Ingram was among about 300 people who died.

His body was brought back to Britain, where his legacy has lived on. He was celebrated as the founder of The Illustrated London News, the first illustrated news magazine, and was credited, as MP for Boston, with helping to transform the town into a large industrial centre.

A statue of him stands outside St Botolph’s Church – the Boston Stump – overlooking the marketplace.

After the watch was discovered by divers in 1992, its owner was identified as Ingram using initials and manufacturer details.

In October 2024, the divers approached Valerie van Heest, an archaeologist who had conducted a survey of the shipwreck.

They said the watch had belonged to Ingram and offered it to her for an exhibition about the Lady Elgin.

“I very quickly came to the realisation it doesn’t belong in America,” she said.

“It belongs in Boston where Herbert Ingram was from, where a statue of him still stands.”

Ms van Heest contacted the Boston Guildhall museum and later purchased the watch in order to donate it to the town.

“It is physical artefacts that connect us in the present to the past,” she said.

“To see a watch which belonged to the man who stands in Boston’s town square… I think this is going to draw people in, to wonder who was this man?”

Coincidentally, the Guildhall had been planning an exhibition about Ingram.

Sharpe, the portfolio holder for heritage and culture at Boston council, said she was so surprised when Ms van Heest got in touch that she “couldn’t sit down”.

“Since then I’ve been absolutely buzzing,” she added. “Herbert Ingram was one of our most influential people.”

Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds latest episode of Look North here.

Prominent music agent Dave Shapiro is among those who were killed after a small plane crashed into a residential street in San Diego, according to his talent agency.

Mr Shapiro was the co-founder of Sound Talent Group, whose clients include rock bands like Sum 41, Story of the Year and Pierce the Veil.

Daniel Williams, former drummer for the band The Devil Wears Prada, is also feared to have been involved in the crash. Media reports indicate he posted on social media from the plane.

Federal officials say there were six people on board the plane and all are presumed dead. The crash destroyed one home and damaged 10 others in the Murphy Canyon neighbourhood, leaving charred cars and fiery debris.

“We are devastated by the loss of our co-founder, colleagues and friends,” a spokesman for Sound Talent Group said in a statement to the BBC.

“Our hearts go out to their families and to everyone impacted by today’s tragedy. Thank you so much for respecting their privacy at this time.”

The company said it lost “three employees in the plane crash” including Shapiro. It did not identify the others.

San Diego authorities confirmed at least two people were killed in the crash, though the National Transportation Safety Board – which is investigating the incident – said the total death toll is still unclear. Authorities have not released the names of any of those killed.

The plane, a Cessna 550 aircraft, veered into the neighbourhood around 3:45 local time (10:45 GMT). Such planes can carry up to 10 people, including a pilot, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Six were on board at the time of the crash.

In addition to his music career, Mr Shapiro was an avid pilot and a certified flight instructor with 15 years of experience, according to his aviation company Velocity Aviation.

Mr Williams, who is thought to have also been on the plane, posted several Instagram stories in the hours before the crash. The posts showed him with Mr Shapiro and him sitting in the co-pilot seat next to the music executive, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The post showed the flight number, which matched the one that crashed, the newspaper reported.

Williams was a founding member of The Devil Wears Prada and part of the Christian metal band for more than 10 years before parting ways in 2016.

The band posted a series of photos of Williams on Instagram, showing him with drumsticks, flying in an aircraft and in the band.

“no words. We owe you everything,” the post reads. “Love you forever.”

The crash caused about 100 people to be evacuated from the neighbourhood, which is just northeast of the city of San Diego.

Eight people on the ground were injured, including one who was hospitalized. treated at the scene.

Elliot Simpson, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said the plane left New Jersey on Wednesday night at around 23:15 local time (3:45 GMT) and then stopped in Wichita, Kansas, to refuel.

He said the plane neared the San Diego airport and appeared to hit two power lines before veering into the neighbourhood and crashing. Mr Simpson said it was too early to say whether that was related to the cause of the crash.

Mr Simpson added that the NTSB was in the process of collecting evidence, and said they found some fragments of the aircraft under the power lines and a wing on a nearby street.

Earlier on Thursday, Assistant Fire Department Chief Dan Eddy described the scene by saying “there’s plane everywhere”.

“As you would expect, something that large at that amount of speed, were going to have a lot of throw that goes every which direction,” he explained.

Footage from the scene shows the charred cars littered across the street.

Local resident Christopher Moore told the Associated Press that he and his wife were woken by a loud bang in the early hours of the morning.

Mr Moore said they looked out the window and saw smoke, and the couple grabbed their two young children and fled.

Once on the street, they saw a car engulfed in flames.

“It was definitely horrifying for sure, but sometimes you’ve just got to drop your head and get to safety,” Mr Moore said.

A marine who lives near the crash site told Fox News he heard a “strange whistling wheezing noise” followed by a “boom and a shake in the house”.

The aircraft appeared to be heading to Montgomery Field, an airport located 10km (six miles) north of downtown San Diego.

When Shreya Mishra Reddy was admitted to Harvard University in 2023, her parents were “ecstatic”.

It is “the ultimate school that anybody in India wants to get into,” she tells the BBC.

Now, with graduation around the corner, she has had to break the bad news to her family: she may not graduate in July from the executive leadership programme after the Trump administration moved to stop Harvard from enrolling international students “as a result of their failure to adhere to the law”.

“It has been very difficult for my family to hear. They’re still trying to process it,” she said.

Ms Reddy is one of around 6,800 international students at Harvard, who make up more than 27% of its enrolments this year. They are a crucial source of revenue for the Ivy League school. About a third of its foreign students are from China, and more than 700 are Indian, such as Ms Reddy.

All of them are now unsure of what to expect next. Harvard has called the move “unlawful”, which could lead to a legal challenge.

But that leaves the students’ futures in limbo, be it those who are waiting to enrol this summer, or are halfway through college, or even those awaiting graduation whose work opportunities are tied to their student visas.

Those who are already at Harvard would have to transfer to other American universities to remain in the US and retain their visas.

“I hope Harvard will stand for us and some solution can be worked out,” Ms Reddy says.

The university has said it is “fully committed to maintaining [its] ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably”.

The move against Harvard has huge implications for the million or so international students in the US. And it follows a growing crackdown by the Trump administration on institutes of higher learning, especially those that witnessed major pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

Dozens of them are facing investigations, as the government attempts to overhaul their accreditation process and reshape the way they are run.

The White House first threatened to bar foreign students from Harvard in April, after the university refused to make changes to its hiring, admissions and teaching practices. And it also froze nearly $3bn in federal grants, which Harvard is challenging in court.

Still, Thursday’s announcement left students reeling.

Chinese student Kat Xie, who is in her second year in a STEM programme, says she is “in shock”.

“I had almost forgotten about [the earlier threat of a ban] and then Thursday’s announcement suddenly came.”

But she adds a part of her had expected “the worst”, so she had spent the last few weeks seeking professional advice on how to continue staying in the US.

But the options are “all very troublesome and expensive”, she says.

The Trump administration seemed to single China out when it accused Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party” in its statement.

Beijing responded on Friday by criticising the “politicisation” of education.

It said the move would “only harm the image and international standing of the United States”, urging for the ban to be withdrawn “as soon as possible”.

“None of this is what we’ve signed up for,” says 20-year-old Abdullah Shahid Sial from Pakistan, a very vocal student activist.

A junior majoring in applied mathematics and economics, he was one of only two Pakistani undergraduate students admitted to Harvard in 2023.

He was also the first person in his family to study abroad. It was a “massive” moment for them, he says.

The situation he now finds himself in, he adds, is “ridiculous and dehumanising”.

Both Ms Reddy and Mr Sial said foreign students apply to go to college in the US because they see it as a welcoming place where opportunities abound.

“You have so much to learn from different cultures, from people of different backgrounds. And everybody really valued that,” Ms Reddy says, adding that this had been her experience at Harvard so far.

But Mr Sial says that has changed more recently and foreign students no longer feel welcome – the Trump administration has revoked hundreds of student visas and even detained students on campuses across the country. Many of them were linked to pro-Palestinian protests.

Now, Mr Sial adds, there is a lot of fear and uncertainty in the international student community.

That has only been exacerbated by the latest development. A postgraduate student from South Korea says she is having second thoughts about going home for the summer because she fears she won’t be able to re-enter the US.

She did not want to reveal her name because she is worried that might affect her chances of staying in the US. She is one year away from graduating.

She said she had a gruelling semester and had been looking forward to “reuniting with friends and family” – until now.

The anxiety among foreign students is palpable, says Jiang Fangzhou, who is reading public administration in Harvard Kennedy School.

“We might have to leave immediately but people have their lives here – apartments, leases, classes and community. These are not things you can walk away from overnight.”

And the ban doesn’t just affect current students, the 30-year-old New Zealander says.

“Think about the incoming ones, people who already turned down offers from other schools and planned their lives around Harvard. They’re totally stuck now.”

A man in Norway woke up to find a huge container ship had run aground and crashed into his front garden.

The 135m-ship (443ft) missed Johan Helberg’s house by metres at about 05:00 local time (03:00 GMT) on Thursday.

Mr Helberg was only alerted to the commotion by his panicked neighbour who had watched the ship as it headed straight for shore, in Byneset, near Trondheim.

“The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Mr Helberg told television channel TV2.

“I went to the window and was quite astonished to see a big ship,” he added, in an interview with the Guardian.

“I had to bend my neck to see the top of it. It was so unreal.”

“Five metres further south and it would have entered the bedroom,” he added to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. “I didn’t hear anything.”

Neighbour Jostein Jorgensen said he was woken by the sound of the ship as it headed at full speed towards land, and ran to Mr Helberg’s house.

“I was sure that he was already outside, but no, there was no sign of life. I rang the doorbell many times and nothing,” said Mr Jorgensen.

“And it was only when I called him on the phone that I managed to contact him,” he told TV2.

The Cypriot-flagged cargo ship, the NCL Salten, had 16 people on board and was travelling south-west through the Trondheim Fjord to Orkanger when it went off course.

No-one was injured in the incident.

It is not known what caused the crash and Norwegian police are said to be investigating.

“It’s a very bulky new neighbour but it will soon go away,” Mr Helberg added.

The head of NCL, which chartered the ship, said it was a “serious incident” and “we are grateful that nobody was injured”.

“At present time, we do not know what caused the incident and are awaiting the conclusion of the ongoing investigation by the relevant authorities,” said managing director Bente Hetland.

According to reports, the ship had previously run aground in 2023 but got free under its own power.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has launched a blistering attack on UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Canada – saying that they had “effectively said they want Hamas to remain in power”.

He also accused Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.

Netanyahu was speaking after Thursday’s deadly attack on Israeli embassy staff in Washington. Days earlier, the UK, France and Canada had condemned Israel’s expanded offensive in Gaza as “disproportionate” and described the humanitarian situation as “intolerable”.

Downing Street has pointed to Sir Keir’s condemnation of the Washington attack.

In that post, Sir Keir called antisemitism an “evil we must stamp out”.

All three countries denounced the Washington killings, which saw embassy workers Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, shot dead at an event hosted by the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, repeatedly shouted “free Palestine” as he was arrested, police said.

The UK, France and Canada – close allies of Israel – also came out in strong support of Israel following the deadly Hamas-led attacks 19 months ago.

Their statement demanding Israel halt its latest offensive was widely viewed as the strongest criticism of Israel’s military action since the war in Gaza began. It threatened concrete actions if Israel did not change course.

On Wednesday Sir Keir added that Israel’s decision to allow only a small amount of aid into Gaza was “utterly inadequate” and the UK suspended talks over a possible trade deal.

In his video, Netanyahu said Hamas wanted to destroy Israel and annihilate the Jewish people. He said the Palestinian armed group had welcomed the joint UK, French and Canadian criticism of Israel’s war conduct.

Some of Israel’s closest allies wanted Israel to “stand down and accept that Hamas’s army of mass murderers will survive”, he said.

“I say to President Macron, Prime Minister Carney and Prime Minister Starmer, when mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you’re on the wrong side of justice,” he added.

“You’re on the wrong side of humanity, and you’re on the wrong side of history.”

Netanyahu went on to blame a recent claim by UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher that thousands of babies would imminently die in Gaza if Israel did not immediately let in aid for the attack in Washington.

“A few days ago, a top UN official said that 14,000 Palestinian babies would die in 48 hours. You see many international institutions are complicit in spreading this lie,” he said.

“The press repeats it. The mob believed it. And a young couple is then brutally gunned down in Washington.”

When asked at the time for clarification on Fletcher’s statement, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke said “there are babies who are in urgent life-saving need of these supplements… and if they do not get those, they will be in mortal danger”.

Also on Thursday, an Israeli minister, Amichai Chikli, accused Sir Keir and other leaders of “emboldening the forces of terror”.

On Friday, UK armed forces minister Luke Pollard condemned the killings in Washington but rejected Netanyahu’s strong criticism of the British prime minister.

He said: “We stand in support of Israel’s right to self-defence as long as they conduct that within international humanitarian law – a position we’ve had since those appalling attacks on 7 October.

“We are also very clear we need to see aid get to the people who are genuinely suffering in Gaza.”

French foreign ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine also reiterated his criticism of Israel’s “escalation” in Gaza following Netanyahu’s statement.

He told FranceInfo radio: “Israel has to let the aid in. Access has to be massive and free.”

On Thursday, more than 90 lorries carrying aid supplies were allowed to cross into Gaza but the UN said that level was “nowhere near enough” to meet the needs of Palestinians living there.

The trickle of aid follows an 11-week total blockade, which humanitarian groups said risked widespread famine. Israel resumed air strikes in March which have since killed 3,613 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

In an interview for BBC World Service’s Newshour programme, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the current Israeli administration as a “gang of thugs”.

He was asked about remarks by the Israeli education minister, who had said Olmert should be ashamed of a previous interview with the BBC, where he argued that what Israel was doing in Gaza was “close to a war crime”.

“This is nonsense, they are a group of thugs that are running the state of Israel these days and the head of the gang is Netanyahu – this is a gang of thugs,” Olmert said.

“Of course they are criticising me, they are defaming me, I accept it, and it will not stop me from criticising and opposing these atrocious policies.”

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 53,762 people, including 16,500 children, have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Satellite images have for the first time shown the extent of a shipyard accident in North Korea that damaged a new warship in the presence of the secretive state’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

The image shows the warship lying on its side, covered by large blue tarpaulins. A portion of the vessel appears to be on land.

An official investigation into the accident – which Kim described as a “criminal act” – has begun, state media reported on Friday.

None of the reports mentioned any casualties or injuries as a result of Thursday’s incident in the eastern port city of Chongjin.

KCNA, North Korea’s official news agency, downplayed the damage in a report on Friday, saying it was “not serious” and that, contrary to initial reports, there were no holes on the ship’s bottom.

“The hull starboard was scratched and a certain amount of seawater flowed into the stern section through the rescue channel,” KCNA reported.

The manager of the shipyard, Hong Kil Ho, has been summoned by law enforcers, it said.

It would take around 10 days to restore the destroyer’s side, according to KCNA.

Kim said on Thursday that the accident was caused by “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism”.

He added that those who made “irresponsible errors” will be dealt with at a plenary meeting next month.

It’s not clear what punishment they might face, but the authoritarian state has a woeful human rights record.

It is uncommon for North Korea to publicly disclose local accidents – though it has done this a handful of times in the past.

This particular accident comes weeks after North Korea unveiled a similar 5,000-ton destroyer, the Choe Hyon.

Kim had called that warship a “breakthrough” in modernising North Korea’s navy and said it would be deployed early next year.

Denmark is set to have the highest retirement age in Europe after its parliament adopted a law raising it to 70 by 2040.

Since 2006, Denmark has tied the official retirement age to life expectancy and has revised it every five years. It is currently 67 but will rise to 68 in 2030 and to 69 in 2035.

The retirement age at 70 will apply to all people born after 31 December 1970.

The new law passed on Thursday with 81 votes for and 21 votes against.

However, last year Social Democrat Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the sliding scale principle would eventually be renegotiated.

“We no longer believe that the retirement age should be increased automatically,” she said, adding that in her party’s eyes “you can’t just keep saying that people have to work a year longer”.

Tommas Jensen, a 47-year-old roofer, told Danish media that the change was “unreasonable”.

“We’re working and working and working, but we can’t keep going,” he said.

He added that the situation may be different for those with desk jobs but that blue-collar workers with physically demanding professions would find the changes difficult.

“I’ve paid my taxes all my life. There should also be time to be with children and grandchildren,” Mr Jensen told outlet DK.

• Retiring in your 60s is becoming an impossible goal. Is 75 the new 65?

Protests backed by trade unions against the retirement age increase took place in Copenhagen over the last few weeks.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Jesper Ettrup Rasmussen, the chairman of a Danish trade union confederation, said the proposal to increase the retirement age was “completely unfair”.

“Denmark has a healthy economy and yet the EU’s highest retirement age,” he said.

“A higher retirement age means that [people will] lose the right to a dignified senior life.”

Retirement ages around Europe vary. Many governments have raised the retirement age in recent years to reflect longer life expectancy and to tackle budget deficits.

In Sweden, the earliest age individuals can start to claim pension benefits is 63.

The standard pension age in Italy is 67, although as in the case of Denmark, this is also subject to adjustments based on life expectancy estimates and may increase in 2026.

In the UK, people born between 6 October, 1954 and 5 April, 1960 start receiving their pension at the age of 66. But for people born after this date, the state pension age will increase gradually.

And in France, a law was passed in 2023 that raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. The highly unpopular change sparked protests and riots and had to be pushed through parliament by President Emmanuel Macron without a vote.

A Royal Bengal tiger was killed and dismembered by a mob in India’s north eastern state of Assam, a forest official has said.

Angry residents from a village in the Golaghat district reportedly took the step because the tiger had killed livestock in the area and posed a threat to their lives.

The state’s forest department has registered a case.

Instances of man-animal conflict are not new to Assam. This is the third tiger killing that has been reported this year.

Top forest official Gunadeep Das told Times of India newspaper that the tiger had died from sharp wounds and not gunshots.

The carcass was later recovered in the presence of a magistrate, reports say.

Mr Das told a local newspaper that “around a thousand people had gathered to kill the tiger” and that some of them attacked the tiger with machetes. He added that the tiger’s carcass had been sent for an autopsy.

Mrinal Saikia, a lawmaker from Assam state condemned the killing on X. He shared a video that showed the purported dead body of the tiger with parts of its skin, face and legs missing.

The BBC has not independently verified the video.

“This is a very painful act. The Earth is not only for humans, it is for animals as well,” he said in the post, adding that strict action will be taken against those involved in the killing.

Another forest official, Sonali Ghosh told local media that the origins of the tiger were unclear. According to reports, the animal was killed about 20km (12 miles) away from the Kaziranga National Park.

Latest data by Assam’s forest department shows the population of tigers in the state has steadily increased from just 70 in 2006 to 190 in 2019 due to various conservation efforts.

However, instances of tigers being killed due to conflict with villagers have been often reported in the media, which could be because of shrinking habitat and lack of protection of tiger corridors between different national parks in the state.

Tigers are a protected species under India’s Wildlife Protection Act (1972), which prohibits poaching, hunting and trade of tiger parts.

The moment that Oceangate’s Titan submersible was lost has been revealed in footage recorded on the sub’s support ship.

Titan imploded about 90 minutes into a descent to see the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023, killing all five people on board.

The passengers had paid Oceangate to see the ship, which lies 3,800m down.

On board were Oceangate’s CEO Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

The BBC has had unprecedented access to the US Coast Guard’s (USCG) investigation for a documentary, Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster.

The footage was recently obtained by the USCG and shows Wendy Rush, the wife of Mr Rush, hearing the sound of the implosion while watching on from the sub’s support ship and asking: “What was that bang?”

The video has been presented as evidence to the USCG Marine Board of Investigation, which has spent the last two years looking into the sub’s catastrophic failure.

The documentary also reveals the carbon fibre used to build the submersible started to break apart a year before the fatal dive.

Titan’s support ship was with the sub while it was diving in the Atlantic Ocean. The video shows Mrs Rush, who was a director of Oceangate with her husband, sitting in front of a computer that was used to send and receive text messages from Titan.

When the sub reaches a depth of about 3,300m, a noise that sounds like a door slamming is heard. Mrs Rush is seen to pause then look up and ask other Oceangate crew members what the noise was.

Within moments she then receives a text message from the sub saying it had dropped two weights, which seems to have led her to mistakenly think the dive was proceeding as expected.

The USCG says the noise was in fact the sound of Titan imploding. However, the text message, which must have been sent just before the sub failed, took longer to reach the ship than the sound of the implosion.

All five people on board Titan died instantly.

Prior to the fatal dive, warnings had been raised by deep sea experts and some former Oceangate employees about Titan’s design. One described it as an “abomination” and said the disaster was “inevitable”.

Titan had never undergone an independent safety assessment, known as certification, and a key concern was that its hull – the main body of the sub where the passengers sat – was made of layers of carbon fibre mixed with resin.

The USCG says it has now identified the moment the hull started to fail.

Carbon fibre is a highly unusual material for a deep sea submersible because it is unreliable under pressure. A known problem is that the layers of carbon fibre can separate, a process called delamination.

The USCG believes that the carbon fibre layers of the hull started to break apart during a dive to the Titanic, which took place a year before the disaster – the 80th dive that Titan had made.

Passengers on board reported hearing a loud bang as the sub made its way back to the surface. They said that at the time Mr Rush said that this noise was the sub shifting in its frame.

But the USCG says the data collected from sensors fitted to Titan shows that the bang was caused by delamination.

“Delamination at dive 80 was the beginning of the end,” said Lieutenant Commander Katie Williams from USCG.

“And everyone that stepped onboard the Titan after dive 80 was risking their life.”

Titan took passengers on three more dives in the summer of 2022 – two to the Titanic and one to a nearby reef, before it failed on its next deep dive, in June 2023.

Businessman Oisin Fanning was onboard Titan for the last two dives before the disaster.

“If you’re asking a simple question: ‘Would I go again knowing what I know now?’ – the answer is no,” he told BBC News.

“A lot of people would not have gone. Very intelligent people who lost their lives, who, had they had all the facts, would not have made that journey.”

Deep sea explorer Victor Vescovo said he had grave misgivings about Titan and that he had told people that diving in the sub was like playing Russian roulette.

“I myself warned people away from getting into that submersible. I specifically told them that it was simply a matter of time before it failed catastrophically. I told Stockton Rush himself that I believed that.”

After the sub imploded, its mangled wreckage was discovered scattered across the sea floor of the Atlantic.

The USCG has described the process of sifting through the recovered debris – and said clothing from Mr Rush had been found, as well as business cards and stickers of the Titanic.

Later this year, the US Coast Guard will publish a final report of the findings from its investigation, which aims to establish what went wrong and prevent a disaster like this from ever happening again.

Speaking to the BBC’s documentary team, Christine Dawood, who lost her husband Shahzada and son Suleman in the disaster, said it had changed her forever.

“I don’t think that anybody who goes through loss and such a trauma can ever be the same,” she said.

The ripples from the Oceangate disaster are likely to continue for years – some private lawsuits have already been filed and criminal prosecutions may follow.

Oceangate told the BBC: “We again offer our deepest condolences to the families of those who died on June 18, 2023, and to all those impacted by the tragic accident.

“Since the tragedy occurred, Oceangate permanently wound down its operations and focused its resources on fully cooperating with the investigations. It would be inappropriate to respond further while we await the agencies’ reports.”

You can watch Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster on 9pm on Tuesday 27 May on BBC Two. It will also be available on the BBC iPlayer.

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In 2010, Indian filmmaker Neeraj Ghaywan made a striking debut at Cannes with Masaan – a poignant tale of love, loss, and the oppressive grip of the caste system, set against the holy city of Varanasi.

The main lead in the film (Vicky Kaushal) performed a job assigned to one of the lowest castes in the rigid Hindu caste hierarchy – cremating dead bodies along the Ganges. Masaan played in the “Un Certain Regard” section at the festival, which looks at films with unusual styles and or that tells non-traditional stories. It won the FIPRESCI and the Avenir – also known as the Promising Future Prize – prizes.

Since then, Ghaywan was in search of a story about India’s marginalised communities. Five years ago in the middle of the pandemic, a friend, Somen Mishra – the head of creative development at Dharma Productions in Mumbai – recommended an opinion piece called Taking Amrit Home, published in The New York Times. It was written by the journalist Basharat Peer.

What drew Ghaywan to Peer’s article was that it tracked the journeys – sometimes of hundreds or even thousands of miles – taken by millions of Indians who travelled on foot to get home during the nation’s strict lockdown during the pandemic. But he was also drawn to the core of the story, which focused on the childhood friendship between two men – one Muslim and the other Dalit (formerly known as the untouchables).

Ghaywan’s new film Homebound, inspired by Peer’s article, premiered at Cannes Film Festival’s “Un Certain Regard” section this week, ending with a nine-minute long standing ovation.

Many in the audience were seen wiping away tears. Ghaywan gave the lead producer Karan Johar a tight hug, while he and his young lead actors – Ishan Khatter, Vishal Jethwa and Janhvi Kapoor – came together in a larger group hug later.

Since this was the biggest South Asian event at Cannes 2025, other film luminaries showed up to support the screening. India’s Mira Nair (who won the Camera d’Or in 1988 for Salaam Bombay) leaned across two rows of seats to reach out to Johar. Pakistan’s Siam Sadiq (who won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize in 2022 for Joyland) was seen making a reel of the mood inside the theatre that he later posted on Instagram.

The film also received backing from a rather unexpected quarter. Its main producer is Johar, the leading Indian commercial filmmaker (known for blockbuster films like Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham and the recent Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahani). But last month Martin Scorsese stepped in as the executive producer after he was introduced to the film by the French producer Mélita Toscan du Plantier.

This is the first time Scorsese has stepped in to support a contemporary Indian film. Until now he has only backed restored classic Indian films.

“I have seen Neeraj’s first film Masaan in 2015 and I loved it, so when Mélita Toscan du Plantier sent me the project of his second film, I was curious,” Scorsese said in a statement last month.

“I loved the story, the culture and was willing to help. Neeraj has made a beautifully crafted film that’s a significant contribution to Indian cinema.”

According to Ghaywan, Scorsese helped nurture the film by mentoring the team through a number of rounds of edits. But he also tried to understand the cultural context which helped the exchange of ideas.

The context was important to Ghaywan, since he had been trying to capture the right spirit of the subject he was tackling.

The film’s two lead characters – Mohammed Shoaib Ali (Khatter) and Chandan Kumar (Jethwa) have shared histories – the weight of centuries of discrimination at the hand of upper caste Hindus, but also similar goals to rise above the barriers imposed on them – in this case by joining their state’s police force.

Ghaywan has openly shared that he was born into a Dalit family – a reality that has cast a long shadow over his life, haunting him since childhood.

As an adult, he went on to study business administration and then worked in a corporate job in Gurgaon outside the capital, Delhi. He said he never faced discrimination but was acutely aware of his position in the caste hierarchy and still lives with the weight of where he was born.

“I am the only acknowledged person from the community who is there behind and in the front of camera in all of Hindi cinema history. That is the kind of gap we are living with,” he says.

A majority of India lives in its villages, but Hindi filmmakers rarely talk about bringing the villages to their stories, says Ghaywan. What also offends him is that marginalised communities are only talked about as statistics.

“What if we pick one person out of that statistic and see what happened in their lives?” he says. “How did they get to this point? I felt it was worth narrating a story.”

When he sat down to write the script, he tried to fictionalise the backstories of the two protagonists until the point that they took the journey during Covid – which is the beginning of Peer’s article.

As a child in Hyderabad, Ghaywan had a close Muslim friend, Asghar, so he felt deeply connected to Ali and Kumar’s lived experiences in the film.

“What appealed to me more was the humanity behind it, the interpersonal, the interiority of the relationship,” he says, that took him back to his childhood in Hyderabad.

In Ghaywan’s hands, Homebound has the wonderful glow and warmth of the winter sun. It is gorgeously shot in India’s rural North, capturing simple joys and the daily struggles of its Muslim and Dalit protagonists. The two men, the woman one of them loves (Kapoor and Jethwa both portray Dalit characters), and their interactions offer much to reflect on and understand.

For the most part, Ghaywan’s script keeps viewers on the edge. Back in 2019, none of us truly grasped the scale of the coming pandemic – but the film subtly foreshadows a shift, reminding us that a crisis can cut across class, caste, and ethnicity, touching everyone.

Homebound’s seamless blend of fiction and reality has produced a powerful public document, grounding its characters in authenticity. More than just moving its audience to tears, the film is bound to spark meaningful conversations – and, one hopes, a deeper understanding of those who live in the shadows.

US President Donald Trump has hosted top purchasers of the cryptocurrency that bears his name at a gala dinner, in an event that protesters and his Democrat opponents branded as “corrupt”.

$TRUMP was launched shortly before his inauguration in January, initially rocketing in value before falling sharply afterwards.

“It’s fundamentally corrupt – a way to buy access to the President,” Democrat senator Chris Murphy wrote on X.

Protesters gathered outside the event on Thursday night, which was held at a golf course near Washington DC, some carrying signs reading “stop crypto corruption” and “no kings.”

The White House has rejected the accusations, and in a video of the dinner posted on social media, Trump is seen saying “I always put the country way ahead of the business.”

“The Biden administration persecuted crypto innovators and we’re bringing them back into the USA where they belong,” Trump is also recorded as saying.

The event took place as Bitcoin – the leading cryptocurrency – was hitting a fresh record high price of almost $112,000 (£83,000) per coin before falling back slightly.

$TRUMP is what is known as a meme coin – a type of cryptocurrency inspired by internet memes or viral online trends.

Its price peaked at $75 in January before plummeting to less than $8 in April – it was trading at around $12.50 at the time of writing.

“This is something that doesn’t have obvious utility. It’s not being used for payments. It’s not being used as a store of value,” said Rob Hadick, General Partner of Dragonfly, a crypto venture fund.

The dinner was advertised on the website gettrumpmemes.com as “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World.”

The top 220 purchasers of the meme coin, viewable on a leaderboard, received invitations to the “black-tie optional” event.

The top investor in the $TRUMP meme coin is billionaire crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun who was charged with fraud and market manipulation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration.

In February, the Trump administration paused the case.

Sun said this week on the social media platform X that he planned to attend the dinner, calling himself Trump’s “TOP fan!”

Sun then made a series of posts on Thursday night on X, including one that said it was an “honour” to attend the dinner.

Earlier in the day, Democrat senators held a press conference to denounce the event and to call for disclosure of who would be attending.

Calling the dinner “an orgy of corruption,” Senator Elizabeth Warren slammed Trump for “using the presidency of the United States to make himself richer through crypto.”

Trump’s views on cryptocurrency have undergone radical change in recent years.

In 2021, he called Bitcoin a “scam.”

Now, he’s not just in charge of regulating cryptocurrencies in the US – he and his family are active industry participants.

In addition to the meme coin, the Trump family also holds a majority stake in the crypto exchange World Liberty Financial, which was launched just prior to the election.

Trump expressed his desire to be the nation’s first “Crypto President” while campaigning for his second term, and was a major beneficiary of campaign contributions from the crypto industry in the 2024 election.

According to a report by the group State Democracy Defenders Action, Trump’s investments in crypto have helped boost his net worth by as much as $2.9bn.

“As a stakeholder in crypto assets, President Trump will likely profit from the very policies he is pursuing,” the report states.

Three days into his term, Trump issued an executive order to establish a regulatory framework that promotes the growth of digital currencies.

A Trump administration official told the BBC that the meme coin has nothing to do with the White House.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly pushed back on concerns about potential conflicts.

“The President is working to secure GOOD deals for the American people, not for himself,” Kelly said in a statement.

But one former financial regulator likened the meme coin to gambling.

“It’s like selling membership cards for his personal fan club which are then traded,” said Timothy Massad, Director of the Digital Asset Policy Project at Harvard.

“They have no value. But people speculate on the price and those purchases and that trading enriches him.”

At a Senate committee hearing this week, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy grilled Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the lack of transparency regarding who would attend Thursday night’s dinner.

Murphy cited reports that many of the attendees at the invite-only event were expected to be foreigners.

“There’s clearly a way around the State Department for foreign individuals of significant influence and wealth to be able to directly lobby the president of the United States,” he said.

“I don’t have any concern that the president having dinner with someone is going to contravene the security of the United States,” Rubio responded, adding that he was unaware of the dinner.

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For the last five years, a loud hum has been a continual backdrop to birdsong and the occasional barking dog in the village of Dresden, New York state.

Coming from the nearby Greenidge Generation power plant, which had been mothballed for years before, the sound has angered some local people.

“It’s an annoyance,” says Ellen Campbell, who owns a house on Seneca Lake a short distance away. “If I sit out by the lake, I would rather not hear that.

“We didn’t sign up for the constant hum.”

The issue here in Dresden, a village of about 300 people surrounded by winding country roads, single-track rail lines and farms growing grapes and hops, sounds like a familiar story about the tension between nature-loving locals and economic development.

But their annoyance is also a signal of something less expected – policies of US President Donald Trump meeting resistance from people in the rural areas whose votes drove his return to the White House.

And the cause? Bitcoin mining.

An energy-intensive process that relies on powerful computers to create and protect the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin mining has grown rapidly in the country over recent years. The current administration, unlike Joe Biden’s, is intent on encouraging the industry.

Trump has said he wants to turn the US into the crypto-mining capital of the world, announcing in June 2024 that “we want all the remaining Bitcoin to be made in the USA”. This has implications for rural communities throughout the US – many of whom voted for Trump.

Installations like the one at the power plant near Dresden are appearing across the country, drawn by record-high cryptocurrency prices and cheap and abundant energy to power the computers that do the mining. There are at least 137 Bitcoin mines in the US across 21 states, and reports indicate there are many more planned. According to estimates by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), Bitcoin mining uses up to 2.3% of the nation’s grid.

The high energy use and its wider environmental impact is certainly causing some concern in Dresden.

But it’s the unmistakable hum that is the soundtrack for discontent in many places with Bitcoin mines – produced by the fans used to cool the computers, it can range from a mechanical whirr to a deafening din.

“We can hear a constant buzzing,” says another Dresden resident, Lori Fishline. “It’s a constant, loud humming noise that you just can’t ignore. It was never present before and has definitely affected the peaceful atmosphere of our bay.”

Such is Ms Campbell’s annoyance with Trump’s Bitcoin backing, her political allegiance to the Republicans is being tested. “Right now I’m not real happy about that party,” she says.

The conflict in Seneca Lake is being played out nationwide, which could pose problems for a White House intent on pursuing a pro-cryptocurrency agenda.

A little over 100 miles west of Dresden, a backlash in the US border town of Niagara Falls prompted the local Mayor Robert Restaino – a Democrat – to issue a moratorium on new mining activity in December 2021, and the following year noise limits of 40 to 50 decibels near residential areas were imposed. He said: “The noise pollution of this industry is like nothing else.”

Locals described the sound as similar to that of a 747 jet, or as grating as having a toothache 24 hours a day, claiming that the noise drowned out the sound of the nearby waterfalls.

And in Granbury, Texas, a 24ft-high sound barrier was erected in 2023 at a mining site after residents complained to public officials that the nonstop roar was keeping them awake and giving them migraines.

All these Bitcoin operations opened before Trump’s return to the White House. But the opposition they have generated suggests public officials in Republican-voting areas are likely to find themselves coming under continued pressure from local people who oppose further Bitcoin mining expansion.

If this happens, could Trump’s crypto dreams be derailed in his own backyard?

Less than four years ago, Trump said Bitcoin “just seems like a scam”. Yet those reservations have now gone: the Trump family has since started the crypto firm World Liberty Financial, and Trump launched his own cryptocurrency, $TRUMP – 220 of its top buyers were invited to a private gala dinner with the president on Thursday.

Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr are behind a crypto mining venture called American Bitcoin, which plans to trade on the Nasdaq stock exchange, and aims to build one of the world’s largest and most efficient Bitcoin mining platforms, rooted in American soil.

Bitcoin mining has boomed in the US partly because of a crackdown in China in 2021, which was due to concerns over its environmental damage. Alexander Neumueller, an expert at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Alternative Finance, says that although it’s hard to trace every last mine, it’s clear that the US is now the leading Bitcoin producer, mining about 40% of the world’s supply.

Dresden is in New York’s Finger Lakes region – a rural area sliced through with deep glacial lakes, which attracts tourists drawn by its wineries, breweries and outdoor pursuits. In Yates County, home to Dresden and the Greenidge plant, around 60% of voters picked Trump last November.

According to the owners of the mine, Greenidge Generation, anywhere from 40 to 120 Bitcoin a month are being produced at the plant, along with some energy that flows back to the grid.

The company – which turned down requests for an interview – has argued that they converted a coal-burning operation into a relatively cleaner gas-fired power installation that complies with state environmental laws.

But amid public concern, New York state and Greenidge are currently engaged in a protracted legal battle over the plant’s future. With some of the strictest environmental laws in the country, New York officials are challenging whether the gas-fired plant is permitted under the regulations that allowed the old coal plant. Power generation – and Bitcoin mining – has been allowed to continue during appeal proceedings.

Abi Buddington, who owns a house in Dresden and has been at the forefront of the fight against the crypto mine, says it has become a big issue locally.

“The climate changed, both environmentally as well as in our quiet little community,” she says, recalling raised voices at contentious town hall meetings.

Ms Buddington is trying to change minds in Dresden and, through her network, elsewhere around the country.

“There are some who are environmentally concerned, and who may be Republican-leaning,” she says. “What we’ve found nationally is even in red states, once elected officials are educated properly and know the harms, they are very opposed.”

But not all are convinced. “They’ve been a good corporate neighbour,” says Dresden’s recently elected mayor, Brian Flynn, about the mine. “I’m pro-business, whether it be Greenidge or local agriculture… I think it’s important to have a mix of both industry and recreation.”

Legal battles like the one in Seneca Lake are bringing home the realities of an industry that at first glance might seem contained to banks of data servers, removed from the real world.

Bitcoin “miners” – who are not actually extracting anything from the earth – verify transactions by solving extremely difficult cryptographic problems that require powerful computers. In return, they are rewarded with Bitcoin.

As the price of Bitcoin has shot up to its current value of around $100,000 (£75,000), ever-increasing amounts of computing power have been needed to win crypto rewards, shutting out smaller miners in favour of large collectives and companies.

As well as the hum, mining’s energy use has environmental impacts. A Harvard study published in March in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature Communications found that Bitcoin mining exposes millions of Americans to harmful air pollution each year – and that 34 Bitcoin mines consumed a third more electricity than the city of LA. (There was some pushback from the crypto industry to the study, which was called The environmental burden of the United States’ Bitcoin mining boom.)

According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, mining globally uses approximately 0.7% of global electricity consumption.

That has a knock-on effect on local energy prices, which is also provoking a backlash in some areas.

In 2017, Bitcoin miners flooded into Plattsburgh, New York – a city of about 20,000 people a couple of hours to the north of Dresden – because of cheap hydroelectricity rates. “We were getting Bitcoin applications from operators all around the world,” says the city’s mayor at the time, Colin Read.

Yet they used so much power that electricity rates shot up. Within a year, some residents were paying up to 40% more during winter months, Read says.

The following year, he and other local lawmakers passed rules against buildings blasting out hot air.

“Fortunately we put a stop to it,” he says, noting that all but one Bitcoin mining operation left the city.

Resistance to Bitcoin mines extends to places with the biggest Trump support.

Cyndie Roberson was retired and unaware of the crypto industry until a Bitcoin mining operation moved to her small town in North Carolina in 2021. The locals banded together and managed to ban new Bitcoin developments in their area – but the existing one was allowed to stay and the bitterness of the fight made her decide to move south, to Gilmer County in Georgia.

There, Ms Roberson has campaigned against crypto mining in a region that is solidly pro-Republican. In the county where she lives, she says that around 1,000 people came to a public meeting to oppose a mine, which then wasn’t allowed to operate.

Just north of Gilmer, the Fannin County Commission has enacted a ban on crypto mining, while a Georgian commission representing 18 primarily rural counties has published advice on how to restrict the development of Bitcoin mines.

“When you’re in my backyard, when you’re in my town, trying to wreck our property and our peace, people will tell you, it’s a hard ‘no’,” says Ms Roberson.

Although 80% of local people backed Trump last November, that support doesn’t appear to stop people opposing one of his key crypto goals.

The Trump administration is not planning to do away with all regulations around crypto mining – but it is ready to actively help companies open power plants next to the mines.

In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine in April, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said: “We’re going to make it so that if you want to mine Bitcoin, and you find the right place to do it, you can build your own power plant next to it,” going on to argue that such projects would stop “these stories about ‘You’re taking too much power and now the cost of operating my refrigerator is higher’.”

“The next generation of miners in America will be able to control their destiny, control the cost of power, and I think that is going to turbocharge Bitcoin mining in America,” Lutnick told the magazine.

According to Zack Shapiro, head of policy at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a US think tank that researches emerging monetary networks, that process has already begun. “There are states that are passing laws specifically prohibiting municipalities from banning Bitcoin mines,” he says. “It’s a mechanism by which mining companies can fight back.”

And the nature of Bitcoin mining means that, if it meets resistance, it can quickly move on to somewhere more favourable.

When Colin Read tackled the mines in Plattsburgh, he saw how easily they could change location.

“This industry is really footloose,” he said. “When we told these companies they couldn’t have more power without going through hoops, they packed up and went to a community where they didn’t have such strict requirements.”

Local opposition is not Trump’s only challenge. Could the sea, for example, be a better location for Bitcoin mining?

Mr Shapiro believes that, with miners looking for the lowest cost, they could turn to leftover renewable energy that can’t be used by other applications. “Wind power in the ocean can’t be used to power a city, but you can set up an offshore platform that captures offshore wind and tidal energy, and use that to mine Bitcoin – because there’s not another buyer to use that energy, it’s probably ultimately where Bitcoin mining operations move.”

It could also be that in the cryptocurrency race, Bitcoin might not be the best bet. Read – who is an energy economist – is sceptical about the staying power of energy-intensive Bitcoin because he believes other more efficient alternatives are going to emerge.

With the White House egging on the industry, fights over Bitcoin mining will inevitably play out in smaller forums, in state and local governments and tiny places like Dresden.

But one constant in the short history of Bitcoin has been volatility. It might be boom times now – yet a downturn in the price, shifts in energy sources and changing crypto needs could fundamentally reshape the Bitcoin mining landscape, no matter how much Trump wants to keep it in the US.

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