US President Donald Trump reignited trade tensions on Friday, threatening a 50% tariff on all goods sent to the United States from the European Union.

He also warned Apple that he would impose a 25% import tax “at least” on iPhones not manufactured in America, later widening the threat to any smartphone.

The warning against the EU came just hours before the two sides were set to have trade talks. Trump last month announced a 20% tariff on most EU goods, but had halved it to 10% until 8 July to allow time for negotiations.

In a statement after the talks, the EU said it remained committed to securing a deal, while warning again that it was prepared to retaliate.

“EU-US trade is unmatched & must be guided by mutual respect, not threats,” European Union Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič wrote on social media. “We stand ready to defend our interests.”

In remarks to reporters at the White House on Friday afternoon, Trump expressed impatience with the pace of the talks, saying his plan to raise tariffs on 1 June was set.

“I’m not looking for a deal – we’ve set the deal,” he added, before immediately adding that a big investment in the US by a European company might make him open to a delay.

“We’re going to see what happens but right now it’s going on on June 1st,” he said.

Analysts said it remained to be seen whether Trump’s rhetoric would turn into reality.

“We have to keep in mind that at this point, this is a threat. It’s not an announcement. There is no executive order,” trade expert Aslak Berg from the Centre for European Reform told the BBC.

He said he thought Trump’s post was intended to increase leverage ahead of the negotiations.

“But the fact of the matter is the EU is not going to budge. They are going to stay calm, carry on and it will be a very difficult discussion this afternoon.”

Since re-entering the White House, Trump has imposed and threatened various tariffs on goods from countries around the world, arguing that the measures – which are a tax on imports – will boost US manufacturing and protect jobs from foreign competition.

The announcements have sparked worries globally, because they will make it more expensive and difficult for foreign businesses to sell goods in the world’s largest economy.

But Trump has also backed down from some of his most aggressive proposals after financial market turmoil and business outcry in the US.

Shares in the US and EU fell on Friday after the latest threats, with the S&P 500 down about 0.7% and Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac 40 ending the day down more than 1.5%.

Shares in Apple, which had won relief last month when Trump exempted key electronics including smartphones from his tariffs, fell about 3%.

Officials at the time warned it would be temporary. Speaking to reporters later on Friday, Trump said he did not intend to single out Apple but planned to apply the duties to all smart phones, which could start by the end of June.

The EU is one of the US’s largest trading partners, sending more than $600bn in goods to the US last year and buying about $370bn worth, according to US government figures.

Trump’s complaints about Europe have focused on that uneven trade relationship, as the EU sells more goods to the US than it buys from America.

He blames this trade deficit on policies that he says are unfair to American companies, and he has specifically raised concerns about policies related to cars and agricultural products.

He targeted goods from the EU with a 20% tariff in his so-called Liberation Day announcement last month, which set off a flurry of negotiations between the US and countries around the world.

While some countries, especially smaller ones, have taken a conciliatory approach, the EU, like China and Canada, has pushed back harder against the threats, saying it is prepared to retaliate by raising its own tariffs on US products.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that he hoped the threat “would light a fire under the EU”.

Politicians from members of the bloc greeted it with dismay.

Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the EU had been engaging in “good faith” and warned that tariffs would be damaging to both sides.

“We do not need to go down this road,” he said. “Negotiations are the best and only sustainable way forward.”

“We are maintaining the same line: de-escalation, but we are ready to respond,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Saint-Martin wrote on social media on Friday morning, adding that the pressure was “not helping” the negotiations.

German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche said her country needed “more trade, not less”.

“We must do everything to ensure that the European Commission reaches a negotiated solution with the United States,” she said.

Trump has ploughed ahead with tariffs, despite widespread concern among experts that the new taxes will lead to economic damage while doing little to achieve his aims.

On Friday, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said the idea that Apple would make iPhones in the US was a “fairy tale that is not feasible”.

He added that he expected Apple to continue to be able to navigate the situation, despite the latest attack from Trump, who has long singled out the company as one he wants to see manufacturing in the US.

Trump met with Apple chief executive Tim Cook at the White House earlier this week, after expressing unhappiness about the firm’s response to the tariffs.

Earlier this month, company said it was shifting production of most of its iPhones and other devices destined to be sold in the US away from China, but towards countries such as India and Vietnam, rather than the US.

Trump earlier this month said he had a “little problem” with Mr Cook, and had warned him: ‘I don’t want you building in India.'”

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

The limited amount of food that trickled into Gaza after an Israeli blockade was partly lifted has sparked chaotic scenes, as hunger continues to spread.

Bakeries distributing food were overwhelmed by crowds and forced to close on Thursday, and armed looters attacked an aid convoy overnight – sparking a firefight with Hamas security officials who, witnesses say, were then targeted by an Israeli drone strike.

The incident in central Gaza, recounted to BBC News by eyewitnesses, local journalists and Hamas officials, underscores the deteriorating security situation in Gaza, where governance has collapsed and lawlessness has spread.

A convoy of 20 trucks, coordinated by the World Food Programme (WFP) and carrying flour, was en route from the Kerem Shalom crossing to a WFP warehouse in the city of Deir al-Balah.

It was being escorted by six Hamas security officers when it was ambushed by five unidentified gunmen, who fired at the tyres of the vehicles and tried to seize the cargo.

The Hamas security team engaged the attackers in a brief firefight, witnesses told BBC News.

Shortly after the clash began, Israeli drones targeted the Hamas unit with four missiles, killing six officers and wounding others.

Hamas issued a statement condemning the attack as “a horrific massacre” and accused Israel of deliberately targeting personnel tasked with protecting humanitarian aid.

BBC News has contacted the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment.

A small amount of food has been allowed to cross into Gaza this week: around 130 lorries carrying aid have crossed the border in the last three days, after an 11-week blockade was partly lifted by the IDF.

The UN says 500 to 600 trucks of supplies a day are needed in Gaza.

• LIVE: Gazans tell BBC more aid needed as Israel eases blockade

International agencies, including the UN and the WFP, have repeatedly warned that the growing insecurity is hampering the delivery of desperately needed food and medical supplies to the population – the majority of whom are displaced.

Israel says the blockade was intended to put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages still held in Gaza. Israel has also accused Hamas of stealing supplies, which the group has denied.

The WFP said 15 of its aid trucks were looted overnight on Thursday, and that “hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity”. The organisation called on Israel to help ensure the safe passage of supplies.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, an agency that supports Palestinian refugees, wrote on X that no one should be “surprised let alone shocked” that aid had been looted because the “people of Gaza have been starved [and] deprived of the basics including water and medicines for more than 11 weeks”.

Earlier on Thursday, angry and hungry Palestinians crowded outside bakeries in Gaza in a desperate attempt to obtain bread, but the situation quickly descended into chaos, forcing distribution to halt.

It forced most bakeries to suspend operations, citing a lack of security.

Many residents across Gaza voiced growing frustration over the aid distribution method and criticised the WFP, which oversees food deliveries.

Some called for an immediate shift from distributing baked bread to handing out flour directly at a rate of one sack per family.

Locals argue that distributing flour would allow families to bake at home or in tents – which, they say, would be safer than waiting at the overcrowded aid centres.

Palestinians on the ground have told of the deepening humanitarian crisis and the collapse of basic services facing people living among the fighting or forced from their homes, as the IDF continues to ramp up its military operations against Hamas.

From a displacement camp in southern Gaza’s al-Mawasi, Abd al-Fatah Hussein told BBC News over WhatsApp that the situation is getting worse due to the number of people in the area.

The father-of-two said there is “no room” in al-Mawasi, where people ordered by the Israeli military to leave their homes are being told to go for safety.

“There is no electricity, no food, insufficient portable water, and no available medicine,” he said.

“The repeated air strikes, especially during the night, add to the suffering.”

He described the aid trucks coming in as a “drop in the ocean of Gaza’s needs”.

When he announced some supplies would finally be allowed into the strip earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said only a “basic amount” would be able to cross.

Humanitarian organisations have warned the amount of food entering Gaza in recent days is not close to what is needed to feed the 2.1 million people living there, while the UN has said about 500 lorries entered the territory on average every day before the war.

Widespread famine, humanitarian groups have warned, looms over Gaza.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said 400 trucks had been cleared to enter Gaza this week, but supplies from just 115 had been collected. He said nothing had “reached the besieged north” so far.

While some flour, baby food and medical supplies had made it into Gaza, and some bakeries in the south had begun operating again, Guterres said that amounted to a “teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required”.

“The supplies – 160,000 pallets, enough to fill nearly 9,000 trucks – are waiting,” he added.

Rida, a midwife with charity Project HOPE in Deir al-Balah, said women come to her clinic suffering from fainting, having sought medical help without eating breakfast.

Many of them eat only one meal a day and subsist on high energy biscuits given by the charity, she said.

“Due to malnutrition they are always telling us, ‘my baby cannot take enough supplement from my breast… my baby won’t stop crying… they always need to be breastfed, but my breast is empty’.”

Teenager Saba Nahed Alnajjar lives in Khan Younis, where the IDF ordered a mass evacuation earlier this week ahead of what it said would be an unprecedented military operation there.

She said her family has stayed in their partially destroyed home.

“An evacuation order has been issued for our area, but we have not been displaced because we have nowhere else to go,” she said.

“There are not many citizens in the area… The displaced are sleeping in the street and there is no food.

“The conditions are deteriorating and very difficult.”

Speaking over WhatsApp messages – often the only way to speak to people in Gaza, which journalists are blocked from entering by the IDF – she said the “bombing continues in a brutal manner”.

She and her family have little left, Saba said, adding: “We have no food, no flour – no basic necessities of life.”

Russia and Ukraine have each handed over 390 soldiers and civilians in the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.

They both returned 270 servicemen and 120 civilians on the Ukrainian border with Belarus, as part of the only deal agreed in direct talks in Istanbul a week ago.

Both sides had agreed to an exchange of 1,000 prisoners and confirmed there would be further swaps in the coming days.

Although there have been dozens of smaller-scale exchanges, no other handover has involved as many civilians.

The Russian defence ministry said servicemen and civilians, including those captured by Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region during Kyiv’s offensive in recent months, were among those handed over.

They were currently on Belarusian territory and were to be taken to Russia for medical checks and treatment, the ministry said.

“We are bringing our people home,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on social media.

“We are verifying every surname, every detail about each person.”

Ukraine’s co-ordination headquarters for prisoners of war said the 270 Ukrainian servicemen had fought in regions across the east and north, from Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy to Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson.

Three of the 390 released on Friday were women, officials said, and some of the soldiers had been held since 2022.

US President Donald Trump earlier posted his congratulations on his Truth Social platform, claiming that the swap was complete and that “this could lead to something big???”.

Families of Ukrainian soldiers held by Russia gathered in northern Ukraine on Friday in the hope that their sons and husbands would be among those released.

Natalia, whose son Yelizar was captured during the battle for the city of Severodonetsk three years ago, told the BBC she believed he would return, but did not know when.

Olha said that since her son Valerii had been captured with five other soldiers in the east, her life had stopped, as she did not know if they were still alive.

“They were captured two months ago in Luhansk. They went missing in a village.”

The prisoner swap was agreed in Turkey a week ago, when low-level delegations from Ukraine and Russia came face to face for the first time since March 2022, even though the meeting lasted only two hours and failed to make any progress towards a ceasefire.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that there would be a second round of talks, when Moscow would hand a “memorandum” to the Ukrainian side.

Trump said earlier this week that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately” start negotiating towards a ceasefire and an end to the war, after a two-hour phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Since then, Zelensky has accused Putin of “trying to buy time” to continue the war.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has backed a suggestion from Trump that the Vatican might mediate talks on negotiating a ceasefire, but Lavrov said that was “not a very realistic option”.

The Russian foreign minister repeated an unfounded claim that Zelensky was not a legitimate leader and suggested new elections should be held before a potential future peace agreement is signed.

Asked if Russia was ready to sign a deal, Lavrov said: “First we need to have a deal. And when it’s agreed, then we will decide. But, as President Putin has said many times, President Zelensky does not have legitimacy.”

He said after an agreement was ready, Russia would “see who out of those in power in Ukraine has legitimacy”.

“The key task now is to prepare a peace agreement which will be reliable and provide a long-term, stable and fair peace without creating security threats for anyone. In our case, we’re concerned with Russia.”

Several people have suffered life-threatening injuries in a knife attack at the main railway station in the German city of Hamburg, police have said.

The city’s fire department said 12 people were injured in the attack, but police later said there were no reliable figures for the number of victims.

Hamburg Police said officers arrested a 39-year-old woman and a major operation is under way.

The attack is understood to have happened at the city’s Central Station at about 18:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Friday.

A spokesman for the Hamburg fire department told AFP news agency that 12 people had been injured and that some of the injuries were life-threatening.

In a post on X, Hamburg Police said there were no reliable figures for the number of people injured but several have sustained life-threatening injuries.

“According to initial findings, a person allegedly injured several people with a knife in the main station,” the police said.

Police later added that they believe the suspect acted alone.

Local media has reported that the attack happened near platforms 13 and 14 – which are accessible via a busy main road – while a train was on one of the platforms.

Some of the victims were treated inside trains, according to reports.

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said four platforms at the station were closed and some services would experience delays and diversions.

Pictures from the scene show a number of emergency service personnel and vehicles on the ground, and barriers that seem to be hiding the injured from public view.

One photograph used by German media shows a man being taken away by paramedics on a stretcher.

A video on social media appears to show the suspect with her hands behind her back being escorted out of the station platform by officers who put her in a police vehicle.

Hamburg Central Station is one of Germany’s busiest transport hubs, with more than 550,000 travellers per day according to its website. It is often crowded during Friday rush hour.

This is the latest in a series of violent attacks in Germany in recent months.

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 – which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said came because they were allegedly “fostering violence” and “antisemitism” – 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.

Harvard has been given 72 hours to comply with a list of demands to have an “opportunity” to regain its ability to enrol these students, including providing the government with all disciplinary records for non-immigrant students enrolled at Harvard over the past five years.

Noem also demanded Harvard turn over electronic records, videos, or audio of “illegal” and “dangerous or violent” activity by non-immigrant students on campus.

But the Trump administration also appeared to single China out when Noem also accused Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party” in her 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 headline in Israel’s liberal daily Ha’aretz this week put it starkly: “Diplomatic tsunami nears,” it warned, “as Europe begins to act against Israel’s ‘complete madness’ in Gaza.”

This week’s diplomatic assault has taken many forms, not all of them foreseen.

From concerted international condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza, to the shocking murder of two young Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, this has been, to put it mildly, a tumultuous week for the Jewish state.

The waves started crashing on Israel’s shores on Monday evening, when Britain, France and Canada issued a joint statement condemning its “egregious” actions in Gaza.

All three warned of the possibility of “further concrete actions” if Israel continued its renewed military offensive and failed to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid.

They also threatened “targeted sanctions” in response to Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

A statement from 24 donor nations followed, condemning a new, Israeli-backed aid delivery model for Gaza.

But that was just the start.

On Tuesday, Britain suspended trade talks with Israel and said a 2023 road map for future cooperation was being reviewed.

A fresh round of sanctions was imposed on Jewish settlers, including Daniela Weiss, a prominent figure who featured in Louis Theroux’s recent documentary, The Settlers.

Israel’s ambassador in London, Tzipi Hotovely, was summoned to the Foreign Office, a move generally reserved for the representatives of countries like Russia and Iran.

To make matters worse for Israel, the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said a “strong majority” of the bloc’s members favoured reviewing the 25-year-old Association Agreement with Israel.

The reasons for this flurry of diplomatic condemnation seemed clear enough.

Evidence that Gaza was closer to mass starvation than at any time since the war began, following Hamas’s attack in October 2023, was sending ripples of horror across the world.

Israel’s military offensive, and the rhetoric surrounding it, suggested that conditions in the stricken territory were about to deteriorate once more.

Addressing MPs on Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy singled out the words of Israel’s hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who had spoken of “cleansing” Gaza, “destroying what’s left” and relocating the civilian population to third countries.

“We must call this what it is,” Lammy said. “It’s extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous. And I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”

Smotrich is not a decision-maker when it comes to conduct of the war in Gaza. Before now, his incendiary remarks might have been set to one side.

But those days appear to be over. Rightly or wrongly, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seen as in thrall to his far-right colleagues. Critics accuse him of relentlessly pursuing a war, without regard for the lives of Palestinian civilians or the remaining Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.

Countries that have long supported Israel’s right to defend itself are beginning to say “enough is enough.”

This week was clearly a significant moment for Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, a staunch defender of Israel (he once said “I support Zionism without qualification”) who faced strong criticism from within the Labour Party for his reluctance last year to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

On Tuesday, Sir Keir said the suffering of innocent children in Gaza was “utterly intolerable”.

In the face of this unusually concerted action from some of his country’s strongest allies, Netanyahu reacted furiously, suggesting Britain, France and Canada were guilty of supporting Hamas.

“When mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you’re on the wrong side of justice,” he posted on X.

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

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar went further, suggesting there was a “direct line” between Israel’s critics, including Starmer, and Wednesday night’s killing of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, the two Israeli embassy employees gunned down outside the Jewish Museum in Washington.

But despite the outpourings of sympathy following the shooting, the Israeli government seems increasingly isolated, with western allies and prominent members of the Jewish diaspora all voicing anger – and anguish – over the war in Gaza.

Lord Levy, former Middle East envoy and advisor to Tony Blair, said he endorsed the current government’s criticisms, even suggesting they might have come “a little late”.

“There has to be a stand, not just from us in this country but internationally, against what is going on in Gaza,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One, describing himself as “a very proud Jew…who passionately cares for Israel”.

But silent, throughout all this, is the one man who could, if he wanted, stop the war.

At the end of his recent tour of the Gulf, Donald Trump said “a lot of people are starving”.

White House officials indicated the US president was frustrated with the war and wanted the Israeli government to “wrap it up”.

But while other western leaders release expressions of outrage, Trump is saying almost nothing.

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.

Eight people have been found guilty after US reality TV star Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint of millions of dollars’ worth of jewellery in Paris nearly a decade ago.

The four who took part in the heist were given prison sentences of up to eight years, but most of these terms were suspended. Two people were acquitted.

Nine men and one woman were accused of carrying out or aiding the armed burglary of $10m (£7.55m) worth of jewellery, including a diamond engagement ring, during Paris Fashion Week in 2016.

“The crime was the most terrifying experience of my life, leaving a lasting impact on me and my family,” Kardashian said in a statement following the verdicts.

“While I’ll never forget what happened, I believe in the power of growth and accountability and pray for healing for all.”

Kardashian’s lawyers said in a statement she “looks forward to putting this tragic episode behind her, as she continues working to improve the criminal justice system on behalf of victims, the innocent and the incarcerated seeking to redeem themselves”.

On the night between 3 and 4 October 2016, as Kardashian was in her room at the Hotel de Pourtales in central Paris, a gang of men made their way into the building.

DNA evidence for Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, and Yunice Abbas, 71, placed them at the scene of the crime, and the two have admitted their involvement.

Khedache was sentenced to eight years in prison on Friday, five of which were suspended.

Abbas, meanwhile, was sentenced to seven years jail with five suspended, alongside Didier Dubreucq.

The fourth member of the robbery gang, Marc-Alexandre Boyer, 35, was given the same sentence.

With most of those convicted now in their 60s and 70s, the group has been dubbed the “Grandpa robbers” by French media.

Kardashian gave evidence during the course of the trial, telling the court she forgave Khedache after receiving a letter of apology from him.

“I do appreciate the letter for sure. I do appreciate it, I forgive you,” she said earlier this month.

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.”

A judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s plan to strip Harvard University of its ability to enrol foreign students.

The ruling came after Harvard filed a lawsuit – the latest escalation of a dispute between the White House and one of America’s most prestigious institutions.

The university said the administration’s decision on Thursday to bar international students was a “blatant violation” of the law and free speech rights.

The Trump administration says Harvard has not done enough to fight antisemitism and change its hiring and admissions practices – allegations that the university has strongly denied.

US District Judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order in a short ruling issued on Friday.

The order pauses a move that the Department of Homeland Security made on Thursday to revoke Harvard’s access to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) – a government database that manages foreign students.

“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission,” Harvard argued in the lawsuit.

“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a letter.

“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body,” he wrote.

In response, White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said: “If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.

“Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits,” Jackson said in a statement.

After the restraining order was issued, Ms Jackson accused the judge in the case of having a “liberal agenda”.

“These unelected judges have no right to stop the Trump Administration from exercising their rightful control over immigration policy and national security policy,” she said.

• ‘We did not sign up for this’: Harvard’s foreign students are stuck and scared

There are around 6,800 international students at Harvard, who make up more than 27% of its enrolled students this year.

Around a fifth of those international students are from China, with significant numbers from Canada, India, South Korea and the UK. Among the international students currently enrolled is the future queen of Belgium, 23-year-old Princess Elisabeth.

Leo Ackerman was set to study education and entrepreneurship at Harvard beginning in August, with the hopes of helping children “fall in love with learning”.

He heard the news on Thursday during a Zoom call with other international students, he told the BBC.

“I’ve had this dream of studying in the US and experiencing that amazing college system, which I just think is one of the best in the world. I was really excited, and I’m still really excited if I manage to go there,” Mr Ackerman said.

“Having it taken away feels like a really sad moment for a lot of people,” he added, though he still held out hope that Harvard’s legal action would allow him to continue his studies there.

Eliminating foreign students would take a large bite out of Harvard’s finances. Although foreign students are eligible for financial aid, they are generally not able to access US federal grants and loans.

Experts say international students are more likely to pay full tuition, essentially subsidising aid for American students.

Undergraduate tuition – not including fees, housing, books, food or health insurance – will reach $59,320 (£43,850) in the coming academic year, according to the university, and the total cost of a year at Harvard before any financial aid is usually significantly more than $100,000.

The Trump administration has taken aim at Harvard and other elite institutions, not only arguing that they should do more to clamp down on pro-Palestinian activists but also claiming they discriminate against conservative viewpoints.

It has launched investigations into dozens of universities across the country and wrung concessions from other major US institutions like Columbia University in New York.

On Friday, speaking from the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said “Harvard is going to have to change its ways” and suggested he is considering measures against other universities as well.

In April, the White House froze $2.2bn (£1.7bn) in federal funding to Harvard, and Trump has threated to remove the university’s tax-exempt status, a standard designation for US educational institutions.

The funding freeze prompted an earlier Harvard lawsuit, also asking the courts to stop the administration’s actions.

Harvard, one of eight elite Ivy League universities, is located just outside Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

While Harvard leaders have made concessions – including dismissing the leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies, who had come under fire for failing to represent Israeli perspectives – the latest lawsuit indicates the university is willing to fight the Trump administration in court.

The university has enlisted several high-profile Republican lawyers in its battle, including an advisor to the Trump Organization and Robert Hur, a former special counsel who investigated Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents.

Foreign students currently attending Harvard have expressed worries that the row between their institution could force them to transfer to another university or return home. Being logged on the SEVP system is a requirement for student visas and, if Harvard is blocked from using the database, students could be found in violation of their visas and potentially face deportation.

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

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

Several British students who are enrolled at Harvard, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they fear being identified by immigration authorities, expressed concerns that their US education could be cut short.

“Getting into Harvard was like an absolute dream. I had worked very hard to get in,” said one student.

“I definitely think freedom of speech is a problem on campus, but it’s being actively worked on… it was an absolute shock when yesterday’s announcement happened.”

“There’s a lot of anger, people feeling like we’re being used as pawns in a game,” she said.

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

The watch officer of a large container ship that ran aground and crashed into a garden in Norway has told police he was asleep at the time of the incident.

Investigators said the man, a Ukrainian national in his thirties, admitted to falling asleep while on duty on his own.

He has been charged with negligent navigation and police are also investigating whether rules regarding working and rest hours were adhered to on board the vessel.

The 135m-ship (443ft) missed a house by metres when it ran aground on Thursday morning in Byneset, near Trondheim, central Norway. Efforts to refloat it have been unsuccessful so far.

“The individual charged was the officer on watch at the time of the incident,” the prosecutor in Trøndelag Police District said in a press statement.

“During questioning, he stated that he fell asleep while on duty alone, which led to the vessel running aground,” Kjetil Bruland Sørensen added.

Local media reported that the man was in charge of steering the ship but failed to change course when entering the Trondheim Fjord.

No one was injured in the incident.

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 veered off course.

Logistics company NCL, which chartered the ship, said this was a “serious incident” and it was grateful no one was harmed.

“This remains an ongoing rescue operation and our highest priority is to ensure a safe and secure salvage operation,” the company’s statement said, adding that it was assisting police with their investigation.

Johan Helberg, who owns the property the ship nearly crashed into, described the moment he looked out of his window and saw it in his front garden.

“I had to bend my neck to see the top of it. It was so unreal,” he said in an interview with the Guardian.

Mr Helberg said he was “astonished” to see the ship in front of his house and that it was “five metres” away from entering his bedroom.

“It’s a very bulky new neighbour but it will soon go away,” he told Norwegian television channel TV2.

He was alerted to the commotion by a panicked neighbour who heard the sound of the ship and watched as it headed straight for shore.

The neighbour’s son said the experience was “terrifying” and his father screamed when he saw the ship.

“I didn’t know if I was dreaming because it was five in the morning and it was so surreal,” Bard Jorgensen told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.

It seemed like the vessel was going to “directly” hit the house, Mr Jorgensen said, adding that he was relieved to know his neighbour was unharmed.

According to reports, the ship had previously run aground in 2023 but crew managed to free it using its own power.

Billy Joel has cancelled all forthcoming tour dates after being diagnosed with a rare brain condition.

The 76-year-old singer-songwriter – known for classic hits like Piano Man, Uptown Girl and We Didn’t Start the Fire – is receiving “excellent care” and is “fully committed to prioritising his health”, a statement said.

He has Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH), which is caused by a build-up of fluid in the brain and causes problems with his hearing, vision and balance.

After being told by doctors to stop performing live, he has called off 17 dates in 2025 and 2026, including stadium shows at Murrayfield in Edinburgh and Anfield in Liverpool next summer.

“I’m sincerely sorry to disappoint our audience, and thank you for understanding,” he said.

A statement issued on his behalf said Joel’s condition “has been exacerbated by recent concert performances, leading to problems with hearing, vision and balance”.

It continued: “Under his doctor’s instructions, Billy is undergoing specific physical therapy and has been advised to refrain from performing during this recovery period.

“Billy is thankful for the excellent care he is receiving and is fully committed to prioritising his health.

“He is grateful for the support from fans during this time and looks forward to the day when he can once again take the stage.”

NPH is described by the NHS as an uncommon and poorly understood condition that most often affects people over the age of 60.

As well as the two UK dates, he had been due to perform in the US and Canada between this July and July 2026.

He had previously postponed shows in March because of a “medical condition”, which was not specified at the time, “to allow him to recover from recent surgery and to undergo physical therapy”.

Joel has regularly been on tour in recent years, and ended a record-breaking decade-long monthly residency at Madison Square Garden in New York last year.

He has been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards, winning five times, and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1999.

Sebastião Salgado, regarded as one of the world’s greatest documentary photographers, has died at the age of 81.

The Brazil-born photographer was known for his dramatic and unflinching black-and-white images of hardship, conflict and natural beauty, captured in 130 countries over 55 years.

His hard-hitting photos chronicled major global events such as the Rwanda genocide in 1994, burning oilfields at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and the famine in the Sahel region of Africa in 1984.

“His lens revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, the power of transformative action,” said a statement from Instituto Terra, the environmental organisation he founded with his wife, Lélia Wanick Salgado.

Some of his most striking pictures were taken in his home country, including epic photos of thousands of desperate figures working in open-cast gold mines and striking images of the indigenous people of the Amazon.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva paid tribute, describing Salgado as “one of the best… photographers the world has given us”.

Salgado’s final major project, Amazônia, spotlighted the rainforest’s beauty and fragility.

A lifelong advocate for the Amazon’s indigenous people, Salgado documented the daily lives of a dozen of the tribes scattered throughout the rainforest – from hunting and fishing expeditions, to dances and rituals.

He spent seven years on an ambitious photographic journey, exploring the remote reaches of the Amazon rainforest and documenting its inhabitants.

The project culminated in an exhibition showcasing over 200 black-and-white images, offering a poignant glimpse into the region’s landscapes and communities.

The Amazônia exhibition was displayed at the Science Museum in London and the the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester in 2021 and 2022.

“Sometimes I ask myself, “Sebastião, was it really you that went to all these places?”‘ he said to an interviewer last year.

“Was it really me that spent years travelling to 130 different countries, who went deep inside the forests, into oil fields and mines?

“Boy, it really is me who did this. I’m probably one of the photographers who’s created the most work in the history of photography.”

Born in 1944, Salgado left a career in economics to start as a photographer in 1973.

He worked on international assignments for a variety of photography agencies before forming his own, Amazonas Images, with Lélia in 1994.

He received the Sony World Photography Awards’ Outstanding Contribution to Photography in 2024.

Other accolades included the Prince of Asturias Award and recognition as a Unicef Goodwill Ambassador.

Through the Instituto Terra, Salgado and Lélia also restored his father’s farm in Brazil to thriving rainforest by planting more than three million trees.

The institute’s statement added: “Sebastião was much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time.

“Alongside his life partner, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, he sowed hope where there was devastation and brought to life the belief that environmental restoration is also a profound act of love for humanity.”

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.

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.”

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• 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?

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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.

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 – which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said came because they were allegedly “fostering violence” and “antisemitism” – 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.

Harvard has been given 72 hours to comply with a list of demands to have an “opportunity” to regain its ability to enrol these students, including providing the government with all disciplinary records for non-immigrant students enrolled at Harvard over the past five years.

Noem also demanded Harvard turn over electronic records, videos, or audio of “illegal” and “dangerous or violent” activity by non-immigrant students on campus.

But the Trump administration also appeared to single China out when Noem also accused Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party” in her 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 resumption of the global trade war by Donald Trump comes after a period of relative calm.

But the US president’s threat of a 50% tariff on all goods from the European Union in a week’s time suggests the trade war tensions were merely on hold.

They have now resumed in earnest, alongside market uncertainty, and social media diplomacy.

It indicates significant volatility in the coming weeks, ahead of a crucial G7 summit in Canada next month.

The crux of what is happening right now is that after the US opted to row back on its trade-stopping tariff conflict with China, most of the rest of the world, especially key US allies, slowed up on their own negotiations with the US. Allies would not expect to be treated worse by the US than China.

Friday’s intervention by President Trump is much worse that what was considered the worst-case scenario – a 20% tariff rate on the EU in early July at the end of the 90-day pause.

As his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent openly admitted, these threats are designed to “light a fire” under such stalled talks.

Many in the EU, and other countries such as Japan, believe the US administration is bluffing, and that it backed down against China in the face of rising inflation and market volatility, and will inevitably do so again.

So the scene is now set for an impasse or perhaps the EU to reinstate its own paused retaliation, while the rest of the world, apart from China and the UK, watches on.

The UK’s trade deals with both sides insulate the British economy to some extent, but full resumption of a transatlantic tariff war would cause a trade shock that would be difficult to escape.

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.

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 Ugandan activist who was arrested and held for days in Tanzania has been found at the border between the two countries with “indications of torture,” her rights group says.

Agather Atuhaire had been held incommunicado in Tanzania alongside fellow Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi, who was on Thursday found at the border with his home country.

“We had been tortured, and we were told to strip naked and to go bathe. We couldn’t walk and were told to crawl and go wash off the blood,” Mwangi said in a post on X.

The two had gone to Tanzania to show solidarity with opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who appeared in court on Monday after being charged with treason.

Despite being allowed into the country, Mwangi and Atuhaire were not permitted to attend the hearing and were arrested.

Tanzania’s government has not commented on the torture claims.

But President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Monday warned that she would not allow activists from neighbouring countries to “meddle” in her country’s affairs and cause “chaos”.

• Why Samia’s hesitant reforms are fuelling Tanzanian political anger

On Thursday night, Atuhaire was found abandoned at the border by Tanzanian authorities after being held in custody since Monday, Agora Centre for Research, the Uganda-based rights group that she leads, posted on X.

Uganda’s high commissioner to Tanzania Fred Mwesigye said Atuhaire had “safely returned home” and had been “warmly received by her family”.

She had visibly swollen legs, allegedly resulting from torture during her detention, Ugandan local media reported, citing her close friends.

“She was dumped at the border at night by the authorities and there are indications of torture,” fellow activist at Agora Centre for Research Spire Ssentongo told AFP news agency.

Mwangi, who was earlier found abandoned on a roadside in northern Tanzania near the Kenyan border, said he had heard Atuhaire “groaning in pain” when they were held together on Tuesday.

“Any attempt to speak to each other during the night we were tortured was met with kicks and insults. We were removed from the torture location in different vehicles,” Mwangi added.

He said those who were holding them were getting orders from a “state security” official, who directed the activist to be given a “Tanzanian treatment”.

Atuhaire is yet to talk about her reported ordeal.

Mwangi’s disappearance had sparked widespread concern across Kenya, with his family, civil society and human rights groups staging protests and demanding his release.

On Wednesday, the Kenyan government formally protested against his detention, accusing Tanzanian authorities of denying consular access despite repeated requests.

Earlier on Thursday, Kenya’s foreign affairs ministry issued a statement saying it had not been able to access the activist.

Regional rights groups have called for an investigation into the alleged mistreatment of the activists by the Tanzanian authorities and urged all East African countries to uphold rights treaties.

• Could this be the end of the road for Tanzania’s great survivor, Tundu Lissu?
• X restricted in Tanzania after police targeted by hackers
• ‘Manhandled and choked’ – Tanzanian activist recounts abduction
• The Tanzanians searching for their grandfathers’ skulls in Germany

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.”

Fans have reacted with a mixture of excitement and caution to the news that hit game Elden Ring is to be made into a live-action film.

The epic dark fantasy game will be adapted by Alex Garland, who is known for movies like Ex Machina and Warfare, along with US entertainment company A24.

“I am very excited,” said TikToker Blue Thunder, adding that he hopes it will stay faithful to the game. Grant Greenly added on TikTok: “All the lore, all the action, all the Elden lords, all the fights… it’s more than we could ask for. This is going to be awesome.”

However, gaming journalist Christopher Dring, host of the Games Business Show podcast, told the BBC that “translating something like Elden Ring is no small feat”.

“Video games have become the new comic books for Hollywood right now,” he said.

“After the huge success of Minecraft, Mario and Sonic at the box office, plus Fallout and The Last of Us on the smaller screen, movie producers have been scrambling to sign all sorts of games, from the biggest proven brands to entirely unproven properties that haven’t even come out yet.”

Elden Ring is “one of the most critically acclaimed fantasy games out there”, he said, with more than 30 million players and the involvement of Game of Thrones author George RR Martin, who helped create its original story. “So it has a lot going for it.”

But he added: “We have seen plenty of game adaptations fail to succeed on the big screen, including last year’s Borderlands movie, which had a strong cast and was directed by Eli Roth. But it’s very much the trend, and it’s only growing.”

Elden Ring is a role-playing adventure game set in the war-torn, devastated Lands Between, where players must collect runes which represent that world’s order and laws, in order to restore it and become the Elden Lord.

TikToker Everythingethan added a note of caution, saying: “I want to know what part of the timeline we’re adapting… I don’t know if I want to see this live action. I think it would be kind of cursed at times. I think animation is the best way to adapt video games nine times out of 10.”

Other fans speculated about which elements of the game’s story would become the focus of the film, while another simply said: “This will be very bad, or meh.”

Some suggested it would work better as a TV series, while others said they felt “conflicted”, with one saying: “You can’t really justify a gaming experience that takes your average player anywhere from 20-40 hours to beat and cram it all into a 2 hour movie.”

Some gamers also welcomed the involvement of A24, which has previously worked with Garland on films including Annihilation, Men and Civil War.

“I’m scared. I love this game too much to watch it be ‘tarnished’,” said another.

In a statement, the game’s publisher Bandai Namco said: “We’re truly excited to bring the world of Elden Ring to fans in a new form, outside the game.

“Stay tuned. The path ahead is only beginning.”

Gaming is a booming market that comes with a young, built-in fanbase.

The plan to bring Elden Ring to the big screen comes after recent successes for adaptations, following years of mixed results.

The latest wave began in earnest with the blockbuster triumph of 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie, which has now raked in a staggering $1.4bn (£1.1bn) at the global box office.

One of the film’s stars, Jack Black, told BBC News at the time: “We will be seeing more storytelling from the gaming universe.”

He’s been proved right – and was also on board for this year’s A Minecraft Movie, a global hit that has grossed more than $900m (£666m).

Beyond financials, it’s also seen unprecedented audience participation from younger fans at screenings – many of whom are more accustomed to streaming and gaming than the traditional cinema experience.

It’s no surprise that a spate of other game franchise adaptations are already in the works.

Mortal Kombat and Five Nights at Freddy’s film sequels are due later this year, with Super Mario Bros 2 and a new Resident Evil film hitting cinemas in 2026. A Legend of Zelda movie is also slated for release in 2027.

Yet while cinema has banked on gaming’s mass appeal, it is on the small screen where the depth of modern-day gaming storylines has really shone.

The critically-acclaimed The Last of Us, a post-apocalyptic survival drama centred around the heartfelt relationship between Joel and Ellie – played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey in HBO’s Emmy Award-winning live-action version – has proven that affecting, mature storylines can come from games just as readily as child-friendly technicolour.

Amazon’s popular adaptation of politically-tinged nuclear wasteland thriller Fallout is another example.

Elden Ring may look to transfer this grit to the big screen, produced by A24 – a studio known for thought-provoking titles like the Oscar-nominated Aftersun and horror Midsommar.

After all, the franchise is notoriously tough to play and complete, so is definitely not one for younger gamers.

Elden Ring might just be the adult gaming crossover Hollywood is looking for.

A Nigerian senator has told the BBC she only learnt that the government was suing her “on the news” and that she was “shocked” by the action taken against her.

The government filed defamation charges against Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan after she accused one of the country’s top politicians of plotting to kill her.

In April, Akpoti-Uduaghan alleged that Senate President Godswill Akpabio and former state governor Yahaya Bell wanted to “eliminate” her. Both have denied this accusation.

She had previously accused Akpabio of sexually harassing her – an allegation he has also denied.

After learning of the charges against her, Akpoti-Uduaghan told the BBC: “I’m actually shocked. My first reaction when I read it is out of shock, because I have not been served [with papers] until now. I had to read it on the news.”

A spokesperson for the senate president said they had “evidence beyond reasonable doubt” that she had been served the court papers.

He added that he hoped Akpoti-Uduaghan would take advantage of the next court hearing to prove her allegations.

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

Akpoti-Uduaghan alleged in the interview that there were “discussions that Akpabio had with Yahaya Bello… to eliminate me”.

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

But Akpoti-Uduaghan stands by her allegation. She said she had even gone to the police with the accusation that Akpabio and Bello posed a threat to her life.

“Do you understand the twist? I was the one who ran to the police. I made my petitions, I appeared on television, I spoke publicly on the threat to my life,” she said.

“Instead, it is the senate president and [former] governor Yahaya Bello’s counter-petition, which is me defaming them, that is being attended to.”

Akpoti-Uduaghan said the charges were an attempt to “intimidate her” and make her “fall in line” after she accused Akabio of sexual harassment in February.

“It’s an ill that has been normalised in the society – sexual harassment. But here I am speaking about it… that was my first offence. Natasha is not supposed to speak about it. I’m supposed to bear it as a woman,” she told the BBC.

The charges mark 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, 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.

No date has been set for her to appear in court.

• ‘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

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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US President Donald Trump reignited trade tensions on Friday, threatening a 50% tariff on all goods sent to the United States from the European Union.

He also warned Apple that he would impose a 25% import tax “at least” on iPhones not manufactured in America, later widening the threat to any smartphone.

The warning against the EU came just hours before the two sides were set to have trade talks. Trump last month announced a 20% tariff on most EU goods, but had halved it to 10% until 8 July to allow time for negotiations.

In a statement after the talks, the EU said it remained committed to securing a deal, while warning again that it was prepared to retaliate.

“EU-US trade is unmatched & must be guided by mutual respect, not threats,” European Union Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič wrote on social media. “We stand ready to defend our interests.”

In remarks to reporters at the White House on Friday afternoon, Trump expressed impatience with the pace of the talks, saying his plan to raise tariffs on 1 June was set.

“I’m not looking for a deal – we’ve set the deal,” he added, before immediately adding that a big investment in the US by a European company might make him open to a delay.

“We’re going to see what happens but right now it’s going on on June 1st,” he said.

Analysts said it remained to be seen whether Trump’s rhetoric would turn into reality.

“We have to keep in mind that at this point, this is a threat. It’s not an announcement. There is no executive order,” trade expert Aslak Berg from the Centre for European Reform told the BBC.

He said he thought Trump’s post was intended to increase leverage ahead of the negotiations.

“But the fact of the matter is the EU is not going to budge. They are going to stay calm, carry on and it will be a very difficult discussion this afternoon.”

Since re-entering the White House, Trump has imposed and threatened various tariffs on goods from countries around the world, arguing that the measures – which are a tax on imports – will boost US manufacturing and protect jobs from foreign competition.

The announcements have sparked worries globally, because they will make it more expensive and difficult for foreign businesses to sell goods in the world’s largest economy.

But Trump has also backed down from some of his most aggressive proposals after financial market turmoil and business outcry in the US.

Shares in the US and EU fell on Friday after the latest threats, with the S&P 500 down about 0.7% and Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac 40 ending the day down more than 1.5%.

Shares in Apple, which had won relief last month when Trump exempted key electronics including smartphones from his tariffs, fell about 3%.

Officials at the time warned it would be temporary. Speaking to reporters later on Friday, Trump said he did not intend to single out Apple but planned to apply the duties to all smart phones, which could start by the end of June.

The EU is one of the US’s largest trading partners, sending more than $600bn in goods to the US last year and buying about $370bn worth, according to US government figures.

Trump’s complaints about Europe have focused on that uneven trade relationship, as the EU sells more goods to the US than it buys from America.

He blames this trade deficit on policies that he says are unfair to American companies, and he has specifically raised concerns about policies related to cars and agricultural products.

He targeted goods from the EU with a 20% tariff in his so-called Liberation Day announcement last month, which set off a flurry of negotiations between the US and countries around the world.

While some countries, especially smaller ones, have taken a conciliatory approach, the EU, like China and Canada, has pushed back harder against the threats, saying it is prepared to retaliate by raising its own tariffs on US products.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that he hoped the threat “would light a fire under the EU”.

Politicians from members of the bloc greeted it with dismay.

Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the EU had been engaging in “good faith” and warned that tariffs would be damaging to both sides.

“We do not need to go down this road,” he said. “Negotiations are the best and only sustainable way forward.”

“We are maintaining the same line: de-escalation, but we are ready to respond,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Saint-Martin wrote on social media on Friday morning, adding that the pressure was “not helping” the negotiations.

German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche said her country needed “more trade, not less”.

“We must do everything to ensure that the European Commission reaches a negotiated solution with the United States,” she said.

Trump has ploughed ahead with tariffs, despite widespread concern among experts that the new taxes will lead to economic damage while doing little to achieve his aims.

On Friday, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said the idea that Apple would make iPhones in the US was a “fairy tale that is not feasible”.

He added that he expected Apple to continue to be able to navigate the situation, despite the latest attack from Trump, who has long singled out the company as one he wants to see manufacturing in the US.

Trump met with Apple chief executive Tim Cook at the White House earlier this week, after expressing unhappiness about the firm’s response to the tariffs.

Earlier this month, company said it was shifting production of most of its iPhones and other devices destined to be sold in the US away from China, but towards countries such as India and Vietnam, rather than the US.

Trump earlier this month said he had a “little problem” with Mr Cook, and had warned him: ‘I don’t want you building in India.'”

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.

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.

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 headline in Israel’s liberal daily Ha’aretz this week put it starkly: “Diplomatic tsunami nears,” it warned, “as Europe begins to act against Israel’s ‘complete madness’ in Gaza.”

This week’s diplomatic assault has taken many forms, not all of them foreseen.

From concerted international condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza, to the shocking murder of two young Israeli embassy staff members in Washington, this has been, to put it mildly, a tumultuous week for the Jewish state.

The waves started crashing on Israel’s shores on Monday evening, when Britain, France and Canada issued a joint statement condemning its “egregious” actions in Gaza.

All three warned of the possibility of “further concrete actions” if Israel continued its renewed military offensive and failed to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid.

They also threatened “targeted sanctions” in response to Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

A statement from 24 donor nations followed, condemning a new, Israeli-backed aid delivery model for Gaza.

But that was just the start.

On Tuesday, Britain suspended trade talks with Israel and said a 2023 road map for future cooperation was being reviewed.

A fresh round of sanctions was imposed on Jewish settlers, including Daniela Weiss, a prominent figure who featured in Louis Theroux’s recent documentary, The Settlers.

Israel’s ambassador in London, Tzipi Hotovely, was summoned to the Foreign Office, a move generally reserved for the representatives of countries like Russia and Iran.

To make matters worse for Israel, the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said a “strong majority” of the bloc’s members favoured reviewing the 25-year-old Association Agreement with Israel.

The reasons for this flurry of diplomatic condemnation seemed clear enough.

Evidence that Gaza was closer to mass starvation than at any time since the war began, following Hamas’s attack in October 2023, was sending ripples of horror across the world.

Israel’s military offensive, and the rhetoric surrounding it, suggested that conditions in the stricken territory were about to deteriorate once more.

Addressing MPs on Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy singled out the words of Israel’s hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who had spoken of “cleansing” Gaza, “destroying what’s left” and relocating the civilian population to third countries.

“We must call this what it is,” Lammy said. “It’s extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous. And I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”

Smotrich is not a decision-maker when it comes to conduct of the war in Gaza. Before now, his incendiary remarks might have been set to one side.

But those days appear to be over. Rightly or wrongly, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seen as in thrall to his far-right colleagues. Critics accuse him of relentlessly pursuing a war, without regard for the lives of Palestinian civilians or the remaining Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.

Countries that have long supported Israel’s right to defend itself are beginning to say “enough is enough.”

This week was clearly a significant moment for Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, a staunch defender of Israel (he once said “I support Zionism without qualification”) who faced strong criticism from within the Labour Party for his reluctance last year to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

On Tuesday, Sir Keir said the suffering of innocent children in Gaza was “utterly intolerable”.

In the face of this unusually concerted action from some of his country’s strongest allies, Netanyahu reacted furiously, suggesting Britain, France and Canada were guilty of supporting Hamas.

“When mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers thank you, you’re on the wrong side of justice,” he posted on X.

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

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar went further, suggesting there was a “direct line” between Israel’s critics, including Starmer, and Wednesday night’s killing of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, the two Israeli embassy employees gunned down outside the Jewish Museum in Washington.

But despite the outpourings of sympathy following the shooting, the Israeli government seems increasingly isolated, with western allies and prominent members of the Jewish diaspora all voicing anger – and anguish – over the war in Gaza.

Lord Levy, former Middle East envoy and advisor to Tony Blair, said he endorsed the current government’s criticisms, even suggesting they might have come “a little late”.

“There has to be a stand, not just from us in this country but internationally, against what is going on in Gaza,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One, describing himself as “a very proud Jew…who passionately cares for Israel”.

But silent, throughout all this, is the one man who could, if he wanted, stop the war.

At the end of his recent tour of the Gulf, Donald Trump said “a lot of people are starving”.

White House officials indicated the US president was frustrated with the war and wanted the Israeli government to “wrap it up”.

But while other western leaders release expressions of outrage, Trump is saying almost nothing.

The watch officer of a large container ship that ran aground and crashed into a garden in Norway has told police he was asleep at the time of the incident.

Investigators said the man, a Ukrainian national in his thirties, admitted to falling asleep while on duty on his own.

He has been charged with negligent navigation and police are also investigating whether rules regarding working and rest hours were adhered to on board the vessel.

The 135m-ship (443ft) missed a house by metres when it ran aground on Thursday morning in Byneset, near Trondheim, central Norway. Efforts to refloat it have been unsuccessful so far.

“The individual charged was the officer on watch at the time of the incident,” the prosecutor in Trøndelag Police District said in a press statement.

“During questioning, he stated that he fell asleep while on duty alone, which led to the vessel running aground,” Kjetil Bruland Sørensen added.

Local media reported that the man was in charge of steering the ship but failed to change course when entering the Trondheim Fjord.

No one was injured in the incident.

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 veered off course.

Logistics company NCL, which chartered the ship, said this was a “serious incident” and it was grateful no one was harmed.

“This remains an ongoing rescue operation and our highest priority is to ensure a safe and secure salvage operation,” the company’s statement said, adding that it was assisting police with their investigation.

Johan Helberg, who owns the property the ship nearly crashed into, described the moment he looked out of his window and saw it in his front garden.

“I had to bend my neck to see the top of it. It was so unreal,” he said in an interview with the Guardian.

Mr Helberg said he was “astonished” to see the ship in front of his house and that it was “five metres” away from entering his bedroom.

“It’s a very bulky new neighbour but it will soon go away,” he told Norwegian television channel TV2.

He was alerted to the commotion by a panicked neighbour who heard the sound of the ship and watched as it headed straight for shore.

The neighbour’s son said the experience was “terrifying” and his father screamed when he saw the ship.

“I didn’t know if I was dreaming because it was five in the morning and it was so surreal,” Bard Jorgensen told the BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.

It seemed like the vessel was going to “directly” hit the house, Mr Jorgensen said, adding that he was relieved to know his neighbour was unharmed.

According to reports, the ship had previously run aground in 2023 but crew managed to free it using its own power.

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 – which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said came because they were allegedly “fostering violence” and “antisemitism” – 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.

Harvard has been given 72 hours to comply with a list of demands to have an “opportunity” to regain its ability to enrol these students, including providing the government with all disciplinary records for non-immigrant students enrolled at Harvard over the past five years.

Noem also demanded Harvard turn over electronic records, videos, or audio of “illegal” and “dangerous or violent” activity by non-immigrant students on campus.

But the Trump administration also appeared to single China out when Noem also accused Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party” in her 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 judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration’s plan to strip Harvard University of its ability to enrol foreign students.

The ruling came after Harvard filed a lawsuit – the latest escalation of a dispute between the White House and one of America’s most prestigious institutions.

The university said the administration’s decision on Thursday to bar international students was a “blatant violation” of the law and free speech rights.

The Trump administration says Harvard has not done enough to fight antisemitism and change its hiring and admissions practices – allegations that the university has strongly denied.

US District Judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order in a short ruling issued on Friday.

The order pauses a move that the Department of Homeland Security made on Thursday to revoke Harvard’s access to the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) – a government database that manages foreign students.

“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission,” Harvard argued in the lawsuit.

“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a letter.

“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body,” he wrote.

In response, White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said: “If only Harvard cared this much about ending the scourge of anti-American, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist agitators on their campus they wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with.

“Harvard should spend their time and resources on creating a safe campus environment instead of filing frivolous lawsuits,” Jackson said in a statement.

After the restraining order was issued, Ms Jackson accused the judge in the case of having a “liberal agenda”.

“These unelected judges have no right to stop the Trump Administration from exercising their rightful control over immigration policy and national security policy,” she said.

• ‘We did not sign up for this’: Harvard’s foreign students are stuck and scared

There are around 6,800 international students at Harvard, who make up more than 27% of its enrolled students this year.

Around a fifth of those international students are from China, with significant numbers from Canada, India, South Korea and the UK. Among the international students currently enrolled is the future queen of Belgium, 23-year-old Princess Elisabeth.

Leo Ackerman was set to study education and entrepreneurship at Harvard beginning in August, with the hopes of helping children “fall in love with learning”.

He heard the news on Thursday during a Zoom call with other international students, he told the BBC.

“I’ve had this dream of studying in the US and experiencing that amazing college system, which I just think is one of the best in the world. I was really excited, and I’m still really excited if I manage to go there,” Mr Ackerman said.

“Having it taken away feels like a really sad moment for a lot of people,” he added, though he still held out hope that Harvard’s legal action would allow him to continue his studies there.

Eliminating foreign students would take a large bite out of Harvard’s finances. Although foreign students are eligible for financial aid, they are generally not able to access US federal grants and loans.

Experts say international students are more likely to pay full tuition, essentially subsidising aid for American students.

Undergraduate tuition – not including fees, housing, books, food or health insurance – will reach $59,320 (£43,850) in the coming academic year, according to the university, and the total cost of a year at Harvard before any financial aid is usually significantly more than $100,000.

The Trump administration has taken aim at Harvard and other elite institutions, not only arguing that they should do more to clamp down on pro-Palestinian activists but also claiming they discriminate against conservative viewpoints.

It has launched investigations into dozens of universities across the country and wrung concessions from other major US institutions like Columbia University in New York.

On Friday, speaking from the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said “Harvard is going to have to change its ways” and suggested he is considering measures against other universities as well.

In April, the White House froze $2.2bn (£1.7bn) in federal funding to Harvard, and Trump has threated to remove the university’s tax-exempt status, a standard designation for US educational institutions.

The funding freeze prompted an earlier Harvard lawsuit, also asking the courts to stop the administration’s actions.

Harvard, one of eight elite Ivy League universities, is located just outside Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

While Harvard leaders have made concessions – including dismissing the leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies, who had come under fire for failing to represent Israeli perspectives – the latest lawsuit indicates the university is willing to fight the Trump administration in court.

The university has enlisted several high-profile Republican lawyers in its battle, including an advisor to the Trump Organization and Robert Hur, a former special counsel who investigated Joe Biden’s retention of classified documents.

Foreign students currently attending Harvard have expressed worries that the row between their institution could force them to transfer to another university or return home. Being logged on the SEVP system is a requirement for student visas and, if Harvard is blocked from using the database, students could be found in violation of their visas and potentially face deportation.

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

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

Several British students who are enrolled at Harvard, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they fear being identified by immigration authorities, expressed concerns that their US education could be cut short.

“Getting into Harvard was like an absolute dream. I had worked very hard to get in,” said one student.

“I definitely think freedom of speech is a problem on campus, but it’s being actively worked on… it was an absolute shock when yesterday’s announcement happened.”

“There’s a lot of anger, people feeling like we’re being used as pawns in a game,” she said.

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.

Several people have suffered life-threatening injuries in a knife attack at the main railway station in the German city of Hamburg, police have said.

The city’s fire department said 12 people were injured in the attack, but police later said there were no reliable figures for the number of victims.

Hamburg Police said officers arrested a 39-year-old woman and a major operation is under way.

The attack is understood to have happened at the city’s Central Station at about 18:00 local time (16:00 GMT) on Friday.

A spokesman for the Hamburg fire department told AFP news agency that 12 people had been injured and that some of the injuries were life-threatening.

In a post on X, Hamburg Police said there were no reliable figures for the number of people injured but several have sustained life-threatening injuries.

“According to initial findings, a person allegedly injured several people with a knife in the main station,” the police said.

Police later added that they believe the suspect acted alone.

Local media has reported that the attack happened near platforms 13 and 14 – which are accessible via a busy main road – while a train was on one of the platforms.

Some of the victims were treated inside trains, according to reports.

German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said four platforms at the station were closed and some services would experience delays and diversions.

Pictures from the scene show a number of emergency service personnel and vehicles on the ground, and barriers that seem to be hiding the injured from public view.

One photograph used by German media shows a man being taken away by paramedics on a stretcher.

A video on social media appears to show the suspect with her hands behind her back being escorted out of the station platform by officers who put her in a police vehicle.

Hamburg Central Station is one of Germany’s busiest transport hubs, with more than 550,000 travellers per day according to its website. It is often crowded during Friday rush hour.

This is the latest in a series of violent attacks in Germany in recent months.

Eight people have been found guilty after US reality TV star Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint of millions of dollars’ worth of jewellery in Paris nearly a decade ago.

The four who took part in the heist were given sentences of up to eight years, mostly suspended, and they will not return to prison because of time served. Two people were acquitted.

Nine men and one woman were accused of carrying out or aiding the armed burglary of $10m (£7.55m) worth of jewellery, including a diamond engagement ring, during Paris Fashion Week in 2016.

“The crime was the most terrifying experience of my life, leaving a lasting impact on me and my family,” Kardashian said in a statement after the verdicts.

“While I’ll never forget what happened, I believe in the power of growth and accountability and pray for healing for all.”

Kardashian’s lawyers said in a statement she “looks forward to putting this tragic episode behind her, as she continues working to improve the criminal justice system on behalf of victims, the innocent and the incarcerated seeking to redeem themselves”.

On the night between 3 and 4 October 2016, as Kardashian was in her room at the Hotel de Pourtales in central Paris, a gang of men made their way into the building.

DNA evidence for Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, and Yunice Abbas, 71, placed them at the scene of the crime, and the two have admitted their involvement.

Khedache, who is now disabled, deaf and mute, was sentenced to eight years in prison on Friday, five of which were suspended.

Due to time already served, he will not return to prison – like all the others convicted.

Abbas, who has Parkinson’s disease and recently underwent heart surgery, was sentenced to seven years jail with five suspended, alongside Didier Dubreucq.

The fourth member of the robbery gang, Marc-Alexandre Boyer, 35, was given the same sentence.

With most of those convicted now in their 60s and 70s, the group has been dubbed the “Grandpa robbers” by French media.

But since the beginning of the trial in April, both prosecutors and civil parties have vigorously pushed back against notions the robbers were harmless.

Prosecutor general Anne-Dominique Merville had urged the jury not to be swayed by their age and health conditions, describing the defendants as “seasoned robbers” when they carried out the heist.

But the sentences handed out on Friday were much lower than prosecutors were seeking.

Kardashian gave evidence during the course of the trial, telling the court she forgave Khedache after receiving a letter of apology from him.

“I do appreciate the letter for sure. I do appreciate it, I forgive you,” she said earlier this month.

Billy Joel has cancelled all forthcoming tour dates after being diagnosed with a rare brain condition.

The 76-year-old singer-songwriter – known for classic hits like Piano Man, Uptown Girl and We Didn’t Start the Fire – is receiving “excellent care” and is “fully committed to prioritising his health”, a statement said.

He has Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH), which is caused by a build-up of fluid in the brain and causes problems with his hearing, vision and balance.

After being told by doctors to stop performing live, he has called off 17 dates in 2025 and 2026, including stadium shows at Murrayfield in Edinburgh and Anfield in Liverpool next summer.

“I’m sincerely sorry to disappoint our audience, and thank you for understanding,” he said.

A statement issued on his behalf said Joel’s condition “has been exacerbated by recent concert performances, leading to problems with hearing, vision and balance”.

It continued: “Under his doctor’s instructions, Billy is undergoing specific physical therapy and has been advised to refrain from performing during this recovery period.

“Billy is thankful for the excellent care he is receiving and is fully committed to prioritising his health.

“He is grateful for the support from fans during this time and looks forward to the day when he can once again take the stage.”

NPH is described by the NHS as an uncommon and poorly understood condition that most often affects people over the age of 60.

As well as the two UK dates, he had been due to perform in the US and Canada between this July and July 2026.

He had previously postponed shows in March because of a “medical condition”, which was not specified at the time, “to allow him to recover from recent surgery and to undergo physical therapy”.

Joel has regularly been on tour in recent years, and ended a record-breaking decade-long monthly residency at Madison Square Garden in New York last year.

He has been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards, winning five times, and was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1999.