At least 24 Palestinians have been killed in two separate Israeli air strikes overnight, including a strike on a school sheltering displaced families in central Gaza, according to medics and Civil Defence officials.

Fahmi Al-Jargawi School in Gaza City had been housing hundreds of displaced people from the town of Beit Lahia, currently under intense Israeli military assault.

A spokesperson for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence said 20 bodies, including those of children, were recovered – many were severely burned, after fires engulfed two classrooms turned into living quarters.

The Israeli military (IDF) said it had targeted “a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre”.

The IDF said the area was being used “by the terrorists to plan… attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops”, and accused Hamas of using “the Gazan population as human shields”.

“Flames were everywhere. I saw charred bodies lying on the ground,” said Rami Rafiq, a resident living across from the school, in a phone call with BBC. “My son fainted when he saw the horrific scene.”

Video footage shared online showed large fires consuming parts of the school, with graphic images of severely burned victims, including children, and survivors suffering critical injuries.

Local reports said among the dead was Mohammad Al-Kasih, the head of investigations for the Hamas police in northern Gaza, along with his wife and children.

Shortly before the school strike, another Israeli air strike hit a home in central Gaza City, killing four more people, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

The twin attacks are part of a broader Israeli offensive that has escalated in the northern part of the enclave over the past week.

On Friday, an Israeli strike on the home of a Palestinian doctor in Gaza killed nine of her 10 children. Dr Alaa al-Najjar’s 11-year-old son was injured, along with her husband, Hamdi al-Najjar, who is in critical condition.

The nine children – Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Gebran, Eve, Rival, Sayden, Luqman and Sidra – were aged between just a few months old and 12. The Israeli military has said the incident is under review.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross said two of its staff were killed in a strike on their home in Khan Younis on Saturday.

The killing of Ibrahim Eid, a weapon contamination officer, and Ahmad Abu Hilal, a security guard at the Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah “points to the intolerable civilian death toll in Gaza”, the ICRC said, repeating its call for a ceasefire.

On Sunday, the head of a controversial US and Israeli-approved organisation that sought to use private firms to deliver aid to Gaza resigned.

In a statement by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, executive director Jake Wood said it had become apparent that plans to set up distribution hubs would not meet the “humanitarian principles” of independence and neutrality.

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on 2 March that lasted 11 weeks before it allowed limited aid to enter the territory in the face of warnings of famine and mounting international outrage.

Israeli military body Cogat said on Saturday morning that 388 trucks carrying aid had entered Gaza since Monday. The UN says much more aid – between 500 to 600 trucks a day – is needed.

Meanwhile, 20 countries and organisations met in Madrid on Sunday to discuss ending the war in Gaza. Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel if it did not stop its attacks.

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

At least 53,939 people, including at least 16,500 children, have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

North Korea has arrested a fourth official over the failed launch of a new warship that has enraged the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

Ri Hyong-son, deputy director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Munitions Industry Department, was “largely responsible for the serious accident” last week, state-run news agency KCNA said on Monday.

The 5,000-ton destroyer had tipped over and damaged its hull, in what Kim described as a “criminal act” that “severely damaged the [country’s] dignity and pride”.

The vessel is being repaired under the guidance of an expert group, KCNA said.

Mr Ri, who is part of the party’s Central Military Commission, is the highest level official arrested over the incident so far.

The commission commands the Korean People’s Army and is responsible for developing and implementing North Korea’s military policies.

Over the weekend, Pyongyang also detained three officials at the northern Chongjin shipyard, where the destroyer was built and where its launch failed.

The officials were the chief engineer, its construction head and an administrative manager.

Kim earlier said Wednesday’s incident was caused by “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism”.

It is not clear what punishment they might face, but the authoritarian state has been known to sentence officials it finds guilty of wrongdoing to forced labour and even death.

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

Some analysts believe Kim’s swift and severe response was meant as a signal that Pyongyang will continue to advance its military capabilities.

While such criticism is “not surprising” for a dictatorship, it is unusual that state media is openly reporting it, says Chun In-bum, a former commander of South Korea’s special forces.

“I fear this might be a sign of confidence and a show of resilience,” he says.

“With this new line of ships, North Korea seems to intend on challenging the sovereignty of the South in earnest.”

Michael Madden, a North Korea expert from the Stimson Center in Washington, sees Kim’s response as a sign of the “high priority” his regime is putting into developing warships.

The mishap may have resulted from officials “trying to do too much at once”, he notes, saying that “there seems to have been an unusual amount of internal pressure on the personnel and production units to get this all done”.

Last week’s shipyard accident comes weeks after North Korea unveiled a similar warship in another part of the country.

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

A fight involvingmachetes at a Melbourne shopping centre has prompted an Australian state to fast-track the country’s first-ever ban on the weapon’s sale.

The ban – to start in Victoria this Wednesday, instead of September – comes after two gangs attacked each other at Northland shopping centre in Preston on Sunday afternoon. A man, 20, remains in hospital in a serious condition.

Victoria’s premier said the ban will “choke the supply”, adding “the community shouldn’t have to deal with these weapons in their shopping centres – neither should our police”.

Two boys, aged 16 and 15, were on Sunday charged with affray, intentionally causing injury, and possession and use of a controlled weapon.

On Monday, police said two men, aged 20 and 18, had also been arrested and were being interviewed. All four people were known to police previously.

“This was a planned fight between two rival youth gangs with no innocent bystanders hurt,” said deputy commissioner David Clayton.

“Fortunately, these events are not very commonplace in Victoria,” he said, adding that youth knife crime is “rare” but “frightening”.

Clayton said one in 10 knife crimes in the state are committed by young people, and often happen in public places.

Emergency services were called to the shopping centre in Preston – about 11km (seven miles) north of Melbourne – just after 14:30 local time (05:30 BST) on Sunday after reports of up to 10 people fighting.

Police said the investigation “remains ongoing” and more arrests are expected. Three of the four machetes used during the attack have been seized, police said.

Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan described the attack as “appalling”.

“We must never let the places where we gather – where families come together, to meet, to shop, to enjoy the peace of their weekend – become the places we fear,” Allan said at a press conference.

“It took the United Kingdom 18 months to bring about a ban on machetes and we are moving to do it within six months,” she added.

In March, Victoria announced legislative changes to its Control of Weapons Act, making it illegal to sell or possess machetes, with the new law to start in September.

The ban covers machetes, which are broadly defined as “knives with a cutting blade longer than 20cm”. It does not include knives primarily used in kitchens.

A three-month amnesty from September means anyone with a machete can place them in specially designated boxes at police stations.

Police also thanked a man who held down one of the alleged offenders until police arrived, saying he “performed an outstanding job”, but added they don’t encourage the public to become involved in such incidents.

In England and Wales, a ban on “zombie-style” knives and machetes was introduced last September, making it illegal to own, make, transport or sell a wide range of “statement” knives favoured by criminal gangs.

Authorities in India’s southern Kerala state have issued an alert after a ship carrying oil and hazardous cargo leaked and sank off the state’s coast in the Arabian Sea.

The spill occurred in a Liberian-flagged vessel that capsized near Kochi city on Sunday. The coastal stretch is rich in biodiversity and is also an important tourist destination.

All 24 crew members on board the ship have been rescued but some of the ship’s 640 containers have reportedly been drifting towards the shore, prompting evacuations in the area.

Authorities fear that oil, fuel and other harmful substances that have leaked from the ship and its cargo could endanger the health of residents and marine life.

“As the oil slick can reach anywhere along the Kerala coast, an alert has been sounded across the coastal belt,” a statement from the chief minister’s office said.

Authorities have advised residents living near the sea to not touch any containers or the oil that might wash up to the shore, while fishermen have been asked to avoid venturing too close to the sunken ship.

On Monday, officials said they had intensified pollution control measures to contain the spill.

The Indian Coast Guard has deployed a ship carrying pollution control equipment to the site.

It has also sent one of its aircraft which has an oil spill detection system to survey the area.

The vessel – MSC ELSA 3 – which was travelling from Vizhinjam port to Kochi, began to tilt dangerously when it was about 38 nautical miles from the coast of Kochi.

It capsized into the Arabian Sea in the early hours of Sunday due to flooding in one of its compartments.

The Indian Coast Guard said that the ship was carrying 13 containers of hazardous cargo and 12 with calcium carbide – a chemical that reacts with seawater to release a flammable gas.

“Additionally, [the] ship had 84.44 metric tonnes of diesel and 367.1 metric tonnes of furnace oil in its tanks,” it said.

The crew members were rescued by Indian navy personnel after an hours-long operation.

A college in Beijing has found itself at the centre of public fury after it allegedly asked a student to prove she was on her period to qualify for sick leave.

A viral video, filmed inside what appears to be a clinic and posted to social media this month, shows a young woman asking an older woman: “Does every menstruating girl have to take off their trousers and show you before they can get a sick note?”

“Basically yes,” the older woman replies. “This is a school rule.”

Local media identified the video’s location as a clinic at the Gengdan Institute university college, which later said in a statement that its staff had “followed protocol”. But social media users have decried the encounter as a serious invasion of privacy.

Neither the student nor Gengdan Institute immediately responded to BBC News’ requests for comment.

Both the student’s video and the school’s statement appear to have been taken down, though screenshots and snippets have been recirculated online, including by state media.

In its statement dated 16 May, Gengdan Institute reportedly said the videos of the incident circulating online had been “distorted” – and that the institution had the right to pursue legal action against those who “maliciously spread untrue videos”.

The statement also said that the staff had followed the proper procedure during the encounter, such as “initiating clinical work after getting the student’s permission”, and did not use tools or conduct a physical examination.

In the video, the staff member did not reply when the student asked for written proof of the school regulation to check students’ menstrual status. She subsequently asked the student to go to a hospital instead.

On social media, the incident has triggered an outpouring of anger and sarcasm towards the school’s rules.

“My head hurts, should I open my skull and call it a day?” wrote one social media user.

“Let’s just take the sanitary pad out and paste it on the sick note,” another Weibo said.

A staff member at Gengdan Institute told local outlet Dute News that the school may have created the rule about proving menstruation in order to deter students from faking periods to get sick notes.

But that argument has rung hollow among social media users.

“If they’re worried about students using their periods as an excuse several times a month, why not simply make a record of it? It’s not that complicated,” one person wrote on Weibo.

State media has also waded into the debate.

“Menstruation is already an intimate topic for women. Rules like this will make students feel very uncomfortable, and even negatively impact students’ psychological wellbeing,” reads an opinion piece from China National Radio.

Gengdan Institute now joins a list of tertiary institutions across the country that have come under fire for what many see as overbearing and ham-fisted attempts at controlling their students.

Last year, some universities were criticised for banning the use of bed curtains in their dormitories. The curtains are often used by students for privacy in shared rooms, but school authorities said they were a fire and safety hazard.

Additionally, during the popular May Day holiday season last year, some universities issued strict guidelines for students who had planned to travel. These included avoiding solo trips, road trips, or cycling trips for safety – which many saw as the institutions overstepping their authority in students’ private lives.

On social media site Xiaohongshu, a user claiming to be a student at Gengdan Institute said “the school’s clinic deserves all the criticism it’s getting”.

“I heard from some older students that this kind of thing has been going on for a while. Some girls spoke up before, but nothing was done,” the user wrote.

“I’m glad it made the trending topics this time. People didn’t stay silent.”

There is no excitement as the camera passes. The children barely glance. What can surprise a child who lives among the dead, the dying, the waiting to die? Hunger has worn them down.

They wait in queues for scant rations or for none at all. They have grown used to my colleague and his camera, filming for the BBC. He witnesses their hunger, their dying, and to the gentle wrapping of their bodies – or fragments of their bodies – in white shrouds upon which their names, if known, are written.

For 19 months of war, and now under a renewed Israeli offensive, this local cameraman – who I do not name, for his safety - has listened to the anguished cries of the survivors in hospital courtyards.

His physical distance is respectful, but they are on his mind, day and night. He is one of them, trapped in the same claustrophobic hell.

This morning he is setting out to find Siwar Ashour, a five-month-old girl whose emaciated frame and exhausted cry at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis affected him so much, when he was filming there earlier this month, that he wrote to tell me something had broken inside him.

She weighed just over 2kg (4lb 6oz). A baby girl of five months should be about 6kg or over.

Siwar has since been discharged and is now at home,  my colleague has heard. That is what brings him to the street of pulverised houses and makeshift shelters of canvas and corrugated iron.

He conducts his search in difficult circumstances. A few days ago I messaged to ask how he was doing. “I am not okay,” he replied. “Just a short while ago, the Israeli army announced the evacuation of most areas of Khan Younis… We don’t know what to do – there is no safe place to go.

“Al-Mawasi is extremely overcrowded with displaced people. We are lost and have no idea what the right decision is at this moment.”

He finds a one-bedroom shack, the entrance formed of a floral patterned, grey and black curtain. Inside there are three mattresses, part of a chest of drawers, and a mirror which reflects sunlight across the floor in front of Siwar, her mother Najwa and her grandmother, Reem.

Siwar is quiet, held secure by the protective presence of the two women. The baby cannot absorb regular milk formula because of a severe allergic reaction. Under the conditions of war and an Israeli blockade on aid arrivals, there is a severe shortage of the formula she needs.

Najwa, 23, explains that her condition stabilised when she was in Nasser hospital, so doctors discharged her with a can of baby formula several days ago.

Now at home, she says the baby’s weight has started to slip again. “The doctors told me that Siwar improved and is better than before, but I think that she is still skinny and hasn’t improved much. They found her only one can of milk, and it [has] started running out.”

Flies dance in front of Siwar’s face. “The situation is very dire,” says Najwa, “the insects come at her, I have to cover her with a scarf so nothing touches her”.

Siwar has lived with the sound of war since last November when she was born. The artillery, the rockets, falling bombs – distant and near. The gunfire, the blades of Israeli drones whirring overhead. Najwa explains: “She understands these things. The sound of the tanks, warplanes, and rockets are so loud and they are close to us. When Siwar hears these sounds, she gets startled and cries. If she is sleeping, she wakes up startled and crying.”

Doctors in Gaza say many young mothers report being unable to breastfeed their babies due to lack of nutrition. The pressing problem is food and clean water.

Najwa was malnourished herself when Siwar was born. She and her mother Reem still find it difficult to get anything to eat themselves. It is the struggle of every waking hour. “In our case, we can’t provide milk or diapers because of the prices and the border closure.”

On 22 May, Israeli military body Cogat said there was no food shortage in Gaza. It said “significant quantities of baby food and flour for bakeries” had been brought into the enclave in recent days.

The agency has repeatedly insisted that Hamas steals aid, while the Israeli government says the war will continue until Hamas is destroyed and the Israeli hostages held in Gaza are released. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 20 hostages seized by Hamas in the 7 October 2023 attacks are believed to be alive and up to 30 others dead.

Aid agencies, the United Nations and many foreign governments, including Britain, reject Cogat’s comment that there is no food shortage. US President Donald Trump has also spoken of people “starving” in Gaza.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the amount of aid Israel has allowed into Gaza as “a teaspoon”. He said Palestinians were “enduring what may be the cruellest phase of this cruel conflict” with restricted supplies of fuel, shelter, cooking gas and water purification supplies.

According to the UN, 80% of Gaza is now either designated as an Israeli militarised zone or a place where people have been ordered to leave.

The denials, the expressions of concern, the condemnations and the moments which seemed like turning points have come and gone throughout this war. The sole constant is the suffering of Gaza’s 2.1 million people, like Najwa and her daughter Siwar.

“One does not think about the future or the past,” Najwa says.

There is only the present moment and how to survive it.

Farooq Ahmed still bristles with anger when he talks about his brother’s death.

Mohammad Iqbal, a resident of Poonch city in Indian-administered Kashmir, died in cross-border shelling on 7 May, the morning after India launched a series of air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in retaliation to a militant attack in the town of Pahalgam that killed 26 people. Pakistan has denied having any role in the attack.

Mr Ahmed says that Iqbal died where he had worked for more than two decades – Zia-ul-Uloom, a madrassa, or a religious centre focused on Islamic teachings, in Poonch.

But his death, it turned out, was just the beginning of the family’s troubles.

As the news spread, several media channels falsely accused Iqbal of being a terrorist, following which the police put out a statement refuting the claim.

“My brother was a teacher but they saw his beard and skullcap and branded him a terrorist,” Mr Ahmed says.

“It was like having salt rubbed into our wounds. We had lost Iqbal and then the media defamed him. The dead can’t defend themselves.”

Indian officials say that a total of 16 people, including Iqbal, were killed in the cross-border shelling during the four-day military conflict that broke out between India and Pakistan following the airstrikes.

Pakistan has claimed 40 civilian deaths, though, it remains unclear how many of these were directly caused by the shelling.

The two nuclear-armed countries have shared a tense relationship for decades, as both administer the Himalayan region of Kashmir in part, but claim it in full.

They have fought three wars over Kashmir since independence from Britain in 1947 and came back from the brink of another one earlier this month.

But as the military conflict escalated, another battle played out on social media – a disinformation war of claims and counterclaims that circulated online and on TV.

Just like rumours about Iqbal’s identity, other misleading and inaccurate information also found its way into some mainstream news channels and websites.

This included claims such as India having destroyed Pakistan’s Karachi port, which was later debunked by the Indian government.

Some of the other fabrications were harder to spot, like an AI-generated video of a Pakistan army general claiming that his country had lost two aircraft in combat.

“The scale of misinformation and fact-free assertions being broadcast by the media was shocking,” says Manisha Pande, managing editor at Newslaundry, an independent news platform.

She notes that while a degree of sensationalism is expected as channels compete for viewership, “the jingoistic and irresponsible coverage” of the conflict was unprecedented in its intensity — and unlike anything she had witnessed before.

No one knows this better than Mr Ahmed.

“I don’t know where news channels got the information about my brother from,” Mr Ahmed says.

“Who did they speak to? What kind of evidence did they have that my brother was a terrorist?” he asks.

Weeks later, the family is still reeling from the tragedy.

Mr Ahmed says that on 7 May, his brother left home for the madrassa in the morning as usual, but it was his body that returned home. By noon, they had buried him in a nearby cemetery.

For some time, the family had no idea about the misinformation that was being shared by some news outlets. They were busy performing Iqbal’s last rites.

It was only hours later that a relative received a WhatsApp forward – a video clip of a prominent news channel claiming that the Indian army had killed a terrorist, with Iqbal’s photo flashing on the screen.

“We were shocked. Soon, we began getting more calls from people asking us what was going on and why was the media calling Iqbal a terrorist,” Mr Ahmed says.

The claim was shared by some prominent channels, including Zee News, ABP and News18. The BBC has reached out to the channels for comment.

One channel claimed that Iqbal was killed in an “Indian strike on a terrorist camp” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and that he was a terrorist with Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

“Our family members have been staying in Poonch for generations. How can they say my brother was living in Pakistan? They [the media] should be ashamed,” Mr Ahmed says.

The accusation against Iqbal was circulated so widely and swiftly that on 8 May, the Poonch police put out a statement, clarifying that Iqbal had died in cross-border shelling in the madrasa.

“Poonch Police strongly refutes such false narratives. The deceased, Maulana Mohd Iqbal, was a respected religious figure in the local community and had no affiliation with any terror outfit,” the statement said, adding that legal action would be taken against any media outlet or individual who circulated the fake news.

But for Mr Ahmed, the statement was too little too late.

“By then, the false claim would’ve already reached millions of people in India,” he says.

He adds that except for one channel, News18, no one else had publicly apologised to him or their viewers for the mistake.

Mr Ahmed says he wants to take legal action against the channels, but the process would have to wait as the family is struggling to make ends meet.

Iqbal is survived by his two wives and eight children. He was the only earning member in his family.

Mr Ahmed says that the compensation given by the government, which amounts to a few million rupees, will last only for a year or two and they must start planning for the future now.

“The whole family depended on my brother. He was a quiet and gentle man who loved teaching children,” Mr Ahmed says.

“But who’s going to tell this to the world? For many people, my brother is still a terrorist whose killing is justified. How will they understand our pain?”

US President Donald Trump has agreed to extend a deadline to negotiate tariffs with the European Union by more than a month.

Last month, he announced a 20% tariff – or import tax – on most EU goods, but later cut this to 10% to allow time for negotiations. On Friday, Trump expressed frustration with the pace of talks and threatened to raise the tariff rate to an even higher level of 50% as soon as 1 June.

On Sunday, he wrote on social media that he was pushing his deadline back to 9 July, after a “very nice” call with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission chief.

Von der Leyen echoed Trump’s assessment of the call and said the bloc was “ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively”.

But, in her own online post, von der Leyen wrote: “To reach a good deal, we would need the time until July 9.”

Trump’s acceptance of that date means the deadline is close to what it was previously. Before threatening the 50% rate, Trump had set a deadline of 8 July for both sides to talk.

Trump has long criticised what he views as an unfair US trading relationship with the EU, despite the bloc being one of Washington’s largest trading partners. Last year, the EU exported more than $600bn (€528bn; £443bn) in goods to the US while importing $370bn worth, according to US government data.

More broadly, the US president has defended his wide-ranging programme of tariffs by arguing they will boost American manufacturing and protect jobs.

But his planned import taxes have thrown the world economy into chaos, and many economist say they will make products more expensive for US consumers. Tariffs are taxes charged on goods bought from other countries, paid by the companies that that bring foreign goods into the US.

In the case of the EU, the president has raised concerns on trade in cars and agricultural goods. Although some tariffs were paused earlier this year to allow for negotiations, a 25% levy on EU steel and aluminium remains in place.

• What tariffs has Trump announced and why?
• Trump reignites tensions with EU tariff threats
• Faisal Islam: Trump’s tariff plans could spark global economic shock

It was while speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday afternoon – hours before talks with the bloc – that Trump said he planned to raise tariffs on all goods sent to the US from the EU to 50% by 1 June.

He expressed impatience with the ongoing negotiations.

Later the same day, the EU’s trade chief Maros Sefcovic reaffirmed the bloc’s commitment to securing a fair deal.

Following a call with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Sefcovic said: “The EU’s fully engaged, committed to securing a deal that works for both.”

He continued: “EU-US trade is unmatched and must be guided by mutual respect, not threats. We stand ready to defend our interests.”

The EU has threatened – and paused – its own measures against the US.

It previously said it would introduce a 25% tariff on €18bn worth of US goods coming into Europe but this was put on hold.

The bloc is also currently consulting on additional measures against US imports into the US valued at €95bn.

At the same time, European leaders continue to warn against escalation. France and Germany have called for a diplomatic solution, stressing that tariffs would harm both economies.

It was shortly after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 that Sergei and Tatyana Voronkov decided they would leave Russia.

The couple, who had long been critical of Vladimir Putin, had condemned the actions of Russia to friends and acquaintances. In response, they were told that if they didn’t like it they could leave.

So the couple, both Russian citizens, decided to relocate to Ukraine, where Tatyana was born.

In 2019 they eventually settled in Novolyubymivka, a village of about 300 people in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region.

The couple got four dogs and started raising livestock, while Sergei, 55, also found work as a land surveyor – his specialism during his time in the Soviet army.

They hoped for a quiet life. But when Moscow launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the peace of their new lives was shattered by the first Russian rockets flying over their home.

“I heard something whistling, something flying, and I went outside,” Tatyana, 52, recalls.

“A rocket was flying right over the house.

“I went on the internet to see what had happened and they wrote that Kyiv had already been bombed.”

The couple quickly found themselves in occupied territory, and decided to become informants for Ukraine.

What followed was detention, interrogation, an escape into Europe – and a letter of thanks from the Ukrainian army.

It was when a Russian convoy passed their home for the first time that Tatyana decided to act.

She ran inside and messaged an acquaintance in Kyiv, whom she believed had contacts in Ukraine’s security services.

The contact sent her a link to a chatbot on messaging app Telegram which told her they would be contacted by a person with a unique identifier.

The couple were then asked to provide the location and details of Russian electronic warfare systems and military hardware they had seen, particularly missile systems and tanks.

The locations would help the Ukrainian army target and destroy Russian troops in the area with drones and artillery.

“We didn’t think of it as treason,” says Tatyana, who along with Sergei insists the information they gave did not result in any strikes on civilians or civilian infrastructure.

“Nobody attacked Russia. This was a fight against evil.”

For two years, Sergei would collect coordinates and Tatyana would transmit them from her phone – removing all traces of the messages afterwards – as and when their village’s internet access allowed them to do so.

But all of this came to an end when Sergei was detained in April 2024 by armed men while he was shopping for gardening seeds in the regional centre of Tokmak.

Sergei says he was taken to an abandoned house and put in a cold basement pit – around two metres wide and three metres deep – where he slept in a squatting position.

The next day he was questioned about whether he had passed details of Russian positions to the Ukrainians. Sergei says a bag was kept over his head during the interrogation and he was threatened with violence.

After initially denying his involvement, Sergei confessed on the fourth day of his captivity, fearing that if he were subjected to violence he might accidently implicate others.

While all of this was happening, Tatyana was desperately searching for information on his whereabouts.

She travelled the area and phoned hospitals and morgues, while the couple’s son, who was still living near Moscow, contacted various authorities there.

Ten days after Sergei’s arrest, security forces searched the Voronkovs’ home and dug up $4,400 that had been hidden by the couple in their garden.

Shortly after, Tatyana was told that her husband was “sitting in a basement” and was with Russia’s security services, the FSB.

Weeks later, after 37 days in captivity, Sergei was made to confess to assisting Ukraine on camera by people who introduced themselves to him as FSB.

But to his surprise, he was released two days later, though almost all of his documents, including his passport, were confiscated.

To this day, Sergei and Tatyana do not understand why he was released.

However, the BBC understands this is not uncommon in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia, where investigative and judicial processes lack transparency and often no explanations are given as to why a person is detained or released.

In the weeks after Sergei’s release, the couple believe they were kept under surveillance, with cars constantly driving up to their home and strangers asking them if they were selling anything.

Believing they’d never be left alone, the couple began plotting a way to leave.

After consulting human rights activists, Sergei and Tatyana decided to try to travel to Lithuania. But to do that, they needed to return to Russia first to get Sergei a new passport.

Their neighbours in Novolyubymivka helped by buying livestock and household appliances from them. The couple even managed to find a new home for their dogs, which Sergei says was his biggest worry.

The couple set off in their car.

Fearing they could be pulled over and quizzed by Russian forces, they made up a cover story about going to the beach to get fresh air for Tatyana, who has asthma. They even brought a straw hat and a rubber ring to make the story more convincing.

But in the end they weren’t stopped.

The couple were initially denied entry into Russia, but were eventually able to enter after Sergei got a certificate proving he had applied for a new passport.

After delays in getting his passport and a thwarted attempt to leave Russia via Belarus, Sergei bought a fake passport through Telegram.

The couple were then able to travel by bus to Belarus and cross the border using Sergei’s forged document. From there, they crossed into Lithuania, a member of the European Union and a close ally of Ukraine, though Sergei was detained for holding forged documents.

He was later found guilty of using a fake passport by a Lithuanian court.

The couple are now living in a shelter for asylum seekers and hope to settle in Lithuania.

The Ukrainian army sent them a letter of thanks – at the request of their former handler in Kyiv – to support their application for asylum. The BBC has seen a copy of the letter.

The BBC has also seen documents from official bodies in both Russia and Ukraine that confirm what happened to the Voronkovs. We are not reproducing them to protect the identities of those involved.

The Voronkovs’ actions have caused deep rifts in the family.

Their son, who remains in Russia, stopped talking to his parents after learning what they had done.  Sergei’s mother, who is 87, still lives in Russia and is supportive of the war and President Putin.

But despite this, the couple are adamant they will never return to Russia.

“Only if it starts showing some humanity,” Sergei says.

“For now, I see nothing human there.”

King Charles III and Queen Camilla will arrive in Canada later, for a two-day visit seen as bringing a message of support for the country in the face of threats and taunts from US President Donald Trump.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who recently won a general election on a wave of anti-Trump sentiment, invited the royal couple and will hold a meeting with them during their stay in Ottawa.

The King will read the “Speech from the Throne” to Canada’s Parliament on Tuesday, the first time a monarch has delivered this for almost 50 years.

It is expected to include a defence of Canada’s sovereignty and to reject claims it should be taken over by the US.

There will be a ceremonial welcome at the airport in Ottawa on Monday and meetings with community groups, which are expected to include representatives of Canada’s First Nation communities.

The King will meet Canada’s first indigenous Governor General Mary Simon.

This is the King and Queen’s first visit to Canada since the start of their reign, after a planned trip last year was cancelled because of King Charles’s cancer diagnosis.

By reading the Speech from the Throne the King is following in the footsteps of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who carried out the duty twice during her long reign in 1957 and 1977.

But the timing of this week’s visit has been seen as a sign of solidarity with Canada, after calls from Trump for the country to become the 51st US state.

The US threat has inflamed public opinion with some businesses in Ottawa, as elsewhere in Canada, putting on displays of national identity such as “Proudly Canadian” posters.

Carney, when he visited Trump at the White House earlier this month, stressed that Canada was “not for sale” and that message is likely to be conveyed in the King’s speech which is written on the advice of Canada’s government.

Former Canadian high commissioner to the UK Jeremy Kinsman said this was a message the King will be pleased to deliver.

“It’s going to be very affirmative of Canadian sovereignty. And I can say personally that it’s something that King Charles will celebrate saying. I have no doubt,” said Mr Kinsman, who worked as a diplomat with the King when he was Prince of Wales.

The speech, to be delivered in French and English, will set out the Canadian government’s policy agenda in a way that is similar to the King’s Speech at the State Opening of Parliament in Westminster.

But it is also expected to have lines asserting the independence of Canada – a Commonwealth country and Nato member.

Speaking ahead of the King’s visit and State Opening, Carney said: “This is an historic honour which matches the weight of our times.”

In terms of the ceremony, the King is expected to wear a suit, in an event that will be more low key than the crown and elaborate robes on display in the UK’s opening of Parliament.

As well as the speech in Parliament, this brief trip will include community events in Ottawa and a chance to meet local leaders.

This royal visit will be something of a diplomatic balancing act. The King is head of state of both Canada and the UK – and in his UK role, the King has been helping to maintain good relations with the US, sending a warm personal letter to President Trump inviting him for a second state visit.

In Canada, he will be expected to reflect a very different message, with Canada’s government rejecting Trump’s ambition to take over the country.

Ahead of the visit, a royal source said: “The King has long experience and great skill in walking that diplomatic tightrope.

“He’s held in high regard around the globe and across the political spectrum, with good relations with world leaders who understand his unique position.”

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The Supreme Court is poised to rule on the cases of two former City traders jailed for rigging interest rates, amid concerns raised by senior politicians that there may have been a series of miscarriages of justice.

If the traders are successful in their application – which is opposed by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) – it could lead to the quashing of all remaining convictions secured in nine criminal trials.

Tom Hayes, a former trader at the Swiss bank UBS, became the first banker to be jailed for “rigging” interest rates in August 2015.

He was accused at the age of 35 by the United States Department of Justice and the Serious Fraud Office of being a “ringmaster” of an international fraud conspiracy and sentenced to 14 years in jail.

Together with former Barclays trader Carlo Palombo, he is now awaiting a crucial Supreme Court judgement.

Hayes and Palombo were among 37 City traders prosecuted for “manipulating” the interest rate benchmarks Libor and Euribor, which track the cost of borrowing cash between the banks and are used to set the interest rates on millions of mortgages and commercial loans.

In criminal trials on both sides of the Atlantic from 2015 to 2019, 19 were convicted of conspiracy to defraud and nine were sent to jail.

As they served time, evidence emerged that central bankers and government officials across the world, including a top adviser at 10 Downing Street at the time, had pressured banks such as theirs to engage in very similar conduct to what they were jailed for – but on a much greater scale.

No central banker or government official was prosecuted.

Then, soon after they were released after serving their full jail tariffs, a US appeal court decided such conduct wasn’t a crime after all; nor even against any rules.

The US Department of Justice revoked the charges against Tom Hayes, and the US courts then threw out all similar convictions.

Yet in the UK, they remain convicted criminals.

The Serious Fraud Office, which prosecuted the cases, says the defendants were convicted of conspiracy to defraud and points to a number of previous unsuccessful attempts to overturn convictions at the Court of Appeal.

The Supreme Court’s now being asked to decide if judges were wrong to tell juries their conduct was unlawful.

If it does so, it could lead to the overturning of all remaining convictions, throwing a global 17-year scandal into reverse.

It’s also likely to prompt renewed calls for a public inquiry into evidence of much larger interest rate “rigging” – ordered from the top of the financial system by central banks and governments worldwide.

This is the first time the cases have reached the Supreme Court following public pressure from senior politicians, including former shadow chancellor John McDonnell and former Brexit Secretary David Davis.

They have told the BBC they’re concerned the traders have been “scapegoated” in a scandalous series of miscarriages of justice that runs “deeper than the Post Office”.

They want a public inquiry.

What the FTSE 100 or the Dow Jones are to share prices, Libor is to interest rates: an index, updated every day, that tracked the cost of borrowing cash between the banks from 1986 until 2024.

Each day at 11am, 16 banks across London would answer a question: at what interest rate could they borrow money?

Before answering, traders on the banks’ cash desks would look at the range of interest rates at which other banks on the market were offering to lend cash, which normally differed from each other by just one or two hundredths of a percentage point (e.g. HSBC offering to lend funds at 3.14%, Bank of China at 3.16%, JP Morgan at 3.15%).

Each bank would then select a rate from that range of offers to submit as their answer.

An average would then be taken to get the official benchmark, Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate).

A similar process was used to get Euribor, the equivalent of Libor for euros.

The evidence against Hayes and Palombo were messages they had sent to the cash traders asking them to select a ‘high’ or ‘low’ rate from that range, depending on what might benefit their banks’ trades – which went up or down in value linked to Libor (or Euribor).

Their requests might make no difference to the average; or they might nudge it very slightly in their bank’s favour – up or down by no more than one eighth of one hundredth of a percentage point (0.00125%).

But it was seen as worth the effort of making the requests, which had been industry practice for years, in case it might help their bank make more money or lose less.

Prosecutors alleged Hayes was dishonestly seeking to manipulate the Libor rate to benefit the bank’s trading positions and therefore his bonuses while “cheating” others trading on the market, “motivated by pure greed”.

The SFO accused Palombo of being a “crook” and a “cheat” who had “left his moral compass at home”.

The traders protested that any potential gains to their bonuses from a nudge to Libor of a maximum 0.00125% were far too little to motivate a criminal conspiracy.

What they saw as the clerical task of choosing ‘high’ or ‘low’ rates based on the commercial interests of the bank – was merely what every bank had done since the 1980s, long before they started work.

But according to the SFO, it was interest rate “manipulation” that amounted to evidence of an international conspiracy to defraud.

At his 2015 trial, Hayes said he had not asked for any false answers to be given to the Libor question – but merely tried to ensure his bank selected a commercially advantageous rate from the range of accurate interest rates at which it could genuinely borrow.

But the judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Cooke, decided that any attempt to take into account commercial interests when submitting a Libor rate was “self-evidently” unlawful.

Sentencing Hayes to 14 years, he dismissed the argument that it was City practice.

“The fact that others were doing the same as you is no excuse, nor is the fact that your immediate managers saw the benefit of what you were doing and condoned and embraced it, if not encouraged it.[…] The conduct involved here must be marked out as dishonest and wrong and a message sent to the world of banking accordingly.”

The defendants say court rulings retrospectively criminalised not only their actions years before, but also those of senior bankers and civil servants, much higher up the financial pecking order, who had sought to influence Libor on a much greater scale.

Audio recordings, documents and data uncovered by the BBC indicate that in the 2008 financial crisis, governments and central banks from the Bank of England to the Banque de France and Banca d’Italia pressured banks to push Libor and Euribor down artificially in order to make real interest rates appear lower than they were and quell speculation about banks’ solvency – a highly commercial motive.

The difference, though, was that whereas the traders were asking for shifts of one hundredth of a percentage point, the central banks sought moves up to 50 times the size, giving rates that were obviously false, far away from the range of interest rates where cash was being borrowed or lent on the money markets.

In a BBC Radio 4 podcast series exposing the scandal, The Lowball Tapes, Palombo asks despairingly, “If that’s not criminal, how can I be a criminal?”

Contemporary emails and phone transcripts, official interviews by the FBI and first-hand accounts of witnesses point to the involvement of top officials at Downing Street and the Treasury.

They were not shown to the juries at the traders’ trials.

Palombo describes his life since being prosecuted as a “Kafka nightmare” where he could barely understand the accusations made against him, with no sense of having done anything even vaguely wrong.

To him and to Hayes, one of the most serious implications is that what happened to them could happen to anyone in the workplace – to them, if normal commercial practice can be retroactively criminalised, no-one can be sure that the daily tasks they’re currently engaged in at work won’t, in years to come, be condemned and prosecuted.

The Treasury has said it did not seek to influence individual bank Libor submissions.

The Bank of England has said Libor was not regulated at the time. The Banque de France, Banca d’Italia and the Federal Reserve have declined to comment.

In the traders’ cases the Court of Appeal, led by judges including Lord Chief Justice John Thomas and Lord Justice Nigel Davis, blocked the path to the Supreme Court five times from 2015 to 2019.

In 2021, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) initially said it would turn down Hayes’s application.

But then in January 2022 a US appeal court fully acquitted two former Deutsche Bank traders, Matt Connolly and Gavin Black, saying prosecutors had failed to produce any evidence they had asked for false rates to be submitted at which their banks could not borrow.

All US convictions for ‘rigging’ Libor were subsequently thrown out.

The pair had initially been convicted in 2018 on similar charges to Hayes and Palombo.

The following year, the CCRC was persuaded to change its mind.

In 2024, Court of Appeal judges certified, for the first time in these cases, that there was a point of law of general public importance at stake, finally clearing the path to the Supreme Court.

Two months ago, the Supreme Court heard arguments that judges in the lower courts had told juries that Hayes and Palombo’s requests were wrong as a matter of law – when it should have been left as a matter of fact for the jury to decide.

The SFO told the court the defendants didn’t challenge the jury directions at the time.

Hayes and Palombo now await the Supreme Court’s judgement.

“When I heard the attack happened, the ground fell from beneath my feet. All the parents started running towards the bus, no-one could understand what was going on,” Nasir Mehmood, a sergeant in Pakistan’s army tells us.

Nasir and I are in the city of Quetta, sitting in the waiting room of the largest military hospital in the province of Balochistan. His 14-year-old son Mohammad Ahmad told him he was flung across the army school bus in a bombing in Khuzdar, a few hours’ drive away.

The bus was carrying around 40 schoolchildren when it exploded at about 07:40 local time (02:40 GMT) on Wednesday.

“I reached the hospital, and there were screams of children everywhere, it was the only thing you could hear,” Nasir said. “My eyes just kept searching for my son.”

Only the most serious cases were airlifted to the Combined Military Hospital. The military have said the death toll has now risen to eight, with six children killed and dozens injured. No group has admitted carrying out the attack.

It is rare for foreign journalists to be allowed to enter the province, south-west of Pakistan, let alone a hospital on the army’s compound. The military said they wanted international media to witness the impact of the attack themselves.

Pakistan alleges India is linked to the attack, though there is no independent evidence – and it is a claim Delhi firmly denies.

India and Pakistan are in the midst of a fragile ceasefire, after a two-week conflict that was their most significant one in decades. It saw them exchange drone attacks, missiles and artillery fire, and left dozens of casualties.

This attack in Balochistan is now in the middle of the tensions, with news channels broadcasting pictures of the children who were killed, most of them girls between the ages of 12 and 16, alongside accusations of an “Indian terror campaign”. Images of scrapped metal, children’s shoes and abandoned backpacks strewn along the scene highlight the tragedy.

As we walked through the intensive care unit, some children lay unconscious on their beds, others thrashed in pain. One young girl kept calling out for her mother as nurses tried to calm her. Doctors told us several children were in critical condition, having suffered extensive trauma, burns and fractured bones. The night before we arrived, another child had died.

Pakistan’s Minister of Information, Attaullah Tarar, says there is a history of Indian proxies operating in Balochistan. In turn, India says that Pakistan has been harbouring militants who wage attacks on Indian-administered Kashmir for years.

The killing of 26 people in April, most of them tourists in Pahalgam, sparked the most recent conflict. Pakistan has called for an open investigation led by an independent party.

However, Tarar denied that such an investigation was necessary in Balochistan.

“Pahalgam was a one-off incident,” he told us. “We are the victims in this case. We have been suffering. There is a history. We have evidence. So what can I say?”

When we asked him what that evidence was, he once again pointed to claims of a history of attacks. He gave us no other details of India’s alleged involvement in this attack.

Later, an officer drove us through Quetta’s roads in a bus flanked by soldiers carrying rifles and ammunition hanging from their pockets.

Balochistan has experienced decades of militant attacks linked to a nationalist insurgency. It is home to several groups which accuse the government of exploiting its natural resources.

In March, some 21 people, most of them off-duty security personnel, were killed during a train siege in Balochistan’s remote Sibi district.

That attack was carried out by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).

Pakistan, as well as several Western countries, including the UK and US, have designated the BLA as a terrorist organisation.

As the military responds to the insurgency, activists in Balochistan accuse Pakistan’s security forces of human rights violations. They say thousands of ethnic Baloch people have been disappeared in the last two decades, and are allegedly detained without due legal process.

The minister of information told us the government believed “faceless courts” might be needed in the province, hiding the identities of the judges and prosecutors in terror cases. Tarar said the courts often fail to convict the accused, because of a fear of retribution from militant groups.

In a press conference, the military spokesperson, Lt Gen Chaudhry, said the school bus attack “had nothing to do with the Baloch identity, rather it was just India’s provocation”.

The government says it is raising the issue “across diplomatic channels” around the world.

The impact on the ceasefire and on the prospect of talks between India and Pakistan remains to be seen.

Burgundy is one of the most prestigious wine regions in France, and the US is its biggest export market. But now Donald Trump’s tariffs are threatening to price European wine out of the American marketplace.

Crouched in cold mud under a thin Spring rain, vineyard employee Élodie Bonet snaps off unwanted vine shoots with her fingers and pruning clippers.

“We want the vine to put all its energy into the shoots that have the flowers where the grapes are going to grow,” she explains.

I leave Élodie working her way down the rows of vines, and walk up to the house and winery in the Burgundy village of Morey-Saint-Denis, where I meet owner and winemaker Cécile Tremblay.

She takes me down to her cellar to taste some of her prized red wines, standing among the oak barrels and old bottles with labels weathered by mould and age.

They have names on them that make wine lovers go weak at the knees – Nuits-Saint-Georges, Echezeaux, Vosne-Romanée, Clos-Vougeot, and Chapelle-Chambertin.

Ms Tremblay sells over half of her wine abroad, under the name Domaine Cecile Tremblay.

“For the United States, it’s around 10% of the production; it’s a big production for me!” she says.

After threatening a 200% mark-up on alcohol from Europe, Donald Trump imposed a 20% tariff on practically all European Union products on 5 April.

Four days later, he lowered this to 10%, with the threat that he’d hike it back up again to 20% in July, depending on how trade negotiations pan out. And now Trump is threatening a future tariff of 50% on all goods from the EU.

I ask Ms Tremblay if she’s worried. “Yes, sure,” she says, “As everybody is.”

But that is all she will say on the matter. French winemakers are walking on eggshells at the moment, fearful of saying anything that might aggravate the situation.

Perhaps their representatives will be more forthcoming? I get in my car and drive over to one of her neighbours – François Labet. He is the president of the Burgundy Wine Board, which represents this region’s 3,500 winemakers.

“The US is the largest export market for the whole region. Definitely,” he tells me. “They are the biggest in volume and the biggest in value.”

And, until Donald Trump’s re-election, the US market was booming. While French wines and spirits global exports fell 4% last year overall, sales of Burgundy wines to the US rose sharply.

In volume terms, there were up 16% from 2024, to 20.9 million bottles. This was worth €370m ($415m; £312m) in revenues, 26.2% higher than in 2023.

Mr Labet says the US accounted for about a quarter of Burgundy’s wine exports last year.

Burgundy’s reputation abroad is mainly for its red wines, which are made from the celebrated pinot noir grape. Indeed, in the English-speaking world, burgundy is not so much a wine as a colour.

The French word for the same colour is bordeaux; showing they know more about their wine, because while Bordeaux wines are mostly red, two-thirds of Burgundy is actually white.

These are predominantly made from the chardonnay grape. Chablis, one of the best-known examples, is extremely popular in the US.

Burgundy also produces an increasingly successful sparkling wine, called Crémant de Bourgogne, and a small amount of rosé.

All of which is good for Burgundy because while general red wine consumption just keeps going down, white is holding firm, and sparkling is going up.

Also, the reds that come out of Burgundy are, according to Mr Labet, the kind consumers increasingly want, as they are typically lighter than New World reds.

“What is interesting to see is that there is a strong de-consumption of what we call the big reds, made in the US. Wines with a lot of alcohol, aged in new wood.”

Less sun and lower temperatures in Burgundy, even with climate change, means less sugar in the grapes and lower alcohol content.

Mr Labet remembers when, for 18 months of his first presidency, Donald Trump hit European wine with a 25% import tariff during a dispute over airlines.

“We were hostages of that situation, and it really did affect our sales to the US. We had a drop of about 50% of our exports to the US.”

Regarding the current 10% Trump tariff, he predicts that French wine producers and US merchants will split the cost of the new import duty between them in order to maintain sales.

But what will be the impact if in July Trump does decide to increase the tariff on all European Union exports to 20%, as he has threatened to do? “We will go back to the 2019 situation where the market was almost stopped,” says Mr Labet.

For French wines in general, things could be even worse.

“When President Trump raised import duties by 25% for one-and-a-half years of his first mandate, we lost about $600m [£450m] very quickly,” says Jerome Bauer, president of the French National Wines and Spirits Confederation.

“But back then Champagne wasn’t included, and neither were wines stronger than 14 degrees of alcohol. So you can see the scale of the threat today.”

The solution Mr Bauer is backing is free trade. No tariffs. But you’d expect him to say that, given that France and Europe run a big trade surplus with the US when it comes to wines and spirits.

More surprising, perhaps, is the opinion of his American competitors in California and Oregon who, you might think, would be cracking open something a bit special to celebrate.

“This looks horrible from our perspective. We don’t like it one bit,” says Rex Stoltz, vice-president of industry relations at Napa Valley Vintners, which represents 540 wineries in the sunny slopes of California’s most famous wine region.

“Wine is an international product. Even here in the Napa Valley, our wineries primarily get their corks from Portugal, and their oak barrels, a key component in winemaking, from France.

Mr Stoltz adds: “They’re already expensive and the potential is that they will get more expensive.”

Also, trade wars cut both ways. He says the tariffs announced against Canada are having a devastating impact on US wine exports.

“Canada is the most important export market for California wines, and one of the top export markets for Napa Valley wines. Right now, there are zero Napa Valley wines on the shelves of stores in Canada.

“They’ve removed all American alcohol beverage products from their store shelves!”

Mr Stoltz adds: “We just want to compete on an even playing field with our friends and neighbours all over the world. That’s our ask and that’s our hope.”

Gary Lineker held back tears as he signed off from his final edition of Match of the Day after 26 years in the hot seat and officially left the BBC.

The host announced in November that he would leave the football show at the end of the Premier League season, which concluded on Sunday.

He had been due to remain with the BBC to front coverage of the men’s FA Cup and the World Cup, but has now left the corporation completely after apologising for sharing an antisemitic social media post.

On his swansong on Sunday, Lineker apparently made a nod to the controversy, opening the show by telling viewers “it wasn’t meant to end this way” – before going on to turn the line into a reference to the final day of the season.

At the end of the programme, Lineker was presented with a commemorative cap and golden boot by pundits Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, who were alongside him.

“It’s been an absolute privilege to have hosted Match of the Day for a quarter of a century. It’s been utterly joyous,” he said.

Speaking directly into the camera to viewers at home, he added: “And my final thank you goes to all of you.

“Thank you for watching, thank you for all your love and support over the years.

“It’s been so special, and I’m sorry that your team was always on last. Time to say goodbye.”

The former England forward replaced Des Lynam as the main presenter of the BBC’s flagship football programme in 1999, and went on to become its highest-paid presenter.

He hit the headlines for airing his opinions beyond football on social media, however.

He was suspended in 2023 for a post about the then-government’s asylum policy, with numerous fellow BBC Sport presenters and pundits walking out in support.

After Lineker was reinstated, the BBC issued new rules for presenters posting on social media.

Earlier this month, Lineker was criticised for sharing a social media post about Zionism that included an illustration of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.

Lineker apologised, saying he had not seen the image and “would never consciously repost anything antisemitic”.

However, it was then announced he would leave the BBC earlier than expected, and that Sunday’s show would be his last.

In a statement at the time, Lineker said football had been “at the heart of my life” and that he cared deeply about the game and his BBC work, but he recognised “the error and upset that I caused”.

“Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action,” he said.

BBC director general Tim Davie thanked Lineker for being “a defining voice in football coverage for the BBC for over two decades”, and said they had “agreed he will step back from further presenting after this season”.

Lineker’s final episode in the presenter’s chair on Sunday saw him interview Liverpool manager Arne Slot as they collected the Premier League trophy.

Slot paid tribute, saying: “Thank you for being such a great presenter of a BBC show that I watched many times when I lived in Holland, and now still.”

The show began with a montage of former Everton and Spurs striker Lineker’s goals and later looked back on highlights of his time at the helm of Match of the Day.

This included him famously presenting a segment while wearing only his Leicester City boxer shorts, as he had promised, after his boyhood team won the Premier League in 2016.

His longstanding sidekicks Shearer and Richards also paid tribute, introducing a montage that included testimonies from the likes of Alan Hansen, Ian Wright and Paul Gascgoine as well as the late Johan Cruyff, singer Andrea Bocelli and Lineker’s sons.

“You won’t believe it but you will be missed,” offered Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.

“You’ve been great to me and you’ve been unbelievable to Match of the Day,” added Shearer.

In January, it was revealed that Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan would jointly take over Match of the Day presenting responsibilities from the start of the 2025-26 season.

“I’d like to wish Gabby, Mark and Kelly all the very best when they sit in this chair,” Lineker said.

“The programme is in the best of hands.”

It was supposed to be a defining, catalytic moment for French society.

Horrific, but unmissable. Unignorable.

The seaside town of Vannes, in southern Brittany, had carefully prepared a special venue and a separate overflow amphitheatre for the occasion.

Hundreds of journalists were accredited for a process that would, surely, dominate headlines in France throughout its three-month duration and force a queasy public to confront a crime too often shunted to the sidelines.

Comparisons were quickly made with – and expectations tied to – last year’s Pelicot mass rape trial in southern France and the massive global attention it garnered.

Instead, the trial of France’s most prolific known paedophile, Joel Le Scouarnec – a retired surgeon who has admitted in court to raping or sexually assaulting 299 people, almost all of them children – is coming to an end this Wednesday amid widespread frustration.

“I’m exhausted. I’m angry. Right now, I don’t have much hope. Society seems totally indifferent. It’s frightening to think [the rapes] could happen again,” one of Le Scouarnec’s victims, Manon Lemoine, 36, told the BBC.

Ms Lemoine and some 50 other victims, stung by an apparent lack of public interest in the trial, have formed their own campaign group to pressure the French authorities, accusing the government of ignoring a “landmark” case which exposed a “true laboratory of institutional failures”.

The group has questioned why a parliamentary commission has not been set up, as in other high-profile abuse cases, and spoken of being made to feel “invisible”, as if “the sheer number of victims prevented us from being recognised.”

Some of the victims, most of whom had initially chosen to testify anonymously, have now decided to reveal their identities in public – even posing for photos on the courthouse steps – in the hope of jolting France into paying more attention and, perhaps, learning lessons about a culture of deference that helped a prestigious surgeon to rape with impunity for decades.

The crimes for which Le Scouarnec is on trial all occurred between 1998 and 2014.

“It’s not normal that I should have to show my face. [But] I hope that what we’re doing now will change things. That’s why we decided to rise up, to make our voices heard,” said Ms Lemoine.

So, what has gone wrong?

Were the horrors too extreme, the subject matter too unremittingly grim or simply too uncomfortable to contemplate?

Why, when the whole world knows the name of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, has a trial with significantly more victims – child victims abused under the noses of the French medical establishment – passed by with what feels like little more than a collective shudder?

Why does the world not know the name Joel Le Scouarnec?

“The Le Scouarnec case is not mobilising a lot of people. Perhaps because of the number of victims. We hear the disappointment, the lack of wide mobilisation, which is a pity,” said Maëlle Nori, from feminist NGO (All of Us).

Some observers have reflected on the absence in this case of a single, totemic figure like Gisèle Pelicot, whose public courage caught the public imagination and enabled people to find some light in an otherwise bleak story.

Others have reached more devastating conclusions.

“The issue is that this trial is about sexual abuse of children.

There’s a virtual on this topic globally, but particularly in France. “We simply don’t want to acknowledge it,” Myriam Guedj-Benayoun, a lawyer representing several of Le Scouarnec’s victims, told me.

In her closing arguments to the court, Ms Guedj-Benayoun condemned what she called France’s “systemic, organised silence” regarding child abuse.

She spoke of a patriarchal society in which men in respected positions like medicine remained almost beyond reproach and pointed to “the silence of those who knew, those who looked the other way, and those who could have – should have – raised the alarm”.

The depravity exposed during the trial has been astonishing – too much for many to stomach.

The court in Vannes has heard in excruciating detail how Le Scouarnec, 74, wallowed in his paedophilia, carefully detailing each child rape in a succession of black notebooks, often preying on his vulnerable young patients while they were under anaesthetic or recovering from surgery.

The court has also been told of the retired surgeon’s growing isolation, and of what his own lawyer described as “your descent into hell”, in the final decade before he was caught, in 2017, after abusing a neighbour’s six-year-old daughter.

By the end, alone in a filthy house, drinking heavily and ostracised by many of his relatives, Le Scouarnec was spending much of his time watching violent images of child rape online, and obsessing over a collection of lifelike child-sized dolls.

“I was emotionally attached to them… They did what I wanted,” Le Scouarnec told the court in his quiet monotone.

A few blocks from the courthouse, in an adapted civic hall, journalists have watched the proceedings unfold on a television screen. In recent days, the seats have begun to fill up and coverage of the trial has increased as it moves towards a close.

Many commentators have noted how the Le Scouarnec trial, like the Pelicot case, has exposed the deep institutional failings which enabled the surgeon to continue his rapes long after they could have been detected and stopped.

Dominique Pelicot had been caught “upskirting” in a supermarket in 2010 and his DNA quickly linked to an attempted rape in 1999 – a fact that, astonishingly, wasn’t followed up for a whole decade.

At Le Scouarnec’s trial a succession of medical officials have explained – some ashamedly, others self-servingly – how an overstretched rural healthcare system chose, for years, to ignore the fact that the surgeon had been reported by America’s FBI in 2004 after using a credit card to pay to download videos of child rapes on his computer.

“I was advised not to talk about such and such a person,” said one doctor who’d tried to sound the alarm.

“There is a shortage of surgeons, and those who show up are welcomed like the messiah,” explained a hospital director.

“I messed up, I admit it, like the whole hierarchy,” a different administrator finally conceded.

Another connection between the Pelicot and Le Scouarnec cases is what they’ve both revealed about our understanding – or lack of understanding – of trauma.

Without warning or support, Gisèle Pelicot had been abruptly confronted by police with the video evidence of her own drugging and rapes.

Later, during the trial, some defence lawyers and other commentators sought to minimise her suffering by pointing to the fact that she’d been unconscious during the rapes – as if trauma only exists, like a wound, when its scar is visible to the naked eye.

In the Le Scouarnec case, French police appear to have gone about searching for the paedophile’s many victims in a similarly brusque manner, summoning people for an unexplained interview and then informing them, out of the blue, that they’d been listed in the surgeon’s notebooks.

The reactions of Le Scouarnec’s many victims have varied widely. Some have simply chosen not to engage with the trial, or with a childhood experience of which they have no memory.

For others, news of the abuse has affected them profoundly.

“You’ve entered my head, it’s destroying me. I’ve become a different person – one I don’t recognise,” said a victim, addressing Le Scouarnec in court.

“I have no memories and I’m already damaged,” said another.

“It turned me upside down,” a policeman admitted.

And then there is a different group of people who – not unlike Gisèle Pelicot – have found that knowledge of their abuse has been revelatory, enabling them to make sense of things they had not previously understood about themselves or their lives.

Some have connected their childhood abuse to a general sense of unhappiness, or poor behaviour, or failure in life.

For others, the links have been much more specific, helping to explain a litany of mysterious symptoms and behaviours, from a fear of intimacy to repeated genital infections and eating disorders.

“With my boyfriend, every time we have sex, I vomit,” one woman revealed in court.

“I had so many after-effects from my operation. But no-one could explain why I had this irrational fear of hospitals,” said another victim, Amélie.

Some have described the trial itself as being like a group therapy session, with victims bonding over shared traumas which they’d previously believed they were suffering alone.

“This trial is like a clinical laboratory involving 300 victims. I sincerely hope it will change France. In any case it will change the victims’ perception of trauma and traumatic memory,” said the lawyer, Ms Guedj-Benayoun.

Despite her concerns about the lack of public interest, Manon Lemoine said the trial had helped the victims “to rebuild ourselves, to turn a page. We lay out our pain and our experiences and we leave it behind [in the courtroom]. So, for me, really, it was liberating.”

Having confessed to his crimes, Le Scouarnec will inevitably receive a guilty verdict and will almost certainly remain in prison for the rest of his life.

Two of his victims took their own lives some years before the trial – a fact which he acknowledged in court with the same penitent but formulaic apology that he’s offered to everyone else.

Meanwhile, some activists remain hopeful that the case will prove to be a turning point in French society.

“Compared to the Pelicot trial… we can see we don’t talk very much about the Le Scouarnec case. We need to unite. We have to do this, otherwise nothing will happen, and the Le Scouarnec trial will have served no purpose. I was also a victim as a child. We’re obliged to react and to organise ourselves,” said Arnaud Gallais, a child rights campaigner and founder of the Mouv’Enfants NGO.

A more wary assessment came from the lawyer, Ms Guedj-Benayoun.

“Now, there is a very important standoff between those who want to denounce child sexual violence and those who want to cover it up, and this standoff is taking place today in this trial. Who will win?” she wondered.

Founded in 1600 as a trading enterprise, the English East India Company gradually transformed into a colonial power.

By the late 18th Century, as it tightened its grip on India, Company officials began commissioning Indian artists – many formerly employed by the Mughals – to create striking visual records of the land they were now ruling.

A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings, c. 1790 to 1835, an ongoing show in the Indian capital put together by Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), features over 200 works that once lay on the margins of mainstream art history. It is India’s largest exhibition of Company paintings, highlighting their rich diversity and the skill of Indian artists.

Painted by largely unnamed artists, these paintings covered a wide range of subjects, but mainly fall into three categories: natural history, like botanical studies; architecture, including monuments and scenic views of towns and landscapes; and Indian manners and customs.

“The focus on these three subject areas reflects European engagements with their Indian environment in an attempt to come to terms with all that was unfamiliar to Western eyes,” says Giles Tillotson of DAG, who curated the show.

“Europeans living in India were delighted to encounter flora and fauna that were new to them, and ancient buildings in exotic styles. They met – or at least observed – multitudes of people whose dress and habits were strange but – as they began to discern – were linked to stream of religious belief and social practice.”

Beyond natural history, India’s architectural heritage captivated European visitors.

Before photography, paintings were the best way to document travels, and iconic Mughal monuments became prime subjects. Patrons soon turned to skilled local artists.

Beyond the Taj Mahal, popular subjects included Agra Fort, Jama Masjid, Buland Darwaza, Sheikh Salim Chishti’s tomb at Fatehpur Sikri (above), and Delhi’s Qutub Minar and Humayun’s Tomb.

The once-obscure and long-anonymous Indian artist Sita Ram, who painted the tomb, was one of them.

From June 1814 to early October 1815, Sita Ram travelled extensively with Francis Rawdon, also known as the Marquess of Hastings, who had been appointed as the governor general in India in 1813 and held the position for a decade. (He is not to be confused with Warren Hastings, who served as India’s first governor general much earlier.)

The largest group in this collection is a set of botanical watercolours, likely from Murshidabad or Maidapur (in present-day West Bengal).

While Murshidabad was the Nawab of Bengal’s capital, the East India Company operated there. In the late 18th century, nearby Maidapur briefly served as a British base before Calcutta’s (now Kolkata) rise eclipsed it.

Originally part of the Louisa Parlby Album – named after the British woman who compiled it while her husband, Colonel James Parlby, served in Bengal – the works likely date to the late 18th Century, before Louisa’s return to Britain in 1801.

“The plants represented in the paintings are likely quite illustrative of what could be found growing in both the well-appointed gardens as well as the more marginal spaces of common greens, waysides and fields in the Murshidabad area during the late eighteenth century,” writes Nicolas Roth of Harvard University.

“These are familiar plants, domestic and domesticated, which helped constitute local life worlds and systems of meaning, even as European patrons may have seen them mainly as exotica to be collected.”

Another painting from the collection is of a temple procession showing a Shiva statue on an ornate platform carried by men, flanked by Brahmins and trumpeters.

At the front, dancers with sticks perform under a temporary gateway, while holy water is poured on them from above.

Labeled Ouricaty Tirounal, it depicts a ritual from Thirunallar temple in Karaikal in southern India, capturing a rare moment from a 200-year-old tradition.

By the late 18th Century, Company paintings had become true collaborations between European patrons and Indian artists.

Art historian Mildred Archer called them a “fascinating record of Indian social life,” blending the fine detail of Mughal miniatures with European realism and perspective.

Regional styles added richness – Tanjore artists, for example, depicted people of various castes, shown with tools of their trade. These albums captured a range of professions – nautch girls, judges, sepoys, toddy tappers, and snake charmers.

“They catered to British curiosity while satisfying European audience’s fascination with the ‘exoticism’ of Indian life,” says Kanupriya Sharma of DAG.

Most studies of Company painting focus on British patronage, but in south India, the French were commissioning Indian artists as early as 1727.

A striking example is a set of 48 paintings from Pondicherry – uniform in size and style – showing the kind of work French collectors sought by 1800.

One painting (above) shows 10 men in hats and loincloths rowing through surf. A French caption calls them nageurs (swimmers) and the boat a chilingue.

Among the standout images are two vivid scenes by an artist known as B, depicting boatmen navigating the rough Coromandel coast in stitched-plank rowboats.

With no safe harbours near Madras or Pondicherry, these skilled oarsmen were vital to European trade, ferrying goods and people through dangerous surf between anchored ships and the shore.

Company paintings often featured natural history studies, portraying birds, animals, and plants – especially from private menageries.

As seen in the DAG show, these subjects are typically shown life-size against plain white backgrounds, with minimal surroundings – just the occasional patch of grass. The focus remains firmly on the species itself.

Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG, says the the latest show proposes Company paintings as the “starting point of Indian modernism”.

Anand says this “was the moment when Indian artists who had trained in courtly ateliers first moved outside the court (and the temple) to work for new patrons”.

“The agendas of those patrons were not tied up with courtly or religious concerns; they were founded on scientific enquiry and observation,” he says.

“Never mind that the patrons were foreigners. What should strike us now is how Indian artists responded to their demands, creating entirely new templates of Indian art.”

Ngabi Dora Tue, consumed by grief, was barely able to stand on her own.

The coffin of her husband, Johnson Mabia, sat amid a crowd of stricken mourners in Limbe in Cameroon’s South-West region – an area that had witnessed scenes like this many times before.

While on a work trip, Johnson – an English-speaking civil servant – and five colleagues were captured by armed separatists.

The militants were – and still are – fighting for the independence of Cameroon’s two anglophone regions in what is a predominantly francophone country. A near-decade-long conflict that has led to thousands of deaths and stunted life in the area.

When he was abducted four years ago, Dora struggled to reach Johnson. When she eventually heard from separatist militants, they asked for a ransom of over $55,000 (£41,500) to be paid within 24 hours in order to secure his release. Dora then received another call from one of Johnson’s relatives.

“He said… that I should take care of the children. That my husband is no more. I didn’t even know what to do. Tuesday he was travelling, and he was kidnapped. Friday he was killed,” says Dora.

The separatists responsible had not just murdered but decapitated Johnson, and left his body on the road.

The roots of the separatist struggle lie in long-standing grievances that stretch back to full independence in 1961, and the formation of a single Cameroonian state in 1972 from former British and French territories.

Since then the English-speaking minority have felt aggrieved at the perceived erosion of rights by the central government. Johnson was just an innocent by-stander, caught up in an increasingly brutal fight for self-determination and the government’s desperate attempts to stamp out the uprising.

The current wave of violence began almost a decade ago.

In late 2016, peaceful protests started against what was perceived to be the creeping use of the francophone legal system in the region’s courtrooms. The French- and English-speaking parts of Cameroon use different judicial systems.

The protests rapidly spread, and led to a call for the closing of shops and institutions.

The response of the security forces was immediate and severe – people were beaten, intimidated and there were mass arrests. The African Union called it “a deadly and disproportionate use of violence”.

Cameroon’s defence ministry did not respond to requests for comment on this or other issues in this article.

Armed groups were set up. And, in late 2017 as tensions escalated, anglophone separatist leaders declared independence for what they called the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

To date, five million anglophone Cameroonians have been dragged into the conflict – equivalent to one-fifth of the total population. At least 6,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes.

“We used to wake up in the morning to dead bodies on the streets,” says Blaise Eyong, a journalist from Kumba in the English-speaking South-West region of Cameroon, who has produced and presented a documentary on the crisis for BBC Africa Eye, and was forced from his hometown with his family in 2019.

“Or you hear that a house has been set ablaze. Or you hear that someone was kidnapped. People’s body parts chopped off. How do you live in a city where every single morning you’re worried if your relatives are safe?”

There have been a number of national and international attempts to resolve the crisis, including what the government called “a major national dialogue” in 2019.

Although the talks established a special status for the country’s two anglophone regions which acknowledged their unique history, very little was resolved in practical terms.

Felix Agbor Nkongho – a barrister who was one of the leaders of the 2016 protests and was later arrested – says that with both sides now seeming to act with impunity, the moral high ground has disappeared.

“There was a time… where most people felt that, if they needed security, they would go to the separatists,” he tells BBC Africa Eye.

“But over the last two years, I don’t think any reasonable person would think that the separatists would be the ones to protect them. So everybody should die for us to have independence and I ask the question: who are you going to govern?”

But it is not just the separatists who are accused of abuses.

Organisations such as Human Rights Watch have recorded the brutal response of the security forces to the anglophone independence movement. They have documented the burning of villages and the torture, unlawful arrests and extrajudicial killings of people in a war largely unseen by the outside world.

Examples of state-sponsored brutality are not difficult to find.

John (not his real name) and a close friend were taken into custody by Cameroonian military forces, accused of buying weapons for a separatist group.

John recalls that after being incarcerated, they were given a document which they were told to sign without being given the chance to read its contents. When they refused, the torture began.

“That is when they separated us into different rooms,” says John. “They tortured [my friend]. You could just hear them flogging everywhere. I could feel it on my own body [too]. They beat me everywhere. Later they told me he accepted and signed and they allowed him to go.”

But that was not the truth.

A month after his arrest, another man arrived in John’s cell. He told him that his friend had, in fact, died in the room he had been held and tortured in. Months later John’s case was dropped and he was released without charge.

“I just live in fear because I don’t really know where to start from or where it is safe to start from or how,” says John.

You can watch the full film, The Land That Bleeds, here

Part of the separatists’ strategy to weaken the state and its security forces is to push for a ban on education which they say is a tool of government propaganda.

In October 2020, a school in Kumba was attacked. No-one claimed responsibility for the atrocity but the government blamed separatists. Men armed with machetes and guns killed at least seven children.

The incident sparked, for a brief moment, international outrage and condemnation.

“Nearly half the schools in this region have been shut,” says journalist Eyong.

“A whole generation of kids is missing out on their education. Imagine the impact this will have for our communities and also for our country.”

As if the violence between the government forces and the various separatist groups was not enough, an additional front has opened up in the war. Militant groups in the separatist areas have emerged to fight the Ambazonians in an effort to keep Cameroon united.

A leader of one of these groups, John Ewome (known as Moja Moja), regularly led patrols in the town of Buea in search of separatists until he was arrested in May 2024.

He, too, has been accused of human rights violations, of public humiliation and torturing unarmed civilians thought to be separatist sympathisers. He denies the accusations. “I’ve never laid my hands on any civilian. Just the Ambazonians. And I believe the gods of this land are with me,” he told the BBC.

Meanwhile, the cycle of abductions and killings continue.

Joe (not his real name) was – like Johnson – taken hostage by a separatist group, keen to maintain control through fear – and to cash in.

“I walked into the house, and found my children and my wife on the floor while the commander was sitting in my kitchen with his gun very close. All around me, my neighbour had been taken, my landlord had been taken. So when I saw them, I knew it was my turn,” says Joe.

He was led into the forest with 15 other people where he witnessed the execution of two of his fellow captives. But he was eventually freed after the military discovered the camp.

Johnson was not as lucky and, about two years after his funeral took place, news arrived that neither were his five colleagues kidnapped with him. Their bodies had just been found.

More families will now have to try to come to terms with their enormous loss. For Ngabi Dora Tue, sitting with her young child in her lap, the future feels almost overwhelming.

“I have debts I have to settle I don’t even know how to settle,” she says.

“I thought of selling my body for money. And then I Iook at the shame that would come after, I just have to swallow the difficulty and then push forward. I was very young to become a widow.”

The BBC has asked for a response from the Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF), which claims to be the largest separatist force.

It responded that there are a multiplicity of separatist fighters now operating in the anglophone region.

The ADF said it operates within international law and does not attack government workers, schools, journalists or civilians.

Instead it has blamed individuals and fringe entities acting on their own accord who are not members of the ADF for these attacks.

The group also accuses government infiltrators of committing atrocities while claiming to be Ambazonian fighters to turn the local populations against the liberation struggle.

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Michelle Mone spent 25 years building her business empire and public profile through the British media.

A brilliant self-publicist, she was regularly described as one of the UK’s most successful businesswomen.

She was the plucky underdog who, through sheer grit and a knack for a good headline, pushed her Ultimo bra concept onto the marketplace and into the high street’s biggest shops.

She even claimed to have given Hollywood star Julia Roberts a cleavage.

The story she told time and time again to a grateful media brought her fame, riches, and even a peerage.

But Baroness Mone of Mayfair has now been stripped of the Conservative whip, is on leave from the House of Lords and a business connected to her is under investigation by the National Crime Agency.

How did it come to that?

That’s the question a new two-part BBC Scotland documentary seeks to answer.

The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone begins in 1999 as the then 28-year-old talks her way into Selfridges in London, and a deal to sell her gel-filled Ultimo bra.

Born in her own words “into nothing”, Mone was raised in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow. She left school at 15 with no qualifications but a determination “to make something of myself”.

Friends from the time describe her hard work ethic, energy and “bubbly” nature. “No matter where you’re from, look at me, you can do it,” she would later say.

She worked as a model and “ring girl” at boxing matches and moved into promotions and sales before setting up MJM International with husband Michael.

They re-mortgaged their house and went £70,000 into debt developing the Ultimo Bra, which is when Mone turned up unannounced at Selfridges.

Virginia Marcolin was the shop’s lingerie buyer, and the person Mone had travelled to London to see.

“I thought: ‘This girl is not what I’m used to dealing with’. She was kind of country bumpkin and a little bit like not overly refined, just very authentic. And this was just such a fresh, new product,” she says.

“That was the start of it. It was her persistence.”

Mone’s natural knack for promotion got them the deal but the cash-poor company needed funds to fulfil the order. They found an investor in Tom Hunter, who in 1998 had just sold his sportswear company JJB Sports for £280m.

The man who made that introduction was Jack Irvine, former newspaper editor turned successful PR executive. He became a key figure in building Mone’s early media profile.

The newspapers and broadcasters were hungry for stories about her, and she was very happy to help.

“She had two driving forces,” Irvine says. “One was to be very rich and one was to be very famous.”

Coverage from that time stressed her humble roots, battle to succeed, new-found wealth, and the global success of her bra.

Magnus Llewellin, now editor of the Times newspapers in Scotland, remembers one infamous story from the time.

“Stories would circulate around Michelle Mone. One of those was that her bra was used in the film Erin Brockovich, that Julia Roberts wore one of her bras,” he says.

“If you actually bother to check, somebody involved in the actual making of the film came out and said an Ultimo bra wasn’t used in the production.”

The truth is that the media, especially the Scottish media, helped create the Michelle Mone myth. And she had a gift for using that.

“The story was almost too good to debunk. A young woman fighting in a male-dominated business world, making a way for herself. That was a great story to tell,” Llewellin says.

After more than 20 years together as a couple and more than a decade in business, the Mones very publicly separated, divorcing in 2011.

Michelle bought Michael out of the business and became the face and body of the brand, modelling her own lingerie.

Behind the scenes at the company there were a number of employment tribunals, including one high-profile case in which a member of staff found a recording device in his office.

Despite her legal challenges, Mone remained in the public eye, a regular feature on television programmes. And her knack for publicity led to her next move – into the world of politics.

She had been a Labour supporter but defected to the Conservatives in 2010. Four years later she was a prominent voice in favour of the union during the independence referendum, going so far as to say she would leave Scotland in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote.

In 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron made her his government’s “entrepreneurship tsar”. Within weeks it was announced she was to become a Conservative peer, as Baroness Mone of Mayfair.

By then she had sold her interests in the company she had built. But her new roles brought increased scrutiny over her business record.

Magnus Llewellin points out that MJM International never turned over more than £10.1m a year, and in 2012 lost more than half a million pounds.

“By that time the company was in real trouble,” he says.

Businessman Donald Anderson runs the Gap Group, a plant hire company which in 2024 had a turnover of £302.3m, employed more than 2,000 people, and made a pre-tax profit of £43.9m.

He wrote to the prime minister at the time of Mone’s appointment.

“Miss Mone is not a successful entrepreneur, she is a small time businesswoman with a PR exposure far in excess of any actual success,” he wrote.

He now says: “If the only thing she achieved was self-publicity, I don’t think that’s a very good reason to put you into the House of Lords. If you follow that logic then the House of Lords will be full of influencers in the next 10 years.”

In 2016, Mone announced she was in a new relationship with Doug Barrowman, a billionaire businessman. They settled in the Isle of Man, and worked together in the booming crypto-currency sector.

In 2020, the Covid pandemic struck. As the death toll rose, UK ministers sought out firms to urgently supply Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), even setting up a VIP lane to give priority to some suppliers.

A company called PPE Medpro made it onto the VIP list. This caught the eye of campaigners who were concerned that firms on the list were run by people with connections to the Conservative Party.

It emerged that PPE Medpro was controlled by people connected to Doug Barrowman.

Mone, a Conservative peer, repeatedly denied any involvement in the business, the deal or the subsequent profits.

But the Guardian uncovered a connection to government ministers.

The paper’s David Conn says: “We did our own freedom of information request, and we got the emails that she’d sent to Michael Gove and Lord Agnew saying that she was offering to supply PPE through ‘my team in Hong Kong’ and that it had gone through the VIP lane.

“And we also got some WhatsApp messages which Michelle Mone had sent about the PPE deals and she said she was sitting on the jet and it was about to take off, which we assumed was their jet, their private plane.”

The National Crime Agency (NCA) launched an investigation into PPE Medpro. Several of the couple’s properties were raided.

Two years into his investigation, David Conn received a leaked document showing Barrowman made at least £65m from the deals, with £29m of this paid into a trust of which Mone and her three adult children are beneficiaries.

Throughout this time, Mone was uncharacteristically quiet.

But that changed at the end of 2023 when she and Barrowman – by then married – released a PPE Medpro-funded documentary in which she admitted being a “conduit” between the company and ministers.

They also agreed to appear on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme. On camera, Mone admitted she could one day benefit from the trust, and said they had done nothing wrong.

When asked about lying to the press, she replied: “That’s not a crime.

“Saying to the press I’m not involved, to protect my family, can I just make it clear, it’s not a crime.”

Laura Kuenssberg says: “That’s a phrase that will always stick with me.

“When she said that, I thought: ‘There’s a thing. There’s a headline’.”

Michelle Mone lost the Conservative whip and has taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords. She has made no further media appearances.

PPE Medpro is still under investigation by the NCA and the government is suing the company for £122m plus costs, claiming the medical gowns the company supplied “did not comply with the specification in the contract”.

The peer declined the offer to be interviewed for The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone.

In response to the programme, a statement said the couple had provided “full and detailed statements to the NCA and cooperated with the investigation throughout”.

It said they had never been arrested and no charges had been brought against them.

The statement also defended PPE Medpro’s delivery of PPE equipment to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

It continued: “Baroness Mone, along with the whole of the Mone/Barrowman family, were beneficiaries of trusts… never direct recipients of PPE Medpro profits.

“The DHSC was fully aware of their involvement from the outset. It was a mistake to have misled the press.”

Michelle Mone’s public life was a self-created fairy story which many in business, politics, and especially the media, bought into.

For Magnus Llewellin, there’s a clear moral to this tale.

“What it does tell us about modern Britain is, we still like fairy tales. We want to believe those rags to riches tales.

“But once you step into the world of politics, things can get a bit trickier.

“It’s a parable of excess, hubris, and then eventually nemesis.”

Laura Kuenssberg says: “For Michelle Mone, public attention, knowing how to grab public attention, is an ability that she obviously always had in spades during her business career.

“But things went wrong for her and you can’t turn that attention off.”

The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone is available on iPlayer and is on BBC Scotland at 22:00 on Monday 26 May and BBC Two at 21:00 on Wednesday 28 May.

Ministers are facing calls to start processing Syrian asylum applications again, as new figures showed more than 7,000 people are still in limbo.

The UK paused decisions on Syrian claims for asylum and permanent settlement in December, after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

But more than five months on, Syrians in the UK still do not know when their claims will be assessed.

Charities including the Refugee Council say the current situation has left people in an “indefinite limbo” and are calling for claims to be processed again on a case-by-case basis.

The government said decisions were paused “while we assess the current situation”.

A Home Office source said this was “a necessary step while there is no stable, objective information available to make robust assessments of risk” on people returning to Syria and the policy “will remain under constant review”.

A total of 7,386 Syrians were waiting for an initial decision on an asylum claim by the end of March, according to the latest figures published on Thursday.

Assad’s regime was overthrown by a rebel offensive led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in December, after years of civil war.

HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa was named as Syria’s interim president earlier this year, but the situation remains uncertain and HTS is still designated a terrorist group by the UK.

In December, the Conservatives suggested most Syrian asylum claims were related to the threat posed by Assad’s government and those people could return when it was safe to do so.

However, Haytham Alhamwi, chairman of the Syrian British Consortium, said while many Syrians left because of Assad’s rule others may still feel unsafe to return.

“Many of them are still calling for democratic change in Syria, which is not guaranteed at the moment. Some of them were afraid of those military groups, they didn’t come running from Assad himself,” he told the BBC.

The number of Syrian asylum claims fell by 81% following the UK’s decision to pause decisions.

However, despite a sharp drop, 299 Syrians came to the UK on small boats in the first three months of this year – 5% of the total number of arrivals.

People claiming asylum do not normally have the right to work while their case is being considered and are provided with government-funded accommodation and financial support to pay for essentials if they would otherwise be destitute.

Jon Featonby, chief policy analyst at the Refugee Council, said that as well as leaving Syrians “stuck in limbo” this also had an impact on the taxpayer as the government is paying to house many of them.

More than 5,500 Syrians were living in government-funded accommodation at the end of March.

Of these, 2,130 were in hotels, which the government has pledged to stop using for asylum seekers.

With Labour promising to clear the overall backlog of asylum claims, Mr Featonby said the situation was causing a “blockage” in the system.

Azadi – not his real name – arrived in the UK by small boat in June 2023 and is waiting for a decision on his asylum application.

The 25-year-old, who is Kurdish, said he was grateful to the UK government for providing him with food and accommodation but he wanted to be able to work and pay tax.

“I stay at home a lot of the time,” he told the BBC. “Every day is the same. I am not progressing so it is stressful.”

Earlier this year, the new Syrian government signed a deal with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which integrated its military and civilian institutions into the state and recognised the Kurdish minority.

But Azadi said he did not trust the new government and felt Syria was not safe for Kurds, who were denied basic rights during Assad’s rule.

He said his hometown had been destroyed by the civil war and there was no way for him to get an education there.

“It’s not a life there at all,” he added.

The pause also applies to Syrians who have already been granted refugee status and were initially given the right to stay in the UK for five years before they can apply for permanent settlement – also known as indefinite leave to remain.

The Refugee Council says that whilst this group still have the right to live and work in the UK, their temporary status can often make it harder to secure a job or housing.

Mr Featonby said Syrians in the UK were also nervous about whether they will be allowed to stay if the government’s position on Syria changes and it is deemed a safe country.

Leen Albrmawi arrived in the UK in October 2019 and applied for indefinite leave to remain last year.

However, she said her “whole life collapsed” when the government paused decisions for Syrians in December.

The 28-year-old had been accepted to study business at university but was told she was not eligible for a student loan because she did not have the right to live in the UK permanently.

After spending the last five years obtaining the necessary qualifications to apply, Leen was devastated she could not afford to take up the offer.

Meanwhile, her employer, a telecoms company, has been chasing her for an update on her leave to remain application.

Leen still has the right to work while her application is pending but is concerned she could lose her job.

She also fears that if the Home Office changes its position on Syria she could be forced to leave the UK.

“I literally have no one in Syria, no family, nothing,” she told the BBC, adding that her hometown had been destroyed in the civil war.

Leen lives in Salford with her mother and sister, who already have British citizenship as they came to the UK earlier than her.

“I’ve been in the UK now nearly six years, so I’ve built my whole life here,” she said.

Mr Featonby said the Refugee Council recognised the situation in Syria had changed but there was unlikely to be clarity on how safe the country would be in the future anytime soon.

He suggested people who were seeking protection for reasons unrelated to the previous regime could have their claims prioritised.

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A 37-year-old cryptocurrency investor appeared in court on Saturday after being arrested for allegedly kidnapping and torturing an Italian tourist in a Manhattan home, according to media reports.

John Woeltz was arraigned in New York Criminal Court at 9:00 EST (14:00 BST) on charges of kidnapping with intent to collect ransom, assault, unlawful imprisonment and other counts, court records show.

A second person, 24-year-old Beatrice Folchi, was arrested on Saturday in connection to the case, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The pair were taken into custody after the victim managed to escape a home in SoHo, where he was allegedly tortured and bound for weeks, police said.

The BBC has contacted the New York Police Department, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and Mr Woeltz’s attorney for comment.

The 28-year-old victim, who has not been named, was taken to the hospital and is in stable condition, police have said. Officers found several Polaroid photos of the victim being tied up and tortured, as well as firearms, in the luxury townhome, according to reports.

The victim told police he came to New York from Italy on 6 May, and that upon arriving at the suspect’s house, Mr Woeltz took his passport and allegedly held him captive until he escaped on Friday morning.

According to a criminal complaint obtained by ABC News, the victim told police that Mr Woeltz and another person beat him and hanged him off a ledge when he refused to provide his bitcoin password.

Mr Woeltz is a crypto investor from Kentucky and has been renting the SoHo home for between $30,000 (£22,000) and $40,000 per month, according to CBS News.

Alan Yentob, the long-serving BBC arts broadcaster and documentary-maker, has died aged 78.

Yentob profiled and interviewed a wide range of important cultural and creative figures over the years, including David Bowie, Charles Saatchi, Maya Angelou and Grayson Perry, for TV series such as Omnibus, Arena and Imagine.

He also served as controller of BBC One and Two, and the organisation’s creative director and head of music and arts during a long and varied career.

Paying tribute to her late husband, Philippa Walker described Yentob as “curious, funny, annoying, late and creative in every cell of his body” and added that he was “the kindest of men”.

BBC director-general Tim Davie called him a “creative force and cultural visionary” who championed “originality, risk-taking and artistic ambition”.

He added: “To work with Alan was to be inspired and encouraged to think bigger. He had a rare gift for identifying talent and lifting others up – a mentor and champion to so many across the worlds of television, film and theatre.

“Above all, Alan was a true original. His passion wasn’t performative – it was personal. He believed in the power of culture to enrich, challenge and connect us.”

Yentob was known for his connections in the entertainment industry, often befriending his famous film subjects who included music stars Jay-Z and Beyoncé, actors and filmmakers Orson Welles and Mel Brooks, and author Salman Rushdie.

Synonymous with the BBC, Yentob was seen by viewers engaging in an arm wrestle with Rushdie while listening to opera in a scene taken from W1A – a sitcom which satirised life at the corporation.

Yentob’s famous 1975 Omnibus feature, Cracked Actor, about David Bowie, showed the drug-affected star opening up to him in the back of a limousine at an “intensely creative time”, the filmmaker later recalled, but also at the singer’s most “fragile and exhausted”.

Yentob became controller of BBC Two in 1988, making him one of the youngest channel controllers in the corporation’s history.

He oversaw a popular and influential period for the channel, with commissions such as hit sitcom Absolutely Fabulous – where his name was dropped into the dialogue of one episode as an in-joke

Other shows launched during his tenure included The Late Show and Have I Got News for You.

Yentob’s success in the role saw him promoted to controller of BBC One from 1993 to 1997, before a stint as BBC television’s overall director of programmes.

He was announced as the corporation’s creative director in 2004, a role he filled for more than a decade. But he continued to step in front of the camera to front more Imagine programmes, including the final episode of that series, a profile of comedic duo French & Saunders.

His commissions also included a TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and children’s channels CBBC and CBeebies.

Actress and comedian Dawn French shared a picture of her and Jennifer Saunders with the late broadcaster on X, saying: “We’ve lost a tip top chap.”

“Our advocate from the start,” she added.

In a post on social media platform Bluesky, pop group the Pet Shop Boys described Yentob as “a legend in British TV, responsible for some of the BBC’s finest programmes”.

The pop duo were the subject of one of Yentob’s Imagine documentaries.

Comedian David Baddiel, who took part in Yentob’s 2011 series The Art of Stand-Up, called him a “king of TV” as he shared a photo of the pair drinking wine together.

BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Amol Rajan also paid tribute, saying: “He was such a unique and kind man: an improbable impresario from unlikely origins who became a towering figure in the culture of post-war Britain.

“Modern art never had a more loyal ally. His shows were always brilliant, often masterpieces, sometimes seminal. So much of Britain’s best TV over five decades came via his desk. That was public Alan. In private, he was magnetic, zealous, and very funny, with a mesmerising voice and mischievous chuckle.”

Yentob’s long and successful career at the BBC was not without controversy.

In 2015, he resigned from his role as the BBC’s creative director, having faced scrutiny for his role, as chairman, in the collapse of the charity Kids Company.

Yentob said the speculation over his conduct – which included claims he had tried to influence the BBC coverage of the charity’s demise – had been “proving a serious distraction” when the BBC was in “particularly challenging times”.

BBC News later concluded that he did not influence its reporting of Kids Company.

In 2021, the founder and former trustees of the charity, including Yentob, were cleared of any personal wrongdoing.

Yentob continued to make many more programmes for the broadcaster, and was subsequently appointed a CBE in 2024 for services to the arts and media.

He is survived by his wife, TV producer Philippa Walker, and their two children.

When Chris Davies’s daughter first begged him for a hamster, he wasn’t exactly thrilled.

But eight-year-old Lily, after hours of research, managed to convince her dad they were not just “starter pets” and to welcome one into their home.

The NHS nurse bought Popcorn, a hamster he said he knew there was “something different” about from the beginning.

But nothing could have prepared Chris for the “surreal” impact the rodent would have on his life, eventually leading him to the woman he will soon marry.

Not long after bringing Popcorn home, Chris’ life took an expected turn as he had a “sudden” break-up.

“I was broken after,” he said. Yet during those lonely times, it was Popcorn who offered him unexpected support.

“I thought I’d just be more open-minded and see what this animal was about.”

Chris was surprised to find that Popcorn behaved more like a loyal puppy than a rodent.

“He was following me like a dog,” he said. “I got him on the sofa with me, and he fell asleep on my chest. I couldn’t believe it.”

For Chris, who struggles with anxiety, Popcorn soon became a source of calm and connection.

“It was just a really beautiful thing. It was mindfulness.

“Being a nurse in the NHS, some days are quite hard and it’s really stressful, but Popcorn would just calm me down.”

Lily and other family members began encouraging Chris to post videos of Popcorn’s behaviour online.

“I was kind of anxious at first,” Chris said. “How many blokes do you see lying on a sofa with a hamster?”

But almost as soon as Chris began posting videos of Popcorn on TikTok, they took off.

More than140,000 fans were charmed by Popcorn’s unusual personality, his affection and his bond with Chris and Lily.

He became, as Chris lovingly described him, their “micro-dog”.

What followed was a bizarre set of events no one could have been predicted, Chris said.

As Popcorn gained popularity online, Chris and Lily wrote a book together about the impact that the little critter had on their family, which was then published in May 2024.

Meanwhile, Chris’ social posts of Popcorn had prompted a comment from a fellow Cardiffian, Carrie, telling him his content was “cute”.

The pair got chatting, soon discovering mutual passions, a shared love for animals and even the same profession.

“We were living only a mile apart, but we’d never bumped into each other,” Chris said. “It was crazy.”

Chris and Carrie met in person a few months later and when Carrie held Popcorn, Chris said, it was like a something “clicked into place”.

The family, which has now grown to include Carrie and her children as well, sadly lost Popcorn in the summer of 2023.

But fast forward to today and Chris and Carrie are engaged, set to marry this December.

Their wedding cake will even feature a small tribute to Popcorn, with his name written at the bottom.

“Without him it wouldn’t have happened, you know. He was cupid, in a way.” Chris said.

Though Popcorn has been gone for a few years now, his impact remains immeasurable.

For Chris, he was more than just a pet. “There’s never be another Popcorn,” he said. “He was just a one-off.”

Iran summoned France’s envoy in Tehran to protest against “insulting” remarks made by the French foreign minister after an Iranian filmmaker won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi won the prestigious Palme d’Or for his film It Was Just an Accident on Saturday, a political drama inspired by his time in prison.

Following the win, French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said Panahi’s win was “a gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime’s oppression”.

This sparked a diplomatic row, with Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mohammad Tanhaei calling the comments “insulting remarks and unfounded allegations”, state media reported.

During the meeting with the French envoy, Tanhaei called Barrot’s comments “blatant interference” in the country’s internal affairs, according to the same report from Iran’s PressTV.

He described the congratulatory message as “irresponsible and provocative”, adding that France had “no moral authority at all” to comment on Iran, citing what he called France’s failure to support Palestinians in Gaza.

He demanded an official explanation from the French government, and the envoy said he would relay the message to Paris.

Panahi has been in and out of prison in recent years for his outspoken criticism of the Iranian establishment.

He spent seven months of a six-year sentence in jail before being released in February 2023.

He had previously been sentenced to six years in 2010 for supporting anti-government protests and creating “propaganda against the system”, serving two months on that occasion.

As well as his jail terms, he was given a 20-year ban on making movies and travelling outside his own country.

Despite this, he filmed It Was Just An Accident, in secret in Iran.

The film follows five ordinary Iranians as they confront a man they believe tortured them in jail – characters drawn from conversations Panahi had with fellow inmates about “the violence and brutality of the Iranian government”.

During his acceptance speech, he urged fellow Iranians to “join forces”.

“No-one should dare tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, what we should do, or what we should not do.”

Soon after the ceremony, his first appearance at an international film festival in 15 years, he told reporters he would be returning to Tehran.

“As soon as I finish my work here I will go back to Iran,” he told reporters in Cannes. “And I will ask myself what’s my next film going to be.”

A college in Beijing has found itself at the centre of public fury after it allegedly asked a student to prove she was on her period to qualify for sick leave.

A viral video, filmed inside what appears to be a clinic and posted to social media this month, shows a young woman asking an older woman: “Does every menstruating girl have to take off their trousers and show you before they can get a sick note?”

“Basically yes,” the older woman replies. “This is a school rule.”

Local media identified the video’s location as a clinic at the Gengdan Institute university college, which later said in a statement that its staff had “followed protocol”. But social media users have decried the encounter as a serious invasion of privacy.

Neither the student nor Gengdan Institute immediately responded to BBC News’ requests for comment.

Both the student’s video and the school’s statement appear to have been taken down, though screenshots and snippets have been recirculated online, including by state media.

In its statement dated 16 May, Gengdan Institute reportedly said the videos of the incident circulating online had been “distorted” – and that the institution had the right to pursue legal action against those who “maliciously spread untrue videos”.

The statement also said that the staff had followed the proper procedure during the encounter, such as “initiating clinical work after getting the student’s permission”, and did not use tools or conduct a physical examination.

In the video, the staff member did not reply when the student asked for written proof of the school regulation to check students’ menstrual status. She subsequently asked the student to go to a hospital instead.

On social media, the incident has triggered an outpouring of anger and sarcasm towards the school’s rules.

“My head hurts, should I open my skull and call it a day?” wrote one social media user.

“Let’s just take the sanitary pad out and paste it on the sick note,” another Weibo said.

A staff member at Gengdan Institute told local outlet Dute News that the school may have created the rule about proving menstruation in order to deter students from faking periods to get sick notes.

But that argument has rung hollow among social media users.

“If they’re worried about students using their periods as an excuse several times a month, why not simply make a record of it? It’s not that complicated,” one person wrote on Weibo.

State media has also waded into the debate.

“Menstruation is already an intimate topic for women. Rules like this will make students feel very uncomfortable, and even negatively impact students’ psychological wellbeing,” reads an opinion piece from China National Radio.

Gengdan Institute now joins a list of tertiary institutions across the country that have come under fire for what many see as overbearing and ham-fisted attempts at controlling their students.

Last year, some universities were criticised for banning the use of bed curtains in their dormitories. The curtains are often used by students for privacy in shared rooms, but school authorities said they were a fire and safety hazard.

Additionally, during the popular May Day holiday season last year, some universities issued strict guidelines for students who had planned to travel. These included avoiding solo trips, road trips, or cycling trips for safety – which many saw as the institutions overstepping their authority in students’ private lives.

On social media site Xiaohongshu, a user claiming to be a student at Gengdan Institute said “the school’s clinic deserves all the criticism it’s getting”.

“I heard from some older students that this kind of thing has been going on for a while. Some girls spoke up before, but nothing was done,” the user wrote.

“I’m glad it made the trending topics this time. People didn’t stay silent.”

Authorities in India’s southern Kerala state have issued an alert after a ship carrying oil and hazardous cargo leaked and sank off the state’s coast in the Arabian Sea.

The spill occurred in a Liberian-flagged vessel that capsized near Kochi city on Sunday. The coastal stretch is rich in biodiversity and is also an important tourist destination.

All 24 crew members on board the ship have been rescued but some of the ship’s 640 containers have reportedly been drifting towards the shore, prompting evacuations in the area.

Authorities fear that oil, fuel and other harmful substances that have leaked from the ship and its cargo could endanger the health of residents and marine life.

“As the oil slick can reach anywhere along the Kerala coast, an alert has been sounded across the coastal belt,” a statement from the chief minister’s office said.

Authorities have advised residents living near the sea to not touch any containers or the oil that might wash up to the shore, while fishermen have been asked to avoid venturing too close to the sunken ship.

On Monday, officials said they had intensified pollution control measures to contain the spill.

The Indian Coast Guard has deployed a ship carrying pollution control equipment to the site.

It has also sent one of its aircraft which has an oil spill detection system to survey the area.

The vessel – MSC ELSA 3 – which was travelling from Vizhinjam port to Kochi, began to tilt dangerously when it was about 38 nautical miles from the coast of Kochi.

It capsized into the Arabian Sea in the early hours of Sunday due to flooding in one of its compartments.

The Indian Coast Guard said that the ship was carrying 13 containers of hazardous cargo and 12 with calcium carbide – a chemical that reacts with seawater to release a flammable gas.

“Additionally, [the] ship had 84.44 metric tonnes of diesel and 367.1 metric tonnes of furnace oil in its tanks,” it said.

The crew members were rescued by Indian navy personnel after an hours-long operation.

US President Donald Trump has said he is “not happy” with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, following Moscow’s largest aerial attack yet on Ukraine.

In a rare rebuke, Trump said: “What the hell happened to him? He’s killing a lot of people.” He later called Putin “absolutely crazy”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said Washington’s “silence” over recent Russian attacks was encouraging Putin, urging “strong pressure” – including tougher sanctions – on Moscow.

At least 12 people were killed and dozens injured in Ukraine overnight Sunday after Russia fired 367 drones and missiles – the highest number in a single night since Putin launched a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Air sirens warning of incoming drones and missiles sounded again in many regions of Ukraine early on Monday.

At least three people, including a child, were injured in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, two people were injured, said regional head Ivan Fedorov.

In Russia, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said two Ukrainian drones heading towards the capital were destroyed by air defence units. No injuries were reported.

Speaking to reporters in New Jersey late on Sunday, Trump said of Putin: “I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”

Asked about whether he was considering increasing US sanctions on Russia, Trump replied: “Absolutely.” The US president has repeatedly threatened to do this before – but is yet to implement any restrictions against Moscow.

Shortly afterwards, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that Putin “has gone absolutely crazy”.

“I’ve always said that he wants all of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”

But the US president also had strong words for Zelensky, saying that he “is doing his country no favours by talking the way he does”.

“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” Trump wrote of Zelensky.

Despite Kyiv’s European allies preparing further sanctions for Russia, the US has said it will either continue trying to broker these peace talks, or “walk away” if progress does not follow.

Last week, Trump and Putin had a two-hour phone call to discuss a US-proposed ceasefire deal to halt the fighting.

The US president said he believed the call had gone “very well”, adding that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start” negotiations toward a ceasefire and “an end to the war”.

Ukraine has publicly agreed to a 30-day ceasefire.

Putin has only said Russia will work with Ukraine to craft a “memorandum” on a “possible future peace” – a move described by Kyiv and its European allies as delaying tactics.

The first direct Ukrainian-Russian talks since 2022 were held on 16 May in Istanbul, Turkey.

Aside from a major prisoner of war swap last week, there was little or no progress on bringing a pause in fighting closer.

Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory. This includes Crimea – Ukraine’s southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Gary Lineker held back tears as he signed off from his final edition of Match of the Day after 26 years in the hot seat and officially left the BBC.

The host announced in November that he would leave the football show at the end of the Premier League season, which concluded on Sunday.

He had been due to remain with the BBC to front coverage of the men’s FA Cup and the World Cup, but has now left the corporation completely after apologising for sharing an antisemitic social media post.

On his swansong on Sunday, Lineker apparently made a nod to the controversy, opening the show by telling viewers “it wasn’t meant to end this way” – before going on to turn the line into a reference to the final day of the season.

At the end of the programme, Lineker was presented with a commemorative cap and golden boot by pundits Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, who were alongside him.

“It’s been an absolute privilege to have hosted Match of the Day for a quarter of a century. It’s been utterly joyous,” he said.

Speaking directly into the camera to viewers at home, he added: “And my final thank you goes to all of you.

“Thank you for watching, thank you for all your love and support over the years.

“It’s been so special, and I’m sorry that your team was always on last. Time to say goodbye.”

The former England forward replaced Des Lynam as the main presenter of the BBC’s flagship football programme in 1999, and went on to become its highest-paid presenter.

He hit the headlines for airing his opinions beyond football on social media, however.

He was suspended in 2023 for a post about the then-government’s asylum policy, with numerous fellow BBC Sport presenters and pundits walking out in support.

After Lineker was reinstated, the BBC issued new rules for presenters posting on social media.

Earlier this month, Lineker was criticised for sharing a social media post about Zionism that included an illustration of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.

Lineker apologised, saying he had not seen the image and “would never consciously repost anything antisemitic”.

However, it was then announced he would leave the BBC earlier than expected, and that Sunday’s show would be his last.

In a statement at the time, Lineker said football had been “at the heart of my life” and that he cared deeply about the game and his BBC work, but he recognised “the error and upset that I caused”.

“Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action,” he said.

BBC director general Tim Davie thanked Lineker for being “a defining voice in football coverage for the BBC for over two decades”, and said they had “agreed he will step back from further presenting after this season”.

Lineker’s final episode in the presenter’s chair on Sunday saw him interview Liverpool manager Arne Slot as they collected the Premier League trophy.

Slot paid tribute, saying: “Thank you for being such a great presenter of a BBC show that I watched many times when I lived in Holland, and now still.”

The show began with a montage of former Everton and Spurs striker Lineker’s goals and later looked back on highlights of his time at the helm of Match of the Day.

This included him famously presenting a segment while wearing only his Leicester City boxer shorts, as he had promised, after his boyhood team won the Premier League in 2016.

His longstanding sidekicks Shearer and Richards also paid tribute, introducing a montage that included testimonies from the likes of Alan Hansen, Ian Wright and Paul Gascgoine as well as the late Johan Cruyff, singer Andrea Bocelli and Lineker’s sons.

“You won’t believe it but you will be missed,” offered Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.

“You’ve been great to me and you’ve been unbelievable to Match of the Day,” added Shearer.

In January, it was revealed that Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan would jointly take over Match of the Day presenting responsibilities from the start of the 2025-26 season.

“I’d like to wish Gabby, Mark and Kelly all the very best when they sit in this chair,” Lineker said.

“The programme is in the best of hands.”

A fight involvingmachetes at a Melbourne shopping centre has prompted an Australian state to fast-track the country’s first-ever ban on the weapon’s sale.

The ban – to start in Victoria this Wednesday, instead of September – comes after two gangs attacked each other at Northland shopping centre in Preston on Sunday afternoon. A man, 20, remains in hospital in a serious condition.

Victoria’s premier said the ban will “choke the supply”, adding “the community shouldn’t have to deal with these weapons in their shopping centres – neither should our police”.

Two boys, aged 16 and 15, were on Sunday charged with affray, intentionally causing injury, and possession and use of a controlled weapon.

On Monday, police said two men, aged 20 and 18, had also been arrested and were being interviewed. All four people were known to police previously.

“This was a planned fight between two rival youth gangs with no innocent bystanders hurt,” said deputy commissioner David Clayton.

“Fortunately, these events are not very commonplace in Victoria,” he said, adding that youth knife crime is “rare” but “frightening”.

Clayton said one in 10 knife crimes in the state are committed by young people, and often happen in public places.

Emergency services were called to the shopping centre in Preston – about 11km (seven miles) north of Melbourne – just after 14:30 local time (05:30 BST) on Sunday after reports of up to 10 people fighting.

Police said the investigation “remains ongoing” and more arrests are expected. Three of the four machetes used during the attack have been seized, police said.

Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan described the attack as “appalling”.

“We must never let the places where we gather – where families come together, to meet, to shop, to enjoy the peace of their weekend – become the places we fear,” Allan said at a press conference.

“It took the United Kingdom 18 months to bring about a ban on machetes and we are moving to do it within six months,” she added.

In March, Victoria announced legislative changes to its Control of Weapons Act, making it illegal to sell or possess machetes, with the new law to start in September.

The ban covers machetes, which are broadly defined as “knives with a cutting blade longer than 20cm”. It does not include knives primarily used in kitchens.

A three-month amnesty from September means anyone with a machete can place them in specially designated boxes at police stations.

Police also thanked a man who held down one of the alleged offenders until police arrived, saying he “performed an outstanding job”, but added they don’t encourage the public to become involved in such incidents.

In England and Wales, a ban on “zombie-style” knives and machetes was introduced last September, making it illegal to own, make, transport or sell a wide range of “statement” knives favoured by criminal gangs.

It was shortly after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 that Sergei and Tatyana Voronkov decided they would leave Russia.

The couple, who had long been critical of Vladimir Putin, had condemned the actions of Russia to friends and acquaintances. In response, they were told that if they didn’t like it they could leave.

So the couple, both Russian citizens, decided to relocate to Ukraine, where Tatyana was born.

In 2019 they eventually settled in Novolyubymivka, a village of about 300 people in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region.

The couple got four dogs and started raising livestock, while Sergei, 55, also found work as a land surveyor – his specialism during his time in the Soviet army.

They hoped for a quiet life. But when Moscow launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the peace of their new lives was shattered by the first Russian rockets flying over their home.

“I heard something whistling, something flying, and I went outside,” Tatyana, 52, recalls.

“A rocket was flying right over the house.

“I went on the internet to see what had happened and they wrote that Kyiv had already been bombed.”

The couple quickly found themselves in occupied territory, and decided to become informants for Ukraine.

What followed was detention, interrogation, an escape into Europe – and a letter of thanks from the Ukrainian army.

It was when a Russian convoy passed their home for the first time that Tatyana decided to act.

She ran inside and messaged an acquaintance in Kyiv, whom she believed had contacts in Ukraine’s security services.

The contact sent her a link to a chatbot on messaging app Telegram which told her they would be contacted by a person with a unique identifier.

The couple were then asked to provide the location and details of Russian electronic warfare systems and military hardware they had seen, particularly missile systems and tanks.

The locations would help the Ukrainian army target and destroy Russian troops in the area with drones and artillery.

“We didn’t think of it as treason,” says Tatyana, who along with Sergei insists the information they gave did not result in any strikes on civilians or civilian infrastructure.

“Nobody attacked Russia. This was a fight against evil.”

For two years, Sergei would collect coordinates and Tatyana would transmit them from her phone – removing all traces of the messages afterwards – as and when their village’s internet access allowed them to do so.

But all of this came to an end when Sergei was detained in April 2024 by armed men while he was shopping for gardening seeds in the regional centre of Tokmak.

Sergei says he was taken to an abandoned house and put in a cold basement pit – around two metres wide and three metres deep – where he slept in a squatting position.

The next day he was questioned about whether he had passed details of Russian positions to the Ukrainians. Sergei says a bag was kept over his head during the interrogation and he was threatened with violence.

After initially denying his involvement, Sergei confessed on the fourth day of his captivity, fearing that if he were subjected to violence he might accidently implicate others.

While all of this was happening, Tatyana was desperately searching for information on his whereabouts.

She travelled the area and phoned hospitals and morgues, while the couple’s son, who was still living near Moscow, contacted various authorities there.

Ten days after Sergei’s arrest, security forces searched the Voronkovs’ home and dug up $4,400 that had been hidden by the couple in their garden.

Shortly after, Tatyana was told that her husband was “sitting in a basement” and was with Russia’s security services, the FSB.

Weeks later, after 37 days in captivity, Sergei was made to confess to assisting Ukraine on camera by people who introduced themselves to him as FSB.

But to his surprise, he was released two days later, though almost all of his documents, including his passport, were confiscated.

To this day, Sergei and Tatyana do not understand why he was released.

However, the BBC understands this is not uncommon in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia, where investigative and judicial processes lack transparency and often no explanations are given as to why a person is detained or released.

In the weeks after Sergei’s release, the couple believe they were kept under surveillance, with cars constantly driving up to their home and strangers asking them if they were selling anything.

Believing they’d never be left alone, the couple began plotting a way to leave.

After consulting human rights activists, Sergei and Tatyana decided to try to travel to Lithuania. But to do that, they needed to return to Russia first to get Sergei a new passport.

Their neighbours in Novolyubymivka helped by buying livestock and household appliances from them. The couple even managed to find a new home for their dogs, which Sergei says was his biggest worry.

The couple set off in their car.

Fearing they could be pulled over and quizzed by Russian forces, they made up a cover story about going to the beach to get fresh air for Tatyana, who has asthma. They even brought a straw hat and a rubber ring to make the story more convincing.

But in the end they weren’t stopped.

The couple were initially denied entry into Russia, but were eventually able to enter after Sergei got a certificate proving he had applied for a new passport.

After delays in getting his passport and a thwarted attempt to leave Russia via Belarus, Sergei bought a fake passport through Telegram.

The couple were then able to travel by bus to Belarus and cross the border using Sergei’s forged document. From there, they crossed into Lithuania, a member of the European Union and a close ally of Ukraine, though Sergei was detained for holding forged documents.

He was later found guilty of using a fake passport by a Lithuanian court.

The couple are now living in a shelter for asylum seekers and hope to settle in Lithuania.

The Ukrainian army sent them a letter of thanks – at the request of their former handler in Kyiv – to support their application for asylum. The BBC has seen a copy of the letter.

The BBC has also seen documents from official bodies in both Russia and Ukraine that confirm what happened to the Voronkovs. We are not reproducing them to protect the identities of those involved.

The Voronkovs’ actions have caused deep rifts in the family.

Their son, who remains in Russia, stopped talking to his parents after learning what they had done.  Sergei’s mother, who is 87, still lives in Russia and is supportive of the war and President Putin.

But despite this, the couple are adamant they will never return to Russia.

“Only if it starts showing some humanity,” Sergei says.

“For now, I see nothing human there.”

There is no excitement as the camera passes. The children barely glance. What can surprise a child who lives among the dead, the dying, the waiting to die? Hunger has worn them down.

They wait in queues for scant rations or for none at all. They have grown used to my colleague and his camera, filming for the BBC. He witnesses their hunger, their dying, and to the gentle wrapping of their bodies – or fragments of their bodies – in white shrouds upon which their names, if known, are written.

For 19 months of war, and now under a renewed Israeli offensive, this local cameraman – who I do not name, for his safety - has listened to the anguished cries of the survivors in hospital courtyards.

His physical distance is respectful, but they are on his mind, day and night. He is one of them, trapped in the same claustrophobic hell.

This morning he is setting out to find Siwar Ashour, a five-month-old girl whose emaciated frame and exhausted cry at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis affected him so much, when he was filming there earlier this month, that he wrote to tell me something had broken inside him.

She weighed just over 2kg (4lb 6oz). A baby girl of five months should be about 6kg or over.

Siwar has since been discharged and is now at home,  my colleague has heard. That is what brings him to the street of pulverised houses and makeshift shelters of canvas and corrugated iron.

He conducts his search in difficult circumstances. A few days ago I messaged to ask how he was doing. “I am not okay,” he replied. “Just a short while ago, the Israeli army announced the evacuation of most areas of Khan Younis… We don’t know what to do – there is no safe place to go.

“Al-Mawasi is extremely overcrowded with displaced people. We are lost and have no idea what the right decision is at this moment.”

He finds a one-bedroom shack, the entrance formed of a floral patterned, grey and black curtain. Inside there are three mattresses, part of a chest of drawers, and a mirror which reflects sunlight across the floor in front of Siwar, her mother Najwa and her grandmother, Reem.

Siwar is quiet, held secure by the protective presence of the two women. The baby cannot absorb regular milk formula because of a severe allergic reaction. Under the conditions of war and an Israeli blockade on aid arrivals, there is a severe shortage of the formula she needs.

Najwa, 23, explains that her condition stabilised when she was in Nasser hospital, so doctors discharged her with a can of baby formula several days ago.

Now at home, she says the baby’s weight has started to slip again. “The doctors told me that Siwar improved and is better than before, but I think that she is still skinny and hasn’t improved much. They found her only one can of milk, and it [has] started running out.”

Flies dance in front of Siwar’s face. “The situation is very dire,” says Najwa, “the insects come at her, I have to cover her with a scarf so nothing touches her”.

Siwar has lived with the sound of war since last November when she was born. The artillery, the rockets, falling bombs – distant and near. The gunfire, the blades of Israeli drones whirring overhead. Najwa explains: “She understands these things. The sound of the tanks, warplanes, and rockets are so loud and they are close to us. When Siwar hears these sounds, she gets startled and cries. If she is sleeping, she wakes up startled and crying.”

Doctors in Gaza say many young mothers report being unable to breastfeed their babies due to lack of nutrition. The pressing problem is food and clean water.

Najwa was malnourished herself when Siwar was born. She and her mother Reem still find it difficult to get anything to eat themselves. It is the struggle of every waking hour. “In our case, we can’t provide milk or diapers because of the prices and the border closure.”

On 22 May, Israeli military body Cogat said there was no food shortage in Gaza. It said “significant quantities of baby food and flour for bakeries” had been brought into the enclave in recent days.

The agency has repeatedly insisted that Hamas steals aid, while the Israeli government says the war will continue until Hamas is destroyed and the Israeli hostages held in Gaza are released. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 20 hostages seized by Hamas in the 7 October 2023 attacks are believed to be alive and up to 30 others dead.

Aid agencies, the United Nations and many foreign governments, including Britain, reject Cogat’s comment that there is no food shortage. US President Donald Trump has also spoken of people “starving” in Gaza.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the amount of aid Israel has allowed into Gaza as “a teaspoon”. He said Palestinians were “enduring what may be the cruellest phase of this cruel conflict” with restricted supplies of fuel, shelter, cooking gas and water purification supplies.

According to the UN, 80% of Gaza is now either designated as an Israeli militarised zone or a place where people have been ordered to leave.

The denials, the expressions of concern, the condemnations and the moments which seemed like turning points have come and gone throughout this war. The sole constant is the suffering of Gaza’s 2.1 million people, like Najwa and her daughter Siwar.

“One does not think about the future or the past,” Najwa says.

There is only the present moment and how to survive it.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla will arrive in Canada later, for a two-day visit seen as bringing a message of support for the country in the face of threats and taunts from US President Donald Trump.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who recently won a general election on a wave of anti-Trump sentiment, invited the royal couple and will hold a meeting with them during their stay in Ottawa.

The King will read the “Speech from the Throne” to Canada’s Parliament on Tuesday, the first time a monarch has delivered this for almost 50 years.

It is expected to include a defence of Canada’s sovereignty and to reject claims it should be taken over by the US.

There will be a ceremonial welcome at the airport in Ottawa on Monday and meetings with community groups, which are expected to include representatives of Canada’s First Nation communities.

The King will meet Canada’s first indigenous Governor General Mary Simon.

This is the King and Queen’s first visit to Canada since the start of their reign, after a planned trip last year was cancelled because of King Charles’s cancer diagnosis.

By reading the Speech from the Throne the King is following in the footsteps of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who carried out the duty twice during her long reign in 1957 and 1977.

But the timing of this week’s visit has been seen as a sign of solidarity with Canada, after calls from Trump for the country to become the 51st US state.

The US threat has inflamed public opinion with some businesses in Ottawa, as elsewhere in Canada, putting on displays of national identity such as “Proudly Canadian” posters.

Carney, when he visited Trump at the White House earlier this month, stressed that Canada was “not for sale” and that message is likely to be conveyed in the King’s speech which is written on the advice of Canada’s government.

Former Canadian high commissioner to the UK Jeremy Kinsman said this was a message the King will be pleased to deliver.

“It’s going to be very affirmative of Canadian sovereignty. And I can say personally that it’s something that King Charles will celebrate saying. I have no doubt,” said Mr Kinsman, who worked as a diplomat with the King when he was Prince of Wales.

The speech, to be delivered in French and English, will set out the Canadian government’s policy agenda in a way that is similar to the King’s Speech at the State Opening of Parliament in Westminster.

But it is also expected to have lines asserting the independence of Canada – a Commonwealth country and Nato member.

Speaking ahead of the King’s visit and State Opening, Carney said: “This is an historic honour which matches the weight of our times.”

In terms of the ceremony, the King is expected to wear a suit, in an event that will be more low key than the crown and elaborate robes on display in the UK’s opening of Parliament.

As well as the speech in Parliament, this brief trip will include community events in Ottawa and a chance to meet local leaders.

This royal visit will be something of a diplomatic balancing act. The King is head of state of both Canada and the UK – and in his UK role, the King has been helping to maintain good relations with the US, sending a warm personal letter to President Trump inviting him for a second state visit.

In Canada, he will be expected to reflect a very different message, with Canada’s government rejecting Trump’s ambition to take over the country.

Ahead of the visit, a royal source said: “The King has long experience and great skill in walking that diplomatic tightrope.

“He’s held in high regard around the globe and across the political spectrum, with good relations with world leaders who understand his unique position.”

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North Korea has arrested a fourth official over the failed launch of a new warship that has enraged the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un.

Ri Hyong-son, deputy director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Munitions Industry Department, was “largely responsible for the serious accident” last week, state-run news agency KCNA said on Monday.

The 5,000-ton destroyer had tipped over and damaged its hull, in what Kim described as a “criminal act” that “severely damaged the [country’s] dignity and pride”.

The vessel is being repaired under the guidance of an expert group, KCNA said.

Mr Ri, who is part of the party’s Central Military Commission, is the highest level official arrested over the incident so far.

The commission commands the Korean People’s Army and is responsible for developing and implementing North Korea’s military policies.

Over the weekend, Pyongyang also detained three officials at the northern Chongjin shipyard, where the destroyer was built and where its launch failed.

The officials were the chief engineer, its construction head and an administrative manager.

Kim earlier said Wednesday’s incident was caused by “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism”.

It is not clear what punishment they might face, but the authoritarian state has been known to sentence officials it finds guilty of wrongdoing to forced labour and even death.

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

Some analysts believe Kim’s swift and severe response was meant as a signal that Pyongyang will continue to advance its military capabilities.

While such criticism is “not surprising” for a dictatorship, it is unusual that state media is openly reporting it, says Chun In-bum, a former commander of South Korea’s special forces.

“I fear this might be a sign of confidence and a show of resilience,” he says.

“With this new line of ships, North Korea seems to intend on challenging the sovereignty of the South in earnest.”

Michael Madden, a North Korea expert from the Stimson Center in Washington, sees Kim’s response as a sign of the “high priority” his regime is putting into developing warships.

The mishap may have resulted from officials “trying to do too much at once”, he notes, saying that “there seems to have been an unusual amount of internal pressure on the personnel and production units to get this all done”.

Last week’s shipyard accident comes weeks after North Korea unveiled a similar warship in another part of the country.

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

Farooq Ahmed still bristles with anger when he talks about his brother’s death.

Mohammad Iqbal, a resident of Poonch city in Indian-administered Kashmir, died in cross-border shelling on 7 May, the morning after India launched a series of air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in retaliation to a militant attack in the town of Pahalgam that killed 26 people. Pakistan has denied having any role in the attack.

Mr Ahmed says that Iqbal died where he had worked for more than two decades – Zia-ul-Uloom, a madrassa, or a religious centre focused on Islamic teachings, in Poonch.

But his death, it turned out, was just the beginning of the family’s troubles.

As the news spread, several media channels falsely accused Iqbal of being a terrorist, following which the police put out a statement refuting the claim.

“My brother was a teacher but they saw his beard and skullcap and branded him a terrorist,” Mr Ahmed says.

“It was like having salt rubbed into our wounds. We had lost Iqbal and then the media defamed him. The dead can’t defend themselves.”

Indian officials say that a total of 16 people, including Iqbal, were killed in the cross-border shelling during the four-day military conflict that broke out between India and Pakistan following the airstrikes.

Pakistan has claimed 40 civilian deaths, though, it remains unclear how many of these were directly caused by the shelling.

The two nuclear-armed countries have shared a tense relationship for decades, as both administer the Himalayan region of Kashmir in part, but claim it in full.

They have fought three wars over Kashmir since independence from Britain in 1947 and came back from the brink of another one earlier this month.

But as the military conflict escalated, another battle played out on social media – a disinformation war of claims and counterclaims that circulated online and on TV.

Just like rumours about Iqbal’s identity, other misleading and inaccurate information also found its way into some mainstream news channels and websites.

This included claims such as India having destroyed Pakistan’s Karachi port, which was later debunked by the Indian government.

Some of the other fabrications were harder to spot, like an AI-generated video of a Pakistan army general claiming that his country had lost two aircraft in combat.

“The scale of misinformation and fact-free assertions being broadcast by the media was shocking,” says Manisha Pande, managing editor at Newslaundry, an independent news platform.

She notes that while a degree of sensationalism is expected as channels compete for viewership, “the jingoistic and irresponsible coverage” of the conflict was unprecedented in its intensity — and unlike anything she had witnessed before.

No one knows this better than Mr Ahmed.

“I don’t know where news channels got the information about my brother from,” Mr Ahmed says.

“Who did they speak to? What kind of evidence did they have that my brother was a terrorist?” he asks.

Weeks later, the family is still reeling from the tragedy.

Mr Ahmed says that on 7 May, his brother left home for the madrassa in the morning as usual, but it was his body that returned home. By noon, they had buried him in a nearby cemetery.

For some time, the family had no idea about the misinformation that was being shared by some news outlets. They were busy performing Iqbal’s last rites.

It was only hours later that a relative received a WhatsApp forward – a video clip of a prominent news channel claiming that the Indian army had killed a terrorist, with Iqbal’s photo flashing on the screen.

“We were shocked. Soon, we began getting more calls from people asking us what was going on and why was the media calling Iqbal a terrorist,” Mr Ahmed says.

The claim was shared by some prominent channels, including Zee News, ABP and News18. The BBC has reached out to the channels for comment.

One channel claimed that Iqbal was killed in an “Indian strike on a terrorist camp” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and that he was a terrorist with Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

“Our family members have been staying in Poonch for generations. How can they say my brother was living in Pakistan? They [the media] should be ashamed,” Mr Ahmed says.

The accusation against Iqbal was circulated so widely and swiftly that on 8 May, the Poonch police put out a statement, clarifying that Iqbal had died in cross-border shelling in the madrasa.

“Poonch Police strongly refutes such false narratives. The deceased, Maulana Mohd Iqbal, was a respected religious figure in the local community and had no affiliation with any terror outfit,” the statement said, adding that legal action would be taken against any media outlet or individual who circulated the fake news.

But for Mr Ahmed, the statement was too little too late.

“By then, the false claim would’ve already reached millions of people in India,” he says.

He adds that except for one channel, News18, no one else had publicly apologised to him or their viewers for the mistake.

Mr Ahmed says he wants to take legal action against the channels, but the process would have to wait as the family is struggling to make ends meet.

Iqbal is survived by his two wives and eight children. He was the only earning member in his family.

Mr Ahmed says that the compensation given by the government, which amounts to a few million rupees, will last only for a year or two and they must start planning for the future now.

“The whole family depended on my brother. He was a quiet and gentle man who loved teaching children,” Mr Ahmed says.

“But who’s going to tell this to the world? For many people, my brother is still a terrorist whose killing is justified. How will they understand our pain?”