China says the US has “severely violated” their trade truce and that it will take strong measures to defend its interests.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said Washington has “seriously undermined” the agreement reached during talks in Geneva last month, when both countries lowered tariffs on goods imported from each other.

The spokesperson added that US actions have also severely violated the consensus reached during a phone call in January between China’s leader Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump.

The comments come after Trump on Friday that China had “totally violated its agreement with us”.

The US President did not give details but Trade Representative Jamieson Greer later said China had not been removing non-tariff barriers as agreed under the deal.

Under the trade truce struck in May at a meeting in Geneva, the US lowered tariffs imposed on goods from China from 145% to 30%. China’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods dropped from 125% to 10%.

On Monday, Beijing said US violations of the agreement included stopping sales of computer chip design software to Chinese companies, warning against using chips made by Chinese tech giant Huawei, and cancelling visas for Chinese students.

The deal reached in Geneva came as a surprise to many analysts as it seemed that the two sides were incredibly far apart on many trade issues.

This showed that during face-to-face talks Washington and Beijing can reach agreements.

But as the rhetoric is once again ratcheting up, the fragility of the current truce has been highlighted and gives an indication of just how challenging it may be to reach a longer-term trade deal.

Although the fresh accusations may suggest that talks between Washington and Beijing are not going well, two top White House officials suggested on Sunday that Trump and Xi could hold talks soon.

Treasury Secretary Bessent told CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, that details of the trade will be “ironed out” once Xi and Trump speak, but he did not say exactly when that conversation is expected to happen.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told ABC News that the two leaders are expected to talk this week and “both sides have expressed a willingness to talk”.

“The bottom line is that we’ve got to be ready in case things don’t happen the way we want,” Hassett said of the expected talks.

But the Chinese side prefers agreements to be done at a lower level first before they reach the desk of the president.

Last week, Trump announced the US would double its current tariffs on steel and aluminium from 25% to 50%, starting on Wednesday.

Speaking at a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Friday, Trump said the move would help boost the local steel industry and national supply, while reducing reliance on China.

The striking feature of this election has been the leading opposition candidate, Lee Jae-myung, campaigning in a bullet-proof vest.

At a recent rally, he was escorted to the podium by close protection officers, ready to shield him with their ballistic briefcases. He then addressed the crowd from behind bullet-proof glass, under the gaze of rooftop watchers.

This is not South Korean politics as usual. But South Korea has not been itself lately.

It is still recovering from the martial law crisis last December, when the president, Yoon Suk Yeol, tried to orchestrate a military takeover.

He failed, because of resistance from the public and politicians, and was impeached, triggering this snap election to choose his successor.

But the chaos Yoon unleashed that night has festered.

While stuck in limbo, without a president, the country has become more polarised and its politics more violent.

At street protests earlier this year it became commonplace to chant for various political leaders to be executed. And since launching his presidential bid, Lee has been receiving death threats, and his team say they have even uncovered a credible plot to assassinate him.

This election is an opportunity to steer South Korea back onto safer, more stable ground, and heal these fractures.

Given this, the ruling party was always going to struggle, marred by President Yoon’s self-defeating coup. But rather than break away from the disgraced former president, the conservative People Power Party (PPP) has chosen a candidate who repeatedly defended Yoon and his actions.

Kim Moon-soo, Yoon’s former labour minister, was the only cabinet member who refused to stand and apologise during a parliamentary hearing into martial law. He said sorry only well into his campaign, after he had won Yoon’s public endorsement.

This has turned the election into more of a referendum on martial law than anything else. Given most of the public overwhelmingly rejected the move, it has also virtually gilded the path for the opposition leader Lee, who famously livestreamed himself scaling the walls of the parliament complex, to get inside and vote down the president’s order.

Now the Democratic Party politician portrays himself as the only candidate who can ensure this never happens again. He has said he will change the constitution to make it more difficult for future presidents to declare martial law.

“We must prevent the return of the rebellion forces,” Lee urged voters at his recent rally from behind fortified glass.

Such promises have pulled in people from across the political spectrum. “I didn’t like Lee before, but since martial law I now trust and depend on him,” said 59-year-old Park Suh-jung, who admitted this was the first time she had attended a political event.

One man in his 50s said he was a member of another smaller political party, but had decided to back Lee this time: “He is the only person who can end Yoon’s martial law insurrection. We need to stop those who destroyed our democracy.”

Most recent polls put Lee about 10 points ahead of his rival Kim, but he was not always so popular. This is his second time running for president, having lost out to Yoon three years ago. He is a divisive character, who has been embroiled in a series of court cases and political scandals. There are many who do not trust him, who loathe him even.

Kim, hoping to capitalise on this, has branded himself “the fair and just candidate”. It is a slogan his supporters have adopted, many seemingly backing him not for his policies, but because he is not Lee.

“I don’t like Kim but at this point there’s no real choice. The other candidate has too many issues,” said one elderly woman who is planning to vote for him.

Kim has charted an unusual political path. As a student who campaigned for workers’ rights, he was tortured and imprisoned under South Korea’s right-wing dictatorship in the 1980s but then moved sharply to the right himself.

He was picked by the party base, many of whom are still loyal to Yoon. The party leadership, realising he was not the best choice, tried to replace him at the last minute with a more moderate, experienced politician, only to be blocked by furious members.

This has left the party weak and divided, with many suspecting it will splinter into rival factions after voting day. “Haven’t we already imploded?” one party insider said to me recently, their face crumpled in their hands. “This is a miserable campaign.”

“Choosing Kim is the biggest mistake the conservative party have made in this election, and they do know that. They will have to be held accountable for this decision,” said Jeongmin Kim, the executive director of Korea Pro, a Seoul-based news and analysis service.

Lee has seized this opportunity to hoover up centrist votes. He has shifted his policies to the right, and even claimed his left-leaning party is, in fact, conservative.

This, despite his reputation as a staunch leftist. He grew up in a slum outside Seoul, working in factories rather than attending school, and is someone who has previously quoted US senator Bernie Sanders.

But gone are his previous pledges to introduce a universal basic income. This time, he is courting South Korea’s powerful conglomerate businesses, the chaebols. He has even incorporated the conservative colour red into his own blue logo, and hits the campaign trail wearing red and blue trainers.

He has rebranded his foreign policy too. Typically, his Democratic Party is cautious about Korea’s security alliance with the US, preferring to prioritise relations with China and North Korea.

But Lee is casting himself as a “pragmatist” who can adapt to a changing security environment. “The US-Korea alliance is the backbone of our national security. It should be strengthened and deepened,” he said in a recent televised debate.

All this has left voters and diplomats here unsure of what he really stands for, and what he will do if elected – though this seems to be the point.

Ms Kim, Korea Pro’s analyst, believes his makeover is more genuine than might appear. “He was already high up in the polls, so he didn’t need to work hard to win votes,” she said. “I think he is playing a longer game. He wants to be a popular leader, someone who can be trusted by more than half of the country.”

Bringing the country together will be the biggest challenge for whoever wins.

When people vote on Tuesday, it will be six months to the day since they came out onto the streets to resist a military takeover.

After months of chaos, they are desperate to move forward, so the country can start addressing pressing issues that have been on hold, including tariff negotiations with US President Donald Trump.

But more than anything they hope this election can restore their own confidence in their democracy, which has been badly shaken.

At a baseball game in the capital Seoul last week – arguably the only place where Koreans are as tribal as they are about politics – both sides were united, acutely aware of this election’s importance.

“I’m really concerned about our democracy,” said Dylan, a data engineer. “I hope we have the power to save it and make it greater than before. My vote is a piece of power.”

“The next president needs to show people clearly and transparently what he is doing,” said one man in his mid-20s. “We need to watch him carefully.”

If Lee is to win, and by the margin the polls suggest, he would have a solid mandate, as well as control of parliament, giving him three years to implement major political reforms.

That could be good for rebuilding South Korea’s stability but would come with its own challenges, said the political analyst Ms Kim.

“If Lee wins, he will have a lot of power. {Given how Yoon behaved} he will need to be very responsible when using it.”

A Chinese Harvard graduate’s speech calling for unity in a divided world, delivered days after the US vowed to “aggressively” revoke Chinese students’ visas, has sparked mixed reactions in the US and her home country.

“We don’t rise by proving each other wrong. We rise by refusing to let one another go,” Jiang Yurong said on Thursday, the same day a US federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students at Harvard.

Her speech went viral on the Chinese internet, with some saying it moved them to tears. However, others said her elite background is not representative of Chinese students.

In the US, some have flagged her alleged links with the Chinese Communist Party.

In their efforts to restrict Harvard from enrolling foreign students, US authorities had accused the institution of “co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

Ms Jiang, who studied international development, was the first Chinese woman to speak at a Harvard graduation ceremony.

In her address, Ms Jiang emphasised the value of Harvard’s international classrooms, noting how that taught her and her classmates to “dance through each other’s traditions” and “carry the weight of each other’s worlds”.

“If we still believe in a shared future, let us not forget: those we label as enemies – they, too, are human. In seeing their humanity, we find our own,” said Ms Jiang, who spent her final two years of school at Cardiff Sixth Form College in Wales before going to Duke University in the US for her undergraduate degree.

A conservative X account, with the handle @amuse, criticised Harvard for choosing a graduation speaker who is “a representative of a CCP-funded and monitored non-government organisation”, alleging that her father works for a non-government organisation that “serves as a quasi-diplomatic agent for the [party]”.

The account, which has 639,000 followers, has previously posted pro-Donald Trump content, such as the US leader fighting Darth Vader and sexualised imagery of former Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Some Chinese social media users, on the other hand, allege that the organisation Ms Jiang’s father works for is backed by prominent American companies and foundations.

The BBC has not independently verified these allegations.

“This is why she could get a scholarship to go to the UK for high school, and later also to Harvard,” wrote a user on China’s X-like platform, Weibo.

Others called for her to stay on in the US, with comments that reeked with sarcasm. “Such talent should be left to the United States,” one wrote. “I hope she will continue to glow abroad and stay away from us!” read another.

But Ms Jiang’s vision of a “shared humanity” also struck a chord.

“That she is able to stand on an international stage and speak the heart of Chinese students has moved me to tears,” wrote a user on Red Note, another Chinese social media platform.

Another user defended Jiang by hitting back at those who criticised her: “You may not have changed them, but they’ve heard you… As more and more people speak out like you, you will eventually move and change others.”

There are around 6,800 international students at Harvard, who make up more than 27% of its enrolments in the past academic year.

About a third of these foreign students are from China, and more than 700 are Indian.

It’s a grim paradox, doctors say.

On the one hand, antibiotics are being overused until they no longer work, driving resistance and fuelling the rise of deadly superbugs. On the other hand, people are dying because they can’t access these life-saving drugs.

A new study by the non-profit Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) looked at access to antibiotics for nearly 1.5 million cases of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative (CRGN) infections across eight major low- and middle-income countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa. CRGN bacteria are superbugs resistant to last-line antibiotics – yet only 6.9% of patients received appropriate treatment in the countries studied.

India bore the lion’s share of CRGN infections and treatment efforts, procuring 80% of the full courses of studied antibiotics but managing to treat only 7.8% of its estimated cases, the study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal reports. (A full drug course of antibiotics refers to the complete set of doses that a patient needs to take over a specific period to fully treat an infection.)

Common in water, food, the environment and the human gut, Gram-negative bacteria cause infections such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia and food poisoning.

They can pose a serious threat to newborns and the elderly alike. Especially vulnerable are hospital patients with weakened immunity, often spreading rapidly in ICUs and proving difficult – and sometimes impossible – to treat. Treating carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections is doubly difficult because those bacteria are resistant to some of the most powerful antibiotics.

“These infections are a daily reality across all age groups,” says Dr Abdul Ghafur, infectious disease consultant at Apollo Hospital in India’s Chennai city. “We often see patients for whom no antibiotic works – and they die.”

The irony is cruel. While the world tries to curb antibiotic overuse, a parallel tragedy plays out quietly in poorer nations: people dying from treatable infections because the right drugs are out of reach.

“For years, the dominant narrative has been that antibiotics are being overused, but the stark reality is that many people with highly drug-resistant infections in low- and middle-income countries are not getting access to the antibiotics they need,” says Dr Jennifer Cohn, GARDP’s Global Access Director and senior author of the study.

• India’s ‘blockbuster’ drugs to take on deadly superbugs
• India facing a pandemic of antibiotics-resistant superbugs

The study examined eight intravenous drugs active against carbapenem-resistant bacteria – ranging from older antibiotics including Colistin to newer ones such as Ceftazidime-avibactam. Of the few available drugs, Tigecycline was the most widely used.

Researchers blame the treatment gap on weak health systems and limited access to effective antibiotics.

For example, only 103,647 full treatment courses were procured of Tigecycline across eight countries – far short of the 1.5 million patients who needed them, the study found. This highlighted a major shortfall in the global response to drug-resistant infections.

What prevents patients with drug-resistant infections in India from getting the right antibiotics?

Physicians point to multiple barriers – reaching the right health facility, getting accurate diagnostic tests, and accessing effective drugs. Cost remains a major hurdle, with many of these antibiotics priced far beyond the reach of poorer patients.

“Those who can afford these antibiotics often overuse them; those who can’t, don’t get them at all,” says Dr Ghafur. “We need a system that ensures access for the poor and prevents misuse by the well-to-do.”

To improve access, these drugs must be made more affordable. To prevent misuse, stronger regulation is key.

“Ideally, every antibiotic prescription in hospitals should require a second sign-off – by an infection specialist or microbiologist,” says Dr Ghafur. “Some hospitals do this, but most don’t. With the right oversight, regulators can ensure this becomes standard practice.”

To fix the access problem and curb misuse, both smarter policies and stronger safeguards are essential, say researchers. But access alone won’t solve the crisis – the pipeline of new antibiotics is drying up. The decline in antibiotic R&D – and the limited availability of existing drugs – is a global issue.

India bears one of the world’s heaviest burdens of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), but it may also hold the key to combating it – both at home and globally, researchers say.

“India is also one of the largest markets for new antibiotics and can successfully advocate for the development and access of new antibiotics,” says Dr Cohn. With a strong pharmaceutical base, the country is emerging as a hub for AMR innovation, from promising new antibiotics to advanced diagnostics.

Dr Cohn says India can strengthen its antibiotic response by generating local data to better estimate needs and pinpoint gaps in the care pathway.

This would allow for more targeted interventions to improve access to the right drugs.

Innovative models are already emerging – Kerala state, for instance, is using a “hub-and-spoke approach” to support lower-level facilities in managing serious infections. Coordinated or pooled procurement across hospitals or states could also reduce the cost of newer antibiotics, as seen with cancer drug programs, researchers say.

Without access to the right antibiotics, modern medicine begins to unravel – doctors risk losing the ability to safely perform surgery, treat complications in cancer patients, or manage everyday infections.

“As an infectious disease doctor, I see appropriate use as one part – but only one part – of access,” says Dr Ghafur. “When we get new antibiotics, it’s important to save them on one hand – and save them for right patients.”

Clearly, the challenge is not just to use antibiotics wisely, but to ensure they reach those who need them most.

It’s hard to exaggerate the sheer audacity – or ingenuity – that went into Ukraine’s countrywide assault on Russia’s air force.

We cannot possibly verify Ukrainian claims that the attacks resulted in $7bn (£5.2bn) of damage, but it’s clear that “Operation Spider’s Web” was, at the very least, a spectacular propaganda coup.

Ukrainians are already comparing it with other notable military successes since Russia’s full-scale invasion, including the sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, and the bombing of the Kerch Bridge, both in 2022, as well as a missile attack on Sevastopol harbour the following year.

Judging by details leaked to the media by Ukraine’s military intelligence, the SBU, the latest operation is the most elaborate achievement so far.

In an operation said to have taken 18 months to prepare, scores of small drones were smuggled into Russia, stored in special compartments aboard freight trucks, driven to at least four separate locations, thousands of miles apart, and launched remotely towards nearby airbases.

“No intelligence operation in the world has done anything like this before,” defence analyst Serhii Kuzan told Ukrainian TV.

“These strategic bombers are capable of launching long-range strikes against us,” he said. “There are only 120 of them and we struck 40. That’s an incredible figure.”

It is hard to assess the damage, but Ukrainian military blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko says that even if the bombers, and command and control aircraft were not destroyed, the impact is enormous.

“The extent of the damage is such that the Russian military-industrial complex, in its current state, is unlikely to be able to restore them in the near future,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

The strategic missile-carrying bombers in question, the Tu-95, Tu-22, and Tu-160 are, he said, no longer in production. Repairing them will be difficult, replacing them impossible.

The loss of the supersonic Tu-160, he said, would be especially keenly felt.

“Today, the Russian Aerospace Forces lost not just two of their rarest aircraft, but truly two unicorns in the herd,” he wrote.

Beyond the physical damage, which may or may not be as great as analysts here are assessing, Operation Spider’s Web sends another critical message, not just to Russia but also to Ukraine’s western allies.

My colleague Svyatoslav Khomenko, writing for the BBC Ukrainian Service website, recalls a recent encounter with a government official in Kyiv.

The official was frustrated.

“The biggest problem,” the official told Svyatoslav, “is that the Americans have convinced themselves we’ve already lost the war. And from that assumption everything else follows.”

Ukrainian defence journalist Illia Ponomarenko, posting on X, puts it another way, with a pointed reference to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s infamous Oval office encounter with Donald Trump.

“This is what happens when a proud nation under attack doesn’t listen to all those: ‘Ukraine has only six months left’. ‘You have no cards’. ‘Just surrender for peace, Russia cannot lose’.”

• Ukraine drones strike bombers during major attack in Russia

Even more pithy was a tweet from the quarterly Business Ukraine journal, which proudly proclaimed “It turns out Ukraine does have some cards after all. Today Zelensky played the King of Drones.”

This, then, is the message Ukrainian delegates carry as they arrive in Istanbul for a fresh round of ceasefire negotiations with representatives from the Kremlin: Ukraine is still in the fight.

The Americans “begin acting as if their role is to negotiate for us the softest possible terms of surrender,” the government official told Svyatoslav Khomenko.

“And then they’re offended when we don’t thank them. But of course we don’t – because we don’t believe we’ve been defeated.”

Despite Russia’s slow, inexorable advance through the battlefields of the Donbas, Ukraine is telling Russia, and the Trump administration, not to dismiss Kyiv’s prospects so easily.

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With all votes counted, right-wing historian Karol Nawrocki has been elected Poland’s new president, the state electoral commission (PKW) said.

PKW said Nawrocki won 50.9% percent of the votes – ahead of Warsaw’s liberal mayor Rafal Trzaskowski on 49.1% percent.

It’s a sensational turnaround from the result of the first exit poll – published immediately after voting ended at 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT) on Sunday – that showed Trzaskowski winning on 50.3% to Nawrocki’s 49.7%.

Trzaskowski had claimed victory after the first exit poll, while Nawrocki cautioned that the results were too close to call.

“We won, although the phrase ‘razor’s edge’ will forever enter the Polish language and politics,” Trzaskowski told his supporters.

His wife, Malgorzata, jokingly told the crowd, “I’m close to having a heart attack”.

Nawrocki, had said after the result of the first exit poll, “Let’s not lose hope for this night. We will win during the night, the difference is minimal. I believe that we will wake up tomorrow with President Karol Nawrocki.”

As Poland’s new president, Nawrocki is likely to continue to use his presidential power of veto to block Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU programme.

The result is also likely also re-energise Nawrocki’s supporters, the national conservative Law and Justice (PiS) opposition, which lost power eighteen months ago, giving them renewed belief they will be able to defeat Tusk’s coalition in 2027 parliamentary elections.

Nawrocki supports traditional Catholic and family values and is a strong supporter of Polish sovereignty within the EU.

He backs continued support for Ukraine, but has said he does not want to see the country joining NATO and the EU during Russia’s ongoing aggression.

Poland’s president is a largely ceremonial role with limited influence on foreign policy and defence, but the president can veto legislation. Tusk’s pro-EU coalition government lacks a large enough parliamentary majority to overturn it.

The current conservative incumbent president, Andrzej Duda, has used his powers to prevent Prime Minister Tusk delivering key campaign promises, including removing political influence from the judiciary and liberalising the country’s strict abortion law.

Duda, who could not run for re-election having already served two consecutive terms, congratulated Nawrocki.

“It was a difficult, sometimes painful but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted. Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute of the campaign!” Duda said.

Both presidential candidates support continued assistance for neighbouring Ukraine, but they differ over their approach to the EU. Trzaskowski, a former Europe minister, supports Tusk’s vision of a Poland at the heart of the European mainstream, influencing decisions through strong relations with Germany and France.

Nawrocki, 42, supports a strong sovereign Poland and does not want the country to cede any more powers to Brussels. He opposes the EU’s climate and migration policies.

He was relatively unknown nationally before he was selected by opposition party PiS to be their “unofficial” candidate.

A keen amateur boxer and footballer, he often posts images of himself working out. PiS presented him as a strong candidate who would stand up for ordinary Poles and the country’s national interests.

A fan of President Donald Trump, he flew to Washington during the Polish election campaign for an extremely brief meeting – and to get a thumbs-up photo of himself with Trump in the Oval Office.

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A “mass casualty influx” of people, many with gunshot or shrapnel wounds, was received at a Red Cross field hospital in southern Gaza, the organisation said, following disputed reports about an incident near an aid distribution centre in Rafah.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said 21 people were “declared dead upon arrival” while women and children were among 179 cases.

The organisation’s statement came after the Hamas-run civil defence agency in Gaza said at least 31 people were killed and many more wounded in the incident, which it blamed on “Israeli gunfire” targeting civilians.

But the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said findings from an initial inquiry showed its forces had not fired at people while they were near or within the aid centre.

The IDF also released drone footage it said showed armed and masked men throwing stones and shooting at civilians while they were collecting aid in the nearby city of Khan Younis. The BBC could not immediately verify the footage.

Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, into Gaza, making verifying what is happening in the territory difficult.

The group that runs the aid distribution centre, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), also denied the claims of injuries and casualties at its site and said they had been spread by Hamas.

As of Sunday evening, the situation on the ground remained unclear.

In its statement, the ICRC said the “Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah received a mass casualty influx of 179 cases, including women and children” early in the morning on Sunday.

It said “the majority suffered gunshot or shrapnel wounds”, and “twenty-one patients were declared dead upon arrival”. It is unclear if the number of people killed reported by the ICRC is separate to the Hamas health ministry’s reports.

“All patients said they had been trying to reach an aid distribution site,” the ICRC said.

The ICRC said it was the “highest number of weapon-wounded in a single incident since the establishment of the field hospital over a year ago”, and that it “far surpassed” the capacity of the 60-bed facility.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said in a statement that it had also responded to the “mass casualty” incident, and that the blood bank at Nasser hospital, where the injured were treated, was almost empty, with medical staff donating blood themselves to help the injured.

Claire Manera, the organisation’s emergency co-ordinator, said that the incident had “shown once again that this new system of aid delivery is dehumanising, dangerous and severely ineffective”.

The IDF said in a statement: “In recent hours, false reports have been spread, including serious allegations against the IDF regarding fire toward Gazan residents in the area of the humanitarian aid distribution site in the Gaza Strip.

“Findings from an initial inquiry indicate that the IDF did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false,” it added.

MSF said at least two patients told them they and others had been shot while trying to get aid. MSF communications officer Nour Alsaqa said in a statement that as MSF staff were treating patients, they also “received confirmation that a colleague’s brother had been killed while attempting to collect aid from the centre”.

Another incident was said to have happened near a separate aid centre in the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza, with the Palestinian Red Crescent reporting 14 injured.

The BBC was contacted by doctors at the Nasser hospital who said they had received about 200 people with injuries caused by bullets or shrapnel.

Local journalists and activists shared footage of bodies and wounded people being transported on donkey carts to the Red Cross field hospital in the al-Mawasi area.

The BBC has examined footage of bodies being carried on carts and in the back of lorries to Nasser Hospital.

Gaza’s health ministry said more than 200 cases had arrived at hospitals, including 31 dead.

Seventy-nine of the injured were brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, according to the emergency department, medical staff from British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians reported.

⁠Those killed and injured “were primarily struck by live gunfire, with many victims sustaining direct shots to the head or chest”, the charity’s staff said.

Victoria Rose, a British surgeon who has been working at Nasser Hospital, recorded a video mid-morning in which she motions to the beds with patients behind her and says “all the bays are full and they’re all gunshot wounds”.

The GHF, which distributes aid at these sites, denied any incident occurred near its distribution centres.

An IDF soldier in Rafah contacted the BBC to say that Israeli soldiers did fire near the crowd, but not at them, and that no-one was hit.

• BBC Verify: How controversial US-Israeli backed Gaza aid plan turned to chaos

Mohammed Ghareeb, a journalist in Rafah, told the BBC that Palestinians had gathered near the aid centre run by the GHF when Israeli tanks approached and opened fire on the crowd.

Mr Ghareeb said the crowd of Palestinians were near Al-Alam roundabout around 04:30 local time (02:30 BST), close to the aid centre run by GHF, shortly before Israeli tanks appeared and opened fire.

“The dead and wounded lay on the ground for a long time,” he said.

“Rescue crews could not access the area, which is under Israeli control. This forced residents to use donkey carts to transport victims to the field hospital.”

Mahmud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s main emergency service the Civil Defence, told AFP news agency that more than 100 people were wounded “due to gunfire from Israeli vehicles towards thousands of citizens”.

The incidents underscore the dire humanitarian conditions in Rafah, where recent Israeli military operations have severely limited access to aid and emergency services.

On Saturday, crowds of civilians rushed aid trucks into Gaza, the World Food Programme said, as hunger and desperation created chaotic scenes.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a new US and Israeli-backed organisation that has been distributing food at designated sites across Gaza. Israel set up the plan after accusing Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies.

The GHF said it had distributed 4.7 million meals this week, which the BBC has not been able to independently verify.

A military campaign was launched by Israel 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 54,418 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the territory’s health ministry.

The UK will build up to 12 new attack submarines, the prime minister will announce as the government unveils its major defence review on Monday.

The review is expected to recommend the armed forces move to “warfighting readiness” to deter growing threats faced by the UK.

Sir Keir Starmer will say up to 12 conventionally-armed nuclear-powered submarines will replace the UK’s current fleet from the late 2030s onwards.

The prime minister is also expected to confirm the UK will spend £15bn on its nuclear warhead programme.

Sir Keir will say that, alongside the UK’s nuclear-armed submarines, the new vessels would keep “Britain and Nato safe for decades”.

The Strategic Defence Review, commissioned by Labour, will shape the UK’s armed forces for years to come.

Led by ex-Labour defence secretary Lord Robertson it will make 62 recommendations, which the government is expected to accept in full.

Other announcements in the review will include:

• Commitment to £1.5bn to build six new factories to enable an “always on” munitions production capacity
• Building up to 7,000 long-range weapons including missiles or drones in the UK, to be used by British forces
• Pledge to set up a “cyber and electromagnetic command” to boost the military’s defensive and offensive capabilities in cyberspace
• Extra £1.5bn to 2029 to fund repairs to military housing
• £1bn on technology to speed up delivery of targeting information to soldiers

Defence Secretary John Healey has signalled he is not aiming to increase the overall size of the Army before the next general election.

On Sunday, he said his “first job” was to reverse a decline in numbers with a target to return to a strength of 73,000 full-time soldiers “in the next Parliament”.

Building the new submarines will support 30,000 jobs into the 2030s as well as 30,000 apprenticeships and 14,000 graduate roles across the next 10 years, the Ministry of Defence said.

Healey said: “Our outstanding submariners patrol 24/7 to keep us and our allies safe, but we know that threats are increasing and we must act decisively to face down Russian aggression.”

The Astute class is the Royal Navy’s current fleet of attack submarines, which have nuclear-powered engines and are armed with conventional torpedoes and missiles.

As well as protecting maritime task groups and gathering intelligence, they protect the Vanguard class of submarines that carry the UK’s trident nuclear missiles.

In the Astute series, HMS Agamemnon, was launched last October and another is under construction which will take the number of submarines in this class to seven.

The next generation of attack submarines that will replace them, SSN-AUKUS, have been developed with the Australian Navy under a deal agreed in 2023 by the Conservative government.

Meanwhile work on modernising the warheads carried by Trident Missiles is already under way.

The £15bn investment into the warhead programme will back the government’s commitments to maintain the continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrent.

In his announcement on Monday, Sir Keir is to repeat a Labour manifesto commitment to deliver the Dreadnought class of nuclear-armed submarines, which are due to replace the ageing Vanguard fleet from the early 2030s onwards.

The MoD’s Defence Nuclear Enterprise accounts for 20% of its budget and includes the cost of building four Dreadnought class submarines.

Commitments on military spending come against the background of the government’s wider review of departmental spending due later this month and have also taken on renewed importance given the Ukraine war, and pressure from Nato and US President Donald Trump for European countries to step up defence spending.

Sir Keir has committed the government to spending 2.5% of the UK’s national income on defence by 2027, up from 2.3%, but has faced pressure to commit to 3%.

Healey said the target will be hit by 2034 but the Conservatives say the threshold should be hit earlier. The Liberal Democrats have also argued for a 3% spending target.

Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said Labour’s review should be “taken with a pinch of salt” unless the government showed there would be enough money to pay for it.

Head of Nato, Mark Rutte has called on allies to spend 3.5% of its GDP on defence, with a further 1.5% on defence related expenditure.

The government has said it wants Britain to be the leading European nation within the Nato alliance but that might prove difficult when a significant number of allies exceed the UK’s military spending.

It says its review will reverse decades of underinvestment in Britain’s armed forces. But it remains to be seen if the investment will be enough.

The ambitions of past defence reviews have rarely been matched by resources.

Sir Salman Rushdie says he has moved on from the knife attack which has seen his attacker jailed for attempted murder.

Hadi Matar, 27, was sentenced to 25 years last month after repeatedly stabbing Sir Salman on a New York lecture stage in 2022.

Sir Salman, who has a new book out later this year, told the Hay Festival that an “important moment” came for him when he and his wife Eliza “went back to the scene of the crime to show myself I could stand up where I fell down”.

“It will be nice to talk about fiction again because ever since the attack, really the only thing anybody’s wanted to talk about is the attack, but I’m over it.”

Sir Salman recently told Radio 4’s Today programme that he was “pleased” the man who tried to kill him had received the maximum possible prison sentence.

The Midnight’s Children and Satanic Verses writer was left with life-changing injuries after the incident – he is now blind in one eye, has damage to his liver and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm.

Last year, Sir Salman published a book titled Knife reflecting on the event, which he has described as “my way of fighting back”.

The attack came 35 years after Sir Salman’s controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which had long made him the target of death threats for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

In November, the author will publish a short story collection, The Eleventh Hour, his first work of fiction to be written since the stabbing.

Security was tight for Sir Salman’s event, with sniffer dogs present and bag checks leading to a 15-minute delay.

He waved at the audience as he entered the stage and humbly gestured to them to stop applauding before joking that: “I can’t see everyone – but I can hear them.”

He said he was feeling “excellent” although there “were bits of me that I’m annoyed about, like not having a right eye. But on the whole, I’ve been very fortunate and I’m in better shape than maybe I would have expected.”

In a wide-ranging discussion, Sir Salman also touched on US politics, declaring that “America was not in great shape”.

In an apparent reference to President Donald Trump, Sir Salman spoke about “the moment of hope, that image of Barack and Michelle Obama walking down the mall in DC with the crowds around them… people dancing in the streets in New York. And to go from that to the orange moment that we live in, it’s, let’s just say, disappointing.”

But he said he was still positive about the future.

“I think I suffer from the optimism disease… I can’t help thinking somehow it will be alright.”

Speaking about free speech, he said “it means tolerating people who say things you don’t like”.

He recalled a time when a film “in which I was the villain”, made around the time of the uproar over Satanic Verses, was not classified by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) “because it was in a hundred ways defamatory” but he asked them to allow its release.

“So they gave it a certificate… and nobody went. You know why? Lousy movie. And it taught me a lesson. Let it out and trust the audience. And that’s still my view.

“I think we do live in a moment when people are too eager to prohibit speech they disapprove of. That’s a very slippery slope”. He warned young people “to think about it.”

When asked about the effect of AI on authors, Sir Salman said: “I don’t have Chat GPT… I try very hard to pretend it doesn’t exist. Someone asked it to write a couple of hundred words like me… it was terrible. And it has no sense of humour.”

Despite being considered one of the greatest living writers, Sir Salman joked that authors “don’t even have that much money… except the two of us (him and host Erica Wagner) and those who write about child wizards… the Taylor Swift of literature,” referring to JK Rowling.

“Good on her.”

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An Byunghui was in the middle of a video game on the night of 3 December when she learned that the South Korean president had declared martial law.

She couldn’t quite believe it – until the internet blew up with the evidence. The shock announcement from then-president Yoon Suk Yeol, the now-famous shots of soldiers breaking down the windows of the National Assembly and MPs scaling the walls to force their way into the building so they could vote the motion down.

Within hours, thousands had spurred into protest, especially young women. And Byunghui joined them, travelling hundreds of miles from Daegu in the south-east to the capital Seoul.

They turned up not just because Yoon’s decision had alarmed and angered them, but to protest against a president who insisted South Korea was free of sexism – despite the deep discrimination and flashes of violence that said otherwise.

They returned week after week as the investigation into Yoon’s abuse of power went on – and they rejoiced when he was impeached after four dramatic months.

And yet, with the country set to elect a new president on 3 June, those very women say they feel invisible again.

The two main candidates have been largely silent about equality for women. A polarising subject, it had helped Yoon into power in 2022 as he vowed to defend men who felt sidelined in a world that they saw as too feminist. And a third candidate, who is popular among young men for his anti-feminist stance, has been making headlines.

For many young South Korean women, this new name on the ballot symbolises a new fight.

“So many of us felt like we were trying to make the world a better place by attending the [anti-Yoon] rallies,” the 24-year-old college student says.

“But now, I wonder if anything has really improved… I can’t shake the feeling that they’re trying to erase women’s voices.”

When Byunghui arrived at the protests, she was struck by the atmosphere.

The bitter December cold didn’t stop tens of thousands of women from gathering. Huddling inside hooded jackets or under umbrellas, waving lightsticks and banners, singing hopeful K-pop numbers, they demanded Yoon’s ouster.

“Most of those around me were young women, we were singing ‘Into the World’ by Girls’ Generation,” Byunghui says.

Into the World, a hit from 2007 by one of K-pop’s biggest acts, became an anthem of sorts in the anti-Yoon rallies. Women had marched to the same song nearly a decade ago in anti-corruption protests that ended another president’s career.

“The lyrics – about not giving up on this world and dreaming of a new world,” Byunghui says, “just overwhelmed me. I felt so close to everyone”.

There are no official estimates of how many of the protesters were young women. Approximately one in three were in their 20s or 30s, according to research by local news outlet Chosun Daily.

An analysis by BBC Korean found that women in their 20s were the largest demographic at one rally in December, where there were 200,000 of them – almost 18% of those in attendance. In comparison, there were just over 3% of men in their 20s at that rally.

The protests galvanised women in a country where discrimination, sexual harassment and even violence against them has long been pervasive, and the gender pay gap – at 31% – is the widest among rich nations.

Like in so many other places, plummeting birth rates in South Korea too have upped the pressure on young women to marry and have children, with politicians often encouraging them to play their part in a patriarchal society.

“I felt like all the frustration that has built up inside me just burst forth,” says 23-year-old Kim Saeyeon . “I believe that’s why so many young women turned up. They wanted to express all that dissatisfaction.”

For 26-year-old Lee Jinha, it was the desire to see Yoon go: “I tried to go every week. It wasn’t easy. It was incredibly cold, super crowded, my legs hurt and I had a lot of work to do… but it was truly out of a sense of responsibility.”

That is not surprising, according to Go Min-hee, associate professor of political science at Ewha Women’s University, who says Yoon had the reputation of being “anti-feminist” and had “made it clear he was not going to support policies for young women”.

There were protests on the other side too, backing Yoon and his martial law order. Throughout, many young South Korean men have supported Yoon, who positioned himself as a champion of theirs, mirroring their grievances in his presidential campaign in 2022.

These men consider themselves victims of “reverse discrimination”, saying they feel marginalised by policies that favour young women. One that is often cited is the mandatory 18 months they must spend in the military, which they believe puts them at a severe disadvantage compared to women.

They label as “man haters” those women who call themselves feminists. And they have been at the heart of a fierce online backlash against calls for greater gender equality.

These groups have long existed, mostly out of the public eye. But over the years they moved closer to the mainstream as their traction online grew, especially under Yoon.

It was them that Yoon appealed to in his campaign pledges, vowing to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, saying it focused too much on women’s rights.

And he consistently denied systemic gender inequality existed in South Korea, which ranks near the bottom on the issue among developed countries.

But his message hit home. A survey by a local newspaper the year before he was elected had found that 79% of young men in their 20s felt “seriously discriminated against” because of their gender.

“In the last presidential election, gender conflict was mobilised by Yoon’s party,” says Kim Eun-ju, director of the Center for Korean Women and Politics. “They actively strengthened the anti-feminist tendencies of some young men in their 20s.”

During Yoon’s term, she says, government departments or publicly-funded organisations with the word “women” in their title largely disappeared or dropped the reference altogether.

The impact has been polarising. It alienated young women who saw this as a rollback of hard-won rights, even as it fuelled the backlash against feminism.

Byunghui saw this up-close back home in Daegu. She says anti-Yoon protests were overwhelmingly female. The few men who came were usually older.

Young men, she adds, even secondary school students, would often drive past the protests she attended cursing and swearing at them. She says some men even threatened to drive into the crowd.

“I wondered if they would have acted this way had the protest been led by young men?”

With Yoon gone, his People Power Party (PPP) is in disarray and still reeling from his fall.

And this is the first time in 18 years that there is no woman among the seven candidates runnning for president. “It’s shocking,” Jinha says, “that there’s no-one”. In the last election, there were two women among 14 presidential candidates.

The PPP’s Kim Moon-soo is trailing frontrunner Lee Jae-myung, from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP). But young women tell the BBC they have been disappointed by 61-year-old Lee.

“It’s only after criticism that that there were no policies targeting women that the DP began adding a few,” Saeyeon says. “I wish they could have drawn a blueprint for improving structural discrimination.”

When he was asked at the start of his campaign about policies targeting gender inequality, Lee responded: “Why do you keep dividing men and women? They are all Koreans.”

After drawing critcism, the DP acknowledged that women still “faced structural discrimination in many areas”. And it pledged to tackle inequality for women with more resources at every level.

During his presidential bid in 2022, Lee was more vocal about the prejudice South Korean women encounter, seeking their votes in the wake of high-profile sexual harassment scandals in his party.

He had promised to put women in top positions in the government and appointed a woman as co-chair of the DP’s emergency committee.

“It’s evident that the DP is focusing significantly less on young women than they did in the [2022] presidential election,” Ms Kim says.

Prof Go believes it’s because Lee “lost by a very narrow margin” back then. So this time, he is “casting the widest net possible” for votes. “And embracing feminist issues is not a good strategy for that.”

That stings for young women like Saeyeon, especially after the role they played in the protests calling for Yoon’s impeachment: “Our voices don’t seem to be reflected in the [campaign] pledges at all. I feel a bit abandoned.”

The ruling party’s Kim Moon-soo, who served in Yoon’s cabinet as labour minister, has emphasised raising birth rates by offering more financial support to parents.

But many women say rising costs are not the only obstacle. And that most politicians don’t address the deeper inequalities – which make it hard to balance a career and family – that are making so many women reconsider the usual choices.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which Yoon had wanted to shut down, has also re-emerged as a sticking point.

Lee has vowed to strengthen the ministry, while Kim says he will replace it with a Ministry of Future Youth and Family.

The ministry already focuses on family services, education and welfare for children. Just under 7% of its total funding, which is about 0.2% of the government’s annual budget, goes towards improving equality for women. But Prof Go says the ministry was “politicised by Yoon and has since been weaponised”.

“The ministry itself is not huge but it’s symbolic… abolishing it would show that gender equality is unimportant.”

It’s also the target of a third candidate, 40-year-old Lee Jun-seok, a former leader of Yoon’s party, who has since launched his own Reform Party.

Although trailing Kim in polls, Lee Jun-seok has been especially popular with many young men for his anti-feminist views.

Earlier this week, he drew swift outrage after a presidential debate in which he said: “If someone says they want to stick chopsticks in women’s genitals or some place like that, is that misogyny?”

He said the “someone” was frontunner Lee Jae-myung’s son, who he claimed made the comment online, an allegation which the Lee camp has sidestepped, apologising for other controversial posts.

But watching Lee Jun-seok say that on live TV “was genuinely terrifying,” Byunghui says. “I had the scary thought that this might boost incel communities.”

Saeyeon describes “anger and even despair” sinking the “hopes I had for politics, which weren’t that great to begin with”.

She believes his popularity “among certain sections of young men is one of the “significant repercussions” of South Korea “long neglecting structural discrimination” against women.

The only candidate to address the issue, 61-year-old Kwon Young-gook, didn’t fare well in early polling.

“I’m still deliberating whether to vote for Lee Jae-myung or Kwon Young-gook,” Saeyeon says.

While Kwon represents her concerns, she says it’s smart to shore up the votes for Lee because she is “much more afraid of the next election, and the one after that”.

She is thinking about Lee Jun-seok, who some analysts believe could eat into the votes of a beleagured PPP, while appealing to Yoon’s base: “He is in the spotlight and as the youngest candidate, he could have a long career ahead.”

That is all the more reason to keep speaking out, Byunghui says. “It’s like there is dust on the wall. If you don’t know it’s there, you can walk by, but once you see it, it sticks with you.”

It’s the same for Jinha who says things can “never go back to how they were before Yoon declared martial law”.

That was a time when politics felt inaccessible, but now, Jinha adds, it “feels like something that affects me and is important to my life”.

She says she won’t give up because she wants to be free of “things like discrimination at work… and live my life in peace”.

“People see young women as weak and immature but we will grow up – and then the world will change again.”

The FBI says an attack in Boulder, Colorado, that injured eight people was a “targeted act of violence”, and they are investigating it as an “act of terrorism”.

A group of people had gathered for a “regularly scheduled, weekly, peaceful event”, which the BBC understands was organised by Run for Their Lives, an organisation that raises awareness for Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.

The FBI said that, according to witnesses, a suspect threw an incendiary device into the group of people, and used a “makeshift flamethrower” to attack them. They said a suspect had been identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45. Soliman was taken to hospital shortly after the attack, the FBI said.

Police said they were “fairly confident” that they had the lone suspect in custody. There was no evidence the suspect was connected to a wider group.

“The suspect was heard to yell ‘Free Palestine’ during the attack,” said special agent in charge of the Denver field office of the FBI, Mark Michalek. “We’re assisting Boulder police and providing technical, analytic and additional forensic resources. As a result of these preliminary facts, it is clear that this is a targeted act of violence and the FBI is investigating this as an act of terrorism,” Michalek said.

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The suspect has been named as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who was taken to hospital shortly after the attack.

Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said he did not believe anyone else was involved. “We’re fairly confident we have the lone suspect in custody,” he said.

The 45-year-old was an Egyptian national, government officials confirmed to the BBC’s broadcast partner, CBS in Colorado.

In 2022, Soliman arrived in California on a non-immigrant visa that expired in February 2023, multiple sources have told CBS News. He had recently been living in Colorado Springs.

There are eight victims, aged between 52 and 88. Four are woman and four are men. All of them have been taken to hospitals with burns and other injuries. The injuries range from “minor” to “very serious”.

At least one of the victims is seriously injured.

Run for their Lives holds walking and running events around the world calling for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, according to their website.

It says its events are not protests, but “peaceful walks”.

Their website says there are currently 230 active groups around the world, with the majority in North America and Europe.

The groups meet once a week for a 1km walk wearing red T-shirts. They also carry national flags of the citizens who are among the hostages still held in Gaza.

The Run for their Lives Instagram account has more than 6,000 followers. Their Facebook group has more than 2,000 members.

The movement was started by a group of Israelis in California, but local events are “independently led”, according to their website.

Authorities said they would not hold another press conference on Sunday. Police said their teams were still working in the area.

The district attorney for Boulder County, Michael Dougherty, said: “We are fully united 100% in making sure the charges we bring hold the attacker fully accountable.”

The Boulder Courthouse will remain closed on Monday.

US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said her department is working with “interagency partners, including the FBI”, and would share more information when it becomes available.

“We are praying for the victims and their families. This violence must stop,” she said.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, released a statement saying he was “shocked” by the incident, which he called “pure antisemitism”.

The Jewish community in Boulder released a statement saying: “Our hearts go out to those who witnessed this horrible attack, and prayers for a speedy recovery to those who were injured,” Boulder’s Jewish Community said in a joint statement. “When events like this enter our own community, we are shaken.”

It’s a condition that affects more than 10 million people in the UK. It can change futures, end careers, and shrink worlds. So when a hack comes along that says it can “cure”, or at the very least fend off a migraine, people will try it.

While there are medical treatments, there is no cure. Prescription medication can be very effective – but it doesn’t always work. For many people there is no simple solution.

Some discover their own ways of managing the debilitating pain: blasting the side of their face with a hairdryer, or sitting in a hot bath while wearing an ice pack and drinking a smoothie.

But now a new hack has suddenly gone viral – the McMigraine Meal. A simple offering of a full-fat cola and a portion of salty fries seems to be doing the trick for hundreds who’ve been extolling its virtues on TikTok.

If there is any science behind these hacks – what do they do to the body?

Nick Cook, from Oxfordshire, carries “a wallet full of drugs” around in case of a migraine attack. He will “try anything” to make the pain go away, he says.

“When you live with the condition, and you’re working a five-day week and you need to carry on, you’ll give anything a go.”

At its worst the pain around Nick’s eye socket can feel like his eyeball is getting crushed. He says it’s the caffeine and sugar in cola that helps him.

“If I catch it soon enough it can sometimes work, when my vision goes fuzzy and I can feel one coming on.”

He stresses that drinking cola doesn’t replace his amitriptyline tablets – the daily pain medication he takes to try to prevent migraines – but it does sometimes help him “last until the end of the day”.

For Kayleigh Webster, a 27-year-old who has had chronic migraines all her life, it’s the salt on the chips that might slow down a migraine attack.

“It can help,” she says cautiously, “but it’s certainly not a cure.

“Migraine is a complex neurological condition – and it can’t be cured by a bit of caffeine, salt and sugar in a fast food meal.”

Kayleigh’s tried cocktails of different medications, putting her feet in hot water, a flannel at the back of the head, acupuncture, cupping – but they’ve had little effect.

One of the few treatments that has given her relief is medical Botox – having dozens of injections in her head, face and neck. It’s still not clear how Botox works for migraine, but it’s believed to block powerful pain signals being released from the nerves.

A migraine – which can last days – is very different to a headache, which tend to be short-lived and can be treated more easily with painkillers like paracetamol. Migraines can cause head pain, neck pain, numbness, blurred vision, and even affect speech and movement.

Skulls dating back to 3,000 BC show ancient Egyptians even had trouble with migraines – but despite that long history, their exact cause is still unknown.

It’s thought pain receptors in the blood vessels and nerve tissue around the brain misfire – sending incorrect signals that something is wrong. But we don’t know why some people have an oversensitive nervous system – and why it reacts to some things and not others.

Experts say there’s not enough research into why only some people – around one in seven – are affected, or what can actually help.

Dr Kay Kennis, a trustee for the Migraine Trust and a GP who specialises in migraines, says while there are elements of the McMigraine meal that can help stave off an attack, these aren’t innate to “a McDonald’s”.

“The caffeine in the coke can act as a nerve disruptor, it is a substance that affects nerve activity. For some, that disturbance works in a positive way,” Dr Kennis says.

“There are some painkillers that people take for migraines that have caffeine – and some do respond well to that – but we don’t fully know why.”

But she warns against using caffeinated fizzy drinks like cola as a way of regularly managing migraines.

“Too much caffeine can be a trigger too – and you can end up in a worse situation in the long run,” Dr Kennis says.

Other ingredients in a fast food meal, like the salt on the chips, can affect nerve activity, she explains, but adds the effects of sodium on migraines have not been tested.

She also warns that not only is fast food often ultra-processed and not conducive to a healthy diet, it can contain high levels of Tyramine, a natural compound commonly found in many foods, which can actually cause severe migraines.

For Eloise Underwood none of the quick fixes on social media work.

The chronic migraine sufferer has been looking for a “magic cocktail” for seven years – she’s seen people recommend putting feet in scorching water (not recommended by experts and potentially dangerous); drinking hot coffee (caffeine can be a trigger); or various vibrating devices which have had little effect.

“There are so many videos online that take advantage of the desperation we all feel,” Eloise explains.

She’s left several jobs – often due to lighting and noise in an office environment triggering migraines. She recently stopped working as an interior designer and has now launched a business pressing and framing wedding flowers from her home.

She wears loop ear buds to reduce the sharpness of the sounds around her, and limits her social life.

“People think a migraine is just a headache – that’s just one symptom of it,” Eloise says. “For me, a migraine is a whole body experience…

“Migraines have completely made my life smaller.”

Prof Peter Goadsby, a neurologist at the NIHR-King’s Clinical Research Facility, says research is beginning to produce positive results after years of underfunding.

His latest study shows medications known as gepants could block a group of pain receptors in the lead-up to a migraine attack, cutting off the pain before it starts.

“Any new treatment is a glimmer of hope,” Eloise says. “They do say that nothing will work for everyone – but something will work for someone.”

Lifestyle changes can also make a difference, Prof Goadsby explains. It might be boring, he says, but basically – “be careful of your brain”.

“You want to have regularity, avoid the highs and lows. If you can feel the warning signs – yawning, sleepiness, mood change, passing more urine and even craving salt and sugar – listen to your body.

“Listen to your body – don’t listen to TikTok, that’s my advice.”

Nick has been doing exactly that. He might reach for the odd cola and salty fries, but he’s moulded his whole life in order to manage his migraines.

“I don’t drink, I wear sunglasses even if it’s cloudy,” he says. “I don’t go wild. When me and my partner go away, half the stuff we take is to help us manage our migraines.”

On a recent stag-do weekend, Nick noticed the difference between his and his friends’ lives.

“They were up all night drinking to the early hours,” Nick says. “I turned up with my own pillow, apples, bananas, Weetabix, and any snacks I would need to keep me going, because hunger can be a major trigger.

“I’m in bed by midnight – but my mates know me, and that’s OK, because this is how I have to live my life.”

Indian singer Diljit Dosanjh’s Met Gala debut last month left a lasting impression on global fashion.

The 41-year-old singer, who is the only Punjabi musician to perform at Coachella, walked the red carpet dressed like an early 20th Century maharajah.

His opulent ivory and gold ensemble – created by designer Prabal Gurung – complete with a feathered bejewelled turban, trended in India for weeks.

He also wore a gorgeous diamond necklace, its design inspired by a Cartier piece worn by an erstwhile king of the northern Indian state of Punjab.

A Panthère de Cartier watch, a lion-headed and a jewel-studded sword completed the ensemble, which had a map of Dosanjh’s home state embroidered on the back of the cape along with letters from Gurmukhi, the script for Punjabi language.

Of course, Dosanjh is no stranger to such style.

Just like his music, he’s carved out a niche in fashion too – a hip hop singer who is known for melding traditional Punjabi styles with Western influences.

Often seen in anti-fit trousers, chunky sneakers, and stacks of necklaces that he matches with his colourful turbans, his unique form of self-expression has captured the imagination of millions, leading to interesting reinventions in the traditional Punjabi attire.

The changes can be felt everywhere. A 16-minute high-intensity bhangra competition in California would be impossible without high performance sneakers. And basement bhangra nights in Berlin are enjoyed in crop tops and deconstructed pants.

Punjabi music itself, high on volume and energy – with lyrics packed with the names of cities and global luxury brands – has become a subculture.

It’s not just Dosanjh – several other Punjabi musicians have also influenced the region’s style game.

Not long ago, Punjabi-Canadian singer Jazzy B’s rings, often the size of a cookie, along with his plus-sized Kanda pendant and silver blonde hair tints, were trending.

More recently, the yellow tinted glasses worn by singer Badshah; the baggy hoodies sported by Yo Yo Honey Singh; and AP Dhillon’s Louis Vuitton bombers and Chanel watches have been hugely popular with Punjabi youth.

But even though their influence was significant, it was restricted to a region. Dosanjh and a few others like him, however, have managed to mount it to a global level, their style speaking to both the Sikh diaspora as well as a broader audience. For instance, the t-shirts, pearls and sneakers Dosanjh wore to his world tour last year were sold out in a matter of hours. Dhillon’s style statements at Paris Couture Week have created aspiration among Punjabi youth.

Cultural experts say that this reinvention, both in music and fashion, has its roots in Western pop-culture as most of the artistes live and perform in the West.

“Punjabi men are inventive. The region has been at the forefront of fusion, it believes in hybridity. This is especially the case with the Punjabi diaspora – even when they live in ghettos, they are the showmen [of their lives],” says art historian, author and museum curator Alka Pande.

Over the years, as the Punjabi diaspora community grew, a new generation of musicians began mixing modern hip-hop sounds with elements of traditional Punjabi aesthetics.

Their distinct style lexicon – of gold chains, faux fur jackets, plus-sized accessories, braids and beards – went on to spawn media articles, books and doctoral theses on South Asian culture.

The coin dropped instantly back home in Punjab, which absorbed logo fashion like a sponge when luxury brands arrived in the 2000s. For Punjabis – who are largely a farming community – it was an aspirational uprising, symbolic of how success and prosperity should look.

“It symbolised the movement of the Punjabi identity from a farmer to a global consumer,” says acclaimed singer Rabbi Shergill.

Arguing that performers, like everyone else, are a product of their times, Shergill says these impulses are “a response to the hyper capitalist world”.

Curiously, the style game of Punjabi musicians – from hip-hop, R&B, bhangra pop, fusion, Punjabi rap, reggae or filmy music – has also remained rooted and androgynous, instead of being hyper masculine.

A pop star may wear Balenciaga or Indian designer Manish Malhotra’s opulent creations; perform anywhere from Ludhiana city to London; dance with Beyonce around Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, atop a luxury car, or in a British mansion – but they always wear their Punjabi identity on their sleeves.

Dosanjh underlined this clearly with his maharajah look at the Met Gala. “It’s like the popularity of his androgynous style was waiting to happen,” Pande says.

The composite impact of this trend on emerging artists is unmissable today in Punjab.

Local Bhangra performances, for instance, are no longer limited to traditional “dhoti-kurta-koti” costume sets paired with juttis (ethnic footwear). Performance attire now includes sneakers, typographic T-shirts, deconstructed bottoms and even denims.

“Such items are highly sought after by customers,” says Harinder Singh, owner of the brand 1469.

The merchandise in Singh’s stores, includes accessories popularised by Punjab’s music stars, such as versions of Phulkari turbans worn by Dosanjh, Kanda pendants that were first popularised by veteran Bhangra artist Pammi Bai. Singh himself owns turbans in more than a 100 shades.

Even overall men’s style in Punjab bears some of this cosmopolitan twang.

Young poet Gurpreet Saini, who performs at cultural festivals across India, says he sources his shawls – printed with ombre Gurmukhi letters – from Hariana, his hometown in Punjab, for a distinctive look. He admits to the influence of music icons, including those like folk singer Gurdas Mann, who he grew up watching.

What began as personal flair in some cases, went on to become fashion statements. Now these choices are cultural signatures. They have recast the Punjabi identity through rhythm, hybridity as well as a rooted sense of self.

It’s a grim paradox, doctors say.

On the one hand, antibiotics are being overused until they no longer work, driving resistance and fuelling the rise of deadly superbugs. On the other hand, people are dying because they can’t access these life-saving drugs.

A new study by the non-profit Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) looked at access to antibiotics for nearly 1.5 million cases of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative (CRGN) infections across eight major low- and middle-income countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa. CRGN bacteria are superbugs resistant to last-line antibiotics – yet only 6.9% of patients received appropriate treatment in the countries studied.

India bore the lion’s share of CRGN infections and treatment efforts, procuring 80% of the full courses of studied antibiotics but managing to treat only 7.8% of its estimated cases, the study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal reports. (A full drug course of antibiotics refers to the complete set of doses that a patient needs to take over a specific period to fully treat an infection.)

Common in water, food, the environment and the human gut, Gram-negative bacteria cause infections such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia and food poisoning.

They can pose a serious threat to newborns and the elderly alike. Especially vulnerable are hospital patients with weakened immunity, often spreading rapidly in ICUs and proving difficult – and sometimes impossible – to treat. Treating carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections is doubly difficult because those bacteria are resistant to some of the most powerful antibiotics.

“These infections are a daily reality across all age groups,” says Dr Abdul Ghafur, infectious disease consultant at Apollo Hospital in India’s Chennai city. “We often see patients for whom no antibiotic works – and they die.”

The irony is cruel. While the world tries to curb antibiotic overuse, a parallel tragedy plays out quietly in poorer nations: people dying from treatable infections because the right drugs are out of reach.

“For years, the dominant narrative has been that antibiotics are being overused, but the stark reality is that many people with highly drug-resistant infections in low- and middle-income countries are not getting access to the antibiotics they need,” says Dr Jennifer Cohn, GARDP’s Global Access Director and senior author of the study.

• India’s ‘blockbuster’ drugs to take on deadly superbugs
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The study examined eight intravenous drugs active against carbapenem-resistant bacteria – ranging from older antibiotics including Colistin to newer ones such as Ceftazidime-avibactam. Of the few available drugs, Tigecycline was the most widely used.

Researchers blame the treatment gap on weak health systems and limited access to effective antibiotics.

For example, only 103,647 full treatment courses were procured of Tigecycline across eight countries – far short of the 1.5 million patients who needed them, the study found. This highlighted a major shortfall in the global response to drug-resistant infections.

What prevents patients with drug-resistant infections in India from getting the right antibiotics?

Physicians point to multiple barriers – reaching the right health facility, getting accurate diagnostic tests, and accessing effective drugs. Cost remains a major hurdle, with many of these antibiotics priced far beyond the reach of poorer patients.

“Those who can afford these antibiotics often overuse them; those who can’t, don’t get them at all,” says Dr Ghafur. “We need a system that ensures access for the poor and prevents misuse by the well-to-do.”

To improve access, these drugs must be made more affordable. To prevent misuse, stronger regulation is key.

“Ideally, every antibiotic prescription in hospitals should require a second sign-off – by an infection specialist or microbiologist,” says Dr Ghafur. “Some hospitals do this, but most don’t. With the right oversight, regulators can ensure this becomes standard practice.”

To fix the access problem and curb misuse, both smarter policies and stronger safeguards are essential, say researchers. But access alone won’t solve the crisis – the pipeline of new antibiotics is drying up. The decline in antibiotic R&D – and the limited availability of existing drugs – is a global issue.

India bears one of the world’s heaviest burdens of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), but it may also hold the key to combating it – both at home and globally, researchers say.

“India is also one of the largest markets for new antibiotics and can successfully advocate for the development and access of new antibiotics,” says Dr Cohn. With a strong pharmaceutical base, the country is emerging as a hub for AMR innovation, from promising new antibiotics to advanced diagnostics.

Dr Cohn says India can strengthen its antibiotic response by generating local data to better estimate needs and pinpoint gaps in the care pathway.

This would allow for more targeted interventions to improve access to the right drugs.

Innovative models are already emerging – Kerala state, for instance, is using a “hub-and-spoke approach” to support lower-level facilities in managing serious infections. Coordinated or pooled procurement across hospitals or states could also reduce the cost of newer antibiotics, as seen with cancer drug programs, researchers say.

Without access to the right antibiotics, modern medicine begins to unravel – doctors risk losing the ability to safely perform surgery, treat complications in cancer patients, or manage everyday infections.

“As an infectious disease doctor, I see appropriate use as one part – but only one part – of access,” says Dr Ghafur. “When we get new antibiotics, it’s important to save them on one hand – and save them for right patients.”

Clearly, the challenge is not just to use antibiotics wisely, but to ensure they reach those who need them most.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is at the centre of a political firestorm after he approved a law that gives the state the power to expropriate some privately owned land without compensation for owners.

The law, which is yet to be implemented, has drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump, who sees it as discriminating against white farmers.

Centre-right political parties and lobby groups in South Africa have also opposed it, saying they will challenge the Expropriation Act – as the law is named – in court on the grounds that it threatens property rights.

Ramaphosa’s government says the law provides for compensation to be paid in the vast majority of cases – and the changes are needed to increase black ownership of land.

Most private farmland is still owned by white people.

When Nelson Mandela came to power more than 30 years ago, ending the racist system of apartheid, it was promised that this would be rectified through a willing-buyer, willing-seller land reform programme – but critics say this has proved too slow and too costly.

In rare circumstances it would be land that was needed for the “public interest”, legal experts told the BBC.

According to South African law firm Werksmans Attorneys, this suggested it would mainly, or perhaps only, happen in relation to the land reform programme.

Although it could also be used to access natural resources such as minerals and water, the firm added, in an opinion written by its experts in the field, Bulelwa Mabasa and Thomas Karberg.

Mabasa and Karberg told the BBC that in their view, productive agricultural land could not be expropriated without compensation.

They said any expropriation without compensation – known as EWC – could take place only in a few circumstances:

• For example, when an owner was not using the land and was holding it for “speculative purposes”
• Or when an owner “abandoned the land by failing to exercise control over it despite being reasonably capable of doing so”.

Owners would probably still get compensation for the buildings on the land and for the natural resources, the lawyers said.

Mabasa and Karberg added that EWC was “not aimed at rural land or farmland specifically, and could include land in urban areas”.

However, in cases where compensation is paid, the rules are set to change, with owners likely to get less money.

The plan is for owners to receive “just-and-equitable” compensation – a departure from the higher “market value” they have been getting up to now, Mabasa and Karberg said.

The government had been paying market-value compensation despite the fact that this was “at odds” with the constitution, adopted after white-minority rule ended in 1994, they added.

The lawyers said that all expropriations had “extensive procedural fairness requirements”, including the owner’s right to go to court if they were not happy.

The move away from market-value compensation will also apply to land expropriated for a “public purpose” – like building state schools or railways.

This has not been a major point of controversy, possibly because it is “hardly a novel concept” – a point made by JURISTnews, a legal website run by law students from around the world.

“The US Constitution, for instance, provides that the government can seize private property for public use so long as ‘just compensation’ is provided,” it added.

The government hopes so.

University of Western Cape land expert Prof Ruth Hall told the BBC that more than 80,000 land claims remain unsettled.

In the eastern regions of South Africa, many black people work on farms for free – in exchange they are allowed to live there and keep their livestock on a portion of the owners’ land, she said.

The government wants to transfer ownership of this land to the workers, and it was “unfair” to expect it to pay the market value, Prof Hall added.

Over the last three decades, the government has used existing powers to expropriate property–- with less than market-value compensation – in fewer than 20 cases, she said.

The new law was aimed at making it easier and cheaper to restore land to black people who were “dispossessed” of it during white-minority rule or were forced to be “long-term tenants” as they could not own land, Prof Hall added.

“It’s a bargaining chip,” she said.

But she doubts that the government will press ahead with implementing the law in the foreseeable future as the “political cost” has become too high.

The academic was referring to the fact that Trump has opposed the law, saying it discriminates against white farmers and their land was being “seized” – a charge the government denies.

In February, Trump cut aid to South Africa, and in April he announced a 30% tariff on South African goods and agricultural products, although this was later paused for 90 days.

This was followed by last month’s infamous Oval Office showdown when Trump ambushed Ramaphosa with a video and printouts of stories alleging white people were being persecuted – much of his dossier has been discredited.

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Like Trump, the second-biggest party in Ramaphosa’s coalition government, the Democratic Alliance (DA), is opposed to the legislation.

In a statement on 26 May, the party said that its top leadership body had rejected the notion of “nil compensation”.

However, it has agreed with the concept of just-and-equitable compensation rather than market-value compensation, adding it should be “adjudicated by a court of law”.

Surprisingly, Jaco Kleynhans of the Solidarity Movement, an influential Afrikaner lobby group, said that while the new law could “destroy” some businesses and he was opposed to it, he did not believe it would lead to the “large-scale expropriation of farmland”.

“I don’t see within the wording of this text that that will happen,” he said in a recent panel discussion at an agricultural exhibition held in South Africa’s Free State province – where a large number of conservative Afrikaner farmers live.

The South African Property Owners Association said it was “irrational” to give “nil compensation” to an owner who held land for speculative purposes.

“There are many landowners whose sole purpose of business is to speculate in land. They do not get the land for free and they have significant holding costs,” the association said, adding it had no doubt the law would be “abundantly tested” in the courts.

Mabasa and Karberg said one view was that the concept of EWC was a “legal absurdity” because “intrinsic in the legal definition of expropriation, is a requirement for compensation to be paid”.

However, the lawyers pointed out the alternative view was that South Africa’s constitution “implicitly recognises that it would in some circumstances be just and equitable for compensation to be nil”.

South Africa’s Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson has defended the legislation, breaking ranks with his party, the DA.

In fact he is in charge of the new legalisation and, on a discussion panel, he explained that while he had some concerns about the law, it was a “dramatic improvement” on the previous Expropriation Act, with greater safeguards for owners.

He said the law could also help end extortionist demands on the state, and in some cases “nil compensation” could be justified.

He gave as an example the problems being faced by the state-owned power utility Eskom.

It plans to roll out a transmission network over about 4,500km (28,000 miles) of land to boost electricity supplies to end the power crisis in the country.

Ahead of the roll-out, some individuals colluded with Eskom officials to buy land for 1m rand ($56,000; £41,000), and then demanded R20m for it, he said.

“Is it just and equitable to give them what they want? I don’t think that’s in the interest of the broader community or the state,” Macpherson said.

Giving another example, Macpherson said that some of South Africa’s inner cities were in a “disastrous” condition. After owners left, buildings were “over-run” and “hijacked” for illegal occupation. The cost to the state to rebuild them could exceed their value, and in such cases the courts could rule that an owner qualified for “nil compensation”, he said.

“Nil is a form of compensation,” Macpherson added, while ruling it out for farms.

Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero told South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper that he wanted to use the buildings for the “public good”, like accommodating around 300,000 people on the housing waiting list.

He added the owners of nearly 100 buildings could not be located.

“They have abandoned the buildings,” he said, adding some of the owners were from the UK and Germany.

But Mabasa and Karberg told the BBC that in such cases compensation would probably still have to be paid for the buildings, though not the land.

If the state could not locate the owners, it “must deposit the compensation with the Master of the High Court” in case they returned or could be traced later, they said.

The law is in limbo, as Ramaphosa – about four months after giving his assent to it – has still not set a date for its implementation.

Nor is he likely to do so anytime soon, as he would not want to further antagonise Trump while South Africa was trying to negotiate a trade deal with the US.

And on the domestic front, the DA is spearheading opposition to the legislation. It said it wanted a “judicial review” of it, while at the same time it was pressing ahead with court action to challenge the law’s constitutionality.

The DA’s tough line is in contrast with that of Macpherson, who, a few weeks ago, warned that if the law was struck down in its entirety: “I don’t know what’s going to come after that.

“In politics, sometimes you must be careful what you wish for because often you can get it,” he said.

His comments highlight the deep fissures in South African politics, with some parties, such as Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), believing that the legislation did not go far enough to tackle racial inequality in land ownership.

With land such an emotive issue, there is no easy solution to the dispute – and it is likely to continue to cause tensions within South Africa, as well as with the US president.

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Almost 40 years on, it seems surprising there are still new stories to tell about the Lockerbie disaster.

The destruction of Pan Am 103 in the skies above the small Dumfries and Galloway town on 21 December 1988 is one of the most chronicled events in recent British history.

A bomb exploded in the plane’s cargo hold, causing the Boeing 747 to break up at 31,000ft as it flew from Heathrow to New York.

All 259 passengers and crew on board were killed, along with 11 people in Lockerbie who died when the plane fell on their homes. It remains the biggest terror attack to have taken place on British soil.

Coverage tends to focus on anniversaries, but the past six months have brought two big-budget television dramas and later this year a play about the town’s response to the disaster will debut at Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre.

Now, a BBC Scotland documentary aims to tell some of the less well-known stories about those who died on the flight, and about those they left behind.

Among the victims on the plane was Tim Burman, a 24-year-old banker who was flying to New York to spend Christmas with his girlfriend, Rose Grant.

Tim was the youngest of four and the only boy. His three sisters – Rachel, Tanya and Fiona – remember him as an “arty, sporty” brother who was keen on the environment and loved running in the Scottish hills.

Tanya says: “He genuinely was easy-going and fun, really good fun”.

Rose, who Tim met while he was on a gap year in Australia, says: “I enjoyed his sense of humour, his style, sense of adventure, ability to get on with everyone.

They all mourn his lost potential. His sister Tanya says: “He’s both the brother we had, but also a victim of Pan Am 103.”

Rose believes Tim and his death created a huge bond between them all.

“Tim is everywhere in the conversation and the mannerisms of Rachel, Tanya and Fiona,” she says.

“Our connection is held together by him still.”

Olive Gordon was 25 and a hairdresser from Birmingham.

She had bought a last-minute ticket on Pan Am 103 and was planning on enjoying some shopping in New York in the run up to Christmas.

“She was just yapping. She said ‘I’m going to America tomorrow. Going to buy stuff’. She loved shopping,” her sister Donna says.

Donna describes Olive as “very bubbly, very full on. You just would not forget her if you knew her”.

Olive was one of nine siblings.

“I have always asked ‘why her? why my sister?'” her brother Colyn says.

“And it’s something that you sort of battle with. And I’m still battling with it, a little bit. Well, not a little bit, a lot.”

Her family believe she would have been in business now, something involving hair and beauty.

“She would probably be an influencer right now,” Donna says.

William MacAllister, known as Billy, was a 26-year-old professional golfer from Mull. He was heading to the USA for a romantic break with his girlfriend Terri.

Her friends say Terri was hoping Billy was about to propose.

Fellow golf pro Stewart Smith worked with Billy at a course in London and remembers his friend as a natural comic with a zest for life.

“He was a very funny guy. Great sense of humour, great sense of fun,” he says.

“He had moved to Richmond Park, so I went across and worked with Billy. Imagine living in London in the mid-80s when you’re mid-20s, both of you.

“We had some great times.”

Back in Mull, family friends have put a memorial bench on the course at Tobermory, where they say Billy played every day after school and every weekend from the age of 12. They remember him as “some guy”.

Family friend Olive Brown says: “Every December I do have a wee sad moment, thinking he’s not here. All that potential, enthusiasm and ability got caught short.”

Colyn and other members of Olive Gordon’s family visited Lockerbie in the days after the disaster. It was a shocking scene.

“I remember the crater, this huge hole, and these little bits all over the place. It just had this smell. My God, my sister was found here. Somewhere here,” he says.

In the weeks that followed, members of the local community came together to wash, press and package up the belongings of those who had died on the plane.

The Lockerbie laundry has become a symbol of the kindness shown by the people of the town. They treated the dead and their families with love and care while coping with their own immeasurable trauma.

Colyn says: “Just thinking about it now makes me emotional. Because these people, they don’t know you, they’ve never met you. But the way they treated you is as if they were family.

“The people of Lockerbie showed how humanity works. How to display compassion, to display love. I’ll never forget them.

“I don’t know if it’s quite macabre to say this but I’ve always said I am glad that’s the place that my sister’s life was ended. Because of the type of people that live in this place.”

The events of the night of 21 December 1988 have resonated across the decades.

In 2001, a Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, was convicted of the bombing and 270 counts of murder, following a trial in front of three Scottish judges sitting in a special court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

His co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was found not guilty.

Suffering from terminal prostate cancer, Megrahi was released from prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds in 2009.

He was returned to Libya and spent the next three years living in a villa in Tripoli before finally succumbing to his illness in 2012.

Ten years later, Libyan Abu Agila Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, known as Masud, was taken into American custody after being removed from his home in Tripoli.

He is awaiting trial in the USA, accused of building the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103.

Today, the town of Lockerbie remembers the disaster in its own, quiet, way.

Pupils from the secondary school can apply for a scholarship to spend a year at Syracuse University, in memory of 35 students from there who died in the bombing.

There is a memorial garden on the edge of the town, as well as plaques in Sherwood Crescent and Park Place, the two sites where most of the plane came down.

Nearby Tundergarth Church, which overlooks the field where the nose cone was found, is also a site of remembrance.

But more than anything, the Lockerbie bombing victims are remembered by those they left behind.

Every year in Tobermory, members at the golf club play for the cup which carries Billy MacAllister’s name.

And his friend Stewart has a special reason to remember him.

“He had a big impact on my life really because, had Billy not enticed me to go and work over at Richmond, I would probably have not got to know my then girlfriend, who became my wife. My life would have been a very different one from what it became,” he says.

“What a shame he didn’t get a chance to go on and fulfil his potential.”

For Rose, Tim’s early death has shaped the course of the past four decades for all those who loved him.

“I think the gift that Tim’s given us is to live our lives. I always feel that I owe that to him. Get out and do it.”

Olive’s death has had the same effect on Colyn and their siblings.

“Olive would have wanted us to live a good life, a full life. Like how she lived. Having a good time.”

Lockerbie: Our Story will be available on the BBC iPlayer from 22:00 on Monday 2 June and will be shown on BBC Two at 21:00 and BBC Scotland at 22:00 on Tuesday 3 June.

Some 17,000 people have evacuated the Canadian province of Manitoba as fast-moving wildfires move across parts of the country.

A military aircraft and helicopters have been used to evacuate some residents in remote areas as firefighters face growing flames. Hot and dry weather is expected in the coming days.

Dense smoke from the fires – of which there are more than 188 according to officials – has spread across Canada and into parts of the US.

Both Saskatchewan and Manitoba have declared states of emergency for the next month and have asked for international help in fighting the fires.

In Saskatchewan, there are 17 wildfires burning as of Saturday, with eight classified as not contained. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) classified conditions in the province as extreme.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe warned at a Saturday news conference that the current figure of 8,000 fire evacuees could climb to 10,000 as dry weather conditions persist.

“The next four to seven days are absolutely critical until we can find our way to changing weather patterns, and ultimately a soaking rain throughout the north,” Mr Moe said.

Large parts of Alberta and British Columbia have also ordered evacuations as the fires spread.

The evacuation of residents of the northern First Nations community of Pukatawagan, is a “rapidly evolving situation”, a Manitoba official told the BBC on Saturday.

Canadian Armed Forces, Manitoba Wildfire Service and Manitoba’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Team have been using a military aircraft and helicopters to bring people to safety from the northern community in Manitoba.

“The scale and complexity of these air evacuations cannot be overstated — and neither can the unwavering dedication of the teams executing them,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Saturday.

In Flin Flon, a city of 5,000 in Manitoba, only firefighters and support workers are left in the town.

In Manitoba, there are a total of 25 active fires, according to the province’s fire situation report, with 11 classified as out of control.

Danielle Desjardins, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada based in Winnipeg, told the BBC that the forecast for both provinces is not promising.

While a cold front is expected to hit some parts of Saskatchewan, it will not bring relief to the regions where fires are burning.

“The bad news about this cold front is it’s going to be windy,” said Ms Desjardins, adding that the wind, coupled with the heat and lack of rain, are prime conditions for wildfire spread.

Smoke from the fires has also left an estimated 22 million Americans under air quality alerts this weekend.

In northern Minnesota, residents have been warned smoke could reach levels “unhealthy for everyone”, while the rest of the state faces air quality warnings for sensitive groups. That alert runs through Monday evening.

Canada experienced its worst wildfire season on record in 2023, when more than 42 million acres (17.3m hectares) burned.

Fires happen naturally in many parts of the world, including in Canada.

But climate change is making the weather conditions needed for wildfires to spread more likely, according to the UN’s climate body.

Extreme and long-lasting heat draws more and more moisture out of the ground and vegetation.

Members of the Western alliance Nato need to prepare for a possible attack from Russia within the next four years, according to Germany’s chief of defence.

General Carsten Breuer told the BBC that Russia was producing hundreds of tanks a year, many of which could be used for an attack on Nato Baltic state members by 2029 or even earlier.

He also insisted that Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, remains unified over the war in Ukraine, despite differences of opinion expressed recently by both Hungary and Slovakia.

Gen Breuer was speaking on the sidelines of the Shangri-la Dialogue, a defence summit in Singapore organised by the think tank International Institute of Strategic Studies.

His comments come weeks ahead of a summit of Nato nations at The Hague where they are expected to discuss defence budgets, among other topics.

Gen Breuer said that Nato was facing “a very serious threat” from Russia, one that he has never seen before in his 40 years in service.

At the moment, he said, Russia was building up its forces to an “enormous extent”, producing approximately 1,500 main battle tanks every year.

“Not every single tank is going to [the war in] Ukraine, but it’s also going in stocks and into new military structures always facing the West,” he said.

Russia also produced four million rounds of 152mm artillery munition in 2024, and not all of it was going to Ukraine either, added Gen Breuer.

The figures come from German and allied nations’ analysts.

“There’s an intent and there’s a build up of the stocks” for a possible future attack on Nato’s Baltic state members, he said.

“This is what the analysts are assessing – in 2029. So we have to be ready by 2029… If you ask me now, is this a guarantee that’s not earlier than 2029? I would say no, it’s not. So we must be able to fight tonight,” he said.

Many have long feared an attack on a Nato state as it could trigger a larger war between Russia and the US, which is a key member of Nato. Under Article 5 of the Nato agreement, any attack on a member state would mean other members must come to its defence.

Gen Breuer singled out the so-called Suwalki Gap, an area that borders Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Belarus, as one of the most vulnerable.

“The Baltic States are really exposed to the Russians, right? And once you are there, you really feel this… in the talks we are having over there,” he said.

The Estonians, he said, had given the analogy of being close to a wildfire where they “feel the heat, see the flames and smell the smoke”, while in Germany “you probably see a little bit of smoke over the horizon and not more”.

Gen Breuer said this showed the differing perspectives among European states of the threat of a possible Russian attack.

Russia’s view of the Ukraine war was different from the West’s, he said, where Moscow sees the war as more of a “continuum” in a larger conflict with Nato and is therefore “trying to find ways into our defence lines and it’s testing it”.

He cited recent attacks on undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, cyber attacks on European public transport, and unidentified drones spotted over German power stations and other infrastructure.

Nato members should therefore build up their militaries again, Gen Breuer argued. “What we have to do now is really to lean in and to tell everybody, hey, ramp up… get more into it because we need it. We need it to be able to defend ourselves and therefore also to build up deterrence.”

Asked by the BBC about Nato cohesion, given Hungary and Slovakia’s closer relations with Moscow, Gen Breuer insisted the alliance was still healthy.

He pointed to Finland and Sweden’s decisions to join Nato shortly after the Ukraine war began. “I’ve never seen such a unity like it is now” among nations and military leaders, he said.

“All of them understand the threat that is at the moment approaching Nato, all understand that we have to develop a direction of deterrence, into the direction of collective defence. This is clear to everyone. The urgency is seen.”

Gen Breuer’s remarks are yet another sign of a significant change in attitudes in Germany towards defence and Russia.

Like many Western nations, including the UK, it has scaled down its investments in its military over many years.

But there has been a growing recognition of the need to reverse this, with even the Green Party coming onboard a recent vote to lift restrictions on Germany’s defence spending.

But as Western military and political leaders say they are ready for the fight, questions remain on whether this is a case of ambition outpacing reality.

It will take years for Europe’s military industrial base to crank up to speed to match anywhere near the scale of weaponry that Russia is churning out.

The US has also been drawing down, not building up, its defence commitments to Europe to focus on the Indo-Pacific.

A British man has been indicted in the US for allegedly trying to smuggle “sensitive American military technology” to China, including missiles, air defence radar and drones.

John Miller, 63, and a Chinese man, Cui Guanghai, are wanted by the FBI on charges relating to conspiracy to commit interstate stalking and conspiracy, smuggling and violations of the Arms Control Act.

Mr Miller, a permanent US resident, and Mr Cui, 43, were both arrested in Serbia. They remain there and could now face extradition to the US.

The Foreign Office has confirmed it is providing consular assistance to a British national following his arrest in April and it is “in touch with the local authorities and his family”.

Court documents suggest the two men discussed ways of exporting a device that could be used for encryption and decryption. They are alleged to have paid a $10,000 (£7,430) deposit for the equipment.

Mr Miller and Mr Cui are also accused of trying to “harass” an anti-Chinese government protester, which included installing a tracking device on their car and slashing their tyres.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the pair of a “blatant assault” on US national security and its democratic values.

He added: “This Justice Department will not tolerate foreign repression on US soil, nor will we allow hostile nations to infiltrate or exploit our defence systems.”

If found guilty, Mr Miller could face up to 20 years in prison for violation of the Arms Export Control Act, and 10 years for smuggling.

Court documents detail how the men allegedly solicited the procurement of US defence articles, including missiles, air defence radar, drones and cryptographic devices for unlawful export to China.

Mr Cui and Mr Miller are said to have discussed with two individuals – identified as “Individual 5” and “Individual 6” in court documents – how to export a cryptographic device from the US to China.

Items the men allegedly discussed using to smuggle the technology include small electronics, a blender and a motor starter.

The indictment also alleges the pair enlisted two individuals in the US to carry out a plot that would have prevented a victim from protesting against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s attendance at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit held in Los Angeles in November 2023.

Mr Miller and Mr Cui were unaware that those two individuals – identified in court documents as “Individual 1” and “Individual 2” – were acting at the direction of the FBI.

“The indictment alleges that Chinese foreign actors targeted a victim in our nation because he criticised the Chinese government and its president,” said US Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California.

“My office will continue to use all legal methods available to hold accountable foreign nationals engaging in criminal activity on our soil.”

A similar scheme allegedly played out in the spring of 2025, when the alleged victim announced in a public video feed that he planned to unveil two new artistic statues that depicted Xi and his wife.

Mr Cui and Mr Miller paid two other individuals – identified in court documents as “Individual 3” and “Individual 4” – to try and dissuade the alleged victim from sharing his online display of statues.

Those individuals were paid $36,000 (£26,745), but the indictment notes that those two people were also affiliated with and acting at the direction of the FBI.

The two men remain in Serbia and the US is co-ordinating with Serbian officials regarding their pending extraditions.

“An indictment is merely an allegation,” the US Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California said in a statement. “All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”

A dog that went missing for 36 days is thought to have covered about 100 miles (161km) – including swimming to an island before being rescued on her return.

Amber was being cared for by a foster family near Bramshaw, in the New Forest, when she escaped after just a night there on 25 April.

The retriever cross, who was rescued as a street puppy in Qatar by a charity and moved to the UK, is thought to have swam to Brownsea Island.

The charity’s co-founder said she hoped adventurous Amber would have a “calmer, more stable spirit” in future in her forever home.

Amber was regularly spotted on her trip across Hampshire and Dorset but Kelly Parker, who set up KS Angels Rescue, said the dog had entered a “wild mindset” until Saturday’s rescue.

“We had a lot of well-meaning people and they really did try to help,” she said.

“Unfortunately with a dog that is scared and has entered that wild mindset, with any people, she would have run.”

Every time she was spotted, Amber would have covered another five or six miles (8km or 9.6km), she added.

“It’s been frustrating, we’ve felt like we were always behind her. It’s definitely been an experience I would rather not have again – but a happy ending.”

Amber was fed by one of Brownsea Island’s few residents after she managed to make it to the island – but left after just a few days.

She was spotted by two men in a boat in Poole Harbour and they rescued her before alerting Lost Dog Recovery, which had helped the search for her.

Jess Wadsworth, who had been looking after Amber before she scarpered, said Amber’s disappearance had left her family anxious for weeks.

“I still can’t quite believe [Amber is back],” she said.

“We’ve lost a pet dog for two or three days. You think in those terms. I have never known a dog that travels that many miles and survives.

“She’s already in really good nick compared to how long she had gone for. What a girl.”

But she said Amber was being carefully watched to ensure she does not make another swift escape.

X

An Irish man has died and a child has been injured in a shooting incident at a shopping centre in County Carlow on Sunday.

Emergency services are currently at the scene at the Fairgreen Shopping Centre, with an army bomb disposal team also in attendance.

Gardaí (Irish police) were alerted to the incident shortly after 18:15 local time.

The girl was treated by paramedics at the scene. Gardaí said it is not yet known how her injuries were sustained.

The shopping centre has been evacuated and the area has been sealed off by police.

The cordon will remain in place overnight.

Gardaí have said there are no further safety concerns and urged people not to share any footage of the incident on social media.

Ireland’s justice minister said the incident “is something we never want or expect to happen in our communities”.

“Gun violence is very rare in Ireland, and I am determined that will remain the case,” said Jim O’Callaghan.

Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Michéal Martin said he is “deeply shocked and saddened at the shooting incident in Carlow this evening”.

In a post on X, he said: “My thoughts are with the families affected and the local community in Carlow after what was a very serious and traumatic incident.

“I urge anyone who has information to speak to the gardaí.”

The tánaiste (Ireland’s deputy prime minister) and Minister for Defence Simon Harris said he joined “people across our country” in thinking about the young child who has been injured and her family.

“I am also thinking of all those who witnessed this situation and the awful shock and upset it must have caused them,” he added.

“I know their families and communities will rally to support them.”

Two Scottish men with links to a Glasgow-based criminal gang have been shot dead at a bar in Spain.

BBC Scotland understands they are Eddie Lyons Jnr and Ross Monaghan, who was previously acquitted of a notorious gangland murder.

They both died when a masked gunman opened fire at Monaghans Bar in Fuengirola in Andalucia on Saturday evening.

Local media reported the attack took place just after 23:00 when a car pulled up outside the crowded bar. The gunman then fled in the same vehicle.

Ross Monaghan was previously linked to the high-profile killing of one of Glasgow’s most feared gangland figures – Kevin ‘Gerbil’ Carroll.

Carroll, an enforcer for the Daniel crime family, was shot 13 times as he sat in a car outside a supermarket in Robroyston, Glasgow, in 2010.

Monaghan was accused of the murder and of disposing of evidence after the killing, but was later acquitted due to a lack of evidence.

He was himself shot in the shoulder as he dropped off his daughter at a primary school in Glasgow in 2017.

He is reported to have moved to Spain at around this time.

Eddie Lyons Jnr had also previously been shot and wounded in an attack in 2006, believed to have been carried out by Carroll.

Police Scotland said it was unable to comment on a possible link to a recent gangland feud in Scotland and has directed inquiries to the Spanish authorities.

Rivalries between the Lyons and the Daniel crime families, resulting in numerous violent attacks, have been ongoing for more than 20 years.

But BBC journalist Guy Hedgecoe, based in Madrid, said there had been a number of other shootings in the Costa del Sol area in recent weeks, several of which are believed to be connected with drug crime.

Monaghans is located on the seafront and is a popular bar with tourists and expats.

The bar had been screening the UEFA Champions League final on the evening of the attack.

The Foreign Office said it had not been approached for any consular assistance but that its staff stood ready to assist any British nationals if required.

Adamu Yusuf’s life has been upended since he lost nine of his family members in Tiffin Maza, one of two communities in his town worst-hit by floods in north-central Nigeria.

The father-of-one, 36, said his wife and newborn baby were among those washed away in floods early on Thursday morning in Niger state.

“She was the one that woke me up when the flood hit, and I quickly gathered the family and told everyone to hold one another. As we stepped outside, we saw water everywhere in our living room and the compound. They panicked and we got disconnected.”

His wife and baby had only just returned to the town of Mokwa a day prior, after having stayed at his in-laws house for a few weeks after having given birth.

“I watched helplessly as water washed away my family. I survived because I could swim. It was God that saved me,” Mr Adamu said.

Local officials say the death toll has risen to more than 200 on Sunday, a sharp increase from 110 on Friday. There are fears the number could still rise further.

The mood in the Tiffin Maza community on Saturday was one of grief, despair and loss.

Scattered clothes, soaked mattresses and crushed metal roofing sheets were some of the last remains of what are now hundreds of destroyed houses.

The structures still standing bear the harsh impact of the floods, with roofs washed off or some parts of the buildings destroyed.

Standing on a blue tiled floor, the only thing that points to where his bedroom once was, Mr Adamu looked around the vast empty space that has replaced his community.

“I lost everything to this flood. But the most painful is that of my family. The only valuable I have now is this cloth I am wearing which was even given to me by my friend.”

He said one relative has been found dead and he has “resigned to fate that others won’t return” to him alive.

Nineteen-year-old high school graduate, Isa Muhammed, has been inconsolable since he heard that his beloved teacher’s house was washed away while the teacher and eight members of his family were inside.

“Two have been found dead; one of them was his baby. My teacher, his second child, his sister and four other relatives are still missing. A building fell on his wife who wasn’t inside the house with them, and she died instantly.”

Mr Muhammed also lost family, remembering his uncle who died in the disaster.

“Uncle Musa was a very good friend to my late father. He took care of me since my dad died in 2023. He taught me to value education and always told me to do the right thing.

“Anytime I am alone and think about him, tears always roll down my cheeks. I haven’t been able to sleep since the incident happened,” Mr Muhammed said.

The water has now receded, and residents gathered on Saturday to offer condolences to the victims and also lend a hand in the search efforts.

Some residents told BBC News that the deluge was at least 7ft (2.1m) high in some parts of the community.

There was a strong foul smell around Tiffin Maza, and residents believe it is proof that there were dead bodies under the thick mud the floods washed up.

They are working to find them and give the dead a decent burial like they have done for others since Thursday.

“I have never seen that kind of floods before in my life, but I am grateful that my family survived it,” 65-year-old Ramat Sulaiman said.

Ms Sulaiman’s house was completely destroyed, rendering her family homeless.

She said 100 children who used to sleep in a Quranic school two blocks from her house “all got washed away”.

“It was a painful sight for me. The children cried for help, but no one could do anything. As their cries got louder, their building sunk and flowed away.”

Her son, Saliu, has been left homeless and broke.

“I lost at least $1,500 to the floods. It was the proceeds from the sale of my farm produce the previous day. I contemplated going back into the room to get it, but the pressure of the water scared me,” he said.

“I also lost eleven bags of groundnuts and seven bags of beans. My wife and I couldn’t pick anything from our room. But I am grateful we made it out on time. There were so many dead bodies in the water.”

He has been having nightmares since, he said.

“I am traumatised.”

Authorities are yet to confirm if a dam broke, exacerbating the impact of the recent floods as widely reported.

Mokwa District Head, Alhaji Muhammadu Shaba Aliyu, indicated to the BBC that there is a “reservoir” in the area that can spill out water “anytime there’s rain”, however he added that the magnitude of the flood is excessive.

Residents told BBC News they believed the floodwater was not caused by the heavy rainfall they had experienced.

“The rain couldn’t have caused the floods because it had subsided and there was no water anywhere. I was outside and suddenly I saw water gushing down in high speed and scattering everything on its path,” Mr Muhammed said.

Ms Sulaiman said: “When I woke up for prayers, I opened the door and looked outside and didn’t see any water. Moments later, I started hearing people screaming. We don’t know where it came from. Its source is a mystery.”

“For people that said the flood was as a result of the rain, they are lying. The rain had stopped before the flood started. Nobody knows the cause of this flood, it’s just from God,” Mr Adamu said.

Mokwa Deputy Local Chairman, Musa Alhaji Aliyu Kimboku, also dismissed that rain caused the flood.

The National Emergency Management Agency said those injured are receiving treatment, while displaced victims have been taken to resettlement camps and relief materials distributed.

The country’s Meteorological Agency has projected that the rainy season will last up to 200 days in central Nigeria this year, while it could linger for a longer period in mostly southern states.

At the beginning of May, the federal government launched a flood awareness campaign, to educate citizens on flood risks.

Thirty of the West African nation’s 36 states are at risk of flooding, and Niger state is one of them.

As victims salvage what they can from the ruins of their homes to start a new life, those that lost their loved ones like Mr Adamu said that they will never be able to heal, although they have accepted their fate.

• Heartbreak as cash-strapped Nigerians abandon their pets
• Could Nigeria’s careful ethnic balancing act be under threat?

It’s hard to exaggerate the sheer audacity – or ingenuity – that went into Ukraine’s countrywide assault on Russia’s air force.

We cannot possibly verify Ukrainian claims that the attacks resulted in $7bn (£5.2bn) of damage, but it’s clear that “Operation Spider’s Web” was, at the very least, a spectacular propaganda coup.

Ukrainians are already comparing it with other notable military successes since Russia’s full-scale invasion, including the sinking of the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, and the bombing of the Kerch Bridge, both in 2022, as well as a missile attack on Sevastopol harbour the following year.

Judging by details leaked to the media by Ukraine’s military intelligence, the SBU, the latest operation is the most elaborate achievement so far.

In an operation said to have taken 18 months to prepare, scores of small drones were smuggled into Russia, stored in special compartments aboard freight trucks, driven to at least four separate locations, thousands of miles apart, and launched remotely towards nearby airbases.

“No intelligence operation in the world has done anything like this before,” defence analyst Serhii Kuzan told Ukrainian TV.

“These strategic bombers are capable of launching long-range strikes against us,” he said. “There are only 120 of them and we struck 40. That’s an incredible figure.”

It is hard to assess the damage, but Ukrainian military blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko says that even if the bombers, and command and control aircraft were not destroyed, the impact is enormous.

“The extent of the damage is such that the Russian military-industrial complex, in its current state, is unlikely to be able to restore them in the near future,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

The strategic missile-carrying bombers in question, the Tu-95, Tu-22, and Tu-160 are, he said, no longer in production. Repairing them will be difficult, replacing them impossible.

The loss of the supersonic Tu-160, he said, would be especially keenly felt.

“Today, the Russian Aerospace Forces lost not just two of their rarest aircraft, but truly two unicorns in the herd,” he wrote.

Beyond the physical damage, which may or may not be as great as analysts here are assessing, Operation Spider’s Web sends another critical message, not just to Russia but also to Ukraine’s western allies.

My colleague Svyatoslav Khomenko, writing for the BBC Ukrainian Service website, recalls a recent encounter with a government official in Kyiv.

The official was frustrated.

“The biggest problem,” the official told Svyatoslav, “is that the Americans have convinced themselves we’ve already lost the war. And from that assumption everything else follows.”

Ukrainian defence journalist Illia Ponomarenko, posting on X, puts it another way, with a pointed reference to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s infamous Oval office encounter with Donald Trump.

“This is what happens when a proud nation under attack doesn’t listen to all those: ‘Ukraine has only six months left’. ‘You have no cards’. ‘Just surrender for peace, Russia cannot lose’.”

• Ukraine drones strike bombers during major attack in Russia

Even more pithy was a tweet from the quarterly Business Ukraine journal, which proudly proclaimed “It turns out Ukraine does have some cards after all. Today Zelensky played the King of Drones.”

This, then, is the message Ukrainian delegates carry as they arrive in Istanbul for a fresh round of ceasefire negotiations with representatives from the Kremlin: Ukraine is still in the fight.

The Americans “begin acting as if their role is to negotiate for us the softest possible terms of surrender,” the government official told Svyatoslav Khomenko.

“And then they’re offended when we don’t thank them. But of course we don’t – because we don’t believe we’ve been defeated.”

Despite Russia’s slow, inexorable advance through the battlefields of the Donbas, Ukraine is telling Russia, and the Trump administration, not to dismiss Kyiv’s prospects so easily.

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A Chinese Harvard graduate’s speech calling for unity in a divided world, delivered days after the US vowed to “aggressively” revoke Chinese students’ visas, has sparked mixed reactions in the US and her home country.

“We don’t rise by proving each other wrong. We rise by refusing to let one another go,” Jiang Yurong said on Thursday, the same day a US federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s ban on foreign students at Harvard.

Her speech went viral on the Chinese internet, with some saying it moved them to tears. However, others said her elite background is not representative of Chinese students.

In the US, some have flagged her alleged links with the Chinese Communist Party.

In their efforts to restrict Harvard from enrolling foreign students, US authorities had accused the institution of “co-ordinating with the Chinese Communist Party”.

Ms Jiang, who studied international development, was the first Chinese woman to speak at a Harvard graduation ceremony.

In her address, Ms Jiang emphasised the value of Harvard’s international classrooms, noting how that taught her and her classmates to “dance through each other’s traditions” and “carry the weight of each other’s worlds”.

“If we still believe in a shared future, let us not forget: those we label as enemies – they, too, are human. In seeing their humanity, we find our own,” said Ms Jiang, who spent her final two years of school at Cardiff Sixth Form College in Wales before going to Duke University in the US for her undergraduate degree.

A conservative X account, with the handle @amuse, criticised Harvard for choosing a graduation speaker who is “a representative of a CCP-funded and monitored non-government organisation”, alleging that her father works for a non-government organisation that “serves as a quasi-diplomatic agent for the [party]”.

The account, which has 639,000 followers, has previously posted pro-Donald Trump content, such as the US leader fighting Darth Vader and sexualised imagery of former Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Some Chinese social media users, on the other hand, allege that the organisation Ms Jiang’s father works for is backed by prominent American companies and foundations.

The BBC has not independently verified these allegations.

“This is why she could get a scholarship to go to the UK for high school, and later also to Harvard,” wrote a user on China’s X-like platform, Weibo.

Others called for her to stay on in the US, with comments that reeked with sarcasm. “Such talent should be left to the United States,” one wrote. “I hope she will continue to glow abroad and stay away from us!” read another.

But Ms Jiang’s vision of a “shared humanity” also struck a chord.

“That she is able to stand on an international stage and speak the heart of Chinese students has moved me to tears,” wrote a user on Red Note, another Chinese social media platform.

Another user defended Jiang by hitting back at those who criticised her: “You may not have changed them, but they’ve heard you… As more and more people speak out like you, you will eventually move and change others.”

There are around 6,800 international students at Harvard, who make up more than 27% of its enrolments in the past academic year.

About a third of these foreign students are from China, and more than 700 are Indian.

Multiple people were injured after a man shouting “free Palestine” tossed Molotov cocktails at a gathering in support of Israeli hostages in Colorado, authorities said.

Police said eight people – aged 52 to 88 – were injured in the attack at the Pearl Street Mall, a popular outdoor space in Boulder, about 30 miles (48km) from Denver.

The FBI called it a suspected terror attack and said the suspect used a makeshift flamethrower, Molotov cocktails and other incendiary devices.

Footage of the attack shows the suspect, who was shirtless, screaming at the group and had what appears to be Molotov cocktails in each hand when he was arrested.

The attack unfolded during a weekly scheduled demonstration put on by Run for Their Lives, a pro-Israeli group that holds walks in the outdoor pedestrian mall in solidarity with Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Police got calls around 13:26 local time (20:26 BST) about a man with a weapon and people being set on fire, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said at a news conference.

Officers who responded found multiple people injured, including those with burns.

Witnesses told authorities that the suspect used a “makeshift flamethrower and threw an incendiary device into the crowd,” said Mark Michalek, who heads the FBI’s Denver office.

Redfearn added those devices included Molotov cocktails being tossed at the crowd.

Michalek identified the suspect as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45.

Soliman is an Egyptian national, government officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

In 2022, Soliman arrived in California on a non-immigrant visa that expired in February 2023, multiple sources have told CBS News. He had been living in Colorado Springs.

Footage that appeared to be from the attack showed a chaotic scene: smoke filling the air, people running in multiple directions, spots of grass on fire and people injured on the ground.

• What we know about the attack so far

Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

In images and videos posted online, but not yet verified by the BBC, a man who appears to be the suspect is seen without a shirt and holding bottles with liquid with a piece of red cloth inside. He can be heard yelling at the crowd and appears to be advancing on them as some rush to flee.

As he screams, one woman is on the ground and appears injured. People surround her and one man pours water on her body.

Footage shows police rushing to the scene and arresting the suspect. Police say he was taken to the hospital with injuries.

“It is clear that this is a targeted act of violence and the FBI is investigating this as an act of terrorism,” Mr Michalek said. “Sadly, attacks like this are becoming too common across the country.”

The attack is the second high-profile act of violence in the US in the last two weeks related to the conflict in Gaza.

A man who shouted “free Palestine” fatally shot two Israeli embassy employees outside a Jewish museum in Washington DC on 22 May. The incident happened at a networking event organised by a Jewish organisation.

Colorado’s Attorney General Phil Weiser said that from what officials know the attack “appears to be hate crime given the group that was targeted”.

“People may have differing views about world events and the Israeli-Hamas conflict, but violence is never the answer to settling differences,” Weiser said in a statement on Sunday. “Hate has no place in Colorado.”

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, said he was “shocked” by the incident and called the attack “pure antisemitism”.

“Shocked by the terrible antisemitic terror attack targeting Jews in Boulder, Colorado,” he wrote on X. “This is pure antisemitism, fuelled by the blood libels spread in the media.”

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, similarly was saddened over the attack, calling it “terrorism” and asking for “concrete action” in response.

In a post on X, the ambassador said that Jewish protesters were brutally attacked”.

“Terrorism against Jews does not stop at the Gaza border – it is already burning the streets of America,” he said.

With all votes counted, right-wing historian Karol Nawrocki has been elected Poland’s new president, the state electoral commission (PKW) said.

PKW said Nawrocki won 50.9% percent of the votes – ahead of Warsaw’s liberal mayor Rafal Trzaskowski on 49.1% percent.

It’s a sensational turnaround from the result of the first exit poll – published immediately after voting ended at 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT) on Sunday – that showed Trzaskowski winning on 50.3% to Nawrocki’s 49.7%.

Trzaskowski had claimed victory after the first exit poll, while Nawrocki cautioned that the results were too close to call.

“We won, although the phrase ‘razor’s edge’ will forever enter the Polish language and politics,” Trzaskowski told his supporters.

His wife, Malgorzata, jokingly told the crowd, “I’m close to having a heart attack”.

Nawrocki, had said after the result of the first exit poll, “Let’s not lose hope for this night. We will win during the night, the difference is minimal. I believe that we will wake up tomorrow with President Karol Nawrocki.”

As Poland’s new president, Nawrocki is likely to continue to use his presidential power of veto to block Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU programme.

The result is also likely also re-energise Nawrocki’s supporters, the national conservative Law and Justice (PiS) opposition, which lost power eighteen months ago, giving them renewed belief they will be able to defeat Tusk’s coalition in 2027 parliamentary elections.

Nawrocki supports traditional Catholic and family values and is a strong supporter of Polish sovereignty within the EU.

He backs continued support for Ukraine, but has said he does not want to see the country joining NATO and the EU during Russia’s ongoing aggression.

Poland’s president is a largely ceremonial role with limited influence on foreign policy and defence, but the president can veto legislation. Tusk’s pro-EU coalition government lacks a large enough parliamentary majority to overturn it.

The current conservative incumbent president, Andrzej Duda, has used his powers to prevent Prime Minister Tusk delivering key campaign promises, including removing political influence from the judiciary and liberalising the country’s strict abortion law.

Duda, who could not run for re-election having already served two consecutive terms, congratulated Nawrocki.

“It was a difficult, sometimes painful but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted. Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute of the campaign!” Duda said.

Both presidential candidates support continued assistance for neighbouring Ukraine, but they differ over their approach to the EU. Trzaskowski, a former Europe minister, supports Tusk’s vision of a Poland at the heart of the European mainstream, influencing decisions through strong relations with Germany and France.

Nawrocki, 42, supports a strong sovereign Poland and does not want the country to cede any more powers to Brussels. He opposes the EU’s climate and migration policies.

He was relatively unknown nationally before he was selected by opposition party PiS to be their “unofficial” candidate.

A keen amateur boxer and footballer, he often posts images of himself working out. PiS presented him as a strong candidate who would stand up for ordinary Poles and the country’s national interests.

A fan of President Donald Trump, he flew to Washington during the Polish election campaign for an extremely brief meeting – and to get a thumbs-up photo of himself with Trump in the Oval Office.

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Australia’s defence minister Richard Marles has called on China to explain why it needs to have “such an extraordinary military build-up”.

He said Beijing needs to provide greater transparency and reassurance as it is the “fundamental issue” for the region.

Meanwhile, the Philippines defence minister Gilberto Teodoro Jr has called China “absolutely irresponsible and reckless” in its actions in the South China Sea.

The ministers had separately addressed reporters on the sidelines of an Asian defence summit held in Singapore.

China has yet to respond to either Marles or Teodoro.

Organised by the think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Shangri-la Dialogue has traditionally been anchored by the US and China, which have been jostling for power in the region.

This year China has sent a lower-level delegation and scrapped its speech. In the absence of a strong Chinese presence, the dialogue has been dominated by criticism and questions of Beijing posed by the US and its allies.

On Sunday morning, Marles asserted that “what we have seen from China is the single biggest increase in military capability and build up in conventional sense, by any country since the end of the Second World War”.

It is not just the size of the military build-up that concerns other countries, he told reporters.

“It’s the fact that it is happening without strategic reassurance. It’s happening without a clear strategic intent on the part of China… what we want to see is strategic transparency and strategic reassurance be provided by China, and an understanding of why it is needed to have such an extraordinary military build-up.”

He cited Australia as an example of such transparency, noting that Canberra makes public its national defence strategy and defence reviews, and makes it “utterly clear” that when they build up their defences it is for Australia and Asia’s security.

“So there is total strategic clarity and assurance that is being provided by Australia to our neighbours, to the region, to the world. That’s what we would like to see,” he said.

Answering a question on a highly-scrutinised Chinese military exercise conducted near Australia and New Zealand’s waters in February, Marles said that while it was “disruptive, and we believe that it could have been done in a better way”, ultimately “China was acting in accordance with international law”.

“The guiding light, the bedrock here, needs to be compliance with international law. That’s what we keep talking about, is the rules-based order.”

Marles was also asked about Hegseth’s call for Indo-Pacific partners to increase defence spending as a bulwark against the threat of China.

Marles said “we actually are taking steps down this path… we understand it, we’re up for it.” US President Donald Trump has called on Australia to increase its spending to 3%, but Canberra has yet to publicly commit to that number.

Marles added that part of that spending would come under Aukus, a pact among Australia, the UK and the US to build up a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

He said projects under the pact were “on track” and he was “very optimistic” about the progress, including more visits of American submarines to Australia and rotations through a Perth-based navy base.

In a separate interview with the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner, the Philippines defence minister Teodoro said China has been “absolutely irresponsible and reckless in appropriating most, if not all, of the South China Sea and the world cannot tolerate this.”

The two countries have repeatedly clashed over competing claims in the South China Sea, and the Philippines has complained of aggressive and violent tactics by the Chinese coast guard.

He echoed the call for a preservation of the international order, saying that “the takeaway of a lot of defence ministers is that Europe and the US must continue to lead” on this.

“That was the call of the Philippines. That is the call of Lithuania, Latvia, the smaller countries who have a way of life that values freedom and dignity of the human being.”

“And with a way of life that we don’t want the deep state looking over our shoulders or being scared of what we say,” he said, referring to China.

On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had warned of China’s “imminent” threat towards Taiwan and accused Beijing of becoming a “hegemonic power” in the region.

China has vigorously attacked Hegseth in two separate statements, with the latest posted on its Foreign Ministry website early on Sunday.

It said that Hegseth had “vilified China with defamatory allegations, and falsely called China a ‘threat’.

“No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the US itself, who is also the primary factor undermining the peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific.”

Earlier in the defence summit, French President Emmanuel Macron had made a pitch for Europe to be a new ally to Asia.

China also responded to Macron, who had compared the defence of Taiwan to the defence of Ukraine, and said the comparison was “unacceptable” as the “Taiwan question is entirely China’s affair”.

China claims Taiwan, a self-governing island, as its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to eventually “reunify” with it.

China says the US has “severely violated” their trade truce and that it will take strong measures to defend its interests.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said Washington has “seriously undermined” the agreement reached during talks in Geneva last month, when both countries lowered tariffs on goods imported from each other.

The spokesperson added that US actions have also severely violated the consensus reached during a phone call in January between China’s leader Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump.

The comments come after Trump said on Friday that China had “totally violated its agreement with us”.

The US President did not give details but Trade Representative Jamieson Greer later said China had not been removing non-tariff barriers as agreed under the deal.

Under the trade truce struck in May at a meeting in Geneva, the US lowered tariffs imposed on goods from China from 145% to 30%. China’s retaliatory tariffs on US goods dropped from 125% to 10%.

On Monday, Beijing said US violations of the agreement included stopping sales of computer chip design software to Chinese companies, warning against using chips made by Chinese tech giant Huawei, and cancelling visas for Chinese students.

The deal reached in Geneva came as a surprise to many analysts as it seemed that the two sides were incredibly far apart on many trade issues.

This showed that during face-to-face talks Washington and Beijing can reach agreements.

But as the rhetoric is once again ratcheting up, the fragility of the current truce has been highlighted and gives an indication of just how challenging it may be to reach a longer-term trade deal.

Although the fresh accusations may suggest that talks between Washington and Beijing are not going well, two top White House officials suggested on Sunday that Trump and Xi could hold talks soon.

Treasury Secretary Bessent told CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, that details of the trade will be “ironed out” once Xi and Trump speak, but he did not say exactly when that conversation is expected to happen.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told ABC News that the two leaders are expected to talk this week and “both sides have expressed a willingness to talk”.

“The bottom line is that we’ve got to be ready in case things don’t happen the way we want,” Hassett said of the expected talks.

But the Chinese side prefers agreements to be done at a lower level first before they reach the desk of the president.

Last week, Trump announced the US would double its current tariffs on steel and aluminium from 25% to 50%, starting on Wednesday.

Speaking at a rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Friday, Trump said the move would help boost the local steel industry and national supply, while reducing reliance on China.

Ukraine says it completed its biggest long-range attack of the war with Russia on Sunday, after using smuggled drones to launch a series of major strikes on 40 Russian warplanes at four military bases.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said 117 drones were used in the so-called “Spider’s Web” operation by the SBU security service, striking “34% of [Russia’s] strategic cruise missile carriers”. SBU sources told BBC News it took a year-and-a-half to organise the strikes.

Russia confirmed Ukrainian attacks in five regions, calling them a “terrorist act”.

The attacks come as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are heading to Istanbul, Turkey, for a second round of peace talks on Monday.

The talks are expected to start around 13:00 local time (10:00 GMT) at the Ciragan Palace.

Expectations are low, as the two warring sides remain far apart on how to end the war.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities reported a massive drone and missile attack on its territory over the weekend.

At least six people, including a seven-year-old child, were injured following a strike in Kharkiv in the early hours of Monday, the region’s governor said.

Elsewhere, Russia’s state news agency Ria said the country’s security service thwarted an attempted arson attack in the east.

It said two residents in the Primorye region were attempting to sabotage a railway track on Ukraine’s orders.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed in 2014.

• Ukraine’s audacious drone attack sends critical message to Russia – and the West

SBU sources earlier told BBC News Sunday’s attack involved drones hidden in wooden mobile cabins, with remotely operated roofs on trucks, brought near the airbases and then fired “at the right time”.

In several posts on social media late on Sunday, Zelensky said he congratulated SBU head Vasyl Maliuk with the “absolutely brilliant result” of the operation.

He said that each of the 117 drones launched had its own pilot.

“The most interesting thing – and we can already say this publicly – is that the ‘office’ of our operation on Russian territory was located right next to the FSB of Russia in one of their regions,” the Ukrainian president said.

The FSB is Russia’s powerful state security service.

Zelensky also said that all the people involved in the operation had been safely “led away” from Russia before the strikes.

The SBU estimated the damage to Russia’s strategic aviation was worth about $7bn (£5bn), promising to unveil more details soon.

The Ukrainian claims have not been independently verified.

Sources in the SBU earlier on Sunday told the BBC in a statement that four Russian airbases – two of which are thousands of miles from Ukraine – were hit:

• Belaya in Irkutsk oblast (region), Siberia
• Olenya in Murmansk oblast, Russia’s extreme north-west
• Dyagilevo in central Ryazan oblast
• Ivanovo in central Ivanovo oblast

The SBU sources said that among the hit Russian aircraft were strategic nuclear capable bombers called Tu-95 and Tu-22M3, as well as A-50 early warning warplanes.

They described the whole operation as “extremely complex logistically”.

“The SBU first smuggled FPV drones into Russia, followed later by mobile wooden cabins. Once on Russian territory, the drones were hidden under the roofs of these cabins, which had been placed on cargo vehicles,” the sources said.

“At the right moment, the roofs were remotely opened, and the drones took off to strike the Russian bombers.”

Irkutsk Governor Igor Kobzev confirmed drones that attacked the Belaya military base in Sredniy, Siberia, were launched from a truck.

Kobzev posted on Telegram to say that the launch site had been secured and there was no threat to life.

Russian media outlets have also reported that other attacks were similarly started with drones emerging from the lorries.

One user is heard saying that the drones were flying out of a Kamaz truck near a petrol station.

Russian media were reporting the attack in Murmansk but said air defences were working. The attack in Irkutsk was also being reported.

In a post on social media later on Sunday, the Russian defence ministry confirmed that airbases in the country’s five regions were attack.

It claimed that “all attacks were repelled” on military airbases in the Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions. The latter base was not mentioned by the SBU sources.

In the Murmansk and Irkutsk regions, “several aircraft caught fire” after drones were launched from nearby areas, the ministry said.

It said all the blazes were extinguished and there were no casualties. “Some of the participants in the terrorist attacks have been detained,” it added.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities say 472 drones and seven ballistic and cruise missiles were involved in a wave of attacks on Ukraine last night.

This would appear to be one of the largest single Russian drone attacks so far. Ukraine says it “neutralised” 385 aerial targets.

In a separate development, Ukraine’s land forces said 12 of its military personnel were killed and more than 60 injured in a Russian missile strike on a training centre.

Ukraine’s head of land forces, Maj Gen Mykhailo Drapatyi, tendered his resignation shortly afterwards.

He said his decision was “dictated by my personal sense of responsibility for the tragedy”.

The UK will build up to 12 new attack submarines, the prime minister will announce as the government unveils its major defence review on Monday.

The review is expected to recommend the armed forces move to “warfighting readiness” to deter growing threats faced by the UK.

Sir Keir Starmer will say up to 12 conventionally-armed nuclear-powered submarines will replace the UK’s current fleet from the late 2030s onwards.

The prime minister is also expected to confirm the UK will spend £15bn on its nuclear warhead programme.

Sir Keir will say that, alongside the UK’s nuclear-armed submarines, the new vessels would keep “Britain and Nato safe for decades”.

The Strategic Defence Review, commissioned by Labour, will shape the UK’s armed forces for years to come.

Led by ex-Labour defence secretary Lord Robertson it will make 62 recommendations, which the government is expected to accept in full.

Other announcements in the review will include:

• Commitment to £1.5bn to build six new factories to enable an “always on” munitions production capacity
• Building up to 7,000 long-range weapons including missiles or drones in the UK, to be used by British forces
• Pledge to set up a “cyber and electromagnetic command” to boost the military’s defensive and offensive capabilities in cyberspace
• Extra £1.5bn to 2029 to fund repairs to military housing
• £1bn on technology to speed up delivery of targeting information to soldiers

Defence Secretary John Healey has signalled he is not aiming to increase the overall size of the Army before the next general election.

On Sunday, he said his “first job” was to reverse a decline in numbers with a target to return to a strength of 73,000 full-time soldiers “in the next Parliament”.

Building the new submarines will support 30,000 jobs into the 2030s as well as 30,000 apprenticeships and 14,000 graduate roles across the next 10 years, the Ministry of Defence said.

Healey said: “Our outstanding submariners patrol 24/7 to keep us and our allies safe, but we know that threats are increasing and we must act decisively to face down Russian aggression.”

The Astute class is the Royal Navy’s current fleet of attack submarines, which have nuclear-powered engines and are armed with conventional torpedoes and missiles.

As well as protecting maritime task groups and gathering intelligence, they protect the Vanguard class of submarines that carry the UK’s trident nuclear missiles.

In the Astute series, HMS Agamemnon, was launched last October and another is under construction which will take the number of submarines in this class to seven.

The next generation of attack submarines that will replace them, SSN-AUKUS, have been developed with the Australian Navy under a deal agreed in 2023 by the Conservative government.

Meanwhile work on modernising the warheads carried by Trident Missiles is already under way.

The £15bn investment into the warhead programme will back the government’s commitments to maintain the continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrent.

In his announcement on Monday, Sir Keir is to repeat a Labour manifesto commitment to deliver the Dreadnought class of nuclear-armed submarines, which are due to replace the ageing Vanguard fleet from the early 2030s onwards.

The MoD’s Defence Nuclear Enterprise accounts for 20% of its budget and includes the cost of building four Dreadnought class submarines.

Commitments on military spending come against the background of the government’s wider review of departmental spending due later this month and have also taken on renewed importance given the Ukraine war, and pressure from Nato and US President Donald Trump for European countries to step up defence spending.

Sir Keir has committed the government to spending 2.5% of the UK’s national income on defence by 2027, up from 2.3%, but has faced pressure to commit to 3%.

Healey said the target will be hit by 2034 but the Conservatives say the threshold should be hit earlier. The Liberal Democrats have also argued for a 3% spending target.

Shadow defence secretary James Cartlidge said Labour’s review should be “taken with a pinch of salt” unless the government showed there would be enough money to pay for it.

Head of Nato, Mark Rutte has called on allies to spend 3.5% of its GDP on defence, with a further 1.5% on defence related expenditure.

The government has said it wants Britain to be the leading European nation within the Nato alliance but that might prove difficult when a significant number of allies exceed the UK’s military spending.

It says its review will reverse decades of underinvestment in Britain’s armed forces. But it remains to be seen if the investment will be enough.

The ambitions of past defence reviews have rarely been matched by resources.

Members of the Western alliance Nato need to prepare for a possible attack from Russia within the next four years, according to Germany’s chief of defence.

General Carsten Breuer told the BBC that Russia was producing hundreds of tanks a year, many of which could be used for an attack on Nato Baltic state members by 2029 or even earlier.

He also insisted that Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, remains unified over the war in Ukraine, despite differences of opinion expressed recently by both Hungary and Slovakia.

Gen Breuer was speaking on the sidelines of the Shangri-la Dialogue, a defence summit in Singapore organised by the think tank International Institute of Strategic Studies.

His comments come weeks ahead of a summit of Nato nations at The Hague where they are expected to discuss defence budgets, among other topics.

Gen Breuer said that Nato was facing “a very serious threat” from Russia, one that he has never seen before in his 40 years in service.

At the moment, he said, Russia was building up its forces to an “enormous extent”, producing approximately 1,500 main battle tanks every year.

“Not every single tank is going to [the war in] Ukraine, but it’s also going in stocks and into new military structures always facing the West,” he said.

Russia also produced four million rounds of 152mm artillery munition in 2024, and not all of it was going to Ukraine either, added Gen Breuer.

The figures come from German and allied nations’ analysts.

“There’s an intent and there’s a build up of the stocks” for a possible future attack on Nato’s Baltic state members, he said.

“This is what the analysts are assessing – in 2029. So we have to be ready by 2029… If you ask me now, is this a guarantee that’s not earlier than 2029? I would say no, it’s not. So we must be able to fight tonight,” he said.

Many have long feared an attack on a Nato state as it could trigger a larger war between Russia and the US, which is a key member of Nato. Under Article 5 of the Nato agreement, any attack on a member state would mean other members must come to its defence.

Gen Breuer singled out the so-called Suwalki Gap, an area that borders Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Belarus, as one of the most vulnerable.

“The Baltic States are really exposed to the Russians, right? And once you are there, you really feel this… in the talks we are having over there,” he said.

The Estonians, he said, had given the analogy of being close to a wildfire where they “feel the heat, see the flames and smell the smoke”, while in Germany “you probably see a little bit of smoke over the horizon and not more”.

Gen Breuer said this showed the differing perspectives among European states of the threat of a possible Russian attack.

Russia’s view of the Ukraine war was different from the West’s, he said, where Moscow sees the war as more of a “continuum” in a larger conflict with Nato and is therefore “trying to find ways into our defence lines and it’s testing it”.

He cited recent attacks on undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, cyber attacks on European public transport, and unidentified drones spotted over German power stations and other infrastructure.

Nato members should therefore build up their militaries again, Gen Breuer argued. “What we have to do now is really to lean in and to tell everybody, hey, ramp up… get more into it because we need it. We need it to be able to defend ourselves and therefore also to build up deterrence.”

Asked by the BBC about Nato cohesion, given Hungary and Slovakia’s closer relations with Moscow, Gen Breuer insisted the alliance was still healthy.

He pointed to Finland and Sweden’s decisions to join Nato shortly after the Ukraine war began. “I’ve never seen such a unity like it is now” among nations and military leaders, he said.

“All of them understand the threat that is at the moment approaching Nato, all understand that we have to develop a direction of deterrence, into the direction of collective defence. This is clear to everyone. The urgency is seen.”

Gen Breuer’s remarks are yet another sign of a significant change in attitudes in Germany towards defence and Russia.

Like many Western nations, including the UK, it has scaled down its investments in its military over many years.

But there has been a growing recognition of the need to reverse this, with even the Green Party coming onboard a recent vote to lift restrictions on Germany’s defence spending.

But as Western military and political leaders say they are ready for the fight, questions remain on whether this is a case of ambition outpacing reality.

It will take years for Europe’s military industrial base to crank up to speed to match anywhere near the scale of weaponry that Russia is churning out.

The US has also been drawing down, not building up, its defence commitments to Europe to focus on the Indo-Pacific.

It’s a grim paradox, doctors say.

On the one hand, antibiotics are being overused until they no longer work, driving resistance and fuelling the rise of deadly superbugs. On the other hand, people are dying because they can’t access these life-saving drugs.

A new study by the non-profit Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) looked at access to antibiotics for nearly 1.5 million cases of carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative (CRGN) infections across eight major low- and middle-income countries, including India, Brazil and South Africa. CRGN bacteria are superbugs resistant to last-line antibiotics – yet only 6.9% of patients received appropriate treatment in the countries studied.

India bore the lion’s share of CRGN infections and treatment efforts, procuring 80% of the full courses of studied antibiotics but managing to treat only 7.8% of its estimated cases, the study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal reports. (A full drug course of antibiotics refers to the complete set of doses that a patient needs to take over a specific period to fully treat an infection.)

Common in water, food, the environment and the human gut, Gram-negative bacteria cause infections such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), pneumonia and food poisoning.

They can pose a serious threat to newborns and the elderly alike. Especially vulnerable are hospital patients with weakened immunity, often spreading rapidly in ICUs and proving difficult – and sometimes impossible – to treat. Treating carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacterial infections is doubly difficult because those bacteria are resistant to some of the most powerful antibiotics.

“These infections are a daily reality across all age groups,” says Dr Abdul Ghafur, infectious disease consultant at Apollo Hospital in India’s Chennai city. “We often see patients for whom no antibiotic works – and they die.”

The irony is cruel. While the world tries to curb antibiotic overuse, a parallel tragedy plays out quietly in poorer nations: people dying from treatable infections because the right drugs are out of reach.

“For years, the dominant narrative has been that antibiotics are being overused, but the stark reality is that many people with highly drug-resistant infections in low- and middle-income countries are not getting access to the antibiotics they need,” says Dr Jennifer Cohn, GARDP’s Global Access Director and senior author of the study.

• India’s ‘blockbuster’ drugs to take on deadly superbugs
• India facing a pandemic of antibiotics-resistant superbugs

The study examined eight intravenous drugs active against carbapenem-resistant bacteria – ranging from older antibiotics including Colistin to newer ones such as Ceftazidime-avibactam. Of the few available drugs, Tigecycline was the most widely used.

Researchers blame the treatment gap on weak health systems and limited access to effective antibiotics.

For example, only 103,647 full treatment courses were procured of Tigecycline across eight countries – far short of the 1.5 million patients who needed them, the study found. This highlighted a major shortfall in the global response to drug-resistant infections.

What prevents patients with drug-resistant infections in India from getting the right antibiotics?

Physicians point to multiple barriers – reaching the right health facility, getting accurate diagnostic tests, and accessing effective drugs. Cost remains a major hurdle, with many of these antibiotics priced far beyond the reach of poorer patients.

“Those who can afford these antibiotics often overuse them; those who can’t, don’t get them at all,” says Dr Ghafur. “We need a system that ensures access for the poor and prevents misuse by the well-to-do.”

To improve access, these drugs must be made more affordable. To prevent misuse, stronger regulation is key.

“Ideally, every antibiotic prescription in hospitals should require a second sign-off – by an infection specialist or microbiologist,” says Dr Ghafur. “Some hospitals do this, but most don’t. With the right oversight, regulators can ensure this becomes standard practice.”

To fix the access problem and curb misuse, both smarter policies and stronger safeguards are essential, say researchers. But access alone won’t solve the crisis – the pipeline of new antibiotics is drying up. The decline in antibiotic R&D – and the limited availability of existing drugs – is a global issue.

India bears one of the world’s heaviest burdens of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), but it may also hold the key to combating it – both at home and globally, researchers say.

“India is also one of the largest markets for new antibiotics and can successfully advocate for the development and access of new antibiotics,” says Dr Cohn. With a strong pharmaceutical base, the country is emerging as a hub for AMR innovation, from promising new antibiotics to advanced diagnostics.

Dr Cohn says India can strengthen its antibiotic response by generating local data to better estimate needs and pinpoint gaps in the care pathway.

This would allow for more targeted interventions to improve access to the right drugs.

Innovative models are already emerging – Kerala state, for instance, is using a “hub-and-spoke approach” to support lower-level facilities in managing serious infections. Coordinated or pooled procurement across hospitals or states could also reduce the cost of newer antibiotics, as seen with cancer drug programs, researchers say.

Without access to the right antibiotics, modern medicine begins to unravel – doctors risk losing the ability to safely perform surgery, treat complications in cancer patients, or manage everyday infections.

“As an infectious disease doctor, I see appropriate use as one part – but only one part – of access,” says Dr Ghafur. “When we get new antibiotics, it’s important to save them on one hand – and save them for right patients.”

Clearly, the challenge is not just to use antibiotics wisely, but to ensure they reach those who need them most.