Vladimir Putin has said he will have to respond to Ukraine’s major drone attack on Russian airbases, US President Donald Trump has warned.

Speaking after a phone call with the Russian president, Trump said: “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

Trump warned in a social media post that the phone call, which lasted more than an hour, would not “lead to immediate peace” between Russia and Ukraine.

The two leaders also discussed Iran, with Trump saying Putin suggested he could help with nuclear talks with the country.

The White House has been approached for comment.

Russia’s RIA Novosti, a state-owned news agency, said Putin told Trump that Ukraine has tried to “disrupt” the negotiations and that the government in Kyiv has “essentially turned into a terrorist organisation”.

The two also “exchanged views on the prospects for restoring cooperation between the countries, which has enormous potential,” it said.

The conversation between the two leaders marks the first since Ukraine launched a surprise attack using smuggled drones to strike Russian airbases on 1 June, targeting what it said were nuclear-capable long-range bombers.

The Kremlin said later on Wednesday that Trump told Putin the US was not warned in advance of the attack.

Last week, Trump appeared to set a two-week deadline for Putin, threatening to change how the US is responding to Russia if he believed Putin was still “tapping” him along on peace efforts in Ukraine.

The comment was one of a string of critical remarks by Trump, who earlier said Putin had gone “absolutely crazy” and was “playing with fire” when Russia intensified drone and missile attacks on targets in Ukraine.

Trump made no mention of a deadline or his previous remarks in Wednesday’s post on his Truth Social platform.

On Wednesday, a delegation of Ukrainian officials including Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and Presidential Office head Andriy Yermak were set to meet with US Senators in Washington to discuss arms purchases and efforts to stop the fighting.

In a social media post, Yermak said that the delegation planned to discuss “defense support and the situation on the battlefield”, sanctions against Russia and a previously signed reconstruction investment fund.

The post also comes just days after a second round of direct peace talks between the warring sides, held in Istanbul, ended without a major breakthrough, although the two sides agreed to swap more prisoners of war.

Ukrainian negotiators said Russia rejected an “unconditional ceasefire” – a key demand of Kyiv and its Western allies including the US.

The Russian team said they’d proposed multi-day ceasefires in “certain areas” of the frontline in Ukraine, although they gave no further details.

Trump has previously – and repeatedly – said he believes the two sides are making progress, despite ongoing fighting on the frontline and aerial attacks carried out in both Russia and Ukraine.

Additionally, Trump said that on the call he and Putin discussed Iran, and he believed the two “were in agreement” that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”.

The US reportedly proposed Iran halt all production of enriched uranium – which can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons – and instead rely on a regional consortium for supplies.

Iran has not yet responded to the plan presented at talks last Saturday.

According to Trump, Putin “suggested that he will participate in discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion”.

“It is my opinion that Iran has been slow walking their decision on this very important matter,” Trump wrote. “We will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has criticised the US proposal and said it will not stop enriching uranium.

South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae-myung, has secured a storming victory, but his honeymoon will barely last the day.

The former opposition leader is not getting to enjoy the two-month transition period usually afforded to new leaders, so they can build their team and nail down their vision for the country.

Instead he is entering office immediately, to fill the hole left by the impeachment of the former president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who last December tried and failed to bring the country under martial law.

In electing Lee, with almost 50% of the vote , South Koreans have vehemently rejected the military dictatorship that was almost forced upon them. Lee campaigned on the promise that he would strengthen South Korea’s democracy and unite the country, after a divisive and tumultuous six months.

But that will have to wait. First, he has a Donald Trump shaped crisis to avert.

In the coming months, Trump has the power to destabilise South Korea’s economy, its security, and its volatile relationship with North Korea.

South Koreans were dismayed when Trump slapped 25% tariffs on all Korean imports in April, after already hitting the country with aggressive tariffs on its core industries – steel and cars. They had assumed that being longstanding military allies from the days of the Korean War, and having a free-trade agreement with the US, would spare them.

If these tariffs take effect “they could trigger an economic crisis”, a seasoned advisor to Lee’s Democratic Party, Moon Chung-in, said.

Before Trump’s announcements, South Korea’s economy was already slowing down. The martial law chaos constricted it further. Then, in the first quarter of this year, it contracted. Fixing this has been voters’ number one demand, even above fixing their beleaguered democracy.

But without a president, talks with Trump have been on hold. They cannot be put off any longer.

And there is much more than South Korea’s economy at stake in these negotiations.

The US currently guarantees South Korea’s security by promising to come to its defence with both conventional and nuclear weapons were it to be attacked by its nuclear-armed neighbour, North Korea. As part of this deal there are 28,500 US troops stationed in the South.

Yet Trump has made clear he does not plan to differentiate between trade and security when negotiating with the country, signalling that Seoul is not pulling its weight in either area.

In a post on his Truth Social platform in April, Trump said that during initial tariff talks with South Korea he had “discussed payment for the big time military protection we provide”, calling it “beautiful and efficient one-stop shopping”.

This approach makes Seoul uniquely vulnerable.

Evans Revere, a former senior US diplomat based in Seoul, fears a crisis is coming. “For the first time in our lifetime we have a US president who does not feel a moral and strategic obligation towards Korea”.

In his first term as president, Trump questioned the value of having US forces stationed in Korea and threatened to withdraw them unless Seoul paid more to have them. It seems likely he will demand more money this time around.

Seoul may not want to pay more, but it can afford to. A bigger problem is that Trump’s calculations, and that of his defence department, seem to have changed. This is no longer just about the money. Washington’s top priority now in Asia is not just stopping North Korea attacking the South, it is also to contain China’s military ambitions in the region and against Taiwan.

Last year, a now-senior US defence official, Elbridge Colby, said that South Korea was going to have to take “overwhelming responsibility for its own self-defence against North Korea”, so the US could be ready to fight China.

One option is that the troops stationed here would switch their focus to constraining China. Another, touted by a couple of US defence officials last month, is that thousands of soldiers would be removed from the peninsula altogether and redeployed, and that Seoul’s military would also have to play a role in deterring Beijing.

Not only could this put South Korea in a dangerous military predicament, but it would also create a diplomatically difficult one.

President Lee, who historically has been sceptical of Korea’s alliance with the US, wants to use his presidency to improve relations with China, South Korea’s powerful neighbour and trading partner. He has stated several times that South Korea should stay out of a conflict between China and Taiwan.

“We must keep our distance from a China-Taiwan contingency. We can get along with both”, he said during a televised debate last month.

The political advisor Mr Moon, who once served as national security advisor, reiterated Lee’s concerns. “We are worried about America abandoning us, but at the same time we are worried about being entrapped in American strategy to contain and encircle China”, he said. “If the US threatens us, we can let [the forces] go”, he said.

For Mr Revere, the former US diplomat, this combination of Lee, Trump and China threatens to create “the perfect storm”. “The two leaders may find themselves on very different pages and that could be a recipe for a problematic relationship. If this plays out, it would undermine peace and stability in North East Asia”.

In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un will no doubt be watching closely, keen to exploit the shifting ground. His nuclear weapons programme is more dangerous than ever, and nothing or no-one has been able to convince him to wind it down – including Donald Trump who, during his first term, was the first US president to ever meet a North Korean leader.

Since returning to office Trump has indicated he would like to resume talks with Kim, which ended without agreement in 2019. In Seoul, there is real concern that this time the pair could strike a deal that is very bad for South Korea.

The fear is that Trump would take an “America first” approach, and ask Kim to stop producing his intercontinental ballistic missiles that threaten the US mainland, without addressing the multiple short-range nuclear weapons pointed at Seoul. And in return, Kim could demand a high price.

Kim has far more leverage than he did in 2019. He has more nuclear warheads, his weapons are more advanced, and the sanctions that were supposed to put pressure on his regime have all but collapsed, thanks largely to Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader is providing Kim with economic and military support in return for North Korea’s help fighting the war in Ukraine.

This therefore gives Kim the cover to make more audacious requests of the US. He could ask Trump to accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, and agree to a deal that would reduce Pyongyang’s weapons count rather than get rid of them altogether. Another of his requests could likely be for the US to remove some of the security it provides South Korea, including the troops.

“North Korea is in the driver’s seat now. The only curveball is how much risk President Trump will take”, said Sydney Seiler, who was involved in the 2019 negotiations on the US side. “The idea there might be some sort of troop withdrawal [included in a deal] is really not that far-fetched”.

Mr Seiler stressed that the US would “not leave South Korea in the dust,” but advised South Korea’s new president to “establish a relationship with Trump early on”, and be clear they expect to be part of any process, if talks materialise.

The new president must move quickly on all fronts, added Mr Revere, arguing that Lee’s first homework assignment should be to come up with a list of 10 reasons why South Korea is an indispensable partner and why American dollars are being well spent; reasons that can convince a sceptical and transactional Trump.

One Ace card South Korea is hoping to play is its shipbuilding prowess. It builds more vessels than any other country bar China, which is now the world’s dominant ship builder and home to the largest naval fleet. This is a frightening prospect for the US whose own industry and navy are in decline.

Last month I visited South Korea’s flagship shipyard in Ulsan on the south coast – the largest in the world – where Hyundai Heavy Industries builds 40-50 new ships a year, including naval destroyers. Sturdy cranes slotted together sheets of metal, creating vessels the size of small villages.

Seoul is hoping it can use this expertise to build, repair and maintain warships for the US, and in the process convince Washington it is a valuable partner.

“US shipbuilding difficulties are affecting their national security”, said Jeong Woo Maan, head of strategy for Hyundai’s naval and ship unit. “This is one of the strongest cards we have to negotiate with”.

In his campaign for president, Lee Jae-myung declared he did not want to rush into any agreements with Trump. Now in office, he could quickly find himself without this luxury.

Vanuatu authorities are looking at revoking Andrew Tate’s citizenship after it was revealed that he acquired a golden passport at around the same time as his 2022 arrest in Romania for rape and human trafficking.

The self-described misogynist influencer acquired citizenship under a fast-track scheme for those who invest at least $130,000 (£96,000) in the tiny Pacific archipelago, according to an investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The scheme has raised security concerns, and led the European Union to revoke Vanuatu’s visa-free privilege in late 2024.

A Vanuatu government spokesman said authorities were “definitely looking into” Tate’s citizenship.

“Once we have the files, definitely, the processes will be in place to revoke his citizenship,” Kiery Manassah told ABC News.

“The government does not want to encourage people of questionable backgrounds to be granted citizenship,” he added. “Those who are wanted by their countries or who are investigated by police authorities from overseas are not welcome to be part of the citizens of Vanuatu.”

Passports-for-sale or citizenship by investment schemes are a source of income for countries like Vanuatu. But they have also been abused by organised crime suspects, oligarchs and even intelligence agents, said Aubrey Belford, Pacific lead editor at OCCRP.

“It’s caused a lot of alarm because it’s one of those loopholes that allows people to get a new passport or even a new identity and be able to evade law enforcement,” Belford told ABC News.

Vanuatu granted Tate citizenship in December 2022. That same month, Tate and his brother Tristan were arrested in Romania and have since largely been under travel restrictions in the country.

Vanuatu does not have a formal extradition treaty with Romania.

It is unclear if Tristan Tate also acquired Vanuatu citizenship.

In recent years, Andrew Tate has built a massive online presence, including more than 10 million followers on X, sharing his lifestyle of fast cars, private jets and yachts.

He has also gained global notoriety for his views towards women, proudly proclaiming himself a “misogynist” and also using extreme language relating to acts of violence against women.

He has also been singled out for the effect he has had in spreading misogyny online among boys and young men by authorities in the UK.

The Tate brothers were both born in the US but moved to Luton in the UK with their mother after their parents divorced.

They have denied allegations of criminal wrongdoing.

Separately, the UK is seeking their extradition from Romania after they were charged in 2024 of rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking.

Lawyers for the brothers have said that they will return to the UK to face those charges, that stemmed from allegation between 2012 and 2015.

A Romanian court has ruled that the brothers could be extradited to the UK following the end of any trial there.

Just hours after winning the South Korean presidency, Lee Jae-myung has pledged to “unite the people” in his inauguration speech on Wednesday.

The 61-year-old won a snap election by 49.4% – a clear rejection of his rival, Kim Moon-soo, who came from the same party as impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol.

Yoon triggered months of political chaos after he attempted to impose martial law, which eventually resulted in his impeachment.

As he takes on the top job, Lee now faces the daunting task of not only uniting the country, but also balancing ties with its most important ally, the US, under President Trump’s unpredictable brand of diplomacy.

In a clear reference to his predecessor, the Democratic Party’s Lee said in his address that he would “never again” allow democratic institutions to be threatened, adding that he would “become a president who ends the politics of division”.

Speaking to a crowd in front of parliament – where just over six months ago he jumped over the perimeter wall to vote down Yoon’s martial law declaration – Lee blamed the country’s political turmoil on “political factions with no desire to work for the lives of the people”.

He also pledged to build a “flexible, pragmatic government” and announced that an emergency economic task force would be “activated immediately”.

It’s a remarkable comeback for a man who has been caught in several political scandals, from investigations over alleged corruption to family feuds – though analysts and officials say his win was a clear capitalisation of public anger.

“The people judged the December 3 martial law [incident] as a violation of democracy,” National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik told BBC Korean in an exclusive interview.

“This election was not only a judgment on that, but also a reflection of the public’s demand to properly restore democratic principles.”

Woo said the result was “a fair reflection of the will of the people” and “clearly expressed the people’s intent”.

This was echoed by Park Sung-min, president of Min Consulting, who said voters were not “necessarily expressing strong support for Lee’s agenda – rather, they were responding to what they saw as a breakdown of democracy”.

“The election became a vehicle for expressing outrage… [and] was a clear rebuke of the ruling party, which had been complicit in or directly responsible for the martial law measures,” he said.

Dozens of Lee supporters gathered in front of parliament on Wednesday, hoping to catch a glimpse of the president – with many saying they were excited to see what he would achieve.

“I’m so happy he was elected – I stayed here all night in order to see the inauguration ceremony,” Leo Kil, a software engineer, told the BBC.

“I believe he will carry out his basic promises, like creating a fair world. I hope South Korea becomes a country where people who commit wrongs receive the consequences of the law and laws are enforced as promised with the people. I have really high expectations.”

Yoo Gi-won, another Lee supporter, said that “Yoon’s presidency made me feel like the country is going to be ruined. I saw everyone around me suffering”.

“For a while South Korea has been cold place [but now] I’m so, so happy,” he added.

But as the fanfare fades, Lee will be left facing a daunting reality.

For one, he is still facing a trial in the Supreme Court over charges of violating election laws. The court postponed the trial until after the election to avoid interference, as a conviction could have barred Lee from contesting.

It’s not clear what happens if Lee is now found guilty, though the law says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted for criminal offences, with the exception of insurrection or treason.

Greater still is his challenge of bringing together a nation that is still racked by deep anger and division.

“Years of escalating polarisation under both the [previous] Moon and Yoon administrations have left South Korea’s political landscape bitterly divided,” Mr Park said.

“Lee may speak of national unity, but he faces a profound dilemma: how to pursue accountability for what many view as an attempted insurrection without deepening the very divisions he seeks to heal.”

Despite the PPP’s loss, ex-President Yoon still has a considerably strong and vocal support base – and it is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

His supporters, mainly young male voters and the elderly, often push strong right-wing narratives, and many of them believe his declaration of martial law was necessary to protect the country.

Many also peddle conspiracy theories, believing Yoon’s party was a victim of election fraud.

With Yoon gone, there are questions about who might fill the vacuum for this predominantly young, male base.

One name in particular has emerged: Lee Jun Seok, who also ran for president, but dropped out earlier on Tuesday when exit polls suggested he was trailing too far behind.

He has been especially popular with many young men for his anti-feminist views, which has reminded some of Yoon, under whom equality for women became a polarising subject.

Young men in their 30s came out in higher numbers than usual to vote this time, drawn in part by candidates like Lee Jun-seok.

Those wanting to hold the PPP-led government accountable, as well as others wanting to ensure Lee Jae-myung’s presidency was dashed, led to this year’s voter turnout reaching 79.4% – the highest since 1997.

And so it is in this political climate that Lee takes over – hoping to transform public fury into hope.

How – and if – he might do that, is a question that will be closely watched.

A 22-year-old man has been arrested in Pakistan and confessed to the murder of 17-year-old social media influencer Sana Yousaf, according to police.

Authorities say they believe Umar Hayat murdered Ms Yousaf at her home in Islamabad on Monday after she rejected what they called his “offers of friendship”. He allegedly also repeatedly tried, and failed, to meet her.

They say he broke into her home, fired two shots, stole her phone and fled.

Ms Yousaf’s father, Syed Yousaf Hassan, told the BBC she was his only daughter, and was “very brave”. Her family have gathered in Chitral, where Ms Yousaf has been buried.

Mr Yousaf said she had never mentioned Hayat, nor any threatening behaviour, before she was killed.

He said Ms Yousaf’s aunt was at the family home when the suspect broke in, and that he had also threatened to shoot her before fleeing.

Ms Yousaf died before she could be taken to the hospital.

Police said the “brutal” murder caused “a wave of concern” across the country, and that there was “immense” pressure to find the killer.

They raided locations across the capital and the province of Punjab and scanned footage from 113 CCTV cameras.

The suspected murder weapon and Ms Yousaf’s phone have since been recovered.

Ms Yousaf already had a wide following in Pakistan, with half a million fans on Instagram before her death. Condolences have flooded her social media pages.

Her TikTok account gained hundreds of thousands of followers overnight, and now stands at more than a million.

Her last video on Instagram, posted last week, showed her surrounded by balloons and cutting a cake for her birthday.

Given her high profile in Pakistan, news of Ms Yousaf’s death spread quickly in local news media and on social media platforms. It’s also ignited a fierce debate about women on social media.

While many have shared their outrage at news of Ms Yousaf’s death, there has also been backlash towards her work as an influencer.

Digital rights advocacy group Bolo Bhi has been monitoring the online reaction, and its director Usama Khilji said such criticism had been coming from a small portion of mostly male internet users – some of whom have cited religious grounds.

“They’re asking why she was putting up all this content, and even suggesting the family should take down her Instagram and TikTok accounts because they add to her ‘sins’,” Mr Khilji explained.

Dr Farzana Bari, a prominent human rights activist, argued the reaction is “misogynistic” and “patriarchal”.

She said Ms Yousaf had “her own voice”, and that the discourse online is a reminder that social media has become a “very threatening place for female content creators” in Pakistan.

The Inspector General of Police for Islamabad, Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi, said women who choose to become social media influencers “deserve our encouragement and support”. He added Ms Yousaf’s murder was “tragic”.

Dr Bari said authorities condemning the incident publicly was a positive sign that could lead to change.

The arrested suspect is the son of a former public servant. He is from the town of Faisalabad, in the province of Punjab, according to police.

The Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), set to take off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida next week, will be piloted by an Indian as it soars towards the International Space Station (ISS).

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian air force is among the four-member multi-country crew of Ax-4 that will be spending two weeks on the ISS.

The flight, scheduled for 10 June at 08:22 EDT (12:22GMT; 17:52IST), has generated a huge interest in India as Group Captain Shukla will only be the second Indian ever to travel to space and the first to visit the ISS.

The trip comes 41 years after cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to fly to space aboard a Russian Soyuz in 1984. He spent nearly eight days there.

Ax-4 is led by former Nasa astronaut Peggy Whitson – a space veteran who has been commander of ISS twice, spent hundreds of days in space and done 10 space walks.

The team also includes Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary – just like the Indian astronaut, they will also be taking their countries back to space after more than four decades.

Experts say the pilot’s role is key, as he would serve as second-in-command to the mission commander, assisting with spacecraft operations during launch, docking, undocking and return to Earth.

The astronauts, who have been in quarantine since 25 May to prepare for the trip, addressed a press conference on Tuesday night where they showed-off Joy – a small, white toy swan they said would be “the fifth crew member” on Ax-4.

“We are good for the launch, we have completed all the training and the team has bonded well,” Commander Whitson said.

Describing the past year as “nothing short of transformative” for him, Group Captain Shukla said he did not have words to describe his excitement.

“It has been an amazing journey so far, but the best is yet to come,” he said.

“As I go into space, I carry not just instruments and equipment, I carry hopes and dreams of a billion hearts.

“I request all Indians to pray for the success of our mission,” he added.

The 39-year-old was among four Indian air force officers shortlisted last year to travel on the country’s first-ever human space flight, scheduled for 2027.

The Gaganyaan mission aims to send three astronauts to an orbit of 400km and bring them back after three days. India has also announced ambitious plans to set up a space station by 2035 and send an astronaut to the Moon by 2040.

India’s space agency Isro has been carrying out a number of tests to prepare for Gaganyaan. In December, it plans to send a female humanoid robot to space as part of the tests.

• Gaganyaan: India names astronauts for maiden space flight
• Gaganyaan: India launches test flight ahead of sending crew into space
• Chandrayaan, Aditya-L1, Gaganyaan: The year India reached the Moon – and aimed for the Sun

So, officials say the mission comes as a “unique exciting opportunity” for Isro and has generated a lot of interest in India.

The trip to ISS aboard Ax-4 – a commercial flight operated by Houston-based private company Axiom Space – is a collaborative effort between Nasa, Isro and European Space Agency (Esa).

Tuesday’s flight will be launched using the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Isro, which has paid 5bn rupees ($59m; £43m) to secure a seat for Group Captain Shukla and his training, says the experience he will gain during his trip to the ISS will help India immensely.

“The benefit we will get from this mission is phenomenal in terms of the training, exposure to the facilities and the experience of jointly conducting experiments in space,” Isro Chairman V Narayanan recently said.

Sudeesh Balan, Isro project director, said Group Captain Shukla had been training since August last year.

“He’s undergone rigorous training, including physical and psychological assessments, to prepare for the journey.”

Born on 10 October 1985 in the northern city of Lucknow, Group Captain Shukla joined the Indian air force as a fighter pilot in 2006.

According to Axiom Space, he has over 2,000 hours of flying experience and has flown MiGs, Sukhois, Dorniers, Jaguars and Hawks.

His sister Shuchi Mishra, however, told the BBC that his entry into the air force was “accidental”.

“When he was 17 and in high school, his friend got a form to apply to the National Defence Academy. But this friend was slightly overage so he was not qualified. Not wanting to waste the form, Shubhanshu filled it up,” Ms Mishra said.

“He was selected – and has never looked back.”

Ms Mishra says their family “is thrilled as one of ours has been chosen out of India’s 1.4 billion people” for this mission.

“We all feel so privileged and proud that he’s a part of our family and that we’ve been a part of his journey.”

Her brother, she says, is undertaking this journey for his country – for the next generation.

“He always tells people to dream big, to do something for the nation. We are hoping that his trip will inspire the next generation.”

Besides piloting the mission, the Indian astronaut will have a busy schedule during his time on ISS.

Considering the huge interest in the flight, Isro has said they are organising events for him to interact with Indian students and answer their questions while floating in space.

“We believe it will motivate our young minds to become passionate about space tech,” Mr Balan said.

But most of the time, the four-member crew will be conducting 60 scientific experiments, seven of which come from India.

Former Nasa scientist Mila Mitra says Isro’s experiments will help improve our understanding of space and its effects on biology and micro-gravity.

• India successfully conducts historic space-docking test
• Could this be what our home on Moon or Mars might look like?
• Why it costs India so little to reach the Moon and Mars

One of the key experiments, she explains, will investigate the impact of spaceflight on six varieties of crop seeds.

“This project aims to help understand how crops may be grown in space for future exploration missions. After the mission, seeds will be grown for multiple generations and plants showing preferred traits will be selected for genetic analyses.”

Another Isro experiment involves growing three strains of microalgae which could be used as food, fuel or even in life support systems and this will help identify the most suitable ones for growing in microgravity, she says.

The Isro projects would also investigate how tardigrades – micro-animals on Earth that can survive extreme environments – would fare in space.

“The project will examine the revival of dormant tardigrades, count the number of eggs laid and hatched during a mission, and compare space-flown versus ground control populations,” Ms Mitra says.

The other experiments aim to identify how muscle loss occurs in space and how it can be treated; and the physical and cognitive impact of using computer screens in microgravity.

“The research will study how gaze fixation and rapid eye movements are affected by being in space, and how this may affect an astronaut’s stress and wellbeing. The results could influence future spacecraft computer design and interaction,” she says.

New satellite images and drone footage show serious damage inflicted on aircraft at several Russian airbases during Ukraine’s surprise drone strike on Sunday.

The images of two Russian airbases in north-western and central Russia, taken on Wednesday morning, show 12 aircraft damaged or destroyed.

Meanwhile, drone footage, released by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on Wednesday, showed attacks on these two bases as well as two more targeted elsewhere.

Ukraine claims that it targeted 41 strategic bombers in the operation, adding that “at least” 13 were destroyed. Security officials say the shock incursion took 18 months to plan and saw many drones smuggled into Russia.

The SBU video is almost five minutes long and consists of edited footage taken by drones in the process of conducting attacks on Olenya, Ivanovo, Dyagilevo and Belaya airbases.

In each shot the feed cuts out before any explosion, but in some instances we see other planes on fire in the background.

At no point do we see any indication of defensive measures from Russian forces, even after the attack was clearly well underway.

Many of the aircraft are covered in tyres – a Russian tactic said to be aimed at mitigating against drone strikes.

Some of the aircraft are seen apparently loaded with cruise missiles and well fuelled – judging by the extent and spread of fires. This suggests they were prepared to conduct strikes.

The clearest satellite imagery covers Olenya and Belaya and shows five damaged or destroyed planes at the former and seven at the latter.

Olenya is a major Russian airbase in the north-west of the country.

The SBU footage shows smoke pouring from three aircraft, identified as Tu-95 strategic bombers and an approach to a fourth. Video footage also shows a drone approaching a Tu-22M strategic bomber sitting on the runway in this very same position.

Satellite imagery from Maxar clearly shows a destroyed aircraft sitting beside a row of Tu-22M type aircraft.

Manufacturing of both the Tu-95 and Tu-22 ended at the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, which will make repair difficult and replacement near impossible.

Elsewhere in the SBU video, an AN-12 Transporter can be seen being approached. The Maxar satellite image does not show the aftermath of this, but other imagery reviewed by BBC Verify from AviVector – a satellite image analyst on X – suggests that it too was destroyed.

Imagery provided by Planet Labs from this morning shows the entirety of Belaya airbase in Irkutsk Oblast, nearly 3,000km from the Ukrainian border.

It shows three damaged Tu-95s and four Tu-22s and in various parts of the base. The SBU footage shows many of the same aircraft being approached.

In two instances we see the drone carefully position itself on the wing of a Tu-95 – next to one of its fuel tanks.

The final shot of the footage shows smoke rising from numerous sites across the base.

At Ivanovo airbase two A50-AWACS planes are seen being targeted. The aircraft serves as an early warning and control asset – or spy plane – and is identifiable by the sizeable radar system on its fuselage.

Ukraine previously shot down two of these aircraft in January and February 2024.

As yet we have not seen any imagery or footage that captures any damage to these aircraft at Ivanovo.

While satellite imagery from the site does show wreckage, BBC Verify has confirmed that the damage was present at the site before Sunday’s attack and is likely from another incident.

The SBU footage from Dyagilevo in Ryazan region shows three Tu-22s being approached, but there is no clear indication of damage sustained in either the footage or available satellite imagery.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Two Chinese nationals have been accused of smuggling a fungus into the US that officials describe as a “dangerous biological pathogen”.

Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, have been charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods, false statements, and visa fraud, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced on Tuesday.

The complaint alleges Mr Liu tried to smuggle the fungus through Detroit airport so he could study it at a University of Michigan laboratory where his girlfriend, Ms Jian, worked.

The fungus called Fusarium graminearum can cause a disease in wheat, barley, maize and rice that can wipe out crops and lead to vomiting and liver damage if it gets into food.

The fungus is described in scientific literature as a “potential agroterrorism weapon”, according to the US Attorney’s Office, adding it is responsible for “billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.”

Officials further allege Ms Jian received funding from the Chinese government for her research on the pathogen in China. They also claim she is a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

United States Attorney Jerome F Gorgon Jr described the allegations as of the “gravest national security concerns”.

“These two aliens have been charged with smuggling a fungus that has been described as a ‘potential agroterrorism weapon’ into in the [sic] heartland of America, where they apparently intended to use a University of Michigan laboratory to further their scheme.”

The investigation was a joint effort between the FBI and US Customs and Border Protection.

Ms Jian is due to appear in court in Detroit, Michigan on Tuesday.

The University of Michigan said in a statement to the BBC that it “has received no funding from the Chinese government in relation to research conducted by the accused individuals”.

University officials are cooperating with law enforcement on the investigation and they “strongly condemn any actions that seek to cause harm, threaten national security or undermine the university’s critical public mission”, according to the statement.

Spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington DC Liu Pengyu told the BBC that he is not familiar with this specific case, but emphasized that Beijing “has always required overseas Chinese citizens to abide by local laws and regulations and will also resolutely safeguard their legitimate rights and interests”.

The charges come amid strained relations between the US and China, and just days after the Trump administration vowed to “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese nationals studying in the US.

Beijing also said Washington “severely violated” a trade truce reached in Geneva last month, when both countries lowered tariffs on goods imported from each other.

Earlier this week, a Chinese student at the University of Michigan was charged for illegally voting in the 2024 election.

The German city of Cologne is evacuating some 20,500 people from a large area in the city centre so experts can defuse three unexploded bombs from World War Two.

The American bombs were discovered on Monday in a shipyard in the Deutz neighbourhood, the city said in a statement.

Unexploded ordnance can still pose a danger and the city has sealed off the zone within a 1,000m (3,280ft) radius, in what it described as “the largest operation since the end of WW2”.

Homes, shops, hotels and schools have been told to evacuate, as well as a large hospital and major train station.

“If you refuse, we will escort you from your home – if necessary by force – along with the police,” the authorities said.

Residents were told if they refused to leave their homes after the evacuation began they could face expensive fines.

Some intensive care patients were helped out in ambulances from the Eduardus Hospital.

Finding bombs from World War Two is not unusual in German cities such as Cologne and Berlin, but the difference here is that these bombs are particularly large.

Germany’s bomb disposal service plans to defuse the devices on Wednesday, but it can only be done once all residents in the densely populated area leave for their own safety, the city said.

The evacuation in the Old Town and Deutz neighbourhoods began with officials going door to door to tell people they must leave their homes.

Many of the city’s usually bustling streets were eerily deserted as shops, restaurants and businesses were told to stop operating during the day.

Cultural institutions including the Philharmonic Hall and many museums have been affected, as well as government buildings, 58 hotels, and nine schools.

Transport was severely disrupted, with all roads are closed in the area, many trains cancelled and the Messe/Deutz train station was closed from 08:00 local time (07:00BST).

The authorities have set up two drop-in centres for people who don’t have anywhere to go during the evacuation period.

Residents were told to “stay calm”, bring their ID and any essential medications, and to take care of their pets.

Cologne Bonn Airport said flights would continue as usual but travelling to the airport by train or road may be difficult.

For some people, the evacuation was more than a little inconvenient. Fifteen couples were scheduled to get married at Cologne’s historic town hall but the ceremonies were relocated to a location in another part of the city, local media reported.

• Are you in Cologne? Have you been evacuated? Tell us here

South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae-myung, has secured a storming victory, but his honeymoon will barely last the day.

The former opposition leader is not getting to enjoy the two-month transition period usually afforded to new leaders, so they can build their team and nail down their vision for the country.

Instead he is entering office immediately, to fill the hole left by the impeachment of the former president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who last December tried and failed to bring the country under martial law.

In electing Lee, with almost 50% of the vote , South Koreans have vehemently rejected the military dictatorship that was almost forced upon them. Lee campaigned on the promise that he would strengthen South Korea’s democracy and unite the country, after a divisive and tumultuous six months.

But that will have to wait. First, he has a Donald Trump shaped crisis to avert.

In the coming months, Trump has the power to destabilise South Korea’s economy, its security, and its volatile relationship with North Korea.

South Koreans were dismayed when Trump slapped 25% tariffs on all Korean imports in April, after already hitting the country with aggressive tariffs on its core industries – steel and cars. They had assumed that being longstanding military allies from the days of the Korean War, and having a free-trade agreement with the US, would spare them.

If these tariffs take effect “they could trigger an economic crisis”, a seasoned advisor to Lee’s Democratic Party, Moon Chung-in, said.

Before Trump’s announcements, South Korea’s economy was already slowing down. The martial law chaos constricted it further. Then, in the first quarter of this year, it contracted. Fixing this has been voters’ number one demand, even above fixing their beleaguered democracy.

But without a president, talks with Trump have been on hold. They cannot be put off any longer.

And there is much more than South Korea’s economy at stake in these negotiations.

The US currently guarantees South Korea’s security by promising to come to its defence with both conventional and nuclear weapons were it to be attacked by its nuclear-armed neighbour, North Korea. As part of this deal there are 28,500 US troops stationed in the South.

Yet Trump has made clear he does not plan to differentiate between trade and security when negotiating with the country, signalling that Seoul is not pulling its weight in either area.

In a post on his Truth Social platform in April, Trump said that during initial tariff talks with South Korea he had “discussed payment for the big time military protection we provide”, calling it “beautiful and efficient one-stop shopping”.

This approach makes Seoul uniquely vulnerable.

Evans Revere, a former senior US diplomat based in Seoul, fears a crisis is coming. “For the first time in our lifetime we have a US president who does not feel a moral and strategic obligation towards Korea”.

In his first term as president, Trump questioned the value of having US forces stationed in Korea and threatened to withdraw them unless Seoul paid more to have them. It seems likely he will demand more money this time around.

Seoul may not want to pay more, but it can afford to. A bigger problem is that Trump’s calculations, and that of his defence department, seem to have changed. This is no longer just about the money. Washington’s top priority now in Asia is not just stopping North Korea attacking the South, it is also to contain China’s military ambitions in the region and against Taiwan.

Last year, a now-senior US defence official, Elbridge Colby, said that South Korea was going to have to take “overwhelming responsibility for its own self-defence against North Korea”, so the US could be ready to fight China.

One option is that the troops stationed here would switch their focus to constraining China. Another, touted by a couple of US defence officials last month, is that thousands of soldiers would be removed from the peninsula altogether and redeployed, and that Seoul’s military would also have to play a role in deterring Beijing.

Not only could this put South Korea in a dangerous military predicament, but it would also create a diplomatically difficult one.

President Lee, who historically has been sceptical of Korea’s alliance with the US, wants to use his presidency to improve relations with China, South Korea’s powerful neighbour and trading partner. He has stated several times that South Korea should stay out of a conflict between China and Taiwan.

“We must keep our distance from a China-Taiwan contingency. We can get along with both”, he said during a televised debate last month.

The political advisor Mr Moon, who once served as national security advisor, reiterated Lee’s concerns. “We are worried about America abandoning us, but at the same time we are worried about being entrapped in American strategy to contain and encircle China”, he said. “If the US threatens us, we can let [the forces] go”, he said.

For Mr Revere, the former US diplomat, this combination of Lee, Trump and China threatens to create “the perfect storm”. “The two leaders may find themselves on very different pages and that could be a recipe for a problematic relationship. If this plays out, it would undermine peace and stability in North East Asia”.

In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un will no doubt be watching closely, keen to exploit the shifting ground. His nuclear weapons programme is more dangerous than ever, and nothing or no-one has been able to convince him to wind it down – including Donald Trump who, during his first term, was the first US president to ever meet a North Korean leader.

Since returning to office Trump has indicated he would like to resume talks with Kim, which ended without agreement in 2019. In Seoul, there is real concern that this time the pair could strike a deal that is very bad for South Korea.

The fear is that Trump would take an “America first” approach, and ask Kim to stop producing his intercontinental ballistic missiles that threaten the US mainland, without addressing the multiple short-range nuclear weapons pointed at Seoul. And in return, Kim could demand a high price.

Kim has far more leverage than he did in 2019. He has more nuclear warheads, his weapons are more advanced, and the sanctions that were supposed to put pressure on his regime have all but collapsed, thanks largely to Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader is providing Kim with economic and military support in return for North Korea’s help fighting the war in Ukraine.

This therefore gives Kim the cover to make more audacious requests of the US. He could ask Trump to accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, and agree to a deal that would reduce Pyongyang’s weapons count rather than get rid of them altogether. Another of his requests could likely be for the US to remove some of the security it provides South Korea, including the troops.

“North Korea is in the driver’s seat now. The only curveball is how much risk President Trump will take”, said Sydney Seiler, who was involved in the 2019 negotiations on the US side. “The idea there might be some sort of troop withdrawal [included in a deal] is really not that far-fetched”.

Mr Seiler stressed that the US would “not leave South Korea in the dust,” but advised South Korea’s new president to “establish a relationship with Trump early on”, and be clear they expect to be part of any process, if talks materialise.

The new president must move quickly on all fronts, added Mr Revere, arguing that Lee’s first homework assignment should be to come up with a list of 10 reasons why South Korea is an indispensable partner and why American dollars are being well spent; reasons that can convince a sceptical and transactional Trump.

One Ace card South Korea is hoping to play is its shipbuilding prowess. It builds more vessels than any other country bar China, which is now the world’s dominant ship builder and home to the largest naval fleet. This is a frightening prospect for the US whose own industry and navy are in decline.

Last month I visited South Korea’s flagship shipyard in Ulsan on the south coast – the largest in the world – where Hyundai Heavy Industries builds 40-50 new ships a year, including naval destroyers. Sturdy cranes slotted together sheets of metal, creating vessels the size of small villages.

Seoul is hoping it can use this expertise to build, repair and maintain warships for the US, and in the process convince Washington it is a valuable partner.

“US shipbuilding difficulties are affecting their national security”, said Jeong Woo Maan, head of strategy for Hyundai’s naval and ship unit. “This is one of the strongest cards we have to negotiate with”.

In his campaign for president, Lee Jae-myung declared he did not want to rush into any agreements with Trump. Now in office, he could quickly find himself without this luxury.

The golden sandy beach of Praia da Luz is dominated by huge cliffs to the east, a mix of orange sandstone and black volcanic rock. These cliffs hide the strip of gorse scrubland which runs east to the larger resort of Lagos, and are dotted with derelict, abandoned agricultural buildings and houses, marked with missing roofs and chipped plaster.

The cliff path that makes its way over the cliffs from Praia da Luz to Lagos is the last stage of Portugal’s famous Trilho dos Pescadores (Fishermen’s Trail).

This week, with the weather pleasantly cool, hundreds of tourists are walking the trail, but all the tracks running north are closed off with police tape.

Because once again detectives are searching for clues as to what happened to Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old British girl who went missing in May 2007, making the little seaside resort of Praia Da Luz famous for all the wrong reasons.

Less than a mile from where she disappeared, press photographers with long lenses trying to get pictures are playing cat and mouse with officers from the Polícia Judiciária – the Portuguese equivalent of the FBI.

How can it be that 18 years on, this beauty spot dotted with ruined buildings, is being searched again? How was it not searched more thoroughly at the time?

Madeleine’s disappearance and the stories always accompanied by pictures of her with blonde hair and large eyes, have made news around the world for almost two decades now. But the story of the police investigations is a pitiful one.

When she first disappeared her parents struggled to get the Portuguese authorities to take it seriously, turning to the media to make appeals for anyone who might have seen her.

The apartment from which she vanished while her parents were having a meal at a nearby restaurant on the holiday complex was not properly sealed off, so vital forensic clues were lost.

Searches at the time were not rigorous and seemed unstructured. For a while, her own parents Gerry and Kate McCann fell under suspicion.

On and off tensions between the Portuguese and British police ran through those early years. From 2011, the Metropolitan Police took the lead, spending more than £13m. Fresh searches took place in 2014 but it seemed that time had obscured any evidence that might lead to the person responsible for her abduction.

Then in 2020, everything changed when prosecutors in Braunschweig, Germany, and officers from the BKA (Bundeskriminalamt) – the German equivalent of the FBI – said they had a suspect. Not just a suspect for the disappearance of Madeleine, but a suspect for her murder – a word never used by the British police.

It became clear that their suspect is Christian Brückner, who was jailed in Germany in 2019 for raping an elderly American woman in Portugal in 2005.

A drifter and petty criminal, he had spent much of his time between 2000 and 2017 in the Algarve.

The Braunschweig prosecutors, led by Hans Christian Wolters, believe Brückner may have committed many more sexual offences in Portugal.

But he was acquitted at a trial last year of three counts of rape and two counts of sexually assaulting children. Through his lawyers he has also adamantly denied any link to Madeleine.

The publicly-known evidence against him is based on comments he is alleged to have made to a friend about Madeleine’s death, and on the fact a phone linked to him was in Praia da Luz on the night she disappeared.

It now seems that there was some data available to the Portuguese police all along about who might have been in the town that night. Data that could have been mapped against known criminals, and that might have led to more targeted searches in 2007 or the years that followed.

But as we stand on the Trilho dos Pescadores watching the German detectives searching through ruined buildings and old wells for Madeleine’s body or anything that might give some clues to her disappearance, it all feels like it is 18 years too late.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

It is hard to argue the UK exemption from the doubling of US tariffs on imported steel from 25 to 50% is not good news.

It was not a given that the UK would get this carve-out despite having done a deal on 8 May to reduce tariffs on the metals to zero.

That agreement is not yet in force, however, and speaking to steel industry leaders and government officials right up until Tuesday night’s announcement, their working assumption was that the UK would be in the same boat as everyone else – facing tariffs of 50% until that deal was finalised.

There was a palpable sense of relief from UK trade officials when the exemption was included in President Donald Trump’s latest executive order.

Up until that point, the UK government didn’t actually know whether it would receive special treatment. It found out the same time everyone else did, and managed to avoid what would have been a somewhat diplomatically embarrassing episode after hailing the tariff pact as “historic”.

Having said that there is now a new clock ticking. Tuesday’s announcement contained a provision that if the deal is not finalised by 9 July, the UK’s steel tariff rate would be hiked to 50%.

So now you have an uncertain period when businesses on both sides of the Atlantic don’t know if the tariff will be zero or 50% in five weeks’ time – which anecdotally is having a corrosive effect on business.

There is no reason to assume the deal won’t come into force. The government said that Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer agreed that both would work faster so customers in US and UK benefit from the agreement.

However, there is a second-order effect – that international steel earmarked for the US could now be diverted to the UK and create a glut of the metal and undercut domestic steelmakers.

The industry has been quick to voice such concerns and wants the government to implement barriers of its own to prevent that.

The UK exemption and ultimate deal is not a free lunch. The UK government agreed to cut tariffs cut on some US beef products and ethanol – a renewable fuel made from crops. It has created a crisis in the UK ethanol market, which in turn is a big customer of wheat farmers.

It is possible that UK efforts to protect these industries could be viewed by the US as backsliding on the deal they struck with the UK.

It’s a reminder that these deals have complex and sometimes underestimated knock on effects.

Former baseball player Shigeo Nagashima, who was once one of Japan’s most famous sports stars, has died aged 89.

He died of pneumonia at a hospital in Tokyo, according to a statement released by his former team the Yomiuri Giants.

Nicknamed Mr Giants, Nagashima won nine straight titles with the team in the 1960s and 70s, playing in 2,186 games and hitting 444 home runs.

Commenting on his death, a government spokesman said Nagashima had given society “bright dreams and hopes”.

His ability – and charm – made him popular, at a time of increasing economic prosperity and growing confidence in Japan.

“He taught me lots of things. I’m grateful to have been able to play with him,” his former teammate, Sadaharu Oh, was quoted as saying. Oh, 85, still holds the world record for hitting the most home runs, and together, known as “O-N”, they were a lethal team on the pitch.

Shohei Ohtani, who is currently one of Japan’s most famous baseballers, and plays for the LA Dodgers, posted photos of himself with Nagashima on his Instagram page.

“May your soul rest in peace,” the 30-year-old wrote.

Nagashima, who also had the nickname Mr Pro Baseball, famously hit a winning home run at the first ever professional baseball game attended by the Japanese emperor, in 1959.

He retired in 1974 after a 17-year playing career – winning the Central League batting title six times.

Nagashima also helped the Giants win two Japan Series titles over 15 seasons as their manager.

The country’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said Nagashima was “a sunny person”.

“He left so many brilliant records in the world of professional baseball for many years and gave bright dreams and hopes to society as a national star,” he said.

The death of a 10-year-old rape victim in the eastern Indian state of Bihar after an alleged delay in medical treatment has sparked outrage in the country.

The girl died on Sunday morning at the state government-run Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) in the capital Patna.

Her uncle has alleged that the child’s condition worsened as she was kept waiting in an ambulance for around four hours on Saturday before being admitted to the hospital.

PMCH authorities have denied this, saying that claims of a delay in admission are “baseless”.

The girl’s death has made national headlines, with opposition leaders accusing the Bihar government – a coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal United (JD-U) – of gross mismanagement. The government has denied any negligence.

The girl is from the Dalit community, which is at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Dalits face widespread mistreatment in India despite laws in place to protect them.

Following the outrage, the National Human Rights Commission and National Commission for Women have criticised the incident and asked for the hospital’s role to be investigated.

Rape victims cannot be named under Indian law.

The girl was raped on 26 May, allegedly by a man who lived near her aunt’s house in Muzaffarpur. Police have arrested the man and are investigating the crime.

The girl went missing while she was playing outside her house. Her family members later found her lying injured near a road. Police officials have told reporters that she had several knife wounds.

She was first taken to a local hospital and then to the Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), around 85km (53 miles) from Patna.

Kumari Vibha, the superintendent of SKMCH, told BBC Hindi that the child had several injuries, including wounds on her chest and neck, but that her condition had stabilised. She was referred to PMCH as she needed reconstruction surgery on her windpipe, Ms Vibha said.

But at PMCH, the child’s uncle said, they faced a delay in admission while the child waited in the ambulance.

“They [the hospital staff] made us run around for four hours from one hospital department to another one,” he alleged. She was later admitted to the gynaecology department, he said.

The hospital has denied the allegations. IS Thakur, a top hospital official, said that the child’s family had initially admitted her to the paediatrics department but that she was sent to the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) department because of her injuries.

“Since we do not have an ICU in ENT, the child was shifted to the ICU of the gynaecology department,” he said, adding that the child was brought in an Advance Life Support ambulance, which is equipped to offer critical care.

“The allegations of a delay in getting a hospital bed are baseless,” Mr Thakur said.

The child’s plight began making news after a viral video showed members of the opposition Congress party arguing with hospital staff, demanding that she be admitted.

Opposition parties in the state have held several protests since the death.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the girl’s death was “extremely shameful” and demanded that strict action be taken against negligent officers.

“The rape victim waited for hours outside PMCH to be admitted… what is the use of the big buildings being built in the name of hospitals when there is chaos, corruption, misbehaviour, lack of resources and insensitivity all around?” the state’s main opposition party Rashtriya Janata Dal said on X.

Leaders of the BJP and JD(U) have denied any negligence. Anamika Singh Patel, a BJP spokesperson, called the girl’s death “unfortunate”.

“But I myself run a hospital and I know that getting a bed in a hospital is a process which takes time. People in our government are working responsibly,” she said.

The incident has also brought attention to the condition of Bihar’s medical infrastructure, months before the state assembly election is due to be held.

Last month, a patient at another government hospital in Patna said that a rat bit his toe while he was asleep. Hospital authorities had launched an investigation into the incident.

On Tuesday, in a scathing editorial titled Bihar’s Shame, the Times of India newspaper highlighted the sorry state of hospitals in the state. It referenced a recent report that found that only half of all ventilators in government hospitals were functional and that capital Patna had just one government doctor for 11,541 people. That ratio is much worse in rural areas.

A body has been found in the search for a Scottish man reported missing in Portugal.

Greg Monks, 38, from Cambuslang, was reported missing by friends last week after leaving the main strip in Albufeira in the Algarve in the early hours of 28 May while on a stag party.

The Portuguese national Policia Judiciaria said the body of a man was found in the Cerro de Aguia area on Wednesday morning.

His sisters described Mr Monks as an “amazing boy” who would “be missed every day”.

A Policia Judiciaria statement said Mr Monks’ disappearance was reported to the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR) on 28 May.

Cerro de Aguia is about 3.1 miles (5km) from the main Albufeira strip, where Mr Monks was last seen by friends in the early hours of the morning.

Posting on a Facebook page set up in the wake of his disappearance, Mr Monks’ sisters, Jillian and Carlyn, said the support they had received had been “out of this world”.

They wrote: “[We] didn’t think it would end like this.

“We are absolutely devastated. Greg was an amazing boy who everyone thought so highly of, was friends with everyone and always made us laugh. We will miss him every day.

“If love coulda saved you, you would live forever.”

They added: “Miss you forever brother.”

Other tributes left online described Mr Monks as “one of life’s good guys” who was “much loved”.

The Polícia Judiciária said the body was found on a “vacant and very uneven lot”.

They said an autopsy would take place in due course.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British man reported missing in Portugal and are in contact with the local authorities.”

An Australian woman on trial for murder says she threw up the toxic mushroom meal which killed her relatives, after binge eating dessert.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to four charges – three of murder and one of attempted murder – over the beef Wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July 2023.

Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson deliberately served toxic death cap mushrooms, but only to her guests. Her defence team say the contaminated meal was a tragic accident, and argue it had made their client sick too.

Ms Patterson told the court she had only eaten a small part of lunch but later consumed two-thirds of a cake, before becoming “over-full” and vomiting.

Doctors have previously told the trial Ms Patterson did not have the same intense symptoms as the other people who’d eaten at her house.

On her third day of wide-ranging testimony, Ms Patterson also admitted she had lied about a cancer diagnosis – which prosecutors say she used to coax the guests to her house – instead of revealing she was actually planning to undergo weight-loss surgery.

She said she had dumped a food dehydrator and wiped her phone in the days after the incident out of fear of being blamed for her relative’s deaths, telling the court her estranged husband had accused her of poisoning them.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

A single lunch guest survived, 71-year-old local pastor Ian Wilkinson, after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The Victorian Supreme Court trial – which started almost six weeks ago – has heard from more than 50 witnesses, and attracted huge global attention.

In the Morwell courthouse, Ms Patterson gave a detailed account of the fatal lunch, saying she had invited her guests under the premise she wanted to talk about health issues.

The 14-member jury heard that Ms Patterson went through “quite a long process of trying to decide what to cook” for the lunch before choosing to make beef Wellington.

The dish – usually prepared with a long strip of fillet steak, wrapped in pastry and mushrooms – was something Ms Patterson’s mother made when she was a child, to mark special occasions, she said.

After deciding the mushrooms she’d prepared tasted “bland”, she said she’d added some dried ones – bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne months earlier – from a container in her pantry.

Asked if that container may have had other types of mushrooms in it, Ms Patterson, choking up, said: “Now I think there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had started hunting for mushrooms in locations close to her Leongatha home in 2020, and her long-standing love for fungi had expanded to include wild varieties as they had “more flavour”.

Ms Patterson told the jury she had served up the food when it was ready, and instructed her guests to grab a plate themselves as she finished preparing gravy.

There were no assigned seats or plates, she said.

Mr Wilkinson previously told the trial the guests had each been given grey plates while Ms Patterson had eaten off an orange one. Ms Patterson on Wednesday said she didn’t have any grey plates.

During the lunch, Ms Patterson recalled that she didn’t eat much of her food – “a quarter, a third, somewhere around there” – because she was busy talking.

She conceded she had told her guests she had cancer, but in court explained she told this lie to make sure she had help with childcare when she underwent gastric bypass surgery.

“I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I was going to have done. I was really embarrassed by it,” she said.

After the guests left, she cleaned up the kitchen and ate a slice of orange cake Gail had brought.

“[I ate] another piece of cake, and then another piece,” she said, before finishing the rest of the dessert.

“I felt sick… over-full so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.”

“After I’d done that, I felt better.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had secretly struggled with bulimia since her teens and was prone to regularly binge eating and vomiting after meals.

Ms Patterson told the court that she started to develop gastro-like symptoms hours after the lunch and took herself to hospital to “get some fluids” two days later. She was “shocked but confused” when medical staff asked if she could have eaten death cap mushrooms.

While in hospital for observation overnight, Ms Patterson said her former husband Simon asked her about a dehydrator she owned.

“Is that how you poisoned my parents?” she told the trial he’d said to her – something Mr Patterson denies.

After this encounter, she’d been “frantic”, Ms Patterson said, and upon being sent home had disposed of her food dehydrator at the local tip.

“I had made the meal and served it and people had got sick.”

“I was scared that they would blame me for it.”

The court also heard that Ms Patterson erased the data on one of her phones several times – including while police were searching her house – because she did not want detectives to see her photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator.

Ms Patterson will continue giving evidence on Thursday, before prosecutors will have the opportunity to cross-examine her.

Elon Musk-owned electric vehicle (EV) giant Tesla is “not interested in manufacturing in India”, the country’s heavy industries minister has said.

The remarks were made on Monday as the Indian government issued detailed guidelines for a scheme to promote EV manufacturing in the country.

This is the first time that India has publicly admitted that it has not been able to lure investment dollars from Musk, even after unveiling incentives for global EV giants last March.

Minister HD Kumaraswamy confirmed that Tesla would open two showrooms in India and have a retail presence.

“Mercedes Benz, Skoda-Volkswagen, Hyundai and Kia have shown interest [in manufacturing electric cars in India]. Tesla – we are not expecting from them,” Kumaraswamy said.

Another official told the Press Trust of India news agency that a Tesla representative had participated in the first round of stakeholder discussions for the manufacturing scheme but “was not part of the second and third round”.

The comments come on the back of US President Donald Trump saying in February that it would be “unfair” for the US if Tesla built a factory in India.

Over the years Tesla has had several rounds of negotiations to enter India.

• Can Tesla’s EVs win over India’s price-conscious buyers?

The company’s original plans to open a base were shelved in 2022 after the Indian government insisted that Tesla make cars locally. The carmaker had said it wanted to export to India first so that it could test demand.

In 2023, Musk said he was “trying to figure out the right timing” to invest in the Indian market.

Musk met Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year in Washington DC where the two discussed the “immense potential” for collaboration in technology and innovation.

Last year India cut import taxes on EVs for global carmakers which committed to investing $500m (£369m) and starting local production within three years. This came after Musk complained that high import duties were preventing the carmaker from entering India.

But analysts say the Indian EV market may not be mature enough yet for Tesla to invest locally – EV sales still make up less than 3% of overall passenger vehicle sales in India, and locally made alternatives can cost half of what consumers will have to shell out for Tesla’s base model.

Charging infrastructure and local road conditions could be further deterrents.

India’s Tata Motors currently leads India’s EV market with over 60% market share. MG Motors – jointly owned by India’s JSW and a Chinese firm – is second at 22%.

Globally, Tesla has been facing growing competition from Chinese players such as BYD.

Its sales plummeted to their lowest level in three years in the first three months of 2025 after a backlash against Musk and his role in the Trump administration.

Musk announced his departure from his government role last week.

The Congolese government has banned the media from reporting on the activities of former President Joseph Kabila and interviewing members of his party.

This comes after Kabila returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo last month amid heightened tensions between himself and the government, led by his successor, President Félix Tshisekedi.

The authorities are pushing to prosecute Mr Kabila amid accusations of treason and alleged links to the M23 rebels which have been fighting the army – something he has previously denied.

Breaches of the ban could result in suspension, said the head of DR Congo’s media regulator, Christian Bosembe.

Responding to the announcement by the regulator, known as the the Supreme Council of Audiovisual and Communication (CSAC), an M23 spokesperson said the media outlets in parts of the country under its control would not abide by the ban.

There has been no immediate response from Kabila, however, the secretary of his party, Ferdinand Kambere, rejected the ban, describing it as “arbitrary” on X.

Kabila was last week seen in the eastern DR Congo city of Goma, which is under M23 control.

He has been highly critical of the government after the senate voted to lift his immunity over his alleged support of the M23 group.

DR Congo’s neighbour, Rwanda has been accused of backing the rebel group, but Kigali denies this.

Kabila, who has not yet been charged with any crime, launched a scathing attack on the Congolese government last month, describing it as a “dictatorship”.

A government spokesperson at the time rejected Kabila’s criticism, saying he had “nothing to offer”.

Reacting to the announcement by the CSAC, activist and president of the African Association for the Defence of Human Rights, Jean-Claude Katende, said the ban constituted an “abuse of power”, according to local media.

Meanwhile, political analyst Ambroise Mamba indicated on X that the ban could be self-defeating because it could pique people’s interest to find out about Kabila’s movements and activities.

Since returning to DR Congo after two years of self-imposed exile, Kabila’s party has been posting his activities online, which include visiting civil society groups and local religious representatives in Goma.

• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?
• The evidence that shows Rwanda is backing rebels in DR Congo
• Is Trump mulling a minerals deal with conflict-hit DR Congo?

Vladimir Putin has said he will have to respond to Ukraine’s major drone attack on Russian airbases, US President Donald Trump has warned.

Speaking after a phone call with the Russian president, Trump said: “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

Russian officials declined to confirm this on Wednesday night, but Moscow had earlier said that military options were “on the table” for its response.

Trump warned in a social media post that the phone call, which lasted more than an hour, would not “lead to immediate peace” between Russia and Ukraine.

Russia’s RIA Novosti, a state-owned news agency, said Putin told Trump that Ukraine has tried to “disrupt” the negotiations and that the government in Kyiv has “essentially turned into a terrorist organisation”.

The two also “exchanged views on the prospects for restoring cooperation between the countries, which has enormous potential,” it said.

The conversation between the two leaders marks the first since Ukraine launched a surprise attack using smuggled drones to strike Russian airbases on 1 June, targeting what it said were nuclear-capable long-range bombers.

Trump told Putin in the call that the US was not warned in advance of the attack, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said.

Last week, Trump appeared to set a two-week deadline for Putin, threatening to change how the US is responding to Russia if he believed Putin was still “tapping” him along on peace efforts in Ukraine.

The comment was one of a string of critical remarks by Trump, who on 26 May said that Putin had gone “absolutely crazy” and was “playing with fire” after Russia escalated drone and missile attacks on cities in Ukraine, killing dozens of civilians.

Trump made no mention of a deadline or his previous remarks in Wednesday’s post on his Truth Social platform.

In a post on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky talked about the scale Russian attacks on his country since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

“Many have spoken with Russia at various levels. But none of these talks have brought a reliable peace, or even stopped the war,” Zelensky wrote.

“If the world reacts weakly to Putin’s threats, he interprets it as a readiness to turn a blind eye to his actions,” he added.

On Wednesday, a delegation of Ukrainian officials including Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and Presidential Office head Andriy Yermak were set to meet with US senators in Washington to discuss arms purchases and efforts to stop the fighting.

In a social media post, Yermak said that the delegation planned to discuss “defense support and the situation on the battlefield”, sanctions against Russia and a previously signed reconstruction investment fund.

The post also comes just days after a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul between the warring sides ended without a major breakthrough, although they agreed to swap more prisoners of war.

Ukrainian negotiators said Russia rejected an “unconditional ceasefire” – a key demand of Kyiv and its Western allies including the US.

The Russian team said they had proposed multi-day ceasefires in “certain areas” of the frontline in Ukraine, although they gave no further details.

Trump has previously – and repeatedly – said he believes the two sides are making progress, despite ongoing fighting on the frontline and aerial attacks carried out in both Russia and Ukraine.

Separately on Wednesday, Putin also had a call with the US-born Pope Leo XIV.

The Vatican confirmed that “particular attention” was paid to peace in the Ukraine war.

In Putin’s call with Trump, the two leaders also discussed Iran. Trump said he believed the two “were in agreement” that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”.

The US reportedly proposed Iran halt all production of enriched uranium – which can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons – and instead rely on a regional consortium for supplies.

Iran has not yet responded to the plan presented at talks last Saturday.

According to Trump, Putin “suggested that he will participate in discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion”.

“It is my opinion that Iran has been slow walking their decision on this very important matter,” Trump wrote. “We will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time.”

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has criticised the US proposal and said it will not stop enriching uranium.

New satellite images and drone footage show serious damage inflicted on aircraft at several Russian airbases during Ukraine’s surprise drone strike on Sunday.

The images of two Russian airbases in north-western and central Russia, taken on Wednesday morning, show 12 aircraft damaged or destroyed.

Meanwhile, drone footage, released by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on Wednesday, showed attacks on these two bases as well as two more targeted elsewhere.

Ukraine claims that it targeted 41 strategic bombers in the operation, adding that “at least” 13 were destroyed. Security officials say the shock incursion took 18 months to plan and saw many drones smuggled into Russia.

The SBU video is almost five minutes long and consists of edited footage taken by drones in the process of conducting attacks on Olenya, Ivanovo, Dyagilevo and Belaya airbases.

In each shot the feed cuts out before any explosion, but in some instances we see other planes on fire in the background.

At no point do we see any indication of defensive measures from Russian forces, even after the attack was clearly well underway.

Many of the aircraft are covered in tyres – a Russian tactic said to be aimed at mitigating against drone strikes.

Some of the aircraft are seen apparently loaded with cruise missiles and well fuelled – judging by the extent and spread of fires. This suggests they were prepared to conduct strikes.

The clearest satellite imagery covers Olenya and Belaya and shows five damaged or destroyed planes at the former and seven at the latter.

Olenya is a major Russian airbase in the north-west of the country.

The SBU footage shows smoke pouring from three aircraft, identified as Tu-95 strategic bombers and an approach to a fourth. Video footage also shows a drone approaching a Tu-22M strategic bomber sitting on the runway in this very same position.

Satellite imagery from Maxar clearly shows a destroyed aircraft sitting beside a row of Tu-22M type aircraft.

Manufacturing of both the Tu-95 and Tu-22 ended at the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, which will make repair difficult and replacement near impossible.

Elsewhere in the SBU video, an AN-12 Transporter can be seen being approached. The Maxar satellite image does not show the aftermath of this, but other imagery reviewed by BBC Verify from AviVector – a satellite image analyst on X – suggests that it too was destroyed.

Imagery provided by Planet Labs from this morning shows the entirety of Belaya airbase in Irkutsk Oblast, nearly 3,000km from the Ukrainian border.

It shows three damaged Tu-95s and four Tu-22s and in various parts of the base. The SBU footage shows many of the same aircraft being approached.

In two instances we see the drone carefully position itself on the wing of a Tu-95 – next to one of its fuel tanks.

The final shot of the footage shows smoke rising from numerous sites across the base.

At Ivanovo airbase two A50-AWACS planes are seen being targeted. The aircraft serves as an early warning and control asset – or spy plane – and is identifiable by the sizeable radar system on its fuselage.

Ukraine previously shot down two of these aircraft in January and February 2024.

As yet we have not seen any imagery or footage that captures any damage to these aircraft at Ivanovo.

While satellite imagery from the site does show wreckage, BBC Verify has confirmed that the damage was present at the site before Sunday’s attack and is likely from another incident.

The SBU footage from Dyagilevo in Ryazan region shows three Tu-22s being approached, but there is no clear indication of damage sustained in either the footage or available satellite imagery.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

A 22-year-old man has been arrested in Pakistan and confessed to the murder of 17-year-old social media influencer Sana Yousaf, according to police.

Authorities say they believe Umar Hayat murdered Ms Yousaf at her home in Islamabad on Monday after she rejected what they called his “offers of friendship”. He allegedly also repeatedly tried, and failed, to meet her.

They say he broke into her home, fired two shots, stole her phone and fled.

Ms Yousaf’s father, Syed Yousaf Hassan, told the BBC she was his only daughter, and was “very brave”. Her family have gathered in Chitral, where Ms Yousaf has been buried.

Mr Yousaf said she had never mentioned Hayat, nor any threatening behaviour, before she was killed.

He said Ms Yousaf’s aunt was at the family home when the suspect broke in, and that he had also threatened to shoot her before fleeing.

Ms Yousaf died before she could be taken to the hospital.

Police said the “brutal” murder caused “a wave of concern” across the country, and that there was “immense” pressure to find the killer.

They raided locations across the capital and the province of Punjab and scanned footage from 113 CCTV cameras.

The suspected murder weapon and Ms Yousaf’s phone have since been recovered.

Ms Yousaf already had a wide following in Pakistan, with half a million fans on Instagram before her death. Condolences have flooded her social media pages.

Her TikTok account gained hundreds of thousands of followers overnight, and now stands at more than a million.

Her last video on Instagram, posted last week, showed her surrounded by balloons and cutting a cake for her birthday.

Given her high profile in Pakistan, news of Ms Yousaf’s death spread quickly in local news media and on social media platforms. It’s also ignited a fierce debate about women on social media.

While many have shared their outrage at news of Ms Yousaf’s death, there has also been backlash towards her work as an influencer.

Digital rights advocacy group Bolo Bhi has been monitoring the online reaction, and its director Usama Khilji said such criticism had been coming from a small portion of mostly male internet users – some of whom have cited religious grounds.

“They’re asking why she was putting up all this content, and even suggesting the family should take down her Instagram and TikTok accounts because they add to her ‘sins’,” Mr Khilji explained.

Dr Farzana Bari, a prominent human rights activist, argued the reaction is “misogynistic” and “patriarchal”.

She said Ms Yousaf had “her own voice”, and that the discourse online is a reminder that social media has become a “very threatening place for female content creators” in Pakistan.

The Inspector General of Police for Islamabad, Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi, said women who choose to become social media influencers “deserve our encouragement and support”. He added Ms Yousaf’s murder was “tragic”.

Dr Bari said authorities condemning the incident publicly was a positive sign that could lead to change.

The arrested suspect is the son of a former public servant. He is from the town of Faisalabad, in the province of Punjab, according to police.

The Duchess of Sussex has posted a video of her dancing while pregnant with Princess Lilibet four years ago to mark her daughter’s birthday.

The video features Meghan and the Duke of Sussex dance and gyrate in a hospital room.

The couple were recreating a TikTok challenge which sees pregnant women and their partners dance to a song called Baby Mama.

She wrote on Instagram: “Four years ago today, this also happened. Both of our children were a week past their due dates… so when spicy food, all that walking, and acupuncture didn’t work – there was only one thing left to do!”

It is not known if the dance challenge, created by comic Cameron Henderson in 2013 and includes the lyrics “been pregnant for way too long”, did indeed induce Meghan’s labour.

The post came after a series of posts by the duchess sharing intimate family photos of four-year-old Princess Lilibet.

Meghan shared a black-and-white snap of her cuddling her daughter, who is sitting on her lap, with the pair both sporting windswept hair, appearing to be on a boat.

The second image shows Meghan tenderly cradling the princess as a newborn following her birth in 2021.

Meghan wrote: “Happy birthday to our beautiful girl! Four years ago today she came into our lives – and each day is brighter and better because of it.

“Thanks to all of those sending love and celebrating her special day!”

The duchess also released an image of a newborn Princess Lillibet looking up at her father.

Another image shows the duke and his daughter in a dress walking bare feet in the sand, with their backs turned to the camera, surrounded by palm trees.

“The sweetest bond to watch unfold,” she said of the pictures. “Daddy’s little girl and favourite adventurer. Happy birthday Lili!”

Meghan usually only shares photos of the princess pictured from behind to protect her privacy, but in one of the newly released photos you can see Lilibet’s eyes and top half of her face, with the bottom half covered by Meghan’s arms as she hugs her daughter.

The princess – the youngest child of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – was born on 4 June 2021, a year after her parents stepped back from being senior royals and moved to the US.

She became a princess when her grandfather the King became monarch.

The couple also share Prince Archie, aged six.

On Tuesday, Meghan said she wondered about launching a future business with her daughter as she chatted to Beyonce’s mother Tina Knowles on her podcast Confessions Of A Female Founder.

“I wonder if one day I’ll be in business with Lili and we’ll be building something,” the duchess said, with Knowles adding: “That’s the best.”

Last week, the duchess shared a clip of her and the princess beekeeping in protective suits, writing: “Like mother, like daughter; she’s even wearing my gloves.”

Lilibet is named after her great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.

The nickname was coined when then-Princess Elizabeth was a toddler and could not pronounce her own name properly.

Her grandfather King George V would affectionately call her Lilibet, imitating her attempts to say her name. It stuck and came to be used by close relatives.

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Gaza has become worse than hell on earth, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross has told the BBC.

In an interview at the ICRC’s headquarters in Geneva, the organisation’s president Mirjana Spoljaric said “humanity is failing” as it watched the horrors of the Gaza war.

Speaking in a room close to a case displaying the ICRC’s three Nobel Peace Prizes, I asked Ms Spoljaric about remarks she made in April, that Gaza was “hell on earth”, and if anything had happened since to change her mind.

“It has become worse… We cannot continue to watch what is happening. It’s surpassing any acceptable, legal, moral, and humane standard. The level of destruction, the level of suffering.

“More importantly, the fact that we are watching a people entirely stripped of its human dignity. It should really shock our collective conscience.”

She added that states must do more to end the war, end the suffering of Palestinians and release Israeli hostages.

The words, clearly carefully chosen, of the president of the ICRC carry moral weight.

The International Red Cross is a global humanitarian organisation that has been working to alleviate suffering in wars for more than a century and a half.

It is also the custodian of the Geneva Conventions, the body of international humanitarian law that is intended to regulate the conduct of war and protect civilians and other non-combatants. The most recent version, the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, was adopted after the Second World War and was intended to stop the mass killing of civilians from happening again.

Israel, I reminded her, justifies its actions in Gaza as self-defence.

“Every state has a right to defend itself,” she said.

“And every mother has a right to see her children return. There’s no excuse for hostage-taking. There is no excuse to depriving children from their access to food, health, and security. There are rules in the conduct of hostilities that every party to every conflict has to respect.”

Did that mean that the actions of Hamas and other armed Palestinians on 7 October 2023 – killing around 1200 and taking more than 250 hostage – did not justify Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip and the killing of more than 50,000 Palestinians?

“It’s no justification for the disrespect or hollowing out of the Geneva Conventions. Neither party is allowed to break the rules, no matter what, and this is important because, look, the same rules apply to every human being under the Geneva Convention. A child in Gaza has exactly the same protections under the Geneva Conventions as a child in Israel.”

You never know, Ms Spoljaric added, when your own child might be on the weaker side and will need these protections.

The ICRC is a reliable source of information about what is happening in Gaza. Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, to send journalists into the territory. The reporting of the more than 300 ICRC staff in Gaza, 90% of whom are Palestinians, forms a vital part of the record of the war.

Ms Spoljaric, the ICRC president, has been talking every day to their team leader in Gaza. The ICRC surgical hospital in Rafah is the closest medical facility to the area where many Palestinians have been killed during chaotic aid distribution by the Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Like the UN, the ICRC is not taking part in the new operation. A fundamental flaw of the new system is that it funnels tens of thousands of desperate, starving civilians through an active war zone.

Ms Spoljaric said there was “no justification for changing and breaking something that works, with something that doesn’t seem to be working”.

In the last few days, the ICRC surgical teams at their field hospital in Rafah near the GHF zone have been overwhelmed at least twice by the volume of casualties in the turmoil of the food operation.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Nowhere. Not for the civilians, not for the hostages,” said Ms Spoljaric. “That’s a fact. And our hospital is not safe. I don’t recall another situation that I have seen where we operate in the midst of hostilities.”

A few days ago, a young boy was hit by a bullet coming through the fabric of the tent while he was treated.

“We have no security even for our own staff… they are working 20 hours a day. They are exhausting themselves. But it’s too much, it’s surpassing human capabilities.”

The ICRC said that in just a few hours on Tuesday morning its Rafah surgical teams received 184 patients, including 19 people dead on arrival and eight others who died of their wounds shortly afterwards. It was the highest number of casualties from a single incident at the field hospital since it was established just over a year ago.

It happened around dawn on Tuesday. Palestinian witnesses and ICRC medics reported terrible scenes of killing as Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians who were converging on the new aid distribution site in southern Gaza. It was “total carnage” according to a foreign witness.

An official statement from the Israeli military described a very different picture. It said “several suspects” moved towards Israeli forces “deviating from the designated access routes”. Troops “carried out warning fire… additional shots were directed near a few individual suspects who advanced towards the troops”.

A military spokesperson said they were investigating what happened. It has denied shooting Palestinians in a similar incident on Sunday.

Ms Spoljaric said the ICRC was deeply concerned about talk of victory at all costs, total war and dehumanisation.

“We are seeing things happening that will make the world an unhappier place far beyond the region, far beyond the Israelis and the Palestinians, because we are hollowing out the very rules that protect the fundamental rights of every human being.”

If there is no ceasefire, she fears for the future of the region.

“This is vital. To preserve a pathway back to peace for the region. If you destroy that pathway forever for good, the region will never find safety and security. But we can stop it now. It’s not too late.”

“State leaders are under an obligation to act. I’m calling on them to do something and to do more and to do what they can. Because it will reverberate, it will haunt them, it would reach their doorsteps.”

The ICRC is considered the custodian of the Geneva conventions. The fourth, agreed after the Second World War, is designed to protect civilians in wars.

The Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 were, she said, no justification for current events.

“Neither party is allowed to break the rules, no matter what,” Ms Spoljaric said.

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

At least 54,607 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 4,335 since Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Appealing to parties to stop the hostilities, she said: “We cannot continue watching what is happening.

“It defies humanity. It will haunt us.”

She called on the international community to do more. “Every state is under the obligation to use their means, their peaceful means, to help reverse what is happening in Gaza today,” she said.

An Australian woman on trial for murder says she threw up the toxic mushroom meal which killed her relatives, after binge eating dessert.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to four charges – three of murder and one of attempted murder – over the beef Wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July 2023.

Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson deliberately served toxic death cap mushrooms, but only to her guests. Her defence team say the contaminated meal was a tragic accident, and argue it had made their client sick too.

Ms Patterson told the court she had only eaten a small part of lunch but later consumed two-thirds of a cake, before becoming “over-full” and vomiting.

Doctors have previously told the trial Ms Patterson did not have the same intense symptoms as the other people who’d eaten at her house.

On her third day of wide-ranging testimony, Ms Patterson also admitted she had lied about a cancer diagnosis – which prosecutors say she used to coax the guests to her house – instead of revealing she was actually planning to undergo weight-loss surgery.

She said she had dumped a food dehydrator and wiped her phone in the days after the incident out of fear of being blamed for her relative’s deaths, telling the court her estranged husband had accused her of poisoning them.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

A single lunch guest survived, 71-year-old local pastor Ian Wilkinson, after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The Victorian Supreme Court trial – which started almost six weeks ago – has heard from more than 50 witnesses, and attracted huge global attention.

In the Morwell courthouse, Ms Patterson gave a detailed account of the fatal lunch, saying she had invited her guests under the premise she wanted to talk about health issues.

The 14-member jury heard that Ms Patterson went through “quite a long process of trying to decide what to cook” for the lunch before choosing to make beef Wellington.

The dish – usually prepared with a long strip of fillet steak, wrapped in pastry and mushrooms – was something Ms Patterson’s mother made when she was a child, to mark special occasions, she said.

After deciding the mushrooms she’d prepared tasted “bland”, she said she’d added some dried ones – bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne months earlier – from a container in her pantry.

Asked if that container may have had other types of mushrooms in it, Ms Patterson, choking up, said: “Now I think there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had started hunting for mushrooms in locations close to her Leongatha home in 2020, and her long-standing love for fungi had expanded to include wild varieties as they had “more flavour”.

Ms Patterson told the jury she had served up the food when it was ready, and instructed her guests to grab a plate themselves as she finished preparing gravy.

There were no assigned seats or plates, she said.

Mr Wilkinson previously told the trial the guests had each been given grey plates while Ms Patterson had eaten off an orange one. Ms Patterson on Wednesday said she didn’t have any grey plates.

During the lunch, Ms Patterson recalled that she didn’t eat much of her food – “a quarter, a third, somewhere around there” – because she was busy talking.

She conceded she had told her guests she had cancer, but in court explained she told this lie to make sure she had help with childcare when she underwent gastric bypass surgery.

“I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I was going to have done. I was really embarrassed by it,” she said.

After the guests left, she cleaned up the kitchen and ate a slice of orange cake Gail had brought.

“[I ate] another piece of cake, and then another piece,” she said, before finishing the rest of the dessert.

“I felt sick… over-full so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.”

“After I’d done that, I felt better.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had secretly struggled with bulimia since her teens and was prone to regularly binge eating and vomiting after meals.

Ms Patterson told the court that she started to develop gastro-like symptoms hours after the lunch and took herself to hospital to “get some fluids” two days later. She was “shocked but confused” when medical staff asked if she could have eaten death cap mushrooms.

While in hospital for observation overnight, Ms Patterson said her former husband Simon asked her about a dehydrator she owned.

“Is that how you poisoned my parents?” she told the trial he’d said to her – something Mr Patterson denies.

After this encounter, she’d been “frantic”, Ms Patterson said, and upon being sent home had disposed of her food dehydrator at the local tip.

“I had made the meal and served it and people had got sick.”

“I was scared that they would blame me for it.”

The court also heard that Ms Patterson erased the data on one of her phones several times – including while police were searching her house – because she did not want detectives to see her photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator.

Ms Patterson will continue giving evidence on Thursday, before prosecutors will have the opportunity to cross-examine her.

Vanuatu authorities are looking at revoking Andrew Tate’s citizenship after it was revealed that he acquired a golden passport at around the same time as his 2022 arrest in Romania for rape and human trafficking.

The self-described misogynist influencer acquired citizenship under a fast-track scheme for those who invest at least $130,000 (£96,000) in the tiny Pacific archipelago, according to an investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The scheme has raised security concerns, and led the European Union to revoke Vanuatu’s visa-free privilege in late 2024.

A Vanuatu government spokesman said authorities were “definitely looking into” Tate’s citizenship.

“Once we have the files, definitely, the processes will be in place to revoke his citizenship,” Kiery Manassah told ABC News.

“The government does not want to encourage people of questionable backgrounds to be granted citizenship,” he added. “Those who are wanted by their countries or who are investigated by police authorities from overseas are not welcome to be part of the citizens of Vanuatu.”

Passports-for-sale or citizenship by investment schemes are a source of income for countries like Vanuatu. But they have also been abused by organised crime suspects, oligarchs and even intelligence agents, said Aubrey Belford, Pacific lead editor at OCCRP.

“It’s caused a lot of alarm because it’s one of those loopholes that allows people to get a new passport or even a new identity and be able to evade law enforcement,” Belford told ABC News.

Vanuatu granted Tate citizenship in December 2022. That same month, Tate and his brother Tristan were arrested in Romania and have since largely been under travel restrictions in the country.

Vanuatu does not have a formal extradition treaty with Romania.

It is unclear if Tristan Tate also acquired Vanuatu citizenship.

In recent years, Andrew Tate has built a massive online presence, including more than 10 million followers on X, sharing his lifestyle of fast cars, private jets and yachts.

He has also gained global notoriety for his views towards women, proudly proclaiming himself a “misogynist” and also using extreme language relating to acts of violence against women.

He has also been singled out for the effect he has had in spreading misogyny online among boys and young men by authorities in the UK.

The Tate brothers were both born in the US but moved to Luton in the UK with their mother after their parents divorced.

They have denied allegations of criminal wrongdoing.

Separately, the UK is seeking their extradition from Romania after they were charged in 2024 of rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking.

Lawyers for the brothers have said that they will return to the UK to face those charges, that stemmed from allegation between 2012 and 2015.

A Romanian court has ruled that the brothers could be extradited to the UK following the end of any trial there.

Aylo, the company which runs a number of pornographic websites, including Pornhub, is to stop operating in France from Wednesday.

It is in reaction to a French law requiring porn sites to take extra steps to verify their users’ ages.

An Aylo spokesperson said the law was a privacy risk and assessing people’s ages should be done at a device level.

Pornhub is the most visited porn site in the world – with France its second biggest market, after the US.

Aylo – and other providers of sexually explicit material – find themselves under increasing regulatory pressure worldwide.

The EU recently announced an investigation into whether Pornhub and other sites were doing enough to protect children.

Aylo has also pulled out of a number of US states, again over the issue of checking the ages of its users.

All sites offering sexually explicit material in the UK will soon also have to offer more robust “age assurance.”

Aylo, formerly Mindgeek, also runs sites such as Youporn and RedTube, which will also become unavailable to French customers.

It is owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners.

Their vice president for compliance, Solomon Friedman, called the French law “dangerous,” “potentially privacy-infringing” and “ineffective”.

“Google, Apple and Microsoft all have the capability built into their operating system to verify the age of the user at the operating system or device level,” he said on a video call reported by Agence France-Presse.

Another executive, Alex Kekesi, said the company was pro-age verification, but there were concerns over the privacy of users.

In some cases, users may have to enter credit cards or government ID details in order to prove their age.

French minister for gender equality, Aurore Bergé, wrote “au revoir” in response to the news that Pornhub was pulling out of France.

In a post on X [in French], she wrote: “There will be less violent, degrading and humiliating content accessible to minors in France.”

The UK has its own age verification law, with platforms required to have “robust” age checks by July, according to media regulator Ofcom.

These may include facial detection software which estimates a user’s age.

In April – in response to messaging platform Discord testing face scanning software – experts predicted it would be “the start of a bigger shift” in age checks in the UK, in which facial recognition tech played a bigger role.

BBC News has asked Aylo whether it will block its sites in the UK too when the laws come in.

In May, Ofcom announced it was investigating two pornography websites which had failed to detail how they were preventing children from accessing their platforms.

Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world’s top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.

Eleven people have been killed and dozens injured in a crush outside a cricket stadium in Bengaluru, which was hosting a victory parade to celebrate the home team’s Indian Premier League win, the state’s chief minister said.

Thousands of people had lined the streets on Wednesday to welcome the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) who beat the Punjab Kings in the IPL cricket final the day before.

Karnataka state Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told reporters that authorities had not expected the number of people who had turned out.

One police official told the BBC more than 200,000 people came out for the victory parade but they had anticipated only half that amount.

When the tragedy struck, the gates of the stadium “were not even opened, but there were so many people trying to push through a small gate that the stampede took place”, an official said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the “mishap in Bengaluru is heartrending” adding that his “thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones”.

State Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said he was “deeply shocked by the tragic loss of lives”.

“A moment of joy has been eclipsed by sorrow,” he added.

The RCB team had arrived by a special flight at the old HAL airport to be received by Karnataka deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar. They were taken in a procession to the hotel.

This was a precursor for the reception on the steps of the majestic Vidhana Soudha, seat of the state legislature, where Governor Thawarchand Gehlot, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and other ministers met the team.

The team was then scheduled to drive, again, in a procession to the stadium before the crush occurred.

The team, however, reached the stadium for a brief reception where cricket legend Virat Kohli spoke. “There was a huge crowd inside,” one eyewitness, who did not want to share his name, told BBC Hindi.

Prior to the incident, masses of people from different parts of the city had moved towards the stadium on all modes of transport wearing RCB jerseys.

Metro trains were so packed that several people – including this reporter – were not able to enter any compartment. All this while passengers inside the train and outside chanted the team’s name in chorus.

Auto rickshaws and taxis did not respond to requests from people who wanted to be dropped anywhere near the stadium. Those who agreed dropped commuters several kilometres away.

After reports of people losing their lives in the crush spread, people started rushing away to metro stations.

Authorities shut down the stations around the stadium as huge crowds had gathered on the platforms.