Donald Trump has signed a ban on travel to the US from 12 countries citing national security risks, according to the White House.

There are also seven additional countries whose nationals will face a partial travel restrictions.

The US president said the list could be revised if “material improvements” were made and additional countries could be added as “threats emerge around the world”.

This is the second time he has ordered a ban on travel from certain countries.

He signed a similar order in 2017, during his first term in office.

• Trump signs ban on travel to US by nationals from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti and Iran

Trump has signed a proclamation banning travel to the US from nationals of 12 countries:

• Afghanistan
• Myanmar
• Chad
• Republic of the Congo
• Equatorial Guinea
• Eritrea
• Haiti
• Iran
• Libya
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Yemen

There are an additional seven countries whose nationals face partial travel restrictions:

• Burundi
• Cuba
• Laos
• Sierra Leone
• Togo
• Turkmenistan
• Venezuela

The ban takes effect on Monday at 12:01 (05:01 BST), a cushion that avoids the chaos that unfolded at airports nationwide when a similar measure took effect with virtually no notice eight years ago. No end date has been provided; the order calls for periodic review.

The White House said these “common sense restrictions” would “protect Americans from dangerous foreign actors”.

In a video posted to his Truth Social website, Trump said the recent alleged terror attack in Boulder, Colorado “underscored the extreme dangers” posed by foreign nationals who had not been “properly vetted”.

Twelve people were injured in Colorado on Sunday when a man attacked a group gathering in support of Israeli hostages, throwing two incendiary devices and using a makeshift flamethrower.

The man accused of carrying out the attack has been identified as an Egyptian national, but Egypt is not included on the list of banned countries.

Trump has close ties with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has in the past been described by the US president as his “favourite dictator”.

There are a number of people from affected countries who may still be able to enter the US due to the following exemptions:

• Athletes travelling for major sporting events, like the 2026 World Cup or the 2028 Olympics
• Holders of “immigrant visas for ethnic and religious minorities facing persecution in Iran”
• Afghan nationals holding Special Immigrant Visas
• Any “lawful permanent resident” of the US
• Dual nationals who have citizenship in countries not included in the travel ban

In addition, the Secretary of State may grant exemptions to individuals on a “case-by-case” basis, if “the individual would serve a United States national interest”.

Trump’s latest order, which is expected to face legal challenges, drew a swift response, at home and abroad.

Somalia promised to work with the United States to address any security issues.

In a statement, Somali ambassador to the US, Dahir Hassan Abdi, said his country “values its longstanding relationship” with America.

Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello warned that “being in the United States is a great risk for anyone, not just for Venezuelans”.

Democrats were quick to condemn the move.

“This ban, expanded from Trump’s Muslim ban in his first term, will only further isolate us on the world stage,” Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat congresswoman from Washington, says in a social media post.

Another Democrat, congressman Don Beyer, says Trump “betrayed” the ideals of the US’ founders.

Human rights groups have also criticised the ban.

Amnesty International USA described it as “discriminatory, racist, and downright cruel”, while the US-based Human Rights First, called it “yet another anti-immigrant and punitive action taken” by the president.

Trump ordered his original travel ban during his first term in the White House in 2017.

It featured some of the same countries as his latest order, including Iran, Libya and Somalia.

Critics called it a “Muslim ban” as the seven countries initially listed were Muslim majority, and it was immediately challenged in courts across the US.

The White House revised the policy, ultimately adding two non-Muslim majority countries, North Korea and Venezuela.

It was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

President Joe Biden, who succeeded Trump, repealed the ban in 2021, calling it “a stain on our national conscience.”

Three days on, and Ukraine is still digesting the full implications of Operation Spider’s Web, Sunday’s massive assault on Russia’s strategic aviation.

On Wednesday, the agency which orchestrated the attack, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), released additional, vivid footage of the attacks in progress, as well as tantalising glimpses into how the whole complex operation was conducted.

Satellite images that have emerged since Sunday, showing the wrecked outlines of planes sitting on the tarmac at the Olenya, Ivanovo, Dyagilevo and Belaya airbases, also help tell the story of the operation’s unprecedented success.

For Ukrainian observers, the whole operation, a year-and-a-half in the making, remains a marvel.

“This can be considered one of the most brilliant operations in our history,” Roman Pohorlyi, founder of the DeepState, a group of Ukrainian military analysts, told me.

“We’ve shown that we can be strong, we can be creative and we can destroy our enemies no matter how far away they are.”

It’s important to note that almost all the information that has emerged since Sunday has been released by the SBU itself.

Flushed with its own success, it is keen to cast the operation in the best possible light. Its information campaign has been helped by the fact that the Kremlin has said almost nothing.

Speaking to the media on Wednesday after handing out medals to SBU officers involved in the operation, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky repeated the claim that 41 aircraft had been damaged or destroyed.

“Half of them cannot be restored,” he said, “and some will take years to repair, if they can be restored at all.”

Had a ceasefire been in place, he added, Operation Spider’s Web would not have happened.

• Putin will seek revenge for Ukraine drone attack, warns Trump
• Satellite images show Russian bombers destroyed in Ukraine attack
• How Ukraine carried out daring ‘Spider Web’ attack on Russian bombers

The latest four-minute compilation released by the SBU shows a number of key details.

Shot from the perspective of some of the 117 drones involved, we see Russian strategic bombers, transport aircraft and airborne warning and control (AWACS) being hunted down.

Fires can be seen raging on a number of stricken planes.

For the first time, we get glimpses under the wings of some of the bombers, revealing that they were already armed with cruise missiles, which Russia has used to devastating effect in its air raids on Ukraine.

The drones, many flown remotely by a separate pilot, sitting far away in Ukraine, are carefully and precisely aimed at vulnerable points, including fuel tanks located in the wings.

Some of the resulting fireballs also suggest the tanks were full of fuel, ready for take off.

One significant section of the video shows drones homing in on two Beriev A-50s, giant AWACS aircraft first produced in the Soviet Union.

Of all the aircraft targeted by Operation Spider’s Web, the A-50, with its radar capable of seeing targets and threats more than 600km (372 miles) away, is arguably the most important.

Before the full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia was thought to operate around nine A-50s. Before last Sunday, as many as three had been shot down or damaged in an earlier drone attack.

The latest footage strongly implies that drones hit the circular radar domes of the two A-50s parked at the Ivanovo Severny airbase, north-east of Moscow.

However, since the video feed cuts out at the moment of impact, this is hard to completely verify.

Satellite imagery, which clearly displays the wreckage of numerous bombers, is inconclusive when it comes to the A-50.

But Russia’s fleet of these crucial aircraft could now be down to as few as four.

“Restarting production of the A-50 is presently highly unlikely, due to difficulties with import substitution and the destruction of production facilities,” defence analyst Serhii Kuzan told me.

“As such, every loss of this type of aircraft constitutes a strategic problem for Russia, one it cannot quickly compensate for.”

Earlier on Wednesday, the SBU offered a brief glimpse into another of Sunday’s remarkable features: the use of specially constructed containers, mounted on flatbed trucks, to transport armed drones to sites close to the four Russian airbases.

Two videos show a truck carrying what appear to be two wooden mobile homes, complete with windows and doors.

In one video, roof panels are clearly visible. Reports suggest these were retracted or otherwise removed shortly before the attacks began, allowing dozens of drones stored inside to take off.

It’s not known when or where the videos were filmed, although snow visible beside the road in one suggests it could have been weeks or months ago.

In another video, posted on a Russian Telegram channel on Sunday, a police officer was seen entering the back of one of the containers in the wake of the attack.

Seconds later, the container exploded, suggesting it may have been booby-trapped.

How to assess the impact of such a spectacular operation?

“From a military point of view, this is a turning point in the war,” aviation expert Anatolii Khrapchynskyi told me.

“Because we have dealt a significant blow to Russia’s image and the capabilities of the Russian Federation.”

A little over three months after Donald Trump berated Volodymyr Zelensky, telling him he had “no cards,” Ukraine has offered an emphatic riposte.

“Ukraine has shown the whole world that Russia is actually weak and cannot defend itself internally,” Khrapchynskyi said.

But that doesn’t mean that Russia is about to change course.

After his latest conversation with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump said the two leaders had discussed Ukraine’s attacks.

“It was a good conversation,” President Trump posted on Truth Social, “but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace.”

“President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

An Australian woman accused of murdering relatives with beef Wellington documented herself using kitchen scales to calculate a lethal dose of toxic mushrooms, prosecutors allege.

Erin Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to killing three people and attempting to murder another at her home in regional Victoria in July 2023, saying it was a tragic accident.

Prosecutors on Thursday suggested photos found on her phone showing wild fungi being weighed depict her measuring the amount required to kill her guests.

Ms Patterson told the court she had likely taken photos in question but said she didn’t believe the mushrooms in them were death caps.

Ms Patterson’s in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, all fell ill and died days after the lunch.

Heather’s husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson, was also hospitalised but recovered after coming out of a weeks-long induced coma.

The high-profile trial, which started six weeks ago, has already heard from more than 50 prosecution witnesses. Ms Patterson became the first defence witness to take the stand on Monday afternoon.

Under cross-examination from the lead prosecutor, Ms Patterson admitted she had foraged for wild mushrooms in the three months before the July lunch, despite telling police and a health official that she hadn’t.

The court was also shown images, taken in late April 2023 and recovered from Ms Patterson’s phone, which depicted mushrooms being measured.

Ms Patterson previously admitted she had repeatedly wiped the device in the days following the lunch because she feared that if officers found such pictures they would blame her for the guests’ deaths.

Pointing to earlier evidence from a fungi expert who said the mushrooms in the images were “highly consistent” with death caps, Dr Rogers alleged Ms Patterson had knowingly foraged them days before.

She had seen a post on iNaturalist – a website for logging plant and animal sightings – and travelled to the Loch area ten days later on 28 April to pick the toxic fungi, Dr Rogers alleged.

Ms Patterson said she couldn’t recall if she went to the town that day, but denied she went there to find death cap mushrooms or that she had seen the iNaturalist post.

“I suggest that you were weighing these mushrooms so that you could calculate the weight required for… a fatal dose,” Dr Rogers put to her.

“Disagree,” Ms Patterson replied.

Earlier on Thursday, Ms Patterson’s barrister asked her why she repeatedly lied to police about foraging mushrooms and having a food dehydrator – which prosecutors say was used to prepare the toxic mushrooms for the meal.

“It was this stupid knee-jerk reaction to dig deeper and keep lying,” she told the court. “I was just scared, but I shouldn’t have done it.”

Ms Patterson also repeated her claim that she never intentionally put the poisonous mushrooms in the meal.

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.

Ukraine’s Minister of Strategic Industries Yuriy Sak told Radio 4’s World Tonight programme his country had hoped the US would respond to the “incessant Russian missile and drone attacks” with “more sanctions and with more pressure”.

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.

When Shamili left her home in India’s Bengaluru city on Wednesday, it wasn’t to see her favourite cricket team – she isn’t even a fan of the game.

But the buzz around the Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB’s) Indian Premier League victory parade – the home team won the tournament for the first time – had swept through the city like wildfire.

Wearing an RCB jersey with “18 Virat” on the back – a nod to Virat Kohli, the city’s favourite cricket icon – Shamili joined her sister and friends near the Chinnaswamy Stadium, looking forward to celebrations.

What she didn’t expect was to get caught in a terrifying crush.

The victory parade turned deadly when surging crowds – far beyond what authorities expected – led to a horrific crush that killed 11 people and injured dozens more.

Survivors like Shamili are now grappling with trauma, pain and a sense of disbelief after the celebration spiralled into catastrophe.

“I kept saying, ‘let’s go, let’s go’ – the crowd was getting out of control,” Shamili recalled, sitting on a bed at the government-run Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital. “The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. People were walking over me. I thought I was going to die.”

She is not alone. Many who had come just to soak in the atmosphere – fans, families, curious onlookers – found themselves caught in a tide of bodies as crowds swelled beyond control.

Police had expected no more than 100,000 people. In reality, Karnataka’s chief minister Siddaramaiah said, the crowd surged to 200,000-300,000. The stadium, with a capacity of 32,000, was overwhelmed long before the team arrived.

Videos from before the crush showed people climbing trees and trying to scale the stadium walls.

Haneef Mohammed, an engineering student, told BBC Hindi that he had no intention of going inside because he didn’t have a pass or ticket.

“I was just standing and watching the crowds near the main gate. Suddenly, people started running all around and the police started hitting people with their lathis,” he said.

Police in India often wield lathis – long bamboo sticks – to try and control crowds.

Mr Mohammed got hit on the head with a lathi and started bleeding. He says the police immediately arranged for a vehicle to take him to the hospital.

The ages of the 11 victims range from 13 to 43 years.

The youngest, Divyanshi, was a Class 9 student who had come to the stadium with her mother and other family members. Other victims include college students and a young tech worker who had come to the stadium with her colleagues.

A doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity said that most of them were “brought dead to hospital” due to suffocation or broken ribs. The massive crowds had delayed ambulances getting to the site of the crush.

Even as chaos and panic ensued on the roads around the Chinnaswamy stadium, the RCB team went inside the stadium after being felicitated on the footsteps of the Vidhana Soudha – the seat of power in Karnataka – by the governor, chief minister and other ministers.

“They went on a victory lap around the stadium. Inside the stadium, there was no sign that anything had happened outside,” said a young man who spoke on condition of anonymity.

IPL chairman Arun Dhumal said he did not know who had planned the event in Bengaluru and that RCB officials inside the stadium were not aware of the crush until they got phone calls.

In a statement on X, RCB said it was “deeply anguished by the unfortunate incidents”.

“Immediately upon being made aware of the situation, we promptly amended our programme and followed the guidance and advice of the local administration,” it said.

“At a loss for words. Absolutely gutted,” star player Kohli wrote on Instagram.

But questions still remain over how and why the event was organised.

“Normally, the felicitation of a team should be done in a controlled environment. But here, there appeared to be no preparation,” a relative of an injured person at the Bowring Hospital said.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has announced a magisterial enquiry into the incident.

“A moment of joy has turned into sorrow,” he said on Wednesday.

A rare oil portrait of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi – painted in 1931 in the UK – will be auctioned in London next month.

Gandhi led a non-violent resistance movement against British rule in India and his teachings have inspired millions. Most Indians revere him as the “father of the nation”.

Over the years, several paintings, drawings and sketches of him have circulated around the world.

The auction house Bonhams says the painting, made by British artist Clare Leighton, is “thought to be the only oil portrait that Gandhi actually sat for”.

The portrait was made when Gandhi went to London in 1931 for the second Round Table conference, held to discuss constitutional reforms for India and address its demands for self-governance.

It will be auctioned in the second week of July at Bonhams.

“This is a painting of unique historic and cultural significance. It would be great if it could be seen and appreciated more widely, whether in India or elsewhere,” Caspar Leighton, a great nephew of the artist, told the BBC.

According to Bonhams, Clare Leighton “was one of the very few artists admitted to his office and was given the opportunity to sit with on multiple occasions to sketch and paint his likeness”.

The works remained in the artist’s collection until her death in 1989 in the US, after which it was passed down through her family.

She was introduced to Gandhi through her partner and British political journalist, Henry Noel Brailsford, who was a strong supporter of India’s independence movement.

In November 1931, Leighton showcased her portraits of Gandhi at an exhibition at the Albany Galleries in London.

Though Gandhi did not attend the opening event, several representatives from the Indian delegation of the second Round Table were present.

Among them was Sarojini Naidu, also an eminent Indian independence leader, who was one of the key advisors to Gandhi at the meeting.

The exhibition included a charcoal sketch of Gandhi, asleep in his office, along with the oil portrait that is now set to be auctioned.

About the painting of Gandhi, British Journalist Winifred Holtby wrote: “The little man squats bare-headed, in his blanket, one finger raised, as it often is to emphasise a point, his mouth parted for a word that is almost a smile”.

The following month, Gandhi’s personal secretary Mahadev Desai wrote to Leighton, saying, “many of my friends who saw it [the oil portrait] in the Albany Gallery said to me that it was a good likeness”.

There doesn’t seem to be any public record of the oil portrait being displayed elsewhere until 1978, when the Boston Public Library organised an exhibition of Leighton’s works.

However, according to the artist’s family, the portrait was thought to have been on display in the 1970s in the US, where it was allegedly damaged in a knife attack.

A label attached to the backing board of the portrait says it was restored by the Lyman Allyn Museum Conservation Laboratory in Connecticut in 1974.

The details of the alleged attack are not clear – according to Bonhams, it was carried out by a right-wing Hindu activist.

Hindu hardliners in India accuse Gandhi of having betrayed Hindus by being too pro-Muslim, and blame him for the division of India and the bloodshed that marked Partition, which saw India and Pakistan created after independence in 1947.

He was shot dead on 30 January 1948 at a prayer meeting by Nathuram Godse, an activist with nationalist right-wing groups.

Shona Banu still shudders when she thinks of the past few days.

The 58-year-old, a resident of Barpeta district in India’s north-eastern state of Assam, says that she was called to the local police station on 25 May and later taken to a point at the border with neighbouring Bangladesh. From there, she says, she and around 13 other people were forced to cross over to Bangladesh.

She says she was not told why. But it was a scenario she had been dreading – Ms Banu says she has lived in Assam all her life but for the past few years, she has been desperately trying to prove that she is an Indian citizen and not an “illegal immigrant” from Bangladesh.

“They pushed me over at gunpoint. I spent two days without food or water in the middle of a field in knee-deep water teeming with mosquitoes and leeches,” Ms Banu said, wiping away tears. After those two days in no man’s land – between India and Bangladesh – she says she was taken to what appeared to be an old prison on the Bangladeshi side.

After two days there, she and a few others – she is not sure if all of them were from the same group sent with her – were escorted by Bangladeshi officials across the border, where Indian officials allegedly met them and sent them home.

It’s not clear why Ms Banu was abruptly sent to Bangladesh and then brought back. But her case is among a spate of recent instances where officials in Assam have rounded up people declared foreigners by tribunals in the past – on suspicion of being “illegal Bangladeshis” – and sent them across the border. The BBC found at least six cases where people said their family members had been picked up, taken to border towns and just “pushed across”.

Officials from India’s Border Security Force, the Assam police and the state government did not respond to questions from the BBC.

Crackdowns on alleged illegal immigrants from Bangladesh are not new in India – the countries are divided by a 4,096km (2,545 miles) long porous border which can make it relatively easy to cross over, even though many of the sensitive areas are heavily guarded.

But it’s still rare, lawyers working on these cases say, for people to be picked up from their homes abruptly and forced into another country without due process. These efforts seem to have intensified over the past few weeks.

The Indian government has not officially said how many people were sent across in the latest exercise. But top sources in the Bangladesh administration claim that India “illegally pushed in” more than 1,200 people into the country in May alone, not just from Assam but also other states. Out of this, they said on condition of anonymity, Bangladesh identified 100 people as Indian citizens and sent them back.

In a statement, the Border Guard Bangladesh said it had increased patrolling along the border to curb these attempts.

India has not commented on these allegations.

While media reports indicate that the recent crackdown includes Rohingya Muslims living in other states too, the situation is particularly tense and complex in Assam, where issues of citizenship and ethnic identity have long dominated politics.

The state, which shares a nearly 300km-long border with Muslim-majority Bangladesh, has seen waves of migration from the neighbouring country as people moved in search of opportunities or fled religious persecution.

This has sparked the anxieties of Assamese people, many of whom fear this is bringing in demographic change and taking away resources from locals.

The Bharatiya Janata Party – in power in Assam and nationally – has repeatedly promised to end the problem of illegal immigration, making the state’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) a priority in recent years.

The register is a list of people who can prove they came to Assam by 24 March 1971, the day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence from Pakistan. The list went through several iterations, with people whose names were missing given chances to prove their Indian citizenship by showing official documents to quasi-judicial forums called Foreigners Tribunals.

After a chaotic process, the final draft published in 2019 excluded nearly two million residents of Assam – many of them were put in detention camps while others have appealed in higher courts against their exclusion.

Ms Banu said her case is pending in the Supreme Court but that authorities still forced her to leave.

The BBC heard similar stories from at least six others in Assam – all Muslims – who say their family members were sent to Bangladesh around the same time as Ms Banu, despite having necessary documents and living in India for generations. At least four of them have now come back home, with no answers still about why they were picked up.

A third of Assam’s 32 million residents are Muslims and many of them are descendants of immigrants who settled there during British rule.

Maleka Khatun, a 67-year-old from Assam’s Barpeta who is still in Bangladesh, says she has temporarily been given shelter by a local family.

“I have no-one here,” she laments. Her family has managed to speak to her but don’t know if and when she can return. She lost her case in the foreigners’ tribunal and in the state’s high court and hadn’t appealed in the Supreme Court.

Days after the recent round of action began, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma cited a February Supreme Court direction which ordered the government to start deportation proceedings for people who had been “declared foreigners” but were still held in detention centres.

“The people who are declared foreigners but haven’t even appealed in court, we are pushing them back,” Sarma said. He also claimed that people with pending court appeals were not being “troubled”.

But Abdur Razzaque Bhuyan, a lawyer working on many citizenship cases in Assam, alleged that in many of the recent instances, due process – which would, among other things, require India and Bangladesh to cooperate on the action – was not followed.

“What is happening is a wilful and deliberate misinterpretation of the court order,” he said.

Mr Bhuyan recently filed a petition on behalf of a student organisation seeking the Supreme Court’s intervention in stopping what they said was a “forceful and illegal pushback policy” but was asked to first approach the Assam high court.

In Morigaon, around 167km from Barpeta, Rita Khatun sat near a table which had a pile of papers on it.

Her husband Khairul Islam, a 51-year-old school teacher, was in the same group as Ms Banu that was allegedly picked up by authorities.

A tribunal had declared him a foreigner in 2016, after which he spent two years in a detention centre before being released. Like Ms Banu, his case is also being heard in the Supreme Court.

“Every document is proof that my husband is Indian,” Ms Khatun said, leafing through what she said was Mr Islam’s high school graduation certificate and some land records. “But that wasn’t enough to prove his nationality to authorities.”

She says her husband, his father and grandfather were all born in India.

But on 23 May, she says that policemen arrived at their home and took Mr Islam away without any explanation.

It was only a few days later – when a viral video surfaced of a Bangladeshi journalist interviewing Mr Islam in no man’s land – that the family learnt where he was.

Like Ms Banu, Mr Islam has now been sent back to India.

While his family confirmed his return, the police told the BBC they had “no information” about his arrival.

Sanjima Begum says she is sure her father was declared a foreigner due to a case of mistaken identity – he was also taken on the same night as Mr Islam.

“My father’s name is Abdul Latif, my grandfather was Abdul Subhan. The notice that came [years ago, from the foreigners’ tribunal] said Abdul Latif, son of Shukur Ali. That’s not my grandfather, I don’t even know him,” Ms Begum said, adding that she had all the necessary documents to prove her father’s citizenship.

The family has now heard that Mr Latif is back in Assam, but he hasn’t reached home yet.

While some of these people are back home now, they fear they might be picked up again abruptly.

“We are not playthings,” Ms Begum said.

“These are human beings, you can’t toss them around as per your whims.”

Think, Denmark. Images of sleek, impossibly chic Copenhagen, the capital, might spring to mind. As well as a sense of a liberal, open society. That is the Scandinavian cliché.

But when it comes to migration, Denmark has taken a dramatically different turn. The country is now “a pioneer in restrictive migration policies” in Europe, according to Marie Sandberg, Director of the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies (AMIS) at the University of Copenhagen – both when it comes to asylum-seekers and economic migrants looking to work in Denmark.

Even more surprising, perhaps, is who is behind this drive. It’s generally assumed ‘far right’ politicians are gaining in strength across Europe on the back of migration fears, but that’s far from the full picture.

In Denmark – and in Spain, which is tackling the issue in a very different but no less radical way by pushing for more, not less immigration – the politicians taking the migration bull by the horns, now come from the centre left of politics.

How come? And can the rest of Europe – including the UK’s Labour government – learn from them?

Migration is a top voter priority, right across Europe. We live in really unsettling times. As war rages in Ukraine, Russia is waging hybrid warfare, such as cyber attacks across much of the continent. Governments talk about spending more on defence, while most European economies are spluttering. Voters worry about the cost of living and into this maelstrom of anxieties comes concern about migration.

But in Denmark, the issue has run deeper, and for longer.

Immigration began to grow apace following World War Two, increasing further – and rapidly – in recent decades. The proportion of Danish residents who are immigrants, or who have two immigrant parents, has increased more than fivefold since 1985, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).

A turning point was ten years ago, during the 2015 European migration and refugee crisis, when well over a million migrants came to Europe, mostly heading to the wealthier north, to countries like Denmark, Sweden and Germany.

Slogans like “Danskerne Først” (Danes First) resonated with the electorate. When I interviewed supporters of the hard-right nationalist, anti-immigration, Danish People’s Party (DPP) that year they told me, “We don’t see ourselves as racists but we do feel we are losing our country.”

Denmark came under glaring international attention for its hardline refugee stance, after it allowed the authorities to confiscate asylum seekers’ jewellery and other valuables, saying this was to pay towards their stay in Denmark.

The Danish immigration minister put up a photo of herself on Facebook having a cake decorated with the number 50 and a Danish flag to celebrate passing her 50th amendment to tighten immigration controls.

And Danish law has only tightened further since then.

Mayors from towns outside Copenhagen had long been sounding the alarm about the effects of the speedy influx of migrants.

Migrant workers and their families had tended to move just outside the capital, to avoid high living costs. Denmark’s famous welfare system was perceived to be under strain. Infant schools were said to be full of children who didn’t speak Danish. Some unemployed migrants reportedly received resettlement payments that made their welfare benefits larger than those of unemployed Danes, and government statistics suggested immigrants were committing more crimes than others. Local resentment was growing, mayors warned.

Today Denmark’s has become one of the loudest voices in Europe calling for asylum seekers and other migrants turning up without legal papers to be processed outside the continent.

The country had first looked at detaining migrants without papers on a Danish island that used to house a centre for contagious animals. That plan was shelved.

Then Copenhagen passed a law in 2021 allowing asylum claims to be processed and refugees to be resettled in partner countries, like Rwanda. The UK’s former Conservative government attempted a not dissimilar plan that was later annulled.

Copenhagen’s Kigali plan hasn’t progressed much either but it’s tightened rules on family reunions, which not long ago, was seen as a refugee’s right. It has also made all refugees’ stay in Denmark temporary by law, whatever their need for protection.

But many of Denmark’s harsh measures seemed targeted as much at making headlines, as taking action. The Danish authorities intentionally created a “hostile environment” for migrants”, says Alberto Horst Neidhardt, senior analyst at the European Policy Centre.

And Denmark has been keen for the word to spread.

It put advertisements in Lebanese newspapers at the height of the migrant crisis, for example, warning how tough Danish migration policies were.

“The goal has been to reduce all incentives to come to Denmark,” says ⁠Susi Dennison, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Danes have gone further than most European governments,” she explains. Not just honing in on politically sensitive issues like crime and access to benefits but with explicit talk about a zero asylum seekers policy.

And yet “before the 2015 refugee crisis, there was a stereotype of Nordic countries being very internationalist… and having a welcoming culture for asylum seekers,” says Ms Dennison.

Then suddenly the reaction was, “No. Our first goal is to provide responsibly for Danish people.”

The turning-point was, she argues, also triggered by Denmark’s neighbour, Germany, allowing a million refugees and others to stay in the country, during the migrant crisis.

“That was a political choice that had repercussions across Europe.”

By 2015 the anti-migration Danish People’s Party was the second biggest power in Denmark’s parliament. But at the same time, the Social Democrats – under new leader Mette Frederiksen – decided to fight back, making a clear, public break with the party’s past reputation of openness to migration.

“My party should have listened,” Frederiksen said.

Under her leadership, the party tacked towards what’s generally seen as the political “far right” in terms of migration and made hardline DPP-associated asylum policies, their own. But they also doubled down on issues more traditionally associated with the left: public services.

Danes pay the highest tax rates in Europe across all household types. They expect top notch public services in return. Frederiksen argued that migration levels threatened social cohesion and social welfare, with the poorest Danes losing out the most.

That is how her party justify their tough migration rules.

Frederiksen’s critics see her ‘rightwards swing’ as a cynical ploy to get into, and then stay in, power. She insists her party’s convictions are sincere. Whatever the case, it worked in winning votes.

Federiksen has been Denmark’s prime minister since 2019, and in last year’s election to the European Parliament, the populist nationalist Danish People’s Party scrambled to hold on to a single seat.

The political labels of old are blurring. It’s not just Denmark. Across Europe, parties of the centre – right and left – are increasingly using language traditionally associated with the “far right” when it comes to migration to claw back, or hold on to votes.

Sir Keir Starmer recently came under fire when, during a speech on immigration, he spoke of the danger of his country becoming ‘an island of strangers’.

At the same time in Europe, right-wing parties are adopting social policies traditionally linked to the left to broaden their appeal.

In the UK, the leader of the anti-migration, opposition Reform Party Nigel Farage has been under attack for generous shadow budget proposals that critics say don’t add up.

In France, centrist Emmanuel Macron has sounded increasingly hardline on immigration in recent years, while his political nemesis the National Rally Party leader Marine Le Pen has been heavily mixing social welfare policies into her nationalist agenda to attract more mainstream voters.

But can Danish – and in particular, Danish Social Democrat – tough immigration policies be deemed a success?

The answer depends on which criteria you use to judge them.

Asylum claim applications are certainly down in Denmark, in stark contrast to much of the rest of Europe. The number, as of May 2025, is the lowest in 40 years, according to immigration.dk, an online information site for refugees in Denmark.

But Nordic Denmark is certainly not what’s seen as a frontline state – like Italy – where people smugglers’ boats frequently wash up along its shores.

“Frederiksen is in a favourable geographical position,” argues Europe professor, Timothy Garton Ash, from Oxford University. But he also praises Denmark’s prime minister for addressing the problem of migration, without adopting “hysterical rhetoric”.

But others say new legislation has damaged Denmark’s reputation for respecting international humanitarian law and the rights of asylum-seekers. Michelle Pace of Chatham House says it has become hard to protect refugees in Denmark, where “the legal goalposts keep moving.”

Danish citizens with a migrant background have also been made to feel like outsiders, she notes.

She cites the Social Democrats’ “parallel societies” law, which allows the state to sell off or demolish apartment blocks in troubled areas where at least half of residents have a “non-Western” background.

The Social Democrats say the law is aimed at improving integration but Ms Pace insists it is alienating. The children of immigrants are told they aren’t Danish or a “pure Dane,” she argues.

In February this year, a senior advisor to the EU’s top court described the non-Western provision of the Danish law as discriminatory on the basis of ethnic origin.

Whereas once a number of European leaders dismissed Denmark’s Social Democrats as becoming far right, now “the Danish position has become the new normal – it was the head of the curve,” says Alberto Horst Neidhardt.

“What’s considered ‘good’ migration policies these days has moved to the right, even for centre left governments, like the UK.”

Before Germany’s general election this year, then centre-left Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, pledged to tighten asylum regulations, including reducing family reunification.

And earlier this month, Frederiksen teamed up with eight other European leaders – not including the UK – to call for a reinterpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights, whose tight constraints, they claim, prevent them from expelling foreign nationals with criminal records.

Contesting international laws on asylum is a trend Denmark is establishing at a more European level, says Sarah Wolff, Professor of International Studies and Global Politics at Leiden University.

“With the topic of migration now politicised, you increasingly see supposedly liberal countries that are signatories to international conventions, like human rights law, coming back on those conventions because the legislation no longer fits the political agenda of the moment,” says Ms Wolff.

Despite the restrictive migrant legislation, Denmark continued to admit migrant workers through legal channels. But not enough, considering the rapidly aging population, say critics like Michelle Pace.

She predicts Denmark will face a serious labour shortage in the future.

Spain’s centre-left government, meanwhile, is taking a very different road. Its Social Democrat prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, loves pointing out the Spanish economy was the fastest growing amongst rich nations last year.

Its 3.2% GDP growth was higher than America’s, three times the UK’s and four times the EU average.

Sanchez wants to legalise nearly a million migrants, already working in Spain but currently without legal papers. That extra tax revenue plus the much-needed extra workers to plug gaps in the labour market will maintain economic growth and ensure future pension payments are covered, he says.

Spain has one of the lowest birth rates in the EU. Spanish society is getting old, fast.

“Almost half of our towns are at risk of depopulation,” he said in autumn 2024. “We have elderly people who need a caregiver, companies looking for programmers, technicians and bricklayers… The key to migration is in managing it well.”

Critics accuse Sanchez of encouraging illegal migration to Spain, and question the country’s record of integrating migrants. Opinion polls show that Sanchez is taking a gamble: 57% of Spaniards say there are already too many migrants in the country, according to public pollster 40dB.

In less than 30 years, the number of foreign-born inhabitants in Spain has jumped almost nine fold from 1.6% to 14% of the population. But so far, migration concerns haven’t translated into widespread support for the immigration sceptic nationalist Vox party.

The Sanchez government is setting up what Ms Pace calls a “national dialogue”, involving NGOs and private business. The aim is to balance plugging labour market gaps with avoiding strains on public services, by using extra tax revenue from new migrant workers, to build housing and extra classrooms, for example.

Right now the plan is aspirational. It’s too early to judge, if successful, or not.

“Successful” migration policy depends on what governments, regardless of their political stripe, set as their priority, says Ms Dennison.

In Denmark, the first priority is preserving the Danish social system. Italy prioritises offshoring the processing of migrants. While Hungary’s prime minister Victor Orban wants strict migrant limits to protect Europe’s “Christian roots”, he claims.

Overstaying visas is thought to be the most common way migrants enter and stay in Europe without legal papers.

But recent UK governments have focused on high profile issues like people smugglers’ boats crossing the Channel.

Ms Dennison thinks that’s a tactical move. It’s taking aim at visible challenges, to “neutralise public anger” she says, in the hope most voters will then support offering asylum to those who need it, and allow some foreign workers into the UK.

It would be hard for Starmer to pursue the Denmark approach, she adds. After taking over from previous Conservative governments, he made a point of recommitting the UK to international institutions and international law.

So, does the ‘ideal’ migration plan exist, that balances voter concerns, economic needs and humanitarian values?

Martin Ruhs, deputy director of the Migration Policy Centre, spends a lot of time asking this question to voters across the UK and the rest of Europe, and thinks the public is often more sophisticated than their politicians.

Most prefer a balance, he says: migration limits to protect themselves and their families, but once they feel that’s in place, they also favour fair legislation to protect refugees and foreign workers.

Donald Trump has suspended for an initial six months the entry of foreign students seeking to study or participate in exchange programmes at Harvard University.

The US president issued the proclamation on Wednesday, citing “national security” concerns and declaring it “detrimental” to US interests to continue allowing foreign students at the institution.

Harvard has responded by calling the order “retaliatory” and emphasised it would continue to protect its international students, according to Reuters news agency.

Trump’s announcement is a further escalation of an ongoing legal row with one of the US’s most prestigious universities after Harvard refused to yield to a series of White House demands in April.

Wednesday’s order comes after a judge blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from banning international students at Harvard in a ruling last week.

Trump’s proclamation accused Harvard of developing “extensive entanglements” with foreign countries and continuing to “flout the civil rights of its students and faculty”.

Follow live updates: Trump signs ban on travel to US by citizens of 12 countries

“Considering these facts, I have determined that it is necessary to restrict the entry of foreign nationals who seek to enter the United States solely or principally to participate in a course of study at Harvard University,” he said.

The order also suspends visas for international students seeking exchange programmes and directs the secretary of state to consider revoking existing visas of students currently studying at the university.

The suspension can be extended beyond six months.

The White House said Harvard had failed to provide sufficient information to the DHS about “foreign students’ known illegal or dangerous activities” and reported “deficient data on only three students”.

Harvard issued a statement calling the order “yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the administration in violation of Harvard’s First Amendment rights”, Reuters reported.

The world’s wealthiest university has been embroiled in a legal battle with the Trump administration after it froze billions of dollars of federal funding and accused the institution of failing to root out antisemitism on campus.

Last month, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem revoked certification Harvard needed to enrol foreign students on campus, a move that was swiftly blocked by a judge.

Another federal judge upheld that decision last Thursday, saying she would issue a longer-term hold that would allow international students to continue their studies at Harvard while the legal battle plays out.

However, Wednesday’s proclamation once again throws the futures of thousands of international students into limbo.

For the 2024-2025 school year, Harvard enrolled nearly 7,000 foreign students, who made up 27% of its population.

Last week, a Chinese Harvard student called for unity during the university’s graduation ceremony, just days after Trump vowed to “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese students.

In the past few months, the Trump administration has ramped up its crackdown on higher education in the US, accusing universities of failing to tackle antisemitism amid protests against the war in Gaza across campuses.

Earlier on Wednesday, the White House threatened to strip Columbia University of its accreditation over claims it violated the civil rights of its Jewish students.

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.

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.

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With Air Canada and Southwest the latest airlines to charge passengers for check-in luggage, the ballooning cost of such ancillary or “junk fees” is provoking anger among politicians and consumer groups. At the same time, sales of suitcases small enough for passengers to take on the plane as hand luggage are booming.

Standing outside Toronto’s downtown airport, Lauren Alexander has flown over from Boston for the weekend. She describes such additional charges as “ridiculous”.

“It feels like a trick,” says the 24-year-old. “You buy the ticket, you think it’s going to be less expensive, then you have to pay $200 (£148) extra [to bring a suitcase].”

To avoid the fee, Ms Alexander instead travelled with a small backpack as hand luggage.

Sage Riley, who is 27, agrees, telling the BBC, “It can be pricey.”

There was a time when checked bags, seat selection and your meals all came as standard on commercial flights. But that all changed with the rise of the budget airlines, says Jay Sorensen of US aviation consultancy IdeaWorks.

It was in 2006 when UK low-cost carrier FlyBe became what is believed to be the world’s first airline to start charging passengers to check in bags. It charged £2 for a pre-booked item of luggage, and £4 if the customer hadn’t paid in advance.

Other budget carriers then quickly followed suit, with the so-called flag carriers or established airlines then also doing so, at least on shorter flights.

In 2008 American Airlines became the first US airline to charge a fee, $15, for the first checked bag on its domestic routes.

Mr Sorenson says such traditional airlines felt they had no choice when they “began to realise that the low-cost carriers were providing very significant competition”. He adds: “They felt they had to do something to meet that.”

Fast forward to today, and US airlines alone made $7.27bn from check-in baggage fees last year, according to federal figures. That is up from $7bn in 2023, and $5.76bn in 2019.

Little wonder then that more of us are trying to just take carry-on. Kirsty Glenn, managing director of UK luggage firm Antler, confirms that there is an ongoing surge in demand for small suitcases that meet airline dimension limits for carry-on luggage.

“We have seen huge spikes in searches online and on our website,” she says. Describing a new small-dimension case her company launched in April, Ms Glenn adds: “Testament to the trend of only travelling with hand luggage, it’s sold like crazy.”

At the same time, social media content about travel packing “hacks” and luggage that meets airlines’ carry-on size measurements, have soared according to travel journalist Chelsea Dickenson. She makes this content for TikTok.

“Social media has really propelled this idea of needing a bag that fits the baggage allowance requirements, says Ms Dickenson. “It’s become a core part of the content that I create and post on social media.”

Ms Dickenson, whose social media following has ballooned to close to a million followers, adds that her luggage videos have become a “core part of the content” she creates.

“It blows my mind,” she says. “I could spend weeks and weeks researching a big trip, and the resulting videos will not come close to doing as well as me going and buying a cheap suitcase, taking it to the airport, testing it in one of those baggage sizes and reporting back.”

The overall global cost of all airline extra fees, from luggage to seat selection, buying wifi access, lounge access, upgrades, and food and drink, is expected to reach $145bn this year, 14% of the sector’s total revenues. That’s according to the International Air Transport Association, which represents the industry. This compares with $137bn last year.

These numbers have caught the attention of some politicians in Washington, and last December airline bosses were grilled before a senate committee. It was a Democrat senator who used the term “junk fees”.

He wants the federal government to review such costs and potentially fine airlines. We asked the US Department of Transportation for a comment, but did not get a response.

But if having to pay for check-in wasn’t enough, a growing number of airlines are now charging for hand luggage. For example, Irish budget airline Ryanair will only allow you to carry a small bag that fits under the seat in front of you for free. If you want to take a bigger bag or suitcase to go in the overhead locker that will cost you from £6.

Other European airlines that now have similar charges for hand luggage are Easyjet, Norwegian Airlines, Transavia, Volotea, Vueling, and Wizzair.

This has annoyed pan-European consumer group Becu (The European Consumer Organisation), which last month filed a complaint with the European Commission.

Becu cites a 2014 EU Court of Justice ruling, which said “carriage of hand baggage cannot be made subject to a price supplement, provided that it meets reasonable requirements in terms of its weight and dimensions, and complies with applicable security requirements”.

However, what determines “reasonable requirements” continues to be a grey area in need of an official ruling.

There can, however, be a different way of doing things, as shown by Indian airline IndiGo. Its boss Pieter Eibers says that it does not charge for check-in luggage.

“The entire philosophy here is different,” he says. “We don’t want long lines, and endless debates at gates about the weight of luggage. We don’t have any of that. We turn our planes around in 35 minutes.”

“Who is responsible for this mess?”

The question recently echoed across India’s financial capital Mumbai as thousands of residents once again found themselves stranded, soaked and frustrated.

Heavy rains brought the city to a standstill, and this was before the monsoon had even begun in full swing. Roads turned into rivers, vehicles broke down mid-commute and low-lying neighbourhoods were waterlogged within hours.

Even a newly-built underground metro station could not withstand the heavy downpour as photos and videos of the station flooded with muddy water went viral.

The pre-monsoon deluge once again exposed the city’s fragile infrastructure and sparked widespread outrage on social media.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), one of India’s richest civic organisations responsible for maintaining Mumbai’s infrastructure, initially blamed the problem on rubbish clogging the drains and debris from metro construction, The Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

Following criticism, the BMC installed de-watering pumps in flood-prone areas and began manually clearing waste from drains to prevent further waterlogging. But for many residents, the action came too late.

The crisis is neither new – nor is it unique to Mumbai.

From Delhi in the north to Bengaluru in the south, India’s biggest cities flood every monsoon season. Roads collapse, drains overflow, infrastructure is overwhelmed and traffic grinds to a halt.

Experts blame rapid unplanned urbanisation, poor infrastructure and years of environmental neglect as the root causes of this problem.

“The pace of urban expansion has far exceeded the evolution of supporting infrastructure, particularly in water and drainage systems,” says Dikshu Kukreja, an architect and urban planner based in Delhi.

“Many cities rely on outdated systems designed decades ago. And in the process of unchecked expansion, natural drainage channels, wetlands and water bodies that once absorbed excess rainwater have been built over or neglected,” he adds.

Experts say there’s no one-size-fits-all solution as each city faces unique challenges and factors such as geography, population and climate must be considered when designing effective responses.

India receives 80% of its annual rainfall during the monsoon season, which usually starts from June and continues until September.

The monsoon is crucial for agriculture and the livelihoods of millions of Indian farmers. They rely on seasonal showers in parts of the country where proper irrigation channels are absent.

But experts say climate change has made erratic weather – such as unseasonal rains, flash floods and droughts linked to extreme heat – a more regular phenomenon, directly affecting millions of people.

This year the monsoon arrived a week early in parts of southern India, catching authorities unprepared.

“A depression developed over the eastern central Arabian Sea which was instrumental in pulling up the monsoon current,” says Mahesh Palawat, vice-president of meteorology and climate change at weather forecasting company Skymet.

In Delhi, the Minto bridge has become a symbol of the city’s annual monsoon chaos. Almost every year, after heavy rain, a bus or lorry gets stuck under the bridge – an image that highlights the city’s struggle with urban flooding.

This year, Delhi recorded its wettest May since 1901, with more than 185mm of rainfall, according to the Indian weather department.

Many residents reported damage to their property.

At least four people were killed and dozens more were injured in one of the two heavy storms that hit the city in May, according to media reports.

Meanwhile, in Bengaluru, more than 2,000kms (1,240 miles) from the capital, the problem looks different but its root cause is the same.

Once known for its network of lakes that helped manage excess rainwater, Bengaluru has seen many of these water bodies encroached upon. In their place now stand apartment complexes, business hubs and roads – leaving the city vulnerable to flooding.

“Bengaluru is made up of three major valleys through which water naturally flows. Most of the city’s lakes are located in these valleys,” explains Ram Prasad, a lake conservation activist.

These valleys were originally designated as no-construction zones but over the years, encroachment has taken place and later changes in the law permitted infrastructure projects to be built in the area, he says.

“When you convert lakes – which traditionally act as flood buffers – into built-up areas, the water has nowhere to go. So, what we’re seeing in Bengaluru today is the result of poor urban planning.”

Mr Prasad points out that Bengaluru, which sits atop a hill, was never meant to flood and the current situation is entirely man-made.

Violations of building norms, especially construction that narrows stormwater drains or builds directly over them, have only made things worse, he says.

Meanwhile, Mumbai faces natural challenges due to its geography. For example, many parts of Mumbai are low-lying and close to the sea, which makes them more vulnerable to flooding during heavy rains and high tides.

But experts say it’s human actions that have made things much worse: cutting down mangroves, which normally act like natural barriers against floods, and building on floodplains where water is supposed to drain.

“The breakdown is systemic – it begins with planning that often doesn’t account for future climate variabilities, gets exacerbated by poor execution and is compounded by weak enforcement of regulations,” Mr Kukerja says. “Political will is often reactive – responding to disasters rather than investing in long-term resilience.”

This isn’t just a big city problem. Smaller towns often suffer equally, if not more.

Over the weekend, at least 30 people died in India’s northeastern states after heavy rains triggered flooding and landslides. Tens of thousands have been affected, with rescue efforts under way.

So, can anything be done to prevent this?

“Yes,” says Mr Kukreja, but only if it is part of a long-term, co-ordinated strategy.

He suggests using mapping and real-time sensors to identify high-risk zones and alert communities. Predictive models can also help authorities plan better responses.

“But technology alone is not a fix, it needs to be paired with responsive governance and community involvement,” he said.

For India’s cities to withstand the rains, they need more than just de-watering pumps and quick fixes. They need forward-thinking planning, before the damage is done.

New German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is making a high-stakes trip to meet US President Donald Trump – his first time in Washington DC as the leader of the European Union’s largest economy.

Tariffs, defence spending and the war in Ukraine will be high on the agenda when Merz meets Donald Trump on Thursday at the White House.

There’s also speculation that Trump’s team – which repeatedly has weighed in on Germany’s domestic politics – could subject him to an Oval Office “ambush”.

It would not be the first time.

Both South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky found themselves in awkward, tense or even fiery exchanges as the world’s cameras rolled, capturing every moment. Those moments have turned once cosy, diplomatic moments in the Oval Office into potentially fraught, tight-rope walks for visiting leaders.

Ahead of the visit, Berlin expressed confidence that the German side is ready. “I think he’s well prepared for this meeting,” Friedrich Merz’s spokesman told reporters this week.

Merz – from the centre-right CDU party – is not just prepared, but on friendly terms with the US President, according to German media.

The pair are even said to have exchanged text messages and be on a first name basis, Germany’s ARD news outlet has reported.

It’s always important to not talk for too long,” Merz recently opined on German TV. “But to keep it short and also let him talk.”

Merz’s forthright, “shoot-from-the-hip” style of politics could add an interesting dimension to the meeting. His remarks can be surprising and make headlines – a stark contrast to those of his more cautious predecessors, Olaf Scholz and Angela Merkel.

Though a traditional supporter of transatlantic relations, Merz raised eyebrows in February by declaring the current US administration is “indifferent to the fate of Europe”.

So far, the White House has been uncharacteristically quiet about Merz’s visit.

It was only briefly mentioned by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in a gaggle with reporters on Monday, and not at all during briefings at the White House and State Department on Tuesday.

Sources familiar with the visit suggested several topics that could dominate the conversation.

Of these, tariffs would be among the most pressing, particularly after Trump doubled import taxes on steel and aluminium this week, prompting warnings of EU countermeasures.

The US President also repeatedly expressed dismay with the speed of tariff negotiations with the EU. In May, he threatened to levy a 50% tariff on European goods, saying that it was “time that we play the game the way I know how to play the game”.

Trump later backtracked and delayed the tariffs until 9 July, a move that his US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer characterised as having a “fire lit” under the EU.

Germany is the EU’s largest exporter to the US, leaving the country’s businesses extremely agitated about any trade obstacles.

Merz, a 69-year-old reputed millionaire with a corporate background, may feel confident about going toe-to-toe with Trump, who often hails himself as the consummate “dealmaker”.

Whether the Chancellor will be able to smooth the path for EU negotiators, however, remains to be seen.

Constanze Stelzenmüller, an expert on German-US relations at the Brookings Institute, believes Merz’s ability to push the negotiations along is limited, given that the EU as an institution has taken the lead on those talks.

“Whatever Merz says is mood music, rather than being able to say that XYZ will happen, even if major nation states aren’t without influence on the European Commission,” she explained. “He has to tread a delicate line.”

When it comes to Ukraine, Merz is vocal in his support of Kyiv and in his criticism of Moscow – recently warning that the fighting could drag on, despite repeated talk of a ceasefire from the White House.

Justin Logan, director of defence and foreign policy studies at the Washington DC-based Cato Institute, told the BBC he believes Ukraine will present a “dilemma” for the German side in the meeting.

“They’ll make a real effort to sell what frankly are the same arguments that have so far failed to persuade the White House,” he said.

Merz also has called for stiffer EU sanctions on Vladimir Putin and Russia – something Trump has so far not committed to, even as some lawmakers from within his own party have escalated calls to do so.

Earlier this week, Leavitt said only that Trump has “kept this as a tool in his toolbox if necessary”.

“The strange thing for me is, that we haven’t heard President Trump say yet, is that Europe has lots of cards it can play on its own,” Mr Logan said, pointing to $228bn in frozen Russian assets held primarily in Belgium.

“That’s money that’s just sitting there,” he said.

From the White House’s point of view, the issue of Ukraine’s defence is also inextricably linked to Trump’s demands that NATO allies raise defence spending to 5% of their GDP.

Germany’s is 2% – well short of Trump’s target, although German officials have signalled a willingness to move in that direction.

“I don’t think they’ve done enough,” Mr Logan added. “And I suspect they can’t do enough. The White House has to know that 5% is not a goal that any of the major European countries are going to reach.”

“The question then becomes: What’s next?”

Among the potential pitfalls the German delegation faces are the deep disdain that some members of Trump’s cabinet – particularly Vice President JD Vance – have for the so-called “firewall” that keeps Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party out of power.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing American can do for you,” Vance told the Munich Security Conference in February.

Vance also broke diplomatic norms by meeting the AfD’s leader, Alice Weidel, ahead of Germany’s snap election that saw the party storm into second place.

Since then, AfD has been classified as extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence service – although the public designation was paused pending a legal challenge.

If confronted, Merz is unlikely to concede, having previously called on the US government to “stay out” of Berlin’s domestic politics.

While she believes a “Zelensky-style” Oval Office is unlikely, Stelzenmüller said a “worst case scenario” would be something more akin to the visit of Irish Prime Minister Micheál to the White House – an occasion promptly followed by a visit from his political foe, former UFC fighter Conor McGregor.

Subsequent contact with the AfD or Alice Weidel, she added, would be seen as a provocation by Germany.

“That would be DEFCON 1 for the bilateral,” she said.

In the heart of the Texas desert, a Stryker is parked near a stretch of border wall. The light but powerful eight-wheeled combat vehicle was used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – and now is being used to stop what US President Donald Trump has called an “invasion” at the US-Mexico border.

The Stryker is just one of about 100 such vehicles being used along the 3,100 km border. In addition, it is estimated there are over 8,000 soldiers, as well as spy planes and drones, and two Navy ships monitoring the coast.

A few kilometres away on the Mexican side of the border, a young man standing on top of a hill is one of the few signs of this so-called “invasion”. He is what Border Patrol agents call a “hawk,” the ones who monitor and decide when and where to encourage migrants to cross into the United States.

But those crossings – not long ago at an all time high – have slowed to a trickle. The declining numbers have raised questions about Trump’s border tactics, which include an unprecedented deployment of American military might.

Trump has been accused of bypassing the conventional distinction between the armed forces and domestic police by deploying the military to the border.

In the US, the Posse Comitatus Act prevents federal armed forces from participating in law enforcement activities unless Congress has expressly authorized it.

However, the military is allowed to patrol its own bases and arrest trespassers through what is known as the “military purpose doctrine”.

Between April 18 and May 1, the Pentagon created two National Defense Areas, both bordering the Mexican state of Chihuahua, and made them de facto parts of existing military bases.

What this has done, says Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program, is allow the military to patrol huge swaths of the border.

Migrants caught crossing into these areas would be considered trespassers and may be temporarily detained by US soldiers until Border Patrol agents arrive.

“It’s exactly what the administration is trying to set up here: to turn up to a third of the southern border into a military installation,” she told BBC Mundo. “When someone enters the area and is detained, they can argue that the primary reason for doing so is to protect the base.”

The military command insists that its mission is to detain and alert border agents so they can make the official arrest – not to do domestic police work.

The Trump administration argues the expanded military areas are necessary for national security, and points to its decisive election victory as a mandate. Stronger border security was a key Trump campaign promise and one of the biggest issues for voters.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says the new areas “will enhance our ability to detect, interdict and prosecute the illegal aliens, criminal gangs, and terrorists who were able to invade our country”.

“It will also bolster our defenses against fentanyl and other dangerous narcotics that have been poisoning our communities,” she added.

Ms Goitein questions how the expansion of the military is justified, given the numbers of crossings at the border have fallen to historic lows. While numbers began falling before Trump took office, the decline has accelerated since January, as the administration has ramped up its efforts to arrest and deport illegal migrants.

In April, more than 8,000 people were detained for illegally entering the country at the southwest border.

A year ago, the number was 128,000 in April – a 94 % drop – according to government statistics.

Brigadier General Jeremy Winters, who is in charge of coordinating the efforts of different law enforcement agencies along the southern border, has said even one illegal crossing is too many.

“Containment is at 95%. But 95% is not 100%,” he said during a press conference.

“For us to accept that 95% is good enough would be to say that it’s conceptually okay to break the law. And that’s not what we’re doing here.”

The creation of these national defense areas has had a direct effect on arrests, statistics show. As of 3 June, the Joint Task Force on the Southern Border has detected approximately 340 migrant in these militerised zones.

To the common charge of entering the United States illegally, prosecutors now can add the charge of intentionally violating security regulations in the areas now declared restricted.

While both are classified as misdemeanors, the penalties for violating security regulations are much steeper. While entering the country without permission through a location not designated as a port of entry carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison and a fine of up to US$5,000, the second charge increases the possible penalties to up to one year in prison and a fine of US$100,000.

“This is pure wilderness, a desert” Carlos Ibarra, the public defender for several of the detainees, told BBC Mundo. “(The migrants) continue arriving as usual, but suddenly, they face military charges. And they don’t understand anything.”

Some of those additional charges were dismissed, with a New Mexico judge finding that military signs were not clearly marked or could be missed. But many have been convicted and pleaded guilty.

Meanwhile, the militarisation of the border will continue.

Trump even recently said that he pressured Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to allow the Army to cross into the neighbouring country to conduct operations against cartels, something the president flatly rejected.

For now, the troops remain on the US side of the border.

“This is their primary mission. This is not training. This is an operation to seal and protect our border, our own homeland,” Brigadier General Winters said.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has been released worldwide, with stores opening at midnight so fans could get their hands on the long-awaited console the moment it became available.

Some shops have the devices available to buy off the shelf – but in most cases customers have been picking up consoles they had ordered in advance, with UK retailer Currys calling it its “biggest gaming pre-order ever.”

Despite the excitement there have been some setbacks, with one supplier, Game, cancelling some pre-orders.

In the US, Nintendo briefly pulled Switch 2 pre-orders in April over concerns around tariffs before starting again a few weeks later.

There are also questions over whether the Switch 2 will match the success of its predecessor – the third-best selling console in history – because of its high game prices.

A physical copy of its most high-profile game, Mario Kart World, comes in at £74.99 – £15 more expensive than a typical Switch title.

The early signs though are that there is considerable customer interest.

Currys told the BBC it had sold 30,000 units – which it attributed to the “incredible excitement” associated with the launch.

The original Nintendo Switch has shifted more than 150 million units since its 2017 release.

A successor has been in the works for years – so perhaps unsurprisingly Tushar Sandarka, the President of the University of York’s Mario Kart society, is among those excited about the launch, and the new version of Mario coming with it.

“It’s coming out with Mario Kart World – which is the first since 2014 – it’s a big deal for us,” the 19-year-old said.

“Securing a pre-order was such a tough decision because it’s so expensive.

“Even if it’s a bit higher than I would have wanted to pay for it, it’s going to serve me well for the next 7 or 8 years.”

But not everyone the BBC spoke to said they would be picking up the console on launch.

Mae and Lottie, both students in York, said they would stick to the original Switch because of the cost.

“It’s quite spenny,” Mae said. “What we’ve got is fine.”

Lottie agreed, but said she was disappointed not to play on the new Mario Kart game – which she said could cost her as much as “a day’s pay”.

“I’m not spending that on a game,” she said.

For Nintendo, the Switch 2 represents a change in strategy – in the past its new devices have been given an entirely new name.

“This is the first time Nintendo has ever launched a straight sequel,” GamesRadar+ brand director Sam Loveridge told the BBC.

“It’s a clear proposition for consumers – they know exactly what they’re getting from this console if they are familiar with the original Switch.”

She said “everything is pointing to” pre-orders having sold well.

“When pre-orders first went live, it was an absolute scramble to find any stock, but Nintendo was clearly prepared and since those early weeks, it’s been a lot easier to secure yourself a console for launch day,” she said.

I was one of the lucky few to get my hands on the Switch 2 at an event in April.

Like its predecessor, it is a “hybrid” console – a handheld device which can also be plugged into a TV to play on the big screen.

But it has a bigger and brighter screen, along with lots more power and storage.

It still has a bit of innovation – you can use the controller like a computer mouse by twisting it on its side, making PC games such as Civilization VII a more enjoyable experience than using joysticks.

But many of the showcase Nintendo games on display at that event – including Metroid Prime 4, Donkey Kong: Bananza, and Super Mario Party Jamboree TV – won’t be available at launch.

Instead the only new Nintendo game on the new console will be Mario Kart World, barring a small title called Welcome Tour which showcases some of the new hardware.

“It might seem like an odd bet, but with the original Mario Kart 8 being the best-selling Wii U game and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe being the best-selling Nintendo Switch game, there’s a very established audience there,” Ms Loveridge said.

The gaming giant is also releasing on day one upgraded versions of the Switch’s Legend of Zelda games, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, which take advantage of the console’s greater power.

Beyond that, gamers will have to look to third-party games for alternatives on launch.

The range of games includes Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, Cyberpunk 2077, and Bravely Default.

“This more powerful console offers plenty of opportunities for third-party games publishers bringing Nintendo into more direct competition with Sony and Microsoft,” said Katie Holt, senior games industry research analyst at Ampere Analysis .

And fans can expect more from third-party games as the console develops too – with Nintendo senior director Takuhiro Dohta telling me he expected games to get even better.

“When there are software titles set for the launch of the hardware, the developers still don’t fully know the capabilities and hardware well enough,” he said.

“As developers continue to develop, they start to understand how it works and what it’s capable of, so I think we can expect improvements not only in graphics but in gameplay too.”

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Authorities in the German city of Cologne have defused three unexploded World War Two bombs after the evacuation of more than 20,000 people.

Bomb squad technicians deactivated the American bombs on Wednesday after evacuating an area of around 10,000 sq m (107,639 sq ft) following their discovery in a shipyard in Deutz on Monday.

Homes, shops, hotels and schools were told to evacuate, as well as a large hospital and a major train station in what the city called “the largest operation since WW2”.

Cologne was subjected to particularly heavy bombing during WW2 and unexploded ordnance can still pose a danger.

Germany’s bomb disposal service was only able to begin the operation after all residents in the densely populated area were evacuated.

“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 WW2 is not unusual in German cities such as Cologne and Berlin, but these bombs were particularly large.

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 were also affected, as well as government buildings, 58 hotels, and nine schools.

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

The authorities had set up two drop-in centres for people who did not 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.

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

The US has vetoed the UN Security Council’s draft resolution calling for an “unconditional and permanent” ceasefire in Gaza.

The other 14 members voted in favour of the document, which also demanded the release of all hostages and the lifting of humanitarian aid restrictions.

The US Ambassador to the UN, Dorothy Shea, said the resolution would “undermine diplomatic efforts” to reach a ceasefire, adding that the UN has not labelled Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Hamas is described as such by the US, UK and the EU.

“We would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza,” she said.

It comes amid growing concern over the distribution of aid in Gaza, with more than two million people at risk of starvation, according to the UN, after a total Israeli ban on shipments of food and other aid that lasted 11 weeks.

Aid distribution has recently been taken over by The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israel and US-backed group which aims to replace UN agencies and other organisations in the region.

Over the past few days, there have been a series of deadly incidents on the route to an aid distribution site in Gaza run by GHF.

The UK’s ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward explained that she voted in favour of the draft resolution because Britain wants the “intolerable situation in Gaza needs to end” and that the country sees a ceasefire as the best way to “achieve a long-term political solution”.

She added that Israel needs to “end its restrictions” on aid now and “let the UN and humanitarians do their job to save lives, reduce suffering and maintain dignity”.

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

At least 54, 000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 4,201 since Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March, according to the territory’s health ministry.

An almost 200-year-old condom – in “mint condition” – has just gone on display at an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

It is thought to be made of a sheep’s appendix and features an explicit print representing a nun and three clergymen.

The rare artefact dates back to 1830 and was purchased by the museum at an auction last year. The condom is part of an exhibition on 19th Century prostitution and sexuality. Prints, drawings and photographs also form part of the display.

Rijksmuseum curator Joyce Zelen told the BBC when she and her colleague first spotted the condom at auction they “were laughing”.

Ms Zelen said “no-one else noticed it” and they were the only ones who bid on it.

After obtaining the item, they inspected it with UV light and ascertained that it had not been used.

“It’s in mint condition,” said Ms Zelen.

Since it was put on display the museum has been packed with people – young and old – and the “response has been amazing”, she added.

Ms Zelen explained the condom is believed to have been a “luxury souvenir” from a fancy brothel in France, and that only two such objects are known to have survived to the present day.

The museum said the unusual item “embodies both the lighter and darker sides of sexual health, in an era when the quest for sensual pleasure was fraught with fears of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases – especially syphilis”.

The explicit print on this specific object shows the nun sitting in front of the three men with her dress up and her legs apart pointing her finger at the clergymen, all of whom are standing in front of her holding up their habits.

The condom also bears the inscription “Voilà mon choix”, meaning “There is my choice”.

The museum noted the print is thus to be considered as a “parody of both celibacy and the Judgement of Paris from Greek mythology”, the latter being the mythological story of a Trojan Prince named Paris who had to decide who was the fairest goddess among Aphrodite, Hera and Athena.

The Dutch museum notes that their Print Room collection holds some 750,000 prints, drawings and photographs but that this is the first example in the collection of a print on a condom.

“As far as we can tell we are the only art museum with a printed condom,” said Ms Zelen.

She said her institution was “open to loan” the artefact out to other museums, but noted that the condom was very delicate.

It will be on display until the end of November.

The first full-length trailer for Wicked’s forthcoming sequel has been released, offering fans a glimpse of how the Wizard of Oz spin-off will conclude.

Wicked: For Good will see Cynthia Erivo return as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, alongside Ariana Grande as Glinda the Good Witch of the North.

The new trailer shows Glinda standing on a balcony overlooking a mob of angry people carrying flaming torches searching for Elphaba.

It ends with Elphaba saying she’s “off to see the Wizard” before flying on a broom into the distance.

Wicked: For Good will pick up where the first film left off and cover the years after Elphaba and Glinda’s decision to part ways.

Elphaba is now an enemy of the state of Oz, while Glinda has become a public figure controlled by the Wizard.

Director Jon M Chu said: “Our heart was broken when Glinda can’t make the choice that we want her to so badly at the end of movie one, and it feels empowering for Elphaba to fly away from society.

“In movie two, we get to see the consequences of those choices. The temperature is up.”

The films have been adapted from the hugely successful Broadway and West End musical, which itself was based on Gregory Maguire’s 2005 novel.

However, the stage musical was split into two films for its big-screen adaptation, with the second due to be released on 21 November.

The two movies were shot simultaneously at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire between December 2022 and January 2024, with production interrupted mid-way through by the Hollywood actors’ strike.

Wicked was the highest-grossing movie of 2024 in the UK, and scored 10 Oscar nominations – winning two for best costume and production design.

At two hours 40 minutes, the first film alone was almost as long as the entire length of the stage show.

Erivo and Grande’s chemistry and real-life friendship prompted several viral interview moments during the first film’s promotional run last year, and the pair jointly opened the Academy Awards in March with a Wicked medley.

But one challenge facing the sequel is that most of the best known songs from the musical, such as Defying Gravity, Popular and The Wizard And I, featured in the first film.

The forthcoming follow-up will feature two brand new songs, with Chu telling Vanity Fair: “They’re great additions to this movie. They were necessary in this movie to help tell the story.”

Grande and Erivo will be joined once again by co-stars Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Bailey and Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard.

A US judge has temporarily halted deportation proceedings against the family of a man accused of Sunday’s petrol-bomb attack on Jewish demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, is accused of a federal hate crime and other charges. Officials say his family, who are not charged in the attack, are Egyptian citizens.

US District Judge Gordon Gallagher, a Biden appointee, ordered deportation proceedings to be halted, a day after the White House said it had six one-way tickets to deport the wife and five children from the US.

The decision was one of three immigration rulings on Wednesday against Trump by federal judges as he seeks to deliver on his pledge for mass deportations.

“The court finds that deportation without process could work irreparable harm and an order must issue without notice due to the urgency this situation presents,” Judge Gallagher wrote in his order on Wednesday.

Lawyers for the defence had accused the government of unfairly targeting the family, who say they were unaware of Mr Soliman’s violent plans and have co-operated with investigators.

“It is patently unlawful to punish individuals for the crimes of their relatives,” the family’s lawyers said in a lawsuit challenging their immigration detention.

“Such methods of collective or family punishment violates the very foundations of a democratic justice system.”

The family members include Mr Soliman’s wife, Hayam El Gamal, 41, as well as the couple’s 17-year-old daughter, two other daughters and two sons.

They are being held at an immigration detention centre in Texas, over 900 miles (1,450km) from their home in Colorado.

Department of Homeland Security officials have said that Mr Soliman arrived in the US on a tourist visa in August 2022. That visa expired the following year. He made an asylum claim in September 2022.

According to police documents, the suspect told officials that he “never talked to his wife or his family” about his plans, and that he had left a phone in a desk drawer with messages to his wife and children. His wife turned the phone in to authorities.

One of Mr Soliman’s daughters was recently awarded a scholarship by a local newspaper in Colorado Springs. A profile in the Gazette newspaper noted she “was born in Egypt but lived in Kuwait for 14 years” and relocated to the US two years ago.

After his arrest, Mr Soliman told police he planned the attack to take place after his daughter’s high school graduation, according to the FBI.

On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the agency was “investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it”.

The judge’s order is the latest setback for the Trump administration on immigration.

On Wednesday, another federal judge ruled that over 100 Venezuelan migrants deported to a jail in El Salvador must be given a chance to challenge their removal.

Judge James Boasberg said the US had “plainly deprived” the migrants of their constitutional right to oppose their detention.

But the ruling does not apply Venezuelan migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native deported from the US at the same time.

It also emerged on Wednesday that the US had flown a Guatemalan man back to the US, after deporting him to Mexico.

A federal judge in Boston last month found that prosecutors had incorrectly declared the man was not afraid for his safety in Mexico.

The individual, identified in court papers only as OCG, was returned on a commercial flight on Wednesday, according to his lawyers.

Graphic designer Bryana Bongolan testified that Sean “Diddy” Combs once dangled her off a 17th floor apartment balcony, and that she saw him throw a knife at her friend Casandra Ventura.

On Wednesday, prosecutors displayed photos taken by Ms Bongolan and her then-girlfriend of Ms Bongolan’s bruises, which she claimed she sustained during the alleged 2016 incident.

Combs’ attorneys worked to cast doubt on Ms Bongolan’s credibility before the jury under intense cross-examination, during which she responded that she could not recall past statements she gave the government.

Combs faces charges of racketeering, conspiracy and sex trafficking. He has pleaded not guilty.

The federal case, now in its fourth week of testimony, followed dozens of civil lawsuits filed against him by men and women accusing him of abuse, including both Ms Ventura, who is Combs’ ex-girlfriend, and Ms Bongolan.

Ms Bongolan said she met Ms Ventura in 2014 when she worked for the brand Young and Reckless. Later, as the head women’s designer at Diamond Supply Co, she was assigned to work with Ms Ventura on creating a collection and the two became close.

Ms Bongolan testified they often took drugs like cocaine, ketamine and marijuana together. She later alleged that she procured drugs for Ms Ventura, and that the R&B singer paid her for them. She also acknowledged that she and Ms Ventura had a “problem” with drug use, but that she was currently sober.

Ms Bongolan testified that during the friendship, she saw signs of Combs’ alleged violence. She said once saw Ms Ventura on FaceTime with a black eye, and that the rapper would often pound on Ms Ventura’s apartment door at night.

Ms Bongolan testified that in September 2016, she heard banging on Ms Ventura’s front door when she and her girlfriend were sleeping on the couch. She hid her girlfriend in a bathroom and went to the balcony, then Mr Combs entered the apartment, and allegedly picked her up and lifted her onto the ledge, she told the court.

She said he repeatedly yelled, “You know what the (expletive) you did”, and then threw her into the balcony furniture.

Prosecutors showed the jury photos of a puncture and bruise on Ms Bongolan’s leg, along with accompanying metadata displaying the date they were taken. She also testified she suffered night terrors and paranoia as a result of the evening.

In another incident she described, Combs burst into Ms Ventura’s apartment and allegedly threw a knife at the R&B singer. Ms Bongolan said Ms Ventura picked the knife up and threw it back. Neither of them was injured, she said.

Once during a photoshoot in Malibu with Ms Ventura, Ms Bongolan alleged that Combs got in her face and told her: “I’m the devil and I could kill you.”

“I was terrified,” she told the court.

During cross examination, Mr Combs’ defence attorney sought to undercut Ms Bongolan, who struggled to answer questions about her statements in previous meetings with prosecutors.

Nicole Westmoreland repeatedly asked Ms Bongolan about what she told government prosecutors when she first met them in January 2024. Several times, she asked her about the alleged balcony incident, but the witness struggled to recall details she described at the initial meeting.

During her testimony two weeks ago, Ms Ventura, the prosecution’s key witness, told the court: “I saw him bring her back over the railing of the balcony and then throw her onto the patio furniture.”

Ms Westmoreland also asked Ms Bongolan about her initial account of the incident in Malibu. The defence attorney said Ms Bongolan originally told government prosecutors that Combs made that threat at a party, and Ms Bongolan testified she could not recall that conversation.

As the afternoon wore on, Ms Bongolan increasingly repeated that she could not recall details of previous conversations with prosecutors. At one point, Ms Westmoreland asked Ms Bongolan to recall her conversations with prosecutors two days prior. Asked about specifics, Ms Bongolan answered that she could not remember.

The court also heard on Wednesday from forensic video editor Frank Piazza, who took the jury through recordings of the “Cassie video”, which shows Mr Combs beating Ms Ventura in a hotel hallway in 2016. He explained that the recordings were untampered with and were an accurate depiction.

Ms Bongolan is expected to return to the stand Thursday. She will likely be followed by “Jane”, whose testimony under a pseudonym could take several days.

Donald Trump has signed a ban on travel to the US from 12 countries citing national security risks, according to the White House.

There are also seven additional countries whose nationals will face a partial travel restrictions.

The US president said the list could be revised if “material improvements” were made and additional countries could be added as “threats emerge around the world”.

This is the second time he has ordered a ban on travel from certain countries.

He signed a similar order in 2017, during his first term in office.

• Trump signs ban on travel to US by nationals from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti and Iran

Trump has signed a proclamation banning travel to the US from nationals of 12 countries:

• Afghanistan
• Myanmar
• Chad
• Republic of the Congo
• Equatorial Guinea
• Eritrea
• Haiti
• Iran
• Libya
• Somalia
• Sudan
• Yemen

There are an additional seven countries whose nationals face partial travel restrictions:

• Burundi
• Cuba
• Laos
• Sierra Leone
• Togo
• Turkmenistan
• Venezuela

The ban takes effect on Monday at 12:01 (05:01 BST), a cushion that avoids the chaos that unfolded at airports nationwide when a similar measure took effect with virtually no notice eight years ago. No end date has been provided; the order calls for periodic review.

The White House said these “common sense restrictions” would “protect Americans from dangerous foreign actors”.

In a video posted to his Truth Social website, Trump said the recent alleged terror attack in Boulder, Colorado “underscored the extreme dangers” posed by foreign nationals who had not been “properly vetted”.

Twelve people were injured in Colorado on Sunday when a man attacked a group gathering in support of Israeli hostages, throwing two incendiary devices and using a makeshift flamethrower.

The man accused of carrying out the attack has been identified as an Egyptian national, but Egypt is not included on the list of banned countries.

Trump has close ties with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has in the past been described by the US president as his “favourite dictator”.

There are a number of people from affected countries who may still be able to enter the US due to the following exemptions:

• Athletes travelling for major sporting events, like the 2026 World Cup or the 2028 Olympics
• Holders of “immigrant visas for ethnic and religious minorities facing persecution in Iran”
• Afghan nationals holding Special Immigrant Visas
• Any “lawful permanent resident” of the US
• Dual nationals who have citizenship in countries not included in the travel ban

In addition, the Secretary of State may grant exemptions to individuals on a “case-by-case” basis, if “the individual would serve a United States national interest”.

Trump’s latest order, which is expected to face legal challenges, drew a swift response, at home and abroad.

Somalia promised to work with the United States to address any security issues.

In a statement, Somali ambassador to the US, Dahir Hassan Abdi, said his country “values its longstanding relationship” with America.

Venezuela’s Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello warned that “being in the United States is a great risk for anyone, not just for Venezuelans”.

Democrats were quick to condemn the move.

“This ban, expanded from Trump’s Muslim ban in his first term, will only further isolate us on the world stage,” Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat congresswoman from Washington, says in a social media post.

Another Democrat, congressman Don Beyer, says Trump “betrayed” the ideals of the US’ founders.

Human rights groups have also criticised the ban.

Amnesty International USA described it as “discriminatory, racist, and downright cruel”, while the US-based Human Rights First, called it “yet another anti-immigrant and punitive action taken” by the president.

Trump ordered his original travel ban during his first term in the White House in 2017.

It featured some of the same countries as his latest order, including Iran, Libya and Somalia.

Critics called it a “Muslim ban” as the seven countries initially listed were Muslim majority, and it was immediately challenged in courts across the US.

The White House revised the policy, ultimately adding two non-Muslim majority countries, North Korea and Venezuela.

It was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

President Joe Biden, who succeeded Trump, repealed the ban in 2021, calling it “a stain on our national conscience.”

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.

Ukraine’s Minister of Strategic Industries Yuriy Sak told Radio 4’s World Tonight programme his country had hoped the US would respond to the “incessant Russian missile and drone attacks” with “more sanctions and with more pressure”.

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.

Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into Joe Biden’s actions during his presidency, accusing aides of a “conspiracy” to “deceive the public about Biden’s mental state”.

In this latest move to discredit his predecessor, Trump took aim at the aides’ use of an autopen – a device that replicates signatures which presidents, including Trump, have used for decades – to sign executive actions.

“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump said on Wednesday.

Biden slammed Trump’s move as “ridiculous”, saying his claims are aimed at distracting Americans as his administration works to extend tax breaks for the wealthy.

Follow live updates: Trump signs ban on travel to US by citizens of 12 countries

Trump and his Republican allies have long questioned Biden’s mental acuity and have attempted to overturn some of the presidential pardons and federal rules issued at the end of his term in office.

A Republican-led panel in the House of Representatives has sought testimony from some of Biden’s closest aides, including his first chief of staff, on his “mental and physical faculties” while he was leading the country.

In a statement on Wednesday, Trump, 78, said the American public had been “purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power” while Biden’s signature was used to endorse documents Trump described as leading to “radical policy shifts”.

Biden, now 82 and fighting advanced prostate cancer, has hit back at Trump.

“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations,” he said.

“Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” Biden said in a statement on Wednesday night.

Scrutiny over Biden’s mental and physical capacity has intensified in recent weeks as a new book accused an inner circle within the former administration of covering up his “physical deterioration” during his ill-fated re-election campaign last year.

Original Sin, written by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, alleges Biden’s condition during the campaign was said to be so poor that aides discussed giving him a wheelchair.

Biden abruptly ended his re-election campaign last July shortly after weeks of pressure following his disastrous debate performance against Trump.

Some Democrats, including former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have publicly blamed Biden for not exiting the race sooner, which would have given his party more time to anoint a popular replacement.

Early last month, Biden gave his first interview since leaving the White House to the BBC, maintaining he “[did not] think it would have mattered” if he had left the race sooner.

Shortly after, he announced that he’s been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones – which has led to more accusations from the Trump White House that those closest to the former president, including his wife Jill, would have known of his condition earlier.

Donald Trump has suspended for an initial six months the entry of foreign students seeking to study or participate in exchange programmes at Harvard University.

The US president issued the proclamation on Wednesday, citing “national security” concerns and declaring it “detrimental” to US interests to continue allowing foreign students at the institution.

Harvard has responded by calling the order “retaliatory” and emphasised it would continue to protect its international students, according to Reuters news agency.

Trump’s announcement is a further escalation of an ongoing legal row with one of the US’s most prestigious universities after Harvard refused to yield to a series of White House demands in April.

Wednesday’s order comes after a judge blocked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from banning international students at Harvard in a ruling last week.

Trump’s proclamation accused Harvard of developing “extensive entanglements” with foreign countries and continuing to “flout the civil rights of its students and faculty”.

Follow live updates: Trump signs ban on travel to US by citizens of 12 countries

“Considering these facts, I have determined that it is necessary to restrict the entry of foreign nationals who seek to enter the United States solely or principally to participate in a course of study at Harvard University,” he said.

The order also suspends visas for international students seeking exchange programmes and directs the secretary of state to consider revoking existing visas of students currently studying at the university.

The suspension can be extended beyond six months.

The White House said Harvard had failed to provide sufficient information to the DHS about “foreign students’ known illegal or dangerous activities” and reported “deficient data on only three students”.

Harvard issued a statement calling the order “yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the administration in violation of Harvard’s First Amendment rights”, Reuters reported.

The world’s wealthiest university has been embroiled in a legal battle with the Trump administration after it froze billions of dollars of federal funding and accused the institution of failing to root out antisemitism on campus.

Last month, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem revoked certification Harvard needed to enrol foreign students on campus, a move that was swiftly blocked by a judge.

Another federal judge upheld that decision last Thursday, saying she would issue a longer-term hold that would allow international students to continue their studies at Harvard while the legal battle plays out.

However, Wednesday’s proclamation once again throws the futures of thousands of international students into limbo.

For the 2024-2025 school year, Harvard enrolled nearly 7,000 foreign students, who made up 27% of its population.

Last week, a Chinese Harvard student called for unity during the university’s graduation ceremony, just days after Trump vowed to “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese students.

In the past few months, the Trump administration has ramped up its crackdown on higher education in the US, accusing universities of failing to tackle antisemitism amid protests against the war in Gaza across campuses.

Earlier on Wednesday, the White House threatened to strip Columbia University of its accreditation over claims it violated the civil rights of its Jewish students.

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.

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Think, Denmark. Images of sleek, impossibly chic Copenhagen, the capital, might spring to mind. As well as a sense of a liberal, open society. That is the Scandinavian cliché.

But when it comes to migration, Denmark has taken a dramatically different turn. The country is now “a pioneer in restrictive migration policies” in Europe, according to Marie Sandberg, Director of the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies (AMIS) at the University of Copenhagen – both when it comes to asylum-seekers and economic migrants looking to work in Denmark.

Even more surprising, perhaps, is who is behind this drive. It’s generally assumed ‘far right’ politicians are gaining in strength across Europe on the back of migration fears, but that’s far from the full picture.

In Denmark – and in Spain, which is tackling the issue in a very different but no less radical way by pushing for more, not less immigration – the politicians taking the migration bull by the horns, now come from the centre left of politics.

How come? And can the rest of Europe – including the UK’s Labour government – learn from them?

Migration is a top voter priority, right across Europe. We live in really unsettling times. As war rages in Ukraine, Russia is waging hybrid warfare, such as cyber attacks across much of the continent. Governments talk about spending more on defence, while most European economies are spluttering. Voters worry about the cost of living and into this maelstrom of anxieties comes concern about migration.

But in Denmark, the issue has run deeper, and for longer.

Immigration began to grow apace following World War Two, increasing further – and rapidly – in recent decades. The proportion of Danish residents who are immigrants, or who have two immigrant parents, has increased more than fivefold since 1985, according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).

A turning point was ten years ago, during the 2015 European migration and refugee crisis, when well over a million migrants came to Europe, mostly heading to the wealthier north, to countries like Denmark, Sweden and Germany.

Slogans like “Danskerne Først” (Danes First) resonated with the electorate. When I interviewed supporters of the hard-right nationalist, anti-immigration, Danish People’s Party (DPP) that year they told me, “We don’t see ourselves as racists but we do feel we are losing our country.”

Denmark came under glaring international attention for its hardline refugee stance, after it allowed the authorities to confiscate asylum seekers’ jewellery and other valuables, saying this was to pay towards their stay in Denmark.

The Danish immigration minister put up a photo of herself on Facebook having a cake decorated with the number 50 and a Danish flag to celebrate passing her 50th amendment to tighten immigration controls.

And Danish law has only tightened further since then.

Mayors from towns outside Copenhagen had long been sounding the alarm about the effects of the speedy influx of migrants.

Migrant workers and their families had tended to move just outside the capital, to avoid high living costs. Denmark’s famous welfare system was perceived to be under strain. Infant schools were said to be full of children who didn’t speak Danish. Some unemployed migrants reportedly received resettlement payments that made their welfare benefits larger than those of unemployed Danes, and government statistics suggested immigrants were committing more crimes than others. Local resentment was growing, mayors warned.

Today Denmark’s has become one of the loudest voices in Europe calling for asylum seekers and other migrants turning up without legal papers to be processed outside the continent.

The country had first looked at detaining migrants without papers on a Danish island that used to house a centre for contagious animals. That plan was shelved.

Then Copenhagen passed a law in 2021 allowing asylum claims to be processed and refugees to be resettled in partner countries, like Rwanda. The UK’s former Conservative government attempted a not dissimilar plan that was later annulled.

Copenhagen’s Kigali plan hasn’t progressed much either but it’s tightened rules on family reunions, which not long ago, was seen as a refugee’s right. It has also made all refugees’ stay in Denmark temporary by law, whatever their need for protection.

But many of Denmark’s harsh measures seemed targeted as much at making headlines, as taking action. The Danish authorities intentionally created a “hostile environment” for migrants”, says Alberto Horst Neidhardt, senior analyst at the European Policy Centre.

And Denmark has been keen for the word to spread.

It put advertisements in Lebanese newspapers at the height of the migrant crisis, for example, warning how tough Danish migration policies were.

“The goal has been to reduce all incentives to come to Denmark,” says ⁠Susi Dennison, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Danes have gone further than most European governments,” she explains. Not just honing in on politically sensitive issues like crime and access to benefits but with explicit talk about a zero asylum seekers policy.

And yet “before the 2015 refugee crisis, there was a stereotype of Nordic countries being very internationalist… and having a welcoming culture for asylum seekers,” says Ms Dennison.

Then suddenly the reaction was, “No. Our first goal is to provide responsibly for Danish people.”

The turning-point was, she argues, also triggered by Denmark’s neighbour, Germany, allowing a million refugees and others to stay in the country, during the migrant crisis.

“That was a political choice that had repercussions across Europe.”

By 2015 the anti-migration Danish People’s Party was the second biggest power in Denmark’s parliament. But at the same time, the Social Democrats – under new leader Mette Frederiksen – decided to fight back, making a clear, public break with the party’s past reputation of openness to migration.

“My party should have listened,” Frederiksen said.

Under her leadership, the party tacked towards what’s generally seen as the political “far right” in terms of migration and made hardline DPP-associated asylum policies, their own. But they also doubled down on issues more traditionally associated with the left: public services.

Danes pay the highest tax rates in Europe across all household types. They expect top notch public services in return. Frederiksen argued that migration levels threatened social cohesion and social welfare, with the poorest Danes losing out the most.

That is how her party justify their tough migration rules.

Frederiksen’s critics see her ‘rightwards swing’ as a cynical ploy to get into, and then stay in, power. She insists her party’s convictions are sincere. Whatever the case, it worked in winning votes.

Federiksen has been Denmark’s prime minister since 2019, and in last year’s election to the European Parliament, the populist nationalist Danish People’s Party scrambled to hold on to a single seat.

The political labels of old are blurring. It’s not just Denmark. Across Europe, parties of the centre – right and left – are increasingly using language traditionally associated with the “far right” when it comes to migration to claw back, or hold on to votes.

Sir Keir Starmer recently came under fire when, during a speech on immigration, he spoke of the danger of his country becoming ‘an island of strangers’.

At the same time in Europe, right-wing parties are adopting social policies traditionally linked to the left to broaden their appeal.

In the UK, the leader of the anti-migration, opposition Reform Party Nigel Farage has been under attack for generous shadow budget proposals that critics say don’t add up.

In France, centrist Emmanuel Macron has sounded increasingly hardline on immigration in recent years, while his political nemesis the National Rally Party leader Marine Le Pen has been heavily mixing social welfare policies into her nationalist agenda to attract more mainstream voters.

But can Danish – and in particular, Danish Social Democrat – tough immigration policies be deemed a success?

The answer depends on which criteria you use to judge them.

Asylum claim applications are certainly down in Denmark, in stark contrast to much of the rest of Europe. The number, as of May 2025, is the lowest in 40 years, according to immigration.dk, an online information site for refugees in Denmark.

But Nordic Denmark is certainly not what’s seen as a frontline state – like Italy – where people smugglers’ boats frequently wash up along its shores.

“Frederiksen is in a favourable geographical position,” argues Europe professor, Timothy Garton Ash, from Oxford University. But he also praises Denmark’s prime minister for addressing the problem of migration, without adopting “hysterical rhetoric”.

But others say new legislation has damaged Denmark’s reputation for respecting international humanitarian law and the rights of asylum-seekers. Michelle Pace of Chatham House says it has become hard to protect refugees in Denmark, where “the legal goalposts keep moving.”

Danish citizens with a migrant background have also been made to feel like outsiders, she notes.

She cites the Social Democrats’ “parallel societies” law, which allows the state to sell off or demolish apartment blocks in troubled areas where at least half of residents have a “non-Western” background.

The Social Democrats say the law is aimed at improving integration but Ms Pace insists it is alienating. The children of immigrants are told they aren’t Danish or a “pure Dane,” she argues.

In February this year, a senior advisor to the EU’s top court described the non-Western provision of the Danish law as discriminatory on the basis of ethnic origin.

Whereas once a number of European leaders dismissed Denmark’s Social Democrats as becoming far right, now “the Danish position has become the new normal – it was the head of the curve,” says Alberto Horst Neidhardt.

“What’s considered ‘good’ migration policies these days has moved to the right, even for centre left governments, like the UK.”

Before Germany’s general election this year, then centre-left Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, pledged to tighten asylum regulations, including reducing family reunification.

And earlier this month, Frederiksen teamed up with eight other European leaders – not including the UK – to call for a reinterpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights, whose tight constraints, they claim, prevent them from expelling foreign nationals with criminal records.

Contesting international laws on asylum is a trend Denmark is establishing at a more European level, says Sarah Wolff, Professor of International Studies and Global Politics at Leiden University.

“With the topic of migration now politicised, you increasingly see supposedly liberal countries that are signatories to international conventions, like human rights law, coming back on those conventions because the legislation no longer fits the political agenda of the moment,” says Ms Wolff.

Despite the restrictive migrant legislation, Denmark continued to admit migrant workers through legal channels. But not enough, considering the rapidly aging population, say critics like Michelle Pace.

She predicts Denmark will face a serious labour shortage in the future.

Spain’s centre-left government, meanwhile, is taking a very different road. Its Social Democrat prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, loves pointing out the Spanish economy was the fastest growing amongst rich nations last year.

Its 3.2% GDP growth was higher than America’s, three times the UK’s and four times the EU average.

Sanchez wants to legalise nearly a million migrants, already working in Spain but currently without legal papers. That extra tax revenue plus the much-needed extra workers to plug gaps in the labour market will maintain economic growth and ensure future pension payments are covered, he says.

Spain has one of the lowest birth rates in the EU. Spanish society is getting old, fast.

“Almost half of our towns are at risk of depopulation,” he said in autumn 2024. “We have elderly people who need a caregiver, companies looking for programmers, technicians and bricklayers… The key to migration is in managing it well.”

Critics accuse Sanchez of encouraging illegal migration to Spain, and question the country’s record of integrating migrants. Opinion polls show that Sanchez is taking a gamble: 57% of Spaniards say there are already too many migrants in the country, according to public pollster 40dB.

In less than 30 years, the number of foreign-born inhabitants in Spain has jumped almost nine fold from 1.6% to 14% of the population. But so far, migration concerns haven’t translated into widespread support for the immigration sceptic nationalist Vox party.

The Sanchez government is setting up what Ms Pace calls a “national dialogue”, involving NGOs and private business. The aim is to balance plugging labour market gaps with avoiding strains on public services, by using extra tax revenue from new migrant workers, to build housing and extra classrooms, for example.

Right now the plan is aspirational. It’s too early to judge, if successful, or not.

“Successful” migration policy depends on what governments, regardless of their political stripe, set as their priority, says Ms Dennison.

In Denmark, the first priority is preserving the Danish social system. Italy prioritises offshoring the processing of migrants. While Hungary’s prime minister Victor Orban wants strict migrant limits to protect Europe’s “Christian roots”, he claims.

Overstaying visas is thought to be the most common way migrants enter and stay in Europe without legal papers.

But recent UK governments have focused on high profile issues like people smugglers’ boats crossing the Channel.

Ms Dennison thinks that’s a tactical move. It’s taking aim at visible challenges, to “neutralise public anger” she says, in the hope most voters will then support offering asylum to those who need it, and allow some foreign workers into the UK.

It would be hard for Starmer to pursue the Denmark approach, she adds. After taking over from previous Conservative governments, he made a point of recommitting the UK to international institutions and international law.

So, does the ‘ideal’ migration plan exist, that balances voter concerns, economic needs and humanitarian values?

Martin Ruhs, deputy director of the Migration Policy Centre, spends a lot of time asking this question to voters across the UK and the rest of Europe, and thinks the public is often more sophisticated than their politicians.

Most prefer a balance, he says: migration limits to protect themselves and their families, but once they feel that’s in place, they also favour fair legislation to protect refugees and foreign workers.

The first bacteria our bodies meet – in the hours after we’re born – could protect us from dangerous infections, UK scientists say.

They have shown, for the first time, that good bacteria seem to halve the risk of young children being admitted to hospital with lung infections.

The researchers said it was a “phenomenal” finding and could lead to therapies that boost good bacteria in babies.

Our early encounters with microbes are thought to be crucial in how our immune system develops.

We come out of the womb sterile, but this doesn’t last for long. All the nooks and crannies of the human body become home to a world of microbial life, known as the microbiome.

Researchers at University College London and the Sanger Institute investigated the earliest stages in our body’s colonisation by bacteria, fungi and more.

They collected stool samples from 1,082 newborns in the first week of life. The team then performed a massive genetic analysis on all the DNA in the samples to work out exactly which species were present and how common they were in each child.

They then tracked what happened to those babies, using hospital data, for the next two years.

One particular early inhabitant of the human body, seemed to have a protective effect.

Only 4% of babies with this species would spend a night in hospital with a lung infection over the next two years. Babies with different starter-bacteria were two-to-three times more likely to need to stay in hospital.

It is the first data to show the formation of the microbiome affects the risk of infection.

“I think it’s really phenomenal. It’s amazing to be able to show this. I’m excited,” Prof Nigel Field, from UCL, told the BBC.

The most likely culprit for children ending up in hospital is respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), but what joins the dots between this and ?

That is the “million dollar question” for Prof Field.

We know starts off digesting breast milk which both contains food for the baby and encourages good bacteria.

The exact details have not yet been worked out, but either the bacteria themselves or the compounds they make by digesting food are interacting with the immune system “and are influencing the way in which the immune system matures and is able to recognise friend from foe,” according to Prof Field.

The protective bacteria were found only in babies that came into the world via a vaginal delivery rather than a caesarean. Even then they were not discovered after every vaginal delivery.

The researchers say their findings do not justify the practice of vaginal seeding, where some new parents smear babies with a swab taken from the vagina.

The good bacteria seem to be coming from the end of the mother’s digestive system, an idea known in the field as the “first lick”.

“I feel pretty confident in saying that vaginal seeding is not a good thing,” said Prof Field.

However, the long-term ambition is to come up with microbial therapies – like a probiotic yogurt – that could be given to babies to set their microbiomes on a healthy path.

Prof Louise Kenny, from the University of Liverpool and a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said: “A caesarean section is often a life-saving procedure, and can be the right choice for a woman and her baby.”

She said that while the benefit was seen only in babies born vaginally, it was not in every child born that way so “further research is needed to create a full, nuanced picture”.

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.