What happens when the richest person and the most powerful politician have a knock-down, drag-out fight?

The world is finding out – and it’s not a pretty picture. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have two of the biggest megaphones, and they have now turned them on each other, as a disagreement has ballooned into a war of words.

Trump has threatened Musk’s voluminous business dealings with the federal government, which form the lifeblood of his SpaceX programme.

“The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts,” Trump posted menacingly on his own social media website.

If Trump turns the machinery of government against Musk, the tech billionaire will feel pain. Tesla’s stock price plunged by 14% on Thursday.

It’s not a one-way street, however. After that volley, Musk called for Trump’s impeachment and dared him to cut funding for his companies.

Musk also said he was accelerating the decommissioning of his Dragon spacecraft, which the US relies on to carry American astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

But hours later, he appeared to back down from that threat, saying in response to a post on X urging him to cool off: “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”

Musk has near limitless resources to respond, including by funding insurgent challengers to Republicans in next year’s elections and primaries. And late on Thursday afternoon, he said he was dropping the “really big bomb” – suggesting without evidence that Trump appears in unreleased files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, offered only a tepid pushback to Musk’s allegations and accusations.

“This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted,” she said.

• Trump ‘very disappointed’ by Musk as row explodes into public
• Tesla shares tumble as Trump-Musk feud erupts

Musk may not win a fight against the whole of Trump’s government, but he could exact a high political – and personal – price for Trump and the Republicans.

Trump, perhaps aware of this, appeared to tamp down the heat a bit by the end of the day. He avoided commenting on Musk during a public appearance at a White House event and posted a message on Truth Social that said he didn’t mind “turning against him”, but wishes he had quit government service months ago.

He then pivoted to boosting of his “big, beautiful” tax and spending legislation.

It’s difficult to envision an easy walk-down after Thursday’s heat, however.

The feud started at a simmer last week, began bubbling on Wednesday and became a full-on boil on Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office. As new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz – the day’s visitor – sat in awkward silence, the president sounded a bit like a spurned lover.

He expressed surprise at Musk’s criticism of his legislation. He pushed back against the notion that he would have lost last year’s presidential election without Musk’s hundreds of millions of dollars in support. And he said Musk was only changing his tune now because his car company, Tesla, will be hurt by the Republican push to end electric vehicle tax credits.

Musk quickly took to his social media site, X, with a very Generation X response for his 220 million followers: “Whatever”.

He said he didn’t care about the car subsidies, and that he wanted to shrink the national debt, which he says is an existential threat to the nation. He insisted that Democrats would have prevailed in last year’s election without his help. “Such ingratitude,” he told Trump.

The billionaire then launched a series of extraordinary attacks throughout the afternoon, and the feud was on in earnest.

Musk and Trump had formed a powerful but unlikely alliance, culminating in the tech billionaire having a key position of budget-slashing authority in the Trump administration. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, became one of the biggest stories of Trump’s first 100 days, as it shuttered entire agencies and dismissed thousands of government workers.

It wasn’t long, however, before speculation began over when – and how – the two outsized personalities would ultimately fall out.

For a while, it seemed like those predictions were off the mark. Trump stood by Musk even as the latter’s popularity dropped, as he feuded with administration officials and as he became a liability in several key elections earlier this year.

Every time it appeared there would be a break, Musk would pop up in the Oval Office, or the Cabinet room or on the president’s Air Force One flight to Mar-a-Lago.

When Musk’s 130 days as a “special government employee” ended last week, the two had a chummy Oval Office send-off, with a golden key to the White House and hints that Musk might someday return.

It’s safe to say that any invitation has been rescinded and the locks have been changed.

“Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said on Thursday – a comment notable for its use of the past tense.

There had been some thought that Trump’s surprise announcement on Wednesday night of a new travel ban, additional sanctions on Harvard and a conspiracy-laced administration investigation of former President Joe Biden were all efforts to change the subject from Musk’s criticism. The White House and its allies in Congress seemed careful not to further antagonise him after his earlier comments.

Then Trump spoke out and… so much for that.

Now the question is where the dispute goes next. Congressional Republicans could find it harder to keep their members behind Trump’s bill with Musk providing rhetorical and, perhaps financial, air cover for those who break ranks.

Trump has already threatened Musk’s government contracts, but he could also take aim at his remaining Doge allies in the administration or reopen Biden-era investigations into Musk’s business dealings.

Everything at this point is on the table.

Meanwhile, Democrats are on the sidelines, wondering how to respond. Few seem willing to welcome Musk, a former donor to their party, back into the fold. But there’s also the old adage that the enemy of an enemy is a friend.

“It’s a zero-sum game,” Liam Kerr, a Democratic strategist, told Politico. “Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans.”

At the very least, Democrats seem happy to stand back and let the two men exchange blows. And until they abandon this fight, the din is likely to drown out everything else in American politics.

But don’t expect this spat to end anytime soon.

“Trump has 3.5 years left as president,” Musk wrote on X, “but I will be around for 40-plus years.”

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

An Australian bouncy castle operator at the centre of a tragedy in 2021 that killed six children and seriously injured three has been cleared of breaching safety laws.

A court found Rosemary Anne Gamble, who runs the business Taz-Zorb, not guilty, ruling that the incident was “due to an unprecedented weather system” that was “impossible to predict”.

The victims, who were on a bouncy castle at a primary school fun day in Devonport, Tasmania, fell about 10m (33ft) after strong winds blew the castle skywards at a school fair.

The verdict on Friday caused anguish among their families, with some crying out in court in disbelief, ABC News reported.

Prosecutors had accused Ms Gamble of failing to anchor the castle adequately, but her defence argued she could not have done more to eliminate or reduce hazards that led to the tragedy.

Magistrate Robert Webster agreed with the defence and found that the incident happened due to a dust devil – an upward spiralling vortex of air and debris – that was “unforeseen and unforeseeable”.

“Ms Gamble could have done more or taken further steps, however, given the effects of the unforeseen and unforeseeable dust devil, had she done so, that would sadly have made no difference to the ultimate outcome,” the magistrate said.

The six children killed in the accident – Addison Stewart, Zane Mellor, Jye Sheehan, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, Peter Dodt and Chace Harrison – were aged between 11 and 12.

They were all at a Hillcrest Primary School fair when the accident took place on the last day of term before the school holidays in December 2021.

Five of the children were on the castle when the gales swept it up and flung it across the school oval.

The sixth child, who was waiting in line, died after being struck in the head by the inflatable blower.

The tragic accident shattered Devonport, a city on the north coast of Tasmania with some 30,000 residents.

Ms Gamble was charged nearly two years after, in November 2023.

Andrew Dodt, the father of one of the young victims Peter, said after Friday’s verdict that “our hopes are just shattered now”.

“At the end of the day all I wanted was an apology for my son not coming home, and I’m never going to get it, and that kills me,” he said in a statement to local media.

“I’ve been broken for a long time, and I think I’m going to be broken for a lot more.”

Ms Gamble’s lawyer Bethan Frake spoke on her behalf, acknowledging that the incident has caused “scars that will remain for an extremely long time, likely forever”.

“I am a mother,” she said, quoting Ms Gamble. “I can only imagine the pain that other parents are living with each and every day because of this terrible thing that happened.”

“Their loss is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”

Russia launched large-scale drone and missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital and other parts of the country early on Friday, officials said.

At least three people were killed and 49 injured in the strikes, according to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The aerial raids targeted Kyiv, as well as the city of Lutsk and the Ternopil region in the north-west of the country.

Russia’s defence ministry said the strikes were in response to “terrorist acts by the Kyiv regime”, adding that it had targeted military sites.

The ministry said its armed forces “overnight launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, sea and ground-based weapons, as well as attack drones”.

The attack came after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned US President Donald Trump he would respond to Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russian airbases.

In a post on X on Friday, Zelensky said that “now is exactly the moment when America, Europe, and everyone around the world can stop this war together by pressuring Russia”.

He made a thinly veiled reference to Trump’s apparent unwillingness to put pressure on Russia.

“If someone is not applying pressure and is giving the war more time to take lives – that is complicity and accountability,” Zelensky wrote. “We must act decisively.”

Zelensky said that “as of now”, three deaths had been confirmed in the strikes – all employees of Ukraine’s state emergency services.

He said the attack used more than 400 drones and more than 40 missiles, and the number of people injured “may increase”.

In an earlier statement, Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said four people had been killed in the country’s capital.

Air raid alerts were in place in Kyiv, where a residential building was hit, and the city’s train system was disrupted after shelling damaged metro tracks.

Tens of thousands of civilians in the capital spent a restless few hours in underground shelters.

From the centre of the city, prolonged bursts of machine gun fire could be heard as air defences on the outskirts attempted to bring down scores of drones aimed at Kyiv.

From time to time, the distinctive buzz of drones overhead could also be heard.

Bright flashes of light, sometimes reflected on nearby buildings, would be followed, five or ten seconds later, by thunderous explosions.

Authorities say the attacks included 38 cruise missiles, which is the kind Ukraine targeted in Sunday’s so-called “Spider’s Web” operation, suggesting this attack could be a message from the Kremlin.

The cities of Kharkiv, Sumy and Luhansk were also under air raid alerts.

Elsewhere, Ternopil’s military chief Vyacheslav Negoda said Friday’s strike was the “most massive air attack on our region to date”.

Mayor of Ternopil, Igor Polishchuk, said five people were wounded in the attack and there was damage to homes, schools and a government facility.

In Lutsk, five people were injured in an attack using 15 drones and six missiles, according to mayor Ihor Polishchuk.

Meanwhile, the Russian defence ministry said its air defences shot down 174 Ukrainian drones overnight in parts of Russia and occupied Crimea.

The ministry said Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles were also intercepted over the Black Sea.

Russia’s latest attack on Ukraine comes days after Kyiv launched its biggest long-range drone strike on at least 40 Russian warplanes at four military bases.

Zelensky said 117 drones were used in the Spider’s Web operation by the SBU security service, striking “34% of [Russia’s] strategic cruise missile carriers”.

Earlier this month, direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Istanbul, but ended without a major breakthrough.

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 a two-or three-day truce “in certain areas” of the vast front line, but gave no further details.

Trump said Putin vowed to “very strongly” respond to Ukraine’s recent attack on Russian airbases, during a phone call that lasted more than an hour on Wednesday.

Moscow had previously said that military options were “on the table” for its response to Ukraine’s attack.

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

North Korea has reportedly refloated a warship about two weeks after it capsized during a launch attempt, in an incident that drew harsh criticism from the country’s leader Kim Jong Un.

State-run news agency KCNA reported on Friday that the warship had “safely entered the water vertically” and had then been “moored at the pier”.

It is expected to be fully repaired before a key meeting led by Kim which top officials in the one-party state attend, KCNA said.

The 5,000-tonne destroyer can be seen upright at the pier and then about three hours later, “floating in the harbour” in satellite images published by specialist news sites 38 North and NK News.

The effort to right the ship, which had happened on Thursday, was a manual process, researchers at 38 North said, noting that satellite imaging showed workers on the quay pulling tethers and using barrage balloons to bring the vessel back to balance.

Some of the balloons appeared to still be attached to the vessel, they added.

Kim, who witnessed the warship tipping over during the failed launch, had criticised the incident as a “criminal act” that “severely damaged the [country’s] dignity and pride”.

It was the result of “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism”, he added.

At least four officials including Ri Hyong-son, the deputy director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Munitions Industry Department, have been arrested over the incident.

Mr Ri is part of the party’s Central Military Commission, which commands the Korean People’s Army and is responsible for developing and implementing North Korea’s military policies.

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

Some analysts saw Kim’s swift and severe response to the earlier failed launch as a signal that Pyongyang would continue to advance its military capabilities.

The regime is “deeply invested in the image of a rising military power” and the failure may harden their resolve to push that forward, says Jihoon Yu, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

Kim’s “unusually severe” response to the failure is aimed at protecting the leader’s image and reasserting his authority, he adds.

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

Just weeks before the botched launch, Pyongyang had unveiled a similar warship in another part of the country.

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

An Australian woman accused of intentionally cooking a fatal mushroom lunch has told her trial she had wanted the beef Wellington meal to be “special”.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering three people and attempting to kill another at her home in regional Victoria in July 2023.

The 50-year-old says it was a tragic accident, and that she never intended to hurt family members she loved. But prosecutors argue Ms Patterson put poisonous fungi into their food in a carefully crafted plot to kill them.

On Friday, the court heard it was “unusual” for Ms Patterson to host such an event at her house, and she was quizzed about her relationships with her guests.

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. Simon Patterson, the accused’s estranged spouse, had been invited too, but pulled out the day before.

More than 50 prosecution witnesses have given evidence at the trial, which began six weeks ago, but Ms Patterson became the first for the defence when she took to the stand on Monday.

On her second day of cross-examination on Friday, Ms Patterson told the court she accepted that invites to her house were rare, but said she’d arranged the occasion to discuss a health issue and wanted to make a nice meal for her relatives to thank them for their support.

“I wanted it to be special,” Ms Patterson said.

She has previously admitted she misled her guests into believing she may need cancer treatment, telling the jury she did so as a cover for weight-loss surgery she was planning to have but was too embarrassed to disclose.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, however, put to her that there was no health issue to discuss, and that she had invited Simon and his relatives over to kill them. She had even prepared a spare toxic meal in case Mr Patterson changed his mind and came over, Dr Rogers suggested.

Over and over this week, Ms Patterson has denied these allegations, often becoming emotional as she told the court she loved the lunch guests like her own family.

She has also repeatedly told the court that she realised, in the days after the lunch, that the beef Wellington may have accidentally included dried mushrooms she had foraged, which were kept in a container with store-bought ones.

Lies to the police and health authorities about the source of the mushrooms and her decision to dispose of a food dehydrator were both because she was scared of being blamed for the guests’ dire illnesses, she said.

“Surely if you had loved them, then you would have immediately notified the medical authorities?” Dr Rogers asked.

Ms Patterson said she didn’t tell doctors about the possibility that wild mushrooms had been unintentionally included because the lunch guests were already getting treatment for death cap mushroom poisoning.

“Even after you were discharged from hospital you did not tell a single person that there may have been foraged mushroom used in the meal,” Dr Rogers said.

“Instead you got up, you drove your children to school… and drove home. And then you got rid of the dehydrator.”

“Correct,” Ms Patterson said.

The court heard there’d been conflict between Ms Patterson and her husband, and Dr Rogers suggested the accused was still angry at her in-laws for taking their son’s side.

“You had two faces,” Dr Rogers said, after making Ms Patterson read aloud messages in which she is critical of both Simon Patterson and his parents.

There was her “public face” of appearing to have a good relationship with Don and Gail, Dr Rogers said, and a “private face” which she showed in the messages.

“How you truly felt about Don and Gail was how you expressed it [there],” she said.

“And that is how you really felt about Simon Patterson… you did not regard him as being a decent human being at his core, correct or incorrect?”

That was “incorrect”, Ms Patterson replied, her head shaking and voice faltering.

Ms Patterson’s use of the iNaturalist website – which listed locations of death cap mushrooms in areas close to her home – was also scrutinised, with the accused repeatedly saying she couldn’t clearly recall ever using the site.

She will resume being cross examined next week. The trial, initially expected to take six weeks, is now expected to run for at least another fortnight, the judge has told the court.

Tucked deep in Donald Trump’s sprawling “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is a clause that could quietly take billions from money sent abroad.

It proposes a 3.5% tax on remittances sent abroad by foreign workers, including green card holders and temporary visa workers such as those on H-1B visas. For India – the world’s top remittance recipient – the implications are serious, say experts. Other major recipients include Mexico, China, the Philippines, France, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In 2023, Indians abroad sent home $119bn (£88bn) – enough to finance half of India’s goods trade deficit and outpace foreign direct investment, according to a paper by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) economists. Of this, the largest share came from the US. For millions of migrants, that includes the money wired to cover a parent’s medicine, a nephew’s tuition or a mortgage back home.

A blunt levy on remittances could skim billions from migrant workers, many of whom already pay taxes in America. The likely result? A rise in informal, untraceable cash transfers and a dent in India’s most stable source of external financing.

India has remained the top recipient of remittances since 2008, with its share rising from 11% in 2001 to 14% in 2024, according to World Bank. India’s central bank says that remittances are expected to stay strong, reaching an estimated $160bn by 2029. The country’s remittances have consistently hovered around 3% of GDP since 2000.

India’s international migrant population grew from 6.6 million in 1990 to 18.5 million in 2024, with its global share rising from 4.3% to over 6%. While the Gulf still hosts nearly half of all Indian migrants, skilled migration to advanced economies – especially the US – has increased significantly, driven by India’s global IT footprint.

The US remains the top source of remittances worldwide, with its share rising from 23.4% in 2020–21 to nearly 28% in 2023–24, driven by a strong post-pandemic job recovery and a 6.3% rise in foreign-born workers in 2022. Notably, 78% of Indian migrants in the US work in high-earning sectors such as management, business, science, and the arts.

Remittance costs – driven by fees and currency conversion – have long been a global policy concern due to their impact on families. While global averages of the costs remain above targets, India stands out as one of the most affordable destinations, reflecting the rise of digital channels and heightened market competition.

A 10-15% drop in remittances could cost India $12-18bn a year, tightening dollar supply and putting pressure on the rupee, according to Ajay Srivastava of Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI). He reckons the central bank may have to step in more often to stabilise the currency.

The bigger blow would land on households in states such as Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where remittances fund essentials like education, healthcare and housing. The tax could “hit household consumption hard” even as the Indian economy grapples with global uncertainty and inflation, Mr Srivastava says in a note.

The remittance tax could squeeze Indian household budgets, dampen consumption and investment, and undermine one of India’s steadiest sources of foreign exchange, warns a brief by the Delhi-based Centre for WTO Studies. Maharashtra, followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu, continues to be among the dominant recipient states.

Remittances in India are largely used for household consumption, savings and investment in assets like housing, gold and small businesses. according to a policy brief by the think tank’s Pritam Banerjee, Saptarshee Mandal and Divyansh Dua.

A drop in inflows could shrink domestic savings and reduce investment in both financial and physical assets. When remittance inflows decline, households are likely to “prioritise consumption needs (e.g. food, healthcare, and education) over savings and investment”, the brief says.

A study by Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, suggests the proposed tax could sharply cut formal transfers, with Mexico facing the biggest hit – over $2.6bn annually. Other major losers include India, China, Vietnam and several Latin American nations like Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.

To be sure, there’s still some confusion surrounding the tax, and final approval is pending Senate action and the President’s signature.

“The tax applies to all non-citizens and even embassy and UN/World Bank staff. But those who pay taxes can claim a tax credit. Thus, the remittance tax would apply only to those migrants who do not pay taxes. That would mostly include unauthorised migrants (and diplomats),” Dilip Ratha, the World Bank lead economist for migration and remittances, told the BBC.

Dr Ratha wrote in a note on LinkedIn that migrants would try to cut remittance costs by turning to informal methods – hand-carrying cash, sending money through friends, couriers, bus drivers or airline staff, arranging local currency payouts via friends in the US, or using hawala, hundi and cryptocurrencies.

“Will the proposed tax deter unauthorised immigration to the US? Will it encourage unauthorised migrants to return home?” wonders Dr Ratha.

Not quite, he says. A minimum wage job in the US earns over $24,000 a year – roughly four to 30 times more than in many developing countries. Migrants typically send home between $1,800 and $48,000 annually, estimates Dr Ratha.

“A 3.5% tax is unlikely to deter these remittances. After all the main motivation for migration – migrants trying to cross oceans and rivers and mountains – is to send money home to help helpless family members.”

India’s central bank has lowered interest rates by a deeper-than-expected half a percent – the third cut in a row amid falling inflation and lower growth in Asia’s third largest economy.

It also increased the amount of liquidity – or supply of money – available in the system.

The repo rate – the level at which the central bank lends money to commercial banks, influencing borrowing costs for home and car loans – now stands at 5.5%, the lowest in three years.

Explaining the rationale for the cut, RBI governor Sanjay Malhotra said growth is “lower than our aspirations” and the bank felt it was “imperative to stimulate domestic consumption and investment” amid rising global uncertainties.

The rate cut comes on the back of two previous reductions in April and February.

Data released last week showed that India’s economy grew by 6.5% in the previous financial year ending March.

The country remains the world’s fastest expanding major economy, although growth has sharply dropped from the 9.2% high recorded in financial year 2023-24.

Meanwhile, retail prices in India have slowed faster than expected to 3.16% in April – the lowest in six years – and below the RBI’s 4% target, driven down by falling food prices.

RBI has now forecast lower inflation than earlier projected for the year ahead.

But the central bank has changed its monetary policy stance from “accommodative” to “neutral”, indicating that further rate cuts will depend on how India’s growth-inflation dynamic evolves.

However, fuller granaries due to a better-than-expected monsoon, weaker prices of commodities like oil – of which India is a net importer – as well as a strong currency are likely to help keep India’s inflation in check in the months ahead, allowing the RBI to keep rates low.

Lower borrowing costs could have a positive growth impact due to improved purchasing power for households, lower input costs for companies and lower debt servicing costs for the government.

They will also help homebuyers and a struggling real estate sector.

“This effectively lowers the cost of borrowing, making home loan EMIs [mortgage payments] easier on the pocket and thereby directly improving affordability for buyers. This can potentially boost demand in the Indian real estate sector, especially in affordable and mid-income segments. Affordable housing faced the sharpest pandemic fallout, with sales and new launches shrinking in the top 7 cities,” Anuj Puri, chairman of ANAROCK Group, said.

Indian markets rallied sharply post the rate cut announcement.

Police in India have arrested at least four people in connection with the fatal crowd crush that took place in the southern city of Bengaluru earlier this week.

On Wednesday, 11 people were killed when tens of thousands gathered outside a cricket stadium to celebrate the cricket league Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB) historic Indian Premier League (IPL) victory.

Those arrested include personnel of RCB and the event management company which organised the celebrations.

Five senior police officers, including the city’s police chief, have been suspended for “negligence and irresponsibility” by the government.

A police official told BBC Hindi that more arrests are expected as the investigation continues.

According to police, the people arrested were responsible for posting about the victory parade – from the state legislature building to the Chinnaswamy Stadium – on RCB’s social media handles and website.

On Thursday, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that a police complaint had been filed and legal action taken against the franchise, the event management company, and the Karnataka State Cricket Association.

More than 200,000 people reportedly turned up for the parade, although police had anticipated only half that number. The stadium, where the celebrations were held, has a capacity of 32,000 and was overwhelmed long before the team arrived.

The Karnataka High Court has also ordered a status report on the incident.

Separately, India cricket coach Gautam Gambhir has criticised the decision to host the victory parade and said his “heart goes out” to those affected.

“If we are not ready to hold a road show we should not have done that,” former India batter and IPL-winning captain Gambhir said.

On Thursday, RCB said they would give 1,000,000 rupees (£9,000) to the families of those killed.

“We need to be responsible. We need to be responsible citizens and responsible in every aspect, because every life matters…You cannot at any point in time lose 11 people. We can be more responsible,” Gambhir added.

An Australian man has been conditionally released from prison in Iraq, after four years of what the UN has called arbitrary detention.

Robert Pether, a mechanical engineer, was jailed in 2021 on fraud charges amid a contract dispute between the consulting firm he worked for and the Central Bank of Iraq.

The UN has said the 50-year-old’s detention was illegal, and an international court has ruled his employer is not responsible for the business disagreement.

Mr Pether is “extremely sick” and needs urgent medical care, his wife Desree told the BBC. However, he is still banned from leaving Iraq, where Australian authorities say he continues to face legal proceedings.

The family feels numb with shock, said Mrs Pether, who has been tirelessly lobbying for this moment.

“It’s the first time in over four years that we’ve taken one step in the right direction.

There’s a tiny glimmer of hope, but there’s another mountain still to go over,” she said, adding that he “needs to be home and in hospital”.

Mr Pether had been living with his wife in County Roscommon, Ireland, before travelling to Iraq.

Simon Harris, the tánaiste (deputy prime minister) of Ireland – where the Pether family lives – said in a statement to media that Iraq’s Foreign Minister had called him to confirm the release.

“I welcomed this as a first step to his being allowed to return to his family in Roscommon.”

The Australian government in a statement said it is a “positive development” after years of “persistent” advocacy.

“I know the personal toll Mr Pether’s detention has taken on him and his family and hope this news brings a measure of relief after years of distress,” Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

He added that he remained concerned about Mr Pether’s health and any outstanding charges against him – though it is unclear what those are.

Mr Pether worked in the Middle East for almost a decade before taking on a huge rebuild of the Central Bank of Iraq’s Baghdad headquarters in 2015.

He was arrested alongside his CME Consulting colleague, Egyptian Khalid Radwan, after the bank accused the men of stealing money from the project.

After being held without charge for almost six months, and then subjected to a speedy trial, the two were each given a five-year jail sentence and a joint fine of $12m (A$18.4m, £8.8m).

However, a 2022 report from the UN determined that the case contravened international law, and that Mr Pether and Mr Khalid had been subjected to “abusive and coercive” interrogations.

Iraq’s government has previously denied allegations of ill treatment.

In 2023, the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Court of Arbitration ruled that Iraq’s central bank was at fault in the dispute with CME, and ordered it to pay $13m to the company.

Mrs Pether said she spoke to her husband after his release on Thursday night.

“He’s on a bit of a high tonight, but I think he’ll probably come crashing down tomorrow.”

He looked sick and weak, she said, noting that he can’t keep food down and hasn’t eaten properly in months. There are also worries he has a potential skin cancer relapse, she added.

“He’s unrecognisable. If he got on a plane now and they were checking his passport, they would not know it was the same person.”

She said efforts are now turning to have Mr Pether’s travel ban lifted, but in the meantime the family has turned to crowdfunding to try to get him private hospital care in Baghdad.

“Enough is enough,” Mrs Pether said. “He needs to come home.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the world’s highest single- arch railway bridge in Indian-administered Kashmir. The term “single-arch bridge” typically refers to a bridge with a single, continuous arch spanning between two supports.

The bridge will connect the valley region of Kashmir with the rest of the country by train for the very first time.

The showpiece infrastructure project, which is built over the Chenab river, is 35m (114ft) taller than the Eiffel Tower and took the Indian Railways more the 20 years to build.

It is part of a 272km (169 miles) all-weather railway line that will pass through Jammu, ultimately going all the way to the Kashmir valley.

Singer and actor Olly Alexander has said he has “come into a different space in my life”, as he announced a new West End stage role after recently parting ways with his record label.

The star will appear in the National Theatre’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest when it transfers to the West End in September.

It will be his first acting role since It’s A Sin, Channel 4’s acclaimed 2021 drama about the Aids crisis, for which he was nominated for a Bafta Award.

“I’d recently been thinking that I’d love to act again,” Alexander told BBC News. “I’d come to the end of my record contract, and I have a bit more breathing space to try a few different things and not feel, oh, well I have to deliver an album to my record label.”

He will take over from Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa, who starred in The Importance of Being Earnest when it opened at the National Theatre in 2024.

Alexander will play Algernon when the show moves to the Noel Coward Theatre in London, in collaboration with Sonia Friedman Productions.

“What’s not to love?” he asked. “It’s such a brilliant play, Oscar Wilde’s most celebrated comedy. I saw the National production and thought it was fantastic, and this opportunity came along and I jumped at the chance.”

Alexander shot to fame when his band Years & Years won the BBC Sound of 2015 poll and went on to have hits such as King and Shine, and score a number one album.

He later went solo, although continued to perform as Years & Years, and scored another top-charting album in 2021. He has performed with Sir Elton John and Kylie Minogue, and was the UK’s Eurovision entrant last year.

However, after his most recent album Polari, released in February, reached number 17, Alexander announced his departure from his record label.

“They aren’t dropping me, they just aren’t renewing my contract,” he explained at the time. “It’s OK and honestly for the best. I’ve been on a pretty terrible deal for 10 years. It’s time I do something new. But I’ll still make music in the future.”

Reflecting on his first decade as a pop star, Alexander told the BBC: “With music, there’s an intensity to the way I’ve been working and putting albums out, promoting and touring. I definitely want to take the foot off the gas in terms of that intensity.”

He still occasionally works on music, but has “not been putting pressure on myself… I just do what feels good and feel very lucky that I have this other strand of acting that I’m able to explore”.

Alexander said he felt he had “learned so much” over the last decade about the way he likes to work.

“But for me,” he continued, “a lot of the reason I think the [music] industry has changed so much is that it’s set on this model which is very antiquated now, and it’s not kept pace with the times.

“Lots of artists have this direct link with their audience via social media. They want their music out quickly. The whole model of promoting it – three singles into an album, then you tour the album, then move onto the next one – it’s not really working like it did.”

He noted that record labels could historically make an album a success because they were “able to pour a lot of money into something”.

“They just can’t do that now. Everything has changed. But I think that is exciting for lots of reasons, and it is an exciting place for artists, even though it’s harder to break through.”

He concluded: “If I go back into it, it’ll be because I think it’s fun and something I want to do, and not think too much about how it’s going to perform.

“That’s pretty much how I try to always feel, but you’re in an environment where you have a lot of other stakeholders, and people telling you it needs to be this or that, and there’s always that tension.”

For now, he is focusing on acting.

First performed in 1895, The Importance of being Earnest follows two male friends who adopt fictional personas. The farcical comedy unfolds with mistaken identities and makes generous use of clever wordplay.

“In a nutshell, it’s a comedy about two quite ridiculous young men and the double lives they lead,” Alexander explained. “They do that to avoid their social obligations, and they both invent these aliases called Ernest, while they try and woo and marry these two young women.

“But really, it’s a comedy that skewers society’s expectations, makes fun of class and what society expects of us, and what roles we’re expected to perform.”

The previous production of the show, starring Gatwa, received a positive reception from critics.

“There is an elegance to the nudge-wink references and it is a production with just the right amount of delightful mischief,” wrote the Guardian’s Arifa Akbar in a four-star review.

The Daily Mail’s Patrick Marmion awarded five stars, describing the “sparkling new production” as a “witty reboot”.

“Yes, liberties are taken,” he said. “But that is surely the best way of blowing the dust off this national treasure.”

In a three-star review, the Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish described the show as “defiantly bold, but more playful than antagonistic”, although he added he wasn’t sure the new iteration “adds much” to the original.

In the play, nobody except Jack and Algernon know about their alter-egos – something which would be much more difficult to pull off now in an age of smartphones.

“It’d be impossible!” Alexander laughed. “Our every movement is captured, so there’s less room to invent aliases and lead double lives, which in some circumstances is probably for the best.

“What’s brilliant about the play is it’s set 100 years ago, at a time that feels so different to where we are now, but the themes are so timeless.”

Alexander last appeared in the West End in 2013, before becoming famous as a pop star, with a relatively small role in Peter & Alice alongside Dame Judi Dench.

In 2024, Alexander finished in 18th place at Eurovision with his track Dizzy, in a tricky year for the contest which was partly overshadowed by controversy surrounding Israel’s participation.

This year’s entrants, girl group Remember Monday, ended in a similar position, finishing 19th. Alexander praised their performance, adding that he “hopes to meet up with them soon and we can exchange stories”.

“But,” he added, “I think I’ll still be processing and reflecting [on Eurovision] for a long time.”

The singer is excited to be returning to the West End, not least because it will mean performing continuously in one venue.

“I spent a lot of my previous years moving around, touring, which is so fun and amazing,” he reflects. “But I also very much appreciate staying in one place now.

“Having a home in London with my partner, my cats, just trotting off to the theatre every night – that just sounds like the most wonderful existence.”

Tucked deep in Donald Trump’s sprawling “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is a clause that could quietly take billions from money sent abroad.

It proposes a 3.5% tax on remittances sent abroad by foreign workers, including green card holders and temporary visa workers such as those on H-1B visas. For India – the world’s top remittance recipient – the implications are serious, say experts. Other major recipients include Mexico, China, the Philippines, France, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In 2023, Indians abroad sent home $119bn (£88bn) – enough to finance half of India’s goods trade deficit and outpace foreign direct investment, according to a paper by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) economists. Of this, the largest share came from the US. For millions of migrants, that includes the money wired to cover a parent’s medicine, a nephew’s tuition or a mortgage back home.

A blunt levy on remittances could skim billions from migrant workers, many of whom already pay taxes in America. The likely result? A rise in informal, untraceable cash transfers and a dent in India’s most stable source of external financing.

India has remained the top recipient of remittances since 2008, with its share rising from 11% in 2001 to 14% in 2024, according to World Bank. India’s central bank says that remittances are expected to stay strong, reaching an estimated $160bn by 2029. The country’s remittances have consistently hovered around 3% of GDP since 2000.

India’s international migrant population grew from 6.6 million in 1990 to 18.5 million in 2024, with its global share rising from 4.3% to over 6%. While the Gulf still hosts nearly half of all Indian migrants, skilled migration to advanced economies – especially the US – has increased significantly, driven by India’s global IT footprint.

The US remains the top source of remittances worldwide, with its share rising from 23.4% in 2020–21 to nearly 28% in 2023–24, driven by a strong post-pandemic job recovery and a 6.3% rise in foreign-born workers in 2022. Notably, 78% of Indian migrants in the US work in high-earning sectors such as management, business, science, and the arts.

Remittance costs – driven by fees and currency conversion – have long been a global policy concern due to their impact on families. While global averages of the costs remain above targets, India stands out as one of the most affordable destinations, reflecting the rise of digital channels and heightened market competition.

A 10-15% drop in remittances could cost India $12-18bn a year, tightening dollar supply and putting pressure on the rupee, according to Ajay Srivastava of Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI). He reckons the central bank may have to step in more often to stabilise the currency.

The bigger blow would land on households in states such as Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where remittances fund essentials like education, healthcare and housing. The tax could “hit household consumption hard” even as the Indian economy grapples with global uncertainty and inflation, Mr Srivastava says in a note.

The remittance tax could squeeze Indian household budgets, dampen consumption and investment, and undermine one of India’s steadiest sources of foreign exchange, warns a brief by the Delhi-based Centre for WTO Studies. Maharashtra, followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu, continues to be among the dominant recipient states.

Remittances in India are largely used for household consumption, savings and investment in assets like housing, gold and small businesses. according to a policy brief by the think tank’s Pritam Banerjee, Saptarshee Mandal and Divyansh Dua.

A drop in inflows could shrink domestic savings and reduce investment in both financial and physical assets. When remittance inflows decline, households are likely to “prioritise consumption needs (e.g. food, healthcare, and education) over savings and investment”, the brief says.

A study by Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, suggests the proposed tax could sharply cut formal transfers, with Mexico facing the biggest hit – over $2.6bn annually. Other major losers include India, China, Vietnam and several Latin American nations like Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.

To be sure, there’s still some confusion surrounding the tax, and final approval is pending Senate action and the President’s signature.

“The tax applies to all non-citizens and even embassy and UN/World Bank staff. But those who pay taxes can claim a tax credit. Thus, the remittance tax would apply only to those migrants who do not pay taxes. That would mostly include unauthorised migrants (and diplomats),” Dilip Ratha, the World Bank lead economist for migration and remittances, told the BBC.

Dr Ratha wrote in a note on LinkedIn that migrants would try to cut remittance costs by turning to informal methods – hand-carrying cash, sending money through friends, couriers, bus drivers or airline staff, arranging local currency payouts via friends in the US, or using hawala, hundi and cryptocurrencies.

“Will the proposed tax deter unauthorised immigration to the US? Will it encourage unauthorised migrants to return home?” wonders Dr Ratha.

Not quite, he says. A minimum wage job in the US earns over $24,000 a year – roughly four to 30 times more than in many developing countries. Migrants typically send home between $1,800 and $48,000 annually, estimates Dr Ratha.

“A 3.5% tax is unlikely to deter these remittances. After all the main motivation for migration – migrants trying to cross oceans and rivers and mountains – is to send money home to help helpless family members.”

For 33 years, Congressman Jim Clyburn’s “world famous fish fry” has been a must-attend event for members of the Democratic Party hoping to make a splash on the national stage. But after a blistering electoral defeat and with an aging old guard, some are wondering if it’s time for the party to make some new traditions.

It was just over five years ago here in South Carolina, that the then-79-year-old Clyburn, a Democratic kingmaker in the state, gave the then-77-year-old Joe Biden his highly coveted presidential endorsement. His past picks – like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – have all won the party’s nomination, if not the White House.

Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden is widely regarded as helping the former vice-president win South Carolina’s primary and turn the tide in his struggling campaign. Since then, Democrats have had to re-evaluate their choice for the aging Biden – who grudgingly abandoned his re-election bid last year amid a rising din of questions about his competency.

After his successor, Vice-President Kamala Harris, lost to Donald Trump, many wondered if he had hung on too long. Then last month, Biden announced he had stage 4 prostate cancer, a condition with a grim prognosis that would have presented a national crisis if he had managed to win re-election.

• Biden’s cancer diagnosis raises fresh questions about his health in White House
• What we know about Biden’s cancer diagnoses
• Audio emerges of Biden’s ‘poor memory’ interview with investigator

Now many within the party, including some of those dining on fried fish and white bread at Clyburn’s gathering last Friday, are wondering if it’s time the party found new blood – especially after three congressional Democrats died in office this year alone. The losses meant that the Republicans’ slim majority in Congress was bolstered, allowing them to pass Trump’s controversial spending bill by a single vote.

“We have a geriatric problem,” said Ashley McIntyre Stewart, specifically noting the recent House spending bill. “We need to get the younger community involved so that we don’t have the Republicans railroad us.”

According to a survey last month by Axios, more than half of the 30 Democrats in the House over age 75 are planning to seek re-election next year, including Clyburn, whose term would end when he is 88 if he wins.

The veteran politician scoffed at the idea of retiring.

“I will respond to the voters of South Carolina,” he told media who were at the fish fry. “I’ve been with them all month, and not a single one of them said to me that they think I’m too old. Every one of them said to me, please don’t leave.”

He also bristled at the second-guessing over whether Biden should have stepped aside earlier, saying that his children and grandchildren don’t care about the former president’s choice.

“They’re going to ask me what did you do to make sure I got a better life,” he said. “That’s all I’m concentrating on.”

Democratic voters have tended to accept the risks that come with electing older politicians to office, prioritising governing experience over youth and vitality. In 2024, only two Democratic incumbents in Congress lost their party’s nomination, and both – Cori Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York – were relative newcomers under the age of 50.

Republicans have their own crop of elderly politicians too, including the 78 year-old president. But 2020’s electoral battering and Biden’s health revelations have caused some introspection.

William Godwin, a Democrat from Chicago, was visiting South Carolina and stopped by the fish fry to see Clyburn and hear from the two Democratic governors, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Wes Moore of Maryland, invited to speak. He said he respected the wisdom of elderly politicians like Clyburn and Biden, but his party needed a youth movement.

“We need the activists,” he said. “We need the energy from a variety of different backgrounds – not just age – to really come put our hands together and work toward getting some real elections won.”

There are signs some young upstarts are taking heed: Saikat Chakrabarti, the 39-year-old former chief of staff to Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is challenging former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her San Francisco Congressional primary. Jake Rakov, 37, is going after the seat of his former boss, 15-term incumbent Rep Brad Sherman, 70.

Voters are craving “new ideas and new energy to get Congress to actually work again,” he told a local news outlet, the Bay Area Reporter, in April.

At the fish fry, winning elections after last year’s disappointment and the challenges of Trump’s aggressive second term agenda were the focus of speeches from two Democratic governors, who are also potential 2028 presidential hopefuls.

Waltz, the 61-year-old who was his party’s vice-presidential nominee last year, may not exactly be a fresh face some in the party are looking for, although he received a warm reception from the South Carolina audience. Maryland’s Moore – a 46-year-old military veteran who is only the third black governor in US history – generated the most animated response, as he spoke about the “baton” being in his generation’s hands.

“We’re about to send a message the entire country is going to hear,” he said. “This is our time. This is our moment. We will not shirk, we will not flinch, we will not blink. We will win, just as those who came before us did.”

Democrats may have won in the past, but last year’s defeat was particularly stinging – and Trump’s first months back in power have put the party in a deep hole, with years’ worth of work needed to rebuild Democrat-backed government programmes and replenish worker rolls that have been slashed by the Republicans.

“I gave Donald Trump credit for this,” Waltz said. “He moves so quickly and so fast for bad things, we better be ready to move quickly and fast for good things.”

Waltz said that Democrats needed to have “tough conversations” about how to win back the voters who flipped to Trump last year.

In a few years, South Carolina will once again be a pivotal battleground in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. The kind of candidate who comes out on top will be determined in part by the conversations – including how to balance age and experience with youth and energy – happening at this fish fry and in other Democratic gatherings across the country in the days ahead.

This week saw Ukraine mount an audacious drone attack on Russian airfields, Donald Trump ban people in 12 countries from travelling to the US, while Billie Piper returned to Doctor Who.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world?

Quiz collated by Ben Fell.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

Beyoncé signed off the first night of her London residency by telling fans she was “blessed” to get to do what she loves by performing on stage.

She stormed through a seven-act set at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, treating the audience to a spectacle that lasted just shy of three hours.

But despite this being the first opportunity for fans to enjoy the singer’s country era in person, slow ticket sales and high prices have been the hot topic around the tour.

Promoters slashed some ticket prices in the run-up to shows in a bid to fill the stadium, prompting some of those who bought seats in advance to feel short-changed.

Beyoncé’s rodeo rumbled into London, bringing with it every country cliché you could think of – cowboy hats, horseshoes, tassels and even a gold mechanical bull.

The 40-song setlist relied heavily on tracks from 2024’s Cowboy Carter, which was met with critical acclaim, including taking the top album prize at this year’s Grammy Awards.

Every element of the performance was flawless, from the 43-year-old superstar’s stunning array of costume changes (each one featuring more rhinestones than the last) to the seamless transitions between songs and musical themes.

Much of the talk around the US leg of this tour, which took place in April and May, was the inclusion of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s 13-year-old daughter Blue Ivy.

She made several appearances throughout the show, earning thunderous applause whilst dancing to an instrumental performance of her mum’s 2006 hit Deja Vu.

The teenager certainly seemed to enjoy her moment in the spotlight, unlike her younger sister, Rumi, who came on stage during Protector, shyly mouthing the words whilst being held by Beyoncé.

The show, which is called The Cowboy Carter and the Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit Tour as a way of referencing black performers that were segregated from the country scene, often paid homage in its interludes to these artists.

Beyoncé herself previously hinted about being rejected from the country music world in the past and throughout the performance it felt like she was wrestling with this idea.

She blended some of her biggest hits into Cowboy Carter tracks, such as Freedom and Diva, almost to prove that she belonged in this space.

Thursday night’s performance certainly showed she is more than qualified to be a country singer, but perhaps that a 60,000 seater stadium is not the best arena for it.

As the night drew darker, Beyoncé delivered an act comprised of tracks from her house-inspired album Renaissance, which immediately lifted the crowd into a party mood.

LED wristbands lit up in array of colours as she belted out Alien Superstar and I’m That Girl – which certainly got the best reaction from fans of the night.

Similarly a section of old classics such as Crazy In Love and Irreplaceable had the crowd singing every word, proving perhaps that a few more classics wouldn’t have gone amiss.

With crowds on their feet, it was difficult to see how sold out the stadium actually was, but with just hours to go until the show there were still thousands of tickets available for sale online.

Despite the tour only stopping in two European cities – London and Paris – the remaining eight dates are not sold out.

Beyoncé’s tour has the highest top-priced ticket of any artist visiting the UK in 2025 at £950, with the cheapest costing £71.

Some seats that were sold in the Beyhive fan presale for £620 excluding fees are next to seats that were available this week for £141.60, also without fees.

Zulkarnain Sadali flew from Singapore to London to watch Beyoncé perform live and bought a ticket in the pre-sale, which he said cost him “more than £700”.

“A couple of weeks ago I checked my ticket and then curiosity got the best of me and I checked the same ticket, or same category, and the price was around £300,” he told the BBC.

“I’m really excited for [the show] but I will say the dynamic pricing really left a sour taste in my mouth.”

Another fan, Holly Whiteman, said she “panic bought” Beyoncé tickets in a fan pre-sale on Ticketmaster, which were “way up in the nosebleeds” and cost £170 each, when she had initially set a budget of £100.

“Fast forward a few days later, the tickets went on general sale through Tottenham Hotspur and I found tickets for the same show in both the same row and the same section for a much cheaper price,” she told the BBC.

“I believe they were at least £50-£70 cheaper per ticket.”

Sadali said that despite feeling short-changed, it had not dented his excitement for the tour.

“It’s really about the Beyoncé experience, you’re not gonna get it anywhere else and I know this sounds like a contradiction, it’s worth every cent,” he said.

Whiteman said the process had left her a bit “disappointed”, but she was still looking forward to the tour.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson told the BBC they do “not use surge pricing or dynamic algorithms to adjust ticket prices”, adding that event organisers are responsible for the pricing structures.

“Since tickets typically go on sale at least 3-6 months before the event, organisers may review prices at key points leading up to the show, but they make any adjustments, not an algorithm,” they also added.

The BBC also contacted tour promoter Live Nation for comment.

Ticketing expert Reg Walker put the lack of sold-out shows down to several factors, including “overexposure” after her last UK stadium tour, which played five nights at the same venue in 2023.

And the ticket prices are “eye-watering”, he told the BBC.

“You might be able to afford to go to one of her concerts where you’re effectively paying, in some categories, the same amount of money as a small holiday, but you can’t do that on consecutive years.

“The pricing strategy on tickets was clearly far too high,” he added.

Walker said there were a lot of “affordably priced” tours coming up – but with so many artists visiting the UK this summer, fans may be picking and choosing who they pay to go and see.

Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, Dua Lipa, Kendrick Lamar and SZA are all embarking on stadium tours over the coming months, with Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapell Roan and Drake headlining festivals.

After a six-year delay, India is finally set to count its population in a two-phase census that will conclude in 2027, the government has announced.

India’s decennial census is one of the world’s largest administrative exercises and provides critical data for planning welfare schemes, allocating federal funds, drawing electoral boundaries and making key policy decisions.

It was originally due in 2021, but has been delayed several times since. The last census was conducted in 2011.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had initially cited the Covid-19 pandemic as the main reason but critics have questioned what has taken so long to resume the exercise.

On Wednesday, India’s home ministry said in a statement that the much-awaited census will be conducted in two phases, with 1 March 2027 as the reference date.

For the snow-bound Himalayan regions, which includes the states of Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh, and the region of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir, the reference date will be 1 October 2026.

It did not, however, specify when the survey would actually begin.

For the first time, the government will also collect the caste details – a politically and socially sensitive issue in India – of all its citizens, the statement added.

The last time caste was officially counted as part of a national census was in 1931, during British colonial rule.

India’s census is conducted under the Census Act, 1948, which provides a legal framework for conducting the exercise, but does not specify a fixed schedule for when the census must be conducted or when its results must be published.

In 2020, India was set to begin the first phase of the census – in which housing data is collected – when the pandemic hit, following which the government postponed the exercise.

In the years since, the government further delayed the exercise several times without any explanation, even as life returned to normal.

Experts have spoken of the consequences this could have on the world’s most populous country – such as people being excluded from welfare schemes, and the incorrect allocation of resources.

“The census is not simply a count of the number of people in a country. It provides invaluable data needed to make decisions at a micro level,” Professor KP Kannan, a development economist, had told the BBC in 2023.

Mark Rutte is determined to give Donald Trump a win at the forthcoming Nato summit.

The alliance’s secretary general wants to avoid the scenes of 2016 when, while in his first term, the US president berated European allies for not spending enough on defence and taking advantage of the American taxpayer.

Trump views relationships, even based on collective security, as transactional.

And so at a press conference in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte proposed that Nato members spend 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence – something Trump has openly called for.

The increase – which would more than double Nato members’ current target of spending 2% of GDP – is a big ask for many European nations.

Some may ask if such a deal would be all about deterring Russia, or – at least in part – designed to appease the president.

Rutte’s compromise will slightly ease the burden. It’ll require nations to increase core defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, while the remaining 1.5% will be made up of “defence-related expenditure”.

It’s a sufficiently vague term that allows them some wriggle room. Rutte said it could include the costs of infrastructure and industry.

He said the US will also sign up to the new target – though for Washington, already spending 3.4% on defence, it’ll be relatively painless.

The real test is not the commitment, but whether it delivers. The leaders who are expected to reach an agreement at The Hague will have long gone by the time their respective nations are expected to meet the new target.

There is still no timetable, but it’s likely to be about 10 years. Nor is there any real sanction that Nato can impose on defaulters. A handful of nations still have to meet the 2% target set more than a decade ago.

At a press conference in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte – who previously ran one such country that has yet to meet the 2% target – was asked if he could ensure that countries would meet the commitment over time.

He only said that he had a “cunning plan” to hold political leaders to account, “that nations will commit to yearly plans showing the increase each year to make sure that you come to the new target of 5%”.

This would prevent a “hockey stick” on a graph of spending over time, where it suddenly ramps up towards the end, he argued.

Rutte will visit the UK next week to meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. The Nato chief’s proposed spending commitment dwarfs the UK prime minister’s current defence plans, under which the UK would spend 2.5% of its GDP by 2027, with an “ambition” to raise this to 3% in the next parliament.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed to reporters on Thursday that countries including France, Germany, the Baltic and Nordic countries, Poland, Greece and Hungary had already committed to the 5% pledge.

He declined to name the countries who had yet to commit, but said he was sure the UK was “going to get there”.

“We think everyone is going to get there, we really do. It’s important they do. It’s important that the UK gets there,” Hegseth said.

A member of New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s staff has resigned after being accused of secretly taking photos and videos of women, and recording audio of sex workers.

Michael Forbes, Luxon’s deputy chief press secretary, offered his “sincerest apologies to the women I have harmed”.

The allegations came to light after a sex worker said she noticed that Forbes’ phone had been recording audio while he was in the shower, local news website Stuff reported earlier this week.

His phone was later found to contain more photos and videos of women as well as audio recordings of his sexual encounters.

There were images of women at the gym and in the supermarket, Stuff NZ reported, as well as four videos of women in their homes, with the footage apparently taken from a window.

Luxon said Forbes’ case came as an “absolute shock” and that he had “zero tolerance for any behaviour that makes women or anyone feel unsafe”.

“My sympathy is with the women who raised these allegations and who were made to feel unsafe due to the actions of this person,” he said on Thursday, a day after Forbes resigned.

Luxon, along with other political leaders, have signalled an openness to changing privacy laws to better protect targets of voyeurism.

Police said they received a complaint from a Wellington brothel last July about photos found on a client’s phone, but ultimately decided the case did not meet the threshold for prosecution.

According to the Stuff report, Forbes’ encounter with the sex worker in Wellington happened in July 2024.

Forbes reportedly gave the sex worker his phone password after being confronted with the secret audio recording. The woman, together with other sex workers, then found multiple audio recordings of similar sessions, as well as photos and video in the device.

At that time, Forbes was the press secretary to social development minister Louise Upston. He became the acting deputy press secretary to Luxon in February.

Upston and Luxon said they had not known about the complaint against Forbes, who said in a statement he was “was in a downward spiral due to unresolved trauma and stress” at the time of the incident. He said he has since sought professional help, but acknowledged what he had “failed to do then was make a genuine attempt to apologise”.

Luxon on Thursday called for a review of “inter-agency processes” after police chief Richard Chambers said the authorities had known about an investigation into Forbes last July but did not flag it to ministers.

“We have to take this incident and understand what has happened here and how it happened, and what more can we do about it,” Luxon said.

What happens when the richest person and the most powerful politician have a knock-down, drag-out fight?

The world is finding out – and it’s not a pretty picture. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have two of the biggest megaphones, and they have now turned them on each other, as a disagreement has ballooned into a war of words.

Trump has threatened Musk’s voluminous business dealings with the federal government, which form the lifeblood of his SpaceX programme.

“The easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts,” Trump posted menacingly on his own social media website.

If Trump turns the machinery of government against Musk, the tech billionaire will feel pain. Tesla’s stock price plunged by 14% on Thursday.

It’s not a one-way street, however. After that volley, Musk called for Trump’s impeachment and dared him to cut funding for his companies.

Musk also said he was accelerating the decommissioning of his Dragon spacecraft, which the US relies on to carry American astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station.

But hours later, he appeared to back down from that threat, saying in response to a post on X urging him to cool off: “Good advice. Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”

Musk has near limitless resources to respond, including by funding insurgent challengers to Republicans in next year’s elections and primaries. And late on Thursday afternoon, he said he was dropping the “really big bomb” – suggesting without evidence that Trump appears in unreleased files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, offered only a tepid pushback to Musk’s allegations and accusations.

“This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted,” she said.

• Trump ‘very disappointed’ by Musk as row explodes into public
• Tesla shares tumble as Trump-Musk feud erupts

Musk may not win a fight against the whole of Trump’s government, but he could exact a high political – and personal – price for Trump and the Republicans.

Trump, perhaps aware of this, appeared to tamp down the heat a bit by the end of the day. He avoided commenting on Musk during a public appearance at a White House event and posted a message on Truth Social that said he didn’t mind “turning against him”, but wishes he had quit government service months ago.

He then pivoted to boosting of his “big, beautiful” tax and spending legislation.

It’s difficult to envision an easy walk-down after Thursday’s heat, however.

The feud started at a simmer last week, began bubbling on Wednesday and became a full-on boil on Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office. As new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz – the day’s visitor – sat in awkward silence, the president sounded a bit like a spurned lover.

He expressed surprise at Musk’s criticism of his legislation. He pushed back against the notion that he would have lost last year’s presidential election without Musk’s hundreds of millions of dollars in support. And he said Musk was only changing his tune now because his car company, Tesla, will be hurt by the Republican push to end electric vehicle tax credits.

Musk quickly took to his social media site, X, with a very Generation X response for his 220 million followers: “Whatever”.

He said he didn’t care about the car subsidies, and that he wanted to shrink the national debt, which he says is an existential threat to the nation. He insisted that Democrats would have prevailed in last year’s election without his help. “Such ingratitude,” he told Trump.

The billionaire then launched a series of extraordinary attacks throughout the afternoon, and the feud was on in earnest.

Musk and Trump had formed a powerful but unlikely alliance, culminating in the tech billionaire having a key position of budget-slashing authority in the Trump administration. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge, became one of the biggest stories of Trump’s first 100 days, as it shuttered entire agencies and dismissed thousands of government workers.

It wasn’t long, however, before speculation began over when – and how – the two outsized personalities would ultimately fall out.

For a while, it seemed like those predictions were off the mark. Trump stood by Musk even as the latter’s popularity dropped, as he feuded with administration officials and as he became a liability in several key elections earlier this year.

Every time it appeared there would be a break, Musk would pop up in the Oval Office, or the Cabinet room or on the president’s Air Force One flight to Mar-a-Lago.

When Musk’s 130 days as a “special government employee” ended last week, the two had a chummy Oval Office send-off, with a golden key to the White House and hints that Musk might someday return.

It’s safe to say that any invitation has been rescinded and the locks have been changed.

“Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump said on Thursday – a comment notable for its use of the past tense.

There had been some thought that Trump’s surprise announcement on Wednesday night of a new travel ban, additional sanctions on Harvard and a conspiracy-laced administration investigation of former President Joe Biden were all efforts to change the subject from Musk’s criticism. The White House and its allies in Congress seemed careful not to further antagonise him after his earlier comments.

Then Trump spoke out and… so much for that.

Now the question is where the dispute goes next. Congressional Republicans could find it harder to keep their members behind Trump’s bill with Musk providing rhetorical and, perhaps financial, air cover for those who break ranks.

Trump has already threatened Musk’s government contracts, but he could also take aim at his remaining Doge allies in the administration or reopen Biden-era investigations into Musk’s business dealings.

Everything at this point is on the table.

Meanwhile, Democrats are on the sidelines, wondering how to respond. Few seem willing to welcome Musk, a former donor to their party, back into the fold. But there’s also the old adage that the enemy of an enemy is a friend.

“It’s a zero-sum game,” Liam Kerr, a Democratic strategist, told Politico. “Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans.”

At the very least, Democrats seem happy to stand back and let the two men exchange blows. And until they abandon this fight, the din is likely to drown out everything else in American politics.

But don’t expect this spat to end anytime soon.

“Trump has 3.5 years left as president,” Musk wrote on X, “but I will be around for 40-plus years.”

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

Russia launched large-scale drone and missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital and other parts of the country early on Friday, officials said.

At least three people were killed and 49 injured in the strikes, according to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The aerial raids targeted Kyiv, as well as the city of Lutsk and the Ternopil region in the north-west of the country.

Russia’s defence ministry said the strikes were in response to “terrorist acts by the Kyiv regime”, adding that it had targeted military sites.

The ministry said its armed forces “overnight launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, sea and ground-based weapons, as well as attack drones”.

The attack came after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned US President Donald Trump he would respond to Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russian airbases.

In a post on X on Friday, Zelensky said that “now is exactly the moment when America, Europe, and everyone around the world can stop this war together by pressuring Russia”.

He made a thinly veiled reference to Trump’s apparent unwillingness to put pressure on Russia.

“If someone is not applying pressure and is giving the war more time to take lives – that is complicity and accountability,” Zelensky wrote. “We must act decisively.”

Zelensky said that “as of now”, three deaths had been confirmed in the strikes – all employees of Ukraine’s state emergency services.

He said the attack used more than 400 drones and more than 40 missiles, and the number of people injured “may increase”.

In an earlier statement, Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said four people had been killed in the country’s capital.

Air raid alerts were in place in Kyiv, where a residential building was hit, and the city’s train system was disrupted after shelling damaged metro tracks.

Tens of thousands of civilians in the capital spent a restless few hours in underground shelters.

From the centre of the city, prolonged bursts of machine gun fire could be heard as air defences on the outskirts attempted to bring down scores of drones aimed at Kyiv.

From time to time, the distinctive buzz of drones overhead could also be heard.

Bright flashes of light, sometimes reflected on nearby buildings, would be followed, five or ten seconds later, by thunderous explosions.

Authorities say the attacks included 38 cruise missiles, which is the kind Ukraine targeted in Sunday’s so-called “Spider’s Web” operation, suggesting this attack could be a message from the Kremlin.

The cities of Kharkiv, Sumy and Luhansk were also under air raid alerts.

Elsewhere, Ternopil’s military chief Vyacheslav Negoda said Friday’s strike was the “most massive air attack on our region to date”.

Mayor of Ternopil, Igor Polishchuk, said five people were wounded in the attack and there was damage to homes, schools and a government facility.

In Lutsk, five people were injured in an attack using 15 drones and six missiles, according to mayor Ihor Polishchuk.

Meanwhile, the Russian defence ministry said its air defences shot down 174 Ukrainian drones overnight in parts of Russia and occupied Crimea.

The ministry said Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles were also intercepted over the Black Sea.

Russia’s latest attack on Ukraine comes days after Kyiv launched its biggest long-range drone strike on at least 40 Russian warplanes at four military bases.

Zelensky said 117 drones were used in the Spider’s Web operation by the SBU security service, striking “34% of [Russia’s] strategic cruise missile carriers”.

Earlier this month, direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Istanbul, but ended without a major breakthrough.

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 a two-or three-day truce “in certain areas” of the vast front line, but gave no further details.

Trump said Putin vowed to “very strongly” respond to Ukraine’s recent attack on Russian airbases, during a phone call that lasted more than an hour on Wednesday.

Moscow had previously said that military options were “on the table” for its response to Ukraine’s attack.

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

The rift between US President Donald Trump and his former adviser Elon Musk has erupted into the open, with each trading insults after the tech billionaire criticised one of Trump’s key domestic policies.

The two billionaires escalated the feud throughout Thursday, lobbing barbs at each other on the social media sites they each own, suggesting a bitter conclusion to their unlikely alliance.

The day began with Trump saying he was “disappointed” with Musk’s criticisms of his administration’s centrepiece tax and spending bill, musing that it may be the end of their “great relationship”.

Musk then accused Trump of “ingratitude”, adding: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election”.

After hours of sparring, Trump appeared to downplay the situation. “Oh it’s okay,” he told news site Politico. “It’s going very well, never done better.” His aides have scheduled a phone call with Musk for Friday, the same news site reported.

Musk also appeared to believe there was a need to patch things up. Late on Thursday, in response to post by Bill Ackman, a prominent Trump backer, which suggested the pair needed to make peace, he wrote: “You’re not wrong”.

• Analysis: How bitter feud escalated – and what happens next
• Tesla shares tumble after feud erupts
• What’s in the Trump bill that triggered the row?

The breaking point in the relationship between the president and his one-time ally came after weeks of Musk lobbying against Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill, which was passed by the US House last month and is awaiting a vote in the Senate.

Shortly after leaving the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) after 129 days in the job, Musk took to his site X to call the bill a “disgusting abomination” and posting: “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong.”

He argued that the bill will irresponsibly add to the US national debt, and encouraged his followers to phone their representatives to express opposition to the spending plan.

Speaking to reporters during a news conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday, Trump defending the bill and said: “I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. All of a sudden he had a problem.”

He went on to suggest that Musk was upset about the removal of subsidies and mandates for electric vehicles, which could affect his Tesla business.

Musk denied this was the case and wrote: “Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”

“Pork” is a term used in US politics to describe wasteful government spending, particularly on things meant to curry favour with particular groups or local areas.

The partnership between the two men began when Musk endorsed Trump last July after an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania. The Tesla boss reportedly funnelled $290m (£213m) into getting him back into the White House.

Amid a flurry of posts on X after Thursday’s news conference, Musk took credit for the sweeping Republican victory in last November’s election, writing: “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”

“Such ingratitude,” he added.

Musk went on to post a poll, asking his followers: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Over the course of the day, Musk went on to repost a tweet calling for Trump to resign, argue that his global tariff plan will trigger a US recession, and to suggest without evidence that Trump appears in unreleased files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking and died by suicide while awaiting trial. Trump was president at the time. He said he knew Epstein “like everybody in Palm Beach knew him” but had a “falling out with him a long time ago”.

The White House condemned Musk’s allegation, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying in a statement: “This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.”

On his Truth Social network, Trump claimed that Musk “just went CRAZY” and went on to post: “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

Musk’s companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink have direct contacts with the US government and, like many other businesses, also benefit from subsidies and tax breaks.

In response, Musk said SpaceX “will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately”. The craft is used to shuttle people and supplies to the International Space Station.

However, he later he appeared to back down from that threat, saying in response to a post on X urging him to cool off: “Ok, we won’t decommission Dragon.”

Telsa stock dropped by 14% within hours of the row bursting out into public.

According to the most recent analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the spending bill working its way through Congress will increase the US national debt by $2.4tn over 10 years and leave nearly 11 million people without government-backed health insurance.

The White House disputes those figures, saying they don’t account for revenues brought in by increased tariffs.

Put in charge of radically slashing government spending at Doge, Musk initiated mass sackings and wholesale elimination of departments such as the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Doge claims to have saved $180bn, although that number has been disputed, and is well short of Musk’s initial aim to cut spending by up to $2tn.

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

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the world’s highest single- arch railway bridge in Indian-administered Kashmir. The term “single-arch bridge” typically refers to a bridge with a single, continuous arch spanning between two supports.

The bridge will connect the valley region of Kashmir with the rest of the country by train for the very first time.

The showpiece infrastructure project, which is built over the Chenab river, is 35m (114ft) taller than the Eiffel Tower and took the Indian Railways more the 20 years to build.

It is part of a 272km (169 miles) all-weather railway line that will pass through Jammu, ultimately going all the way to the Kashmir valley.

North Korea has reportedly refloated a warship about two weeks after it capsized during a launch attempt, in an incident that drew harsh criticism from the country’s leader Kim Jong Un.

State-run news agency KCNA reported on Friday that the warship had “safely entered the water vertically” and had then been “moored at the pier”.

It is expected to be fully repaired before a key meeting led by Kim which top officials in the one-party state attend, KCNA said.

The 5,000-tonne destroyer can be seen upright at the pier and then about three hours later, “floating in the harbour” in satellite images published by specialist news sites 38 North and NK News.

The effort to right the ship, which had happened on Thursday, was a manual process, researchers at 38 North said, noting that satellite imaging showed workers on the quay pulling tethers and using barrage balloons to bring the vessel back to balance.

Some of the balloons appeared to still be attached to the vessel, they added.

Kim, who witnessed the warship tipping over during the failed launch, had criticised the incident as a “criminal act” that “severely damaged the [country’s] dignity and pride”.

It was the result of “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism”, he added.

At least four officials including Ri Hyong-son, the deputy director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Munitions Industry Department, have been arrested over the incident.

Mr Ri is part of the party’s Central Military Commission, which commands the Korean People’s Army and is responsible for developing and implementing North Korea’s military policies.

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

Some analysts saw Kim’s swift and severe response to the earlier failed launch as a signal that Pyongyang would continue to advance its military capabilities.

The regime is “deeply invested in the image of a rising military power” and the failure may harden their resolve to push that forward, says Jihoon Yu, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

Kim’s “unusually severe” response to the failure is aimed at protecting the leader’s image and reasserting his authority, he adds.

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

Just weeks before the botched launch, Pyongyang had unveiled a similar warship in another part of the country.

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

Beyoncé signed off the first night of her London residency by telling fans she was “blessed” to get to do what she loves by performing on stage.

She stormed through a seven-act set at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, treating the audience to a spectacle that lasted just shy of three hours.

But despite this being the first opportunity for fans to enjoy the singer’s country era in person, slow ticket sales and high prices have been the hot topic around the tour.

Promoters slashed some ticket prices in the run-up to shows in a bid to fill the stadium, prompting some of those who bought seats in advance to feel short-changed.

Beyoncé’s rodeo rumbled into London, bringing with it every country cliché you could think of – cowboy hats, horseshoes, tassels and even a gold mechanical bull.

The 40-song setlist relied heavily on tracks from 2024’s Cowboy Carter, which was met with critical acclaim, including taking the top album prize at this year’s Grammy Awards.

Every element of the performance was flawless, from the 43-year-old superstar’s stunning array of costume changes (each one featuring more rhinestones than the last) to the seamless transitions between songs and musical themes.

Much of the talk around the US leg of this tour, which took place in April and May, was the inclusion of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s 13-year-old daughter Blue Ivy.

She made several appearances throughout the show, earning thunderous applause whilst dancing to an instrumental performance of her mum’s 2006 hit Deja Vu.

The teenager certainly seemed to enjoy her moment in the spotlight, unlike her younger sister, Rumi, who came on stage during Protector, shyly mouthing the words whilst being held by Beyoncé.

The show, which is called The Cowboy Carter and the Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit Tour as a way of referencing black performers that were segregated from the country scene, often paid homage in its interludes to these artists.

Beyoncé herself previously hinted about being rejected from the country music world in the past and throughout the performance it felt like she was wrestling with this idea.

She blended some of her biggest hits into Cowboy Carter tracks, such as Freedom and Diva, almost to prove that she belonged in this space.

Thursday night’s performance certainly showed she is more than qualified to be a country singer, but perhaps that a 60,000 seater stadium is not the best arena for it.

As the night drew darker, Beyoncé delivered an act comprised of tracks from her house-inspired album Renaissance, which immediately lifted the crowd into a party mood.

LED wristbands lit up in array of colours as she belted out Alien Superstar and I’m That Girl – which certainly got the best reaction from fans of the night.

Similarly a section of old classics such as Crazy In Love and Irreplaceable had the crowd singing every word, proving perhaps that a few more classics wouldn’t have gone amiss.

With crowds on their feet, it was difficult to see how sold out the stadium actually was, but with just hours to go until the show there were still thousands of tickets available for sale online.

Despite the tour only stopping in two European cities – London and Paris – the remaining eight dates are not sold out.

Beyoncé’s tour has the highest top-priced ticket of any artist visiting the UK in 2025 at £950, with the cheapest costing £71.

Some seats that were sold in the Beyhive fan presale for £620 excluding fees are next to seats that were available this week for £141.60, also without fees.

Zulkarnain Sadali flew from Singapore to London to watch Beyoncé perform live and bought a ticket in the pre-sale, which he said cost him “more than £700”.

“A couple of weeks ago I checked my ticket and then curiosity got the best of me and I checked the same ticket, or same category, and the price was around £300,” he told the BBC.

“I’m really excited for [the show] but I will say the dynamic pricing really left a sour taste in my mouth.”

Another fan, Holly Whiteman, said she “panic bought” Beyoncé tickets in a fan pre-sale on Ticketmaster, which were “way up in the nosebleeds” and cost £170 each, when she had initially set a budget of £100.

“Fast forward a few days later, the tickets went on general sale through Tottenham Hotspur and I found tickets for the same show in both the same row and the same section for a much cheaper price,” she told the BBC.

“I believe they were at least £50-£70 cheaper per ticket.”

Sadali said that despite feeling short-changed, it had not dented his excitement for the tour.

“It’s really about the Beyoncé experience, you’re not gonna get it anywhere else and I know this sounds like a contradiction, it’s worth every cent,” he said.

Whiteman said the process had left her a bit “disappointed”, but she was still looking forward to the tour.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson told the BBC they do “not use surge pricing or dynamic algorithms to adjust ticket prices”, adding that event organisers are responsible for the pricing structures.

“Since tickets typically go on sale at least 3-6 months before the event, organisers may review prices at key points leading up to the show, but they make any adjustments, not an algorithm,” they also added.

The BBC also contacted tour promoter Live Nation for comment.

Ticketing expert Reg Walker put the lack of sold-out shows down to several factors, including “overexposure” after her last UK stadium tour, which played five nights at the same venue in 2023.

And the ticket prices are “eye-watering”, he told the BBC.

“You might be able to afford to go to one of her concerts where you’re effectively paying, in some categories, the same amount of money as a small holiday, but you can’t do that on consecutive years.

“The pricing strategy on tickets was clearly far too high,” he added.

Walker said there were a lot of “affordably priced” tours coming up – but with so many artists visiting the UK this summer, fans may be picking and choosing who they pay to go and see.

Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, Dua Lipa, Kendrick Lamar and SZA are all embarking on stadium tours over the coming months, with Olivia Rodrigo, Sabrina Carpenter, Chapell Roan and Drake headlining festivals.

An Australian woman accused of intentionally cooking a fatal mushroom lunch has told her trial she had wanted the beef Wellington meal to be “special”.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering three people and attempting to kill another at her home in regional Victoria in July 2023.

The 50-year-old says it was a tragic accident, and that she never intended to hurt family members she loved. But prosecutors argue Ms Patterson put poisonous fungi into their food in a carefully crafted plot to kill them.

On Friday, the court heard it was “unusual” for Ms Patterson to host such an event at her house, and she was quizzed about her relationships with her guests.

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. Simon Patterson, the accused’s estranged spouse, had been invited too, but pulled out the day before.

More than 50 prosecution witnesses have given evidence at the trial, which began six weeks ago, but Ms Patterson became the first for the defence when she took to the stand on Monday.

On her second day of cross-examination on Friday, Ms Patterson told the court she accepted that invites to her house were rare, but said she’d arranged the occasion to discuss a health issue and wanted to make a nice meal for her relatives to thank them for their support.

“I wanted it to be special,” Ms Patterson said.

She has previously admitted she misled her guests into believing she may need cancer treatment, telling the jury she did so as a cover for weight-loss surgery she was planning to have but was too embarrassed to disclose.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers, however, put to her that there was no health issue to discuss, and that she had invited Simon and his relatives over to kill them. She had even prepared a spare toxic meal in case Mr Patterson changed his mind and came over, Dr Rogers suggested.

Over and over this week, Ms Patterson has denied these allegations, often becoming emotional as she told the court she loved the lunch guests like her own family.

She has also repeatedly told the court that she realised, in the days after the lunch, that the beef Wellington may have accidentally included dried mushrooms she had foraged, which were kept in a container with store-bought ones.

Lies to the police and health authorities about the source of the mushrooms and her decision to dispose of a food dehydrator were both because she was scared of being blamed for the guests’ dire illnesses, she said.

“Surely if you had loved them, then you would have immediately notified the medical authorities?” Dr Rogers asked.

Ms Patterson said she didn’t tell doctors about the possibility that wild mushrooms had been unintentionally included because the lunch guests were already getting treatment for death cap mushroom poisoning.

“Even after you were discharged from hospital you did not tell a single person that there may have been foraged mushroom used in the meal,” Dr Rogers said.

“Instead you got up, you drove your children to school… and drove home. And then you got rid of the dehydrator.”

“Correct,” Ms Patterson said.

The court heard there’d been conflict between Ms Patterson and her husband, and Dr Rogers suggested the accused was still angry at her in-laws for taking their son’s side.

“You had two faces,” Dr Rogers said, after making Ms Patterson read aloud messages in which she is critical of both Simon Patterson and his parents.

There was her “public face” of appearing to have a good relationship with Don and Gail, Dr Rogers said, and a “private face” which she showed in the messages.

“How you truly felt about Don and Gail was how you expressed it [there],” she said.

“And that is how you really felt about Simon Patterson… you did not regard him as being a decent human being at his core, correct or incorrect?”

That was “incorrect”, Ms Patterson replied, her head shaking and voice faltering.

Ms Patterson’s use of the iNaturalist website – which listed locations of death cap mushrooms in areas close to her home – was also scrutinised, with the accused repeatedly saying she couldn’t clearly recall ever using the site.

She will resume being cross examined next week. The trial, initially expected to take six weeks, is now expected to run for at least another fortnight, the judge has told the court.

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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Tucked deep in Donald Trump’s sprawling “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is a clause that could quietly take billions from money sent abroad.

It proposes a 3.5% tax on remittances sent abroad by foreign workers, including green card holders and temporary visa workers such as those on H-1B visas. For India – the world’s top remittance recipient – the implications are serious, say experts. Other major recipients include Mexico, China, the Philippines, France, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

In 2023, Indians abroad sent home $119bn (£88bn) – enough to finance half of India’s goods trade deficit and outpace foreign direct investment, according to a paper by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) economists. Of this, the largest share came from the US. For millions of migrants, that includes the money wired to cover a parent’s medicine, a nephew’s tuition or a mortgage back home.

A blunt levy on remittances could skim billions from migrant workers, many of whom already pay taxes in America. The likely result? A rise in informal, untraceable cash transfers and a dent in India’s most stable source of external financing.

India has remained the top recipient of remittances since 2008, with its share rising from 11% in 2001 to 14% in 2024, according to World Bank. India’s central bank says that remittances are expected to stay strong, reaching an estimated $160bn by 2029. The country’s remittances have consistently hovered around 3% of GDP since 2000.

India’s international migrant population grew from 6.6 million in 1990 to 18.5 million in 2024, with its global share rising from 4.3% to over 6%. While the Gulf still hosts nearly half of all Indian migrants, skilled migration to advanced economies – especially the US – has increased significantly, driven by India’s global IT footprint.

The US remains the top source of remittances worldwide, with its share rising from 23.4% in 2020–21 to nearly 28% in 2023–24, driven by a strong post-pandemic job recovery and a 6.3% rise in foreign-born workers in 2022. Notably, 78% of Indian migrants in the US work in high-earning sectors such as management, business, science, and the arts.

Remittance costs – driven by fees and currency conversion – have long been a global policy concern due to their impact on families. While global averages of the costs remain above targets, India stands out as one of the most affordable destinations, reflecting the rise of digital channels and heightened market competition.

A 10-15% drop in remittances could cost India $12-18bn a year, tightening dollar supply and putting pressure on the rupee, according to Ajay Srivastava of Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI). He reckons the central bank may have to step in more often to stabilise the currency.

The bigger blow would land on households in states such as Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where remittances fund essentials like education, healthcare and housing. The tax could “hit household consumption hard” even as the Indian economy grapples with global uncertainty and inflation, Mr Srivastava says in a note.

The remittance tax could squeeze Indian household budgets, dampen consumption and investment, and undermine one of India’s steadiest sources of foreign exchange, warns a brief by the Delhi-based Centre for WTO Studies. Maharashtra, followed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu, continues to be among the dominant recipient states.

Remittances in India are largely used for household consumption, savings and investment in assets like housing, gold and small businesses. according to a policy brief by the think tank’s Pritam Banerjee, Saptarshee Mandal and Divyansh Dua.

A drop in inflows could shrink domestic savings and reduce investment in both financial and physical assets. When remittance inflows decline, households are likely to “prioritise consumption needs (e.g. food, healthcare, and education) over savings and investment”, the brief says.

A study by Center for Global Development, a Washington-based think tank, suggests the proposed tax could sharply cut formal transfers, with Mexico facing the biggest hit – over $2.6bn annually. Other major losers include India, China, Vietnam and several Latin American nations like Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.

To be sure, there’s still some confusion surrounding the tax, and final approval is pending Senate action and the President’s signature.

“The tax applies to all non-citizens and even embassy and UN/World Bank staff. But those who pay taxes can claim a tax credit. Thus, the remittance tax would apply only to those migrants who do not pay taxes. That would mostly include unauthorised migrants (and diplomats),” Dilip Ratha, the World Bank lead economist for migration and remittances, told the BBC.

Dr Ratha wrote in a note on LinkedIn that migrants would try to cut remittance costs by turning to informal methods – hand-carrying cash, sending money through friends, couriers, bus drivers or airline staff, arranging local currency payouts via friends in the US, or using hawala, hundi and cryptocurrencies.

“Will the proposed tax deter unauthorised immigration to the US? Will it encourage unauthorised migrants to return home?” wonders Dr Ratha.

Not quite, he says. A minimum wage job in the US earns over $24,000 a year – roughly four to 30 times more than in many developing countries. Migrants typically send home between $1,800 and $48,000 annually, estimates Dr Ratha.

“A 3.5% tax is unlikely to deter these remittances. After all the main motivation for migration – migrants trying to cross oceans and rivers and mountains – is to send money home to help helpless family members.”

An Australian bouncy castle operator at the centre of a tragedy in 2021 that killed six children and seriously injured three has been cleared of breaching safety laws.

A court found Rosemary Anne Gamble, who runs the business Taz-Zorb, not guilty, ruling that the incident was “due to an unprecedented weather system” that was “impossible to predict”.

The victims, who were on a bouncy castle at a primary school fun day in Devonport, Tasmania, fell about 10m (33ft) after strong winds blew the castle skywards at a school fair.

The verdict on Friday caused anguish among their families, with some crying out in court in disbelief, ABC News reported.

Prosecutors had accused Ms Gamble of failing to anchor the castle adequately, but her defence argued she could not have done more to eliminate or reduce hazards that led to the tragedy.

Magistrate Robert Webster agreed with the defence and found that the incident happened due to a dust devil – an upward spiralling vortex of air and debris – that was “unforeseen and unforeseeable”.

“Ms Gamble could have done more or taken further steps, however, given the effects of the unforeseen and unforeseeable dust devil, had she done so, that would sadly have made no difference to the ultimate outcome,” the magistrate said.

The six children killed in the accident – Addison Stewart, Zane Mellor, Jye Sheehan, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, Peter Dodt and Chace Harrison – were aged between 11 and 12.

They were all at a Hillcrest Primary School fair when the accident took place on the last day of term before the school holidays in December 2021.

Five of the children were on the castle when the gales swept it up and flung it across the school oval.

The sixth child, who was waiting in line, died after being struck in the head by the inflatable blower.

The tragic accident shattered Devonport, a city on the north coast of Tasmania with some 30,000 residents.

Ms Gamble was charged nearly two years after, in November 2023.

Andrew Dodt, the father of one of the young victims Peter, said after Friday’s verdict that “our hopes are just shattered now”.

“At the end of the day all I wanted was an apology for my son not coming home, and I’m never going to get it, and that kills me,” he said in a statement to local media.

“I’ve been broken for a long time, and I think I’m going to be broken for a lot more.”

Ms Gamble’s lawyer Bethan Frake spoke on her behalf, acknowledging that the incident has caused “scars that will remain for an extremely long time, likely forever”.

“I am a mother,” she said, quoting Ms Gamble. “I can only imagine the pain that other parents are living with each and every day because of this terrible thing that happened.”

“Their loss is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”