Authorities have imposed a curfew and shut down the internet in parts of the troubled north-eastern Indian state of Manipur after protests erupted over the arrest of leaders from an ethnic group.

On Sunday, police arrested five leaders of Arambai Tenggol, an armed Meitei radical group, including their chief Asem Kanan Singh.

India’s top investigation agency said Singh was arrested at Manipur’s Imphal airport for his involvement in “various criminal activities” related to the violence that broke out in the state in 2023.

Manipur has been rocked by periodic violence since 2023 after ethnic clashes between the two largest groups, the majority Meitei and minority Kuki, over land and influence.

More than 250 people have been killed in the conflict, with tens of thousands displaced.

Arambai Tenggol identifies itself as a social outfit and wields considerable influence in the state, enjoying support from the Meitei community.

The latest round of tensions began on 7 June, when India’s top investigation agency arrested Singh and four other leaders of Arambai Tenggol, following which he was taken to Guwahati city in the neighbouring state of Assam.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is investigating cases related to violence in Manipur, said that the trial for these had been shifted from Manipur to Guwahati in Assam “in view of the law and order situation in Manipur”.

After the arrests, protesters demanding the release of members of Arambai Tenggol stormed a police post, set fire to a bus and blocked roads in parts of Imphal.

Some protesters also clashed with security personnel, The Hindu newspaper reported.

A 13-year-old boy was injured after security forces fired tear gas shells and live rounds to disperse crowds, The Hindustan Times reported.

State lawmaker Okram Surjakumar said the arrests had thrown the state into chaos.

Following the violence, the state government suspended internet and mobile data services in five districts of the state for five days and imposed an indefinite curfew in one. Gatherings of four or more people has also been prohibited in the some parts.

Arambai Tenggol has also declared a 10-day shutdown in parts of the state since Saturday night.

Priyanka Gandhi, leader of the opposition Congress party, on Sunday questioned why the government was unable to bring to peace to the conflict-hit state.

Earlier this year, the Indian government brought the state under direct federal rule after the chief minister resigned following criticism from opposition groups.

Gandhi blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he had not met representatives from the state or made any efforts for peace.

“It is the prime minister’s responsibility to ensure peace and security for the citizens of the country. To step back from this is to turn away from one’s duty,” she wrote in a post on X.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been sharply criticised by opposition leaders and rights groups for its handling of the conflict. Opposition leaders have also criticised Modi for not visiting the state since the violence first began in 2023.

On Sunday, a multi-party delegation of state lawmakers met the state governor.

BJP lawmker Kh Ibomcha said the delegation had asked that the arrested leaders be released after they were questioned by the police.

South Koreans are celebrating their first win in the Tony Awards, which they say highlights their country’s status as a cultural powerhouse.

The acclaimed Broadway production of Maybe Happy Ending, which debuted in South Korea almost a decade ago, won six Tonys, including best musical.

Maybe Happy Ending is about the romance between two humanoid robots living in an apartment building on the outskirts of Seoul. It entered Sunday night’s awards ceremony with 10 nominations.

With the Tonys, South Koreans have now won the four most coveted awards in US entertainment. Squid Game won Emmy awards in 2022 while Parasite won four Oscars in 2020. Soprano Sumi Jo won a Grammy in 1993.

On Sunday, South Korean lyricist Hue Park and American composer Will Aronson took home the Tony for best original score and best book of a musical.

Before making their Broadway debut with Maybe Happy Ending in 2024, the pair, who met as students at New York University, had written the musical in both English and Korean.

“This is amazing!” one post on Threads reads. “I heard the Broadway version got even more polished. I’m so proud that Korea is becoming a true cultural powerhouse.”

“This feels like a dream come true for the Korean Wave,” reads another post. “I’m just as thrilled as when Parasite won the Oscars, Squid Game won the Emmys, and Han Kang received the Nobel Prize.”

Former Glee star Darren Criss, who played one of the robots, Oliver, won best lead actor in a musical. It was his first Tony win.

The musical, which also stars Helen J Shen as robot Claire, was already on a streak this awards season.

It bagged some of the top prizes at the Outer Critics Circle Awards and Drama League Awards this year.

First directed by Kim Dong-yeon, Maybe Happy Ending premiered in Seoul in 2016 to much critical acclaim. It has since been revived several times in South Korea and abroad – in both Korean and English.

Maybe Happy Ending’s success comes as South Korean artists continue to break ground in entertainment, especially with K-pop acts like BTS and Blackpink dominating music in the last few years.

It also serves as a window into Korean culture, some social media users say.

“It’s amazing that Korean elements like Jeju Island, fireflies, and hwabun (a plant pot) were kept in the Broadway version too,” reads one post on Threads.

“I already felt proud just seeing it nominated, but watching the local audience react so positively made it even more special.”

A prisoner exchange is under way between Russia and Ukraine, governments in Moscow and Kyiv have confirmed.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the exchange would unfold “in several stages” over the coming days, adding that the wounded, seriously wounded and soldiers under 25 were being returned.

Writing on Telegram, Zelensky said: “The process is quite complicated, there are many sensitive details, negotiations continue virtually every day.”

Russia said a “similar number” of prisoners of war had been returned to Ukraine, though neither side provided an exact figure for how many people had been exchanged.

Russia’s defence ministry said “the first group of Russian servicemen under the age of 25 were returned from the territory controlled by the Kyiv regime” following an agreement reached between the warring countries last week during talks in Turkey.

As with past exchanges, Moscow said the exchanged Russian soldiers were receiving psychological and medical assistance in Belarus.

On the Ukrainian side, relatives of prisoners of war and the missing gathered in the Chernihiv region, close to the border with Belarus, to greet the released prisoners and, in many cases, seek news of others still in captivity.

Last week, Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of disrupting the planned repatriation of the bodies of dead soldiers.

In late May, Russia and Ukraine each handed over 390 soldiers and civilians in the biggest prisoner exchange since Russia launched the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Meanwhile, war continued overnight, with Moscow launching a record 479 drones at Ukraine, including on the western region of Rivne that had been largely spared from attacks.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted Rivne’s Dubno base and described this as “one of the retaliatory strikes” in response to Ukraine’s audacious drone attacks on Russian airfields on 1 June.

The overnight Russian launches caused damage in several Ukrainian regions but there were no reports of casualties.

Russia has recently escalated its attacks on Ukraine, with each week bringing a new record of drones fired at the country.

For its part, Kyiv said it attacked another Russian airbase in the Nizhny Novgorod region, which lies 400 miles from the Ukrainian border.

Ukraine said the base houses planes that launch hypersonic missiles and that it had damaged “two units of enemy aircraft”.

It also targeted an electronics factory that Kyiv says manufactures equipment to guide drones and aerial bombs.

Video shows one of the explosions caused by an attack drone, and a large fire at the plant. Production there has been suspended.

Unregulated mining in the deep sea should not be allowed to go ahead, the head of the United Nations has warned.

“The deep sea cannot become the Wild West,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the opening of the UN Oceans Conference in Nice, France.

His words were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who declared the “oceans are not for sale”.

The remarks appear to refer to the decision by President Trump in April to begin issuing permits for the extraction of critical minerals in international waters.

There is increasing interest in extracting precious minerals from what are called metallic “nodules” that naturally occur on the seabed.

But marine scientists are concerned about the harm that could be caused.

“The ocean is not for sale. We’re talking about a common shared good,” President Macron said. “I think it’s madness to launch predatory economic action that will disrupt the deep seabed, disrupt biodiversity, destroy it.”

This issue is one of a number on the agenda in France, including over-fishing, plastic pollution and climate change.

Over 2,000 of the world’s scientists met last week to review the latest data on ocean health – they recommended to governments meeting this week that deep sea exploration be halted whilst further research be carried out on the impacts.

More than 30 countries support this position and are calling for a moratorium – but President Trump has not rowed back on his executive order.

A key aim of the UN oceans conference, which runs until Friday, is to get 60 countries to ratify a High Seas Treaty and thus bring it into force.

This agreement was made two years ago to put 30% of international waters into marine protected areas (MPAs) by 2030, in the hope it would preserve and help ecosystems recover.

President Macron declared in his opening speech that an additional 15 had ratified but that only brings the total number to 47.

The UK government has not yet ratified the agreement, though on Monday it said a ban on a bottom “destructive” type of fishing that drags large nets along the seafloor could be extended across MPAs in England.

Even if enough countries sign there are concerns from environmentalists, including Sir David Attenborough, that there is nothing explicit in the Treaty to ban bottom trawling in these MPAs.

Bottom trawling is one of the more destructive fishing practices that can lead to accidentally killing larger marine species.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Ahmad has been hiding in Afghanistan for years.

The former Afghan military employee is living in fear of being found by the Taliban, which seized power in 2021 as US forces withdrew from the Central Asian nation.

As a result, Ahmad is unable to get a job or access medical care, relying on donations from friends outside the country to survive. His son, 12, is unable to go to school.

If they are found, Ahmad says, the Taliban “will remove” him.

His hope had been refugee resettlement in the US, but – with just a medical check to complete – the process was put on pause by the Trump administration.

Still, he hoped. Then, on Thursday he woke to the news that US President Donald Trump had issued a new order banning the entry of Afghan passport holders to the US, citing national security threats.

“I am not a threat to the United States,” Ahmad told the BBC. The BBC is not using his real name because of concerns about his safety.

“We were friends of the United States,” he added.

• Why are these 12 countries on the list?
• How nations have responded
• Everything else we know about the ban – so far
• Trump’s new ban dodges pitfalls from last time, experts say
• Chad halts US visas in revenge for Trump travel ban

Trump’s sweeping travel ban came into force on Monday, blocking people from Afghanistan and 11 other countries, including seven from Africa, as well as countries like Haiti and Yemen, from entering the US. There are partial bans on seven other countries.

According to the ban, Afghanistan was included because the Taliban are considered by the US government to be a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) group, and the country does not have “a competent or co-operative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents”, or “appropriate screening and vetting measures”. It also notes a relatively high rate of people overstaying their visas.

The Trump administration has, however, recently dropped temporary protected status for more than 9,000 Afghans living in the US, arguing its assessments showed the security and economic situation in Afghanistan had improved.

But those living in Afghanistan are faced with a series of restrictions brought in by the Taliban government in line with its strict interpretation of Sharia law.

The ones affecting women – including the enforcement of head coverings, restrictions on travel and education over the age of 12 – amount to a “gender apartheid”, according to the United Nations. The Taliban says it respects the rights of women in line with Sharia and Afghan culture.

A different UN report from 2023 found there were credible reports that hundreds of former government officials and armed forces members had been killed since the group returned to power in 2021, despite a general amnesty. The Taliban has previously said all Afghans could “live in the country without any fear” – and those abroad should come back and help rebuild the country.

“There is a general amnesty,” Mohammad Suhail Shaheen, Taliban ambassador to Qatar, told the BBC earlier this year. “Countrywide security is prevalent in Afghanistan. Every citizen and traveller can travel to any corner of the country without any obstacles or any difficulties.”

There are exceptions to Trump’s ban – including for Afghans who worked directly with the US military before the Taliban back took control of the country in 2021.

But Ahmad, whose application for resettlement was backed by a former US service member, does not qualify for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) because he did not work directly for the US.

And he is far from the only one.

• Trump to end protected status for Afghans

Some 200,000 Afghans have been resettled since the US military’s chaotic withdrawal, but there are still tens of thousands more waiting for a decision.

Many have fled across the border to neighbouring Pakistan to wait for a decision to be made on their application.

Samira, who spoke to the BBC’s Afghan Service, is currently in Pakistan – which has been expelling tens of thousands of Afghans in recent months. If the path to the US is closed to her, she is not sure what to do next.

“Returning to Afghanistan is not an option for us – it would be incredibly challenging,” she said. “Our children have already lost years of education, and we have no hope of safely going back.”

More than 8,300 family members of US citizens are ready for an interview in Afghanistan, with more than 11,400 others awaiting family reunification, according to US Department of State data shared by AfghanEvac.

Mojo, who asked to be identified by his nickname, is one of the 200,000 Afghans who have already reached the US, because he worked directly for the US military. He is now a US citizen.

His sister, however, remains in Afghanistan where she and her husband are “living in a hide and seek game”, he says. They change their address and city every couple months in order to stay safe.

They passed the background and medical checks for refugee resettlement, but like the others who spoke to the BBC, they became trapped when the process was paused in January.

This latest order has made Mojo, who lives in Houston, Texas, and the rest of his family lose “all our hope completely” .

“I wish that he would change his mind, make some exception, change the rules or take his order back and let people have a peaceful life,” he said.

• Pakistan expels tens of thousands of Afghans
• Afghans hiding in Pakistan live in fear of forced deportation
• Ex-US generals describe chaos of Afghanistan withdrawal

The ban also affects Afghans who are not trying to reach the US for resettlement.

Zarifa Ghafari is studying at Cornell University in New York state, but is currently in Germany for the summer with her young child.

She said she began a “frantic” race back to the US on Thursday in order to continue her studies, before the start of the travel ban on Monday.

The ban has put her under “immense pressure” and has made her feel “very vulnerable”, the the 30-year-old former politician told the BBC.

What makes it worse, she said, was that she regularly had to return to Germany every few months to maintain her residency status there too. Describing her situation as “precarious”, she said she worried about how she could make her regular trips to Germany when the travel ban began.

Shawn VanDiver, of AfghanEvac, said the ban broke a promise Americans had made to Afghans over the 20 years they were in the country.

“This policy punishes people who escaped the Taliban, risked everything to support democracy, are already vetted, were told by the US government to wait,” he wrote on social media platform X.

“They’re not threats. They’re our allies – and they’re being left behind.”

Meanwhile, many of those still in Afghanistan have other problems to contend with.

As one Afghan man in Kabul told AFP news agency: “We don’t even have bread, why are you asking me about travelling to America?”

A new round of talks aimed at resolving the trade war between the US and China have started in central London.

A senior US delegation including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has met with Chinese representatives such as Vice Premier He Lifeng at Lancaster House to resolve tensions between the world’s two largest economies, which is threatening global growth.

Chinese exports of rare earths, which are crucial for modern technology, as well as Beijing’s access to US products, including computer chips, are expected to be high on the agenda.

Last month, Washington and Beijing agreed a temporary truce over trade tariffs but each country has since accused the other of breaching the deal.

The new round of negotiations follows a phone call between Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping last week which the US President described as a “very good talk”.

The call – the first between the two leaders since the trade war erupted in February – “resulted in a very positive conclusion for both countries”, Trump said.

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Xi told Trump that the US should “withdraw the negative measures it has taken against China”.

While last month’s talks in Geneva reduced tariffs, they did not resolve a range of other issues including Chinese exports of rare earth metals and magnets which are essential for manufacturing everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, Washington has restricted China’s access to US goods such as semiconductors and other related technologies linked to artificial intelligence (AI).

The inclusion of Lutnick in this week’s meetings with China is “a welcome addition”, according to Swetha Ramachandran, fund manager at Artemis, since he is “behind some of the very harsh export controls of technology to China”.

She told the BBC’s Today programme: “Some of the focus certainly seems to be on rare earths where China, of course, has dominance in terms of producing.

“They mine 69% of the rare earths globally that are quite essential to technology development in the US so I think there are enough chips on the table here that could make it acceptable for both sides to walk away with desired outcomes.”

As well as Lutnick, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is meeting Chinese officials in London.

When Trump announced sweeping tariffs on imports from a number of countries earlier this year, China was the hardest hit. Beijing responded with its own higher rates on US imports, and this triggered tit-for-tat increases that peaked at 145%.

In May, talks held in Switzerland led to a temporary truce that Trump called a “total reset”.

It brought US tariffs on Chinese products down to 30%, while Beijing slashed levies on US imports to 10% and promised to lift barriers on critical mineral exports. It gave both sides a 90-day deadline to try to reach a trade deal.

But the US and China have since claimed breaches on non-tariff pledges.

Greer said China had failed to roll-back restrictions on exports of rare earth magnets.

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

On Saturday, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said it had approved some applications for rare earth export licences, although it did not provide details of which countries were involved.

Trump said on Friday that Xi had agreed to restart trade in rare earth materials.

But speaking on Sunday, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CBS News that “those exports of critical minerals have been getting released at a rate that is, you know, higher than it was, but not as high as we believe we agreed to in Geneva”.

Prior to talks with the US, He met with Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Sunday where the vice premier said China and the UK should maintain and deepen communication and cooperation across economics and finance, according to a report by state broadcaster CCTV.

China wants to build a new embassy at Royal Mint Court, a building complex close to the City of London which is home to the UK financial industry. Beijing bought the site in 2018.

The US has reportedly raised concerns about the proposed embassy’s proximity to sensitive infrastructure underpinning banks and institutions.

The UK is in talks to finalise an agreement with the US over tariffs, which must be signed by 9 July or British exports of steel will face higher taxes when they reach American ports.

Economists have warned that Trump’s trade policy will impact the global economy.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said it now expected worldwide economic growth to be a “modest” 2.9%, down from a previous forecast of 3.1%.

It blamed a “significant” rise in trade barriers and warned that “weakened economic prospects will be felt around the world, with almost no exception”.

New data released by Bejing on Monday showed China’s exports in May were lower than analysts expected.

China’s exports in dollar terms increased by 4.8% compared to the same time last year.

At the same time imports dropped by 3.4%, which was much worse than the 0.9% fall predicted.

Police in India say a woman, who had gone missing after her husband was found brutally murdered during their honeymoon, is in custody after she surrendered.

The families of the couple had alleged that the bride had also either been killed or abducted and mounted a huge campaign to find her.

Police now allege that Sonam Raghuvanshi, 25, hired killers to murder her 30-year-old husband Raja during their trip to the tiny north-eastern state of Meghalaya. Four men have also been arrested.

Sonam’s father Devi Singh has defended his daughter saying “she is innocent and she cannot do this”.

The newly-wed couple from Indore city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh had chosen Meghalaya for their honeymoon because they had heard it had “very beautiful valleys”, Raja’s brother Sachin Raghuvanshi told the BBC at the weekend, before Sonam’s arrest.

The couple had married on 11 May in Indore in a ceremony blessed by both their families.

“Their marriage was arranged four months back and they were both happy and there had been no fights between the couple before or after marriage,” Raja’s other brother Vipin Raghuvanshi said.

The couple left for Meghalaya on 20 May. But four days into their trip, they went missing.

Police and disaster relief teams, accompanied by local people, searched for the couple. Videos from the area showed rescuers rappelling down hills and cliffs in valleys covered in mist. Officials said rain and low visibility were hampering the search operations.

A week later, Raja’s decomposed body was found in a gorge with his throat slit and his wallet, a gold ring and a chain missing. And Sonam had disappeared without a trace.

Their families mounted a huge campaign, accusing the Meghalaya police of not doing enough to solve Raja’s murder or find Sonam – an accusation contested by the state’s chief minister.

The couple’s families demanded that the case be handed over to the federal police for a proper investigation and met influential caste leaders and federal ministers in their home state to lobby for this.

Last Friday, they also wrote a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to deliver justice for Raja and find Sonam.

But on Monday morning, Director General of Meghalaya police Idashisha Nongrang said Sonam had surrendered at a police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district.

Three other suspects, who are also from the couple’s home state Madhya Pradesh, have been arrested in overnight raids, DGP Nongrang said.

“One person was picked up from Uttar Pradesh and another two accused were apprehended from Indore. Sonam surrendered at the Nandganj police station and was subsequently arrested.”

Later, addressing a press conference, Superintendent of Police Vivek Syiem said a fourth man had been arrested in Meghalaya in connection with the case on Monday morning.

He did not give any motive for Raja’s murder but described Sonam “as the main suspect”.

In response to a reporter’s question on “whether Sonam was in an extra-marital relationship with one of the arrested men”, Mr Syeim said “if you join the dots, then it would seem like it”. But he added that these details could be verified only after the two were questioned.

Sonam’s father Devi Singh told ANI news agency that his daughter had reached “a dhaba [roadside eatery] in Ghazipur last night where she borrowed a mobile phone and called her brother – who then called the police”.

Mr Singh said he had not been able to speak to his daughter but he believed that she had “somehow managed to escape her captors” and insisted that she was “innocent”.

Mr Singh also accused the Meghalaya police of “making up stories” and appealed to Home Minister Amit Shah to order a federal inquiry into the case for the truth to come out.

Raja’s brother Vipin Raghuvanshi initially told reporters he would “not accept Sonam’s involvement in the murder until she confessed”.

But he later said that one of the arrested men named by the police worked in Sonam’s office.

“Only Sonam can clarify,” he said. “If she’s guilty, she should be punished.”

Mr Raghuvanshi, who had repeatedly criticised Meghalaya’s police and government for not doing enough to solve the case, also said “I now believe that Meghalaya government was not lying. They were telling the truth”.

On Monday morning, after the news broke, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma complimented his state’s police force, saying that they had achieved a “major breakthrough” in seven days. Another minister, Alexander Laloo Hek, said that the state’s police, government and even ordinary people had been unfairly blamed while the search was going on.

“The truth has come out,” he said.

Succession star Sarah Snook and singer Nicole Scherzinger were among the big winners at Sunday’s Tony Awards.

Scherzinger was named best actress in a musical for her role as faded film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, Jamie Lloyd’s minimalist reboot of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical.

In an emotional acceptance speech, Scherzinger reflected on her recent Broadway success, which came two decades after shooting to fame with the Pussycat Dolls.

“Growing up, I always felt like I didn’t belong, but you all have made me feel like I belong and I have come home, at last,” she said. “If there’s anyone out there who feels like they don’t belong or your time hasn’t come, don’t give up.”

She added: “Just keep on giving and giving because the world needs your love and your light now more than ever. This is a testament that love always wins.”

The singer and former X Factor judge won the same prize at the UK equivalent of the Tonys, the Olivier Awards, for her performance in the show’s original West End run.

She said it had been an “honour” to work with composer Lord Lloyd Webber, and paid tribute to Lloyd, saying: “You saw in me what no one else did. You have given us all new ways to dream and you have changed my life forever.”

Scherzinger also sang As If We Never Said Goodbye during the ceremony, a performance that was introduced by Glenn Close, who played Desmond in Sunset Boulevard when it played on Broadway in 1995.

The Tony Awards, hosted by Wicked star Cynthia Erivo at Radio City Music Hall in New York, celebrate the best in US theatre, and particularly Broadway.

Snook also repeated her Olivier win, taking best leading actress in a play, for performing all 26 roles in a one-woman stage adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In her acceptance speech, the actress said: “This means so much for a little Australian girl to be here on Broadway.

“[The Picture of Dorian Gray] is billed as a one-person show, but I don’t feel alone any night that I do this show. There are so many people on stage making it work and behind the stage making it work.”

Other winners included Maybe Happy Ending, about two outdated robots who find connection. It took home best musical, while its star Darren Criss, who previously appeared in Glee, also won an acting prize.

“I have such immense pride to get to be part of this notably diverse, exquisite Broadway season this year,” he said.

Paying tribute to his wife, he added: “Your love and your support for me and our beautiful children, combined with the miracle of working on something as magical as Maybe Happy Ending, has been and will always be award enough.”

Purpose, about an African-American family who reunite in Chicago, was named best play, a month after winning the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Meanwhile, Cole Escola was named best actor in a play for Oh Mary!, a one-act reimagining of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination through the eyes of his wife – a raging alcoholic who dreams of life as a cabaret star.

Sunset Boulevard also won best musical revival, while Eureka Day, about a school in California which must confront its vaccination policy after an outbreak of mumps among the pupils, won best revival of a play.

Stranger Things: The First Shadow, a stage adaptation of the hit Netflix show, and Buena Vista Social Club, which tells the story of the Cuban musical group, were among the other winners.

The biggest winners:

• 6 – Maybe Happy Ending
• 4 – Buena Vista Social Club
• 3 – Sunset Boulevard, Stranger Things: The First Shadow
• 2 – Purpose, Oh Mary!, The Picture of Dorian Gray

British actor Jak Malone was named best featured actor in a musical – the Tonys equivalent of the supporting actor prize – for Operation Mincemeat, the story of the British plot to fool the Nazis during World War Two.

Elsewhere in the ceremony, Erivo was joined on stage by singer Sara Bareilles for a rendition of Tomorrow from the musical Annie, in tribute to those in the theatre community who had died throughout the year. The song’s composer, Charles Strouse, died last month.

Presenters at the event included Samuel L Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, Ben Stiller and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

The original cast of Hamilton reunited to perform a rapturously received medley, to celebrate the show’s 10th anniversary.

In the last year, a string of new shows and stars drew 14.7 million people to Broadway performances, grossing $1.89bn (£1.39bn) at the box office.

Best musical

• WINNER: Maybe Happy Ending
• Buena Vista Social Club
• Dead Outlaw
• Death Becomes Her
• Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical

Best play

• WINNER: Purpose
• English
• The Hills of California
• John Proctor is the Villain
• Oh, Mary!

Best revival of a play

• WINNER: Eureka Day
• Romeo + Juliet
• Our Town
• Yellow Face

Best revival of a musical

• WINNER: Sunset Boulevard
• Floyd Collins
• Gypsy
• Pirates! The Penzance Musical

Best actress in a musical

• WINNER: Nicole Scherzinger, Sunset Boulevard
• Megan Hilty, Death Becomes Her
• Audra McDonald, Gypsy
• Jasmine Amy Rogers, BOOP! The Musical
• Jennifer Simard, Death Becomes Her

Best actor in a musical

• WINNER: Darren Criss, Maybe Happy Ending
• Andrew Durand, Dead Outlaw
• Tom Francis, Sunset Boulevard
• Jonathan Groff, Just in Time
• James Monroe Iglehart, A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical
• Jeremy Jordan, Floyd Collins

Best actress in a play

• WINNER: Sarah Snook, The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Laura Donnelly, The Hills of California
• Mia Farrow, The Roommate
• LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Purpose
• Sadie Sink, John Proctor is the Villain

Best actor in a play

• WINNER: Cole Escola, Oh, Mary!
• George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
• Jon Michael Hill, Purpose
• Daniel Dae Kim, Yellow Face
• Harry Lennix, Purpose
• Louis McCartney, Stranger Things: The First Shadow

Best direction of a musical

• WINNER: Michael Arden, Maybe Happy Ending
• Saheem Ali, Buena Vista Social Club
• David Cromer, Dead Outlaw
• Christopher Gattelli, Death Becomes Her
• Jamie Lloyd, Sunset Boulevard

Best direction of a play

• WINNER: Sam Pinkleton, Oh, Mary!
• Knud Adams, English
• Sam Mendes, The Hills of California
• Danya Taymor, John Proctor is the Villain
• Kip Williams, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Best supporting actress in a musical

• WINNER: Natalie Venetia Belcon, Buena Vista Social Club
• Julia Knitel, Dead Outlaw
• Gracie Lawrence, Just in Time
• Justina Machado, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical
• Joy Woods, Gypsy

Best supporting actor in a musical

• WINNER: Jak Malone, Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical
• Brooks Ashmanskas, SMASH
• Jeb Brown, Dead Outlaw
• Danny Burstein, Gypsy
• Taylor Trensch, Floyd Collins

Best supporting actress in a play

• WINNER: Kara Young, Purpose
• Tala Ashe, English
• Jessica Hecht, Eureka Day
• Marjan Neshat, English
• Fina Strazza, John Proctor is the Villain

Best supporting actor in a play

• WINNER: Francis Jue, Yellow Face
• Glenn Davis, Purpose
• Gabriel Ebert, John Proctor is the Villain
• Bob Odenkirk, Glengarry Glen Ross
• Conrad Ricamora, Oh, Mary!

The Israeli military has said it has located and identified the body of Mohammed Sinwar, the military leader of Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza.

His body was discovered in a tunnel underneath the European Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Sunday.

It said it had verified the body’s identity through DNA checks – though Hamas has not publicly confirmed his death.

Sinwar, 49, was killed in an air strike on 13 May, which the Hamas-run civil defence agency said killed 28 people and injured dozens.

Sinwar’s body was found alongside that of Mohammad Sabaneh, the commander of Hamas’s Rafah Brigade, the IDF said.

It added that “several items belonging to Sinwar and Sabaneh were located, along with additional intelligence findings that were transferred for further investigation”.

The IDF said other bodies were found, which it was looking to identify.

It took a small group of foreign journalists into Gaza to Khan Younis to show them the tunnel on Sunday.

It also published video of the small entrance to the tunnel, accessible through freshly dug earth just in front of the European Hospital.

The footage shows a long, narrow underground corridor that leads to several rooms.

Inside some of them, piles of clothes and plastic chairs are visible, with a rifle leaning up against the wall. One video also shows a shrouded body being pulled from the tunnel by a rope.

IDF spokesperson Brig Gen Effie Defrin said that in one of the rooms they found the Sinwar’s body.

“This is another example of the cynical use by Hamas, using civilians as human shields, using civilian infrastructure, hospitals, again and again,” he said.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals as hiding places for weapons and command centres, which the group denies.

The IDF has mounted sieges and attacks on hospitals in Gaza, or ordered their evacuation, leaving the territory’s health system on the verge of total collapse.

Such attacks have caused widespread international concern, as many hospitals and medical facilities have been put out of action – and the lives of patients and staff put at risk.

In a statement after an Israeli strike on al-Ahli hospital in April, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres expressed his deep alarm and declared that, under international humanitarian law, the “wounded and sick, medical personnel and medical facilities, including hospitals, must be respected and protected”.

Hospital staff in Gaza have also repeatedly denied that Hamas is using their facilities as a base.

The IDF will point to this latest footage as vindication of its claims and its military strategy.

As with so much in Gaza, however, full independent verification is not possible.

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

At least 54,880 people have been killed in Gaza since, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The renewed fighting in Gaza comes following the collapse of a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal a few months ago.

Since then, Israel has restated its aim to destroy Hamas and recover the hostages, of whom 54 remain in captivity and 23 are thought to still be alive.

Mohammed Sinwar joined Hamas shortly after its founding in the late 1980s and became a member of the group’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.

He rose through the ranks and by 2005 he was commander of the Khan Younis Brigade.

Sinwar was also reported to have been close to another of Hamas’s previous military chiefs, Mohammed Deif, and had been involved in the planning of the 7 October attack.

His brother and predecessor, Yahya Sinwar – believed to be the one of the masterminds behind the 7 October attack – was killed by Israeli troops last October.

Nearly two dozen paintings by one of the world’s most celebrated modern artists – once part of a record-breaking art deal – are set to hit the auction block for the first time next week.

On 12 June, 25 rare MF Husain paintings will go under the hammer at an art gallery in Mumbai city, more than two decades after he painted them.

This will be the first public glimpse of the paintings, locked away in bank vaults since 2008 after authorities seized them from a prominent businessman over an alleged loan default.

“It’s like the paintings have come full circle,” says Dadiba Pundole, director of Pundole Art Gallery, where the auction is set to be held.

Husain used the gallery as his studio for many of these works, part of an ambitious 100-painting series he never finished. Often called the “Picasso of India,” he was one of the country’s most celebrated – and controversial – artists. His works have fetched millions, but his bold themes often drew criticism. He died in 2011, aged 95.

Titled MF Husain: An Artist’s Vision of the XX Century, the 25 paintings at Pundole’a gallery offer a glimpse into his take on a transformative century shaped by leaps in technology, politics, and culture. Pundole has estimated that the auction could fetch up to $29m (£21m).

This comes months after another Husain painting, Untitled (Gram Yatra), sold for an unprecedented $13.8m at a Christie’s auction in New York, becoming the most expensive Indian artwork to be auctioned.

The oil-on-canvas masterpiece had adorned the walls of a Norwegian hospital for almost five decades, forgotten by the art world, until the auction house was alerted about its presence in 2013.

The latest paintings to be auctioned seem to follow a similar trajectory.

Husain began working on them in the early 2000s, with great excitement and vigour, recalls Pundole.

“When he was painting, nothing could disturb him. It didn’t matter what was happening around him,” he adds.

In 2004, Husain sold 25 paintings to a Mumbai businessman as the first instalment of a billion-rupee deal.

Kishore Singh, author of , wrote about this agreement in the Indian Express newspaper.

“He [Husain] wasn’t jealous of fellow artists, but he was competitive,” Singh writes, noting that Husain struck the deal soon after Tyeb Mehta’s Kali [an Indian goddess] set a new record for India’s most expensive painting in 2002, selling for 15 million rupees.

Husain struck a billion rupees deal with businessman Guru Swarup Srivastava for this series of paintings. Media dubbed it “India’s biggest art deal,” catapulting the little-known Srivastava into overnight fame as a celebrity collector.

But two years later, India’s top crime agency, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), began investigating Srivastava’s business, alleging he and associates had misused a loan from a government-backed agricultural body.

The CBI alleged Srivastava diverted the funds into real estate, mutual funds, and Husain paintings. He and his company deny all charges; the case remains in court.

In 2008, a tribunal allowed the government-backed agricultural body to seize one billion rupees in assets from Srivastava, including the 25 Husain paintings.

In February this year, a court cleared the way for the paintings to be auctioned to recover part of the loan. And so, after years locked away in bank vaults, the 25 paintings are finally stepping into the spotlight.

In a 2018 interview to author and journalist Tara Kaushal, Srivastava spoke about his stalled deal with the artist.

“I had planned to pay Husain for the rest of the paintings by selling the first 25. But legal complications meant that, when Husain called me in 2008 saying the paintings were ready in London and Paris, and to pick them up at the agreed price, my funds were not ready. He understood,” he said.

Asked why Husain had chosen to sell his paintings to a person who almost nobody knew in India’s elite art circles, Pundole says, “He didn’t care. As long as his paintings were sold.”

There’s no way to know how Husain felt about the failed deal or his unfinished 20th Century series – but the episode remains a striking footnote in his bold, eventful career.

The 25 paintings in this series, vibrant acrylics on canvas, showcase Husain’s bold style while reflecting key 20th-century events and social attitudes.

One painting shows an unlikely group chatting on a bench, symbolising Husain’s call for peaceful dialogue and coexistence among global powers.

Another painting honours Charlie Chaplin while juxtaposing a rocket launch to highlight the contrast between social and economic disparities and massive state spending.

Other paintings depict a world battling poverty, soldiers in trenches, and humanity confronting tragedies like World War Two, the Partition, and the Holocaust.

It is 1am on 3 June. A near gale force wind is blasting into Scotland. Great weather for the Moray East and West offshore wind farms, you would have thought.

The two farms are 13 miles off the north-east coast of Scotland and include some of the biggest wind turbines in the UK, at 257m high. With winds like that they should be operating at maximum capacity, generating what the developer, Ocean Winds, claims is enough power to meet the electricity needs of well over a million homes.

Except they are not.

That’s because if you thought that once an electricity generator – whether it be a wind farm or a gas-powered plant – was connected to the national grid it could seamlessly send its electricity wherever it was needed in the country, you’d be wrong.

The electricity grid was built to deliver power generated by coal and gas plants near the country’s major cities and towns, and doesn’t always have sufficient capacity in the wires that carry electricity around the country to get the new renewable electricity generated way out in the wild seas and rural areas.

And this has major consequences.

The way the system currently works means a company like Ocean Winds gets what are effectively compensation payments if the system can’t take the power its wind turbines are generating and it has to turn down its output.

It means Ocean winds was paid £72,000 not to generate power from its wind farms in the Moray Firth during a half-hour period on 3 June because the system was overloaded – one of a number of occasions output was restricted that day.

At the same time, 44 miles (70km) east of London, the Grain gas-fired power station on the Thames Estuary was paid £43,000 to provide more electricity.

Payments like that happen virtually every day. Seagreen, Scotland’s largest wind farm, was paid £65 million last year to restrict its output 71% of the time, according to analysis by Octopus Energy.

Balancing the grid in this way has already cost the country more than £500 million this year alone, the company’s analysis shows. The total could reach almost £8bn a year by 2030, warns the National Electricity System Operator (NESO), the body in charge of the electricity network.

It’s pushing up all our energy bills and calling into question the government’s promise that net zero would end up delivering cheaper electricity.

Now, the government is considering a radical solution: instead of one big, national electricity market, there’ll be a number of smaller regional markets, with the government gambling that this could make the system more efficient and deliver cheaper bills.

But in reality, it’s not guaranteed that anyone will get cheaper bills. And even if some people do, many others elsewhere in the country could end up paying more.

The proposals have sparked such bitter debate that one senior energy industry executive called it “the most vicious policy fight” he has ever known. He has, he says, “lost friends” over it.

Meanwhile, political opponents who claim net zero is an expensive dead end are only too ready to pounce.

It is reported that the Prime Minister has asked to review the details of what some newspapers are calling a “postcode pricing” plan. So is the government really ready to risk the most radical shake-up of the UK electricity market since privatisation 35 years ago? And what will it really mean for our bills?

The Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, is certainly in a fix. His net zero policy is under attack like never before. The Tories have come out against it, green politicians say it isn’t delivering for ordinary people, and even Tony Blair has weighed in against it.

Meanwhile Reform UK has identified the policy as a major Achilles heel for the Labour government. “The next election will be fought on two issues, immigration and net stupid zero,” says Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice. “And we are going to win.”

Poll after poll says cost of living is a much more important for most people, and people often specifically cite concerns about rising energy prices.

Miliband sold his aggressive clean energy policies in part on cutting costs. He said that ensuring 95% of the country’s electricity comes from low-carbon sources by 2030 would slash the average electricity bill by £300.

But the potential for renewables to deliver lower costs just isn’t coming through to consumers.

Renewables now generate more than half the country’s electricity, but because of the limits to how much electricity can be moved around the system, even on windy days some gas generation is almost always needed to top the system up.

And because gas tends to be more expensive, it sets the wholesale price.

Supporters of the government’s plan argue that, as long as prices continue to be set at a national level, the hold gas has on the cost of electricity will be hard to break. Less so with regional – or, in the jargon, “zonal” – pricing.

Think of Scotland, blessed with vast wind resources but just 5.5 million people. The argument goes that if prices were set locally, it wouldn’t be necessary to pay wind farms to be turned down because there wasn’t enough capacity in the cables to carry all the electricity into England.

On a windy day like 3 June, they would have to sell that spare power to local people instead of into a national market. The theory is prices would fall dramatically – on some days Scottish customers might even get their electricity for free.

Other areas with lots of renewable power – such as Yorkshire and the North East, as well as parts of Wales – would stand to benefit too. And, as solar investment increases in Lincolnshire and other parts of the east of England, they could also see prices tumble.

All that cheap power could also transform the economics of industry. Supporters argue that it would attract energy-intensive businesses such as data centres, chemical companies and other manufacturing industries.

In London and much of the south of England, the price of electricity would sometimes be higher than in the windy north. But supporters say some of the hundreds of millions of pounds the system would save could be used to make sure no one pays more than they do now.

And those higher prices could also encourage investors to build new wind farms and solar plants closer to where the demand is. The argument is that would lower prices in the long run and bring another benefit – less electricity would need to be carried around the country, so we would need fewer new pylons, saving everyone money and meaning less clutter in the countryside.

“Zonal pricing would make the energy system as a whole dramatically more efficient, slashing this waste and cutting bills for every family and business in the country,” argues Greg Jackson, the CEO of Octopus Energy, one of the biggest energy suppliers in the UK.

Research commissioned by the company estimates the savings could top £55 billion by 2050 – which it claims could knock £50 to £100 a year off the average bill. Octopus points out Sweden made the switch to regional pricing in just 18 months.

The supporters of regional pricing include NESO, Citizens Advice and the head of the energy regulator, Ofgem. Last week a committee of the House of Lords recommended the country should switch to the system.

There are, however, many businesses involved in building and running renewable energy plants that oppose the move.

“We’re making billions of pounds of investments in renewable power in the UK every year,” says Tom Glover, the UK chair of the giant German power company RWE. “I can’t go to my board and say let’s take a bet on billions of pounds of investment.”

He’s worried changing the way energy is priced could undermine contracts and make revenues more uncertain. And he says it risks undermining the government’s big push to switch to green energy.

The main cost of wind and solar plants is in the build. It means the price of the energy they produce is very closely tied to the cost of building and, because developers borrow most of the money, that means the interest rates they are charged.

And we are talking a lot of money. The government is expecting power companies to spend £40bn pounds a year over the next five years on renewable projects in the UK.

Glover says even a very small change in interest rates could have dramatic effects on how much renewable infrastructure is built and how much the power from it costs.

“Those additional costs could quickly overwhelm any of the benefits of regional pricing,” says Stephen Woodhouse, an economist with the consultancy firm AFRY, which has studied the impact of regional pricing for the power companies.

That would come as already high interest rates have combined with rising prices for steel and other materials to push up the cost of renewables. Plans for a huge wind farm off the coast of Yorkshire were cancelled last month because the developer said it no longer made economic sense.

And there’s another consideration, he says. The National Grid, which owns the pylons, substations and cables that move electricity around the country, is already rolling out a huge investment programme – some £60bn over the next five years – to upgrade the system ready for the new world of clean power.

That new infrastructure will mean more capacity to bring electricity from our windy northern coasts down south, and therefore also mean fewer savings from a regional pricing system in the future.

There are other arguments too. Critics warn introducing regional pricing could take years, that energy-intensive businesses like British Steel can’t just up sticks and move, and that the system will be unfair because some customers will pay more than others.

But according to Greg Jackson of Octopus, the power companies and their backers just want to protect their profits. “Unsurprisingly, it’s the companies that enjoy attractive returns from this absurd system who are lobbying hard to maintain the status quo,” he says.

Yet the power companies say Octopus has a vested interest too. It is the UK’s biggest energy supplier with some seven million customers, and owns a sophisticated billing system it licenses to other suppliers, so could gain from changes to the way electricity is priced, they claim.

And the clock is ticking. Whether the government meets its clean power targets will depend on how many new wind farms and solar plants are built.

The companies who will build them say they need certainty around the future of the electricity market, so a decision must be taken soon.

It’s expected in the next couple of weeks. Over to you, Mr Miliband.

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Sonny Olumati was born in Rome and has lived in Italy all his life but the country he calls home does not recognise him as its own.

To Italy, Sonny is Nigerian, like his passport, and the 39-year-old is only welcome as long as his latest residence permit.

“I’ve been born here. I will live here. I will die here,” the dancer and activist tells me in what he calls “macaroni” Italian-English beneath the palm trees of a scruffy Roman park.

“But not having citizenship is like… being rejected from your country. And I don’t think this is a feeling we should have”.

That is why Sonny and others have been campaigning for a “Yes” vote in a national referendum on Sunday and Monday that proposes halving the time required to apply for Italian citizenship.

Any children under 18 would automatically be naturalised along with their parents.

Cutting the wait from 10 years to five would bring this country in line with most others in Europe and, proponents argue, improve integration.

The referendum was initiated by a citizens’ initiative and is supported by civil society groups. But for such a referendum to be valid, 50% of all voters in Italy have to turn up.

Giorgia Meloni, the country’s hard-right prime minister, has announced she will boycott the vote, declaring the citizenship law already “excellent” and “very open”.

Other parties allied to her are calling on Italians to go to the beach instead of the polling station.

Sonny will not be taking part either. Without citizenship, he is not entitled to vote.

The question of who gets to be Italian is a sensitive one.

Large numbers of migrants and refugees arrive in the country each year helped across the Mediterranean from North Africa by smuggling gangs.

Meloni’s populist government has made a big deal about cutting the number of arrivals.

But this referendum is aimed at those who have travelled legally for work to a country with a rapidly shrinking and ageing population.

The aim is limited: to speed up the process for getting citizenship, not ease the strict criteria.

“Knowledge of the Italian language, not having criminal charges, continuous residence et cetera – all the various requirements remain the same,” explains Carla Taibi of the liberal party More Europe, one of several backers of the referendum.

The reform would affect long-term foreign residents already employed in Italy and their families: from those on factory production lines in the north to those caring for pensioners in plush Rome neighbourhoods.

Up to 1.4 million people could qualify for citizenship immediately, with some estimates ranging higher.

“These people live in Italy, study and work and contribute. This is about changing the perception of them so they are not strangers anymore – but Italian,” argues Taibi.

The reform would also have practical implications.

As a non-Italian, Sonny cannot apply for a public sector job, and even struggled to get a driving licence.

When he was booked for hit reality TV show Fame Island last year, he ended up arriving two weeks late on set in Honduras because he had had so many problems getting the right paperwork.

For a long time, Meloni ignored the referendum entirely. Italy’s publicly owned media, run by a close Meloni ally, have also paid scant attention to the vote.

There is no substantive “No” campaign, making it hard to have a balanced debate.

But the real reason appears strategic.

“They don’t want to raise awareness of the significance of the referendum,” Professor Roberto D’Alimonte of Luiss University in Rome explains. “That’s rational, to make sure that the 50% threshold won’t be reached.”

The prime minister eventually announced she would turn up at a polling station “to show respect for the ballot box” – but refuse to cast a vote.

“When you disagree, you also have the option of abstaining,” Meloni told a TV chat show this week, after critics accused her of disrespecting democracy.

Italy’s citizenship system was “excellent”, she argued, already granting citizenship to more foreign nationals than most countries in Europe: 217,000 last year, according to the national statistics agency, Istat.

But about 30,000 of those were Argentines with Italian ancestry on the other side of the world, unlikely even to visit.

Meanwhile, Meloni’s coalition partner, Roberto Vannacci of the far-right League, accused those behind the referendum of “selling off our citizenship and erasing our identity”.

I ask Sonny why he thinks his own application for citizenship has taken over two decades.

“It’s racism,” he replies immediately.

At one point his file was lost completely, and he has now been told his case is “pending”.

“We have ministers who talk about white supremacy – racial replacement of Italy,” the activist recalls a 2023 comment by the agriculture minister from Meloni’s own party.

“They don’t want black immigration and we know it. I was born here 39 years ago so I know what I say.”

It is an accusation the prime minister has denied repeatedly.

Insaf Dimassi, 28, defines herself as “Italian without citizenship”.

“Italy let me grow up and become the person I am today, so not being seen as a citizen is extremely painful and frustrating,” she explains from the northern city of Bologna where she is studying for a PhD.

Insaf’s father travelled to Italy for work when she was a baby, and she and her mother then joined him. Her parents finally got Italian citizenship 20 days after Insaf turned 18. That meant she had to apply for herself from scratch, including proving a steady income.

Insaf chose to study instead.

“I arrived here at nine months old, and maybe at 33 or 34 – if all goes well – I can finally be an Italian citizen,” she says, exasperated.

She remembers exactly when the significance of her “outsider” status hit home: it was when she was asked to run for election alongside a candidate for mayor in her hometown.

When she shared the news with her parents, full of excitement, they had to remind her she was not Italian and was not eligible.

“They say it’s a matter of meritocracy to be a citizen, that you have to earn it. But more than being myself, what do I have to demonstrate?” Insaf wants to know.

“Not being allowed to vote, or be represented, is being invisible.”

On the eve of the referendum, students in Rome wrote a call to the polls on the cobbles of a city square.

“Vote ‘YES’ on the 8th and 9th [of June],” they spelled out in giant cardboard letters.

With a government boycott and such meagre publicity, the chances of hitting the 50% turnout threshold seem slim.

But Sonny argues that this vote is just the beginning.

“Even if they vote ‘No’, we will stay here – and think about the next step,” he says. “We have to start to talk about the place of our community in this country.”

During the mid-1970s, under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s imposition of the Emergency, India entered a period where civil liberties were suspended and much of the political opposition was jailed.

Behind this authoritarian curtain, her Congress party government quietly began reimagining the country – not as a democracy rooted in checks and balances, but as a centralised state governed by command and control, historian Srinath Raghavan reveals in his new book.

In Indira Gandhi and the Years That Transformed India, Prof Raghavan shows how Gandhi’s top bureaucrats and party loyalists began pushing for a presidential system – one that would centralise executive power, sideline an “obstructionist” judiciary and reduce parliament to a symbolic chorus.

Inspired in part by Charles de Gaulle’s France, the push for a stronger presidency in India reflected a clear ambition to move beyond the constraints of parliamentary democracy – even if it never fully materialised.

It all began, writes Prof Raghavan, in September 1975, when BK Nehru, a seasoned diplomat and a close aide of Gandhi, wrote a letter hailing the Emergency as a “tour de force of immense courage and power produced by popular support” and urged Gandhi to seize the moment.

Parliamentary democracy had “not been able to provide the answer to our needs”, Nehru wrote. In this system the executive was continuously dependent on the support of an elected legislature “which is looking for popularity and stops any unpleasant measure”.

What India needed, Nehru said, was a directly elected president – freed from parliamentary dependence and capable of taking “tough, unpleasant and unpopular decisions” in the national interest, Prof Raghavan writes.

The model he pointed to was de Gaulle’s France – concentrating power in a strong presidency. Nehru imagined a single, seven-year presidential term, proportional representation in Parliament and state legislatures, a judiciary with curtailed powers and a press reined in by strict libel laws. He even proposed stripping fundamental rights – right to equality or freedom of speech, for example – of their justiciability.

Nehru urged Indira Gandhi to “make these fundamental changes in the Constitution now when you have two-thirds majority”. His ideas were “received with rapture” by the prime minister’s secretary PN Dhar. Gandhi then gave Nehru approval to discuss these ideas with her party leaders but said “very clearly and emphatically” that he should not convey the impression that they had the stamp of her approval.

Prof Raghavan writes that the ideas met with enthusiastic support from senior Congress leaders like Jagjivan Ram and foreign minister Swaran Singh. The chief minister of Haryana state was blunt: “Get rid of this election nonsense. If you ask me just make our sister [Indira Gandhi] President for life and there’s no need to do anything else”. M Karunanidhi of Tamil Nadu – one of two non-Congress chief ministers consulted – was unimpressed.

When Nehru reported back to Gandhi, she remained non-committal, Prof Raghavan writes. She instructed her closest aides to explore the proposals further.

What emerged was a document titled “A Fresh Look at Our Constitution: Some suggestions”, drafted in secrecy and circulated among trusted advisors. It proposed a president with powers greater than even their American counterpart, including control over judicial appointments and legislation. A new “Superior Council of Judiciary”, chaired by the president, would interpret “laws and the Constitution” – effectively neutering the Supreme Court.

Gandhi sent this document to Dhar, who recognised it “twisted the Constitution in an ambiguously authoritarian direction”. Congress president DK Barooah tested the waters by publicly calling for a “thorough re-examination” of the Constitution at the party’s 1975 annual session.

The idea never fully crystallised into a formal proposal. But its shadow loomed over the Forty-second Amendment Act, passed in 1976, which expanded Parliament’s powers, limited judicial review and further centralised executive authority.

The amendment made striking down laws harder by requiring supermajorities of five or seven judges, and aimed to dilute the Constitution’s ‘basic structure doctrine’ that limited parliament’s power.

It also handed the federal government sweeping authority to deploy armed forces in states, declare region-specific Emergencies, and extend President’s Rule – direct federal rule – from six months to a year. It also put election disputes out of the judiciary’s reach.

This was not yet a presidential system, but it carried its genetic imprint – a powerful executive, marginalised judiciary and weakened checks and balances. The Statesman newspaper warned that “by one sure stroke, the amendment tilts the constitutional balance in favour of the parliament.”

Meanwhile, Gandhi’s loyalists were going all in. Defence minister Bansi Lal urged “lifelong power” for her as prime minister, while Congress members in the northern states of Haryana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh unanimously called for a new constituent assembly in October 1976.

“The prime minister was taken aback. She decided to snub these moves and hasten the passage of the amendment bill in the parliament,” writes Prof Raghavan.

By December 1976, the bill had been passed by both houses of parliament and ratified by 13 state legislatures and signed into law by the president.

After Gandhi’s shock defeat in 1977, the short-lived Janata Party – a patchwork of anti-Gandhi forces – moved quickly to undo the damage. Through the Forty-third and Forty-fourth Amendments, it rolled back key parts of the Forty Second, scrapping authoritarian provisions and restoring democratic checks and balances.

Gandhi was swept back to power in January 1980, after the Janata Party government collapsed due to internal divisions and leadership struggles. Curiously, two years later, prominent voices in the party again mooted the idea of a presidential system.

In 1982, with President Sanjiva Reddy’s term ending, Gandhi seriously considered stepping down as prime minister to become president of India.

Her principal secretary later revealed she was “very serious” about the move. She was tired of carrying the Congress party on her back and saw the presidency as a way to deliver a “shock treatment to her party, thereby giving it a new stimulus”.

Ultimately, she backed down. Instead, she elevated Zail Singh, her loyal home minister, to the presidency.

Despite serious flirtation, India never made the leap to a presidential system. Did Gandhi, a deeply tactical politician, hold herself back ? Or was there no national appetite for radical change and India’s parliamentary system proved sticky?

There was a hint of presidential drift in the early 1970s, as India’s parliamentary democracy – especially after 1967 – grew more competitive and unstable, marked by fragile coalitions, according to Prof Raghavan. Around this time, voices began suggesting that a presidential system might suit India better. The Emergency became the moment when these ideas crystallised into serious political thinking.

“The aim was to reshape the system in ways that immediately strengthened her hold on power. There was no grand long-term design – most of the lasting consequences of her [Gandhi’s] rule were likely unintended,” Prof Raghavan told the BBC.

“During the Emergency, her primary goal was short-term: to shield her office from any challenge. The Forty Second Amendment was crafted to ensure that even the judiciary couldn’t stand in her way.”

The itch for a presidential system within the Congress never quite faded. As late as April 1984, senior minister Vasant Sathe launched a nationwide debate advocating a shift to presidential governance – even while in power.

But six months later, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in Delhi, and with her, the conversation abruptly died. India stayed a parliamentary democracy.

South Koreans are celebrating their first win in the Tony Awards, which they say highlights their country’s status as a cultural powerhouse.

The acclaimed Broadway production of Maybe Happy Ending, which debuted in South Korea almost a decade ago, won six Tonys, including best musical.

Maybe Happy Ending is about the romance between two humanoid robots living in an apartment building on the outskirts of Seoul. It entered Sunday night’s awards ceremony with 10 nominations.

With the Tonys, South Koreans have now won the four most coveted awards in US entertainment. Squid Game won Emmy awards in 2022 while Parasite won four Oscars in 2020. Soprano Sumi Jo won a Grammy in 1993.

On Sunday, South Korean lyricist Hue Park and American composer Will Aronson took home the Tony for best original score and best book of a musical.

Before making their Broadway debut with Maybe Happy Ending in 2024, the pair, who met as students at New York University, had written the musical in both English and Korean.

“This is amazing!” one post on Threads reads. “I heard the Broadway version got even more polished. I’m so proud that Korea is becoming a true cultural powerhouse.”

“This feels like a dream come true for the Korean Wave,” reads another post. “I’m just as thrilled as when Parasite won the Oscars, Squid Game won the Emmys, and Han Kang received the Nobel Prize.”

Former Glee star Darren Criss, who played one of the robots, Oliver, won best lead actor in a musical. It was his first Tony win.

The musical, which also stars Helen J Shen as robot Claire, was already on a streak this awards season.

It bagged some of the top prizes at the Outer Critics Circle Awards and Drama League Awards this year.

First directed by Kim Dong-yeon, Maybe Happy Ending premiered in Seoul in 2016 to much critical acclaim. It has since been revived several times in South Korea and abroad – in both Korean and English.

Maybe Happy Ending’s success comes as South Korean artists continue to break ground in entertainment, especially with K-pop acts like BTS and Blackpink dominating music in the last few years.

It also serves as a window into Korean culture, some social media users say.

“It’s amazing that Korean elements like Jeju Island, fireflies, and hwabun (a plant pot) were kept in the Broadway version too,” reads one post on Threads.

“I already felt proud just seeing it nominated, but watching the local audience react so positively made it even more special.”

A Colombian presidential candidate remains in intensive care after he was shot three times – twice in the head – at a campaign event in the capital, Bogotá.

Miguel Uribe Turbay, a 39-year-old senator, was attacked while addressing supporters in a park on Saturday. Police arrested a 15-year-old suspect at the scene, the attorney general’s office said.

Uribe’s wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, called on the nation to pray for his survival, saying: “Miguel is currently fighting for his life. Let us ask God to guide the hands of the doctors who are treating him.”

Uribe’s Centro Democratico party condemned the attack, calling it a threat to “democracy and freedom in Colombia”.

Footage shared online appears to show the moment when he was shot in the head mid-speech, prompting those gathered to flee in panic.

He was airlifted to the Santa Fe Foundation hospital where supporters gathered to hold a vigil.

Uribe was rushed into surgery while in a critical condition, Bogotá Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán said late on Saturday night.

The hospital said on Sunday morning that Uribe had undergone procedures to his head and left thigh, before being taken to be stabilised in intensive care.

He remains in an extremely serious condition, it added.

The 15-year-old suspect was shot in the leg as police and security officers pursued him following the attack, according to local media.

He was arrested carrying a “9mm Glock-type firearm”, a statement from the attorney general’s office said. An investigation is under way.

The government of left-wing President Gustavo Petro said it “categorically” condemned the attack as an “act of violence not only against his person, but also against democracy”.

Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez deplored the “vile attack” and offered a 3bn peso ($730,000; £540,000) reward for information about who may have been behind it.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also condemned the shooting as a “direct threat to democracy”.

He blamed the attack, without providing examples, on “violent leftist rhetoric coming from the highest levels of the Colombian government”. The suspect’s motivation remains unclear.

Many Colombians have condemned the hostile rhetoric increasingly used by the government and opposition parties alike.

The week before the shooting was particularly tense, with Petro seeking popular backing for his reforms in a move that opposition leaders – including Uribe – dubbed unconstitutional.

Petro urged Colombians to wish Uribe well, on what he described as a “day of pain” in a video address to the nation.

There was a “political difference” between Uribe and the government, but it was “only political”, he said.

“What matters most today is that all Colombians focus with the energy of our hearts, with our will to live… on ensuring that Dr Miguel Uribe stays alive,” the president added.

Uribe, a right-wing critic of Petro, announced his candidacy for next year’s presidential election in October. He has been a senator since 2022.

He is from a prominent political family in Colombia, with links to the country’s Liberal Party. His father was a union leader and businessman.

His mother was Diana Turbay, a journalist who was killed in 1991 in a rescue attempt after she had been kidnapped by the Medellin drugs cartel run at the time by Pablo Escobar.

For many, Saturday’s shooting harked back to Colombia’s violent history, when figures like Escobar attacked politicians to pressure the government.

“We cannot return to situations of political violence, nor to times when violence was used to eliminate those who thought differently,” Bogotá Mayor Galán said shortly after the attack.

Petro had been elected on a promise to bring “total peace” to the country.

He made early progress in talks with gangs and rebel groups, but his interior minister recently acknowledged that the strategy was “not going well”.

Dozens of soldiers and police officers were killed over a two-week span in April, in attacks the Colombian government blamed on armed groups.

Earlier in the year, more than 32,000 people fled their homes in the northern Catatumbo region, where to rival rebel groups engaged in bloody fighting despite a peace treaty.

Dozens of activists have staged a protest outside a mortuary in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, following the death of a 26-year-old man in police custody.

Albert Omondi Ojwang’s death has sparked outrage in Kenya. He was arrested following a complaint by the deputy police chief, who accused him of tarnishing his name on social media.

In an initial statement, police said that Mr Ojwang “sustained head injuries after hitting his head against a cell wall” while in custody.

However, the Ojwang family’s lawyer, Julius Juma, said the body bore signs of severe physical trauma, including swelling on the head, nose and ears.

Mr Juma also cited bruises on Mr Ojwang’s shoulders and hands – injuries which, he said, were inconsistent with a single impact against a wall.

Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) has launched an inquiry into his death.

Holding placards and chanting “Stop killing us”, a crowd protested outside Nairobi City mortuary, where Mr Ojwang’s body is being kept.

The crowd later marched to the Central Police Station where Mr Ojwang was being held at the time of his death.

Mr Ojwang was arrested in Homa Bay, a town in western Kenya, on Friday, over a post on X that was allegedly critical of the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Eliud Lagat.

He was subsequently transferred over 350 km (220 miles) to Nairobi and booked into the Central Police Station on Saturday.

According to Mr Kanja, Mr Ojwang was arrested after Mr Lagat filed a complaint that his name was being “tarnished”.

“It was on that basis that investigations were actually being carried out,” Mr Kanja said at a press conference.

Responding to mounting public pressure, Mr Kanja announced that senior officers at Nairobi’s Central Police Station had been “interdicted”.

Police spokesperson Michael Muchiri, told the BBC that this means the officers could not perform their duties, and would receive half their salaries, pending the outcome of the investigation by IPOA.

Speaking at a press conference, Inspector General Kanja said the police would give the investigators all “necessary support” to resolve the case.

Mr Ojwang was found unconscious during a routine inspection of the cells and “rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival”, police say.

The director of Amnesty International’s Kenya branch, Irungu Houghton, told the BBC that Mr Ojwang’s death was “very suspicious”.

Mr Houghton said it was “quite shocking” that Mr Ojwang was not booked in at the local police station after being detained, but was instead taken on a long journey.

On Sunday, he called on the independent investigators to secure what he described as “the crime scene” at the police station in Nairobi.

Mr Ojwang’s death in detention comes at a time of rising concern about how some government critics are being treated.

Last week, software developer Rose Njeri, who created a tool to help people oppose a government finance bill, was charged with violating a cybercrime law. She denies the charge.

• Why Kenya’s president has so many nicknames
• The ‘tax collector’ president sparking Kenyan anger
• BBC identifies security forces who shot Kenya anti-tax protesters

Cameroon’s main opposition leader Maurice Kamto says police have surrounded his home for the past two days since he returned from France, where he had held a political rally that inflamed the ruling CPDM party.

On Sunday law enforcement officers blocked the 71-year-old from leaving his lodgings in the main city of Douala for a meeting with members of his Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) party.

He later called off plans to hold the meeting on Monday because of the strong police presence.

Kamto plans to contest Cameroon’s presidential election later this year, hoping to end 92-year-old Paul Biya’s four-decade grip on power. Biya has not yet declared whether he will stand for re-election.

Kamto spent nine months in detention after contesting the 2018 poll, when the authorities accused the former law professor of insurrection following protests by his supporters who claimed that the poll had been rigged in favour of Biya. The government denied the allegation.

While in Paris last month, Kamto promised to protect Biya and his family if he wins October’s election.

“When you do me the great of honour of entrusting me with the reins, you can be sure that nothing will happen to Mr Biya and his family. Nothing. I guarantee it, I have no time for hatred. I [only] have time to build Cameroon with you,” he told thousands of Cameroonians living in the diaspora who had turned up to his rally on 31 May.

This did not go down well with ruling party officials, with one calling his comments “pathetic”.

“What protection do they need? Which family are we talking about?,” asked Labour Minister Grégoire Owona in a Facebook post, adding, “Cameroon is not in danger.”

Following Kamto’s return, security has been tightened in parts of Douala.

Police officers on the ground told the BBC on Monday that they had been instructed to watch the neighbourhood where Kamto was staying, and the media was not allowed to film.

Footage filmed in the city on Sunday evening showed Kamto telling supporters “as I speak, I’m still sequestered”.

“Go home in calm and dignity,” he told chanting supporters who had gathered at the scene.

Police and gendarme officers had also restricted access to the CRM party building that Kamto was trying to reach, saying the meeting was not authorised.

But Kamto denies this, saying local authorities and law enforcement officials were informed that he was coming to the city for a meeting.

As the election approaches, rights groups have condemned the government’s crackdown on dissent in the Central African nation.

Parliamentary elections that were also supposed to take place earlier this year have been delayed until 2026.

Biya has been in power for 42 years and is one of the world’s oldest heads of state.

Last year the country banned reports on the president’s health, following rumours that he had died.

Kamto’s eligibility to run for the presidency is in question, because Cameroonian law demands that any political party must already have elected representatives in place if its leader wishes to run for president.

At the last presidential election Kamto’s CRM party had one senator, but going into this election it has no elected officials.

Alternatively Kamto could run as an independent candidate, for which he would need 300 signatures from designated personalities from across the country.

Yet Kamto insists there is “no legal obstacle” stopping his bid for the presidency, and CRM representative Guy Tassé told the AFP news agency that there was “a political manoeuvre by the regime to try to block the candidate they fear because he embodies real change”.

The country is also in the throes of a separatist insurgency – with rebels demanding independence for Cameroon’s two English-speaking provinces, which are home to 20% of the population.

In the near-decade since the conflict began, at least 6,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes.

• ‘Nowhere is safe’ – Cameroonians trapped between separatists and soldiers
• Art curator Koyo Kouoh dies at height of career
• The lawyer risking everything to defend LGBT rights
• Paul Biya: Cameroon’s ‘absentee president’

A new round of talks aimed at resolving the trade war between the US and China have started in central London.

A senior US delegation including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has met with Chinese representatives such as Vice Premier He Lifeng at Lancaster House to resolve tensions between the world’s two largest economies, which is threatening global growth.

Chinese exports of rare earths, which are crucial for modern technology, as well as Beijing’s access to US products, including computer chips, are expected to be high on the agenda.

Last month, Washington and Beijing agreed a temporary truce over trade tariffs but each country has since accused the other of breaching the deal.

The new round of negotiations follows a phone call between Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping last week which the US President described as a “very good talk”.

The call – the first between the two leaders since the trade war erupted in February – “resulted in a very positive conclusion for both countries”, Trump said.

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Xi told Trump that the US should “withdraw the negative measures it has taken against China”.

While last month’s talks in Geneva reduced tariffs, they did not resolve a range of other issues including Chinese exports of rare earth metals and magnets which are essential for manufacturing everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, Washington has restricted China’s access to US goods such as semiconductors and other related technologies linked to artificial intelligence (AI).

The inclusion of Lutnick in this week’s meetings with China is “a welcome addition”, according to Swetha Ramachandran, fund manager at Artemis, since he is “behind some of the very harsh export controls of technology to China”.

She told the BBC’s Today programme: “Some of the focus certainly seems to be on rare earths where China, of course, has dominance in terms of producing.

“They mine 69% of the rare earths globally that are quite essential to technology development in the US so I think there are enough chips on the table here that could make it acceptable for both sides to walk away with desired outcomes.”

As well as Lutnick, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is meeting Chinese officials in London.

When Trump announced sweeping tariffs on imports from a number of countries earlier this year, China was the hardest hit. Beijing responded with its own higher rates on US imports, and this triggered tit-for-tat increases that peaked at 145%.

In May, talks held in Switzerland led to a temporary truce that Trump called a “total reset”.

It brought US tariffs on Chinese products down to 30%, while Beijing slashed levies on US imports to 10% and promised to lift barriers on critical mineral exports. It gave both sides a 90-day deadline to try to reach a trade deal.

But the US and China have since claimed breaches on non-tariff pledges.

Greer said China had failed to roll-back restrictions on exports of rare earth magnets.

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

On Saturday, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said it had approved some applications for rare earth export licences, although it did not provide details of which countries were involved.

Trump said on Friday that Xi had agreed to restart trade in rare earth materials.

But speaking on Sunday, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CBS News that “those exports of critical minerals have been getting released at a rate that is, you know, higher than it was, but not as high as we believe we agreed to in Geneva”.

Prior to talks with the US, He met with Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Sunday where the vice premier said China and the UK should maintain and deepen communication and cooperation across economics and finance, according to a report by state broadcaster CCTV.

China wants to build a new embassy at Royal Mint Court, a building complex close to the City of London which is home to the UK financial industry. Beijing bought the site in 2018.

The US has reportedly raised concerns about the proposed embassy’s proximity to sensitive infrastructure underpinning banks and institutions.

The UK is in talks to finalise an agreement with the US over tariffs, which must be signed by 9 July or British exports of steel will face higher taxes when they reach American ports.

Economists have warned that Trump’s trade policy will impact the global economy.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said it now expected worldwide economic growth to be a “modest” 2.9%, down from a previous forecast of 3.1%.

It blamed a “significant” rise in trade barriers and warned that “weakened economic prospects will be felt around the world, with almost no exception”.

New data released by Bejing on Monday showed China’s exports in May were lower than analysts expected.

China’s exports in dollar terms increased by 4.8% compared to the same time last year.

At the same time imports dropped by 3.4%, which was much worse than the 0.9% fall predicted.

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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Dozens of people have been arrested in Los Angeles after days of violent protests, which erupted following immigration raids.

US President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard troops to the city, triggering a political row. He also condemned what he called “violent, insurrectionist mobs”.

Vehicles have been set on fire and there have been reports of looting in affected areas of America’s second largest city.

• Follow live coverage of the protests
• Full story: Unlawful assembly declared in downtown LA
• How city erupted over rumours of immigration raid at a hardware store
• Analysis: Trump’s intervention in LA may thrill his base but inflame tensions

The protests began on Friday after it emerged Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers were carrying out raids in areas of the city with prominent Latino populations.

Raids have stepped up after Trump returned to the White House and pledged to crack down on illegal immigration.

The BBC’s US partner, CBS News, reported that recent operations took place in the Westlake district as well as in Paramount, south of LA – where the population is more than 82% Hispanic.

There were also reports of an ICE raid at a Home Depot shop in Paramount, which officials told the BBC were false.

ICE later told CBS that 44 unauthorised immigrants were arrested in a single operation at a job site on Friday. Another 77 were also arrested in the greater LA area on the same day.

The protests have been largely limited to downtown LA, which has been declared an “unlawful assembly” area by police after days of clashes.

• Vehicles were set alight on Sunday, and police accused protesters of using incendiary devices against horse patrols. Meanwhile, officers in riot gear have used flash-bang grenades and pepper spray to subdue crowds. The unrest temporarily brought the 101 freeway to a halt, and there were reports of looting
• The downtown Federal Building has become a flashpoint after it emerged that ICE detainees were allegedly being held there. On Saturday, ICE accused “over 1,000 rioters” of surrounding and attacking the building
• A Home Depot shop in Paramount, roughly 20 miles (32 km) south of downtown LA, has become another key protest site. Tear gas and flash-bangs were deployed against protesters who also gathered on Saturday, and armed National Guard troops guarded a nearby business park on Sunday
• The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said it made 29 arrests on Saturday. A further 27 people were arrested on Sunday
• Separately, about 60 people were arrested and three officers injured following unrest in San Francisco on Sunday, police there said

Elsewhere in the sprawling city of LA, life continues as normal – and some areas were closed off over the weekend for the LA Pride parade.

On Saturday, Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard members to the Los Angeles area, triggering a political row with state politicians.

The National Guard acts as a hybrid entity that serves both state and federal interests. Typically, a state’s force is activated at the request of the governor.

Trump circumvented that step by invoking a rarely-used federal law, arguing that the protests constituted “a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States”.

This is reportedly the first time the National Guard has been activated without request of the state’s governor since 1965.

The move has been condemned by California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass, who said they believed local police could handle the situation.

Newsom accused Trump of an “illegal” act that was “putting fuel on this fire”, and has threatened to sue.

The role of the National Guard is to protect federal agents, including ICE and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel, as they carry out their duties.

The troops will not be conducting their own immigration raids or performing regular policing – which remains the role of the (LAPD).

The law generally prohibits domestic use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement, outside of some exceptions like the Insurrection Act.

Although Trump has threatened to invoke that act in the past, during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, for example, he has not done so here.

Trump’s allies have defended his decision to mobilise the National Guard. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth also said active-duty US marines stationed at nearby Camp Pendleton would be sent if needed and were on “high alert”.

The recent raids are part of the president’s aim to enact the “biggest deportation operation” in US history. Los Angeles, where over one-third of the population is born outside of the US, has been a key target for operations.

In early May, ICE announced it had arrested 239 undocumented migrants during a week-long operation in the LA area, as overall arrests and deportations lagged behind Trump’s expectations.

The following month, the White House increased its goal for ICE officials to make at least 3,000 arrests per day.

Authorities have expanded their search increasingly to include workplaces such as restaurants and retail shops.

The ambitious deportation campaign has included removing migrants to a mega-prison in El Salvador, including at least one who was in the US legally. Many of Trump’s actions have been met by legal challenges.

A new round of talks aimed at resolving the trade war between the US and China have started in central London.

A senior US delegation including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has met with Chinese representatives such as Vice Premier He Lifeng at Lancaster House to resolve tensions between the world’s two largest economies, which is threatening global growth.

Chinese exports of rare earths, which are crucial for modern technology, as well as Beijing’s access to US products, including computer chips, are expected to be high on the agenda.

Last month, Washington and Beijing agreed a temporary truce over trade tariffs but each country has since accused the other of breaching the deal.

The new round of negotiations follows a phone call between Donald Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping last week which the US President described as a “very good talk”.

The call – the first between the two leaders since the trade war erupted in February – “resulted in a very positive conclusion for both countries”, Trump said.

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Xi told Trump that the US should “withdraw the negative measures it has taken against China”.

While last month’s talks in Geneva reduced tariffs, they did not resolve a range of other issues including Chinese exports of rare earth metals and magnets which are essential for manufacturing everything from smartphones to electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, Washington has restricted China’s access to US goods such as semiconductors and other related technologies linked to artificial intelligence (AI).

The inclusion of Lutnick in this week’s meetings with China is “a welcome addition”, according to Swetha Ramachandran, fund manager at Artemis, since he is “behind some of the very harsh export controls of technology to China”.

She told the BBC’s Today programme: “Some of the focus certainly seems to be on rare earths where China, of course, has dominance in terms of producing.

“They mine 69% of the rare earths globally that are quite essential to technology development in the US so I think there are enough chips on the table here that could make it acceptable for both sides to walk away with desired outcomes.”

As well as Lutnick, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is meeting Chinese officials in London.

When Trump announced sweeping tariffs on imports from a number of countries earlier this year, China was the hardest hit. Beijing responded with its own higher rates on US imports, and this triggered tit-for-tat increases that peaked at 145%.

In May, talks held in Switzerland led to a temporary truce that Trump called a “total reset”.

It brought US tariffs on Chinese products down to 30%, while Beijing slashed levies on US imports to 10% and promised to lift barriers on critical mineral exports. It gave both sides a 90-day deadline to try to reach a trade deal.

But the US and China have since claimed breaches on non-tariff pledges.

Greer said China had failed to roll-back restrictions on exports of rare earth magnets.

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

On Saturday, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said it had approved some applications for rare earth export licences, although it did not provide details of which countries were involved.

Trump said on Friday that Xi had agreed to restart trade in rare earth materials.

But speaking on Sunday, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CBS News that “those exports of critical minerals have been getting released at a rate that is, you know, higher than it was, but not as high as we believe we agreed to in Geneva”.

Prior to talks with the US, He met with Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Sunday where the vice premier said China and the UK should maintain and deepen communication and cooperation across economics and finance, according to a report by state broadcaster CCTV.

China wants to build a new embassy at Royal Mint Court, a building complex close to the City of London which is home to the UK financial industry. Beijing bought the site in 2018.

The US has reportedly raised concerns about the proposed embassy’s proximity to sensitive infrastructure underpinning banks and institutions.

The UK is in talks to finalise an agreement with the US over tariffs, which must be signed by 9 July or British exports of steel will face higher taxes when they reach American ports.

Economists have warned that Trump’s trade policy will impact the global economy.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said it now expected worldwide economic growth to be a “modest” 2.9%, down from a previous forecast of 3.1%.

It blamed a “significant” rise in trade barriers and warned that “weakened economic prospects will be felt around the world, with almost no exception”.

New data released by Bejing on Monday showed China’s exports in May were lower than analysts expected.

China’s exports in dollar terms increased by 4.8% compared to the same time last year.

At the same time imports dropped by 3.4%, which was much worse than the 0.9% fall predicted.

The EU is investigating Pornhub, Stripchat and two other pornography websites it believes may be falling foul of its online content laws.

The European Commission said the sites, which also include XVideos and XNXX, did not appear to have measures in place to safeguard children and their rights.

It said this included an apparent lack of “appropriate” age verification methods to stop children accessing adult material.

“Online platforms must ensure that the rights and best interests of children are central to the design and functioning of their services,” it said.

Pornhub’s parent company Aylo said it was aware of the investigation and “fully committed to ensuring the safety of minors online”.

“We will always comply with the law, but we hope that governments around the world will implement laws that protect the safety and security of users,” it added.

The BBC has also approached Stripchat for comment.

The Commission said its initial investigations found the four platforms had not put in place “appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors”.

It said the platforms also do not appear to be abiding by requirements for porn sites to use age verification tools to protect children from accessing adult content.

A Commission official said that “click away” pop-ups currently used by some porn sites, asking users if they are over 18, may not be an effective means of doing so.

The platforms were also found not to have put into place “risk assessment and mitigation measures of any negative effects on the rights of the child, the mental and physical well-being of users,” it said.

It comes amid wider scrutiny of online pornography services worldwide, with many regulators looking to crack down on those that do not have age verification in place.

The UK’s online safety regulator Ofcom recently announced two investigations into porn sites that did not appear to have any methods to check the age of users.

It said in early May that Itai Tech Ltd – which operates a so-called “nudifying” site – and Score Internet Group LLC had failed to detail how they were preventing children from accessing their platforms.

Pornhub is the most visited porn site in the world – and the 19th most visited on the entire web, according to data from Similarweb.

But it finds itself under increasing regulatory pressure.

It has blocked access to its site in 16 US states, including Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas, that passed laws requiring it to verify the age of users.

It argues age verification should take place on users’ devices, rather than on individual, age-restricted sites, to create a simpler process for regulators and enhance privacy for users.

The companies subject to the EU’s investigation were designated as very large online platforms under its Digital Services Act (DSA) in 2023.

Under the bloc’s sweeping set of digital content rules, they face tougher requirements to tackle harmful and illegal material on the platforms.

If suspected infringements of the DSA are confirmed, platforms could face further enforcement actions or, ultimately, a fines of up to 6% of their annual turnover.

The Commission said on Tuesday that Stripchat would no longer be designated a so-called VLOP, but its suspected non-compliance with its digital content rules would still be investigated.

Smaller platforms that do not meet the 45m EU user threshold must also abide by the bloc’s digital rules to safeguard children, it said.

Coordinated action by its member states will also seek to enforce requirements for smaller pornography sites.

“Our priority is to protect minors and allow them to navigate safely online,” said Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy.

“Together with the Digital Service Coordinators in the Member States we are determined to tackle any potential harm to young online users.”

Microsoft has finally revealed its highly-anticipated handheld console, years after it was first rumoured.

The ROG Xbox Ally will let gamers access their Game Pass subscription library on-the-go, in effect meaning members will start off with hundreds of games.

It is being made in partnership with Asus, which has been making handheld gaming devices since 2023, and will be released at the end of 2025 – though it is unknown what it will cost.

Speculation over Microsoft making a handheld Xbox has been widespread for more than a decade, with the company starting and scrapping various efforts over the years.

Microsoft’s announcement comes just three days after the launch of the Switch 2.

Much like its predecessor, the Switch 2 is a hybrid gaming device – meaning it can be both played on-the-go and connect to a TV.

Its success likely led to the design of Valve’s Steam Deck, a handheld PC which gives gamers access to the entire library of titles they’ve bought through game distribution service Steam – though not all the games work on the device.

It means Microsoft may be accused of being slightly late to the game when rivals already exist in the space, but the benefit of native support for Game Pass will likely address a lot of concerns for its 34 million subscribers.

Microsoft’s new handheld will comes in two flavours, the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X.

“Whether you’re at home or on the go, your favorite games should follow you,” said Xbox head of gaming devices Roanne Sones.

“Both handhelds allow players to play natively, via the cloud, or remotely with their Xbox console in another room.”

The two versions both share a 7 inch screen with 1080p resolution.

The base version comes with 16GB memory and 512GB storage, while the “X” version has 24GB memory and double the storage.

The more powerful version of the handheld also has a bigger battery and a more powerful processor.

In both cases, Xbox will be hoping to convince players that it offers something out of the box that its rivals don’t – Microsoft’s operating system.

“Because these handhelds run Windows, you have access to games you can’t get elsewhere, so you can enjoy the full freedom and versatility of PC gaming,” said Ms Sones.

In other words, gamers can leave the Xbox app and launch other gaming platforms – such as Steam and EA Play – through the device.

But all that capability comes at a cost when it comes to weight.

At 670g and 715g respectively, the base and X versions of the Xbox Ally may be heavier than handheld gamers are used to – with Nintendo’s new Switch 2 weighing a fair bit less at 534g.

And there remains one big unanswered question – the price.

Microsoft decided not to reveal how much its new handheld will cost, but it goes without saying the more powerful X version will also be more expensive.

The Switch 2, which has a similar screen, retails at £395 in the UK, while the Steam Deck costs between £349 and £569 depending on the specs.

Part of the success of Game Pass is many highly-anticipated new releases appear on the service on launch day, meaning gamers can save money by subscribing – though you lose access to a game if you cancel your subscription.

At its showcase event where it unveiled the new handheld, Microsoft announced several new games – including a reveal that 17 new titles will come to Game Pass PC & Ultimate on day one.

Many of these are highly-anticipated games such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, Ninja Gaiden 4 and Outer Worlds 2.

It also includes the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 when that releases – likely later this year.

The new game will be a sequel to the critically-acclaimed Black Ops 2, which first released in 2012.

Interestingly, while the game was confirmed for several consoles, there was no mention of the Switch 2 at the event – despite Nintendo previously signing a 10-year deal to bring the series to its consoles in 2022.

But there’s something else which many gaming fans will have been excited to finally see revealed.

The much-anticipated Persona 4 remake, subtitled Revival, is set to be remade 17 years after it was first released on PlayStation 2.

The original, which sees a group of friends investigate a series of murders in the Japanese countryside, is considered a gaming classic.

But fans of the series will have to wait, as Sega and Atlus did not share a release date for the remake.

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