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In China, they call it the Seagull, and it has looks to match. It is sleek and angular, with bright, downward-slanting headlights that have more than a hint of mischievous eyes about them.

It is, of course, a car. A very small one, designed as a cheap city runabout – but it could have huge significance. Available in China since 2023, where it has proved extremely popular, it has just been launched in Europe with the name Dolphin Surf (because Europeans apparently aren’t as keen on seagulls as Chinese people).

When it goes on sale in the UK this week, it’s expected to have a price tag of around £18,000. That will still make it, for an electric car on western markets, very cheap indeed.

It won’t be the outright lowest-priced model on offer: the Dacia Spring, manufactured in Wuhan jointly by Renault and Dongfeng, and the Leapmotor T03, which is being produced by a joint venture between Chinese startup Leapmotor and Stellantis, both cost less.

But the Dolphin Surf is the invasive species that has long-established brands most worried. That is because the company behind it has been making ever bigger waves on international markets.

BYD is already the biggest player in China. It overtook Tesla in 2024 to become the world’s best-selling maker of electric vehicles (EVs), and since entering the European markets two years ago, it has expanded aggressively.

“We want to be number one in the British market within 10 years,” says Steve Beattie, sales and marketing director for BYD UK.

BYD is part of a wider expansion of Chinese companies and brands that some believe could change the face of the global motor industry – and which has already prompted radical action from the US government and the EU.

It means once-unknown marques like Nio, Xpeng, Zeekr or Omoda could become every bit as much household names as Ford or Volkswagen. They will join classic brands such as MG, Volvo and Lotus, which have been under Chinese ownership for years.

The products on offer already encompass a huge range, from runabouts like the tiny Dolphin Surf to exotic supercars, like the pothole-jumping U9, from BYD’s high-end sub-brand Yangwang.

“Chinese brands are making massive inroads into the European market,” says David Bailey, professor of business and economics at Birmingham Business School.

In 2024, 17 million battery and plug-in hybrid cars were sold worldwide, 11 million of those in China. Chinese brands, meanwhile, had 10% of global EV and plug-in hybrid sales outside their home country, according to the consultancy Rho Motion. That figure is only expected to grow.

For consumers, it should be good news – leading to more high-quality and affordable electric cars becoming available. But with rivalry between Beijing and western powers showing no sign of subsiding, some experts are concerned Chinese vehicles could represent a security risk from hackers and third parties. And for established players in Europe, it represents a formidable challenge to their historic dominance.

“[China has] a huge cost advantage through economies of scale and battery technology. European manufacturers have fallen well behind,” warns Mr Bailey.

“Unless they wake up very quickly and catch up, they could be wiped out.”

China’s car industry has been developing rapidly since the country joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001. But that process accelerated rapidly in 2015, when the Communist Party introduced its “Made in China 2025” initiative. The 10-year plan to make the country a leader in several high-tech industries, including EVs, attracted intense criticism from abroad, and particularly the US, amid claims of forced technology transfers and theft of intellectual property – all of which the Chinese government denies.

Fuelled by lavish state funding, the plan helped lay the groundwork for the breakneck growth of companies like BYD – originally a maker of batteries for mobile phones – and allowed the Chinese parent companies of MG and Volvo, SAIC and Geely, to become major players in the EV market.

“The general standard of Chinese cars is very, very high indeed,” says Dan Caesar, chief executive of Electric Vehicles UK.

“China has learned extremely quickly how to manufacture cars.”

Yet competition in China has become ever more cut-throat, with brands jostling for space in an increasingly saturated market. This has led them to hunt for sales elsewhere.

While Chinese firms have expanded into East Asia and South America, for years the European market proved a tough nut to crack – that is, until governments here decided to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel models.

The transition to electric cars opened the door to new players.

“[Chinese brands] have seen an opportunity to get a bit of a foothold,” says Oliver Lowe, UK product manager of Omoda and Jaecoo, two sub brands of the Chinese giant Chery.

Low labour costs in China, coupled with government subsidies and a very well-established supply chain, have given Chinese firms advantages, their rivals have claimed. A report from the Swiss bank UBS, published in late 2023, suggested that BYD alone was able to build cars 25% more cheaply than western competitors.

Chinese firms deny the playing field is uneven. Xpeng’s vice chairman Brian Gu told the BBC at the Paris Motor Show in 2024 that his company is competitive “because we have fought tooth and nail through the most competitive market in the world”.

Concerns that Chinese EV imports could flood international markets at the expense of established manufacturers reached fever pitch in 2024.

In the US, the Alliance for American Manufacturing warned they could prove to be an “extinction-level event” for the US industry, while the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen suggested that “huge state subsidies” for Chinese firms were distorting the European market.

The Biden administration took dramatic action, raising import tariffs on Chinese-made EVs from 25% to 100%, effectively making it pointless to sell them in the US.

It was condemned by Beijing as “naked protectionism”.

Meanwhile, in October 2024, the EU imposed extra tariffs of up to 35.3% on Chinese-made EVs. The UK, however, took no action.

Matthias Schmidt, founder of Schmidt Automotive Research, says the EU’s tariffs have now made it harder for Chinese firms to gain market share.

“The door was wide open in 2024… but the Chinese failed to take their chance. With the tariffs in place, Chinese manufacturers are now unable to push their cost advantage onto European consumers.”

European manufacturers have been racing to develop their own affordable electric cars. French car-maker Renault is among them.

At its factory in Douai, in northeastern France, an army of spark-spitting robots weld sections of steel to form car bodies, while on the main assembly line, automated systems mate together bodyshells, doors, batteries, motors and other parts, before human workers apply the finishing touches.

The factory has been making cars for Renault since 1974, but four years ago, the ageing production lines were replaced with new highly automated, digitally-controlled systems.

Part of the site was also taken over by the Chinese-owned battery firm AESC, which built its own “gigafactory” next door.

It’s part of Renault’s wider plan to set up an ultra-modern EV “hub” in northern France. Mirroring the lean production techniques of Chinese manufacturers, the hub cuts costs by maximising efficiency and ensuring that suppliers are located as close as possible.

“Our target was to be able to produce affordable electric cars here to sell in Europe,” explains Pierre Andrieux, director of the Douai plant, arguing that automated processes “will enable us to do that profitably”.

But the company is also exploiting something the Chinese brands do not have: heritage. Its latest model, the Renault 5 E-tech, built in Douai, borrows its name from one of the company’s most famous products.

The original Renault 5, launched in 1972, was a quirky little everyman car with boxy looks and low running costs that became a cult classic.

The new design, despite being a state-of-the art EV, pays homage to its predecessor in name and appearance, in an effort to emulate its popular appeal.

But irrespective of how desirable Chinese cars are in comparison with European rivals, some experts believe we should be wary of them – for security reasons.

Most modern vehicles are internet-enabled in some way – to allow satellite navigation, for example – and drivers’ phones are often connected to car systems. Pioneered by Tesla, so-called “over-the-air updates” can upgrade a car’s software remotely.

This has all led to concerns, in some quarters, that cars could be hacked and used to harbour spyware, monitor individuals or even be immobilised at the touch of a keyboard.

Earlier this year, a British newspaper reported that military and intelligence chiefs had been ordered not to discuss official business while riding in EVs; it was also alleged that cars with Chinese components had been banned from sensitive military sites.

Then in May, a former head of the intelligence service MI6 claimed that Chinese-made technology in a range of products, including cars, could be controlled and programmed remotely. Sir Richard Dearlove warned MPs that there was the potential to “immobilise London”.

Beijing has always denied all accusations of espionage.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London says that the recent allegations are “entirely unfounded and absurd”.

“China has consistently advocated the secure, open, and rules-based development of global supply chains,” the spokesperson told the BBC. “Chinese enterprises operating around the world are required to comply with local laws and regulations.

“To date, there is no credible evidence to support the claim that Chinese EVs pose a security threat to the UK or any other country.”

Joseph Jarnecki, research fellow at defence and security think-tank The Royal United Services Institute, argues that potential risks can be mitigated.

“Chinese carmakers exist in this highly competitive market. While they’re beholden to Chinese law and that may require compliance with national security agencies, none of them want to damage their ability to grow and to have international exports by being perceived as a security risk,” he says.

“The Chinese government equally is conscious of the need for economic growth. They’re not hell-bent on solely conducting surveillance.”

But the car industry is just one area in which Chinese technology is becoming increasingly enmeshed in the UK economy. To achieve the government’s climate objectives, for instance, “It will be necessary to use Chinese-supplied technology”, adds Mr Jarnecki.

He believes that regulators of key industries should be given sufficient resources to monitor cyber security and advise companies using Chinese products of any potential issues.

As for electric cars powered by Chinese technology, there’s no question that they’re here to stay.

“Even if you have a car that’s made in Germany or elsewhere, it probably contains quite a few Chinese components,” says Dan Caesar.

“The reality is most of us have smartphones and things from China, from the US, from Korea, without really giving it a second thought. So I do think there’s some fearmongering going on about what the Chinese are capable of.

“I think we have to face the reality that China is going to be a big part of the future.”

A South Korean court has fined a woman for sexual misconduct after she pulled down a colleague’s trousers – and his underwear, by accident – in front of their colleagues, local media reported.

On top of the 2.8 million won ($2,100; £1,500) fine, the woman in her 50s has also been ordered to complete eight hours of sexual violence prevention education.

The incident reportedly happened last October at a restaurant kitchen in Gangwon province in the north-east.

The Chuncheon District Court’s ruling on Saturday rejected the woman’s claim that she had intended it to be a prank on her colleague, who is in his 20s.

But the court said it was taking into account the fact that she had no prior criminal record and had shown remorse. She had knelt down to apologise to the man and his parents, the judge said.

“It seems like they punished a simple prank too harshly,” says one comment under the Chosun Daily’s report of the case.

But another reader argues, “The fine is not excessive at all. Why are you playing this kind of prank? Does this look like a prank to you?”

Pulling down someone’s trousers, which could include underwear – “pantsing” or “debagging” as it’s known – is often seen as a common practical joke despite criticism that it is a form of bullying.

Pantsing has long been used as a comic routine on variety shows and reality TV in South Korea.

But it has got people in trouble as well. In 2019, South Korean Olympic short track speed skating champion Lim Hyo-jun was suspended for a year after he pulled down a male teammate’s trousers in front of other female skaters.

And in 2021, a group of elementary school students in North Jeolla Province were investigated for bullying a younger boy at a playground, after the victim’s mother told police that they had pulled her son’s pants down.

A group of activists – including Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg – who were detained aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat, have been taken to a Tel Aviv airport for deportation, Israel said on Tuesday.

The yacht carrying 12 people trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza was towed to the Israeli port city of Ashdod on Monday, after it was seized by Israeli forces in the early hours.

Dismissing it as a “selfie yacht”, Israel said the passengers had arrived at Ben Gurion Airport to return to their home countries.

“Those who refuse to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial authority,” the Israeli foreign ministry said on X.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the activist group operating the vessel, said all campaigners were “being processed and transferred into the custody of Israeli authorities”.

“They may be permitted to fly out of Tel Aviv as early as tonight,” it said on social media.

Organisers said the Madleen was aiming to bring a “symbolic” amount of aid to Gaza in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade. They said it was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters.

The aid on board the Madleen includes rice and baby formula, the FFC said.

Citizens of Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey were onboard the vessel – among them Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament, and Omar Faiad, a French journalist with Al Jazeera.

The boat set sail from Italy on 1 June to raise awareness of starvation conditions in Gaza and deliver aid.

Israel says its blockade on Gaza is necessary to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas fighters there.

On Sunday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz warned that Israel would act against any attempt to breach the blockade.

The FFC has argued that the sea blockade is illegal, characterising Katz’s statement as an example of Israel threatening the unlawful use of force against civilians and “attempting to justify that violence with smears”.

In 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish activists when they boarded the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was leading an aid flotilla towards Gaza.

Israel recently began to allow limited aid into Gaza after a three-month land blockade, prioritising distribution through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by Israel and the US but widely condemned by humanitarian groups.

In a post on X early on Monday, the Israeli foreign ministry said: “While Greta and others attempted to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity – and which included less than a single truckload of aid – more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks, and in addition, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza.

“There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip – they do not involve Instagram selfies.”

It is 20 months since Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the unprecedented Hamas-led cross-border attack on Israel 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.

When 26-year-old Umar Sofi received his acceptance letter from Columbia University’s School of Journalism, he thought the hardest part of his journey was over.

After trying for three years, Mr Sofi had finally been admitted to his dream university and even secured a partial scholarship. He quit his job in anticipation of the big move.

But on 27 May, when the US suddenly paused student visa appointments, the ground slipped from beneath his feet.

“I was numb. I could not process what had happened,” Mr Sofi, who lives in Indian-administered Kashmir, told the BBC.

Some 2,000km (1,242 miles) away in Mumbai, 17-year-old Samita Garg (name changed on request) went through a similar ordeal.

A day after she was accepted into a top US university to study biochemistry – her first step towards becoming a dermatologist – the US embassy halted student visa appointments.

“It is scary and stressful,” Ms Garg told the BBC over the phone. “It feels like I’ve been left in the lurch, not knowing when this will end.”

Both Mr Sofi and Ms Garg now have only a few weeks to secure their visas before the academic year begins in August, but little clarity on whether they can go ahead with their plans.

Last month President Donald Trump’s administration asked US embassies across the world to stop scheduling appointments for student visas and expand social media vetting of applicants.

This wider move followed a crackdown on America’s elite universities like Harvard, which Trump accused of being too liberal and of not doing enough to combat antisemitism.

Trump’s decisions have had far-reaching repercussions in India, which sends more international students to the US than any other country.

Over the last month, the BBC spoke with at least 20 students at various stages of their application process, all of whom echoed deep anxieties about their futures. Most chose to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the US government and worried that speaking out now could hurt their chances of obtaining a visa, or renewing it.

• Trump’s battle on international students explained… in 70 seconds
• Students say they ‘regret’ applying to US universities after visa changes
• Trump suspends foreign student visas at Harvard

More than 1.1 million international students were enrolled in US colleges in the 2023-24 school year, according to Open Doors, an organisation that collects data on foreign students.

Nearly a third of them, or more than 330,000, were from India.

Educational consultants report that applications to US universities for the upcoming autumn semester have dropped by at least 30% because of the uncertainty.

“Their biggest fear is safety – what if their visas are rejected or they’re deported mid-term?” said Naveen Chopra, founder of TC Global, an international education consultancy.

Experts say many students are now either deferring their plans or switching to countries perceived to be more “stable” like the UK, Germany, Ireland and Australia.

Prema Unni (name changed on request) was accepted into three US universities for a master’s in data analytics. But instead of preparing for the move, he decided to forgo the opportunity altogether.

“There’s uncertainty at every step – first the visa, then restrictions on internships and part-time work, and the constant surveillance while on campus,” Mr Unni said. “It is very stressful.”

The halt on visa interviews is the latest in a series of policies tightening immigration rules for students. A few weeks ago, the US warned that students who drop out or miss classes without proper notification risk having their visas revoked, and could be barred from future entry.

These decisions have come around the time of the year when 70% of student visas are issued, or renewed, sparking great unease among Indian students.

“No student wants to go to a country and then have the visa policy suddenly change,” Chris R Glass, a professor at Boston College told the BBC. “They need stability and options.”

The uncertainty will have long-term consequences – both for the aspirations of Indian students, but also for the US’s future as a coveted higher education hub – says Prof Glass.

Foreign student enrolment in US universities was slowing even before Trump’s latest salvo.

According to The Indian Express newspaper, the US denied 41% of student visa applications between the fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the highest rejection rate in a decade, and nearly doubling from 2014.

Data from Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems (SEVIS), which tracks foreign students’ compliance with their visas, showed a nearly 10% drop in international student enrolments as of March this year compared with the same period in 2024.

International students are a financial lifeline for many US colleges, especially regional and state universities offering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and other master’s programmes.

These students pay significantly higher tuition fees than US citizens.

In the 2023–24 academic year alone, foreign students contributed $43.8bn to the US economy, according to Nafsa, an association of International educators. They also supported over 375,000 jobs.

“This really isn’t about a short-term disruption of tuition revenue. This is about a long-term rupture in a strategic relationship that benefits both countries,” Prof Glass said.

For decades the brightest Indian students have depended on an American education in the absence of top quality Indian universities or a supportive research ecosystem.

In turn they’ve helped plug a skills gap in the US.

Many land highly sought-after jobs after they finish their courses – in particular, representing a significant pool of skilled professionals in sectors like biotechnology, healthcare and data science – and have even gone on to lead iconic companies.

Everyone from Google’s Sunder Pichai to Microsoft’s Satya Nadella went to the US as students.

While this has often led to concerns of a “brain-drain” from India, experts point out that India is simply unable to solve the problem of quality and quantity higher education in the immediate future to provide a domestic alternative to these students.

Experts say it will be a lose-lose situation for both countries, unless the cloud of uncertainty lifts soon.

Palestinians in Gaza say they were fired on once again as they headed to one of the aid distribution centres run by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Monday.

Witnesses said that for the first time they were fired on by Palestinian gunmen near the GHF site in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah, in the south. They also said Israeli troops fired on them.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said six people were killed and 99 injured from areas designated for aid collection.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.

The GHF said the Tal al-Sultan site did not open on Monday and that there were no incidents at two other sites which did hand out aid.

It comes days after Israel’s prime minister acknowledged that it was arming Palestinian clans in Gaza who were opposed to Hamas.

Almost every day since the GHF began distributing aid on 26 May, there have been deadly incidents near one or other of the four centres it has so far opened.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed while approaching one site in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah on a route that runs through an Israeli military zone.

In the previous incidents, witnesses have said that Israeli forces opened fire at crowds. The Israeli military has denied that troops fired at civilians within the site, but it has said that troops fired at “suspects” who ignored warning shots and approached them.

In Monday’s incident, people at the scene said that Palestinian gunmen shot at them, as well as Israeli forces.

They said the gunmen appeared to be allied with the Israeli forces, as they were operating near them and moved back into an Israeli military zone.

One witness told BBC Arabic’s Middle East daily programme that he saw a group of young men dressed in civilian clothes and with their faces completely covered when he arrived in the area to get a box of food aid from the GHF site.

“At first, we thought they might be Palestinian youths helping with the process, but suddenly, they began shooting at us,” Hisham Saeed Salem said.

“Even those who managed to get a box of aid were targeted and shot. We still don’t know who these attackers are. They took everything from us – some even stole from us during the chaos,” he added.

Another man, Mohammed Sakout, said: “Several young men were shot and killed right behind me. I narrowly escaped death – some bullets passed just inches from my head.”

“At first, it was the Israeli army that was shooting at civilians. But today, we were shocked to discover the presence of gangs and militias,” he added.

At Nasser hospital in the nearby city of Khan Younis, a seriously injured man being treated for a gunshot wound to his neck, Mohammed Kabaga, told the Associated Press: “A group of masked armed men who were organising us starting firing towards us directly.”

“We went to get aid. They said to stand in line. We stood in line and suddenly they started shooting at us. While I was standing, I was surprised when a bullet hit me, I got dizzy and fell down,” he said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC that it was looking into the reports.

The GHF said in a statement that it opened two sites on Monday in the Saudi neighbourhood of Rafah and Wadi Gaza, in the centre of the Strip, and that “aid distribution at both sites proceeded without incident”.

When asked by the BBC about the reports from Tal al-Sultan, a GHF spokesperson said there was “nothing around our sites”.

However, a post on the group’s Facebook account did say on Monday afternoon that the Tal al-Sultan centre was closed due to the “chaos of the crowds”.

The GHF’s interim executive director, John Acree, said it had delivered more than 11 million meals over the past two weeks “without an injury or major incident at our distribution sites”.

Gaza’s health ministry said hospitals had received a total of 127 dead and 1,287 injured people from “areas designated for aid distribution” during the same period.

The GHF, which uses US private security contractors, aims to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Palestinians.

The UN and other aid groups refuse to co-operate with the new system, saying it contravenes the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence.

They also warn that Gaza’s 2.1 million population faces catastrophic levels of hunger after an almost three-month total Israeli blockade that was partially eased three weeks ago.

The US and Israel say the GHF’s system will prevent aid being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies doing.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 54,927 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Russia has launched a “massive” drone attack on the capital, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has said, while a maternity ward in Odesa has also been targeted.

The Odesa drone attack hit medical facilities and residential buildings, killing a 59-year-old man and injuring four, Governer Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.

In the capital, emergency services were called to four districts a couple of hours after midnight on Tuesday, Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app.

The latest attacks come after Russia’s biggest drone strike on Ukraine on Monday. Moscow said that strike was a retaliatory measure for Ukraine’s recent attacks inside Russia.

After a covert Ukrainian drone strike named “Operation Spider’s Web” struck air bases deep inside Russia on 1 June, US President Donald Trump called Vladimir Putin. Trump said the Russian president had promised to respond “very strongly” to the attacks.

Air raid alerts were in place across large parts of Ukraine during the attack early on Tuesday, the country’s official air raid map showed, including the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions in the east.

“Stay in shelters! The massive attack on the capital continues,” Kyiv Mayor Klitschko warned on Telegram.

The head of Kyiv’s military administration Timur Tkachenko said on Telegram that the attacks on various districts happened “simultaneously”.

Debris from “downed targets” fell on several different buildings across the city and fires broke out at a residential building and in warehouses, he added.

In Odesa, Governer Kiper said patients and staff managed to evacuate the medical station and maternity ward that were targeted, while ambulances were damaged.

Those that were injured were receiving medical assistance, he added.

The 59-year-old who was killed has not been publicly identified.

This attack follows the start of a prisoner swap on Monday that will see sick and heavily wounded prisoners of war, those under the age of 25 and the bodies of 12,000 soldiers returned.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the exchange would unfold “in several stages”, describing it as a “complicated” process with “many sensitive details”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.

But it always comes back to one question: ‘Can we afford it?’

She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming – school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.

It was different when Namrata was growing up. “We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do.”

According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata’s situation is becoming a global norm.

The agency has taken its strongest line yet on fertility decline, warning that hundreds of millions of people are not able to have the number of children they want, citing the prohibitive cost of parenthood and the lack of a suitable partner as some of the reasons.

UNFPA surveyed 14,000 people in 14 countries about their fertility intentions. One in five said they haven’t had or expect they won’t have their desired number of children.

The countries surveyed – South Korea, Thailand, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, US, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, and Nigeria – account for a third of the global population.

They are a mix of low, middle and high-income countries and those with low and high fertility. UNFPA surveyed young adults and those past their reproductive years.

“The world has begun an unprecedented decline in fertility rates,” says Dr Natalia Kanem, head of UNFPA.

“Most people surveyed want two or more children. Fertility rates are falling in large part because many feel unable to create the families they want. And that is the real crisis,” she says.

“Calling this a crisis, saying it’s real. That’s a shift I think,” says demographer Anna Rotkirch, who has researched fertility intentions in Europe and advises the Finnish government on population policy.

“Overall, there’s more undershooting than overshooting of fertility ideals,” she says. She has studied this at length in Europe and is interested to see it reflected at a global level.

She was also surprised by how many respondents over 50 (31%) said they had fewer children than they wanted.

The survey, which is a pilot for research in 50 countries later this year, is limited in its scope. When it comes to age groups within countries for example, the sample sizes are too small to make conclusions.

But some findings are clear.

In all countries, 39% of people said financial limitations prevented them from having a child.

The highest response was in Korea (58%), the lowest in Sweden (19%).

In total, only 12% of people cited infertility – or difficulty conceiving – as a reason for not having the number of children they wanted to. But that figure was higher in countries including Thailand (19%), the US (16%), South Africa (15%), Nigeria (14%) and India (13%).

“This is the first time that [the UN] have really gone all-out on low fertility issues,” says Prof Stuart Gietel-Basten, demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Until recently the agency focused heavily on women who have more children than they wanted and the “unmet need” for contraception.

Still, the UNFPA is urging caution in response to low fertility.

“Right now, what we’re seeing is a lot of rhetoric of catastrophe, either overpopulation or shrinking population, which leads to this kind of exaggerated response, and sometimes a manipulative response,” says Dr Kanem.

“In terms of trying to get women to have more children, or fewer.”

She points out that 40 years ago China, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Turkey were all worried their populations were too high. By 2015 they wanted to boost fertility.

“We want to try as far as possible to avoid those countries enacting any kind of panicky policies,” says Prof Gietel-Basten.

“We are seeing low fertility, population ageing, population stagnation used as an excuse to implement nationalist, anti-migrant policies and gender conservative policies,” he says.

UNFPA found an even bigger barrier to children than finances was a lack of time. For Namrata in Mumbai that rings true.

She spends at least three hours a day commuting to her office and back. When she gets home she is exhausted but wants to spend time with her daughter. Her family doesn’t get much sleep.

“After a working day, obviously you have that guilt, being a mom, that you’re not spending enough time with your kid,” she says.

“So, we’re just going to focus on one.”

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A New York judge has dismissed Justin Baldoni’s $400m (£295m) defamation lawsuit against his former co-star Blake Lively.

The pair, who both starred in the 2024 film It Ends with Us, have been locked in a legal battle for several months, with a trial set for next year.

Judge Lewis Liman on Monday dismissed Baldoni’s countersuit, which alleged extortion, defamation and other allegations.

Baldoni brought the suit after Lively filed a legal complaint last year against her former co-star, accusing him of sexual harassment and starting a smear campaign against her.

Lively filed a suit against Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios in December 2024, alleging she was sexually harassed on set and that Baldoni retaliated against her for bringing those complaints, among other allegations.

Lively also shared details of the allegations in a New York Times article published before her lawsuit.

Baldoni then brought defamation suits against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, their publicist, claiming they were aiming to ruin his career and reputation with the allegations, as well as the New York Times.

Baldoni’s lawsuit centred on two claims: that Lively “stole the film” from him and his company Wayfarer by threatening not to promote it, and that she and others promoted a false narrative that Baldoni sexually assaulted her and launched a smear campaign against her, Judge Liman explained in his opinion.

But Baldoni and his production company “have not adequately alleged that Lively’s threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions”, he wrote.

Additionally, the judge wrote, Baldoni and his company had not proved defamation because the “Wayfarer Parties have not alleged that Lively is responsible for any statements other than the statements” in her lawsuit, which are privileged.

The judge also determined that evidence did not show that the New York Times “acted with actual malice” in publishing their story, dismissing that $250m suit as well.

“The alleged facts indicate that the Times reviewed the available evidence and reported, perhaps in a dramatized manner, what it believed to have happened,” he wrote. “The Times had no obvious motive to favor Lively’s version of events.”

In a statement shared with US media, Lively’s lawyers called the opinion “a total victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively, along with those that Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer Parties dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit, including Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Sloane and The New York Times”.

In a post on her Instagram, Lively said that “Like so many others, I’ve felt the pain of a retaliatory lawsuit, including the manufactured shame that tries to break us”.

“While the suit against me was defeated, so many don’t have the resources to fight back,” she said, adding that she was “more resolved than ever to continue to stand for every woman’s right to have a voice in protecting themselves”.

The BBC has contacted Baldoni’s lawyers for comment.

Judge Liman said Baldoni would be allowed to amend and refile his allegations related to interference with contracts by 23 June.

Judge Liman’s dismissal comes a week after Lively asked to withdraw two of the claims in her suit against Baldoni – intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

In the original lawsuit, she said she experienced “severe emotional distress” in response to the alleged sexual harassment and smear campaign.

It Ends With Us is an adaption of a best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, which features Blake Lively as the main character, Lily Bloom, a young woman who grew up witnessing domestic abuse and finds herself in the same position years later.

US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, has removed all 17 members of a committee that issues official government recommendations on immunisations.

Announcing the move in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy said that conflicts of interest on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Acip) were responsible for undermining trust in vaccinations.

Kennedy said he wanted to “ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible.”

Doctors and health experts have criticised Kennedy’s longstanding questioning of the safety and efficacy of a number of vaccines, although in his Senate confirmation hearing he said he is “not going to take them away.”

On Monday he said he was “retiring” all of the Acip panel members. Eight of the 17 panellists were appointed in January 2025, in the last days of President Biden’s term.

Most of the members are practising doctors and experts attached to major university medical centres.

Kennedy noted that if he did not remove the committee members, President Trump would not have been able to appoint a majority on the panel until 2028.

“The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” Kennedy wrote.

He claimed that health authorities and drug companies were responsible for a “crisis of public trust” that some try to explain “by blaming misinformation or antiscience attitudes.”

In the editorial, Kennedy cited examples from the 1990s and 2000s and alleged that conflicts of interest persist.

“Most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

The move appears contrary to assurances Kennedy gave during his confirmation hearings. Bill Cassidy, a Republican Senator from Louisiana who is also a doctor, reported that he received commitments from the health secretary that Acip would be maintained “without changes.”

On Monday, Cassidy wrote on X: “Of course, now the fear is that the Acip will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion.

“I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

Acip members are required to disclose conflicts of interest, which are posted online, and to recuse themselves from voting on decisions where they may have a conflict.

“The problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt,” Kennedy wrote. “Most likely aim to serve the public interest as they understand it.

“The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.”

Dr Bruce Scott, president of the American Medical Association, a professional organisation for American doctors, said mass sacking “upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives.”

“With an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses,” Dr Scott said in a statement.

Kennedy did not say who he would appoint to replace the board members. Acip has a meeting scheduled starting 25 June, at which members are scheduled to vote on recommendations for vaccines for Covid, flu, meningococcal disease, RSV and other illnesses.

The BBC contacted the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Acip chair, Dr Helen Keipp Talbot, for comment.

Sly Stone, a funk-rock star who led the group Sly and the Family Stone, has died at the age of 82, his family said.

In a statement on Monday, they said that he died following a “prolonged battle” with COPD, a lung disease that makes breathing difficult, and other underlying health issues.

“Sly was a monumental figure, a groundbreaking innovator, and a true pioneer who redefined the landscape of pop, funk, and rock music,” his family said. “His iconic songs have left an indelible mark on the world, and his influence remains undeniable.”

He rose to stardom in the 1960s and 1970s after starting out as a DJ in San Francisco.

Stone, whose real name was Sylvester Stewart, began singing gospel music with his brothers and sisters at a young age.

He started his career as a disc jockey for radio stations in California, and then went on to form a band that included his brother, called Sly and the Family Stone.

Initially that band played gospel music but with time they became known for blending music styles including psychedelia and funk.

They were known both for having a diverse music style and being a diverse band with black and white musicians.

When the band released the single “Dance to the Music” in 1967 it reached No. 8 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart.

They played a memorable set at the 1969 Woodstock Festival and to crowds at the Summer of Soul concert in Harlem that same year.

Stone “recently completed the screenplay for his life story, a project we are eager to share with the world in due course”, his family said.

The band and Stone struggled in 1970s with some internal strife and drug issues and, while Stone occasionally played alone, the band fizzled.

Sly and the Family Stone was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

Sly returned to the stage at 2005 Grammy Awards but was seen publicly only a handful of times after that.

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A man in Texas has been charged with murder after he allegedly slipped an abortion drug into his pregnant girlfriend’s drink.

Justin Anthony Banta was arrested on Friday after a months-long investigation into his former girlfriend’s accusation that he gave her the Plan C pill (known as an abortion drug) without her knowledge, according to police in the US state.

Mr Banta’s ex-partner said when she disclosed her pregnancy last year, he had offered to cover the cost of an abortion, but she expressed her desire to keep the baby.

Police said after meeting with Mr Banta in a coffee shop, she experienced heavy bleeding and visited the emergency room, but lost her baby a few days later.

Mr Banta was also charged with tampering with physical evidence and is awaiting prosecution, according to the Parker County Sheriff’s Office.

Police said Mr Banta’s former girlfriend was around six-weeks pregnant when she went for a check up with her doctor, who told her the baby was healthy and had “a strong heartbeat” and vital signs.

“Later that same day, the victim reported she met Banta at a coffee shop… where she expressed her suspicion that Banta had secretly added abortion-inducing pills to her drink without her knowledge or permission,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.

Mr Banta’s former girlfriend also said he suggested they buy the Plan C abortion drug online after she disclosed her pregnancy.

Following an interview with Mr Banta, police collected his mobile phone, but later discovered “crucial evidence relating to the case” was deleted, they said.

Investigators said they believed Mr Banta, who worked in IT at the US Department of Justice, later accessed his phone remotely and performed a “reset”.

An arrest warrant for him was then obtained, and Mr Banta was charged last week with capital murder and tampering with physical evidence.

Police said the cases against Mr Banta remained active and ongoing.

Texas has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the US, banning all abortions except in dire medical circumstances.

The state introduced a law in 2022 that carries civil and criminal penalties for those who perform abortions.

A law in 2021 also bans the termination of pregnancies after a baby’s heartbeat is detected, but does make exceptions for medical emergencies.

Sly Stone, a funk-rock star who led the group Sly and the Family Stone, has died at the age of 82, his family statement.

A statement said he had suffered a “prolongued battle” with the lung disease COPD.

Stone, whose real name was Sylvester Stewart, grew up singing gospel with his siblings, and went on to play the Woodstock music festival in 1969.

On the way, Stone was a San Francisco radio DJ, before he and his band hit the big time with hits including It’s a Family Affair and If You Want Me to Stay.

Stone was a giant of funk music, known for blending psychedelia, funk, rock and soul, his big style and even bigger hair.

Here is a selection of images from his life.

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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?”

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.

Joe is somewhat shorter than the average American man, at 5ft 6in (1.67m) – but when Ashley came across his Tinder profile last year, the last thing she was thinking about was Joe’s height.

“We were talking about our hobbies and passions,” Ashley says, “not superficial things.”

News that the dating app where Ashley and Joe found love is trialling a new feature – allowing some premium users to filter potential matches according to their height – was met with mixed reactions earlier this week.

While daters like Ashley worry it might stifle possible connections, others say the feature might actually help shorter men find a match.

Tinder’s trial is running in “limited” parts of the world, excluding the UK, with the feature only available to those who pay for its two highest subscription tiers. Tinder has not told the BBC which countries it is being trialled in.

It works by informing the app’s matching algorithm based on a user’s stated preference, rather than filtering out certain users altogether. But online reaction to its launch has ranged from amusement to outrage.

“Tinder just declared war on short kings,” wrote one social media user, while another said they’d be “using the Tinder height filter to filter out all men taller than 5ft 9in”.

Another commented: “I don’t care what Tinder says – short kings are elite.”

Ashley, from Wisconsin, says she understands why height can be a deal-breaker for some daters – but that wasn’t the case for her.

“I’ve heard people talk: ‘I can’t wear heels or my partner will look shorter,'” the 24-year-old says, “but that’s never mattered to me”.

Joe is “just such an amazing person”, she says, it wouldn’t matter to her “if he was six feet tall or five feet tall”.

Using a height filter might actually have prevented her and Joe from ever meeting, she adds – and she reckons others could be missing out too.

Joe, meanwhile, says Tinder’s height filtering feature could actually make dating harder for shorter men.

“Limiting yourself to physical things about someone will lessen your opportunities and chances of finding a partner,” he says. “Height shouldn’t matter when you’re looking for forever.”

The 27-year-old says his own dating experience hadn’t “all been so bad” and that his matches had judged him based on his personality, rather than his height.

But he thinks the new Tinder filter might affect other users’ chances of meaningful connections.

Tinder is not breaking new ground here – seasoned swipers will be familiar with various kinds of filter, which are now common features of dating apps including in the UK.

Hinge, a key Tinder competitor, already allows paying users to filter matches according to their height. Other filters include education level, religion, and checking whether potential matches smoke, drink or take drugs.

Bumble allows premium users to avoid matches with certain star signs, while paying Grindr users can filter by body type.

But as the world’s largest dating app, Tinder’s experiment with height filtering still has huge significance, and has sparked discussion in Britain too.

At 5ft 9in, Matt Heal, from Manchester, says he feels jaded about the online dating scene.

Matt’s around average height for a man in the UK, but says some daters’ preferences for taller men have disadvantaged him on the apps.

“As someone who is neither very tall nor financially well off, I have definitely felt desensitised about dating [using apps],” he says.

The 28-year-old thinks it’s understandable that apps like Tinder try to optimise their matching algorithms, though.

“People have preferences based on all sorts of things,” Matt says, adding these features help people “see others they are interested in, rather than swiping for hours on people you don’t consider compatible”.

However, he thinks daters shouldn’t be too rigid about what they’re looking for.

“If you were into people who are over six feet, would you really not date someone who’s 5ft 11in” – if they were good looking and had similar interests?”

Matt feels it’s easier for men his height to meet people offline, explaining that meeting someone in person, through mutual friends, for example, can mean a less prescriptive approach.

But Beth McColl, 31, thinks the Tinder height filter may offer shorter men some reassurance. The London-based writer and podcaster says it could help people avoid “women who only want to date really tall men”.

Whether or not women will actually use this feature, Beth is uncertain.

“Women typically don’t have a problem with dating a shorter man,” Beth says, “but they do, maybe, have a problem with dating a shorter man who is really hung up on it.”

Aside from the filters, Beth believes the real problem of modern dating lies with the dating apps themselves.

“It encourages us to treat dating like picking something from the menu,” she says, adding, “there’s nothing in being a little bit taller that will make that man a better partner – but I think we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that there’s truth in that.”

As to whether the Tinder move will prove popular with users on a mass scale – that remains to be seen.

“Features like this capitalise on a well-known preference – some women desire taller partners,” says Lara Besbrode, managing director at The Matchmaker UK. “They don’t address the deeper issues at the heart of online dating fatigue.”

But, she says, attraction is “not static” and can evolve over time.

“A man who is 5ft 7in (1.7m), but confident, kind, and emotionally attuned can be far more attractive than someone who ticks the 6ft (1.8m) box but lacks substance,” Lara says.

Tinder told the BBC its new filter demonstrates it is “building with urgency, clarity, and focus” and that it is “part of a broader effort to help people connect more intentionally” on the app.

A spokesperson said: “Not every test becomes a permanent feature, but every test helps us learn how we can deliver smarter, more relevant experiences and push the category forward.”

And that fleeting moment when stumbling across each other’s profiles on a dating app can be vital, as Ashley and Joe know.

Ashley worries that people who use Tinder’s new filter “might be cutting themselves off from people who’re a potential match for them, rather than someone who’s their preferred height”.

But for now her swiping days are over, and her relationship with Joe is blossoming. He’s “phenomenal”, Ashley says, “super sweet”.

From the moment Justin Baldoni announced in 2019 that he was adapting the best-selling book It Ends With Us into a film, there was a widespread frenzy.

There are few books in recent years that have become as big a cultural phenomenon as Colleen Hoover’s novel – it has sold 20m copies and became an internet sensation on TikTok with more than one billion tags on the app.

When Blake Lively, who rose to fame in the 2000s in Gossip Girl, was cast as the main character, fans became even more excited, describing her as the perfect choice to play Lily Bloom, a young woman who grew up witnessing domestic abuse and winds up in the same position years later.

Lily, a florist in Boston, navigates a complicated love triangle between her charming but abusive boyfriend Ryle Kincaid – played by Jane the Virgin’s Justin Baldoni – and her compassionate first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar).

Released last August, the film became a box office success bringing in more than $350m (£280m) globally.

But despite its financial success, everything wasn’t running so smoothly behind the scenes. Rumours of a feud between Baldoni and Lively began swirling before the film was even released.

In December, Lively filed a legal complaint against her co-star, accusing him of sexual harassment and starting a smear campaign against her. Baldoni strongly denies that and filed a suit in response, which was dismissed by a judge in June.

Here is the story so far:

For a film about domestic abuse, the press tour for It Ends With Us was probably not what you would have expected. There were pink carpets, flowers galore and the promotion of Lively’s new haircare brand and her husband’s gin company.

Instead of advocacy on the red carpet, Lively highlighted fashion and florals.

At the London premiere, press were told to keep questions “fun and light-hearted” with one event organiser telling me to “steer away from questions on domestic abuse”.

One of her remarks made at the New York premiere – “you are so much more than just a survivor or just a victim” – sparked backlash on social media.

Domestic abuse survivor Ashley Paige criticised Ms Lively’s language and told the BBC that Lively was promoting the film like it’s “the sequel to Barbie”.

Lively was also criticised for her comments in another clumsy promotional tour video where she said: “Grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it.”

Alongside the press tour being described as “tone-deaf”, people started asking questions about why the Lively and Baldoni weren’t photographed on the red carpet together at the film’s New York premiere.

The pair also did no interviews together during the press tour and at the London premiere, which Baldoni didn’t attend, I was warned by Lively’s team to not “ask any questions about Justin”.

Internet sleuths also spotted that cast members including Lively and author Hoover did not follow Baldoni on social media.

Neither Lively or Baldoni addressed rumours of a feud during the press tour and the only reference to each other was Baldoni telling Today that his co-star was a “dynamic creative”.

“She had her hands in every part of this production, and everything she touched made [it] better,” he said about the 37-year-old.

During the film’s press tour, Baldoni hired a crisis manager, Melissa Nathan, whose previous clients include Johnny Depp and Drake.

Shortly after the press tour, Lively faced a barrage of criticism on social media relating to her comments on that tour as well as from old interviews.

One of the interviews to resurface was one shared by a Norwegian journalist, Kjersti Flaa, who posted a video on YouTube of her interviewing Lively in 2016. It was titled “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job.”

Flaa has since said she had “nothing to do with Justin Baldoni and his smear campaign”.

Actor Brandon Sklenar, who plays Atlas in the film, defended Lively and said in a post on Instagram that people had been “vilifying” the women involved in the film online.

He said it was “disheartening to see the amount of negativity being projected” and that someone close to him who had experienced a relationship similar to Lily’s had credited the film with “saving her life”.

Four months after the film’s launch, Lively filed a legal complaint against Mr Baldoni in which she accused him of sexual harassment.

The complaint also listed Wayfarer Studios, Mr Baldoni’s production company which produced It Ends With Us, as a defendant.

The legal filing accuses Mr Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath of “repeated sexual harassment and other disturbing behaviour”. Some other female cast and crew had also spoken up about their conduct, the filing alleges.

It also alleges that Ms Lively, Mr Baldoni and other people involved in the development of the film attended a meeting in January to address “the hostile work environment” on set. Her husband, actor Ryan Reynolds, attended the meeting alongside her, according to the complaint.

At the meeting, attendees agreed to a list of demands, including Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath making “no more descriptions of their own genitalia”, requiring an intimacy coordinator on set at all times when Ms Lively was in scenes with Mr Baldoni and no “friends” of the producers and directors being on set during scenes when Ms Lively was in a state of nudity.

The list of demands also implied that Mr Baldoni had asked Ms Lively’s trainer how much she weighed and alleged that Mr Baldoni and Mr Heath had spoken about their “pornography addiction” to Ms Lively.

In the filing, Ms Lively also alleges that Mr Baldoni and his team attacked her public image after the meeting.

She accuses him of orchestrating a plan to “destroy” her reputation in the press and online, including hiring a crisis manager who led a “sophisticated, coordinated, and well-financed retaliation plan” against her and used a “digital army” to post social media content that seemed authentic.

“To safeguard against the risk of Ms Lively ever revealing the truth about Mr Baldoni, the Baldoni-Wayfarer team created, planted, amplified, and boosted content designed to eviscerate Ms Lively’s credibility,” her team wrote in the filing.

It adds: “They engaged in the same techniques to bolster Mr Baldoni’s credibility and suppress any negative content about him.”

In the filing, Ms Lively says that this had led to “substantial harm” that affected “all aspects” of her life.

Mr Baldoni’s legal team told the BBC the allegations are “categorically false” and said they hired a crisis manager because Ms Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.

Responding to the legal complaint, Mr Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said: “It is shameful that Ms Lively and her representatives would make such serious and categorically false accusations against Mr Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and its representatives.”

Mr Freedman accused Ms Lively of making numerous demands and threats, including “threatening to not show up to set, threatening to not promote the film”, which would end up “ultimately leading to its demise during release, if her demands were not met”.

Hollywood stars including America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn and Alexis Bledel have publicly backed Blake Lively after she filed her complaint.

Ferrera, Tamblyn and Bledel, who starred with Lively in 2005 film The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, issued a joint statement on Instagram, on Sunday saying they “stand with her in solidarity”.

“Throughout the filming of It Ends with Us, we saw her summon the courage to ask for a safe workplace for herself and colleagues on set, and we are appalled to read the evidence of a premeditated and vindictive effort that ensued to discredit her voice,” they wrote.

Colleen Hoover, the author of It Ends With Us, also showed her support, describing Ms Lively as “honest, kind, supportive and patient”.

In early December Baldoni was awarded a women’s solidarity honour by Vital Voices, a global non-profit organisation that focuses on empowering women.

The organisation has rescinded the award after the legal complaint filed by Lively alleged “abhorrent conduct” by the actor, his studio and a crisis public relations team that it said was “contrary to the values” it held.

And since the legal complaint, Baldoni’s podcast co-host Liz Plank announced she was leaving The Man Enough show.

The podcast bills itself as creating “a safe environment” for exploring issues such as how “masculinity” shows up in relationships, as well as “sex, success” and “mental health”.

On 31 December Baldoni’s lawyers filed a $250m libel lawsuit against New York Times over its reporting of Lively’s allegations against him.

The paper published an article on 21 December entitled: “‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine.”

Federal Judge Lewis Liman dismissed the defamation suit in June.

Baldoni and nine other plaintiffs including publcist Melissa Nathan had accused the paper of libel and false-light invasion of privacy.

The lawsuit said the paper “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead”.

A New York Times spokesperson said the story was “meticulously and responsibly reported” and it plans to “vigorously defend” itself.

In dismissing the suit, Judge Liman said the Times “reviewed the available evidence and reported, perhaps in a dramatized manner, what it believed to have happened”. “The Times had no obvious motive to favor Lively’s version of events,” the judge wrote.

On 16 January, Baldoni filed a lawsuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Ryenolds.

He sued them for $400m (£326m) damages on claims of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.

Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman said the actress and her partners had disseminated “grossly edited, unsubstantiated, new and doctored information to the media”.

He also said Lively and her team had “attempted to bulldoze reputations and livelihoods for heinously selfish reasons”.

Judge Liman dismissed the suit in June, saying Baldoni and his company “have not adequately alleged that Lively’s threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions”.

On 21 January, Baldoni released three out-takes of a romantic scene from the film as evidence that Lively’s claims of sexual harassment are unfounded.

The video’s caption says the footage shows both actors “clearly behaving well within the scope of the scene and with mutual respect and professionalism”.

However, Lively’s lawyers said the footage showed him “repeatedly leaning in toward Ms Lively and attempting to kiss her”.

They added that every moment was “improvised by Mr Baldoni with no discussion or consent in advance, and no intimacy co-ordinator present”.

“Any woman who has been inappropriately touched in the workplace will recognise Ms Lively’s discomfort,” they said.

The following week, a voicemail of Baldoni apologising to Lively during an exchange about a script rewrite in April 2023 was also released.

A judge has set a date for their case to trial – 9 March 2026.

Baldoni has published a website called Lawsuit Info with his amended complaint and a timeline of events related to his lawsuits against Lively and New York Times.

Published on 1 February it contains two legal documents: Baldoni’s latest court filings against Lively and Reynolds, and a 168-page document entitled “timeline of relevant events” related to the dispute and the production of the film.

The latter includes alleged text message exchanges between him and Lively.

Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, told BBC News that Baldoni amended his lawsuit due “to the overwhelming amount of new proof that has come to light”.

Lively’s representatives are yet to comment, but a New York Times spokesperson told BBC News that Baldoni’s legal filings were “rife with inaccuracies” about the newspaper, “including, for example, the bogus claim that The Times had early access to Ms Lively’s state civil rights complaint”.

On 3 February, a pretrial meeting was held at a federal court in Manhattan.

The hour-and-a-half hearing became heated as lawyers for each side claimed the other was badmouthing their client outside of court.

Judge Liman said both sides have “given the public plenty to feast upon” and added that if the case ended up being “litigated in the press”, he could be forced to make the March 2026 trial date earlier, so jurors do not become prejudiced against either of the defendants.

He also said he is barring the lawyers from making statements publicly that could sway the outcome of a trial.

Thousands gathered on Sunday in an ancient town in south-west Nigeria for a spectacular display of culture, colour and tradition.

The Ojude Oba festival in Ijebu-Ode, brought together locals and visitors to pay homage to the Awujale – the traditional ruler of the Ijebu people.

This union of drummers, musicians and dancers coupled with a fashion parade told a tale of people deeply connected to their roots.

Ojude Oba – a Yoruba phrase meaning “the kings forecourt” – began over two centuries ago.

Earmarked for the third day after Eid, this was originally a modest gathering of the Muslim faithful, thanking the king for allowing them to practise their religion freely.

But it has grown to symbolise pride, unity and identity among all the Ijebu people regardless of religion.

The women were elegantly turned-out in colourful traditional dresses, known here as iro and buba, along with the gele, or head wrap.

Their outfits were made from lace or aso-oke, a locally sourced fabric woven by the Yoruba people.

The sunglasses and hand fans meant to provide respite for the blistering sun were must-have accessories, complementing the looks.

Dressed in traditional Yoruba agbada, the men agree months ahead on what outfits, colour and accessories to use for the festival.

Each year, they tweak the style and colour and display. Accessories include matching caps, beads and shoes.

Regardless of social status, the people are classified into age groups known as regbe-regbe, with hundreds belonging to each one. They are aimed at fostering unity among the locals.

The horses were adorned in colourful ornaments of gold and silver. Their riders displayed their prowess and the strength of their horses circling the arena to thunderous applause from spectators.

Shots from locally made guns sent white smoke into the air, signalling the arrival of each of the traditional warrior family, known as Balogun or Eleshin.

They protected the Ijebu kingdom from external aggression at one time.

The flamboyant parade of culture provides an economic boost to the area as dress makers, weavers, shoe makers, jewellers and others are contracted to make the desired outfits and matching accessories.

• Nigeria’s Egungun festival: Colour, culture and community
• Nigeria’s spectacular horse parade closing Ramadan
• Nigerians take to the streets for Calabar Carnival

Canada will significantly boost its defence spending to hit a Nato target of 2% of GDP years earlier than planned, Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced.

In a speech at the University of Toronto on Monday, Carney said the action was required to ward off the “multiplying” threats from hostile governments, terrorist entities and cyber criminals.

He also conceded his country was “too reliant” on the United States for defence, adding that Washington was “reducing its relative contribution to our collective security”.

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte is pushing for members to agree to a new spending target of 3.5% of GDP at a summit later this month.

In his address, Mark Carney said the world was at a “hinge moment” similar to the end of the Second World War. He said his country must act in the face of an aggressive Russia and China, and threats to Arctic security.

He also accused Washington of looking to “monetise its hegemony” by making access to its market more costly.

Canada spent 1.4% of its GDP on defence in 2024. GDP stands for gross domestic product, and is a measure of all the economic activity of companies, governments, and people in a country.

During the election campaign earlier this year, Carney had pledged to hit the 2% spending target by 2030, while the previous government under Justin Trudeau had promised to meet it by 2032. However on Monday, Carney said the spending goal would be hit by March next year.

The prime minister said Canada’s equipment had aged, “hindering our military preparedness”.

Only one of four submarines were seaworthy and less than half the maritime fleet and land vehicles were in good working order, he said.

Carney said the new strategy would have four pillars – investing more in soldiers and equipment, expanding the military’s capability, strengthening the domestic defence industry, and diversifying Canada’s defence partnerships.

This is an age where “middle powers” must act to defend themselves knowing “if they’re not at the table, they’re on the menu”, Carney said.

Carney’s announcement comes just a week before Canada hosts the G7 Summit from 15 to 17 June.

Speaking to reporters later, Carney said the government’s new plan includes a cash increase of C$9.3bn ($6.5bn, £4.8bn) for this fiscal year, which he said will bring Canada’s defence spending to the Nato threshold.

Some of it would be immediately “spendable” on personnel and equipment.

This would include investing in new submarines, aircraft, ships, armoured vehicles and artillery, as well as new drones and sensors to monitor activity in the Arctic and seafloor approaches to the country, he said.

Carney said the government would also create a new defence procurement agency, following criticisms of the current process as slow and unwieldly. The agency would “move more quickly in making procurement decisions” and would focus on building domestic capacity.

A report by a parliamentary committee in June 2024 highlighted that delays, cost overruns, bureaucratic hurdles, a shortage of personnel and the politicisation of the defence procurement process raised concerns about the government’s ability to provide the armed forces with the equipment it needed “in a timely and cost-effective manner”.

Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the opposition Conservatives, said his party supports increased defence spending, and accused the Liberals, who have been in power for a decade, of failing to properly fund the country’s military.

Nato members have for years pledged to meet the 2% target – now seen as the bare minimum – but Canada has long lagged behind its allies.

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte arrived in London on Monday where he said the military alliance needed a “400% increase in air and missile defence” to maintain a credible defence deterrence.

Last week, Rutte proposed that Nato members spend 5% of their GDP on defence – something US President Donald Trump has called for in the past.

Dozens of activists have staged a protest outside a mortuary in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, following the death of a 31-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

Music superstars J Balvin, Doja Cat and Tems will perform a half-time show at the Club World Cup final in New Jersey next month, as football follows the example of the Super Bowl.

Colombian singer Balvin, US rapper Doja Cat and Nigerian star Tems will cram their performances into the 15-minute half-time break.

The line-up has been curated by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and the event will hope to emulate the success of the long-running Super Bowl half-time show, which has featured stars including Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna and The Weeknd in recent years.

Teams including Chelsea, Manchester City, Real Madrid and Paris St-Germain will take part in the tournament across the US from 15 June to 13 July.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino said: “This show will be unforgettable – not just for its spectacle on a landmark night, but also for the lasting impact it will make.”

Previously an annual tournament contested by seven teams, the Club World Cup has been expanded to 32 teams and is aiming for an increased global profile.

Superstar player Lionel Messi will take part for US team Inter Miami, although the team’s participation has raised some eyebrows.

There will be no Cristiano Ronaldo, though, who has declined offers to play for various teams. The 40-year-old is out of contract with Saudi Arabian club Al-Nassr at the end of June.

A small marble sculpture thought to be a copy of the French artist Auguste Rodin’s work has turned out to be the real thing, selling for almost $1m at an auction in France on Monday.

The sculpture, called “Despair”, a figure of a woman hugging her knees and holding one foot, is a work by the famed sculptor from 1892 that had disappeared after being sold at an auction in 1906.

For the owners, “Despair” turned to delight when the piece they believed to be a Rodin copy was confirmed as authentic by the Comite Rodin after a six-week probe.

French auctioneer Aymeric Rouillac described it as an “extremely rare” find and the work was put up for auction and eventually sold for €860,000 (£725,000; $982,000).

“Despair” was originally modelled by Rodin as part of his series of figures for The Gates of Hell.

According to the Musée Rodin, the figure is a depiction of sorrow and the French sculptor created other versions after it was positively received.

After the family who owned the 28.5cm (11 inches) marble figure – which had sat on their piano for years – approached Mr Rouillac, he and his team spent months investigating the origins of the piece.

In March, Mr Rouillac brought the piece to the Comité Rodin, a research group dedicated to studying the works of Rodin, who confirmed its authenticity six weeks later.

The committee found that “Despair” had disappeared after being sold at an auction in 1906.

“We have rediscovered it,” Mr Rouillac told the AFP news agency.

The owner of CNN and HBO Max, Warner Bros Discovery, says it will split into two companies by the middle of next year.

The US media giant plans to separate its studio and streaming business away from its more traditional cable television networks.

The move comes as streaming services attract hundreds of millions of users around the world but cable TV has seen audiences decline in recent years.

HBO Max has enjoyed success with shows including Succession, The White Lotus and The Last of Us – while channels like CNN have been losing viewers.

These hit shows will soon come under a new Streaming & Studios business, along with the company’s film division and be headed by Mr Zaslav.

The other new company will be called Global Networks – with CNN, Discovery and TNT Sports amongst its brands. This business will be led by Warner Bros Discovery’s chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels.

“We are empowering these iconic brands with the sharper focus and strategic flexibility they need to compete most effectively in today’s evolving media landscape”, said David Zaslav, Warner Bros Discovery president and chief executive.

The splitting of the media conglomerate follows the 2022 merger that created Warner Bros Discovery.

News of the split did little to improve Warner Bros Discovery’s stock market performance. Shares were down nearly 3% in trading on Monday, with the stock down more than 10% this year.

Peter Jankovskis, an analyst at Arbor Financial Services, said the split would help investors get a better understanding of each new company’s value.

“When you make the business less complicated, analysts can go in and do a better job of determining what the business is actually worth,” he told the BBC.

Warner Bros Discovery’s flagship news channel, CNN, has seen its ratings decline. It averaged 558,000 viewers during primetime hours in the first three months of this year, 6% lower than the same period in 2024.

In January, the network announced that it was laying off more than 200 employees as it looks to focus on its digital offerings.

The outlook is brighter for Warner Bros Discovery’s streaming platforms, which ended the first quarter of this year with more than 122 million subscribers.

Monday’s breakup announcement came after rival media giant Comcast announced last year that it would spin off its NBCUniversal cable television arm.

That breakup is currently underway, with channels such as MSNBC and CNBC being separated from Comcast’s other brands, including its Peacock streaming service.

“It’s a very competitive market right now, so many firms are trying to segregate out the streaming portion or the content portion of their businesses so that the remaining business can be valued separately”, said Mr Jankovskis.

The families of missing Ukrainian soldiers gathered close to the border with Belarus on Monday, as a planned prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine took place.

As the bus carrying prisoners of war arrived, a crowd of relatives surged forward, many brandishing photos of missing fathers, brothers and sons.

Faces were filled with apprehension. Few expected to be reunited, and most were just desperate for information after waiting years for any news.

During the latest round of direct talks in Turkey last week, the two warring sides agreed to exchange sick and heavily wounded prisoners of war, those aged under 25, and the bodies of 12,000 soldiers.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the exchange would unfold “in several stages” over the coming days.

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

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” and that a “similar number” had been returned to Ukraine. Neither side provided an exact figure of how many people had been exchanged.

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

Officials in Kyiv said some of the Ukrainian prisoners who returned on Monday had been in Russian captivity since the beginning of the war.

Tetiana, who had gathered with other Ukrainians in the Chernihiv region close to Belarus, carried a cardboard sign with photos of her father, Valentyn, and cousin, Mykola, both still missing.

“When my father went to fight, my biggest fear was that he would go missing,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I hoped maybe he’d be wounded and come back.”

The war has exacted a heavy toll on the family. Tetiana’s uncle was killed last September, but his body was only recently returned for burial.

When one of the returned prisoners appeared at an upstairs window, women waiting below hurled the names of regiments at him, hoping he might have news.

He apologised, made a heart sign with his hands and called out “slava Ukraini” – glory to Ukraine. “Heroiam Slava” – glory to the heroes – the crowd replied in unison.

Glimpsed briefly through the crowd as they were escorted inside, some of the soldiers looked gaunt.

“They spent a lot of time in Russian places of detention, without any visits of International Red Cross,” Petro Yatsenko, of Ukraine’s Coordination HQ for prisoners of war, told the BBC.

“Their health conditions are very poor. They have not had sufficient food. Of course they need a long period of rehabilitation.”

But 23-year-old Valera, back on home soil after three years and three months of captivity, seemed happy enough after a bowl of Ukrainian soup.

As he turned to leave, women pressed forward, pushing pictures of the missing into his arms, hoping he might recognise someone.

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

Russia said that the bodies of more than 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been taken to an agreed exchange point but that Ukrainian officials had never arrived. Ukraine accused Moscow of “playing dirty games” and alleged that Russia was not sticking to the agreed parameters of the swap.

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 in 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.

Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.

But it always comes back to one question: ‘Can we afford it?’

She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming – school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.

It was different when Namrata was growing up. “We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do.”

According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata’s situation is becoming a global norm.

The agency has taken its strongest line yet on fertility decline, warning that hundreds of millions of people are not able to have the number of children they want, citing the prohibitive cost of parenthood and the lack of a suitable partner as some of the reasons.

UNFPA surveyed 14,000 people in 14 countries about their fertility intentions. One in five said they haven’t had or expect they won’t have their desired number of children.

The countries surveyed – South Korea, Thailand, Italy, Hungary, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, US, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, and Nigeria – account for a third of the global population.

They are a mix of low, middle and high-income countries and those with low and high fertility. UNFPA surveyed young adults and those past their reproductive years.

“The world has begun an unprecedented decline in fertility rates,” says Dr Natalia Kanem, head of UNFPA.

“Most people surveyed want two or more children. Fertility rates are falling in large part because many feel unable to create the families they want. And that is the real crisis,” she says.

“Calling this a crisis, saying it’s real. That’s a shift I think,” says demographer Anna Rotkirch, who has researched fertility intentions in Europe and advises the Finnish government on population policy.

“Overall, there’s more undershooting than overshooting of fertility ideals,” she says. She has studied this at length in Europe and is interested to see it reflected at a global level.

She was also surprised by how many respondents over 50 (31%) said they had fewer children than they wanted.

The survey, which is a pilot for research in 50 countries later this year, is limited in its scope. When it comes to age groups within countries for example, the sample sizes are too small to make conclusions.

But some findings are clear.

In all countries, 39% of people said financial limitations prevented them from having a child.

The highest response was in Korea (58%), the lowest in Sweden (19%).

In total, only 12% of people cited infertility – or difficulty conceiving – as a reason for not having the number of children they wanted to. But that figure was higher in countries including Thailand (19%), the US (16%), South Africa (15%), Nigeria (14%) and India (13%).

“This is the first time that [the UN] have really gone all-out on low fertility issues,” says Prof Stuart Gietel-Basten, demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Until recently the agency focused heavily on women who have more children than they wanted and the “unmet need” for contraception.

Still, the UNFPA is urging caution in response to low fertility.

“Right now, what we’re seeing is a lot of rhetoric of catastrophe, either overpopulation or shrinking population, which leads to this kind of exaggerated response, and sometimes a manipulative response,” says Dr Kanem.

“In terms of trying to get women to have more children, or fewer.”

She points out that 40 years ago China, Korea, Japan, Thailand and Turkey were all worried their populations were too high. By 2015 they wanted to boost fertility.

“We want to try as far as possible to avoid those countries enacting any kind of panicky policies,” says Prof Gietel-Basten.

“We are seeing low fertility, population ageing, population stagnation used as an excuse to implement nationalist, anti-migrant policies and gender conservative policies,” he says.

UNFPA found an even bigger barrier to children than finances was a lack of time. For Namrata in Mumbai that rings true.

She spends at least three hours a day commuting to her office and back. When she gets home she is exhausted but wants to spend time with her daughter. Her family doesn’t get much sleep.

“After a working day, obviously you have that guilt, being a mom, that you’re not spending enough time with your kid,” she says.

“So, we’re just going to focus on one.”

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US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine sceptic, has removed all 17 members of a committee that issues official government recommendations on immunisations.

Announcing the move in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy said that conflicts of interest on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Acip) were responsible for undermining trust in vaccinations.

Kennedy said he wanted to “ensure the American people receive the safest vaccines possible.”

Doctors and health experts have criticised Kennedy’s longstanding questioning of the safety and efficacy of a number of vaccines, although in his Senate confirmation hearing he said he is “not going to take them away.”

On Monday he said he was “retiring” all of the Acip panel members. Eight of the 17 panellists were appointed in January 2025, in the last days of President Biden’s term.

Most of the members are practising doctors and experts attached to major university medical centres.

Kennedy noted that if he did not remove the committee members, President Trump would not have been able to appoint a majority on the panel until 2028.

“The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” Kennedy wrote.

He claimed that health authorities and drug companies were responsible for a “crisis of public trust” that some try to explain “by blaming misinformation or antiscience attitudes.”

In the editorial, Kennedy cited examples from the 1990s and 2000s and alleged that conflicts of interest persist.

“Most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

The move appears contrary to assurances Kennedy gave during his confirmation hearings. Bill Cassidy, a Republican Senator from Louisiana who is also a doctor, reported that he received commitments from the health secretary that Acip would be maintained “without changes.”

On Monday, Cassidy wrote on X: “Of course, now the fear is that the Acip will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion.

“I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”

Acip members are required to disclose conflicts of interest, which are posted online, and to recuse themselves from voting on decisions where they may have a conflict.

“The problem isn’t necessarily that ACIP members are corrupt,” Kennedy wrote. “Most likely aim to serve the public interest as they understand it.

“The problem is their immersion in a system of industry-aligned incentives and paradigms that enforce a narrow pro-industry orthodoxy.”

Dr Bruce Scott, president of the American Medical Association, a professional organisation for American doctors, said mass sacking “upends a transparent process that has saved countless lives.”

“With an ongoing measles outbreak and routine child vaccination rates declining, this move will further fuel the spread of vaccine-preventable illnesses,” Dr Scott said in a statement.

Kennedy did not say who he would appoint to replace the board members. Acip has a meeting scheduled starting 25 June, at which members are scheduled to vote on recommendations for vaccines for Covid, flu, meningococcal disease, RSV and other illnesses.

The BBC contacted the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Acip chair, Dr Helen Keipp Talbot, for comment.

Theo will be responding to reader comments about this article between 12pm and 1pm today. Go to the comments section at the bottom of this page to share what you think about the rise of these more affordable EVs.

In China, they call it the Seagull, and it has looks to match. It is sleek and angular, with bright, downward-slanting headlights that have more than a hint of mischievous eyes about them.

It is, of course, a car. A very small one, designed as a cheap city runabout – but it could have huge significance. Available in China since 2023, where it has proved extremely popular, it has just been launched in Europe with the name Dolphin Surf (because Europeans apparently aren’t as keen on seagulls as Chinese people).

When it goes on sale in the UK this week, it’s expected to have a price tag of around £18,000. That will still make it, for an electric car on western markets, very cheap indeed.

It won’t be the outright lowest-priced model on offer: the Dacia Spring, manufactured in Wuhan jointly by Renault and Dongfeng, and the Leapmotor T03, which is being produced by a joint venture between Chinese startup Leapmotor and Stellantis, both cost less.

But the Dolphin Surf is the invasive species that has long-established brands most worried. That is because the company behind it has been making ever bigger waves on international markets.

BYD is already the biggest player in China. It overtook Tesla in 2024 to become the world’s best-selling maker of electric vehicles (EVs), and since entering the European markets two years ago, it has expanded aggressively.

“We want to be number one in the British market within 10 years,” says Steve Beattie, sales and marketing director for BYD UK.

BYD is part of a wider expansion of Chinese companies and brands that some believe could change the face of the global motor industry – and which has already prompted radical action from the US government and the EU.

It means once-unknown marques like Nio, Xpeng, Zeekr or Omoda could become every bit as much household names as Ford or Volkswagen. They will join classic brands such as MG, Volvo and Lotus, which have been under Chinese ownership for years.

The products on offer already encompass a huge range, from runabouts like the tiny Dolphin Surf to exotic supercars, like the pothole-jumping U9, from BYD’s high-end sub-brand Yangwang.

“Chinese brands are making massive inroads into the European market,” says David Bailey, professor of business and economics at Birmingham Business School.

In 2024, 17 million battery and plug-in hybrid cars were sold worldwide, 11 million of those in China. Chinese brands, meanwhile, had 10% of global EV and plug-in hybrid sales outside their home country, according to the consultancy Rho Motion. That figure is only expected to grow.

For consumers, it should be good news – leading to more high-quality and affordable electric cars becoming available. But with rivalry between Beijing and western powers showing no sign of subsiding, some experts are concerned Chinese vehicles could represent a security risk from hackers and third parties. And for established players in Europe, it represents a formidable challenge to their historic dominance.

“[China has] a huge cost advantage through economies of scale and battery technology. European manufacturers have fallen well behind,” warns Mr Bailey.

“Unless they wake up very quickly and catch up, they could be wiped out.”

China’s car industry has been developing rapidly since the country joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001. But that process accelerated rapidly in 2015, when the Communist Party introduced its “Made in China 2025” initiative. The 10-year plan to make the country a leader in several high-tech industries, including EVs, attracted intense criticism from abroad, and particularly the US, amid claims of forced technology transfers and theft of intellectual property – all of which the Chinese government denies.

Fuelled by lavish state funding, the plan helped lay the groundwork for the breakneck growth of companies like BYD – originally a maker of batteries for mobile phones – and allowed the Chinese parent companies of MG and Volvo, SAIC and Geely, to become major players in the EV market.

“The general standard of Chinese cars is very, very high indeed,” says Dan Caesar, chief executive of Electric Vehicles UK.

“China has learned extremely quickly how to manufacture cars.”

Yet competition in China has become ever more cut-throat, with brands jostling for space in an increasingly saturated market. This has led them to hunt for sales elsewhere.

While Chinese firms have expanded into East Asia and South America, for years the European market proved a tough nut to crack – that is, until governments here decided to phase out the sale of new petrol and diesel models.

The transition to electric cars opened the door to new players.

“[Chinese brands] have seen an opportunity to get a bit of a foothold,” says Oliver Lowe, UK product manager of Omoda and Jaecoo, two sub brands of the Chinese giant Chery.

Low labour costs in China, coupled with government subsidies and a very well-established supply chain, have given Chinese firms advantages, their rivals have claimed. A report from the Swiss bank UBS, published in late 2023, suggested that BYD alone was able to build cars 25% more cheaply than western competitors.

Chinese firms deny the playing field is uneven. Xpeng’s vice chairman Brian Gu told the BBC at the Paris Motor Show in 2024 that his company is competitive “because we have fought tooth and nail through the most competitive market in the world”.

Concerns that Chinese EV imports could flood international markets at the expense of established manufacturers reached fever pitch in 2024.

In the US, the Alliance for American Manufacturing warned they could prove to be an “extinction-level event” for the US industry, while the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen suggested that “huge state subsidies” for Chinese firms were distorting the European market.

The Biden administration took dramatic action, raising import tariffs on Chinese-made EVs from 25% to 100%, effectively making it pointless to sell them in the US.

It was condemned by Beijing as “naked protectionism”.

Meanwhile, in October 2024, the EU imposed extra tariffs of up to 35.3% on Chinese-made EVs. The UK, however, took no action.

Matthias Schmidt, founder of Schmidt Automotive Research, says the EU’s tariffs have now made it harder for Chinese firms to gain market share.

“The door was wide open in 2024… but the Chinese failed to take their chance. With the tariffs in place, Chinese manufacturers are now unable to push their cost advantage onto European consumers.”

European manufacturers have been racing to develop their own affordable electric cars. French car-maker Renault is among them.

At its factory in Douai, in northeastern France, an army of spark-spitting robots weld sections of steel to form car bodies, while on the main assembly line, automated systems mate together bodyshells, doors, batteries, motors and other parts, before human workers apply the finishing touches.

The factory has been making cars for Renault since 1974, but four years ago, the ageing production lines were replaced with new highly automated, digitally-controlled systems.

Part of the site was also taken over by the Chinese-owned battery firm AESC, which built its own “gigafactory” next door.

It’s part of Renault’s wider plan to set up an ultra-modern EV “hub” in northern France. Mirroring the lean production techniques of Chinese manufacturers, the hub cuts costs by maximising efficiency and ensuring that suppliers are located as close as possible.

“Our target was to be able to produce affordable electric cars here to sell in Europe,” explains Pierre Andrieux, director of the Douai plant, arguing that automated processes “will enable us to do that profitably”.

But the company is also exploiting something the Chinese brands do not have: heritage. Its latest model, the Renault 5 E-tech, built in Douai, borrows its name from one of the company’s most famous products.

The original Renault 5, launched in 1972, was a quirky little everyman car with boxy looks and low running costs that became a cult classic.

The new design, despite being a state-of-the art EV, pays homage to its predecessor in name and appearance, in an effort to emulate its popular appeal.

But irrespective of how desirable Chinese cars are in comparison with European rivals, some experts believe we should be wary of them – for security reasons.

Most modern vehicles are internet-enabled in some way – to allow satellite navigation, for example – and drivers’ phones are often connected to car systems. Pioneered by Tesla, so-called “over-the-air updates” can upgrade a car’s software remotely.

This has all led to concerns, in some quarters, that cars could be hacked and used to harbour spyware, monitor individuals or even be immobilised at the touch of a keyboard.

Earlier this year, a British newspaper reported that military and intelligence chiefs had been ordered not to discuss official business while riding in EVs; it was also alleged that cars with Chinese components had been banned from sensitive military sites.

Then in May, a former head of the intelligence service MI6 claimed that Chinese-made technology in a range of products, including cars, could be controlled and programmed remotely. Sir Richard Dearlove warned MPs that there was the potential to “immobilise London”.

Beijing has always denied all accusations of espionage.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London says that the recent allegations are “entirely unfounded and absurd”.

“China has consistently advocated the secure, open, and rules-based development of global supply chains,” the spokesperson told the BBC. “Chinese enterprises operating around the world are required to comply with local laws and regulations.

“To date, there is no credible evidence to support the claim that Chinese EVs pose a security threat to the UK or any other country.”

Joseph Jarnecki, research fellow at defence and security think-tank The Royal United Services Institute, argues that potential risks can be mitigated.

“Chinese carmakers exist in this highly competitive market. While they’re beholden to Chinese law and that may require compliance with national security agencies, none of them want to damage their ability to grow and to have international exports by being perceived as a security risk,” he says.

“The Chinese government equally is conscious of the need for economic growth. They’re not hell-bent on solely conducting surveillance.”

But the car industry is just one area in which Chinese technology is becoming increasingly enmeshed in the UK economy. To achieve the government’s climate objectives, for instance, “It will be necessary to use Chinese-supplied technology”, adds Mr Jarnecki.

He believes that regulators of key industries should be given sufficient resources to monitor cyber security and advise companies using Chinese products of any potential issues.

As for electric cars powered by Chinese technology, there’s no question that they’re here to stay.

“Even if you have a car that’s made in Germany or elsewhere, it probably contains quite a few Chinese components,” says Dan Caesar.

“The reality is most of us have smartphones and things from China, from the US, from Korea, without really giving it a second thought. So I do think there’s some fearmongering going on about what the Chinese are capable of.

“I think we have to face the reality that China is going to be a big part of the future.”

A group of activists – including Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg – who were detained aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat, have been taken to a Tel Aviv airport for deportation, Israel said on Tuesday.

The yacht carrying 12 people trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza was towed to the Israeli port city of Ashdod on Monday, after it was seized by Israeli forces in the early hours.

Dismissing it as a “selfie yacht”, Israel said the passengers had arrived at Ben Gurion Airport to return to their home countries.

“Those who refuse to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial authority,” the Israeli foreign ministry said on X.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the activist group operating the vessel, said all campaigners were “being processed and transferred into the custody of Israeli authorities”.

“They may be permitted to fly out of Tel Aviv as early as tonight,” it said on social media.

Organisers said the Madleen was aiming to bring a “symbolic” amount of aid to Gaza in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade. They said it was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters.

The aid on board the Madleen includes rice and baby formula, the FFC said.

Citizens of Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Turkey were onboard the vessel – among them Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament, and Omar Faiad, a French journalist with Al Jazeera.

The boat set sail from Italy on 1 June to raise awareness of starvation conditions in Gaza and deliver aid.

Israel says its blockade on Gaza is necessary to prevent weapons from reaching Hamas fighters there.

On Sunday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz warned that Israel would act against any attempt to breach the blockade.

The FFC has argued that the sea blockade is illegal, characterising Katz’s statement as an example of Israel threatening the unlawful use of force against civilians and “attempting to justify that violence with smears”.

In 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish activists when they boarded the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was leading an aid flotilla towards Gaza.

Israel recently began to allow limited aid into Gaza after a three-month land blockade, prioritising distribution through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by Israel and the US but widely condemned by humanitarian groups.

In a post on X early on Monday, the Israeli foreign ministry said: “While Greta and others attempted to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity – and which included less than a single truckload of aid – more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks, and in addition, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza.

“There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip – they do not involve Instagram selfies.”

It is 20 months since Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the unprecedented Hamas-led cross-border attack on Israel 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.

This weekend, tensions boiled over in the Los Angeles area after a week of immigration sweeps in the region sparked violent protests against the Trump administration and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

President Donald Trump’s decision to send 700 US Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops to the Los Angeles area to support the federal response to the unrest has opened a volatile chapter in his mass deportation campaign.

The location of the raids and subsequent protests – a liberal-leaning city in a state controlled by Democrats – also gave the White House an ideal public foil as it seeks to show progress on removing illegal immigrants and instilling law and order.

Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and prominent critic of the president, wrote on X that the troop deployment was a “deranged fantasy of a dictatorial President”.

The raids in America’s second-biggest city are unfolding against the backdrop of an aggressive push to raise arrest and deportation numbers, as the administration has been disappointed with its current pace.

ICE has ramped up its enforcement actions in recent weeks as it faces pressure to show progress on Trump’s signature policy initiative.

The agency arrested 2,200 people on 4 June, according to NBC News, a record for a single day.

The network reported that hundreds of those arrested were enrolled in a programme known as Alternative to Detention, which allows for the release and monitoring of individuals not deemed an immediate threat.

• Live updates from LA protests
• LA’s unrest in maps and pictures

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the man widely seen as the intellectual architect of the deportation policy, has repeatedly said the White House hopes that ICE can scale up to 3,000 arrests a day, up from 660 or so during the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency.

“President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day,” Miller told Fox News in late May.

Yet for much of the first 100 days of the administration, deportations were on par with, and at times below, those recorded during the last year of Joe Biden’s presidency.

The White House stopped publishing daily deportation figures early in 2020.

“I’m not satisfied with the numbers,” the administration’s border tsar, Tom Homan, told reporters at the White House at the end of May. “We need to increase.”

Homan added that the Trump administration had “increased the teams a lot” and that “we expect a fast increase in the number of arrests”.

Several senior ICE officials – including Kenneth Genalo, its top deportation official – have left their roles at the agency in recent months.

In February, ICE also moved two top officials overseeing deportations, as well as the agency’s acting director, Caleb Vitello.

At the time of the more recent reshuffle, the agency characterised the move as organisational realignments that will “help ICE achieve President Trump and the American people’s mandate of arresting and deporting illegal aliens and making American communities safe”.

• How LA erupted over a rumour
• Everything we know about the protests
• Analysis: A political fight Trump is eager to have

The Department of Homeland Security said in a press release that the immigrants detained in the recent Los Angeles raids included individuals convicted of sex crimes, burglary, and drug related charges, among other offences.

Local immigration advocates and community members, however, say that families have been torn apart and nonviolent immigrants detained.

At a rally on Monday, Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said that a Friday raid at a warehouse in the Fashion District “was not about public safety, it was a fear driven, state violence designed to silence, to intimidate, to disappear”.

While opinion polls show that Trump’s immigration policies are popular with a majority of Americans, some of his backers have expressed concern about tactics.

The co-founder of Latinas for Trump, for example, Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia, wrote on X that “this is not what we voted for”.

“I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens, but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings – in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims – all driven by a Miller-like desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation goal,” she added.

Federal authorities have conducted more frequent immigration raids across the US, in states that lean both towards Democrats and Republicans. Some Republican-controlled states, like Tennessee, have assisted federal authorities.

“California was willing to resist,” said John Acevedo, an associate dean at Emory Law School, who studies free speech and protests in the US.

Images of violence and resistance on the streets of Los Angeles gave Trump a catalyst for the deployment of the National Guard.

“For his base, it does quite a bit. It shows he’s serious, and allows them to show he will use all means necessary to enforce his [immigration] rules,” Prof Acevedo said.

Protesters in Los Angeles – which calls itself a sanctuary city, meaning it limits co-operation with federal immigration enforcement – did not relish the role they believed the administration had chosen for their city.

“This is my people, you know, I’m fighting for us,” said Maria Gutierrez, a Mexican-American who protested for two days in Paramount, a city in LA County that saw protests after residents spotted ICE agents in the area.

The unrest there involved looting and at least one car burning. Authorities used rubber bullets and tear gas.

She said there are some protesting in LA, including those in the nearby city of Compton, that share a belief that they were protecting the city from immigration enforcement and saw the Trump administration’s threats as a challenge.

Ms Gutierrez believed undocumented immigrants who commit violent offences should be targeted, but not those who she believes work hard and aspire to a better life.

“This is our city. We’re angry, we know how to protect ourselves and this isn’t going to scare us,” she said.

But the community is not united in support for the protests that have captured national attention.

Juan, who lives near Paramount, came to the US illegally and later became a citizen, but supports ICE’s actions.

“ICE agents have a job to do, just like you and I,” said Juan, who asked the BBC to withhold his last name given the federal operations in the area.

He said he worked for years as a day labourer, but gained citizenship and has four children who graduated from college.

“It’s hard,” he said. “I have family who don’t have papers, too.

“But you can’t really fight it if you’re here and you’re not supposed to be.”

“A crime is a crime,” he said.

A South Korean court has fined a woman for sexual misconduct after she pulled down a colleague’s trousers – and his underwear, by accident – in front of their colleagues, local media reported.

On top of the 2.8 million won ($2,100; £1,500) fine, the woman in her 50s has also been ordered to complete eight hours of sexual violence prevention education.

The incident reportedly happened last October at a restaurant kitchen in Gangwon province in the north-east.

The Chuncheon District Court’s ruling on Saturday rejected the woman’s claim that she had intended it to be a prank on her colleague, who is in his 20s.

But the court said it was taking into account the fact that she had no prior criminal record and had shown remorse. She had knelt down to apologise to the man and his parents, the judge said.

“It seems like they punished a simple prank too harshly,” says one comment under the Chosun Daily’s report of the case.

But another reader argues, “The fine is not excessive at all. Why are you playing this kind of prank? Does this look like a prank to you?”

Pulling down someone’s trousers, which could include underwear – “pantsing” or “debagging” as it’s known – is often seen as a common practical joke despite criticism that it is a form of bullying.

Pantsing has long been used as a comic routine on variety shows and reality TV in South Korea.

But it has got people in trouble as well. In 2019, South Korean Olympic short track speed skating champion Lim Hyo-jun was suspended for a year after he pulled down a male teammate’s trousers in front of other female skaters.

And in 2021, a group of elementary school students in North Jeolla Province were investigated for bullying a younger boy at a playground, after the victim’s mother told police that they had pulled her son’s pants down.

When 26-year-old Umar Sofi received his acceptance letter from Columbia University’s School of Journalism, he thought the hardest part of his journey was over.

After trying for three years, Mr Sofi had finally been admitted to his dream university and even secured a partial scholarship. He quit his job in anticipation of the big move.

But on 27 May, when the US suddenly paused student visa appointments, the ground slipped from beneath his feet.

“I was numb. I could not process what had happened,” Mr Sofi, who lives in Indian-administered Kashmir, told the BBC.

Some 2,000km (1,242 miles) away in Mumbai, 17-year-old Samita Garg (name changed on request) went through a similar ordeal.

A day after she was accepted into a top US university to study biochemistry – her first step towards becoming a dermatologist – the US embassy halted student visa appointments.

“It is scary and stressful,” Ms Garg told the BBC over the phone. “It feels like I’ve been left in the lurch, not knowing when this will end.”

Both Mr Sofi and Ms Garg now have only a few weeks to secure their visas before the academic year begins in August, but little clarity on whether they can go ahead with their plans.

Last month President Donald Trump’s administration asked US embassies across the world to stop scheduling appointments for student visas and expand social media vetting of applicants.

This wider move followed a crackdown on America’s elite universities like Harvard, which Trump accused of being too liberal and of not doing enough to combat antisemitism.

Trump’s decisions have had far-reaching repercussions in India, which sends more international students to the US than any other country.

Over the last month, the BBC spoke with at least 20 students at various stages of their application process, all of whom echoed deep anxieties about their futures. Most chose to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the US government and worried that speaking out now could hurt their chances of obtaining a visa, or renewing it.

• Trump’s battle on international students explained… in 70 seconds
• Students say they ‘regret’ applying to US universities after visa changes
• Trump suspends foreign student visas at Harvard

More than 1.1 million international students were enrolled in US colleges in the 2023-24 school year, according to Open Doors, an organisation that collects data on foreign students.

Nearly a third of them, or more than 330,000, were from India.

Educational consultants report that applications to US universities for the upcoming autumn semester have dropped by at least 30% because of the uncertainty.

“Their biggest fear is safety – what if their visas are rejected or they’re deported mid-term?” said Naveen Chopra, founder of TC Global, an international education consultancy.

Experts say many students are now either deferring their plans or switching to countries perceived to be more “stable” like the UK, Germany, Ireland and Australia.

Prema Unni (name changed on request) was accepted into three US universities for a master’s in data analytics. But instead of preparing for the move, he decided to forgo the opportunity altogether.

“There’s uncertainty at every step – first the visa, then restrictions on internships and part-time work, and the constant surveillance while on campus,” Mr Unni said. “It is very stressful.”

The halt on visa interviews is the latest in a series of policies tightening immigration rules for students. A few weeks ago, the US warned that students who drop out or miss classes without proper notification risk having their visas revoked, and could be barred from future entry.

These decisions have come around the time of the year when 70% of student visas are issued, or renewed, sparking great unease among Indian students.

“No student wants to go to a country and then have the visa policy suddenly change,” Chris R Glass, a professor at Boston College told the BBC. “They need stability and options.”

The uncertainty will have long-term consequences – both for the aspirations of Indian students, but also for the US’s future as a coveted higher education hub – says Prof Glass.

Foreign student enrolment in US universities was slowing even before Trump’s latest salvo.

According to The Indian Express newspaper, the US denied 41% of student visa applications between the fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the highest rejection rate in a decade, and nearly doubling from 2014.

Data from Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems (SEVIS), which tracks foreign students’ compliance with their visas, showed a nearly 10% drop in international student enrolments as of March this year compared with the same period in 2024.

International students are a financial lifeline for many US colleges, especially regional and state universities offering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and other master’s programmes.

These students pay significantly higher tuition fees than US citizens.

In the 2023–24 academic year alone, foreign students contributed $43.8bn to the US economy, according to Nafsa, an association of International educators. They also supported over 375,000 jobs.

“This really isn’t about a short-term disruption of tuition revenue. This is about a long-term rupture in a strategic relationship that benefits both countries,” Prof Glass said.

For decades the brightest Indian students have depended on an American education in the absence of top quality Indian universities or a supportive research ecosystem.

In turn they’ve helped plug a skills gap in the US.

Many land highly sought-after jobs after they finish their courses – in particular, representing a significant pool of skilled professionals in sectors like biotechnology, healthcare and data science – and have even gone on to lead iconic companies.

Everyone from Google’s Sunder Pichai to Microsoft’s Satya Nadella went to the US as students.

While this has often led to concerns of a “brain-drain” from India, experts point out that India is simply unable to solve the problem of quality and quantity higher education in the immediate future to provide a domestic alternative to these students.

Experts say it will be a lose-lose situation for both countries, unless the cloud of uncertainty lifts soon.

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 stopped operating in 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 leaving 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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A New York judge has dismissed Justin Baldoni’s $400m (£295m) defamation lawsuit against his former co-star Blake Lively.

The pair, who both starred in the 2024 film It Ends with Us, have been locked in a legal battle for several months, with a trial set for next year.

Judge Lewis Liman on Monday dismissed Baldoni’s countersuit, which alleged extortion, defamation and other allegations.

Baldoni brought the suit after Lively filed a legal complaint last year against her former co-star, accusing him of sexual harassment and starting a smear campaign against her.

Lively filed a suit against Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios in December 2024, alleging she was sexually harassed on set and that Baldoni retaliated against her for bringing those complaints, among other allegations.

Lively also shared details of the allegations in a New York Times article published before her lawsuit.

Baldoni then brought defamation suits against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, their publicist, claiming they were aiming to ruin his career and reputation with the allegations, as well as the New York Times.

Baldoni’s lawsuit centred on two claims: that Lively “stole the film” from him and his company Wayfarer by threatening not to promote it, and that she and others promoted a false narrative that Baldoni sexually assaulted her and launched a smear campaign against her, Judge Liman explained in his opinion.

But Baldoni and his production company “have not adequately alleged that Lively’s threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions”, he wrote.

Additionally, the judge wrote, Baldoni and his company had not proved defamation because the “Wayfarer Parties have not alleged that Lively is responsible for any statements other than the statements” in her lawsuit, which are privileged.

The judge also determined that evidence did not show that the New York Times “acted with actual malice” in publishing their story, dismissing that $250m suit as well.

“The alleged facts indicate that the Times reviewed the available evidence and reported, perhaps in a dramatized manner, what it believed to have happened,” he wrote. “The Times had no obvious motive to favor Lively’s version of events.”

In a statement shared with US media, Lively’s lawyers called the opinion “a total victory and a complete vindication for Blake Lively, along with those that Justin Baldoni and the Wayfarer Parties dragged into their retaliatory lawsuit, including Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Sloane and The New York Times”.

In a post on her Instagram, Lively said that “Like so many others, I’ve felt the pain of a retaliatory lawsuit, including the manufactured shame that tries to break us”.

“While the suit against me was defeated, so many don’t have the resources to fight back,” she said, adding that she was “more resolved than ever to continue to stand for every woman’s right to have a voice in protecting themselves”.

The BBC has contacted Baldoni’s lawyers for comment.

Judge Liman said Baldoni would be allowed to amend and refile his allegations related to interference with contracts by 23 June.

Judge Liman’s dismissal comes a week after Lively asked to withdraw two of the claims in her suit against Baldoni – intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

In the original lawsuit, she said she experienced “severe emotional distress” in response to the alleged sexual harassment and smear campaign.

It Ends With Us is an adaption of a best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, which features Blake Lively as the main character, Lily Bloom, a young woman who grew up witnessing domestic abuse and finds herself in the same position years later.

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 outrage from Democrats. Then on Monday he ordered another 2,000 troops and 700 marines to deploy to the city, too.

People began gathering after federal immigration officers arrested large groups of unauthorised immigrants in areas with large Latino populations.

While the demonstrations started out as peaceful, five self-driving vehicles were set on fire, protesters shut down a major freeway, and there were reports of looting in affected parts 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 and 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
• On Monday, protests continued their demonstrations and police fired stun grenades to try to disperse people

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.

On Monday evening, he ordered another 2,000 National Guard members to the west-coast city. The Pentagon also called up 700 marines to assist with the efforts.

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 then sued Trump’s administration.

In its lawsuit filed on Monday California argued that Trump was going against the US Constitution, which has protections for states’ rights , in deploying the guard against the governor’s wishes. The 10th amendment says that any power not expressly granted to the federal government in the Constitution goes to the states.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the deployment an “inflammatory escalation unsupported by conditions on the ground” and “exceeds the federal government’s authority”.

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.