Iran’s supreme leader has insisted the US “gained no achievements” from strikes on its nuclear facilities, in his first public address since a ceasefire with Israel was agreed on Tuesday.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the strikes did not “accomplish anything significant” to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme, and described the retaliation against an American air base in Qatar as dealing a “heavy blow”.

It came as Washington doubled down on its assessment that the strikes had severely undermined Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said intelligence gathered by the US and Israel indicated the operation “significantly damaged the nuclear programme, setting it back by years”.

Previously, US President Donald Trump said the strikes against three key nuclear sites inside Iran “totally obliterated” them, and has responded furiously to reports citing unnamed American officials suggesting the damage may have been less extensive than anticipated.

Speaking alongside senior general Dan Caine at a Pentagon press conference on Thursday morning, Hegseth said the mission was a “historic success” that had “rendered [Iranian] enrichment facilities inoperable”.

During an at times combative exchange with reporters, Hegseth also said the US was “not aware of any intelligence” which indicated the enriched uranium had moved out of Fordo – the deeply buried facility which the US targeted with powerful so-called buster bombs – prior to the strikes.

Khamenei, who had been largely out of public view since direct conflict with Israel broke out on 13 June, released a televised address on Thursday morning, ending a week-long public silence.

The supreme leader has reportedly been sheltering in a bunker and limiting communications, which has sparked speculation about his whereabouts. Iranian authorities did not disclose where he was speaking from on Thursday, though a senior official acknowledged he was in a safe place earlier this week.

Khamenei used Thursday’s video address to threaten to carry out more strikes on US bases in the Middle East if Iran was attacked again, and declared victory over both Israel and the US.

Khamenei said Trump had “exaggerated” the impact of the nuclear site strikes, adding: “They couldn’t accomplish anything and did not achieve their objective.”

Referencing the attack on the US air base in Qatar, Khamenei said: “This incident is also repeatable in the future, and should any attack take place, the cost for the enemy and the aggressor will undoubtedly be very high.”

No one was killed during that attack, which Trump said had been flagged before it was launched. The US says the base was not damaged.

Direct confrontation broke out between Iran and Israel on 13 June, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time”.

A day earlier the global nuclear watchdog’s board of governors declared Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes alone and that it had never sought to develop a nuclear weapon.

On Thursday, Iran approved a parliamentary bill calling for an end to the country’s co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meaning it is no longer committed to allowing nuclear inspectors into its sites.

Iran’s health ministry said 610 people were killed during the 12 days of air attacks, while Israeli authorities said 28 were killed.

The US became directly involved last weekend, striking facilities in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, before Trump sought to rapidly mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

The ceasefire appeared shaky at first, with Iranian strikes and Israel before an outburst from Trump

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday that there was a chance Tehran had moved much of its highly enriched uranium elsewhere as it came under attack.

Iranian authorities have carried out a wave of arrests and multiple executions of people suspected of links to Israeli intelligence agencies, in the wake of the recent war between the two countries.

It comes after what officials describe as an unprecedented infiltration of Iranian security services by Israeli agents.

Authorities suspect information fed to Israel played a part in a series of high-profile assassinations during the conflict. This included the targeted killings of senior commanders from the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and nuclear scientists, which Iran attributes to operatives of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency working inside the country.

Shaken by the scale and precision of these killings, authorities have been targeting anyone suspected of working with foreign intelligence, saying it is for the sake of national security.

But many fear this is also a way to silence dissent and tighten control over the population.

During the 12-day conflict, Iranian authorities executed three people accused of spying for Israel. On Wednesday – just one day after the ceasefire – three more individuals were executed on similar charges.

Officials have since announced the arrest of hundreds of suspects across the country on accusations of espionage. State television has aired alleged confessions from several detainees, purportedly admitting to collaboration with Israeli intelligence.

Human rights groups and activists have expressed fears over the latest developments, citing Iran’s longstanding practice of extracting forced confessions and conducting unfair trials. There are concerns that more executions may follow.

Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence claims it is engaged in a “relentless battle” against what it calls Western and Israeli intelligence networks – including the CIA, Mossad, and MI6.

According to Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, since the beginning of Israel’s attack on Iran on 13 June, “the Israeli spy network has become highly active inside the country”. Fars reported that over the course of 12 days, Iranian intelligence and security forces arrested “more than 700 individuals linked to this network”.

Iranians have told BBC Persian they received warning text messages from Iran’s intelligence ministry informing them their phone numbers had appeared on social media pages related to Israel. They were instructed to leave these pages or face prosecution.

The Iranian government has also stepped up pressure on journalists working for Persian-language media outlets abroad, including BBC Persian and the London-based Iran International and Manoto TV.

According to Iran International, the IRGC detained the mother, father, and brother of one of its TV presenters in Tehran to pressure her into resigning over the channel’s coverage of the Iran-Israel conflict. The presenter received a phone call from her father – prompted by security agents – urging her to quit and warning of further consequences.

After the conflict began, threats directed at BBC Persian journalists and their families have become increasingly severe. According to the journalists recently affected, Iranian security officials contacting their families have claimed that, in a wartime context, they are justified in targeting family members as hostages. They have also labelled the journalists as “mohareb” — a term meaning ‘one who wages war against God’ — a charge that, under Iranian law, can carry the death penalty.

Manoto TV has reported similar incidents, including threats against employees’ families and demands to cut all ties with the outlet. Some relatives were reportedly threatened with charges such as “enmity against God” and espionage – both capital offences under Iranian law.

Analysts view these tactics as part of a broader strategy to silence dissent and intimidate exiled media workers.

Security forces have also detained dozens of activists, writers and artists, in many cases without formal charges. There are also reports of arrests targeting family members of those killed during the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” anti-government protests.

These actions suggest a broader campaign aimed not only at current activists but also at those connected to previous waves of dissent.

During the war, the Iranian government severely restricted access to the internet, and even after the ceasefire, full access has not yet been restored. Limiting internet access during crises, especially during nationwide protests against the government, has become a common pattern by Iran. Additionally, most of the social networks like Instagram, Telegram, X and YouTube, as well as news websites such as BBC Persian, have long been blocked in Iran and cannot be accessed without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) proxy service.

Human rights advocates and political observers have drawn parallels to the 1980s, when the Iranian authorities brutally suppressed political opposition during the Iran-Iraq War.

Many fear that, in the wake of its weakened international standing after the conflict with Israel, the Iranian authorities may again turn inward, resorting to mass arrests, executions, and heavy-handed repression.

Critics point to events of 1988, when, according to human rights groups, thousands of political prisoners – many already serving sentences – were executed following brief, secretive trials by so-called “death commissions.” Most victims were buried in unmarked mass graves.

Amy Hunt, whose mother and two sisters were murdered in their own home last year, has told the BBC there is an “epidemic” of misogyny in society that has “the most horrific, devastating consequences”.

In her first interview since the murders of her mum, Carol, and sisters, Hannah and Louise, Amy says the UK “should be very concerned” about sexist, hateful content on social media – calling on media platforms, people in power, schools and “every single one of us” to do something about it.

She tells the BBC people are “slowly waking up” to the links between hate posted on social media and violence against women by men in real life.

The man who killed her loved ones was Kyle Clifford, her youngest sister’s ex-boyfriend. The attacks came two weeks after Louise ended their 18-month relationship.

Amy describes Clifford as a man filled with hatred, self-loathing, and a deep insecurity. “It’s very clear he hates women,” she says. “But what I often say is, he doesn’t hate women as much as he hates himself.”

She says there is “a serious obligation as a society to change men’s behaviour, because this is a man’s issue – it is not a woman’s issue”.

Amy has been speaking to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire alongside her father, racing commentator John Hunt.

• Watch: John and Amy Hunt’s interview with BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire

The pair describe the legacy of love Carol, Hannah and Louise have left. John says it is this that has helped sustain them through their trauma and grief. The three women remain a constant presence in their lives, he says.

Amy adds that her mother and sisters were “the best of us” and says “the world is a much emptier place without them”.

Clifford fatally stabbed 61-year-old Carol in July last year after he followed her into her home, in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on the pretext of bringing over some of his former partner Louise’s belongings.

He then lay in wait for Louise, 25, before raping her, and using a crossbow to shoot both her and her sister Hannah, 28.

In March this year, he was sentenced to three whole-life orders, meaning he will never be released from prison.

John and Amy strongly reject reports in some media that there were clear signs of abuse by Clifford during his relationship with Louise.

Prosecutors in the case did, however, say Clifford’s actions had been fuelled by the “violent misogyny” promoted by controversial social media personality Andrew Tate, whose videos he had watched in the days before the murders.

Clifford had searched for Tate’s podcast the day before carrying out the attack.

The court was told it was no coincidence that he had turned to such content before carrying out the violence. Amy says she believes there was an “undeniable link”.

But she also says any suggestion that Clifford was not dangerous, or that he only became capable of murder after watching misogynistic content, is “ridiculous”. She says, however, we live in a society that “emboldens misogyny” and “allows misogyny to fester”.

“It’s not just Andrew Tate, there are many subsets of Andrew Tate on social media who are spouting the same misogynistic hate – that is an undeniable fact and we should be very concerned about it.”

She feels misogyny is “the acceptable form of extremism” on social media platforms.

“We’ve got a serious issue on our hands, and we don’t give it the attention it deserves until it forces its way into your life, like it has ours,” she says.

Amy says the minute Clifford left their home on the day of the incident, “my mum, Hannah and Louise became a statistic. They became victims of Kyle Clifford.” She wants “to breathe life back into my mum, Hannah and Louise as fully-rounded people”.

When sentencing Clifford in March, the judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, described him as a “jealous man soaked in self-pity, who holds women in utter contempt”. The attacks, the judge added, were “brutal and cowardly”.

Reflecting on these words, John says: “I know it’s difficult to hear, but it’s worth remembering that he killed Carol in the most brutal way, and [he] still had choices after that.

“He didn’t choose to say, ‘oh my God, what have I done? I’ve got to get out of here’. His choice then was to say, ‘I’ve killed Carol, and now I’m going to sit and wait for an hour and a half. I’m going to kill Louise as well, and whatever time Hannah turns up, [do the] same’.

“The amount of time that day, on 9 July, he would have just been sitting there making a conscious decision to do the next step. It’s impossible for us to comprehend, isn’t it?”

He says schools should teach boys to respect women and girls much earlier than they currently do. Once boys start viewing dangerous, misogynistic content online, he adds, “they’re already on the path to doom”.

Amy says she believes misogynist influencers “don’t care” about the men and boys who watch their content.

“Who are the people that do care about the men in our society? It’s the people who love them, the people who know them,” she says. “It’s a question of what sort of world are we comfortable living in.”

The head of Ukraine’s army, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, has said his troops have stopped Russian advances in the northeastern border region of Sumy.

During a visit to the front on Thursday, Syrskyi said the line of combat had been “stabilised” and that the Russian summer offensive in the area had been “choked off”.

However, Syrskyi also added that he had personally gone to check on fortifications in the region and that more were urgently needed.

Syrskyi’s comments on the successes of the Ukrainian troops in Sumy back recent statements by Ukrainian officials that Russia’s pressure on the region was declining.

However, the situation remained “volatile”, Border Guard spokesperson Andriy Demchenko said earlier this week.

Sumy borders the Russian region of Kursk, parts of which were seized and occupied last year by Ukrainian forces in a surprise offensive before being almost totally driven out months later.

The Kursk incursion was an embarrassment for Russia and in April President Vladimir Putin announced a plan to create “security buffer zones” along the border to provide “additional support” to areas in Russia which border Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv regions.

Moscow has been pushing in the Sumy area with renewed effort since then. In late May Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky said 50,000 of Russia’s “largest, strongest” troops were concentrated along the border and were planning to create a 10km (6-mile) buffer zone.

• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

There has been criticism about the lack of fortifications in some areas of the Sumy region – and in his statement on Thursday Syrskyi tried to quell growing public concerns over delays in their construction.

“Additional fortifications, the establishment of ‘kill zones’, the construction of anti-drone corridors to protect our soldiers and ensure more reliable logistics for our troops are obvious tasks that are being carried out,” he said.

However, Syrskyi acknowledged that these improvements had to be done better and more efficiently.

In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the lack of fortifications in certain parts of Ukraine allowed Moscow to make advances across the country – from its northern borders and from the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula.

The window of opportunity to build fortifications in Sumy safely and quickly was in autumn 2024, when Ukrainian troops were still advancing in the Russia’s border Kursk region and Sumy remained relatively unscathed.

Now may be too late, as Russia is undoubtedly well aware of the sections of the front line that lack strong fortifications.

In the last several months Moscow has claimed to have captured several villages while pummelling the city of Sumy with heavy missile strikes, killing dozens. A single ballistic missile attack on 13 April killed at least 34 people and injured 117.

DeepState, a group that monitors the latest frontline developments in Ukraine, has quoted sources as confirming that combat is raging in various unfortified areas of Sumy. The delays with erecting “much-needed fortifications” or the “low quality of some of the dugouts” could no longer be ignored, DeepState analysts said.

Asked about the summer offensive at a forum in St Petersburg last week, Putin said Russia did not “have the goal of capturing Sumy, but I don’t rule it out”. He said Russian forces had already established a buffer zone of 8-12km in depth.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, is now well into its fourth year.

Large-scale Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian cities are on the rise. In recent weeks the capital Kyiv was targeted with record numbers of drones that overwhelm air defences and cause deadly explosions.

Recent rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia resulted in large prisoner exchanges but have so far failed to produce any tangible progress towards a ceasefire.

Earlier this week Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said that European and Canadian allies had pledged €35bn (£30bn; $41bn) to Ukraine.

But there remains nervousness in Kyiv over the level of US President Donald Trump’s commitment to the Ukrainian cause and his volatile relationship with Zelensky.

However, Trump said on Wednesday a meeting he held with Zelensky on the sidelines of the Nato summit in The Hague “couldn’t have been nicer”.

He told BBC Ukraine’s Myroslava Petsa at a press conference afterwards that he was considering supplying Kyiv with US Patriot air defence missiles to defend itself against Russian strikes.

“We’re going to see if we could make some available. You know, they’re very hard to get,” he said.

One of the “grandpa robbers” found guilty of stealing jewellery worth millions from reality TV star Kim Kardashian has died one month after being convicted, French media have said.

Didier Dubreucq, 69, was diagnosed with lung cancer while in detention prior to going on trial and had been undergoing chemotherapy.

In May, he and seven accomplices were found guilty of the high-profile Paris heist, during which millions of dollars’ worth of jewellery were stolen from Kardashian nearly a decade ago.

Dubreucq denied any involvement in the heist. “It’s a mistaken identity case… I had nothing to do with this,” he told the court during his testimony in April.

Due to chemotherapy, Dubreucq – nicknamed “Blue Eyes” – was absent from the sentencing, but received a seven-year sentence from the judge of which five were suspended.

He did not spend time in prison following the sentencing as he had already spent two years in pre-trial detention.

Three other people were given sentences of up to eight years, mostly suspended, but also did not return to prison because of time already served.

Judge David De Pas said as he delivered the verdict that “the state of health of the main protagonists ethically prohibits incarcerating anyone”.

During the three-week trial, the court heard how Kardashian was bound and had a gun held to her head during the ordeal.

On the day she took the stand, she recalled thinking she “would be shot dead on the bed”.

The thieves – nicknamed the “grandpa robbers” due to the advanced ages of those involved, stole about $10m (£7.5m) of her jewellery, including the engagement ring her then-husband and rapper Kanye West gifted her, which alone was worth $4m (£3m).

“The crime was the most terrifying experience of my life, leaving a lasting impact on me and my family,” Kardashian said in a statement after the verdicts.

Dame Anna Wintour is stepping back as editor-in-chief of American Vogue after 37 years.

The British-born fashion magnate, 75, is leaving the role she has held longer than any other editor, but will retain senior positions at its publisher.

Dame Anna will continue as Vogue’s global editorial director, as well as chief content officer for its parent company Conde Nast.

She was made a dame by the late Queen Elizabeth II for services to fashion and journalism in 2017, and was made Companion of Honour by King Charles earlier this year.

Dame Anna announced to staff on Thursday that a new role, head of editorial content, would be introduced at American Vogue.

According to an account published by the company, Dame Anna told staff she wanted to help “the next generation of impassioned editors storm the field with their own ideas” as she announced her departure from the editor-in-chief role.

She said she would continue with many of her responsibilities, and that “it goes without saying that I plan to remain Vogue’s tennis and theatre editor in perpetuity”.

Raised in London, Dame Anna was the editor of British Vogue before she took the helm at its US sister publication in 1988.

She is credited with giving American Vogue a new lease of life, turning it into one of the world’s top fashion publications and was credited with overhauling its output, including featuring less well-known models and mixing inexpensive clothes with couture.

Over her long career, Dame Anna has become one of the most recognisable and influential figures in the fashion industry.

Outside of her work with Vogue, she has also organised the Met Gala, a New York fundraiser which attracts high-profile celebrities, since 1995.

She is known for her trademark bob and dark glasses. Last December, she told the BBC’s culture editor Katie Razzall the signature shades were a “prop”, and “they help me see and they help me not see”.

Dame Anna’s tenure as editor-in-chief of US Vogue is also widely rumoured to have inspired the tyrannical but revered character of Miranda Priestly in the Devil Wears Prada – a novel by a former assistant of Wintour, Lauren Weisberger.

Earlier this year, King Charles asked Dame Anna whether she would stop working – to which she said she replied “firmly no”.

At least 18 Palestinians have been killed after an Israeli drone strike targeted a Hamas police unit attempting to assert control over a market in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, a doctor and eyewitnesses told the BBC.

Eyewitnesses said Israeli drones fired at members of a Hamas police force, dressed in civilian clothing and wearing masks, who were confronting vendors they accused of price gouging and selling goods looted from aid trucks.

The Hamas-run Ministry of Interior condemned the strike, accusing Israel of committing “a new crime against a police unit tasked with maintaining public order”.

The BBC has contacted the Israeli military for comment.

One eyewitness told the BBC clashes broke out on Thursday after police confronted the vendors, with the unit commander shouting: “Either sell at a fair price or we will confiscate the goods.”

Some of the vendors then “pulled out handguns and one man had a Kalashnikov”, the eyewitness said.

Israeli drones then fired two missiles, local residents said.

Video footage from the aftermath shows bodies strewn on the ground and panicked shoppers screaming, as ambulances rush to attend to those injured.

A doctor at Deir al-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital told the BBC 18 bodies were brought to the morgue there. It was not immediately clear how many of those killed were police officers.

The incident came as civilians in Gaza continue to struggle to access food, with near daily shootings reported at and around US and Israel-backed distribution sites in south and central Gaza, and the limited goods available in markets selling for highly inflated prices.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday accused Hamas of “once again taking control of humanitarian aid… and stealing it from civilians” in northern Gaza, as he gave the military two days to devise an “action plan” to prevent this.

It came after video footage was filmed on Wednesday of a truck convoy carrying aid into northern Gaza, after entering through the Zikim gate, with armed and masked men on top.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir shared the video on social media, saying Hamas was “taking control of the food and goods” and calling on Netanyahu to halt the entry of aid into Gaza.

Hamas has denied stealing or profiting from aid, and Gaza’s higher committee for tribal affairs – a non-Hamas affiliated committee created during the war – also dismissed Israel’s “false claims” in a statement on Thursday.

“The securing of aid has been carried out purely through tribal efforts,” it said.

At a warehouse in Gaza City on Thursday, thousands of aid parcels were distributed.

Hamas political officials were present but said their role was “supervisory”, with an NGO in charge of distributing some 6,000 food parcels.

“This morning, when I woke up to the message telling me to go get aid, all my children, young and old, started singing and dancing with joy. I pray to God that this blessing remains with us,” one woman waiting for food there said.

Also on Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced its first medical shipment into Gaza since 2 March had been delivered on Wednesday.

Nine trucks carrying medical supplies, 2,000 units of blood, and 1,500 units of plasma were transported without any looting “despite the high-risk conditions”, WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

He added the amount was “only a drop in the ocean”.

The blood and plasma were delivered to Nasser Medical Complex for onward distribution to hospitals “facing critical shortages amid a growing influx of injuries, many linked to incidents at food distribution sites”, he said.

Before Thursday’s strike at the market, at least 14 Palestinians had been killed and dozens injured in Israeli military attacks across Gaza since midnight, a spokesperson for the Hamas-run Civil Defence said.

Rescue teams evacuated 14 bodies, including those of three Palestinians who were waiting for humanitarian aid near the Wadi Gaza bridge close to the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza.

A medical source at Al-Awda Hospital nearby confirmed that three Palestinians were killed and several others injured by Israeli gunfire near the Wadi Gaza bridge.

Witnesses said Israeli drones opened fire at a big crowd of civilians reportedly waiting for humanitarian aid at the time of the attack.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC that overnight, a gathering was identified in an area adjacent to troops in the Netzarim corridor, and troops fired warning shots to prevent suspects from approaching them.

The IDF said it was aware of reports regarding the number of injured individuals in the area, but said an initial inquiry suggested the number does not align with the IDF’s information. However, the details of the incident are under additional review, the IDF added.

Elsewhere, five people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced families in western Gaza City.

In the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, in the south of the Strip, five members of the Abu Arab family were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a tent sheltering displaced persons. Another Palestinian was also killed in a strike that hit a tent in Al-Mawasi.

Others were wounded in the strikes.

The IDF said it was looking into these reports, but requested specific coordinates and times. In general, the IDF said it was “operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities”.

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

At least 56,259 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

One of the two charismatic criminals involved in the kidnapping that gave the world the term “Stockholm syndrome” has died aged 78, his family has said.

Clark Olofsson – who rose to global notoriety in 1973 following a kidnapping and bank robbery in the Swedish capital – died following a lengthy illness, his family told online media outlet Dagens ETC.

During a six-day siege, Olofsson’s hostages began to sympathise with him and his accomplice, defending their actions while growing more hostile to the police outside.

The incident lends its name to a theorised psychological condition whereby kidnap victims develop affections for their captors.

• What is Stockholm syndrome?

The notorious bank siege was instigated by another man, Jan-Erik Olsson. After seizing three women and a man hostage, he demanded Olofsson – who he had previously befriended in prison – be brought to the bank from jail.

Swedish authorities agreed to his demand, and Olofsson entered the bank, which was surrounded by police.

Years later, in an interview with the Aftonbladet newspaper, he claimed he was asked to work as an inside man to keep the captives safe in exchange for a reduced sentence, but accused officials of not honouring the agreement.

Olofsson persuaded one of the hostages, Kristin Enmark, to speak to the Swedish prime minister on the phone on behalf of the robbers.

She begged to be allowed to leave the bank in a getaway car with the kidnappers, telling him: “I fully trust Clark and the robber… They haven’t done a thing to us.”

She went on: “On the contrary, they have been very nice… Believe it or not but we’ve had a really nice time here.”

Over the course of several phone calls, Enmark said she feared her captors would be harmed by police and repeatedly defended their actions.

In her memoir, she said of Olofsson: “He promised that he would make sure nothing happened to me and I decided to believe him. I was 23 years old and feared for my life.”

The hostage situation ended after six days when police officers broke through the roof and used tear gas to subdue the pair.

Initially, hostages refused to leave their captors over fears they would be shot by police. The hostages also later refused to testify against Olofsson and Olsson.

Experts have since debated whether Stockholm syndrome is an actual psychiatric condition, with some arguing it is a defence mechanism to cope with traumatic situations.

The term was coined in the aftermath of the siege by Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot to explain the seemingly irrational affection some captives felt for their hostage-takers.

The theory reached a wider audience the following year when Californian newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by revolutionary militants.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sideways podcast in 2021, Enmark rubbished the concept of Stockholm syndrome, saying: “It’s a way of blaming the victim. I did what I could to survive.”

Olofsson was a repeat offender and spent much of his life in prison. He was released for the last time in 2018 after serving a sentence for a drug offence in Belgium.

In 2022, actor Bill Skarsgård portrayed him in the Netflix drama series Clark.

The BBC has introduced a paywall for people looking at parts of its website from the United States.

US-based visitors to BBC.com will now have to pay $49.99 (£36) a year or $8.99 (£6.50) a month for access to most BBC News stories and features, and to stream the BBC News channel.

Those who do not pay will still have ad-supported access to selected global breaking news stories, BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, as well as its language services and some newsletters and podcasts.

Rebecca Glashow, CEO of BBC Studios Global Media & Streaming, described the move as a “major milestone” that would “unlock new opportunities for growth”.

There will be no changes for the BBC’s UK audiences or for those elsewhere around the world.

The corporation hopes the offer will raise money to help fund the BBC’s services alongside revenue from UK households through the licence fee, which costs £174.50 a year and accounted for about two-thirds of its total income last year.

The BBC has said it expected to have a £492m budget deficit for the latest financial year.

The UK government is set to review the corporation’s funding model, but the BBC’s director general has said switching to a subscription system for UK audiences would not “pass the test of building a universal trusted public service”.

The BBC’s new US pay model follows similar subscription systems used by other publications including the New York Times, and the likes of the Telegraph and the Sun putting selected stories and content behind paywalls in the UK.

BBC.com reaches 139 million visitors globally, including almost 60 million in the US, the corporation said.

UK audiences will still be able to access BBC News when travelling to America if they have the latest version of the app.

Ms Glashow said the BBC wanted to “reimagine how we deliver” news and factual content to the US.

“Our goal? To serve our audiences better than ever before – and unlock new opportunities for growth,” she said.

“Today, the next phase of that vision becomes reality. We’re bringing more of the BBC’s trusted, high-quality content together in one powerful, easy-to-access destination.”

BBC News CEO Deborah Turness said: “Through our partnership with BBC Studios we are growing our audiences in North America – providing more people with news they can trust at a time of dramatic global uncertainty.”

More documentaries, podcasts and newsletters will be added to the subscription offer in the coming months.

The paywall will be launched for the BBC app in the US at a later date.

It comes after the BBC announced it was to block most stations on the BBC Sounds app for audiences outside the UK.

The government is expected to announce a deal shortly with Labour rebels on its planned benefits changes.

Multiple sources tell the BBC existing claimants of the Personal Independence Payment (Pip) will continue to receive what they currently get, as will recipients of the health element of Universal Credit.

It is also expected that the support to help people into employment will be fast forwarded so it happens sooner.

The concessions amount to a massive climbdown from the government, which was staring at the prospect of defeat if it failed to accommodate the demands of over 100 of its backbenchers.

It comes after Sir Keir Starmer spent Thursday making calls to shore up support among the 120 Labour MPs who backed an amendment to stop the government’s flagship welfare bill progressing through Parliament.

Speaking in the Commons earlier, Sir Keir said he wanted to “see reform implemented with Labour values and fairness”.

He said he recognised that MPs of all parties were “eager” to reform the “broken” welfare system.

The Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill would change who would qualify for certain disability and sickness benefits.

Ministers had said the legislation, which aims to save £5bn a year by 2030, is crucial to slow down the increase in the number of people claiming benefits.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves had factored these cuts into her Spring Statement in March – designed to help meet her economic plans.

It is unclear how the new reforms will affect the government’s spending plans.

Working-age health-related benefit spending has increased from £36bn to £52bn in the five years between 2019 and 2024, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a think tank.

It is expected to double to £66bn by 2029, without changes to the system.

But Labour MPs have criticised elements of government proposals, including plans to require Pip claimants to prove they need a higher degree of assistance with tasks such as preparing and eating food, communicating, washing and getting dressed.

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The pound briefly hit its highest level against the dollar for almost four years after markets were unnerved by a report that US President Donald Trump could bring forward the naming of the new head of the US central bank.

Sterling rose above $1.37, which is the strongest since October 2021.

The dollar weakened after the Wall Street Journal reported Trump had considered naming Jerome Powell’s replacement as head of the Federal Reserve by September or October.

The US Fed is independent from the government and Mr Powell chairs a committee that decides on interest rates which have remained unchanged this year, prompting a series of angry outbursts from Trump.

On Wednesday, Trump called Mr Powell “terrible” and said he was looking at “three or four people” who could replace him. Mr Powell’s term is due to end in May 2026.

There are concerns the US president could install someone who is sympathetic to his demands.

Earlier this week, Mr Powell told US lawmakers the Fed would wait and see how the American economy reacts if Trump’s so-called retaliatory tariffs against a range of countries come into force next month, after being paused until 9 July.

The Fed is concerned that the levies, which are paid by the businesses importing the goods, might push up inflation.

The US economy shrank in the first three months of this year – the first decline for three years – as government spending fell and imports rose as firms raced to get products into the country before the tariffs went live.

JP Morgan, the investment bank, has lowered the chance of the US economy falling into recession this year but at 40% the probability of a slowdown remains comparatively high.

Kaspar Hense, a senior portfolio manager at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, said traders were betting the dollar would fall “in this environment, where there is an erosion of institutions”.

While Kit Juckes, chief FX strategist at Societe Generale, said: “I think the market is pricing in President Trump appointing someone who at least at first sight appears more sympathetic to his cause.”

Academics have said that confidence in the Fed’s independence is key to maintaining financial markets’ faith that inflation will be controlled.

If this confidence is shaken, it could lead to higher borrowing costs for everyone if investors demand higher interest rates for holding debt.

There is speculation that Kevin Warsh, a former governor at the Fed, may be considered for the role.

Earlier this month, Trump was asked about whether Warsh could become the Fed’s chair, to which he replied: “He’s very highly thought of.”

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could also be a candidate, according to reports.

He recently told lawmakers in the House of Representatives that he currently has “the best job” in Washington and is “happy to do what President Trump wants me to do”.

Mr Powell was himself a Trump appointee. During Trump’s first term in the White House, Mr Powell replaced the then Fed chair Janet Yellen.

Trump had criticised Ms Yellen for keeping interest rates too low, stating: “I think she should be ashamed of herself.”

Ms Yellen went on to become the US Treasury Secretary under President Joe Biden and said she did not think that Trump had a grasp of macroeconomic policy.

A bitter standoff between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and the Armenian Apostolic Church has seen mass arrests, allegations of a coup plot, and an extraordinary offer by Armenia’s leader to reveal his private parts to prove he is a Christian.

Earlier this week, Pashinyan told his 1.1 million followers on Facebook he was prepared to expose himself to the head of the Armenian Church and his spokesman, to prove they were wrong that he had been circumcised.

Social media became his preferred means of communication after he came to office after Armenia’s so-called Velvet Revolution of 2018.

Pashinyan faces pivotal elections next year and the Church has become a prominent anti-government voice since Armenia was defeated in a 2020 war with neighbouring Azerbaijan.

His extraordinary offer last Monday followed a Facebook post by a priest in the southwestern town of Masis who alleged Pashinyan had been circumcised, comparing him to Judas and implying that he was not Christian.

“I believe that our Apostolic Holy Church must immediately cleanse itself,” said Father Zareh Ashuryan, “of those false ‘believers’ who have betrayed the nation, dishonoured the memory of their ancestors, violated the baptism, and replaced the seal of the Holy Cross with the sign of circumcision.”

The confrontation between Church and state began at the end of May when the prime minister accused the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II, of breaking his vow of celibacy and fathering a child, demanding the church leader’s replacement.

The Church released a statement accusing Pashinyan of undermining Armenia’s “spiritual unity” but did not address the claim about the child.

Government-affiliated media subsequently circulated photos and names of Karekin II’s alleged daughter, while Pashinyan established a “co-ordination group” to organise the election of a new Church leader – despite constitutional provisions guaranteeing separation of Church and state.

When Karekin II returned from a trip to the UAE last week, hundreds of supporters gathered at Yerevan airport chanting (Pontiff).

He called for unity and restraint, saying they would “overcome this difficulty” together.

The crisis then escalated on Wednesday, when security services detained 16 people, including Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a senior cleric who leads the opposition Sacred Struggle movement. They face allegations of plotting terrorist acts to seize power.

Among the others detained are an opposition member, a former MP, a businessman and a blogger.

Armenia’s Investigative Committee alleges the group planned to establish 250 “assault” groups” of 25 members each to carry out attacks and cause mass disturbances, and that “a large quantity of items and objects intended for criminal activity” were found during the searches.

The archbishop led major anti-government protests last year and a court has now ruled that he should spend two months in pre-trial detention. He faces charges of planning terrorism and attempting to overthrow the state.

His lawyers have dismissed the allegations as “political persecution”.

The arrests followed the publication of what government-affiliated media claimed was a detailed opposition coup plan, allegedly involving the Church, recently detained Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, and two former presidents – Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan.

Nikol Pashinyan shared a montage of the photos of the four men and said that the event would remain history as a “failed revolution of crooks”.

In a statement, Sargsyan’s Republican Party accused the government of using the “law enforcement system to silence political opponents”.

Samvel Karapetyan, who holds dual Russian and Armenian citizenship, is one of the richest men in Armenia, with an estimated wealth of $4bn (£2.9bn).

He owns the Tashir Group, known across Russia for its pizza brand. It is a conglomerate that operates real estate as well as the Electric Networks of Armenia – a major energy distributor in the country.

Karapetyan, one of the most prominent benefactors of the Armenian Apostolic Church and the recipient of high Church awards, was arrested after he made a public video pledging his support for the Church.

“I have always stood with the Armenian Church and the Armenian people. If the politicians do not succeed, we will intervene in our own way in this campaign against the Church,” he warned.

Hours after the statement, law enforcement officers conducted searches in Karapetyan’s mansion, he was arrested and later charged with publicly calling for the seizure of power.

He has denied all the charges against him.

Pashinyan’s spokesman suggested that the billionaire had decided to use a “classic manual received from the north” – a clear reference to Russia.

The prime minister later announced his intention to nationalise Karapetyan’s Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA) and he told a cabinet meeting on Thursday the government would start taking control of it.

“We must do this swiftly and effectively,” Pashinyan said.

Following Karapetyan’s arrest giant billboards with his photos appeared in Moscow – and Russia’s Armenian diaspora expressed support for the billionaire.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow was “closely monitoring” the situation around “Russian national Samvel Karapetyan” promising to provide him necessary assistance to ensure that his legal rights were respected.

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough may not be a household name, but the so-called referee of the Senate has found herself the centre of a firestorm after she objected to several parts of US President Donald Trump’s mega-sized tax bill.

The 1,000-page document, which he’s dubbed the “big beautiful bill”, would slash spending and extend tax cuts.

But Ms MacDonough has said that certain provisions violate senate rules, throwing billions of dollars of cuts into doubt.

Her findings have also made it difficult for Congress to pass the bill by 4 July – a deadline set by the president himself.

Now, some Republicans are calling for the Senate to ignore her recommendations – going against long-standing tradition – or to fire her.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives narrowly passed a massive spending bill that included cuts to low-income health insurance programme Medicaid, reforms to the food assistance programme SNAP, and a measure to end taxes on tips and overtime pay.

That version then went to the Senate, where both Republicans and Democrats wanted adjustments made.

The US Senate has spent recent weeks debating changes and writing a new version of the bill.

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Legislators are now racing against the clock to deliver the bill to Trump’s desk by 4 July.

Republicans maintain a majority in both the House and the Senate, which should make it easy to pass legislation. But leadership in both chambers has struggled to get consensus on a number of provisions – particularly on social programs like Medicaid – from competing factions within the party.

The Senate parliamentarian’s job is to decide whether a bill complies with budget rules.

Ms MacDonough – the first woman to hold the role – has held the position since 2012. Before that, she spent 25 years as a Senate staffer and worked for the Justice Department.

While she was appointed by former Democratic Senator Harry Reid, she has served Senates controlled by both Republicans and Democrats.

In 2021, multiple Democratic legislators called on the Senate to overrule Ms MacDonough when she said a minimum wage increase could not be included in a policy bill at the time.

People serving as the Senate parliamentarian have been fired before, too.

In 2001, the Senate majority leader at the time fired then Senate parliamentarian, Robert Dove, after one of Dove’s rulings on a bill infuriated Republicans.

Several of the provisions Republican senators have proposed violate the Byrd Rule, she said, which is a 1985 rule the Senate adopted that says “extraneous” provisions cannot be tacked onto “reconciliation” bills.

The budget bill is a reconciliation bill, which means it does not need a 60-vote supermajority to pass the Senate. Reconciliation bills tell the government how to spend money, not how to issue policy, the Byrd rule says.

Because of these rules, Republicans can avoid a Democratic filibuster on the bill and pass it with a simple majority.

But as Ms MacDonough has examined the text she has found a number of places where the reconciliation bill tries to change policy.

Among the provisions Ms MacDonough has ruled against is a plan that would cap states’ ability to collect more federal Medicaid funding through healthcare provider taxes and a measure that would have made it harder to enforce contempt findings against the Trump administration.

And more rulings could come as she continues to examine the large bill.

Some Republicans, like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, are not please with her rulings and have gone as far as calling for her to be fired.

“President Trump’s landslide victory was a MANDATE from 77 million Americans,” he wrote on X on Thursday. “The One Big Beautiful Bill delivers on that mandate. The Parliamentarian is trying to UNDERMINE the President’s mandate and should be fired.”

Kansas Senator Roger Marshall urged his party to pass a resolution to term limit the parliamentarian.

He noted in a social media post that the Senate parliamentarian was fired during reconciliation in 2001: “It’s 2025 during reconciliation & we need to again fire the Senate Parliamentarian.”

Texas Senator John Cornyn said Republicans should not let “an unelected Senate staffer” stop the party from passing the bill.

But Senate Republican Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, does not seem to agree with these calls to oust her.

Thune, who is the senior most ranking senator, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday he would not overrule Ms MacDonough.

Instead, he described the senate referee’s rulings as “speed bumps”, and said his party had other options to reach Republican-promised budget cuts, namely rewriting the bill.

Thune had previously said a vote on the bill was expected on Friday, though it remains unclear if Republicans can agree on a bill to move to the floor for a vote by then.

Once the bill passes the Senate, it goes back to the House for approval. Some Republicans in the House have already indicated their displeasure with the Senate’s edits to the bill.

After the bill passes both houses, then it can go to Trump’s desk.

Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary, said the Trump administration is sticking by the 4 July deadline.

“This is part of the process, this is part of the inner workings of the United States Senate, but the president is adamant about seeing this bill on his desk here at the White House by Independence Day,” she said referring to the parliamentarian’s rulings.

Last year, in an unlikely development, I was booked to DJ at Glastonbury Festival. When I arrived on Thursday afternoon, one thing struck me straight away.

There was a very particular atmosphere. I’d best describe is as a sense of release – of a wait being over. I’d never seen or felt anything like it.

That Thursday feeling stayed with me. I kept thinking about it in the months afterwards

Though the main stages open on Friday and run all weekend, Glastonbury is a five-day festival.

To its organiser, Emily Eavis, the first two days are special. The festival was started by her parents, Michael and Jean, and her memories are intertwined with family life.

“Traditionally, it would be me and my dad who go down to open the gates on Wednesday,” she says.

“It’s like letting people into Christmas in a way, you know? It’s sort of like musical Christmas, because they’re in the best state of mind.”

Over the next two days, the site fills up. And, at some point, almost everyone is in.

“Normally Thursday afternoon is when we reach capacity,” Emily tells me. “I get a message when we know that the site is full.

“I love the Thursday. I love energy of the Thursday.”

She then describes the same phenomenon I noticed last year.

“There’s a palpable feeling of excitement, anticipation. People want to see everything and touch everything and be there together. It’s a feeling of community, and big gangs of friends all reuniting.’

“A palpable feeling of excitement,” is the perfect way of putting it.

The opening of the festival is something Emily has been witnessing her whole life – although it predates her by 10 years.

In 1970, her farmer parents organised the Pilton Pop, Folk and Blues Festival, with glam rocker Marc Bolan, ’60s pop star Wayne Fontana and singer-songwriter Al Stewart playing in his back garden.

“I think this is the quickest way of clearing my overdraft,” said Michael, when asked why he was staging a concert in the field where his dairy cows typically grazed.

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With a few fits and starts, that event went on to become the UK’s most recognisable music festival.

And while it has changed over the years, some things have stayed the same.

‘When I was little, it was very different to how it is now because it was so much smaller, it was a very few people,” says Emily.

“But they still had the same look in their eyes which they have now, which is cheer, determination and commitment and joy and excitement and kind of magic.

“The look of, like, they’re going to make this five days the best five days of their life and it’s an amazing thing to witness.”

It was an amazing thing to witness first-hand last year. And as Emily once more sees the valley fill up, to my delight, I’m one of those who’s pitching their tent.

I’ll be DJing at Stonebridge on Thursday night and doing my best to capture the sense of expectation and possibility.

To do that, I’ve been getting some help from Radio 1’s Greg James and his listeners – and from Drum & Bass DJ and producer Crissy Criss.

Last week, I took the lift from the BBC newsroom all the way to the top of London’s Broadcasting House and joined Greg on his show.

We talked about Glastonbury – and Greg asked his listeners to send us voice notes describing the way they feel as the festival kicks off. A good number of them did.

We then sampled some of those messages – alongside my interview with Emily Eavis.

Crissy Criss has scattered those samples across a track that’s a celebration of what Thursday at Glastonbury is all about.

Greg will introduce the track at the Stonebridge venue where I’m DJing.

As you can probably tell, that Thursday last year had quite an impact on me.

As one of Greg’s listeners put it: “You set yourself up, you’ve got your drink. Life is good. You are where you’re meant to be.”

Or in the words of Emily Eavis: “They’re going to make this five days the best five days of their life.”

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It’s the wedding that everyone is talking about – US tech billionaire Jeff Bezos is set to marry TV presenter Lauren Sanchez, and the million-dollar party in Venice has caused quite a stir.

Activists have been protesting against the event, with “No Space for Bezos” posters and banners plastered across the city.

But the three-day event is set to go ahead and the guest list is rumoured to include hundreds of A-listers, including Kim Kardashian, Mick Jagger and Leonardo DiCaprio.

While Bezos’ name is synonymous with e-commerce empires, space technology companies and extreme wealth, his wife-to-be is perhaps lesser known but is no stranger to the spotlight.

Sanchez is a third-generation Mexican-American and was born in New Mexico in 1969 and raised in California.

In 2017, she told The Hollywood Reporter that she didn’t have much growing up.

“We came from nothing. I used to sleep in the back of my grandmother’s car when she would go clean houses,” she said.

As a young adult, she applied to be an air stewardess but was told she weighed too much – “back then, they weighed you, and I weighed 121 pounds. They said, ‘You need to be 115′”, she told The Wall Street Journal.

She chose instead to study journalism at the University of Southern California, leaving in 1994 to pursue a career in broadcast journalism.

Sanchez worked in various local newsrooms before landing roles as a reporter and anchor at outlets like Fox Sports Net, Extra, and Good Day LA.

She was a familiar face on American television in the late 1990s and earned an Emmy nomination for her show on Fox Sports Net, Going Deep and won an Emmy Award in 1999 as the anchor on KCOP-TV’s UPN News 13.

Sanchez went on to work as the co-host of KTTV Fox 11’s Good Day LA, an anchor on the Fox 11 News at Ten and was the original host of dancing competition So You Think You Can Dance.

According to The Times, in 2003 Sanchez appeared on the cover of lads’ magazine Open Your Eyes with the headline: America’s hottest news anchor.

At the age of 40, Sanchez pivoted from news desks to cockpits and became a licensed helicopter pilot which she says was inspired by her father who was a flight instructor.

In 2016, she launched Black Ops Aviation, becoming the first woman to own an aerial film production company. The company has provided cinematography to clients such as Netflix and Amazon and served as a consultant on Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

Her interest in aviation saw her join the all-female crew of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket earlier this year alongside Gayle King and Katy Perry.

Sanchez said that the 10-minute suborbital spaceflight mission funded by Jeff Bezos’ aerospace venture, made her come back with an open heart.

“Protect this planet we’re on, this is the only one we’ve got,” she said.

She also released a children’s book in 2024 – The Fly Who Flew to Space – which drew on her own childhood struggles with undiagnosed dyslexia.

Sanchez has three children – a son born in 2001 with former NFL player Tony Gonzalez and two from her marriage with Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell.

It is believed that Sanchez met Bezos after her company Black Ops Aviation was hired to film for Blue Origin.

Rumours emerged that the pair started dating in early 2019 and Bezos announced his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in January of that year. A few months later Sanchez also filed for divorce from Whitesell.

Both Bezos and Sanchez had been separated from their partners for some time before the divorces were announced.

In the summer of 2023, the couple announced their engagement and threw a star-studded party on Bezos’ yacht on the Amalfi Coast in Italy.

The pair will now tie the knot at a three-day wedding in Venice.

Fifty years after it first exploded on Indian screens, Sholay (Embers) – arguably the most iconic Hindi film ever made – is making a spectacular return.

In a landmark event for film lovers, the fully restored, uncut version of Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 magnum opus will have its world premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy, on Friday. This version includes the film’s original ending – changed due to objection from the censors – and deleted scenes.

The screening will take place on the festival’s legendary open-air screen in Piazza Maggiore – one of the largest in Europe – offering a majestic setting for this long-awaited cinematic resurrection.

Crafted by writer duo Salim-Javed and featuring an all-star cast led by Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri, Sanjeev Kumar and the unforgettable Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh, Sholay draws cinematic inspiration from Western and samurai classics. Yet, it remains uniquely Indian.

The 204-minute film is a classic good-versus-evil tale set in the fictional village of Ramgarh, where two petty criminals, Jai and Veeru (Bachchan and Dharmendra), are hired by a former jailer, Thakur Baldev Singh, to take down the ruthless bandit Gabbar Singh – one of Indian cinema’s most iconic villains.

When it first released, Sholay ran for five uninterrupted years at Mumbai’s 1,500-seater Minerva theatre. It was later voted “Film of the Millennium” in a BBC India online poll and named the greatest Indian film in a British Film Institute poll. Half a million records and cassettes of RD Burman’s score and the film’s instantly recognisable dialogues were sold.

The film is also a cultural phenomenon: dialogues are quoted at weddings, referenced in political speeches and spoofed in adverts.

“Sholay is the eighth wonder of the world,” Dharmendra, who plays a small-town crook and is paired up with Bachchan in the film, said in a recent statement.

Shooting the film was an “unforgettable experience,” Bachchan said, “though I had no idea at the time that it would become a watershed moment in Indian cinema.”

This new restoration is the most faithful version of Sholay, complete with the original ending and never-before-seen deleted scenes, according to Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of the Film Heritage Foundation.

In the original version, Gabbar Singh dies – killed by Thakur, who crushes him with spiked shoes.

But the censors objected. They balked at the idea of a former police officer taking the law into his own hands. They also found the film’s stylised violence too excessive. The film faced unusually tough censors because it hit the theatres during the Emergency, when the ruling Congress government suspended civil liberties.

After failed attempts to reason with them, Sippy was forced to reshoot the ending. The cast and crew were rushed back to the rugged hills of Ramanagaram in southern India – transformed into the fictional village of Ramgarh. With the new, softened finale – where Gabbar Singh is captured, not killed – in place, the film finally cleared the censors.

The road to the three-year-long restoration of the epic was far from easy. The original 70mm prints had not survived, and the camera negatives were in a severely deteriorated condition.

But in 2022, Shehzad Sippy, son of Ramesh Sippy, approached the Mumbai-based Film Heritage Foundation with a proposal to restore the film.

He revealed that several film elements were being stored in a warehouse in Mumbai. What seemed like a gamble turned out to be a miracle: inside the unlabelled cans were the original 35mm camera and sound negatives.

The excitement didn’t end there.

Sippy Films also informed the Foundation about additional reels stored in the UK. With the support of the British Film Institute, the team gained access to archival materials. These were carefully shipped to L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, one of the world’s premier film restoration facilities.

Despite the loss of the original 70mm prints and severely damaged negatives, archivists sourced elements from Mumbai and the UK, collaborating with the British Film Institute and Italy’s L’Immagine Ritrovata to painstakingly piece the film back together. The effort even uncovered the original camera used for shooting the film.

Interestingly, Sholay had a rocky start when it first hit the screens. Early reviews were harsh, the box office was shaky, and the 70mm print was delayed at customs.

India Today magazine called the film a “dead ember”. Filmfare’s Bikram Singh wrote that the major problem with the film was the “unsuccessful transplantation it attempts, grafting a western on the Indian milieu”.

“The film remains imitation western – neither here nor there”.

In initial screenings, audiences sat in silence – no laughter, no tears, no applause. “Just silence,” writes film writer Anupama Chopra in her book, Sholay: The Making of a Classic. By the weekend, theatres were full but the response remained uncertain – and panic had set in.

Over the next few weeks, audiences warmed up to the film, and word of mouth spread: “The visuals were epic, and the sound was a miracle…By the third week, the audience was repeating dialogues. It meant that at least some were coming in to see the film for the second time,” writes Chopra.

A month after Sholay hit screens, Polydor released a 48-minute dialogue record – and the tide had turned. The film’s characters became iconic, and Gabbar Singh – the “genuinely frightening, but widely popular” villain – emerged as a cultural phenomenon. Foreign critics called it India’s first “curry western”.

Sholay ran for over five years – three in regular shows and two as matinees at Mumbai’s Minerva. Even in its 240th week, shows were full. Sholay hit Pakistani screens on April 2015, and despite being 40 years old, it outperformed most Indian films over a decade old – including the 2002 hit Devdas starring Shah Rukh Khan.

As film distributor Shyam Shroff told Chopra: “As they used to say about the British Empire, the sun never sets on Sholay.”

Why does Sholay still resonate with audiences, half a century later? Amitabh Bachchan offers a simple yet profound answer: “The victory of good over evil and… most importantly, poetic justice in three hours! You and I shall not get it in a lifetime,” he told an interviewer.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth took the lectern at the Pentagon briefing room on Thursday morning with two goals.

He wanted to present evidence of the success of the American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, pushing back against a preliminary defence intelligence assessment that suggested the strikes were less effective.

And he wanted to berate the American media and paint their coverage of that preliminary report as unpatriotic and disrespectful to the “brave men and women” in the US military.

It was a briefing aimed at winning over divided public opinion on the attacks – and to satisfy an audience of one in the White House, who has been railing against the media coverage for days.

The former goal is still in question, but the latter seems to have been a mission accomplished.

“One of the greatest, most professional, and most ‘confirming’ News Conferences I have ever seen!” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social after Hegseth concluded.

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During his half-hour briefing, Hegseth ticked through a range of intelligence information, although little of it was new.

He read from a Wednesday letter penned by CIA Director John Ratcliffe that claimed there was “intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years”.

He cited an earlier Israeli intelligence finding, detailed a recent statement by Iranian leaders and reviewed initial findings of “very significant damage” by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

After General Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided information about the development and power of the “bunker buster bombs” used in the attack – including how they were used to repeatedly hit the ventilation shafts at Iran’s Fordo facility – Hegseth told Americans to use their common sense when deciding whether the strikes were successful.

“Anyone with two eyes, ears and a brain can recognise that kind of firepower, with that specificity at that location and others is going to have a devastating effect,” he said.

“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated, choose your words,” he said. “This was a historically successful attack.”

After lauding members of the military who participated in the strikes, Hegseth pivoted to those he wanted to portray as the real villains of this story – an American media he said was more interested in cheering against the president and hoping that he failed. “It’s in your DNA,” he said.

If Hegseth’s comments were tinged with anger and frustration, it is in part because the political stakes at this moment are high.

Battle damage assessments take time – time to review intelligence reports from both surveillance and human sources, time to gather information and time to reach conclusions with some level of confidence. But the pace of American politics moves much more quickly.

Trump administration officials know it doesn’t take long for public opinion in a major event like this to harden. If American voters conclude now that the US attacks weren’t effective, it will be hard for the White House to change minds weeks or months later.

Hegseth’s early morning briefing was an attempt to wrest back a narrative derailed by the preliminary defence intelligence report.

Polls indicate that Donald Trump’s popularity has sagged recently and that Americans were sceptical about American military involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict going into Saturday night.

One survey in the days after the attack found that while Republicans are rallying around the president, the majority of Democrats and independents believed the US action made Americans less safe.

In theory, a successful military operation has the potential to give the president a political boost if the White House can convince the public that Trump took decisive action that produced a positive result. It would provide the president to claim a signature foreign policy success after his early high-profile efforts to end wars in Ukraine and Gaza have been stymied.

But the windows on such opportunities close fast, which could explain why Trump, often prone to hyperbole, was quick to declare that Iran’s nuclear programme was “obliterated”, as the dust from the strikes was still settling and before intelligence assessments had begun in earnest.

It’s also why his critics were so eager to boost the preliminary Pentagon report that undercut his claims – and why journalists, attuned to politicians motivated by political advantage, took note.

For the protesters waving Palestinian flags outside EU buildings in Brussels, it was the moment that everything might change.

An EU report presented to foreign ministers had found there were indications Israel had breached human rights obligations under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, ahead of Thursday’s European Union leaders’ summit.

The European Union is Israel’s biggest trading partner, and the protesters were demanding that the EU suspend its 25-year-old trade accord over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

But their hopes that EU leaders would agree to suspend the agreement with Israel were soon dashed, because despite the report deep divisions remain over the war in Gaza.

The protesters have been backed by more than 100 NGOs and charities.

In 20 months of Israeli military operations more than 55,000 Gazans have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Another 1.9 million people have been displaced.

Israel also imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings from global experts that half a million people were facing starvation.

Since then, the UN says more than 400 Palestinians are reported to have been killed by Israeli gunfire or shelling while trying to reach food distribution centres run by a US and Israeli-backed organisation. Another 90 have also reportedly been killed by Israeli forces while attempting to approach convoys of the UN and other aid groups.

“Every red line has been crossed in Gaza” Agnes Bertrand-Sanz from Oxfam told the BBC.

“Every rule has been breached. It really is high time that the European Union acts.”

As the report was made public, it fell to foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to explain what the European Union would do next.

The EU’s first goal would be to “change the situation” on the ground in Gaza, she said. If that did not happen, “further measures” would be discussed next month on how to suspend the association agreement.

“We will contact Israel to, you know, present our finding,” she stumbled in an uncharacteristically faltering manner. “Because that is the focus of the member states, to really, you know… be very, very sure about the feelings that we have here.”

NGOs said the EU had missed an opportunity to take action and that the response was feeble.

The Israeli foreign ministry called the review “a complete moral and methodological failure.”

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For some of the EU’s critics, the episode was a vivid example of how the EU can talk a good game about being the biggest global humanitarian aid donor to Gaza, but badly struggles to present any coherent or powerful voice to match it.

As the world’s biggest market of 450 million people, the EU carries great economic weight but it is not translating into political clout.

“The fact that European countries and the UK are not doing more to put pressure on Israel and to enforce international humanitarian law, it makes it very difficult for these countries to be credible,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights.

“War crimes are being committed at a very large scale In Gaza, there is debate about whether this amounts to genocide, but even if there’s no genocide there is a duty to act.”

De Schutter fears the EU’s soft power is being lost and its inaction makes it much harder for it to persuade to countries in Africa, Asia in Latin America to back Europe on condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example.

Israel maintains it acts within international law and that its mission is to destroy Hamas and bring home the remaining hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed in the attack, which triggered Israel’s offensive on Gaza.

As a union of 27 countries, the domestic political reality in Europe makes it unlikely that EU leaders will back the views of the majority of member states on Gaza.

Eleven EU countries have recognised Palestine as a state, and among them Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Slovenia and Sweden had pushed for the European Union’s agreement with Israel to be suspended.

At the heart of the EU’s foreign policy decision-making in Brussels is the fact that decisions have to be unanimous, and so just one dissenting voice can block the EU from taking action.

In this case Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are all opposed.

Austria hopes the EU’s review will spark action, but not necessarily a suspension of the treaty with Israel.

“Everything I’ve heard in this regard will not help the people in Gaza,” said Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger. “What it would however cause is a deterioration, if not a complete breakdown of the dialogue we currently have with Israel.”

Germany’s position on Israel has often been shaped by its role in the Holocaust and World War Two.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz says the “current level of attacks on Gaza can no longer be justified by the fight against Hamas”, but he has refused to consider suspending or terminating the agreement.

Slovakia and Hungary are considered more closely aligned politically to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu than many other EU countries.

Among the key players advocating tougher measures against Netanyahu’s government is Ireland.

Its foreign affairs minister, Simon Harris, condemned the EU’s handling of the review.

“Our response in relation to Gaza has been much too slow and far too many people have been left to die as genocide has been carried out,” he said.

Israel rejects the charge of genocide and when it closed its embassy in Dublin last December it accused Ireland of antisemitism.

Europe has recently found itself sidelined by Washington on big global issues, notably Ukraine and Iran – with President Donald Trump in favour of direct talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US may not be in listening mood, but on Gaza the EU has struggled to muster a unified voice on Gaza, let alone make it heard.

Elizabeth Butler goes from one supermarket to the next in her home town of Martinsburg, West Virginia, to ensure she gets the best price on each item on her grocery list.

Along with 42 million Americans, she pays for those groceries with federal food subsides. That cash doesn’t cover the whole bill for her family of three.

“Our food doesn’t even last the month,” she says. “I’m going to all these different places just to make sure that we have enough food to last us the whole month.”

But that money may soon run out, as Congress gears up to vote on what US President Donald Trump has coined his “big beautiful bill”.

The food subsidy programme that Ms Butler uses – called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP – is one of many items on the chopping block, as Congress tries to reconcile the president’s seemingly conflicting demands to both lower taxes and balance the budget.

The Senate is due to vote on their version of the bill by the end of the week. If it passes, it will then be voted on by the House, at which point it will be sent to Trump to sign. He has pressured both chambers of Congress, which the Republican Party controls, to pass the bill by 4 July.

• Four sticking points in Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ tax bill

SNAP offers low-income households, including older Americans, families with children and people who are disabled, money each month to buy groceries. In West Virginia, one of the states with the highest rates of poverty, 16% of the population depends on the benefit.

The state is also a reliable Republican stronghold and voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November, when he ran on the promise of reducing the cost of living for Americans, including the price of groceries.

“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” he said at an August news conference surrounded by packaged foods, milk, meats and eggs.

Months after the president made that pledge, the prices of commonly purchased groceries like orange juice, eggs and bacon are higher than they were the same time last year.

It’s a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Ms Butler: “The president hasn’t changed the food prices yet and he promised the people that he would do that.”

Trump has argued, without providing an explanation how, that spending cuts in the 1,000-page budget bill will help bring food prices down: “The cut is going to give everyone much more food, because prices are coming way down, groceries are down,” Trump said when asked specifically about cuts to SNAP.

“The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will ultimately strengthen SNAP through cost-sharing measures and common-sense work requirements,” a White House official told the BBC.

Republicans have long been divided on how to fund social welfare programmes like SNAP and Medicaid. While many think the government should prioritise balancing the budget, others, especially in impoverished regions, support programmes that directly help their constituents.

As the bill stands, Senate Republicans are proposing $211bn (£154bn) in cuts with states being partly responsible for making up the difference.

In theory, passing the bill should be an easy political lift, since Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

But since the bill includes cuts to programmes like SNAP and Medicaid, which are popular with everyday Americans, selling the bill to all factions within the Republican Party has not been an easy feat.

Reports of private frustration and dissent about potential cuts to Medicaid and SNAP have leaked in recent weeks, showing the internal wrestling happening within the party.

West Virginia Senator Jim Justice told Politico in June that he has warned fellow Republicans that cutting SNAP could cost the party their majority in Congress when voters head to the polls again in 2026.

“If we don’t watch out, people are going to get hurt, people are going to be upset. It’s going to be the number one thing on the nightly news all over the place,” Justice said. “And then, we could very well awaken to a situation in this country where the majority quickly becomes the minority.”

A recent poll by the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 45% of Americans think food assistance programmes like SNAP are underfunded, while only 30% think the funding levels are adequate. About a quarter of respondents thought programmes were overfunded.

This is not the first time the party has wrestled with cuts to SNAP, said Tracy Roof, a University of Richmond professor who is currently writing a book on the political history of SNAP.

Under the Biden administration, Congress allowed expanded benefits implemented during Covid to be phased out, despite both Republicans and Democrats warning Americans could go hungry.

“One thing about [SNAP] is that it has bipartisan support, more than any other anti-poverty programme,” Prof Roof told the BBC.

But this time feels different, she said.

“One thing that kind of distinguishes this period from the previous efforts to cut social welfare programmes has been the willingness of congressional Republicans to vote for things many of them apparently off the record have many concerns about,” she said.

“Before, there were always moderate Republicans, particularly in the Senate, but in both Houses that held out for concessions.”

Prof Roof attributes that submission to two things: fear of getting on the wrong side of Trump and a lack of fear of public backlash for representatives who hold congressional seats they can easily get re-elected to.

The BBC contacted Congressman Riley Moore, who represents Martinsburg, West Virginia, about the impacts of the cuts to his constituents, but he did not respond.

Moore voted for the initial House bill, which included the cuts to SNAP.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who had been one of the more vocal critics of the cuts, has since softened: Hawley told the news outlet NOTUS he has “always supported” most of the Medicaid cuts and he would “be fine” with most of what’s in the bill.

Father of two Jordan, who asked that his last name not be used, has spent the past three years surviving on SNAP benefits.

He and his wife get about $700 a month to feed their family of four, but they still struggle.

The 26-year-old says his wife has struggled to get work and take care of their two children simultaneously, so if changes to SNAP impact his family, he is prepared to act and get a second job.

“I’m going to make sure that I can do whatever I can to feed my family,” he says.

He and other West Virginians are following what happens to the bill in Congress.

Cameron Whetzel, 25, grew up in a family dependent on SNAP. But when he and his wife tried to apply for SNAP, he learned that making $15 a hour was too much to qualify, he said.

“It’s not great the fact that I need to double my salary in order to be able to afford groceries,” Mr Whetzel says, adding “we have not bought any eggs in four months just cause they’re too expensive”.

He is frustrated that officials in Washington do not understand the impacts of the cuts they are backing in Congress, he says.

“To make a federal cut that then would be put onto the state that’s already struggling it just kind of feels like kicking a horse while its down,” Mr Whetzel adds. “Whether you believe in small government or big government, government has to provide for somebody, somehow.”

Twenty-nine children who were taking their school exams in the Central African Republic have been killed in a crush after a nearby explosion caused panic, a hospital director told the BBC.

The blast, on the second day of the high-school finals on Wednesday, occurred at an electricity transformer, said Abel Assaye from the Bangui community hospital.

“The noise of the explosion, combined with smoke” caused alarm among the almost 6,000 students sitting the baccalaureate at a school in the capital, Bangui, local radio station Ndeke Luka reported.

President Faustin-Archange Touadéra has declared a period of national mourning.

He also ordered that the more than 280 who were wounded in the crush get free treatment in hospital.

Students from five different schools in the capital had gone to the Lycée Barthélémy Boganda to sit the baccalaureate exam.

The education ministry said the explosion happened after power was restored at the electricity transformer, located on the ground floor of the main building, that had been undergoing repairs.

“I also offer our sincere condolences to the parents of the affected candidates and wish a speedy recovery to the injured candidates,” Education Minister Aurelien-Simplice Kongbelet-Zimgas said in a statement.

He also announced the suspension of further exams.

A female survivor spoke to the BBC.

“I don’t even remember what happened. We were in the exam room and when I heard a noise, I immediately fell into a daze,” she said. “Since then, I have had a pain in my pelvis that is causing me a lot of problems.”

Radio France Internationale spoke to another student whose face was covered in blood after he had climbed out of a window.

Magloire explained that the blast happened during the history and geography exam.

“The students wanted to save their lives, and as they fled, they saw death because there were so many people and the door was really small. Not everyone could get out,” he told RFI.

The CAR continues to face political instability and security challenges.

Government forces, backed by Russian mercenaries, are battling armed groups threatening to overthrow Touadéra’s administration.

Three Palestinians have been shot dead after dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian authorities say.

Video footage from Kafr Malik, near Ramallah, on Wednesday night showed a car and a home on fire and Palestinians running away as gunfire is heard.

The Israeli military said forces deployed to the scene found settlers and villagers throwing stones at each other. It added that several “terrorists” opened fire and threw stones at the forces, who returned fire and identified hits. They also arrested five Israelis.

The Palestinian foreign ministry said settlers fired at villagers in their homes during what it called their “terrorist assault”.

The ministry also said Israeli forces prevented ambulance crews from reaching the wounded and obstructed fire crews from entering the village for several hours.

Another villager, a 13-year-old boy, was shot dead – reportedly by Israeli troops – earlier in the week.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land Palestinians want, along with Gaza, for a hoped-for future state – in the 1967 Middle East war. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them.

The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last year – although Israel disputes this.

“What do you expect us to do when our homes are being attacked by settlers with petrol bombs?” asked one elderly man, sitting quietly with hundreds of other mourners on Thursday after the funerals of the three men who were killed – Murshid Nawwaf Hamayel, Mohammed Qaher al-Naji and Lutfi Sabri Bearat.

Kafr Malik has been attacked numerous times in recent weeks by settlers increasingly emboldened by Israeli government ministers who often support their actions and who have endorsed the building of many more settlements.

“They think they can take my land and force me to leave, but I’m not going anywhere,” said Hamdallah Bearat, a retired professor of engineering who has lived in Kafr Malik for most of his life.

For many younger Palestinians, though, the realities of an increasingly restrictive occupation and its economic consequences make life here more difficult by the day.

Shortly after the incident in Kafr Malik, there was another attack in the Palestinian community of Dar Fazaa, near the village of Taybeh.

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said three people were injured and three cars were torched. It posted CCTV footage showing a group of at least 10 masked men setting one car on fire and throwing stones.

“The settler violence and rampage, under the protection of the occupation army, is a political decision by the Israeli government, implemented by the settlers,” Palestinian Vice-President Hussein al-Sheikh wrote on X.

“The Israeli government’s behaviour and decisions are pushing the region toward an explosion. We call on the international community to urgently intervene to protect our Palestinian people.”

Since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza, more than 900 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank – a period in which more than 20 Israelis have also been killed.

There has also been a sharp increase in the number and severity of settler attacks in the West Bank over the same period.

The UN says there were 487 attacks by settlers resulting in casualties or property damage in the first four months of this year, including 122 in April. At least 181 Palestinians were reportedly injured by settlers in the attacks.

Human rights organisations and witnesses say the Israeli military and police frequently stand by while settlers attack Palestinian towns and villages.

Since the right-wing, pro-settler governing coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took office in late 2022, it has decided to establish 49 new settlements and begin the legalisation process for seven settler outposts which were built without government authorisation, according to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now.

Last month, Israeli ministers said 22 new settlements had been approved across the length and width of the West Bank, hailing it as a move that “prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”.

In a separate incident on Wednesday, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the town of al-Yamoun, near Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The Israeli military said “terrorists” threw explosive devices at its forces during an operation there. Afterwards, they approached while holding additional explosives and the forces responded by opening fire, it added.

In January, Israeli forces launched a large-scale operation against Palestinian armed groups in Jenin and two other governorates in the northern West Bank, which Netanyahu said aimed to “defeat terrorism”.

The UN’s human rights chief said in April that the operation had destroyed entire refugee camps and makeshift medical sites, and displaced more than 40,000 Palestinians, who had been told not to return to their homes for a year.

Kenya’s interior minister has denied that the police used excessive force during Wednesday’s protests in which at least 10 people were killed, describing them as “terrorism disguised as dissent” and an “unconstitutional attempt” to change the government.

Kipchumba Murkomen thanked security agencies for their “remarkable restraint amid extreme provocation” crediting them with helping to “foil an attempted coup”.

In addition to the 10 deaths, more than 400 others were injured, including about 300 police officers, he said.

“We condemn the criminal anarchists who in the name of peaceful demonstrations unleashed a wave of violence, looting, sexual assault and destruction upon our people,” he said.

Key government installations and offices were targeted in the protests, he added, with nine police stations attacked, five of which were torched – and five guns stolen.

Dozens of vehicles, belonging to the police, government and civilians, were destroyed, he said.

Murkomen said that investigations were under way into the exact number of casualties and the circumstances around the violence.

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Rights group Amnesty International has put the death toll at 16, saying that all those who died had gunshot wounds.

Nineteen-year-old David Mwangi, who lived in Nairobi’s Mukuru informal settlement, was one of those who was shot dead.

His mother told the BBC that he was a bystander who had gone to pick up his younger brother from a tuition class. A tearful Rachael Nyambura Mwangi said that a bullet had gone through her son’s head.

“I am in so much pain,” she said.

“David was hoping to go to college to become a mechanic. He was my first-born and he was my helper. If I needed to fetch water or get something I would send him. I sell sweet potatoes and whenever I needed to get my stock I would send him.”

Student Dennis Njuguna, 17, was shot dead in Molo, 170km (100 miles) north-west of Nairobi shortly after the end of the school day.

“I don’t know if he was in the midst of the protesters or a stray bullet him. I don’t know but I heard he was shot, fell down and died on the spot,” his mother Jecinta Gathoni said.

“My child was still young, he was in his final year of secondary school. He had his dreams, I also had a lot of hope in him. I have not even gathered the courage to go to the morgue to see his body.”

The protests marked the first anniversary of a previous wave of deadly anti-government demonstrations.

On Wednesday, thousands took to the streets across to voice anger with President William Ruto’s government, and to demand an end to police brutality.

Many of those demonstrating chanted “Ruto must go” and waved branches as a symbol of peaceful opposition to his rule.

The government banned live TV and radio coverage of the protests, although its decree was overturned by the Nairobi High Court. The ban has has since been lifted.

Rights groups have condemned the actions of the police and state.

The Law Society of Kenya said there had been “unnecessary aggression and brute force” by security officers, which it said had led to “senseless loss of life”.

On Wednesday, human rights groups said three police officers had been injured.

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Sabrina Carpenter has revealed alternative artwork “approved by God” for her new album after the original cover sparked controversy.

Earlier in June, the Espresso singer shared art for her album, Man’s Best Friend, which shows her on her hands and knees in a black minidress with a suited man grabbing her hair.

The photo prompted a heated debate, with some arguing that it pandered to the male gaze and promoted misogynistic stereotypes.

On Wednesday, the pop princess posted two less contentious black-and-white images of herself holding a suited man’s arm, with the caption: “Here is a new alternate cover approved by God.”

Users responding to Carpenter’s post on Instagram included fellow pop star Katy Perry, who simply replied: “Gahahahaha.”

Man’s Best Friend is Carpenter’s seventh studio album and will be released on 29 August. Fans can purchase the album with either set of artwork.

Those criticising the initial artwork included Glasgow Women’s Aid, a charity supporting victims of domestic abuse, which said it was “regressive” and “promotes an element of violence and control”.

Not everyone was against it, and some defended the singer, explaining that the image was satirical.

“There’s a deeper meaning, portraying how the public views her, believing she is just for the male gaze,” a fan wrote on X.

But Heather Binning of Women’s Rights Network, told the BBC that violence against women should “never be used as satire”.

Many of Carpenter’s fans are young women, and Ms Binning said the imagery “grooms girls to believe that it is a fun, casual, sexy thing to submit to men’s sexual (sometimes sexually violent) desires”.

On social media, some also criticised Carpenter for the timing, suggesting the image was not appropriate given the current political climate in the US.

“Women’s control over their bodies are being taken away in the US and this is kind of insensitive,” one user wrote on Instagram.

Professor Catherine Rottenberg from Goldsmiths University of London said that regardless of how the artwork should be interpreted, Carpenter was “fanning the flames of controversy in order to sell her brand”.

“Debates around representation that this album has already generated will likely mean more sales, more popularity, and more traction,” she told the BBC.

It is not the first time the 26-year-old’s music has sparked an outcry.

Carpenter has built her brand around fun and risque pop music, and her sexual lyrics, X-rated ad-lib Nonsense outros and provocative performances regularly cause a stir.

At the Brit Awards in March, media watchdog Ofcom received 825 complaints, with the majority involving Carpenter’s pre-watershed opening performance that saw her wearing a red sparkly military-style mini-dress with matching stockings and suspenders.

She was also seen having a close encounter with a dancer dressed as a soldier wearing a bearskin hat during the show, which was broadcast live on ITV.

Lucy Ford, a culture critic, previously told the BBC that Carpenter is “in on the joke” when she performs.

“Sabrina is being unabashedly horny in her music and it feels like an embrace of fun and silliness and not taking things too seriously.”

A large wildfire swept through the coastal towns of Palaia Fokaia and Thymari 40 km (25 miles) southeast of Athens, destroying homes and forcing evacuations as it neared the beach.

The flames erupted in low vegetation but quickly spread into residential areas, as Greece experienced its first heatwave of the summer.

At least 20 homes were destroyed and many others suffered structural damage, according to local officials.

Strong winds and soaring temperatures of up to 40°C made the fire extremely difficult to control.

Local residents joined firefighters, forest rangers and aircraft in trying to contain the fire and protect their homes. The coast guard was also deployed along the coastline.

Emergency alerts were issued via the 112 system, urging residents to evacuate the a series of towns and villages.

Greece has sought to beef up its response to wildfires, which have become increasingly common because of its long, hot summers and warming climate.

An extra 18,000 firefighters backed up by volunteers have been deployed this year, officials say, for the rest of the fire season which ends in October.

Earlier this week thousands of hectares were torched on Chios, Greece’s fifth-largest island. A Georgian woman was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of unintentionally starting a fire by dropping a cigarette.

One resident in Thymari told Greek website Kathimerini on Thursday that by the time she had reached her home it had burned down because of the strong winds. Another said his neighbours’ homes had been destroyed but he had been more fortunate.

Further east along the coast towards Cape Sounion, on the tip of the Attica peninsula, the fire crossed the coastal road and moved toward the ridge of a nearby hill.

Authorities said more than 1,000 people were evacuated from affected areas. Eleven tourists were rescued from a beach after becoming trapped by the advancing flames, according to local authorities.

Despite evacuation orders, some residents refused to leave and attempted to defend their homes using garden hoses and other improvised means. Authorities warned that such actions endangered lives and obstructed emergency services.

According to Greek state broadcaster ERT, at least 40 people, including children and elderly residents, were rescued by police after becoming trapped.

Fire Service spokesperson Vasileios Vathrakogiannis said firefighters were engaged in an intense battle on the ground and by air, particularly in areas where the fire was burning close to houses.

Local officials in villages inland from Thymari described the situation as extremely difficult.

“All of the municipality’s facilities were open to anyone who needed shelter or medical help,” Babis Galanis, a local deputy mayor told ERT.

The head of Greece’s fire service has ordered a special arson investigation unit to the scene to examine whether the fire had been deliberately set.

According to a report by Greece’s Risk Assessment Committee, extremely high temperatures are expected on Friday, with a very high risk of wildfires in Attica, Evia, the Peloponnese, and the northern Aegean.

North Korea is opening a beach resort that its leader Kim Jong Un hopes will boost tourism in the secretive communist regime, state media reports.

Wonsan Kalma on the east coast will open to domestic tourists on 1 July, six years after it was due to be completed. It is unclear when it will welcome foreigners.

Kim grew up in luxury in Wonsan, where many of the country’s elite have private villas, and has been trying to transform the town, which once hosted a missile testing site.

State media KCNA claims the resort can accomodate up to 20,000 visitors, occupying a 4km (2.5 mile) stretch of beach, with hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and a water park – none of which can be verified.

Heavily sanctioned for decades for its nuclear weapons programme, North Korea is among the poorest countries in the world. It pours most of its resources into its military, monuments and landmarks – often in Pyongyang – that embellish the image and cult of the Kim family that has run the country since 1948.

Some observers say this is an easy way for Pyongyang to earn money. While foreign tourists are allowed in, tour groups largely tend to come from China and Russia, countries with whom Pyongyang has long maintained friendly relations.

“I was hoping this might signal a broader reopening to international tourism, but unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case for now,” Rowan Beard, co-founder of Young Pioneer Tours, tells the BBC.

Tourism from overseas took a hit during the Covid pandemic, though, with the country closing its borders in early 2020. It did not scale back restrictions until the middle of 2023 and welcomed Russian visitors a year later.

It opened to more Western visitors in February, when tourists from the UK, France, Germany and Australia drove across the border from China. It abruptly halted tourism weeks later without saying why.

Some tour agencies are sceptical of Wonsan’s appeal to foreigners. It is “unlikely to be a major draw for most Western tourists”, Mr Beard says.

“Key sites like Pyongyang, the DMZ, and other brutalist or communist landmarks will continue to be the main highlights for international visitors once broader tourism resumes.”

However, Elliott Davies, director of Uri Tours, says North Korea holds a “niche appeal” for travellers drawn to unconventional destinations.

“It’s intriguing to experience something as familiar as a beach resort that’s been shaped within the unique cultural context of North Korea.”

KCNA described the Wonsan development as a “great, auspicious event of the whole country” and called it a “prelude to the new era” in tourism.

It was initially scheduled to open in October 2019, but ran into construction delays before the pandemic struck.

Kim attended a ceremony to celebrate its completion on 24 June, accompanied by his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, and wife Ri Sol Ju. It marked Ri’s first public appearance since a New Year’s Day event.

Russian ambassador Alexander Matsegora and embassy staff also attended.

Some tour operators expect the resort to be opened to Russian tourists, who are currently the only foreign nationals allowed into some parts of the country.

The resort’s opening comes as North Korea and Russia strengthened their partnership in the face of sanctions from the West.

North Korea has sent troops to fight for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

On Thursday, the two countries also reopened a direct passenger train route between their capitals after a five-year suspension because of the pandemic.

Iran’s supreme leader has insisted the US “gained no achievements” from strikes on its nuclear facilities, in his first public address since a ceasefire with Israel was agreed on Tuesday.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the strikes did not “accomplish anything significant” to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme, and described the retaliation against an American air base in Qatar as dealing a “heavy blow”.

It came as Washington doubled down on its assessment that the strikes had severely undermined Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said intelligence gathered by the US and Israel indicated the operation “significantly damaged the nuclear programme, setting it back by years”.

Previously, US President Donald Trump said the strikes against three key nuclear sites inside Iran “totally obliterated” them, and has responded furiously to reports citing unnamed American officials suggesting the damage may have been less extensive than anticipated.

Speaking alongside senior general Dan Caine at a Pentagon press conference on Thursday morning, Hegseth said the mission was a “historic success” that had “rendered [Iranian] enrichment facilities inoperable”.

During an at times combative exchange with reporters, Hegseth also said the US was “not aware of any intelligence” which indicated the enriched uranium had moved out of Fordo – the deeply buried facility which the US targeted with powerful so-called buster bombs – prior to the strikes.

Khamenei, who had been largely out of public view since direct conflict with Israel broke out on 13 June, released a televised address on Thursday morning, ending a week-long public silence.

The supreme leader has reportedly been sheltering in a bunker and limiting communications, which has sparked speculation about his whereabouts. Iranian authorities did not disclose where he was speaking from on Thursday, though a senior official acknowledged he was in a safe place earlier this week.

Khamenei used Thursday’s video address to threaten to carry out more strikes on US bases in the Middle East if Iran was attacked again, and declared victory over both Israel and the US.

Khamenei said Trump had “exaggerated” the impact of the nuclear site strikes, adding: “They couldn’t accomplish anything and did not achieve their objective.”

Referencing the attack on the US air base in Qatar, Khamenei said: “This incident is also repeatable in the future, and should any attack take place, the cost for the enemy and the aggressor will undoubtedly be very high.”

No one was killed during that attack, which Trump said had been flagged before it was launched. The US says the base was not damaged.

Direct confrontation broke out between Iran and Israel on 13 June, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time”.

A day earlier the global nuclear watchdog’s board of governors declared Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.

Iran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes alone and that it had never sought to develop a nuclear weapon.

On Thursday, Iran approved a parliamentary bill calling for an end to the country’s co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meaning it is no longer committed to allowing nuclear inspectors into its sites.

Iran’s health ministry said 610 people were killed during the 12 days of air attacks, while Israeli authorities said 28 were killed.

The US became directly involved last weekend, striking facilities in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, before Trump sought to rapidly mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

The ceasefire appeared shaky at first, with Iranian strikes and Israel before an outburst from Trump

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday that there was a chance Tehran had moved much of its highly enriched uranium elsewhere as it came under attack.

The pound briefly hit its highest level against the dollar for almost four years after markets were unnerved by a report that US President Donald Trump could bring forward the naming of the new head of the US central bank.

Sterling rose above $1.37, which is the strongest since October 2021.

The dollar weakened after the Wall Street Journal reported Trump had considered naming Jerome Powell’s replacement as head of the Federal Reserve by September or October.

The US Fed is independent from the government and Mr Powell chairs a committee that decides on interest rates which have remained unchanged this year, prompting a series of angry outbursts from Trump.

On Wednesday, Trump called Mr Powell “terrible” and said he was looking at “three or four people” who could replace him. Mr Powell’s term is due to end in May 2026.

There are concerns the US president could install someone who is sympathetic to his demands.

Earlier this week, Mr Powell told US lawmakers the Fed would wait and see how the American economy reacts if Trump’s so-called retaliatory tariffs against a range of countries come into force next month, after being paused until 9 July.

The Fed is concerned that the levies, which are paid by the businesses importing the goods, might push up inflation.

The US economy shrank in the first three months of this year – the first decline for three years – as government spending fell and imports rose as firms raced to get products into the country before the tariffs went live.

JP Morgan, the investment bank, has lowered the chance of the US economy falling into recession this year but at 40% the probability of a slowdown remains comparatively high.

Kaspar Hense, a senior portfolio manager at RBC BlueBay Asset Management, said traders were betting the dollar would fall “in this environment, where there is an erosion of institutions”.

While Kit Juckes, chief FX strategist at Societe Generale, said: “I think the market is pricing in President Trump appointing someone who at least at first sight appears more sympathetic to his cause.”

Academics have said that confidence in the Fed’s independence is key to maintaining financial markets’ faith that inflation will be controlled.

If this confidence is shaken, it could lead to higher borrowing costs for everyone if investors demand higher interest rates for holding debt.

There is speculation that Kevin Warsh, a former governor at the Fed, may be considered for the role.

Earlier this month, Trump was asked about whether Warsh could become the Fed’s chair, to which he replied: “He’s very highly thought of.”

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could also be a candidate, according to reports.

He recently told lawmakers in the House of Representatives that he currently has “the best job” in Washington and is “happy to do what President Trump wants me to do”.

Mr Powell was himself a Trump appointee. During Trump’s first term in the White House, Mr Powell replaced the then Fed chair Janet Yellen.

Trump had criticised Ms Yellen for keeping interest rates too low, stating: “I think she should be ashamed of herself.”

Ms Yellen went on to become the US Treasury Secretary under President Joe Biden and said she did not think that Trump had a grasp of macroeconomic policy.

Iranian authorities have carried out a wave of arrests and multiple executions of people suspected of links to Israeli intelligence agencies, in the wake of the recent war between the two countries.

It comes after what officials describe as an unprecedented infiltration of Iranian security services by Israeli agents.

Authorities suspect information fed to Israel played a part in a series of high-profile assassinations during the conflict. This included the targeted killings of senior commanders from the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and nuclear scientists, which Iran attributes to operatives of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency working inside the country.

Shaken by the scale and precision of these killings, authorities have been targeting anyone suspected of working with foreign intelligence, saying it is for the sake of national security.

But many fear this is also a way to silence dissent and tighten control over the population.

During the 12-day conflict, Iranian authorities executed three people accused of spying for Israel. On Wednesday – just one day after the ceasefire – three more individuals were executed on similar charges.

Officials have since announced the arrest of hundreds of suspects across the country on accusations of espionage. State television has aired alleged confessions from several detainees, purportedly admitting to collaboration with Israeli intelligence.

Human rights groups and activists have expressed fears over the latest developments, citing Iran’s longstanding practice of extracting forced confessions and conducting unfair trials. There are concerns that more executions may follow.

Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence claims it is engaged in a “relentless battle” against what it calls Western and Israeli intelligence networks – including the CIA, Mossad, and MI6.

According to Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, since the beginning of Israel’s attack on Iran on 13 June, “the Israeli spy network has become highly active inside the country”. Fars reported that over the course of 12 days, Iranian intelligence and security forces arrested “more than 700 individuals linked to this network”.

Iranians have told BBC Persian they received warning text messages from Iran’s intelligence ministry informing them their phone numbers had appeared on social media pages related to Israel. They were instructed to leave these pages or face prosecution.

The Iranian government has also stepped up pressure on journalists working for Persian-language media outlets abroad, including BBC Persian and the London-based Iran International and Manoto TV.

According to Iran International, the IRGC detained the mother, father, and brother of one of its TV presenters in Tehran to pressure her into resigning over the channel’s coverage of the Iran-Israel conflict. The presenter received a phone call from her father – prompted by security agents – urging her to quit and warning of further consequences.

After the conflict began, threats directed at BBC Persian journalists and their families have become increasingly severe. According to the journalists recently affected, Iranian security officials contacting their families have claimed that, in a wartime context, they are justified in targeting family members as hostages. They have also labelled the journalists as “mohareb” — a term meaning ‘one who wages war against God’ — a charge that, under Iranian law, can carry the death penalty.

Manoto TV has reported similar incidents, including threats against employees’ families and demands to cut all ties with the outlet. Some relatives were reportedly threatened with charges such as “enmity against God” and espionage – both capital offences under Iranian law.

Analysts view these tactics as part of a broader strategy to silence dissent and intimidate exiled media workers.

Security forces have also detained dozens of activists, writers and artists, in many cases without formal charges. There are also reports of arrests targeting family members of those killed during the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” anti-government protests.

These actions suggest a broader campaign aimed not only at current activists but also at those connected to previous waves of dissent.

During the war, the Iranian government severely restricted access to the internet, and even after the ceasefire, full access has not yet been restored. Limiting internet access during crises, especially during nationwide protests against the government, has become a common pattern by Iran. Additionally, most of the social networks like Instagram, Telegram, X and YouTube, as well as news websites such as BBC Persian, have long been blocked in Iran and cannot be accessed without using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) proxy service.

Human rights advocates and political observers have drawn parallels to the 1980s, when the Iranian authorities brutally suppressed political opposition during the Iran-Iraq War.

Many fear that, in the wake of its weakened international standing after the conflict with Israel, the Iranian authorities may again turn inward, resorting to mass arrests, executions, and heavy-handed repression.

Critics point to events of 1988, when, according to human rights groups, thousands of political prisoners – many already serving sentences – were executed following brief, secretive trials by so-called “death commissions.” Most victims were buried in unmarked mass graves.

One of the two charismatic criminals involved in the kidnapping that gave the world the term “Stockholm syndrome” has died aged 78, his family has said.

Clark Olofsson – who rose to global notoriety in 1973 following a kidnapping and bank robbery in the Swedish capital – died following a lengthy illness, his family told online media outlet Dagens ETC.

During a six-day siege, Olofsson’s hostages began to sympathise with him and his accomplice, defending their actions while growing more hostile to the police outside.

The incident lends its name to a theorised psychological condition whereby kidnap victims develop affections for their captors.

• What is Stockholm syndrome?

The notorious bank siege was instigated by another man, Jan-Erik Olsson. After seizing three women and a man hostage, he demanded Olofsson – who he had previously befriended in prison – be brought to the bank from jail.

Swedish authorities agreed to his demand, and Olofsson entered the bank, which was surrounded by police.

Years later, in an interview with the Aftonbladet newspaper, he claimed he was asked to work as an inside man to keep the captives safe in exchange for a reduced sentence, but accused officials of not honouring the agreement.

Olofsson persuaded one of the hostages, Kristin Enmark, to speak to the Swedish prime minister on the phone on behalf of the robbers.

She begged to be allowed to leave the bank in a getaway car with the kidnappers, telling him: “I fully trust Clark and the robber… They haven’t done a thing to us.”

She went on: “On the contrary, they have been very nice… Believe it or not but we’ve had a really nice time here.”

Over the course of several phone calls, Enmark said she feared her captors would be harmed by police and repeatedly defended their actions.

In her memoir, she said of Olofsson: “He promised that he would make sure nothing happened to me and I decided to believe him. I was 23 years old and feared for my life.”

The hostage situation ended after six days when police officers broke through the roof and used tear gas to subdue the pair.

Initially, hostages refused to leave their captors over fears they would be shot by police. The hostages also later refused to testify against Olofsson and Olsson.

Experts have since debated whether Stockholm syndrome is an actual psychiatric condition, with some arguing it is a defence mechanism to cope with traumatic situations.

The term was coined in the aftermath of the siege by Swedish criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot to explain the seemingly irrational affection some captives felt for their hostage-takers.

The theory reached a wider audience the following year when Californian newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by revolutionary militants.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sideways podcast in 2021, Enmark rubbished the concept of Stockholm syndrome, saying: “It’s a way of blaming the victim. I did what I could to survive.”

Olofsson was a repeat offender and spent much of his life in prison. He was released for the last time in 2018 after serving a sentence for a drug offence in Belgium.

In 2022, actor Bill Skarsgård portrayed him in the Netflix drama series Clark.

Dame Anna Wintour is stepping back as editor-in-chief of American Vogue after 37 years.

The British-born fashion magnate, 75, is leaving the role she has held longer than any other editor, but will retain senior positions at its publisher.

Dame Anna will continue as Vogue’s global editorial director, as well as chief content officer for its parent company Conde Nast.

She was made a dame by the late Queen Elizabeth II for services to fashion and journalism in 2017, and was made Companion of Honour by King Charles earlier this year.

Dame Anna announced to staff on Thursday that a new role, head of editorial content, would be introduced at American Vogue.

According to an account published by the company, Dame Anna told staff she wanted to help “the next generation of impassioned editors storm the field with their own ideas” as she announced her departure from the editor-in-chief role.

She said she would continue with many of her responsibilities, and that “it goes without saying that I plan to remain Vogue’s tennis and theatre editor in perpetuity”.

Raised in London, Dame Anna was the editor of British Vogue before she took the helm at its US sister publication in 1988.

She is credited with giving American Vogue a new lease of life, turning it into one of the world’s top fashion publications and was credited with overhauling its output, including featuring less well-known models and mixing inexpensive clothes with couture.

Over her long career, Dame Anna has become one of the most recognisable and influential figures in the fashion industry.

Outside of her work with Vogue, she has also organised the Met Gala, a New York fundraiser which attracts high-profile celebrities, since 1995.

She is known for her trademark bob and dark glasses. Last December, she told the BBC’s culture editor Katie Razzall the signature shades were a “prop”, and “they help me see and they help me not see”.

Dame Anna’s tenure as editor-in-chief of US Vogue is also widely rumoured to have inspired the tyrannical but revered character of Miranda Priestly in the Devil Wears Prada – a novel by a former assistant of Wintour, Lauren Weisberger.

Earlier this year, King Charles asked Dame Anna whether she would stop working – to which she said she replied “firmly no”.

Sabrina Carpenter has revealed alternative artwork “approved by God” for her new album after the original cover sparked controversy.

Earlier in June, the Espresso singer shared art for her album, Man’s Best Friend, which shows her on her hands and knees in a black minidress with a suited man grabbing her hair.

The photo prompted a heated debate, with some arguing that it pandered to the male gaze and promoted misogynistic stereotypes.

On Wednesday, the pop princess posted two less contentious black-and-white images of herself holding a suited man’s arm, with the caption: “Here is a new alternate cover approved by God.”

Users responding to Carpenter’s post on Instagram included fellow pop star Katy Perry, who simply replied: “Gahahahaha.”

Man’s Best Friend is Carpenter’s seventh studio album and will be released on 29 August. Fans can purchase the album with either set of artwork.

Those criticising the initial artwork included Glasgow Women’s Aid, a charity supporting victims of domestic abuse, which said it was “regressive” and “promotes an element of violence and control”.

Not everyone was against it, and some defended the singer, explaining that the image was satirical.

“There’s a deeper meaning, portraying how the public views her, believing she is just for the male gaze,” a fan wrote on X.

But Heather Binning of Women’s Rights Network, told the BBC that violence against women should “never be used as satire”.

Many of Carpenter’s fans are young women, and Ms Binning said the imagery “grooms girls to believe that it is a fun, casual, sexy thing to submit to men’s sexual (sometimes sexually violent) desires”.

On social media, some also criticised Carpenter for the timing, suggesting the image was not appropriate given the current political climate in the US.

“Women’s control over their bodies are being taken away in the US and this is kind of insensitive,” one user wrote on Instagram.

Professor Catherine Rottenberg from Goldsmiths University of London said that regardless of how the artwork should be interpreted, Carpenter was “fanning the flames of controversy in order to sell her brand”.

“Debates around representation that this album has already generated will likely mean more sales, more popularity, and more traction,” she told the BBC.

It is not the first time the 26-year-old’s music has sparked an outcry.

Carpenter has built her brand around fun and risque pop music, and her sexual lyrics, X-rated ad-lib Nonsense outros and provocative performances regularly cause a stir.

At the Brit Awards in March, media watchdog Ofcom received 825 complaints, with the majority involving Carpenter’s pre-watershed opening performance that saw her wearing a red sparkly military-style mini-dress with matching stockings and suspenders.

She was also seen having a close encounter with a dancer dressed as a soldier wearing a bearskin hat during the show, which was broadcast live on ITV.

Lucy Ford, a culture critic, previously told the BBC that Carpenter is “in on the joke” when she performs.

“Sabrina is being unabashedly horny in her music and it feels like an embrace of fun and silliness and not taking things too seriously.”

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth took the lectern at the Pentagon briefing room on Thursday morning with two goals.

He wanted to present evidence of the success of the American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, pushing back against a preliminary defence intelligence assessment that suggested the strikes were less effective.

And he wanted to berate the American media and paint their coverage of that preliminary report as unpatriotic and disrespectful to the “brave men and women” in the US military.

It was a briefing aimed at winning over divided public opinion on the attacks – and to satisfy an audience of one in the White House, who has been railing against the media coverage for days.

The former goal is still in question, but the latter seems to have been a mission accomplished.

“One of the greatest, most professional, and most ‘confirming’ News Conferences I have ever seen!” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social after Hegseth concluded.

• US gained nothing from strikes, Iran’s supreme leader says
• Trump takes Middle East victory lap – but big questions remain
• What we know about US strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites

During his half-hour briefing, Hegseth ticked through a range of intelligence information, although little of it was new.

He read from a Wednesday letter penned by CIA Director John Ratcliffe that claimed there was “intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years”.

He cited an earlier Israeli intelligence finding, detailed a recent statement by Iranian leaders and reviewed initial findings of “very significant damage” by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

After General Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided information about the development and power of the “bunker buster bombs” used in the attack – including how they were used to repeatedly hit the ventilation shafts at Iran’s Fordo facility – Hegseth told Americans to use their common sense when deciding whether the strikes were successful.

“Anyone with two eyes, ears and a brain can recognise that kind of firepower, with that specificity at that location and others is going to have a devastating effect,” he said.

“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated, choose your words,” he said. “This was a historically successful attack.”

After lauding members of the military who participated in the strikes, Hegseth pivoted to those he wanted to portray as the real villains of this story – an American media he said was more interested in cheering against the president and hoping that he failed. “It’s in your DNA,” he said.

If Hegseth’s comments were tinged with anger and frustration, it is in part because the political stakes at this moment are high.

Battle damage assessments take time – time to review intelligence reports from both surveillance and human sources, time to gather information and time to reach conclusions with some level of confidence. But the pace of American politics moves much more quickly.

Trump administration officials know it doesn’t take long for public opinion in a major event like this to harden. If American voters conclude now that the US attacks weren’t effective, it will be hard for the White House to change minds weeks or months later.

Hegseth’s early morning briefing was an attempt to wrest back a narrative derailed by the preliminary defence intelligence report.

Polls indicate that Donald Trump’s popularity has sagged recently and that Americans were sceptical about American military involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict going into Saturday night.

One survey in the days after the attack found that while Republicans are rallying around the president, the majority of Democrats and independents believed the US action made Americans less safe.

In theory, a successful military operation has the potential to give the president a political boost if the White House can convince the public that Trump took decisive action that produced a positive result. It would provide the president to claim a signature foreign policy success after his early high-profile efforts to end wars in Ukraine and Gaza have been stymied.

But the windows on such opportunities close fast, which could explain why Trump, often prone to hyperbole, was quick to declare that Iran’s nuclear programme was “obliterated”, as the dust from the strikes was still settling and before intelligence assessments had begun in earnest.

It’s also why his critics were so eager to boost the preliminary Pentagon report that undercut his claims – and why journalists, attuned to politicians motivated by political advantage, took note.

Amy Hunt, whose mother and two sisters were murdered in their own home last year, has told the BBC there is an “epidemic” of misogyny in society that has “the most horrific, devastating consequences”.

In her first interview since the murders of her mum, Carol, and sisters, Hannah and Louise, Amy says the UK “should be very concerned” about sexist, hateful content on social media – calling on media platforms, people in power, schools and “every single one of us” to do something about it.

She tells the BBC people are “slowly waking up” to the links between hate posted on social media and violence against women by men in real life.

The man who killed her loved ones was Kyle Clifford, her youngest sister’s ex-boyfriend. The attacks came two weeks after Louise ended their 18-month relationship.

Amy describes Clifford as a man filled with hatred, self-loathing, and a deep insecurity. “It’s very clear he hates women,” she says. “But what I often say is, he doesn’t hate women as much as he hates himself.”

She says there is “a serious obligation as a society to change men’s behaviour, because this is a man’s issue – it is not a woman’s issue”.

Amy has been speaking to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire alongside her father, racing commentator John Hunt.

• Watch: John and Amy Hunt’s interview with BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire

The pair describe the legacy of love Carol, Hannah and Louise have left. John says it is this that has helped sustain them through their trauma and grief. The three women remain a constant presence in their lives, he says.

Amy adds that her mother and sisters were “the best of us” and says “the world is a much emptier place without them”.

Clifford fatally stabbed 61-year-old Carol in July last year after he followed her into her home, in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on the pretext of bringing over some of his former partner Louise’s belongings.

He then lay in wait for Louise, 25, before raping her, and using a crossbow to shoot both her and her sister Hannah, 28.

In March this year, he was sentenced to three whole-life orders, meaning he will never be released from prison.

John and Amy strongly reject reports in some media that there were clear signs of abuse by Clifford during his relationship with Louise.

Prosecutors in the case did, however, say Clifford’s actions had been fuelled by the “violent misogyny” promoted by controversial social media personality Andrew Tate, whose videos he had watched in the days before the murders.

Clifford had searched for Tate’s podcast the day before carrying out the attack.

The court was told it was no coincidence that he had turned to such content before carrying out the violence. Amy says she believes there was an “undeniable link”.

But she also says any suggestion that Clifford was not dangerous, or that he only became capable of murder after watching misogynistic content, is “ridiculous”. She says, however, we live in a society that “emboldens misogyny” and “allows misogyny to fester”.

“It’s not just Andrew Tate, there are many subsets of Andrew Tate on social media who are spouting the same misogynistic hate – that is an undeniable fact and we should be very concerned about it.”

She feels misogyny is “the acceptable form of extremism” on social media platforms.

“We’ve got a serious issue on our hands, and we don’t give it the attention it deserves until it forces its way into your life, like it has ours,” she says.

Amy says the minute Clifford left their home on the day of the incident, “my mum, Hannah and Louise became a statistic. They became victims of Kyle Clifford.” She wants “to breathe life back into my mum, Hannah and Louise as fully-rounded people”.

When sentencing Clifford in March, the judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, described him as a “jealous man soaked in self-pity, who holds women in utter contempt”. The attacks, the judge added, were “brutal and cowardly”.

Reflecting on these words, John says: “I know it’s difficult to hear, but it’s worth remembering that he killed Carol in the most brutal way, and [he] still had choices after that.

“He didn’t choose to say, ‘oh my God, what have I done? I’ve got to get out of here’. His choice then was to say, ‘I’ve killed Carol, and now I’m going to sit and wait for an hour and a half. I’m going to kill Louise as well, and whatever time Hannah turns up, [do the] same’.

“The amount of time that day, on 9 July, he would have just been sitting there making a conscious decision to do the next step. It’s impossible for us to comprehend, isn’t it?”

He says schools should teach boys to respect women and girls much earlier than they currently do. Once boys start viewing dangerous, misogynistic content online, he adds, “they’re already on the path to doom”.

Amy says she believes misogynist influencers “don’t care” about the men and boys who watch their content.

“Who are the people that do care about the men in our society? It’s the people who love them, the people who know them,” she says. “It’s a question of what sort of world are we comfortable living in.”

It’s the wedding that everyone is talking about – US tech billionaire Jeff Bezos is set to marry TV presenter Lauren Sanchez, and the million-dollar party in Venice has caused quite a stir.

Activists have been protesting against the event, with “No Space for Bezos” posters and banners plastered across the city.

But the three-day event is set to go ahead and the guest list is rumoured to include hundreds of A-listers, including Kim Kardashian, Mick Jagger and Leonardo DiCaprio.

While Bezos’ name is synonymous with e-commerce empires, space technology companies and extreme wealth, his wife-to-be is perhaps lesser known but is no stranger to the spotlight.

Sanchez is a third-generation Mexican-American and was born in New Mexico in 1969 and raised in California.

In 2017, she told The Hollywood Reporter that she didn’t have much growing up.

“We came from nothing. I used to sleep in the back of my grandmother’s car when she would go clean houses,” she said.

As a young adult, she applied to be an air stewardess but was told she weighed too much – “back then, they weighed you, and I weighed 121 pounds. They said, ‘You need to be 115′”, she told The Wall Street Journal.

She chose instead to study journalism at the University of Southern California, leaving in 1994 to pursue a career in broadcast journalism.

Sanchez worked in various local newsrooms before landing roles as a reporter and anchor at outlets like Fox Sports Net, Extra, and Good Day LA.

She was a familiar face on American television in the late 1990s and earned an Emmy nomination for her show on Fox Sports Net, Going Deep and won an Emmy Award in 1999 as the anchor on KCOP-TV’s UPN News 13.

Sanchez went on to work as the co-host of KTTV Fox 11’s Good Day LA, an anchor on the Fox 11 News at Ten and was the original host of dancing competition So You Think You Can Dance.

According to The Times, in 2003 Sanchez appeared on the cover of lads’ magazine Open Your Eyes with the headline: America’s hottest news anchor.

At the age of 40, Sanchez pivoted from news desks to cockpits and became a licensed helicopter pilot which she says was inspired by her father who was a flight instructor.

In 2016, she launched Black Ops Aviation, becoming the first woman to own an aerial film production company. The company has provided cinematography to clients such as Netflix and Amazon and served as a consultant on Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

Her interest in aviation saw her join the all-female crew of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket earlier this year alongside Gayle King and Katy Perry.

Sanchez said that the 10-minute suborbital spaceflight mission funded by Jeff Bezos’ aerospace venture, made her come back with an open heart.

“Protect this planet we’re on, this is the only one we’ve got,” she said.

She also released a children’s book in 2024 – The Fly Who Flew to Space – which drew on her own childhood struggles with undiagnosed dyslexia.

Sanchez has three children – a son born in 2001 with former NFL player Tony Gonzalez and two from her marriage with Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell.

It is believed that Sanchez met Bezos after her company Black Ops Aviation was hired to film for Blue Origin.

Rumours emerged that the pair started dating in early 2019 and Bezos announced his divorce from MacKenzie Scott in January of that year. A few months later Sanchez also filed for divorce from Whitesell.

Both Bezos and Sanchez had been separated from their partners for some time before the divorces were announced.

In the summer of 2023, the couple announced their engagement and threw a star-studded party on Bezos’ yacht on the Amalfi Coast in Italy.

The pair will now tie the knot at a three-day wedding in Venice.

The head of Ukraine’s army, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, has said his troops have stopped Russian advances in the northeastern border region of Sumy.

During a visit to the front on Thursday, Syrskyi said the line of combat had been “stabilised” and that the Russian summer offensive in the area had been “choked off”.

However, Syrskyi also added that he had personally gone to check on fortifications in the region and that more were urgently needed.

Syrskyi’s comments on the successes of the Ukrainian troops in Sumy back recent statements by Ukrainian officials that Russia’s pressure on the region was declining.

However, the situation remained “volatile”, Border Guard spokesperson Andriy Demchenko said earlier this week.

Sumy borders the Russian region of Kursk, parts of which were seized and occupied last year by Ukrainian forces in a surprise offensive before being almost totally driven out months later.

The Kursk incursion was an embarrassment for Russia and in April President Vladimir Putin announced a plan to create “security buffer zones” along the border to provide “additional support” to areas in Russia which border Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv regions.

Moscow has been pushing in the Sumy area with renewed effort since then. In late May Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky said 50,000 of Russia’s “largest, strongest” troops were concentrated along the border and were planning to create a 10km (6-mile) buffer zone.

• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

There has been criticism about the lack of fortifications in some areas of the Sumy region – and in his statement on Thursday Syrskyi tried to quell growing public concerns over delays in their construction.

“Additional fortifications, the establishment of ‘kill zones’, the construction of anti-drone corridors to protect our soldiers and ensure more reliable logistics for our troops are obvious tasks that are being carried out,” he said.

However, Syrskyi acknowledged that these improvements had to be done better and more efficiently.

In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the lack of fortifications in certain parts of Ukraine allowed Moscow to make advances across the country – from its northern borders and from the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula.

The window of opportunity to build fortifications in Sumy safely and quickly was in autumn 2024, when Ukrainian troops were still advancing in the Russia’s border Kursk region and Sumy remained relatively unscathed.

Now may be too late, as Russia is undoubtedly well aware of the sections of the front line that lack strong fortifications.

In the last several months Moscow has claimed to have captured several villages while pummelling the city of Sumy with heavy missile strikes, killing dozens. A single ballistic missile attack on 13 April killed at least 34 people and injured 117.

DeepState, a group that monitors the latest frontline developments in Ukraine, has quoted sources as confirming that combat is raging in various unfortified areas of Sumy. The delays with erecting “much-needed fortifications” or the “low quality of some of the dugouts” could no longer be ignored, DeepState analysts said.

Asked about the summer offensive at a forum in St Petersburg last week, Putin said Russia did not “have the goal of capturing Sumy, but I don’t rule it out”. He said Russian forces had already established a buffer zone of 8-12km in depth.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched in February 2022, is now well into its fourth year.

Large-scale Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian cities are on the rise. In recent weeks the capital Kyiv was targeted with record numbers of drones that overwhelm air defences and cause deadly explosions.

Recent rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia resulted in large prisoner exchanges but have so far failed to produce any tangible progress towards a ceasefire.

Earlier this week Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said that European and Canadian allies had pledged €35bn (£30bn; $41bn) to Ukraine.

But there remains nervousness in Kyiv over the level of US President Donald Trump’s commitment to the Ukrainian cause and his volatile relationship with Zelensky.

However, Trump said on Wednesday a meeting he held with Zelensky on the sidelines of the Nato summit in The Hague “couldn’t have been nicer”.

He told BBC Ukraine’s Myroslava Petsa at a press conference afterwards that he was considering supplying Kyiv with US Patriot air defence missiles to defend itself against Russian strikes.

“We’re going to see if we could make some available. You know, they’re very hard to get,” he said.