The US must rule out any further strikes on Iran if it wants to resume diplomatic talks, Tehran’s deputy foreign minister has told the BBC.

Majid Takht-Ravanchi says the Trump administration has told Iran through mediators it wants to return to negotiations, but had “not made their position clear” on the “very important question” of further attacks while talks are taking place.

Israel’s military operation, which began in the early hours of 13 June, scuppered a sixth round of mainly indirect talks set to take place in Muscat two days later.

The US became directly involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran last weekend when it targeted three Iranian nuclear sites in a bombing raid.

Takht-Ravanchi also said Iran will “insist” on being able to enrich uranium for what it says are peaceful purposes, rejecting accusations that Iran was secretly moving towards developing a nuclear bomb.

He said Iran had been “denied access to nuclear material” for its research programme so needed “to rely on ourselves”.

“The level of that can be discussed, the capacity can be discussed, but to say that you should not have enrichment, you should have zero enrichment, and if do you not agree, we will bomb you – that is the law of the jungle,” the deputy foreign minister said.

Israel began its attacks, targeting nuclear and military sites as well as assassinating commanders and scientists, in Iran on 13 June, claiming Tehran was close to building a nuclear weapon.

Iran responded by attacking Israel with missiles. Hostilities continued for 12 days, during which the US dropped bombs on three of Iran’s nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

The extent of the damage caused to Iran’s nuclear programme by US strikes has been unclear, and Takht-Ravanchi said he could not give an exact assessment.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the strikes caused severe but “not total” damage, while US President Donald Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear facilities were “totally obliterated”.

Grossi also said Iran had the capacity to start enriching uranium again in “a matter of months”. In response, Takht-Ravanchi said he did not know if that would be the case.

Iran’s relationship with the IAEA has become increasingly strained. On Wednesday, its parliament moved to suspend cooperation with the atomic watchdog, accusing the IAEA of siding with Israel and the US.

Trump has said he would “absolutely” consider bombing Iran again if intelligence found that it could enrich uranium to concerning levels.

Takht-Ravanchi said no date had been agreed upon for a possible return to talks and he did not know what would be on the agenda, after Trump suggested discussions could take place this week.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister said “right now we are seeking an answer to this question: are we going to see a repetition of an act of aggression while we are engaging in dialogue?”

He said the US had to be “quite clear on this very important question” and “what they are going to offer us in order to make the necessary confidence required for such a dialogue”.

Asked if Iran could consider rethinking its nuclear programme as part of any deal, possibly in return for sanctions relief and investment in the country, Takht-Ravanchi said: “Why should we agree to such a proposal?”

He reiterated that Iran’s programme, including enriching uranium to 60%, was “for peaceful purposes”.

Under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran was not permitted to enrich uranium above 3.67% purity – the level required for fuel for commercial nuclear power plants – and was not allowed to carry out any enrichment at its Fordo plant for 15 years.

However, Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018 during his first term as president, saying it did too little to stop a pathway to a bomb, and reinstated US sanctions.

Iran retaliated by increasingly breaching the restrictions – particularly those relating to enrichment. It resumed enrichment at Fordo in 2021 and had amassed enough 60%-enriched uranium to potentially make nine nuclear bombs, according to the IAEA.

Pressed on European and Western leaders having a lack of trust towards Iran, Takht-Ravanchi accused some European leaders of a “ridiculous” endorsement of US and Israeli strikes.

He said those who are criticising Iran over its nuclear programme “should criticise the way that we have been treated” and criticise the US and Israel.

He added: “And if they do not have the guts to criticise America, they should keep silent, not try to justify the aggression.”

Takht-Ravanchi also said Iran had received messages through mediators that the US did “not want to engage in regime change in Iran” by targeting the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Iranians to “rise for their freedom” to bring down the clerical rule of Khamenei, but, after last week’s ceasefire was reached, Trump said he did not want the same.

Takht-Ravanchi insisted it would not happen and the idea was “tantamount to a futile exercise”.

He said that although some Iranians “might have criticism of some actions by the government, when it comes to foreign aggression they would be united to confront it”.

The deputy foreign minister said it was “not quite clear” if the ceasefire with Israel would last, but Iran would continue to observe it “as long as there is no military attack against us”.

He said Iran’s Arab allies in the Persian Gulf were “doing their best to try to prepare the necessary atmosphere for a dialogue”. Qatar is known to have played a key role in brokering the current ceasefire.

He added: “We do not want war. We want to engage in dialogue and diplomacy, but we have to be prepared, we have to be cautious, not to be surprised again.”

“What they’re showing on Russian TV are fairy tales for fools. Most of Mariupol still lies in ruins,” says John, a Ukrainian living in Russian-occupied Mariupol. We’ve changed his name as he fears reprisal from Russian authorities.

“They are repairing the facades of the buildings on the main streets, where they bring cameras to shoot. But around the corner, there is rubble and emptiness. Many people still live in half-destroyed apartments with their walls barely standing,” he says.

It’s been just over three years since Mariupol was taken by Russian forces after a brutal siege and indiscriminate bombardment – a key moment in the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Thousands were killed, and the UN estimated 90% of residential buildings were damaged or destroyed.

In recent months, videos and reels from several pro-Russia influencers have been painting a picture of a glossy city where damaged structures have been repaired and where life has gone back to normal.

But the BBC has spoken to more than half a dozen people – some still living in Mariupol, others who escaped after spending time under occupation – to piece together a real picture of what life is like in the city.

“There are a lot of lies floating around,” says 66-year-old Olha Onyshko who escaped from Mariupol late last year and now lives in Ukraine’s Ternopil.

“We had a beautiful city but now it’s diseased. I wouldn’t say they [Russian authorities] have repaired a lot of things. There’s a central square – only the buildings there have been reconstructed. And there are also empty spaces where buildings stood. They cleared the debris, but they didn’t even separate out the dead bodies, they were just loaded on to trucks with the rubble and carried out of the city,” she adds.

Mariupol is also facing severe water shortages.

“Water flows for a day or two, then it doesn’t come for three days. We keep buckets and cans of water at home. The colour of the water is so yellow that even after boiling it, it’s scary to drink it,” says James, another Mariupol resident whose name has been changed.

Some have even said the water looks like “coca cola”.

Serhii Orlov, who calls himself Mariupol’s deputy mayor in exile, says the Siverskyi Donets–Donbas Canal which supplied water to the city was damaged during the fighting.

“Only one reservoir was left supplying water to Mariupol. For the current population, that would’ve lasted for about a year and a half. Since occupation has lasted longer than that, it means there is no drinking water at all. The water people are using doesn’t even meet the minimum drinking water standard,” says Serhii.

There are frequent power cuts, food is expensive, and medicines are scarce, residents tell us.

“Basic medicines are not available. Diabetics struggle to get insulin on time, and it is crazy expensive,” says James.

The BBC has reached out to Mariupol’s Russian administration for a response to the allegations about shortages and whether they had found an alternative source for water. We have not got a response so far.

Despite the hardships the most difficult part of living in the city, residents say, is watching what Ukrainian children are being taught at school.

Andrii Kozhushyna studied at a university in Mariupol for a year after it was occupied. Now he’s escaped to Dnipro.

“They are teaching children false information and propaganda. For example, school textbooks state that Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Odesa, Crimea and even Dnipropetrovsk regions are all already part of Russia,” says Andrii.

He also described special lessons called “Conversations about Important Things” in which students are taught about how Russia liberated the Russian-speaking population of these regions from Nazis in 2022.

“Teachers who refuse to take these lessons are intimidated or fired. It’s like they are reprogramming the minds of our children,” says John, a Mariupol resident.

During World War Two Victory Day celebrations in May, images from Mariupol’s central square showed children and adults dressed up in military costumes participating in parades and performances – Soviet-era traditions that Ukraine had increasingly shunned are now being imposed in occupied territories. Mariupol was bathed in the colours of the Russian flag – red, blue and white.

But some Ukrainians are waging a secret resistance against Russia, and in the dead of the night, they spray paint Ukrainian blue and yellow colours on walls, and also paste leaflets with messages like “Liberate Mariupol” and “Mariupol is Ukraine”.

James and John are both members of resistance groups, as was Andrii when he lived in the city.

“The messages are meant as moral support for our people, to let them know that the resistance is alive,” says James.

Their main objective is collecting intelligence for the Ukrainian military.

“I document information about Russian military movements. I analyse where they are transporting weapons, how many soldiers are entering and leaving the city, and what equipment is being repaired in our industrial areas. I take photos secretly, and keep them hidden until I can transmit them to Ukrainian intelligence through secure channels,” says James.

Occasionally, the resistance groups also try to sabotage civil or military operations. On at least two occasions, the railway line into Mariupol was disrupted because the signalling box was set on fire by activists.

It’s risky work. Andrii said he was forced to leave when he realised that he had been exposed.

“Perhaps a neighbour snitched on me. But once when I was at a store buying bread, I saw a soldier showing my photo to the cashier asking if they knew who the person was,” he said.

He left immediately, slipping past Mariupol’s checkposts and then travelling through numerous cities in Russia, and through Belarus, before entering Ukraine from the north.

For those still in the city, each day is a challenge.

“Every day you delete your messages because your phone can be checked at checkpoints. You’re afraid to call your friends in Ukraine in case your phone is being tapped,” says James.

“A person from a neighbouring house was arrested right off the street because someone reported that he was allegedly passing information to the Ukrainian military. Your life is like a movie – a constant tension, fear, distrust,” he adds.

As talks continue between Ukraine and Russia, there have been suggestions from within and outside Ukraine that it would need to concede land in exchange for a peace deal.

“Giving away territory for a ‘deal with Russia’ will be a betrayal. Dozens risk their lives every day to pass information to Ukraine, not so that some diplomat in a suit will sign a paper that will ‘hand us over’,” says John.

“We don’t want ‘peace at any cost’. We want liberation.”

The prime minister has condemned UK punk duo Bob Vylan for urging “death” to Israeli troops in what he called “appalling hate speech”.

Glastonbury Festival organisers have also said they were “appalled” after frontman rapper Bobby Vylan led chants of “free, free Palestine” and “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”.

In a statement, Sir Keir Starmer said the BBC had questions to answer over its live broadcast of the group’s performance on Saturday.

A BBC spokesperson previously said some of the comments were “deeply offensive”, adding it had issued a warning on screen about “very strong and discriminatory language”. The set will not be available on BBC iPlayer.

Sir Keir has also criticised Kneecap saying ahead of the festival that their appearance was not “appropriate”. The Irish-language rap group have previously described Israel’s military action in Gaza as a genocide.

He said: “There is no excuse for this kind of appalling hate speech.

“I said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence.”

The prime minister is the latest in a string of cabinet ministers to denounce Bobby Vylan’s comments in the 24 hours since the group appeared at Glastonbury.

Directly after the set, a government spokesperson said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had pressed BBC boss Tim Davie for an urgent explanation of the broadcaster’s vetting process.

The government added that it welcomed the decision not to re-broadcast the performance on BBC iPlayer.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said it was “clear” the rapper was “inciting violence and hatred” and should be prosecuted.

In a post shared on X on Sunday, he also called on the police to “urgently investigate and prosecute the BBC” who he claimed “appear to have also broken the law”.

“Our national broadcaster should not be transmitting hateful material designed to incite violence and conflict,” he said.

The BBC has been asked for further comment.

Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme earlier, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Bob Vylan’s comments were “revolting”.

He said the “irony of that music festival is that Israelis were taken from a music festival, killed, raped and in some cases are still being held captive”.

• Follow the latest updates from Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury Festival has said Bob Vylan’s statements “very much crossed a line”.

A joint Instagram post from Glastonbury Festival and organiser Emily Eavis on Sunday said the event stood “against all forms of war and terrorism”, and that with almost 4,000 performances on site “there will inevitably be artists and speakers appearing on our stages whose views we do not share”.

“However, we are appalled by the statements made from the West Holts stage by Bob Vylan yesterday,” it continued.

“Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.”

Bob Vylan are an English punk duo based in London. Bobby Vylan serves as the singer and guitarist, while Bobbie Vylan is the drummer of the band. Both members use stage names to maintain their privacy and collectively refer to themselves as “the Bobs”.

Antisemitism campaigners said they will formally complain to the BBC over its “outrageous decision” to broadcast the act live.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism group said in a post on X that Glastonbury had “continued its headlong descent into a pit of extremism and hatred, but it is the behaviour of the BBC that is even more dangerous”.

It said it would formally complain to the BBC for broadcasting the performance, as well as that of Kneecap.

The BBC did not run a live broadcast of Kneecap’s set due to editorial concerns around impartiality, but on Sunday announced the set had been made available on iPlayer, with some edits.

It said the content had been edited to ensure it “falls within the limits of artistic expression in line with our editorial guidelines” and any strong language had been signposted with “appropriate warnings”.

Kneecap has made headlines in recent months after rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara, was charged with a terrorism offence.

He is accused of displaying the flag of proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a gig last year. He has denied the charge.

Following sets from both groups, Avon and Somerset Police said it would review footage of comments made by acts on the West Holts Stage.

The force said footage “will be assessed by officers to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation”.

Kneecap’s highly-charged performance on Saturday was watched by thousands as they hit back at Sir Keir with expletive-laden chants.

Mr Ó hAnnaidh continues to be on bail and will appear at court for the next hearing on 20 August.

Separately on Sunday, the Met Police said it will not pursue prosecution after videos emerged in April appearing to show Kneecap calling for the death of British MPs.

“A range of offences were considered as part of the investigation. However, given the time elapsed between the events in the video and the video being brought to police attention, any potential summary only offences were beyond the statutory time limit for prosecution,” the force said.

A heatwave continues to grip large parts of Europe, with authorities in many countries issuing health warnings amid searing temperatures.

Southern Spain is the worst-affected region, with temperatures in the mid-40s Celsius recorded in Seville and neighbouring areas.

A new heat record for June of 46C was set on Saturday in the town of El Granado, according to Spain’s national weather service, which also said this month is on track to be the hottest June on record.

Red heat warnings are in force in parts of Portugal, Italy and Croatia, with numerous amber warnings covering areas of Spain, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

In Barcelona, a woman died after completing a shift as a road sweeper on Saturday, when temperatures were very high. Local authorities are investigating her death.

In Italy, emergency departments across the country have reported an uptick in heatstroke cases, mainly affecting “elderly people, cancer patients, or homeless people”, Mario Guarino, vice president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine told the AFP news agency.

Hospitals such as the Ospedale dei Colli in Naples have set up dedicated heatstroke pathways to speed up access to vital treatments such as cold water immersion.

The city of Bologna further to the north has set up seven climate shelters with air conditioning and drinking water, while Rome has offered free access to city swimming pools for those over 70.

A pharmacist in Portugal’s capital Lisbon told Reuters news agency that, despite telling people “not to go out” during the hottest hours of the day, “we have already had some cases of heat strokes and burns”.

The severe heat has also affected countries across the western Balkans where temperatures have reached in excess of 40C.

Serbia registered its highest-ever temperature since it began recording them in the 19th century. In Slovenia, the hottest-ever June temperature was recorded on Saturday.

North Macedonia is also sweltering as temperatures reached 42C on Friday.

Some areas will continue to get hotter until the middle of the week, with temperatures rising across France, Germany, Italy and the UK over the next few days.

Yellow and amber alerts are in place for parts of England this weekend, and temperatures in London may reach 35C on Monday.

The heat has been building under a big area of high pressure, with dry air descending and warming.

As that process has continued over a number of days, temperatures have climbed. The area of high pressure will move eastwards over the next few days – taking the high temperatures northwards and eastwards with it.

While it is hard to link individual extreme weather events to climate change, heatwaves are becoming more common and more intense due to climate change.

Scientists at World Weather Attribution, who analyse the influence of climate change on extreme weather events, say June heatwaves with three consecutive days above 28C are about 10 times more likely to occur now compared to pre-industrial times.

Israel has ordered Palestinians to evacuate from parts of northern Gaza ahead of increased military action, as US President Donald Trump pushes for a ceasefire deal.

People in neighbourhoods across Gaza City and Jabalia have been told to move south towards the coastal area of al-Mawasi as Israeli military operations “intensify and expand westward”.

At least 86 people were killed as the result of Israeli attacks in the 24 hours before midday on Sunday, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

Three children were among those killed in a strike on the so-called “safe zone” of al-Mawasi, their parents said.

Trump has reiterated calls to “make the deal in Gaza” and “get the hostages back”.

On Saturday, Trump had said on Truth Social that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the process of negotiating a deal with Hamas “right now”.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Avichay Adraee said on Sunday that the Israeli military was operating in north Gaza “to eliminate terrorists and terrorist infrastructure”.

Medics and residents told Reuters that military bombardments increased in Gaza in the early hours of Sunday, destroying several houses.

Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence agency told news outlets that at least 23 people had been killed on Sunday alone.

Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a tent housing displaced people in al-Mawasi near the southern city of Khan Younis – an area where people in the north had been told to evacuate to.

Five members of the Maarouf family, including three children, were killed.

“They bombed us while we were sleeping on the ground,” their mother Iman Abu Maarouf said. “We didn’t do anything wrong. My children were killed, and the rest are in intensive care.”

Their father Zeyad Abu Maarouf told Reuters that the family had arrived in the “safe zone” a month ago after Israel told them to go to al-Mawasi.

When asked about the incident, the IDF told the BBC it could not provide a specific response without more information, but said it “follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.

Also on Sunday, a 20-year-old IDF soldier, Sergeant Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld, was killed in northern Gaza.

The increased Israeli military action comes as mediators begin new efforts to end the war and release the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

On Thursday, a senior Hamas official told the BBC mediators have intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.

Qatari mediators have said they hope US pressure could help to achieve a deal, following a truce between Israel and Iran that ended the 12-day conflict between the countries.

On Sunday, Netanyahu told members of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet that “victory” over Iran opened up many possibilities, “first and foremost, to rescue the hostages”.

“Of course, we will also need to resolve the issue of Gaza, to defeat Hamas, but I believe we will achieve both missions. Beyond that, broad regional opportunities are opening up, in most of which – almost all – you are partners,” he said.

Trump previously said he was hopeful a ceasefire in Gaza could be agreed in the next week.

In March, a two-month ceasefire collapsed when Israel launched fresh strikes on Gaza. It said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release its hostages.

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.

That partial easing included the creation of a US and Israeli-backed aid group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), after Israel accused Hamas of stealing aid. Hamas has denied this.

GHF’s aid system has been condemned by UN agencies. There have been repeated incidents of killings and injuries of Palestinians seeking aid.

Juliette Touma, communications director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, told the BBC that the new mechanism was “a killing field”. She said the distribution of aid in an orderly way could only be done through the UN and other humanitarian organisations.

GHF boss Johnnie Moore previously told the BBC World Service’s Newshour he did not deny deaths near aid sites, but said “100% of those casualties are being attributed to close proximity to GHF” and that was “not true”.

The previous ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas – which started on 19 January – was set up to have three stages, but did not make it past the first stage.

Stage two included establishing a permanent ceasefire, the return of remaining living hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Trump has called for ongoing corruption charges against Netanyahu to be dropped, describing proceedings as a “political witch hunt” delaying ceasefire negotiations.

On Sunday, an Israeli court accepted a request by the Israeli prime minister to delay his scheduled testimony for a week, due to diplomatic and security issues.

Netanyahu was charged in 2019 with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, all of which he denies.

Earlier in the week, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said Trump should not “intervene in a legal process of an independent state”.

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

Since then, 56,500 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Glastonbury saved the best ’til last, with a triumphant set by American star Olivia Rodrigo to close the festival’s Pyramid Stage.

After the artifice and intensity of previous headliners The 1975 and Neil Young, the 22-year-old stomped her way through a series of crisp, punk-pop anthems and heartfelt ballads about the injustices of young love.

She charmed her English fans by professing her love for Marks and Spencers’ Colin The Caterpillar sweets; and won over Glastonbury veterans by duetting with The Cure’s Robert Smith (“perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England”).

“Glastonbury’s been my dream festival forever and I can’t believe today’s the day,” she beamed.

The set was a crowning moment for the singer, who only released her first single, Drivers License, five years ago.

A desperate cry of loneliness, the ballad broke Spotify streaming records in just 24 hours. Then it broke them again.

Seven days later, it entered the UK and the US charts at number one, instantly catapulting the singer from Disney actress to fully-fledged pop star.

Drivers License cast her as “the sad piano girl” in the public imagination – but she quickly deconstructed that image with a flurry of dynamic, guitar-heavy pop anthems that built on the templates established by Joan Jett, Alanis Morisette and Avril Lavigne.

It was those sounds that opened her Glastonbury set, with the crunchy riffs of Obsessed, a self-mocking song about her jealousy; and the semi-autobiographical Diary Of A Homeschooled Girl.

Dressed in a white lace corset and knee-high bovver boots, she high-kicked across the stage, whipping the crowd into a frenzy.

“How are we doing tonight Glastonbury,” she screamed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in my life.

“Guys, it’s the last night of the festival. Are you ready to have some fun?”

She undercut the question slightly by launching into Drivers License – but watching the army of young fans holler those lyrics back at her, there was a communal sense of catharsis, at least.

The rest of the set balanced her competing impulses: rock chick, singer-songwriter, rabble rouser, strident feminist, heartfelt balladeer.

But above all else, she’s a music fan. Her decision to duet with Glastonbury veteran Robert Smith, rather than a pop contemporary like Harry Styles or Lorde, flowed directly from her love of 80s British pop.

As they played The Cure classics Friday I’m in Love and Just Like Heaven, Rodrigo kept glancing over at Smith, beaming from ear to ear, like she couldn’t believe her luck.

She added little harmonies to the songs, embellishing without being disrespectful – and Smith seemed to be just as enamoured with Rodrigo as she was with him, watching the rest of her set from the wings of the Pyramid Stage.

“He’s the nicest, most wonderful man ever and I’m so honoured to play with him tonight,” she gushed.

That guilelessness worked in her favour. For the audience, it often felt like watching your cool older sister (or your precocious young daughter) up on stage, rather than some untouchable pop star.

What’s more, Rodrigo needed none of the usual pop star props. There was no choreography. Until the encore, there was only one costume. All she required were the songs and her pin-sharp, all-female band.

She charmed the audience even more as she introduced the new wavey So American – a song about the inside jokes she shared with an English boyfriend.

“I love England so much,” she said. “I love how nobody judges you for having a pint at noon. I love English sweets, all the sweets from M&S, Colin the Caterpillar specifically.

“True story: I have had three sticky toffee puddings since coming to Glastonbury. And as luck would have it, I love English boys.”

England loved her right back, saving their biggest reaction for her encore – a headlong rush through Brutal, All American Bitch, Good 4 U and Get Him Back.

She left the stage under a downpour of fireworks, as inflatable balls bounced around the audience and our ears rang with feedback.

It was, hands down, the best (and best-attended) headline set of the weekend.

Olivia Rodrigo had understood the brief: Bring the hits. Make it unique. And make it personal.

Perhaps she’d learned that from Jarvis Cocker, whom she’d watched from her boyfriend’s shoulders on Saturday.

“To enjoy Glastonbury, you have to submit to it,” he advised.

Rodrigo channeled that spirit innately. She’s welcome back any time.

Earlier on Sunday, The Selecter opened up the final day of music on the Pyramid Stage, with an energetic set of punchy ska anthems.

Singer Pauline Black, a former NHS worker, dedicated Frontline to her colleagues, saying we’d thank them when we needed their help for “all those knees and all those hips in the not-so-distant future”.

And the crowd carried her through the band’s biggest hit, On The Radio, as her voice cracked on the trilling high notes.

“As you can tell, my voice is hurting,” she explained. “Are you going to help me?”

They didn’t need asking twice.

Celeste took our breath away with a grungier, angrier sound than the floaty jazz-soul of her debut.

The singer, who won the BBC’s Sound Of 2020, has taken five years to follow up her chart topping album, Not Your Muse, but told the audience “everything happens when it’s supposed to”.

On the basis of Everyday – an excoriating, paranoid track built around Death In Vegas’s 1999 dance hit Dirge – the new material has been worth the wait.

Also previewing new material was London soul-pop singer Joy Crookes. Dressed in a striking pink and green sari, she sauntered through the bassy grooves of recent singles Pass The Salt and Carmen, coming across like a latter-day Amy Winehouse.

The highlight of her set was the new single Perfect Crime – with a chorus so immaculate that the crowd had picked it up after one refrain.

After an unexpectedly nostalgic set from The Libertines, Rod Stewart took to the Pyramid Stage in the prestigious “legend slot”.

In full lounge lizard style, he played big band arrangements of hits like Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, Maggie May and The First Cut Is The Deepest, full of bubbly blonde backing vocals and endless saxophone solos.

Despite promising to “get in as many hits as I can”, the set had a wobbly start, with a couple of lesser-known numbers.

But he found his groove with 1984’s Some Guys Have All The Luck, after which the jukebox served up hit after hit. Ronnie Wood came out for a chummy duet on the Faces’ Stay With Me (an obvious highlight) before Stewart closed his set with a maritime singalong on We Are Sailing.

He was followed by Nile Rodgers and Chic who, it has to be said, drew an even bigger crowd for their feel-good disco anthems.

The song choices were faultless, ranging from Chic’s Le Freak and Good Times, to the songs Rodgers produced for Bowie (Let’s Dance, Modern Love) and Madonna (Like A Virgin, Material Girl) in the 80s.

As they played, a biplane flew over the Pyramid Stage and drew a smiley face and a love heart in the sky. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

Over at the Woodsies stage, AJ Tracey gave a masterclass in crowd work.

“I asked you for a mosh pit and I’m not gonna lie to you, it was weak,” he scolded, promising to give the crowd something to really get their teeth into.

At that point, Aitch burst onto the stage for the pair’s 2020 collaboration, Rain.

To say the energy ramped up would be an understatement on par with saying the surface of the sun is a little warm to the touch.

The set continued with a clutch of UK rap anthems – Ladbroke Grove, Thiago Silva, Kiss and Tell – turning it into one of the weekend’s sweatiest shows.

Other standout sets on the festivals’ final day included The Prodigy, who dedicated their set on The Other Stage to late frontman Keith Flint; and Jorja Smith, who provided a soothing set of British soul for the festival’s more weary revellers.

Wolf Alice delivered a crowd-pleasing cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams on The Other Stage, but it was their ode to friendship, Bros, that sent the audience into rapture.

Old friends, best mates and new-found companions hugged each other and swayed deliriously to the song’s “me and you” refrain.

The band only played two songs from their highly-anticipated fourth album, The Clearing – but lead single Bloom Baby Bloom was treated like an old friend.

The new material is more angular, more face-forward than their previous work; and lead singer Ellie Rowsell seemed to be enjoying her newfound confidence as a frontwoman.

After the delicious love song The Sofa, she poured a bottle of water over her head, shook off the droplets, grabbed a megaphone and screamed out the lyrics to the band’s two loudest, punkiest songs, Yuk Foo and Greatest Hits.

Expect to see them at the top of the bill when Glastonbury returns in 2027.

“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.

“I’ll never forget it – being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”

The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least eight in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.

At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.

They had published their work on Haitang Literature City, a Taiwan-hosted platform known for its “danmei”, the genre of so-called boys’ love and erotic fiction.

Think of it as a gay version of Fifty Shades of Grey: a BDSM relationship that leads to a happily-ever-after. That’s a frequent trope, across historical, fantasy or sci-fi settings. Over the years it has cultivated a fiercely devoted following, especially among young Chinese women.

These authors are being accused of breaking China’s pornography law for “producing and distributing obscene material”. Writers who earn a profit could be jailed for more than 10 years.

The law targets “explicit descriptions of gay sex or other sexual perversions”. Heterosexual depictions often have more leeway – works by acclaimed Chinese authors, including Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, have graphic sexual scenes, but are widely available.

Although authors of heterosexual erotica have been jailed in China, observers say the genre is subjected to far less censorship. Gay erotica, which is more subversive, seems to bother authorities more. Volunteers in a support group for the Haitang writers told the BBC police even questioned some readers.

Those who reported being arrested declined to be interviewed, fearing repercussions. Police in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, who are accused of driving this crackdown, have not responded to the BBC.

Online, the crackdown has unleashed a debate – and a rarer pushback against the law.

“Is sex really something to be ashamed of?” a Weibo user asked, arguing that China’s anti-obscenity laws are out of touch. Another wrote that women never get to decide what is obscene because they don’t control the narrative. Even legal scholars have expressed concern that just 5,000 views for anything deemed “obscene” qualifies as criminal “distribution”, lowering the bar to arrest creators.

It made Beijing uneasy enough that discussions have been vanishing: #HaitangAuthorsArrested drew more than 30 million views on Weibo before it was censored. Posts offering legal advice are gone. A prominent Chinese news site’s story has been taken down. Writers’ accounts, and some of the handles, are also disappearing.

After Pingping Anan Yongfu’s post went viral, she deleted it and wrote another, thanking supporters and admitting her writing had violated the law. She then deleted her handle.

Before that last post, she had written: “I was always the good girl in my parents’ eyes. But that day, I brought them nothing but shame. They’ll never hold their heads up again.”

These women have long worked in the shadows in China, where homosexuality and eroticism are stigmatised. Now outed by police investigations, they face social consequences that are as brutal as the legal ones.

“In that moment, all I felt was shame,” posted a writer whose Weibo handle translates to “the world is a huge psychiatric hospital”. She said the police pulled her out of class in college – and her classmates watched as they followed her to search her dorm.

“I earned my money word by word at a keyboard. But once it went south, it was as if none of that mattered. People treated me like I’d made money without ever working for it.”

Another wrote the police had been kind, advising her to speak to a lawyer and return her “illegal earnings” to reduce her sentence. “I’m only 20. So young, and I’ve already ruined my life so early.”

A third said: “I never imagined a day would come when every word I once wrote would come back to haunt me.”

One author who has been writing danmei novels for 20 years was not questioned but she says the crackdown won’t stop her. “This is how I find happiness. And I can’t let go of the connections I have made with the community.”

Inspired by Japanese boys’ love manga, danmei emerged as a sub-genre online in the 1990s. It has become hugely successful, with some of the novels appearing on international bestseller lists.

In 2021, 60 of them were optioned for film and TV adaptations. The most expensive IP reportedly sold for 40 million yuan ($5.6 million; £4.1 million). Some of China’s biggest stars, such as Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, began their careers on streaming shows based on danmei novels.

In short, it’s the rebellious royal of pop culture – too popular to ignore, too controversial to honour.

And it is a signature offering on Haitang, which, in Mandarin, is a flower that blooms in every shade of pink.

Fittingly, Haitang and danmei have flourished as uniquely female spaces, although they centre male protagonists. In a culture where female sexual desire is routinely policed, danmei beceme a coded, creative outlet – a space where women can write about female desire for other women.

That is exactly what makes danmei so “subversive”, says Dr Liang Ge, who teaches digital sociology at University College London. It allows women to “detach from gendered realities”, which they often associate with marriage and motherhood.

For instance, in danmei stories, men can get pregnant and are at ease with being vulnerable – a stark contrast from the often unequal relationships many Chinese women struggle with in real life.

“Danmei frees me from thinking about all those potential dangers in relationships in traditional heterosexual romance,” explains one writer who has been active in the danmei world for a decade.

Danmei novels are not without their critics, because some do contain extreme and violent scenes. “As a parent, how many of us can accept our children reading novels like this, let alone writing them?” asked one Weibo user.

The age of authors has also been a concern: a handful of those the BBC spoke to said they all started reading and writing gay erotica before they turned 18, some as young as 11.

It’s a problem the community should acknowledge and address, said Ma, a danmei writer who only shared her surname, adding that this is a problem for all adult content because China does not restrict content by age.

But danmei in particular has increasingly come under attack in the last decade as Beijing launched a series of campaigns to “clean up” the internet. In 2018 a danmei author was jailed for 10 years for selling 7,000 copies of her book titled Occupy.

As marriage and birth rates plummet, and China’s leader Xi Jinping encourages a national rejuvenation, so state scrutiny of danmei has ratcheted up, Dr Ge says.

“The Chinese government wants to promote traditional family values and liking danmei novels is seen as a factor in making women less willing to have children,” Dr Ge explains.

This is the second wave of mass arrests in less than a year – late last year, some 50 Haitang writers were prosecuted. A famous author who earned about 1.85 million yuan was jailed for nearly five years.

The two crackdowns are similar, according to a lawyer who had represented some of the defendants last year, “but this time, even those with minor involvement weren’t spared”.

A lawyer offering free legal advice said more than 150 people requested consultations in just two days. Many of those contacting her had not been charged yet – they were terrified about the possibility though.

“This is classic offshore fishing,” says a lawyer who authored a “practical guide” to assist Haitang writers. The term refers to overreach by local police – those in Lanzhou summoned writers in various places, arguably beyond their jurisdiction.

Several reported paying out of pocket to fly to Lanzhou. One posted that the 2,000 yuan earned from two books on Haitang paid for the flight.

Last year too all the arrests were by police in Jixi County in eastern China.

Indebted local governments have done this before to earn revenue through fines, sometimes forcing a warning from the central government. Cyber crimes are particularly prone to this “as long as they claim a local reader was corrupted”, the lawyer says.

Danmei writers know tolerance can be fickle. It’s why they skirt censorship with metaphors. “Making dinner” means sex; “kitchen tool” is code for male genitals.

Still, the recent crackdown stunned them. “A phone call shattered my dreams,” is how one writer described the call from police.

They accused police of searching their phone without a warrant. They said their crime was assessed by adding up the views for each chapter – a method they argued was misleading, as it likely exaggerated the readership.

Another danmei author posted: “I wrote on Haitang for years, with only a handful of readers. Then, those overlooked stories accumulated over 300,000 clicks, and the 4,000 yuan in royalties sitting in my account became evidence of my crime.”

It’s hard to know if this spells the end of their careers on Haitang.

“If I could go back, I’d still choose to write. And I will keep writing,” wrote the handle Sijin de Sijin.

“Right now, I can only hope the law will see beyond the words on the page – and see the girl who skipped meals to save money, the girl who sold her hair to buy a pen, the girl who believed her mind could carve a way through fate. I hope it gives all of us a fair chance.”

The Air India tragedy, in which at least 270 people died, involved one of Boeing’s most innovative and popular planes. Until now, it was considered one of its safest too.

We still do not know why flight 171 crashed just 30 seconds after take-off. Investigators have now recovered flight recorder data and are working hard to find out. But the incident has drawn attention to the aircraft involved: the 787 Dreamliner, the first of a modern generation of radical, fuel-efficient planes.

Prior to the accident, the 787 had operated for nearly a decade and a half without any major accidents and without a single fatality. During that period, according to Boeing, it carried more than a billion passengers. There are currently more than 1,100 in service worldwide.

However, it has also suffered from a series of quality control problems.

Whistleblowers who worked on the aircraft have raised numerous concerns about production standards. Some have claimed that potentially dangerously flawed aircraft have been allowed into service – allegations the company has consistently denied.

It was on a chilly December morning in 2009 that a brand-new aircraft edged out onto the runway at Paine Field airport near Seattle and, as a cheering crowd looked on, accelerated into a cloudy sky.

The flight was the culmination of years of development and billions of dollars worth of investment.

The 787 was conceived in the early 2000s, at a time of rising oil prices, when the increasing cost of fuel had become a major preoccupation for airlines. Boeing decided to build a long-haul plane for them that would set new standards in efficiency.

“In the late 1990s, Boeing was working on a design called the Sonic Cruiser,” explains aviation historian Shea Oakley.

This was firstly conceived as a plane that would use advanced materials and the latest technology to carry up to 250 passengers at just under the speed of sound. The initial emphasis was on speed and cutting journey times, rather than fuel economy.

“But then the effects of 9/11 hit the world airline industry quite hard,” says Mr Oakley.

“The airlines told Boeing what they really needed was the most fuel-efficient, economical long-range jetliner ever produced. They now wanted an aeroplane with a similar capacity to the Sonic Cruiser, minus the high speed.”

Boeing abandoned its initial concept, and began work on what became the 787. In doing so, it helped create a new business model for airlines.

Instead of using giant planes to transport huge numbers of people between “hub” airports, before placing them on connecting flights to other destinations, they could now fly smaller aircraft on less crowded direct routes between smaller cities which would previously have been unviable.

At the time Boeing’s great rival, the European giant Airbus, was taking precisely the opposite approach. It was developing the gargantuan A380 superjumbo – a machine tailor-made for carrying as many passengers as possible on busy routes between the world’s biggest and busiest airports.

In hindsight, Boeing’s approach was wiser. The fuel-thirsty A380 went out of production in 2021, after only 251 had been built.

“Airbus thought the future was giant hubs where people would always want to change planes in Frankfurt or Heathrow or Narita,” explains aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, who is a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.

“Boeing said ‘no, people want to fly point to point’. And Boeing was extremely right.”

The 787 was a truly radical aircraft. It was the first commercial plane to be built primarily of composites such as carbon fibre, rather than aluminium, in order to reduce weight. It had advanced aerodynamics to reduce drag.

It also used highly efficient modern engines from General Electric and Rolls Royce, and it replaced many mechanical and pneumatic systems with lighter electrical ones.

All of this, Boeing said, would make it 20% more efficient than its predecessor, the Boeing 767. It was also significantly quieter, with a noise footprint (the area on the ground affected by significant noise from the aircraft) that the manufacturer said was up to 60% smaller.

Not long after the aircraft entered service, however, there were serious problems. In January 2013, lithium-ion batteries caught fire aboard a 787 as it waited at a gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

A week later, overheating batteries forced another 787 to make an emergency landing during an internal flight in Japan.

The design was grounded worldwide for several months, while Boeing came up with a solution.

Since then, day to day operations have been smoother, but production has been deeply problematic. Analysts say this may, in part, have been due to Boeing’s decision to set up a new assembly line for the 787 in North Charleston, South Carolina – more than 2000 miles from its Seattle heartlands.

This was done to take advantage of the region’s low rates of union membership, as well as generous support from the state.

“There were serious development issues,” says Mr Aboulafia. “Some notable production issues, related especially to the decision to create Boeing’s first ever production line outside of the Puget Sound area.”

In 2019, Boeing discovered the first of a series of manufacturing defects that affected the way in which different parts of the aircraft fitted together. As more problems were found, the company widened its investigations – and uncovered further issues.

Deliveries were heavily disrupted, and halted altogether between May 2021 and July 2022, before being paused again the following year.

However, potentially the most damaging allegations about the 787 programme have come from the company’s own current and former employees.

Among the most prominent was the late John Barnett, a former quality control manager at the 787 factory in South Carolina. He claimed that pressure to produce planes as quickly as possible had seriously undermined safety.

In 2019, he told the BBC that workers at the plant had failed to follow strict procedures intended to track components through the factory, potentially allowing defective parts to go missing. In some cases, he said, workers had even deliberately fitted substandard parts from scrap bins to aircraft in order to avoid delays on the production line.

He also maintained that defective fixings were used to secure aircraft decks. Screwing them into place produced razor-sharp slivers of metal, which in some cases accumulated beneath the deck in areas containing large amounts of aircraft wiring.

His claims had previously been passed to the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, which partially upheld them. After investigating, it concluded that at least 53 “non-conforming” parts had gone missing in the factory.

An audit by the FAA also confirmed that metal shavings were present beneath the floors of a number of aircraft.

Boeing said its board analysed the problem and decided it did not “present a safety of flight issue”, though the fixings were subsequently redesigned. The company later said it had “fully resolved the FAA’s findings regarding part traceability and implemented corrective actions to prevent recurrence”.

Mr Barnett remained concerned that aircraft that had already gone into service could be carrying hidden defects serious enough to cause a major accident. “I believe it’s just a matter of time before something big happens with a 787,” he told me in 2019. “I pray that I am wrong.”

In early 2024, Mr Barnett took his own life. At the time he had been giving evidence in a long-running whistleblower lawsuit against the company – which he maintained had victimised him as a result of his allegations. Boeing denied this.

Much of what he had alleged echoed previous claims by another former quality manager at the plant, Cynthia Kitchens.

In 2011, she had complained to regulators about substandard parts being deliberately removed from quarantine bins and fitted to aircraft, in an attempt to keep the production line moving.

Ms Kitchens, who left Boeing in 2016, also claimed employees had been told to overlook substandard work, and said defective wiring bundles, containing metallic shavings within their coatings, had been deliberately installed on planes – creating a risk of dangerous short-circuits.

Boeing has not responded to these specific allegations but says Ms Kitchens resigned in 2016 “after being informed that she was being placed on a performance improvement plan”. It says that she subsequently filed a lawsuit against Boeing, “alleging claims of discrimination and retaliation unrelated to any quality issues”, which was dismissed.

More recently, a third whistleblower made headlines when testifying before a senate committee last year.

Sam Salehpour, a current Boeing employee, told US lawmakers he had come forward because “the safety problems I have observed at Boeing, if not addressed could result in a catastrophic failure of a commercial aeroplane that would lead to the loss of hundreds of lives”.

The quality engineer said that while working on the 787 in late 2020, he had seen the company introduce shortcuts in assembly processes, in order to speed up production and delivery of the aircraft. These, he said, “had allowed potentially defective parts and defective installations in 787 fleets”.

He also noted that on the majority of aircraft he looked at, tiny gaps in the joints between sections of fuselage had not been properly rectified. This, he said, meant those joints would be prone to “premature fatigue failure over time” and created “extremely unsafe conditions for the aircraft” with “potentially catastrophic” consequences.

He suggested that more than 1,000 aircraft – the bulk of the 787 fleet – could be affected.

Boeing insists that “claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate”. It says: “The issues raised have been subject to rigorous examination under US Federal Aviation Administration oversight. This analysis has validated that the aircraft will maintain its durability and service life over several decades, and these issues do not present any safety concerns.”

There is no question that Boeing has come under huge pressure in recent years over its corporate culture and production standards. In the wake of two fatal accidents involving its bestselling 737 Max, and a further serious incident last year, it has been repeatedly accused of putting the pursuit of profit over passenger safety.

It is a perception that chief executive Kelly Ortberg, who joined the company last year, has been working hard to overturn – overhauling its internal processes and working with regulators on a comprehensive safety and quality control plan.

But has the 787 already been compromised by past failures, that may have created ongoing safety risks?

Richard Aboulafia believes not. “You know. It’s been 16 years of operations, 1,200 jets and over a billion passengers flown, but no crashes until now,” he says. “It’s a stellar safety record.”

He thinks that any major issues would already have become apparent.

“I really think production problems are more of a short-term concern,” he says. “For the past few years, there’s been far greater oversight of 787 production.

“For older planes, I think any serious problems would have shown up by now.”

The Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad was more than 11 years old, having first flown in 2013.

But the Foundation for Aviation Safety, a US organisation established by the former Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson that has previously been highly critical of the company, says it did have concerns about 787s prior to the recent crash.

“Yes, it was a possible safety risk,” claims Mr Pierson. “We monitor incident reports, we monitor regulatory documents. Airworthiness directives come out that describe various issues, and it does make you wonder.”

One such issue, he argues, is water potentially leaking from washroom taps into electrical equipment bays. Last year, the FAA instructed airlines to carry out regular inspections, following reports that leaks were going undetected on certain 787 models.

However, he stresses that the cause of the recent tragedy is still unknown – and that it is vital the investigation moves forward quickly, so that any problems, whether they lie with the aircraft, the airline or elsewhere, can be resolved.

For the moment, however, the 787’s safety record remains strong.

“We don’t know at this point what caused the Air India crash,” says Scott Hamilton, managing director of aviation consulting firm Leeham Company.

“But based on what we do know about the plane, I would not hesitate to get on board a 787.”

A sprawling budget bill in the US Senate could cut health insurance coverage for nearly 12 million Americans and add $3.3tn (£2.4tn) in debt, according to new estimates.

The assessment from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency, could complicate Republican efforts to pass President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act in the coming days.

The spending plan narrowly cleared a preliminary vote in the Senate late on Saturday after party leaders scrambled to arm-twist hesitant members of their rank and file.

One defector, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, announced he would not seek reelection after voting against the president’s signature legislation.

Democratic lawmakers have led criticism of the bill. The CBO numbers calculate $1tn in cuts to healthcare funding if the measure passes.

The latest version of the bill was advanced in a 51-49 Senate vote on Saturday night. Two Republicans – Tillis and Rand Paul of Kentucky – joined Democrats in opposing the move.

Paul has said he opposes the bill because it raises the US debt limit. Tillis has said the bill would cost his state billions of dollars in healthcare funding.

While senators debated the bill on Sunday, it is unclear whether it has enough support to ultimately pass.

Republicans have a small majority in the Senate, holding 53 seats. Vice-President JD Vance has the tie-breaker vote so the party can only afford three defectors.

Democratic senators used chamber rules to force a 16-hour reading of the nearly 1,000-page bill in an attempt to delay a vote on its passage.

Under Senate rules, lawmakers now have 20 hours allocated to debate the bill. It is expected that Democrats will use all of their time to further delay a vote, while Republicans try to speed up the process.

Lawmakers could also propose amendments to the bill. If the revised bill passes the Senate, it still must return to the House of Representatives for final approval before landing on the president’s desk for signing into law.

Trump has pushed for the bill to clear Congress before a self-imposed 4 July deadline. The White House said failure to pass it would be the “ultimate betrayal”.

On Saturday, he called the Senate’s vote to advance the bill a “great victory”.

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But the bill’s proposed cuts to Medicaid, a healthcare programme that is relied on by millions of elderly, disabled and low-income Americans, have become a political flashpoint.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner told CNN on Sunday that the measure would negatively affect millions. “This is tax cuts for the wealthiest to end up cutting healthcare, plain and simple,” he said.

Under the bill, more than 80% of Americans would get a tax cut next year, though wealthier taxpayers would benefit most, including as a percentage of income, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.

Senator Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, told NBC on Sunday that the legislation aims to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse.

He argued that many Americans using Medicaid are not under the poverty line.

“We don’t pay people in this country to be lazy,” he said. “We want to give them an opportunity. And when they’re going through a hard time, we want to give them a helping hand.”

Some parts of the spending bill were revised in the Senate in order to appease Republican holdouts.

It still contains some of its core components: tax cuts that Trump campaigned on, such as a tax deduction on Social Security benefits, and the elimination of taxes on overtime work and tips.

It would also extend tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017.

The bill proposes cuts to certain programmes in order to pay for the tax deductions.

On healthcare, the spending bill proposes a work requirement on most adults in order to qualify for benefits.

It also reduces the amount of taxes that states can charge medical providers, the funds from which are used heavily to finance Medicaid programs.

After some Republican senators voiced concern that these cuts would hurt rural hospitals in their districts, lawmakers added a provision in the latest bill that increases the size of a rural hospital relief fund from $15bn to $25bn.

The bill includes restrictions on the US food stamps programme, by asking most adults with children 14 or older to show proof of work in order to qualify.

It also shifts some costs from the federal government to states starting in 2028.

President Donald Trump has said he has a buyer for TikTok, the video-sharing app that was banned in the US amid claims it posed a national security risk.

In a Fox News interview, Trump said he had a group of “very wealthy people” willing to acquire the platform. “I’ll tell you in about two weeks,” he teased.

A sale would need approval from the Chinese government, but Trump told Fox he thought President Xi Jinping “will probably do it”.

This month Trump delayed for a third time the enforcement of a law mandating TikTok’s sale.

The latest extension requires parent company ByteDance to reach a deal to sell the platform by 17 September.

The BBC has contacted TikTok for comment.

A previous deal to sell TikTok to an American buyer fell apart in April, when the White House clashed with China over Trump’s tariffs.

It is not clear if the current buyer Trump says he has has lined up is the same as the one who was waiting in the wings three months ago.

The US Congress passed a law forcing TikTok’s sale in April last year, with lawmakers citing fears that the app or its parent company could hand over US user data to the Chinese government, which TikTok denied.

Trump had criticised the app during his first term, but came to see it as a factor in his 2024 election win and now supports its continued use in the US.

The law was supposed to take effect on 19 January, but Trump has repeatedly delayed its enforcement through executive actions, moves that have drawn criticism for overruling congressional lawmakers.

TikTok challenged the constitutionality of the law, but lost its appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Somebody’s getting fired…

Beyoncé was forced to stop her show in Houston on Saturday night when the car she was sitting in started to tilt mid-air.

The elaborate stage prop – a red Cadillac – is suspended on cables and carries the superstar high over her fans near the end of her Cowboy Carter stadium show.

But during Saturday’s performance, the car started to slowly tilt to one side, leaving the 43-year-old performer clinging to a flag pole for support.

“Stop! Stop, stop, stop stop,” Beyoncé said, bringing an abrupt end to her country ballad, 16 Carriages.

Gasps could be heard from the audience when fans realised what was happening, but then applause as the star was slowly lowered to the ground, smiling and waving to the crowd.

“If ever I fall, I know y’all will catch me,” she said later.

Fans took to social media to post their videos of the frightening moment, commenting with Beyoncé’s now-infamous catchphrase “somebody’s getting fired”, which she quipped on stage during a lighting problem in 2010.

Beyoncé’s company, Parkwood Entertainment, said a “technical mishap” had caused the car to tilt.

“She was quickly lowered and no one was injured. The show continued without incident,” the statement added.

This was not the first prop malfunction Beyoncé has experienced over her years of touring.

Earlier in this tour, a robot supposed to pour her a drink missed its mark, no doubt leaving a puddle of Sir Davis whisky for the crew to clean up. And during her On The Run II tour with husband Jay-Z in 2018, a moving platform broke, forcing Beyoncé to climb down a ladder – in heels and a sequined leotard, no less.

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The performance in her hometown of Houston, Texas, was the 23rd of her 32-show Cowboy Carter tour, which wraps up in Las Vegas next month.

The three-hour extravaganza of chaps and cowboy boots has been lauded for its high-energy and artistry, and has delighted fans with appearances by Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughters, Blue, 13, and Rumi, aged eight.

The show has broken ticket records at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London (the previous record holder was… Beyoncé) and Stade De France in Paris.

At the age of 80, Rod Stewart has earned the right to do things his way. And if that means turning Glastonbury into a Vegas nightclub for 90 minutes, so be it.

The star played the festival’s coveted “legends slot” on Sunday afternoon, putting on a show resplendent with glittery suits, saxophone solos and special guests – including Stewart’s former Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood.

With plenty of gold in his back catalogue to draw on, the setlist was an all-timer, from the new wave synths of Young Turks to the beautiful folk melodies of Maggie May and Sailing.

And if the set veered towards cheese, at least it was well matured – much like Stewart himself.

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He emerged on stage to the sound of Scotland The Brave on bagpipes – a nod to his Scottish father.

He was met by fans wearing frightwigs and waving the flag of his beloved football team Celtic.

Others held aloft signs that said “Rod’s a rascal”, and “Does Nigel Farage think you’re sexy” – in reference to an interview Stewart gave to The Times over the weekend, where he said people should give the Reform leader “a chance”.

At the age of 80, Stewart is one of the oldest artists to perform at the festival, but not the very oldest.

Burt Bacharach played the Pyramid stage in 2015 at the age of 87, while in 2022, Paul McCartney headlined the week after his 80th birthday.

Other artists to have played the legend slot in recent years include Kylie Minogue, Shania Twain, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and Cat Stevens.

In a BBC interview earlier this week, Stewart talked about how he prepared for a major performance like Glastonbury.

“It’s like being a footballer in the FA Cup Final. You’re like, ‘I’ll treat it like any other game’, but it’s not [because] you don’t know what to expect.

“The difference with a football match is half the audience want to see you lose, but with me, everybody wants to see me win.

“So, I’ll be in good voice. I’ll enjoy myself. I don’t care any more what the critics think.”

Despite cancelling a string of shows in the US earlier this month due to illness, the star delivered his 90-minutes with gusto, sweat drenching the frilled white shirt he wore under a black and gold brocade jacket.

On ballads like Tonight’s the Night and First Cut is the Deepest, he found new ways around the melodies, accommodating the cracks and crevices that have appeared in his famously gravelly voice.

And his stage banter was delightfully barmy.

“Here’s one from 1979,” he shouted at one point.

“You guessed it: If You Want My Body, stick it up your bum.”

(The song’s actually called Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, but it’s his tune, so I guess he gets to decide.)

Later, he shared some nuanced political analysis.

“There’s been a lot about the Middle East recently, and quite rightly so, but I want to draw your attention to the Ukraine with this next song, it’s called the Love Train!” he declared.

The song, a cover of The O’Jays classic, is a plea for peace and tolerance that mentions Russia, China, Egypt, England and Israel.

It reflected the idealism of Stewart’s post-war rock and rollers, but the audience didn’t seem to mind the simplicity of the message. They just wanted to dance.

They got the chance during classics like Baby Jane and Forever Young, which even included a ceildh breakdown, courtesy of the star’s talented backing band.

After his third costume change, Stewart pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket for an “important announcement”.

Reading from the note, he wished a happy 90th birthday to Glastonbury founder Sir Michael Eavis, whose daughter Emily pushed him onstage in a wheelchair.

Sir Michael waved to the crowd, eliciting a huge round of applause, and Stewart leaned in to give him a hug.

“Let’s dedicate this one to him,” he announced, striking up the opening chords to I Don’t Want To Talk About It.

When everyone joined in the chorus, Sir Michael looked delighted.

After that, guest stars arrived in quick succession. Mick Hucknall for a duet on If You Don’t Know Me By Now, Ronnie Wood for Stay With Me and Lulu for Hot Legs.

“You’re killing it,” declared Lulu, resplendent in a white tassled suit, leaning in for a hug. “We’d make a great couple.”

The set ended with Sailing, the mega-ballad that took Stewart to the top of the charts in 1976 – while his backing singers pulled on sailors’ caps.

It was charming, it was silly, it was immensely enjoyable.

If Stewart had taken this legend slot to sea, sure, it would have been a diamond-encrusted cruise ship.

But when the water’s this smooth, it has a beauty all of its own.

This week, Jurassic World Rebirth hits the big screen, more than three decades after the first film in the dinosaur franchise came out.

But that’s not all the next seven days have in store.

The much-anticipated Oasis reunion tour kicks off, with a BBC livestream covering all the build-up and reaction, Evita officially opens starring Rachel Zegler, and The Sandman returns for season two.

Read on for what’s coming up this week…

In 1993, a cultural phenomenon swept the world with the release of the first Jurassic Park film.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film sparked a global fascination with dinosaurs, while its use of computer-generated imagery was considered groundbreaking at the time.

Six films have since been released, with a seventh – Jurassic World Rebirth – out on Wednesday.

It is directed by Gareth Edwards, and stars US actress Scarlett Johansson and Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey, who were seen locking lips at the film’s London premiere.

Bailey later told Entertainment Tonight: “I believe in being able to show the love in all different ways and if you can’t kiss your friends… life is too short not to.”

Set five years after the events of 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion, it explores a world where the surviving dinosaurs live in isolated tropical regions. Early reviews so far have been mixed.

Writing on X, Variety’s Jazz Tangcay called the film a “roaring triumph” and “a beautiful homage to the original”.

But The Flick Pick’s host John Flickinger was more critical, saying it “just feels blah”, adding: “It’s a string of forgettable scenes that go nowhere.”

Last summer, there was nothing short of a frenzy when Oasis announced they would be reuniting for a series of live shows.

A blizzard of headlines and a social media storm followed as tickets went on sale, with many fans criticising the sales process and prices.

For those lucky enough to get tickets, it all gets started this week, with the first gig taking place at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff.

But if you missed out, you can still join in on some of the action.

The BBC is putting on a special livestream, Oasis: Countdown to the Comeback, building up to the highly anticipated gig. Hosted by Jason Mohammad and Tina Daheley, the show begins at 1pm on Friday and will be broadcast from a site overlooking the stadium.

You won’t be able to watch the actual gig, but what you will get is a mix of live coverage, special guests, and on-the-ground reports from our team speaking to fans across the city.

After the gig, there will also be instant reactions and live reviews as the excitement continues into the night.

People strolling through central London over the last couple of weeks may have caught a free performance from Snow White star Rachel Zegler.

The actress is playing the lead role in Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Evita, which formally opens on Tuesday after running previews since mid-June.

This production has Zegler belt out Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, the show’s most well-known song, to passersby from a balcony above the entrance of London Palladium, while those who bought tickets watch from inside via a video feed.

The balcony serenade is the latest twist from director Jamie Lloyd, who’s known for blending theatre and film. Last year, Tom Holland performed part of Romeo & Juliet on a rooftop.

Theatre blogger Carl Woodward appreciates some paying audiences members have been left feeling “a bit aggrieved”.

However, Lord Lloyd-Webber told BBC Radio 2 that Zegler was a “bit of a phenomenon”. He added: “She does Rainbow High in Evita, which is the really difficult song, I think the best I’ve ever heard it.”

On Thursday, season two of The Sandman lands on Netflix.

The first instalment, based on British author Neil Gaiman’s comic book series, came out in 2022 and was well received by critics and fans.

We’re told the new and final season, once again starring Tom Sturridge as Dream, will see him facing a string of impossible decisions as he tries to save himself, his kingdom, and the waking world from the fallout of his misdeeds.

Showrunner Allan Heinberg said he hoped the adaptation would “surprise and delight the comics’ loyal readers as well as fans of our show”.

Earlier this year, Gaiman was accused of sexual misconduct by eight women, including four who had previously spoken out.

He denied the allegations, saying he had “never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever”.

Following the claims, several of his film and TV projects were affected, but The Sandman is still going out as planned.

Netflix declined to comment when approached by BBC News.

• Wimbledon begins on Monday, with coverage of all the action on BBC iPlayer
• Scrublands: Silver is back for series two on BBC iPlayer on Monday
• To Catch A Stalker is released on BBC Three and iPlayer on Tuesday
• Catherine Paiz, of YouTube fame, puts out the audiobook for her memoir on Tuesday
• The Nine Lives Of Ozzy Osbourne premieres on Friday in Birmingham
• Black Sabbath play their final gig in Birmingham on Saturday
• Sabrina Carpenter is headlining two nights at BST Hyde Park, starting on Saturday

When it emerged that last weekend a convicted paedophile had organised a fake wedding to a nine-year-old at Disneyland Paris, many people were perplexed.

Who would do such a thing? How was it even possible? The BBC understands it was the latest bizarre stunt by Jacky Jhaj – a British man I have been investigating for two years.

He first came to my attention after a tip off from a teenage girl came out of the blue in 2023.

She was horrified that she had come face to face with a paedophile who she had been hired to fawn over.

She was too terrified of him to go on the record – but I tracked down a number of aspiring actors who had also been directed to scream at Jhaj while he was parading down a red carpet, and reach out to try and touch him.

In all, 200 children and young women had been recruited by reputable casting agencies to play Jhaj’s fans at a fake film premiere in London’s Leicester Square that year. Some were as young as six.

Towards the end of the event someone recognised Jhaj – who had previously been found guilty of sexual activity with two 15-year-olds in 2016 and sent to prison.

The fake red carpet was one of a litany of stunts he has organised since his release which often involve casting girls as his fans.

All have been organised at great expense, while he was on the Sex Offenders Register and subject to restrictions on his activities.

For the mock-wedding at Disneyland Paris a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl was flown in to play his bride.

The theme park can be privately rented outside of its opening hours and actors had been booked at great cost to be there – one received £10,000.

The BBC understands that Jacky Jhaj, 39, who is from west London, has now been charged by French authorities in connection with organising the event.

Over the past two years I’ve set out to try and understand how he has been able to carry out these stunts and why there are not more stringent rules preventing them.

Many have taken place at high profile British landmarks – including the British Museum, the Royal Exchange in London and the University of Oxford.

They also typically involve young people being hired to act as his fans in elaborate productions.

Videos of some of them were uploaded to a YouTube channel which was watched more than six million times and had 12 million subscribers.

Many remained on YouTube for years until last September, when the BBC alerted Google, which owns the platform.

A video on a separate channel showed him next to one of the victims he was convicted of sexual activity with – with her face anonymised. It had remained on YouTube for four years with more than a million views.

Google told the BBC at the time that it takes users’ safety seriously but offered no explanation as to how an account featuring a man with almost no profile or success had 12 million subscribers, or why the videos had not been previously removed.

Clips on social media sites appear to cast Jhaj as a successful writer and singer and are often styled as music videos.

Many are highly concerning – some feature him posing with young children and weapons. It is not clear if the guns are real or fake.

Others revel in his infamy. In one, he is greeted by fans apparently celebrating his release from Wormwood Scrubs prison.

I wanted to know how he had organised the stunts – and if he had received help.

Over the past two years, I have spoken to videographers, production assistants and technicians who were hired for some of the events before they discovered Jhaj’s real identity.

One man repeatedly appears in videos they shared with me.

We have been sent images and footage of him at three of the stunts by people who described him as assisting the choreographer hired for dance auditions, and apparently filming.

At a different event last year, he was confronted by duped cast members who recognised Jhaj from our reports and showed him the online article.

The cast members filmed him acknowledging that Jhaj is a convicted sex offender but he says he is his “friend” and is now “free”.

At this event Jhaj was filmed posing naked in front of a mocked-up BBC News lorry in London which had been set on fire.

Jhaj had initially appeared there disguised by prosthetics – before he removed them and was identified as the man from our story.

Preliminary findings from the French prosecutor also said that make-up artists had allegedly changed the organiser’s facial features dramatically at the Disneyland event.

How Jhaj funds his stunts – which involve extraordinary costs on venue hire, casts and props – is a mystery.

One production hired a tank, while in another a mock police car was set on fire.

The booking of Disneyland Paris alone would have cost more than €130,000 (£110,000), according to the French broadcaster BFMTV.

I was also told that hiring the red carpet space that is the home of movie premieres in Leicester Square would have required tens of thousands of pounds.

Jhaj was listed as a director of a business that was wound up in 2016 – but there is no other obvious source of money.

I also wanted to know how he had been able to carry out these events while subject to a sexual harm prevention order.

We have seen a copy of it. It lists ten restrictions on his activities – but does not appear to explicitly prohibit the stunts he had organised.

The order restricts Jhaj from contacting his previous victims, entering public places for the use of children and deliberately contacting any girl under the age of 16.

However, there is no blanket ban on hosting events with children under 16 if they are supervised – as was the case with the Leicester Square stunt, where some adults attended as chaperones.

I also wanted to know who, if anyone, was responsible for monitoring convicted paedophiles.

Following my first report, a police officer who helped monitor Jhaj rang me, asking for information on his movements.

He said he was responsible for managing the whereabouts of dozens of offenders – and it was challenging work.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council advise that the minimum safe staffing levels at which paedophiles should be monitored is one officer to every 50 offenders.

The Metropolitan Police’s average offender management ratio was one officer to 40 offenders – well within the benchmark.

I asked other forces what their ratios were and some never replied. But 10 out of 26 forces failed to meet this benchmark, according to Freedom of Information requests received last year.

At one force, officers were responsible for monitoring 85 offenders each on average.

Some forces defended their resourcing – arguing that these are advisory levels only and also dependent on risk assessments of offenders.

But successfully managing 50 sex offenders is “impossible” according to Jonathan Taylor, a safeguarding expert and former child abuse investigator.

“I feel so sorry for the officers”, he says. “It’s a poisoned chalice – one of the paedophiles will re-offend. This case also highlights concerns about a lack of safeguarding in entertainment and tech companies enabling these types of offenders.”

The BBC understands that Jhaj is currently detained in French custody. The local prosecutor there says the Ukrainian girl involved in Saturday’s stunt had not been a victim of either physical or sexual violence and had not been forced to play the role of a bride.

His statement also said Disneyland Paris had been “deceived” and that the organiser had used a fake Latvian ID to hire the venue.

The BBC approached Disneyland Paris for comment – they did not respond.

The Metropolitan Police said that a 39-year-old man is wanted by them for breaching restrictions placed on his activities, and is also separately being investigated for “any possible” fraud offences.

Love Island USA – a spinoff of the UK reality series – is having its most-watched season yet. But its newfound popularity has come with a dark side.

Contestants have been relentlessly cyberbullied on social media, so much so that the show aired a statement during a recent episode with a plea for viewers to halt the harassment. Its host Ariana Madix echoed the sentiment, asking viewers to rethink their posts and how they could impact the cast.

The show – which places everyday men and women in a villa in Fiji to compete and find love – often helps contestants secure millions of social media followers, brand deals and appearance requests.

But the downsides of overnight fame have been well-documented since the show’s start 10 years ago in the UK, with some contestants complaining about depression, anxiety and relentless scrutiny.

A UK parliamentary committee carried out an inquiry into reality TV in 2019 after the deaths of a former British tabloid talk show guest and two former Love Island contestants.

Love Island’s producers say they’ve learned from the reality franchise’s years of success how to better support cast and crew. But psychology experts who have worked with reality TV shows say it’s an uphill battle.

Behavioural psychologist Jo Hemmings, who has worked with reality TV productions including Big Brother, said the last five years have seen a lot of positive changes in the UK to address welfare concerns – but those strides haven’t been as evident in the US.

“I don’t think duty of care has evolved as far in the US as it has in the UK,” she told the BBC. “Maybe there isn’t the same level of welfare, support or transparency. I also wonder that with increased political polarisation in the US, the cyber-bullying and threats may be more intense and widespread.”

She said it’s about achieving a balance when working on a reality show. The core of many of these shows is outrageous emotional outbursts, sexual behaviour, aggressive insults and confrontations.

“Producers want excitement and jeopardy,” she said, but on-set psychologists are ensuring “stability and healthy behaviours”.

Love Island, which has run iterations in more than 20 countries, says it offers contestants support before, during and after production, and continues to adjust its mental health offerings to meet changing needs.

On the USA version, ITV America, which produces the show, employs a duty of care representative, two on-site psychologists and a welfare manager that helps islanders as a “non-producer voice” in the villa. Throughout filming, all cast members have an appointed psychologist at the villa – and check ins can be initiated by an islander, as cast members are called on the series, or the doctor.

Before they are cast on the show, each contestant goes through a lengthy vetting by a psychologist. Contestants are also briefed about negative press, social media interactions and public perceptions.

But this mental health awareness has come from some hard lessons. As the show gained popularity in the UK, some complained about depression or anxiety after appearing as part of the cast. Several have spoken out about thoughts about taking their own lives in the aftermath.

The suicides of former Love Island UK contestants Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis in 2018 and 2019 prompted questions about how and how well participants are helped.

• ITV boss says Love Island aftercare ‘can’t be forever’
• Love Island: ITV announces new contestant welfare measures

“You can earn a lot of money if that’s what you want to do, but really you need to look at the bigger picture and think in five, six, 10 years’ time, you’re always going to be pretty much known for being on a reality TV show,” said Zara Holland, who competed on Love Island in 2016 in the UK.

“It was a really hard time for me. And if I could turn back time, I really wish I’d never gone on the show,” she told BBC’s Newsbeat.

Social media can act as a double-edged sword for contestants. Dr Jamie Huysman, who has advised productions on mental health care for more than 20 years, noted it has “made it hell” for some. “It has truly disassociated us from the impact of our words.”

Contestants want fame – but they’re not the only ones who feel a rush by getting likes and followers online. Average viewers on social media are also chasing that same gratification when they make memes or posts that become popular, and they are often incentivised to be critical, he says.

Ms Hemmings said psychologists can encourage people to ignore those criticising them online, but it’s difficult.

“The public can be fickle and harsh,” she said. “They need to remember that contributors are young and ambitious, but could be their siblings, brothers, sisters or children.”

She noted that overnight fame can lead to a cascade of issues for contestants, which can be overwhelming.

“They yearn for it, but it brings unwelcome scrutiny,” she said. “Their pasts are dissected. Exes come out of the woodwork to sell their stories, and everything they do or say is open to criticism.”

Another complication is that “very few reality stars go onto successful media careers – most struggle or fade away”. But having a taste of popularity can make it difficult to go back to their old lives.

• Love Island: Secrets from a former contestant
• What are the legal rights of reality TV stars, really?

Season 7, which is still airing, has become the series’ most-watched season since it was launched in the US in 2019. Sports bars are hosting watch parties, celebrities are spoofing viral moments online – Grammy-winner Megan Thee Stallion even appeared on an episode this season and gushed over her obsession with the show.

The show’s popularity in the US has spurred a spin-off dubbed “Beyond the Villa”, which is set to air next month and follow Season 6 Islanders as they navigate life in Los Angeles after the show.

But that success has also led to a rise in negative comments about the cast this season, who have been relentlessly criticised over their appearances and actions. The show broadcast a message this week in the middle of an episode: “The keyword in Love Island is… Love. We love our fans. We love our Islanders. We don’t love cyberbullying, harassment or hate.”

It followed a public plea from host Ariana Madix: “Don’t be contacting people’s families. Don’t be doxing people. Don’t be going on Islanders’ pages and saying rude things.”

Love Island USA’s producers did not say whether added mental health precautions would be taken after this season – but noted they review and reassess such measures continually.

Members of the cast do not have access to their cell phones or social media while on the island, but their friends and family have been responding to some of the harassment – including those who know contestant Huda Mustafa, a mother whose relationship with fellow Islander Jeremiah Brown has been heavily scrutinised online this season.

The show has routinely defended itself and its cohesive psychological support system. Similar critiques have been made toward reality TV production broadly, boiling over in 2023 when reality star Bethenny Frankel of the Housewives franchise sounded off on the treatment of reality stars, dubbing it a “reality reckoning”.

“Networks and streamers have been exploiting people for too long,” she said, arguing those who appear on reality programmes should be unionised.

The calls were followed by several lawsuits challenging “Love Is Blind,” the “Real Housewives” franchise and “Vanderpump Rules” – where Ms Madix rose to fame – over the treatment of the shows’ casts.

Suzie Gibson, a senior lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University, compared reality TV stars to “modern-day gladiators, battling for love, fame and Instagram followers”.

“Audiences can live vicariously through their favourites, while hoping for others’ dismissal or ridicule.”

It seemed like a harmless encounter.

It was the summer of 2021, and Jay Hulme, a volunteer at St Nicholas Church in Leicester, was on the door, welcoming people. That’s when Venessa walked in.

“There was something awkward about her,” he recalls. “But I assumed it was about being in a new church with new people, and we were just coming out of the pandemic. There was no red flag.”

Venessa Pinto, employed by the Leicester diocese of the Church of England as a lay preacher – a non-ordained person who can lead worship – returned a few more times to Jay’s church.

A few weeks later, they both happened to be at a midweek service in Leicester Cathedral. When it was over, she approached him and asked to speak privately. They stepped into the quiet of the old cathedral graveyard.

Then she asked him out.

“I was very taken aback, because I didn’t know her. And I was like, ‘I’m gay, but thank you for asking.’ But she asked me if it was because she was black.”

Jay was startled by the question. He gently reiterated that he could not go out on a date because he was gay – and also not in the right place for a relationship.

“I left it thinking, ‘That was very awkward’, but I think, ‘That’s the end of that.'”

It wasn’t.

In fact, it was the beginning of a devastating campaign of stalking and harassment. And when Jay complained, the highest authority in the Church in Leicester – a top contender to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury – said he didn’t believe him. Instead, he accused Jay of witchcraft.

That summer, Jay Hulme, then in his mid-twenties, was at a very happy juncture in his life. He was a poet and author, an assistant warden at the LGBT-friendly St Nicholas Church and known on social media for his love of church buildings and theology.

He was exploring his Christian faith and considering the possibility of training to become a priest in the coming years.

“I’m also trans, I’d come out a number of years before, and I’d finally come to a place of full and complete happiness with who I was. I saw my future unfurling before me in a way that had felt impossible before,” he reminisces.

After being rejected, Venessa, also then in her mid-twenties, sent Jay a series of “angry and accusatory” messages, saying he was gossiping about her. Though he tried to reassure her he wasn’t, she was adamant.

To try to resolve things, Jay agreed to a demand from her to meet. He had been determined that the meeting happened outside in public but a heavy rainstorm meant they ended up inside, alone together at her place of work.

He says she yelled at him, telling him he was a liar, a racist and an awful person – demanding an apology over and over again without telling him what he was supposed to have done.

Unsettled, Jay stopped interacting with Venessa and avoided her when she continued to come to his church. But then he started to get messages from anonymous online accounts which could be seen by his social media followers.

Jay quickly worked out the author was Venessa. She even sent him an email from her personal account apologising for what she described as the “pain” she’d caused.

But the nastiness online escalated, with Venessa publicly making false allegations and threats.

Jay was concerned for his safety. He reported the harassment to Leicestershire Police. He says he didn’t want Venessa prosecuted at that point – just for the abuse to stop.

But he heard nothing back and the abuse continued relentlessly. Each time he blocked an account, another would spring up. Jay felt he had no way of escaping it.

“I felt like she was in my pocket, and in my house, and in my brain all of the time, saying these horrendous things and I couldn’t get away,” he says.

Jay needed to stay online because of his writing and speaking commitments. But he was beginning to lose contracts. He suspects that was because of the allegations about him online.

Finally, weeks after reporting it, the police did visit Venessa. The outcome was far from satisfactory for Jay.

“She told the officer that it was her friends who were sending the messages, and the officer told her to tell them to stop. I was told by the police that I should just delete my social media,” he says.

Jay says he got the impression the police did not appreciate the seriousness of the abuse because it was online.

The police visit triggered even more angry messages from Venessa.

Jay then started assembling a powerful body of evidence, now on a mission to prove the messages had not been sent by Venessa’s friends, but by Venessa herself.

He compiled a detailed spreadsheet setting out the connections between the numerous anonymous accounts which had sent abuse or posted allegations about him. They all led back to Venessa.

Having lost faith in the police, Jay handed all this evidence to the Church of England, which promised to investigate his formal complaint.

While he waited, he thought he would get some respite by going to a silent Jesuit retreat in rural Wales. Days later, a colleague told him Venessa had booked to go to the very same retreat.

Jay had booked last minute and says there were not many slots left. “It’s in the middle of nowhere. As far as I’m concerned there is no way that could have happened naturally.”

Jay left the retreat just hours before Venessa arrived. It left him terrified, feeling the stalking had now gone beyond the confines of the internet.

Finally, there was some positive news for Jay.

Back in Leicester, the Church HR investigation concluded Venessa had been responsible for the abuse, to Jay’s huge relief. He assumed that would be the end of it.

But almost as soon as that happened, there was an unexpected turn.

He was called into a meeting with the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow – who’s seen as a favourite to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England.

Jay thought Venessa was going to lose her job. But it turned out the bishop had conducted his own investigation.

“I go in and the bishop sits down with this thick folder on his knee. And he begins to question me about my complaint. He actually states that ‘It’s he said, she said’.”

The bishop said he didn’t believe that Venessa had been responsible for the harassment. And he wouldn’t uphold Jay’s complaint against her.

Then he made an extraordinary accusation about Jay.

“Somebody had given a statement that I had been seen in the church, in the darkness, with a candle – and they thought I was conducting a seance. For clarity, I was praying with a candle in the dark, because that’s a thing that Christians do,” says Jay.

It got worse.

Bishop Snow accused him of practising witchcraft – both because of the “seance” and the fact Jay happened to have a close friend who was a tarot card reader.

“It felt like an enormous gut punch. These made-up allegations were being presented to me by a person with the power of a bishop, in a meeting which I suddenly realised I had no control over,” says Jay.

“She [Venessa] had somehow managed to make a bishop become part of her stalking campaign of harassment and threats, and use his power and position, and I couldn’t believe it was happening.”

Jay says he was told Venessa would not lose her licence to preach, but he would be punished.

He says Bishop Snow told him the process to begin his training for priesthood – something he decided he wanted to pursue – would be “slowed down”.

Jay was devastated. He went home feeling trapped. And after the complaint was dismissed, more messages were posted.

“Really horrific things, saying that I raped children, that I stole money, that I was a racist, a bully. She created fake accounts that were me saying really racist things and would then screenshot them and share those things,” he says.

Bishop Snow suggested to Jay that his allegations were not in keeping with Venessa’s character. But Jay soon learned he wasn’t the only person affected by Venessa’s behaviour.

A colleague who worked closely with Venessa, Kat Gibson, had been complaining about her for more than a year before the campaign against Jay began.

Kat says Venessa was unpredictable and adversarial in the extreme. “I was just really scared when I was around her, thinking, ‘what’s she going to explode at me for this time?’ with these explosive angry outbursts that I can’t prevent.”

She adds that as the months went on, “around 30 people” from eight churches approached her to informally complain about Venessa’s behaviour. She calls the issue an “open secret” but one that managers felt unable to tackle.

In a joint statement, Kat’s manager, Lusa Nsenga Ngoy – now a bishop in London – and Leicester Diocese said pastoral support and counselling were offered to those affected. The Church of England says Kat’s complaints were treated with care and seriousness.

She was a lay preacher in Leicester, but Venessa soon gained increasing prominence on a national level.

In 2022, several months into her stalking campaign against Jay Hulme, she was elected onto the Church of England’s national assembly – the General Synod.

Soon after, she was one of just a handful of people from Synod appointed to the Crown Nominations Commission, a panel that selects new bishops and archbishops. But all the while, she was sending countless sinister messages to Jay.

The online harassment from Venessa now included extreme pornographic content posted on his social media. Then she tweeted Jay’s address.

He went to the police a second time, but again felt no sense of urgency.

“There was a period where every night, I would wake up screaming because I dreamed that I was being murdered by Venessa. I had extra locks put on my door,” Jay says.

Though there appeared to be inaction, behind the scenes the Church was clearly starting to realise it had a problem on its hands.

While Jay had been told in summer 2022 that a Leicester Diocese investigation found Venessa had been responsible for Jay’s harassment, he was also told that the Bishop of Leicester decided quite the opposite.

The BBC has now learned that shortly before that, the bishop did tell Venessa to step back from ministry because of “her behaviour”, though it is not known what this refers to.

He also later revoked her licence to preach, after what’s described as “new evidence” coming to light. The diocese also suggested she go on leave.

But none of these things were made public and did not stop the unrelenting stalking of Jay.

All of a sudden, in late 2022, Leicester Diocese announced Venessa would be leaving.

It said she would “pursue other opportunities” and thanked her for the positive contributions she had made.

Again, this appeared to have no impact on the hate-filled barrages coming Jay’s way.

“I wrote my own will because…I felt that I’d been let down by the police, I’d been let down by the diocese and as far as I was concerned, this would continue until one of us died,” he says.

In desperation, in December 2022 he went to the police again.

In March 2023, 21 months after the stalking campaign against Jay began (and eight months after the Bishop of Leicester told Jay he did not believe him) the police finally took action against Venessa.

“I get a phone call from Leicestershire Police [who] basically acknowledged that they made a mess of it. And very soon Venessa was arrested. Her devices were confiscated,” says Jay.

In a statement, Leicestershire Police acknowledged their initial response fell short of the standards expected, adding it continued “to develop its knowledge and training in relation to preventing and detecting stalking offences”.

By the end of 2023, Venessa had been charged. In May 2024 she pleaded guilty to stalking, involving serious distress or harm and was given an 18-month community order and banned from contacting Jay for a year.

After Venessa’s conviction, Jay asked for a meeting with the Bishop of Leicester, Martyn Snow, who now apologised. “He did acknowledge in some way his own part in it and that he should have done better, and I agree,” says Jay.

Leicester Diocese told us it took legal advice and is confident it followed HR practice and due process in handling Jay’s complaint. But wouldn’t say why it did not sack Venessa for months after concluding she had sent the messages to Jay.

A spokesperson for the Church of England says they are “appalled by the serious criminal behaviour that led to Venessa Pinto’s conviction.”

Venessa’s colleague Kat Gibson was recently made redundant from her post in Leicester. She says she’s much better, physically and mentally, and is pleased to be out of Church of England employment.

And what of Venessa Pinto? Having carried out her community service and abided by the restraining order, she is once again preaching – and has also done missionary work in Brazil.

In a statement to the BBC she said one aspect of the court case in particular changed everything for her.

“Reading [Jay’s] victim impact statement brought into sharp focus the pain I caused and strengthened my resolve to take responsibility and make amends,” Venessa says.

“I acknowledge the seriousness of my past conduct and do not seek to diminish its impact. I have moved forward in my life and hope those affected in Leicester and elsewhere can find it in their hearts to allow space for healing and growth,” she says.

But while Venessa admits to the harassment she was convicted of, she denies some other allegations, including the frequent angry outbursts Kat and others reported. In fact she says accusations of aggressive behaviour were never formally raised with her in Leicester.

Venessa says she was going through a difficult period and was struggling with her mental health during her time in Leicester.

Her targeting of Jay has left him scarred. He struggles to open his email for fear of what he’ll find and he says his finances have been destroyed by years of sporadic work.

“I feel that everybody failed to protect me. I almost feel like I was naive that when the police failed to protect me, I thought the Church, which talks about safeguarding, [would],” says Jay.

“It fails because people are scared to do the right thing. In James, my favourite book of the Bible, there’s a bit that says that anybody who knows the right thing and fails to do it, commits sin. And that’s the problem at the heart of this Church.”

“I don’t think God intended for people in their late 20s to live with their parents,” Hanya Aljamal says.

She’s hanging out on the balcony of the tiny apartment where she lives with her mother, father and five grown-up siblings – because it’s the only place she can get any peace and quiet.

Two years ago, 28-year-old Hanya was working as an English teacher and lived in a flat of her own. She was applying to colleges in the US to do a Master’s in international development, and on course for a scholarship to pay for it. Things were going well – but life is different now.

Like most days, Sunday begins with a morning coffee on the balcony, while Hanya watches her neighbour, a man in his 70s, carefully tending pots of herbs, seedlings and plants in his tidy garden, just across the road from a blown-up building.

“It just looks like the purest form of resistance,” Hanya says. “In the middle of all this horror and uncertainty, he still finds time to grow something – and there’s something absolutely beautiful about that.”

Hanya lives in Deir al-Balah, a town in the middle of Gaza, a 25-mile stretch of land on the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea that’s been a war zone since October 2023. She has recorded an audio diary which she shared with the BBC for a radio documentary about what life is like there.

The school where she taught had to close down when the war started. Hanya has become a teacher with no students and no school, her sense of who she was slipping through her fingers.

“It’s very hard finding purpose in this time, finding some sort of solace or meaning as your entire world falls apart.”

The apartment Hanya shares with her family is her fifth home since the war started. The UN estimates 90% of Gazans have been displaced by the war – many multiple times. Most Gazans now live in temporary shelters.

On Monday, Hanya is jolted awake in bed at 2am.

“There was an explosion really close by that was then followed by a second, and a third,” she says, “it was so loud and very scary. I tried to soothe myself to sleep.”

The Israeli government says its military action in Gaza is intended to destroy the capabilities of Hamas, which describes itself as an Islamist resistance movement. It is designated a terrorist organisation by the UK, the US, Israel, and others.

Israel’s military action began after armed Palestinian groups from Gaza led by Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 251 hostages.

So far, the Israeli military has killed more than 56,000 people in the conflict – the majority civilians – according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which is run by Hamas. Israel doesn’t currently allow international journalists to report freely from Gaza.

Hanya is working for an aid organisation called Action for Humanity and spends the day at one of their projects. A group of girls wearing white T-shirts and with keffiyehs tied around their waists perform a dance and then take part in a group therapy session.

One talks about what it means to lose your home, others talk about losing their belongings, their friends, someone they love. And then one suddenly starts crying and everyone else falls silent. A teaching assistant takes the girl away to comfort her in private.

“And then someone tells me that she lost both parents,” Hanya says.

On Tuesday, Hanya is watching five colourful kites soaring in the sky from her balcony.

“I like kites – they’re like an active act of hope,” she says. “Every kite is a couple of kids down there trying to have a normal childhood in the midst of all this.”

Seeing kites flying makes a nice change to the drones, jets and “killing machines” Hanya is used to seeing above her apartment, she says. But later that evening, the “nightly orchestra” of nearby drones buzzing at discordant pitches begins. She describes the sound they make as “psychological torture”.

“Sometimes they’re so loud you can’t even listen to your own thoughts,” she says. “They’re kind of a reminder that they’re there watching, waiting, ready to pounce.”

On Thursday morning, Hanya hears loud, consistent gunfire and wonders what it might be. Maybe theft. Maybe a turf war between families. Maybe someone defending a warehouse.

She spends most of the day in bed. She feels dizzy every time she tries to get up and puts it down to the effect of fasting ahead of Eid al-Adha, when she’s already very malnourished.

Hanya says the lack of control over what she eats – and the rest of her life – is having a big psychological impact.

“You cannot control anything – not even your thoughts, not even your wellbeing, not even who you are,” she says. “It took me a while to accept the fact that I am no longer the person that I identify myself as.”

The school where Hanya used to teach has been destroyed, and the idea of studying abroad now seems very distant.

“I felt like I was gaslit,” Hanya says, “like all of these things were made up. Like none of it was true.”

The next morning, Hanya wakes to the sound of birds chirping and the call to prayer.

It’s the first day of Eid al-Adha, when her dad would usually sacrifice a sheep and they’d share the meat with the needy and their relatives. But her family don’t have the means to travel now and there’s no animal to sacrifice anyway.

“All of Gaza’s population has been not eating any sort of protein, outside canned fava beans, for three months now,” she says.

Hanya’s family discover that one of her cousins has been killed while trying to get aid.

“To be honest, I hadn’t known him very well,” she says, “but it’s the general tragedy of someone hungry, seeking food and getting shot in the process that is quite grotesque.”

There have been multiple shooting incidents and hundreds of deaths reported at or near aid distribution points in recent weeks. The circumstances are disputed and difficult to verify without being able to report freely in Gaza.

Hanya knows at least 10 people who have lost their lives during the war. This number includes several of her students and a colleague who had got engaged a month before the war started. She was the same age as Hanya and shared her ambition.

Hanya is updating her CV to remove her college professor’s name. He was her referee and writing mentor – but he is dead now too.

“It’s a huge thing when someone tells you that they see you, that they believe in you, and that they bet on you,” she says.

Hanya doesn’t think she’s grieved for any of these people properly, and says she feels she has to ration her emotions in case any of her close family are hurt.

“Grieving is a luxury many of us can’t afford.”

Crowing cocks mark the start of another new day, and Hanya is taking in a beautiful pink and blue dawn from the balcony. She says she has developed a habit of looking up to the sky as an escape.

“It’s very hard to find beauty in Gaza anymore. Everything is grey, or soot-covered, or destroyed,” Hanya says.

“The one thing about the sky is that it gives you colours and a respite of beauty that Earth lacks.”

A famous chess club in a slum of Uganda’s capital that became the focus of the Hollywood movie Queen of Katwe is still producing champions – but faces a daily struggle to survive.

Run by chess coach Robert Katende, played by actor David Oyelowo in the Disney film released in 2016, he still believes that despite financial struggles he is managing to change children’s lives for the better through chess.

“We use chess as a teaching tool. To identify the potential of the learners and guide them to their destiny,” Mr Katende told the BBC on a visit to his SomChess Academy in Katwe, a poor neighbourhood of Kampala.

Shortly after graduating as a civil engineer, he first began volunteering in Katwe as a football coach before deciding on chess – starting up with a single chessboard in 2004 and a determination to help.

Within a year nine-year-old Phiona Mutesi, who had dropped out of school, joined up – and went on to become a chess prodigy.

She took the title of national women’s junior champion three times, competed in several prestigious international chess Olympiads and by the age of 16 was given the title Woman Candidate Master by the World Chess Federation.

It was her remarkable story that was told in the film, with Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o playing her mother.

Mr Katende says her success came from resilience and determination – and shows the truly transformative power of chess.

She also continues to be an inspiration for many of Mr Katende’s players, including 18-year-old Patricia Kawuma.

“Apart from winning school scholarships, this game has taught me how to strategise and plan ahead, and it instils discipline and patience,” the two-time national junior chess champion told the BBC.

She has also represented Uganda in two international tournaments and has earned money by winning chess competitions.

Prize money and sponsorships have enabled her to pay for her own school fees as well as those of her siblings.

Mr Katende says more than 4,000 children have gone through his programmes over the last two decades, with some of them ending up becoming doctors, engineers and lawyers.

His big boost came after a book published in 2012 by journalist Tim Crothers about Ms Mutesi caught the eye of Disney.

When the film company decided to go ahead and make the book into a movie, it gave him a one-time grant of $50,000 (£36,000).

This allowed him buy a property in Katwe to headquarter his academy and from where he also runs the Robert Katende Initiative.

He was able to extend his chess club from Katwe to sessions within Ugandan prisons – and to slums in neighbouring Kenya and Rwanda, and those in countries as far as Angola, Botswana, Cameroon and Malawi.

Currently, more than 2,500 children and about 800 inmates are in his programmes, which help them to develop and make critical decisions, he says.

“Chess is a metaphor for life. There are challenges and surprises everywhere but if you look closely you can find opportunities, you can find your way through,” the 43-year-old told me.

“A bad move in chess means you will lose, just the same with life.”

There is one move the coach, who worked on the Queen of Katwe film as a senior story consultant and who trained the actors in their chess scenes, did not predict.

The Walt Disney Company made a loss on the film – and this has had repercussions for his burgeoning chess projects.

He, Ms Mutesi and the chess champion’s mother had been promised a sizable share of any Disney profits – 67%, he says.

But he was told by the corporation that after investing about $15m (£11m) into the drama, directed by Mira Nair, it had only made back $10m.

“The loss put me in a bad spot because people think that I have hidden some money,” Mr Katende said.

“Many people think I’m a wealthy Hollywood chess coach after the film but the hard truth is that we are yet to benefit from its profits.”

However, he says he is not bitter as the film publicised his chess programmes, attracting both local and international partners.

“If Disney had not done the film, we wouldn’t be where we are; I don’t think we would be known – and many other people have come on board to support our philosophy,” he said.

Ms Mutesi’s fame helped her win a scholarship to Northwest University in the US in 2017 and she now works in Canada as a business analyst and is able to support her mother, who has moved back to their home village outside Kampala.

But Mr Katende’s mission faces huge financial challenges as most of his partners have fallen off since the coronavirus pandemic.

“We had to scale down operations and close down some training centres. Before Covid I had 26 staff, but now we have eight. I fear we might let go of more staff due to financial constraints,” he said.

Thousands of his players in Uganda have to scramble for only 120 chess boards due to a lack of funds.

Uganda’s current junior chess champion, 19-year-old Jovan Kasozi – one of Mr Katende’s protégés – has also been hit.

The Katende chess initiative pays towards his schooling and the teenager has been able to occasionally crowdfund from some well wishers for extra chess training sessions – but last year he missed out an international tournament because he could not raise $400 for his air ticket.

“But I’m not giving up on chess, the game stimulates my mind and it has made me to be very good at mathematics. It makes me think like a computer,” the young man told the BBC.

Mr Katunde is equally upbeat, saying that it may well be a long game when it comes to Disney.

“Hopefully they will reach out to me if they break even,” he said, adding that then the profits could start coming in.

• From pawn to teenage chess queen – Uganda’s Phiona Mutesi
• Listen: Can chess help children displaced by conflict to rebuild their lives?
• Tunde Onakoya: Nigerian breaks chess marathon record
• Kenya chess: Male player dons disguise to compete as woman

Scores of Norwegians thought they had become millionaires after receiving a notification from the state-owned gambling company saying they had won eye-watering sums – until it turned out it was a mistake.

“Several thousand” people who won prizes in the Eurojackpot were notified of incorrect amounts on Friday, Norsk Tipping said. The company declined to confirm the exact number of those impacted to the BBC.

Norsk Tipping CEO Tonje Sagstuen apologised and resigned a day later.

An error in the conversion from Eurocents to Norwegian kroner caused the prize amounts to be “excessively high”, the company said. The amount was multiplied by 100, instead of being divided by 100, local media reported.

Norsk Tipping receives the prize amounts from Germany in euros, and then converts them to Norwegian kroner.

The correct amounts were updated on Saturday evening. No incorrect pay-outs were made, the gambling company said.

“I am terribly sorry that we have disappointed so many, and I understand that people are angry with us,” Ms Sagstuen said in a statement, adding that “criticism is justified” given the “breach of trust”.

She said she had received several messages from people who were planning to go on holiday, renovate their homes or buy an apartment.

“To them I can only say: Sorry! But I understand that it is a small consolation,” she said.

One woman, in the middle of a renovation project, told Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) she received a notification that she had won 1.2 million kroner ($119,000: £87,000), but instead received only a fraction of that sum.

The Norsk Tipping board met with the Ministry of Culture, which administers the running of the company, for an emergency meeting on Saturday.

After the meeting, Ms Sagstuen stepped down from her role as CEO. She held the position since September 2023 and had worked at Norsk Tipping since 2014.

“Here, things have failed in several places, this is my responsibility,” she said.

She said she was “sad” to leave but confident in the “improvement processes” that have been put in place.

Minister of Culture and Equality Lubna Jaffery told NRK that “such mistakes should not happen”, especially as Norsk Tipping has the exclusive right to deliver gaming services in the country.

“We expect the board to work actively to improve the control routines,” she said.

This is not the first time Norsk Tipping has found itself under criticism.

The company said that “several serious errors have been uncovered” in recent months and it had “experienced a number of technical problems in the past year”.

It acknowledged it had been “heavily criticised” by the regulator and its customers, and the criticism “was justified”.

A car bomb attack in Pakistan has killed at least 13 soldiers and injured civilians.

Pakistani officials said a suicide bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives into a military convoy in the north-western tribal region of North Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan, on Saturday.

Pakistan alleged that the militants behind the attack were backed by India, but Delhi quickly denied this.

Dismissing Pakistan’s accusation, Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman for India’s ministry of external affairs, posted on X: “We reject this statement with the contempt it deserves.”

The attack has been claimed by a suicide bomber wing of the Hafiz Gul Bahadur armed group, a faction of the Pakistan Taliban.

Pakistan’s army, however, said the attack was carried out by militants backed by India, without providing evidence.

“In this tragic and barbaric incident, three innocent civilians including two children and a woman also got severely injured,” the Pakistani army said in a statement.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the “cowardly act”.

Relations between the two nations have long been strained, but tensions deepened in April after a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir left 26 people dead.

India blamed Pakistan for sheltering members of a militant group it said were behind the attack, and the incident brought the two nuclear-armed countries to the brink of another war.

• Relief in Kashmir – but BBC hears from families on both sides mourning the dead

In May, India launched a series of airstrikes, targeting sites it called “terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir”.

Pakistan denied the claim that these were terror camps and also responded by firing missiles and deploying drones into Indian territory.

The hostilities continued until 10 May when US President Donald Trump announced that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire”.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in terrorist incidents following the collapse of the ceasefire agreement between the government and the Pakistani Taliban in November 2022.

Serbian police have clashed with a huge crowd of anti-government protesters demanding an early election and end to President Aleksandar Vucic’s 12-year rule in the capital Belgrade.

A sea of around 140,000 protesters rallied in the city on Saturday, the largest turnout in recent months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government. “We want elections!” the crowd chanted.

Dozens were arrested, with riot police seen firing tear gas and stun grenades.

President Vucic accused protesters calling for an election of being part of a foreign plot trying to usurp his country. “They wanted to topple Serbia, and they have failed,” he wrote on his Instagram page.

On Friday, five people were detained, accused of plotting to overthrow the government, according to a statement from Serbia’s Higher Court in Belgrade.

Following the clashes, the police minister strongly condemned violence by protesters and said those responsible would be arrested.

Months of protests across the country – including university shutdowns – have rattled Mr Vucic, whose second term ends in 2027 when there are also parliamentary elections scheduled.

Sladjana Lojanovic, 37, a farmer from the town of Sid in the north, said on Saturday she came to support students.

“The institutions have been usurped and… there is a lot of corruption. Elections are the solution, but I don’t think he (Vucic) will want to go peacefully,” she told Reuters.

The president has previously refused snap elections. His Progressive Party-led coalition holds 156 of 250 parliamentary seats.

Mr Vucic’s opponents accuse him and his allies of ties to organised crime, corruption, violence against rivals and curbing media freedoms, which they deny.

He has maintained close ties to Russia, and Serbia – a candidate for EU membership – has not joined the Western sanctions regime imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

Protests by students, opposition, teachers, workers and farmers began last December after 16 people died on 1 November in the collapse of Novi Sad railway station’s roof. Protesters blame corruption for the disaster.

The accident has already forced the former prime minister to resign.

As Saturday’s protest ended, organisers played a statement to the crowd, calling for Serbians to “take freedom into your own hands” and giving them the “green light”.

“The authorities had all the mechanisms and all the time to meet the demands and prevent an escalation,” the organisers said in a statement on Instagram after the rally.

“Instead, they opted for violence and repression against the people. Any radicalisation of the situation is their responsibility.”

On the wall of the League of Social Democrats office, the Chinese characters for freedom are spelt out with court admission slips.

Members of the party take turns speaking into a microphone connected to a loudspeaker. They stand in front of a banner that reads “rather be ashes than dust”, written in Chinese. Founded close to 20 years ago, the party is known as the last protest group in Hong Kong.

“The red lines are now everywhere,” Chan Po Ying, the chair of the party, tells the BBC.

“Our decision to disband was because we were facing a lot of pressure.”

She added that everything in Hong Kong has become politicised, and she was not in a position to go into more detail to elaborate the reasons.

The party is the third major opposition party to disband this year in Hong Kong. The group known for its street protests said it had made the decision after “careful deliberation” and to avoid “consequences” for its members.

The announcement to disband comes just days ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Beijing-imposed national security law. The party said it could not elaborate on the timing of its closure, but said it faced “intense pressure.”

“Over these 19 years, we have endured hardships of internal disputes and the near-total imprisonment of our leadership, while witnessing the erosion of civil society, the fading of grassroots voices, the omnipresence of red lines, and the draconian suppression of dissent,” it said in a statement.

The authorities said the national security law was needed in order to restore order after a year of often violent protests in 2019. But five years on, critics say it has been used to dismantle the political opposition.

In June, a Chinese official claimed hostile forces were still interfering in the city.

“We must clearly see that the anti-China and Hong Kong chaos elements are still ruthless and are renewing various forms of soft resistance,” Xia Baolong said in a speech.

The national security law criminalises charges such as subversion. In 2024 Hong Kong passed a domestic national security law known as Article 23, criminalising crimes such as sedition and treason. Today the majority of Hong Kong’s political opposition have either fled the territory or have been detained.

“I think it’s no longer safe to actually run a political party. I think the political rights have almost totally gone in Hong Kong,” vice-chairman Dickson Chau told the BBC.

On 12 June, three members were fined by a magistrates’ court for hanging a banner at a street booth while collecting money from the public without permission.

Critics say opposition groups face political persecution. Chau says the party’s bank accounts were closed in 2023. Over the last five years, six party members have been imprisoned.

“A place without any meaningful political party, then people sooner or later will forget how strong they are going to be if they can group together and voice out in a collective manner,” said Chau.

“If I do nothing then why am I here in Hong Kong?”.

He said even if he was not politically active, he feared he could still find himself a target of the police and be pressured to leave Hong Kong by the authorities.

“The future is very difficult as a citizen. If you want to exercise your right as a citizen it’s very difficult. Not only for the politician or the activist, even the ordinary people need to think twice,” said Chau.

“It’s a dilemma I didn’t expect to face in Hong Kong for just being an activist,” he added.

Zohran Mamdani, who is the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor after a stunning victory last week, has said no-one should have billions of dollars.

In an interview with NBC, Mamdani also stood by his proposal to tax “richer and whiter” neighborhoods, arguing the city’s property tax system is unfair.

The 33-year-old defended his democratic socialism, rejecting an accusation from US President Donald Trump that he is a communist.

If elected in November, he would be the first Muslim and Indian American to lead the nation’s largest city.

Mamdani ran an energetic campaign focused on affordability, promising free buses, universal childcare, a $30 minimum hourly wage, a rent freeze and city-run supermarkets – all paid for with higher taxes on the top 1% of earners.

On NBC’s Meet the Press programme on Sunday, he was asked whether billionaires have a right to exist.

“I don’t think that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality,” he replied.

New York’s mayor has the power to propose a hike on property taxes, but revenue increases ultimately require approval from the state legislature and the governor.

NBC interviewer Kristen Welker asked Mamdani about a policy proposal on his campaign website to shift the tax burden “to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods”.

Asked whether he might alienate key constituents by invoking race, he denied the policy was driven by race and said: “I think I’m just naming things as they are.”

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, President Trump threatened to cut off federal funding for New York City if Mamdani wins, calling him a “pure communist”.

• Who is Zohran Mamdani?
• How Mamdani stunned New York
• Rama Duwaji: Who is the wife of Zohran Mamdani?

Mamdani denied being a communist, adding: “I have already to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am, ultimately because he wants to distract from what I am fighting for.”

He said New York is “the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty”.

Millionaires in New York pay 41% of all personal income tax, according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance.

In last week’s Democratic primary, Mamdani defeated his main intraparty challenger, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as New York governor in 2021 after sexual harassment allegations.

Mamdani has been under scrutiny for his stance on the Israel-Gaza war, after voicing strong support for Palestinians and accusing Israel of genocide, which it denies.

He was asked about these views in the NBC interview, and whether he would condemn the term “globalise the intifada”.

Many Jews argue this slogan is an antisemitic call for violence, but pro-Palestinian activists say it is a call for international solidarity with Palestinians.

“That’s not the language that I use,” said Mamdani, adding that he condemns antisemitism. When pressed, he said it was not the role of the mayor to “police speech”.

On NBC, he sought to draw a contrast between himself and the Trump administration, whom he criticised for detaining Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University and a lawful US resident.

Mamdani has described “globalise the intifada” in the past as “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights”.

“What they’re showing on Russian TV are fairy tales for fools. Most of Mariupol still lies in ruins,” says John, a Ukrainian living in Russian-occupied Mariupol. We’ve changed his name as he fears reprisal from Russian authorities.

“They are repairing the facades of the buildings on the main streets, where they bring cameras to shoot. But around the corner, there is rubble and emptiness. Many people still live in half-destroyed apartments with their walls barely standing,” he says.

It’s been just over three years since Mariupol was taken by Russian forces after a brutal siege and indiscriminate bombardment – a key moment in the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Thousands were killed, and the UN estimated 90% of residential buildings were damaged or destroyed.

In recent months, videos and reels from several pro-Russia influencers have been painting a picture of a glossy city where damaged structures have been repaired and where life has gone back to normal.

But the BBC has spoken to more than half a dozen people – some still living in Mariupol, others who escaped after spending time under occupation – to piece together a real picture of what life is like in the city.

“There are a lot of lies floating around,” says 66-year-old Olha Onyshko who escaped from Mariupol late last year and now lives in Ukraine’s Ternopil.

“We had a beautiful city but now it’s diseased. I wouldn’t say they [Russian authorities] have repaired a lot of things. There’s a central square – only the buildings there have been reconstructed. And there are also empty spaces where buildings stood. They cleared the debris, but they didn’t even separate out the dead bodies, they were just loaded on to trucks with the rubble and carried out of the city,” she adds.

Mariupol is also facing severe water shortages.

“Water flows for a day or two, then it doesn’t come for three days. We keep buckets and cans of water at home. The colour of the water is so yellow that even after boiling it, it’s scary to drink it,” says James, another Mariupol resident whose name has been changed.

Some have even said the water looks like “coca cola”.

Serhii Orlov, who calls himself Mariupol’s deputy mayor in exile, says the Siverskyi Donets–Donbas Canal which supplied water to the city was damaged during the fighting.

“Only one reservoir was left supplying water to Mariupol. For the current population, that would’ve lasted for about a year and a half. Since occupation has lasted longer than that, it means there is no drinking water at all. The water people are using doesn’t even meet the minimum drinking water standard,” says Serhii.

There are frequent power cuts, food is expensive, and medicines are scarce, residents tell us.

“Basic medicines are not available. Diabetics struggle to get insulin on time, and it is crazy expensive,” says James.

The BBC has reached out to Mariupol’s Russian administration for a response to the allegations about shortages and whether they had found an alternative source for water. We have not got a response so far.

Despite the hardships the most difficult part of living in the city, residents say, is watching what Ukrainian children are being taught at school.

Andrii Kozhushyna studied at a university in Mariupol for a year after it was occupied. Now he’s escaped to Dnipro.

“They are teaching children false information and propaganda. For example, school textbooks state that Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Odesa, Crimea and even Dnipropetrovsk regions are all already part of Russia,” says Andrii.

He also described special lessons called “Conversations about Important Things” in which students are taught about how Russia liberated the Russian-speaking population of these regions from Nazis in 2022.

“Teachers who refuse to take these lessons are intimidated or fired. It’s like they are reprogramming the minds of our children,” says John, a Mariupol resident.

During World War Two Victory Day celebrations in May, images from Mariupol’s central square showed children and adults dressed up in military costumes participating in parades and performances – Soviet-era traditions that Ukraine had increasingly shunned are now being imposed in occupied territories. Mariupol was bathed in the colours of the Russian flag – red, blue and white.

But some Ukrainians are waging a secret resistance against Russia, and in the dead of the night, they spray paint Ukrainian blue and yellow colours on walls, and also paste leaflets with messages like “Liberate Mariupol” and “Mariupol is Ukraine”.

James and John are both members of resistance groups, as was Andrii when he lived in the city.

“The messages are meant as moral support for our people, to let them know that the resistance is alive,” says James.

Their main objective is collecting intelligence for the Ukrainian military.

“I document information about Russian military movements. I analyse where they are transporting weapons, how many soldiers are entering and leaving the city, and what equipment is being repaired in our industrial areas. I take photos secretly, and keep them hidden until I can transmit them to Ukrainian intelligence through secure channels,” says James.

Occasionally, the resistance groups also try to sabotage civil or military operations. On at least two occasions, the railway line into Mariupol was disrupted because the signalling box was set on fire by activists.

It’s risky work. Andrii said he was forced to leave when he realised that he had been exposed.

“Perhaps a neighbour snitched on me. But once when I was at a store buying bread, I saw a soldier showing my photo to the cashier asking if they knew who the person was,” he said.

He left immediately, slipping past Mariupol’s checkposts and then travelling through numerous cities in Russia, and through Belarus, before entering Ukraine from the north.

For those still in the city, each day is a challenge.

“Every day you delete your messages because your phone can be checked at checkpoints. You’re afraid to call your friends in Ukraine in case your phone is being tapped,” says James.

“A person from a neighbouring house was arrested right off the street because someone reported that he was allegedly passing information to the Ukrainian military. Your life is like a movie – a constant tension, fear, distrust,” he adds.

As talks continue between Ukraine and Russia, there have been suggestions from within and outside Ukraine that it would need to concede land in exchange for a peace deal.

“Giving away territory for a ‘deal with Russia’ will be a betrayal. Dozens risk their lives every day to pass information to Ukraine, not so that some diplomat in a suit will sign a paper that will ‘hand us over’,” says John.

“We don’t want ‘peace at any cost’. We want liberation.”

Two people have been fatally shot in a mountain community in the north-western US state of Idaho while responding to a brush fire, say officials.

Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office Robert Norris said at least one suspect was firing at law enforcement with a high-powered rifle near the city of Coeur d’Alene.

“We are actively taking sniper fire as we speak,” said Sheriff Norris, adding that officers had reported bullets coming from various directions. Residents have been asked to avoid the scene, which is on Canfield Mountain.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said agents would “provide tactical and operational support”, Governor Brad Little said “multiple heroic firefighters” were attacked.

“This is a heinous direct assault on our brave firefighters,” the governor posted on X. “I ask all Idahoans to pray for them and their families as we wait to learn more.”

He added: “As this situation is still developing, please stay clear from the area to allow law enforcement and firefighters to do their jobs.”

Sheriff Norris said at a news conference on Sunday, “we don’t know if there’s one, two, three or four” shooters at the scene, about four miles (6.5km) north of central Coeur d’Alene.

“We don’t know how many suspects are up there, and we don’t know how many casualties there are,” he said.

Authorities believed the two people killed were firemen.

“I’m hoping that somebody has a clear shot and is able to neutralise, because they’re not at this point in time showing any evidence of wanting to surrender,” the sheriff added.

“If these individuals are not neutralised quickly, this is going to be a likely a multi-day operation”.

He told reporters there were civilians up on Canfield Mountain, which is criss-crossed with hiking and biking trails, so it “would be safe to assume” others were still up there.

The call about the brush fire came in around 13:22 local time (19:22 GMT) on Sunday. At 14:00, firefighters reported shots fired.

The brush fire is still burning amid the shootout.

Local fire chief Pat Riley told TV station KHQ he was “heartbroken” by the attack.

Kootenai County Emergency Management Office sent an alert asking people to avoid the area around Canfield Mountain Trailhead and Nettleton Gulch Road.

Coeur d’Alene resident Linda Tiger, 80, told the BBC she was shocked by the shooting.

“This has never happened here,” said Mrs Tiger, who has lived in the city for nearly 30 years. “But it goes to show that that no-one is safe from this kind of mental sadness.”

She said she was staying indoors as “all Coeur d’Alene is supposed to shelter in place, but I see people walking around because they haven’t heard the news”.

The city of around 56,000 people is near the border with Washington state.

A heatwave continues to grip large parts of Europe, with authorities in many countries issuing health warnings amid searing temperatures.

Southern Spain is the worst-affected region, with temperatures in the mid-40s Celsius recorded in Seville and neighbouring areas.

A new heat record for June of 46C was set on Saturday in the town of El Granado, according to Spain’s national weather service, which also said this month is on track to be the hottest June on record.

Red heat warnings are in force in parts of Portugal, Italy and Croatia, with numerous amber warnings covering areas of Spain, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

In Barcelona, a woman died after completing a shift as a road sweeper on Saturday, when temperatures were very high. Local authorities are investigating her death.

In Italy, emergency departments across the country have reported an uptick in heatstroke cases, mainly affecting “elderly people, cancer patients, or homeless people”, Mario Guarino, vice president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine told the AFP news agency.

Hospitals such as the Ospedale dei Colli in Naples have set up dedicated heatstroke pathways to speed up access to vital treatments such as cold water immersion.

The city of Bologna further to the north has set up seven climate shelters with air conditioning and drinking water, while Rome has offered free access to city swimming pools for those over 70.

A pharmacist in Portugal’s capital Lisbon told Reuters news agency that, despite telling people “not to go out” during the hottest hours of the day, “we have already had some cases of heat strokes and burns”.

The severe heat has also affected countries across the western Balkans where temperatures have reached in excess of 40C.

Serbia registered its highest-ever temperature since it began recording them in the 19th century. In Slovenia, the hottest-ever June temperature was recorded on Saturday.

North Macedonia is also sweltering as temperatures reached 42C on Friday.

Some areas will continue to get hotter until the middle of the week, with temperatures rising across France, Germany, Italy and the UK over the next few days.

Yellow and amber alerts are in place for parts of England this weekend, and temperatures in London may reach 35C on Monday.

The heat has been building under a big area of high pressure, with dry air descending and warming.

As that process has continued over a number of days, temperatures have climbed. The area of high pressure will move eastwards over the next few days – taking the high temperatures northwards and eastwards with it.

While it is hard to link individual extreme weather events to climate change, heatwaves are becoming more common and more intense due to climate change.

Scientists at World Weather Attribution, who analyse the influence of climate change on extreme weather events, say June heatwaves with three consecutive days above 28C are about 10 times more likely to occur now compared to pre-industrial times.

The Air India tragedy, in which at least 270 people died, involved one of Boeing’s most innovative and popular planes. Until now, it was considered one of its safest too.

We still do not know why flight 171 crashed just 30 seconds after take-off. Investigators have now recovered flight recorder data and are working hard to find out. But the incident has drawn attention to the aircraft involved: the 787 Dreamliner, the first of a modern generation of radical, fuel-efficient planes.

Prior to the accident, the 787 had operated for nearly a decade and a half without any major accidents and without a single fatality. During that period, according to Boeing, it carried more than a billion passengers. There are currently more than 1,100 in service worldwide.

However, it has also suffered from a series of quality control problems.

Whistleblowers who worked on the aircraft have raised numerous concerns about production standards. Some have claimed that potentially dangerously flawed aircraft have been allowed into service – allegations the company has consistently denied.

It was on a chilly December morning in 2009 that a brand-new aircraft edged out onto the runway at Paine Field airport near Seattle and, as a cheering crowd looked on, accelerated into a cloudy sky.

The flight was the culmination of years of development and billions of dollars worth of investment.

The 787 was conceived in the early 2000s, at a time of rising oil prices, when the increasing cost of fuel had become a major preoccupation for airlines. Boeing decided to build a long-haul plane for them that would set new standards in efficiency.

“In the late 1990s, Boeing was working on a design called the Sonic Cruiser,” explains aviation historian Shea Oakley.

This was firstly conceived as a plane that would use advanced materials and the latest technology to carry up to 250 passengers at just under the speed of sound. The initial emphasis was on speed and cutting journey times, rather than fuel economy.

“But then the effects of 9/11 hit the world airline industry quite hard,” says Mr Oakley.

“The airlines told Boeing what they really needed was the most fuel-efficient, economical long-range jetliner ever produced. They now wanted an aeroplane with a similar capacity to the Sonic Cruiser, minus the high speed.”

Boeing abandoned its initial concept, and began work on what became the 787. In doing so, it helped create a new business model for airlines.

Instead of using giant planes to transport huge numbers of people between “hub” airports, before placing them on connecting flights to other destinations, they could now fly smaller aircraft on less crowded direct routes between smaller cities which would previously have been unviable.

At the time Boeing’s great rival, the European giant Airbus, was taking precisely the opposite approach. It was developing the gargantuan A380 superjumbo – a machine tailor-made for carrying as many passengers as possible on busy routes between the world’s biggest and busiest airports.

In hindsight, Boeing’s approach was wiser. The fuel-thirsty A380 went out of production in 2021, after only 251 had been built.

“Airbus thought the future was giant hubs where people would always want to change planes in Frankfurt or Heathrow or Narita,” explains aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, who is a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.

“Boeing said ‘no, people want to fly point to point’. And Boeing was extremely right.”

The 787 was a truly radical aircraft. It was the first commercial plane to be built primarily of composites such as carbon fibre, rather than aluminium, in order to reduce weight. It had advanced aerodynamics to reduce drag.

It also used highly efficient modern engines from General Electric and Rolls Royce, and it replaced many mechanical and pneumatic systems with lighter electrical ones.

All of this, Boeing said, would make it 20% more efficient than its predecessor, the Boeing 767. It was also significantly quieter, with a noise footprint (the area on the ground affected by significant noise from the aircraft) that the manufacturer said was up to 60% smaller.

Not long after the aircraft entered service, however, there were serious problems. In January 2013, lithium-ion batteries caught fire aboard a 787 as it waited at a gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

A week later, overheating batteries forced another 787 to make an emergency landing during an internal flight in Japan.

The design was grounded worldwide for several months, while Boeing came up with a solution.

Since then, day to day operations have been smoother, but production has been deeply problematic. Analysts say this may, in part, have been due to Boeing’s decision to set up a new assembly line for the 787 in North Charleston, South Carolina – more than 2000 miles from its Seattle heartlands.

This was done to take advantage of the region’s low rates of union membership, as well as generous support from the state.

“There were serious development issues,” says Mr Aboulafia. “Some notable production issues, related especially to the decision to create Boeing’s first ever production line outside of the Puget Sound area.”

In 2019, Boeing discovered the first of a series of manufacturing defects that affected the way in which different parts of the aircraft fitted together. As more problems were found, the company widened its investigations – and uncovered further issues.

Deliveries were heavily disrupted, and halted altogether between May 2021 and July 2022, before being paused again the following year.

However, potentially the most damaging allegations about the 787 programme have come from the company’s own current and former employees.

Among the most prominent was the late John Barnett, a former quality control manager at the 787 factory in South Carolina. He claimed that pressure to produce planes as quickly as possible had seriously undermined safety.

In 2019, he told the BBC that workers at the plant had failed to follow strict procedures intended to track components through the factory, potentially allowing defective parts to go missing. In some cases, he said, workers had even deliberately fitted substandard parts from scrap bins to aircraft in order to avoid delays on the production line.

He also maintained that defective fixings were used to secure aircraft decks. Screwing them into place produced razor-sharp slivers of metal, which in some cases accumulated beneath the deck in areas containing large amounts of aircraft wiring.

His claims had previously been passed to the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, which partially upheld them. After investigating, it concluded that at least 53 “non-conforming” parts had gone missing in the factory.

An audit by the FAA also confirmed that metal shavings were present beneath the floors of a number of aircraft.

Boeing said its board analysed the problem and decided it did not “present a safety of flight issue”, though the fixings were subsequently redesigned. The company later said it had “fully resolved the FAA’s findings regarding part traceability and implemented corrective actions to prevent recurrence”.

Mr Barnett remained concerned that aircraft that had already gone into service could be carrying hidden defects serious enough to cause a major accident. “I believe it’s just a matter of time before something big happens with a 787,” he told me in 2019. “I pray that I am wrong.”

In early 2024, Mr Barnett took his own life. At the time he had been giving evidence in a long-running whistleblower lawsuit against the company – which he maintained had victimised him as a result of his allegations. Boeing denied this.

Much of what he had alleged echoed previous claims by another former quality manager at the plant, Cynthia Kitchens.

In 2011, she had complained to regulators about substandard parts being deliberately removed from quarantine bins and fitted to aircraft, in an attempt to keep the production line moving.

Ms Kitchens, who left Boeing in 2016, also claimed employees had been told to overlook substandard work, and said defective wiring bundles, containing metallic shavings within their coatings, had been deliberately installed on planes – creating a risk of dangerous short-circuits.

Boeing has not responded to these specific allegations but says Ms Kitchens resigned in 2016 “after being informed that she was being placed on a performance improvement plan”. It says that she subsequently filed a lawsuit against Boeing, “alleging claims of discrimination and retaliation unrelated to any quality issues”, which was dismissed.

More recently, a third whistleblower made headlines when testifying before a senate committee last year.

Sam Salehpour, a current Boeing employee, told US lawmakers he had come forward because “the safety problems I have observed at Boeing, if not addressed could result in a catastrophic failure of a commercial aeroplane that would lead to the loss of hundreds of lives”.

The quality engineer said that while working on the 787 in late 2020, he had seen the company introduce shortcuts in assembly processes, in order to speed up production and delivery of the aircraft. These, he said, “had allowed potentially defective parts and defective installations in 787 fleets”.

He also noted that on the majority of aircraft he looked at, tiny gaps in the joints between sections of fuselage had not been properly rectified. This, he said, meant those joints would be prone to “premature fatigue failure over time” and created “extremely unsafe conditions for the aircraft” with “potentially catastrophic” consequences.

He suggested that more than 1,000 aircraft – the bulk of the 787 fleet – could be affected.

Boeing insists that “claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate”. It says: “The issues raised have been subject to rigorous examination under US Federal Aviation Administration oversight. This analysis has validated that the aircraft will maintain its durability and service life over several decades, and these issues do not present any safety concerns.”

There is no question that Boeing has come under huge pressure in recent years over its corporate culture and production standards. In the wake of two fatal accidents involving its bestselling 737 Max, and a further serious incident last year, it has been repeatedly accused of putting the pursuit of profit over passenger safety.

It is a perception that chief executive Kelly Ortberg, who joined the company last year, has been working hard to overturn – overhauling its internal processes and working with regulators on a comprehensive safety and quality control plan.

But has the 787 already been compromised by past failures, that may have created ongoing safety risks?

Richard Aboulafia believes not. “You know. It’s been 16 years of operations, 1,200 jets and over a billion passengers flown, but no crashes until now,” he says. “It’s a stellar safety record.”

He thinks that any major issues would already have become apparent.

“I really think production problems are more of a short-term concern,” he says. “For the past few years, there’s been far greater oversight of 787 production.

“For older planes, I think any serious problems would have shown up by now.”

The Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad was more than 11 years old, having first flown in 2013.

But the Foundation for Aviation Safety, a US organisation established by the former Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson that has previously been highly critical of the company, says it did have concerns about 787s prior to the recent crash.

“Yes, it was a possible safety risk,” claims Mr Pierson. “We monitor incident reports, we monitor regulatory documents. Airworthiness directives come out that describe various issues, and it does make you wonder.”

One such issue, he argues, is water potentially leaking from washroom taps into electrical equipment bays. Last year, the FAA instructed airlines to carry out regular inspections, following reports that leaks were going undetected on certain 787 models.

However, he stresses that the cause of the recent tragedy is still unknown – and that it is vital the investigation moves forward quickly, so that any problems, whether they lie with the aircraft, the airline or elsewhere, can be resolved.

For the moment, however, the 787’s safety record remains strong.

“We don’t know at this point what caused the Air India crash,” says Scott Hamilton, managing director of aviation consulting firm Leeham Company.

“But based on what we do know about the plane, I would not hesitate to get on board a 787.”

A Republican US senator from North Carolina has said he will not run for reelection next year, a day after he opposed a sprawling budget bill that is key to President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Thom Tillis, 64, announced he would leave Congress because he said independent thinkers in Washington had become “an endangered species”.

Trump criticised Tillis on Saturday for not backing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and threatened to support other candidates.

The president has also denounced other fellow Republican lawmakers who oppose his bill, including Senator Rand Paul and congressman Thomas Massie, both of Kentucky.

A final Senate vote on passage of the spending plan is expected in the coming days. It narrowly cleared the House of Representatives last month.

Tillis has held public office in North Carolina since 2007 and has been a senator since 2015.

In his statement on Sunday, he said he was proud of his career in public service, and especially of what he called “bipartisan victories”.

“Sometimes those bipartisan initiatives got me in trouble with my own party, but I wouldn’t have changed a single one,” he wrote.

He added that in recent years lawmakers who are “willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking” have become a rare sight in Washington.

“Too many elected officials are motivated by pure raw politics who really don’t give a damn about the people they promised to represent on the campaign trail,” Tillis wrote.

• Trump’s budget may cost millions their healthcare as Senate debates bill
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On Sunday, Trump called Tillis “a talker and complainer”.

He was one of two Republican senators who voted against advancing Trump’s spending and tax cuts bill on Saturday.

Tillis said the legislation’s cuts to Medicaid, a healthcare programme that is used by millions of elderly, disabled and low-income Americans, would be “devastating” to people in North Carolina.

The bill proposes a work requirement on most adults in order to qualify for benefits.

It also reduces the amount of taxes states can charge medical providers, the funds from which are used heavily to finance Medicaid.

“I did my homework on behalf of North Carolinians, and I cannot support this bill in its current form,” Tillis said on Saturday. “It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina.”

Republicans who support the bill have dismissed Tillis’ criticism, saying the proposed changes to Medicaid will eliminate fraud and waste and ensure the programme is viable in the long run.

The Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency, estimated late on Saturday that the changes would result in nearly 12 million Americans losing their health coverage.

Trump has also threatened to back another candidate in the Republican primary ahead of next year’s midterm elections, saying he would be meeting with “numerous” contenders to challenge Tillis.

Speculation is already rife that Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and a North Carolina native, might run for the seat, though she has not commented.

Trump has issued similar threats to other lawmakers who have not supported his marquee bill.

US news outlet Politico reported on Sunday, citing anonymous sources, that the White House was looking for challengers to Thomas Massie.

Trump dubbed Massie a “loser” in a post on the Truth Social platform last week.

“He votes, ‘NO!’ on everything, because he thinks it makes him cool,” the president wrote.

Glastonbury saved the best ’til last, with a triumphant set by American star Olivia Rodrigo to close the festival’s Pyramid Stage.

After the artifice and intensity of previous headliners The 1975 and Neil Young, the 22-year-old stomped her way through a series of crisp, punk-pop anthems and heartfelt ballads about the injustices of young love.

She charmed her English fans by professing her love for Marks and Spencers’ Colin The Caterpillar sweets; and won over Glastonbury veterans by duetting with The Cure’s Robert Smith (“perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England”).

“Glastonbury’s been my dream festival forever and I can’t believe today’s the day,” she beamed.

The set was a crowning moment for the singer, who only released her first single, Drivers License, five years ago.

A desperate cry of loneliness, the ballad broke Spotify streaming records in just 24 hours. Then it broke them again.

Seven days later, it entered the UK and the US charts at number one, instantly catapulting the singer from Disney actress to fully-fledged pop star.

Drivers License cast her as “the sad piano girl” in the public imagination – but she quickly deconstructed that image with a flurry of dynamic, guitar-heavy pop anthems that built on the templates established by Joan Jett, Alanis Morisette and Avril Lavigne.

It was those sounds that opened her Glastonbury set, with the crunchy riffs of Obsessed, a self-mocking song about her jealousy; and the semi-autobiographical Diary Of A Homeschooled Girl.

Dressed in a white lace corset and knee-high bovver boots, she high-kicked across the stage, whipping the crowd into a frenzy.

“How are we doing tonight Glastonbury,” she screamed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people in my life.

“Guys, it’s the last night of the festival. Are you ready to have some fun?”

She undercut the question slightly by launching into Drivers License – but watching the army of young fans holler those lyrics back at her, there was a communal sense of catharsis, at least.

The rest of the set balanced her competing impulses: rock chick, singer-songwriter, rabble rouser, strident feminist, heartfelt balladeer.

But above all else, she’s a music fan. Her decision to duet with Glastonbury veteran Robert Smith, rather than a pop contemporary like Harry Styles or Lorde, flowed directly from her love of 80s British pop.

As they played The Cure classics Friday I’m in Love and Just Like Heaven, Rodrigo kept glancing over at Smith, beaming from ear to ear, like she couldn’t believe her luck.

She added little harmonies to the songs, embellishing without being disrespectful – and Smith seemed to be just as enamoured with Rodrigo as she was with him, watching the rest of her set from the wings of the Pyramid Stage.

“He’s the nicest, most wonderful man ever and I’m so honoured to play with him tonight,” she gushed.

That guilelessness worked in her favour. For the audience, it often felt like watching your cool older sister (or your precocious young daughter) up on stage, rather than some untouchable pop star.

What’s more, Rodrigo needed none of the usual pop star props. There was no choreography. Until the encore, there was only one costume. All she required were the songs and her pin-sharp, all-female band.

She charmed the audience even more as she introduced the new wavey So American – a song about the inside jokes she shared with an English boyfriend.

“I love England so much,” she said. “I love how nobody judges you for having a pint at noon. I love English sweets, all the sweets from M&S, Colin the Caterpillar specifically.

“True story: I have had three sticky toffee puddings since coming to Glastonbury. And as luck would have it, I love English boys.”

England loved her right back, saving their biggest reaction for her encore – a headlong rush through Brutal, All American Bitch, Good 4 U and Get Him Back.

She left the stage under a downpour of fireworks, as inflatable balls bounced around the audience and our ears rang with feedback.

It was, hands down, the best (and best-attended) headline set of the weekend.

Olivia Rodrigo had understood the brief: Bring the hits. Make it unique. And make it personal.

Perhaps she’d learned that from Jarvis Cocker, whom she’d watched from her boyfriend’s shoulders on Saturday.

“To enjoy Glastonbury, you have to submit to it,” he advised.

Rodrigo channeled that spirit innately. She’s welcome back any time.

Earlier on Sunday, The Selecter opened up the final day of music on the Pyramid Stage, with an energetic set of punchy ska anthems.

Singer Pauline Black, a former NHS worker, dedicated Frontline to her colleagues, saying we’d thank them when we needed their help for “all those knees and all those hips in the not-so-distant future”.

And the crowd carried her through the band’s biggest hit, On The Radio, as her voice cracked on the trilling high notes.

“As you can tell, my voice is hurting,” she explained. “Are you going to help me?”

They didn’t need asking twice.

Celeste took our breath away with a grungier, angrier sound than the floaty jazz-soul of her debut.

The singer, who won the BBC’s Sound Of 2020, has taken five years to follow up her chart topping album, Not Your Muse, but told the audience “everything happens when it’s supposed to”.

On the basis of Everyday – an excoriating, paranoid track built around Death In Vegas’s 1999 dance hit Dirge – the new material has been worth the wait.

Also previewing new material was London soul-pop singer Joy Crookes. Dressed in a striking pink and green sari, she sauntered through the bassy grooves of recent singles Pass The Salt and Carmen, coming across like a latter-day Amy Winehouse.

The highlight of her set was the new single Perfect Crime – with a chorus so immaculate that the crowd had picked it up after one refrain.

After an unexpectedly nostalgic set from The Libertines, Rod Stewart took to the Pyramid Stage in the prestigious “legend slot”.

In full lounge lizard style, he played big band arrangements of hits like Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, Maggie May and The First Cut Is The Deepest, full of bubbly blonde backing vocals and endless saxophone solos.

Despite promising to “get in as many hits as I can”, the set had a wobbly start, with a couple of lesser-known numbers.

But he found his groove with 1984’s Some Guys Have All The Luck, after which the jukebox served up hit after hit. Ronnie Wood came out for a chummy duet on the Faces’ Stay With Me (an obvious highlight) before Stewart closed his set with a maritime singalong on We Are Sailing.

He was followed by Nile Rodgers and Chic who, it has to be said, drew an even bigger crowd for their feel-good disco anthems.

The song choices were faultless, ranging from Chic’s Le Freak and Good Times, to the songs Rodgers produced for Bowie (Let’s Dance, Modern Love) and Madonna (Like A Virgin, Material Girl) in the 80s.

As they played, a biplane flew over the Pyramid Stage and drew a smiley face and a love heart in the sky. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

Over at the Woodsies stage, AJ Tracey gave a masterclass in crowd work.

“I asked you for a mosh pit and I’m not gonna lie to you, it was weak,” he scolded, promising to give the crowd something to really get their teeth into.

At that point, Aitch burst onto the stage for the pair’s 2020 collaboration, Rain.

To say the energy ramped up would be an understatement on par with saying the surface of the sun is a little warm to the touch.

The set continued with a clutch of UK rap anthems – Ladbroke Grove, Thiago Silva, Kiss and Tell – turning it into one of the weekend’s sweatiest shows.

Other standout sets on the festivals’ final day included The Prodigy, who dedicated their set on The Other Stage to late frontman Keith Flint; and Jorja Smith, who provided a soothing set of British soul for the festival’s more weary revellers.

Wolf Alice delivered a crowd-pleasing cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams on The Other Stage, but it was their ode to friendship, Bros, that sent the audience into rapture.

Old friends, best mates and new-found companions hugged each other and swayed deliriously to the song’s “me and you” refrain.

The band only played two songs from their highly-anticipated fourth album, The Clearing – but lead single Bloom Baby Bloom was treated like an old friend.

The new material is more angular, more face-forward than their previous work; and lead singer Ellie Rowsell seemed to be enjoying her newfound confidence as a frontwoman.

After the delicious love song The Sofa, she poured a bottle of water over her head, shook off the droplets, grabbed a megaphone and screamed out the lyrics to the band’s two loudest, punkiest songs, Yuk Foo and Greatest Hits.

Expect to see them at the top of the bill when Glastonbury returns in 2027.

The US must rule out any further strikes on Iran if it wants to resume diplomatic talks, Tehran’s deputy foreign minister has told the BBC.

Majid Takht-Ravanchi says the Trump administration has told Iran through mediators it wants to return to negotiations, but had “not made their position clear” on the “very important question” of further attacks while talks are taking place.

Israel’s military operation, which began in the early hours of 13 June, scuppered a sixth round of mainly indirect talks set to take place in Muscat two days later.

The US became directly involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran last weekend when it targeted three Iranian nuclear sites in a bombing raid.

Takht-Ravanchi also said Iran will “insist” on being able to enrich uranium for what it says are peaceful purposes, rejecting accusations that Iran was secretly moving towards developing a nuclear bomb.

He said Iran had been “denied access to nuclear material” for its research programme so needed “to rely on ourselves”.

“The level of that can be discussed, the capacity can be discussed, but to say that you should not have enrichment, you should have zero enrichment, and if do you not agree, we will bomb you – that is the law of the jungle,” the deputy foreign minister said.

Israel began its attacks, targeting nuclear and military sites as well as assassinating commanders and scientists, in Iran on 13 June, claiming Tehran was close to building a nuclear weapon.

Iran responded by attacking Israel with missiles. Hostilities continued for 12 days, during which the US dropped bombs on three of Iran’s nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

The extent of the damage caused to Iran’s nuclear programme by US strikes has been unclear, and Takht-Ravanchi said he could not give an exact assessment.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the strikes caused severe but “not total” damage, while US President Donald Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear facilities were “totally obliterated”.

Grossi also said Iran had the capacity to start enriching uranium again in “a matter of months”. In response, Takht-Ravanchi said he did not know if that would be the case.

Iran’s relationship with the IAEA has become increasingly strained. On Wednesday, its parliament moved to suspend cooperation with the atomic watchdog, accusing the IAEA of siding with Israel and the US.

Trump has said he would “absolutely” consider bombing Iran again if intelligence found that it could enrich uranium to concerning levels.

Takht-Ravanchi said no date had been agreed upon for a possible return to talks and he did not know what would be on the agenda, after Trump suggested discussions could take place this week.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister said “right now we are seeking an answer to this question: are we going to see a repetition of an act of aggression while we are engaging in dialogue?”

He said the US had to be “quite clear on this very important question” and “what they are going to offer us in order to make the necessary confidence required for such a dialogue”.

Asked if Iran could consider rethinking its nuclear programme as part of any deal, possibly in return for sanctions relief and investment in the country, Takht-Ravanchi said: “Why should we agree to such a proposal?”

He reiterated that Iran’s programme, including enriching uranium to 60%, was “for peaceful purposes”.

Under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran was not permitted to enrich uranium above 3.67% purity – the level required for fuel for commercial nuclear power plants – and was not allowed to carry out any enrichment at its Fordo plant for 15 years.

However, Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018 during his first term as president, saying it did too little to stop a pathway to a bomb, and reinstated US sanctions.

Iran retaliated by increasingly breaching the restrictions – particularly those relating to enrichment. It resumed enrichment at Fordo in 2021 and had amassed enough 60%-enriched uranium to potentially make nine nuclear bombs, according to the IAEA.

Pressed on European and Western leaders having a lack of trust towards Iran, Takht-Ravanchi accused some European leaders of a “ridiculous” endorsement of US and Israeli strikes.

He said those who are criticising Iran over its nuclear programme “should criticise the way that we have been treated” and criticise the US and Israel.

He added: “And if they do not have the guts to criticise America, they should keep silent, not try to justify the aggression.”

Takht-Ravanchi also said Iran had received messages through mediators that the US did “not want to engage in regime change in Iran” by targeting the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Iranians to “rise for their freedom” to bring down the clerical rule of Khamenei, but, after last week’s ceasefire was reached, Trump said he did not want the same.

Takht-Ravanchi insisted it would not happen and the idea was “tantamount to a futile exercise”.

He said that although some Iranians “might have criticism of some actions by the government, when it comes to foreign aggression they would be united to confront it”.

The deputy foreign minister said it was “not quite clear” if the ceasefire with Israel would last, but Iran would continue to observe it “as long as there is no military attack against us”.

He said Iran’s Arab allies in the Persian Gulf were “doing their best to try to prepare the necessary atmosphere for a dialogue”. Qatar is known to have played a key role in brokering the current ceasefire.

He added: “We do not want war. We want to engage in dialogue and diplomacy, but we have to be prepared, we have to be cautious, not to be surprised again.”

At the age of 80, Rod Stewart has earned the right to do things his way. And if that means turning Glastonbury into a Vegas nightclub for 90 minutes, so be it.

The star played the festival’s coveted “legends slot” on Sunday afternoon, putting on a show resplendent with glittery suits, saxophone solos and special guests – including Stewart’s former Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood.

With plenty of gold in his back catalogue to draw on, the setlist was an all-timer, from the new wave synths of Young Turks to the beautiful folk melodies of Maggie May and Sailing.

And if the set veered towards cheese, at least it was well matured – much like Stewart himself.

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• Rod Stewart on Glastonbury, trashing hotel rooms and ‘that’ hairdo

He emerged on stage to the sound of Scotland The Brave on bagpipes – a nod to his Scottish father.

He was met by fans wearing frightwigs and waving the flag of his beloved football team Celtic.

Others held aloft signs that said “Rod’s a rascal”, and “Does Nigel Farage think you’re sexy” – in reference to an interview Stewart gave to The Times over the weekend, where he said people should give the Reform leader “a chance”.

At the age of 80, Stewart is one of the oldest artists to perform at the festival, but not the very oldest.

Burt Bacharach played the Pyramid stage in 2015 at the age of 87, while in 2022, Paul McCartney headlined the week after his 80th birthday.

Other artists to have played the legend slot in recent years include Kylie Minogue, Shania Twain, Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and Cat Stevens.

In a BBC interview earlier this week, Stewart talked about how he prepared for a major performance like Glastonbury.

“It’s like being a footballer in the FA Cup Final. You’re like, ‘I’ll treat it like any other game’, but it’s not [because] you don’t know what to expect.

“The difference with a football match is half the audience want to see you lose, but with me, everybody wants to see me win.

“So, I’ll be in good voice. I’ll enjoy myself. I don’t care any more what the critics think.”

Despite cancelling a string of shows in the US earlier this month due to illness, the star delivered his 90-minutes with gusto, sweat drenching the frilled white shirt he wore under a black and gold brocade jacket.

On ballads like Tonight’s the Night and First Cut is the Deepest, he found new ways around the melodies, accommodating the cracks and crevices that have appeared in his famously gravelly voice.

And his stage banter was delightfully barmy.

“Here’s one from 1979,” he shouted at one point.

“You guessed it: If You Want My Body, stick it up your bum.”

(The song’s actually called Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, but it’s his tune, so I guess he gets to decide.)

Later, he shared some nuanced political analysis.

“There’s been a lot about the Middle East recently, and quite rightly so, but I want to draw your attention to the Ukraine with this next song, it’s called the Love Train!” he declared.

The song, a cover of The O’Jays classic, is a plea for peace and tolerance that mentions Russia, China, Egypt, England and Israel.

It reflected the idealism of Stewart’s post-war rock and rollers, but the audience didn’t seem to mind the simplicity of the message. They just wanted to dance.

They got the chance during classics like Baby Jane and Forever Young, which even included a ceildh breakdown, courtesy of the star’s talented backing band.

After his third costume change, Stewart pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket for an “important announcement”.

Reading from the note, he wished a happy 90th birthday to Glastonbury founder Sir Michael Eavis, whose daughter Emily pushed him onstage in a wheelchair.

Sir Michael waved to the crowd, eliciting a huge round of applause, and Stewart leaned in to give him a hug.

“Let’s dedicate this one to him,” he announced, striking up the opening chords to I Don’t Want To Talk About It.

When everyone joined in the chorus, Sir Michael looked delighted.

After that, guest stars arrived in quick succession. Mick Hucknall for a duet on If You Don’t Know Me By Now, Ronnie Wood for Stay With Me and Lulu for Hot Legs.

“You’re killing it,” declared Lulu, resplendent in a white tassled suit, leaning in for a hug. “We’d make a great couple.”

The set ended with Sailing, the mega-ballad that took Stewart to the top of the charts in 1976 – while his backing singers pulled on sailors’ caps.

It was charming, it was silly, it was immensely enjoyable.

If Stewart had taken this legend slot to sea, sure, it would have been a diamond-encrusted cruise ship.

But when the water’s this smooth, it has a beauty all of its own.

“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.

“I’ll never forget it – being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”

The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least eight in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.

At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.

They had published their work on Haitang Literature City, a Taiwan-hosted platform known for its “danmei”, the genre of so-called boys’ love and erotic fiction.

Think of it as a gay version of Fifty Shades of Grey: a BDSM relationship that leads to a happily-ever-after. That’s a frequent trope, across historical, fantasy or sci-fi settings. Over the years it has cultivated a fiercely devoted following, especially among young Chinese women.

These authors are being accused of breaking China’s pornography law for “producing and distributing obscene material”. Writers who earn a profit could be jailed for more than 10 years.

The law targets “explicit descriptions of gay sex or other sexual perversions”. Heterosexual depictions often have more leeway – works by acclaimed Chinese authors, including Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, have graphic sexual scenes, but are widely available.

Although authors of heterosexual erotica have been jailed in China, observers say the genre is subjected to far less censorship. Gay erotica, which is more subversive, seems to bother authorities more. Volunteers in a support group for the Haitang writers told the BBC police even questioned some readers.

Those who reported being arrested declined to be interviewed, fearing repercussions. Police in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, who are accused of driving this crackdown, have not responded to the BBC.

Online, the crackdown has unleashed a debate – and a rarer pushback against the law.

“Is sex really something to be ashamed of?” a Weibo user asked, arguing that China’s anti-obscenity laws are out of touch. Another wrote that women never get to decide what is obscene because they don’t control the narrative. Even legal scholars have expressed concern that just 5,000 views for anything deemed “obscene” qualifies as criminal “distribution”, lowering the bar to arrest creators.

It made Beijing uneasy enough that discussions have been vanishing: #HaitangAuthorsArrested drew more than 30 million views on Weibo before it was censored. Posts offering legal advice are gone. A prominent Chinese news site’s story has been taken down. Writers’ accounts, and some of the handles, are also disappearing.

After Pingping Anan Yongfu’s post went viral, she deleted it and wrote another, thanking supporters and admitting her writing had violated the law. She then deleted her handle.

Before that last post, she had written: “I was always the good girl in my parents’ eyes. But that day, I brought them nothing but shame. They’ll never hold their heads up again.”

These women have long worked in the shadows in China, where homosexuality and eroticism are stigmatised. Now outed by police investigations, they face social consequences that are as brutal as the legal ones.

“In that moment, all I felt was shame,” posted a writer whose Weibo handle translates to “the world is a huge psychiatric hospital”. She said the police pulled her out of class in college – and her classmates watched as they followed her to search her dorm.

“I earned my money word by word at a keyboard. But once it went south, it was as if none of that mattered. People treated me like I’d made money without ever working for it.”

Another wrote the police had been kind, advising her to speak to a lawyer and return her “illegal earnings” to reduce her sentence. “I’m only 20. So young, and I’ve already ruined my life so early.”

A third said: “I never imagined a day would come when every word I once wrote would come back to haunt me.”

One author who has been writing danmei novels for 20 years was not questioned but she says the crackdown won’t stop her. “This is how I find happiness. And I can’t let go of the connections I have made with the community.”

Inspired by Japanese boys’ love manga, danmei emerged as a sub-genre online in the 1990s. It has become hugely successful, with some of the novels appearing on international bestseller lists.

In 2021, 60 of them were optioned for film and TV adaptations. The most expensive IP reportedly sold for 40 million yuan ($5.6 million; £4.1 million). Some of China’s biggest stars, such as Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, began their careers on streaming shows based on danmei novels.

In short, it’s the rebellious royal of pop culture – too popular to ignore, too controversial to honour.

And it is a signature offering on Haitang, which, in Mandarin, is a flower that blooms in every shade of pink.

Fittingly, Haitang and danmei have flourished as uniquely female spaces, although they centre male protagonists. In a culture where female sexual desire is routinely policed, danmei beceme a coded, creative outlet – a space where women can write about female desire for other women.

That is exactly what makes danmei so “subversive”, says Dr Liang Ge, who teaches digital sociology at University College London. It allows women to “detach from gendered realities”, which they often associate with marriage and motherhood.

For instance, in danmei stories, men can get pregnant and are at ease with being vulnerable – a stark contrast from the often unequal relationships many Chinese women struggle with in real life.

“Danmei frees me from thinking about all those potential dangers in relationships in traditional heterosexual romance,” explains one writer who has been active in the danmei world for a decade.

Danmei novels are not without their critics, because some do contain extreme and violent scenes. “As a parent, how many of us can accept our children reading novels like this, let alone writing them?” asked one Weibo user.

The age of authors has also been a concern: a handful of those the BBC spoke to said they all started reading and writing gay erotica before they turned 18, some as young as 11.

It’s a problem the community should acknowledge and address, said Ma, a danmei writer who only shared her surname, adding that this is a problem for all adult content because China does not restrict content by age.

But danmei in particular has increasingly come under attack in the last decade as Beijing launched a series of campaigns to “clean up” the internet. In 2018 a danmei author was jailed for 10 years for selling 7,000 copies of her book titled Occupy.

As marriage and birth rates plummet, and China’s leader Xi Jinping encourages a national rejuvenation, so state scrutiny of danmei has ratcheted up, Dr Ge says.

“The Chinese government wants to promote traditional family values and liking danmei novels is seen as a factor in making women less willing to have children,” Dr Ge explains.

This is the second wave of mass arrests in less than a year – late last year, some 50 Haitang writers were prosecuted. A famous author who earned about 1.85 million yuan was jailed for nearly five years.

The two crackdowns are similar, according to a lawyer who had represented some of the defendants last year, “but this time, even those with minor involvement weren’t spared”.

A lawyer offering free legal advice said more than 150 people requested consultations in just two days. Many of those contacting her had not been charged yet – they were terrified about the possibility though.

“This is classic offshore fishing,” says a lawyer who authored a “practical guide” to assist Haitang writers. The term refers to overreach by local police – those in Lanzhou summoned writers in various places, arguably beyond their jurisdiction.

Several reported paying out of pocket to fly to Lanzhou. One posted that the 2,000 yuan earned from two books on Haitang paid for the flight.

Last year too all the arrests were by police in Jixi County in eastern China.

Indebted local governments have done this before to earn revenue through fines, sometimes forcing a warning from the central government. Cyber crimes are particularly prone to this “as long as they claim a local reader was corrupted”, the lawyer says.

Danmei writers know tolerance can be fickle. It’s why they skirt censorship with metaphors. “Making dinner” means sex; “kitchen tool” is code for male genitals.

Still, the recent crackdown stunned them. “A phone call shattered my dreams,” is how one writer described the call from police.

They accused police of searching their phone without a warrant. They said their crime was assessed by adding up the views for each chapter – a method they argued was misleading, as it likely exaggerated the readership.

Another danmei author posted: “I wrote on Haitang for years, with only a handful of readers. Then, those overlooked stories accumulated over 300,000 clicks, and the 4,000 yuan in royalties sitting in my account became evidence of my crime.”

It’s hard to know if this spells the end of their careers on Haitang.

“If I could go back, I’d still choose to write. And I will keep writing,” wrote the handle Sijin de Sijin.

“Right now, I can only hope the law will see beyond the words on the page – and see the girl who skipped meals to save money, the girl who sold her hair to buy a pen, the girl who believed her mind could carve a way through fate. I hope it gives all of us a fair chance.”

The prime minister has condemned UK punk duo Bob Vylan for urging “death” to Israeli troops in what he called “appalling hate speech”.

Glastonbury Festival organisers have also said they were “appalled” after frontman rapper Bobby Vylan led chants of “free, free Palestine” and “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”.

In a statement, Sir Keir Starmer said the BBC had questions to answer over its live broadcast of the group’s performance on Saturday.

A BBC spokesperson previously said some of the comments were “deeply offensive”, adding it had issued a warning on screen about “very strong and discriminatory language”. The set will not be available on BBC iPlayer.

Sir Keir has also criticised Kneecap saying ahead of the festival that their appearance was not “appropriate”. The Irish-language rap group have previously described Israel’s military action in Gaza as a genocide.

He said: “There is no excuse for this kind of appalling hate speech.

“I said that Kneecap should not be given a platform and that goes for any other performers making threats or inciting violence.”

The prime minister is the latest in a string of cabinet ministers to denounce Bobby Vylan’s comments in the 24 hours since the group appeared at Glastonbury.

Directly after the set, a government spokesperson said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had pressed BBC boss Tim Davie for an urgent explanation of the broadcaster’s vetting process.

The government added that it welcomed the decision not to re-broadcast the performance on BBC iPlayer.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said it was “clear” the rapper was “inciting violence and hatred” and should be prosecuted.

In a post shared on X on Sunday, he also called on the police to “urgently investigate and prosecute the BBC” who he claimed “appear to have also broken the law”.

“Our national broadcaster should not be transmitting hateful material designed to incite violence and conflict,” he said.

The BBC has been asked for further comment.

Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme earlier, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Bob Vylan’s comments were “revolting”.

He said the “irony of that music festival is that Israelis were taken from a music festival, killed, raped and in some cases are still being held captive”.

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Glastonbury Festival has said Bob Vylan’s statements “very much crossed a line”.

A joint Instagram post from Glastonbury Festival and organiser Emily Eavis on Sunday said the event stood “against all forms of war and terrorism”, and that with almost 4,000 performances on site “there will inevitably be artists and speakers appearing on our stages whose views we do not share”.

“However, we are appalled by the statements made from the West Holts stage by Bob Vylan yesterday,” it continued.

“Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.”

Bob Vylan are an English punk duo based in London. Bobby Vylan serves as the singer and guitarist, while Bobbie Vylan is the drummer of the band. Both members use stage names to maintain their privacy and collectively refer to themselves as “the Bobs”.

Antisemitism campaigners said they will formally complain to the BBC over its “outrageous decision” to broadcast the act live.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism group said in a post on X that Glastonbury had “continued its headlong descent into a pit of extremism and hatred, but it is the behaviour of the BBC that is even more dangerous”.

It said it would formally complain to the BBC for broadcasting the performance, as well as that of Kneecap.

The BBC did not run a live broadcast of Kneecap’s set due to editorial concerns around impartiality, but on Sunday announced the set had been made available on iPlayer, with some edits.

It said the content had been edited to ensure it “falls within the limits of artistic expression in line with our editorial guidelines” and any strong language had been signposted with “appropriate warnings”.

Kneecap has made headlines in recent months after rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara, was charged with a terrorism offence.

He is accused of displaying the flag of proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a gig last year. He has denied the charge.

Following sets from both groups, Avon and Somerset Police said it would review footage of comments made by acts on the West Holts Stage.

The force said footage “will be assessed by officers to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation”.

Kneecap’s highly-charged performance on Saturday was watched by thousands as they hit back at Sir Keir with expletive-laden chants.

Mr Ó hAnnaidh continues to be on bail and will appear at court for the next hearing on 20 August.

Separately on Sunday, the Met Police said it will not pursue prosecution after videos emerged in April appearing to show Kneecap calling for the death of British MPs.

“A range of offences were considered as part of the investigation. However, given the time elapsed between the events in the video and the video being brought to police attention, any potential summary only offences were beyond the statutory time limit for prosecution,” the force said.