At least 20 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike that hit a popular seafront cafe frequently used by activists, journalists, and local residents in western Gaza on Monday, according to medics and eyewitnesses.

Rescue teams evacuated 20 bodies and dozens wounded from Al-Baqa Cafeteria, an outdoor venue which consisted of tents along the beach, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence told the BBC.

He added that emergency crews were still searching through a deep crater left by the explosion.

“I was on my way to the café to use the internet just a few meters away when a massive explosion hit,” said Aziz Al-Afifi, a cameraman with a local production company, told the BBC.

“I ran to the scene. My colleagues were there, people I meet every day. The scene was horrific – bodies, blood, screaming everywhere.”

Videos posted by activists on social media appeared to show the moment a missile, reportedly fired from an Israeli warplane, struck the area. Footage captured the aftermath of the attack, with bodies scattered across the ground.

Al-Baqa Cafeteria had become a well-known space for journalists, activists, and remote workers, offering internet access, seating, and workspace along Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

The attack came after Israel carried out a wave of air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight, triggering the mass displacement of hundreds of Palestinian families, witnesses said.

Rescue teams recovered the bodies of five people, while dozens of injured civilians were evacuated to Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, according to local reports.

The bombardment follows one of the largest evacuation orders issued since the war resumed in March.

It comes amid increasing pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refocus efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump said on social media that Netanyahu was working on negotiating a deal with Hamas “right now”. That came days after a senior Hamas official said mediators had intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.

A two-month ceasefire collapsed in March when Israel launched fresh strikes on Gaza. The ceasefire deal – which started on 19 January – was meant to have three stages, but did not make it past the first stage.

Israel followed this with a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings of starvation from global experts.

The partial easing saw the creation of the controversial US- and Israeli-backed aid group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Since GHF took over distribution operations, there have been almost daily incidents of killings and injuries of Palestinians seeking aid.

Eyewitnesses and medics have blamed Israel, though Israel has said it has only fired warning shots towards people it considered a threat.

Residents in Gaza City said dozens of Israeli air raids targeted densely populated eastern neighbourhoods, including Shujaiya, Tuffah, and Zeitoun.

Videos posted by activists on social media captured scenes of chaos and explosions illuminating the night sky, followed by flames and thick plumes of smoke rising above the skyline.

One of the strikes reportedly hit a school in Zeitoun that had been sheltering displaced families.

“Explosions never stopped… it felt like earthquakes,” Salah, 60, from Gaza City told Reuters news agency.

“In the news we hear a ceasefire is near, on the ground we see death and we hear explosions,” the father of five added.

The five fatalities reportedly occurred in a strike at the Al Shati camp, to the west of Gaza City.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had earlier ordered residents to leave large parts of northern Gaza, in anticipation of the attacks. Most of those displaced overnight moved westwards within Gaza City rather than to the southern region as instructed by the IDF.

“We had no choice but to leave everything behind,” said Abeer Talba, a mother of seven who fled Zeitoun with her family.

“We got phone calls recordings in Arabic telling us we were in a combat zone and must evacuate immediately.

“This is the seventh time we’ve been forced to flee,” she added. “We’re in the streets again, no food, no water. My children are starving. Death feels kinder than this.”

Amid the growing humanitarian crisis, fears are mounting that the evacuation orders and sustained air strikes are part of a broader Israeli plan to expand its ground offensive deeper into Gaza.

But there is also speculation in Israeli media that some generals are close to concluding that military operations in Gaza are near to being achieved.

That is also the view of many former army leaders who fear that the descent of the Gaza campaign into more attritional, guerilla-style warfare would lead to more deaths – of hostages, civilians and soldiers.

The Israeli prime minister’s next moves are being closely watched. While Benjamin Netanyahu’s instincts have always been to continue the war and defeat Hamas, he is coming under increasing pressure at home and abroad to pursue a new ceasefire agreement.

The Israeli military launched its bombardment of Gaza in response to the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 56,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A criminal investigation has been launched over performances by Bob Vylan and Kneecap at Glastonbury on Saturday, Avon and Somerset Police has said.

The force said it had appointed a senior detective to investigate whether comments made by either act amounted to a criminal offence after reviewing footage.

A statement added: “This has been recorded as a public order incident at this time while our enquiries are at an early stage.”

Speaking in Parliament on Monday after the announcement, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called the scenes broadcast “appalling and unacceptable”.

Police have not specified which part of Bob Vylan’s or Kneecap’s set would be subject to the criminal investigation.

It comes after the BBC said it should have cut away from a live broadcast of Bob Vylan’s performance, during which the band’s singer Pascal Robinson-Foster, who performs under the name Bobby Vylan, led a chant of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”.

Those comments drew criticism of both the English punk-rap duo and the BBC for its live coverage of their performance.

The corporation said it would “look at our guidance around live events so we can be sure teams are clear on when it is acceptable to keep output on air”, and labelled remarks made during the performance antisemitic.

Lisa Nandy told MPs that she immediately called the BBC’s director general after the set was broadcast.

She said outstanding questions remain, including why the feed “wasn’t immediately cut”, why it was broadcast live “given the concerns regarding other acts in the weeks preceding the festival” and what due diligence had been done ahead of deciding to put Bob Vylan on TV.

“When the rights and safety of people and communities are at risk, and when the national broadcaster fails to uphold its own standards, we will intervene,” she added, and said she will continue to speak to the BBC in the coming days.

Earlier, broadcast regulator Ofcom said the BBC “clearly has questions to answer” over its coverage, and the government questioned why the comments were aired live.

The organisers of Glastonbury have previously said they were “appalled” by the comments, which “crossed a line”.

On Sunday, Robinson-Foster responded to the controversy on Instagram, writing “I said what I said” and a statement in defence of political activism, without addressing his on-stage comments in more detail.

Since then, both members of Bob Vylan – who were due to embark on a tour of America later this year – have had their US visas revoked, it is understood.

US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote on X: “Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

In response, Bobby Vylan released a video statement on social media on Monday, where he said politicians should be “utterly ashamed” about where their “allegiances lie”.

“First it was Kneecap, now it’s us two,” he said.

“Regardless of how it was said, calling for an end to the slaughter of innocents is never wrong. To civilians of Israel, understand this anger is not directed at you, and don’t let your government persuade you that a call against an army is a call against the people.

“To Keir, Kemi and the rest of you, I’ll get you at a later date.”

Avon and Somerset Police also confirmed the criminal investigation would assess Kneecap’s Glastonbury performance.

The Irish-language rap band are known for making pro-Palestinian and political comments during their live performances and have attracted controversy in the past.

Band member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara, was charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly displaying the flag of proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a gig. He has denied the charge.

Although there was no live stream of Kneecap’s performance, the BBC later uploaded a largely unedited version of the set to its Glastonbury highlights page on BBC iPlayer.

An 82-year-old woman who was one of the 12 victims in an attack on a gathering in support of Israeli hostages has died from her injuries in Colorado, officials say.

Karen Diamond was severely injured after the suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, shouting “free Palestine” tossed Molotov cocktails at the group in what federal officials have called a “terrorist attack”.

The suspect told police after he was arrested that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people”, according to court documents.

Because of the death of one of the victims, prosecutors are now adding new first-degree murder charges in addition to multiple others faced by the suspect, who remains jailed.

Diamond was among the 20 or so people gathered on 1 June to participate in a Run for Their Lives gathering at Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado, to generate awareness for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

She died as a result of “the severe injuries that she suffered in the attack”, the district attorney’s office said.

“This horrific attack has now claimed the life of an innocent person who was beloved by her family and friends,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty said. “Our hearts are with the Diamond family during this incredibly difficult time.”

Officials say the suspect planned the attack for a year, watching videos on how to make Molotov cocktails before driving from his home in Colorado Springs to Boulder to carry out the attack.

The suspect allegedly posed as a gardener wearing a construction vest to get close to the group ahead of the attack, prosecutors say.

Near the scene of the crime, officials say they found 16 unlit Molotov cocktails in a plastic container within arm’s reach, as well as a weed sprayer filled with petrol.

Last week, Mr Soliman was indicted on 12 federal hate crime counts. He also faces at least 100 state criminal charges, including attempted murder.

Mr Soliman’s attorney, David Kraut, entered a not guilty plea on his behalf last week for the hate crime charges.

Federal authorities say Mr Soliman, an Egyptian national, has been living in the US illegally with his family.

Days after the attack his wife and five children were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

Data from the Anti-Defamation League suggests antisemitic incidents spiked to a record level in 2023 and again in 2024.

Police sources have identified 20-year-old Wess Roley as the suspect in the sniper attack on firefighters in Idaho, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

Two firefighters were killed and a third injured on Sunday after a gunman shot at them as they arrived at a blaze at Canfield Mountain, just north of Coeur d’Alene.

Authorities believe Roley deliberately lit the fire to lure first responders to the area.

A police tactical team later “located a deceased male” – believed to be the shooter – close to where the attack took place. Authorities are yet to comment on a motive, or reveal how Roley died.

Roley moved from Arizona to Idaho in 2023 to work for his father’s tree lopping company, his mother said in a social media post.

In an update shared in October 2024, his mother wrote that he was “doing great living in Idaho.”

Police believe Roley was responsible for the fire. “This was a total ambush. These firefighters did not have a chance,” Sheriff Bob Norris told a new conference.

“We did lose a Coeur d’Alene firefighter, and we did lose a firefighter from the Kootenai County Fire and Rescue.”

A third was “fighting for his life, but is in stable condition”, he said.

The first report of a fire in the mountainside community was made around 13:21 PST (21:21 BST), which was followed 40 minutes later by reports firefighters were being shot at, Norris said.

The fire grew to 20 acres after it was first reported and continued to burn into Sunday night, Norris said.

More than 300 law enforcement officers from city, county, state and federal authorities to the shooting, including two helicopters with snipers on board.

Norris said the suspect used a high-powered sporting rifle to fire rapidly at first responders, with officers initially unsure of the number of perpetrators involved.

After an hours-long barrage of gunfire, the suspect was found using mobile phone data.

It was unclear whether he took his own life or had been hit by an officer, Norris said.

A record number of heat alerts are in place across France as the country, and other parts of southern and eastern Europe, remain in the grip of soaring temperatures.

Sixteen French regions, including Paris, have been placed on red alert for Tuesday, the country’s highest, while 68 others are on orange alert.

On Monday, 84 of 96 mainland regions were under an orange alert, which France’s Climate Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher called an “unprecedented” situation.

Heat warnings are also in place for parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the UK and Balkan countries including Croatia.

Both Spain and Portugal had their hottest June days on record at the weekend.

El Granado in Andalucía saw a temperature of 46C on Saturday, while 46.6C was recorded in the town of Mora in central Portugal on Sunday.

Many countries have emergency medical services on standby and have warned people to stay inside as much as possible.

Nearly 200 schools across France have been closed or partially closed as a result of the heatwave, which has gripped parts of Europe for more than a week now but is expected to peak mid-week.

France’s red alert will come into effect at 12:00 local time on Tuesday.

Several forest fires broke out in the southern Corbières mountain range on Sunday, leading to evacuations and the closure of a motorway. The fires have since been contained, officials told French media.

• Top tips on how to sleep in the heat

Meanwhile, 21 Italian cities are also on the highest alert, including Rome, Milan and Venice, as is Sardinia.

Mario Guarino, vice-president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine, told AFP news agency that hospital emergency departments across the country had reported a 10% increase in heatstroke cases.

Parts of the UK were just shy of being one of the hottest June days ever on Monday.

The highest UK temperature of the day was recorded at Heathrow Airport in London at 33.1C. Meanwhile, Wimbledon recorded a temperature of 32.9C, the tennis tournament’s hottest opening day on record.

Meanwhile, heat alerts across Spain, which is on course to record its hottest June on record, remained in place.

“I can’t sleep well and have insomnia. I also get heat strokes, I stop eating and I just can’t focus,” Anabel Sanchez, 21, told Reuters news agency in Seville.

It is a similar situation in Portugal, where seven districts, including the capital, Lisbon, are on the highest alert level.

In Germany, the country’s meteorological service warned that temperatures could reach almost 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday – further potentially record-breaking temperatures.

The heatwave lowered levels in the Rhine River – a major shipping route – limiting the amount cargo ships can transport and raising freighting costs.

Countries in and around the Balkans have also been struggling with the intense heat, although temperatures have begun to cool.

In Turkey, rescuers evacuated more than 50,000 people – mostly from the resort city of Izmir in the country’s west – as firefighters continued to put out hundreds of wildfires that had broken out in recent days.

The fires were fuelled by winds of 120km/h (75 mph) and destroyed at least 20 homes.

Wildfires also broke out in Croatia, where red heat warnings are in place for coastal areas. An extreme temperature alert was issued for neighbouring Montenegro.

Temperatures in Greece have been approaching 40C for several days and coastal towns near the capital Athens last week erupted in flames that destroyed homes – forcing people to evacuate.

On Wednesday, Serbia reported its hottest day since records began, and the meteorological service warned on Monday that “severe and extreme drought conditions prevail” in much of the country.

A record 38.8C was recorded in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Thursday. In Slovenia, the hottest-ever June temperature was recorded on Saturday.

The temperature in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, reached 42C on Friday – and are expected to continue in that range.

While the heatwave is a potential health issue, it is also impacting the environment. Higher temperatures in the Adriatic Sea are encouraging invasive species such as the poisonous lionfish, while also causing further stress on alpine glaciers that are already shrinking at record rates.

The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, warned on Monday that the heatwave highlighted the need for climate adaptation – moving away from practices and energy sources, such as fossil fuels, which are the main cause of climate change.

“Rising temperatures, rising seas, floods, droughts, and wildfires threaten our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and much more,” he told the UN’s Human Rights Council.

Heatwaves are becoming more common due to human-caused climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Extreme hot weather will happen more often – and become even more intense – as the planet continues to warm, it has said.

Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading in the UK, explained that rising greenhouse gas levels are making it harder for the planet to lose excess heat.

“The warmer, thirstier atmosphere is more effective at drying soils, meaning heatwaves are intensifying, with moderate heat events now becoming extreme.”

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

“Your brother is a hero.”

This is what Emad was told after finding out his brother had been killed in a suicide explosion at a church in the Syrian capital of Damascus.

His brother, Milad, and two others had tried to push the suicide attacker out of the church building. He was killed instantly – alongside 24 other members of the congregation.

Another 60 people were injured in the attack at Greek Orthodox Church of the Prophet Elias, in the eastern Damascus suburb of Dweila on 22 June.

It was the first such attack in Damascus since Islamist-led rebel forces overthrew Bashar al- Assad in December, ending 13 years of devastating civil war.

It was also the first targeting of the Christian community in Syria since a massacre in 1860, when a conflict broke out between Druze and Maronite Christians under Ottoman rule.

The Syrian authorities blamed the attack on the Islamic State (IS) group. However, a lesser- known Sunni extremist group, Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, has said it was behind the attack – though government officials say they do not operate independently of IS.

Milad had been attending a Sunday evening service at the church, when a man opened fire on the congregation before detonating his explosive vest.

Emad heard the explosion from his house and for hours was unable to reach his brother.

“I went to the hospital to see him. I couldn’t recognise him. Half of his face was burnt,” Emad told me, speaking from his small two bedroom-home which he shares with several other relatives.

Emad is a tall, thin man in his 40s with an angular face that bears the lines of a hard life. He, like his brother, had been working as a cleaner in a school in the poor neighbourhood, which is home to many lower to middle class and predominantly Christian families.

During Bashar al-Assad’s rule, members of Syria’s many religious and ethnic minority communities believed the state protected them. Now, many fear the new Islamist-led government, established by the rebels who overthrew him last December, will not do the same.

While interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and his government have pledged to protect all citizens, recent deadly sectarian violence in Alawite coastal areas and then in Druze communities around Damascus have made people doubt its ability to control the situation.

Many of Emad’s family members echoed this sentiment, saying: “We are not safe here anymore.”

Angie Awabde, 23, was just two months away from graduating university when she got caught up in the church attack.

She heard the gunshots before the blast.

“It all happened in seconds,” she told me, speaking from her hospital bed as she recovers from shrapnel wounds to her face, hand and leg, as well as a broken leg.

Angie is frightened and feels there is no future for Christians in Syria.

“I just want to leave this country. I lived through the crisis, the war, the mortars. I never expected that something would happen to me inside a church,” she said.

“I don’t have a solution. They need to find a solution, this is not my job, if they can’t protect us, we want to leave.”

Before the 13-year civil war, Christians made up about 10% of the 22 million population in Syria – but their numbers have shrunk significantly since then with hundreds of thousands fleeing abroad.

Churches were among the buildings bombed by the Syrian government and allied Russian forces during the war – but not while worshippers were inside.

Thousands of Christians were also forced from their homes due to the threat from hardline Islamist and jihadist groups, such as IS.

Outside the hospital where Angie is being treated, coffins of some of the victims of the church attack were lined up, ready for burial.

People from all walks of life, and representing different parts of Syrian society, attended the service at a nearby church, which took place under a heavy security presence.

In a sermon at the service, the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in Syria, John Yazigi, insisted “the government bears responsibility in full”.

He said a phone call from President Ahmed al-Sharaa expressing his condolences was “not enough for us”, drawing applause from the congregation.

“We are grateful for the phone call. But the crime that took place is a little bigger than that.”

Sharaa last week promised that those involved in the “heinous” attack would face justice.

A day after the bombing, two of the suspects were killed and six others arrested in a security operation on an IS cell in Damascus.

But this has done little to allay fears here about the security situation, especially for religious minorities.

Syria has also seen a crack down on social freedoms, including decrees on how women should dress at beaches, attacks on men wearing shorts in public and bars and restaurants closing for serving alcohol.

Many here fear that these are not just random cases but signs of a wider plan to change Syrian society.

Archimandrite Meletius Shattahi, director-general of the charitable arm of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, feels the government is not doing enough.

He refers to videos circulating online showing armed religious preachers advocating for Islam over loud speakers in Christian neighbourhoods, saying these are not “individual incidents”.

“These are taking place in public in front of everybody, and we know very well that our government is not taking any action against [those] who are breaching the laws and the rules.”

This alleged inaction, he says, is what led to the attack at the Church of the Prophet Elias.

The UK’s High Court has rejected a case brought by campaigners trying to stop the transfer to Israel of all British-made spare parts for US-produced F-35 fighter jets, saying it didn’t have the constitutional authority to intervene.

The government suspended about 30 arms export licences to Israel last September because of a risk of UK-made weapons being used in violations of international law in the Gaza Strip.

But the UK supplies components to a global pool of F-35s which Israel can access. The government had argued it could not pull out of the defence programme without endangering international peace.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch expressed their dismay at the ruling.

Both groups had intervened in the case.

“The horrifying reality in Gaza is unfolding in full view of the world: entire families obliterated, civilians killed in so-called safe zones, hospitals reduced to rubble, and a population driven into starvation by a cruel blockade and forced displacement,” said Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK.

“This judgment does not change the facts on the ground, nor does it absolve the UK government of its responsibilities under international law.”

The two judges said the case was not about whether the UK should supply arms and other military equipment to Israel – because the government had decided it should not.

They were being asked to decide on a particular issue: whether the UK “must withdraw from a specific multilateral defence collaboration” because of the prospect that some UK-manufactured parts may be supplied to Israel and used in contravention of international law in the conflict in Gaza.

“Under our constitution, that acutely sensitive and political issue is a matter for the executive which is democratically accountable to parliament and ultimately to the electorate, not for the courts,” they ruled.

UK industry makes 15% of every F-35, according to the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.

Oxfam, which provided evidence to the court, said: “It is unconscionable that the government would continue to license the sale of components for F-35 jets knowing that they are used to deliberately attack civilians in Gaza and destroy their means of survival, including vital water supplies.”

The case was brought by al-Haq, a group based in the Israel-occupied West Bank, and the Global Legal Action Network against the Department for Business and Trade.

The court said that Business Minister Jonathan Reynolds was “faced with the blunt choice of accepting the F-35 carve out or withdrawing from the F-35 programme and accepting all the defence and diplomatic consequences which would ensue”.

The government also argued pulling out of the defence programme could undermine US confidence in the UK and Nato.

But human rights groups argue that the global rule of law is under threat over Gaza.

“The atrocities we are witnessing in Gaza are precisely because governments don’t think the rules should apply to them,” said Yasmine Ahmed, UK director of Human Rights Watch.

“Judicial deference to the executive in this case has left the Palestinians in Gaza without access to the protections of international law, despite the government and the court acknowledging that there is a serious risk that UK equipment might be used to facilitate or carry out atrocities against them.”

The government says it will continue to keep its defence export licensing under review.

“The court has upheld this government’s thorough and lawful decision-making on this matter,” a spokesman said.

Lawyers for the human rights groups are considering if they can find grounds to appeal.

The Trump administration says that Harvard University violated civil-rights laws over its treatment of Israeli and Jewish students, potentially further endangering its federal funding.

In a letter sent to Harvard, the administration accused the university of deliberate indifference towards the concerns of Jewish students who felt threatened on campus.

The move is the latest in a series of legal and financial battles between Harvard and the White House – the stakes of which have dramatically escalated over the last few months.

Harvard says it has made “significant strides” to combat discrimination and “strongly disagrees” with the government’s findings.

The letter – viewed by the BBC – says that “failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources” for Harvard.

“Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again,” says the letter addressed to Harvard University President Alan Gerber.

According to the letter, federal investigators found that a “majority” of Jewish students reported discrimination or bias against them, with one quarter having felt physically threatened.

Among the behaviours detailed in the letter are Jewish students being spat upon or assaulted, and images being widely circulated depicting a dollar sign in the Star of David and antisemitic stickers being distributed, including one showing an Israel flag with a swastika in place of the Star of David.

“Harvard’s inaction in the face of these civil rights violations is a clear example of the demographic hierarchy that has taken hold of the university,” the letter adds. “Harvard’s commitment to racial hierarchies—where individuals are sorted and judged according to their membership in an oppressed group identity and not individual merit—has enabled anti-Semitism to fester.”

The letter is what is known as a “notice of violation” that often precedes a lawsuit or a voluntary resolution if corrective measures are taken.

In a statement, Harvard said that it had taken “substantive, proactive steps” to combat antisemitism on campus, and had made “significant strides to combat bigotry, hate and bias”.

“We are not alone in confronting this challenge and recognise that this work is ongoing,” the statement added.

Speaking at the White House on Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that negotiations between the administration and Harvard are taking place “behind closed doors”, without elaborating.

Leavitt added that incidents of antisemitism on campus are “facts that Harvard cannot dispute”.

In April, Harvard released the findings of an internal investigation which found that the university was deeply polarised by the ongoing war in Gaza, with students on both sides feeling unsafe.

In a message from Mr Garber which accompanied the report, the university president apologised for “moments in which we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community”.

The university has also taken a number of steps to address the issue, including facilitating dialogue problems, expanding non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies and enhancing antisemitism training.

The letter is the latest in a series of clashes between Harvard and the Trump administration, which has ramped up its crackdown on universities it claims have failed to tackle antisemitism amid protests against the war in Gaza.

Earlier, in May, the administration directed US federal agencies to review Harvard University’s grants to potentially end or redistribute funding. The administration estimated about 30 contracts, collectively worth $100m (£74m), could be reviewed.

It already had frozen $2.65bn in federal grants and tried to revoke Harvard’s ability to enrol international students.

The Trump administration also issued Columbia University a similar notice last month accusing it of violation of civil-rights law for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from harassment. Columbia is also negotiating with the administration over its federal funding and autonomy.

A street vendor shot in the head by police during protests two weeks ago has died a day after being declared brain-dead in hospital, his family says.

“Boniface is no more. We have just viewed his body,” family spokeswoman Emily Wanjira told the BBC.

Boniface Kariuki was shot as police cracked down on a protest in the capital Nairobi against the death in detention of blogger and teacher Albert Ojwang, 31.

Kariuki, a mask vendor, was shot at close range on 17 June, and later admitted to the main public referral hospital in Nairobi for treatment.

He spent nearly two weeks on a life-support machine, before his family were told by doctors that his heart was still beating but his brain had ceased to function.

Doctors had carried out several operations but some bullet fragments were reportedly still lodged in his brain.

News that he was brain dead had sparked further public anger over alleged police brutality, with increasing demands for justice.

Many Kenyans have also urged the government to settle the hospital bill after Mr Kariuki’s family had appealed for public donations.

Two police officers have appeared in court over his shooting, but have not yet been asked their pleas. They remain in custody pending the outcome of investigations.

On Sunday, Mr Kariuki’s family urged authorities to speed up investigations and ensure they get justice.

• Are East African governments uniting to silence dissent?
• Why the death of a blogger has put Kenya’s police on trial

Kenya has seen a wave of protests in recent weeks, fuelled by accusations of police brutality.

At least 19 people were killed last Wednesday, rights groups say, however the authorities have blamed the violence on protesters, saying they set out to attack police stations and officers.

On Monday, Director of Criminal Investigations Mohamed Amin told journalists that a total of 485 people have been arrested for a range of alleged offences, including murder, terrorism, rape, looting, destruction of property and attacks on police officers.

“No-one will hide behind peaceful protest to commit criminal acts,” Amin said. “We are analysing CCTV footage, mobile phone data, and digital communications to track those involved in the violence. More arrests will follow.

“Intelligence and arrest records reveal that some individuals had specific instructions to attack public institutions and security installations,” he added.

The DCI chief also said that at least 11 police officers were seriously injured during the protests – some with life-threatening wounds.

Kenya’s Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen last week described the protests as “terrorism disguised as dissent”.

He urged officers to “shoot on sight” civilians who attacked police stations, sparking further criticism from lawyers and rights groups.

In another related development, a Kenyan High Court ordered Police Insp Gen Douglas Kanja to produce missing blogger Ndiangui Kinyagia within 24 hours, or appear in court the next day to explain his whereabouts.

He was reportedly detained by security officers last week but has not been seen since.

• BBC identifies security forces who shot Kenya anti-tax protesters
• Why Kenya’s president has so many nicknames
• Four Kenyan police officers charged over baby’s killing as others freed
• New faces of protest – Kenya’s Gen Z anti-tax revolutionaries

The US Senate has begun voting on a massive spending plan, dubbed the “big beautiful bill”, on Monday after weeks of contentious negotiations.

Republicans – who control both chambers of Congress – were divided over how much to cut welfare programmes in order to extend tax breaks.

President Donald Trump wants Congress to pass the bill by 4 July.

After the House of Representatives passed its version of the bill last month by a single vote, the legislation went to the Senate. Because of the changes made by the Senate, the bill will go back to the House for another vote.

Senators zipped through the halls of the Capitol building on Monday, making their way to the Senate floor for various amendment votes, then back to their private meeting rooms where they hashed out grievances outside the view of reporters.

There could be up to 20 hours of debate when senators argue for or against adding amendments to the nearly 1,000-page bill in a process called “vote-a-rama”.

“We’re still obviously perfecting a few things,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Monday.

An amendment to the proposal for Medicaid cuts recently proposed by Florida Senator Rick Scott could cause roughly 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage, according to one estimate.

When asked about the report, Thune said there are “lots of analyses out there”.

“The thing that (Scott’s) bill doesn’t do is it doesn’t take effect until 2031. So I’m not sure how you can make the argument that it’s going to kick any people off of health insurance tomorrow,” Thune said.

Democrats, who have repeatedly denounced the bill, particularly for cutting health care coverage for millions of poorer Americans, are expected to use all ten of their allotted hours of debate, while Republicans likely will not.

Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, called the bill “terrible”.

He told the BBC he was unsure if Senate Republicans would meet Trump’s 4 July deadline, adding that, even if they did, “who knows what happens in the House”.

Speaking at the White House on Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump is “confident” the bill would be passed and still expects it on his desk by his self-imposed deadline.

Democratic Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania appeared frustrated on Monday afternoon, after no signs of a final draft of the bill emerged.

“Oh, my God, I just want to go home,” he said, adding that the extended negotiations and voting rounds have caused him to miss his “entire trip to the beach”.

“I don’t think it’s really helpful to put people here till some ungodly hour,” he said.

On Sunday, Democrats used a political manoeuvre to stall the bill’s progress, calling on Senate clerks to read all 940 pages of the bill out loud, a process that took 16 hours.

The move followed weeks of public discussion and the Senate narrowly moving to open debate on the budget bill in a 51-49 vote over the weekend.

Two Republicans and all Democrats voted against opening debate, arguing for further changes to the legislation.

One of those Republicans, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, announced his retirement following that vote and argued the legislation broke promises that Trump and Republicans made to voters.

“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 in his announcement.

The White House reacted angrily to Tillis’ comments on Monday, with Leavitt telling reporters that the senator is “just wrong” and that “the President and the vast majority of Republicans who are supportive of this legislation are right”.

The other Republican who voted against moving the bill was Kentucky Senator Rand Paul who objected to debt increases, and cuts to Medicaid, a healthcare programme that is relied on by millions of elderly, disabled and low-income Americans.

On Monday, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan sought to quell concerns about cuts to Medicaid, saying “we’re going to be fine in this”.

• A look at the key items in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
• The woman who could bust Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill

When the bill comes up for a full Senate vote – expected either late on Monday night or early Tuesday morning – Republicans can only afford three defections in order for the bill to pass.

If they lose three votes, Vice President JD Vance will have to cast a tie-breaking vote.

The bill will then return to the House of Representatives, where leadership has advised a full vote on the Senate’s bill could come as early as Wednesday morning.

While Republicans control the House, they can also only lose a handful of votes. There are frustrations with the Senate version of the bill among some Republicans in the House, which could make for another close vote.

Democrats in both chambers have largely objected to the spending cuts and the proposed extension of tax breaks.

Meanwhile, Republican debate has focused on how much to cut welfare programmes in order to extend $3.8tn (£2.8tn) in Trump tax breaks. The proposed cuts could strip millions of America’s poorest of health insurance.

The version of the bill senators will soon vote on contains 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.

The bill also authorises $5 trillion in new borrowing which will add to a growing US debt load – a move that goes against what many conservatives have argued for and infuriated one-time Trump confidant Elon Musk earlier this summer.

The Senate version of the bill will add $3.3tn (£2.4tn) in debt, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency.

The national debt currently sits at $36 trillion, according to the treasury department.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has urged Congress to address the debt limit by mid-July and warned that if they do not, the US could be unable to pay its bills as early as August.

Thirty-two people have been arrested in an operation targeting one of the main criminal organisations responsible for fuel theft in central Mexico, authorities said.

The gang stole fuel by drilling into pipelines and then storing it in warehouses, according to the security and civilian protection secretary.

Omar García Harfuch said gang members would then sell the fuel illegally across Mexico City and the states of Hidalgo and Querétaro.

In a press conference on Sunday, García Harfuch said some gang members had also forged documents and maintained connections with local authorities to facilitate operations.

He identified suspects Cirio Sergio “N” and Luis Miguel “N” as two of the main alleged leaders of the criminal organisation tasked with coordinating the extraction and distribution of the fuel.

Another man, named as Aurelio N, was identified as a leading “logistic and financial operator of the criminal cell,” García Harfuch alleged.

The operation was the result of six months of investigative work to identify and locate gang members, authorities said.

García Harfuch also said 12 properties that served as the gang’s operation centres were seized, alongside nearly 50 vehicles, 36 firearms and 16 million pesos (£619,464) in cash.

Various animals and exotic species – including a lion cub, a jaguar cub and two spider monkeys – were also found at the properties.

In an update on X on Sunday evening, he said “these animals were in risky conditions” and were now being taken care of by the federal attorney for environmental protection’s office.

Ipswich punk-rap duo Bob Vylan grabbed the headlines at Glastonbury Festival over the weekend, but for many readers, the name might be a new one.

Organisers of the festival said they were “appalled” after frontman Bobby Vylan led a crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”.

The prime minister condemned them for using what he called “appalling hate speech”. And on Monday, Avon and Somerset Police said a criminal investigation has been launched over performances by the band and Irish outfit Kneecap.

The BBC said it should have cut away from the live broadcast of Bob Vylan’s performance and a spokesperson for media watchdog Ofcom said: “We are very concerned about the live stream of this performance, and the BBC clearly has questions to answer.”

Posting on Instagram on Sunday evening, Bobby – real name Pascal Robinson-Foster – appeared to stand by his on-stage comments, with the caption: “I said what I said.” He told fans he had been “inundated” with messages of both “support and hatred” and also called for “a change in foreign policy”.

The provocative band were formed in Suffolk in 2017 by the singer, guitarist and poet alongside drummer Bobbie Vylan.

Collectively known as “the Bobs”, they perform under their stage names.

The pair blend elements of punk rock and UK grime/hip-hop, drawing influence from the likes of the Sex Pistols, Dizzee Rascal and Stormzy as well as reggae dancehall, reflecting Robinson-Foster’s Jamaican heritage.

Their lyrics tackle themes around racism, police violence, capitalism and fatherhood; as well as the ills of homophobia and toxic masculinity.

After a string of early singles, they released their debut album, We Live Here, in 2020.

They then went on to tour with the likes of the Offspring, the Hives and Biffy Clyro and performed at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in 2021.

Their second (of five) studio albums, Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life, entered the UK album chart at number 18, winning the Kerrang! magazine award for best album in 2022.

The same year, they bagged the inaugural award for best alternative music act at the Mobo Awards.

Robinson-Foster, 34, initially started writing verse as a teenager around 2004, becoming an established performance poet under the name Nee Hi, as well as being part of a grime outfit called Ear 2 da Street.

He was invited to perform at the Black and Asian Police Association conference in Manchester in 2005, and served as a mentor for young people in his home town Ipswich.

He once said in an interview with Tribune magazine that he started the band Bob Vylan in a bid to “wind people up”, score some victories and alleviate boredom.

Speaking to the BBC’s Newsbeat at the Download Festival in 2023, the stage-diving provocateur explained their high-energy and highly politicised approach to music.

“I suppose it’s a life of experience under certain power structures that have kept us at a certain place within the hierarchy of this country,” he explained.

“When I’m recounting those lyrics, it can be quite cathartic to play these songs in front of crowds of people, and tell them about my experience.

“It’s also a very, I suppose at certain points, emotional experience and emotional ride talking about these things in front of a crowd of people.”

He added: “You’re vulnerable… we put ourselves up there and we we talk about our life and the lives of people living in our communities, and people are free to enjoy it but they’re also free to disagree with it and they’re also free to heckle us or throw something at us or whatever it might be.

“So it’s quite a vulnerable position to be in, but you just have to have trust.”

In the past he has appeared to take aim at members of the crowd, verbally, and also swung a baseball bat on stage; as well as wearing football shirts of the rivals of the town or city in which they were playing.

The band previously performed at Glastonbury in 2022 for the BBC, playing a rendition of their track Wicked and Bad, which denigrates former UK PM Margaret Thatcher and includes the line “eat the rich”.

During their Glastonbury set this year, the rapper – whose band have also played Coachella and collaborated with Amyl And The Sniffers singer Amy Taylor, Soft Play guitarist Laurie Vincent and rock band Kid Kapichi – brought out his daughter to sing with him on the track Dream Bigger.

The performance took place on the West Holts stage on Saturday afternoon, just ahead of another controversial rap group, Kneecap.

Although there was no live stream of Kneecap’s performance, the BBC later uploaded a largely unedited version of the set to its Glastonbury highlights page on BBC iPlayer.

The Irish-language act recently lost their US visa sponsor. Bob Vylan were set to tour the US later this year but US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has now confirmed that the band will have their visas revoked.

Just like Kneecap, Bob Vylan’s name isn’t going away any time soon.

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.”

“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 became 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.”

Sergei Tikhanovsky has barely spoken for more than five years.

All that time he was held in solitary confinement in a high security Belarusian prison for daring to stand up to a dictator.

Now the former opposition blogger is free, and words stream out of him so quickly that his thoughts sometimes struggle to keep up.

“The restriction on speaking was the hardest thing,” Sergei confided when we met in Vilnius very soon after his surprise release.

“When you can’t say or write anything, you can’t talk to anyone and you’re just trapped in a cell – that’s the toughest thing – not the restriction on movement.”

Sergei is now in enforced exile, freed along with 13 other political prisoners after a senior US delegation paid a rare visit to the authoritarian ruler of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.

When I ask about the reunion with his family, Sergei lifts a hand to his face and weeps.

His daughter was only four when he was arrested.

“She didn’t recognise me,” he manages eventually, after a long pause. “Then she threw herself into my arms and we hugged for a long time.”

Sergei’s transformation since his arrest is shocking.

Back in 2020 he was stocky and bearded. Now the face beneath his close-shaven head is gaunt. He says he’s lost almost 60kg (132 pounds) in jail, where he spent endless weeks in punishment cells.

“Physically I’m half the size and half the weight,” Sergei says. “But my spirit is not broken. Maybe it’s even stronger.”

“Before I’d only heard of the crimes of this regime, but now I’ve seen them first-hand and we have to fight that.”

Until last week, Sergei Tikhanovsky was one of the most prominent political prisoners in Belarus.

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election he developed a big YouTube following by filming candid interviews about people’s complaints and problems.

Then he tried to register to run himself, waving a giant slipper and calling on Belarusians to “Stop the Cockroach!”.

“I was using the chance to show that it’s impossible to win democratically in Belarus,” Sergei explains. “I wanted to show that the elections are fake, and they arrested me.”

When his wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, went on to run in his place she attracted huge crowds. After Lukashenko claimed another implausible victory, those crowds became a mass protest which soon became mass arrests.

In prison, Sergei was constantly singled out for ill treatment like the other high-profile figures – “the ones they think are most dangerous, or who they want to destroy”, as he puts it.

“For the last two-and-a-half years I was in total isolation. I didn’t get a single letter in almost three years. For almost three years they didn’t let me have any phone calls,” he says.

He wasn’t even allowed to see a priest.

“They’d say: you will die in prison. We are going to keep extending your time and you won’t get out.”

To make matters worse, Sergei was frequently sent to a punishment cell – for a mark on the wall or a stray cobweb.

“Those cells could be three-by-two metres, including a hole in the floor for a toilet,” he recalls. “No mattress, no sheet and no pillows.”

He would get up every hour through the night to keep warm with sets of squats and sit-ups, then lie on the wooden bunk until his arms and legs seized up, and he had to start the exercises all over again.

To cope, he had to empty his brain of all thoughts of family and friends.

“You have to put that to one side,” he says. “Because if you think about how they are and what’s happening to them, you won’t survive.”

It was last August when Sergei started to think he might be getting out.

That’s when the deputy prosecutor began touring prisons and “seriously recommending” that political detainees “write to the dictator and request his pardon” as Sergei puts it.

Lukashenko was suddenly keen on looking merciful and several dozen were released.

Sergei and the other big names, like Viktor Babaryka and Maria Kolesnikova, were never on any lists.

But he never entertained the idea of confessing, even to get back to his children.

“I am no criminal,” he explains. “So that would be a betrayal of all who support me.”

Then last week the United States stepped in.

When special envoy Keith Kellogg travelled to Minsk to intercede for American citizens in prison, he emerged with Sergei, too.

For Lukashenko, the meeting with Kellogg was a big win diplomatically.

He has been ostracised by Western countries since he suppressed the peaceful protests in 2020.

His active support for Russia in invading Ukraine has isolated him still further.

“Now Lukashenko could show some co-operation was starting, a dialogue with the US,” Sergei says, explaining what Lukashenko got for freeing some prisoners.

“That was the price: the start of contact with him. Because no-one had been engaging.”

Sergei wants nothing more than for all the other political prisoners to be released, too. There are more than 1,000 in total.

In tears, he describes meeting an “old man” recently who turned out to be a young friend, aged beyond recognition by prison.

“I’d give anything to get them all out,” Sergei says. “I think we should pay any price. But I don’t want them to drop all sanctions.”

Sergei’s wife, now the leader of the opposition, is overjoyed to have him back with her and their children. But Svetlana tells me she is wary of the next US move.

“We cannot soften the sanctions until repressions fully stop,” she argues. “For 14 people released, 28 more were detained immediately in Belarus. For Lukashenko, there is no change in policy.”

Sergei’s first week of freedom has passed in a whirl of activity. He has met politicians, made speeches and written to Donald Trump with his thanks. He has also been catching up on lost time with his children – as well as all the news he has missed in isolation.

But what about his ambitions? The last time he and Svetlana were together she was a housewife and he was the political one. So could there be tensions?

“I don’t have any claims to her role,” Sergei insists. “I don’t need that. I just need a democratic Belarus.”

A 92-year-old man has been found guilty of the rape and murder of a Bristol woman in a case that remained unsolved for nearly six decades.

Louisa Dunne, 75, was found strangled on her living room floor by a neighbour on Britannia Road in Easton, Bristol, on 28 June 1967.

Convicted rapist Ryland Headley, of Clarence Road in Ipswich, has now been found guilty of Mrs Dunne’s murder following a trial at Bristol Crown Court.

Senior investigating officer Det Insp Dave Marchant said Headley, who was in his 30s when he killed Mrs Dunne, had left “a legacy of misery and pain”.

Despite the efforts of police investigating Mrs Dunne’s death 58 years ago, no key suspect was identified.

Police collected about 19,000 prints from men and boys at the time with no success. They also made about 8,000 house-to-house inquiries and took 2,000 statements.

It was only when the case was re-examined by Avon and Somerset Police decades later that DNA testing of a swab that contained semen was linked to Headley.

Det Insp Marchant called him a “dangerous serial offender” with a “shocking and abhorrent history” and said there was a sense of “gravity” when police were told of the positive result.

“This is a marrying of old school and new school policing techniques,” he said.

Det Insp Marchant added it was believed to be the oldest cold case solved in the UK.

Mrs Dunne had been twice widowed and lived alone, but was well-known in the local area.

Headley was accused of forcing entry into her home before sexually attacking her and then strangling her.

The night of her death, neighbours reported hearing a woman’s “frightening scream”.

Det Insp Marchant said a neighbour was first alerted to something unusual happening when the paper they left for Mrs Dunne was not taken in on the morning of 28 June 1967.

After Headley’s arrest, fingerprint experts compared his palm print to one collected from the rear window of Mrs Dunne’s home, which matched Headley’s.

He previously admitted breaking into the homes of two widows, aged 84 and 79, and raping them in Suffolk in October 1977, in crimes police described as “eerily similar”.

Trevor Mason, a Special Branch detective in Suffolk drafted in to assist in the 1977 cases, described Headley as “worse than an animal”.

Speaking to Channel 4 News, Mr Mason said what the women had suffered was “absolutely horrendous”, adding Headley’s victims were “obviously frail” and “didn’t stand a chance”.

Headley had denied both the rape and murder of Mrs Dunne after being charged in November 2024. He is set to be sentenced for both crimes on Tuesday.

The Israeli military has said it is examining reports of civilians being “harmed” while approaching aid distribution centres in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

Since GHF operations began in late May, following a three-month Israeli blockade on Gaza, there have been almost daily reports from medics, eyewitnesses and the Hamas-run health ministry of Israeli fire killing people seeking aid at these sites.

The UN says more than 400 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.

The Israeli military said on Monday instructions had been issued to forces after “lessons learned”, but did not specify what these lessons were.

The IDF has on numerous occasions said it has fired what it has described as “warning shots” on “suspects” approaching its troops.

Multiple Israeli media outlets, including the Times of Israel, reported on Monday that the IDF had acknowledged that some Palestinians had been killed while seeking aid, but that the IDF said Hamas’s casualty figures were inaccurate.

Israeli media reported that the military had admitted that in some cases “inaccurate” fire by Israeli forces had led to casualties and some deaths.

The BBC put these points to the IDF, which said in response that “reports of incidents of harm” were being “examined” and that “any allegation of a deviation from the law or IDF directives will be thoroughly examined and further action will be taken as necessary.”

It said it had no further comment regarding the claims made in Israeli media on Monday.

However it denied any allegations of deliberate fire at civilians, such as those raised in a report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday.

That report quoted unnamed IDF soldiers who said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians near aid distribution sites, to drive them away or disperse them.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly rejected the report, calling the allegations “malicious falsehoods”.

The GHF aid system has been condemned by UN agencies, and on Friday UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres branded it “inherently unsafe”. It is intended to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Palestinians. Israel and the US said the system would prevent aid being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies doing.

Within days of GHF operations starting in late May, dozens of Palestinians were killed in separate incidents on 1 and 3 June, sparking international condemnation.

On Friday GHF boss Johnnie Moore told the BBC he was not denying reports of deaths near aid sites, but said “100% of those casualties are being attributed to close proximity to GHF” and that was “not true”.

Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, to send journalists into Gaza.

In its statement on Monday, the IDF said it was reorganising access to the sites and this would include new “fencing” and signposting, including directional and warning signs. This was aimed at “improving the operational response in the area, minimising friction with the population, and ensuring that the aid reaches its intended recipients”, it said.

It also said it had decided to close an aid distribution centre in the Tel al-Sultan area near Rafah in southern Gaza to establish a new one nearby.

Last week the US State Department announced $30m (£22m) in funding for the GHF, which is its first known direct contribution to the group.

Israel partially eased its three-month blockade of Gaza following pressure from US allies and warnings from global experts that half a million people were facing starvation.

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

More than 56,500 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Civic rights groups say at least seven people have been killed during a crackdown on protesters who are calling for Togo’s leader, Faure Gnassingbé, to step down and release political prisoners.

Seven bodies were recovered from rivers in the capital city Lomé, according to a coalition called Le Front Citoyen Togo Debout which accuses security forces and militias of committing abuses.

The Togolese government has denied these deaths were linked to last week’s demonstrations.

It is now threatening legal action against the protest organisers, calling the protests a “campaign of disinformation and hatred” that was orchestrated from abroad.

There is growing anger in Togo due to a crackdown on critical voices, and changes to the constitution labelled by labelled by critics and opposition figures as an “institutional coup d’état”.

These protests comes weeks after Gnassingbé – who was president for two decades and whose family has ruled the country for 58 years – was sworn into a new post of President of the Council of Ministers, which has no official term limits.

Demonstrations have been banned in the West African country since 2022, with the authorities citing “security reasons”.

Three days of demonstrations by online activists and youth-led movements began in Lomé on Thursday, before taking a violent turn on Friday and Saturday.

Tear gas was fired by anti-riot police at protesters, who pelted them with stones and other missiles.

Some determined anti-government protesters engaged security forces in street battles in several areas considered to be opposition strongholds, including Bè, where police chased demonstrators into their hideouts.

A coalition of 23 Togolese civil rights groups – known as the National Platform for Civic Space and Development Effectiveness – has since asked the authorities to carry out investigations into the bloody police repression.

They condemned what they described as “the use of disproportionate force against peaceful demonstrators”, adding that “peaceful protest is a fundamental right, recognized both by the Togolese Constitution and by international instruments ratified by our country”.

By Sunday calm had returned to most of Lomé, with shops reopened at the main central market at Assigamé and businesses operating as usual.

The recent change of regime orchestrated by the Togolese leader continues to fuel resentment. In addition to the new post which he can keep for life, constitutional reform in Togo has ended presidential elections, and introduced a parliamentary system.

Last month’s arrest and psychiatric detention of the Togolese rapper Narcisse Essowè Tchalla, also known as Aamron, acted as a catalyst for public outrage, culminating in over 50 arrests during protests earlier this month.

Though most have been released, at least three people remain in custody.

• New post for Togo leader could see him rule for life
• Kenya protests are ‘coup attempt’, says minister
• Disbelief as Nigeria urges prayer to end food shortages

Canada will rescind a tax on big US technology firms, just hours before first payments were due, to allow trade talks between the two countries to restart.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump called off negotiations over a trade deal, describing the tax as a “blatant attack”, and threatened higher tariffs on imports from Canada.

In response, Canada has said it will introduce legislation to remove the tax and would halt the collection of payments, which were due on Monday.

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told Fox News on Monday that negotiations between the North American neighbours would “absolutely” restart as a result.

The digital services tax (DST) would have meant US tech giants including Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple faced a 3% charge on Canadian revenue above $20m.

Canada’s finance minister, François-Philippe Champagne, issued a statement saying the tax would be rescinded.

“The DST was announced in 2020 to address the fact that many large technology companies operating in Canada may not otherwise pay tax on revenues generated from Canadians,” it said.

“Canada’s preference has always been a multilateral agreement related to digital services taxation,” the statement added.

Many countries, including the UK, are changing how they tax large multinational technology firms, which have millions of customers and advertisers around the world, but high corporation tax bills due to the way their businesses are structured.

It was estimated that Canada’s tax would cost the tech giants more than C$2bn ($1.5bn; £1.06bn) in its first year as the tax was being applied retroactively to January 2022.

• ‘In business, indecision is killer’ – Canadian firms seek certainty in tariff war

Last year’s federal budget estimated the tax would bring in C$5.9bn in total over the next five years.

Trump, who has forged a close relationship with tech company owners in his second term in office, has pushed back against such taxes.

He described Canada’s policy as “egregious” adding “economically we have such power over Canada”.

In a social media post on Monday, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick thanked Canada for removing the tax, saying it would have “been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America”.

Three quarters of Canada’s goods exports go to the US, worth more than $400bn a year, while Canada takes just 17% of US production.

In a statement, the American Chamber of Commerce hailed the move to rescind the tax.

“This is a constructive decision that allows both countries to focus on strengthening their economic partnership,” said chamber president Rick Tachuk.

Canada’s climbdown comes after a rollercoaster few months for US-Canada relations.

Shortly after taking office Trump threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs and even to annex the US’s northern neighbour.

The antagonism helped propel Canada’s Liberal Party, led by former central banker, Mark Carney, back into power.

Since then there appeared to be a rapprochement, with Canada and the US saying they aimed to agree new trade terms by 21 July.

Canada’s digital services tax has been a long-time irritant for the US dating back to the previous Biden administration.

Ottawa had received repeated warnings that it could undermine the trading relationship and lead to retaliation.

But earlier this month, Champagne said Canada would move ahead with collecting the scheduled payments from big tech companies regardless of ongoing talks with the US.

“It is hard to overstate how badly the government managed the DST issue over the past five years,” Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa who has written extensively on the policy, wrote on his blog on Monday.

He pointed to, among other factors, making the tax retroactive and downplaying bipartisan concerns from US lawmakers.

There has been Canadian opposition to the tax as well, with business groups warning costs will be passed along to consumers.

Italian luxury fashion label Prada has said it acknowledges the Indian roots of its new footwear line, days after the design sparked a controversy in India.

The sandals, showcased at the Milan Fashion Week last week, had an open-toe braided pattern that closely resembled the traditional Kolhapuri sandals made in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Prada described the sandals as “leather footwear” but did not mention its Indian origins, prompting backlash and allegations of cultural appropriation in India.

Responding to the controversy, Prada told the BBC in a statement that it recognises that the sandals are inspired by traditional Indian footwear.

A Prada spokesperson said that the company has “always celebrated craftsmanship, heritage and design traditions”, adding that it was “in contact with the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture on this topic”. This is a prominent industry trade body in the state.

Last week, its chief had written to the brand, saying the design was commercialised without crediting the artisans who have preserved its heritage for generations.

Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s head of Corporate Social Responsibility, responded to his letter saying that the sandals were “at an early stage of design”, according to Reuters.

He also said that Prada was open to a “dialogue for meaningful exchange with local Indian artisans” and the company would organise follow-up meetings to discuss this further.

Named after a city in Maharashtra where they are made, Kolhapuri sandals trace their roots back to the 12th Century.

Made from leather and sometimes dyed in natural colours, the traditional handcrafted sandals are sturdy and well-suited to India’s hot climate.

They were awarded the Geographical Indication (GI) status by the Indian government in 2019.

According to the World Trade Organisation, a geographical indication tag credits a good or product as having originated from a certain region or place, and is considered a mark of authenticity.

Following the controversy, many artisans in Kolhapur said they were saddened by Prada’s use of the design without giving due credit.

“These sandals are made with the hard work of leather workers in Kolhapur. They should be named after Kolhapur. Don’t take advantage of others’ labour,” Prabha Satpute, a Kolhapuri artisan, told BBC Marathi.

The sandals cost a few hundreds rupees in India but Prada’s reported premium pricing angered some, though the brand’s website does not mention the price tag. Most other sandals sold by the fashion house, retail at between £600 to £1,000 in the UK.

Industrialist Harsh Goenka highlighted this, saying the local artisans barely make any money for the same hand-made products. “They lose, while global brands cash in on our culture,” he said.

This is not the first time that global brands have been accused to appropriating Indian traditional products without crediting their roots.

At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Gucci described a sari worn by Bollywood star Alia Bhatt as a gown, sparking backlash.

Earlier in May, a popular TikTok trend was criticised for calling dupatta, a traditional South Asian scarf, a Scandinavian scarf.

In Kolhapur, however, some said the move had instilled a sense of pride in them.

“Artisans are happy that someone is recognising their work,” Kolhapur-based businessman Dileep More told Reuters.

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 said the Trump administration told Iran through mediators that it wanted to return to negotiations this week, but had not made its position clear on the “very important question” of further attacks while talks are taking place.

The US and Iran were involved in talks over Iran’s nuclear programme when Israel struck Iranian nuclear sites and military infrastructure earlier this month and Iran responded with missiles.

The US became directly involved in the conflict on 21 June when it bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites.

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

He said Iran had been “denied access to nuclear material” for its research programme so they 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, saying Tehran was close to building a nuclear weapon.

On Monday, Iran said that, based on the latest forensics data, 935 people had been killed by the Israeli strikes.

According to the latest data reported by Israel’s health ministry, 28 people have been killed in Israel since 13 June when Iran responded by attacking Israel.

On 21 June, the US became involved in the conflict, dropping bombs on three of Iran’s nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

The extent of the damage caused to Iran’s nuclear programme 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. The IAEA said it resumed enrichment at Fordo in 2021 and had reached about 60% enrichment – a short, technical step away from weapons grade, or 90% – to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.

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.”

More than 256,000 Afghans left Iran in June alone, marking a surge in returns to Afghanistan since Tehran set a hard deadline for repatriations, the UN’s migration agency has said.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded as many as 28,000 Afghans leaving Iran in a single day in June, after the Iranian regime ordered all undocumented Afghans to leave the country by 6 July.

The number of Afghan refugees in neighbouring Iran has swelled since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, many of whom live without legal status.

This has contributed to growing anti-Afghan sentiment in Iran, with refugees facing systemic discrimination.

The IOM said more than 700,000 Afghans had left Iran since January, with spokesperson Avand Azeez Agha telling news agency AFP that 70% had been “forcibly sent back”.

The surge in repatriations – and the deadline – have come since Iran and Israel engaged in direct conflict with one another, beginning with Israel attacking nuclear and military sites in mid-June. A ceasefire has since been brokered.

As the two exchanged daily strikes, the Iranian regime arrested several Afghan migrants it suspected of spying for Israel, state media reported.

Following these claims, a new wave of deportations began. The semi-official Iranian Mehr news agency reported that police had been directed to accelerate deportations, though the police later denied this.

“We’re scared to go anywhere because there’s always the fear they might accuse us of being spies,” one Afghan migrant in Iran, who we are not naming to protect their identity, told BBC Persian.

“At the checkpoints, they do body searches and check people’s phones. If they find any messages or videos from foreign media on social networks, it could literally put someone’s life in danger.

“Many Iranians insult us, saying things like: ‘you Afghans are spies’ or ‘you work for Israel’.”

Numerous reports in Iranian media indicate that even Afghans with valid visas and documentation have been forcibly deported. Some Afghans who were detained and later freed said they were accused by officials of betraying the country.

Arafat Jamal, the UN’s refugee co-ordinator for Afghanistan, said that while there was now a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, “the consequences of that war continue”.

“This movement pre-dates the war, but it has been exacerbated by it,” he told BBC Pashto.

“And what we hear from the returnees is a series of actions that have caused them to come back, some of them quite coercive, others not as much.”

Afghan refugees are not eligible for Iranian citizenship, even if they are born in the country, while many are unable to open bank accounts, buy SIM cards or live in certain areas. Employment opportunities are also heavily restricted, and are often limited to hard labour with low wages.

In this latest push to remove them, Iranian authorities have also urged the public to report undocumented Afghans.

“There are oppressors here, and there are oppressors there,” a second Afghan in Iran said. “We migrants have never been free, never lived a free life.”

Another said “the future for Afghans living in Iran looks really bleak”, adding: “The police are violent and humiliating, and now even the Basij [volunteer militia] have been tasked with arresting Afghans.”

The surge in repatriations comes after Pakistan accelerated its own drive to expel undocumented Afghans, saying it could no longer manage hosting them.

Mr Jamal said the number of refugees returning to Afghanistan from both Iran and Pakistan this year was in excess of one million.

While he thanked both nations for taking in millions of Afghans over the past few decades of instability, he urged them to seek a joint solution to the crisis.

The UN director said humanitarian provisions at the border had been “overwhelmed”, adding: “There is simply too many people coming back.”

Maulvi Abdul Salam Hanafi, deputy prime minister in the Taliban government, said on Saturday that talks with Iranian officials were under way over the issue.

The Taliban’s transport minister also said it was accelerating efforts to transport refugees from the border to their homes.

A record number of heat alerts are in place across France as the country, and other parts of southern and eastern Europe, remain in the grip of soaring temperatures.

Sixteen French regions, including Paris, have been placed on red alert for Tuesday, the country’s highest, while 68 others are on orange alert.

On Monday, 84 of 96 mainland regions were under an orange alert, which France’s Climate Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher called an “unprecedented” situation.

Heat warnings are also in place for parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the UK and Balkan countries including Croatia.

Both Spain and Portugal had their hottest June days on record at the weekend.

El Granado in Andalucía saw a temperature of 46C on Saturday, while 46.6C was recorded in the town of Mora in central Portugal on Sunday.

Many countries have emergency medical services on standby and have warned people to stay inside as much as possible.

Nearly 200 schools across France have been closed or partially closed as a result of the heatwave, which has gripped parts of Europe for more than a week now but is expected to peak mid-week.

France’s red alert will come into effect at 12:00 local time on Tuesday.

Several forest fires broke out in the southern Corbières mountain range on Sunday, leading to evacuations and the closure of a motorway. The fires have since been contained, officials told French media.

• Top tips on how to sleep in the heat

Meanwhile, 21 Italian cities are also on the highest alert, including Rome, Milan and Venice, as is Sardinia.

Mario Guarino, vice-president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine, told AFP news agency that hospital emergency departments across the country had reported a 10% increase in heatstroke cases.

Parts of the UK were just shy of being one of the hottest June days ever on Monday.

The highest UK temperature of the day was recorded at Heathrow Airport in London at 33.1C. Meanwhile, Wimbledon recorded a temperature of 32.9C, the tennis tournament’s hottest opening day on record.

Meanwhile, heat alerts across Spain, which is on course to record its hottest June on record, remained in place.

“I can’t sleep well and have insomnia. I also get heat strokes, I stop eating and I just can’t focus,” Anabel Sanchez, 21, told Reuters news agency in Seville.

It is a similar situation in Portugal, where seven districts, including the capital, Lisbon, are on the highest alert level.

In Germany, the country’s meteorological service warned that temperatures could reach almost 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday – further potentially record-breaking temperatures.

The heatwave lowered levels in the Rhine River – a major shipping route – limiting the amount cargo ships can transport and raising freighting costs.

Countries in and around the Balkans have also been struggling with the intense heat, although temperatures have begun to cool.

In Turkey, rescuers evacuated more than 50,000 people – mostly from the resort city of Izmir in the country’s west – as firefighters continued to put out hundreds of wildfires that had broken out in recent days.

The fires were fuelled by winds of 120km/h (75 mph) and destroyed at least 20 homes.

Wildfires also broke out in Croatia, where red heat warnings are in place for coastal areas. An extreme temperature alert was issued for neighbouring Montenegro.

Temperatures in Greece have been approaching 40C for several days and coastal towns near the capital Athens last week erupted in flames that destroyed homes – forcing people to evacuate.

On Wednesday, Serbia reported its hottest day since records began, and the meteorological service warned on Monday that “severe and extreme drought conditions prevail” in much of the country.

A record 38.8C was recorded in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Thursday. In Slovenia, the hottest-ever June temperature was recorded on Saturday.

The temperature in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, reached 42C on Friday – and are expected to continue in that range.

While the heatwave is a potential health issue, it is also impacting the environment. Higher temperatures in the Adriatic Sea are encouraging invasive species such as the poisonous lionfish, while also causing further stress on alpine glaciers that are already shrinking at record rates.

The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, warned on Monday that the heatwave highlighted the need for climate adaptation – moving away from practices and energy sources, such as fossil fuels, which are the main cause of climate change.

“Rising temperatures, rising seas, floods, droughts, and wildfires threaten our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and much more,” he told the UN’s Human Rights Council.

Heatwaves are becoming more common due to human-caused climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Extreme hot weather will happen more often – and become even more intense – as the planet continues to warm, it has said.

Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading in the UK, explained that rising greenhouse gas levels are making it harder for the planet to lose excess heat.

“The warmer, thirstier atmosphere is more effective at drying soils, meaning heatwaves are intensifying, with moderate heat events now becoming extreme.”

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

Police sources have identified 20-year-old Wess Roley as the suspect in the sniper attack on firefighters in Idaho, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

Two firefighters were killed and a third injured on Sunday after a gunman shot at them as they arrived at a blaze at Canfield Mountain, just north of Coeur d’Alene.

Authorities believe Roley deliberately lit the fire to lure first responders to the area.

A police tactical team later “located a deceased male” – believed to be the shooter – close to where the attack took place. Authorities are yet to comment on a motive, or reveal how Roley died.

Roley moved from Arizona to Idaho in 2023 to work for his father’s tree lopping company, his mother said in a social media post.

In an update shared in October 2024, his mother wrote that he was “doing great living in Idaho.”

Police believe Roley was responsible for the fire. “This was a total ambush. These firefighters did not have a chance,” Sheriff Bob Norris told a new conference.

“We did lose a Coeur d’Alene firefighter, and we did lose a firefighter from the Kootenai County Fire and Rescue.”

A third was “fighting for his life, but is in stable condition”, he said.

The first report of a fire in the mountainside community was made around 13:21 PST (21:21 BST), which was followed 40 minutes later by reports firefighters were being shot at, Norris said.

The fire grew to 20 acres after it was first reported and continued to burn into Sunday night, Norris said.

More than 300 law enforcement officers from city, county, state and federal authorities to the shooting, including two helicopters with snipers on board.

Norris said the suspect used a high-powered sporting rifle to fire rapidly at first responders, with officers initially unsure of the number of perpetrators involved.

After an hours-long barrage of gunfire, the suspect was found using mobile phone data.

It was unclear whether he took his own life or had been hit by an officer, Norris said.

A criminal investigation has been launched over performances by Bob Vylan and Kneecap at Glastonbury on Saturday, Avon and Somerset Police has said.

The force said it had appointed a senior detective to investigate whether comments made by either act amounted to a criminal offence after reviewing footage.

A statement added: “This has been recorded as a public order incident at this time while our enquiries are at an early stage.”

Speaking in Parliament on Monday after the announcement, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called the scenes broadcast “appalling and unacceptable”.

Police have not specified which part of Bob Vylan’s or Kneecap’s set would be subject to the criminal investigation.

It comes after the BBC said it should have cut away from a live broadcast of Bob Vylan’s performance, during which the band’s singer Pascal Robinson-Foster, who performs under the name Bobby Vylan, led a chant of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”.

Those comments drew criticism of both the English punk-rap duo and the BBC for its live coverage of their performance.

The corporation said it would “look at our guidance around live events so we can be sure teams are clear on when it is acceptable to keep output on air”, and labelled remarks made during the performance antisemitic.

Lisa Nandy told MPs that she immediately called the BBC’s director general after the set was broadcast.

She said outstanding questions remain, including why the feed “wasn’t immediately cut”, why it was broadcast live “given the concerns regarding other acts in the weeks preceding the festival” and what due diligence had been done ahead of deciding to put Bob Vylan on TV.

“When the rights and safety of people and communities are at risk, and when the national broadcaster fails to uphold its own standards, we will intervene,” she added, and said she will continue to speak to the BBC in the coming days.

Earlier, broadcast regulator Ofcom said the BBC “clearly has questions to answer” over its coverage, and the government questioned why the comments were aired live.

The organisers of Glastonbury have previously said they were “appalled” by the comments, which “crossed a line”.

On Sunday, Robinson-Foster responded to the controversy on Instagram, writing “I said what I said” and a statement in defence of political activism, without addressing his on-stage comments in more detail.

Since then, both members of Bob Vylan – who were due to embark on a tour of America later this year – have had their US visas revoked, it is understood.

US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau wrote on X: “Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

In response, Bobby Vylan released a video statement on social media on Monday, where he said politicians should be “utterly ashamed” about where their “allegiances lie”.

“First it was Kneecap, now it’s us two,” he said.

“Regardless of how it was said, calling for an end to the slaughter of innocents is never wrong. To civilians of Israel, understand this anger is not directed at you, and don’t let your government persuade you that a call against an army is a call against the people.

“To Keir, Kemi and the rest of you, I’ll get you at a later date.”

Avon and Somerset Police also confirmed the criminal investigation would assess Kneecap’s Glastonbury performance.

The Irish-language rap band are known for making pro-Palestinian and political comments during their live performances and have attracted controversy in the past.

Band member Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs under the name Mo Chara, was charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly displaying the flag of proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah at a gig. He has denied the charge.

Although there was no live stream of Kneecap’s performance, the BBC later uploaded a largely unedited version of the set to its Glastonbury highlights page on BBC iPlayer.

At least 20 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike that hit a popular seafront cafe frequently used by activists, journalists, and local residents in western Gaza on Monday, according to medics and eyewitnesses.

Rescue teams evacuated 20 bodies and dozens wounded from Al-Baqa Cafeteria, an outdoor venue which consisted of tents along the beach, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence told the BBC.

He added that emergency crews were still searching through a deep crater left by the explosion.

“I was on my way to the café to use the internet just a few meters away when a massive explosion hit,” said Aziz Al-Afifi, a cameraman with a local production company, told the BBC.

“I ran to the scene. My colleagues were there, people I meet every day. The scene was horrific – bodies, blood, screaming everywhere.”

Videos posted by activists on social media appeared to show the moment a missile, reportedly fired from an Israeli warplane, struck the area. Footage captured the aftermath of the attack, with bodies scattered across the ground.

Al-Baqa Cafeteria had become a well-known space for journalists, activists, and remote workers, offering internet access, seating, and workspace along Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

The attack came after Israel carried out a wave of air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight, triggering the mass displacement of hundreds of Palestinian families, witnesses said.

Rescue teams recovered the bodies of five people, while dozens of injured civilians were evacuated to Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, according to local reports.

The bombardment follows one of the largest evacuation orders issued since the war resumed in March.

It comes amid increasing pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refocus efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement.

On Saturday, US President Donald Trump said on social media that Netanyahu was working on negotiating a deal with Hamas “right now”. That came days after a senior Hamas official said mediators had intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.

A two-month ceasefire collapsed in March when Israel launched fresh strikes on Gaza. The ceasefire deal – which started on 19 January – was meant to have three stages, but did not make it past the first stage.

Israel followed this with a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings of starvation from global experts.

The partial easing saw the creation of the controversial US- and Israeli-backed aid group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Since GHF took over distribution operations, there have been almost daily incidents of killings and injuries of Palestinians seeking aid.

Eyewitnesses and medics have blamed Israel, though Israel has said it has only fired warning shots towards people it considered a threat.

Residents in Gaza City said dozens of Israeli air raids targeted densely populated eastern neighbourhoods, including Shujaiya, Tuffah, and Zeitoun.

Videos posted by activists on social media captured scenes of chaos and explosions illuminating the night sky, followed by flames and thick plumes of smoke rising above the skyline.

One of the strikes reportedly hit a school in Zeitoun that had been sheltering displaced families.

“Explosions never stopped… it felt like earthquakes,” Salah, 60, from Gaza City told Reuters news agency.

“In the news we hear a ceasefire is near, on the ground we see death and we hear explosions,” the father of five added.

The five fatalities reportedly occurred in a strike at the Al Shati camp, to the west of Gaza City.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had earlier ordered residents to leave large parts of northern Gaza, in anticipation of the attacks. Most of those displaced overnight moved westwards within Gaza City rather than to the southern region as instructed by the IDF.

“We had no choice but to leave everything behind,” said Abeer Talba, a mother of seven who fled Zeitoun with her family.

“We got phone calls recordings in Arabic telling us we were in a combat zone and must evacuate immediately.

“This is the seventh time we’ve been forced to flee,” she added. “We’re in the streets again, no food, no water. My children are starving. Death feels kinder than this.”

Amid the growing humanitarian crisis, fears are mounting that the evacuation orders and sustained air strikes are part of a broader Israeli plan to expand its ground offensive deeper into Gaza.

But there is also speculation in Israeli media that some generals are close to concluding that military operations in Gaza are near to being achieved.

That is also the view of many former army leaders who fear that the descent of the Gaza campaign into more attritional, guerilla-style warfare would lead to more deaths – of hostages, civilians and soldiers.

The Israeli prime minister’s next moves are being closely watched. While Benjamin Netanyahu’s instincts have always been to continue the war and defeat Hamas, he is coming under increasing pressure at home and abroad to pursue a new ceasefire agreement.

The Israeli military launched its bombardment of Gaza in response to the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 56,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

A 92-year-old man has been found guilty of the rape and murder of a Bristol woman in a case that remained unsolved for nearly six decades.

Louisa Dunne, 75, was found strangled on her living room floor by a neighbour on Britannia Road in Easton, Bristol, on 28 June 1967.

Convicted rapist Ryland Headley, of Clarence Road in Ipswich, has now been found guilty of Mrs Dunne’s murder following a trial at Bristol Crown Court.

Senior investigating officer Det Insp Dave Marchant said Headley, who was in his 30s when he killed Mrs Dunne, had left “a legacy of misery and pain”.

Despite the efforts of police investigating Mrs Dunne’s death 58 years ago, no key suspect was identified.

Police collected about 19,000 prints from men and boys at the time with no success. They also made about 8,000 house-to-house inquiries and took 2,000 statements.

It was only when the case was re-examined by Avon and Somerset Police decades later that DNA testing of a swab that contained semen was linked to Headley.

Det Insp Marchant called him a “dangerous serial offender” with a “shocking and abhorrent history” and said there was a sense of “gravity” when police were told of the positive result.

“This is a marrying of old school and new school policing techniques,” he said.

Det Insp Marchant added it was believed to be the oldest cold case solved in the UK.

Mrs Dunne had been twice widowed and lived alone, but was well-known in the local area.

Headley was accused of forcing entry into her home before sexually attacking her and then strangling her.

The night of her death, neighbours reported hearing a woman’s “frightening scream”.

Det Insp Marchant said a neighbour was first alerted to something unusual happening when the paper they left for Mrs Dunne was not taken in on the morning of 28 June 1967.

After Headley’s arrest, fingerprint experts compared his palm print to one collected from the rear window of Mrs Dunne’s home, which matched Headley’s.

He previously admitted breaking into the homes of two widows, aged 84 and 79, and raping them in Suffolk in October 1977, in crimes police described as “eerily similar”.

Trevor Mason, a Special Branch detective in Suffolk drafted in to assist in the 1977 cases, described Headley as “worse than an animal”.

Speaking to Channel 4 News, Mr Mason said what the women had suffered was “absolutely horrendous”, adding Headley’s victims were “obviously frail” and “didn’t stand a chance”.

Headley had denied both the rape and murder of Mrs Dunne after being charged in November 2024. He is set to be sentenced for both crimes on Tuesday.

Italian luxury fashion label Prada has said it acknowledges the Indian roots of its new footwear line, days after the design sparked a controversy in India.

The sandals, showcased at the Milan Fashion Week last week, had an open-toe braided pattern that closely resembled the traditional Kolhapuri sandals made in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Prada described the sandals as “leather footwear” but did not mention its Indian origins, prompting backlash and allegations of cultural appropriation in India.

Responding to the controversy, Prada told the BBC in a statement that it recognises that the sandals are inspired by traditional Indian footwear.

A Prada spokesperson said that the company has “always celebrated craftsmanship, heritage and design traditions”, adding that it was “in contact with the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture on this topic”. This is a prominent industry trade body in the state.

Last week, its chief had written to the brand, saying the design was commercialised without crediting the artisans who have preserved its heritage for generations.

Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s head of Corporate Social Responsibility, responded to his letter saying that the sandals were “at an early stage of design”, according to Reuters.

He also said that Prada was open to a “dialogue for meaningful exchange with local Indian artisans” and the company would organise follow-up meetings to discuss this further.

Named after a city in Maharashtra where they are made, Kolhapuri sandals trace their roots back to the 12th Century.

Made from leather and sometimes dyed in natural colours, the traditional handcrafted sandals are sturdy and well-suited to India’s hot climate.

They were awarded the Geographical Indication (GI) status by the Indian government in 2019.

According to the World Trade Organisation, a geographical indication tag credits a good or product as having originated from a certain region or place, and is considered a mark of authenticity.

Following the controversy, many artisans in Kolhapur said they were saddened by Prada’s use of the design without giving due credit.

“These sandals are made with the hard work of leather workers in Kolhapur. They should be named after Kolhapur. Don’t take advantage of others’ labour,” Prabha Satpute, a Kolhapuri artisan, told BBC Marathi.

The sandals cost a few hundreds rupees in India but Prada’s reported premium pricing angered some, though the brand’s website does not mention the price tag. Most other sandals sold by the fashion house, retail at between £600 to £1,000 in the UK.

Industrialist Harsh Goenka highlighted this, saying the local artisans barely make any money for the same hand-made products. “They lose, while global brands cash in on our culture,” he said.

This is not the first time that global brands have been accused to appropriating Indian traditional products without crediting their roots.

At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Gucci described a sari worn by Bollywood star Alia Bhatt as a gown, sparking backlash.

Earlier in May, a popular TikTok trend was criticised for calling dupatta, a traditional South Asian scarf, a Scandinavian scarf.

In Kolhapur, however, some said the move had instilled a sense of pride in them.

“Artisans are happy that someone is recognising their work,” Kolhapur-based businessman Dileep More told Reuters.

The US Senate has begun voting on a massive spending plan, dubbed the “big beautiful bill”, on Monday after weeks of contentious negotiations.

Republicans – who control both chambers of Congress – were divided over how much to cut welfare programmes in order to extend tax breaks.

President Donald Trump wants Congress to pass the bill by 4 July.

After the House of Representatives passed its version of the bill last month by a single vote, the legislation went to the Senate. Because of the changes made by the Senate, the bill will go back to the House for another vote.

Senators zipped through the halls of the Capitol building on Monday, making their way to the Senate floor for various amendment votes, then back to their private meeting rooms where they hashed out grievances outside the view of reporters.

There could be up to 20 hours of debate when senators argue for or against adding amendments to the nearly 1,000-page bill in a process called “vote-a-rama”.

“We’re still obviously perfecting a few things,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Monday.

An amendment to the proposal for Medicaid cuts recently proposed by Florida Senator Rick Scott could cause roughly 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance coverage, according to one estimate.

When asked about the report, Thune said there are “lots of analyses out there”.

“The thing that (Scott’s) bill doesn’t do is it doesn’t take effect until 2031. So I’m not sure how you can make the argument that it’s going to kick any people off of health insurance tomorrow,” Thune said.

Democrats, who have repeatedly denounced the bill, particularly for cutting health care coverage for millions of poorer Americans, are expected to use all ten of their allotted hours of debate, while Republicans likely will not.

Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, called the bill “terrible”.

He told the BBC he was unsure if Senate Republicans would meet Trump’s 4 July deadline, adding that, even if they did, “who knows what happens in the House”.

Speaking at the White House on Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump is “confident” the bill would be passed and still expects it on his desk by his self-imposed deadline.

Democratic Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania appeared frustrated on Monday afternoon, after no signs of a final draft of the bill emerged.

“Oh, my God, I just want to go home,” he said, adding that the extended negotiations and voting rounds have caused him to miss his “entire trip to the beach”.

“I don’t think it’s really helpful to put people here till some ungodly hour,” he said.

On Sunday, Democrats used a political manoeuvre to stall the bill’s progress, calling on Senate clerks to read all 940 pages of the bill out loud, a process that took 16 hours.

The move followed weeks of public discussion and the Senate narrowly moving to open debate on the budget bill in a 51-49 vote over the weekend.

Two Republicans and all Democrats voted against opening debate, arguing for further changes to the legislation.

One of those Republicans, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, announced his retirement following that vote and argued the legislation broke promises that Trump and Republicans made to voters.

“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 in his announcement.

The White House reacted angrily to Tillis’ comments on Monday, with Leavitt telling reporters that the senator is “just wrong” and that “the President and the vast majority of Republicans who are supportive of this legislation are right”.

The other Republican who voted against moving the bill was Kentucky Senator Rand Paul who objected to debt increases, and cuts to Medicaid, a healthcare programme that is relied on by millions of elderly, disabled and low-income Americans.

On Monday, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan sought to quell concerns about cuts to Medicaid, saying “we’re going to be fine in this”.

• A look at the key items in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
• The woman who could bust Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill

When the bill comes up for a full Senate vote – expected either late on Monday night or early Tuesday morning – Republicans can only afford three defections in order for the bill to pass.

If they lose three votes, Vice President JD Vance will have to cast a tie-breaking vote.

The bill will then return to the House of Representatives, where leadership has advised a full vote on the Senate’s bill could come as early as Wednesday morning.

While Republicans control the House, they can also only lose a handful of votes. There are frustrations with the Senate version of the bill among some Republicans in the House, which could make for another close vote.

Democrats in both chambers have largely objected to the spending cuts and the proposed extension of tax breaks.

Meanwhile, Republican debate has focused on how much to cut welfare programmes in order to extend $3.8tn (£2.8tn) in Trump tax breaks. The proposed cuts could strip millions of America’s poorest of health insurance.

The version of the bill senators will soon vote on contains 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.

The bill also authorises $5 trillion in new borrowing which will add to a growing US debt load – a move that goes against what many conservatives have argued for and infuriated one-time Trump confidant Elon Musk earlier this summer.

The Senate version of the bill will add $3.3tn (£2.4tn) in debt, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency.

The national debt currently sits at $36 trillion, according to the treasury department.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has urged Congress to address the debt limit by mid-July and warned that if they do not, the US could be unable to pay its bills as early as August.

“Your brother is a hero.”

This is what Emad was told after finding out his brother had been killed in a suicide explosion at a church in the Syrian capital of Damascus.

His brother, Milad, and two others had tried to push the suicide attacker out of the church building. He was killed instantly – alongside 24 other members of the congregation.

Another 60 people were injured in the attack at Greek Orthodox Church of the Prophet Elias, in the eastern Damascus suburb of Dweila on 22 June.

It was the first such attack in Damascus since Islamist-led rebel forces overthrew Bashar al- Assad in December, ending 13 years of devastating civil war.

It was also the first targeting of the Christian community in Syria since a massacre in 1860, when a conflict broke out between Druze and Maronite Christians under Ottoman rule.

The Syrian authorities blamed the attack on the Islamic State (IS) group. However, a lesser- known Sunni extremist group, Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, has said it was behind the attack – though government officials say they do not operate independently of IS.

Milad had been attending a Sunday evening service at the church, when a man opened fire on the congregation before detonating his explosive vest.

Emad heard the explosion from his house and for hours was unable to reach his brother.

“I went to the hospital to see him. I couldn’t recognise him. Half of his face was burnt,” Emad told me, speaking from his small two bedroom-home which he shares with several other relatives.

Emad is a tall, thin man in his 40s with an angular face that bears the lines of a hard life. He, like his brother, had been working as a cleaner in a school in the poor neighbourhood, which is home to many lower to middle class and predominantly Christian families.

During Bashar al-Assad’s rule, members of Syria’s many religious and ethnic minority communities believed the state protected them. Now, many fear the new Islamist-led government, established by the rebels who overthrew him last December, will not do the same.

While interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and his government have pledged to protect all citizens, recent deadly sectarian violence in Alawite coastal areas and then in Druze communities around Damascus have made people doubt its ability to control the situation.

Many of Emad’s family members echoed this sentiment, saying: “We are not safe here anymore.”

Angie Awabde, 23, was just two months away from graduating university when she got caught up in the church attack.

She heard the gunshots before the blast.

“It all happened in seconds,” she told me, speaking from her hospital bed as she recovers from shrapnel wounds to her face, hand and leg, as well as a broken leg.

Angie is frightened and feels there is no future for Christians in Syria.

“I just want to leave this country. I lived through the crisis, the war, the mortars. I never expected that something would happen to me inside a church,” she said.

“I don’t have a solution. They need to find a solution, this is not my job, if they can’t protect us, we want to leave.”

Before the 13-year civil war, Christians made up about 10% of the 22 million population in Syria – but their numbers have shrunk significantly since then with hundreds of thousands fleeing abroad.

Churches were among the buildings bombed by the Syrian government and allied Russian forces during the war – but not while worshippers were inside.

Thousands of Christians were also forced from their homes due to the threat from hardline Islamist and jihadist groups, such as IS.

Outside the hospital where Angie is being treated, coffins of some of the victims of the church attack were lined up, ready for burial.

People from all walks of life, and representing different parts of Syrian society, attended the service at a nearby church, which took place under a heavy security presence.

In a sermon at the service, the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church in Syria, John Yazigi, insisted “the government bears responsibility in full”.

He said a phone call from President Ahmed al-Sharaa expressing his condolences was “not enough for us”, drawing applause from the congregation.

“We are grateful for the phone call. But the crime that took place is a little bigger than that.”

Sharaa last week promised that those involved in the “heinous” attack would face justice.

A day after the bombing, two of the suspects were killed and six others arrested in a security operation on an IS cell in Damascus.

But this has done little to allay fears here about the security situation, especially for religious minorities.

Syria has also seen a crack down on social freedoms, including decrees on how women should dress at beaches, attacks on men wearing shorts in public and bars and restaurants closing for serving alcohol.

Many here fear that these are not just random cases but signs of a wider plan to change Syrian society.

Archimandrite Meletius Shattahi, director-general of the charitable arm of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, feels the government is not doing enough.

He refers to videos circulating online showing armed religious preachers advocating for Islam over loud speakers in Christian neighbourhoods, saying these are not “individual incidents”.

“These are taking place in public in front of everybody, and we know very well that our government is not taking any action against [those] who are breaching the laws and the rules.”

This alleged inaction, he says, is what led to the attack at the Church of the Prophet Elias.

An 82-year-old woman who was one of the 12 victims in an attack on a gathering in support of Israeli hostages has died from her injuries in Colorado, officials say.

Karen Diamond was severely injured after the suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, shouting “free Palestine” tossed Molotov cocktails at the group in what federal officials have called a “terrorist attack”.

The suspect told police after he was arrested that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people”, according to court documents.

Because of the death of one of the victims, prosecutors are now adding new first-degree murder charges in addition to multiple others faced by the suspect, who remains jailed.

Diamond was among the 20 or so people gathered on 1 June to participate in a Run for Their Lives gathering at Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado, to generate awareness for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

She died as a result of “the severe injuries that she suffered in the attack”, the district attorney’s office said.

“This horrific attack has now claimed the life of an innocent person who was beloved by her family and friends,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty said. “Our hearts are with the Diamond family during this incredibly difficult time.”

Officials say the suspect planned the attack for a year, watching videos on how to make Molotov cocktails before driving from his home in Colorado Springs to Boulder to carry out the attack.

The suspect allegedly posed as a gardener wearing a construction vest to get close to the group ahead of the attack, prosecutors say.

Near the scene of the crime, officials say they found 16 unlit Molotov cocktails in a plastic container within arm’s reach, as well as a weed sprayer filled with petrol.

Last week, Mr Soliman was indicted on 12 federal hate crime counts. He also faces at least 100 state criminal charges, including attempted murder.

Mr Soliman’s attorney, David Kraut, entered a not guilty plea on his behalf last week for the hate crime charges.

Federal authorities say Mr Soliman, an Egyptian national, has been living in the US illegally with his family.

Days after the attack his wife and five children were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

Data from the Anti-Defamation League suggests antisemitic incidents spiked to a record level in 2023 and again in 2024.

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.”