Hamas says it has delivered a “positive response” to mediators on the latest proposal for a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal put forward by the US.

The Palestinian armed group added in a statement that it was “seriously ready to enter immediately into a round of negotiations”.

A senior Palestinian official familiar with the talks told the BBC that Hamas accepted the general framework but had requested several key amendments, including a US guarantee that hostilities would not resume if talks on a permanent end to the 20-month war failed.

There was no immediate response from Israel and the US. But they have previously been reluctant to accept similar demands.

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that Israel had accepted the “necessary conditions” for a 60-day ceasefire, during which the parties would work to end the war.

He also urged Hamas to accept what he described as “the final proposal”, warning the group that “it will not get better – it will only get worse”.

The plan is believed to include the staggered release of 10 living Israeli hostages by Hamas and the bodies of 18 other hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Fifty hostages are still being held in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

The proposal also reportedly says that sufficient quantities of humanitarian aid would enter Gaza immediately with the involvement of the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The senior Palestinian official said Hamas was demanding that the aid be distributed exclusively by the UN and its partners, and that the controversial distribution system run by the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) end immediately.

Another key amendment demanded by Hamas was about Israeli troop withdrawals, according to the Palestinian official.

The US proposal is believed to include phased pull-outs from parts of northern and southern Gaza. But the official said Hamas was insisting that troops returned to the positions they held before the last ceasefire collapsed in March, when Israel resumed its offensive against the group.

The Palestinian official said Hamas also wanted a US guarantee that Israeli air and ground operations would not resume if negotiations on a permanent ceasefire failed.

The proposal is believed to say that negotiations on ending the war would begin on day one.

However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out ending the war until all of the hostages are released and Hamas’s military and governing capabilities are destroyed.

The Israeli military continued to bomb targets across the Gaza Strip as the US and Israel awaited Hamas’s response to the ceasefire proposal on Friday.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said in the afternoon that Israeli attacks had killed at least 138 Palestinians over the previous 24 hours.

Overnight, at least 15 Palestinians were killed in strikes on two tents housing displaced people in the southern Khan Younis area, the local Nasser hospital said.

Thirteen-year-old Mayar al-Farr’s brother, Mahmoud, was among those killed.

“The ceasefire will come, and I have lost my brother? There should have been a ceasefire long ago before I lost my brother,” she told Reuters news agency at his funeral.

Adlar Mouamar, whose nephew Ashraf was also killed, said: “Our hearts are broken… We want them to end the bloodshed. We want them to stop this war.”

The Israeli military has not yet commented on the strikes, but did say its forces were “operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities”.

Later on Friday, the ICRC said a staff member at the Red Cross field hospital in Rafah, in southern Gaza, had been hit by a stray bullet. His condition was stable after the “unacceptable” incident, the ICRC said.

Meanwhile, medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said a former colleague had been killed the previous day when, it said, Israeli forces fired on people waiting for aid lorries in Khan Younis. At least 16 people were killed in the incident, MSF quoted teams at Nasser hospital as saying. The Israeli military has not yet commented.

“The systemic and deliberate starvation of Palestinians for over 100 days is pushing people in Gaza to breaking point,” said Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, MSF’s emergency co-ordinator in Gaza. “This carnage must stop now.”

The UN human rights office said on Friday that it had recorded the killing of at least 509 people near the GHF’s aid distribution centres and 104 other people near aid convoys.

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the office was working to verify the figures and ascertain who was responsible, but added that it was “clear that the Israeli military has shelled and shot at Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points”.

The GHF said the UN figures were coming “directly” from the Gaza health ministry, which it says is not credible, and that they were being used to “falsely smear” its effort. Its chairman insisted this week there had not been any violent incidents at or in close proximity to its sites.

The Israeli military has said it is examining reports of civilians being harmed while approaching the GHF’s sites, but insisted that reports of “extensive casualties” at them are “lies”.

In the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, only 60km (40 miles) from Gaza, the families of the remaining hostages and their supporters held a rally outside the US embassy branch office, urging Trump to “make the deal” that would see them all released.

On the nearby beachfront, they laid out a giant banner featuring the US flag and the words “liberty for all”.

Among those who addressed the event was Ruby Chen, the father of Israeli-American Itay Chen. The 19-year-old soldier was killed during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 which triggered the war, and his body was taken back to Gaza as a hostage, according to the Israeli military.

“I urge you Prime Minister Netanyahu to go to the US next week and bring back a deal that brings all the hostages home,” Mr Chen said. “There has to be a final, detailed agreement between Israel and Hamas.”

Keith Siegel, an Israeli American who was released in February during the last ceasefire after 484 days in captivity, also spoke.

“Many of my friends from Kibbutz Kfar Aza remain in captivity,” he said. “Only a comprehensive deal can bring them all home and create a better future for the Middle East.”

The primary concern for most Israelis is the fate of the remaining hostages and what might happen to them if the ceasefire does not happen and Netanyahu orders the Israeli military to step up its air strikes on Gaza.

On Thursday, the prime minister promised to secure the release of all the remaining hostages during a visit to Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community near the Israel-Gaza border where a total of 76 residents were abducted on 7 October 2023.

“I feel a deep commitment, first of all, to ensure the return of all of our hostages, all of them,” he said. “We will bring them all back.”

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

At least 57,268 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

As the evening light ebbed away a handful of Ukrainian troops emerged from the treeline to face an unequal fight. Their mission – to shoot down 21st Century killer drones with weapons designed in the dying days of World War One.

In Ukraine’s north-eastern region of Sumy, bordering Russia, this is a nightly battle.

Just after we joined the troops, there was danger in the skies, and tension and adrenaline on the ground.

The commander – codenamed Jaeger – was glued to a screen showing clusters of red dots, each indicating an Iranian-designed Shahed drone, one of Russia’s key weapons. By early evening, there were already 30 in the skies over Sumy, and the neighbouring region of Chernihiv.

Two flatbed trucks were driven out into a clearing – on the back of each a heavy machine gun and a gunner, scanning the skies. The trucks were flanked by troops, light machine guns at the ready.

We could hear the whirring of the propellers before we could see the drone – barely visible as it sliced through the sky. The troops opened fire – all guns blazing in unison – but the drone disappeared into the distance. These low-cost long-range weapons are terrorising Ukraine.

As often in war, there were flashes of humour. “You’ll know when the next drone is coming, when that short guy gets nervous,” said Jaeger, pointing at one of his team.

As darkness closed in, the drones kept coming and the troops kept trying – sending tracer fire streaking across the sky. But how do they feel when these suicide drones get through?

“Well, it’s not very good, “Jaeger says sombrely, glancing away. “You feel a slight sadness but to be honest – as you have seen – you don’t have time for emotions. One comes in and another can come right behind it. You work in this rhythm. If it’s taken down – good, if not, you know there are other teams behind you who will also engage it.”

He and his men are a “mobile fire unit” from Ukraine’s 117 Territorial Defence Brigade – all locals trying to defend not just their hometown but their country. Most Russian drones fly through this region and deeper into Ukraine.

“They come in massive waves, often flying at different altitudes,” says Jaeger. “When there is heavy cloud cover, they fly above the clouds, and we can’t see them. And it’s very hard to detect them when it’s raining.”

A hundred Shahed drones a night is standard for Sumy.

His unit includes a farmer (“now I do something else in the fields,” he jokes) and a builder. Jaeger himself is a former forest ranger, and mixed martial arts fighter.

Now he fights an enemy he can barely see.

“It’s the same thing every single day, over and over again,” he says. “For us, it’s just like Groundhog Day.”

“The worst thing is that years are passing by,” adds Kurban, the builder, “and we have no idea how long all this is going to last”.

Many of the drones in the skies over Sumy that night were headed for the capital, Kyiv. Jaeger and his men knew it. So did we. The knowledge was chilling.

An air raid alert warned the residents of Kyiv of incoming drones. Russia aimed more than 300 at the capital overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force, trying to overwhelm its air defences. By morning six locations had been hit, and the victims were being reclaimed from the rubble. In the days that followed the death toll climbed to 30.

In Ukraine’s fourth summer of full-scale war the fields around Sumy are dotted with corn and sunflowers, not yet in bloom, and a crop of dragon’s teeth – triangles of concrete which can stop tanks in their tracks.

The picture was very different last autumn. Ukrainian troops had turned the tables with a cross-border attack on Russia, capturing territory in the neighbouring region of Kursk.

By March of this year, most were forced out, although Ukraine’s military chief said recently it still holds some territory there. By May, President Zelensky warned that 50,000 Russian troops were massed “in the direction of Sumy”.

By June, more than 200 villages and settlements in Sumy had been evacuated, as the Kremlin’s men slowly shelled their way forward.

President Putin wants “a buffer zone” along the border, and is talking up the threat to the city of Sumy.

“The city…is next, the regional centre,” he said recently. “We don’t have a task to take Sumy, but I don’t rule it out.” He claims his forces are already up to 12 kilometres (7.5 miles) inside the region.

The head of Ukraine’s army, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, claims his troops have halted the Russian advance, but the war has already closed in on Margaryta Husakova, 37, menacing her village. She warned her sister not to come because there were explosions.

“She came anyway,” Margaryta says, “and everything was fine for a month, quiet and peaceful, until we got on that bus”.

On the morning of 17 May, the sisters set out with other relatives for a trip to the city.

“I remember how we came, got on the bus, how we laughed, were happy,” says Margaryta. “Then we started to leave, and it happened.”

The bus was ripped apart by a Russian drone, in an attack that killed nine people – all civilians – including her mother, her uncle and her sister.

Margaryta was pulled from the wreckage with a shattered right arm – now held together by steel rods.

She is tormented by what she lost, and what she saw. Her description is graphic.

“I opened my eyes, and there was no bus,” she said, her voice beginning to break. “I looked around and my sister’s head was torn off. My mum too, she was lying there, hit in the temple. My uncle had fallen out of the bus, his brain was exposed.”

We met at a sand-bagged reception centre for evacuees in Sumy. Margaryta sat outside on a wooden bench, seeking comfort from a cigarette. She told me she was planning to leave for the home of another relative, but feared her eight children might not be safe there either.

“Maybe we will have to run away even further,” she said, adding: “It’s scary everywhere.”

“I’m terrified, not for myself but for the children. I must save them. That’s what matters.”

As we spoke an air raid siren wailed overhead – the sound so familiar that Margaryta did not respond. Neither did anyone else around us. “We only run for explosions now,” a Ukrainian journalist explained “and only if they are loud and close”.

There’s little talk in Sumy of a ceasefire, let alone an end to Europe’s largest war since 1945.

US President Donald Trump no longer claims he can deliver peace in Ukraine in a day. He’s become embroiled in a newer war, bombing Iranian nuclear sites.

Talks between Russia and Ukraine have delivered only prisoner exchanges, and the return of bodies. President Putin appears emboldened and has been upping his demands.

With the Summer sun still overhead, those trying to save Ukraine expect more Winters of war. We followed a bumpy track deep into a forest to meet troops fresh from the front lines. They were getting a refresher course in weapons skills at a remote training ground. A battle-hardened 35-year-old with a shaved head and full beard was among the group – call sign “student”.

“I think the war won’t end in the next year or two,” he told me. “And even if it does end in six months with some kind of ceasefire, it will start again in four or five years. President Putin has imperialist ambitions.”

War inflicts wounds – seen and unseen.

“Student” sent his family abroad for safety soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and has been unable to see his two daughters since then.

He and his wife are now divorced. Other soldiers we met also spoke of broken relationships and marriages that have buckled under the strain.

Student sums up war as “blood, dirt and sweat” and does not try to conceal the cost. “We joined our battalion, as a platoon of 30 neighbours,” he told me.

“Today, only four of us remain alive. “

One of Sweden’s most wanted gang leaders, Ismail Abdo, has been arrested in Turkey, the Swedish prosecutor’s office said on Friday.

The dual Swedish-Turkish national has an extensive list of drug-related charges against him according to the global police agency, Interpol.

The 35-year-old, nicknamed The Strawberry, is a well-known leader of the Rumba crime gang in Sweden. He is accused of orchestrating illegal operations from abroad and has been the subject of an Interpol red notice since last year.

Swedish police did not identify him, but confirmed the arrest of a man “suspected of having engaged in serious drug trafficking and inciting serious violent crimes” for many years in Sweden.

He was one of 19 people who were arrested during raids in Turkey, where officers seized more than a tonne of drugs, state broadcaster TRT reported. Exactly where the raids took place has not been revealed.

Arrest warrants were issued for a further 21 suspects, of whom 14 were believed to be abroad and three already in custody on other charges. Four are still at large, TRT added.

Turkish authorities reportedly seized assets worth around 1.5bn Turkish lira (£27.8m; $38m), including 20 vehicles, bank accounts and 51 real estate properties.

Gang violence in Sweden has escalated in recent years, in part because Abdo’s former friend, Rawa Majida, is the leader of a rival gang, Foxtrot.

Many people have been killed since their deadly turf war began. It entered a new, violent chapter in 2023 when Abdo’s mother was murdered in her home in Uppsala, north of the capital, Stockholm.

The escalation prompted the government to bring in the army to help tackle the surge in gang killings.

In 2024, Turkish police arrested Abdo during a traffic stop, but released him on bail despite the active Interpol red notice against him – a move which drew criticism from Swedish authorities who were seeking to extradite Abdo.

The increase in gang violence that has plagued some of Sweden’s biggest cities and spread to quieter suburbs and towns has shattered its reputation as a safe and peaceful nation.

Lat year, Sweden’s security service, Sapo, accused Iran of recruiting Swedish gang members to carry out attacks on Israeli or Jewish interests. In October, a 13-year-old boy fired shots outside the offices of Israeli tech firm Elbit Systems. Israel’s embassies in Sweden and Denmark were also both targeted.

Sweden’s centre-right governing coalition, which promised to end the gang crime wave when it was elected in 2022, will see Abdo’s capture as a win. However the fact that he is also a Turkish citizen could complicate the extradition process.

An estimated 14,000 people in Sweden are caught up in criminal gangs, according to a police report last year, and a further 48,000 people are said to be connected to them.

US President Donald Trump has signed his landmark policy bill into law, a day after it was narrowly passed by Congress.

The signing event at the White House on Friday afternoon enacts key parts of the Trump agenda including tax cuts, spending boosts for defence and the immigration crackdown.

There was a celebratory atmosphere at the White House as Trump signed the bill ahead of Independence Day fireworks and a military picnic attended by the pilots who recently flew into Iran to strike three nuclear sites.

Trump told supporters it will unleash economic growth, but he must now convince sceptical Americans as polling suggests many disapprove of parts of the bill.

Several members of his own Republican party were opposed because of the impact on rising US debt and Democrats warned the bill would reward the wealthy and punish the poor.

The 870-page package includes:

• extending 2017 tax cuts of Trump’s first term
• steep cuts to Medicaid spending, the state-provided healthcare scheme for those on low incomes and the disabled
• new tax breaks on tipped income, overtime and Social Security
• a budget increase of $150bn for defence
• a reduction in Biden-era clean energy tax credits
• $100bn to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Moments before the bill signing, there was a fly-by of a pair B-2 bombers – the same kind of aircraft that participated in the Iran operation – flanked by highly advanced F-35 and F-22 fighter aircraft.

In a speech from the White House balcony facing the South Lawn, Trump thanked Republican lawmakers who helped usher the bill to his desk. He touted the tax cuts in the bill, brushing aside criticism of the impact to social programmes such as food assistance and Medicaid.

“The largest spending cut, and yet, you won’t even notice it,” he said of the bill. “The people are happy.”

Additionally, Trump praised additional resources being given to border and immigration enforcement and an end to taxes on tips, overtime and social security for senior citizens, which he says the bill will fulfil.

The celebratory mood follows days of tense negotiations with Republican rebels in Congress and days of cajoling on Capitol Hill, sometimes by the president himself.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delayed the final vote in the lower chamber of Congress on Thursday by speaking for nearly nine hours.

He called the bill an “extraordinary assault on the healthcare of the American people” and quoted testimony from individuals anxious about its impact.

But his marathon speech only postponed the inevitable. As soon as he sat down, the House moved to a vote.

Only two Republicans went against, joining all 212 Democrats united in opposition. The bill passed by 218 votes to 214.

Earlier this week, the Senate passed the bill but US Vice-President JD Vance was required to cast a tiebreaking vote after three Republicans held out.

• Major win now but political peril awaits
• Fact-checking three key claims about the bill

Hours after the House passed the bill, the president was in a triumphant mood as he took to the stage in Iowa to kick off a years long celebration of 250 years since American independence.

“There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago,” he told supporters in Des Moines.

The White House believes the various tax cuts will help stimulate economic growth, but many experts fear that will not be sufficient to prevent the budget deficit – the difference between spending and tax revenue in any year – from ballooning, adding to the national debt.

Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) suggests the tax cuts could produce a surplus in the first year but will then cause the deficit to rise sharply.

According to the Tax Policy Center, the tax changes in the bill would benefit wealthier Americans more than those on lower incomes, About 60% of the benefits would go to those making above $217,000 (£158,000), its analysis found.

The BBC spoke to Americans who may see a cut in the subsidies that help them pay for groceries.

Jordan, a father of two, is one of 42 million Americans who benefits from the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) scheme targeted by the bill.

• Americans brace for Trump’s welfare cuts
• What is in the bill?

He and his wife get about $700 a month to feed their family of four and the 26-year-old said if this bill reduces what he can claim he would get a second job. “I’m going to make sure that I can do whatever I can to feed my family,” he says.

Along with cuts to SNAP, the changes to Medicaid – a programme that covers healthcare for low-income, elderly and disabled Americans – would result in nearly 12 million losing coverage in the next decade, the CBO estimates.

Republicans defend their changes to Medicaid, saying that by toughening up work requirements they are tackling abuse and fraud.

Polling taken before the bill passed in Congress suggests public support is low and dwarfed by numbers opposed. A recent Quinnipiac University survey pointed to only 29% endorsing the legislation, which rose to two-thirds among Republicans.

But knowledge of the bill may be low too. Reuters reported there was little awareness of the legislation among Trump supporters they spoke to at the Iowa rally on Thursday night.

Crowds mourned Diogo Jota in his hometown to pay their respects to the Liverpool forward and his brother André Silva, who both died in a car crash on Thursday.

Portugal’s president, stars from the national team and fans from across the country gathered in the small town of Gondomar, on the outskirts of Porto, where the pair grew up.

Their parents, grandfather and other family members held a private vigil at a chapel in the town before it was opened to the public for a wake. The funeral will be held on Saturday.

The pair – both footballers, with André playing in Portugal’s second division – were killed after the Lamborghini they were travelling in crashed in the Spanish province of Zamora.

Fans carrying Portugal flags, flowers and other memorabilia were seen weeping as they queued to pay their respects.

Those in attendance included President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, national team stars João Moutinho, Diogo Dalot and Ricardo Horta, and Jota’s agent Jorge Mendes.

For years as a young boy, Jota played for local club Gondomar SC, which named its academy after him in 2022.

Emblazoned on its sign is a quote from Jota: “It’s not about where we come from but where we’re going to.”

Outside the club, shirts and scarves were laid inside a ring of candles.

The 28-year-old father-of-three – who this year won the Nations League with Portugal and Premier League with Liverpool – married his long-term partner Rute Cardoso just 11 days before the fatal crash.

He had been travelling back to Liverpool for pre-season training, making the trip by car and ferry because he had undergone minor surgery and had been advised against flying.

Liverpool said his death was a “tragedy that transcends” the club.

Fans also grieved outside the club’s Anfield stadium.

Former captain Jordan Henderson was seen in tears as he laid a wreath, with a card that read: “Rest in peace my friend, along with your brother André. We will all miss you.”

There was also a touching moment at Oasis’s reunion gig on Friday evening when Jota’s image appeared on screen at the end of Live Forever, prompting applause around Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

Liverpool striker Mohamed Salah admitted he was dreading returning to the club in the wake of Jota’s shock death.

“I am truly lost for words. Until yesterday, I never thought there would be something that would frighten me of going back to Liverpool after the break,” Salah wrote in a post on social media.

A delegation from Liverpool’s city rival club Everton – including Portugal-born strikers Beto and Youssef Chermiti – also attended and left flowers outside Anfield.

Former Liverpool councillor Peter Millea – a home and away regular who had come to pay his respects – told the BBC: “There was something about him as a player when he first came to us that he became an instant hit.

“He was one of those players you can easily take to, because of the manner in which he conducted himself on and off the pitch and the important goals he scored.”

Mr Millea said some fans at Anfield had broken into impromptu renditions of the chant while paying their respects.

“I’m sure we’ll hear it loud and clear at Wembley for the Community Shield and we’ll hear it at Preston for the first pre-season away game, you know it’ll be sung around the field against Athletic Bilbao and then during the course of the rest of the season and probably forever-more,” he said.

Elsewhere, fans left flowers, scarves and shirts outside Wolves’ Molineux Stadium, where Jota played prior to his move to Anfield.

At Wimbledon, Portuguese tennis player Francisco Cabral wore a black ribbon to mark the passing of his countrymen.

A minute’s silence was held in the Women’s Euro 2025 game between Denmark and Sweden.

Liverpool has cancelled pre-season fitness tests that were due to take place today for some players as a result of yesterday’s news. A phased return of training will now begin on Monday.

The funeral service will be held at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar in Sao Cosme in Gondomar at 10:00 on Saturday.

Oasis blew off the cobwebs and swept away the doubters as they kicked off their reunion tour in Cardiff.

Taking to the stage after a 16-year break, the band sounded refreshed and rejuvenated, tearing into classics like Cigarettes and Alcohol, Live Forever and Slide Away – as 70,000 fans clasped each other and spilled beer all over themselves.

They opened with Hello, with its chorus of “it’s good to be back”, following up with Acquiesce – one of the few songs that features vocals from both Noel and Liam Gallagher.

The lyric “we need each other” felt like a reconciliation – or a sigh of relief – as the brothers buried the hatchet of a decades-long feud and reconnected with their fans.

Liam, in particular, attacked the gig with wild-eyed passion – stalking the stage and biting into the lyrics like a lion tearing apart its prey.

The audience responded in kind. A communal fervour greeted songs like Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger, both pulled from Oasis’s 1995 masterpiece, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – one of the best selling British albums of all time.

All night, it was one singalong after another: Some Might Say, Supersonic, Whatever, Half The World Away, Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.

During Live Forever – which they dedicated to Liverpool footballer Diogo Jota – the audience even sang Noel’s guitar solo.

“You sound like a load of Charlotte Churches,” said Liam, impressed, after Stand By Me.

The frontman sounded fresh and powerful himself, putting to rest the vocal issues that had plagued him on previous tours – a result of Hashimoto’s disease, an auto-immune condition that can affect the voice.

As fans will know, Oasis were never the most dynamic act on stage. Noel, in particular, wears the studious look of a man trying to remember his National Insurance number – but somehow, it’s impossible to take your eyes off them.

Although they came out hand in hand, there were few other signs of chemistry between the brothers, who never addressed one another during the two-and-a-quarter hour show.

But just hearing them harmonise again, after all the animosity and the turbulent waters under the bridge, was hugely emotional.

“Nice one for putting up with us over the years,” said Liam, introducing the night’s last song, Champagne Supernova. “We are hard work, I get it.”

As they left the stage, the Gallaghers shared a brief hug.

But the band’s volatility was always part of the appeal.

Their off-stage antics made the headlines as often as their music: They missed their first European gig after getting arrested on a cross-channel ferry, Liam lost two front teeth in a fight with German police, and later abandoned a pivotal US tour go house-hunting.

Half the fun was working out which act of the Shakespearean drama was being enacted in front of you.

Still, Liam’s antics often frustrated his brother.

“Noel is the guy who’s chained to the Tasmanian devil,” Danny Eccleston, consultant editor of the Mojo magazine, once said. “A lifetime of that would wear you down.”

• BBC Sounds: The Rise and Fall of Oasis

It all came to a head at a gig in Paris in 2009. Oasis split up after a backstage altercation that began with Liam throwing a plum at his older brother’s head.

In the intervening years, they engaged in a long war of words in the press, on stage and social media.

Liam repeatedly called Noel a “massive potato” on Twitter and, more seriously, accused him of skipping the One Love concert for victims of the Manchester Arena bombing.

Noel responded by saying Liam was a “village idiot” who “needs to see a psychiatrist”.

But relations thawed last year, with Liam dedicating Half The World Away to his brother at Reading Festival last August.

Two days later, the reunion was announced, with the band declaring: “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”

A scramble for tickets ensued, with more than 10 million people applying to see the 19 UK dates alone.

Those who succeeded were shocked by the high prices – especially when standing tickets advertised at £155 were re-labelled “in demand” and changed on Ticketmaster to £355 plus fees.

On stage, Liam made light of the scandal, asking the audience: “Is it worth the £4,000 you paid for a ticket?”

For many, the answer was yes. Cardiff was awash with Oasis fans from all over the world – including Peru, Japan, Argentina, Spain and South Korea.

An Italian couple had “live forever” inscribed on their wedding rings. A British woman, expecting her first child, had scrawled “our kid” – Noel’s nickname for Liam – across her baby bump.

The city was awash in bucket hats and branded tracksuit tops. Outside the stadium, an enterprising busker drew a massive crowd by playing a set of Oasis songs. Everyone joined in.

Inside, the band stuck to the classics, with a setlist that only strayed out of the 1990s once, for 2002’s Little By Little.

The songs held up remarkably well.

The youthful hunger of tracks like Live Forever and Supersonic crackled with energy. And Cigarettes and Alcohol, written by Noel in 1991, about the discontent of Manchester’s working classes after 15 years of Conservative rule, sounded as relevant in 2025 as it did then.

“?” snarled Liam. Fans, young and old, roared along in recognition and approval.

Later, during Wonderwall, the frontman cheekily changed the lyrics to say: “.”

I have seen Oasis many, many times and this was the best they’ve been since 1995, when I caught them supporting REM at Ireland’s Slane Castle, as they limbered up for the release of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

The Manchester band blew the headliners away – instantly making them seem dated and irrelevant – in a show that threatened to turn into chaos after Liam threatened a fan who’d thrown a projectile on stage.

They might not have that sense of danger in 2025, but there was a hunger and a passion that was missing from their last shows in 2009.

Fans, and some parts of the British press, are already speculating over whether Liam and Noel’s rapprochement will hold – but from the evidence on stage in Cardiff, the Gallaghers are finally, belatedly, mad fer it once more.

• Hello
• Acquiesce
• Morning Glory
• Some Might Say
• Bring it on down
• Cigarettes & Alcohol
• Fade Away
• Supersonic
• Roll With It
• Talk Tonight (Noel sings)
• Half the World Away (Noel sings)
• Little by Little (Noel sings)
• D’You Know What I Mean
• Stand By Me
• Cast No Shadow
• Slide Away
• Whatever
• Live Forever
• Rock and Roll Star

• The Masterplan (Noel sings)
• Don’t Look Back in Anger (Noel sings)
• Wonderwall
• Champagne Supernova

French police have waded into shallow waters off a beach south of Boulogne and used knives to slash an inflatable small boat – packed with men, women and children – that was wallowing, dangerously, in the waves.

All those onboard clambered to safety as the boat collapsed in chaotic scenes.

The intervention was highly unusual.

French police usually follow strict rules that bar them from going into the sea in case they put lives at risk.

“Let’s go in,” said one of the gendarmes, pulling off his body armour, and taking out a small knife. His colleagues took their heavy armour off, too, placing equipment in the back of a nearby police car before rushing into the water.

There had been some speculation that this rare incident could be evidence that the French police – under growing pressure to stop a surge of small boat migrant crossings to the UK – are changing their tactics.

But they have made it clear to the BBC that police have not adopted any new tactics in dealing with small boat launches, that the rules forbidding intervention in the water remains in place and officers must continue to prioritise safety on the beaches. They are allowed to intervene, however, if they believe lives are at immediate risk.

Well-placed sources in France have told us that the procedural changes now being considered will almost certainly focus on the use of patrol boats at sea to intercept the “taxi-boats” before they’re fully loaded, rather than on approving more aggressive interventions from police on the beaches.

The UK prime minister’s official spokesman said the images of French police destroying a boat were “a significant moment and we welcome this action”.

“We want to see tougher action taken, that’s precisely the focus of our work, it is the outcome of that close work that you’ve seen,” the spokesman said.

A few metres offshore, the boat itself was clearly in trouble. People were crowded around the outboard motor, which had briefly stalled but was being restarted.

Waves were breaking underneath the boat, causing it to lurch wildly, and there were loud screams from several children who were in danger of being crushed onboard.

Earlier, two large groups of people already wearing orange life jackets had emerged from the nearby dunes and rushed towards the sea.

In all there were probably 80 or 100 people. But when the first “taxi-boat” – used by the smuggling gangs to collect passengers from various points along the French coast – sped past perhaps 100m from the shore, it was clearly full already and did not stop to pick anyone else up.

A few minutes later, a second boat, with almost no passengers, came towards the shore, watched by a French coastguard boat further into the English Channel.

Initially, people were ushered forwards in organised groups, holding hands, and directed by one man who appeared to be leading events.

But as the inflatable boat turned and reversed towards the shore, there was a scrum as dozens of people scrambled to climb aboard in water that was at least waist deep.

At first the gendarmes declined to intervene and stood watching from the shore.

One officer repeated a now-familiar explanation to me – that they were barred from going into the water except to rescue people.

But as the situation became increasingly chaotic, the officers at the scene clearly felt that a line had been crossed, that those on board were now in danger, and that there was a brief opportunity to disable the boat in relative safety and while any smugglers – who might have fought back – were distracted by their attempts to restart the engine.

As a policeman slashed repeatedly at the rubber, there were cries and shouts of anger and frustration from some of those onboard.

A young girl, who had been in the middle of the scrum, squashed at the stern of the boat close to the engine, was plucked to safety as others scrambled on to the nearby sand.

Moments later the boat was dragged ashore by the police as the migrants began collecting items they had dropped on the beach and then headed inland, up the sandy paths through the dunes towards the nearest village and a bus-ride back to the migrant camps further north.

As Donald Trump cheered the passage of his self-styled, and officially named, Big Beautiful Budget Bill through Congress this week, long-sown seeds of doubt about the scale and sustainability of US borrowing from the rest of the world sprouted anew.

Trump’s tax-cutting budget bill is expected to add at least $3 trillion (£2.2 trillion) to the US’s already eye-watering $37tn (£27tn) debt pile. There is no shortage of critics of the plan, not least Trump’s former ally Elon Musk, who has called it a “disgusting abomination”.

The growing debt pile leaves some to wonder whether there is a limit to how much the rest of the world will lend Uncle Sam.

Those doubts have been showing up recently in the weaker value of the dollar and the higher interest rate investors are demanding to lend money to America.

It needs to borrow this money to make up the difference between what it earns and what it spends every year.

Since the beginning of this year, the dollar has fallen 10% against the pound and 15% against the euro.

Although US borrowing costs have been steady overall, the difference between the interest rates paid on longer-term loans versus shorter-term loans – what’s known as the yield curve – has increased, or steepened, signalling increased doubts about the long-term sustainability of US borrowing.

And that is despite the fact that the US has lowered interest rates more slowly than the EU and the UK, which would normally make the dollar stronger because investors can get higher interest rates on bank deposits.

The founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, Ray Dalio, believes that US borrowing is at a crossroads.

On its current trajectory he estimates the US will soon be spending $10tn a year in loan and interest repayments.

“I am confident that the [US] government’s financial condition is at an inflection point because, if this is not dealt with now, the debts will build up to levels where they can’t be managed without great trauma,” he says.

So what might that trauma look like?

The first option is a drastic reduction in government spending, a big increase in taxes or both.

Ray Dalio suggests that cutting the budget deficit from its current 6% to 3% soon could head off trouble in the future.

Trump’s new budget bill did cut some spending, but it also cut taxes more, and so the current political trajectory is going the other way.

Secondly, as in previous crises, the US central bank could print more money and use it to buy up government debt – as we saw after the great financial crisis of 2008.

But that can end up fuelling inflation and inequality as the owners of assets like houses and shares do much better than those who rely on the value of labour.

The third is a straightforward US default. Can’t pay won’t pay. Given that the “full faith and credit of the US Treasury” underpins the entire global financial system, that would make the great financial crisis look like a picnic.

So how likely is any of this?

Right now, mercifully, not very.

But the reasons why are not actually that comforting. The fact is, whether we like it or not, the world has few alternatives to the dollar.

Economist and former bond supremo Mohamed El-Erian told the BBC that many are trying to reduce dollar holdings, “the dollar is overweight and the world knows it, which is why we have seen a rise in gold, the euro and the pound, but it’s hard to move at scale so there’s really very few places to go”.

“The dollar is like your cleanest dirty shirt, you have to keep wearing it.”

Nevertheless, the future of the dollar and the world’s benchmark asset – US government bonds – is being discussed at the highest levels.

The governor of the Bank of England recently told the BBC that the levels of US debt and the status of the dollar is “very much on [US Treasury] Secretary Bessent’s mind. I don’t think the dollar is fundamentally under threat at the moment but he is very aware of these issues and I don’t think it is something that he underestimates.”

Debt of $37tn is an unfathomable number. If you saved a million dollars every day, it would take you 100,000 years to save up that much.

The sensible way to look at debt is as a percentage of a country’s income. The US economy produces income of around $25tn a year.

While its debt to income level is much higher than many, it’s not as high as Japan or Italy, and it has the benefit of the world’s most innovative and wealth creating economy behind it.

At home I have a book called Death of the Dollar by William F Rickenbacker in which he warns of the risks to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. It was written in 1968. Mr Rickenbacker is no longer with us – the dollar is.

But it doesn’t mean that its status and value is a divine right.

Kenyan President William Ruto says he is building a church at the presidential residence in Nairobi that he will pay for himself – and says he has nothing to apologise for.

“I am not going to ask anyone for an apology for building a church. The devil might be angry and can do what he wants,” Ruto said on Friday.

That statement alone has angered Kenyans already frustrated with his style of leadership and what they regard as the entanglement of the state and the church.

The BBC has asked the government for comment.

It is not clear who Ruto was referring to as “the devil” in his comments at State House, but he says nothing will stop the project from going ahead.

“I did not start building this church when I entered the State House. I found a church but one made out of iron sheets. Does that look befitting for the State House?” a defiant Ruto told politicians at a meeting he hosted on Friday.

On Friday, one of Kenya’s leading newspapers, the Daily Nation, published architectural designs showing a large building with stained glass windows and capacity for 8,000 people.

The paper questioned whether the project was in keeping with Kenya’s secular constitution.

There has also been criticism of the cost, estimated at $9m (£6.5m), at a time when many Kenyans are struggling with the rising cost of living.

Ruto said he would pay for the church out of his own pocket, however that raises the question of whether he has the right to build such a large structure on state-owned property.

The Atheists Society of Kenya is threatening legal action to stop the church being built, calling it shocking and unacceptable.

“We view this action as anti-democratic and a promotion of Christian nationalism by President Ruto. We want to remind him that Kenya does not belong to Christians only,” said the group’s head, Harrison Mumia.

William Ruto is Kenya’s first evangelical Christian president, cultivating a pious image and earning him the nickname of “deputy Jesus”.

During his many years in public office he has been known to quote scripture and cry in public – behaviour that has long alienated some Kenyans.

Back when Ruto was the deputy president, he erected a church at his government residence in the suburb of Karen, using it to host religious leaders of various faiths.

While roughly 85% of Kenyans are Christian, there is also a large Muslim population of about 11%, along with other minority faiths including Hinduism and traditional African religions.

There is no mosque or temple at the presidency.

Meanwhile, Nairobi’s Catholic Archbishop Philip Anyolo says clarity is urgently needed about the type of structure being built, otherwise it might be seen to favour one Christian denomination over others.

“We have to be very cautious with this. Such a structure ought to have been built in an area that is not a public institution. Unless what is being built is a chaplaincy, but that is also not clear.”

• El Chapo & Deputy Jesus – why Kenya’s president has so many nicknames
• Why Kenya’s evangelical president has fallen out with churches
• How African popes changed Christianity – and gave us Valentine’s Day
• Ghana to investigate ex-president’s controversial $400m cathedral project

Former Arsenal footballer Thomas Partey has been charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.

The offences are reported to have taken place between 2021-2022, the Metropolitan Police said.

The charges involve three women, with two counts of rape relating to one woman, three counts of rape in connection to a second woman and one count of sexual assault linked to a third woman.

The Ghanaian international denies the charges and “welcomes the opportunity to finally clear his name”, his lawyer said.

The charges follow an investigation by detectives, which started in February 2022 after police first received a report of rape.

The 32-year-old’s contract with Arsenal ended on Monday after playing with the team since 2020.

An Arsenal spokesman said: “The player’s contract ended on June 30. Due to ongoing legal proceedings the club is unable to comment on the case.”

The Football Association and the Premier League declined to comment.

Det Supt Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation, said: “Our priority remains providing support to the women who have come forward.

“We would ask anyone who has been impacted by this case, or anyone who has information, to speak with our team. You can contact detectives about this investigation by emailing CIT@met.police.uk”

Mr Partey, of Hertfordshire, is expected to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 5 August.

In a statement, his lawyer Jenny Wiltshire said: “Thomas Partey denies all the charges against him.

“He has fully cooperated with the police and CPS throughout their three-year investigation.

“He now welcomes the opportunity to finally clear his name.

“Given that there are now ongoing legal proceedings, my client is unable to comment further.”

Mr Partey joined Arsenal for £45.3m from Atletico Madrid in October 2020, made 35 top-flight appearances last season and scored four goals as the London club finished second in the Premier League.

He also played 12 times in the Champions League as the Gunners reached the semi-finals before being knocked out by eventual winners Paris St-Germain.

Overall, he made 130 Premier League appearances for Mikel Arteta’s side, scoring nine goals.

Mr Partey has also made more than 50 appearances for Ghana’s national team, and most recently played at World Cup qualification matches in March.

Two female tourists, including a British pensioner, have been killed by a charging elephant while on safari in Zambia, police have told the BBC.

Easton Taylor, 68, from the UK and 67-year-old Alison Taylor from New Zealand were attacked by a female elephant that was with a calf at the South Luangwa National Park, said local police chief Robertson Mweemba.

The two tourists were trampled to death by the nursing elephant after efforts by tour guides to stop it by firing shots failed. Both women died at the scene, he said.

The British Foreign Office said it was supporting the family of a British woman who had died in Zambia and was liaising with local authorities.

Mr Mweemba said the two women were part of a guided safari group who were walking in the park on Thursday when the elephant charged towards them at high speed.

The two tourists had stayed for four days at the Big Lagoon Camp, about 600 km (370 miles) from the capital, Lusaka, where the attack happened.

“They were moving to other camps when the elephant charged from behind. We are really sorry that we have lost our visitors,” Mr Mweemba said.

“They both died on the spot,” he added.

It is not clear whether the pair were related.

Female elephants are very protective of their calves and Zambian authorities have previously called on tourists to exercise extreme caution while observing wildlife around the country.

“It is very difficult to control the animals and tourists like feeding them,” Mr Mweemba said.

Last year, two American tourists were killed in separate attacks by elephants in the southern African country. Both cases involved elderly tourists who were in a safari vehicle when they were attacked.

• Akon’s futuristic $6bn city project in Senegal abandoned, BBC told
• ‘I’m afraid that elephants will kill me’
• Elephant corridors – where locals take care to cross
• Zimbabwe’s dilemma over deadly elephant attacks

A tiny, obscure animal often sold as aquarium food has been quietly protecting our planet from global warming by undertaking an epic migration, according to new research.

These “unsung heroes” called zooplankton gorge themselves and grow fat in spring before sinking hundreds of metres into the deep ocean in Antarctica where they burn the fat.

This locks away as much planet-warming carbon as the annual emissions of roughly 55 million petrol cars, stopping it from further warming our atmosphere, according to researchers.

This is much more than scientists expected. But just as researchers uncover this service to our planet, threats to the zooplankton are growing.

Scientists have spent years probing the animal’s annual migration in Antarctic waters, or the Southern Ocean, and what it means for climate change.

The findings are “remarkable”, says lead author Dr Guang Yang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, adding that it forces a re-think about how much carbon the Southern Ocean stores.

“The animals are an unsung hero because they have such a cool way of life,” says co-author Dr Jennifer Freer from British Antarctic Survey.

But compared to the most popular Antarctic animals like the whale or penguin, the small but mighty zooplankton are overlooked and under-appreciated.

If anyone has heard of them, it’s probably as a type of fish food available to buy online.

But their life cycle is odd and fascinating. Take the copepod, a type of zooplankton that is a distant relative of crabs and lobsters.

Just 1-10mm in size, they spend most of their lives asleep between 500m to 2km deep in the ocean.

In pictures taken under a microscope, you can see long sausages of fat inside their bodies, and fat bubbles in their heads, explains Prof Daniel Mayor who photographed them in Antarctica.

Without them, our planet’s atmosphere would be significantly warmer.

Globally the oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat humans have created by burning fossil fuels. Of that figure, the Southern Ocean is responsible for about 40%, and a lot of that is down to zooplankton.

Millions of pounds is being spent globally to understand how exactly they store carbon.

Scientists were already aware that the zooplankton contributed to carbon storage in a daily process when the animals carbon-rich waste sinks to the deep ocean.

But what happened when the animals migrate in the Southern Ocean had not been quantified.

The latest research focussed on copepods, as well as other types of zooplankton called krill, and salps.

The creatures eat phytoplankton on the ocean surface which grow by transforming carbon dioxide into living matter through photosynthesis. This turns into fat in the zooplankton.

“Their fat is like a battery pack. When they spend the winter deep in the ocean, they just sit and slowly burn off this fat or carbon,” explains Prof Daniel Mayor at University of Exeter, who was not part of the study.

“This releases carbon dioxide. Because of the way the oceans work, if you put carbon really deep down, it takes decades or even centuries for that CO2 to come out and contribute to atmospheric warming,” he says.

The research team calculated that this process – called the seasonal vertical migration pump – transports 65 million tonnes of carbon annually to at least 500m below the ocean surface.

Of that, it found that copepods contribute the most, followed by krill and salps.

That is roughly equivalent to the emissions from driving 55 million diesel cars for a year, according to a greenhouse gas emissions calculator by the US EPA.

The latest research looked at data stretching back to the 1920s to quantify this carbon storage, also called carbon sequestration.

But the scientific discovery is ongoing as researchers seek to understand more details about the migration cycle.

Earlier this year, Dr Freer and Prof Mayor spent two months on the Sir David Attenborough polar research ship near the South Orkney island and South Georgia.

Using large nets the scientists caught zooplankton and brought the animals onboard.

“We worked in complete darkness under red light so we didn’t disturb them,” says Dr Freer.

“Others worked in rooms kept at 3-4C. You wear a lot of protection to stay there for hours at a time looking down the microscope,” she adds.

But warming waters as well as commercial harvesting of krill could threaten the future of zooplankton.

“Climate change, disturbance to ocean layers and extreme weather are all threats,” explains Prof Atkinson.

This could reduce the amount of zooplankton in Antarctica and limit the carbon stored in the deep ocean.

Krill fishing companies harvested almost half a million tonnes of krill in 2020, according to the UN.

It is permitted under international law, but has been criticised by environmental campaigners including in the recent David Attenborough Ocean documentary.

The scientists say their new findings should be incorporated into climate models that forecast how much our planet will warm.

“If this biological pump didn’t exist, atmospheric CO2 levels would be roughly twice those as they are at the moment. So the oceans are doing a pretty good job of mopping up CO2 and getting rid of it,” explains co-author Prof Angus Atkinson.

The research is published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.

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Fifty years ago Arthur Ashe pulled off an amazing feat, upsetting the odds and becoming the first black man to win the Wimbledon Men’s final when he beat fellow American Jimmy Connors – but it was not something he wanted to define his life.

His fight to break down barriers around racial discrimination was closer to his heart – and apartheid South Africa became one of his battle grounds.

“I don’t want to be remembered in the final analysis for having won Wimbledon… I take applause for having done it, but it’s not the most important thing in my life – not even close,” he said in a BBC interview a year before his death in 1993.

Nonetheless his Centre Court victory on 5 July 1975 was hailed as one of those spine-tingling sporting moments that stopped everyone in their tracks, whether a tennis fan or not, and it is being commemorated with a special display at the Wimbledon museum.

Ashe was already in his 30s, tall, serene and with a quiet and even-tempered demeanour. Connors, 10 years younger and the defending champion, was an aggressive player and often described as “brattish”.

Ashe’s achievements and the skills and courage he displayed on the court were certainly matched by his actions off it.

In the early 1970s, South Africa repeatedly refused to issue a visa for him to travel to the country alongside other US players.

The white-minority government there had legalised an extreme system of racial segregation, known as apartheid – or apartness – in 1948.

The authorities said the decision to bar him was based on his “general antagonism” and outspoken remarks about South Africa.

However, in 1973, the government relented and granted Ashe a visa to play in the South African Open, which was one of the top tournaments in the world at the time.

It was Ashe’s first visit to South Africa, and although he stipulated he would only play on condition that the stadium be open to both black and white spectators, it sparked anger among anti-apartheid activists in the US and strong opposition from sections of the black community in South Africa.

British journalist and tennis historian Richard Evans, who became a life-long friend of Ashe, was a member of the press corps on that South Africa tour.

He says that Ashe was “painfully aware” of the criticism and the accusation that he was in some way giving legitimacy to the South African government – but he was determined to see for himself how people lived there.

“He felt that he was always being asked about South Africa, but he’d never been. He said: ‘How can I comment on a place I don’t know? I need to see it and make a judgment. And until I go, I can’t do that.'”

Evans recalls that during the tour, the South African writer and poet Don Mattera had organised for Ashe to meet a group of black journalists, but the atmosphere was tense and hostile.

“As I passed someone,” Evans told the BBC, “I heard someone say: ‘Uncle Tom'” – a slur used to disparage a black person considered servile towards white people.

“And then one or two very vociferous journalists stood up and said: ‘Arthur, go home. We don’t want you here. You’re just making it easier for the government to be able to show that they allow someone like you in.'”

But not all black South Africans were so vehemently opposed to Ashe’s presence in the country.

The South African author and academic Mark Mathabane grew up in the Alexandra township – popularly known as Alex – in the north of Johannesburg. Such townships were set up under apartheid on the outskirts of cities for non-white people to live.

He first became aware of Ashe as a boy while accompanying his grandmother to her gardening job at a British family’s mansion in a whites-only suburb.

The lady of the house gifted him a September 1968 edition of Life magazine from her collection, and there, on the front cover, was a bespectacled Arthur Ashe at the net.

Mathabane was mesmerised by the image and its cover line “The Icy Elegance of Arthur Ashe” – and he set out to emulate him.

When Ashe went on the 1973 tour, Mathabane had only one mission – to meet Ashe, or at least get close to him.

The opportunity came when Ashe took time off from competing to hold a tennis clinic in Soweto, a southern Johannesburg township.

The 13-year-old Mathabane made the train journey to get there and join scores of other black – and mostly young – people who had turned out to see the tennis star, who they had given the nickname “Sipho”.

“He may have been honorary white to white people, but to us black people he was Sipho. It’s a Zulu word for gift,” Mathabane, now aged 64, told the BBC.

“You know, a gift from God, from the ancestors, meaning that this is very priceless, take care of it. Sipho is here, Sipho from America is here.”

The excitement generated at the Soweto clinic was not just contained to that township but had spread across the country, he said.

From rural reservations to shebeens or speakeasies (bars) – wherever black people gathered, they were talking about Ashe’s visit.

“For me, he was literally the first free black man I’d ever seen,” said Mathabane.

After the 1973 tour, Ashe went back to South Africa a few more times. In early 1976 he helped to establish the Arthur Ashe Soweto Tennis Centre (AASTC) for budding players in the township.

But not long after it opened, the centre was vandalised in the student-led uprisings against the apartheid regime that broke out in June of that year.

It remained neglected and in disrepair for several years before undergoing a major refurbishment in 2007, and was reopened by Ashe’s widow Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe.

The complex now has 16 courts, and hosts a library and skills development centre.

The ambition is to produce a tennis star and Grand Slam champion from the township – and legends such as Serena and Venus Williams have since run clinics there.

For Mothobi Seseli and Masodi Xaba, who were once both South African national junior champions and now sit on the AASTC board, the centre goes beyond tennis.

They feel that fundamentally it is about instilling a work ethic that embraces a range of life skills and self-belief.

“We’re building young leaders,” Ms Xaba, a successful businesswoman, told the BBC.

Mr Seseli, an entrepreneur born and raised in Soweto, agrees that this would be Ashe’s vision too: “When I think about what his legacy is, it is believing that we can, at the smallest of scales, move the dial in very big ways.”

Ashe was initially inclined to challenge apartheid through conversations and participation, believing that by being visible and winning matches in the country he could undermine the very foundation of the regime.

But his experience within South Africa, and international pressure from the anti-apartheid movement, persuaded him that isolation rather than engagement would be the most effective way to bring about change in South Africa.

He became a powerful advocate and supporter of an international sporting boycott of South Africa, speaking before the United Nations and the US Congress.

In 1983, at a joint press conference set up by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and UN, he spoke about the aims of the Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid, which he had just co-founded with the American singer Harry Belafonte.

The organisation lobbied for sanctions against the South African government, and at its height had more than 500 members.

Ashe joined many protests and rallies, and when he was arrested outside the South African embassy in Washington DC in 1985, it drew more international attention to the cause and helped to amplify global condemnation of the South African regime.

He was the captain of the US Davis Cup team at the time, and always felt that the arrest cost him his job.

Ashe used his platform to confront social injustice wherever he saw it, not just in Africa and South Africa, but also in the US and Haiti.

He was also an educator on many issues, and specifically HIV/Aids, which he succumbed to, after contracting the disease from a blood transfusion during heart surgery in the early 1980s.

But he had a particular affinity with South Africa’s black population living under a repressive regime.

He said that he identified with them because of his upbringing in racially segregated Richmond in the US state of Virginia.

No wonder then that Ashe was one of the key figures that South African anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela was keen to meet on a trip to New York, inviting him to a historic townhall gathering in 1990 shortly after his release from 27 years in prison.

The pair met on a few occasions, however Ashe did not live to see Mandela become president of South Africa following the 1994 election, which brought in democratic rule and the dismantling of apartheid.

But like Ashe, Mandela was able to use sport to push for change – by helping unify South Africa – notably during the 1995 Rugby World Cup when he famously wore the Springbok jersey, once a hated symbol of apartheid.

To celebrate this year’s anniversary of Ashe’s victory, the Wimbledon Championships have an installation in the International Tennis Centre tunnel and a new museum display about him. They are also taking a trailblazer workshop on the road to mark his achievement.

His Wimbledon title was the third of his Grand Slam crowns, having previously won the US and Australian Opens.

But to many people like Mathabane – who in 1978 became the first black South African to earn a tennis scholarship to a US university – Arthur Ashe’s legacy was his activism, not his tennis.

“He was literally helping to liberate my mind from those mental chains of self-doubt, of believing the big lie about your inferiority and the fact that you’re doomed to repeat the work of your parents as a drudge,” he said.

“So that was the magic – because he was showing me possibilities.”

• ‘I’m not afraid of dying’: The pioneering tennis champion who told the world he had Aids
• Arthur Ashe’s 1976 interview: ‘Fighting the myth’
• ‘Growing up black’ made Arthur Ashe crave control

Pictures of a weepy Rachel Reeves dominated the newspaper front pages and TV news after her tearful appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions earlier this week.

The markets were spooked so much by her emotional appearance that the cost of government borrowing immediately jumped and the pound took a dive.

The sight of most of us crying in the workplace is unlikely to move financial markets, but does it matter if you do?

Does it show weakness, or strength, or simply that you’re in touch with your emotions?

Anecdotally, it’s not unusual to have a bit of a sniffle at work. Several people got in touch with the BBC to say they had let it all out.

Clara, 48, from Lancaster, said she had become emotional when she was a young graduate getting a “blasting”, and years later “in frustration”.

“I’ve also cried after receiving bad news from home and left work immediately.”

Emma, meanwhile, felt she had to keep her emotions under wraps because she worked in “a tough male-dominated environment” and would give herself a hard time for “showing emotion or ‘weakness’.”

Although some research has suggested women are more likely than men to cry, plenty of men told us they had also shed tears in front of colleagues.

Guy Clayton, a doctor, said he had often cried “with patients, colleagues and families over the years, when I’ve shared their sadness”.

A 38-year-old from London who works in finance said he had become emotional at work when dealing with personal issues and felt it showed “a professional dedication” to still turn up.

So is crying a strength or a weakness? Executive coach and success mentor Shereen Hoban says it’s old-fashioned to think weeping at work is unacceptable.

“We’ve moved beyond the old-school idea that professionalism means leaving emotion at the door,” she says. “In today’s world, emotional intelligence is a strength, not a liability.”

Career coach Georgia Blackburn says it’s not unusual for people at work to be upset, so firms need to know how to handle and support staff who are feeling a bit fragile.

Ultimately, she says it will mean workers get more done.

“An employer that truly listens, shows compassion and understanding, is so much more likely to keep their staff motivated and happier in the long run,” she says.

That’s been the case for Amanda in Stockport who contacted the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2.

She cried at a job interview at the University of Manchester 17 years ago, just after her father had been diagnosed with cancer.

She got the job and is still there.

“I cried every day for about nine months until my dad sadly passed away. It just made me realise what an amazing person I work for, and what an amazing place I work at, where that was OK.”

Fashion designer Amy Powney was having a bit of a rough time at the end of last year.

She was having an “intense” time leaving a job, and it coincided with traumatic things happening in her life.

Amy, who founded sustainable fashion brand Akyn earlier this year, also felt pressure to be a “poster child” for ethical fashion.

“My to-do list at that time was: feed the kids, pick them up from school, sort that nursery thing out, design the next collection, make sure the staff are OK, sort out that VAT return… and then save the world,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

“I went through this period of time where I just could not stop crying and I was doing it in public places, I was doing it on stage.”

She thinks that showing emotion at work has been “demonised” and is unapologetic about breaking down.

“I just think bring back the crying, bring back the emotions,” she says.

“Women in leadership should be able to show their emotion. I think it’s a superpower. I think it’s a strength.”

But not everybody thinks that way. Some people are still a teensy bit judgemental, says Ann Francke, chief executive at the Chartered Management Institute (CMI).

Women who weep are seen as “too emotional” while men who mope can be shamed for being soft and vulnerable, she says.

Junior staff can get away with it more than their bosses, but this shouldn’t necessarily be the case, she adds.

“When a senior leader cries, it can be seen as shocking or even inappropriate. But when handled with authenticity, it can also be powerful. It shows that leaders are human and care deeply about what they do,” she says.

But if you want to climb the greasy pole, it could be best to keep a stiff upper lip, at least in some organisations, says executive coach Shereen Hoban.

Crying could affect your promotion prospects, she says. “Let’s be honest. There’s still a bias in some workplaces that sees composure as strength and emotion as instability.”

But she says some organisations see things differently, and value leaders who are “real, self-aware, and able to navigate complexity, including their own emotions”.

She adds that if you break down once at work it “won’t ruin your career”, and that what matters more is the bigger picture:

“Your performance, your presence, and how you bounce back or move forward with intention,” she says.

• Give yourself permission to step back and take a moment

• You don’t need to hide your emotions, it often shows you care deeply about your job – that’s not a bad thing

• But you should feel supported, so maybe talk to a trusted colleague, take a short break or ask for support from your manager or HR

• Managers and colleagues need to acknowledge when their staff are crying – offer a tissue to them, don’t pretend it’s not happening

Moments before the explosion, artists, students and athletes were among those gathered at a bustling seaside cafe in Gaza City.

Huddled around tables, customers at al-Baqa Cafeteria were scrolling on their phones, sipping hot drinks, and catching up with friends. At one point, the familiar melody of “Happy Birthday” rang out as a young child celebrated with family.

In a quiet corner of the cafe overlooking the sea, a Hamas operative, dressed in civilian clothing, arrived at his table, sources told the BBC.

It was then, without warning, that a bomb was dropped by Israeli forces and tore through the building, they said.

At the sound of the explosion, people nearby flooded onto the streets and into al-Baqa in a desperate search for survivors.

“The scene was horrific – bodies, blood, screaming everywhere,” one man told the BBC later that day.

“It was total destruction,” said another. “A real massacre happened at al-Baqa Cafeteria. A real massacre that breaks hearts.”

The BBC has reviewed 29 names of people reported killed in the strike on the cafe on Monday. Twenty-six of the deaths were confirmed by multiple sources, including through interviews with family, friends and eyewitness accounts.

At least nine of those killed were women, and several were children or teenagers. They included artists, students, social activists, a female boxer, a footballer and cafe staff.

The conduct of the strike and the scale of civilian casualties have amplified questions over the proportionality of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say are aimed at defeating Hamas and rescuing the hostages still being held by the group.

Family members in Gaza and abroad spoke to the BBC of their shock and devastation at the killings.

“We were talking with each other two days ago. We were sending reels to each other. I can’t believe it,” said a young Palestinian man living in the US whose 21-year-old “bestie” Muna Juda and another close friend, Raghad Alaa Abu Sultan, were both killed in the strike.

The numbers of deaths analysed by the BBC were broadly consistent with figures given by the Hamas-run Civil Defence Agency, a senior local medic and the Palestinian Red Crescent in the days after the strike.

Staff at Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies, said its toll as of Thursday had reached 40 deaths, including people who had succumbed to their injuries, and unidentified bodies.

An official at the hospital said some of the bodies had been “blown to pieces”, and that 72 injured patients were brought there – many having sustained severe burns and significant injuries that required surgery. He said many were students.

In a statement after the strike, the IDF said it had been targeting “terrorists” and that steps were taken to “mitigate the risk of harming civilians using aerial surveillance”.

“The IDF will continue to operate against the Hamas terrorist organization in order to remove any threat posed to Israeli civilians,” it added, before saying the “incident” was “under review”.

The IDF did not directly respond to multiple BBC questions about the target of the strike, or whether it considered the number of civilian casualties to be proportionate.

Al-Baqa Cafeteria was well-known across the Gaza Strip, considered by many to be among the territory’s most scenic and vibrant meeting spots.

Split over two floors and divided into men’s and mixed family sections, it had views out to the Mediterranean Sea and television screens where people could watch football matches. It was a place to gather for coffee, tea and shisha with friends, and was a particular favourite with journalists.

Al-Baqa had remained popular even during the war, especially because of its unusually stable internet connection. The cafe, which had until now survived largely unscathed, also served up a reminder of the life that existed before the bombardments.

A cafe manager told the BBC that there was a strict entry policy. “It was known to our customers that if any person looked like a target, then they were not let inside the cafeteria – this was for our safety and the safety of the people there,” he said.

On the day of the strike, the port area of Gaza City where the cafe is located was not under Israeli evacuation orders, and families of those killed on Monday say they had felt as safe as is possible when heading there.

Staff told the BBC that the strike in the early afternoon – between the Muslim prayers of Zuhr and Asr – was outside of the cafe’s busiest hours.

The strike hit a section of the men’s area where staff said few people were at the time.

BBC Verify showed several experts photos of the crater left in the wake of the explosion and the remaining munition fragments. Most said that they believed it was caused by a bomb, rather than a missile, with a range of size estimates given, at a maximum of 500lb (230kg).

The IDF told the BBC it would not comment on the type of munition used.

A journalist who was in the area at the time of the strike and spoke to eyewitnesses immediately afterwards told the BBC the munition that hit the cafe “was launched from a warplane – not from a drone that would usually target one or two people… It looked like they were very keen on getting their target”. His account was consistent with others we spoke to.

Twenty-seven-year-old Hisham Ayman Mansour, whose deceased father had been a leading figure in Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, was among those in the men’s section by the sea.

His brother was previously killed by Israeli forces, and one social media post mourning his death suggested the brother had taken part in the 7 October 2023 attacks.

A local Hamas source said Hisham was the target of the strike, and described him as a field commander with the group, a “mid-ranking role”.

Tributes posted on social media also referred to him as a “fighter” and “member of the resistance”. His cousin also described him to the BBC as a “fighter” with the proscribed group, but said he thought he was “low-level” and not currently active.

It is unclear what he was doing in the cafe that day, with two sources telling the BBC he was believed to be there for a “money drop”, while another suggested he was there for “coffee and a short respite” and that he had not been involved in “militant activities” during the war.

A photo shared on social media purported to show Hisham at the same spot in the men’s area of the cafe the day before the strike, wearing a cap and sports t-shirt. Photos of his body after the strike in the same outfit were shared by family and friends.

Two members of his family – one of them a child – were also killed.

The IDF would not confirm whether Hisham was the primary target, or one of a number of targets of the strike.

One former senior IDF official told the BBC he understood that “multiple Hamas operatives” were hit at the cafe, but that a so-called battle damage assessment was still ongoing. A source with Israeli intelligence connections pointed towards a social media post naming Hisham as the target.

Sources in Gaza gave the BBC the name of a more senior Hamas commander who was rumoured to have been seated on a nearby table, but posts on social media said he died the following day and did not mention the cafe.

The Hamas source said Hisham was the only person within the group killed at al-Baqa, while the IDF did not respond to questions about the commander.

An anti-Hamas activist told the BBC that “many Hamas people” were injured in the strike, including one who worked with the group but not as a fighter, who lost his leg in the explosion.

Medics could not confirm this account, but said that they dealt with many people with severe injuries, including those arriving with missing limbs or requiring amputations.

Israel does not allow international journalists access to Gaza to report on the war making it difficult to verify information, and Hamas has historically ruled the territory with an iron grip, making speaking out or any dissent dangerous.

Among the bodies and the debris in al-Baqa were traces of the civilian lives lost – a giant pink and white teddy bear, its stuffing partially exposed, a child’s tiny shoe, and playing cards soaked in blood.

A displaced man who was in the area seeing family at the time of the strike was among those who went running into the cafe to try to find survivors.

“Shrapnel was everywhere… there were many injuries,” he told the BBC.

He said when he entered part of the men’s section that he found the bodies of waiters and other workers, and saw as one “took his last breath”.

“It was crazy,” said Saeed Ahel, a regular at the cafe and friend of its managers.

“The waiters were gathered around the bar since it was shady and breezy there. Around [six] of them were killed,” he added, before listing their names. More were injured.

The mother of two young men who worked at the cafe screamed as she followed their bodies while they were carried on a sheet out of the wreckage on Monday.

A distraught man pointed at a dry patch of blood on the floor, where he said bits of brain and skull had been splattered. He had put them in a bag and carried them out.

Meanwhile, the grandmother of 17-year-old Sama Mohammad Abu Namous wept.

The teenager had gone to the cafe that afternoon with her brother, hoping to use the internet connection to study. Relatives said the siblings were walking into the beachside cafe when the bomb hit. Sama was killed, while her brother was rushed to hospital.

“She went to study and they killed her,” she said. “Why did she have to return to her grandmother killed?”

The coach of young female boxer Malak Musleh said he was in shock at the loss of his friend of more than 10 years, having first learned the news of her killing through social media.

“She believed that boxing was not just for boys but that girls should have the right too,” Osama Ayoub said. “Malak was ambitious. She didn’t skip any training day.”

He said he last saw Malak about 10 days before the strike, when he dropped off some aid to her and her father.

“We sat together for nearly an hour. She told me that she was continuing her training with her sister and wished I could train them. I told her unfortunately because my house got demolished I live now in Khan Younis [in southern Gaza], but as soon as I hear that there is a ceasefire I will try to go back to training,” he said.

“She said to make sure to keep a space for them… She had passion in her eyes and her words.”

When Osama saw the Facebook post by Malak’s father announcing her death, he “didn’t believe it”.

“I called him and he confirmed it but I still don’t believe it,” he said over the phone from a displacement camp.

Artist Amina Omar Al-Salmi, better known as Frans, was also at the cafe with a well-known photographer friend.

Since the 35-year-old’s death, one of her pieces depicting a dead woman with her eyes closed and covered in blood, has been shared widely online alongside an image of her after her death, with people noting the striking similarities.

Her sister, now living in Sweden, told the BBC that the last time they spoke, Frans had said that she was sure “something good was going to happen”.

“She was happy and said: ‘We’ll meet soon. You’ll see me at your place.'”

The Western Indian town of Kolhapur has found itself in an unlikely global spotlight, as thousands of local artisans who hand-craft traditional leather footwear are mounting a collective attack on luxury fashion label Prada for plagiarising their designs without credit.

The rhythmic pounding of the hammer in 58-year-old Sadashiv Sanake’s dimly lit workshop bears witness to the hard grind behind handcrafting the iconic Kolhapuri leather sandals.

“I learnt the craft as a child,” he tells the BBC. A day’s toil goes into making just “eight to 10 pairs” of these sandals he says, that retail at a modest $8-10

Barely 5,000 artisans in Kolhapur are still in the profession – a cottage industry that struggles to compete in a mechanised world, caught in the funk of dismal working conditions and low wages.

It’s no surprise then that when Italian luxury brand Prada released a new line of footwear that bore a striking resemblance to the Kolhapuri sandals – but didn’t mention the design origins – local artisans were up in arms.

The backlash was swift. Social media was flooded with accusations of cultural appropriation, prompting Prada to issue a statement acknowledging the sandals’ roots.

Now local politicians and industry associations have thrown their weight behind the artisans who want better recognition of the craft and its cultural legacy.

Mr Sanake was not aware of Prada’s show until the BBC showed him a video of it. When told that that the sandals could retail for hundreds of pounds in luxury markets, he scoffed. “Do they have gold in them?” he asked.

Prada hasn’t revealed the price tag but its other sandals retail at between £600 to £1,000 in the UK as per its website.

The earliest records of Kolhapur sandals date back to the 12th Century.

“These sandals were originally crafted by members of the marginalised Charmakar (cobbler) community, also known as chamars,” said Kavita Gagrani, a history professor at the New College in Kolhapur.

Chamar is a pejorative caste term used to describe Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) who work with animal hides.

“But in the early 20th Century, the craft flourished when the then ruler of Kolhapur, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj granted royal patronage to this community,” Ms Gagrani said.

Today, nearly 100,000 artisans across India are engaged in the trade with an industry worth over $200m, according to the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture (MACCIA), a prominent industry trade group.

Yet, most of them continue to work in unorganised setups under dismal conditions.

“I was never educated. This is all I know, and I earn about $4-5 a day, depending on the number of orders,” said 60-year-old Sunita Satpute.

Women like her play a critical role, particularly in engraving fine patterns by hand, but are not compensated fairly for their long hours of labour, she said.

That’s why Sunita’s children don’t want to continue the craft.

A short distance away from her workshop lies Kolhapur’s famous chappal gully, or sandal lane, a cluster of storefronts – many of them struggling to stay afloat.

“Leather has become very expensive and has pushed up our costs,” said Anil Doipode, one of the first sellers to open a shop here.

Traditionally, artisans would use cow and buffalo hide to make these sandals. But since 2014, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power, there have been several reports of vigilantes – self-appointed protesters or activists – cracking down on alleged cow slaughter, sometimes with physical violence. The cow is considered sacred by Hindus.

In 2015, Maharashtra state banned the slaughter of cows and the sale and consumption of beef, forcing artisans to rely on buffalo leather sourced from neighbouring states, pushing up their production costs.

Traditional sellers are also struggling to compete with synthetic copies flooding the market.

“Customers want cheaper sandals and can’t always tell the difference,” said Rohit Balkrishna Gavali, a second-generation Kolhapuri sandal seller.

Industry experts say the controversy highlights the need for a better institutional framework to protect the rights of artisans.

In 2019, the Indian government had awarded Kolhapuri sandals the Geographical Indication (GI) – a mark of authenticity which protects its name and design within India, preventing unauthorised use by outsiders.

Globally, however, there is no binding law that stops other countries or brands from aesthetic imitation.

Aishwarya Sandeep, a Mumbai-based advocate, says that India could raise the issue at the World Trade Organization under its TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement, of which it is a signatory.

But the system is cumbersome, expensive and often lacks enforceability, both in India and abroad, she adds.

Lalit Gandhi, the president of MCCIA, says his organisation is planning to patent the Kolhapuri sandal design, hoping to create a legal precedent for future cases.

But some say real change can only happen when India starts seeing its traditional heritage in a different light.

“It’s about ethical recognition. India must push for royalty-sharing and co-branding,” says Ritu Beri, a renowned designer. “The more we take pride in our culture, the less we will be exploited.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time a global fashion brand has been accused of appropriating Indian handicrafts.

Many big labels have featured Indian fabrics and embroidery work with little to no artist collaboration. “Take Chikankari (a delicate hand-embroidery style from the northern Indian city of Lucknow), Ikat (a cloth-dyeing technique), mirror work; they’ve all been used repeatedly. The artisans remain invisible while brands profit from their inspiration,” Ms Beri says.

Mr Gandhi, however, says that Prada’s endorsement of Kolhapuri sandals could also be beneficial for artisans.

“Under their label, the value [of Kolhapuri sandals] is going to increase manifold,” he says. “But we want some share of that profit to be passed on to artisans for their betterment.”

Rohit Balkrishna Gavali, a sandal-seller in Kolhapur, agrees – he has already begun to see the difference.

“The design Prada used wasn’t even very popular, but now people are asking for it, with clients from Dubai, the US and Qatar” placing orders, he says.

“Sometimes, controversy can help,” he adds. “But it would be nice if it also brought respect and better prices for those keeping this tradition alive.”

The issue is unlikely to die down soon.

For now, a plea has been filed in a high court, demanding Prada pay damages and compensation to artisans, along with a court-supervised collaboration between the luxury label and artisan associations.

Prada has told BBC in a statement that it is in talks with the MCCIA on this matter.

Mr Gandhi, its chief, says a meeting between the two sides is going to take place next week.

Abbie was 16 years old when she started using ketamine. It was the first time she had felt in control.

The negative thoughts that had swamped her mind since a young age began to dissipate.

Twelve years later and fresh out of rehab she’s still battling with the addiction that almost took her life.

She wants to speak out to explain why ketamine has become such a popular drug – especially among young people with mental health problems – and to talk about the damage it can do long term.

Abbie’s warning comes as the first NHS clinic in the UK – dedicated to helping children struggling with ketamine use – opens on Merseyside, with patients as young as 12 needing help.

Ketamine is unlike many other street drugs due to the way it interacts with the brain.

Small amounts of the Class B drug can give a sense of euphoria and excitement, while large amounts can lead to a state known as the “K-hole,” where users feel detached from reality – an out-of-body-type experience.

The number of under 16s reporting a problem with the drug has nearly doubled over the past two years, overtaking cocaine in popularity with children and young people.

Nearly half those (49%) who started treatment for drug misuse in 2023-24 said they had a mental health problem, with more than a quarter not receiving any treatment for the latter.

Experts are warning that some young people are taking dangerous amounts of ketamine not only due to it’s low price and ease of availability, but also because of the dissociative feelings it brings.

“What we are seeing is a perfect storm,” David Gill, the founder of Risk and Reliance, a company which trains front-line workers on emerging drug trends.

“We have more young people struggling with depression, trauma, anxiety, a lack of services – and we have a very cheap street drug that helps them disconnect.”

Abbie’s first line of ketamine did exactly that. She says it “felt like such a powerful place to be”.

“My thoughts no longer had a negative effect on me – life was passing me by, but I didn’t have to engage with it.”

Abbie’s childhood had been hard. Struggling with mental health problems and undiagnosed ADHD, she had left school at 14 and found herself in a whirlwind of drink, drugs and unhealthy relationships.

Although addiction cast a long shadow throughout her 20s, Abbie managed to secure a place at university, staying clean throughout, and obtained a healthcare degree.

She is smart, articulate and wants to do well, but after two abusive and controlling relationships ketamine became the only means she had to block out the trauma.

Yet when she went to her GP to seek help she was prescribed sleeping tablets and told to “come off the ket”.

“The withdrawals were so bad I would be shaking and vomiting,” she says, “it wasn’t that easy to just come off it.”

Then a deeper level of addiction took hold.

“I always prided myself in the early stages of addiction of keeping my morals and my values and not lying to people,” Abbie says, “but I couldn’t stop the drugs and I found myself hiding my use to my friends.”

Things escalated. Eventually Abbie was taking ketamine every day – incessantly. The only time she would take a shower, she says, would be when she went out to meet her dealer on the street.

The physical effects of overuse began to kick in – horrific abdominal pains, known as K-cramps, would leave her screaming in agony. She would place boiling hot water bottles on her abdomen – burning her skin. And then she would take even more ketamine to numb the pain.

• Often referred to as ket, Special K or just K, ketamine is a powerful horse tranquilliser and anaesthetic. It is a licensed drug and can be prescribed medically
• When misused, it can cause serious and sometimes permanent damage to the bladder
• It is currently a Class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971
• The penalty for possession is up to five years in prison, an unlimited fine – or both

This cycle of drug abuse is something public health consultant Professor Rachel Isba also sees in her new clinic for under 16s experiencing the physical side effects of ketamine use.

Chronic use of the drug can cause ketamine-induced uropathy, a relatively new condition, which affects the bladder, kidneys and liver. The bladder lining becomes so inflamed it can result in permanent damage and it has to be removed.

Prof Isba says the first signs of ketamine bladder are severe abdominal pains, urinating blood and jelly from the damaged bladder lining.

“Patients referred to the clinic will receive a holistic approach,” she says, “care from the specialist urology team to treat the physical effects of the drug, and then they will be supported – and referred if necessary – to community services who can help with the often complex reasons behind their drug use.”

Sarah Norman, from St Helens, says she felt like a “silent watcher” as her daughter began to “fade in front” of her eyes.

Last September she discovered that Maisie, 25, was addicted to ketamine, which had caused potentially irreversible damage to her kidneys.

“We are just an average family,” Sarah says. “I never thought Maisie would have ended up addicted to any drugs – she doesn’t even drink alcohol.”

Maisie had kept it quiet – ashamed of the stigma attached to her ketamine use. But what had started as a party drug she’d take at festivals had become a substance she couldn’t function without.

In the end her partner moved out with their three-year-old son.

“I had nothing left to live for,” Maisie says. “It got to the point I was doing bump after bump [snorting small amounts of it].

“For a short time I would be knocked out of reality – then I would take more.”

Eventually, Maisie’s mum and sister carried her into hospital – she weighed just five stone (32kg).

“The doctors said her body was failing her,” Sarah says. “We thought we might lose her.”

As a parent, she says, she felt completely helpless.

“It’s hell on earth, there is nothing you can do. You ask yourself what you should have done.”

Maisie’s kidneys were fitted with nephrostomy tubes, which drain the urine out into two bags – which she now carries around with her.

Yet even this major operation didn’t end Maisie’s addiction. But finally, after fighting for a place in rehab she has now been clean for five months.

Sarah posts about her daughter’s drug journey on Tik Tok where many parents reach out to her for help and advice with their own children.

“This drug is just horrific, so many other young people are struggling with it,” Sarah says. “I am so proud of Maisie though, she’s going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings every night.

“The pain she must have been through – and still goes through – I’m not sure if I’d have been as resilient and strong as she is.”

Abbie was rejected from NHS rehabilitation services twice, and reached a point where she considered taking her own life.

“There was so much chaos around me and the services weren’t going to help me, I just wanted to end it all,” she says.

But after sending a five-page letter to the panel that decides on eligibility she finally managed to access a detox and rehabilitation service.

“I had three choices,” Abbie says, “rehab, section – or in a coffin.”

Abbie was treated in the same rehabilitation unit as Maisie. She is now out, clean and proud of herself but says the treatment she received failed to deal with her trauma.

“I can look after myself on a daily basis and I’m doing OK. The real work starts now I’m out of rehab,” she says, ” and now I am clean, hopefully I can get the mental health support I so desperately needed when I was using.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said that as part of its 10 Year Health Plan to reform the NHS, it was going to be much “bolder in moving from sickness to prevention”.

“This government is driving down the use of drugs like ketamine, ensuring more people receive timely treatment and support, and making our streets and communities safer.”

The Namibian government has announced a temporary ban on state funerals amid criticism over the rising costs of these burials.

Only President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah has the power to exempt funerals from the moratorium, the government said.

Minister of Information and Communication Technology Emma Theofelus made the announcement following a Cabinet meeting earlier this week.

She said the moratorium would last until April 2026, while a review committee looks into the “criteria and processes associated with bestowing official funerals”.

Ms Theofelus told the BBC that a committee consisting of “no more than seven members” would be established to lead the review.

• Sam Nujoma: The revolutionary leader who liberated Namibia
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The government has not said whether the decision was related to mounting criticism of the increasing costs of the numerous state funerals as reported by local media.

The BBC has asked the presidency for comment.

The Windhoek Observer, a privately owned publication, said calls for the moratorium had been made as far back as 2021 when the rising cost of official burials came under scrutiny, especially at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It quoted Prime Minister Elijah Ngurare, who earlier this year revealed that official funerals had cost the government 38.4m Namibian dollars ($2.2m; £1.6m) in the 2024/2025 financial year.

By comparison, only 2.1m Namibian dollars was spent on 23 funerals during the 2022/2023 financial year, according to the news site.

The Observer said the state had spent 30m Namibian dollars just to transport the body of founding President Sam Nujoma around the country ahead of his state funeral in February this year.

Nujoma, who died at the age of 95, led the long fight for independence from South Africa after helping found Namibia’s liberation movement, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo), in the 1960s.

After independence, Nujoma became president in 1990 and led the country until 2005.

• Namibia marks colonial genocide as reparations hang in the balance
• From freedom fighter to Namibia’s first female president
• ‘I wanted someone to take better care of my son’

Palestine Action has been banned after a judge refused its request to temporarily block the UK government from proscribing it as a terror group.

On Friday, a High Court judge refused a bid to temporarily stop the ban.

The group then challenged the ruling at the Court of Appeal, which late on Friday evening rejected the last-minute appeal.

The ban – which came into effect on Saturday – means supporting Palestine Action will become a criminal offence, with membership or expressing support for the group punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

On his decision at the hearing on Friday, denying the group’s request for a temporary block, High Court judge Mr Justice Chamberlain said: “I have concluded that the harm which would ensue if interim relief is refused but the claim later succeeds is insufficient to outweigh the strong public interest in maintaining the order in force.”

Earlier this week, a draft order was laid before Parliament requesting an amendment to the Terrorism Act 2000 to include Palestine Action as a proscribed organisation.

The move was taken to ban the group after an estimated £7m of damage was caused to planes at RAF Brize Norton last month, in action claimed by Palestine Action.

Raza Husain KC, barrister for Palestine Action’s Ms Ammori, told the court banning the group would be “ill-considered” and an “authoritarian abuse” of power.

“This is the first time in our history that a direct action civil disobedience group, which does not advocate for violence, has been sought to be proscribed as terrorists,” he said.

In a 26-page judgement, Mr Justice Chamberlain said some of the consequences feared by Ms Ammori and others who gave evidence were “overstated”.

After the ruling, Ms Ammori said “thousands of people across Britain wake up tomorrow to find they had been criminalised overnight for supporting a domestic protest group which sprays red paint on warplanes and disrupts Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer”.

She added: “We will not stop fighting to defend fundamental rights to free speech and protest in our country and to stand up for the rights of the Palestinian people.”

The group then launched a last-minute challenge at the Court of Appeal, which they lost late on Friday evening.

Delivering their ruling, the Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr, Lord Justice Lewis and Lord Justice Edis said: “The merits of the underlying decision to proscribe a particular group is not a matter for the court.

“This is a matter, under the relevant Act of Parliament, for the Secretary of State, who is accountable to Parliament for the decisions that she makes.”

The court also refused to pause the ban coming into effect pending any Supreme Court bid.

Around 81 organisations are already proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, including Hamas, al Qaida and National Action.

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to proscribe Palestine Action on 23 June, saying that the vandalism of the two planes was “disgraceful” and that the group had a “long history of unacceptable criminal damage”.

Mr Justice Chamberlain said an assessment on whether to ban the group had been made as early as March, and “preceded” the incident at RAF Brize Norton.

Four people have been charged in connection to the incident.

Pop star Katy Perry and actor Orlando Bloom have officially confirmed they have split, US media outlets say, six years after getting engaged.

The couple have been romantically linked since 2016 and have a four-year-old daughter.

In a joint statement issued to US media outlets, representatives for the couple said the pair “have been shifting their relationship over the past many months to focus on co-parenting”.

“They will continue to be seen together as a family, as their shared priority is – and always will be – raising their daughter with love, stability and mutual respect.”

The statement was being released due to the “abundance of recent interest and conversation” surrounding their relationship, it added.

The pop star, 40, and the 48-year-old actor split in 2017 but got back together shortly afterwards. They got engaged on Valentine’s Day in 2019.

A year later Perry revealed she was pregnant in the music video for her single Never Worn White.

Their daughter Daisy Dove was born later that year, with Unicef announcing the news on its Instagram account. Both Perry and Bloom are goodwill ambassadors for the United Nations agency that helps children.

The couple’s split follows a tough year for Perry. Her most recent album, 143, and its lead single Woman’s World, were not as well received as her previous music.

The singer is currently on tour, but ticket sales have reportedly been slower than earlier in her career.

Perry and a group of other female celebrities also faced backlash after their Blue Origin space trip in April, a reaction which Perry said left her feeling “battered and bruised”.

The US singer, who was previously married to Russell Brand, shot to fame in 2008 with the single I Kissed A Girl, which reached number one in the UK.

Her hits since then have included Roar, California Gurls, Firework and Never Really Over.

Bloom was previously married to Australian model Miranda Kerr, and they have a son, 14-year-old Flynn.

The British actor has starred in Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Russia has become the first country to formally recognise the Taliban government in Afghanistan, sparking outrage from opposition figures.

The decision marks a major milestone for the Taliban almost four years after they swept into Kabul and took power.

Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said he hoped it would serve as an example to other countries, which have been reluctant to recognise a regime which implements a version of Sharia law along with severe restrictions on women and girls.

Others have decried the move, with former Afghan politician Fawzia Koofi saying “any move by any country to normalise relations with the Taliban will not bring peace it will legitimise impunity”.

Koofi went on to warn “such steps risk endangering not just the people of Afghanistan, but global security”.

Meanwhile, the Afghan Women’s Political Participation Network said it legitimised “a regime that is authoritarian, anti-women, and actively dismantling basic civil rights”.

The Taliban government has previously said it respects women’s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Afghan culture and Islamic law.

But since 2021, girls over the age of 12 have been prevented from getting an education, and women from many jobs. There have also been restrictions on how far a woman can travel without a male chaperone, and decrees on them raising their voices in public.

Foreign Minister Muttaqi said Moscow’s recognition, which came on Thursday, was “a new phase of positive relations, mutual respect, and constructive engagement”, describing the decision as “courageous”.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it saw the potential for “commercial and economic” co-operation in “energy, transportation, agriculture and infrastructure”, and that it would continue to help Kabul to fight against the threats of terrorism and drug trafficking.

Russia was one of very few countries that did not close down their embassy in Afghanistan in 2021 – as the Taliban swept across Afghanistan following the withdrawal of US troop.

The country was also the first to sign an international economic deal with the Taliban in 2022, where they agreed to supply oil, gas and wheat to Afghanistan.

The Taliban was removed from Russia’s list of terrorist organisations in April this year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also referred to the Taliban as an “ally” in fighting terrorism in July last year. Taliban representatives had visited Moscow for talks as early as 2018.

However, the two countries have a complex history. The Soviet Union – which included Russia – invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and fought a nine-year war that cost them 15,000 personnel.

Their decision to install a Soviet-backed government in Kabul turned the Soviets into an international pariah, and eventually led to their withdrawal in February 1989.

In its statement, the Afghan Women’s Political Participation Network noted it had not forgotten “Russia’s role in the destruction of Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion”.

“Today, its political interference and direct support for the Taliban represent a continuation of those same destructive strategies, now under the banner of diplomacy,” it said.

Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta, a former Afghan national security adviser under the predceding Western-backed government, described Russia’s decision as “regrettable”, adding: “This is just the beginning; in the absence of widespread resistance, others will follow Russia.”

Strict sanctions were placed on Afghanistan in 2021 by the United Nations Security Council, most notably the freezing of approximately $9bn (£6.6bn) in assets.

The UN has said the rules impacting women amount to “gender apartheid”, while also reporting public floggings and brutal attacks on former government officials.

While the Taliban government is widely not recognised by other countries, Germany’s interior minister wants to work with Afghanistan to resume deportations of convicted Afghan criminals.

Germany initially stopped deportations following the Taliban’s return to power.

Alexander Dobrindt on Thursday said he wants to make “agreements directly with Afghanistan to enable deportations”.

On Friday, a UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman said it was “not appropriate” to return people to Afghanistan on the account of the Taliban “documenting continuing human rights violations”.

Most countries closed their embassies after 2021. However, China, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Pakistan all have designated ambassadors to Kabul.

One person has been killed and 26 others were injured after a night of intensive Russian strikes on almost every district in Kyiv, officials say.

A pall of acrid smoke hung over the Ukrainian capital on Friday morning following hours of nightfall punctuated by the staccato of air defence guns, buzz of drones and large explosions. Ukraine said Russia fired a record 539 drones and 11 missiles.

The strikes came hours after a call between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, after which Trump said he was “disappointed” that Putin was not ready to end the war against Ukraine.

Moscow says the war will continue for as long as it is necessary to reach its objectives.

Russia’s overnight air strikes broke another record, Ukraine’s air force said, with 72 of the 539 drones penetrating air defences – up from a previous record of 537 launched last Saturday night.

Air raid alerts sounded for more than eight hours asseveral waves of attacks struck Kyiv, the “main target of the strikes”, the air force said on the messaging app Telegram.

Footage shared on social media by Ukraine’s state emergency service showed firefighters battling to extinguish fires in Kyiv after Russia’s overnight attack.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the strikes as one of the most “demonstratively significant and cynical” attacks of the war, describing a “harsh, sleepless night”.

Noting that it came directly after Putin’s call with Trump, Zelensky added in a post on Telegram: “Russia once again demonstrates that it does not intend to end the war”.

He called on international allies – particularly the US – to increase pressure on Moscow and impose greater sanctions.

Later on Friday, Zelensky and Trump held a phone call regarding the supply of US weapons, which the Ukrainian leader said was a “very important and fruitful conversation”. It came after Washington decided to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine, including those used for air defences.

“We spoke about opportunities in air defence and agreed that we will work together to strengthen protection of our skies,” Zelensky said on X.

Kyiv has warned that the move to pause some shipments would impede its ability to defend Ukraine against escalating airstrikes and Russian advances on the frontlines.

According to Ukrainian authorities, the overnight strikes damaged railway infrastructure, while schools, buildings and cars were set ablaze across Kyiv.

Poland’s Foreign Minister, Radosław Sikorski, said the Polish consulate had also been damaged.

The Russian strikes also hit the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Chernihiv. Rescuers also found a dead body while going through the rubble in the Svyatoshynsky district, the head of the Kyiv city military administration said.

Russia’s defence ministry said the “massive strike” had been launched in response to the “terrorist acts of the Kyiv regime”.

The acting governor of Russia’s southern Rostov region said a woman was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a village not far from the border on Friday night.

Friday’s attacks were the latest in a string of major Russian air strikes on Ukraine that have intensified in recent weeks as ceasefire talks have largely stalled.

War in Ukraine has been raging for more than three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Following his conversation with Putin on Thursday, Trump said that “no progress” to end the fighting had been made.

“I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don’t think he’s there, and I’m very disappointed,” Trump said.

“I’m just saying I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad.”

The Kremlin reiterated that it would continue to seek to remove “the root causes of the war in Ukraine”. Putin has sought to return Ukraine to Russia’s sphere of influence and said last week that “the whole of Ukraine is ours”.

Responding to Trump’s comments on Friday, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the BBC that as long as it was not possible to secure Russia’s aims through political-diplomatic means, “we are continuing our Special Military Operation” – Russia’s preferred name for the invasion.

Previously, Trump has said that the US is “giving weapons” to Ukraine, and hasn’t completely paused the flow of munitions. He blamed former President Joe Biden for “emptying out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves”.

On Friday, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that while he understands Washington’s needs to maintain its own weapon stockpiles, he hopes “for a level of flexibility” to make sure Ukraine also has what it needs.

Meanwhile, a German government spokesperson said they were currently in talks with the US to buy Patriot air defence systems to give to Ukraine.

Plans for a futuristic city in Senegal dreamt up by the singer Akon have been scrapped and instead he will work on something more realistic, officials say.

“The Akon City project no longer exists,” Serigne Mamadou Mboup, the head of Senegal’s tourism development body, Sapco, told the BBC.

“Fortunately, an agreement has been reached between Sapco and the entrepreneur Alioune Badara Thiam [aka Akon]. What he’s preparing with us is a realistic project, which Sapco will fully support.”

Known for his string of noughties chart hits, Akon – who was born in the US but partly raised in Senegal – announced two ambitious projects in 2018 that were supposed to represent the future of African society.

The first was Akon City – reportedly costed at $6bn (£5bn). It was to run on the second initiative – a brand new cryptocurrency called Akoin.

Initial designs for Akon City, with its boldly curvaceous skyscrapers, were compared by commentators to the awe-inspiring fictional city of Wakanda in Marvel’s Black Panther films and comic books.

But after five years of setbacks, the 800-hectare site in Mbodiène – about 100km (60 miles) south of the capital, Dakar – remains mostly empty. The only structure is an incomplete reception building. There are no roads, no housing, no power grid.

“We were promised jobs and development,” one local resident told the BBC. “Instead, nothing has changed.”

Meanwhile the star’s Akoin cryptocurrency has struggled to repay its investors over the years, with Akon himself conceding: “It wasn’t being managed properly – I take full responsibility for that.”

There had also been questions over whether it would even be legal for Akoin to operate as the primary payment method for would-be residents of Akon City. Senegal uses the CFA franc, which is regulated and issued by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), and like many central banks has expressed opposition to cryptocurrency.

The plans for Akon City had been sweeping.

Phase one alone was to include a hospital, a shopping mall, a school, a police station, a waste centre, and a solar plant – all by the end of 2023.

Sitting on Senegal’s Atlantic Coast, Akon’s high-tech, eco-friendly city was supposed to run entirely on renewable energy.

But despite Akon’s insistence in a 2022 BBC interview that the project was “100,000% moving”, no significant construction followed the initial launch ceremony.

Now the Senegalese government has confirmed what many suspected – the project had stalled beyond recovery. Officials cited a lack of funding and halted construction efforts as key reasons for the decision.

Although Akon City as it was originally imagined has been shelved, the government says it is now working with Akon on a more “realistic” development project for the same site.

The land near Mbodiène remains of high strategic value, especially with the 2026 Youth Olympic Games approaching and increased tourism activity expected.

• Akon’s Wakanda, grazing goats and a crumbling crypto dream
• Born in France but searching for a future in Africa
• US basketball training for Senegal cancelled after visas rejected
• Senegal starts producing oil as president promises benefits

A joint funeral has been held for two major crime figures more than a month after they were shot dead in a Spanish bar.

Eddie Lyons Jnr and Ross Monaghan were gunned down in a beachfront bar in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol on 31 May.

Both men had spent the evening watching the Champions League final before they were targeted, just before midnight, by a lone gunman.

Michael Riley, 44, from Liverpool, has been accused by Spanish police of the murders with a full extradition hearing scheduled for later this year.

On Friday hundreds of mourners gathered to pay their respects to Lyons Jnr, 46, and Monaghan, 43, at Bishopbriggs Crematorium in East Dunbartonshire.

Two silver hearses carried the coffins with floral tributes that said “Dad” and “Son”.

Both men were linked to the Lyons crime group, which is based in the west of Scotland.

It has been engaged in a violent feud with the Daniel family and their associates which dates back more than two decades.

Lyons Jnr survived a previous attempt on his life 18 years ago when he was ambushed by Daniel clan enforcer Kevin “Gerbil” Carroll in Bellshill, Lanarkshire.

It followed an incident which was widely credited with taking the rivalry with the Daniel family to another level.

In November 2006 Carroll allegedly used a 4×4 and a tow rope to topple the headstone of Eddie Jnr’s brother, Garry, who was only eight when he died of leukaemia in 1991.

The following month two men in a blue Mazda pulled up outside a garage in Lambhill, in the north of Glasgow.

Raymond Anderson and James McDonald put on old man face masks, then walked into Applerow Motors and opened fire.

The owner, David Lyons, took cover but his 21-year-old nephew Michael – Eddie Jnr’s cousin – was shot dead.

Eddie’s brother, Steven, was injured along with his associate Robert Pickett.

The feud claimed a further victim on 13 January 2010 when Carroll was shot dead outside an Asda in Robroyston, Glasgow, which was busy with lunchtime shoppers.

Mongahan was arrested over the murder in August 2010 but he was acquitted in May 2012 after a judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to convict him.

Less than five years later he was shot in the shoulder outside a Glasgow primary school after dropping his child off.

The gunman was pushing a child’s buggy when he opened fire on Muirdykes Road near St George’s Primary, Penilee.

Two associates of the Daniel group were both cleared of the attack at a trial but were later convicted for other organised crime offences.

Monaghan is believed to have moved to Spain soon after the school shooting.

It was reported that he owned the Costa del Sol bar, bearing his name, where he and Lyons Jnr were killed.

It has since reopened under a new name.

The double murder follows a wave of gangland violence in Scotland since March.

It has resulted in a series of assaults, shootings and firebombings against individuals linked to the Daniel group in the east and west of the country.

Detectives working on Operation Portaledge, set up in response to the violence, have so far made 50 arrests.

Police Scotland has maintained it has no evidence the double murder is linked to the feud, despite conflicting claims by a senior Spanish officer.

Chief Supt Pedro Agudo Novo last month confirmed Lyons and Monaghan were killed within seconds of each other by a lone gunman who fled the scene on foot.

According to the officer, the suspect’s gun jammed after he killed Lyons Jnr with a single shot outside the bar.

He then pursued Monaghan inside and fired two more shots which proved fatal.

Chief Supt Agudo Novo last month highlighted the “professionalism” of the shootings and the suspect’s “perfectly planned” escape from Spain.

He also alleged that the killer was a member of the Daniel crime group.

BBC Scotland News understands that investigators in Spain and in Scotland were surprised by Chief Supt Agudo Novo’s public statement.

The position of Scottish detectives is that there is “no current evidence” linking the shootings to the Daniel group.

In response to Chief Supt Novo’s comments, Police Scotland repeated the carefully-worded statement they issued three days after the murders.

And last week Chief Constable Jo Farrell said the force “wasn’t aware” of any evidence the murders were linked to the feud, or had been planned from Scotland.

Michael Riley, of Huyton, was arrested on an international arrest warrant in the Liverpool area on 13 June in connection with the shootings.

On 20 June, Mr Riley appeared before Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London.

Asked by the court clerk if he wished to give his consent to be extradited back to Spain, he replied: “No, I do not.”

Mr Riley, who was remanded in custody, will return to court in October for an extradition hearing.

Crowds mourned Diogo Jota in his hometown to pay their respects to the Liverpool forward and his brother André Silva, who both died in a car crash on Thursday.

Portugal’s president, stars from the national team and fans from across the country gathered in the small town of Gondomar, on the outskirts of Porto, where the pair grew up.

Their parents, grandfather and other family members held a private vigil at a chapel in the town before it was opened to the public for a wake. The funeral will be held on Saturday.

The pair – both footballers, with André playing in Portugal’s second division – were killed after the Lamborghini they were travelling in crashed in the Spanish province of Zamora.

Fans carrying Portugal flags, flowers and other memorabilia were seen weeping as they queued to pay their respects.

Those in attendance included President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, national team stars João Moutinho, Diogo Dalot and Ricardo Horta, and Jota’s agent Jorge Mendes.

For years as a young boy, Jota played for local club Gondomar SC, which named its academy after him in 2022.

Emblazoned on its sign is a quote from Jota: “It’s not about where we come from but where we’re going to.”

Outside the club, shirts and scarves were laid inside a ring of candles.

The 28-year-old father-of-three – who this year won the Nations League with Portugal and Premier League with Liverpool – married his long-term partner Rute Cardoso just 11 days before the fatal crash.

He had been travelling back to Liverpool for pre-season training, making the trip by car and ferry because he had undergone minor surgery and had been advised against flying.

Liverpool said his death was a “tragedy that transcends” the club.

Fans also grieved outside the club’s Anfield stadium.

Former captain Jordan Henderson was seen in tears as he laid a wreath, with a card that read: “Rest in peace my friend, along with your brother André. We will all miss you.”

There was also a touching moment at Oasis’s reunion gig on Friday evening when Jota’s image appeared on screen at the end of Live Forever, prompting applause around Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

Liverpool striker Mohamed Salah admitted he was dreading returning to the club in the wake of Jota’s shock death.

“I am truly lost for words. Until yesterday, I never thought there would be something that would frighten me of going back to Liverpool after the break,” Salah wrote in a post on social media.

A delegation from Liverpool’s city rival club Everton – including Portugal-born strikers Beto and Youssef Chermiti – also attended and left flowers outside Anfield.

Former Liverpool councillor Peter Millea – a home and away regular who had come to pay his respects – told the BBC: “There was something about him as a player when he first came to us that he became an instant hit.

“He was one of those players you can easily take to, because of the manner in which he conducted himself on and off the pitch and the important goals he scored.”

Mr Millea said some fans at Anfield had broken into impromptu renditions of the chant while paying their respects.

“I’m sure we’ll hear it loud and clear at Wembley for the Community Shield and we’ll hear it at Preston for the first pre-season away game, you know it’ll be sung around the field against Athletic Bilbao and then during the course of the rest of the season and probably forever-more,” he said.

Elsewhere, fans left flowers, scarves and shirts outside Wolves’ Molineux Stadium, where Jota played prior to his move to Anfield.

At Wimbledon, Portuguese tennis player Francisco Cabral wore a black ribbon to mark the passing of his countrymen.

A minute’s silence was held in the Women’s Euro 2025 game between Denmark and Sweden.

Liverpool has cancelled pre-season fitness tests that were due to take place today for some players as a result of yesterday’s news. A phased return of training will now begin on Monday.

The funeral service will be held at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar in Sao Cosme in Gondomar at 10:00 on Saturday.

Oasis blew off the cobwebs and swept away the doubters as they kicked off their reunion tour in Cardiff.

Taking to the stage after a 16-year break, the band sounded refreshed and rejuvenated, tearing into classics like Cigarettes and Alcohol, Live Forever and Slide Away – as 70,000 fans clasped each other and spilled beer all over themselves.

They opened with Hello, with its chorus of “it’s good to be back”, following up with Acquiesce – one of the few songs that features vocals from both Noel and Liam Gallagher.

The lyric “we need each other” felt like a reconciliation – or a sigh of relief – as the brothers buried the hatchet of a decades-long feud and reconnected with their fans.

Liam, in particular, attacked the gig with wild-eyed passion – stalking the stage and biting into the lyrics like a lion tearing apart its prey.

The audience responded in kind. A communal fervour greeted songs like Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger, both pulled from Oasis’s 1995 masterpiece, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – one of the best selling British albums of all time.

All night, it was one singalong after another: Some Might Say, Supersonic, Whatever, Half The World Away, Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.

During Live Forever – which they dedicated to Liverpool footballer Diogo Jota – the audience even sang Noel’s guitar solo.

“You sound like a load of Charlotte Churches,” said Liam, impressed, after Stand By Me.

The frontman sounded fresh and powerful himself, putting to rest the vocal issues that had plagued him on previous tours – a result of Hashimoto’s disease, an auto-immune condition that can affect the voice.

As fans will know, Oasis were never the most dynamic act on stage. Noel, in particular, wears the studious look of a man trying to remember his National Insurance number – but somehow, it’s impossible to take your eyes off them.

Although they came out hand in hand, there were few other signs of chemistry between the brothers, who never addressed one another during the two-and-a-quarter hour show.

But just hearing them harmonise again, after all the animosity and the turbulent waters under the bridge, was hugely emotional.

“Nice one for putting up with us over the years,” said Liam, introducing the night’s last song, Champagne Supernova. “We are hard work, I get it.”

As they left the stage, the Gallaghers shared a brief hug.

But the band’s volatility was always part of the appeal.

Their off-stage antics made the headlines as often as their music: They missed their first European gig after getting arrested on a cross-channel ferry, Liam lost two front teeth in a fight with German police, and later abandoned a pivotal US tour go house-hunting.

Half the fun was working out which act of the Shakespearean drama was being enacted in front of you.

Still, Liam’s antics often frustrated his brother.

“Noel is the guy who’s chained to the Tasmanian devil,” Danny Eccleston, consultant editor of the Mojo magazine, once said. “A lifetime of that would wear you down.”

• BBC Sounds: The Rise and Fall of Oasis

It all came to a head at a gig in Paris in 2009. Oasis split up after a backstage altercation that began with Liam throwing a plum at his older brother’s head.

In the intervening years, they engaged in a long war of words in the press, on stage and social media.

Liam repeatedly called Noel a “massive potato” on Twitter and, more seriously, accused him of skipping the One Love concert for victims of the Manchester Arena bombing.

Noel responded by saying Liam was a “village idiot” who “needs to see a psychiatrist”.

But relations thawed last year, with Liam dedicating Half The World Away to his brother at Reading Festival last August.

Two days later, the reunion was announced, with the band declaring: “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised.”

A scramble for tickets ensued, with more than 10 million people applying to see the 19 UK dates alone.

Those who succeeded were shocked by the high prices – especially when standing tickets advertised at £155 were re-labelled “in demand” and changed on Ticketmaster to £355 plus fees.

On stage, Liam made light of the scandal, asking the audience: “Is it worth the £4,000 you paid for a ticket?”

For many, the answer was yes. Cardiff was awash with Oasis fans from all over the world – including Peru, Japan, Argentina, Spain and South Korea.

An Italian couple had “live forever” inscribed on their wedding rings. A British woman, expecting her first child, had scrawled “our kid” – Noel’s nickname for Liam – across her baby bump.

The city was awash in bucket hats and branded tracksuit tops. Outside the stadium, an enterprising busker drew a massive crowd by playing a set of Oasis songs. Everyone joined in.

Inside, the band stuck to the classics, with a setlist that only strayed out of the 1990s once, for 2002’s Little By Little.

The songs held up remarkably well.

The youthful hunger of tracks like Live Forever and Supersonic crackled with energy. And Cigarettes and Alcohol, written by Noel in 1991, about the discontent of Manchester’s working classes after 15 years of Conservative rule, sounded as relevant in 2025 as it did then.

“?” snarled Liam. Fans, young and old, roared along in recognition and approval.

Later, during Wonderwall, the frontman cheekily changed the lyrics to say: “.”

I have seen Oasis many, many times and this was the best they’ve been since 1995, when I caught them supporting REM at Ireland’s Slane Castle, as they limbered up for the release of (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

The Manchester band blew the headliners away – instantly making them seem dated and irrelevant – in a show that threatened to turn into chaos after Liam threatened a fan who’d thrown a projectile on stage.

They might not have that sense of danger in 2025, but there was a hunger and a passion that was missing from their last shows in 2009.

Fans, and some parts of the British press, are already speculating over whether Liam and Noel’s rapprochement will hold – but from the evidence on stage in Cardiff, the Gallaghers are finally, belatedly, mad fer it once more.

• Hello
• Acquiesce
• Morning Glory
• Some Might Say
• Bring it on down
• Cigarettes & Alcohol
• Fade Away
• Supersonic
• Roll With It
• Talk Tonight (Noel sings)
• Half the World Away (Noel sings)
• Little by Little (Noel sings)
• D’You Know What I Mean
• Stand By Me
• Cast No Shadow
• Slide Away
• Whatever
• Live Forever
• Rock and Roll Star

• The Masterplan (Noel sings)
• Don’t Look Back in Anger (Noel sings)
• Wonderwall
• Champagne Supernova

As Donald Trump cheered the passage of his self-styled, and officially named, Big Beautiful Budget Bill through Congress this week, long-sown seeds of doubt about the scale and sustainability of US borrowing from the rest of the world sprouted anew.

Trump’s tax-cutting budget bill is expected to add at least $3 trillion (£2.2 trillion) to the US’s already eye-watering $37tn (£27tn) debt pile. There is no shortage of critics of the plan, not least Trump’s former ally Elon Musk, who has called it a “disgusting abomination”.

The growing debt pile leaves some to wonder whether there is a limit to how much the rest of the world will lend Uncle Sam.

Those doubts have been showing up recently in the weaker value of the dollar and the higher interest rate investors are demanding to lend money to America.

It needs to borrow this money to make up the difference between what it earns and what it spends every year.

Since the beginning of this year, the dollar has fallen 10% against the pound and 15% against the euro.

Although US borrowing costs have been steady overall, the difference between the interest rates paid on longer-term loans versus shorter-term loans – what’s known as the yield curve – has increased, or steepened, signalling increased doubts about the long-term sustainability of US borrowing.

And that is despite the fact that the US has lowered interest rates more slowly than the EU and the UK, which would normally make the dollar stronger because investors can get higher interest rates on bank deposits.

The founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, Ray Dalio, believes that US borrowing is at a crossroads.

On its current trajectory he estimates the US will soon be spending $10tn a year in loan and interest repayments.

“I am confident that the [US] government’s financial condition is at an inflection point because, if this is not dealt with now, the debts will build up to levels where they can’t be managed without great trauma,” he says.

So what might that trauma look like?

The first option is a drastic reduction in government spending, a big increase in taxes or both.

Ray Dalio suggests that cutting the budget deficit from its current 6% to 3% soon could head off trouble in the future.

Trump’s new budget bill did cut some spending, but it also cut taxes more, and so the current political trajectory is going the other way.

Secondly, as in previous crises, the US central bank could print more money and use it to buy up government debt – as we saw after the great financial crisis of 2008.

But that can end up fuelling inflation and inequality as the owners of assets like houses and shares do much better than those who rely on the value of labour.

The third is a straightforward US default. Can’t pay won’t pay. Given that the “full faith and credit of the US Treasury” underpins the entire global financial system, that would make the great financial crisis look like a picnic.

So how likely is any of this?

Right now, mercifully, not very.

But the reasons why are not actually that comforting. The fact is, whether we like it or not, the world has few alternatives to the dollar.

Economist and former bond supremo Mohamed El-Erian told the BBC that many are trying to reduce dollar holdings, “the dollar is overweight and the world knows it, which is why we have seen a rise in gold, the euro and the pound, but it’s hard to move at scale so there’s really very few places to go”.

“The dollar is like your cleanest dirty shirt, you have to keep wearing it.”

Nevertheless, the future of the dollar and the world’s benchmark asset – US government bonds – is being discussed at the highest levels.

The governor of the Bank of England recently told the BBC that the levels of US debt and the status of the dollar is “very much on [US Treasury] Secretary Bessent’s mind. I don’t think the dollar is fundamentally under threat at the moment but he is very aware of these issues and I don’t think it is something that he underestimates.”

Debt of $37tn is an unfathomable number. If you saved a million dollars every day, it would take you 100,000 years to save up that much.

The sensible way to look at debt is as a percentage of a country’s income. The US economy produces income of around $25tn a year.

While its debt to income level is much higher than many, it’s not as high as Japan or Italy, and it has the benefit of the world’s most innovative and wealth creating economy behind it.

At home I have a book called Death of the Dollar by William F Rickenbacker in which he warns of the risks to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. It was written in 1968. Mr Rickenbacker is no longer with us – the dollar is.

But it doesn’t mean that its status and value is a divine right.

French police have waded into shallow waters off a beach south of Boulogne and used knives to slash an inflatable small boat – packed with men, women and children – that was wallowing, dangerously, in the waves.

All those onboard clambered to safety as the boat collapsed in chaotic scenes.

The intervention was highly unusual.

French police usually follow strict rules that bar them from going into the sea in case they put lives at risk.

“Let’s go in,” said one of the gendarmes, pulling off his body armour, and taking out a small knife. His colleagues took their heavy armour off, too, placing equipment in the back of a nearby police car before rushing into the water.

There had been some speculation that this rare incident could be evidence that the French police – under growing pressure to stop a surge of small boat migrant crossings to the UK – are changing their tactics.

But they have made it clear to the BBC that police have not adopted any new tactics in dealing with small boat launches, that the rules forbidding intervention in the water remains in place and officers must continue to prioritise safety on the beaches. They are allowed to intervene, however, if they believe lives are at immediate risk.

Well-placed sources in France have told us that the procedural changes now being considered will almost certainly focus on the use of patrol boats at sea to intercept the “taxi-boats” before they’re fully loaded, rather than on approving more aggressive interventions from police on the beaches.

The UK prime minister’s official spokesman said the images of French police destroying a boat were “a significant moment and we welcome this action”.

“We want to see tougher action taken, that’s precisely the focus of our work, it is the outcome of that close work that you’ve seen,” the spokesman said.

A few metres offshore, the boat itself was clearly in trouble. People were crowded around the outboard motor, which had briefly stalled but was being restarted.

Waves were breaking underneath the boat, causing it to lurch wildly, and there were loud screams from several children who were in danger of being crushed onboard.

Earlier, two large groups of people already wearing orange life jackets had emerged from the nearby dunes and rushed towards the sea.

In all there were probably 80 or 100 people. But when the first “taxi-boat” – used by the smuggling gangs to collect passengers from various points along the French coast – sped past perhaps 100m from the shore, it was clearly full already and did not stop to pick anyone else up.

A few minutes later, a second boat, with almost no passengers, came towards the shore, watched by a French coastguard boat further into the English Channel.

Initially, people were ushered forwards in organised groups, holding hands, and directed by one man who appeared to be leading events.

But as the inflatable boat turned and reversed towards the shore, there was a scrum as dozens of people scrambled to climb aboard in water that was at least waist deep.

At first the gendarmes declined to intervene and stood watching from the shore.

One officer repeated a now-familiar explanation to me – that they were barred from going into the water except to rescue people.

But as the situation became increasingly chaotic, the officers at the scene clearly felt that a line had been crossed, that those on board were now in danger, and that there was a brief opportunity to disable the boat in relative safety and while any smugglers – who might have fought back – were distracted by their attempts to restart the engine.

As a policeman slashed repeatedly at the rubber, there were cries and shouts of anger and frustration from some of those onboard.

A young girl, who had been in the middle of the scrum, squashed at the stern of the boat close to the engine, was plucked to safety as others scrambled on to the nearby sand.

Moments later the boat was dragged ashore by the police as the migrants began collecting items they had dropped on the beach and then headed inland, up the sandy paths through the dunes towards the nearest village and a bus-ride back to the migrant camps further north.

Former Arsenal footballer Thomas Partey has been charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.

The offences are reported to have taken place between 2021-2022, the Metropolitan Police said.

The charges involve three women, with two counts of rape relating to one woman, three counts of rape in connection to a second woman and one count of sexual assault linked to a third woman.

The Ghanaian international denies the charges and “welcomes the opportunity to finally clear his name”, his lawyer said.

The charges follow an investigation by detectives, which started in February 2022 after police first received a report of rape.

The 32-year-old’s contract with Arsenal ended on Monday after playing with the team since 2020.

An Arsenal spokesman said: “The player’s contract ended on June 30. Due to ongoing legal proceedings the club is unable to comment on the case.”

The Football Association and the Premier League declined to comment.

Det Supt Andy Furphy, who is leading the investigation, said: “Our priority remains providing support to the women who have come forward.

“We would ask anyone who has been impacted by this case, or anyone who has information, to speak with our team. You can contact detectives about this investigation by emailing CIT@met.police.uk”

Mr Partey, of Hertfordshire, is expected to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 5 August.

In a statement, his lawyer Jenny Wiltshire said: “Thomas Partey denies all the charges against him.

“He has fully cooperated with the police and CPS throughout their three-year investigation.

“He now welcomes the opportunity to finally clear his name.

“Given that there are now ongoing legal proceedings, my client is unable to comment further.”

Mr Partey joined Arsenal for £45.3m from Atletico Madrid in October 2020, made 35 top-flight appearances last season and scored four goals as the London club finished second in the Premier League.

He also played 12 times in the Champions League as the Gunners reached the semi-finals before being knocked out by eventual winners Paris St-Germain.

Overall, he made 130 Premier League appearances for Mikel Arteta’s side, scoring nine goals.

Mr Partey has also made more than 50 appearances for Ghana’s national team, and most recently played at World Cup qualification matches in March.

One of Sweden’s most wanted gang leaders, Ismail Abdo, has been arrested in Turkey, the Swedish prosecutor’s office said on Friday.

The dual Swedish-Turkish national has an extensive list of drug-related charges against him according to the global police agency, Interpol.

The 35-year-old, nicknamed The Strawberry, is a well-known leader of the Rumba crime gang in Sweden. He is accused of orchestrating illegal operations from abroad and has been the subject of an Interpol red notice since last year.

Swedish police did not identify him, but confirmed the arrest of a man “suspected of having engaged in serious drug trafficking and inciting serious violent crimes” for many years in Sweden.

He was one of 19 people who were arrested during raids in Turkey, where officers seized more than a tonne of drugs, state broadcaster TRT reported. Exactly where the raids took place has not been revealed.

Arrest warrants were issued for a further 21 suspects, of whom 14 were believed to be abroad and three already in custody on other charges. Four are still at large, TRT added.

Turkish authorities reportedly seized assets worth around 1.5bn Turkish lira (£27.8m; $38m), including 20 vehicles, bank accounts and 51 real estate properties.

Gang violence in Sweden has escalated in recent years, in part because Abdo’s former friend, Rawa Majida, is the leader of a rival gang, Foxtrot.

Many people have been killed since their deadly turf war began. It entered a new, violent chapter in 2023 when Abdo’s mother was murdered in her home in Uppsala, north of the capital, Stockholm.

The escalation prompted the government to bring in the army to help tackle the surge in gang killings.

In 2024, Turkish police arrested Abdo during a traffic stop, but released him on bail despite the active Interpol red notice against him – a move which drew criticism from Swedish authorities who were seeking to extradite Abdo.

The increase in gang violence that has plagued some of Sweden’s biggest cities and spread to quieter suburbs and towns has shattered its reputation as a safe and peaceful nation.

Lat year, Sweden’s security service, Sapo, accused Iran of recruiting Swedish gang members to carry out attacks on Israeli or Jewish interests. In October, a 13-year-old boy fired shots outside the offices of Israeli tech firm Elbit Systems. Israel’s embassies in Sweden and Denmark were also both targeted.

Sweden’s centre-right governing coalition, which promised to end the gang crime wave when it was elected in 2022, will see Abdo’s capture as a win. However the fact that he is also a Turkish citizen could complicate the extradition process.

An estimated 14,000 people in Sweden are caught up in criminal gangs, according to a police report last year, and a further 48,000 people are said to be connected to them.

US President Donald Trump has signed his landmark policy bill into law, a day after it was narrowly passed by Congress.

The signing event at the White House on Friday afternoon enacts key parts of the Trump agenda including tax cuts, spending boosts for defence and the immigration crackdown.

There was a celebratory atmosphere at the White House as Trump signed the bill ahead of Independence Day fireworks and a military picnic attended by the pilots who recently flew into Iran to strike three nuclear sites.

Trump told supporters it will unleash economic growth, but he must now convince sceptical Americans as polling suggests many disapprove of parts of the bill.

Several members of his own Republican party were opposed because of the impact on rising US debt and Democrats warned the bill would reward the wealthy and punish the poor.

The 870-page package includes:

• extending 2017 tax cuts of Trump’s first term
• steep cuts to Medicaid spending, the state-provided healthcare scheme for those on low incomes and the disabled
• new tax breaks on tipped income, overtime and Social Security
• a budget increase of $150bn for defence
• a reduction in Biden-era clean energy tax credits
• $100bn to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Moments before the bill signing, there was a fly-by of a pair B-2 bombers – the same kind of aircraft that participated in the Iran operation – flanked by highly advanced F-35 and F-22 fighter aircraft.

In a speech from the White House balcony facing the South Lawn, Trump thanked Republican lawmakers who helped usher the bill to his desk. He touted the tax cuts in the bill, brushing aside criticism of the impact to social programmes such as food assistance and Medicaid.

“The largest spending cut, and yet, you won’t even notice it,” he said of the bill. “The people are happy.”

Additionally, Trump praised additional resources being given to border and immigration enforcement and an end to taxes on tips, overtime and social security for senior citizens, which he says the bill will fulfil.

The celebratory mood follows days of tense negotiations with Republican rebels in Congress and days of cajoling on Capitol Hill, sometimes by the president himself.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delayed the final vote in the lower chamber of Congress on Thursday by speaking for nearly nine hours.

He called the bill an “extraordinary assault on the healthcare of the American people” and quoted testimony from individuals anxious about its impact.

But his marathon speech only postponed the inevitable. As soon as he sat down, the House moved to a vote.

Only two Republicans went against, joining all 212 Democrats united in opposition. The bill passed by 218 votes to 214.

Earlier this week, the Senate passed the bill but US Vice-President JD Vance was required to cast a tiebreaking vote after three Republicans held out.

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Hours after the House passed the bill, the president was in a triumphant mood as he took to the stage in Iowa to kick off a years long celebration of 250 years since American independence.

“There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago,” he told supporters in Des Moines.

The White House believes the various tax cuts will help stimulate economic growth, but many experts fear that will not be sufficient to prevent the budget deficit – the difference between spending and tax revenue in any year – from ballooning, adding to the national debt.

Analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) suggests the tax cuts could produce a surplus in the first year but will then cause the deficit to rise sharply.

According to the Tax Policy Center, the tax changes in the bill would benefit wealthier Americans more than those on lower incomes, About 60% of the benefits would go to those making above $217,000 (£158,000), its analysis found.

The BBC spoke to Americans who may see a cut in the subsidies that help them pay for groceries.

Jordan, a father of two, is one of 42 million Americans who benefits from the SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) scheme targeted by the bill.

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He and his wife get about $700 a month to feed their family of four and the 26-year-old said if this bill reduces what he can claim he would get a second job. “I’m going to make sure that I can do whatever I can to feed my family,” he says.

Along with cuts to SNAP, the changes to Medicaid – a programme that covers healthcare for low-income, elderly and disabled Americans – would result in nearly 12 million losing coverage in the next decade, the CBO estimates.

Republicans defend their changes to Medicaid, saying that by toughening up work requirements they are tackling abuse and fraud.

Polling taken before the bill passed in Congress suggests public support is low and dwarfed by numbers opposed. A recent Quinnipiac University survey pointed to only 29% endorsing the legislation, which rose to two-thirds among Republicans.

But knowledge of the bill may be low too. Reuters reported there was little awareness of the legislation among Trump supporters they spoke to at the Iowa rally on Thursday night.

The Western Indian town of Kolhapur has found itself in an unlikely global spotlight, as thousands of local artisans who hand-craft traditional leather footwear are mounting a collective attack on luxury fashion label Prada for plagiarising their designs without credit.

The rhythmic pounding of the hammer in 58-year-old Sadashiv Sanake’s dimly lit workshop bears witness to the hard grind behind handcrafting the iconic Kolhapuri leather sandals.

“I learnt the craft as a child,” he tells the BBC. A day’s toil goes into making just “eight to 10 pairs” of these sandals he says, that retail at a modest $8-10

Barely 5,000 artisans in Kolhapur are still in the profession – a cottage industry that struggles to compete in a mechanised world, caught in the funk of dismal working conditions and low wages.

It’s no surprise then that when Italian luxury brand Prada released a new line of footwear that bore a striking resemblance to the Kolhapuri sandals – but didn’t mention the design origins – local artisans were up in arms.

The backlash was swift. Social media was flooded with accusations of cultural appropriation, prompting Prada to issue a statement acknowledging the sandals’ roots.

Now local politicians and industry associations have thrown their weight behind the artisans who want better recognition of the craft and its cultural legacy.

Mr Sanake was not aware of Prada’s show until the BBC showed him a video of it. When told that that the sandals could retail for hundreds of pounds in luxury markets, he scoffed. “Do they have gold in them?” he asked.

Prada hasn’t revealed the price tag but its other sandals retail at between £600 to £1,000 in the UK as per its website.

The earliest records of Kolhapur sandals date back to the 12th Century.

“These sandals were originally crafted by members of the marginalised Charmakar (cobbler) community, also known as chamars,” said Kavita Gagrani, a history professor at the New College in Kolhapur.

Chamar is a pejorative caste term used to describe Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) who work with animal hides.

“But in the early 20th Century, the craft flourished when the then ruler of Kolhapur, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj granted royal patronage to this community,” Ms Gagrani said.

Today, nearly 100,000 artisans across India are engaged in the trade with an industry worth over $200m, according to the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture (MACCIA), a prominent industry trade group.

Yet, most of them continue to work in unorganised setups under dismal conditions.

“I was never educated. This is all I know, and I earn about $4-5 a day, depending on the number of orders,” said 60-year-old Sunita Satpute.

Women like her play a critical role, particularly in engraving fine patterns by hand, but are not compensated fairly for their long hours of labour, she said.

That’s why Sunita’s children don’t want to continue the craft.

A short distance away from her workshop lies Kolhapur’s famous chappal gully, or sandal lane, a cluster of storefronts – many of them struggling to stay afloat.

“Leather has become very expensive and has pushed up our costs,” said Anil Doipode, one of the first sellers to open a shop here.

Traditionally, artisans would use cow and buffalo hide to make these sandals. But since 2014, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power, there have been several reports of vigilantes – self-appointed protesters or activists – cracking down on alleged cow slaughter, sometimes with physical violence. The cow is considered sacred by Hindus.

In 2015, Maharashtra state banned the slaughter of cows and the sale and consumption of beef, forcing artisans to rely on buffalo leather sourced from neighbouring states, pushing up their production costs.

Traditional sellers are also struggling to compete with synthetic copies flooding the market.

“Customers want cheaper sandals and can’t always tell the difference,” said Rohit Balkrishna Gavali, a second-generation Kolhapuri sandal seller.

Industry experts say the controversy highlights the need for a better institutional framework to protect the rights of artisans.

In 2019, the Indian government had awarded Kolhapuri sandals the Geographical Indication (GI) – a mark of authenticity which protects its name and design within India, preventing unauthorised use by outsiders.

Globally, however, there is no binding law that stops other countries or brands from aesthetic imitation.

Aishwarya Sandeep, a Mumbai-based advocate, says that India could raise the issue at the World Trade Organization under its TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) agreement, of which it is a signatory.

But the system is cumbersome, expensive and often lacks enforceability, both in India and abroad, she adds.

Lalit Gandhi, the president of MCCIA, says his organisation is planning to patent the Kolhapuri sandal design, hoping to create a legal precedent for future cases.

But some say real change can only happen when India starts seeing its traditional heritage in a different light.

“It’s about ethical recognition. India must push for royalty-sharing and co-branding,” says Ritu Beri, a renowned designer. “The more we take pride in our culture, the less we will be exploited.”

Of course, this isn’t the first time a global fashion brand has been accused of appropriating Indian handicrafts.

Many big labels have featured Indian fabrics and embroidery work with little to no artist collaboration. “Take Chikankari (a delicate hand-embroidery style from the northern Indian city of Lucknow), Ikat (a cloth-dyeing technique), mirror work; they’ve all been used repeatedly. The artisans remain invisible while brands profit from their inspiration,” Ms Beri says.

Mr Gandhi, however, says that Prada’s endorsement of Kolhapuri sandals could also be beneficial for artisans.

“Under their label, the value [of Kolhapuri sandals] is going to increase manifold,” he says. “But we want some share of that profit to be passed on to artisans for their betterment.”

Rohit Balkrishna Gavali, a sandal-seller in Kolhapur, agrees – he has already begun to see the difference.

“The design Prada used wasn’t even very popular, but now people are asking for it, with clients from Dubai, the US and Qatar” placing orders, he says.

“Sometimes, controversy can help,” he adds. “But it would be nice if it also brought respect and better prices for those keeping this tradition alive.”

The issue is unlikely to die down soon.

For now, a plea has been filed in a high court, demanding Prada pay damages and compensation to artisans, along with a court-supervised collaboration between the luxury label and artisan associations.

Prada has told BBC in a statement that it is in talks with the MCCIA on this matter.

Mr Gandhi, its chief, says a meeting between the two sides is going to take place next week.

Thirteen people have died in Kerr County in the US state of Texas, according to authorities, after severe weather and flooding hit parts of the state.

More people are unaccounted for, including at a summer camp where Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick confirmed around 20 children are missing.

“Within 45 minutes, the Guadalupe River rose 26 feet and it was a destructive flood, taking property and sadly lives,” he said at a news conference on Friday.

He read out a statement from all-girls Camp Mystic, where about 750 children were in attendance. He said there had been a “catastrophic level” of flooding.

• Follow live updates

Patrick also informed parents that if they have not been contacted, their child is accounted for.

“That does not mean [the missing children] have been lost. They could be out of communication,” the lieutenant governor, who is acting governor while Governor Greg Abbott is on vacation, added.

Patrick acknowledged the offers of personal helicopters and drones from the public, saying they do not need any additional equipment to help with rescue efforts.

He said rescue agencies had 14 choppers, 12 drones, nine rescue teams, and swimmers in the water – a total of 400-500 people on the ground.

Another official confirmed that the search will continue through the night.

He said the flooding affected an area that has a lot of summer camps that “thousands” of children attend, especially over the 4 July Independence Day weekend.

“We have not had reports from other camps at this point of a loss, but that does not mean there has not been,” Patrick said.

On Friday morning, flash flooding in the state prompted disaster declarations for the Hill Country and Concho Valley regions.

In Kerr County, the sheriff’s office has reported severe flooding with several people missing and confirmed loss of life.

At the news conference on Friday afternoon, Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly – the top official in the county – was pressed as to why the camps along the Guadalupe River weren’t evacuated in advance.

“We didn’t know this flood was coming. Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming,” Kelly responded.

He later added “we do not have a warning system” in the area, which floods regularly.

He said what happened on Friday “far” surpassed a flood in 1987, which killed 10 teenagers on a church camp bus near the town of Comfort, south of Kerr County.

Rescues and evacuations have been under way since the early morning and there are warnings of more potential flash flooding to come in the state.

The state received several months worth of precipitation in a few hours, according to officials, leading to dangerous flash floods.

Governor Greg Abbott said Texas was providing “all necessary resources to Kerrville, Ingram, Hunt and the entire Texas Hill Country dealing with these devastating floods”.

The region is to the north-west of the city of San Antonio.

Pictures show the deep flood waters swamping bridges and fast moving water swirling down roads.

“Folks, please don’t take chances. Stay alert, follow local emergency warnings, and do not drive through flooded roads,” Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said.

The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office told residents near creeks, streams and the Guadalupe River to move to higher ground.

Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring said there was no indication the floods were going to be so devastating as the country does not have an early warning system in place, as reported by The Kerrville Daily Times.

The Kerrville Breaking News group on Facebook is a forum where locals often post restaurant recommendations, upcoming events and resources in the area.

On Friday, it was inundated with posts from families who have relatives unaccounted for from the flooding.

A pleading mother shared that she had not been able to get in touch with her daughter and son-in-law, whose home was swept away from a road near Kerrville Lake.

One woman in Austin, Texas posted that her grandparents living along the Guadalupe River had not been heard from since yesterday.

Separately, in New Jersey, authorities say at least three people died in the state following heavy rain and thunderstorms on Thursday night.

Among the three killed were two men, aged 79 and 25, who died after a tree fell onto their car in Plainfield during Thursday’s severe storm.

A 44-year-old woman was also killed when a tree fell on her vehicle in North Plainfield.

Two female tourists, including a British pensioner, have been killed by a charging elephant while on safari in Zambia, police have told the BBC.

Easton Taylor, 68, from the UK and 67-year-old Alison Taylor from New Zealand were attacked by a female elephant that was with a calf at the South Luangwa National Park, said local police chief Robertson Mweemba.

The two tourists were trampled to death by the nursing elephant after efforts by tour guides to stop it by firing shots failed. Both women died at the scene, he said.

The British Foreign Office said it was supporting the family of a British woman who had died in Zambia and was liaising with local authorities.

Mr Mweemba said the two women were part of a guided safari group who were walking in the park on Thursday when the elephant charged towards them at high speed.

The two tourists had stayed for four days at the Big Lagoon Camp, about 600 km (370 miles) from the capital, Lusaka, where the attack happened.

“They were moving to other camps when the elephant charged from behind. We are really sorry that we have lost our visitors,” Mr Mweemba said.

“They both died on the spot,” he added.

It is not clear whether the pair were related.

Female elephants are very protective of their calves and Zambian authorities have previously called on tourists to exercise extreme caution while observing wildlife around the country.

“It is very difficult to control the animals and tourists like feeding them,” Mr Mweemba said.

Last year, two American tourists were killed in separate attacks by elephants in the southern African country. Both cases involved elderly tourists who were in a safari vehicle when they were attacked.

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Crowds mourned Diogo Jota in his hometown to pay their respects to the Liverpool forward and his brother André Silva, who both died in a car crash on Thursday.

Portugal’s president, stars from the national team and fans from across the country gathered in the small town of Gondomar, on the outskirts of Porto, where the pair grew up.

Their parents, grandfather and other family members held a private vigil at a chapel in the town before it was opened to the public for a wake. The funeral will be held on Saturday.

The pair – both footballers, with André playing in Portugal’s second division – were killed after the Lamborghini they were travelling in crashed in the Spanish province of Zamora.

Fans carrying Portugal flags, flowers and other memorabilia were seen weeping as they queued to pay their respects.

Those in attendance included President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, national team stars João Moutinho, Diogo Dalot and Ricardo Horta, and Jota’s agent Jorge Mendes.

For years as a young boy, Jota played for local club Gondomar SC, which named its academy after him in 2022.

Emblazoned on its sign is a quote from Jota: “It’s not about where we come from but where we’re going to.”

Outside the club, shirts and scarves were laid inside a ring of candles.

The 28-year-old father-of-three – who this year won the Nations League with Portugal and Premier League with Liverpool – married his long-term partner Rute Cardoso just 11 days before the fatal crash.

He had been travelling back to Liverpool for pre-season training, making the trip by car and ferry because he had undergone minor surgery and had been advised against flying.

Liverpool said his death was a “tragedy that transcends” the club.

Fans also grieved outside the club’s Anfield stadium.

Former captain Jordan Henderson was seen in tears as he laid a wreath, with a card that read: “Rest in peace my friend, along with your brother André. We will all miss you.”

There was also a touching moment at Oasis’s reunion gig on Friday evening when Jota’s image appeared on screen at the end of Live Forever, prompting applause around Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

Liverpool striker Mohamed Salah admitted he was dreading returning to the club in the wake of Jota’s shock death.

“I am truly lost for words. Until yesterday, I never thought there would be something that would frighten me of going back to Liverpool after the break,” Salah wrote in a post on social media.

A delegation from Liverpool’s city rival club Everton – including Portugal-born strikers Beto and Youssef Chermiti – also attended and left flowers outside Anfield.

Former Liverpool councillor Peter Millea – a home and away regular who had come to pay his respects – told the BBC: “There was something about him as a player when he first came to us that he became an instant hit.

“He was one of those players you can easily take to, because of the manner in which he conducted himself on and off the pitch and the important goals he scored.”

Mr Millea said some fans at Anfield had broken into impromptu renditions of the chant while paying their respects.

“I’m sure we’ll hear it loud and clear at Wembley for the Community Shield and we’ll hear it at Preston for the first pre-season away game, you know it’ll be sung around the field against Athletic Bilbao and then during the course of the rest of the season and probably forever-more,” he said.

Elsewhere, fans left flowers, scarves and shirts outside Wolves’ Molineux Stadium, where Jota played prior to his move to Anfield.

At Wimbledon, Portuguese tennis player Francisco Cabral wore a black ribbon to mark the passing of his countrymen.

A minute’s silence was held in the Women’s Euro 2025 game between Denmark and Sweden.

Liverpool has cancelled pre-season fitness tests that were due to take place today for some players as a result of yesterday’s news. A phased return of training will now begin on Monday.

The funeral service will be held at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar in Sao Cosme in Gondomar at 10:00 on Saturday.