French President Emmanuel Macron said any peace deal in Ukraine must come with security guarantees, as he met US President Donald Trump at the White House for talks on the war.

“This peace must not be a surrender of Ukraine, it must not mean a ceasefire without guarantees,” he said as the two leaders held a joint news conference following their meeting on Monday.

Trump, who did not mention security guarantees himself, said the cost and burden of securing peace in Ukraine must be paid for by European nations and not just the US.

Macron responded that Europe understood the need to “more fairly share the security burden”, and added that talks on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion had shown a path forward.

While the pair exchanged warm words throughout Monday, some clear differences emerged on the issue of ending the war in Ukraine as they spoke to reporters in the Oval Office and then held a 40-minute news conference later in the day.

The topic of including security guarantees in any peace deal was one area of difference, as was the potential next steps to end the war.

Trump said the war could end “within weeks” and he wanted a ceasefire as soon as possible, adding that he would visit Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin once one was agreed.

Macron, however, pushed a more considered approach involving a truce and then a broader peace deal that would include clear guarantees for protecting Ukraine long-term.

“We want peace swiftly, but we don’t want an agreement that is weak,” he said.

The pair did agree, however, that any peace deal should include the deployment of European peacekeeping forces to Ukraine. That suggestion has been rejected outright by Russia.

“They would not be along the front lines. They would not be part of any conflict. They would be there to ensure that the peace is respected,” Macron said in the Oval Office.

Trump then said Russian President Vladimir Putin would accept that. “I specifically asked him that question. He has no problem with it,” he said.

The French president praised Trump’s efforts to engage with Putin in recent weeks, saying “there is good reason” for him to do so.

Trump declined to call Putin a “dictator” after using the term last week to describe Ukraine’s president, and said he planned to meet with the Russian leader after holding a call with him last week.

“I don’t know when we’ll speak,” Trump said. “At some point I’ll be meeting with President Putin.”

He also invited Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House to conclude a deal to share some of the country’s natural resources. “He may come in this week or next week,” Trump said. “I’d love to meet him.”

And while there were no moments of open disagreement between Trump and Macron, the French president did interrupt his US counterpart in the Oval Office to push back on his claim that EU aid to Ukraine was all in the form of loans.

“No, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60% of the total effort,” Macron said.

“If you believe that, it’s OK with me,” Trump replied.

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The meeting between the two leaders came on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Zelensky began the day with a news release marking “three years of absolute heroism of Ukrainians” before hosting an event with global representatives.

At the event in Kyiv, which was attended by many world leaders, he said “we hope that we can finish this war this year”.

Other leaders, including from the UK, Germany and Japan, spoke by video link. There was no US representation.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier addressed the recently warming relations between Moscow and Washington.

“Russia may have gained an open ear in the White House but they have not gained an inch of legitimacy,” he said.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told attendees: “We must speed up the delivery of weapons and ammunition” to Ukraine, saying the war remains “the most central and consequential crisis for Europe’s future”.

Also on Monday, the US twice sided with Russia in votes at the UN related to the war in Ukraine.

The two countries first opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow’s actions and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity, which was eventually passed by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

UNGA members backed the European resolution by 93 votes but the US did not abstain but actually voted against it, along with Russia, Israel, North Korea, Sudan, Belarus, Hungary and 11 other states.

The US and Russia then backed a US-drafted resolution at the UN Security Council calling for an end to the conflict but containing no criticism of Russia.

The Security Council resolution was passed but two key US allies, the UK and France, abstained in the vote after their attempts to amend the wording were vetoed.

Meanwhile, the EU and UK passed a fresh round of sanctions on Russia on Monday. The EU sanctions, the 16th round passed since Russia’s invasion, targets Russia’s aluminium exports, and its so-called “shadow fleet” of ships allegedly used to bypass sanctions.

The UK sanctions target machine tools and electronics used by Russia military, and the defence minister of North Korea who is allegedly responsible for deploying over 11,000 forces to Russia to assist in the war.

Relations between Europe and the US are unquestionably in crisis, so merely keeping things together as French President Emmanuel Macron did at the White House on Monday stands as an achievement.

He did that by praising, flattering and gently cajoling the US president as they took questions in the Oval Office and held a joint news conference. This is a playbook that many leaders around the world now see as more productive than outright plain speaking or criticism of Trump.

Macron managed to navigate what could have been a tricky day in Washington without conceding or revealing too much.

He spoke of both countries wanting peace, and while he gently corrected one of Trump’s claims on Europe’s support for Ukraine, he also agreed that Europe needed to take more responsibility for its own security.

But Macron did make one important concession – that Trump was right to re-establish some kind of relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

That is in sharp contrast to the view up until now in London, Paris and Berlin, which have all pursued a policy of isolating Putin and slapping sanctions on Russian industries and individuals.

“There is good reason for President Trump to re-engage with President Putin,” Macron said, adding that the new administration represented “a big change”.

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Macron held out the prospect of European countries such as France and the UK being willing to play a leading role in ensuring the security of a post-truce Ukraine, possibly in the form of air power and troops stationed away from the frontline.

But at the same time, he stressed the importance of having an American backstop.

Macron, however, did not get a commitment of US back-up from his meeting in the Oval Office. And if he was looking for a scintilla of criticism of the Russian president from Trump, then he did not get that either.

What he did get was, at least to some extent, Europe’s voice back at the table and he, along with other European leaders, will take some heart from that.

It is clear however, that the ambitions for re-establishing the kind of close relationship that Europe and the US have had since the end of World War Two are not on anyone’s roadmap.

That is why Macron himself has been working on the idea of a more strategically autonomous Europe for some time, toying with ideas of combined European defence forces.

His sense that Europe needs to adapt given the dramatic shift in the US position is shared by Friedrich Merz, who will be Germany’s next chancellor.

Merz has already said that he believes the US under Donald Trump is indifferent to Europe’s fate, and that the continent needs to be independent of the US in terms of security.

“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Merz said.

But France, the UK and Germany have also got to be cognisant of the fact that not all European powers are so hostile to the US view on Ukraine.

The rise of far-right nationalist parties in Europe, most notably in places like Germany where the AfD came second in Sunday’s elections, suggests some European citizens are also sceptical about the continent’s continued support for Kyiv.

Later this week, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who has been closely co-ordinating with his French counterpart, will come to Washington to reinforce their case on Ukraine.

He, like Macron, believes his country has a special relationship with the US which can open doors and get a fair hearing.

The problem is that Washington in the shape of Donald Trump is on transmit mode at the moment – pushing an agenda that leaves little room for the opinion of others.

And while America has always had the ability to flex its muscles and get its way, Europe for the most part has not been on the receiving end. The fact that has changed is a sign of just how serious this rupture in established alliances has become.

Hamas says talks with Israel about further steps in the Gaza ceasefire deal are conditional on Palestinian prisoners being freed as agreed.

Israel said on Sunday it was delaying the release of more than 600 Palestinians in return for six living and four dead hostages who had been freed, accusing Hamas of repeated violations including “humiliating” handover ceremonies.

A senior Hamas official said the decision exposed the entire agreement to “grave danger” and called on mediators, especially the US, to pressure Israel.

The deal’s first phase and temporary six-week truce is set to expire on Saturday but indirect negotiations on the second phase and an end to the war have not yet begun.

UN Secretary General António Guterres warned that the ceasefire was “precarious” and that a resumption of hostilities must be avoided at all costs.

He also called for the “dignified release of all remaining hostages”.

On Saturday – the start of the sixth and final week of the ceasefire deal’s first phase – Hamas released six living Israeli hostages.

As with many of the previous handovers, five of them were led onto stages beside armed fighters before being transferred to the Red Cross and then taken to Israel.

Later, Hamas posted a video of two other hostages in a vehicle watching one of the handover ceremonies and appearing to plead with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get them out too. A forum representing the hostages’ families condemned the video as a “sickening display of cruelty”.

There was already fury in Israel after Hamas returned the bodies of four hostages earlier in the week, including those of Shiri Bibas and her two young sons Ariel and Kfir, who were abducted during the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel.

It emerged on Friday that Hamas had handed over the remains of a Palestinian woman rather than those of Ms Bibas. The group said there had been a mistake and transferred Ms Bibas’s body later that day.

Israeli authorities also said a post-mortem had shown that Ariel and Kfir’s captors killed the boys “with their bare hands”, contradicting Hamas’s claim that they died in an Israeli air strike.

Israel was scheduled to free 620 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the 10 hostages. More than 400 were Gazans detained by Israeli forces during the war, while 50 of the prisoners were serving life sentences in Israeli jails.

They had reportedly already boarded buses at a prison in the occupied West Bank when the order came to suspend their release while Netanyahu consulted ministers.

In the early hours of Sunday, the prime minister’s office said the release would be postponed “in light of Hamas’s repeated violations, including the ceremonies that humiliate our hostages and the cynical exploitation of our hostages for propaganda purposes”.

“It has been decided to delay the release of terrorists that was planned for yesterday until the release of the next hostages has been assured, and without the humiliating ceremonies.”

Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, UK and other countries – denounced Israel’s decision as a “blatant violation” of the deal and warned US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators that there could be no talks on extending the ceasefire until the prisoners were released.

“We have conveyed a clear and strong message to the mediators – we cannot continue discussing any further steps if these 620 Palestinians are not released,” Hamas political bureau member Basem Naim said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Monday.

Asked if the scheduled release of the bodies of another four Israeli hostages on Thursday could be affected, he replied that “all options are on the table”.

“Before going to the next step, we have to be sure that the past step [will happen],” he added.

“Netanyahu is clearly sending strong messages that he is intentionally sabotaging the deal, he is preparing the atmosphere for returning back to the war. Therefore, what are the guarantees that he might take the other four bodies and again not release the agreed-upon number of Palestinians, plus the 620 Palestinians?”

Naim said Hamas had discussed Israel’s complaints about the hostage handover ceremonies, but denied they had been humiliating and alleged that Israeli authorities had mistreated Palestinian prisoners before they were released.

The White House backed Israel’s decision to delay the prisoner release, saying it was an “appropriate response” to what it called the “barbaric treatment” of hostages by Hamas.

But President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said he would travel to the region this week with the aim of getting “an extension of phase one”.

“We’re hopeful that we have the proper time… to begin phase two, and finish it off and get more hostages released,” he told CNN on Sunday.

A total of 33 Israeli hostages are supposed to be exchanged for about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Gaza during the ceasefire deal’s first phase.

So far, 25 living hostages and four dead hostages have been released, while the bodies of the last four hostages are scheduled to be handed over this week. Five living Thai hostages have also been freed outside the deal.

The agreement has also seen Israeli forces withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been allowed to return to their homes in the north and hundreds of aid lorries are now being allowed into the territory each day.

The ceasefire’s second phase should see the remaining hostages released, a full Israeli withdrawal and a permanent ceasefire.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

At least 48,346 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

The freezing of US humanitarian assistance has forced the closure of almost 80% of the emergency food kitchens set up to help people left destitute by Sudan’s civil war, the BBC has learned.

Aid volunteers said the impact of President Donald Trump’s executive order halting contributions from the US government’s development organisation (USAID) for 90 days meant more than 1,100 communal kitchens had shut.

It is estimated that nearly two million people struggling to survive have been affected.

The conflict between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has killed tens of thousands of people, forced millions from their homes and left many facing famine since it erupted in April 2023.

The kitchens are run by groups known as emergency response rooms, a grassroots network of activists who stayed on the frontlines to respond to the crises in their neighbourhoods.

“People are knocking on the volunteers’ doors,” says Duaa Tariq, one of the emergency room organisers. “People are screaming from hunger in the streets.”

The Trump administration abruptly suspended all US aid last month to determine whether it was “serving US interests”, and moved to begin dismantling USAID.

The State Department has issued an exemption for emergency food assistance, but Sudanese groups and others say there is significant confusion and uncertainty about what that means in practice.

The normal channels for processing a waiver through USAID no longer exist, and it is not clear if cash assistance – on which the communal kitchens depend – will be restored, or only goods in-kind. According to some estimates, USAID provided 70-80% of the total funding to these flexible cash programmes.

The closure of the majority of Sudan’s emergency kitchens is being seen as a significant setback by organisations working to tackle the world’s largest hunger crisis, with famine conditions reported in at least five locations.

The network of communal feeding centres relied in the early stages of the country’s civil war on community and diaspora donations but later became a focal point for funding from international agencies struggling to access the conflict zones, including USAID.

It’s a “huge setback” says Andrea Tracy, a former USAID official who’s set up a fund, the Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition, for private donations to the emergency rooms.

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The former head of USAID, Samantha Power, had embraced the idea of working with the local groups rather than relying only on traditional channels like the UN.

Money had started to flow through international aid organisations that got US grants, but a channel for direct funding was in the works.

“It was ground-breaking,” says Ms Tracy. “The only time that USAID had ever done this was with the White Helmets (humanitarian group) in Syria.”

For Ms Tariq, the cut in US funding made it impossible to buy stock for the more than 25 kitchens in the six neighbourhoods in the capital, Khartoum, she helps to service. She told the BBC that left them unprepared for a worsening situation as the army advanced on the area, which has been held by the RSF since the conflict broke out.

There was widespread looting of markets as the RSF began to withdraw and the army tightened its siege.

Most of the kitchens have closed, she said. Some are trying to get food on credit from local fishermen and farmers, but very soon “we expect to see a lot of people starving”.

Here and in the rest of the country, Ms Tracy’s Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition fund will do what it can to plug the gap left by USAID.

“I think we can shore up [the emergency kitchens],” she said, “but the reality is that [private donations] are going to have to do even more now, because even if humanitarian assistance resumes, it’s never going to be what it was.”

“These volunteers were challenging us to work differently, and we were responding,” says a member of a former USAID partner organisation.

They are “exhausted, traumatised and underfunded” and “we were scaling up to help them”.

The State Department did not answer specific questions about waivers for Sudan, saying that information was shared directly with groups whose applications were successful.

“The aid review process is not about ending foreign aid, but restructuring assistance to ensure it makes the United States safer, stronger, and more prosperous,” it said in response to a BBC query.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says it has received waivers for its 13 existing Sudanese grants with USAID, but there is no certainty about what comes next for future funding. That would anyway have been under negotiation – now the talks will take place in changed circumstances.

In 2024 the United States was the largest single donor to Sudan, both in direct donations and in contributions to the UN’s Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan.

Top UN officials told the BBC the impact of Washington’s policy shift would be felt beyond the borders of Sudan, with more than two million civilians now refugees in neighbouring countries.

“I witnessed people who have fled conflict but not hunger,” said Rania Dagesh, the WFP’s assistant executive director for partnerships and innovation, after visiting camps in Renk and Malakal, South Sudan, earlier this month.

The influx of refugees has only strained available meagre resources further.

“We have to rationalise, rationalise, rationalise,” says Mamadou Dian Balde, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ regional bureau director.

He had also been to visit refugee camps in Chad and Egypt when he spoke to the BBC. “We are strained. It’s extremely difficult.”

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They both credit the local communities for welcoming those seeking refuge and sharing with them the little that is available. In the case of South Sudan, “it is a million extra people who’ve come in to a country where already 60% of the population is in emergency hunger”, says Ms Dagesh.

Most families are now down to a meal a day, with children and the elderly given priority.

“But you see them wearing out and thinning in front of you – malnourished children. You see mothers who are trying to breastfeed, and there is nothing coming out of their breast,” she said.

Most of the refugees are women, children and some elderly people.

They say most of the able-bodied men were either killed or simply disappeared. So, they fled to save themselves and the children. They have nothing.

Faced with the hunger in the camps, some in South Sudan have tried to sell firewood. But Ms Dagesh says it exposes them to harassment, violence and rape.

Many of the refugees she met had come from Sudan’s agricultural areas. The war disrupted their lives and livelihoods.

They would want to see peace restored so they can go back home, but the fighting has been raging for close to two years now with no end in sight.

With the hunger situation deteriorating inside Sudan in the absence of a ceasefire, the closure of the kitchens supplying emergency meals will only increase the numbers fleeing across borders.

Yet aid agencies that normally would help are strained.

The UNHCR says it has been forced to rationalise “to levels where our interventions are absolutely limited – they are at the minimum”.

It does not help that the agency was already underfunded.

The UNHCR’s call for donor contributions last year yielded only 30% of the anticipated amount, forcing their teams to cut “everything”, including the number of meals and amount of water refugees could receive.

The US has been the UNHCR’s main funder and the announcement last month of the aid freeze and subsequent waiver appeared to have thrown things into limbo.

“We are still assessing, working with partners, to see the extent to which this is affecting our needs,” Mr Balde told the BBC.

Faced with impossible choices, some refugees are already resorting to seek refuge in third countries, including in the Gulf, Europe and beyond. Some are embarking on “very dangerous journeys”, says Mr Balde.

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The US has twice sided with Russia in votes at the UN to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the Trump administration’s change of stance on the war.

First the two countries opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow’s actions and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity, which was passed by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

Then they backed a US-drafted resolution at the UN Security Council calling for an end to the conflict but containing no criticism of Russia.

The Security Council resolution was passed but two key US allies, the UK and France, abstained in the vote after their attempts to amend the wording were vetoed.

The competing resolutions were tabled as French President Emmanuel Macron visited President Donald Trump at the White House in an attempt to address their sharp differences over the war.

On Thursday, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will likewise visit the new American leader.

Trump’s White House has upended the transatlantic alliance, currying favour with Moscow and casting doubt on America’s long-term commitment to European security.

That rift was laid bare on the floor of the 193-member UNGA on Monday as US diplomats pushed their limited resolution mourning the loss of life during the “Russia-Ukraine conflict” and calling for a swift end to it.

European diplomats tabled a more detailed text, blaming Russia for its full-scale invasion, and supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“We need to reconfirm that the aggression should be condemned and discredited, not rewarded,” said Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa.

UNGA members backed the European resolution by 93 votes but, extraordinarily, the US did not abstain but actually voted against it, along with Russia, Israel, North Korea, Sudan, Belarus, Hungary and 11 other states, with 65 abstentions.

The UNGA also passed the US resolution but only after it was amended to include language supporting Ukraine, which led to the US abstaining.

At the much more powerful UN Security Council, which has 15 members, the unamended US resolution was passed by 10 votes, with the UK, France, Denmark, Greece and Slovenia abstaining.

America’s acting envoy to the UN, Dorothy Camille Shea, described the US resolution as a “simple historic statement… that looks forward, not backwards. A resolution focused on one simple idea: ending the war”.

Rarely has the US been so at odds with its supposed European allies.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, the Security Council has been deadlocked by the power of Russia, one of its five permanent members, to veto any resolution there.

For this reason the UNGA has been the main forum for debating the war but its resolutions are not legally binding for member states, unlike those of the Security Council.

Roaring crowds, faces painted blue and green, flags waving like battle standards.

This is the opening of The Greatest Rivalry: India v Pakistan, a new Netflix documentary on one of cricket’s most storied contests.

India’s Virender Sehwag sets the tone: “This is a contest bigger than one between the bat and ball”. Cut to dramatic footage of some of the matches, the Wagah border, partition refugees. A nation split into two, but forever bound by cricket.

Pakistan’s Waqar Younis doesn’t hesitate: “I put this rivalry right at the top. There’s no match like India v Pakistan.” India’s R Ashwin agrees: “I think this is bigger than the Ashes.” Ramiz Raja says it’s “the political garnish that makes this rivalry world-class”.

Despite wars, border standoffs and terror attacks, the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry has endured, driven by history and national pride. Even when politics halts the bilateral series, International Cricket Council (ICC) tournaments keep the fire alive, turning every match into a high-stakes spectacle.

But Pakistan’s crushing defeat to India on Sunday at the Champions Trophy has reignited the question: is this rivalry overhyped, propped up by slogans like “war minus the shooting” – a phrase George Orwell coined in 1945 to criticise excessive nationalism in sports?

Is this still the premier clash in cricket, or just one of its most dramatic? Has it lost its competitive edge, running more on history than intensity?

Consider this. From an eight-wicket thrashing in 2018 to a 228-run demolition in 2023, India has dominated, winning six of the last eight ODIs. Pakistan’s last victory? The 2017 Champions Trophy final – a fading memory in an increasingly one-sided rivalry.

What rivalry, asked Dawn – a leading Pakistani newspaper – pointedly after the latest debacle. A cricket war that’s now just a big yawn, headlined India Today magazine.

The loss would be easier to accept if Pakistan were at least putting up a fight, according to Dawn’s Zohaib Ahmed Majeed.

Majeed believes the troubled politics between the two neighbours is the only thing that has kept the rivalry alive.

“In a way we must thank the politicians of these two nations for keeping this rivalry alive, because the cricketers, especially from our side, are certainly incapable of putting up a show that is worthy of its billing,” he wrote.

“Cut out the war of words and the actual wars and what you’ll be left with is a professional cricketing unit against a haphazardly put together team at the last minute. There is no rivalry as far as pure cricketing merits are concerned.”

India Today was no less acerbic. “With its history of one-sided losses to India in recent years, Pakistan cricket is fast sliding into pity territory. And unless it reverses the trend, Pakistan’s dream of competing with India could soon turn into a butt of jokes for cricket fans,” wrote Sandipan Sharma.

To be true, Pakistan’s cricketing woes keep mounting. They have missed the final four in the last three ODI World Cups, crashed out in the T20 World Cup group stage and now, as hosts of the Champions Trophy, they’ve hit rock-bottom.

Since the 2009 attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus, Pakistan cricket has battled isolation, political turmoil, board instability, frequent coaching changes and selection controversies – all adding to its struggles. Meanwhile, across the border, India has risen as cricket’s powerhouse, backed by a strong domestic system and the IPL, cricket’s richest international league.

Pakistani cricket writer Osman Samiuddin also notes a sense of “marginalisation” among his country’s cricketers, who remain excluded from the IPL and its franchise ecosystem (no Pakistani player has featured in the IPL since 2009, as they were banned after the Mumbai terror attacks). “I think they see Indian cricketers and others as well, like Australian and English cricketers, as partaking in a world of cricket they have been excluded from,” he told a programme.

This has all contributed to the team’s fast-declining fortunes.

“It is a futile exercise to wonder if this is the lowest Pakistan cricket has ever been. However, even when Pakistan have plummeted to spectacular lows in the past, they have done it in a way that justifies the cliché of their mercurial nature,” wrote Sidharth Monga in ESPNcricinfo, after Sunday’s game.

“This slide just feels like a terminal, slow decline. Players are not fighting with each other, there is no backdoor intrigue, there are no cliques in the team plotting to dethrone the captain, there are no comical run-outs or misfields, no defeats snatched from the jaws of victory.”

The “war without guns” narrative once held weight, especially when Imran Khan’s Pakistan, armed with a fearsome pace attack of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis and batting stars like Javed Miandad and Inzamam-ul-Haq, regularly got the better of India.

“The narrative may have been true till the early 2000s because this is how the actual fans felt. But it was soon hijacked by the multinationals and the media to cash in on the hyper-pathos of it all,” Nadeem Farooq Paracha, Pakistani author and columnist, told me.

“The quality of cricket between the two sides isn’t the same anymore. Indian cricket continues to get better. In fact, I think the narrative in question here has ended up pressuring Pakistani side more. They underplay it, even though they’re more than willing to pocket its financial benefits.”

The cricket boards and broadcasters are doing all they can to keep the rivalry alive, and the ICC won’t dial down the hype – it’s too valuable in an era of overexposure of cricket, limited stars and competition from franchise cricket.

This one game has become a financial juggernaut, fuelling a parallel economy wherever it’s played – Dubai, London, Ahmedabad – drawing fans who spend big just to be there. “Pakistan has talent, but the contest now feels more psychological,” says cricket writer Gautam Bhattacharyya.

Brand consultant Santosh Desai feels the real contest between the arch rivals plays out beyond the cricket ground and the “rivalry thrives more in imagination than in reality”.

“The asymmetry [between the two sides] only fuels the hype. India’s dominance makes it an easy narrative to sell, a battle royale where the outcome feels preordained. If Pakistan were winning consistently, the marketing appeal would fade. The rivalry’s commercial power lies in India’s superiority, feeding a script designed for validation, not uncertainty,” Desai told me.

India’s vice-captain Shubman Gill dismisses talk of overhyping, calling it a contest fans love to watch. “It is an exciting contest when both of these teams play. Everyone enjoys watching it. If so many people are happy to watch the match, then who are we to say that it is underhyped or overhyped,” he told reporters on eve of Sunday’s game.

Gill is possibly right. Tickets for India-Pakistan games still fly off the shelves – the ICC reported sellouts within minutes. An astonishing 600 plus million viewers tuned in to watch Sunday’s match on Indian streaming platform JioHotstar, setting new records.

But for now, as cricket writer Ayaz Memon puts it, “the hype is more thrilling than the cricket itself”.

A 22-member Bangladeshi delegation of political leaders, civil society activists, academics and journalists have begun a 10-day visit to China.

They will be having talks with Chinese government officials and senior members of the ruling Communist Party, a delegation leader confirmed with the BBC.

Analysts say China is making overtures while diplomatic tensions have risen between Bangladesh and India on a range of issues.

This includes ousted Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina living in exile in India. Dhaka has requested her extradition but Delhi has refused.

Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior official from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) who’s leading the delegation in Beijing, told the BBC: “It’s basically a goodwill visit, initiated by Beijing.”

“It is unique because China this time has invited a team representing various groups in Bangladesh.”

Many of the delegation members are from the BNP and its allies. The BNP, headed by former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia, is one of the main parties in Bangladesh, besides the Awami League led by Hasina.

The delegation also includes several representatives from the student movement that began the mass uprising against Hasina that eventually ousted the prime minister in August last year.

An interim government, led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus is currently in charge.

It has been urging India to repatriate Hasina to face charges of crimes against humanity and money laundering, among other allegations. The UN says Hasina’s government’s crackdown on protesters during the uprising killed about 1,400 people.

So far India has showed no sign of extraditing Hasina, who denies the charges.

Delhi and Dhaka had maintained close ties during the 15-year rule of Ms Hasina, who was widely seen by her critics as pro-India. While maintaining close ties with Delhi, she balanced it with her relationship with Beijing.

After the fall of Hasina, Beijing has stepped up its interaction with Bangladeshi leaders, activists and delegations, including from Islamist parties.

This week’s visit follows a meeting between the Bangladesh interim government’s foreign policy advisor Touhid Hossain and the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in Beijing in January.

It also marks the second time BNP officials have visited China in recent months, after Beijing hosted a BNP delegation late last year.

With the political vacuum and absence of India’s influence, analysts say, Beijing is trying to increase its foothold in Bangladesh, a country of about 170 million people.

China is Bangladesh’s largest trading partner with bilateral trade amounting to around $24bn (£19bn) – the vast majority of that consists of Chinese exports to the South Asian country.

The Bangladeshi military also heavily relies on Chinese equipment and ammunition with more than 70% of supplies coming from China.

Compared to Beijing’s overtures, India has had very limited interactions with the interim government and other Bangladeshi political leaders in the past six months.

The BNP held a protest in December alleging India’s interference in Bangladesh’s internal matters by hosting Hasina. Some advisors of the interim government have also criticised Delhi on the same issue.

This criticism has sparked sharp reaction from Delhi.

The Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said last week that it was up to Bangladesh to decide on “what kind of relationship they want with us”.

He described the criticism of India by Bangladeshi officials and politicians as “absolutely ridiculous”.

Some argue that this increasingly tense rhetoric between Dhaka and Delhi could push Bangladesh towards China.

The latest events indicate that Bangladesh has joined fellow South Asian countries Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal as a target for both Delhi and Beijing, as the superpowers jostle for influence.

“I don’t believe India should consider the whole subcontinent is under Delhi’s sphere of influence. That attitude would make India suffer,” Chinese analyst Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, told the BBC.

Singapore’s biggest bank says it expects to cut 4,000 roles over the next three years as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on more work currently done by humans.

“The reduction in workforce will come from natural attrition as temporary and contract roles roll off over the next few years,” a DBS spokesperson told the BBC.

Permanent staff are not expected to be affected by the cuts. The bank’s outgoing chief executive Piyush Gupta also said it expects to create around 1,000 new AI-related jobs.

It makes DBS one of the first major banks to offer details on how AI will affect its operations.

The company did not say how many jobs would be cut in Singapore or which roles would be affected.

DBS currently has between 8,000 and 9,000 temporary and contract workers. The bank employs a total of around 41,000 people.

Last year, Mr Gupta said DBS had been working on AI for over a decade.

“We today deploy over 800 AI models across 350 use cases, and expect the measured economic impact of these to exceed S$1bn ($745m; £592m) in 2025,” he added.

Mr Gupta is set to leave the firm at the end of March. Current deputy chief executive Tan Su Shan will replace him.

The ongoing proliferation of AI technology has put its benefits and risks under the spotlight, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying in 2024 that it is set to affect nearly 40% of all jobs worldwide.

The IMF’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva said that “in most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality”.

The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, told the BBC last year that AI will not be a “mass destroyer of jobs” and human workers will learn to work with new technologies.

Mr Bailey said that while there are risks with AI, “there is great potential with it”.

New Zealand’s commerce minister Andrew Bayly has resigned as a government minister after he “placed a hand” on a staff member’s upper arm last week, in what he described as “overbearing” behaviour.

Bayly said on Monday that he was “deeply sorry” about the incident, which he described as not an argument but an “animated discussion”.

He remains a member of parliament.

His resignation comes after he was criticised last October for calling a winery worker a “loser”- including putting his fingers in an ‘L’ shape on his forehead – and allegedly using an expletive directed at them. He later issued a public apology.

“As many of you know, I have been impatient to drive change in my ministerial portfolios,” Bayly said in a statement announcing his resignation.

“Last week I had an animated discussion with a staff member about work. I took the discussion too far, and I placed a hand on their upper arm, which was inappropriate.”

He said a complaint had been made but would not elaborate further on exactly what had happened.

Bayly resigned last Friday, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon later told a press conference, adding that the incident happened three days earlier, on 18 February.

Luxon said on Monday the government’s handling the issue within a week was “pretty quick” and “pretty impressive”. He denied that he should have asked Bayly to step down following October’s winery incident, and said “never say never” when asked if there was a way back for the 63-year-old into another cabinet position.

However, Labour leader Chris Hipkins criticised Luxon as being “incredibly weak”, saying the incident with the staff member should not have been dragged over the weekend.

“Christopher Luxon has once again set the bar for ministerial behaviour so low, that it would be almost impossible not to get over it,” he told reporters on Monday.

Bayly himself said that he had to talk to his family and “would have had difficulty” speaking to the media earlier.

He was first elected to the New Zealand Parliament in 2014 as an MP for the current ruling National Party. He was appointed the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing, and Minister of Statistics following Luxon’s election in late 2023.

He was also appointed minister for the ACC – the national accidental injury compensation scheme – following a cabinet reshuffle earlier this year. Before joining politics, Bayly worked in the finance industry.

Luxon said Scott Simpson, National’s senior whip, would take over the ACC and Commerce and Consumer Affairs portfolios.

Bayly is the first minister to resign of his own accord under PM Luxon, whose favourability has dipped considerably, according to recent polls. Both the 1News-Verian poll and the Post/Freshwater Strategy poll show his National-led coalition government is losing support among voters.

The government has recently come under fire for some policies that were seen by some as anti-Māori, including the introduction of a bill that many argued undermined Māori rights and the dissolution of the Māori Health Authority – which was set up under the last Labour government to try and create greater health equality.

Thousands of villagers in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are protesting against a multi-million-dollar river-linking project which, they say, will rob them of their homes and livelihoods.

The Ken-Betwa project, with a budget of 440bn rupees ($5.06bn; £4.05bn), will channel excess water from the Ken river in Madhya Pradesh to the Betwa river in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state through a network of tunnels, canals and a dam.

It is the first of 16 such river-linking projects earmarked under India’s National Perspective Plan for water resource development in the 1980s. The plan faced multiple delays – mainly due to environmental concerns and political disputes – before the government cleared it in 2021.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for its construction in December last year.

The project is supposed to help the drought-prone Bundelkhand region – which includes parts of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh – where arid climate and unpredictable rainfall patterns have led to decades of poverty and underdevelopment.

The government says that once completed in 2030, it will help irrigate 1.06 million hectares of land, provide drinking water to 6.2 million people and generate 130MW of hydropower and solar energy.

But at least 10 villages, including vast swathes of precious forest land, will be submerged to build the dam’s reservoir and 11 more villages will be displaced for constructing the canal, affecting more than 7,000 families, district officials say.

“Our livelihoods are tied to this land – we don’t know what the future holds for us anymore,” said Tulsi Adivasi, who is among the thousands of villagers protesting against the project.

Most of them belong to the indigenous Gond and Kol tribes, who live along the edge of forests and depend on farming for a living.

Environmental experts warn the project will submerge nearly 98 sq km (38 sq miles) of the Panna Tiger Reserve, a 543 sq km sanctuary that successfully brought tigers back from local extinction in 2009.

This could undo years of conservation efforts. “It’s unprecedented. We have never seen a core area of a national park being used for such a large-scale infrastructure project before,” says environmentalist Amit Bhatnagar.

In 2019, a panel of experts constituted by India’s top court had also raised concerns about the project, questioning its economic viability and impact on the region’s wildlife. The government, it said, should explore alternative irrigation methods in the river basin.

Independent studies on river-linking projects in India have made similar observations.

A 2023 study published in the Nature Communications journal states that such endeavours “may worsen the water stress across the country, making these projects ineffective or possibly even counterproductive”.

Baleshwar Thakur, who heads the National Water Development Agency, however, defended the project, saying authorities had conducted a thorough research and acquired all environmental clearances for the project.

“We have also designated additional land to offset the loss of tiger habitats and will rehabilitate other species affected by the project as well,” he said.

The government official admitted that there would be a potential “challenge” to the biodiversity of the region, but said that “the benefits of the project outweigh the adverse impacts”.

The assurances have done little to comfort the villagers.

In the heart of Daudhan, 48-year-old Mahesh Adivasi sat with a group of men, who voiced their dissent in the form of a protest song.

“Ken-Betwa dam is built by the government, it gives others water but drowns us,” they sang, the lyrics capturing their anguish.

The village is one of the poorest areas in the region, lacking basic facilities such as clean drinking water and electricity.

The bitter irony of the river project isn’t lost on its people – they ask why they are being asked to abandon their homes to provide electricity in 13 other districts when their own village has never had power.

“We have seen generations pass without progress. Now, we are being asked to sacrifice our lives for others’ progress. What about us?” Mahesh Adivasi said.

The government has offered villagers an optional compensation plan, where they can either opt for a piece of land along with 750,000 rupees ($8,655; £6,842) or a one-time payout of 1,250,000 rupees. For those who own land, an additional amount based on the land’s value will also be given.

Mr Thakur said that about 90% of the people had chosen to take the lump sum amount. “In the meantime, the government has started looking for alternative government land to resettle the villagers,” he added.

But locals say the amount being offered is insufficient. Tulsi Adivasi showed BBC Hindi a government notice which evaluated his house at 46,000 rupees.

“Can a house be built with this much money?” he asked.

Others complain they have not been informed when they must evacuate or where they’d be resettled, fuelling anxieties about their future.

“The project should have been a blessing for our village but, the truth is, it will plunge us further into darkness,” said Lakshmi Adivasi, 20.

Questions have also been raised against the claim that the project is meant to channel excess water from the Ken river.

Critics point out that the government has relied on outdated data from 2003, without independent verification, to calculate the river’s annual yield.

Mr Thakur denied the allegation and said authorities “have all the data to continue with the project”.

Mr Bhatnagar, the environmentalist, said that by going ahead with the project, the government was setting “a dangerous precedent” for similar development programmes to be carried out in other geologically sensitive areas.

“And for those affected, it once again underscores how development in India often comes at the cost of the most marginalised,” he added.

A US Secret Service agent who leapt on to John F Kennedy’s limousine as it came under fire in Dallas, and was pictured in famous photos of one of the most dramatic events in US history, has died at the age of 93.

Clint Hill later became a bestselling author, but was haunted for decades by guilt over Kennedy’s assassination.

Hill died at his home on California on Friday, according to a statement from his publicist.

On 22 November 1963, he was assigned to protect the president’s wife, Jacqueline Kennedy.

Hill was riding on a car behind the Kennedy limousine when the first shot rang out.

He immediately rushed towards the couple and started to climb on to the back of the limousine as the shooting continued.

Hill’s actions during the assassination were captured on the Zapruder film – an amateur home video that provided one of the best recordings of the shooting.

Hill, originally from North Dakota, served in the Army prior to joining the Secret Service in 1958.

He was given an award for his actions in Dallas and eventually rose to become assistant director of the Secret Service.

However the trauma he experienced during the assassination led him to retire early from the agency in 1975, at the age of 43.

He had become convinced that he could have saved Kennedy’s life and shortly after his retirement told CBS 60 Minutes that he felt responsible.

“If I had reacted about five-tenths of a second faster, maybe a second faster, I wouldn’t be here today,” Hill said.

“You mean you would have gotten there and you would have taken the shot?” asked interviewer Mike Wallace.

“Yes, sir… That would have been fine with me,” Hill responded.

“I have a great deal of guilt about that,” he said. “Had I turned in a different direction, I’d have made it. It’s my fault.”

As the years went by, the former Secret Service agent later told a documentary, he returned to Dallas, eventually coming to the conclusion he could not have saved Kennedy’s life.

Hill met journalist Lisa McCubbin in 2009 and collaborated on a bestselling memoir, Mrs Kennedy and Me.

It was the first of a series of books and Hill and McCubbin fell in love. The couple married in 2021.

A statement from his publisher said that Hill had died at home with his wife at his side. A cause of death was not given.

A French former surgeon accused of abusing hundreds of patients, most of them children, has told a court that he admits to having “committed despicable acts” and “understands and shares the suffering” caused to his alleged victims.

Joel Le Scouarnec is accused of assaulting or raping 299 patients, the vast majority under 15 years old, between 1989 and 2014, mostly in Brittany.

“I am perfectly aware that these wounds are indelible, beyond repair,” Le Scouarnec said, in a halting but clear voice.

The white-haired 74-year-old, who wore glasses and a black zip-up sweater over a grey shirt, was addressing the court in Vannes, north-west France, on the first day of the largest child abuse trial in French history.

“I can’t go back, but I owe it to [the victims] and their relatives to admit my actions and the consequences they had and that they undoubtedly will continue to have throughout their lives,” Le Scouarnec told the court.

Throughout the day – which was mainly devoted to technical proceedings – he had looked attentive but had no particular reaction when two visibly nervous men in their 30s took the stand to identify themselves as his victims.

The youngest of Le Scouarnec’s alleged victims was aged one and the oldest 70.

Police were able to identify them thanks to meticulously-compiled diaries in which Le Scouarnec is alleged to have logged assaults he carried out on his young patients over more than 25 years.

He has already been imprisoned since 2017 for abusing four children, of which he was found guilty in 2020.

Many of the plaintiffs were allegedly abused while they were under anaesthesia or recovering from surgeries in hospitals across northern France – meaning a number of them had no recollection of the abuse they are said to have sustained, and had to be told by police that their names appeared in Le Scouarnec’s diaries.

“Everything in this terrible story is out of the ordinary… it wasn’t the victims that approached the investigators but the investigators that alerted the victims,” public prosecutor Stéphane Kellenberger said in court.

“Many of them had no memory… several would have rather gone on not knowing. But silence had reigned for too long.”

Many other people, who do remember being allegedly abused, have said the impact of the events has followed them their whole lives, in many cases resulting in serious psychological trauma.

Mauricette Vinet, the grandmother of a patient of Le Scouarnec who killed himself some years ago, told the BBC her grandson Mathis had been “killed” by Le Scouarnec’s alleged abuse.

“If he hadn’t happened Mathis would still be here,” she said.

Defence lawyer Maxime Tissier told the trial on Monday that Le Scouarnec admitted to the “vast majority” of the charges against him and that his client would soon “explain himself” with regard to the accusations.

“He is a defendant who has made himself entirely available to the court… despite his age,” Mr Tissier said.

Le Scouarmec added in court that during his police examinations he did his best to “admit to the events which constituted rape and those that, in my view, did not”.

Dozens of lawyers were also present in court, but the hundreds of alleged victims they represent were sat in a separate overflow room due to their sheer number. Several psychologists and emotional support dogs will be on hand throughout the course of the trial.

Aude Buresi, the presiding judge, read out a graphic and gruelling summary of the charges against Le Scouarnec, as well as excerpts from his interrogations in 2020, in which the former surgeon initially denied that his diaries reflected real-life abuse and were merely retellings of his “fantasies”.

But Ms Buresi said several elements – including the level of detail and choice of words used by Le Scouarnec – indicated that the diaries were most likely truthful.

In his short statement to the court on Monday, the former surgeon referred to his writings as “very violent”.

An hour before proceedings kicked off a few dozen protesters staged a rally outside the courtroom, carrying letters spelling out the phrase “Stop the code of silence”, while another sign read “Who knew?”

Victims and child advocacy groups have said “systemic failures” allowed Le Scouarnec to continue working with children.

In 2005, the FBI warned the French authorities that he had been accessing child abuse websites, but this just resulted in a suspended sentence and he faced no consequences in the workplace.

Later, when Le Scouarnec was working in the hospital of Quimperlé, he allegedly made sexually-charged comments about a young patient of his, raising the suspicions of a colleague who alerted the regional medical association and made them aware of the suspended sentence.

The members of the association were summoned and all but one doctor – who abstained – voted that Le Scouarnec had not violated the medical code of ethics. The BBC has approached the regional medical association for comment

The association is now pressing charges against Le Scouarnec for “bringing the medical profession into disrepute,” the body’s secretary Didier Robin said on Monday.

His statement elicited a swift rebuttal from lawyer Frédéric Benoist, who represents a child protection advocacy group La Voix de L’Enfant (The Child’s Voice) and has previously told the BBC that Le Scouarnec was able to commit his deeds due to “a huge degree of dysfunction” among medical professionals.

Mr Benoist said it was “morally indecent and legally questionable” that the medical association was allowed to be listed as a plaintiff. “It is unacceptable that [the association] is sat alongside the victims,” he said.

Monday’s session closed early – something that is unlikely to happen again over the course of the trial, which will run on a tight schedule and is due to end in June.

At the request of the plaintiffs, some sessions will be held behind closed doors – but big portions of it will be open to journalists and members of the public.

Le Scouarnec’s ex-wife and his siblings will be heard in court on Tuesday.

Asked why she was attending proceedings that will undoubtedly include sordid and graphic details of abuse, one woman queuing to enter the overflow room told the BBC she wanted to see “this doctor, this Mr Everyman”.

“I want to see what human nature can be capable of, because all of this – it’s just beyond me,” she said.

Starbucks is cutting 1,100 jobs and simplifying its menu in the US as it tries to improve flagging business in its home market.

The first items to get the axe include the Royal English Breakfast Latte, White Hot Chocolate and several kinds of blended frappuccinos.

But Starbucks said more offerings would be cut, as it aims to shrink its menu by nearly a third over the next year, hoping to reduce wait times and improve quality and consistency.

The company has been wrestling with a sustained fall in sales since last year, which has been particularly pronounced in the US.

Chief executive Brian Niccol, who previously headed the Mexican food chain Chipotle, was brought into Starbucks last year to help turn the business around.

He has said he wants to see the company return to its roots as a coffee house.

The drinks set for the chopping block “weren’t commonly purchased, can be complex to make, or are like other beverages on our menu”, Starbucks said. The changes are due to go into effect on 4 March.

“We’re simplifying our menu to focus on fewer, more popular items, executed with excellence,” the company said on Monday.

“This will make way for innovation, help reduce wait times, improve quality and consistency, and align with our core identity as a coffee company.”

The job cuts announced on Monday are focused on corporate “support partner” roles and will not affect jobs or investments at stores, the company said.

The company said it would inform staff affected by the decisions by mid-day on Tuesday. It is also eliminating “several hundred” open and unfilled positions.

“Our intent is to operate more efficiently, increase accountability, reduce complexity and drive better integration,” Mr Niccol wrote in the announcement.

Starbucks employs more than 360,000 people and operates or licenses more than 40,000 stores around the world.

The US is its biggest and most important market, but its brand there has suffered in recent years as customers complained about long wait times and high prices, and the company wrestled with baristas trying to unionise.

The company was also embroiled in debates over the Israel-Gaza war, facing boycott calls from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine camps, despite the company’s efforts to remain neutral.

The company last month said transactions at US stores open at least a year were down 8% in the most recent quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The drive to simplify the menu marks a shift from previous strategies, which emphasised personalised drinks.

For months, Japan’s entertainment industry has been rocked by a scandal that unseated one of its most popular celebrities and put one of its biggest broadcasters at risk.

But some believe it has also marked a turning point in how cases of sexual assault are perceived in Japan – where traditionally victims have been shamed into silence.

At its heart was Masahiro Nakai, a household name and leading presenter for Fuji TV, one of the country’s biggest broadcasters.

Nakai, who is also a former member of J-pop boy band SMAP, was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at a dinner party in 2023.

The revelations, which appeared last December in the weekly tabloid magazine Josei Seven and were then picked up by the Shukan Bunshun, marked the latest of a series of scandals involving celebrities in Japan, including that of late entertainment mogul Johnny Kitagawa, who was found by investigators to have abused hundreds of boys and young men over six decades.

Nakai didn’t admit guilt and denied using force against the woman. But he apologised for “causing trouble” in a statement and said that he had “resolved” the matter in a settlement, reportedly worth more than half a million dollars.

But as public anger mounted, he was forced to announce his retirement from the entertainment industry in January. Another channel, the Tokyo Broadcasting System, has also stopped airing a program that Nakai regularly appeared on as an MC.

The impact on Fuji TV has been devastating.

The broadcaster’s reputation is now in ruins. Its revenue is under threat and some of its top executives have also been forced to step down.

High-profile companies like Nissan and Toyota were among those who pulled advertising from the broadcaster as outrage grew. Fuji TV has since admitted it allowed Nakai to continue presenting shows even after finding out about the allegations.

“If this had happened 10 years ago, there would not have been this outcry,” Keiko Kojima, who worked in Japan’s media industry for 15 years as a TV presenter, told the BBC.

Sexual violence against women is one of Japan’s worst-kept secrets. A 2020 survey claimed that more than 70% of sexual assaults in the country go unreported. And according to a 2024 study published in the International Journal of Asian Studies, for every 1,000 rapes in Japan, only 10–20 result in a criminal conviction – and fewer than half of convicted rapists are incarcerated.

“There’s still a prevalent attitude of ‘Shoganai ‘ or ‘there’s nothing you can do’ that is being projected on women – so they’re encouraged to keep silent,” Machiko Osawa, professor emeritus at Japan Women’s University in Tokyo, told the BBC.

She added that women were seldom believed and did not have proper mechanisms to even report such incidents, which contributed to this culture of silence.

Ms Kojima said that the media industry, in particular, has long had a culture of impunity and lack of accountability where many young women felt they must keep silent to keep their jobs.

“It was common for men to make rude comments about women’s bodies or appearance or age. I remember my colleagues and I being asked how many people we’ve had sex with,” she said.

“We were expected to reply with a sense of humour without getting angry or offended. I saw sexual harassment and other forms of derogatory treatment of women on a daily basis. For a woman, adapting to these situations was the only way to become a full-fledged TV or media professional.”

The Fuji TV case has also raised questions about dinners and drinking parties involving celebrities and young women – and how common they were.

Although Shukan Bunshun retracted an earlier report that claimed the alleged assault took place at a party organised by Fuji TV, Ms Kojima told the BBC that it was indeed common to use women as “tools for entertaining”.

“In Japanese working culture, it’s an everyday practice to half-forcibly take young female employees to events to entertain clients,” she said.

“Men are happy when young women join them. The idea that women are like a gift and that taking a young woman with you is a way of offering hospitality to the other person is very common.”

That is why the fallout from this scandal has encouraged women’s rights activists.

Minori Kitahara, one of the founders of the Flower Demo movement – where groups of sexual violence survivors and their supporters gather in public spaces on the 11th of every month – admitted she was surprised at how swiftly and severely the sponsors reacted.

“Even if it’s more of self-preservation than human rights for sponsors, this is a turning point for the MeToo movement in Japan,” she told the BBC.

“It’s up to us how big we make it.”

Nearly 50 companies have walked away from the now-tarnished Fuji TV.

The Japanese government has also withdrawn all its recent and planned advertisements with the network. And it has called on the broadcaster to regain the trust of viewers and sponsors. So far Fuji TV seems to have done neither.

The scandal and Fuji TV’s role in hiding it have sent the company on a crisis-management frenzy that seems to have led to deeper disgrace, fuelling even more public anger.

Fuji TV president Koichi Minato admitted that the company had known about the allegation shortly after the alleged incident.

But he said they chose not to disclose it at the time because they “prioritised the woman’s physical and mental recovery as well as the protection of her privacy.”

After a press conference held in the hope of defusing the outrage turned into a PR disaster, the company held a second one that lasted 10 hours.

It was intended to show remorse.

Both Fuji TV’s chairman Shuji Kano and its President Koichi Minato stepped down, bowing humbly as they announced their resignations. The firm said its executive vice-president Kenji Shimizu would replace Mr Minato as president.

But this was seen as a mere face-saving exercise to appease advertisers rather than a sign of substantial change – especially because the president’s replacement belonged to the same leadership cadre.

Professor Osawa told the BBC, however, that high-profile cases like Fuji TV become important precedents for real change.

And this is the latest saga in a series of prominent sexual misconduct cases that have generated conversation about women’s rights in Japan.

These include the case of journalist Shiori Ito, who became a symbol of the country’s MeToo movement in 2017. She took the rare step of going public with allegations that Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a well-known TV journalist, had raped her after she met him for drinks. While he denied the allegations, she won a civil lawsuit against him in 2019

“People have now started to realise that it was OK to speak out and say that this [sexual harassment] is a problem. We are changing what we take as the norm,” Ms Kojima said.

But Ms Kojima and Ms Kitahara both say that Japan is not moving fast enough.

“I think it’s time for that generation [of media leadership] to step down. The industry needs to create a new corporate culture. The change is slow,” Ms Kojima said.

“The TV industry has long neglected the issue of exploitation and violence and has not dealt with the victims properly. If the root of the problem doesn’t change, the same will happen again.”

Professor Osawa agrees that Japan still has a long way to go because of the ubiquitous power imbalance in the country.

She adds that while women have been part of the workforce for decades they’re still seen as the “caretakers” and men as the “breadwinners” by a society that is heavily shaped by patriarchal values.

“This is an important time… But it’s unclear how far attitudes will change,” she said.

While Ms Kitahara is hopeful, she says she’s also angry: “The sexual violence never stops.”

“I still meet new survivors at Flower Demo [protests] every month and learn what happened to them. We had a high school girl other day. When we started the movement [in 2019] she was probably in junior high, ” she said.

“I hope for the day when I will never have to go to a Flower Demo protest again.”

Friedrich Merz’s conservatives have won, but Germany’s 2025 election has thrown up some important and fascinating stories that reveal a country in flux.

Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has doubled its support in just four years to 20.8%, and has spread out from its support base in the east to become the second biggest political force in parliament.

Meanwhile, outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD had its worst performance in decades, only securing 16.4% of the vote.

Here are five key takeaways.

Look at an election results map of Germany, and you could almost have travelled back in time to the Cold War, when an iron curtain divided communist East Germany from the west.

In the east it’s a swathe of AfD light blue, apart from pockets like Berlin and half of Leipzig. In the west the vast majority has turned conservative black, especially in Bavaria where Merz’s conservative sister party, the CSU, dominates the landscape.

But the AfD is spreading in the west too, and political loyalty to the old mainstream parties has gone.

For one in five Germans it has become normalised. “They’re just normal people,” said one young man of immigrant origin in Duisburg, a city in western Germany’s old industrial heartland.

Even though it came second, the AfD is blocked from being part of the next government because of a “firewall” – or– operated by Germany’s main parties, who do not co-operate with any party seen as extremist since the end of World War Two.

The AfD’s leader Alice Weidel insists it is a libertarian, conservative movement, not racist. Its big increase in public support has coincided with a series of deadly attacks in the past nine months, all allegedly by immigrants.

The AfD has embraced a highly controversial policy called “remigration”, which it defines as deporting migrants who have committed crimes. But the term can also refer to the mass deportation of migrants and their descendants.

In May 2024 a German court rejected an AfD appeal against a ruling classifying it as a suspected far-right extremist organisation. Judges found that the AfD had “positions that disparage the democratic order and are incompatible with the principle of democracy”.

In three German states in the east – Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony – domestic intelligence has designated the AfD as right-wing extremist.

A leading AfD figure in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted of using a banned Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland” – everything for Germany. Alice Weidel supporters have chanted her name during the election campaign, using the phrase “Alice für Deutschland”.

Not since 1987 has turnout been as high as 82.5% in a German election, and that was three years before reunification of east and west.

Four years ago it was 76.6%.

Put simply, more than four in every five of Germany’s 59.2 million voters turned out.

It reflects just how energised Germans have been by this election, which comes at a pivotal moment for their country. There were nine TV debates in the final stretch of the campaign, but that reflected the broad interest of the audience.

The three-party government of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz fell apart at the end of last year, and within 24 hours of Sunday’s election, all three leaders have said they’re leaving the front line of politics.

The leader of the economic liberals, the FDP, was first. Christian Lindner has led his party for 11 years. But it failed to get any MPs elected and Lindner has said he’s leaving politics after 25 years.

It was Lindner’s refusal to compromise on debt rules that first brought the government down, and then sent his party into the wilderness.

Although Scholz will remain as chancellor until the next government is formed, he won’t be taking part in coalition talks and will be leaving frontline politics.

Greens Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck is also leaving frontline politics after his party fell below 12% in the election.

Until a few weeks ago, the Left party looked doomed when one of its leading lights, Sahra Wagenknecht, went off and founded her own, more populist, party with eight other MPs.

Wagenknecht’s popularity soared for a while as head of her BSW party, but ultimately fell just below the 5% threshold for getting into parliament.

The story was very different for the Left (), which came back from the dead with an inspired social medial campaign.

Heidi Reichinnek, Die Linke’s co-chair, went viral after she gave a speech enthusiastically defending the firewall against the AfD.

She now has 580,000 followers on TikTok and her post has attracted seven million views.

Her party secured just under 9% of the vote.

Die Linke’s viral videos helped secure a quarter of the 18-24 vote, and the AfD were not far behind with 21%, according to surveys by ARD TV.

Alice Weidel was the biggest hit on social media during the election, even bigger than Heidi Reichinnek. She has attracted more than 935,000 followers on TikTok.

For the over-35s, it was the Christian Democrats who won out, and more men than women.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded the complete demilitarisation of much of southern Syria.

It is an announcement that could make conflict between Israel and the new leadership in Syria, after the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad, more likely.

In a speech to Israeli military cadets on Sunday, Netanyahu said that Israel would not allow the forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – the Islamist group that led the overthrow of Assad – nor the new Syrian army that is being formed to “enter the area south of Damascus”.

“We demand the complete demilitarisation of southern Syria in the provinces of Quneitra, Deraa and Suweida from the forces of the new regime,” he added. “Likewise, we will not tolerate any threat to the Druze community in southern Syria.”

He also said that Israeli forces would remain indefinitely inside the Syrian territory that they have seized since Assad’s fall last December – which would be a shift in Israeli strategy.

Until now, Israel had described its move into a UN-monitored demilitarised buffer zone in the Golan Heights as a temporary measure to ensure the security of Israelis on the other side.

The rationale appeared to be to prevent extremist groups from moving down to the Golan in the power vacuum.

But with his latest comments, Netanyahu has made it clear that he believes that the new authorities in Syria – with their background in jihadism – could represent a similar danger.

Israel seized most of the Golan from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed. The move was not recognised internationally, although the US did so in 2019.

Syria’s new interim President, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, has tried to reassure Israel that he does not want conflict and that he is ready to uphold the long-standing disengagement agreement between the two countries concluded after another war in 1973.

He has also stressed that he will not allow Syria to be used as a base for attacks against Israel.

But Sharaa has also called on Israel to withdraw from the buffer zone it has taken, as he tries to assert sovereignty across the whole of Syria’s fractured landscape.

Clearly, Netanyahu does not trust these assurances.

Like much of the international community, the Israeli prime minister is waiting to see if Sharaa makes good on his moderate, emollient stance in action as well as words.

From the perspective of the new Syrian leadership, freeing the country from the influence of all the foreign powers that jockeyed for position during the long years of civil war is seen as vital to ensuring a more positive future for the country and a definitive break with the past.

Some foreign players, such as Iran and Russia, have seen for now at least the curtailment of the overweening influence they once had.

Under President Donald Trump, the US might also further disengage from Syria – a role which has helped underpin Kurdish-led forces in the north-east of the country.

There has, though, been growing influence from Turkey – which provided essential support for HTS in its lightning campaign against Assad.

How big a part it chooses to play could be a determining factor in how Syria develops in the post-Assad era.

But Israel may present a more immediate challenge to the independence of Syria’s new leadership.

To have Israeli troops increasingly infringing on the country’s territory – as well as carrying out numerous strikes on targets associated with what’s left of Assad’s military arsenal – does not fit with the vision of a re-unified, sovereign state that Sharaa is trying to convince Syrians both inside and outside the country that his leadership can provide.

Netanyahu’s move to forbid Syrian forces from operating freely within the country’s borders may be a step too far for the new order in Damascus to stomach, however non-confrontational an image it is trying to maintain.

Indian authorities have banned two highly-addictive opioids in response to a BBC investigation which found they were fuelling a public health crisis in parts of West Africa.

In a letter seen by the BBC from India’s Drugs Controller General, Dr Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi said permission to manufacture and export the drugs had been withdrawn

BBC Eye found one pharmaceutical company, Aveo, had been illegally exporting a harmful mix of tapentadol and carisoprodol in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote D’Ivoire.

India’s Food and Drug Administration said the company’s factory in Mumbai had since been raided and its entire stock seized.

The circular from Dr Raghuvanshi, dated to Friday, cited the BBC investigation in his decision to ban all combinations of tapentadol and carisoprodol, which was to be implemented with immediate effect.

He said this also came after officials had looked into “the potential of drug abuse and its harmful impact on population”.

Tapentadol is a powerful opioid, and carisoprodol is a muscle relaxant so addictive it is banned in Europe.

Carisoprodol is approved for use in the US, but only for short periods of up to three weeks. Withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, insomnia and hallucinations.

The combination of the two drugs is not licensed for use anywhere in the world as they can cause breathing difficulties and seizures and an overdose can kill.

Despite the risks, these opioids are popular street drugs in many West African countries, because they are so cheap and widely available.

Publicly-available export data show that Aveo Pharmaceuticals, along with a sister company called Westfin International, has shipped millions of these tablets to Ghana and other West African countries.

The BBC World Service also found packets of these pills with the Aveo logo for sale on the streets of Nigeria, and in Ivoirian towns and cities.

Nigeria, with a population of 225 million people, provides the biggest market for these pills. It has been estimated that about four million Nigerians abuse some form of opioid, according to the nation’s National Bureau of Statistics.

As part of the investigation, the BBC also sent an undercover operative – posing as an African businessman looking to supply opioids to Nigeria – inside one of Aveo’s factories in India, where they filmed one of Aveo’s directors, Vinod Sharma, showing off the same dangerous products the BBC found for sale across West Africa.

In the secretly recorded footage, the operative tells Sharma that his plan is to sell the pills to teenagers in Nigeria “who all love this product”.

Sharma in response replies “OK,” before explaining that if users take two or three pills at once, they can “relax” and agrees they can get “high”.

Towards the end of the meeting, Sharma says: “This is very harmful for the health,” adding that “nowadays, this is business”.

Sharma and Aveo Pharmaceuticals did not respond to a request for comment when the BBC’s initial investigation was published.

India’s Food and Drug Administration said a sting operation saw Aveo’s entire stock seized and further production halted in a statement on Friday. Further legal action will be taken against the company, it added.

The agency said it was “fully prepared” to take action against anyone involved in “illegal activities that tarnish the reputation of the country”.

The FDA has been instructed to carry out further inspections to prevent the supply of the drugs, it said.

Hollywood has had another eventful year: Deadpool faced off with Wolverine, Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni sued each other, Inside Out 2 conquered the box office and Joker’s sequel emphatically did not.

The Oscars race, meanwhile, played out against the grim backdrop of wildfires which devastated Los Angeles and left thousands of homes destroyed.

Awards season had its fair share of scandal. While The Brutalist’s use of AI and Anora’s lack of an intimacy co-ordinator were storms in a teacup, there was one genuine controversy when some historic tweets nearly brought down Emilia Pérez.

Ahead of the Academy Awards on Sunday (2 March), here are 17 of the quirks, trends, patterns, and record breakers from this year’s batch of nominees.

1. This is the first time two musicals have been nominated for best picture in more than five decades.

Wicked and Emilia Pérez are the first tuneful twosome to be up for the top prize since Funny Girl and Oliver! in 1969.

The musical resurgence is partly down to it being twice as easy to score a best picture nomination nowadays, after the top category was expanded to 10 slots.

2. Adrien Brody already holds one Oscars record, and he could break another.

The US star is currently the youngest ever winner of best actor – he was 29 when he won for his performance in 2002’s The Pianist.

But Brody wasn’t nominated again until this year, with his nod for The Brutalist. If he wins again, he will become the first person to win the leading actor category with his first two nominations.

Only seven other actors currently have a 100% win rate at the Oscars from two or more nominations – Vivien Leigh, Hilary Swank, Kevin Spacey, Luise Rainer, Christoph Waltz, Helen Hayes and Mahershala Ali.

3. But Timothée Chalamet is a major threat.

The Dune and Wonka star is Brody’s toughest competition in best actor, thanks to his acclaimed portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.

If he won, not only would Chalamet halt Brody’s winning streak, he would also take Brody’s record as the youngest-ever winner. There isn’t much in it – Chalamet would be just 10 months younger than Brody was when he won.

4. Netflix’s Emilia Pérez could follow a dubious pattern for streaming films.

It might have the most nominations, but the Spanish-language musical could share the same fate as other recent streaming films which were heavily nominated, but failed to follow through with many wins.

• The Irishman (Netflix) won zero Oscars, from 10 nominations
• Mank (Netflix) won two out of 10
• The Power of the Dog (Netflix) won one out of 12
• Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple) won zero out of 10

Emilia Pérez is strong in a couple of categories, but it’s similarly unlikely to sweep the board.

Only one streaming film has ever won best picture – Apple’s Coda – which only had three nominations overall.

5. Two Succession stars share a disadvantage.

Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong are both nominated for best supporting actor, for their performances in A Real Pain and The Apprentice respectively.

But the pair are the only two nominees in the category who don’t come from best picture-nominated films.

A Real Pain’s absence in best picture shouldn’t stop frontrunner Culkin from winning. The last person to win the category without a best picture nomination was Christopher Plummer in 2012, for Beginners.

Every actor in the category this year is Oscar-nominated for the first time, except Edward Norton, who has three previous nods.

6. The Substance is the first body horror to be nominated for best picture, and only the seventh horror overall.

The other six were The Exorcist, Get Out, The Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, The Sixth Sense and Black Swan.

The Substance is a strong contender in best make-up and hairstyling, a category where the winner often overlaps with the acting winners. That could work in Demi Moore’s favour in a tight best actress race.

7. Isabella Rossellini is nominated for an eight-minute performance in Conclave, but that isn’t the shortest in Oscars history.

Beatrice Straight won the same category, best supporting actress, for her role in Network, which lasted 5min 02sec.

Dame Judi Dench is only marginally ahead, winning for a performance in Shakespeare in Love which lasted 5min 52sec.

Winners aside, the shortest nominee is thought to be Hermione Baddeley’s performance in 1959’s Room at the Top, lasting 2min 19sec.

On the subject of durations, The Brutalist (3hrs 35mins including an intermission) would be the fourth-longest best picture winner of all time, after Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur.

8. Sing Sing star Colman Domingo is nominated for best actor, just a year after his last nomination in the same category for Rustin.

Quite an achievement, no doubt. But he has some way to go to catch up with Bette Davis and Greer Garson, who both managed five consecutive Oscar nominations in the 1930s and 40s.

Just behind them are Al Pacino, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Thelma Ritter and Jennifer Jones, who each scored four back-to-back nods.

Bradley Cooper, Renée Zellweger, Russell Crowe, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, William Hurt, Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr, Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy all managed three in a row.

9. All five best actress nominees come from films which are also nominated for best picture.

That might not sound like much, but it’s the first time it’s happened since 1977.

The historic lack of overlap between the two categories has often been attributed to the Academy being less likely to give female-focused films the top prize.

But that trend has shifted in recent years, with films featuring female leads such as Nomadland, Coda and Everything Everywhere All At Once scoring best picture.

10. Before Sebastian Stan’s nomination for The Apprentice, only seven other actors had been Oscar-nominated for playing a US president.

Frank Langella was recognised for his portrayal of Richard Nixon, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Raymond Massey were both nominated for playing Abraham Lincoln.

Sam Rockwell was nominated for playing George W Bush, Alexander Knox for Woodrow Wilson, and James Whitmore for Harry Truman.

Perhaps most notably, Sir Anthony Hopkins has been nominated twice for portraying two different presidents in separate films – once as Nixon and another as John Quincy Adams.

Stan is slightly different in that he portrays Trump in his younger years as a real estate tycoon, rather than during his tenure as president, but we’re still chalking that up as worthy of induction into this exclusive club.

11. Robbie Williams’ biopic Better Man is nominated for best visual effects, but he also has a connection to two other films in the race.

The British singer’s track Swing Supreme features in a pivotal scene of Emilia Pérez, while his former Take That bandmates feature at the beginning of Anora as a remix of Greatest Day plays in a nightclub.

Its prominence in the film led to the remaining members of Take That performing the song at this year’s Bafta Film Awards.

12. Ralph Fiennes could be a good omen for Conclave.

The last two times the British star was nominated for best actor, for Schindler’s List and The English Patient, his film won best picture.

If Conclave wins, Fiennes would set a record for having appeared in the most best picture winners, becoming the only actor with roles in four (the other being The Hurt Locker).

However, Edward Berger’s absence in the best director category significantly weakens Conclave’s chances. Only six films have ever won best picture without a corresponding director nomination.

On the plus side, three of those have been in the last 12 years (Argo, Coda and Green Book), suggesting this is less of an obstacle than it used to be.

Why wasn’t Berger nominated? One possible factor is that, unlike the five directors who were, he didn’t write or co-write his film’s screenplay. Conclave was adapted from Robert Harris’s novel by British screenwriter Peter Straughan.

13. Diane Warren really wants to win.

The songwriter scored her 16th best original song nomination this year, for writing The Journey, from The Six Triple Eight.

But Warren has never won. With Emilia Pérez’s campaign damaged and potentially splitting votes with two songs in the category, could this finally be her year?

She certainly hopes so. Earlier this month, when a film account on X asked followers: “Which Oscar winner would make you happiest?” Warren brilliantly replied: “Me!”

14. Wicked has a tall hill to climb to win best picture, having missed both a directing and screenplay nomination.

It did score several technical nods as well as acting nominations for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, but neither are frontrunners in their category.

The last film to win best picture without a corresponding win in a director, screenplay or acting category was Rebecca in 1942.

15. Two nominees are following in their mothers’ footsteps.

I’m Still Here star Fernanda Torres is nominated for best actress – after her mother Fernanda Montenegro became the first Brazilian nominee in the same category in 1999 for Central Station.

Meanwhile, Conclave star Isabella Rossellini’s mother Ingrid Bergman was nominated five times in her career, winning twice.

16. Anora’s director could become the first person to win four Oscars for the same film.

As Sean Baker was involved in so many aspects of the film’s production, he could personally win best picture, editing, director and screenplay.

Nobody has ever done this before.

Walt Disney did win four Oscars in the same night in 1953, but for four different films.

And Parasite’s Bong Joon-Ho came incredibly close in 2020, but as the best international film prize technically goes to the country that submitted it rather than the director, he only took home three for his own trophy cabinet.

If Anora does win the top prize, it will be the second consecutive year the director of best picture co-wins with his wife. Baker and wife Samantha Quan would follow Oppenheimer’s Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas.

Anora would also be the first 18-rated film to win best picture since The Departed in 2007.

17. It’s official: The cat in Flow is named Flow.

The delightful film about a cat who survives a flood is a dark horse in the animated film category, having beaten box office juggernauts Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot to the prize at the Golden Globes.

“While we worked on Flow the cat didn’t have a name,” the film’s director Gints Zilbalodis said earlier this month. “We just called it the cat.

“I’ve heard from multiple people that they think that its name is Flow. People have even named their cats Flow now! So I think we can call the cat Flow.”

Roaring crowds, faces painted blue and green, flags waving like battle standards.

This is the opening of The Greatest Rivalry: India v Pakistan, a new Netflix documentary on one of cricket’s most storied contests.

India’s Virender Sehwag sets the tone: “This is a contest bigger than one between the bat and ball”. Cut to dramatic footage of some of the matches, the Wagah border, partition refugees. A nation split into two, but forever bound by cricket.

Pakistan’s Waqar Younis doesn’t hesitate: “I put this rivalry right at the top. There’s no match like India v Pakistan.” India’s R Ashwin agrees: “I think this is bigger than the Ashes.” Ramiz Raja says it’s “the political garnish that makes this rivalry world-class”.

Despite wars, border standoffs and terror attacks, the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry has endured, driven by history and national pride. Even when politics halts the bilateral series, International Cricket Council (ICC) tournaments keep the fire alive, turning every match into a high-stakes spectacle.

But Pakistan’s crushing defeat to India on Sunday at the Champions Trophy has reignited the question: is this rivalry overhyped, propped up by slogans like “war minus the shooting” – a phrase George Orwell coined in 1945 to criticise excessive nationalism in sports?

Is this still the premier clash in cricket, or just one of its most dramatic? Has it lost its competitive edge, running more on history than intensity?

Consider this. From an eight-wicket thrashing in 2018 to a 228-run demolition in 2023, India has dominated, winning six of the last eight ODIs. Pakistan’s last victory? The 2017 Champions Trophy final – a fading memory in an increasingly one-sided rivalry.

What rivalry, asked Dawn – a leading Pakistani newspaper – pointedly after the latest debacle. A cricket war that’s now just a big yawn, headlined India Today magazine.

The loss would be easier to accept if Pakistan were at least putting up a fight, according to Dawn’s Zohaib Ahmed Majeed.

Majeed believes the troubled politics between the two neighbours is the only thing that has kept the rivalry alive.

“In a way we must thank the politicians of these two nations for keeping this rivalry alive, because the cricketers, especially from our side, are certainly incapable of putting up a show that is worthy of its billing,” he wrote.

“Cut out the war of words and the actual wars and what you’ll be left with is a professional cricketing unit against a haphazardly put together team at the last minute. There is no rivalry as far as pure cricketing merits are concerned.”

India Today was no less acerbic. “With its history of one-sided losses to India in recent years, Pakistan cricket is fast sliding into pity territory. And unless it reverses the trend, Pakistan’s dream of competing with India could soon turn into a butt of jokes for cricket fans,” wrote Sandipan Sharma.

To be true, Pakistan’s cricketing woes keep mounting. They have missed the final four in the last three ODI World Cups, crashed out in the T20 World Cup group stage and now, as hosts of the Champions Trophy, they’ve hit rock-bottom.

Since the 2009 attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus, Pakistan cricket has battled isolation, political turmoil, board instability, frequent coaching changes and selection controversies – all adding to its struggles. Meanwhile, across the border, India has risen as cricket’s powerhouse, backed by a strong domestic system and the IPL, cricket’s richest international league.

Pakistani cricket writer Osman Samiuddin also notes a sense of “marginalisation” among his country’s cricketers, who remain excluded from the IPL and its franchise ecosystem (no Pakistani player has featured in the IPL since 2009, as they were banned after the Mumbai terror attacks). “I think they see Indian cricketers and others as well, like Australian and English cricketers, as partaking in a world of cricket they have been excluded from,” he told a programme.

This has all contributed to the team’s fast-declining fortunes.

“It is a futile exercise to wonder if this is the lowest Pakistan cricket has ever been. However, even when Pakistan have plummeted to spectacular lows in the past, they have done it in a way that justifies the cliché of their mercurial nature,” wrote Sidharth Monga in ESPNcricinfo, after Sunday’s game.

“This slide just feels like a terminal, slow decline. Players are not fighting with each other, there is no backdoor intrigue, there are no cliques in the team plotting to dethrone the captain, there are no comical run-outs or misfields, no defeats snatched from the jaws of victory.”

The “war without guns” narrative once held weight, especially when Imran Khan’s Pakistan, armed with a fearsome pace attack of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis and batting stars like Javed Miandad and Inzamam-ul-Haq, regularly got the better of India.

“The narrative may have been true till the early 2000s because this is how the actual fans felt. But it was soon hijacked by the multinationals and the media to cash in on the hyper-pathos of it all,” Nadeem Farooq Paracha, Pakistani author and columnist, told me.

“The quality of cricket between the two sides isn’t the same anymore. Indian cricket continues to get better. In fact, I think the narrative in question here has ended up pressuring Pakistani side more. They underplay it, even though they’re more than willing to pocket its financial benefits.”

The cricket boards and broadcasters are doing all they can to keep the rivalry alive, and the ICC won’t dial down the hype – it’s too valuable in an era of overexposure of cricket, limited stars and competition from franchise cricket.

This one game has become a financial juggernaut, fuelling a parallel economy wherever it’s played – Dubai, London, Ahmedabad – drawing fans who spend big just to be there. “Pakistan has talent, but the contest now feels more psychological,” says cricket writer Gautam Bhattacharyya.

Brand consultant Santosh Desai feels the real contest between the arch rivals plays out beyond the cricket ground and the “rivalry thrives more in imagination than in reality”.

“The asymmetry [between the two sides] only fuels the hype. India’s dominance makes it an easy narrative to sell, a battle royale where the outcome feels preordained. If Pakistan were winning consistently, the marketing appeal would fade. The rivalry’s commercial power lies in India’s superiority, feeding a script designed for validation, not uncertainty,” Desai told me.

India’s vice-captain Shubman Gill dismisses talk of overhyping, calling it a contest fans love to watch. “It is an exciting contest when both of these teams play. Everyone enjoys watching it. If so many people are happy to watch the match, then who are we to say that it is underhyped or overhyped,” he told reporters on eve of Sunday’s game.

Gill is possibly right. Tickets for India-Pakistan games still fly off the shelves – the ICC reported sellouts within minutes. An astonishing 600 plus million viewers tuned in to watch Sunday’s match on Indian streaming platform JioHotstar, setting new records.

But for now, as cricket writer Ayaz Memon puts it, “the hype is more thrilling than the cricket itself”.

The US has twice sided with Russia in votes at the UN to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the Trump administration’s change of stance on the war.

First the two countries opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow’s actions and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity, which was passed by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

Then they backed a US-drafted resolution at the UN Security Council calling for an end to the conflict but containing no criticism of Russia.

The Security Council resolution was passed but two key US allies, the UK and France, abstained in the vote after their attempts to amend the wording were vetoed.

The competing resolutions were tabled as French President Emmanuel Macron visited President Donald Trump at the White House in an attempt to address their sharp differences over the war.

On Thursday, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will likewise visit the new American leader.

Trump’s White House has upended the transatlantic alliance, currying favour with Moscow and casting doubt on America’s long-term commitment to European security.

That rift was laid bare on the floor of the 193-member UNGA on Monday as US diplomats pushed their limited resolution mourning the loss of life during the “Russia-Ukraine conflict” and calling for a swift end to it.

European diplomats tabled a more detailed text, blaming Russia for its full-scale invasion, and supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“We need to reconfirm that the aggression should be condemned and discredited, not rewarded,” said Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa.

UNGA members backed the European resolution by 93 votes but, extraordinarily, the US did not abstain but actually voted against it, along with Russia, Israel, North Korea, Sudan, Belarus, Hungary and 11 other states, with 65 abstentions.

The UNGA also passed the US resolution but only after it was amended to include language supporting Ukraine, which led to the US abstaining.

At the much more powerful UN Security Council, which has 15 members, the unamended US resolution was passed by 10 votes, with the UK, France, Denmark, Greece and Slovenia abstaining.

America’s acting envoy to the UN, Dorothy Camille Shea, described the US resolution as a “simple historic statement… that looks forward, not backwards. A resolution focused on one simple idea: ending the war”.

Rarely has the US been so at odds with its supposed European allies.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, the Security Council has been deadlocked by the power of Russia, one of its five permanent members, to veto any resolution there.

For this reason the UNGA has been the main forum for debating the war but its resolutions are not legally binding for member states, unlike those of the Security Council.

French President Emmanuel Macron said any peace deal in Ukraine must come with security guarantees, as he met US President Donald Trump at the White House for talks on the war.

“This peace must not be a surrender of Ukraine, it must not mean a ceasefire without guarantees,” he said as the two leaders held a joint news conference following their meeting on Monday.

Trump, who did not mention security guarantees himself, said the cost and burden of securing peace in Ukraine must be paid for by European nations and not just the US.

Macron responded that Europe understood the need to “more fairly share the security burden”, and added that talks on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion had shown a path forward.

While the pair exchanged warm words throughout Monday, some clear differences emerged on the issue of ending the war in Ukraine as they spoke to reporters in the Oval Office and then held a 40-minute news conference later in the day.

The topic of including security guarantees in any peace deal was one area of difference, as was the potential next steps to end the war.

Trump said the war could end “within weeks” and he wanted a ceasefire as soon as possible, adding that he would visit Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin once one was agreed.

Macron, however, pushed a more considered approach involving a truce and then a broader peace deal that would include clear guarantees for protecting Ukraine long-term.

“We want peace swiftly, but we don’t want an agreement that is weak,” he said.

The pair did agree, however, that any peace deal should include the deployment of European peacekeeping forces to Ukraine. That suggestion has been rejected outright by Russia.

“They would not be along the front lines. They would not be part of any conflict. They would be there to ensure that the peace is respected,” Macron said in the Oval Office.

Trump then said Russian President Vladimir Putin would accept that. “I specifically asked him that question. He has no problem with it,” he said.

The French president praised Trump’s efforts to engage with Putin in recent weeks, saying “there is good reason” for him to do so.

Trump declined to call Putin a “dictator” after using the term last week to describe Ukraine’s president, and said he planned to meet with the Russian leader after holding a call with him last week.

“I don’t know when we’ll speak,” Trump said. “At some point I’ll be meeting with President Putin.”

He also invited Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House to conclude a deal to share some of the country’s natural resources. “He may come in this week or next week,” Trump said. “I’d love to meet him.”

And while there were no moments of open disagreement between Trump and Macron, the French president did interrupt his US counterpart in the Oval Office to push back on his claim that EU aid to Ukraine was all in the form of loans.

“No, to be frank, we paid. We paid 60% of the total effort,” Macron said.

“If you believe that, it’s OK with me,” Trump replied.

• Why is Ukraine negotiating a minerals deal with the US?
• Three years on, Ukraine’s extinction nightmare has returned
• Zelensky says he hopes to end Ukraine war ‘this year’

The meeting between the two leaders came on the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Zelensky began the day with a news release marking “three years of absolute heroism of Ukrainians” before hosting an event with global representatives.

At the event in Kyiv, which was attended by many world leaders, he said “we hope that we can finish this war this year”.

Other leaders, including from the UK, Germany and Japan, spoke by video link. There was no US representation.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier addressed the recently warming relations between Moscow and Washington.

“Russia may have gained an open ear in the White House but they have not gained an inch of legitimacy,” he said.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen told attendees: “We must speed up the delivery of weapons and ammunition” to Ukraine, saying the war remains “the most central and consequential crisis for Europe’s future”.

Also on Monday, the US twice sided with Russia in votes at the UN related to the war in Ukraine.

The two countries first opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow’s actions and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity, which was eventually passed by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.

UNGA members backed the European resolution by 93 votes but the US did not abstain but actually voted against it, along with Russia, Israel, North Korea, Sudan, Belarus, Hungary and 11 other states.

The US and Russia then backed a US-drafted resolution at the UN Security Council calling for an end to the conflict but containing no criticism of Russia.

The Security Council resolution was passed but two key US allies, the UK and France, abstained in the vote after their attempts to amend the wording were vetoed.

Meanwhile, the EU and UK passed a fresh round of sanctions on Russia on Monday. The EU sanctions, the 16th round passed since Russia’s invasion, targets Russia’s aluminium exports, and its so-called “shadow fleet” of ships allegedly used to bypass sanctions.

The UK sanctions target machine tools and electronics used by Russia military, and the defence minister of North Korea who is allegedly responsible for deploying over 11,000 forces to Russia to assist in the war.

Relations between Europe and the US are unquestionably in crisis, so merely keeping things together as French President Emmanuel Macron did at the White House on Monday stands as an achievement.

He did that by praising, flattering and gently cajoling the US president as they took questions in the Oval Office and held a joint news conference. This is a playbook that many leaders around the world now see as more productive than outright plain speaking or criticism of Trump.

Macron managed to navigate what could have been a tricky day in Washington without conceding or revealing too much.

He spoke of both countries wanting peace, and while he gently corrected one of Trump’s claims on Europe’s support for Ukraine, he also agreed that Europe needed to take more responsibility for its own security.

But Macron did make one important concession – that Trump was right to re-establish some kind of relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

That is in sharp contrast to the view up until now in London, Paris and Berlin, which have all pursued a policy of isolating Putin and slapping sanctions on Russian industries and individuals.

“There is good reason for President Trump to re-engage with President Putin,” Macron said, adding that the new administration represented “a big change”.

• Peace must not mean surrendering Ukraine, Macron says
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Macron held out the prospect of European countries such as France and the UK being willing to play a leading role in ensuring the security of a post-truce Ukraine, possibly in the form of air power and troops stationed away from the frontline.

But at the same time, he stressed the importance of having an American backstop.

Macron, however, did not get a commitment of US back-up from his meeting in the Oval Office. And if he was looking for a scintilla of criticism of the Russian president from Trump, then he did not get that either.

What he did get was, at least to some extent, Europe’s voice back at the table and he, along with other European leaders, will take some heart from that.

It is clear however, that the ambitions for re-establishing the kind of close relationship that Europe and the US have had since the end of World War Two are not on anyone’s roadmap.

That is why Macron himself has been working on the idea of a more strategically autonomous Europe for some time, toying with ideas of combined European defence forces.

His sense that Europe needs to adapt given the dramatic shift in the US position is shared by Friedrich Merz, who will be Germany’s next chancellor.

Merz has already said that he believes the US under Donald Trump is indifferent to Europe’s fate, and that the continent needs to be independent of the US in terms of security.

“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” Merz said.

But France, the UK and Germany have also got to be cognisant of the fact that not all European powers are so hostile to the US view on Ukraine.

The rise of far-right nationalist parties in Europe, most notably in places like Germany where the AfD came second in Sunday’s elections, suggests some European citizens are also sceptical about the continent’s continued support for Kyiv.

Later this week, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who has been closely co-ordinating with his French counterpart, will come to Washington to reinforce their case on Ukraine.

He, like Macron, believes his country has a special relationship with the US which can open doors and get a fair hearing.

The problem is that Washington in the shape of Donald Trump is on transmit mode at the moment – pushing an agenda that leaves little room for the opinion of others.

And while America has always had the ability to flex its muscles and get its way, Europe for the most part has not been on the receiving end. The fact that has changed is a sign of just how serious this rupture in established alliances has become.

A British couple in their 70s have been arrested by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Peter Reynolds, 79, and his wife Barbie, 75, were returning to their home in Bamiyan on 1 February when they were detained.

The couple have been running training projects in Afghanistan for 18 years and their daughter, Sarah Entwistle, told the BBC she had not heard from her parents in more than two weeks.

It is not known exactly what the couple were arrested for but projects run by them include one training mothers and children, which had apparently been approved by the local authorities despite a ban by the Taliban on women working and on education for girls older than the age of 12.

The couple, who originally met at the University of Bath, married in Kabul in 1970. Since 2009 they have been running training projects in five schools in Kabul and one project in Bamiyan training mothers and children.

While the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 saw most of their staff leave – along with most westerners – Mr and Mrs Reynolds insisted on staying put.

After their arrest, the couple were initially able to keep in touch with their four children by text message. The family knew that their parents were being held by the interior ministry and were assured by them that they were “fine”.

Three days later, however, the texts stopped. The children have heard nothing since.

Ms Entwistle, who lives in Daventry, Northamptonshire, told the BBC: “It’s been over two weeks since the messages stopped, and they were taken into custody.

“We would like the Taliban to release them to go back to their home and continue their work.”

She told the Sunday Times: “They said they could not leave when Afghans were in their hour of need.

“They were meticulous about keeping by the rules even as they kept changing.”

She added: “My mother is 75 and my father almost 80 and [he] needs his heart medication after a mini-stroke. They were just trying to help the country they loved. The idea they are being held because they were teaching mothers with children is outrageous.”

The couple were arrested alongside their American friend Faye Hall and a translator from their business, the PA news agency reported, quoting an employee.

The employee, who described the pair as “the most honourable people I have ever met”, said Mr Reynolds had been denied access to heart medication and his condition was “not good”.

Ms Entwistle and her three siblings have written a letter to the Taliban, pleading with them to release their parents.

“We do not understand the reasons behind their arrest,” they wrote. “They have communicated their trust in you, and that as Afghan citizens they will be treated well.”

“We recognise that there have been instances where exchanges have been beneficial for your government and western nations. However, our parents have consistently expressed their commitment to Afghanistan, stating that they would rather sacrifice their lives than become part of ransom negotiations or be traded.”

The Foreign Office is aware two British nationals have been detained in Afghanistan. But assistance is limited by the fact that the UK does not recognise the Taliban and has no embassy in Kabul.

Taliban official sources have told the BBC they arrested British nationals, who they believe were working for a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Bamiyan province.

An official claimed they had been arrested, about 20 days ago, after using a plane without informing Bamiyan police headquarters or the border security forces.

The Taliban announced women would be banned from working for NGOs in 2022 and in December last year Al Jazeera reported the government had said it would close any NGOs employing women.

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting didn’twait for the final results of his country’s election on Sunday to herald a new era in Europe.

Declaring the US indifferent to this continent’s fate, Friedrich Merz questioned the future of Nato and demanded Europe boost its own defences. Quickly.

This tone from the close US ally – and from Friedrich Merz who is known to be a passionate Atlanticist – would have been unimaginable even a couple of months ago.

It’s a seismic shift. That may read like hyperbole, but what we are now experiencing in terms of transatlantic relations is unprecedented in the 80 years since the end of World War Two.

Big European powers have been shocked to the core by the Trump administration, which suggests it could revoke the security guarantees to Europe in place since 1945.

“I would never have thought that I would have to say something like this in a TV show but, after Donald Trump’s remarks last week… it is clear that this government does not care much about the fate of Europe,” Friedrich Merz said during a post-election debate on Sunday.

• Germany’s conservatives celebrate, but far right enjoy record result

“My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” he added.

Merz hinted that the endeavour was so urgent that he was not sure on whether the transatlantic alliance leaders gathering for a summit in June “would still be talking about Nato in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly”.

Significantly, the forthcoming chancellor put Donald Trump’s America on a par with Russia – widely viewed here as a security threat to Europe more broadly. “We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my absolute priority now really is to create unity in Europe,” Merz said.

The UK prime minister heads to Washington on Thursday, following the visit there on Monday by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Friedrich Merz admits, indirectly, to a sense of Fomo – fear of missing out. By rights Germany should be there, too, this week, he says. Berlin, is one of Europe’s Big Three powers, alongside France and the UK.

And with the US and Russia now pow-wowing bilaterally, about, but not with, Ukraine, it feels like a global return to big-power politics.

But Germany has been MIA [missing in action] for a good while now on the European and the world stage. The outgoing government here was weakened and distracted by vicious internal bickering. This infuriated German voters – who wanted urgent focus on the economy and migration – and European allies, demanding action on Russia, security and defence.

Merz says a top priority for Germany is to re-engage internationally.

The country is already the second-biggest donor of military aid to Ukraine, after the US.

Merz wants to continue that support, but, unlike France and the UK, he’s been reticent about the idea of sending soldiers to Ukraine, to back up an eventual ceasefire there.

Based on Germany’s track record though – it dragged its heels at every stage of Ukraine support, and despite that, ended up delivering more aid than any of its European neighbours – a ‘No’ now, doesn’t mean a ‘No’ forever to committing troops or participating in whatever form a European “reassurance force” in Ukraine may take.

• Germany’s conservatives celebrate, but far right enjoy record result
• Analysis: Big challenges loom for Germany’s Merz in divided country
• Friedrich Merz: The risk-taker who flirted with far right

For now, the soldiers Germans most worry about are the 35,000 American ones, stationed in their country, that make them feel safe.

It’s highly unusual for foreign policy to be a top voter concern at election time. But in Germany this weekend, alongside the economy and migration, voter after voter said they worried about peace in Europe and felt very insecure.

Back in November, Germany’s interior ministry said it was drawing up a list of bunkers that could provide emergency shelter for civilians.

Ukraine may be far away, but Germans feel at great risk from Russia for two reasons.

Firstly, the amount of military equipment their country has sent Ukraine. The far right, Alternative for Germany (AfD), with its “Germany First” slogan, campaigned for Berlin to disengage from Kyiv and to re-establish relations with Russia. A strategy not unlike Donald Trump’s, as the party is fond of pointing out.

Secondly, many in Germany think that if Russia wanted to really destabilise Europe, it might be tempted to strike one of the Big Three with a long-range missile.

France and the UK are nuclear powers. Germany is not. Even its conventional military is woefully understaffed and underequipped (to the immense irritation of European partners), so Germany fears it’s a soft target.

All the more so if President Trump withdraws his active servicemen and women from Germany.

He has pledged to significantly reduce US troop presence in Europe as a whole.

The German sense of deep domestic insecurity prompted Friedrich Merz to suggest last week that he’d look to France and Britain to form a European nuclear umbrella, to replace US nuclear guarantees.

It’s an idea that’s easy to bring up on the campaign trail, but that in reality is hugely complex – involving questions of capabilities, commitment and control.

The reality check: Friedrich Merz will need a lot of money for his plans to secure Germany and Europe, and Germany’s economy is depressed.

He also has to reach agreement with the coalition partner, or partners, with whom he’ll form the next German government – as well as with other European countries, like the UK.

And they may not want to strike such a strident tone against the US.

This election may herald stronger leadership from Germany. But is the rest of Europe ready?

US government workers faced widespread confusion on Monday following conflicting advice over compliance with an Elon Musk-backed order to list their last week’s work in an email or face termination.

Just 48 hours after an email asking “what did you do last week?” was sent, the office behind it clarified responses were voluntary, leaving agencies to decide their approach.

But as this new guidance was shared with federal agencies, President Donald Trump weighed in that workers who did not comply with Mr Musk’s demand would be fired or “sort of semi-fired”.

And later on Monday evening, Mr Musk reinforced the ultimatum, granting workers a final chance to respond.

The mail from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Saturday, instructed recipients to reply with five examples of what they did over the past seven days, without revealing any classified information. The recipients were asked to respond by end of Monday.

Mr Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), said that failure to respond would be taken as a resignation.

The comments fuelled backlash, with federal worker unions and activist groups filing a lawsuit in California to halt the email mandate.

Key agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services (HHS), Justice, and the FBI—now led by Trump appointees—instructed employees to ignore the directive. This led to widespread uncertainty, with some workers receiving contradictory messages over the weekend.

The result was widespread bafflement, as federal workers faced uncertainty over their employment. Many also expressed confusion at the competing guidance they had been given by their respective agencies.

“They’re succeeding in driving us insane,” one employee who works under HHS told the BBC, and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

On Monday afternoon, OPM held a call with the heads of human resources at federal agencies and said it was up to each entity to determine how they want to handle the directive employees received Saturday, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

The same afternoon, President Trump told reporters at the White House that Mr Musk’s demand was a “genius” move.

“There was a lot of genius in sending it,” he said. “We’re trying to find out if people are working and so we’re sending a letter to people, please tell us what you did last week. If people don’t respond, it’s very possible that there is no such person or they’re not working.”

“And then if you don’t answer like you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired because a lot of people are not answering because they don’t even exist,” Trump said.

Mr Musk maintained he was acting on instructions from President Donald Trump.

“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” he wrote on X, apparently referring to workers who did not respond to his demand by the end of Monday. “Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”

“The email request was utterly trivial, as the standard for passing the test was to type some words and press send!” he said in another post. “Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?”

Despite pushback from agencies led by Trump appointees, the White House insisted, “Everyone is working together as one unified team at the direction of President Trump”. “Any notion to the contrary is completely false,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

The statement did not explain why different government agencies were giving different recommendations.

A US Secret Service agent who leapt on to John F Kennedy’s limousine as it came under fire in Dallas, and was pictured in famous photos of one of the most dramatic events in US history, has died at the age of 93.

Clint Hill later became a bestselling author, but was haunted for decades by guilt over Kennedy’s assassination.

Hill died at his home on California on Friday, according to a statement from his publicist.

On 22 November 1963, he was assigned to protect the president’s wife, Jacqueline Kennedy.

Hill was riding on a car behind the Kennedy limousine when the first shot rang out.

He immediately rushed towards the couple and started to climb on to the back of the limousine as the shooting continued.

Hill’s actions during the assassination were captured on the Zapruder film – an amateur home video that provided one of the best recordings of the shooting.

Hill, originally from North Dakota, served in the Army prior to joining the Secret Service in 1958.

He was given an award for his actions in Dallas and eventually rose to become assistant director of the Secret Service.

However the trauma he experienced during the assassination led him to retire early from the agency in 1975, at the age of 43.

He had become convinced that he could have saved Kennedy’s life and shortly after his retirement told CBS 60 Minutes that he felt responsible.

“If I had reacted about five-tenths of a second faster, maybe a second faster, I wouldn’t be here today,” Hill said.

“You mean you would have gotten there and you would have taken the shot?” asked interviewer Mike Wallace.

“Yes, sir… That would have been fine with me,” Hill responded.

“I have a great deal of guilt about that,” he said. “Had I turned in a different direction, I’d have made it. It’s my fault.”

As the years went by, the former Secret Service agent later told a documentary, he returned to Dallas, eventually coming to the conclusion he could not have saved Kennedy’s life.

Hill met journalist Lisa McCubbin in 2009 and collaborated on a bestselling memoir, Mrs Kennedy and Me.

It was the first of a series of books and Hill and McCubbin fell in love. The couple married in 2021.

A statement from his publisher said that Hill had died at home with his wife at his side. A cause of death was not given.

New Zealand’s commerce minister Andrew Bayly has resigned as a government minister after he “placed a hand” on a staff member’s upper arm last week, in what he described as “overbearing” behaviour.

Bayly said on Monday that he was “deeply sorry” about the incident, which he described as not an argument but an “animated discussion”.

He remains a member of parliament.

His resignation comes after he was criticised last October for calling a winery worker a “loser”- including putting his fingers in an ‘L’ shape on his forehead – and allegedly using an expletive directed at them. He later issued a public apology.

“As many of you know, I have been impatient to drive change in my ministerial portfolios,” Bayly said in a statement announcing his resignation.

“Last week I had an animated discussion with a staff member about work. I took the discussion too far, and I placed a hand on their upper arm, which was inappropriate.”

He said a complaint had been made but would not elaborate further on exactly what had happened.

Bayly resigned last Friday, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon later told a press conference, adding that the incident happened three days earlier, on 18 February.

Luxon said on Monday the government’s handling the issue within a week was “pretty quick” and “pretty impressive”. He denied that he should have asked Bayly to step down following October’s winery incident, and said “never say never” when asked if there was a way back for the 63-year-old into another cabinet position.

However, Labour leader Chris Hipkins criticised Luxon as being “incredibly weak”, saying the incident with the staff member should not have been dragged over the weekend.

“Christopher Luxon has once again set the bar for ministerial behaviour so low, that it would be almost impossible not to get over it,” he told reporters on Monday.

Bayly himself said that he had to talk to his family and “would have had difficulty” speaking to the media earlier.

He was first elected to the New Zealand Parliament in 2014 as an MP for the current ruling National Party. He was appointed the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing, and Minister of Statistics following Luxon’s election in late 2023.

He was also appointed minister for the ACC – the national accidental injury compensation scheme – following a cabinet reshuffle earlier this year. Before joining politics, Bayly worked in the finance industry.

Luxon said Scott Simpson, National’s senior whip, would take over the ACC and Commerce and Consumer Affairs portfolios.

Bayly is the first minister to resign of his own accord under PM Luxon, whose favourability has dipped considerably, according to recent polls. Both the 1News-Verian poll and the Post/Freshwater Strategy poll show his National-led coalition government is losing support among voters.

The government has recently come under fire for some policies that were seen by some as anti-Māori, including the introduction of a bill that many argued undermined Māori rights and the dissolution of the Māori Health Authority – which was set up under the last Labour government to try and create greater health equality.

Thieves stole a £4.8m solid gold toilet from Blenheim Palace in an “audacious raid” which took just five minutes, a court has heard.

The toilet was plumbed in and fully functioning as part of an art exhibition at the Oxfordshire stately home in September 2019.

Michael Jones, 39, from Divinity Road, Oxford denies a charge of burglary. Fred Doe, previously known as Frederick Sines, 36, from Windsor, and 41-year-old Bora Guccuk, from west London, have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to transfer criminal property.

Their trial at Oxford Crown Court was told the toilet was most likely broken up and was never recovered.

Prosecutor Julian Christopher KC told the court that a gang of five in two vehicles drove through locked gates of Blenheim Palace in the early hours of 14 September 2019 and smashed their way into the building with sledgehammers.

The court heard that the sledgehammers were left at the scene.

A photograph was taken about 17 hours before the toilet was stolen and Mr Christopher told the court that Mr Jones had taken it while he was “there as part of the reconnaissance for the burglary”.

Mr Christopher told the court the raid took just five minutes.

He added: “The work of art was never recovered. It appears to have been split up into smaller amounts of gold and never recovered.”

A fourth man, James Sheen, 40, from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, pleaded guilty to burglary, transferring criminal property and conspiracy to do the same in April 2024, jurors were told.

Entitled America, the 18-carat gold toilet was part of an exhibition by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan.

It weighed 98kg and was insured for $6m. Gold prices at the time would have seen the gold alone worth £2.8m in September 2019, the court was told.

The prosecutor said a series of messages, voice notes and screengrabs discovered on Mr Sheen, Mr Doe and Mr Guccuk’s phones showed the trio negotiated a price of £25,632 per kilo for around 20kg of the stolen gold.

It was claimed Mr Guccuk, who ran the jewellers Pacha of London in Hatton Garden, would make a profit of about £3,000 for every kilo he sold on.

The palace is a Unesco World Heritage Site and was the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill.

The trial continues.

Roaring crowds, faces painted blue and green, flags waving like battle standards.

This is the opening of The Greatest Rivalry: India v Pakistan, a new Netflix documentary on one of cricket’s most storied contests.

India’s Virender Sehwag sets the tone: “This is a contest bigger than one between the bat and ball”. Cut to dramatic footage of some of the matches, the Wagah border, partition refugees. A nation split into two, but forever bound by cricket.

Pakistan’s Waqar Younis doesn’t hesitate: “I put this rivalry right at the top. There’s no match like India v Pakistan.” India’s R Ashwin agrees: “I think this is bigger than the Ashes.” Ramiz Raja says it’s “the political garnish that makes this rivalry world-class”.

Despite wars, border standoffs and terror attacks, the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry has endured, driven by history and national pride. Even when politics halts the bilateral series, International Cricket Council (ICC) tournaments keep the fire alive, turning every match into a high-stakes spectacle.

But Pakistan’s crushing defeat to India on Sunday at the Champions Trophy has reignited the question: is this rivalry overhyped, propped up by slogans like “war minus the shooting” – a phrase George Orwell coined in 1945 to criticise excessive nationalism in sports?

Is this still the premier clash in cricket, or just one of its most dramatic? Has it lost its competitive edge, running more on history than intensity?

Consider this. From an eight-wicket thrashing in 2018 to a 228-run demolition in 2023, India has dominated, winning six of the last eight ODIs. Pakistan’s last victory? The 2017 Champions Trophy final – a fading memory in an increasingly one-sided rivalry.

What rivalry, asked Dawn – a leading Pakistani newspaper – pointedly after the latest debacle. A cricket war that’s now just a big yawn, headlined India Today magazine.

The loss would be easier to accept if Pakistan were at least putting up a fight, according to Dawn’s Zohaib Ahmed Majeed.

Majeed believes the troubled politics between the two neighbours is the only thing that has kept the rivalry alive.

“In a way we must thank the politicians of these two nations for keeping this rivalry alive, because the cricketers, especially from our side, are certainly incapable of putting up a show that is worthy of its billing,” he wrote.

“Cut out the war of words and the actual wars and what you’ll be left with is a professional cricketing unit against a haphazardly put together team at the last minute. There is no rivalry as far as pure cricketing merits are concerned.”

India Today was no less acerbic. “With its history of one-sided losses to India in recent years, Pakistan cricket is fast sliding into pity territory. And unless it reverses the trend, Pakistan’s dream of competing with India could soon turn into a butt of jokes for cricket fans,” wrote Sandipan Sharma.

To be true, Pakistan’s cricketing woes keep mounting. They have missed the final four in the last three ODI World Cups, crashed out in the T20 World Cup group stage and now, as hosts of the Champions Trophy, they’ve hit rock-bottom.

Since the 2009 attack on Sri Lanka’s team bus, Pakistan cricket has battled isolation, political turmoil, board instability, frequent coaching changes and selection controversies – all adding to its struggles. Meanwhile, across the border, India has risen as cricket’s powerhouse, backed by a strong domestic system and the IPL, cricket’s richest international league.

Pakistani cricket writer Osman Samiuddin also notes a sense of “marginalisation” among his country’s cricketers, who remain excluded from the IPL and its franchise ecosystem (no Pakistani player has featured in the IPL since 2009, as they were banned after the Mumbai terror attacks). “I think they see Indian cricketers and others as well, like Australian and English cricketers, as partaking in a world of cricket they have been excluded from,” he told a programme.

This has all contributed to the team’s fast-declining fortunes.

“It is a futile exercise to wonder if this is the lowest Pakistan cricket has ever been. However, even when Pakistan have plummeted to spectacular lows in the past, they have done it in a way that justifies the cliché of their mercurial nature,” wrote Sidharth Monga in ESPNcricinfo, after Sunday’s game.

“This slide just feels like a terminal, slow decline. Players are not fighting with each other, there is no backdoor intrigue, there are no cliques in the team plotting to dethrone the captain, there are no comical run-outs or misfields, no defeats snatched from the jaws of victory.”

The “war without guns” narrative once held weight, especially when Imran Khan’s Pakistan, armed with a fearsome pace attack of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis and batting stars like Javed Miandad and Inzamam-ul-Haq, regularly got the better of India.

“The narrative may have been true till the early 2000s because this is how the actual fans felt. But it was soon hijacked by the multinationals and the media to cash in on the hyper-pathos of it all,” Nadeem Farooq Paracha, Pakistani author and columnist, told me.

“The quality of cricket between the two sides isn’t the same anymore. Indian cricket continues to get better. In fact, I think the narrative in question here has ended up pressuring Pakistani side more. They underplay it, even though they’re more than willing to pocket its financial benefits.”

The cricket boards and broadcasters are doing all they can to keep the rivalry alive, and the ICC won’t dial down the hype – it’s too valuable in an era of overexposure of cricket, limited stars and competition from franchise cricket.

This one game has become a financial juggernaut, fuelling a parallel economy wherever it’s played – Dubai, London, Ahmedabad – drawing fans who spend big just to be there. “Pakistan has talent, but the contest now feels more psychological,” says cricket writer Gautam Bhattacharyya.

Brand consultant Santosh Desai feels the real contest between the arch rivals plays out beyond the cricket ground and the “rivalry thrives more in imagination than in reality”.

“The asymmetry [between the two sides] only fuels the hype. India’s dominance makes it an easy narrative to sell, a battle royale where the outcome feels preordained. If Pakistan were winning consistently, the marketing appeal would fade. The rivalry’s commercial power lies in India’s superiority, feeding a script designed for validation, not uncertainty,” Desai told me.

India’s vice-captain Shubman Gill dismisses talk of overhyping, calling it a contest fans love to watch. “It is an exciting contest when both of these teams play. Everyone enjoys watching it. If so many people are happy to watch the match, then who are we to say that it is underhyped or overhyped,” he told reporters on eve of Sunday’s game.

Gill is possibly right. Tickets for India-Pakistan games still fly off the shelves – the ICC reported sellouts within minutes. An astonishing 600 plus million viewers tuned in to watch Sunday’s match on Indian streaming platform JioHotstar, setting new records.

But for now, as cricket writer Ayaz Memon puts it, “the hype is more thrilling than the cricket itself”.

A 22-member Bangladeshi delegation of political leaders, civil society activists, academics and journalists have begun a 10-day visit to China.

They will be having talks with Chinese government officials and senior members of the ruling Communist Party, a delegation leader confirmed with the BBC.

Analysts say China is making overtures while diplomatic tensions have risen between Bangladesh and India on a range of issues.

This includes ousted Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina living in exile in India. Dhaka has requested her extradition but Delhi has refused.

Abdul Moyeen Khan, a senior official from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) who’s leading the delegation in Beijing, told the BBC: “It’s basically a goodwill visit, initiated by Beijing.”

“It is unique because China this time has invited a team representing various groups in Bangladesh.”

Many of the delegation members are from the BNP and its allies. The BNP, headed by former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia, is one of the main parties in Bangladesh, besides the Awami League led by Hasina.

The delegation also includes several representatives from the student movement that began the mass uprising against Hasina that eventually ousted the prime minister in August last year.

An interim government, led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus is currently in charge.

It has been urging India to repatriate Hasina to face charges of crimes against humanity and money laundering, among other allegations. The UN says Hasina’s government’s crackdown on protesters during the uprising killed about 1,400 people.

So far India has showed no sign of extraditing Hasina, who denies the charges.

Delhi and Dhaka had maintained close ties during the 15-year rule of Ms Hasina, who was widely seen by her critics as pro-India. While maintaining close ties with Delhi, she balanced it with her relationship with Beijing.

After the fall of Hasina, Beijing has stepped up its interaction with Bangladeshi leaders, activists and delegations, including from Islamist parties.

This week’s visit follows a meeting between the Bangladesh interim government’s foreign policy advisor Touhid Hossain and the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in Beijing in January.

It also marks the second time BNP officials have visited China in recent months, after Beijing hosted a BNP delegation late last year.

With the political vacuum and absence of India’s influence, analysts say, Beijing is trying to increase its foothold in Bangladesh, a country of about 170 million people.

China is Bangladesh’s largest trading partner with bilateral trade amounting to around $24bn (£19bn) – the vast majority of that consists of Chinese exports to the South Asian country.

The Bangladeshi military also heavily relies on Chinese equipment and ammunition with more than 70% of supplies coming from China.

Compared to Beijing’s overtures, India has had very limited interactions with the interim government and other Bangladeshi political leaders in the past six months.

The BNP held a protest in December alleging India’s interference in Bangladesh’s internal matters by hosting Hasina. Some advisors of the interim government have also criticised Delhi on the same issue.

This criticism has sparked sharp reaction from Delhi.

The Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said last week that it was up to Bangladesh to decide on “what kind of relationship they want with us”.

He described the criticism of India by Bangladeshi officials and politicians as “absolutely ridiculous”.

Some argue that this increasingly tense rhetoric between Dhaka and Delhi could push Bangladesh towards China.

The latest events indicate that Bangladesh has joined fellow South Asian countries Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Nepal as a target for both Delhi and Beijing, as the superpowers jostle for influence.

“I don’t believe India should consider the whole subcontinent is under Delhi’s sphere of influence. That attitude would make India suffer,” Chinese analyst Zhou Bo, a senior fellow at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, told the BBC.

The R&B singer Roberta Flack, best known for the hits The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and Killing Me Softly With His Song, has died at the age of 88.

“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” said a statement from her representatives.

“She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”

Flack had previously announced in 2022 that she had motor neurone disease, and could no longer sing.

Born in North Carolina and raised in Arlington, Virginia, the musician started out as a classical pianist. She gained a full school scholarship to Howard University aged just 15. Her classical training led her into teaching, but at night she’d accompany opera singers on piano, singing pop standards during the breaks.

“The whole while I was studying classical music, especially in my younger years, I was also doing a lot of doo-ron-ron, shoo-doo-bee-doo, all of that stuff, with my peers, so I’ve been fortunate enough to be surrounded by music all of my life, the Bach and the Chopin and the Schumann on one hand, and all the rhythm and blues,” she explained.

Her recording career started after she was discovered singing in a jazz club by musician Les McCann, who later wrote that “her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known”.

But she didn’t score her first hit until she was in her 30s – when her recording of Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was used to soundtrack an explicit love scene in Clint Eastwood’s 1971 film Play Misty For Me.

It was subsequently named song of the year at the Grammys. Flack won the award a second time the following year, for Killing Me Softly With His Song.

After topping the charts again in 1974 with Feel Like Makin’ Love, Flack took a break from performing to concentrate on recording and charitable causes.

She spent much of the 1980s touring and over the course of her career, worked with artists including Donny Hathaway and Miles Davis.

In 1991 she returned to the charts with a duet with Maxi Priest called Set the Night to Music (from the album of the same name).

She also recorded an album of Beatles covers, called Let It Be Roberta, in 2012.

According to the Guardian, Flack once told a journalist: “What I consider myself is a soulful singer, in that I try to sing with all the feeling that I have in my body and my mind.

“A person with true soul is one who can take anybody’s song and transcend all the flaws, the technique and just make you listen.”

Once married, to US jazz musician Stephen Novosel, the star devoted a lot of her time to the Roberta Flack School of Music in New York.

Reverend Jesse Jackson once described her as “socially relevant and politically unafraid”.

In 2020, a year after having a stroke, Flack was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the Grammys.

“It’s a tremendous and overwhelming honour,” she said at the time.

“I’ve tried my entire career to tell stories through my music. This award is a validation to me that my peers heard my thoughts and took in what I have tried to give.”

Flack’s most famous song was introduced to a new generation of music fans when Lauryn Hill’s hip-hop group The Fugees recorded a Grammy-winning cover of Killing Me Softly, which they would eventually perform on-stage alongside her.

It topped the charts around the world in 1996.

A Scottish businessman who disappeared in Kenya has been found dead.

Campbell Scott, from Fife, was attending a conference at the JW Marriott Hotel in Nairobi when he was last seen by colleagues on 16 February.

The 58-year-old was a senior director at credit scoring firm Fico. His employer confirmed to the BBC on Monday that local police had identified his body.

A spokeswoman for the firm said staff were “devastated” by the news.

She added: “Campbell was a leader in our international Scores business.

“He joined FICO in 2014 and was instrumental in introducing Scores to new markets and growing our business with existing partnerships. We mourn his passing and will miss his humour and kindness.

“Our thoughts are with Campbell’s family and friends. We ask that the media respect their privacy.”

Mr Scott studied at Woodmill High School in Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy Technical College, going on to work for a number of companies before joining Fico.

The JW Marriott hotel is located in the Nairobi’s Westlands district, an affluent business area.

Police launched a search following his disappearance and were assisted by Interpol, according to newspaper reports.

The UK Foreign Office has been approached for comment.

Suspended Labour MP Mike Amesbury has been jailed for 10 weeks after he admitted punching a man to the ground in his Cheshire constituency.

Amesbury, 55, who represents Runcorn and Helsby as an independent MP, pleaded guilty to assaulting 45-year-old Paul Fellows after video footage emerged showing the confrontation.

He had his Labour whip removed after the incident in Frodsham, Cheshire, which happened in the early hours of 26 October.

Sitting at Chester Magistrates’ Court, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram said a pre-sentence report showed Amesbury’s actions were the result of a “anger and loss of emotional control”.

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Amesbury was taken down to the cells immediately and an application for bail pending an appeal was refused.

Addressing the MP before handing down the jail term, the magistrate said: “I have to say that I have seen a single punch to the head cause fatal injuries, but note the limited injuries in this case.

“I note that you, Mr Amesbury, continued to punch Mr Fellows when he was on the ground and continued to shout at Mr Fellows. I consider this more culpable.

“You continued to attack when he was on the ground and it may have continued further had a bystander not intervened,” the magistrate said.

“You continued to rant, your position ought to be as a role model to others.”

Passing sentence, the magistrate said the immediate custodial sentence was “necessary both as a punishment and a deterrent”.

He said he accepted the incident was one incident “in an otherwise unblemished career”.

“You have spent your life in public service and served in high office”, he told Amesbury.

But the magistrate said he was of “the view that unprovoked drunken behaviour is too serious to be dealt with unpaid work”.

Mr Ikram said he had also considered how the MP was “unlikely to re-offend”.

But he said: “You were only stopped from going further by members of the public.”

Richard Derby, representing Amesbury, asked the magistrate: “Is that an immediate sentence?”

Mr Ikram nodded and replied: “Yes,” before leaving the courtroom.

Amesbury was then joined in the dock by two security guards who took him down to the cells.

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Mr Derby requested the judge come back into court as he wished to make an application for bail for Amesbury, pending an appeal against his sentence.

Mr Ikram returned to court, sat down, paused briefly, and said: “Application refused.”

Amesbury was also ordered to pay £200 compensation to the victim, costs of £85 and a surcharge of £154.

Following sentencing, a Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour Party took swift action following Mike Amesbury’s completely unacceptable actions and he is no longer a Labour MP or a member of the Labour Party.

“It is right that Mr Amesbury pleaded guilty and has now been sentenced.

“Local residents in the Runcorn and Helsby constituency deserved better and we look forward to them getting the representation they deserve in the future with a new Labour MP.”

The jail sentence means voters in Amesbury’s constituency can remove the independent MP from his seat with a recall petition.

This can be called if a sitting MP is convicted of an offence that leads to jail time, or even a suspended sentence.

More than 10% of voters must sign the petition in his Runcorn and Helsby constituency for a by-election to be triggered.

A recall petition would also be triggered if the House of Commons decided to suspend him for 10 sitting days or more.

Reform UK party chairman Zia Yusuf called for Amesbury to stand down so a by-election could be held.

He said: “The great people of Runcorn deserve far better than waiting six weeks for a recall petition to take place.”

A further application for bail is expected to be heard at the crown court later this week.

A US judge has declined a request by the Associated Press to immediately restore its access to presidential events after the Trump administration blocked the agency in a dispute over the term “Gulf of America”.

US District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, declined to grant the news outlet’s emergency motion, but set another hearing for the case for 20 March.

The news agency has refused to change its style from the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, after President Donald Trump renamed it with an executive order.

The AP argues the ban is retaliatory and infringes on First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and the press.

The ban has meant that the AP – which hundreds of news outlets rely on – has been unable to access press events at the White House as well as Air Force One.

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Last week, the US President said that he planned to “keep them out” until they begin using the term “Gulf of America”.

After the ruling on Monday, the White House said it stood by its decision to block access to the news agency.

“As we have said from the beginning, asking the President of the United States questions in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One is a privilege granted to journalists, not a legal right,” the Trump administration said in a statement.

“We stand by our decision to hold the Fake News accountable for their lies, and President Trump will continue to grant an unprecedented level of access to the press.”

Shortly after the judge’s decision became public, the White House put up two large electric signs in the briefing room which say “Victory” and “Gulf of America”.

The AP, meanwhile, said in a statement that it was looking forward to the next hearing where “we will continue to stand for the right of the press and the public to speak freely without government retaliation. This is a fundamental American freedom”.

Soon after taking office in January, the Trump administration signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, a move the White House said reflects the gulf’s status as “an indelible part of America”.

The AP said it would continue to use the term Gulf of Mexico, while acknowledging the Trump administration’s efforts to rename it.

In response, the administration began clamping down on the AP’s access to White House events covered by the “pool” of journalists that cover smaller events and report back to other media outlets.

On Monday, Judge McFadden said he declined to deny the request from the AP for emergency relief because he did not believe the publication was suffering “irreparable harm” from the ban, according to CNN. The judge said the AP could access the same information from notes that other White House pool members had gathered.

Still, during several points in the hearing, he called the ban “discriminatory” and problematic”, CNN reported.

AP reporters still have access to the White House grounds.

The AP lawsuit specifically names three administration figures – Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, chief of staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich -as it seeks to regain access.

“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” the AP said in the lawsuit.

On a trip with the White House pool to Florida last week, the BBC witnessed an AP reporter and one of its photographers be told by an official that they were a “no go” for the trip after clearing security at Joint Base Andrews a short while before Air Force One was due to depart.

Over the course of the next several days, the AP team – which had travelled to Florida unilaterally – was repeatedly prevented from joining the pool of reporters covering Trump at his estate in Mar-a-Lago, as well as a trip to the Daytona 500 Nascar race.

Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on 18 February, Trump said that “we’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America”.

“We’re very proud of this country,” he said. “We want it to be the Gulf of America”.

Last week, dozens of news organisations – including conservative outlets such as Fox and NewsMax – signed a letter organised by the White House Correspondents’ Association in which they urged the White House to reconsider its stance on the AP.

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New Zealand’s commerce minister Andrew Bayly has resigned as a government minister after he “placed a hand” on a staff member’s upper arm last week, in what he described as “overbearing” behaviour.

Bayly said on Monday that he was “deeply sorry” about the incident, which he described as not an argument but an “animated discussion”.

He remains a member of parliament.

His resignation comes after he was criticised last October for calling a winery worker a “loser”- including putting his fingers in an ‘L’ shape on his forehead – and allegedly using an expletive directed at them. He later issued a public apology.

“As many of you know, I have been impatient to drive change in my ministerial portfolios,” Bayly said in a statement announcing his resignation.

“Last week I had an animated discussion with a staff member about work. I took the discussion too far, and I placed a hand on their upper arm, which was inappropriate.”

He said a complaint had been made but would not elaborate further on exactly what had happened.

Bayly resigned last Friday, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon later told a press conference, adding that the incident happened three days earlier, on 18 February.

Luxon said on Monday the government’s handling the issue within a week was “pretty quick” and “pretty impressive”. He denied that he should have asked Bayly to step down following October’s winery incident, and said “never say never” when asked if there was a way back for the 63-year-old into another cabinet position.

However, Labour leader Chris Hipkins criticised Luxon as being “incredibly weak”, saying the incident with the staff member should not have been dragged over the weekend.

“Christopher Luxon has once again set the bar for ministerial behaviour so low, that it would be almost impossible not to get over it,” he told reporters on Monday.

Bayly himself said that he had to talk to his family and “would have had difficulty” speaking to the media earlier.

He was first elected to the New Zealand Parliament in 2014 as an MP for the current ruling National Party. He was appointed the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing, and Minister of Statistics following Luxon’s election in late 2023.

He was also appointed minister for the ACC – the national accidental injury compensation scheme – following a cabinet reshuffle earlier this year. Before joining politics, Bayly worked in the finance industry.

Luxon said Scott Simpson, National’s senior whip, would take over the ACC and Commerce and Consumer Affairs portfolios.

Bayly is the first minister to resign of his own accord under PM Luxon, whose favourability has dipped considerably, according to recent polls. Both the 1News-Verian poll and the Post/Freshwater Strategy poll show his National-led coalition government is losing support among voters.

The government has recently come under fire for some policies that were seen by some as anti-Māori, including the introduction of a bill that many argued undermined Māori rights and the dissolution of the Māori Health Authority – which was set up under the last Labour government to try and create greater health equality.

US President Donald Trump has appointed podcaster and commentator Dan Bongino as deputy director of the FBI.

Trump posted on social media that Bongino was “a man of incredible love and passion for our Country” and would serve under newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel.

Bongino, 50, who has worked for the New York police department and the Secret Service, is a staunch Trump ally who has pushed false claims about the 2020 election.

His appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, means neither of the top two people running the agency has FBI experience.

“Thank you Mr President,” Bongino wrote on social media on Sunday night.

The deputy director, who is responsible for supervising all domestic and international operations, is usually a career agent with years of experience.

Bongino hosts daily podcast The Dan Bongino Show, whose Facebook posts often attract more attention than those of Fox News and CNN combined.

In Friday’s episode there was a segment about the FBI, in which he praised Patel and tried to allay Democratic fears the agency will be used to target Trump’s enemies.

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“Kash Patel is there for one reason, he is there to make the FBI great again,” he said.

He’s committed to fighting crime and only that, he added, calling his new boss the “change agent” the FBI needs.

“How amazing would it be in four years to look back with a good, high-quality, reformed FBI free of woke culture and DEI that goes out making headline, big arrests of real bad guys destroying your community. How good would that be?”

Bongino’s appointment comes with FBI in flux after the justice department forced out some of its top officials and demanded the names of agents who investigated the 2021 riot by Trump supporters at the US Capitol.

Critics have said that threatened the FBI’s political independence.

Bongino and PateI are both seen as Trump loyalists. Bongino, on Monday on his daily radio show, addressed concerns about political partisanship in his content.

“We play different roles in our life, and each one requires a different skill set,” he said.

He later added: “We are going to re-establish faith in this institution. The FBI belongs to the American people.”

Bongino, who has run for Congress three times, hosted Trump on his podcast ahead of last year’s election.

Episodes of his programme from the last week include titles such as “Trump Keeps Delivering And The Libs Are Seething” and “The Only People Who Love Crime Are Criminals!!!”

He has repeated Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election and advanced another conspiracy that Joe Biden’s administration was behind the FBI search for classified documents at Trump’s Florida home.

“EVERYONE involved in this DOJ/FBI abomination, from the management down to the agents, must be immediately terminated when the tyrants are thrown out of office,” he said on X.

In 2018, when talking about his career as a prolific conservative political commentator, Bongino said: “My life is all about owning the libs now.”

With a combative persona, he can often be found firing back at Trump’s detractors on X, including a long-running spat with horror author Stephen King.

In his social media announcement on Sunday, Trump said that Bongino would give up the podcast in order to serve in the FBI role.

Patel was last week narrowly confirmed by the Senate to the lead the law-enforcement agency that he has long attacked.

He denied any plans to pursue political vendettas and has promised to “rebuild” the bureau.

The FBI has 38,000 employees and a budget of more than $11bn.

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