“I swear to God I need help,” said the man quietly on the other end of the line.

The Ethiopian, who calls himself Mike, said he is being held with 450 others in a building inside Myanmar, along the country’s border with Thailand.

They are among the thousands of people who have been freed from the notorious scam compounds that have thrived on the border for years, in what appears to be the toughest action so far against the industry along the Thai-Myanmar border.

But many of them are now stranded in Myanmar in makeshift camps because the process of assessing them and arranging flights back to their own countries is so slow.

The armed militia groups who are holding them have a very limited capacity to support so many people – more than 7,000. One of them has said they have stopped freeing people from the compounds because they are not being moved to Thailand fast enough.

The BBC understands that conditions in the camps are unsanitary, food barely sufficient, and many of the freed workers, like Mike, are in poor health. He is suffering from panic attacks, after working for a year in a scam centre where he was routinely beaten.

He told us they got two very basic meals a day, there were only two toilets for 450 people, who he said were now relieving themselves wherever they could.

Mike described being invited a year ago to take up what he was promised would be a good job, in Thailand, requiring only good English language and typing skills.

Instead he found himself subjected to a brutal regime, forced to work long hours every day to meet the target for defrauding people online set by his Chinese bosses.

“It was the worst experience of my life. Of course I was beaten. But believe me I have seen a lot worse done to other people.”

Mike is one of an estimated 100,000 people who are believed to have been lured to work in the scam operations along the Thai-Myanmar border, most of them run by Chinese fraud and gambling operatives who have taken advantage of the lawlessness in this part of Myanmar.

Despite horrifying accounts of abuse from those who escaped in the past, thousands still come from parts of the world where good jobs are scarce, enticed by promises of good money.

China, where many of the scam victims come from, has acted to shut down scam operations along its own border with Myanmar, but until this year neither China nor Thailand had done much about the Thai-Myanmar border.

Ariyan, a young man from Bangladesh, has come back to Thailand to try to help 17 friends who are still there. He said he made a promise to himself to do this after his own gruelling escape from one of the most notorious scam centres last October.

He showed us a brief, shaky video of the compound, still under construction in a remote, forested valley, where he was held, and remembers the terrible treatment he and his friends suffered at the hands of their Chinese boss.

“They gave us a target every week, $5,000. If not, they gave us two electric shocks. Or they put us in a dark room, with no windows. But if we earned a lot of money, they were very happy with us.”

Ariyan had to approach men in the Middle East and lure them into transferring funds to fictitious investments. Using AI, the scammers made him appear on the screen to be an attractive young woman, altering his voice as well.

He says he hated doing it. He remembers one man who was willing to sell his wife’s jewellery to fund the fraudulent investment, and wishing he could warn him. But he said the bosses monitored all their calls.

The release of the scam workers started more than two weeks ago after Thailand, under pressure from China and some of its own politicians, cut power and telecommunications links to the compounds on the border.

It limited banking access to the scam bosses and issued arrest warrants for some of the militia leaders who had been protecting the business.

That hit the business, but it also hit the ordinary Karen people who live nearby even harder, putting pressure on the militia commanders to show willingness in ending the abuses in the scam centres. They began helping those trying to escape, and completely evacuating some compounds.

The camp Mike is housed in is now being guarded by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, DKBA, a breakaway insurgent faction of the ethnic Karen community.

Until recently, it was protecting the many scam compounds which have sprung up in its territory. You can see them easily as you drive along the Moei River which divides the two countries – unlikely expanses of new buildings over in war-torn Karen State contrasting with the rural landscape on the Thai side of the border.

Thailand insists it is moving as fast as it can to process the former scam workers and get them home.

A group of 260 freed workers were brought over the Moei River on a raft earlier this month. And around 621 Chinese nationals were flown straight back to China with a police escort on chartered planes. Otherwise, the movement of freed workers to Thailand seems to have stalled.

The problem is that they are from many different countries, some of which are doing little to help get their people home. Around 130 of the first 260 who came over are from Ethiopia, which does not have an embassy in Bangkok.

The BBC has been told that some other African countries will only fly their people home if someone else pays. Most of the freed workers have nothing; even their passports were withheld by the compound bosses.

Thailand fears bringing over thousands of people it will then have to look after indefinitely. It also wants to screen them to find out which are genuine victims of human trafficking and which may have committed criminal acts, but does not have the capacity to do this with such a large group of people.

Different ministries and agencies, including the army, are involved in managing this problem, and have to agree who does what. It does not help that several senior police and immigration officers have been transferred over their alleged involvement in the scam business.

“If this issue is not resolved, then we will not stop working on it – we must work seriously,” said Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on Tuesday in Bangkok. But she was referring to the wider problem of the scam business, not the growing humanitarian crisis among the freed workers.

“Unfortunately, it seems we’re in a bit of a standstill,” says Judah Tana, an Australian who runs an NGO which has for years been helping the victims of trafficking in the scam centres.

“We are hearing distressing information about the lack of sanitation and toilets. Many of the 260 who already came were screened for TB and tested positive. We are hearing from those who are still inside that people are coughing up blood. They are very happy that they have been liberated from the scam compounds, but our worry is that we’re not engaging fast enough.”

Thailand now seems ready to bring over one group of 94 Indonesians, as their embassy has been pushing for their release for several days and has booked flights to Indonesia for them.

But that still leaves more than 7,000 still inside Myanmar, unsure what will now happen to them.

Mike told me he and many others with him feared that if they are not allowed to cross into Thailand soon, the DKBA may hand them back to the scam bosses, where they could face punishment for trying to leave.

On Wednesday night his panic attacks and breathing were so bad, he said, they took him to hospital.

“I just want to go home,” he said over the phone. “I just want to go back to my country. That is all I am asking.”

Oscar-winning US actor Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa and their dog have been found dead at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In a wide-ranging career spanning more than six decades, Hackman won two Academy Awards for his work on The French Connection and Unforgiven.

A statement from the Santa Fe County Sheriff in New Mexico said: “We can confirm that both Gene Hackman and his wife were found deceased Wednesday afternoon at their residence on Sunset Trail.

“This is an active investigation – however, at this time we do not believe that foul play was a factor.”

Hackman was 95, and his wife – a classical pianist – 63.

He won the best actor Oscar for his role as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller The French Connection, and another for best supporting actor for playing Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Western film Unforgiven in 1992.

• Gene Hackman obituary: One of Hollywood’s greatest ‘tough guys’

His other Oscar-nominated roles included 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde – as Buck Barrow in his breakthrough role, opposite Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – and 1970’s I Never Sang for My Father.

Both films saw him recognised in the supporting actor category. He was also nominated for best leading actor in 1988 for playing the agent in Mississippi Burning.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office said: “On 26 February, 2025, at approximately 1:45pm, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to an address on Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park where Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa, and a dog were found deceased.”

Much-celebrated actor Hackman played more than 100 roles in total, including supervillain Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman movies in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hackman acted opposite many Hollywood heavyweights including Al Pacino in 1973’s Scarecrow, Gene Wilder in 1974’s Young Frankenstein and Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in 1981’s Reds.

He also starred in the hit movies Runaway Jury, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.

Coppola led the tributes to the late star on Thursday, calling him “a great artist”. In a statement posted on Instagram, the director wrote: “Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity. I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.”

Valerie Perrine, who featured alongside Hackman in Superman (1978) as his character’s on-screen girlfriend Eve Teschmacher, described the late actor as “a genius” and one of the “greatest to grace the silver screen”.

She posted on X: “His performances are legendary. His talent will be missed. Goodbye my sweet Lex Till we meet again.”

Star Trek actor George Takei posted that “we have lost one of the true giants of the screen”.

“Gene Hackman could play anyone, and you could feel a whole life behind it,” he wrote. “He could be everyone and no one, a towering presence or an everyday Joe. That’s how powerful an actor he was. He will be missed, but his work will live on forever.”

Slumdog Millionaire star Anil Kapoor also called Hackman a “genius” performer. “A true legend whose legacy will live on,” he wrote.

As well as his Oscar wins, Hackman also collected two Baftas, four Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

He took a comedic turn playing a conservative senator in 1996’s The Birdcage alongside Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, who starred as a gay couple.

His last big-screen appearance came as Monroe Cole in Welcome to Mooseport in 2004, after which he stepped back from Hollywood for a quieter life in New Mexico.

Born in California in 1930, Hackman’s family moved frequently, and after lying about his age at 16, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps serving for four-and-a-half years.

He was stationed in China, Hawaii and Japan before being discharged in 1951.

Following his military service, Hackman lived and worked in New York and studied journalism and television production at the University of Illinois, before deciding to move back to California to pursue his childhood acting dream.

He joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where he befriended a young Dustin Hoffman.

“I suppose I wanted to be an actor from the time I was about 10, maybe even younger than that,” Hackman once said. “Recollections of early movies that I had seen and actors that I admired like James Cagney, Errol Flynn, those kind of romantic action guys.

“When I saw those actors, I felt I could do that. But I was in New York for about eight years before I had a job. I sold ladies shoes, polished leather furniture, drove a truck.

“I think that if you have it in you and you want it bad enough, you can do it.”

He added that he “wanted to act” but had “always been convinced that actors had to be handsome”.

“That came from the days when Errol Flynn was my idol. I’d come out of a theatre and be startled when I looked in a mirror because I didn’t look like Flynn. I felt like him.”

Hackman moved back to New York in 1963, performing in Off-Broadway productions – including at the Music Box Theatre for the comedy Any Wednesday – and smaller TV roles.

But he began to really make his name in the 1970s, becoming a leading man as New York City detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in The French Connection.

From then on he became a fixture on the big screen in the likes of 1972 disaster film The Poseidon Adventure.

He also appeared in Children From Their Games at the former Morosco Theatre, Poor Richard at Helen Hayes Theatre and The Natural Look at Longacre Theatre, before later returning in 1992 to perform Death And The Maiden at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

Hackman and his first wife, Faye Maltese, were together for 30 years and raised three children before getting divorced in 1986.

In his later years, he and his second wife, Betsy stayed out of the spotlight, but made a rare public appearance together at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards, where he won the Cecil B. deMille award.

In 2008 he told Reuters that despite the lack of any official announcement, he was “not going to act any longer”.

“I’ve been told not to say that over the last few years, in case some real wonderful part comes up, but I really don’t want to do it any longer.”

He also explained he was focusing his attentions away from the big screen and towards his quieter, calmer passion for writing novels.

“I was trained to be an actor, not a star. I was trained to play roles, not to deal with fame and agents and lawyers and the press,” he once said.

“It really costs me a lot emotionally to watch myself on-screen. I think of myself, and feel like I’m quite young, and then I look at this old man with the baggy chins and the tired eyes and the receding hairline and all that.”

Support for Ukraine has become a key issue since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

President Trump has made a number of claims about how much the United States has spent compared to European countries.

But some of his claims are questionable – with no evidence to back them up.

President Trump has made this claim on a number of occasions – including when he hosted France’s President Macron in the White House this week.

Short answer: Figures suggest the actual spend is much lower.

BBC Verify can find no evidence to back up the claim. There are different calculations on US spending in or related to Ukraine – and they produce a much lower figure.

The Kiel Institute is a German-based think tank tracking support going into Ukraine. It calculated that the United States spent $119.7bn (£94.3bn) on aid between January 2022 and December 2024.

Others have reached a higher figure – but with a broader definition of what counts as spending on Ukraine.

The US Department of Defense has provided a figure looking at all spending on Operation Atlantic Resolve – a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It says $182.8bn has been “appropriated” – a figure that covers US military training in Europe and replenishment of US defence stocks.

Either way, both figures are considerably lower than claimed by the president.

We asked the White House about the basis for the $350bn claim. So far, it hasn’t provided an explanation.

President Trump has claimed: “We’ve spent more than $300bn and Europe has spent about $100bn – that’s a big difference”

Short answer: Figures suggest Europe has spent more when all aid is included and, as above, we can’t find any evidence for the $300bn figure.

The United States is, by some margin, the largest single donor to Ukraine. But Europe combined has spent more money than the United States, according to the Kiel Institute.

The figure includes aid directly from the European Union, but also from bilateral deals from European countries, both inside and outside the EU. It includes military, financial and humanitarian aid.

They calculate that between 24 January 2022 and the end of 2024, Europe as a whole spent $138.7bn on Ukraine. In the same period, the United States spent $119.7bn, according to their figures.

NATO secretary general Mark Rutte made a similar argument, adding Canada into his calculation.

Mr Rutte said February 2025: “In 2024, NATO Allies provided over 50 billion euros in security assistance to Ukraine – nearly 60% of this coming from Europe and Canada.”

We asked for NATO’s figures, but they said they were classified.

This is a claim President Trump made when he hosted President Macron. It prompted President Macron to disagree, saying both Europe and the US had given a mixture of grants and loans.

Short answer: The EU has provided loans, but also grants.

President Macron is correct, according to Kiel figures. But they suggest President Trump also has a point; the US has sent more grants, while the EU sent more loans.

However, again, there are different figures out there.

The European Union says EU countries have provided around $145bn in aid so far and that just 35% of that has been loans. Like the United States Department of Defence, the EU has used a broader definition of what counts as aid to Ukraine.

EU loans will have been on generous terms – so Ukraine will be repaying less interest than it would normally. In some cases, Ukraine isn’t expected to pay anything, with repayments coming from revenues from frozen Russian assets.

What we can say is that aid to Ukraine has been a mixture of loans and grants.

The UK is one of the biggest individual state donors to Ukraine.

The only countries to have spent more are the United States and Germany, according to Kiel data.

But the UK contributions are much smaller than the United States.

That raises a question for the UK and other European countries; if the United States withdraws a large part of its funding to Ukraine, can other states make up the difference?

That would require a significant increase in their contributions.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are travelling to the US after leaving Romania, where they face charges of rape, trafficking minors and money laundering, all of which they deny.

Questions remain about why they were allowed to travel and what happens next with their legal cases.

Andrew Tate, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, are dual US-UK citizens who claim to have made millions from their social media empire.

Their online output was controversial even before their legal troubles, with the pair attracting frequent criticism over offensive statements about women.

The pair have an American father who worked for the US Air Force in Britain. Their parents met in the UK before moving to the US.

After their parents divorced, their mother moved to Luton, England. The brothers spent time in the UK, where they built their early careers.

Police in the UK have linked Andrew Tate to the “quite terrifying” radicalisation of boys and young men in a 2024 report into violence against women and girls.

The brothers were first arrested in Romania in 2022. They are facing separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK. Both brothers also deny the charges against them in the UK.

• Follow updates: Tate brothers take private jet to US after leaving Romania
• Who is Andrew Tate? The self-proclaimed misogynist influencer
• What are the charges against the Tate brothers?

The brothers had been under a travel ban in Romania for more than two years while they were under investigation.

Speculation that they would leave Romania had been mounting ahead of their journey, after the pair went quiet on social media.

They left from a Bucharest airport at around 03:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on a private jet bound for Florida, sources have told the BBC.

Prosecutors said the travel ban had been lifted, and the pair’s US passports had been returned to them, but investigations into their alleged crimes have not been dropped and they are expected to return to Romania.

The Tates have a large US following and are popular figures among some elements of the American right.

Earlier in February, some of Andrew Tate’s alleged victims said they were “extremely concerned” by reports that US officials had asked for his travel restrictions to be relaxed.

It came after US special envoy Richard Grenell raised the Tate brothers with Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference.

Hurezeanu said he had not considered Grenell’s approach as a “form of pressure”. Grenell told the Financial Times his support for the brothers was evident.

The Tates have been vocal supporters of US President Donald Trump, while his close adviser, Elon Musk, restored Andrew Tate’s account on X after he bought the social media platform in 2022.

Andrew and Tristan Tate have not yet commented on their trip to the US, and neither has the Trump administration.

The cases against the Tate brothers in Romania are now being rewritten by prosecutors, who allowed them to leave the country on the condition that they return – possibly as early as the end of March.

The pair’s request to leave the country was accepted, prosecutors said, but their request for the charges against them to be dropped was rejected.

The brothers face a number of civil and criminal legal cases.

The pair were charged with human trafficking and rape along with two Romanian female suspects in June 2023. They deny the charges.

They face separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK. Last year, a Romanian court ruled they could be extradited to the UK after their case in Romania concludes.

Separately, lawyers for four women who claim they were assaulted by the Tates said they were bringing a civil case against him at the High Court in the UK for “damages for injuries they suffered as a result”.

A representative for the Tate brothers said in response that they “unequivocally deny all allegations”.

A separate civil case in the UK, which the brothers are contesting, accuses the brothers and a third individual of being serial tax evaders.

Four women who allege they were sexually abused by Andrew Tate have said they are in “disbelief and feel re-traumatised” by news of him leaving Romania.

In a joint statement, the four said: “It is clear that he will now not face criminal prosecution for his alleged crimes in Romania; he will use it as an opportunity to harass further and intimidate witnesses and his accusers, and he will continue to spread his violent, misogynistic doctrine around the world.”

They also urged British authorities to “finally take action, do something about this terrifying unfolding situation and ensure he faces justice in the UK”.

Matthew Jury, a lawyer representing the four alleged victims, told the BBC the Trump administration was “interfering in due process” in Romania and the UK.

He added he didn’t think the Tate brothers would “ever face justice in Romania now”.

At least 40 Uyghurs have been deported to China, the Thai authorities have confirmed, despite warnings from rights groups that they face possible torture and even death.

The group is thought to have been flown back to China’s Xinjiang region on Thursday, after being held for 10 years in a Bangkok detention centre.

China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang. Beijing denies all of the allegations.

It is the first time Thailand has deported Uyghurs since 2015.

The deportation has been shrouded in secrecy after serious concerns were raised by the United States and United Nations.

Thai media reported that several trucks, some with windows blocked with sheets of black plastic, left Bangkok’s main immigration detention centre in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Hours later, tracker Flightrader24 showed an unscheduled China Southern Airlines flight leaving Bangkok, eventually arriving in Xinjiang. It was not immediately clear how many people had been deported.

The Thai government later said it had decided to send the 40 Uyghurs back to China because it was not right that they had been held for more than a decade, but that no other third country had stepped forward offering to take them. That includes Turkey, which has given Uyghurs asylum in the past.

Eight Uyghurs remain in Thailand, including five who are serving jail terms for crimes they committed while in detention.

The government also said that Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was given assurances that the Uyghurs would be looked after if returned to China during her recent visit to the country.

She did not initially confirm any deportations had taken place when asked by reporters on Thursday.

“In any country in the world actions must adhere to the principles of law, international processes, and human rights,” Shinawatra said.

Beijing said that 40 Chinese illegal immigrants were repatriated from Thailand, but refused to confirm that the group were Uyghurs.

“The repatriation was carried out in accordance with the laws of China and Thailand, international law and international practice,” the foreign ministry said.

Chinese state media said the group had been “bewitched” by criminal organisations and were stranded in Thailand after illegally leaving the country.

• China deportation looms for Uyghurs held in Thailand
• Who are the Uyghurs?

The returned group is made up of more than 300 Uyghurs who were detained at the Thai border in 2014 after fleeing repression in Xinjiang.

Many were sent to Turkey, while others were deported back to China in 2015 – prompting a storm of protest from governments and human rights groups.

“What is the Thai government doing?” asked opposition lawmaker Kannavee Suebsang on social media on Thursday.

“There must not be Uyghur deportation to face persecution. They were jailed for 11 years. We violated their human rights for too long.”

The detention centre where the Uyghurs – who had been charged with no crime, apart from entering Thailand without a visa – were kept was known to be unsanitary and overcrowded. Five Uyghurs died in custody.

In a statement on Thursday, Human Rights Watch said the group now face a high risk of torture, enforced disappearance and long-term imprisonment.

“Thailand’s transfer of Uyghur detainees to China constitutes a blatant violation of Thailand’s obligations under domestic and international laws,” said the organisation’s Asia director, Elaine Pearson.

“Until yesterday [Wednesday], senior Thai officials had made multiple public assurances that these men would not be transferred, including to allies and UN officials.”

Phil Robertson, director of the Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates (AHRLA) group, said that the deportations “totally destroyed” the “charade” that the current Thai government was different to the previous one “when it comes to transnational repression and cooperating with authoritarian neighbours”.

Amnesty International described the deportations as “unimaginably cruel”.

Bipartisan members of the US House China Committee on Wednesday issued a statement warning that the deportations “would constitute a clear violation of international human rights norms to which the Kingdom of Thailand is obligated under international law”.

The UN said that it “deeply regrets” the deportations.

There are about 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

The Uyghurs speak their own language, which is similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. They make up less than half of the Xinjiang population.

Recent decades have seen a mass migration of Han Chinese (China’s ethnic majority) into Xinjiang, allegedly orchestrated by the state to dilute the minority population there.

China has also been accused of targeting Muslim religious figures and banning religious practices in the region, as well as destroying mosques and tombs.

In a crowded control centre, surrounded by dozens of TV screens, the Taliban’s police force proudly shows off its newly-acquired network of 90,000 CCTV cameras – used to watch over the day-to-day lives of millions of people.

“We monitor the entire city of Kabul from here,” says Khalid Zadran, a spokesperson for the Taliban police chief, pointing to one of the screens.

The authorities say such surveillance will help fight crime, but critics fear it will be used to clamp down on dissent and to monitor the strict morality code enforced by the Islamist Taliban government under their interpretation of Sharia law.

The BBC are the first international journalists allowed to see the system in action.

Inside the control room, police officers sit in rows watching the live streams from thousands of cameras, keeping tabs on the lives of the six million people who live in Kabul.

From car licence plates to facial expressions, everything is monitored.

“In certain neighbourhoods, when we notice groups of people and suspect they might be involved in drug use, criminal activities, or something suspicious, we quickly reach out to the local police,” says Zadran.

“They arrive swiftly to investigate the nature of the gathering.”

Under the previous government, Kabul was threatened daily with attacks from the Taliban and so-called Islamic State militants, as well as high profile kidnappings and car-jackings. When the Taliban retook power in 2021, they promised to crack down on crime.

The dramatic increase in the number of surveillance cameras in the capital is a sign of growing sophistication in the way the Taliban enforce law and order. Before their return, just 850 cameras were in place in the capital, according to a spokesman for the security forces that were driven from power.

However, in the past three years, the Taliban authorities have also introduced a range of draconian measures limiting people’s rights and freedoms, especially those of women. The Taliban government has not been formally recognised by any other country.

The surveillance system the BBC is shown in Kabul features the option to track people by facial recognition. On the corner of one screen images pop up with each face categorised by age range, gender, and whether or not they have a beard or a face mask.

“On clear days, we can zoom in on individuals [who are] kilometres away,” says Zadran, highlighting a camera positioned up high that focuses on a busy traffic junction.

The Taliban even monitor their own personnel. At a checkpoint, as soldiers popped open the trunk of a car for inspection, the operators focused their lenses, zooming in to scrutinise the contents within.

The interior ministry says the cameras have “significantly contributed to enhancing safety, curbing crime rates, and swiftly apprehending offenders”. It adds the introduction of CCTV and motorcycle controls have led to a 30% decrease in crime rates between 2023 and 2024 but it is not possible to independently verify these figures.

However, rights groups are concerned about who is being monitored and for how long.

Amnesty International say installing cameras “under the guise of ‘national security’ sets a template for the Taliban to continue their draconian policies that violate fundamental rights of people in Afghanistan – especially women in public spaces”.

By law women are not allowed to be heard outside their houses, although in practice this is not being strictly enforced. Teenage girls are prevented from accessing secondary and higher education. Women are barred from many forms of employment. In December, women training as midwives and nurses told the BBC they had been ordered not to return to classes.

While women continue to be visible on the streets of cities like Kabul, they are required to wear a face covering.

Fariba*, a young graduate who lives with her parents in Kabul, has been unable to find work since the Taliban came to power. She tells the BBC there is “significant concern that surveillance cameras may be used to monitor women’s hijabs [veils]”.

The Taliban say only the city police have access to the CCTV system and the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry – the Taliban’s morality police – does not use it.

But Fariba is concerned the cameras will further endanger those opposed to Taliban rule.

“Many individuals, especially ex-military members, human rights advocates and protesting women, struggle to move freely and often live in secrecy,” she says.

“There is significant concern that surveillance cameras will be used to monitor women’s hijabs too,” she says.

Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, says Afghanistan does not have the data protection laws in place to regulate how the collected CCTV footage is held and used.

The police say the data is kept only for three months, while, according to the interior ministry, the cameras do not pose a threat to privacy as they “are operated from a special and completely confidential room by a specific and professional person in charge”.

The cameras appear to be Chinese-made. The control room monitors and branding on the feeds the BBC saw carried the name Dahua, a Chinese government-linked company. Earlier reports that the Taliban were in talks with China’s Huawei Technologies to buy cameras were denied by the company. Taliban officials refused to answer BBC questions about where they sourced the equipment.

Some of the cost of installing the new network is falling on ordinary Afghans who are being monitored by the system.

In a house in central Kabul the BBC spoke to Shella*, who was asked to pay for some of the cameras installed on the streets near her home.

“They demanded thousands of afghanis from every household,” she says. It’s a large amount in a country where those women who have jobs may earn only around 5,000 afghanis ($68; £54) a month.

The humanitarian situation in Kabul, and in Afghanistan in general, remains precarious after years of war. The country’s economy is in crisis, but international aid funding has been largely stopped since the Taliban came back to power.

According to the United Nations, 30 million people are in need of aid.

“If families refused to pay [for the cameras], they were threatened with water and power cuts within three days,” Shella adds. “We had to take loans to cover the costs.

“People are starving – what good are these cameras to them?”

The Taliban say that if people do not want to contribute, they can put in an official complaint.

“Participation was voluntary, and donations were in the hundreds, not thousands,” Khalid Zadran, the Taliban police spokesperson, insists.

Despite the assurances, rights campaigners both inside and outside Afghanistan continue to have concerns over how such a powerful surveillance system will be used.

Jaber, a vegetable seller in Kabul, says the cameras represent another way in which Afghans are made to feel powerless.

“We are treated like trash, denied the opportunity to earn a living, and the authorities regard us as worthless,” he told the BBC.

“We can do nothing.”

*

Donald Trump said he planned to hit goods from China with another 10% rise in tariffs, the latest salvo in the US president’s steadily escalating trade fights.

Imports from China already face tariffs of at least 10%, after a Trump order that went into effect earlier this month.

Trump also said he intended to move forward with a threatened 25% tax on imports from Canada and Mexico, which are set to come into effect on 4 March.

The US president previously announced the 25% duty on the country’s neighbours, but he suspended the measure at the last moment after the countries agreed to increase border security funding and talk further on how to combat drug trafficking.

China, Mexico and Canada are America’s top three trade partners, together accounting for more than 40% of imports into the US last year.

Officials from Mexico and Canada are in Washington this week as they try to head off the measures. The threat of tariffs on Mexico and Canada have alarmed many, as they are close allies of the US and the three countries economies are closely interwoven after decades of free trade agreements.

Leaders of both countries have previously said they would impose retaliatory tariffs on the United States if the White House went ahead with the proposal.

On social media, Trump wrote that he did not think enough action had been taken to address the flow of fentanyl to the US – and that Canada, Mexico and China were to blame.

“Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels,” he wrote, adding that “a large percentage” of the drugs were made in China.

During the campaign, Trump had threatened to hit imports from China with tariffs as high as 60%.

Tariffs are a tax collected by the government and paid for by the business bringing the goods into the country.

Economists have warned they could lead to higher prices in the US on everything from iPhones to avocados.

Recent surveys of consumer sentiment suggest concerns about the measures have hit consumer confidence and contributed to worries about living costs.

Trump’s trade moves have also added to jitters on financial markets, despite significant uncertainty about whether Trump is prepared to carry out his threats.

The three major stock indexes in the US were little changed on Thursday.

Analysts have warned that the impact of tariffs, if they go into effect, would likely be felt more heavily on the Canadian and Mexican economies.

But they say that the threat of tariffs, even if they never go into effect, was likely to have a chilling effect on investment, including in the US.

China responded to the first round of tariffs from the US with its own tariffs on US products, including coal and agricultural machinery.

Trump has dismissed fears about damage to the American economy.

“We are the pot of gold. We are the one that everybody wants,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Cypriot authorities mishandled their investigation into the case of a British woman who was found guilty of lying about a gang rape attack before her conviction was overturned, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has concluded.

The woman, then 18, told Cypriot police she had been raped in Ayia Napa in July 2019 but retracted the allegation after being held without a lawyer.

The court found “the Cypriot authorities failed in their obligation to effectively investigate the applicant’s complaint of rape and to adopt a victim‑sensitive approach when doing so”.

It awarded the Derbyshire woman €20,000 (£16,500) in damages and €5,000 (£4,125) in costs.

The ECHR found Cypriot authorities breached article 3 – lack of effective investigation – and article 8 – the right to respect for private and family life – of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The woman originally told police she had been raped by 12 Israeli men and boys.

Ten days after the incident the woman was questioned again, with only two short breaks over six hours and no lawyer or welfare services present.

At 01:15 she signed a retraction and was arrested for committing public mischief.

She was subsequently tried and convicted of the offence and given a suspended four-month sentence.

This was overturned at the Supreme Court in Cyprus in 2022 on the grounds the original conviction for public mischief was unsafe.

The case outraged women’s rights campaigners who felt the woman had been treated like the accused rather than a victim.

Thursday’s judgement, as well as noting issues with the forensic investigation, highlighted “the failure of the authorities in their central task of examining whether there had been consent”.

It also said: “Neither the chief investigator nor the counsel for the Attorney General… engaged in any meaningful examination of the evidence which could signify a lack of consent.”

The judges also felt the authorities took the suspects’ statements that no rape had taken place “at face value”.

The ruling said: “In conclusion, the Court observes that the present case reveals certain biases concerning women in Cyprus which impeded the effective protection of the applicant’s rights as a victim of gender-based violence and which, if not reversed, run the risk of creating a background of impunity, discouraging victims’ trust in the criminal justice system, despite the existence of a satisfactory legislative framework.”

It added: “The investigative and prosecutorial authorities’ response to the applicant’s allegations of rape in the present case fell short of the state’s positive obligation to apply the relevant criminal provisions in practice through effective investigation and prosecution.”

By Anna Holligan, BBC Hague correspondent

The ECHR judgement amounts to a string of stinging indictments of the Cypriot justice system.

From their initial handling of the investigation, to the way in which an alleged victim of gang rape was questioned by police, alone late into the night without a lawyer present, the court ruling also notes the case was underpinned by apparent institutionalised bias in which the British woman’s credibility “appears to have been assessed through prejudicial gender stereotypes and victim-blaming attitudes”.

When I met the British teenager during the original hearings in Cyprus back in 2019, she was determined to pursue justice in the hope that other women wouldn’t be afraid of coming forward to report allegations of sexual violence.

During those hearings, chants of “we believe you” from women’s rights groups echoed through the courtroom.

This ruling is a vindication of their claims that this young woman didn’t get a fair hearing partly on account of gender stereotypes, oversights and intrinsic inadequacies within the very system that was supposed to support her.

True justice, according to her legal team, would be for the Attorney General in Cyprus to consider this ECHR ruling compelling enough to order a fresh investigation into her original gang rape allegations.

Lawyers for the young woman said she had shown “immense resilience in her pursuit of justice”.

They hope this legal victory will empower others to speak out and demand accountability.

Justice Abroad, which has represented the woman, known as X in court, through the process, welcomed the verdict.

Its director, Michael Polak, said: “This is a landmark decision for victims of sexual violence.

“The ruling reinforces the fundamental principle that allegations of sexual violence must be investigated thoroughly and fairly, without institutional obstruction.

“Following our victory in X v Greece, where the court found that Greek authorities had failed to uphold the rights of a rape victim, this case further strengthens the procedural protections for victims of sexual violence in Europe.

“By holding that Cyprus was in breach of the rights of our client, we hope that the court’s decision will cause the Attorney General of the Republic of Cyprus to reconsider his decision and order a proper investigation using outside investigators.

“A proper framework for the investigation and prosecution of sexual offences needs to be developed urgently in Cyprus.

“Our client has shown immense resilience in her pursuit of justice, and we hope this outcome will empower others to speak out against such offences and demand accountability from authorities.”

Listen to Sue read this article

In a busy, terraced house in Bradford, three sisters are animatedly chatting. It’s a big day at their home: a beautician sits on their sofa, styling their hair and makeup. The room is warm with fun and laughter. It feels like a scene from a Jane Austen novel: three women in their late 20s, each of them bursting with personality, swapping stories.

And like most Austen novels, the conversation often turns to marriage.

The sisters are preparing for a family wedding at the weekend – where the bride and groom are first cousins. Many people might find this unusual, but in their family and in some parts of Bradford, it’s fairly common.

Ayesha, who at 29 is the oldest of the three sisters, also married her first cousin in 2017. She has two children with her husband and their marriage is happy, she says. It felt perfectly normal at the time to marry her cousin. Their mother, a Pakistani migrant, assumed it was what all three of her daughters would do.

But 26-year-old Salina, the youngest of the three, tells us she broke the mould by having what they call a “love” marriage, choosing a partner from outside the family. Salina tells us she is outgoing and ambitious; marrying a cousin simply did not appeal to her. Then there’s Mallika, who at 27 is the middle of the three. She’s still single and has already decided not to marry within her family.

“I said to my mum that I wouldn’t judge my sisters but I wasn’t going to do it,” Mallika tells us. She says having an education has created opportunities for her. “Before, even if you had an education, you wouldn’t be expected to carry on with it. You would be thinking of marriage. Now the mindset is so different.”

In the UK and across Europe, cousin marriage is coming under increased scrutiny – particularly from doctors, who warn that children of first cousins are more likely to experience an array of health problems.

And there’s now some new, potentially worrying data from Bradford to add into that mix.

Researchers at the city’s university are entering their 18th year of the Born in Bradford study. It’s one of the biggest medical trials of its kind: between 2007 and 2010, researchers recruited more than 13,000 babies in the city and then followed them closely from childhood into adolescence and now into early adulthood. More than one in six children in the study have parents who are first cousins, mostly from Bradford’s Pakistani community, making it among the world’s most valuable studies of the health impacts of cousin marriage.

And in data published in the last few months – and analysed in an upcoming episode of BBC Radio 4’s Born in Bradford series – the researchers found that first cousin-parentage may have wider consequences than previously thought.

The most obvious way that a pair of blood-related parents might increase health risks for a child is through a recessive disorder, like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell disease. According to the classic theory of genetics laid out by the biologist Gregor Mendel, if both parents carry a recessive gene then there’s a one in four chance that their child will inherit the condition. And when parents are cousins, they’re more likely to both be carriers. A child of first cousins carries a 6% chance of inheriting a recessive disorder, compared to 3% for the general population.

But the Bradford study took a much broader view – and sheds fresh light. The researchers weren’t just looking at whether a child had been diagnosed with a specific recessive disorder. Instead they studied dozens of data points, observing everything from the children’s speech and language development to their frequency of healthcare to their performance at school. Then they used a mathematical model to try to eliminate the impacts of poverty and parental education – so they could focus squarely on the impact on “consanguinity”, the scientific word for having parents who are related.

They found that even after factors like poverty were controlled for, a child of first cousins in Bradford had an 11% probability of being diagnosed with a speech and language problem, versus 7% for children whose parents are not related.

They also found a child of first cousins has a 54% chance of reaching a “good stage of development” (a government assessment given to all five year-olds in England), versus 64% for children whose parents are not related.

We get further insight into their poorer health through the number of visits to the GP. Children of first cousins have a third more primary care appointments than children whose parents are not related – an average of four instead of three a year.

What is notable is that even once you account for the children in that group who already have a diagnosed recessive disorder, the figures suggest consanguinity may be affecting even those children who don’t have a diagnosable recessive disorder.

Neil Small, emeritus professor at the University of Bradford and the author of the study, says that even if all of the children with recessive disorders visited their GP more than average, “this does not explain the much wider distribution of excess health care usage in the consanguineous children”.

The study, he says, is “exciting because it gives the opportunity for a much more accurate development of a response, targeting interventions and treatments”.

It is, of course, just one study, and the population of Bradford is not representative of the whole of the UK.

Nevertheless, it adds to a growing concern among scientists that has caught the attention of lawmakers across Europe. Two Scandinavian countries have now moved to outlaw cousin marriage entirely. In Norway, the practice became illegal last year; in Sweden, a ban will come into effect next year.

In the UK, the Conservative MP Richard Holden has introduced a private members’ bill to outlaw the practice, adding it to the list of illegal marriages (alongside parents, child, siblings, and grandparents). But the Labour government says there are “no plans” to impose a ban. At present, the UK is still following the policy of “genetic counselling”, in which first cousin-couples are educated about the risks of having children, and encouraged to get extra screening in pregnancy.

But amid concern about child health and strains on the NHS, some academics are asking whether a beefed-up approach to counselling is needed, with more funding and laser-focused intervention. And there are those who think it’s time to follow the Scandinavian example and impose something bound to be difficult and controversial: an outright ban on cousin marriage.

For most in the UK, the prospect of marrying a cousin is largely alien. But it wasn’t always so unusual. The father of evolution Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. Their son, the Victorian scientist Sir George Darwin, went on to estimate that cousin marriages accounted for almost one in 20 aristocratic unions in 19th Century Britain. One of them was Queen Victoria, who married her first cousin, Prince Albert. The novel Wuthering Heights is full of fictional examples.

By the 20th Century the proportion of marriages between cousins had declined to about 1%. But it remains a relatively common practice among some South Asian minorities. In three inner-city Bradford wards, almost half (46%) of mothers from the Pakistani community were married to a first or second cousin, according to the most recent Born in Bradford data published two years ago.

For those who want to ban the practice, the public health argument is compelling. When announcing his private members’ bill in December, Richard Holden highlighted the higher risk of birth defects. Later, on Talk TV, he pointed to data showing that infant mortality rates are higher for children born to cousin parents, with more heart, brain, and kidney problems due to recessive disorders. He also explained that health effects can be “compounded” when the practice persists through generations.

This risk to child health is one of the reasons Patrick Nash, a researcher and co-founder at the Pharos Foundation research institute, wants to see cousin marriage banned. In a paper published in the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion last year, Nash wrote that a ban would result in “immediate” health improvements, especially in communities where the practice is common. He said: “Banning cousin marriage would improve public health drastically and have no negative health implications of its own.”

On the ground in Bradford, it’s a more mixed picture. Prof Sam Oddie, a consultant neonatologist and researcher at Bradford Teaching Hospitals, has worked in the city for more than two decades. Over the years he has observed lots of severe genetic disorders. “I’ve seen fatal skin conditions, fatal brain conditions, fatal muscle conditions”. He says it was “immediately clear” these conditions were occurring more in Bradford than elsewhere.

He remembers some tragic examples: families who lost several children, one after the other, to the same genetic disorder. “That’s very upsetting and very difficult for the family to get their heads around.”

But crucially, Prof Oddie thinks the main risk to genetic health in Bradford is not cousin marriage, but a similar issue known as endogamy, in which people marry members of their close community. In a tight-knit ethnic group, people are more likely to share common ancestors and genes – whether or not they are first cousins, he says.

Endogamy is not unique to Pakistani communities in the UK. It is an issue too in the UK’s Jewish community and globally among the Amish and also French Canadians.

“It’s often the case that the exact familial tie can’t be traced, but the gene occurs more commonly within a certain group, and for that reason, both parents carry the affected gene,” Prof Oddie says. “It’s an oversimplification to say that cousin marriage is the root of all excess recessive disorders in Bradford or in Pakistani communities. Endogamy is an important feature.”

Rather than a ban, he stresses the power of education – or what he calls “genetic literacy”. It’s a phrase that crops up again and again from the people we speak to. For many years there’s been a campaign in Bradford to inform people in the Pakistani community about their genetic risks. Couples are given specialist advice at their GP; at pregnancy classes, information is shared with expectant mothers.

And in Bradford at least, some are taking the message on board. Back at the sisters’ house, all three women we interview say that ideas around cousin marriage are slowly changing, in part due to an increased awareness of health risks. They live in the deprived, post-industrial Manningham area of the city. There’s a distinct feeling of neighbourliness here. All of the front doors open directly onto the street, which is full of children playing. Occasionally the sounds of their laughter drift inside.

“It has to be something that happens gradually – it’s slow, you can’t rush it,” says Salina, the sister who chose to have a love marriage. “My mum was very young when she came [to the UK from Pakistan]. She had certain views but those changed because she loves us. I just explained to her, ‘Mum, how does it benefit you to push cousin marriage?’.”

Mallika, her older sister, agrees. “It’s also to do with social media and being exposed to different people,” she says. “You have new connections… contact with people outside our parents’ eyes.”

Even Ayesha, the oldest sister who is in a cousin marriage, said she doesn’t imagine either of her two children will marry their cousins.

At the time she married her cousin, she says, “I didn’t know any different. My parents were strong in their culture. As the generations move on, the culture is disappearing a bit.”

She was aware of the genetic risks when she had her two children. Neither of them have a genetic illness.

“We did take that on board,” she says, on the topic of genetic health. “But I always feel like if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. If the child is going to be born with a disability then it will happen if you are married to a cousin or not.”

Indeed, in Bradford at least, the practice is in decline. The share of new mothers from across the Born in Bradford study who were first cousins with the father of their baby fell from 39% in the late 2000s to 27% in the late 2010s.

This is no coincidence, according to Professor John Wright, chief investigator on the Born in Bradford project. He points out that it is only recently that his team published evidence around the risks of cousin marriage in the UK.

“When we talked to the families 10 years ago it was very clear that people weren’t aware of the risks but like all parents they want to do their best for their children. They want to have healthy children,” he says.

“Education is the starting point and we’ve shown in Born in Bradford how powerful that is.”

Aside from health concerns, there’s another reason some people want to see cousin marriage banned: its impact on social cohesion. This is what’s largely driving the debate in Scandinavia. In Norway, where cousin marriage was banned last year, lawmakers said the practice was linked to forced marriage, with some South Asian immigrant women coerced into unions with relatives.

They also looked at the link with so-called “honour” violence, according to Tonje Egedius, a journalist who covered the story for a Norwegian newspaper.

“[Police] claim that cousin marriage makes it easier for perpetrators to maintain honour in families,” she says, “and that marrying within the family is a contributing cause of honour-related violence and abuse”.

Jasmina Holten, a senior Norwegian police officer, said in an interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK last year that some women coerced into cousin marriage found themselves trapped, with financial dependence on relatives. In those cases, divorce often means ostracism. A ban on cousin marriage could break down that abusive chain, she said.

Likewise, Sweden’s justice secretary Gunnar Strömmer said his own country’s ban on cousin marriage will liberate women from “oppressive standards of honour”.

This cultural argument is becoming increasingly prominent. Proponents of a ban broadly see cousin marriage as an instrument of segregation, siphoning people off from the rest of society. Nash, from the Pharos Foundation, says that a ban on cousin marriage would help reduce ethnic segregation in places like Bradford.

Others are sceptical of the idea that you can force people to integrate through the sharp stick of legislation. They say that even if a ban goes ahead, some couples would continue to marry their cousins through illegal, unregistered unions – and that women in those marriages may feel they no longer have the protection of the state if the relationship goes sour.

Nazir Afzal, former Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North West of England, tells us that “thoughtful legislation” would “offer protections” to people coerced into cousin marriage. “[But] we must respect cultural diversity and personal choice,” he says. “Cousin marriage is an important cultural practice in many parts of the world, and legislation should be sensitive to the social and familial values that underlie it.”

More broadly, he suggests governments may want to think about boosting education and genetic screening for couples entering cousin marriage – rather than imposing “blanket bans”.

For some, the idea of an outright ban raises the ugly image of certain minorities being targeted over others. Karma Nirvana, a charity that works to end honour-based abuse, described the backbench attempt to ban cousin marriage as “a tool of political point-scoring, inciting hate and driving a wedge between communities”.

Richard Holden’s bill is awaiting its second reading in the House of Commons. Without government support it has never been likely to pass but its very existence and events in Scandinavia have resulted in cousin marriage being talked about far beyond the communities where it is prevalent.

Of course, for those Britons in a cousin marriage, life goes on much as before.

Back at the Bradford house, the beautician is putting her finishing touches to the hair of the three sisters, ahead of their big wedding at the weekend. Ayesha, the sister who is in a cousin marriage, is reflective and thoughtful about her own near decade-long relationship. “There are difficulties – we’ve been through lots together, we have sacrificed a lot,” she says about her husband. “But we are happy together.”

“I think even with love marriages you’re going to have problems. They’ll just be different ones.”

Leaked audio instructions by Greek rescue co-ordinators have cast further doubt on Greece’s official version of events in the hours before a migrant boat sank along with up to 650 people onboard.

The Adriana went down in the early hours of 14 June 2023 in international waters – but within Greece’s rescue zone – after leaving Libya days earlier.

Survivors later told the BBC that coastguards had caused their overcrowded fishing boat to capsize in a botched attempt to tow it and then forced witnesses to stay silent.

The Greek coastguard denied these claims and maintains it did not try to rescue those onboard because they were not in danger and said they had voluntarily wanted to reach Italy, not Greece.

But in a phone call that’s now emerged an unnamed man speaking from inside a Greek rescue coordination centre is heard instructing the captain of the migrant boat to tell an approaching ship that those onboard do not want to reach Greece.

The coastguard has not commented on the audio but said it had handed over all available evidence to a Naval Court which is investigating the disaster.

The sinking was one of the worst-ever disasters known to have happened in the Mediterranean Sea.

It is estimated the boat was carrying up to 750 migrants when it set off from the port of Tobruk in Libya nearly a week earlier.

Eighty-two bodies were recovered, but the United Nations believes an additional 500 people – including 100 women and children who were in the hold of the boat – may have died.

Audio recordings obtained by Greek website News247.gr reveal phone calls involving the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) at the port of Piraeus, near the capital Athens.

In the first call, at 18:50 local time (15:50 GMT) on 13 June, an officer is heard explaining to the man piloting the migrant boat that a large red vessel will soon be approaching to give supplies and that he should explain that the migrants do not want to reach Greece.

Officer 1:

The replies of the man captaining the migrant boat are not heard.

In a second call, 90 minutes later, at 22:10, a seemingly different officer from the same coordination centre, speaks to the captain of the Lucky Sailor (the “big red ship”).

Officer 2:

Lucky Sailor captain:

Officer 2:

Lucky Sailor captain:

Officer 2:

Officer 2:

Lucky Sailor captain:

Officer 2:

Lucky Sailor captain:

Officer 2:

Lucky Sailor captain:

Officer 2:

Lucky Sailor captain:

Another vessel, the Faithful Warrior, also gave some supplies to the migrant boat but no further conversations between its captain and the Greek authorities have emerged.

The Greek coastguard did not comment on the contents of the conversations but told the BBC it had submitted “all the material it had in its possession, including the audio recordings and the diaries of events” to the Maritime Court Prosecutor’s Office, which is investigating.

It said it had rescued more than a quarter of a million migrants in danger at sea in the last decade and arrested more than a thousand smugglers, and that its humanitarian work had been recognised internationally.

Our BBC investigation in the immediate days after the sinking challenged the Greek authorities’ explanation for the disaster.

Analysis of the movement of other ships in the area suggests the overcrowded fishing vessel was not moving for at least seven hours before it capsized.

The coastguard has always insisted that during these hours the boat was on a course to Italy and not in need of rescue.

Last year, a Greek court threw out charges against nine Egyptian men who were accused of causing the shipwreck.

The judges in the southern port city of Kalamata ruled they did not have jurisdiction to hear the case, on the grounds the vessel sank in international waters.

Listen: Surviving Greece’s migrant boat disaster

The indictment had showed that the defendants were being prosecuted on evidence that had already been contradicted by at least six survivors, who told the BBC the coastguard had caused their boat to capsize and then pressured them to frame the Egyptians.

Human rights lawyer, Dimitris Choulis, who represented some of the accused Egyptians said he was not surprised by what these recordings.

“We know about the coastguard’s tactics of either pushing back or not rescuing people.”

He claimed there had been “an attempted cover up from day one.”

“They [Greek authorities] told the story ‘they did not want to be rescued’ and so have insulted the memory of so many dead people,” he told the BBC.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have said they have strong reservations about the integrity of the Greek investigation and have called for an international investigation.

The Greek Ombudsman – an independent authority removed from the government – has been looking at the allegations.

The disaster is also being examined by the Greek Naval Court.

The top judge in the United States has given temporary backing to the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid payments.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ intervention came as the administration faced a midnight deadline (05:00 GMT on Thursday) to pay contractors.

Officials had argued that they could not process the payments within the timeframe set by a lower court judge.

Since coming to power in January, US President Donald Trump has taken quick action to end many aid programmes, largely run by the US Agency for International Development, USAID, and placed most of its staff on administrative leave or sacked them.

The Trump administration is seeking to shrink the federal workforce and cut costs in a drive led by Elon Musk.

The billionaire Trump adviser asked millions of bureaucrats over the weekend to list their accomplishments from the past week – sparking fury amongst the workforce and disagreement with officials leading the departments.

• Most USAID staff laid off or placed on leave
• What is USAID and why does Trump want to close it down?

US District Judge Amir Ali had ordered the US State Department and USAID to pay about $2bn-worth of bills (£1.6bn) to contractors by midnight on Wednesday.

It is one of many interventions by judges trying to stop or pause a wave of Trump administration orders.

As the deadline approached, the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court, arguing it was impossible to process claims in an orderly fashion in such a short period of time.

The US federal government freeze comes as the administration carries out a review of foreign aid funding.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said Judge Ali’s order “has thrown what should be an orderly review by the government into chaos”.

The cutbacks to USAID have already upended the global aid system.

Hundreds of programmes have been frozen in countries around the world since the president announced his intentions in January.

The US is by far the biggest single provider of humanitarian aid around the world.

It has bases in more than 60 countries and works in dozens of others, with much of its work carried out by its contractors.

According to the Associated Press news agency, the Trump administration wants to eliminate more than 90% of the USAID’s foreign aid contracts – and $60bn of US overseas aid.

India is home to 1.4 billion people but around a billion lack money to spend on any discretionary goods or services, a new report estimates.

The country’s consuming class, effectively the potential market for start-ups or business owners, is only about as big as Mexico, 130-140 million people, according to the report from Blume Ventures, a venture capital firm.

Another 300 million are “emerging” or “aspirant” consumers but they are reluctant spenders who have only just begun to open their purse strings, as click-of-a-button digital payments make it easy to transact.

What is more, the consuming class in Asia’s third largest economy is not “widening” as much as it is “deepening”, according to the report. That basically means India’s wealthy population is not really growing in numbers, even though those who are already rich are getting even wealthier.

All of this is shaping the country’s consumer market in distinct ways, particularly accelerating the trend of “premiumisation” where brands drive growth by doubling down on expensive, upgraded products catering to the wealthy, rather than focusing on mass-market offerings.

This is evident in zooming sales of ultra-luxury gated housing and premium phones, even as their lower-end variants struggle. Affordable homes now constitute just 18% of India’s overall market compared with 40% five years ago. Branded goods are also capturing a bigger share of the market. And the “experience economy” is booming, with expensive tickets for concerts by international artists like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran selling like hot cakes.

• Why global stars like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran are hitting India

Companies that have adapted to these shifts have thrived, Sajith Pai, one of the report’s authors, told the BBC. “Those who are too focused at the mass end or have a product mix that doesn’t have exposure to the premium end have lost market share.”

The report’s findings bolster the long-held view that India’s post-pandemic recovery has been K-shaped – where the rich have got richer, while the poor have lost purchasing power.

In fact, this has been a long-term structural trend that began even before the pandemic. India has been getting increasingly more unequal, with the top 10% of Indians now holding 57.7% of national income compared with 34% in 1990. The bottom half have seen their share of national income fall from 22.2% to 15%.

The latest consumption slump, however, has deepened amid not just a destruction in purchasing power, but also a precipitous drop in financial savings and surging indebtedness among the masses.

The country’s central bank has also cracked down on easy unsecured lending that propped up demand after the Covid pandemic.

Much of the consumption spending of the “emerging” or “aspirant” class of Indians was led by such borrowing and “turning off that tap will definitely have some impact on consumption”, says Pai.

In the short run, two things are expected to help boost spending – a pick-up in rural demand on the back of a record harvest and a $12 billion tax give-away in the recently concluded budget. It will not be “dramatic” but could boost India’s GDP – largely driven by consumption – by over half a percent, says Pai.

But major longer-term headwinds remain.

India’s middle class – which has been a major engine for consumer demand – is being squeezed out, with wages pretty much staying flat, according to data compiled by Marcellus Investment Managers.

“The middle 50% of India’s tax-paying population has seen its income stagnate in absolute terms over the past decade. This implies a halving of income in real terms [adjusted for inflation],” says the report, published in January.

“This financial hammering has decimated the middle class’s savings – the RBI [Reserve Bank of India] has repeatedly highlighted that net financial savings of Indian households are approaching a 50-year low. This pounding suggests that products and services associated with middle-class household spending are likely to face a rough time in the years ahead,” it adds.

The Marcellus report also points out that white-collar urban jobs are becoming harder to come by as artificial intelligence automates clerical, secretarial and other routine work. “The number of supervisors employed in manufacturing units [as a percentage of all employed] in India has gone down significantly,” it adds.

The government’s recent economic survey has flagged these concerns as well.

It says labour displacement as a result of these technological advancements is of particular concern for a mainly services-driven economy like India, where a significant share of the IT workforce is employed in low value-added services sectors that are most prone to disruption.

“India is also a consumption-based economy, thus the fall in consumption that can result from the displacement of its workforce is bound to have macroeconomic implications. If the worst-case projections materialise, this could have the potential to set the country’s economic growth trajectory off course,” the survey says.

In a crowded control centre, surrounded by dozens of TV screens, the Taliban’s police force proudly shows off its newly-acquired network of 90,000 CCTV cameras – used to watch over the day-to-day lives of millions of people.

“We monitor the entire city of Kabul from here,” says Khalid Zadran, a spokesperson for the Taliban police chief, pointing to one of the screens.

The authorities say such surveillance will help fight crime, but critics fear it will be used to clamp down on dissent and to monitor the strict morality code enforced by the Islamist Taliban government under their interpretation of Sharia law.

The BBC are the first international journalists allowed to see the system in action.

Inside the control room, police officers sit in rows watching the live streams from thousands of cameras, keeping tabs on the lives of the six million people who live in Kabul.

From car licence plates to facial expressions, everything is monitored.

“In certain neighbourhoods, when we notice groups of people and suspect they might be involved in drug use, criminal activities, or something suspicious, we quickly reach out to the local police,” says Zadran.

“They arrive swiftly to investigate the nature of the gathering.”

Under the previous government, Kabul was threatened daily with attacks from the Taliban and so-called Islamic State militants, as well as high profile kidnappings and car-jackings. When the Taliban retook power in 2021, they promised to crack down on crime.

The dramatic increase in the number of surveillance cameras in the capital is a sign of growing sophistication in the way the Taliban enforce law and order. Before their return, just 850 cameras were in place in the capital, according to a spokesman for the security forces that were driven from power.

However, in the past three years, the Taliban authorities have also introduced a range of draconian measures limiting people’s rights and freedoms, especially those of women. The Taliban government has not been formally recognised by any other country.

The surveillance system the BBC is shown in Kabul features the option to track people by facial recognition. On the corner of one screen images pop up with each face categorised by age range, gender, and whether or not they have a beard or a face mask.

“On clear days, we can zoom in on individuals [who are] kilometres away,” says Zadran, highlighting a camera positioned up high that focuses on a busy traffic junction.

The Taliban even monitor their own personnel. At a checkpoint, as soldiers popped open the trunk of a car for inspection, the operators focused their lenses, zooming in to scrutinise the contents within.

The interior ministry says the cameras have “significantly contributed to enhancing safety, curbing crime rates, and swiftly apprehending offenders”. It adds the introduction of CCTV and motorcycle controls have led to a 30% decrease in crime rates between 2023 and 2024 but it is not possible to independently verify these figures.

However, rights groups are concerned about who is being monitored and for how long.

Amnesty International say installing cameras “under the guise of ‘national security’ sets a template for the Taliban to continue their draconian policies that violate fundamental rights of people in Afghanistan – especially women in public spaces”.

By law women are not allowed to be heard outside their houses, although in practice this is not being strictly enforced. Teenage girls are prevented from accessing secondary and higher education. Women are barred from many forms of employment. In December, women training as midwives and nurses told the BBC they had been ordered not to return to classes.

While women continue to be visible on the streets of cities like Kabul, they are required to wear a face covering.

Fariba*, a young graduate who lives with her parents in Kabul, has been unable to find work since the Taliban came to power. She tells the BBC there is “significant concern that surveillance cameras may be used to monitor women’s hijabs [veils]”.

The Taliban say only the city police have access to the CCTV system and the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry – the Taliban’s morality police – does not use it.

But Fariba is concerned the cameras will further endanger those opposed to Taliban rule.

“Many individuals, especially ex-military members, human rights advocates and protesting women, struggle to move freely and often live in secrecy,” she says.

“There is significant concern that surveillance cameras will be used to monitor women’s hijabs too,” she says.

Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, says Afghanistan does not have the data protection laws in place to regulate how the collected CCTV footage is held and used.

The police say the data is kept only for three months, while, according to the interior ministry, the cameras do not pose a threat to privacy as they “are operated from a special and completely confidential room by a specific and professional person in charge”.

The cameras appear to be Chinese-made. The control room monitors and branding on the feeds the BBC saw carried the name Dahua, a Chinese government-linked company. Earlier reports that the Taliban were in talks with China’s Huawei Technologies to buy cameras were denied by the company. Taliban officials refused to answer BBC questions about where they sourced the equipment.

Some of the cost of installing the new network is falling on ordinary Afghans who are being monitored by the system.

In a house in central Kabul the BBC spoke to Shella*, who was asked to pay for some of the cameras installed on the streets near her home.

“They demanded thousands of afghanis from every household,” she says. It’s a large amount in a country where those women who have jobs may earn only around 5,000 afghanis ($68; £54) a month.

The humanitarian situation in Kabul, and in Afghanistan in general, remains precarious after years of war. The country’s economy is in crisis, but international aid funding has been largely stopped since the Taliban came back to power.

According to the United Nations, 30 million people are in need of aid.

“If families refused to pay [for the cameras], they were threatened with water and power cuts within three days,” Shella adds. “We had to take loans to cover the costs.

“People are starving – what good are these cameras to them?”

The Taliban say that if people do not want to contribute, they can put in an official complaint.

“Participation was voluntary, and donations were in the hundreds, not thousands,” Khalid Zadran, the Taliban police spokesperson, insists.

Despite the assurances, rights campaigners both inside and outside Afghanistan continue to have concerns over how such a powerful surveillance system will be used.

Jaber, a vegetable seller in Kabul, says the cameras represent another way in which Afghans are made to feel powerless.

“We are treated like trash, denied the opportunity to earn a living, and the authorities regard us as worthless,” he told the BBC.

“We can do nothing.”

*

The parents of an eight-year-old diabetic girl in Australia who died after they denied her insulin for almost a week have each been sentenced to 14 years in jail for manslaughter.

Elizabeth Struhs had in 2019 been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and her family was told she would need daily insulin injections.

Her parents belonged to a religious sect known as The Saints, who opposed medical care, believing God would heal her.

She died from diabetic ketoacidosis, which causes a dangerous build-up of ketones – a type of acid – and blood sugar spikes at her home in Toowoomba west of Brisbane in January 2022.

Her father Jason Struhs and mother Elizabeth Struhs, were among 14 people convicted of manslaughter last month.

The Saints’ leader Brendan Stevens has been jailed for 13 years by the judge at the Supreme Court of Queensland, who called him a “dangerous, highly manipulative individual”.

Eleven other members were handed jail terms of six to nine years.

Stevens and the girl’s father had been on trial for murder but they were convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter. All had pleaded not guilty.

When handing down his almost 500-page verdict last month, Justice Martin Burns said that although it was clear Elizabeth’s parents and “every member of the church including all other accused” had adored her, their actions had resulted in her death.

“Due to a singular belief in the healing power of God… she was deprived of the one thing that would most definitely have kept her alive.”

Elizabeth would have endured vomiting, extreme lethargy, and a loss of consciousness because she was denied medical care, prosecutor Caroline Marco said during the trial, which lasted several months and was heard by a judge sitting alone without a jury.

Prosecutors called 60 witnesses and painted a picture of an “intelligent” child who suffered greatly in her final days.

The congregation, meanwhile, had prayed and sung for the girl as she lay on a mattress and her condition deteriorated.

Believing she could be brought back to life, the sect member made no effort to call a doctor, and authorities were not notified until 36 hours after her death, the court heard.

“Elizabeth is only sleeping, and I will see her again,” her father Jason Struhs had earlier told the court.

Stevens, 63, had defended the group’s actions as faith-based and described the trial as an act of “religious persecution”. He said that the group was within its “rights to believe in the word of God completely”.

Type 1 diabetes is a disorder in which the pancreas fails to produce enough insulin. It is characterised by uncontrolled high blood glucose levels and it can be controlled by injecting insulin.

Elizabeth’s sister Jayde Struhs had earlier said she had left the Saints and fled her family home at 16, after coming out as gay, and was now estranged from them.

She and other witnesses described the congregation as having strict views, including that mainstream healthcare should be shunned and that both Christmas and Easter were “pagan” or ungodly festivals.

The Saints are not affiliated with an established church in Australia and count around two dozen members from three families among its members.

Pamela Anderson has had her fair share of ups and down over her career.

So that might explain why she’s so stoic about missing out on an Oscar nomination for her role in The Last Showgirl.

“The win is the work,” the Canadian actress told BBC News.

“You couldn’t have told me I’d be here a decade ago, so this is very exciting for me, to even be in the conversation.”

Anderson, 57, did manage to score nominations at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards for her part in Gia Coppola’s film about a fading Las Vegas dancer.

But she is not in the running for the Academy Awards, which take place this Sunday in Los Angeles.

“I just wish everybody well,” she said.

“I think anybody, any actor, realises that all of this is about having another chance to be able to perform and share your talent with the world.”

Anderson rose to prominence on the 1990s TV series Baywatch.

The lifeguard drama became the most-watched television show in the world at the time, and it’s still the role she’s best known for.

But in the three decades since she first ran along the California beaches, fans and critics have become acquainted with different parts of Anderson’s life story including Playboy covers, a leaked sex tape and many marriages.

In 2022, Hulu series Pam & Tommy told the story of how Anderson and now ex-husband Tommy Lee’s sex tape was stolen and illegally distributed in the mid-90s.

Anderson later criticised the series in an interview with Variety, describing it as “shocking” and calling for the people behind it to apologise to her.

• Pam & Tommy: Lily James ‘a triumph’ as Pamela Anderson

Now, she’s starring in a new film which is also about second chances.

In The Last Showgirl, the lead character Shelly, played by Anderson, must plan for her future after her show abruptly closes.

Plenty of critics have drawn parallels with Anderson’s own life in the spotlight, and she doesn’t dispute this.

“I think that’s what drew me to the project, that it was so relatable on so many levels,” Anderson said of the film.

She added that its central theme, of struggling to make your career work as a woman in later middle age, was something “many generations of women” had faced.

In the film, Shelly is portrayed as having a strained relationship with her daughter Hannah.

Shelly’s career as a showgirl means she often works late, causing her to miss important moments like bedtime with Hannah.

That, too, is something that Anderson says she can relate to.

• Pamela Anderson memoir bares soul on fame and heartbreak

She shares two sons, Brandon Thomas, 28, and Dylan Jagger, 27, with her ex-husband, Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee.

She said that for all working mums, there’s “no proper way” to be a parent while also following your dreams and pursuing your career.

“So this movie is, I think, in a very vulnerable space.

“And it was an interesting role to play with all her imperfections and selfishness and selflessness. And it was a lot of layers and nuances to the character that I could really relate to.”

The Last Showgirl has received a mixed reception from critics, though most have praised Anderson’s performance.

The New York Times called it “sensitive and beguiling” and described Anderson as “dazzling”. But the Guardian awarded it just one star, calling it “a big disappointment”.

Many have also described the role as Anderson’s “comeback”. She doesn’t reject the term, but says she prefers to see it as “a new chapter”.

“I’ve always been fascinated with the craft of acting,” she said. “[But] my personal life kind of took me off course, and I raised two beautiful boys.”

She’s not the only actress to be back in the spotlight this season.

Demi Moore is nominated for best actress at the Oscars for her role in The Substance, a body horror which has revitalised her career.

“I’m really happy for Demi,” Anderson said. “I think she’s earned her place. And you have to earn it. You have to fight for it.”

With so many strong female protagonists in this year’s films, I’m curious what Anderson now thinks of Baywatch.

The show has long been criticised for its portrayal of its female characters, who, many argued, were sexualised and denied meaningful plot lines.

“I didn’t see it like that at all. I thought it was quite innocent and wholesome and, and fun to watch,” she said.

“I always felt like I was surrounded by such incredible people, lifeguards that were also firemen or firewomen. It was really, really, empowering.”

Anderson has always been seen to embody a look that rose to prominence in the 90s – skinny, blonde, and enhanced by plastic surgery.

But in recent years, she has been sporting a “no-makeup” look, choosing instead to embrace her natural appearance.

“My beauty routine is rest. And so that’s more important to me these days,” she told me.

She said it’s not that she’s against makeup, but more that she thinks “there’s a time and a place” for it.

“This chapter, for me, has been about self-acceptance and finding out who I am. What are my original thoughts? What do I have to give?” she said.

“I know I have a lot more to give in this world, in this industry too, and I feel like even I have to remember who I am to start with and then hopefully, play characters in films and not in my personal life.”

Chloe Webb was explaining how she recently sold a Pokémon card in her shop for £40,000 when a young boy and his dad politely interrupted to ask for her autograph.

Ever since the 31-year-old quit her office job and opened Collector’s Cardhouse in the picturesque Hertfordshire village of Chorleywood in April, it has become a destination for fans around the world.

“Every week we have an international visitor – Japan, America, United Arab Emirates – I’ve made so many friends all over the world, which is crazy to me because I never used to leave my little bubble when I had a normal job,” she says.

“I live, breathe, and eat Pokémon.”

“I’ve travelled everywhere around the world, made lifelong friends,” she adds.

“It has completely transformed every part of my life and I’ve got a really successful business now because of it.”

The Japanese franchise started life in 1996 on the Nintendo Game Boy, with players having to catch, train and battle virtual monsters called Pokémon.

When it arrived on UK shores in 1999, it had evolved.

There was an animated series and packets of trading cards were available at most newsagents across the country. That’s when Mrs Webb, from Watford, became a fan.

She began a business with her husband, Harry, selling the cards online just before the pandemic. During lockdown, it “really blew up”.

Mrs Webb started making YouTube videos under the name “PokiChloe” to reach new fans.

The couple joined forces with another Youtuber, Dean Leander – AKA PokeDean – to open a physical business.

Today her Youtube channel, which mostly shows daily life in her Chorleywood shop, has more than 118,000 subscribers.

In recent years, Pokémon cards have become valuable collectors’ items and many shop visitors hope they too could be sitting on a gold mine.

Last year, a Nottinghamshire man made £55,000 when he sold a collection of cards from the 1990s and 2000s.

But a collector from Suffolk failed to sell his fourth print Charizard card when it did not reach its reserve of £8,000.

Mrs Webb explained: “It could be anything that makes a card collectable.

“It could be that they’re rare… It could be that it’s a really popular Pokémon.

“Sometimes overnight prices change on cards and I can’t tell you why that card is now valuable.”

Sometimes cards worth up to £100,000 have been brought into the shop, although PokiChloe admits the big sums no longer surprise her.

“It’s going to sound really awful: I’m very used to it now,” she says.

“It is very surreal to think that this little bit of cardboard is worth that sort of money because to some people that’s a deposit for a house – that could buy them two or three cars.

“But with what we do now we’re exposed to it. Often it’s just another day and another Pokémon card.”

Many of the visitors who arrive at Collector’s Cardhouse come with large binders tucked under their arms filled with cards they stashed away in their childhood.

Many of these collections are, unfortunately, not worth anything.

If, however, PokiChloe does deem a card valuable, it then has to be “graded”.

The process involves sending the card to a grading company who analyse it for signs of wear and then award it a graded score, usually out of 10, which denotes its quality and potential value.

PokiChloe compared those cards that get a 10 to “gold dust”.

“It has to be completely clean,” she says.

“There can’t be scratches on the holographic part, there can’t be any whitening or damage on the back, it can’t be creased. It has to be perfect like it’s never been touched before.

“We had a Charizard that was graded a 10. It was a special card that was given out to employees at Creatures, who own Pokémon. I think there’s only 300 of them and we had a 10 and we sold it for just under £40,000.”

Mrs Webb said a common misunderstanding is that a card has to be old to be valuable.

“There are packs that you could open today from the shop that cost you about £30,” she says.

“If you got the best card in the set and it was graded a 10, you’d be looking at a couple of thousand.

“And they’re cards that only came out a few years ago. So they’re not even what we would call vintage. They’re modern cards.”

A graded card, regardless of how damaged it is, is sealed in plastic to preserve its condition.

Mrs Webb said: “We get people that send off cards that aren’t in good condition. They just want to encapsulate it and keep it as a memory. So that’s quite nice to see.

“I know the money is a big part of it and obviously people are blown away by the prices, but for some people it’s about the memories, the nostalgia and just having some memories from when they were kids.”

Next year Pokémon is celebrating its 30th anniversary. PokiChloe has ambitious plans for the future of Collector’s Cardhouse.

“I want to keep this growing,” she says.

“If you’d asked me about this five years ago I wouldn’t have believed it. I used to work in an office, I had a very normal job before this, and now this is my life… So, as long as people enjoy it, I’m going to keep doing it.”

Oscar-winning US actor Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa and their dog have been found dead at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In a wide-ranging career spanning more than six decades, Hackman won two Academy Awards for his work on The French Connection and Unforgiven.

A statement from the Santa Fe County Sheriff in New Mexico said: “We can confirm that both Gene Hackman and his wife were found deceased Wednesday afternoon at their residence on Sunset Trail.

“This is an active investigation – however, at this time we do not believe that foul play was a factor.”

Hackman was 95, and his wife – a classical pianist – 63.

He won the best actor Oscar for his role as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller The French Connection, and another for best supporting actor for playing Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s Western film Unforgiven in 1992.

• Gene Hackman obituary: One of Hollywood’s greatest ‘tough guys’

His other Oscar-nominated roles included 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde – as Buck Barrow in his breakthrough role, opposite Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – and 1970’s I Never Sang for My Father.

Both films saw him recognised in the supporting actor category. He was also nominated for best leading actor in 1988 for playing the agent in Mississippi Burning.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office said: “On 26 February, 2025, at approximately 1:45pm, Santa Fe County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to an address on Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park where Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa, and a dog were found deceased.”

Much-celebrated actor Hackman played more than 100 roles in total, including supervillain Lex Luthor in the Christopher Reeve-starring Superman movies in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hackman acted opposite many Hollywood heavyweights including Al Pacino in 1973’s Scarecrow, Gene Wilder in 1974’s Young Frankenstein and Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in 1981’s Reds.

He also starred in the hit movies Runaway Jury, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.

Coppola led the tributes to the late star on Thursday, calling him “a great artist”. In a statement posted on Instagram, the director wrote: “Gene Hackman a great actor, inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity. I mourn his loss, and celebrate his existence and contribution.”

Valerie Perrine, who featured alongside Hackman in Superman (1978) as his character’s on-screen girlfriend Eve Teschmacher, described the late actor as “a genius” and one of the “greatest to grace the silver screen”.

She posted on X: “His performances are legendary. His talent will be missed. Goodbye my sweet Lex Till we meet again.”

Star Trek actor George Takei posted that “we have lost one of the true giants of the screen”.

“Gene Hackman could play anyone, and you could feel a whole life behind it,” he wrote. “He could be everyone and no one, a towering presence or an everyday Joe. That’s how powerful an actor he was. He will be missed, but his work will live on forever.”

Slumdog Millionaire star Anil Kapoor also called Hackman a “genius” performer. “A true legend whose legacy will live on,” he wrote.

As well as his Oscar wins, Hackman also collected two Baftas, four Golden Globes and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

He took a comedic turn playing a conservative senator in 1996’s The Birdcage alongside Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, who starred as a gay couple.

His last big-screen appearance came as Monroe Cole in Welcome to Mooseport in 2004, after which he stepped back from Hollywood for a quieter life in New Mexico.

Born in California in 1930, Hackman’s family moved frequently, and after lying about his age at 16, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps serving for four-and-a-half years.

He was stationed in China, Hawaii and Japan before being discharged in 1951.

Following his military service, Hackman lived and worked in New York and studied journalism and television production at the University of Illinois, before deciding to move back to California to pursue his childhood acting dream.

He joined the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where he befriended a young Dustin Hoffman.

“I suppose I wanted to be an actor from the time I was about 10, maybe even younger than that,” Hackman once said. “Recollections of early movies that I had seen and actors that I admired like James Cagney, Errol Flynn, those kind of romantic action guys.

“When I saw those actors, I felt I could do that. But I was in New York for about eight years before I had a job. I sold ladies shoes, polished leather furniture, drove a truck.

“I think that if you have it in you and you want it bad enough, you can do it.”

He added that he “wanted to act” but had “always been convinced that actors had to be handsome”.

“That came from the days when Errol Flynn was my idol. I’d come out of a theatre and be startled when I looked in a mirror because I didn’t look like Flynn. I felt like him.”

Hackman moved back to New York in 1963, performing in Off-Broadway productions – including at the Music Box Theatre for the comedy Any Wednesday – and smaller TV roles.

But he began to really make his name in the 1970s, becoming a leading man as New York City detective Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in The French Connection.

From then on he became a fixture on the big screen in the likes of 1972 disaster film The Poseidon Adventure.

He also appeared in Children From Their Games at the former Morosco Theatre, Poor Richard at Helen Hayes Theatre and The Natural Look at Longacre Theatre, before later returning in 1992 to perform Death And The Maiden at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.

Hackman and his first wife, Faye Maltese, were together for 30 years and raised three children before getting divorced in 1986.

In his later years, he and his second wife, Betsy stayed out of the spotlight, but made a rare public appearance together at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards, where he won the Cecil B. deMille award.

In 2008 he told Reuters that despite the lack of any official announcement, he was “not going to act any longer”.

“I’ve been told not to say that over the last few years, in case some real wonderful part comes up, but I really don’t want to do it any longer.”

He also explained he was focusing his attentions away from the big screen and towards his quieter, calmer passion for writing novels.

“I was trained to be an actor, not a star. I was trained to play roles, not to deal with fame and agents and lawyers and the press,” he once said.

“It really costs me a lot emotionally to watch myself on-screen. I think of myself, and feel like I’m quite young, and then I look at this old man with the baggy chins and the tired eyes and the receding hairline and all that.”

Actress Michelle Trachtenberg, who rose to fame as a child star in the 1990s and 2000s, has died aged 39.

Police in Manhattan said they responded to an emergency call on Wednesday morning and found Trachtenberg “unconscious and unresponsive”. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The US actress was best known for playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s younger sister Dawn Summers, and later took on the role of manipulative socialite Georgina Sparks in Gossip Girl as an adult.

Trachtenberg made her film debut in Harriet the Spy in 1996, and also appeared in several Nickelodeon productions.

Co-stars paid tribute to her, describing her as a “fiercely intelligent” person who “cared deeply” about her work.

Her family’s representatives confirmed her death in a statement.

“It is with great sadness to confirm that Michelle Trachtenberg has passed away. The family requests privacy for their loss,” it said.

Authorities said her death was not being treated as suspicious.

“Criminality is not suspected. The medical examiner will determine the cause of death. The investigation remains ongoing,” the NYPD said in a statement.

Trachtenberg got her start in acting at age nine on the Nickelodeon television series The Adventures of Pete & Pete.

In the early 2000s, she was nominated for several acting awards – including a Daytime Emmy Award – for her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

She also starred in films including EuroTrip, Ice Princess, Killing Kennedy, and Sister Cities.

Blake Lively, a Gossip Girl co-star, said everything Trachtenberg did “she did 200%”.

“She laughed the fullest at someone’s joke… she cared deeply about her work, she was fiercely loyal to her friends and brave for those she loved, she was big and bold and distinctly herself,” she wrote on social media.

“The real tragedies in life are the ones that blindside you on an idle Tuesday. Hold those you love and have loved dear.”

US comedian Rosie O’Donnell, who starred alongside Trachtenberg in her Harriet the Spy debut, said her death was “heartbreaking”.

“I loved her very much. She struggled the last few years. I wish I could have helped.”

Josh Safran, a writer and producer on Gossip Girl, said it was “an honour and joy to write for Michelle for so many years”, as she had a “clear voice” as an actor.

“You heard her as you typed,” he wrote. “You knew she’d make each line rougher, more real, much funnier – and that made the writing better.

Former castmates also paid tribute.

Buffy cast member James Marsters said on social media that the actress was “fiercely intelligent, howlingly funny, and a very talented person”.

“She died much too young, and leaves behind scores of people who knew and loved her,” Marsters said.

How I Met Your Mother actress Alyson Hannigan, who played Willow Rosenberg in Buffy, shared a series of photos on social media, including images of the two sharing scenes, and said Trachtenberg “brought a loving energy to the set of Buffy”.

Trachtenberg first appeared in Gossip Girl – which ran from 2007 to 2012 – in 2008. She returned to the role for two episodes of the second season of HBO Max’s reboot in 2023.

Her last major acting role was in 2021 as the host of a true-crime docuseries Meet, Marry, Murder, which appeared on digital streamer Tubi.

In 2021, Trachtenberg accused Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon of inappropriate behaviour on set, after her co-star Charisma Carpenter said she had been left traumatised due to the treatment she received from Whedon.

Controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are travelling to the US after leaving Romania, where they face charges of rape, trafficking minors and money laundering, all of which they deny.

Questions remain about why they were allowed to travel and what happens next with their legal cases.

Andrew Tate, 38, and his brother Tristan, 36, are dual US-UK citizens who claim to have made millions from their social media empire.

Their online output was controversial even before their legal troubles, with the pair attracting frequent criticism over offensive statements about women.

The pair have an American father who worked for the US Air Force in Britain. Their parents met in the UK before moving to the US.

After their parents divorced, their mother moved to Luton, England. The brothers spent time in the UK, where they built their early careers.

Police in the UK have linked Andrew Tate to the “quite terrifying” radicalisation of boys and young men in a 2024 report into violence against women and girls.

The brothers were first arrested in Romania in 2022. They are facing separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK. Both brothers also deny the charges against them in the UK.

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The brothers had been under a travel ban in Romania for more than two years while they were under investigation.

Speculation that they would leave Romania had been mounting ahead of their journey, after the pair went quiet on social media.

They left from a Bucharest airport at around 03:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on a private jet bound for Florida, sources have told the BBC.

Prosecutors said the travel ban had been lifted, and the pair’s US passports had been returned to them, but investigations into their alleged crimes have not been dropped and they are expected to return to Romania.

The Tates have a large US following and are popular figures among some elements of the American right.

Earlier in February, some of Andrew Tate’s alleged victims said they were “extremely concerned” by reports that US officials had asked for his travel restrictions to be relaxed.

It came after US special envoy Richard Grenell raised the Tate brothers with Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference.

Hurezeanu said he had not considered Grenell’s approach as a “form of pressure”. Grenell told the Financial Times his support for the brothers was evident.

The Tates have been vocal supporters of US President Donald Trump, while his close adviser, Elon Musk, restored Andrew Tate’s account on X after he bought the social media platform in 2022.

Andrew and Tristan Tate have not yet commented on their trip to the US, and neither has the Trump administration.

The cases against the Tate brothers in Romania are now being rewritten by prosecutors, who allowed them to leave the country on the condition that they return – possibly as early as the end of March.

The pair’s request to leave the country was accepted, prosecutors said, but their request for the charges against them to be dropped was rejected.

The brothers face a number of civil and criminal legal cases.

The pair were charged with human trafficking and rape along with two Romanian female suspects in June 2023. They deny the charges.

They face separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK. Last year, a Romanian court ruled they could be extradited to the UK after their case in Romania concludes.

Separately, lawyers for four women who claim they were assaulted by the Tates said they were bringing a civil case against him at the High Court in the UK for “damages for injuries they suffered as a result”.

A representative for the Tate brothers said in response that they “unequivocally deny all allegations”.

A separate civil case in the UK, which the brothers are contesting, accuses the brothers and a third individual of being serial tax evaders.

Four women who allege they were sexually abused by Andrew Tate have said they are in “disbelief and feel re-traumatised” by news of him leaving Romania.

In a joint statement, the four said: “It is clear that he will now not face criminal prosecution for his alleged crimes in Romania; he will use it as an opportunity to harass further and intimidate witnesses and his accusers, and he will continue to spread his violent, misogynistic doctrine around the world.”

They also urged British authorities to “finally take action, do something about this terrifying unfolding situation and ensure he faces justice in the UK”.

Matthew Jury, a lawyer representing the four alleged victims, told the BBC the Trump administration was “interfering in due process” in Romania and the UK.

He added he didn’t think the Tate brothers would “ever face justice in Romania now”.

Listen to Sue read this article

In a busy, terraced house in Bradford, three sisters are animatedly chatting. It’s a big day at their home: a beautician sits on their sofa, styling their hair and makeup. The room is warm with fun and laughter. It feels like a scene from a Jane Austen novel: three women in their late 20s, each of them bursting with personality, swapping stories.

And like most Austen novels, the conversation often turns to marriage.

The sisters are preparing for a family wedding at the weekend – where the bride and groom are first cousins. Many people might find this unusual, but in their family and in some parts of Bradford, it’s fairly common.

Ayesha, who at 29 is the oldest of the three sisters, also married her first cousin in 2017. She has two children with her husband and their marriage is happy, she says. It felt perfectly normal at the time to marry her cousin. Their mother, a Pakistani migrant, assumed it was what all three of her daughters would do.

But 26-year-old Salina, the youngest of the three, tells us she broke the mould by having what they call a “love” marriage, choosing a partner from outside the family. Salina tells us she is outgoing and ambitious; marrying a cousin simply did not appeal to her. Then there’s Mallika, who at 27 is the middle of the three. She’s still single and has already decided not to marry within her family.

“I said to my mum that I wouldn’t judge my sisters but I wasn’t going to do it,” Mallika tells us. She says having an education has created opportunities for her. “Before, even if you had an education, you wouldn’t be expected to carry on with it. You would be thinking of marriage. Now the mindset is so different.”

In the UK and across Europe, cousin marriage is coming under increased scrutiny – particularly from doctors, who warn that children of first cousins are more likely to experience an array of health problems.

And there’s now some new, potentially worrying data from Bradford to add into that mix.

Researchers at the city’s university are entering their 18th year of the Born in Bradford study. It’s one of the biggest medical trials of its kind: between 2007 and 2010, researchers recruited more than 13,000 babies in the city and then followed them closely from childhood into adolescence and now into early adulthood. More than one in six children in the study have parents who are first cousins, mostly from Bradford’s Pakistani community, making it among the world’s most valuable studies of the health impacts of cousin marriage.

And in data published in the last few months – and analysed in an upcoming episode of BBC Radio 4’s Born in Bradford series – the researchers found that first cousin-parentage may have wider consequences than previously thought.

The most obvious way that a pair of blood-related parents might increase health risks for a child is through a recessive disorder, like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell disease. According to the classic theory of genetics laid out by the biologist Gregor Mendel, if both parents carry a recessive gene then there’s a one in four chance that their child will inherit the condition. And when parents are cousins, they’re more likely to both be carriers. A child of first cousins carries a 6% chance of inheriting a recessive disorder, compared to 3% for the general population.

But the Bradford study took a much broader view – and sheds fresh light. The researchers weren’t just looking at whether a child had been diagnosed with a specific recessive disorder. Instead they studied dozens of data points, observing everything from the children’s speech and language development to their frequency of healthcare to their performance at school. Then they used a mathematical model to try to eliminate the impacts of poverty and parental education – so they could focus squarely on the impact on “consanguinity”, the scientific word for having parents who are related.

They found that even after factors like poverty were controlled for, a child of first cousins in Bradford had an 11% probability of being diagnosed with a speech and language problem, versus 7% for children whose parents are not related.

They also found a child of first cousins has a 54% chance of reaching a “good stage of development” (a government assessment given to all five year-olds in England), versus 64% for children whose parents are not related.

We get further insight into their poorer health through the number of visits to the GP. Children of first cousins have a third more primary care appointments than children whose parents are not related – an average of four instead of three a year.

What is notable is that even once you account for the children in that group who already have a diagnosed recessive disorder, the figures suggest consanguinity may be affecting even those children who don’t have a diagnosable recessive disorder.

Neil Small, emeritus professor at the University of Bradford and the author of the study, says that even if all of the children with recessive disorders visited their GP more than average, “this does not explain the much wider distribution of excess health care usage in the consanguineous children”.

The study, he says, is “exciting because it gives the opportunity for a much more accurate development of a response, targeting interventions and treatments”.

It is, of course, just one study, and the population of Bradford is not representative of the whole of the UK.

Nevertheless, it adds to a growing concern among scientists that has caught the attention of lawmakers across Europe. Two Scandinavian countries have now moved to outlaw cousin marriage entirely. In Norway, the practice became illegal last year; in Sweden, a ban will come into effect next year.

In the UK, the Conservative MP Richard Holden has introduced a private members’ bill to outlaw the practice, adding it to the list of illegal marriages (alongside parents, child, siblings, and grandparents). But the Labour government says there are “no plans” to impose a ban. At present, the UK is still following the policy of “genetic counselling”, in which first cousin-couples are educated about the risks of having children, and encouraged to get extra screening in pregnancy.

But amid concern about child health and strains on the NHS, some academics are asking whether a beefed-up approach to counselling is needed, with more funding and laser-focused intervention. And there are those who think it’s time to follow the Scandinavian example and impose something bound to be difficult and controversial: an outright ban on cousin marriage.

For most in the UK, the prospect of marrying a cousin is largely alien. But it wasn’t always so unusual. The father of evolution Charles Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. Their son, the Victorian scientist Sir George Darwin, went on to estimate that cousin marriages accounted for almost one in 20 aristocratic unions in 19th Century Britain. One of them was Queen Victoria, who married her first cousin, Prince Albert. The novel Wuthering Heights is full of fictional examples.

By the 20th Century the proportion of marriages between cousins had declined to about 1%. But it remains a relatively common practice among some South Asian minorities. In three inner-city Bradford wards, almost half (46%) of mothers from the Pakistani community were married to a first or second cousin, according to the most recent Born in Bradford data published two years ago.

For those who want to ban the practice, the public health argument is compelling. When announcing his private members’ bill in December, Richard Holden highlighted the higher risk of birth defects. Later, on Talk TV, he pointed to data showing that infant mortality rates are higher for children born to cousin parents, with more heart, brain, and kidney problems due to recessive disorders. He also explained that health effects can be “compounded” when the practice persists through generations.

This risk to child health is one of the reasons Patrick Nash, a researcher and co-founder at the Pharos Foundation research institute, wants to see cousin marriage banned. In a paper published in the Oxford Journal of Law and Religion last year, Nash wrote that a ban would result in “immediate” health improvements, especially in communities where the practice is common. He said: “Banning cousin marriage would improve public health drastically and have no negative health implications of its own.”

On the ground in Bradford, it’s a more mixed picture. Prof Sam Oddie, a consultant neonatologist and researcher at Bradford Teaching Hospitals, has worked in the city for more than two decades. Over the years he has observed lots of severe genetic disorders. “I’ve seen fatal skin conditions, fatal brain conditions, fatal muscle conditions”. He says it was “immediately clear” these conditions were occurring more in Bradford than elsewhere.

He remembers some tragic examples: families who lost several children, one after the other, to the same genetic disorder. “That’s very upsetting and very difficult for the family to get their heads around.”

But crucially, Prof Oddie thinks the main risk to genetic health in Bradford is not cousin marriage, but a similar issue known as endogamy, in which people marry members of their close community. In a tight-knit ethnic group, people are more likely to share common ancestors and genes – whether or not they are first cousins, he says.

Endogamy is not unique to Pakistani communities in the UK. It is an issue too in the UK’s Jewish community and globally among the Amish and also French Canadians.

“It’s often the case that the exact familial tie can’t be traced, but the gene occurs more commonly within a certain group, and for that reason, both parents carry the affected gene,” Prof Oddie says. “It’s an oversimplification to say that cousin marriage is the root of all excess recessive disorders in Bradford or in Pakistani communities. Endogamy is an important feature.”

Rather than a ban, he stresses the power of education – or what he calls “genetic literacy”. It’s a phrase that crops up again and again from the people we speak to. For many years there’s been a campaign in Bradford to inform people in the Pakistani community about their genetic risks. Couples are given specialist advice at their GP; at pregnancy classes, information is shared with expectant mothers.

And in Bradford at least, some are taking the message on board. Back at the sisters’ house, all three women we interview say that ideas around cousin marriage are slowly changing, in part due to an increased awareness of health risks. They live in the deprived, post-industrial Manningham area of the city. There’s a distinct feeling of neighbourliness here. All of the front doors open directly onto the street, which is full of children playing. Occasionally the sounds of their laughter drift inside.

“It has to be something that happens gradually – it’s slow, you can’t rush it,” says Salina, the sister who chose to have a love marriage. “My mum was very young when she came [to the UK from Pakistan]. She had certain views but those changed because she loves us. I just explained to her, ‘Mum, how does it benefit you to push cousin marriage?’.”

Mallika, her older sister, agrees. “It’s also to do with social media and being exposed to different people,” she says. “You have new connections… contact with people outside our parents’ eyes.”

Even Ayesha, the oldest sister who is in a cousin marriage, said she doesn’t imagine either of her two children will marry their cousins.

At the time she married her cousin, she says, “I didn’t know any different. My parents were strong in their culture. As the generations move on, the culture is disappearing a bit.”

She was aware of the genetic risks when she had her two children. Neither of them have a genetic illness.

“We did take that on board,” she says, on the topic of genetic health. “But I always feel like if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. If the child is going to be born with a disability then it will happen if you are married to a cousin or not.”

Indeed, in Bradford at least, the practice is in decline. The share of new mothers from across the Born in Bradford study who were first cousins with the father of their baby fell from 39% in the late 2000s to 27% in the late 2010s.

This is no coincidence, according to Professor John Wright, chief investigator on the Born in Bradford project. He points out that it is only recently that his team published evidence around the risks of cousin marriage in the UK.

“When we talked to the families 10 years ago it was very clear that people weren’t aware of the risks but like all parents they want to do their best for their children. They want to have healthy children,” he says.

“Education is the starting point and we’ve shown in Born in Bradford how powerful that is.”

Aside from health concerns, there’s another reason some people want to see cousin marriage banned: its impact on social cohesion. This is what’s largely driving the debate in Scandinavia. In Norway, where cousin marriage was banned last year, lawmakers said the practice was linked to forced marriage, with some South Asian immigrant women coerced into unions with relatives.

They also looked at the link with so-called “honour” violence, according to Tonje Egedius, a journalist who covered the story for a Norwegian newspaper.

“[Police] claim that cousin marriage makes it easier for perpetrators to maintain honour in families,” she says, “and that marrying within the family is a contributing cause of honour-related violence and abuse”.

Jasmina Holten, a senior Norwegian police officer, said in an interview with Norwegian broadcaster NRK last year that some women coerced into cousin marriage found themselves trapped, with financial dependence on relatives. In those cases, divorce often means ostracism. A ban on cousin marriage could break down that abusive chain, she said.

Likewise, Sweden’s justice secretary Gunnar Strömmer said his own country’s ban on cousin marriage will liberate women from “oppressive standards of honour”.

This cultural argument is becoming increasingly prominent. Proponents of a ban broadly see cousin marriage as an instrument of segregation, siphoning people off from the rest of society. Nash, from the Pharos Foundation, says that a ban on cousin marriage would help reduce ethnic segregation in places like Bradford.

Others are sceptical of the idea that you can force people to integrate through the sharp stick of legislation. They say that even if a ban goes ahead, some couples would continue to marry their cousins through illegal, unregistered unions – and that women in those marriages may feel they no longer have the protection of the state if the relationship goes sour.

Nazir Afzal, former Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North West of England, tells us that “thoughtful legislation” would “offer protections” to people coerced into cousin marriage. “[But] we must respect cultural diversity and personal choice,” he says. “Cousin marriage is an important cultural practice in many parts of the world, and legislation should be sensitive to the social and familial values that underlie it.”

More broadly, he suggests governments may want to think about boosting education and genetic screening for couples entering cousin marriage – rather than imposing “blanket bans”.

For some, the idea of an outright ban raises the ugly image of certain minorities being targeted over others. Karma Nirvana, a charity that works to end honour-based abuse, described the backbench attempt to ban cousin marriage as “a tool of political point-scoring, inciting hate and driving a wedge between communities”.

Richard Holden’s bill is awaiting its second reading in the House of Commons. Without government support it has never been likely to pass but its very existence and events in Scandinavia have resulted in cousin marriage being talked about far beyond the communities where it is prevalent.

Of course, for those Britons in a cousin marriage, life goes on much as before.

Back at the Bradford house, the beautician is putting her finishing touches to the hair of the three sisters, ahead of their big wedding at the weekend. Ayesha, the sister who is in a cousin marriage, is reflective and thoughtful about her own near decade-long relationship. “There are difficulties – we’ve been through lots together, we have sacrificed a lot,” she says about her husband. “But we are happy together.”

“I think even with love marriages you’re going to have problems. They’ll just be different ones.”

For over 20 years, archaeologists in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu have been unearthing clues to the region’s ancient past.

Their digs have uncovered early scripts that rewrite literacy timelines, mapped maritime trade routes connecting India to the world and revealed advanced urban settlements – reinforcing the state’s role as a cradle of early civilisation and global commerce.

Now they’ve also uncovered something even older – evidence of what could be the earliest making and use of iron. Present-day Turkey is one of the earliest known regions where iron was mined, extracted and forged on a significant scale around the 13th Century BC.

Archaeologists have discovered iron objects at six sites in Tamil Nadu, dating back to 2,953–3,345 BCE, or between 5,000 to 5,400 years old. This suggests that the process of extracting, smelting, forging and shaping iron to create tools, weapons and other objects may have developed independently in the Indian subcontinent.

“The discovery is of such a great importance that it will take some more time before its implications sink in,” says Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti, a professor of South Asian archaeology at Cambridge University.

The latest findings from Adichchanallur, Sivagalai, Mayiladumparai, Kilnamandi, Mangadu and Thelunganur sites have made local headlines such as “Did the Iron Age Begin in Tamil Nadu?” The age marks a period when societies began using and producing iron widely, making tools, weapons and infrastructure.

Parth R Chauhan, a professor of archaeology at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (ISSER), urges caution before drawing broad conclusions. He believes that iron technology likely emerged “independently in multiple regions”.

Also, the “earliest evidence remains uncertain because many regions of the world have not been properly researched or archaeological evidence is known but has not been dated properly”.

If the Tamil Nadu discovery is further validated through rigorous academic study, “it would certainly rank amongst the world’s earliest records”, Mr Chauhan says. Oishi Roy, an archaeologist at ISSER, adds that the find “suggests parallel developments [in iron production] across different parts of the world”.

Early iron came in two forms – meteoritic and smelted. Smelted iron, extracted from ore, marked the true beginning of iron technology with mass production. The earliest known iron artefacts – nine tubular beads – were made from meteoritic iron, which comes from fallen meteorites.

Identifying iron-bearing rocks is the first challenge. Once located, these ores must be smelted in a furnace at extremely high temperatures to extract the metal. Without this process, raw iron remains locked within the rock. After extraction, skilled ironsmiths shape the metal into tools and implements, marking a crucial step in early ironworking.

Most sites in Tamil Nadu where iron has been found are ancient habitation areas near present-day villages. Archaeologists K Rajan and R Sivanantham say that excavators have so far explored a fraction of over 3,000 identified Iron Age graves containing sarcophagi (stone coffins) and a wealth of iron artefacts. In the process, they uncovered hoe-spades, spears, knives, arrowheads, chisels, axes and swords made of iron.

At burials excavated at one site, over 85 iron objects – knives, arrowhead, rings, chisels, axes and swords – were found inside and outside burial urns. More than 20 key samples were robustly dated in five labs worldwide, confirming their antiquity.

Some finds are particularly striking.

Historian Osmund Bopearachchi of the Paris-based French National Centre for Scientific Research highlights a key discovery – an iron sword from a burial site, made of ultra-high-carbon steel and dating to 13th–15th Century BC.

This advanced steel, a direct evolution of Iron Age metallurgy, required sophisticated knowledge and precise high-temperature processes.

“We know that the first signs of real steel production date back to the 13th Century BC in present-day Turkey. The radiometric dates seem to prove that the Tamil Nadu samples are earlier,” he said. Ms Roy adds that the early steel in Tamil Nadu indicates the people there “were iron makers, not just users – a technologically advanced community evolving over time”.

Also, in a site called Kodumanal, excavators found a furnace, pointing to an advanced iron-making community.

The furnace area stood out with its white discolouration, likely from extreme heat. Nearby, excavators found iron slag – some of it fused to the furnace wall – hinting at advanced metalworking techniques. Clearly the people at the site were not just using iron, but actively producing and processing it.

To be sure, the Tamil Nadu excavations are not the first in India to uncover iron. At least 27 sites across eight states have revealed evidence of early iron use, some dating back 4,200 years. The latest Tamil Nadu digs pushes back the antiquity of Indian iron by another 400 years,” archaeologist Rajan, who has co-authored a paper on the subject, told me.

“The Iron Age is a technological shift, not a single-origin event – it develops in multiple places independently,” says Ms Roy, noting earlier discoveries in eastern, western and northern India.

“What’s clear now,” she adds, “is that indigenous iron technology developed early in the Indian subcontinent.”

Experts say the excavations in Tamil Nadu are significant and could reshape our understanding of the Iron Age and iron smelting in the Indian subcontinent. Also, “what these digs testify is to the existence of a distinctly sophisticated style of civilisation,” notes Nirmala Lakshman, author of The Tamils – A Portrait of a Community.

However, archaeologists caution that there is still a lack of excavations needed to collect fresh data from all over India. As one expert put it, “Indian archaeology is in silent mode outside Tamil Nadu.”

Katragadda Paddayya, a leading Indian archaeologist, said this was “just the starting point”.

“We need to delve deeper into the origins of iron technology – these findings mark the beginning, not the conclusion. The key is to use this as a premise, trace the process backward and identify the sites where iron production truly began.”

At least 40 Uyghurs have been deported to China, the Thai authorities have confirmed, despite warnings from rights groups that they face possible torture and even death.

The group is thought to have been flown back to China’s Xinjiang region on Thursday, after being held for 10 years in a Bangkok detention centre.

China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang. Beijing denies all of the allegations.

It is the first time Thailand has deported Uyghurs since 2015.

The deportation has been shrouded in secrecy after serious concerns were raised by the United States and United Nations.

Thai media reported that several trucks, some with windows blocked with sheets of black plastic, left Bangkok’s main immigration detention centre in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Hours later, tracker Flightrader24 showed an unscheduled China Southern Airlines flight leaving Bangkok, eventually arriving in Xinjiang. It was not immediately clear how many people had been deported.

The Thai government later said it had decided to send the 40 Uyghurs back to China because it was not right that they had been held for more than a decade, but that no other third country had stepped forward offering to take them. That includes Turkey, which has given Uyghurs asylum in the past.

Eight Uyghurs remain in Thailand, including five who are serving jail terms for crimes they committed while in detention.

The government also said that Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was given assurances that the Uyghurs would be looked after if returned to China during her recent visit to the country.

She did not initially confirm any deportations had taken place when asked by reporters on Thursday.

“In any country in the world actions must adhere to the principles of law, international processes, and human rights,” Shinawatra said.

Beijing said that 40 Chinese illegal immigrants were repatriated from Thailand, but refused to confirm that the group were Uyghurs.

“The repatriation was carried out in accordance with the laws of China and Thailand, international law and international practice,” the foreign ministry said.

Chinese state media said the group had been “bewitched” by criminal organisations and were stranded in Thailand after illegally leaving the country.

• China deportation looms for Uyghurs held in Thailand
• Who are the Uyghurs?

The returned group is made up of more than 300 Uyghurs who were detained at the Thai border in 2014 after fleeing repression in Xinjiang.

Many were sent to Turkey, while others were deported back to China in 2015 – prompting a storm of protest from governments and human rights groups.

“What is the Thai government doing?” asked opposition lawmaker Kannavee Suebsang on social media on Thursday.

“There must not be Uyghur deportation to face persecution. They were jailed for 11 years. We violated their human rights for too long.”

The detention centre where the Uyghurs – who had been charged with no crime, apart from entering Thailand without a visa – were kept was known to be unsanitary and overcrowded. Five Uyghurs died in custody.

In a statement on Thursday, Human Rights Watch said the group now face a high risk of torture, enforced disappearance and long-term imprisonment.

“Thailand’s transfer of Uyghur detainees to China constitutes a blatant violation of Thailand’s obligations under domestic and international laws,” said the organisation’s Asia director, Elaine Pearson.

“Until yesterday [Wednesday], senior Thai officials had made multiple public assurances that these men would not be transferred, including to allies and UN officials.”

Phil Robertson, director of the Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates (AHRLA) group, said that the deportations “totally destroyed” the “charade” that the current Thai government was different to the previous one “when it comes to transnational repression and cooperating with authoritarian neighbours”.

Amnesty International described the deportations as “unimaginably cruel”.

Bipartisan members of the US House China Committee on Wednesday issued a statement warning that the deportations “would constitute a clear violation of international human rights norms to which the Kingdom of Thailand is obligated under international law”.

The UN said that it “deeply regrets” the deportations.

There are about 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

The Uyghurs speak their own language, which is similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. They make up less than half of the Xinjiang population.

Recent decades have seen a mass migration of Han Chinese (China’s ethnic majority) into Xinjiang, allegedly orchestrated by the state to dilute the minority population there.

China has also been accused of targeting Muslim religious figures and banning religious practices in the region, as well as destroying mosques and tombs.

“I swear to God I need help,” said the man quietly on the other end of the line.

The Ethiopian, who calls himself Mike, said he is being held with 450 others in a building inside Myanmar, along the country’s border with Thailand.

They are among the thousands of people who have been freed from the notorious scam compounds that have thrived on the border for years, in what appears to be the toughest action so far against the industry along the Thai-Myanmar border.

But many of them are now stranded in Myanmar in makeshift camps because the process of assessing them and arranging flights back to their own countries is so slow.

The armed militia groups who are holding them have a very limited capacity to support so many people – more than 7,000. One of them has said they have stopped freeing people from the compounds because they are not being moved to Thailand fast enough.

The BBC understands that conditions in the camps are unsanitary, food barely sufficient, and many of the freed workers, like Mike, are in poor health. He is suffering from panic attacks, after working for a year in a scam centre where he was routinely beaten.

He told us they got two very basic meals a day, there were only two toilets for 450 people, who he said were now relieving themselves wherever they could.

Mike described being invited a year ago to take up what he was promised would be a good job, in Thailand, requiring only good English language and typing skills.

Instead he found himself subjected to a brutal regime, forced to work long hours every day to meet the target for defrauding people online set by his Chinese bosses.

“It was the worst experience of my life. Of course I was beaten. But believe me I have seen a lot worse done to other people.”

Mike is one of an estimated 100,000 people who are believed to have been lured to work in the scam operations along the Thai-Myanmar border, most of them run by Chinese fraud and gambling operatives who have taken advantage of the lawlessness in this part of Myanmar.

Despite horrifying accounts of abuse from those who escaped in the past, thousands still come from parts of the world where good jobs are scarce, enticed by promises of good money.

China, where many of the scam victims come from, has acted to shut down scam operations along its own border with Myanmar, but until this year neither China nor Thailand had done much about the Thai-Myanmar border.

Ariyan, a young man from Bangladesh, has come back to Thailand to try to help 17 friends who are still there. He said he made a promise to himself to do this after his own gruelling escape from one of the most notorious scam centres last October.

He showed us a brief, shaky video of the compound, still under construction in a remote, forested valley, where he was held, and remembers the terrible treatment he and his friends suffered at the hands of their Chinese boss.

“They gave us a target every week, $5,000. If not, they gave us two electric shocks. Or they put us in a dark room, with no windows. But if we earned a lot of money, they were very happy with us.”

Ariyan had to approach men in the Middle East and lure them into transferring funds to fictitious investments. Using AI, the scammers made him appear on the screen to be an attractive young woman, altering his voice as well.

He says he hated doing it. He remembers one man who was willing to sell his wife’s jewellery to fund the fraudulent investment, and wishing he could warn him. But he said the bosses monitored all their calls.

The release of the scam workers started more than two weeks ago after Thailand, under pressure from China and some of its own politicians, cut power and telecommunications links to the compounds on the border.

It limited banking access to the scam bosses and issued arrest warrants for some of the militia leaders who had been protecting the business.

That hit the business, but it also hit the ordinary Karen people who live nearby even harder, putting pressure on the militia commanders to show willingness in ending the abuses in the scam centres. They began helping those trying to escape, and completely evacuating some compounds.

The camp Mike is housed in is now being guarded by the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, DKBA, a breakaway insurgent faction of the ethnic Karen community.

Until recently, it was protecting the many scam compounds which have sprung up in its territory. You can see them easily as you drive along the Moei River which divides the two countries – unlikely expanses of new buildings over in war-torn Karen State contrasting with the rural landscape on the Thai side of the border.

Thailand insists it is moving as fast as it can to process the former scam workers and get them home.

A group of 260 freed workers were brought over the Moei River on a raft earlier this month. And around 621 Chinese nationals were flown straight back to China with a police escort on chartered planes. Otherwise, the movement of freed workers to Thailand seems to have stalled.

The problem is that they are from many different countries, some of which are doing little to help get their people home. Around 130 of the first 260 who came over are from Ethiopia, which does not have an embassy in Bangkok.

The BBC has been told that some other African countries will only fly their people home if someone else pays. Most of the freed workers have nothing; even their passports were withheld by the compound bosses.

Thailand fears bringing over thousands of people it will then have to look after indefinitely. It also wants to screen them to find out which are genuine victims of human trafficking and which may have committed criminal acts, but does not have the capacity to do this with such a large group of people.

Different ministries and agencies, including the army, are involved in managing this problem, and have to agree who does what. It does not help that several senior police and immigration officers have been transferred over their alleged involvement in the scam business.

“If this issue is not resolved, then we will not stop working on it – we must work seriously,” said Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra on Tuesday in Bangkok. But she was referring to the wider problem of the scam business, not the growing humanitarian crisis among the freed workers.

“Unfortunately, it seems we’re in a bit of a standstill,” says Judah Tana, an Australian who runs an NGO which has for years been helping the victims of trafficking in the scam centres.

“We are hearing distressing information about the lack of sanitation and toilets. Many of the 260 who already came were screened for TB and tested positive. We are hearing from those who are still inside that people are coughing up blood. They are very happy that they have been liberated from the scam compounds, but our worry is that we’re not engaging fast enough.”

Thailand now seems ready to bring over one group of 94 Indonesians, as their embassy has been pushing for their release for several days and has booked flights to Indonesia for them.

But that still leaves more than 7,000 still inside Myanmar, unsure what will now happen to them.

Mike told me he and many others with him feared that if they are not allowed to cross into Thailand soon, the DKBA may hand them back to the scam bosses, where they could face punishment for trying to leave.

On Wednesday night his panic attacks and breathing were so bad, he said, they took him to hospital.

“I just want to go home,” he said over the phone. “I just want to go back to my country. That is all I am asking.”

Support for Ukraine has become a key issue since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

President Trump has made a number of claims about how much the United States has spent compared to European countries.

But some of his claims are questionable – with no evidence to back them up.

President Trump has made this claim on a number of occasions – including when he hosted France’s President Macron in the White House this week.

Short answer: Figures suggest the actual spend is much lower.

BBC Verify can find no evidence to back up the claim. There are different calculations on US spending in or related to Ukraine – and they produce a much lower figure.

The Kiel Institute is a German-based think tank tracking support going into Ukraine. It calculated that the United States spent $119.7bn (£94.3bn) on aid between January 2022 and December 2024.

Others have reached a higher figure – but with a broader definition of what counts as spending on Ukraine.

The US Department of Defense has provided a figure looking at all spending on Operation Atlantic Resolve – a response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It says $182.8bn has been “appropriated” – a figure that covers US military training in Europe and replenishment of US defence stocks.

Either way, both figures are considerably lower than claimed by the president.

We asked the White House about the basis for the $350bn claim. So far, it hasn’t provided an explanation.

President Trump has claimed: “We’ve spent more than $300bn and Europe has spent about $100bn – that’s a big difference”

Short answer: Figures suggest Europe has spent more when all aid is included and, as above, we can’t find any evidence for the $300bn figure.

The United States is, by some margin, the largest single donor to Ukraine. But Europe combined has spent more money than the United States, according to the Kiel Institute.

The figure includes aid directly from the European Union, but also from bilateral deals from European countries, both inside and outside the EU. It includes military, financial and humanitarian aid.

They calculate that between 24 January 2022 and the end of 2024, Europe as a whole spent $138.7bn on Ukraine. In the same period, the United States spent $119.7bn, according to their figures.

NATO secretary general Mark Rutte made a similar argument, adding Canada into his calculation.

Mr Rutte said February 2025: “In 2024, NATO Allies provided over 50 billion euros in security assistance to Ukraine – nearly 60% of this coming from Europe and Canada.”

We asked for NATO’s figures, but they said they were classified.

This is a claim President Trump made when he hosted President Macron. It prompted President Macron to disagree, saying both Europe and the US had given a mixture of grants and loans.

Short answer: The EU has provided loans, but also grants.

President Macron is correct, according to Kiel figures. But they suggest President Trump also has a point; the US has sent more grants, while the EU sent more loans.

However, again, there are different figures out there.

The European Union says EU countries have provided around $145bn in aid so far and that just 35% of that has been loans. Like the United States Department of Defence, the EU has used a broader definition of what counts as aid to Ukraine.

EU loans will have been on generous terms – so Ukraine will be repaying less interest than it would normally. In some cases, Ukraine isn’t expected to pay anything, with repayments coming from revenues from frozen Russian assets.

What we can say is that aid to Ukraine has been a mixture of loans and grants.

The UK is one of the biggest individual state donors to Ukraine.

The only countries to have spent more are the United States and Germany, according to Kiel data.

But the UK contributions are much smaller than the United States.

That raises a question for the UK and other European countries; if the United States withdraws a large part of its funding to Ukraine, can other states make up the difference?

That would require a significant increase in their contributions.

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India is home to 1.4 billion people but around a billion lack money to spend on any discretionary goods or services, a new report estimates.

The country’s consuming class, effectively the potential market for start-ups or business owners, is only about as big as Mexico, 130-140 million people, according to the report from Blume Ventures, a venture capital firm.

Another 300 million are “emerging” or “aspirant” consumers but they are reluctant spenders who have only just begun to open their purse strings, as click-of-a-button digital payments make it easy to transact.

What is more, the consuming class in Asia’s third largest economy is not “widening” as much as it is “deepening”, according to the report. That basically means India’s wealthy population is not really growing in numbers, even though those who are already rich are getting even wealthier.

All of this is shaping the country’s consumer market in distinct ways, particularly accelerating the trend of “premiumisation” where brands drive growth by doubling down on expensive, upgraded products catering to the wealthy, rather than focusing on mass-market offerings.

This is evident in zooming sales of ultra-luxury gated housing and premium phones, even as their lower-end variants struggle. Affordable homes now constitute just 18% of India’s overall market compared with 40% five years ago. Branded goods are also capturing a bigger share of the market. And the “experience economy” is booming, with expensive tickets for concerts by international artists like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran selling like hot cakes.

• Why global stars like Coldplay and Ed Sheeran are hitting India

Companies that have adapted to these shifts have thrived, Sajith Pai, one of the report’s authors, told the BBC. “Those who are too focused at the mass end or have a product mix that doesn’t have exposure to the premium end have lost market share.”

The report’s findings bolster the long-held view that India’s post-pandemic recovery has been K-shaped – where the rich have got richer, while the poor have lost purchasing power.

In fact, this has been a long-term structural trend that began even before the pandemic. India has been getting increasingly more unequal, with the top 10% of Indians now holding 57.7% of national income compared with 34% in 1990. The bottom half have seen their share of national income fall from 22.2% to 15%.

The latest consumption slump, however, has deepened amid not just a destruction in purchasing power, but also a precipitous drop in financial savings and surging indebtedness among the masses.

The country’s central bank has also cracked down on easy unsecured lending that propped up demand after the Covid pandemic.

Much of the consumption spending of the “emerging” or “aspirant” class of Indians was led by such borrowing and “turning off that tap will definitely have some impact on consumption”, says Pai.

In the short run, two things are expected to help boost spending – a pick-up in rural demand on the back of a record harvest and a $12 billion tax give-away in the recently concluded budget. It will not be “dramatic” but could boost India’s GDP – largely driven by consumption – by over half a percent, says Pai.

But major longer-term headwinds remain.

India’s middle class – which has been a major engine for consumer demand – is being squeezed out, with wages pretty much staying flat, according to data compiled by Marcellus Investment Managers.

“The middle 50% of India’s tax-paying population has seen its income stagnate in absolute terms over the past decade. This implies a halving of income in real terms [adjusted for inflation],” says the report, published in January.

“This financial hammering has decimated the middle class’s savings – the RBI [Reserve Bank of India] has repeatedly highlighted that net financial savings of Indian households are approaching a 50-year low. This pounding suggests that products and services associated with middle-class household spending are likely to face a rough time in the years ahead,” it adds.

The Marcellus report also points out that white-collar urban jobs are becoming harder to come by as artificial intelligence automates clerical, secretarial and other routine work. “The number of supervisors employed in manufacturing units [as a percentage of all employed] in India has gone down significantly,” it adds.

The government’s recent economic survey has flagged these concerns as well.

It says labour displacement as a result of these technological advancements is of particular concern for a mainly services-driven economy like India, where a significant share of the IT workforce is employed in low value-added services sectors that are most prone to disruption.

“India is also a consumption-based economy, thus the fall in consumption that can result from the displacement of its workforce is bound to have macroeconomic implications. If the worst-case projections materialise, this could have the potential to set the country’s economic growth trajectory off course,” the survey says.

Degrading, violent and misogynistic pornography should be banned, a review of the industry has recommended.

The review, commissioned by the previous government and headed by the Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin, urges ministers to give regulator Ofcom sweeping powers to police porn sites deemed to contain “harmful” material.

It proposes outlawing “degrading, violent and misogynistic content”, including making it illegal to possess or publish pornography showing women being choked during sex.

Non-fatal strangulation is already an offence if someone does not consent but its depiction online is not illegal and the review finds it is “rife on mainstream platforms”.

The review proposes that porn videos considered too harmful for any certificate in the offline world should be banned online.

Baroness Bertin argues that online pornography contributes to some of the “gravest issues in our society, from domestic violence to toxic masculinity to the mental health crisis among young people”.

She told the BBC: “I’m not saying that people shouldn’t watch porn. I’m not saying porn shouldn’t exist. I’m not a prude.”

However, her 32 recommendations on what government should do about the “high-harm sector” of legal online pornography are likely to initiate a debate about how far the state should police people’s sex lives.

Baroness Bertin said online porn was not “properly scrutinised and regulated” in the same way as offline content.

“It strikes me as incredible that to buy a DVD, which sounds so sort of retro, the BBFC [British Board of Film Classification] has to put a stamp on it, has to check that certain standards have been met. That there’s no sense you are encouraging child sexual abuse. No harmful, degrading, humiliating practices which is not through consensual roleplay,” she told the BBC.

“You just have to go on the homepages of some of these mainstream sites and you will see of all that degrading content – particularly violent towards women – and it’s all there for everyone to see.”

Her report suggests pornography websites depicting the non-fatal choking of women during sex has normalised such behaviour in the real world, with violent and degrading material rife on mainstream platforms amid a “total absence of government scrutiny”.

The review cites research suggesting that over a quarter of the nation regularly accesses online porn with a third of all men watching material at least once a week. It concludes that increasingly disturbing content is “rewiring” the way young people think about gender, sex and their role in society.

The Department for Science Innovation and Technology said it would look at the links the review highlighted.

“We have already announced we will ban the creation of intimate deepfakes without consent and from next month under the Online Safety Act platforms will have to proactively tackle illegal content including extreme pornography and sexual abuse material,” the spokesperson said.

“But further action is needed to address the review’s shocking finding that graphic strangulation is increasingly appearing in pornography, despite being illegal, and is becoming normalised in real life.

“We will urgently ensure that platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors take all necessary steps to tackle this disturbing harm.”

Downing Street also described the findings of a report into the porn industry as “shocking”, and suggested it would “act swiftly” to address gaps in the law – but stopped short of saying it would be banned.

The review’s recommendations were welcomed by the End Violence Against Women Coalition, which called for action from the government to address the harms arising from the current state of the porn industry.

“We know these companies are profiting enormously from sexual violence, and until they are forced to clean up their act, they won’t,” the group’s director Andrea Simon said.

Madelaine Thomas, an adult content creator, also welcomed the review but added: “If we look to police people’s sexual interests that’s problematic.

“I don’t think prohibition has ever eliminated demand in any way but I do think there are ways that we can work together to come up with frameworks that prioritise both consent and compassion and allow people to create and view what they would like to view on the internet,” she told BBC Two’s Politics Live.

Baroness Bertin argues that her proposals for sweeping new controls in currently legal pornography online would prevent real-world violence against women and girls.

The review relates how a 14-year-old boy asked a teacher how to choke girls during sex and suggests online porn has created “such a confusing world for our sons”.

“They are, quite rightly, encouraged and taught to reject sexist attitudes, while a subterranean online world of pornography is simultaneously showing them that anything goes,” Baroness Bertin writes.

Ministers are urged to fund programmes for boys and young men which encourage positive masculinity and counter misogynistic culture.

The report quotes BBC research suggesting up to 38% of British women had experienced being strangled during intercourse, but notes that nearly half of those women wanted to be choked. “This is important in demonstrating freedom of sexual expression and its nuance,” the review says.

Nevertheless, the report concludes that society has decided that “enough is enough” of harmful online pornography and its impact on young people.

Measures to increase regulation of pornography, including to prevent children accessing explicit content, are already part of the Online Safety Act, which became law in October 2023.

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North Korea has sent more soldiers to Russia and re-deployed others to the frontline in the western Kursk region, according to South Korea’s intelligence agency.

It said the exact number of extra troops sent was unknown, but military officials quoted in South Korean media have said they believed it was at least 1,000.

Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have confirmed the new deployment.

North Korea is thought to have suffered heavy losses in the four months since its troops were first deployed to help Russia in its war with Ukraine.

In January, Western officials told the BBC they believed at least 1,000 of the 11,000 troops sent from North Korea had been killed in the past three months. North Korea and Russia did not comment.

The South Korean intelligence agency also said on Thursday that North Korean troops already in Russia had been re-deployed to the front line in Kursk at the start of February “after about a month of lull”.

Ukrainian special forces fighting in Kursk told the BBC in January that they had not seen any North Korean troops for weeks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later confirmed they had returned to the front line.

Earlier reports attributed to South Korean intelligence suggested that the North Korean soldiers were unprepared for modern warfare, and were especially vulnerable to Ukrainian drones.

However, defectors and other military experts have told the BBC these troops should not be underestimated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The fighting has led to heavy losses on both sides.

Last August, Ukraine made a lightning thrust into the Russian Kursk region, taking border guards by surprise. Russia has been trying to drive them out ever since.

While Ukraine’s gains have since been steadily pushed back, partly due to the arrival of the North Koreans in Russia in October, it still retains hundreds of square kilometres of Russian territory and is inflicting huge losses on its enemy.

Russia’s military has not publicly revealed its battlefield casualties since September 2022, when it said 5,937 soldiers had been killed.

Zelensky has put Ukraine’s military casualties at 45,100 – but a number of military experts in both Ukraine and the West believe the losses are much higher.

Reports began emerging that North Korean soldiers had been deployed in October, following the deepening of bilateral ties between Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. This included the signing a security and defence treaty.

A Succession-like feud has engulfed one of Singapore’s richest families as property tycoon Kwek Leng Beng accused his son of plotting a boardroom takeover.

Mr Kwek says he has filed court papers accusing his son Sherman of trying to take control of their real estate firm City Developments Limited (CDL). Sherman Kwek has denied the allegation.

Kwek Leng Beng, who is CDL’s executive chairman, is also seeking to fire his son, who is the chief executive.

CDL, Singapore’s biggest listed property developer, has halted trading in its shares on the financial hub’s stock exchange.

The feud has sparked comparisons with the HBO television series Succession, in which the fictional Roy family fight for control of the global media firm Waystar RoyCo.

“We intend to change the chief executive officer at the appropriate time,” Kwek Leng Beng said in a statement.

“As a father, firing my son was certainly not an easy decision.”

But the octogenarian added: “This is necessary to deal with this attempted coup at the board level and restore corporate integrity.”

If Sherman Kwek is removed as chief executive, his father said he plans to replace him on an interim basis with his cousin Kwek Eik Sheng.

The dispute centres on an email sent by CDL’s corporate secretary nominating two additional independent directors on the night of 28 January, the eve of the Lunar New Year – which marks the start of a major holiday in Singapore.

The row has attracted public attention in a part of the world in which battles over family businesses are not uncommon and have been known to end up in court.

After Wednesday’s court hearing, Kwek Leng Beng said the two new directors had agreed to not exercise any powers until further notice.

The company has said Sherman Kwek would remain in the role until the issue was resolved.

Sherman Kwek said he and the majority of CDL’s board were disappointed by what he described as extreme actions taken by his father “regarding this disagreement around the size and make-up of the CDL board.”

“To reiterate, this has never been about ousting our esteemed chairman. These steps to strengthen our board have purely been to ensure CDL has the highest standards of governance to which it has become known,” he said in a statement to the BBC.

Kwek Leng Beng, along with his father and brother, took control of then-loss-making CDL in 1971. He became the firm’s executive chairman after his father’s death in 1995.

It now has more than 160 hotel, residential and commercial properties around the world and forms part of a multi-billion dollar family empire.

Catholics gathered to pray for the health of the Pope beneath the steps of St Peter’s Basilica for a third night, as his doctors said his condition showed further slight improvement.

Nuns dangling rosary beads, tourists and student priests were among those who joined the gentle incantation of the rosary in the Vatican.

They were led by a cardinal in a scarlet skull cap who prayed for Pope Francis to be able to resume his duties as soon as possible.

The nightly gatherings began on Monday after the 88-year-old’s health took a dramatic dip at the weekend. He was fighting to breathe and needed blood transfusions.

But the latest statements suggest the Pope is able to sit in his chair, is eating normally and even doing what the Vatican calls “light work”: reading and signing documents.

“It was a bit scary last weekend but a bit better now,” Stacey, a medical student from Paris, told the BBC.

She was attending the prayers for the Pope for a second time.

“Francis is very popular with young people because he’s really open, and in a world that became a little scary, he gives us a lot of hope.”

Xiomara, from Panama, said she felt drawn to this Pope in particular as he was “a good man”.

“Prayers always help, they don’t just hang in the air,” she believes.

Leading the rosary from beneath a white canopy was Cardinal Battista Re.

He’s the figure in the Vatican who would call a conclave – the closed gathering of senior clergy that elects a Pope – if Francis were not able to continue in the role.

Despite the slight improvement, the Pope’s medical team are still giving no prognosis.

He was admitted to Gemelli hospital on 14 February with double-pneumonia and, according to the Vatican, a CT scan of his lungs shows a “normal evolution” which suggests he is responding to treatment.

We’re told he still uses additional oxygen but has suffered no further “respiratory crises”.

The tone of Vatican officials has certainly relaxed a little.

On Tuesday, the Pope’s condition was described as “stable”, which was new. By Wednesday evening there was a “further slight improvement” and the update omitted to say “critical” for the first time.

Vatican officials cautioned that didn’t mean the Pope was out of the woods.

But with so little to go on, those following his condition closely are wringing every word – or missing word – for meaning.

Inevitably, many have also been wondering about the future.

The Pope was frail even before this infection, so there has been speculation over whether he might resign.

The Quotidiano Nazionale newspaper calls it the “fluttering of crows” over St Peter’s, inevitable at the “sunset” of any Papacy.

It’s even louder this time since Benedict XVI set a precedent and stepped down in 2013, the first Pope to do so in six centuries.

Francis has said before that he would consider resigning if he can’t carry out his duties.

“His instinct will be to carry on as long as he can and is able to,” believes Austen Ivereigh, who co-authored a book with Pope Francis.

“He’s shown he doesn’t mind being a weak and frail Pope; he can be a Pope in a wheelchair, or one who gets ill regularly and that’s ok.”

All the same, if his health prognosis were too bad, the author said, “then the [resignation] issue might arise.”

Even with Francis confined to the Gemelli hospital, the well-oiled Vatican cogs continue to turn. The bureaucracy functions and the Pope has been signing some documents.

On Monday, his secretary of state and another senior official visited.

Officially, the Pope signed papers, moving a list of candidates further along the path towards sainthood.

But some question why they couldn’t wait, given the frailty of the Pope, and wonder what other plans were discussed at that meeting.

As Francis enters his 14th day in hospital, pilgrims to Rome are already experiencing life without him. His weekly audience, or meeting, with the faithful was cancelled for the second week.

“We really want him to get better and continue the amazing work he’s started,” said Mabi.

She mentions the foregrounding of women in the church in particular.

“He’s a people’s Pope and people want his work to continue.”

“We’re sorry, because we hoped to meet the Pope today at an audience – we had tickets,” Fr Cristiano said.

Around him almost 100 Catholics from northern Italy were gathering to begin processing up the street towards St Peter’s behind a large wooden crucifix.

“I’m not disappointed, I’m just worried for him,” the priest said. “Today the news is not so bad, but it’s not so good, either. So we need to pray.”

King Mohammed VI has asked Moroccans to abstain from performing the Muslim rite of slaughtering sheep during Eid al-Adha this year due to a sharp drop in the country’s herd.

The shortages are blamed on seven years of drought.

Eid al-Adha, which falls in June, commemorates the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim, or Abraham, to sacrifice his son on God’s command.

Muslims mark the event by slaughtering sheep or other animals and the meat is shared among family and donated to the poor.

But herds in Morocco have shrunk by 38% in a decade due to dry pastures, according to official data.

Meat prices are rocketing, and 100,000 sheep are being imported from Australia.

Performing the rite “under these difficult circumstances will cause significant harm to large segments of our people, especially those with limited income,” King Mohammed VI said in a speech read by the minister of religious affairs on national television on Wednesday.

His father, Hassan II, made the same appeal back in 1966 when Morocco also suffered a long drought.

Explaining the challenge in a recent interview, Morocco’s agriculture minister, Ahmed Bouari, said “the need to secure water for priority sectors, such as driving and industry” meant that agriculture was the worst-hit, “with most irrigation areas subject to strict regulations and water rationing”.

Import tax and VAT on cattle, sheep, camels and red meat were recently lifted to help stabilise prices across Morocco.

• Why there are two Eids and how they are celebrated
• France backs Morocco in dispute over Western Sahara
• The YouTubers exploring their family homelands
• A quick guide to Morocco

Actress Michelle Trachtenberg, who rose to fame as a child star in the 1990s and 2000s, has died aged 39.

Police in Manhattan said they responded to an emergency call on Wednesday morning and found Trachtenberg “unconscious and unresponsive”. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The US actress was best known for playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s younger sister Dawn Summers, and later took on the role of manipulative socialite Georgina Sparks in Gossip Girl as an adult.

Trachtenberg made her film debut in Harriet the Spy in 1996, and also appeared in several Nickelodeon productions.

Co-stars paid tribute to her, describing her as a “fiercely intelligent” person who “cared deeply” about her work.

Her family’s representatives confirmed her death in a statement.

“It is with great sadness to confirm that Michelle Trachtenberg has passed away. The family requests privacy for their loss,” it said.

Authorities said her death was not being treated as suspicious.

“Criminality is not suspected. The medical examiner will determine the cause of death. The investigation remains ongoing,” the NYPD said in a statement.

Trachtenberg got her start in acting at age nine on the Nickelodeon television series The Adventures of Pete & Pete.

In the early 2000s, she was nominated for several acting awards – including a Daytime Emmy Award – for her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

She also starred in films including EuroTrip, Ice Princess, Killing Kennedy, and Sister Cities.

Blake Lively, a Gossip Girl co-star, said everything Trachtenberg did “she did 200%”.

“She laughed the fullest at someone’s joke… she cared deeply about her work, she was fiercely loyal to her friends and brave for those she loved, she was big and bold and distinctly herself,” she wrote on social media.

“The real tragedies in life are the ones that blindside you on an idle Tuesday. Hold those you love and have loved dear.”

US comedian Rosie O’Donnell, who starred alongside Trachtenberg in her Harriet the Spy debut, said her death was “heartbreaking”.

“I loved her very much. She struggled the last few years. I wish I could have helped.”

Josh Safran, a writer and producer on Gossip Girl, said it was “an honour and joy to write for Michelle for so many years”, as she had a “clear voice” as an actor.

“You heard her as you typed,” he wrote. “You knew she’d make each line rougher, more real, much funnier – and that made the writing better.

Former castmates also paid tribute.

Buffy cast member James Marsters said on social media that the actress was “fiercely intelligent, howlingly funny, and a very talented person”.

“She died much too young, and leaves behind scores of people who knew and loved her,” Marsters said.

How I Met Your Mother actress Alyson Hannigan, who played Willow Rosenberg in Buffy, shared a series of photos on social media, including images of the two sharing scenes, and said Trachtenberg “brought a loving energy to the set of Buffy”.

Trachtenberg first appeared in Gossip Girl – which ran from 2007 to 2012 – in 2008. She returned to the role for two episodes of the second season of HBO Max’s reboot in 2023.

Her last major acting role was in 2021 as the host of a true-crime docuseries Meet, Marry, Murder, which appeared on digital streamer Tubi.

In 2021, Trachtenberg accused Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon of inappropriate behaviour on set, after her co-star Charisma Carpenter said she had been left traumatised due to the treatment she received from Whedon.

For over 20 years, archaeologists in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu have been unearthing clues to the region’s ancient past.

Their digs have uncovered early scripts that rewrite literacy timelines, mapped maritime trade routes connecting India to the world and revealed advanced urban settlements – reinforcing the state’s role as a cradle of early civilisation and global commerce.

Now they’ve also uncovered something even older – evidence of what could be the earliest making and use of iron. Present-day Turkey is one of the earliest known regions where iron was mined, extracted and forged on a significant scale around the 13th Century BC.

Archaeologists have discovered iron objects at six sites in Tamil Nadu, dating back to 2,953–3,345 BCE, or between 5,000 to 5,400 years old. This suggests that the process of extracting, smelting, forging and shaping iron to create tools, weapons and other objects may have developed independently in the Indian subcontinent.

“The discovery is of such a great importance that it will take some more time before its implications sink in,” says Dilip Kumar Chakrabarti, a professor of South Asian archaeology at Cambridge University.

The latest findings from Adichchanallur, Sivagalai, Mayiladumparai, Kilnamandi, Mangadu and Thelunganur sites have made local headlines such as “Did the Iron Age Begin in Tamil Nadu?” The age marks a period when societies began using and producing iron widely, making tools, weapons and infrastructure.

Parth R Chauhan, a professor of archaeology at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (ISSER), urges caution before drawing broad conclusions. He believes that iron technology likely emerged “independently in multiple regions”.

Also, the “earliest evidence remains uncertain because many regions of the world have not been properly researched or archaeological evidence is known but has not been dated properly”.

If the Tamil Nadu discovery is further validated through rigorous academic study, “it would certainly rank amongst the world’s earliest records”, Mr Chauhan says. Oishi Roy, an archaeologist at ISSER, adds that the find “suggests parallel developments [in iron production] across different parts of the world”.

Early iron came in two forms – meteoritic and smelted. Smelted iron, extracted from ore, marked the true beginning of iron technology with mass production. The earliest known iron artefacts – nine tubular beads – were made from meteoritic iron, which comes from fallen meteorites.

Identifying iron-bearing rocks is the first challenge. Once located, these ores must be smelted in a furnace at extremely high temperatures to extract the metal. Without this process, raw iron remains locked within the rock. After extraction, skilled ironsmiths shape the metal into tools and implements, marking a crucial step in early ironworking.

Most sites in Tamil Nadu where iron has been found are ancient habitation areas near present-day villages. Archaeologists K Rajan and R Sivanantham say that excavators have so far explored a fraction of over 3,000 identified Iron Age graves containing sarcophagi (stone coffins) and a wealth of iron artefacts. In the process, they uncovered hoe-spades, spears, knives, arrowheads, chisels, axes and swords made of iron.

At burials excavated at one site, over 85 iron objects – knives, arrowhead, rings, chisels, axes and swords – were found inside and outside burial urns. More than 20 key samples were robustly dated in five labs worldwide, confirming their antiquity.

Some finds are particularly striking.

Historian Osmund Bopearachchi of the Paris-based French National Centre for Scientific Research highlights a key discovery – an iron sword from a burial site, made of ultra-high-carbon steel and dating to 13th–15th Century BC.

This advanced steel, a direct evolution of Iron Age metallurgy, required sophisticated knowledge and precise high-temperature processes.

“We know that the first signs of real steel production date back to the 13th Century BC in present-day Turkey. The radiometric dates seem to prove that the Tamil Nadu samples are earlier,” he said. Ms Roy adds that the early steel in Tamil Nadu indicates the people there “were iron makers, not just users – a technologically advanced community evolving over time”.

Also, in a site called Kodumanal, excavators found a furnace, pointing to an advanced iron-making community.

The furnace area stood out with its white discolouration, likely from extreme heat. Nearby, excavators found iron slag – some of it fused to the furnace wall – hinting at advanced metalworking techniques. Clearly the people at the site were not just using iron, but actively producing and processing it.

To be sure, the Tamil Nadu excavations are not the first in India to uncover iron. At least 27 sites across eight states have revealed evidence of early iron use, some dating back 4,200 years. The latest Tamil Nadu digs pushes back the antiquity of Indian iron by another 400 years,” archaeologist Rajan, who has co-authored a paper on the subject, told me.

“The Iron Age is a technological shift, not a single-origin event – it develops in multiple places independently,” says Ms Roy, noting earlier discoveries in eastern, western and northern India.

“What’s clear now,” she adds, “is that indigenous iron technology developed early in the Indian subcontinent.”

Experts say the excavations in Tamil Nadu are significant and could reshape our understanding of the Iron Age and iron smelting in the Indian subcontinent. Also, “what these digs testify is to the existence of a distinctly sophisticated style of civilisation,” notes Nirmala Lakshman, author of The Tamils – A Portrait of a Community.

However, archaeologists caution that there is still a lack of excavations needed to collect fresh data from all over India. As one expert put it, “Indian archaeology is in silent mode outside Tamil Nadu.”

Katragadda Paddayya, a leading Indian archaeologist, said this was “just the starting point”.

“We need to delve deeper into the origins of iron technology – these findings mark the beginning, not the conclusion. The key is to use this as a premise, trace the process backward and identify the sites where iron production truly began.”

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US National Intelligence, says she was not informed in advance about the UK government’s demand to be able to access Apple customers’ encrypted data from anywhere in the world.

Earlier this year, the UK government asked for the right to see the data, which currently not even Apple can access.

The tech giant last week took the unprecedented step of removing its highest level data security tool from customers in the UK.

In a letter, Ms Gabbard said she was seeking further information from the FBI and other US agencies and said, if the reports were true, the UK government’s actions amounted to an “egregious violation” of US citizens’ privacy.

The Home Office notice, which cannot legally be made public, was issued to Apple under the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act in January.

Ms Gabbard added that she was also seeking legal advice over whether the UK had breached an agreement between it and the US not to demand data belonging to each other’s citizens.

In response to the Home Office notice, last week Apple pulled its top level privacy tool, Advanced Data Protection, from the UK market.

Advanced Data Protection (ADP) means only account holders can view items such as photos or documents they have stored online through a process known as end-to-end encryption.

Apple would have to break its encryption systems in order to comply with the UK government demand, as currently it cannot see data protected in this way so would be unable to share it with law enforcement. This is something it says it will never do.

Apple’s UK users’ data remains encrypted in the UK but at a level which means it can be accessed by the tech giant if served with a warrant.

• Apple pulls UK Advanced Data Protection – what it means for you

In the letter to Senator Ron Wyden and Representative Andy Biggs which has now been published online, Tulsi Gabbard said she first read about the notice in the media and had not been informed beforehand by either the UK or by Apple.

Apple did not comment. The Home Office referred the BBC to comments made earlier this week by security minister Dan Jarvis.

The Minister of State for Security said: “I cannot comment on operational matters, and it would not be appropriate for me either to confirm or to deny the existence of any notices under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016.”

He added: “What I can say is that the suggestion that privacy and security are at odds is not correct; we can and must have both.”

Meanwhile, two US lawmakers have also requested the US Department of Justice (DOJ) review the UK government’s notice to Apple and its implications.

US Senator Alex Padilla and Representative Zoe Lofgren, two Democrats who both represent California, asked the DOJ to investigate whether the UK might have breached the terms of the US-UK Agreement on Access to Electronic Data for the Purpose of Countering Serious Crime.

“It is difficult to see the UK’s notice to Apple, if the reports are accurate, as anything less than an action that undermines US law, public policy, and information security by requiring US companies to take such reckless action as undermining encryption for all users globally,” the lawmakers said in a statement.