Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is back in Kyiv after three frantic days – which began with him being ordered to leave the White House following a tense and public showdown with Donald Trump and JD Vance on Friday.

He found a warmer welcome in London on the weekend, where he was greeted by the prime minister outside Downing Street, visited the King, and received a strong show of support from European leaders at a summit on Sunday – a sharp contrast to the scenes in the Oval Office.

After the London summit, Sir Keir Starmer suggested European leaders would form a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine – but details of who would contribute what were scarce.

Here’s the latest on Zelensky’s relationship with Trump, and Europe’s plans to guarantee Ukraine’s security.

• Zelensky, Trump and Europe – follow live updates

In a series of social media posts on Saturday morning, President Zelensky said Ukraine and the US needed to be “honest and direct with each other” to understand their shared goals – and he wanted America to “stand more firmly” on their side.

Appearing on Fox News hours after leaving the White House, Zelensky said the confrontation was a “really tough situation” and took the chance to thank Americans and Donald Trump. He also stopped short of an outright apology despite calls from US lawmakers for him to do so.

While Trump hasn’t commented directly on the angry exchange over the weekend, most Republican figures have expressed their support for Trump and Vance.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz – who was in the Oval Office during Friday’s heated meeting – compared the Ukrainian leader to an “ex-girlfriend”, while Speaker Mike Johnson called for Zelensky to quit.

However, moderate Republican Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon said it was “a bad day for America’s foreign policy” and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said she is “sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing Putin”.

• Vance took the lead attacking Zelensky. Why?

• Was Starmer’s summit enough to sway Trump?

Posts on social media in support of Zelensky poured in shortly after he left the White House on Friday evening. Among the notable exceptions were Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who wants to preserve her excellent relations with the Trump administration, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who praised Donald Trump for “standing bravely for peace”.

By the time the London summit came around on Sunday, there was a sense that concrete action had to follow words of support – with most leaders careful to highlight that they still considered US support essential.

At the end of the summit, Starmer outlined a four-point plan for peace which included the continuation of military aid to Ukraine, a commitment for Ukraine to be present at peace talks, boosting Ukraine’s defence capabilities to deter future Russian aggression, and developing a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine, including sending troops to Ukraine.

Starmer said that the idea of sending troops to Ukraine – which would include boots on the ground and planes in the air – had the backing of several parties, but he was careful to leave it to individual countries to discuss the matter internally.

Scandinavian countries have already signalled they would be open to the idea. Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was keeping an “open mind” on the proposal, while Sweden’s Ulf Kristersson said his country was ready to provide Ukraine with security guarantees – if it had the backing of the US.

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni would much rather push for another summit that includes the US than discuss a European contingent in Ukraine – a possibility which she says “perplexes” her.

And Poland – which has long been one of Kyiv’s most vocal supporters – has already ruled out sending soldiers, although it put few boundaries on humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine.

European leaders will now have a few days to digest the latest developments before they meet again in Brussels on Thursday for a special meeting on defence, at which Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen will present what she has called “a comprehensive plan on how to rearm Europe”.

On Sunday night, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported that President Emmanuel Macron and Starmer have proposed a potential one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine, “in the air and at sea”.

Details of any agreement are scarce and the idea put forward by the French remains just that. Under the hypothesis, both sides would agree a truce for four weeks in the air, on the sea and around energy infrastructure. But, Macron has suggested it would not cover fighting on the ground along the front line, as it would be too hard to monitor.

But on Monday morning, the UK’s armed forces minister played down the idea of a truce insisting that “no agreement has been made on what a truce looks like”.

Luke Pollard told Times Radio: “We are working together with France and our European allies to look at what is the path to how… we create a lasting and durable peace in Ukraine.”

Any truce would have to be agreed by Russia and there is no evidence yet they are willing to do that.

Although Vladimir Putin has not yet officially commented on the Washington encounter, the Kremlin’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it had been a “complete diplomatic failure of Kyiv”.

On Monday morning, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov then added his criticism of the London summit on Ukraine.

“Statements were made there about the need to step up funding for Ukraine as a matter of urgency. This is obviously not part of a peace plan but is done to continue the fighting,” Peskov said.

“The rest will depend on what kind of peace plans will be drawn up and offered for discussion. Any constructive support for this process would be welcome now, and any constructive initiatives.”

Remarking on the response to the war more broadly, Peskov also suggested that “the collective West has partially begun to lose its collectivity”.

India’s first medical clinic for transgender people has shut operations in three cities after US President Donald Trump stopped foreign aid to it.

Mitr (friend) Clinic, which was started in 2021 in the southern city of Hyderabad, offered HIV treatment, support and counselling services to thousands of transgender people.

Two more Mitr Clinics in Thane and Pune cities in western India, which were established the same year, have also shut down due to the aid cut.

In January, Trump signed an executive order pausing all foreign aid for 90 days, pending a review.

Trump has said he wants overseas spending to be closely aligned with his “America First” approach.

His crackdown on USAID, the US agency overseeing humanitarian aid to foreign countries since the 1960s, has been seen as a step to this end.

The pausing of USAID funds has affected dozens of development programmes all around the world, especially in poor and developing countries.

In India, the shutting down of the Mitr Clinics has impacted the transgender community’s access to crucial medical support.

The project came into existence under the US President’s agency for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003 when George Bush was president. John Hopkins University worked in collaboration with USAID and the Indian government to set it up.

A staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity to BBC Hindi said the three clinics catered to some 6,000 people and about 6% to 8% of the patients were being treated for HIV.

“All these cases were below 30 years of age. And 75% to 80% of this population was accessing health services for the first time,” this staff member said.

In Hyderabad, the Mitr Clinic offered care to 150 to 200 transgender patients each month, many of whom suffered from HIV. The clinic had a small team of doctors, psychologists and technical staff.

“We were receiving 250,000 rupees ($2900; £2300) every month to provide services,” Rachana Mudraboyina, a trans woman who was in-charge of the clinic, told BBC Hindi.

The news of the clinic’s closure has come as a blow to the community.

Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli, a trans woman who has visited the clinic, told The Indian Express newspaper that she was “devastated” by the news as the clinic used to offer treatment at subsidised rates.

Another trans woman, who was hoping to use the clinic’s services, told the Express that she was sad that she would no longer be able to do this.

India is estimated to have around two million transgender people, though activists say the number is higher. Despite a 2014 Supreme Court ruling that gives them the same rights as people of other genders, many still struggle to access education and healthcare due to stigma and discrimination.

There are state-run and private hospitals that offer medical help to the community, but many say they prefer going to Mitr Clinics because they find it more affordable and inclusive.

“Transgender people are not treated properly in general hospitals,” Rachana says, explaining why the Mitr Clinics were so important for the community.

Trump’s order freezing foreign aid has been criticised by many.

“USAID has made significant contributions in health and education and shutting it down is bound to have an impact on developing countries,” Bubberjung Venkatesh, a lawyer, told BBC Hindi.

“It’s a big blow. Its support for HIV prevention was significant,” he added.

Last Thursday, the Trump administration said it was going to eliminate more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts. This means that very few projects will survive and the Mitr Clinics are unlikely to be among them.

Elon Musk, a close aide of Trump who also heads a government department in charge of slashing federal spending and jobs, has criticised funding projects for transgender people.

“That’s what American tax dollars were funding,” Musk said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday in response to a post about the closure of the Mitr Clinics.

Meanwhile, staff at the clinic say they are looking for funding from other sources and hope that the state government will step in to help.

“We did a lot more than just provide medical help. The clinic also provided us a space to interact with the community, to share advice about various government schemes and health facilities,” Rachana says.

“We want to continue [running the clinic] and are trying our best to find donors,” she adds.

US President Donald Trump’s administration is pausing its offensive cyber operations against Russia, officials say, as a diplomatic push continues to end the war in Ukraine.

The reasoning for the instruction has not been publicly stated, and it is not clear how long the halt might last. The defence department has declined to comment.

The directive reportedly came before Trump ended up in a televised row with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday.

Since returning to office, Trump has markedly softened the American position towards Moscow in eagerness to reach a deal to end the war – following Russia’s full-scale invasion more than three years ago.

He appeared to echo Moscow’s justification for starting the war and announced plans to meet his counterpart President Vladimir Putin. The US has also sided with Russia during recent votes at the United Nations related to the war.

At the same time, Trump has labelled Zelensky a dictator, and accused the other man of “gambling with World War Three” during Friday’s blow-up in the Oval Office.

• Live updates on Zelensky’s talks with allies
• Zelensky bruised but determined after diplomatic whirlwind
• Was Starmer’s summit enough to sway Trump?

The halt of American cyber operations against Russia came from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in new guidance to US Cyber Command, officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

It leaves questions over the strength of the US fightback in the cyber arena against alleged Russian hacking, election interference and sabotage efforts that have targeted the Western nations which have sided with Ukraine during the war.

Hundreds or thousands of personnel could be affected by Hegseth’s order, according to The Record, a cybersecurity publication which first reported the news. Operations aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s digital defences are likely to be among those affected.

In a statement, a senior defence department official said they would not comment on the issue due to operation concerns, but added: “There is no greater priority to Secretary Hegseth than the safety of the Warfighter in all operations, to include the cyber domain.”

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz denied that a policy change had been discussed, but acknowledged in an interview on CNN that there would be “all kinds of carrots and sticks to get this war to an end”.

Senior members of Trump’s team – who last month met their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia, with the Ukrainians excluded – have recently defended their change of approach to Moscow more broadly.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told ABC: “You’re not going to bring [the Russians] to the table if you’re calling them names, if you’re being antagonistic. That’s just the president’s instincts from years and years and years of putting together deals.”

In a statement to the New York Times, senior Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said the move was “a critical strategic mistake”.

Trump seemed to be giving Putin “a free pass as Russia continues to launch cyberoperations and ransomware attacks against critical American infrastructure”, Schumer added.

Dozens of construction workers have been pulled out alive from metal containers after they were buried by an avalanche in the Himalayas in India’s Uttarakhand state.

They survived – some as long as nearly two days – as the containers in which they were living had enough oxygen to sustain them until rescuers could dig them out, Indian media reported quoting officials.

On Friday, 54 workers were buried when the avalanche hit a construction camp near Mana village. Eight were killed, while the other 46 were rescued.

The operation lasted almost 60 hours in sub-zero temperatures and concluded on Sunday.

Most of the labourers, who were working on a highway expansion project, were able to “withstand the wrecking avalanche” because of the containers, rescuers told The Indian Express newspaper.

“These metal shelters saved most of them. They had just enough oxygen to hold on until we got them out,” a senior rescue official told The Times of India.

The newspaper reported that the force of the avalanche had hurled eight metal containers and a shed down the mountain.

Uttarakhand state Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has thanked rescue teams for their efforts in challenging conditions.

Members of the Indian army, national and state disaster response forces and local administration had worked to free the workers, using helicopters and drones for the operation.

Many of the rescued workers are receiving treatment at hospitals in the state’s Joshimath town and Rishikesh city.

Satyaprakash Yadav, a migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh who was among those rescued, said the “avalanche hit our container like a landslide”, according to a video released by the army.

He added that the container he was in broke apart when the snow hit and it ended up near a river.

“We managed to get out on our own and reached a nearby army guest house, where we stayed overnight,” he added.

Rajnish Kumar, a worker from Uttarkhand’s Pithoragarh town, said most of them were sleeping when the avalanche struck.

“When the snow hit the container, it sank about 50 to 60 metres down [the mountain]. The Army arrived quickly and rescued us,” he said, according to the army video.

Gaurav Kunwar, a former village council member of Mana, told the BBC on Friday the area where the avalanche hit was a “migratory area” and that it had no permanent residents.

“Only labourers working on border roads stay there in the winter,” he said, adding that it had rained for two days prior to the avalanche.

The India Meteorological Department has warned of rainfall and snow in the northern states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as Jammu and Kashmir until Tuesday.

Avalanches and landslides are common in the higher regions of the Himalayas, especially during winter.

Experts say that climate change has made extreme weather more severe and less predictable. There has also been a rapid rise in deforestation and construction in Uttarakhand’s hilly areas in recent years.

In 2021, nearly 100 people died in Uttarakhand after a piece of a Himalayan glacier fell into the river, triggering flash floods.

Japan has deployed more than 2,000 firefighters to battle the country’s biggest forest fire in three decades.

At least one person has died in the blaze, which has torched more than 5,200 acres around the northern Japanese city of Ofunato since Thursday, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA).

Although January to March is typically Ofunato’s driest season, the area saw less rainfall last month than any February in more than 20 years – recording just 2.5 millimetres, compared to the usual average of 41.

About 4,600 people remain under government-issued evacuation orders as the fire continues to burn.

Some 2,000 have already left the area to stay with friends or relatives, and more than 1,200 have evacuated to shelters, officials said.

The fires are burning in a forest area of Iwate Prefecture, which is Japan’s second largest prefecture and has the country’s second-lowest population density.

More than 80 buildings are estimated to have been damaged so far, although FDMA noted that details are still being assessed.

“Although it is inevitable that the fire will spread to some extent, we will take all possible measures to ensure there will be no impact on people’s homes,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in parliament.

Thousands of firefighters from 14 prefectures, including Tokyo, have been dispatched to fight the fires. At least 16 helicopters are also being used, with images showing the aircraft dumping water onto the smouldering hills.

Like many other countries, Japan in 2024 recorded its hottest year since records began.

It is difficult to know if climate change has caused or worsened specific fires, because other factors – such as changes to the way land is used – are also relevant.

However, the IPCC says climate change is making the weather conditions needed for wildfires to spread more likely.

Have you been evacuated? Send us your story.

An adventurer who tried to row across the Pacific Ocean from the United States to Australia has been rescued just days before he reached his final destination.

Lithuanian rower Aurimas Mockus sounded a distress signal late on Friday after he was stranded by a cyclone, and surrounded by towering waves and strong winds packing up to 100 km/h (62 mph), local media reported.

Authorities made radio contact with Mr Mockus the next day when he was about 740km east of Mackay, a city on Australia’s east coast in the Coral Sea.

By the time he was rescued on Monday morning, the 44-year-old had spent nearly five months alone at sea.

Mr Mockus is getting medical treatment on an Australian warship, which will take him to Sydney, the Australian navy said.

He was attempting to become one of few rowers who have crossed the Pacific alone and without stopping.

Among them are Britons Peter Bird and John Beeden, who achieved the feat in 1983 and 2015 respectively, and Australian Michelle Lee in 2023.

Mr Mockus started his 12,000km-long journey in October from San Diego in southern California. Brisbane was meant to be his destination.

He rowed for an average of 12 hours a day, according to local reports.

He regularly updated his progress on Instagram. In the latest post published a day before he called for help, Mr Mockus reported that he had crossed the Chesterfield Islands, a cluster of French coral islands about 1,500km east of Australia.

“The highlight is that I successfully sailed the reefs of Chesterfield Islands. And further as God allows… The most important thing is to hold back the next few days,” he wrote.

Tropical Cyclone Alfred, which derailed Mr Mockus’s plan, is forecast to hit Australia’s eastern states of Queensland and New South Wales in the coming days.

One of the world’s most prolific blood donors – whose plasma saved the lives of more than 2 million babies – has died.

James Harrison died in his sleep at a nursing home in New South Wales, Australia on 17 February, his family said on Monday. He was 88.

Known in Australia as the man with the golden arm, Harrison’s blood contained a rare antibody, Anti-D, which is used to make medication given to pregnant mothers whose blood is at risk of attacking their unborn babies.

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service who paid tribute to Harrison, said he had pledged to become a donor after receiving transfusions while undergoing a major chest surgery when he was 14.

He started donating his blood plasma when he was 18 and continued doing so every two weeks until he was 81.

In 2005, he had the world record for most blood plasma donated – a title he held until 2022 when he was overtaken by a man in the US.

Harrison’s daughter, Tracey Mellowship, said her father was “very proud to have saved so many lives, without any cost or pain”.

“He always said it does not hurt, and the life you save could be your own,” she said.

Mellowship and two of Harrison’s grandchildren are also recipients of anti-D immunisations.

“It made [James] happy to hear about the many families like ours, who existed because of his kindness,” she said.

Anti-D jabs protect unborn babies from a deadly blood disorder called haemolytic disease of the foetus and newborn, or HDFN.

The condition occurs at pregnancy when the mother’s red blood cells are incompatible with that of their growing baby.

The mother’s immune system then sees the baby’s blood cells as a threat and produces antibodies to attack them. This can seriously harm the baby, causing severe anaemia, heart failure, or even death.

Before anti-D interventions were developed in the mid-1960s, one in two babies diagnosed with HDFN died.

It is unclear how Harrison’s blood came to be so rich in anti-D, but some reports said it had to do with the massive blood transfusion he received at 14.

There are fewer than 200 anti-D donors in Australia, but they help an estimated 45,000 mothers and their babies every year, according to the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, also known as Lifeblood.

Lifeblood has been working with Australia’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research to grow anti-D antibodies in the lab by replicating blood and immune cells from Harrison and other donors.

Researchers involved hope lab-made anti-D can one day be used to help pregnant women worldwide.

“Creating a new therapy has long been a ‘holy grail’,” Lifeblood’s research director David Irving said.

He noted the scarcity of donors committed to regular donation, who are able to produce antibodies in sufficient quality and quantity.

An elderly man has been killed and four other people have been wounded in what police say was a terrorist stabbing attack in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.

It happened at the HaMifratz Central train and bus station, and the attacker was shot dead at the scene by security guards, police said.

The victim who died was aged around 70, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said. A 15-year-old boy and a man and a woman in their 30s were in a serious condition, while a 70-year-old woman was moderate hurt, it added.

The police said the attacker was an Israeli Druze man from the town of Shfaram who had recently returned from abroad. Such an attack by a member of Israel’s Druze community is rare.

The Druze are an ethnic and religious group whose faith is an offshoot of Shia Islam. About 150,000 live in Israel and the occupied Golan Heights, comprising about 1.5% of the population.

A witness told Israel’s Walla news website that the attacker travelled to Haifa on a bus from Shfaram, which is about 10km (6 miles) east of Haifa.

He began stabbing passengers when the bus arrived at the station, then got off and attacked others on the concourse, the witness said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “My wife Sara and I send our deepest condolences to the family of the man who was murdered in the shocking terrorist attack in Haifa.

“We will continue to fight everywhere against those who seek to murder us and we will defeat them.”

There was no immediate claim from any armed groups, but Hamas described the attack as “heroic” and a “natural response” to what it called Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

It comes amid deadlock between Hamas and Israel over moving forward with the six-week-old Gaza ceasefire deal.

Israel stopped aid from entering Gaza after Hamas rejected what Netanyahu’s office said was a US proposal for an extension to the first phase, which ended on Saturday night.

Hamas accused Israel of reneging on the deal and said the second phase should go ahead as agreed.

“I’m scared,” sobs Nabila.

The 10-year-old’s life is limited to her one-bedroom home in Islamabad and the dirt road outside it. Since December she hasn’t been to her local school, when it decided it would no longer accept Afghans without a valid Pakistani birth certificate. But even if she could go to classes, Nabila says she wouldn’t.

“I was off sick one day, and I heard police came looking for Afghan children,” she cries, as she tells us her friend’s family were sent back to Afghanistan.

Nabila’s not her real name – all the names of Afghans quoted in this article have been changed for their safety.

Pakistan’s capital and the neighbouring city of Rawalpindi are witnessing a surge in deportations, arrests and detentions of Afghans, the UN says. It estimates that more than half of the three million Afghans in the country are undocumented.

Afghans describe a life of constant fear and near daily police raids on their homes.

Some told the BBC they feared being killed if they went back to Afghanistan. These include families on a US resettlement programme, that has been suspended by the Trump administration.

Pakistan is frustrated at how long relocation programmes are taking, says Philippa Candler, the UN Refugee Agency’s representative in Islamabad. The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) says 930 people were sent back to Afghanistan in the first half of February, double the figure two weeks earlier. At least 20% of those deported from Islamabad and Rawalpindi had documentation from the UN Refugee Agency, meaning they were recognised as people in need of international protection.

But Pakistan is not a party to the Refugee Convention and has previously said it does not recognise Afghans living in the country as refugees. The government has said its policies are aimed at all illegal foreign nationals and a deadline for them to leave is looming. That date has fluctuated but is now set to 31 March for those without valid visas, and 30 June for those with resettlement letters.

Many Afghans are terrified amid the confusion. They also say the visa process can be difficult to navigate. Nabila’s family believes they have only one option: to hide. Her father Hamid served in the Afghan military, before the Taliban takeover in 2021. He broke down in tears describing his sleepless nights.

“I have served my country and now I’m useless. That job has doomed me,” he said.

His family are without visas, and are not on a resettlement list. They tell us their phone calls to the UN’s refugee agency go unanswered.

The BBC has reached out to the agency for comment.

The Taliban government has previously told the BBC all Afghans should return because they could “live in the country without any fear”. It claims these refugees are “economic migrants”.

But a UN report in 2023 cast doubt on assurances from the Taliban government. It found hundreds of former government officials and armed forces members were allegedly killed despite a general amnesty.

The Taliban government’s guarantees are of little reassurance to Nabila’s family so they choose to run when authorities are nearby. Neighbours offer each other shelter, as they all try to avoid retuning to Afghanistan.

The UN counted 1,245 Afghans being arrested or detained in January across Pakistan, more than double the same period last year.

Nabila says Afghans shouldn’t be forced out. “Don’t kick Afghans out of their homes – we’re not here by choice, we are forced to be here.”

There is a feeling of sadness and loneliness in their home. “I had a friend who was here and then was deported to Afghanistan,” Nabila’s mother Maryam says.

“She was like a sister, a mother. The day we were separated was a difficult day.”

I ask Nabila what she wants to do when she’s older. “Modelling,” she says, giving me a serious look. Everyone in the room smiles. The tension thaws.

Her mother whispers to her there are plenty of other things she could be, an engineer or a lawyer. Nabila’s dream of modelling is one she could never pursue under the Taliban government. With their restrictions on girls’ education, her mother’s suggestions would also prove impossible.

Pakistan has a long record of taking in Afghan refugees. But cross-border attacks have surged and stoked tension between the two neighbours. Pakistan blames them on militants based in Afghanistan, which the Taliban government denies. Since September 2023, the year Pakistan launched its “Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan,” 836,238 individuals have now been returned to Afghanistan.

Amidst this current phase of deportations, some Afghans are being held in the Haji camp in Islamabad. Ahmad was in the final stages of the United States’ resettlement programme. He tells us when President Donald Trump suspended it for review, he extinguished Ahmad’s “last hope”. The BBC has seen what appears to be his employment letter by a Western, Christian non-profit group in Afghanistan.

A few weeks ago, when he was out shopping, he received a call. His three-year-old daughter was on the line. “My baby called, come baba police is here, police come to our door,” he says. His wife’s visa extension was still pending, and she was busy pleading with the police.

Ahmad ran home. “I couldn’t leave them behind.” He says he sat in a van and waited hours as police continued their raids. The wives and children of his neighbours continued trickling into the vehicle. Ahmad began receiving calls from their husbands, begging him to take care of them. They had already escaped into the woods.

His family was held for three days in “unimaginable conditions”, says Ahmad, who claims they were only given one blanket per family, and one piece of bread per day, and that their phones were confiscated. The Pakistani government says it ensures “no one is mistreated or harassed during the repatriation process”.

We attempt to visit inside Haji camp to verify Ahmad’s account but are denied entry by authorities. The BBC approached the Pakistani government and the police for an interview or statement, but no one was made available.

Scared of being detained or deported, some families have chosen to leave Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Others tell us they simply can’t afford to.

One woman claims she was in the final stages of the US resettlement scheme and decided to move with her two daughters to Attock, 80km (50 miles) west of Islamabad. “I can barely afford bread,” she says.

The BBC has seen a document confirming she had an interview with the IOM in early January. She claims her family is still witnessing almost daily raids in her neighbourhood.

A spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad has said it is in “close communication” with Pakistan’s government “on the status of Afghan nationals in the US resettlement pathways”.

Outside Haji camp’s gates, a woman is waiting. She tells us she has a valid visa but her sister’s has expired. Her sister is now being held inside the camp, along with her children. The officers would not let her visit her family, and she is terrified they will be deported. She begins weeping, “If my country was safe, why would I come here to Pakistan? And even here we cannot live peacefully.”

She points to her own daughter who is sitting in their car. She was a singer in Afghanistan, where a law states women cannot be heard speaking outside their home, let alone singing. I turn to her daughter and ask if she still sings. She stares. “No.”

Mixue Ice Cream and Tea may be unfamiliar to many of us but the Chinese firm has more outlets than McDonald’s and Starbucks.

On Monday, the bubble tea chain’s shares jumped by more than 40% in their Hong Kong Stock Exchange debut.

The company raised $444m (£352m) in the financial hub’s biggest initial public offering (IPO) of the year.

Mixue’s popularity comes as many people in China are grappling with the country’s economic challenges – including a property crisis, and weak consumer and business confidence. It sells ice creams and drinks for an average of six Chinese yuan ($0.82; £0.65).

The company was founded in 1997 by Zhang Hongchao, a student at Henan University of Finance and Economics, as a part time job to help his family’s finances.

Its full name Mìxuě Bīngchéng means “honey snow ice city”, with its stores adorned with its Snow King mascot and playing the firm’s official theme tune on a loop.

According to Mixue, it has more than 45,000 stores across China and 11 other countries, including Singapore and Thailand. The firm has also said it plans to continue expanding.

That compares to “over 43,000 locations” for McDonald’s and Starbucks’ 40,576 outlets.

While it is often seen as China’s biggest bubble tea, iced drinks, and ice cream chain, it operates more like a raw-materials supplier than a traditional brand.

Unlike Starbucks, which operates more than half of its stores directly, almost all of Mixue’s outlets are run by franchisees.

Mixue’s strong market debut contrasts with smaller rival Guming, which saw shares slide on its first day of trading in February.

Last year, shares in the owner of bubble tea chain Chabaidao also fell on their market debut.

The fashion is almost as important as the films at the Oscars, and Hollywood’s finest walked the red carpet in an array of eyecatching outfits before Sunday’s ceremony in Los Angeles.

They included Wicked star Cynthia Erivo, who wore a shade of her character Elphaba’s green in an elaborate velvet ballgown.

Erivo missed out on the prize for best actress, but won the award for best nails.

Co-star Ariana Grande, who was nominated for best supporting actress, wore a striking champagne Schiaparelli gown.

However, it was perhaps a little impractical – so she changed before performing to open the show with Erivo.

Best actor contender Timothee Chalamet brought a splash of bright colour in a daffodil Givenchy tux.

Demi Moore radiated Hollywood style in her jewelled silver gown. She was nominated for best actress for The Substance.

She lost out to newcomer Mikey Madison, who paid homage to another sex worker fable, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in a baby pink and black column Dior gown and a Tiffany’s necklace from the 1910s – very reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn.

Emilia Perez star Selena Gomez also went for classic figure-hugging glamour.

Zoe Saldana chose a maroon duvet-dress with a jewel-encrusted bustier. She won best supporting actress for Emilia Perez.

Best actor nominee Colman Domingo has been a style icon all awards season, and said the choice of red for his custom Valentino jacket represented love.

Andrew Garfield, dapper in a brown suit, was among the Oscar presenters.

The Substance actress Margaret Qualley sported a backless Chanel gown and a backwards diamond necklace.

British star Felicity Jones, nominated for best supporting actress for The Brutalist, wore a slinky metallic custom Armani Privé creation.

More on the Oscars 2025:

• LIVE: Follow reaction to the Oscars
• ROUND-UP: Anora sweeps the board
• HIGHLIGHTS: A payback kiss, a surprise win, and defying gravity
• WINNERS: Full list of tonight’s awardees
• ANORA: ‘I didn’t want to be in a bad stripper film’
• MORE: How to watch the winning films

Jeff Goldblum, who was in Wicked, sported a floral shirt and real flowers on his white dinner jacket, and was accompanied by wife Emilie Livingston.

Monica Barbaro, nominated for best supporting actress for playing Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown, wore a Dior gown with voluminous skirt.

A Complete Unknown co-star Elle Fanning had a lace-layered Givenchy dress with long black ribbon belt.

Michelle Yeoh won best actress in 2023, and wore a blue Balenciaga gown as she joined her Wicked cast-mates this year.

Rachel Zegler, who will soon be seen in a remake of Snow White, wore a strapless studded sheer Dior gown.

British actress Raffey Cassidy, who appears in The Brutalist, had a flowing gown tied with a giant bow.

Best supporting actor nominee Jeremy Strong wore an olive suit with quirky matching tie as he returned to the red carpet, three decades after he watched the stars from the bleachers as a young fan.

Ana de Armas, who presented an award, wore a sleek black dress with intricate jewelled halter neck.

Double Oscar winner Emma Stone went for the flapper look in a shimmering Louis Vuitton dress.

Nosferatu star Lily-Rose Depp wore a sheer floral lace Chanel creation.

Miley Cyrus also brought goth glam to the red carpet in a beaded black Alexander McQueen gown with halter neck and lace gloves.

British actress Yasmin Finney, known for Heartstopper and Doctor Who, was framed by tall feathers attached to her dress.

Blackpink singer Lisa sported a dramatic flowing floor-length black-and-white jacket and shirt by Markgong with a red floral brooch. She later performed Live and Let Die in a segment paying tribute to the James Bond films.

UK singer Raye, resplendent in red by Vivienne Westwood, also performed in the James Bond segment.

Halle Berry sparkled in a mirrored mosaic effect design.

Edward Norton was nominated for best supporting actor for playing folk music hero Pete Seeger in A Complete Unknown.

Wallace and Gromit joined the Hollywood stars on the red carpet after Vengeance Most Fowl was nominated for best animated film – they were accompanied by creator Nick Park (left), producer Richard Beek (centre) and co-director Merlin Crossingham.

Isabella Rossellini received her first Oscar nomination, for playing a nun in Conclave. She wore blue velvet – a nod to the name of her 1986 breakthrough film.

Four-time Oscars host Whoopi Goldberg was back as an award presenter this year. Designer Christian Siriano described the reflective look of her dress as like “liquid water”.

Best actor winner Adrien Brody‘s traditional suit had bird-shaped style beading on his shoulder.

Grammy-nominated singer Omar Apollo wore a netted veil along with black-and-white spotted shirt and scarf.

Wicked actor Bowen Yang, who announced the Oscar nominations in January, opted for floral embellishments on his jacket along with a frilled pink shirt.

• LIVE: Follow BBC coverage of the ceremony
• RECAP: How the Oscars unfolded this year
• BEST MOMENTS: A payback kiss, a surprise win, and defying gravity
• WATCH: Highlights of the show in 180 seconds
• FASHION: See the best looks from the red carpet
• WINNERS: Full list of tonight’s awardees
• MORE: How to watch the winning films

This year’s Oscars had it all – glamour, tears and the Wicked stars defying gravity. Here are some of the top moments from the biggest night in Hollywood.

There was an audible gasp from journalists in the winners’ room when Mikey Madison was announced as the best actress winner.

Demi Moore was the favourite for much of this campaign. Things did shift after Madison’s Bafta win, but the race remained incredibly tight.

In the end, it was Madison’s night. It marked an incredible moment for a 25-year-old actress who was relatively unknown before her role in Anora.

This is exactly the type of rags-to-riches story that awards ceremonies love – and the film itself celebrates.

• The sex workers at the heart of Anora

The film tells the story of sex worker Anora, who has a whirlwind ill-fated romance with the spoilt son of a Russian oligarch.

Edie Turquet, one of the young female dancers and strippers in the film, texted me to say it was “insane” that a film about sex workers could win best picture at the Oscars.

She added that she hoped it would “shift or at least challenge” perspectives of people towards her community.

• LIVE: Follow BBC coverage of the ceremony
• RECAP: How the Oscars unfolded this year
• WATCH: Highlights of the show in 180 seconds
• FASHION: See the best looks from the red carpet
• WINNERS: Full list of tonight’s awardees
• MORE: How to watch the winning films

We all knew it was coming but Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande belting out Wicked’s anthem Defying Gravity was even better than we could have hoped for.

As Erivo, in a white gown, hit that final iconic note, the audience stood in applause.

The co-stars performed a medley of songs, including Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which Grande sang to open the show wearing a gorgeous red sequined dress.

Earlier in the night, Grande stunned on the red carpet with a champagne Schiaparelli gown, which leaned into her role as Glinda the Good Witch in the film.

“It’s giving chandelier,” one reporter said to me backstage.

On social media the big question was: “How is she going to sit down in that dress?”

On the red carpet, there was quite a moment when Halle Berry ran up to Adrien Brody and gave him a big kiss.

It recreated a moment at the 2003 Academy Awards, when Brody – having just won best actor for his performance in The Pianist – turned and kissed Berry, who had presented the award to him.

She told Variety: “I had to pay him back”.

Speaking to Extra, she added that the only reason she did it was because Brody’s girlfriend, Georgina Chapman, “was fine” with it.

The Oscars wrote on X with a clip of the kiss: “A reunion 22 years in the making”.

Berry and Brody weren’t the only two seen locking lips.

Inside the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre, lovebirds Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet were photographed sharing a kiss and laughing together.

Reality star and makeup mogul Jenner was there to support her boyfriend who was up for best actor – but ended up losing out to… Brody.

Actor Adam Sandler was in on the ongoing jokes about his typically casual attire.

Early on in the night, host Conan O’Brien called him out, saying he was “dressed like a guy playing video poker at 2am”.

(For reference, Sandler was in the audience wearing a blue hoodie and shorts, an ensemble that looked more at home on the basketball court).

Following a playful back and forth between the two, the actor walked into the aisle of the theatre and said he was “leaving” before going over to Timothée Chalamet and shouting his surname, in the way he previously did on Saturday Night Live.

Chalamet, ever good natured, laughed along.

This year’s Oscars race has played out against the grim backdrop of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, which killed 29 people.

The Grammys and Golden Globes both made the fires a central theme of the show.

The Academy Awards mentioned it only a handful of times, signalling Hollywood is moving on.

There was, however, one powerful moment, when O’Brien welcomed some of the firefighters who fought the blazes on stage. He called them “heroes”, with the audience clapping and giving the emergency workers a standing ovation.

O’Brien then said there are some jokes that even he isn’t brave enough to tell – and asked some of the firefighters to read them out instead.

LA Fire Captain Erik Scott read one joke off a teleprompter that said their hearts go out to everyone who lost their homes – including the makers of Joker 2.

It got a big laugh and O’Brien called it the best joke delivery of the night.

It was Zoe Saldaña’s first Oscar, winning best supporting actress for Emilia Pérez – a musical about a transgender Mexican drug lord – and it marked one of the most powerful and emotional speeches of the night.

She broke down in tears immediately, crying out “Mommy”, to her mother in the audience.

“I am floored by this honour,” she wept, paying tribute to her fellow nominees for their “loving and community”, saying “I will pay it forward”.

Praising the film’s cast and crew, she got emotional as she talked about her family.

“Everything brave, outrageous and good I’ve ever done in my life is because of you,” she said, praising her husband, his “beautiful hair” and their three sons.

“My grandmother came to this country in 1961 – I am a proud child of immigrant parents with dreams and dignity and hardworking hands.

“I’m the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award and I know I won’t be the last.

“Getting an award where I got to sing and speak in Spanish – this is for my grandmother.”

The month-long saga to obtain a US visa by two Iranian filmmakers ended in the pair winning the best animated short film Academy Award – with them rushing to even make the ceremony in Hollywood.

Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani arrived at Los Angeles airport just hours before the Oscars award ceremony was due to begin.

After their plane landed, they quickly changed outfits in a public restroom and made it with only moments to go before winning the award for their film, In the Shadow of the Cypress.

“It’s not our fault we are so late,” Sohani said to BBC News before the show. “We couldn’t get a visa. It’s a difficult relationship” between the US and Iran, she explained.

“Until yesterday we hadn’t obtained our visa and now we are standing here with this statuette in our hands,” said Molayemi in his acceptance speech.

“Speaking in front of this expectant audience is very hard for us,” he added. “Yes, if we preserve and remain faithful, miracles will happen.”

As ever, politics reared its head during Sunday night’s ceremony.

Host O’Brien made a quip about how Anora was “having a good night”, before saying: “I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.”

O’Brien must have been writing his monologue up to the very last minute, because the joke appeared to be a nod to the White House spat between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the No Other Land documentary team descended on the red carpet wearing Palestinian scarves and Kufiya. Their film is set in the occupied West Bank. After they won for the film, the team took the stage and called out US policy in the region.

Kill Bill star Daryl Hannah also veered into politics while on stage. She referenced the war in Ukraine, saying “Slava Ukraini”, the country’s salute, as she presented an award.

But one person wasn’t mentioned.

Here in liberal Hollywood, you may have expected jokes and barbs toward Donald Trump – but his name didn’t come up even once.

TikTok is profiting from sexual livestreams performed by teens as young as 15, the BBC has been told.

We spoke to three women in Kenya who said they began this activity as teenagers. They told us they used TikTok to openly advertise and negotiate payment for more explicit content that would be sent via other messaging platforms.

TikTok bans solicitation but the company knows it takes place, moderators have told the BBC. TikTok takes a cut of about 70% from all livestream transactions, we have previously found.

TikTok told the BBC it has “zero tolerance for exploitation”.

Livestreams from Kenya are popular on TikTok – each night over the course of a week, we found up to a dozen in which women performers danced suggestively, watched by hundreds of people around the world.

It’s two o’clock in the morning in Nairobi, and the TikTok Lives are in full flow.

Music blasts, and users chat over each other, as a woman turns her camera on to twerk or pose provocatively. Emoji “gifts” then fill the screen.

“Inbox me for kinembe guys. Tap, tap,” the performers say on repeat. “Tap, tap,” is a phrase commonly used on TikTok, calling for viewers to “like” a livestream.

“Kinembe” is Swahili for “clitoris”. “Inbox me” instructs the viewer to send a private message over TikTok with a more explicit bespoke request – such as to watch the performer masturbating, stripping or performing sexual activities with other women.

In some of the livestreams we watched, coded sexual slang was used to advertise sexual services.

The emoji gifts act as payment for the TikTok livestreams and – because TikTok removes any obvious sexual acts and nudity – also the more explicit content sent later on other platforms. The gifts can be converted into cash.

“It’s not in TikTok’s interest to clamp down on soliciting of sex – the more people give gifts on a livestream… [the] more revenue for TikTok,” says a Kenyan former moderator we are calling Jo – one of more than 40,000 moderators TikTok says it employs globally.

• If you are outside of the UK, watch Liked, Lured, Livestreamed: The Dark World of Digital Brothels on YouTube
• Or listen to TikTok and the digital pimps: Eye Investigates – from BBC World Service

We discovered that TikTok is still taking about a 70% cut from livestream gifts. The company denied it took such a large commission after we established the same cut in a 2022 investigation.

TikTok has long been aware of child exploitation in its livestreams – having run its own internal investigation in 2022 – but ignored the issue because it “profited significantly” from them, according to the claims of a lawsuit brought by the US state of Utah last year.

TikTok responded that the lawsuit – which is ongoing – ignored the “proactive measures” it had made to improve safety.

Kenya is a hotspot for this abuse, says the charity ChildFund Kenya, compounded by a young demographic and widespread internet usage. The African continent as a whole also has poor online moderation compared to Western countries, the charity added.

Jo, who worked for Teleperformance – contracted by TikTok to provide content moderation – says moderators are given a reference guide of banned sexual words or actions. But this guide is restrictive, says Jo, and does not take into account slang or other provocative gestures.

“You can see by the way they are posing, with the camera on their cleavage and thighs [for example], that they are soliciting sex. They may not say anything, but you can see they are signposting to their [other platform] account, but there’s nothing I can do.”

Another content moderator for Teleperformance, who we are calling Kelvin, says moderation is also limited by TikTok’s increasing reliance on artificial intelligence (AI), which he says is not sensitive enough to pick up on local sexual slang.

Jo and Kelvin are among seven current and former content moderators working on TikTok content who told us their concerns. Jo says about 80% of livestreams flagged in content moderators’ feeds were sexual, or advertising sexual services, and TikTok is aware of the scale of the issue.

ChildFund Kenya and other charities have told the BBC that children as young as nine are taking part in these activities.

We have spoken to teenage girls and young women who say they are spending up to six or seven hours a night on the activity and making on average £30 a day – enough to pay for a week’s food and transport.

“I sell myself on TikTok. I dance naked. I do that because that’s where I can earn money to support myself,” says a 17-year-old we are calling Esther. She lives in a poor Nairobi neighbourhood, where 3,000 residents share toilet facilities. She says the money helps her buy food for her child, and support her mother who has been struggling to pay the rent since Esther’s father died.

She says she was 15 years old when she was introduced to TikTok Lives by a friend, who helped her bypass the age restrictions – only over-18s can use a Live. Users also need at least 1,000 followers to go live.

So TikTok users with a big following can act as digital pimps – hosting the livestreams selling sexual content. Some of them have back-up accounts, indicating they have been banned or suspended by TikTok in the past.

They appear to know how to evade detection by TikTok’s content moderators, while generating the right amount of sexual teasing to pique customers’ interest.

“When you’re dancing, move away from the camera, otherwise you’ll get blocked,” shouts a pimp to a woman twerking on screen.

In return for being hosted, the women give pimps a cut of their earnings.

The relationship can quickly turn exploitative, says Esther. She says her digital pimp knew she was under 18, and “he likes using young girls”.

He put pressure on her to earn more – meaning she needed to livestream more frequently – and took a larger cut of her earnings than she expected, she says.

“So if an emoji is sent which is 35,000ksh (£213), he takes 20,000ksh (£121) and you only get 15,000ksh (£91).”

Working for him was like being in “handcuffs” she says. ”You are the one hurting because he gets the biggest share and yet it is you who has been used.”

“Sophie”, not her real name, who says she was also 15 when she started livestreaming on TikTok, says she got requests from men in Europe for services on third-party platforms, including from one a German user who would demand that she caress her breasts and genitals for money.

Now 18, she regrets her online sex work. Some of the videos she sent to users via other platforms were then uploaded to social media without her consent, she says.

Her neighbours found out, and warned other young people not to associate with her, she told the BBC.

“They brand me as a lost sheep, and young people are told that I’ll mislead them. I am lonely most of the time.”

Some of the girls and women we spoke to said they had also been paid to meet TikTok users for sex in person, or had been pressured into having sex with their pimps.

TikTok is keen to establish itself in African markets, but is not employing enough staff to effectively monitor content, the content moderators in Kenya told us.

Kenya’s government has shown signs of acknowledging the issue – in 2023, President William Ruto held a meeting with TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew to call for better content moderation on the platform. The government said the company had agreed to tighter regulation, with a TikTok office in Kenya to help co-ordinate operations.

But the moderators we spoke to said, more than 18 months later, neither had happened.

Teleperformance replied that its moderators “work diligently to tag and flag user-generated content based on community standards and client guidelines” and that its clients’ systems are not set up to allow Teleperformance to remove offending material or report it to law enforcement authorities.

A spokesperson for TikTok told the BBC:

“TikTok has zero tolerance for exploitation. We enforce strict safety policies, including robust Live content rules, moderation in 70 languages, including Swahili, and we partner with local experts and creators, including our Sub-Saharan Africa Safety Advisory Council to continually strengthen our approach.”

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“Dangerous, demeaning, and immoral.” That’s how Donald Trump has described diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programmes which aim to boost workers from diverse backgrounds.

Upon returning to the White House, he ordered the shutdown of all federal DEI initiatives, urging the private sector to follow suit.

And many have, with the likes of Walmart, McDonald’s, Meta and Amazon ditching or scaling back their diversity policies.

Corporations, according to Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, have been “neutered” and need more “masculine energy”.

Some UK employees fear Trump’s rhetoric could normalise intolerant attitudes in the workplace, even if DEI policies remain intact.

“Someone that is at the top saying things like that sets a precedent that it’s okay to do so,” says Chloe, who works at a London-based finance company.

Stefan Hoops, the head of Deutsche Bank’s investment arm, also said he feared Trump’s language would “lead us straight back to the macho ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ era” and called on companies to ensure equal opportunities.

He posted his thoughts on LinkedIn alongside a picture of him lifting weights, saying, “I figured a masculine-looking picture would balance my anti-anti-woke observations.”

But so far there is little evidence of UK firms changing their diversity policies.

In fact, the UK arm of accountancy giant Deloitte has signalled a split with its US counterpart by saying it remains “committed to our diversity goals”, not long after staff in the US were told there were plans to “sunset” their DEI goals.

In the UK, the Equality Act protects against discrimination and since 2017, organisations with over 250 employees must report their gender pay gap.

In addition, any company listed on the stock exchange is required to publish board diversity data against set targets, including that at least 40% of board members should be women.

Pavita Cooper is the UK chair of the 30% Club, which campaigns to increase gender diversity in senior management.

She says the UK’s legal system will help protect DEI policies.

“In the US, they are talking a lot about affirmative action and ‘woke ideology’. In the UK, we focus a lot more on positive action,” Ms Cooper says.

She explains that affirmative action involves quotas, while positive action encourages participation without preferential treatment, such as through scholarships or mentoring.

Martha Lane Fox, who has worked to promote diversity in the tech sector, believes the UK has an opportunity to “lean into diversity – stand apart from the US”.

She points out the “irony” of Elon Musk, tasked by Donald Trump with slashing federal government spending, standing in the Oval Office with his young son as he dismantled DEI programmes.

“Imagine if everyone had such casual and extraordinary opportunities for childcare, what could we unlock?”

• Could DEI live on in the US under a different name?

However, Baroness Lane Fox, who is chair of the British Chambers of Commerce business group, says the UK still has “a long way to go” in terms of representation, pointing out that there is only one disabled person on the board of a FTSE 100 company and very few female executives on boards.

The CIPD, the professional body for HR, notes some change to DEI (also known as EDI) policies, with companies such as BT dropping diversity measures from its managers’ bonus scheme.

“We’re seeing some UK organisations reposition or re-evaluate their EDI initiatives and metrics,” says Peter Cheese, chief executive of the CIPD.

“Some of this will be in response to what is happening in America but it’s a shift that has been building for a while.

“The current climate – social and political – is making organisations look at what they’re doing and why, how they’re measuring the impact of these initiatives, and the difference their EDI policies are making to business outcomes.”

A spokesperson for BT said the changes do not represent a rollback on the company’s EDI commitments.

In the City, the financial regulator had proposed collecting diversity data for all financial services staff, but in May its chief executive told MPs that it was not “prioritising moving forward on that at this stage”.

The data gathering plans had been criticised by some Conservative MPs as well as City bosses privately as being costly and little more than a box-ticking exercise.

In the US even tech giant Apple, which points to its “north star of dignity and respect for everyone”, has been forced to admit that it may need to make some changes to its policies “as the legal landscape around this issue evolves”.

Last month, consulting giant Accenture also cited the “evolving landscape” as it said it was ending employee representation goals and career development programmes for “people of specific demographic groups”.

The company, which employs around 11,000 people in the UK, said the change in its policies and practices would apply “globally, and not just in the US”.

It also noted that it had “largely achieved” its diversity goals.

Similarly, investment bank Goldman Sachs told the BBC earlier this month that it had axed an internal diversity rule that barred it from advising all male, all white boards on company flotations because it was no longer needed.

Ann Cairns, who is the chair of Crown Agents Bank and Trust Management Finance Group, and also sits on the board of London Business School, says she isn’t surprised that DEI policies are under attack.

“We swing back and forth on this topic depending on who is in power and their influence. Some bigger companies are being driven by America but we will have to wait and see what happens.”

The uncertain future of two killer whales is no closer to being resolved despite the closure of their marine zoo home two months ago.

Wikie, 23, and her 11-year-old son Keijo are still being kept at Marineland Antibes, located in southern France, after it closed in January due to a forthcoming law banning the use of orcas in shows.

For months managers at Marineland have tried to send the killer whales to other marine zoos but this has angered animal rights campaigners who want them housed in a sanctuary, where the orcas won’t have to perform or be used for breeding.

The orcas were expected to go to another marine zoo in Spain when the French government rejected a move to a proposed sanctuary in Canada a few weeks ago.

But now Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the French ecology minister, said she would speak to colleagues in Spain, Italy and Greece about creating a different sanctuary together. However, her proposal has few other details and has been criticised.

The ecology ministry, when asked by the BBC, had no further information on where a sanctuary might be located or who would fund its construction and running costs.

Loro Parque, a marine zoo in Spain that wants to receive the killer whales from Marineland, told the BBC this week the current proposal was “wholly unsuitable” and that they were best positioned to care for them.

Christoph Kiessling, vice-president of the facility in Tenerife, said whale sanctuaries were “currently unable to meet the complex physiological, social and environmental needs” of killer whales.

Most designs involve cordoning off a bay and employing staff to ensure Wikie and Keijo – who were born in captivity and cannot be released into the wild – are properly fed and looked after.

Kiessling did say such a solution might be possible if there was more extensive research and planning but “such a process could take years, leaving the two Marineland [orcas] in a facility that is being wound down”.

Campaigners point out that several orcas have died at Loro Parque in the last few years, including three between March 2021 and September 2022.

Managers at the marine zoo said scientific examination of those orcas by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria showed the deaths were unavoidable.

They also fear Wikie might be used for breeding. Loro Parque announced in January that Morgan, the only female of the three orcas currently kept there, is pregnant.

Katheryn Wise, from the charity World Animal Protection, said Loro Parque was ultimately an entertainment business that used orcas to make money.

She added: “Morgan’s pregnancy underlines the fact that Loro Parque could never be a suitable option for Wikie and Keijo and should be removed as an option.”

Marineland, who are still paying to look after the orcas, said a move to Loro Parque as soon as possible was in the best interests of the animals’ welfare. They have asked the ecology ministry to approve the transfer.

The whale sanctuary in Canada applied to the French government to take in the orcas last year but their bid was rejected in January.

They were told the site they had selected in Nova Scotia was too far away and that the water there was too cold for Wikie and Keijo, who have spent their whole lives in southern France.

Following Pannier-Runacher’s proposal for a sanctuary in Europe, which she announced a fortnight ago in a video on Instagram, the directors of the rejected Canadian project criticised the idea of one being built in the Mediterranean.

They wrote a letter to her in which they cited Dr David Perpiñán, a diplomate at the European College of Zoological Medicine, who said: “Wikie and Keijo’s origin is Iceland. These two orcas do not belong to the ecotypes seen in the Mediterranean.”

He added: “The possibility of building a sanctuary for them in the Mediterranean is probably the worst of the possible options.”

The directors also said, unlike the European proposal, their sanctuary was ready to begin construction as the design had already been finalised.

Other animal rights groups have been more welcoming of Pannier-Runacher’s announcement, saying a European sanctuary would still be better for the orcas’ welfare than life in another marine zoo.

Sea Shepherd, a marine conservation society, replied to the minister on Instagram saying this was a chance to achieve what the zoo industry calls “impossible” – the building of an ocean sanctuary where captive orcas can enjoy the rest of their lives.

Pannier-Runacher said in her video she was keenly aware of the strong feelings people had about where Wikie and Keijo should be rehomed.

She did not rule out sending them to Loro Parque or other marine zoos, only that she would “oppose any transfer to a site that is not suitable for accommodating” orcas.

Last November she blocked an application by Marineland to send the killer whales to a marine zoo in Japan, citing lower animal welfare regulations in the country.

The ‘Year of the Sea’ is currently underway in France, a government initiative to raise awareness about the importance of the ocean, and Pannier-Runacher believes the creation of a European whale sanctuary would be a fitting testament to it.

“I’m not telling you that it will work,” she told Instagram users. “But nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

As a Ryanair flight from London approached Vilnius, Lithuania, on 17 January, its descent was suddenly aborted. Just minutes from touching down, the aircraft’s essential Global Positioning System (GPS) suffered an unexplained interference, triggering an emergency diversion.

The Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 had already descended to around 850ft (259m) when the disruption occurred. Instead of landing, the plane was forced to climb back into the sky and divert nearly 400km (250 miles) south to Warsaw, Poland. Lithuanian air authorities later confirmed the aircraft had been affected by “GPS signal interference”.

This was not an isolated incident. Over the last three months of 2024, more than 800 cases of GPS interference were recorded in Lithuanian airspace. Estonia and Finland have also raised concerns, accusing Russia of deploying technology to jam satellite navigation signals near Nato’s eastern flank – though the country has denied that. Last March the then Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, was on a plane that had its GPS signal jammed while flying close to Russian territory.

The threat of GPS jamming extends beyond aviation. Without GPS, our lives would grind to a halt: in 2017, a government report stated that systematic GPS jamming could bring the UK’s financial, electricity and communications systems to a standstill.

To pinpoint our exact location, we need to know the exact time. GPS works by users receiving signals from multiple satellites. The length of time it takes each signal to reach a device is used to determine exactly where on Earth we are.

Very large atomic clocks communicate directly with the satellites, allowing them to know the time to within 100 billionths of a second, and this precision timing is key to a variety of economic activities around the world, including communication systems, electrical power grids, and financial networks.

The potential cost of losing GPS has been put at £1.4bn each day – no wonder GPS jamming is on the government’s national risk register as one of the UK’s greatest threats.

With this in mind, a group of British scientists – dubbed the “Time Lords” – has been asked to come up with a solution.

The plan is simple: to develop a more secure alternative to GPS by enabling the portable use of new atomic clocks, rather than relying on signals from satellites in space that can be jammed. But its execution is fiendishly difficult: to harness the power of the atom, develop a new type of clock, and even change the way we measure time itself – all within a few years.

In recent months, the UK government has set up research initiatives to tackle the threat of GPS jamming. But turning prototypes into robust devices that could one day be incorporated into our phones is an enormous undertaking – and the need for the new technology is getting ever more urgent.

The challenge can be compared to the invention of a portable clock for marine navigation by John Harrison in the 18th Century, which solved the so-called longitude problem, allowing a new era of trade and a golden age of exploration.

Three hundred years on, researchers are once again racing to perfect a new clock to solve the GPS problem – and the impact could be at least as transformative.

“History shows that each time we have an improvement in the ability to measure time, new applications follow to make things possible that people didn’t dream of before,” says Dr Helen Margolis, head scientist (time and frequency) of the UK’s timing laboratories at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in south-west London.

In 1967, the world’s timekeepers, an intergovernmental body called the General Conference on Weights and Measures, agreed to define time using atomic clocks, rather than by the Earth’s rotation.

The switch transformed our world just as radically as Harrison’s clock, laying the foundation for GPS and similar space-based systems. These provided precise timekeeping from atomic clocks on satellites, which allowed rapid and huge volumes of communications, computation, and transactions to be carried out everywhere in the world near instantaneously, as well as more precise navigation.

The search for a new portable alternative to GPS involves a field called quantum technologies, finding ways to manipulate atoms. Much of the buzz around the subject in recent years has been about the development of powerful quantum computers which, the narrative goes, will make our fastest supercomputers seem like abacuses by comparison.

But a quieter revolution to improve navigation and measurement of time has flown under the radar, and it is in this field that quantum technology is set to make its earliest impact, according to Prof Douglas Paul of the UK Hub for Quantum Enabled Position Navigation and Timing (QEPNT), which was set up last December by the government to develop these new devices.

“We are expecting to see some sort of navigation system within two to five years in the marketplace,” he says. “So, some of these technologies are already quite advanced.”

Prof Paul and his quantum scientists are working with Dr Margolis and her fellow researchers at NPL, who have been given the “Time Lords” nickname by other horologists. In 1955, the NPL invented the first atomic clock of the sort that is used today, based on the frequency of radiation from an atom of the element caesium.

GPS and other satellite navigation systems reset their own clocks by touching base with these more accurate clocks on the ground. For the alternative to GPS, the scientists will need a new type of atomic clock that can eventually be miniaturised and robust enough to work in everyday situations, rather than the carefully controlled conditions inside a lab.

The NPL researchers are perfecting a so-called optical clock to achieve this, which is 100 times more accurate than the most accurate caesium clocks used today. It looks as if it might be part of Dr Who’s Tardis and is stimulated with laser light rather than microwaves.

When optical clocks take over from caesium ones as the timepieces that determine Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), the way the passage of time is defined will also have to change, according to Dr Margolis.

“The international community has drawn up a road map for the redefinition of the second,” she tells BBC News.

The NPL’s immediate hope is to have a national network by 2030, connecting four atomic clocks across the UK that businesses can plug into for secure accurate timekeeping and for developing new innovative applications that harness ultra-fast time.

Eventually, critical systems in the UK in finance, telecommunications, energy, utilities and national security could switch over – though that would take longer. “To convert everything is at least a decade away, and probably significantly longer,” says Prof Paul.

Yet the stakes are high, and the alternative this new technology offers is significant. “The US Department of Defence might decide to stop supporting GPS, it could be taken out in a conflict or by an accident,” he says. “There is no guarantee GPS … will always be available. With all the jamming and spoofing [where a criminal gives a false signal with an incorrect time and location], you cannot always guarantee you have an assured signal, so if you cannot get or trust the information then people will stop using it.”

While this type of research is taking place around the world, it’s being led by the UK. When an aircraft with the technology on board carried out a test flight in May 2024, the then science minister Andrew Griffith described it as “further proof of the UK as one of the world leaders on quantum”. According to the government, it was the first test of this type of technology in the UK on an aircraft in flight, and “the first such flight worldwide that has been publicly acknowledged”.

By carrying a group of atoms cooled to -273C on the plane itself, rather than relying on an external signal, the technology can’t be interfered with by jamming.

But the problem is that the equipment is still too large to be used routinely on planes.

Henry White, part of the team from BAE Systems that worked on the test flight, told BBC News that he thought the first application could be aboard ships, “where there’s a bit more space”.

Quantum clocks, gyroscopes and accelerometers are large, bulky and incredibly expensive, with an accurate quantum clock costing around £100,000. Yet military research is allowing the creation of smaller, better and cheaper systems.

GPS jamming is causing problems for the British military in conflict zones such as Ukraine. One of the main challenges faced by scientists at the government’s Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) is making the sensitive technology work not just in the real world, which in the Navy’s case is often in very choppy seas, but also in the harshest of environments; the battlefield, according to a lead researcher at the DSTL, who has to remain anonymous for security reasons.

“We are harnessing atoms,” she points out.

“You have vibrations, you have pressure changes, you have temperature changes, and you have environments which have all of these different variables going on while you are trying to manipulate the properties of light. So, it’s precision that is needed”.

The ultimate aim for some of those working on this new technology is for each of us to have the equivalent of our own personal GPS system incorporated into our phones.

This would comprise a miniaturised optical clock as well as a tiny gyroscope, so we know which direction we are going in, and a device called an accelerometer, which will tell us how fast we are going.

QEPNT has been set up by the government to shrink the devices on to a chip, making them robust enough for everyday life and affordable for everyone.

That process isn’t going to happen soon, though. “This is many decades away from happening for all critical national infrastructure across the UK,” says Prof Paul.

Quantum clock researchers are facing exactly the same problems experienced by John Harrison when he was developing his portable marine clock in the 18th Century. Mr Harrison had to build a clock whose timekeeping was not affected by changes in temperature, pressure or humidity, and was able to function in a constantly moving ship – his greatest difficulty was to make it small.

But it turned out that his difficulty was also the path to his solution. The smaller he made his clocks, the more robust he found they were at sea.

“Harrison found that it was it easier to isolate them from all those external influences,” says another DSTL scientist.

“As was the case 300 years ago, as we make these systems smaller, it will become easier to control the environment around them and isolate them from the effects of vibration, temperature, pressure, and humidity.”

Prominent 18th-Century scientists, including Sir Isaac Newton, thought that navigation with marine clocks was impossible. But eventually Mr Harrison, a simple clockmaker and carpenter, proved his more illustrious colleagues wrong.

Bringing prototype optical clocks first into the battlefield and then eventually into everyday life is just as challenging. Will the scientists working on the problem be able to find solutions fast enough?

One day we might have them in our pockets, but the more urgent aim is to get them in a state where we can safely fly, as incidents of GPS jamming on planes and critical computer systems increase. The Time Lords and quantum scientists hope to continue the humble clockmaker’s legacy – transforming the measurement of time, and protecting the UK’s critical systems from GPS attack.

Before he came to the throne, the then Prince Charles had been challenged over whether he could avoid meddling and stay out of politics when he became King.

Now King Charles seems to be in demand as never before to help out the politicians and to get involved, playing an unexpectedly pivotal role in dramatic times for international diplomacy.

Last week an invitation from the King for a second state visit was offered to President Trump, with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer presenting it, with no shortage of flattery, as an “unprecedented” sign of friendship and respect.

Then in the fallout of the disastrous Trump meeting with President Zelensky in the White House, it was the King, as well as Sir Keir, who embraced the Ukrainian leader and offered a visible image of support for his embattled country.

It was a vital element in the diplomatic balancing act taking place, as the UK government tries to shore up Western support for Ukraine, without alienating and aggravating the Trump administration in the US.

It’s placed the double act of King Charles and Sir Keir Starmer at the centre of some huge shifts in international relations.

The King greeting President Zelensky so warmly and publicly, on a visit to Sandringham, was an important message of solidarity that he had not been abandoned and that there was still support for Ukraine, three years after it was invaded by Russia.

With Trump’s enthusiasm for the royals, and his evident keenness for a state visit, it provides a diplomatic bridge, with the King keeping open friendly channels with both Trump and Zelensky.

Trump described the King as a “beautiful man”, as he looked forward to the opulence of a state visit, with its carriage ride up the Mall and glittering banquet. Invitations for such visits are sent by the monarch, but the decisions on who gets invited are made in government.

The King has decades of experience of getting along with people from remarkably different backgrounds and viewpoints. He seems to enjoy chatting to people, asking them about themselves, while saying little about his own views. He’s also known generations of previous US leaders, all the way back to visiting Nixon in the White House and meeting Eisenhower at Balmoral.

For King Charles, there has also been a very personal sense of support for Ukraine, he’s been outspoken in a way that is unusual. He has attacked the “indescribable aggression” against Ukraine, in what he called an “unprovoked attack on their land”.

Soon after the invasion he went to see refugees arriving in Romania. On visits to France and Germany he singled out the importance of Western allies standing firm with Ukraine to protect democratic values.

He’s made repeated visits to meet the Ukrainian community in the UK and last month went to see a project providing medical assistance for injured Ukrainian military personnel.

But these are complicated times for the monarch, not least because as well as being the UK’s head of state, King Charles is also the head of state of Canada – and on Monday he faced a different set of agendas when he met Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The words exchanged in those meetings are not revealed – but as well as discussing Ukraine, there would be no need to guess the other topic of conversation.

“Nothing seems more important to Canadians right now than standing up for our sovereignty and our independence as a nation,” said Trudeau ahead of the meeting.

Canada is facing President Trump’s calls for his northern neighbour, and longstanding Nato ally, to become the 51st state of the US. This unsurprisingly has deeply angered and offended many Canadians.

They might look to King Charles as their head of state, and head of the Commonwealth too, to strongly speak up for them and to rebuff such expansionist claims from the US president.

Except that from a UK perspective, the King is being deployed to keep President Trump on board and to keep alive the “special relationship” between the US and UK. So there will be no appetite for a royal denunciation over Canada.

The BBC’s Royal Watch newsletter has already had plenty of feedback from Canadians who are angry that the King has not spoken up for them against Trump.

“I am a 73-year-old proud Canadian and loyal royal supporter. Should the King choose a relationship with Trump over support of Canada, I will be changing my support to withdrawing from the Commonwealth,” emailed Peggy.

“I realise the Royal Family don’t usually get involved in politics, but this is different and at the moment many here are wondering why we have a King as head of state at all,” Ann said in an email to the newsletter.

‌It won’t be an easy balancing act, when so much of the King’s diplomacy has to be in symbols as much as words. He has to speak on the advice of ministers, in Canada and the UK.

It seems like a long time since one of the famous moments of unspoken royal commentary, when the late Queen Elizabeth II stood in front of a big bunch of flowers in the Ukrainian colours of blue and yellow, in the weeks after the Russian invasion.

And who was she meeting? A popular young Canadian prime minister called Justin Trudeau. It was seen as a sign of Western solidarity to support Ukraine.

Would anyone have believed three years later that he’d be seeking support against the United States?

The world is a very insecure place right now – conflict, climate change, and fears of recession dominate the headlines. But for some people, things are going rather well – the wealthy.

Despite the global turmoil, the number of billionaires in the world is growing and the personal wealth of each of them is increasing too.

So what to do with all that money? The growing trend for the ultimate luxury experience is a clue as to what the very rich are doing with their cash. For the tourist industry in particular, it’s an opportunity.

In Switzerland, which has long cultivated a reputation for understated luxury, the number of five-star hotels is increasing faster than any other category. Many of them were built in the early 20th century – grand belle epoque palaces serving a then emerging class of privileged, primarily English tourists.

Today, renovated to the highest standards, those hotels leave no guest’s wish unmet. There are luxury spas, gourmet restaurants, and designer suites with panoramic views of the alps. Some offer “ski butlers” to ferry guests to and from the slopes, carry the skis, and even help put on their boots.

Key markets are the US, the Gulf states, China and South East Asia. American guests in particular, Swiss hoteliers say, expect the full five-star treatment, including 24-hour room service, so that they can order food in the middle of the night.

Meanwhile, China and India are emerging markets, where the first groups to travel from those two countries are among the wealthiest. Switzerland is very keen to get in at the start of that trend.

But the five-star offer comes with a hefty price tag, so where does that leave those who are not billionaires? Markus Berger of Switzerland Tourism says the strategy is not to focus solely on high-end guests, but to take a hard-headed look at the figures.

Stays at Swiss five-star hotels make up around 8% of all overnights, but the guests in them contribute at least 25% of Switzerland’s total revenue from tourism.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” says Mr Berger. “The high economic significance justifies a commitment to luxury guests.”

What’s more, he adds, Switzerland, with its high-wage, high-price economy, cannot compete with less expensive neighbours, particularly now that the Swiss franc is so strong.

“Switzerland has never tried to compete over prices,” Mr Berger explains. “There is always somewhere cheaper.”

Instead, the focus is on quality, service, and added value, like those ski butlers. In exchange, guests who come to five-star hotels also contribute a good deal to the rest of the economy, spending lavishly in the Michelin-starred restaurants and boutique shops that are also becoming a feature in a number of Swiss alpine resorts.

But it’s not an entirely win-win situation. In some of Switzerland’s most famous up-market resorts, like St Moritz or Zermatt, there are long-standing concerns that the focus on luxury is pricing locals out of the market.

A common challenge is finding accommodation for the hundreds of hotel and restaurant staff needed to provide the five-star service.

They sometimes find themselves commuting, late at night when the cocktail bars and restaurants have finally closed, long journeys to other villages where the accommodation is affordable on a waiter’s salary.

Monika Bandi, who leads the Tourism Research Unit at Bern University’s Centre for Regional Development, sees Switzerland’s pitch to high-end guests as a fine balancing act. It’s about “quantity versus quality”, she says.

More tourists aren’t necessarily better, she believes. Instead, higher spending by existing numbers can be positive.

And, she adds, Switzerland needs to watch out for the “tipping point, where the destinations really lose their character”.

Questions about a tipping point are currently being asked in the resort of Wengen, world famous for its Lauberhorn ski race, and its decades long connection with British skiers – the much-loved “Down Hill Only” ski club celebrated its 100th anniversary this year.

And also this year, Wengen is opening its first ever five-star hotel, and there are plans too for a five-star complex of serviced “hotel apartments”. They will be sold to wealthy tourists who want a luxury holiday home in the Alps, and they can also be rented out when the owners are absent.

By calling the project a hotel, it exploits a loophole in Switzerland’s strict laws against the “cold beds” of holiday homes. In theory, the law limits them to no more than 20% of a resort’s accommodation.

The Swiss Heritage Society has formally objected to the Wengen plans, because, claims spokesman Simon Weiss, the project is not really a hotel. “It looks like a typical holiday home complex… there is no integration into the community.”

The required public spaces that a hotel would have – a restaurant and a spa – are planned, but they will all be underground. The design priority, Mr Weiss fears, is for private luxury apartments that may be occupied for only a few weeks a year. “The design is unacceptable,” he adds.

Some Wengen locals also have their doubts. “It’s not St Moritz here,” one told Swiss media, adding “Wengen is not posh”.

Wengen’s tourism director Rolf Wegmüller agrees with that assessment, but says the trend towards luxury accommodation won’t change the resort’s character. “We’re not going to have guests walking around in fur coats all of a sudden,” he says.

Wengen, he points out, is only accessible by train, so, unlike St Moritz, there will be no Bentleys or Rolls-Royces taking up parking spaces. Even if they could ostentatiously display their wealth, Mr Wegmüller believes “our guests won’t want to show off what they have”.

The resort also has visitors who come back year after year, contributing to the integration Mr Weiss worries about losing. “Some families have been coming for generations,’ says Mr Wegmüller. ‘The locals know them, and that’s good.”

Among them are Brian Bollen, keen member of the Down Hill Only Club, who has been coming to Wengen for more than 50 years. He loves it, but does worry that some of “the charm has gone from the place… it’s over built”.

But most in Wengen, like Switzerland Tourism, see the investment in the alpine resorts as positive. These villages were, not much more than a century ago, very poor. A 19th English guide to the Swiss alps wrote that “most of the children are beggars”.

In more recent years, the global trade rules limiting agricultural subsidies have forced many small alpine dairy farms to close. Tourism, winter and summer, is enormously important for the Swiss economy, especially for the mountain communities.

And, as Mr Berger of Switzerland Tourism points out, while the five-star sector is growing, three-star hotels are still the biggest category. “We have one to five-star [in Wengen],” adds Mr Wegmüller. “That’s a good thing in a resort.”

And while the people with unlimited money to spend on luxury travel may still be in a tiny minority, their numbers, and their wealth, are growing. Switzerland’s approach – not cheaper, but better, not more people, just richer – seems to be paying off.

The Academy Awards have taken place in Los Angeles, with Anora scooping the most honours, while Conclave, The Brutalist, Wicked and Emilia Pérez also took prizes.

Here is the full list of winners.

Best picture

• WINNER: Anora
• The Brutalist
• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Pérez
• I’m Still Here
• Nickel Boys
• The Substance
• Wicked

Best actress

• WINNER: Mikey Madison – Anora
• Cynthia Erivo – Wicked
• Karla Sofía Gascón – Emilia Pérez
• Demi Moore – The Substance
• Fernanda Torres – I’m Still Here

Best actor

• WINNER: Adrien Brody – The Brutalist
• Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown
• Colman Domingo – Sing Sing
• Ralph Fiennes – Conclave
• Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice

Best supporting actress

• WINNER: Zoe Saldaña – Emilia Pérez
• Monica Barbaro – A Complete Unknown
• Ariana Grande – Wicked
• Felicity Jones – The Brutalist
• Isabella Rossellini – Conclave

Best supporting actor

• WINNER: Kieran Culkin – A Real Pain
• Yura Borisov – Anora
• Edward Norton – A Complete Unknown
• Guy Pearce – The Brutalist
• Jeremy Strong – The Apprentice

Best director

• WINNER: Sean Baker – Anora
• Jacques Audiard – Emilia Pérez
• Brady Corbet – The Brutalist
• Coralie Fargeat – The Substance
• James Mangold – A Complete Unknown

Best international feature

• WINNER: I’m Still Here – Brazil
• The Girl with the Needle – Denmark
• Emilia Pérez – France
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig – Germany
• Flow – Latvia

Best animated feature

• WINNER: Flow
• Inside Out 2
• Memoir of a Snail
• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
• The Wild Robot

Best original screenplay

• WINNER: Anora – Sean Baker
• The Brutalist – Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
• A Real Pain – Jesse Eisenberg
• September 5 – Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, Alex David
• The Substance – Coralie Fargeat

Best adapted screenplay

• WINNER: Conclave – Peter Straughan
• A Complete Unknown – Jay Cocks and James Mangold
• Emilia Pérez – Jacques Audiard
• Nickel Boys – RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes
• Sing Sing – Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar

Best original song

• WINNER: El Mal – Emilia Pérez
• Never Too Late – Elton John: Never Too Late
• Mi Camino – Emilia Pérez
• Like A Bird – Sing Sing
• The Journey – The Six Triple Eight

Best original score

• WINNER: The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked
• The Wild Robot

Best documentary feature

• WINNER: No Other Land
• Black Box Diaries
• Porcelain War
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
• Sugarcane

Best costume design

• WINNER: Wicked
• Nosferatu
• A Complete Unknown
• Conclave
• Gladiator II

Best make-up and hairstyling

• WINNER: The Substance
• A Different Man
• Emilia Pérez
• Nosferatu
• Wicked

Best production design

• WINNER: Wicked
• The Brutalist
• Dune: Part Two
• Nosferatu
• Conclave

Best sound

• WINNER: Dune: Part Two
• A Complete Unknown
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked
• The Wild Robot

Best film editing

• WINNER: Anora
• The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked

Best cinematography

• WINNER: The Brutalist
• Dune: Part Two
• Emilia Pérez
• Maria
• Nosferatu

Best visual effects

• WINNER: Dune: Part Two
• Alien: Romulus
• Better Man
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Wicked

Best live action short

• WINNER: I’m Not a Robot
• Anuja
• The Last Ranger
• A Lien
• The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best animated short

• WINNER: In the Shadow of the Cypress
• Beautiful Men
• Magic Candies
• Wander to Wonder
• Yuck!

Best documentary short

• WINNER: The Only Girl in the Orchestra
• Death by Numbers
• I Am Ready, Warden
• Incident
• Instruments of a Beating Heart

More on the Oscars 2025:

• LIVE: Follow BBC coverage of the ceremony
• RECAP: How the Oscars unfolded this year
• BEST MOMENTS: A payback kiss, a surprise win, and defying gravity
• WATCH: Highlights of the show in 180 seconds
• FASHION: See the best looks from the red carpet
• MORE: How to watch the winning films

US President Donald Trump’s administration is pausing its offensive cyber operations against Russia, officials say, as a diplomatic push continues to end the war in Ukraine.

The reasoning for the instruction has not been publicly stated, and it is not clear how long the halt might last. The defence department has declined to comment.

The directive reportedly came before Trump ended up in a televised row with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday.

Since returning to office, Trump has markedly softened the American position towards Moscow in eagerness to reach a deal to end the war – following Russia’s full-scale invasion more than three years ago.

He appeared to echo Moscow’s justification for starting the war and announced plans to meet his counterpart President Vladimir Putin. The US has also sided with Russia during recent votes at the United Nations related to the war.

At the same time, Trump has labelled Zelensky a dictator, and accused the other man of “gambling with World War Three” during Friday’s blow-up in the Oval Office.

• Live updates on Zelensky’s talks with allies
• Zelensky bruised but determined after diplomatic whirlwind
• Was Starmer’s summit enough to sway Trump?

The halt of American cyber operations against Russia came from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in new guidance to US Cyber Command, officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

It leaves questions over the strength of the US fightback in the cyber arena against alleged Russian hacking, election interference and sabotage efforts that have targeted the Western nations which have sided with Ukraine during the war.

Hundreds or thousands of personnel could be affected by Hegseth’s order, according to The Record, a cybersecurity publication which first reported the news. Operations aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s digital defences are likely to be among those affected.

In a statement, a senior defence department official said they would not comment on the issue due to operation concerns, but added: “There is no greater priority to Secretary Hegseth than the safety of the Warfighter in all operations, to include the cyber domain.”

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz denied that a policy change had been discussed, but acknowledged in an interview on CNN that there would be “all kinds of carrots and sticks to get this war to an end”.

Senior members of Trump’s team – who last month met their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia, with the Ukrainians excluded – have recently defended their change of approach to Moscow more broadly.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told ABC: “You’re not going to bring [the Russians] to the table if you’re calling them names, if you’re being antagonistic. That’s just the president’s instincts from years and years and years of putting together deals.”

In a statement to the New York Times, senior Democrat Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, said the move was “a critical strategic mistake”.

Trump seemed to be giving Putin “a free pass as Russia continues to launch cyberoperations and ransomware attacks against critical American infrastructure”, Schumer added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is back in Kyiv after three frantic days – which began with him being ordered to leave the White House following a tense and public showdown with Donald Trump and JD Vance on Friday.

He found a warmer welcome in London on the weekend, where he was greeted by the prime minister outside Downing Street, visited the King, and received a strong show of support from European leaders at a summit on Sunday – a sharp contrast to the scenes in the Oval Office.

After the London summit, Sir Keir Starmer suggested European leaders would form a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine – but details of who would contribute what were scarce.

Here’s the latest on Zelensky’s relationship with Trump, and Europe’s plans to guarantee Ukraine’s security.

• Zelensky, Trump and Europe – follow live updates

In a series of social media posts on Saturday morning, President Zelensky said Ukraine and the US needed to be “honest and direct with each other” to understand their shared goals – and he wanted America to “stand more firmly” on their side.

Appearing on Fox News hours after leaving the White House, Zelensky said the confrontation was a “really tough situation” and took the chance to thank Americans and Donald Trump. He also stopped short of an outright apology despite calls from US lawmakers for him to do so.

While Trump hasn’t commented directly on the angry exchange over the weekend, most Republican figures have expressed their support for Trump and Vance.

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz – who was in the Oval Office during Friday’s heated meeting – compared the Ukrainian leader to an “ex-girlfriend”, while Speaker Mike Johnson called for Zelensky to quit.

However, moderate Republican Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon said it was “a bad day for America’s foreign policy” and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said she is “sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing Putin”.

• Vance took the lead attacking Zelensky. Why?

• Was Starmer’s summit enough to sway Trump?

Posts on social media in support of Zelensky poured in shortly after he left the White House on Friday evening. Among the notable exceptions were Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who wants to preserve her excellent relations with the Trump administration, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who praised Donald Trump for “standing bravely for peace”.

By the time the London summit came around on Sunday, there was a sense that concrete action had to follow words of support – with most leaders careful to highlight that they still considered US support essential.

At the end of the summit, Starmer outlined a four-point plan for peace which included the continuation of military aid to Ukraine, a commitment for Ukraine to be present at peace talks, boosting Ukraine’s defence capabilities to deter future Russian aggression, and developing a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine, including sending troops to Ukraine.

Starmer said that the idea of sending troops to Ukraine – which would include boots on the ground and planes in the air – had the backing of several parties, but he was careful to leave it to individual countries to discuss the matter internally.

Scandinavian countries have already signalled they would be open to the idea. Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was keeping an “open mind” on the proposal, while Sweden’s Ulf Kristersson said his country was ready to provide Ukraine with security guarantees – if it had the backing of the US.

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni would much rather push for another summit that includes the US than discuss a European contingent in Ukraine – a possibility which she says “perplexes” her.

And Poland – which has long been one of Kyiv’s most vocal supporters – has already ruled out sending soldiers, although it put few boundaries on humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine.

European leaders will now have a few days to digest the latest developments before they meet again in Brussels on Thursday for a special meeting on defence, at which Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen will present what she has called “a comprehensive plan on how to rearm Europe”.

On Sunday night, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported that President Emmanuel Macron and Starmer have proposed a potential one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine, “in the air and at sea”.

Details of any agreement are scarce and the idea put forward by the French remains just that. Under the hypothesis, both sides would agree a truce for four weeks in the air, on the sea and around energy infrastructure. But, Macron has suggested it would not cover fighting on the ground along the front line, as it would be too hard to monitor.

But on Monday morning, the UK’s armed forces minister played down the idea of a truce insisting that “no agreement has been made on what a truce looks like”.

Luke Pollard told Times Radio: “We are working together with France and our European allies to look at what is the path to how… we create a lasting and durable peace in Ukraine.”

Any truce would have to be agreed by Russia and there is no evidence yet they are willing to do that.

Although Vladimir Putin has not yet officially commented on the Washington encounter, the Kremlin’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it had been a “complete diplomatic failure of Kyiv”.

On Monday morning, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov then added his criticism of the London summit on Ukraine.

“Statements were made there about the need to step up funding for Ukraine as a matter of urgency. This is obviously not part of a peace plan but is done to continue the fighting,” Peskov said.

“The rest will depend on what kind of peace plans will be drawn up and offered for discussion. Any constructive support for this process would be welcome now, and any constructive initiatives.”

Remarking on the response to the war more broadly, Peskov also suggested that “the collective West has partially begun to lose its collectivity”.

King Charles has met Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, under the shadow of inflammatory statements made about Canada by US President Donald Trump.

Trump has repeatedly spoken of making the neighbouring country the 51st state of America. He has also vowed to impose new import taxes on Canada, which is one of the US’s top trading partners.

Ahead of his meeting with the King at Sandringham, outgoing PM Trudeau said he would discuss issues of importance to Canadians, including “standing up for our sovereignty and our independence as a nation”.

The King has also extended an invitation to Trump to visit him in what will be an unprecedented second state visit.

As head of state of the Commonwealth nation, the King has faced calls to give Canada his vocal backing in the face of Trump’s statements.

Jason Kenney, the former leader of the Canadian province of Alberta, suggested Charles faces a difficult tightrope.

Jason Kenney, a conservative who served as Alberta’s premier, wrote on X that the King could only act on the advice of the Canadian PM, who “should ask [Charles] to underscore Canadian sovereignty”.

But the conservative politician then took aim at British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, whom he said had “cravenly thrown Canada under the bus” when he refused to comment on Trump’s annexation threats during his visit to the White House last week.

“It was a shameful betrayal of a fellow realm which has made enormous sacrifices for the defence of Britain,” Kenney wrote.

New import taxes announced by Trump are also set to come into effect on Tuesday, targeting goods arriving from China and Mexico as well as Canada.

• King invites Trump for unprecedented second state visit
• US says tariffs on Canada and Mexico will happen on Tuesday
• Supporters welcome Zelensky’s Sandringham visit

The president is eager to protect American manufacturing and jobs, and to address the US trade deficit.

He suggested in a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday that his country was effectively subsidising Canada by paying to import its products. Without this flow of capital, Canada “ceases to exist as a viable country”, he wrote.

Trump has previously spoken of using “economic force” to make Canada the 51st state of America. But he said he was not considering using military force – an assurance he has not given while stating his ambitions of taking the Panama Canal and Greenland.

The question of how to respond to Trump’s tariff threats and other statements about Canadian sovereignty has dominated the debate in Trudeau’s Liberal Party, with candidates vying to replace the PM after he announced his resignation in January.

On the other side of the Canadian political divide, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has also attacked Trump’s statements.

The King has found himself at the centre of a recent whirlwind of diplomatic meetings following Trump’s return to the presidency – some of which relate to the war in Ukraine.

On Sunday, he also met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – who ended up in a row of his own with Trump at the White House on Friday.

Zelensky was in the UK to meet European leaders, who reiterated their support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia – with American support apparently on the wane under Trump.

This year’s Oscars had it all – glamour, tears and the Wicked stars defying gravity. Here are some of the top moments from the biggest night in Hollywood.

There was an audible gasp from journalists in the winners’ room when Mikey Madison was announced as the best actress winner.

Demi Moore was the favourite for much of this campaign. Things did shift after Madison’s Bafta win, but the race remained incredibly tight.

In the end, it was Madison’s night. It marked an incredible moment for a 25-year-old actress who was relatively unknown before her role in Anora.

This is exactly the type of rags-to-riches story that awards ceremonies love – and the film itself celebrates.

• The sex workers at the heart of Anora

The film tells the story of sex worker Anora, who has a whirlwind ill-fated romance with the spoilt son of a Russian oligarch.

Edie Turquet, one of the young female dancers and strippers in the film, texted me to say it was “insane” that a film about sex workers could win best picture at the Oscars.

She added that she hoped it would “shift or at least challenge” perspectives of people towards her community.

• LIVE: Follow BBC coverage of the ceremony
• RECAP: How the Oscars unfolded this year
• WATCH: Highlights of the show in 180 seconds
• FASHION: See the best looks from the red carpet
• WINNERS: Full list of tonight’s awardees
• MORE: How to watch the winning films

We all knew it was coming but Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande belting out Wicked’s anthem Defying Gravity was even better than we could have hoped for.

As Erivo, in a white gown, hit that final iconic note, the audience stood in applause.

The co-stars performed a medley of songs, including Somewhere Over the Rainbow, which Grande sang to open the show wearing a gorgeous red sequined dress.

Earlier in the night, Grande stunned on the red carpet with a champagne Schiaparelli gown, which leaned into her role as Glinda the Good Witch in the film.

“It’s giving chandelier,” one reporter said to me backstage.

On social media the big question was: “How is she going to sit down in that dress?”

On the red carpet, there was quite a moment when Halle Berry ran up to Adrien Brody and gave him a big kiss.

It recreated a moment at the 2003 Academy Awards, when Brody – having just won best actor for his performance in The Pianist – turned and kissed Berry, who had presented the award to him.

She told Variety: “I had to pay him back”.

Speaking to Extra, she added that the only reason she did it was because Brody’s girlfriend, Georgina Chapman, “was fine” with it.

The Oscars wrote on X with a clip of the kiss: “A reunion 22 years in the making”.

Berry and Brody weren’t the only two seen locking lips.

Inside the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre, lovebirds Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet were photographed sharing a kiss and laughing together.

Reality star and makeup mogul Jenner was there to support her boyfriend who was up for best actor – but ended up losing out to… Brody.

Actor Adam Sandler was in on the ongoing jokes about his typically casual attire.

Early on in the night, host Conan O’Brien called him out, saying he was “dressed like a guy playing video poker at 2am”.

(For reference, Sandler was in the audience wearing a blue hoodie and shorts, an ensemble that looked more at home on the basketball court).

Following a playful back and forth between the two, the actor walked into the aisle of the theatre and said he was “leaving” before going over to Timothée Chalamet and shouting his surname, in the way he previously did on Saturday Night Live.

Chalamet, ever good natured, laughed along.

This year’s Oscars race has played out against the grim backdrop of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, which killed 29 people.

The Grammys and Golden Globes both made the fires a central theme of the show.

The Academy Awards mentioned it only a handful of times, signalling Hollywood is moving on.

There was, however, one powerful moment, when O’Brien welcomed some of the firefighters who fought the blazes on stage. He called them “heroes”, with the audience clapping and giving the emergency workers a standing ovation.

O’Brien then said there are some jokes that even he isn’t brave enough to tell – and asked some of the firefighters to read them out instead.

LA Fire Captain Erik Scott read one joke off a teleprompter that said their hearts go out to everyone who lost their homes – including the makers of Joker 2.

It got a big laugh and O’Brien called it the best joke delivery of the night.

It was Zoe Saldaña’s first Oscar, winning best supporting actress for Emilia Pérez – a musical about a transgender Mexican drug lord – and it marked one of the most powerful and emotional speeches of the night.

She broke down in tears immediately, crying out “Mommy”, to her mother in the audience.

“I am floored by this honour,” she wept, paying tribute to her fellow nominees for their “loving and community”, saying “I will pay it forward”.

Praising the film’s cast and crew, she got emotional as she talked about her family.

“Everything brave, outrageous and good I’ve ever done in my life is because of you,” she said, praising her husband, his “beautiful hair” and their three sons.

“My grandmother came to this country in 1961 – I am a proud child of immigrant parents with dreams and dignity and hardworking hands.

“I’m the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award and I know I won’t be the last.

“Getting an award where I got to sing and speak in Spanish – this is for my grandmother.”

The month-long saga to obtain a US visa by two Iranian filmmakers ended in the pair winning the best animated short film Academy Award – with them rushing to even make the ceremony in Hollywood.

Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani arrived at Los Angeles airport just hours before the Oscars award ceremony was due to begin.

After their plane landed, they quickly changed outfits in a public restroom and made it with only moments to go before winning the award for their film, In the Shadow of the Cypress.

“It’s not our fault we are so late,” Sohani said to BBC News before the show. “We couldn’t get a visa. It’s a difficult relationship” between the US and Iran, she explained.

“Until yesterday we hadn’t obtained our visa and now we are standing here with this statuette in our hands,” said Molayemi in his acceptance speech.

“Speaking in front of this expectant audience is very hard for us,” he added. “Yes, if we preserve and remain faithful, miracles will happen.”

As ever, politics reared its head during Sunday night’s ceremony.

Host O’Brien made a quip about how Anora was “having a good night”, before saying: “I guess Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian.”

O’Brien must have been writing his monologue up to the very last minute, because the joke appeared to be a nod to the White House spat between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, the No Other Land documentary team descended on the red carpet wearing Palestinian scarves and Kufiya. Their film is set in the occupied West Bank. After they won for the film, the team took the stage and called out US policy in the region.

Kill Bill star Daryl Hannah also veered into politics while on stage. She referenced the war in Ukraine, saying “Slava Ukraini”, the country’s salute, as she presented an award.

But one person wasn’t mentioned.

Here in liberal Hollywood, you may have expected jokes and barbs toward Donald Trump – but his name didn’t come up even once.

Japan has deployed more than 2,000 firefighters to battle the country’s biggest forest fire in three decades.

At least one person has died in the blaze, which has torched more than 5,200 acres around the northern Japanese city of Ofunato since Thursday, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA).

Although January to March is typically Ofunato’s driest season, the area saw less rainfall last month than any February in more than 20 years – recording just 2.5 millimetres, compared to the usual average of 41.

About 4,600 people remain under government-issued evacuation orders as the fire continues to burn.

Some 2,000 have already left the area to stay with friends or relatives, and more than 1,200 have evacuated to shelters, officials said.

The fires are burning in a forest area of Iwate Prefecture, which is Japan’s second largest prefecture and has the country’s second-lowest population density.

More than 80 buildings are estimated to have been damaged so far, although FDMA noted that details are still being assessed.

“Although it is inevitable that the fire will spread to some extent, we will take all possible measures to ensure there will be no impact on people’s homes,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in parliament.

Thousands of firefighters from 14 prefectures, including Tokyo, have been dispatched to fight the fires. At least 16 helicopters are also being used, with images showing the aircraft dumping water onto the smouldering hills.

Like many other countries, Japan in 2024 recorded its hottest year since records began.

It is difficult to know if climate change has caused or worsened specific fires, because other factors – such as changes to the way land is used – are also relevant.

However, the IPCC says climate change is making the weather conditions needed for wildfires to spread more likely.

Have you been evacuated? Send us your story.

Dozens of construction workers have been pulled out alive from metal containers after they were buried by an avalanche in the Himalayas in India’s Uttarakhand state.

They survived – some as long as nearly two days – as the containers in which they were living had enough oxygen to sustain them until rescuers could dig them out, Indian media reported quoting officials.

On Friday, 54 workers were buried when the avalanche hit a construction camp near Mana village. Eight were killed, while the other 46 were rescued.

The operation lasted almost 60 hours in sub-zero temperatures and concluded on Sunday.

Most of the labourers, who were working on a highway expansion project, were able to “withstand the wrecking avalanche” because of the containers, rescuers told The Indian Express newspaper.

“These metal shelters saved most of them. They had just enough oxygen to hold on until we got them out,” a senior rescue official told The Times of India.

The newspaper reported that the force of the avalanche had hurled eight metal containers and a shed down the mountain.

Uttarakhand state Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has thanked rescue teams for their efforts in challenging conditions.

Members of the Indian army, national and state disaster response forces and local administration had worked to free the workers, using helicopters and drones for the operation.

Many of the rescued workers are receiving treatment at hospitals in the state’s Joshimath town and Rishikesh city.

Satyaprakash Yadav, a migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh who was among those rescued, said the “avalanche hit our container like a landslide”, according to a video released by the army.

He added that the container he was in broke apart when the snow hit and it ended up near a river.

“We managed to get out on our own and reached a nearby army guest house, where we stayed overnight,” he added.

Rajnish Kumar, a worker from Uttarkhand’s Pithoragarh town, said most of them were sleeping when the avalanche struck.

“When the snow hit the container, it sank about 50 to 60 metres down [the mountain]. The Army arrived quickly and rescued us,” he said, according to the army video.

Gaurav Kunwar, a former village council member of Mana, told the BBC on Friday the area where the avalanche hit was a “migratory area” and that it had no permanent residents.

“Only labourers working on border roads stay there in the winter,” he said, adding that it had rained for two days prior to the avalanche.

The India Meteorological Department has warned of rainfall and snow in the northern states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as Jammu and Kashmir until Tuesday.

Avalanches and landslides are common in the higher regions of the Himalayas, especially during winter.

Experts say that climate change has made extreme weather more severe and less predictable. There has also been a rapid rise in deforestation and construction in Uttarakhand’s hilly areas in recent years.

In 2021, nearly 100 people died in Uttarakhand after a piece of a Himalayan glacier fell into the river, triggering flash floods.

For the third week in a row, Pope Francis has been unable to deliver his traditional Angelus prayer in person, with the Vatican publishing his written comments instead.

Vatican officials said the text, sent from his hospital room in Rome, had been written “in the past few days”. In it, the Pope thanked people for their prayers and thanked his medical team for their care.

“I feel in my heart the ‘blessing’ that is hidden within frailty, because it is precisely in these moments that we learn even more to trust in the Lord,” he wrote.

“At the same time, I thank God for giving me the opportunity to share in body and spirit the condition of so many sick and suffering people.”

The Pope usually makes his address from a window of the official Vatican appartments, drawing a crowd below on St Peter’s Square.

Many Catholics come specially for the chance to see him but this is now the longest Pope Francis has been out of the public eye since he was elected.

Each evening on the square, a group of cardinals lead people in prayers for his health.

In his latest written address, the Pope told Catholics that he felt their “affection and closeness” and felt “carried and supported by all God’s people”.

The Vatican said he remained stable on Sunday, although doctors still describe his overall condition – with pneumonia – as “complex” and the risk of another infection is high. After 16 days in hospital, they are still giving no prognosis.

The medical team has not spoken directly to journalists for over a week, and all updates are coming via Vatican officials.

On Sunday, they said the Pope no longer required “non-invasive mechanical ventilation, only high-flow oxygen therapy”.

He does not have a fever and was able to participate in mass in a chapel on the 10th floor of Rome’s Gemelli hospital where he is being treated.

• The Roman hospital caring for Pope Francis
• In pictures: Prayers for the Pope around the world

The Pope also received two visitors – Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin and his deputy Monsignor Pena Parra. They are the first to be mentioned by the Vatican in almost a week.

There are no details about the length of time the men spent with him or what was discussed.

The latest details do suggest that the Pope has rallied somewhat since Friday, when he suffered a second breathing “crisis” which doctors had worried might have a lasting impact. It was the second time the word “crisis” had been used since he was admitted to hospital on 14 February.

By Sunday, though, Vatican sources were more reassuring.

“The Pope woke, had breakfast with coffee, continued his therapy and read the newspapers as he usually does,” they told journalists.

In his Sunday Angelus, the Pope prayed for peace, including in “tormented Ukraine, Palestine, Israel”, adding: “From here, war appears even more absurd.”

Always outspoken against war, some of the Pope’s previous comments on Ukraine have nevertheless created controversy.

He suggested that Russia’s full-scale invasion was “somehow provoked” and on one occasion agreed that Kyiv should show “the courage of the white flag” and negotiate for peace.

One of the world’s most prolific blood donors – whose plasma saved the lives of more than 2 million babies – has died.

James Harrison died in his sleep at a nursing home in New South Wales, Australia on 17 February, his family said on Monday. He was 88.

Known in Australia as the man with the golden arm, Harrison’s blood contained a rare antibody, Anti-D, which is used to make medication given to pregnant mothers whose blood is at risk of attacking their unborn babies.

The Australian Red Cross Blood Service who paid tribute to Harrison, said he had pledged to become a donor after receiving transfusions while undergoing a major chest surgery when he was 14.

He started donating his blood plasma when he was 18 and continued doing so every two weeks until he was 81.

In 2005, he had the world record for most blood plasma donated – a title he held until 2022 when he was overtaken by a man in the US.

Harrison’s daughter, Tracey Mellowship, said her father was “very proud to have saved so many lives, without any cost or pain”.

“He always said it does not hurt, and the life you save could be your own,” she said.

Mellowship and two of Harrison’s grandchildren are also recipients of anti-D immunisations.

“It made [James] happy to hear about the many families like ours, who existed because of his kindness,” she said.

Anti-D jabs protect unborn babies from a deadly blood disorder called haemolytic disease of the foetus and newborn, or HDFN.

The condition occurs at pregnancy when the mother’s red blood cells are incompatible with that of their growing baby.

The mother’s immune system then sees the baby’s blood cells as a threat and produces antibodies to attack them. This can seriously harm the baby, causing severe anaemia, heart failure, or even death.

Before anti-D interventions were developed in the mid-1960s, one in two babies diagnosed with HDFN died.

It is unclear how Harrison’s blood came to be so rich in anti-D, but some reports said it had to do with the massive blood transfusion he received at 14.

There are fewer than 200 anti-D donors in Australia, but they help an estimated 45,000 mothers and their babies every year, according to the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, also known as Lifeblood.

Lifeblood has been working with Australia’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research to grow anti-D antibodies in the lab by replicating blood and immune cells from Harrison and other donors.

Researchers involved hope lab-made anti-D can one day be used to help pregnant women worldwide.

“Creating a new therapy has long been a ‘holy grail’,” Lifeblood’s research director David Irving said.

He noted the scarcity of donors committed to regular donation, who are able to produce antibodies in sufficient quality and quantity.

US tariffs against Canada and Mexico will go ahead on Tuesday but their level will be decided by Donald Trump, the US commerce secretary has said.

The US president has threatened to impose 25% tariffs – which are a tax on imports – on his two neighbours on 4 March, in response to what he says is an unacceptable flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the US.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Sunday the tariffs would happen as planned but the exact details will depend on negotiations.

A 10% tariff on Chinese imports is also expected to be implemented in response to US accusations that Beijing is not doing enough to stop the flow of fentanyl into the US.

This means that if brought into effect, Chinese exports to the US will face a levy of at least 20%, following a 10% tariff that took effect a month ago.

Chinese state media claims leaders in Beijing have prepared a series of countermeasures to happen on the same day, raising the prospect of an all-out trade war between the world’s top two economies.

China’s state-run Global Times newspaper said the countermeasures would probably target US agricultural and food products.

Analysts believe Beijing still hopes to avoid an all-out trade war and negotiate a truce with the Trump administration, but so far there has been no sign of a deal between the two economic giants.

Trump has long maintained that tariffs are a useful tool to correct trade imbalances and protect US manufacturing.

• How does fentanyl get into the US?
• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• How Japan sparked Trump’s 40-year love affair with tariffs

Speaking on Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News, Lutnick said: “There are going to be tariffs on Tuesday on Mexico and Canada. Exactly what they are, we’re going to leave that for the president and his team to negotiate.”

Canada has repeatedly said tariffs will harm both economies but added that it will defend itself if they happen.

Canadian Internal Trade Minister Anita Anand met officials in Washington in recent days and said over the weekend there will be a response.

“We are steady at the wheel. We are prepared for any eventuality, but we will at every turn defend our country’s economy,” she told CBC News.

Last month, Canada had prepared a list of $30bn (£23.6bn) worth of American goods it said it would levy in response to US tariffs. Items on that list included everyday goods like pasta, clothing and perfume.

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) says it has been “surging” its efforts to tackle fentanyl crossing into the US.

Only 1% of fentanyl seized in the US is thought to come from Canada, according to US data.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Sunday, from a summit on Ukraine in London, that Canada was “not an issue” as a source of illegal fentanyl in the US.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, appeared to send a message to Trump after the Lutnick interview when she said at a public event in the city of Colima that “Mexico has to be respected”.

“Co-operation [and] co-ordination, yes, subordination, never.”

President Trump has also announced a 25% charge on all steel and aluminium imports, which is meant to come into effect on 12 March.

In addition, he has threatened to impose custom “reciprocal” tariffs on individual countries, as well as 25% tariffs on the European Union.

The UK death rate reached a record low last year, according to exclusive analysis carried out for BBC News.

Mortality experts looked at death certificates registered in 2024 and found that deaths per head of the population had returned to pre-pandemic levels and were slightly below the previous record in 2019.

However, the new figure puts the UK back on its long-term trend of only gradual improvement.

The research was carried out by analysts from the Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

“This is five years of basically flat mortality improvement, it’s pretty poor by historical standards,” said Stuart McDonald from the CMI.

There was also a “concerning” rise in the death rate at young working ages, he said.

A Department of Health spokesperson said the government was “shifting focus from sickness to prevention”.

The registered death rate in the UK steadily halved from 1974 to 2011 largely driven by improvements in tackling heart disease, including smoking prevention and medical advances.

From 2011 to 2019 the improvements drastically slowed, then changed direction during Covid as thousands more people died than normal. The first post-pandemic year of 2022 also saw high numbers of extra deaths.

To calculate the record low 2024 UK figure of 989 deaths per 100,000 people, analysts at the CMI used provisional weekly death registration figures for the four nations of the UK.

“Clearly, it’s very good news that our mortality rate is lower in 2024 than it was,” says Dr Veena Raleigh, epidemiologist at health think tank The King’s Fund. “But if you look at the broader canvas then it’s not so good.”

Although similar countries also experienced a slowdown since 2011, the UK’s has been more severe and our life expectancy is at the “bottom of the pack of comparable countries,” she says, adding that nations such as Spain returned to pre-pandemic levels by 2023.

Researchers point to a variety of reasons behind the slowdown since 2011. Some of the “low hanging fruit” of improvements in heart disease and cancer, such as the cut in smoking rates, had already happened, making further gains harder.

At the same time, the UK saw rising risk factors, including obesity, poor diet and low levels of exercise, against a backdrop of widening social inequality and pressure on the NHS.

Some academics argue that austerity cuts to public services after the 2008 financial crash had a strong impact on life expectancy, while others say it’s not possible to prove this directly.

Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of death in England and Wales, according to the latest official figures. Heart disease, lung disease, strokes, lung cancer also feature highly, along with flu in some years.

“Cardiovascular disease remains a leading killer in the UK,” said Prof Bryan Williams OBE, chief scientific and medical officer at the British Heart Foundation.

“The plateau we have seen in reducing the number of deaths… is a serious cause for concern, made worse by the impact of the pandemic on an already overstretched health service.”

He added that early deaths from cardiovascular disease had grown in the most deprived areas of England and called for “urgent government action” in its prevention, detection and treatment.

Overall death rates are largely a reflection of older people’s health as more than three-quarters of UK deaths happen over the age of 70.

So the main trend is driven by what is happening to people in this age group.

But the CMI found “really significant differences” at younger ages says Stuart McDonald, with a “concerning” upward trend in mortality among 20-44-year-olds.

“For this age group, death rates have actually been going up slightly, even before the pandemic. If we go back to 2011 we can see a slight increase in death rates year-on-year.”

Death numbers among this age group are much lower than at older ages and the causes tend to be different. Fewer than 20,000 people aged 20-44 die in the UK each year, about 3% of all deaths.

“External and substance-related causes are most important because often that’s what people die of in this age group,” says Antonino Polizzi, researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford.

“Things like drug overdoses, alcohol-related deaths, accidents, homicides and suicides.”

The UK, particularly Scotland, has seen a rise in drug-related death rates, he says.

“These causes are usually improving for other Western European countries so we are seeing a divergent effect.”

Commenting on the overall trends at all age groups, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We inherited an NHS that was broken and we are determined to fix it.

“Through our Plan for Change we are shifting focus from sickness to prevention and targeting the drivers of ill health and catching the biggest killers earlier.

“We are creating the first smoke free generation, stopping junk food ads being targeted at children and improving detection of diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.”

The CMI took weekly provisional death registration data from the Office for National Statistics, for England and Wales, National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and calculated the 2024 rate.

The rate is age-standardised, which means that you can make comparisons with other years even though the UK population as a whole is getting older.

Changes to the death registration process may mean that more 2024 deaths are registered in 2025 than was the case for the previous year, but the CMI says this is not the main explanation for the return to the pre-pandemic trend.

The mother of a six-year-old girl who disappeared more than a year ago in South Africa has gone on trial accused of organising her kidnapping.

Kelly Smith, her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and their friend Steveno van Rhyn were arrested after Smith’s daughter, Joshlin, went missing from outside her home in Saldanha Bay, near Cape Town, in February last year.

Joshlin’s disappearance sent shockwaves across South Africa and despite a highly publicised search for her, she is yet to be found.

All three have pleaded not guilty to charges of human trafficking and kidnapping.

Ms Smith initially said that Joshlin had gone missing after she left the young girl in Mr Appollis’s care.

Prosecutors later accused her of having “sold, delivered or exchanged” the six-year-old and lied about her disappearance.

An intense and widespread search then ensued for the young girl but attention soon turned to Ms Smith after her friend and former co-accused, Lorentia Lombaard, turned state witness, according to South Africa’s Daily Maverick news site.

Her search even attracted the interest of Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie, who offered a reward of one million rand (£42,500; $54,000) for her safe return.

The trial will run from 3-28 March at the Saldanha multi-purpose centre, which has been repurposed into a high court specifically for the case.

A judge presiding over the case earlier this year explained that the location was selected to “ensure the community has access” to proceedings throughout the marathon trial.

An adventurer who tried to row across the Pacific Ocean from the United States to Australia has been rescued just days before he reached his final destination.

Lithuanian rower Aurimas Mockus sounded a distress signal late on Friday after he was stranded by a cyclone, and surrounded by towering waves and strong winds packing up to 100 km/h (62 mph), local media reported.

Authorities made radio contact with Mr Mockus the next day when he was about 740km east of Mackay, a city on Australia’s east coast in the Coral Sea.

By the time he was rescued on Monday morning, the 44-year-old had spent nearly five months alone at sea.

Mr Mockus is getting medical treatment on an Australian warship, which will take him to Sydney, the Australian navy said.

He was attempting to become one of few rowers who have crossed the Pacific alone and without stopping.

Among them are Britons Peter Bird and John Beeden, who achieved the feat in 1983 and 2015 respectively, and Australian Michelle Lee in 2023.

Mr Mockus started his 12,000km-long journey in October from San Diego in southern California. Brisbane was meant to be his destination.

He rowed for an average of 12 hours a day, according to local reports.

He regularly updated his progress on Instagram. In the latest post published a day before he called for help, Mr Mockus reported that he had crossed the Chesterfield Islands, a cluster of French coral islands about 1,500km east of Australia.

“The highlight is that I successfully sailed the reefs of Chesterfield Islands. And further as God allows… The most important thing is to hold back the next few days,” he wrote.

Tropical Cyclone Alfred, which derailed Mr Mockus’s plan, is forecast to hit Australia’s eastern states of Queensland and New South Wales in the coming days.

Swedish police are investigating a suspected sabotage incident on a water pump on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea.

Police told the BBC that the local government’s water unit received an alarm for a water pump on Sunday at 17:30 local time (16:30 GMT).

“Technicians found that someone has opened an electrical cabinet, pulled out a cable and thereby cut off the power to the pump,” police said. The technician put the cable back and reset the alarm at 21:30 local time, and the pump is now working.

Police have not said who they suspect could be responsible. The incident comes after the suspected sabotage of an undersea telecoms cable connecting Germany and Finland last month.

There has been an increase in damage to infrastructure in the Baltic Sea in recent months, largely caused by ships dragging their anchors across cables. European leaders have suspected Russian involvement.

However, poor weather, inadequate equipment and human error has been found to be responsible for some damages.

Following the discovery of the suspected sabotage on Gotland on Sunday, Patrik Johansson, who heads the local water and sanitation department, said: “We can see that it is human influence that caused the damage.”

There has been no impact on the drinking water, the statement added.

Susanne Bjergegaard-Pettersson, Gotland’s head of water and sewage, told Aftonbladet, which first reported the incident, that the water pumps drew from a lake that supplies large parts of the island.

The BBC has contacted Bjergegaard-Pettersson for more information.

Gotland is a large island in the Baltic Sea that sits to the east of mainland Sweden and west of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Dozens of construction workers have been pulled out alive from metal containers after they were buried by an avalanche in the Himalayas in India’s Uttarakhand state.

They survived – some as long as nearly two days – as the containers in which they were living had enough oxygen to sustain them until rescuers could dig them out, Indian media reported quoting officials.

On Friday, 54 workers were buried when the avalanche hit a construction camp near Mana village. Eight were killed, while the other 46 were rescued.

The operation lasted almost 60 hours in sub-zero temperatures and concluded on Sunday.

Most of the labourers, who were working on a highway expansion project, were able to “withstand the wrecking avalanche” because of the containers, rescuers told The Indian Express newspaper.

“These metal shelters saved most of them. They had just enough oxygen to hold on until we got them out,” a senior rescue official told The Times of India.

The newspaper reported that the force of the avalanche had hurled eight metal containers and a shed down the mountain.

Uttarakhand state Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has thanked rescue teams for their efforts in challenging conditions.

Members of the Indian army, national and state disaster response forces and local administration had worked to free the workers, using helicopters and drones for the operation.

Many of the rescued workers are receiving treatment at hospitals in the state’s Joshimath town and Rishikesh city.

Satyaprakash Yadav, a migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh who was among those rescued, said the “avalanche hit our container like a landslide”, according to a video released by the army.

He added that the container he was in broke apart when the snow hit and it ended up near a river.

“We managed to get out on our own and reached a nearby army guest house, where we stayed overnight,” he added.

Rajnish Kumar, a worker from Uttarkhand’s Pithoragarh town, said most of them were sleeping when the avalanche struck.

“When the snow hit the container, it sank about 50 to 60 metres down [the mountain]. The Army arrived quickly and rescued us,” he said, according to the army video.

Gaurav Kunwar, a former village council member of Mana, told the BBC on Friday the area where the avalanche hit was a “migratory area” and that it had no permanent residents.

“Only labourers working on border roads stay there in the winter,” he said, adding that it had rained for two days prior to the avalanche.

The India Meteorological Department has warned of rainfall and snow in the northern states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as well as Jammu and Kashmir until Tuesday.

Avalanches and landslides are common in the higher regions of the Himalayas, especially during winter.

Experts say that climate change has made extreme weather more severe and less predictable. There has also been a rapid rise in deforestation and construction in Uttarakhand’s hilly areas in recent years.

In 2021, nearly 100 people died in Uttarakhand after a piece of a Himalayan glacier fell into the river, triggering flash floods.

Former Fifa president Sepp Blatter and French football legend Michel Platini are back in court in Switzerland to face accusations of fraud.

In 2022, the pair were acquitted in a trial over a payment of 2m Swiss francs (£1.6m) made to Platini and authorised by Blatter in 2011.

Both men denied wrongdoing and said the transfer was belated payment for Fifa advisory work by Platini, who formerly led European football’s governing body Uefa.

But the Swiss federal prosecutor appealed against the decision. The new trial is expected to last until Thursday, with a verdict due on 25 March.

The pair appeared before an appeals court in Muttenz, near Basel, on Monday. Blatter, 88, reaffirmed that he was innocent.

“When you talk about falsehoods, lies and deception, that’s not me. That didn’t exist in my whole life,” he told the court.

A lawyer for Platini, 69, said the lower court that acquitted the pair in 2022 had been “right to find that the disputed payment of 2m francs was lawful”.

Platini had an illustrious playing career and is a three-time winner of the Ballon d’Or – Europe’s highest individual football award.

He captained France to victory at the 1984 European Championship and won the 1985 European Cup with Juventus. He went on to coach the French national team and became Uefa president in 2007.

In 2015, prosecutors accused the pair of deceiving Fifa about payments made to Platini.

In his testimony at the first trial, Blatter said that he had asked Platini to work as his adviser in 1998. He added that at the time, Fifa could not afford the 1m Swiss francs annual fee requested by Platini.

They instead settled on partial payment, with the outstanding balance to be paid at a later date. Platini said during the trial: “I trusted the president, and knew he would pay me one day.”

He stopped working for Fifa in 2002 but initially did not pursue the payment as he told the court he had not needed the money at the time, and – according to Blatter – Fifa was “broke”. In January 2011, however, Platini felt he was in a position to send an invoice and the money was paid after approval by Blatter.

Following an investigation launched in 2015, Swiss prosecutors accused Blatter and Platini of forgery and fraud.

Also in 2015, Fifa suspended both men from football for ethics breaches – originally for eight years, although their exclusions were later reduced.

In 2022, Switzerland’s federal criminal court in Bellinzona cleared the two after accepting their account of a “gentlemen’s agreement” for the payment.

Swiss businessman and sports administrator Blatter joined Fifa in 1975, became general secretary in 1981 and then president of world football’s governing body in 1998.

He remained in the role for 17 years until resigning amid corruption investigations. Platini later withdrew his own candidacy for president.