Australian authorities say a body has been found in floodwaters and 13 military workers injured in a vehicle crash as wild weather from a tropical storm lashes the country’s eastern coast.

Cyclone Alfred, which was downgraded to a tropical low on Saturday, made landfall near the Queensland capital city of Brisbane in the evening local time.

Officials have warned residents to stay indoors and remain vigilant, saying the storm’s threat is “not over”.

Winds have brought down trees and power lines and flooded low-lying roads. More than 300,000 properties are without power in the region.

Police said on Saturday they had discovered a body in the search for a 61-year-old man who went missing on Friday after his car was caught in floodwaters in Dorrigo, northern New South Wales (NSW).

Emergency responders witnessed the man escaping his car and climbing onto a tree near the riverbank, but rescuers were not able to reach him before he was swept away.

Police found a body in the area on Saturday and said it “is believed to be that of the missing man”.

In a separate incident on Saturday, 13 military personnel were injured in a convoy crash in Lismore, about 200km south of Brisbane, according to Federal Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh.

One truck overturned while driving on a narrow road. A second truck then collided with it.

The state’s ambulance service had earlier said it treated 36 people in the accident. Keogh clarified to media that while around 36 people were involved, only 13 were injured.

They had been part of military crews deployed to Lismore, near the Queensland border, to help rescue and response operations.

“Our ADF [Australian Defence Force] heroes were on their way to help Australians in need,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement noting some had been “seriously” injured.

Albanese earlier on Saturday had addressed the nation from the capital Canberra, saying millions of residents were “well-prepared” but “we must remain vigilant.”

Four million people across Queensland and northern New South Wales were bracing for the storm’s landfall with dozens of weather warnings in place across both areas.

Around 287,000 customers are experiencing outages in south east Queensland, according to energy provider Energex, while Essential Energy said more than 42,600 homes and businesses in New South Wales had experienced blackouts.

People in Brisbane, Queensland’s capital, went to bed on Friday bracing for strong winds and heavy rain.

They woke up on Saturday to learn that the cyclone had been downgraded and the city would escape the worst of the weather.

But the danger’s not over in other parts of southeastern Queensland and northern New South Wales.

Along the Gold Coast, pummelled by bad weather the past few days, conditions have been very strong with driving rain and strong winds.

Hundreds of trees have been blown over in gardens, parks and along the main roads. There has been lots of debris and emergency services had sectioned off areas most at risk.

“This emergency is not over,” said New South Wales state premier Chris Minns, adding that it was “crucially important” the public did not “dismiss” the storm.

“It really doesn’t matter to us whether it’s been downgraded from a tropical cyclone to a weather event,” he said.

The state’s emergency service operations commander, Stuart Fisher, warned people not to be “complacent” and said authorities in the region expect flooding to continue over the next few days.

As the storm has edged closer to landfall, nearly 1,000 schools have closed, public transport has been suspended and airports are shut. Elective surgeries have also been cancelled.

Flights are not expected to resume until Sunday at the earliest.

The BBC spoke to several people from Brisbane’s homeless community, who took refuge at Emmanuel City Mission, which had become a round-the-clock shelter.

At the Treasure Island Holiday Park in the Gold Coast, just north of Surfer’s Paradise, a gum tree had come down between two cabins, damaging a third. Nearby, a boat was half submerged in one of the canals a block away from the beach.

On the coast itself, many paths down to the beach are now unpassable. Instead, there’s a sudden drop to the ocean where the powerful waves have eaten away at the sand.

But the clean-up operation won’t happen for a few days – the wind is still powerful and there’s driving rain.

Residents are starting to venture out to look at the damage, but plenty are remaining indoors to keep themselves safe.

Gurpreet Singh was handcuffed, his legs shackled and a chain tied around his waist. He was led onto the tarmac in Texas by US Border Patrol, towards a waiting C-17 military transport aircraft.

It was 3 February and, after a months-long journey, he realised his dream of living in America was over. He was being deported back to India. “It felt like the ground was slipping away from underneath my feet,” he said.

Gurpreet, 39, was one of thousands of Indians in recent years to have spent their life savings and crossed continents to enter the US illegally through its southern border, as they sought to escape an unemployment crisis back home.

There are about 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US, the third largest group behind Mexicans and El Salvadoreans, according to the most recent figures from Pew Research in 2022.

Now Gurpreet has become one of the first undocumented Indians to be sent home since President Donald Trump took office, with a promise to make mass deportations a priority.

Gurpreet intended to make an asylum claim based on threats he said he had received in India, but – in line with an executive order from Trump to turn people away without granting them asylum hearings – he said he was removed without his case ever being considered.

About 3,700 Indians were sent back on charter and commercial flights during President Biden’s tenure, but recent images of detainees in chains under the Trump administration have sparked outrage in India.

US Border Patrol released the images in an online video with a bombastic choral soundtrack and the warning: “If you cross illegally, you will be removed.”

“We sat in handcuffs and shackles for more than 40 hours. Even women were bound the same way. Only the children were free,” Gurpreet told the BBC back in India. “We weren’t allowed to stand up. If we wanted to use the toilet, we were escorted by US forces, and just one of our handcuffs was taken off.”

Opposition parties protested in parliament, saying Indian deportees were given “inhuman and degrading treatment”. “There’s a lot of talk about how Prime Minister Modi and Mr Trump are good friends. Then why did Mr Modi allow this?” said Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a key opposition leader.

Gurpreet said: “The Indian government should have said something on our behalf. They should have told the US to carry out the deportation the way it’s been done before, without the handcuffs and chains.”

An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said the government had raised these concerns with the US, and that as a result, on subsequent flights, women deportees were not handcuffed and shackled.

But on the ground, the intimidating images and President Trump’s rhetoric seem to be having the desired effect.

“No-one will try going to the US now through this illegal ‘donkey’ route while Trump is in power,” said Gurpreet.

In the longer term, this could depend on whether there are continued deportations, but for now many of the Indian people-smugglers, locally called “agents”, have gone into hiding, fearing raids against them by Indian police.

Gurpreet said Indian authorities demanded the number of the agent he had used when he landed back home, but the smuggler could no longer be reached.

“I don’t blame them, though. We were thirsty and went to the well. They didn’t come to us,” said Gurpreet.

While the official headline figure puts the unemployment rate at only 3.2%, it conceals a more precarious picture for many Indians. Only 22% of workers have regular salaries, the majority are self-employed and nearly a fifth are “unpaid helpers”, including women working in family businesses.

“We leave India only because we are compelled to. If I got a job which paid me even 30,000 rupees (£270/$340) a month, my family would get by. I would never have thought of leaving,” said Gurpreet, who has a wife, a mother and an 18-month-old baby to look after.

“You can say whatever you want about the economy on paper, but you need to see the reality on the ground. There are no opportunities here for us to work or run a business.”

Gupreet’s trucking company was among the cash-dependent small businesses that were badly hit when the Indian government withdrew 86% of the currency in circulation with four hours notice. He said he didn’t get paid by his clients, and had no money to keep the business afloat. Another small business he set up, managing logistics for other companies, also failed because of the Covid lockdown, he said.

He said he tried to get visas to go to Canada and the UK, but his applications were rejected.

Then he took all his savings, sold a plot of land he owned, and borrowed money from relatives to put together 4 million rupees ($45,000/£36,000) to pay a smuggler to organise his journey, Gurpreet told us.

On 28 August 2024, he flew from India to Guyana in South America to start an arduous journey to the US.

Gurpreet pointed out all the stops he made on a map on his phone. From Guyana he travelled through Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, mostly by buses and cars, partly by boat, and briefly on a plane – handed from one people-smuggler to another, detained and released by authorities a few times along the way.

From Colombia, smugglers tried to get him a flight to Mexico, so he could avoid crossing the dreaded Darién Gap. But Colombian immigration didn’t allow him to board the flight, so he had to make a dangerous trek through the jungle.

A dense expanse of rainforest between Colombia and Panama, the Darién Gap can only be crossed on foot, risking accidents, disease and attacks by criminal gangs. Last year, 50 people died making the crossing.

“I was not scared. I’ve been a sportsman so I thought I would be OK. But it was the toughest section,” said Gurpreet. “We walked for five days through jungles and rivers. In many parts, while wading through the river, the water came up to my chest.”

Each group was accompanied by a smuggler – or a “donker” as Gurpreet and other migrants refer to them, a word seemingly derived from the term “donkey route” used for illegal migration journeys.

At night they would pitch tents in the jungle, eat a bit of food they were carrying and try to rest.

“It was raining all the days we were there. We were drenched to our bones,” he said. They were guided over three mountains in their first two days. After that, he said they had to follow a route marked out in blue plastic bags tied to trees by the smugglers.

“My feet had begun to feel like lead. My toenails were cracked, and the palms of my hands were peeled off and had thorns in them. Still, we were lucky we didn’t encounter any robbers.”

When they reached Panama, Gurpreet said he and about 150 others were detained by border officials in a cramped jail-like centre. After 20 days, they were released, he said, and from there it took him more than a month to reach Mexico, passing through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.

Gurpreet said they waited for nearly a month in Mexico until there was an opportunity to cross the border into the US near San Diego.

“We didn’t scale a wall. There is a mountain near it which we climbed over. And there’s a razor wire which the donker cut through,” he said.

Gurpreet entered the US on 15 January, five days before President Trump took office – believing that he had made it just in time, before the borders became impenetrable and rules became tighter.

Once in San Diego, he surrendered to US Border Patrol, and was then detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

During the Biden administration, illegal or undocumented migrants would appear before an immigration officer who would do a preliminary interview to determine if each person had a case for asylum. While a majority of Indians migrated out of economic necessity, some also left fearing persecution because of their religious or social backgrounds, or their sexual orientation.

If they cleared the interview, they were released, pending a decision on granting asylum from an immigration judge. The process would often take years, but they were allowed to remain in the US in the meantime.

This is what Gurpreet thought would happen to him. He had planned to find work at a grocery store and then to get into trucking, a business he is familiar with.

Instead, less than three weeks after he entered the US, he found himself being led towards that C-17 plane and going back to where he started.

In their small house in Sultanpur Lodhi, a city in the northern state of Punjab, Gurpreet is now trying to find work to repay the money he owes, and fend for his family.

More than 80 Afghan women who fled the Taliban to pursue higher education in Oman now face imminent return back to Afghanistan, following the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to foreign aid programmes.

Funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), their scholarships were abruptly terminated after a funding freeze ordered by President Donald Trump when he returned to office in January.

“It was heart-breaking,” one student told the BBC, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals. “Everyone was shocked and crying. We’ve been told we will be sent back within two weeks.”

Since regaining power nearly four years ago, the Taliban has imposed draconian restrictions on women, including banning them from universities.

The Trump administration’s aid freeze has faced legal roadblocks, but thousands of humanitarian programmes around the world have already been terminated as the White House dismantles USAID and cuts tens of billions of dollars in spending.

The students in Oman say preparations are under way to return them to Afghanistan, and have appealed to the international community to “intervene urgently”.

The BBC has seen emails sent to the 82 students informing them that their scholarships have been “discontinued” due to the termination of the programme and USAID funding.

The emails – which acknowledge the news will be “profoundly disappointing and unsettling” – refer to travel arrangements back to Afghanistan, which caused alarm among the students.

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“We need immediate protection, financial assistance and resettlement opportunities to a safe country where we can continue our education,” one told the BBC.

The USAID website’s media contact page remains offline. The BBC has contacted the US State Department for comment.

The Afghan women, now facing a forced return from Oman, had been pursuing graduate and post-graduate courses under the Women’s Scholarship Endowment (WSE), a USAID programme which began in 2018.

It provided scholarships for Afghan women to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the disciplines banned for women by the Taliban.

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Just over a week ago, the students were told their scholarships had been terminated.

“It’s like everything has been taken away from me,” another student told the BBC. “It was the worst moment. I’m under extreme stress right now.”

These women, mostly aged in their 20s, qualified for scholarships in 2021 before the Taliban seized Afghanistan. Many continued their studies in Afghan universities until December 2022, when the Taliban banned higher education for women.

After 18 months in limbo, they said they fled to Pakistan last September.

USAID then facilitated their visas to Oman, where they arrived between October and November 2024.

“If we are sent back, we will face severe consequences. It would mean losing all our dreams,” a student said. “We won’t be able to study and our families might force us to get married. Many of us could also be at personal risk due to our past affiliations and activism.”

The Taliban has cracked down on women protesting for education and work, with many activists beaten, detained and threatened.

Women in Afghanistan describe themselves as “dead bodies moving around” under the regime’s brutal policies.

The Taliban government says it has been trying to resolve the issue of women’s education, but has also defended its supreme leader’s diktats, saying they are “in accordance with Islamic Sharia law”.

“Afghanistan is experiencing gender apartheid, with women systematically excluded from basic rights, including education,” a student said.

She and her friends in Oman had managed to escape that fate, as the scholarships were supposed to fund their education until 2028.

“When we came here, our sponsors told us to not go back to Afghanistan till 2028 for vacations or to visit our families because it’s not safe for us. And now they’re telling us to go,” a student said.

Last month, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly blamed the situation for Afghan women on the US military’s withdrawal from the country under the Democrats, telling the Washington Post: “Afghan women are suffering because Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal allowed the Taliban to impose mediaeval Sharia law policies.”

The decision to slash American aid funding has come under the Trump administration, and been implemented by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

And these women face a grim future, urgently seeking a lifeline before time runs out.

A new Bollywood film – Mrs – has once again laid bare a stark reality: even in well-educated households in India a woman’s role is often confined to unpaid domestic work.

The protagonist, married to a gynaecologist, finds herself trapped in an endless cycle of cooking, cleaning and caregiving. Her dreams are sidelined not by force, but by relentless criticism and quiet coercion.

While the film, which is a remake of the hit Malayalam movie The Great Indian Kitchen, has sparked conversation – and pushback, especially from men on social media – its themes resonate with hard data.

A recent government survey reveals that Indian women spend over seven hours a day on unpaid domestic and caregiving work – more than twice the time men do. Data shows that women spend 289 minutes on unpaid domestic work and 137 minutes on unpaid caregiving, whereas men spend 88 minutes on chores and 75 minutes on care work.

They also spent less time than men doing paid work and engaging in self-care activities.

What’s disappointing is that the last such survey which came out six years ago had similar results. Despite the government launching campaigns to empower women, the situation hasn’t changed much.

India’s Time Use Surveys (TUS) track how people spend their time across various activities. Surveyors gather data nationwide by asking individuals aged six to 59 how they spent the previous day. The first TUS was released in 2019, with the second published last week.

When the government released findings from the second Time Use Survey (TUS), it highlighted two key shifts: women aged 15 to 59 spent 10 minutes less on unpaid domestic work, while their participation in employment and related activities rose by just over three percentage points.

The survey concluded this marked a “shift from unpaid to paid activities” for women – a positive sign that they were spending less time on domestic chores and more time in paid employment.

However, economists argue this isn’t necessarily true. Even if it is, the slight drop in domestic work suggests women are still juggling paid jobs with a heavier load of unpaid work than men.

Ashwini Deshpande, an economics professor at Ashoka University, says TUS data should be analysed alongside India’s Female Labour Force Participation Rate (FLFPR) for a deeper understanding of how women spend their time. FLFPR measures the percentage of women aged 15 and above in the labour force.

According to government data, the FLFPR grew from about 23% in 2017-2018 to 37% in 2022-2023. Prof Deshpande says that this increase is not solely due to an increase in employment opportunities for women, but has also been spurred by economic distress.

“Women are not waiting for their time spent on domestic chores to reduce to take up jobs. Research shows that women want to work to supplement household incomes and so they end up working ‘double-shifts’, doing paid work outside the home and unpaid work inside,” Prof Deshpande says.

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Indian women aren’t alone in shouldering a disproportionate share of household and caregiving work – it’s a global reality. However, the gap in time spent on domestic work is significantly wider in India.

Where globally women spend about 2.8 hours more than men on domestic and care work, for Indian women, this difference is closer to four hours.

Sociologists attribute this to India’s deeply patriarchal society, which continues to enforce strict gender norms. Even among the educated elite, women remain confined by roles upheld and perpetuated not just by men, but also by women.

This rigid enforcement of gender roles doesn’t just shape women’s lives – it also shapes the way stories about them are received.

So, while Mrs struck a chord with many, it also faced sharp criticism – especially from men on social media.

A men’s rights group accused it of “spreading toxicity” against traditional joint families, while others dismissed its premise altogether.

Kajol Srinivasan, a Mumbai-based comedian, says the film ruffled feathers because it held up an uncomfortable mirror to society.

She told the BBC how her father, who quit his job at 40 to take over household duties while her mother continued working, quickly realised that housework was no easy task.

“The first week he was excited; he cooked different dishes and deep-cleaned the house,” she says.

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But then he began to find the work tedious and couldn’t continue beyond a week.

“My father realised that housework was not just about work, it was also an imbalance in power. The power always stays with the breadwinner; no matter how well you cook, there are no accolades,” she says.

She believes that women are expected and raised to accept this lower rung of power.

“When Indian men talk about what they like about their wives and mothers, it often has a lot to do with how much they have sacrificed for them or how much they take care of them or the home,” Ms Srinivasan says.

India’s Time Use Survey shows that social change is slow, and it may take time before women spend less on domestic work.

In the meantime, films like Mrs spark conversations around everyday questions many prefer to avoid – like, who’s doing the dishes?

Syrian security forces are alleged to have killed hundreds of civilians belonging to the Alawite minority group in continuing violence along the country’s coast, according to a war monitoring group.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said some 745 civilians had been killed in around 30 “massacres” targeting Alawites on Friday and Saturday.

BBC News has not been able to independently verify these claims.

Hundreds of people have reportedly fled their homes in the region – a heartland of deposed president Bashar al-Assad, who also belongs to the Alawite sect.

A total of more than 1,000 people have been killed in the past two days, the SOHR said, in what is the worst violence in Syria since rebels toppled the Assad regime in December.

This figure includes dozens of government troops and gunmen loyal to Assad, who have been locked in clashes in the coastal Latakia and Tartous provinces since Thursday.

Some 125 members of the Islamist-led government security forces and 148 pro-Assad fighters have been killed in the violence, according to the SOHR’s report.

A Syrian defence ministry spokesman told the country’s Sana news agency that the government had re-established control after “treacherous attacks” against its security personnel.

The violence has left the Alawite community in “a state of horror”, an activist in the city told the BBC on Friday, with hundreds of people reportedly fleeing affected areas.

Large crowds sought refuge at a Russian military base at Hmeimim in Latakia, according to the Reuters news agency.

Video footage shared by Reuters showed dozens of people chanting “people want Russian protection” outside the base.

Meanwhile, dozens of families have fled to neighbouring Lebanon, according to local media.

The UN’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said he was “deeply alarmed” by “very troubling reports of civilian casualties” in Syria’s coastal areas.

He called on all sides to refrain from actions which could “destabilise” the country and jeopardise a “credible and inclusive political transition”.

Alawites, whose sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, make up around 10% of Syria’s population, which is majority Sunni Muslim.

At least 25 people have died in Ukraine in the latest wave of Russian strikes, Ukrainian officials say, as the conflict shows no sign of easing.

One attack on Donetsk Region killed at least 11 people and wounded 40, including six children, local officials said on Saturday. Homes and infrastructure were hit in other regions, including Kharkiv and Odesa.

Russian attacks have intensified in recent days, as the US paused military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv. It followed last week’s Oval Office clash between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

After the latest Russian strikes, Polish PM Donald Tusk said: “This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians.”

“More bombs, more aggression, more victims,” he added in a social media post.

The deadliest strikes occurred late on Friday in the Donetsk Region town of Dobropillya. At least 11 people were killed when two ballistic missiles hit eight residential buildings and a shopping centre, officials said.

After emergency services arrived, Russia launched another strike “deliberately targeting the rescuers”, Zelensky said in a Telegram post. “Such strikes show that Russia’s goals are unchanged,” he added.

Other attacks in the region killed nine people and wounded 13 on Friday and Saturday, local officials said.

Drones struck a company in Bohodukhiv, Kharkiv Region, killing three people and injuring seven early on Saturday, regional head Oleh Synyehubov reported.

Another drone attack on Friday hit civilian and energy infrastructure in Odesa, the regional head said. “This is the seventh attack on the region’s energy system in three weeks,” the DTEK energy company said.

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Meanwhile Ukraine has continued to target Russia, whose defence ministry said its forces had intercepted 31 Ukrainian drones overnight.

On Friday, Trump said he was finding it “more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine” than Russia in attempts to broker peace between the two nations.

The US is “doing very well with Russia”, and “it may be easier dealing with” Moscow than Kyiv, he told reporters.

Hours earlier, Trump had said he was “strongly considering” large-scale sanctions and tariffs on Russia until a ceasefire with Ukraine was reached.

In addition to halting military and intelligence help, the US suspended Ukraine’s access to some satellite imagery, space technology company Maxar said on Friday.

The move came exactly a week after the extraordinary exchange at the White House, in which Trump berated Zelensky for being “disrespectful” to the US.

The Trump administration’s overtures to Putin have left many in Europe concerned that the continent will not be able to rely on US support for its security.

On Thursday EU leaders met in Brussels to approve plans to spend more on defence and renew the bloc’s support for Ukraine.

Next week Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is due to hold talks with Ukrainian negotiators in Saudi Arabia to discuss the possibility of a ceasefire with Russia.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, and now controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory.

About 15 years ago, an Indian rapper of humble origins broke onto the country’s then-infertile hip-hop music scene and transformed it forever.

He teased, cajoled and vexed his listeners, daring them to explore the “devilish” contours of his mind, as he sang rash rhymes about parties, drugs and “seducing” women. His songs played in clubs and weddings, blaring from stereos at big parties and roadside tea stalls alike.

Then, at the peak of his career, he vanished. Seven years later, Yo Yo Honey Singh is back – with a new album and an ongoing music tour, claiming to be a changed man after a prolonged battle with drug abuse and mental health struggles.

The 41-year-old singer and producer was once one of India’s biggest music stars, a figure who “moved the cultural gravity of hip-hop music”, says music journalist Bhanuj Kappal in Famous, a recent Netflix documentary on Singh.

But he was also deeply controversial – and, by his own admission, an “aggressive and reckless man”, routinely accused of promoting vulgarity, debauchery and violence through his music.

Many criticised Singh’s lyrics for depicting violence against women and rape, an image that gained further traction in the press after his former wife and childhood sweetheart accused him of domestic violence in her divorce filing. Singh has denied the charge.

Seven years later, the singer is no longer the defiant hitmaker who once ruled the charts with his provocative, foot-tapping anthems.

A lot has changed in the intervening years, including Indian hip-hop, which has evolved into a thriving, dynamic space. Artists once inspired by his sound have now surpassed him as the genre’s leading voices.

Singh also seems different. From someone who described himself as “the all-knowing master of the universe”, he now identifies as a God-fearing man who believes in good energies, the cyclic nature of life and “scientific astrologers”.

He claims his music is now more conscious, moving beyond drugs to something deeper. But loyal fans say it’s lost its edge and his latest tracks haven’t left a mark.

“He has a core audience that will stick with him forever… but his vision is old now. It’s outdated,” Kappal says.

But Singh is not ready to be written off, yet.

Instead of trying to conceal or defend his personal struggles with fame and drugs, he has made it the centrepiece of his comeback.

Since his return, Singh has candidly admitted his struggles with addiction and mental health. “Drugs destroyed me completely,” he told Lallantop, a digital news platform. “I lost myself to fame, money and women. I was like a devil, completely satanic.”

In interviews, he is witty and relaxed, speaking with the clarity of a tormented artist who, after battling his inner demons, seems to have unlocked a spiritual truth

“What goes around comes around, I really believe that,” he said recently. “It took a lot of time for me to get out from where I was stuck. But I am back now.”

Born Hridesh Singh in Punjab state, he grew up in a cramped Delhi neighbourhood. Those tough early years shaped his music and still echo in his work today.

“This ghetto was my home, my hood, always will be,” he’s often heard saying.

Singh always knew he wanted a career in music. He started as a college DJ, later moving into production full-time. “I wanted to make beats and produce music, not sing or write,” he says.

But after years as a small-time producer in Punjab, he realised it wouldn’t be enough. “My sounds were too urban for the place. People didn’t understand it. For that, I had to go beyond the state.”

So he went solo. In 2011, Singh released The International Villager, his breakout album. Blending Punjabi folk – its dhol beats and string melodies – with global hip-hop, he created something entirely new.

For three months, it seemed the formula had failed. Then everything changed. Overnight, the songs went viral, topped charts, won awards – and catapulted Singh into Bollywood.

Brown Rang, a song about a brown man’s global ambition, became YouTube’s most-watched video in 2012. Shot in Dubai on a million-dollar budget, it introduced many Indians to the bling of hip-hop – fast cars, baggy clothes, gem-studded watches and gold chains – set to slick, thumping beats.

Despite mounting criticism over his misogynistic lyrics, Singh packed stadiums and churned out hits, breaking into Bollywood with songs for stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar.

“A lot of times, my lyrics were trash, even I knew that. But people were still listening to it because the sound was so good and fresh,” he told Lallantop.

But Singh’s ascent to fame coincided with his personal downfall.

“I was drowning in drugs and alcohol, smoking 12-15 joints and downing bottles. I abandoned my family, lost control. This one time, I got so high I bit a friend on his stomach eight times,” he told Lallantop.

In 2017, Singh broke down mid-tour – a moment that shook him. He quit music and substances, returned to Delhi and began recovery with a global team of doctors and therapists. “I told my family I was mentally unwell. I can’t do anything till I get better.”

Singh says he’s been sober for seven years, except for the occasional beer.

“I have been to hell and back,” he says in Famous. “Even now, I wake up hazy because of the medicines.”

Fans, however, appreciate Singh’s raw honesty about his self-destructive tendencies – and his effort to overcome them.

“No-one’s perfect. But at least Singh tries to be better. He may have left the scene briefly but his music never stopped playing,” says Nandini Gupta, a Delhi-based student.

Others see his transformation as performative, noting his new music remains problematic. “Though toned down, he is still objectifying women and talking only about money and fame,” says listener Bushra Neyazi.

No matter how you see it, Singh’s redemption feels like another challenge to his audience – pushing them to accept his complicated past and give his music another chance.

“I was away for seven years, but I will drive everyone mad again in the next seven,” he said recently.

“I am back and I want the same love I received seven years ago.”

It’s been another turbulent week in global politics.

The world digested the extraordinary exchange between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader visited European allies, who have sprung into action to beef up their defences. Russian bombs hit Ukraine.

But what are these major players thinking ahead of fresh US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia next week?

Five BBC correspondents have analysed the week’s events.

After Donald Trump and JD Vance’s humiliating attack on Zelensky, the US president on Monday suspended military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine.

Over time, this will have a fundamental impact on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself – and Trump’s Democratic opponents say it’s now beyond question that he is aligned with Russia.

The administration has been plain that it sees the move as pressure on Zelensky to sign the president’s minerals deal and cede to a quick ceasefire.

Trump’s envoy Gen Keith Kellogg characterised the withdrawal of US military support as “like hitting a mule in the face with a [plank of wood]… You got their attention and it’s very significant… and it’s then up to them to do [what the president wants].”

After all the arm-twisting, the week ends with a more conciliatory tone from some of Trump’s top foreign policy team who will meet with the Ukrainians next week in Saudi Arabia.

There was a rare moment of criticism for Moscow by Trump on Friday as he threatened sanctions, even though it is already heavily sanctioned, to try to deter its intensifying bombardment of Ukraine.

But other than that this is an administration that has repeatedly reprimanded its supposed ally but refrained from any such criticism of its adversary.

On Thursday I asked the US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce for her reaction to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ruling out the presence of European peacekeepers in Ukraine. He had called it a “hostile aim” by the West over which there was “no room for compromise”.

Ms Bruce declined to respond, saying it wasn’t for her to comment on the remarks of foreign leaders or ministers, even though she had just repeated Trump’s label of Zelensky as “not ready for peace”.

Until Trump’s sanctions threat, this was another week when all the pressure seemed to be on Kyiv, giving Russia little reason to tame its appetite.

The suspension of American military aid and intelligence is one of the worst setbacks for Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, and a huge boost to Russia’s chances.

The deadly attacks across Ukraine which have followed suggest that Moscow is happy to continue with business as usual in the war.

It still insists that the original objectives of the “special military operation” must be achieved and more Ukrainian land captured.

It has also rejected efforts by Ukraine supporters to relieve this pressure on Kyiv, through a truce or a peacekeeping force.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks this week that Trump’s America may no longer be “on our side” are music to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ears, too.

It’s a situation in which Putin can sit back and enjoy the spectacle of cracks appearing in the Western alliance. It’s a situation that he’s been working to achieve for years, if not decades.

And he has achieved it not because of shots fired on the battlefield, but because of a breathtaking U-turn by Ukraine’s biggest ally.

Next Tuesday, Ukrainian and US representatives are sitting down for talks in Saudi Arabia. Russia will be watching closely, but feeling confident.

It’s been a bruising, emotional, and relentless week for the embattled Ukrainian president, as he fought to keep Western military support intact while reiterating his commitment to peace.

The fallout from his spectacular Oval Office clash with Trump was compounded in Kyiv after the US suspended military aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine.

“There’s a scent of betrayal in the air,” one source close to the Ukrainian government said. “The whole country feels it – including the president and his team.”

Zelensky refused Trump’s demand for an “explicit public apology”, instead penning a letter to the US president and calling their White House showdown “regrettable”.

To counter the damage, Zelensky was on the road again, seeking to shore up European support in Brussels. But while he secured public displays of solidarity, he didn’t get the firm military commitments he was hoping for.

Meanwhile, Zelensky urged EU leaders to support a limited truce at sea and in the air – an idea backed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Ukrainian and US delegations will hold talks in Saudi Arabia next week, but the path to peace remains uncertain.

Despite the setbacks, a source close to the president’s team insisted he remains defiant: “Three years ago, he could have been killed, but he decided to stay in Kyiv. The more pressure he’s under, the tougher he gets.”

There have been so many European summits it has been hard to keep up. And more are to come.

Europe’s leaders have suddenly realised the security umbrella they have relied on since World War Two may no longer be there, and proposals are flashing by at warp speed in European terms.

There is a broad consensus Europe needs to help Ukraine. France and the UK are offering “a coalition of the willing” on the ground if a peace deal can be found.

Russia hates the idea but Macron will bring together army chiefs on Tuesday to work on a plan.

But far bigger questions are now being asked about how Europe protects itself from what EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen calls a “clear and present danger”.

“We have to be ready” if the US is not there to help, says Macron. The EU is now talking about a multi-billion euro plan for beefing up defences.

And Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has raised the possibility of France and the UK extending their nuclear deterrent across Europe.

Macron has been receptive to that, although France’s nuclear umbrella would stretch only so far and final decisions would be made in Paris.

That goes to the heart of Europe’s defence problem.

Without the US, can individual European countries pool their resources and rely on each other?

For smaller states such as Lithuania there is no choice.

But the debate has begun, and Poland’s Donald Tusk says clearly it would be safer “if we have our own nuclear arsenal”.

Leading European nations have said they support an Arab-backed plan for the reconstruction of Gaza that would cost $53 billion (£41 billion) and avoid displacing Palestinians from the territory.

The plan, drawn up by Egypt and endorsed by Arab leaders, has been rejected by Israel and by US President Donald Trump, who presented his own vision to turn the Gaza Strip into a “Middle East Riviera”.

On Saturday the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Britain welcomed the plan, which calls for Gaza to be rebuilt over five years, as “realistic”.

In a statement, they said the proposal promised “swift and sustainable improvement of the catastrophic living conditions” for the people of Gaza.

The plan calls for Gaza to be governed temporarily by a committee of independent experts and for international peacekeepers to be deployed to the territory.

The committee would be responsible for overseeing humanitarian aid and temporarily managing Gaza’s affairs under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority.

The proposal was drawn up amid growing concern that Gaza’s fragile ceasefire deal could collapse after the six-week first phase expired on 1 March.

Israel has blocked aid from entering the territory to pressure Hamas to accept a new US proposal for a temporary extension of the truce, during which more hostages held in Gaza would be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

But Hamas has insisted that the second phase of the ceasefire, which would see the full withdrawal of Israeli troops, should begin as agreed.

Israel will send a negotiating team to Qatar on Monday to take part in talks on extending the ceasefire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

It remains unclear if or when the second phase of the ceasefire agreement will be implemented. But a Hamas spokesman, Abdel Latif al-Qanoua, spoke of “positive indicators” for next week’s talks.

The Arab-backed plan for Gaza’s future is an alternative to Trump’s idea for the US to take over the territory and resettle its population.

Egypt presented the plan at an emergency Arab League summit on Tuesday and it was welcomed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

But both the White House and Israeli foreign ministry said it failed to address realities in Gaza.

“Residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance,” Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for Trump’s National Security Council, said late on Tuesday.

“President Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas,” the statement added.

The statement issued by the four European countries on Saturday said they were “committed to working with the Arab initiative” and they appreciated the “important signal” the Arab states had sent by developing it.

The statement said Hamas “must neither govern Gaza nor be a threat to Israel any more” and that the four countries “support the central role for the Palestinian Authority and the implementation of its reform agenda”.

Almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have had to leave their homes since the start of hostilities. Israel began military operations after Hamas’s October 2023 attack which killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 more taken hostage.

Gaza has suffered vast destruction with a huge humanitarian impact. More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military action, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and much infrastructure across the strip has been levelled by air strikes.

King Charles is to call for unity and building bridges in what he describes as “these uncertain times” of international tension, in a message to mark Commonwealth Day next week.

In the annual message to mark the day on Monday, the King will emphasise the value of nations coming together in a “spirit of support, and crucially, friendship”.

The King has become involved in the diplomatic negotiations involving the UK, the US and Ukraine – with the monarch warmly welcoming President Volodymyr Zelensky after the Ukrainian leader’s disastrous meeting with US President Donald Trump and with a state visit planned for Trump.

A Commonwealth country, Canada, also faces its own tensions with Trump’s administration, as he has called for Canada to become the US 51st state.

Commonwealth Day is traditionally marked with a service at Westminster Abbey and this year the King and Queen will attend alongside the Prince and Princess of Wales.

In his written message, which will be published in full on Monday, the King will say: “In these uncertain times, where it is all too easy to believe that our differences are problems instead of a source of strength and an opportunity for learning, the Commonwealth’s remarkable collection of nations and peoples come together in the spirit of support and, crucially, friendship.”

It is a message that he has made before – that the diversity of peoples and cultures is a strength and not a weakness.

But it is a message now against a backdrop of global tensions, as the US pushes for an end to the war that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

As well as a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian President Zelensky, the King this week held a meeting with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, a Commonwealth leader who has faced pressure from the US.

King Charles is Canada’s head of state and ahead of the meeting Trudeau said: “Nothing seems more important to Canadians right now than standing up for our sovereignty and our independence as a nation.”

The King used the Commonwealth, with its 56-member nations, as an example of co-operation between countries.

“The Commonwealth’s ability to bring together people from all over the world has stood the test of time and remains as ever-important today,” says the King’s message.

The service at Westminster Abbey on Monday will emphasise the multicultural diversity of the Commonwealth, with the royal guests being met by a pipe band from a Hindu eco-temple in north-west London.

There will be music from an African arts group, the Masai Cultural Arts team.

And singer Joan Armatrading will perform a version of her song, Love and Affection.

An innovation for this year’s Commonwealth Day has been that the King has prepared his own personal playlist of favourite music tracks, by artists including Bob Marley, Kylie Minogue and Raye.

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The family of an Indian man who was shot dead while illegally crossing into Israel say he was a victim of a job scam.

Thomas Gabriel Perera was killed by Jordanian security forces by the border with Israel on 10 February.

He was lured to Jordan by the promise of a lucrative job, and when it did not materialise he tried to enter Israel as he was told he could find work there, his family told the BBC.

Reports of Indians falling for employment scams and illegally entering other countries to look for work have become increasingly common.

Perera, 47, had been accompanied by his brother-in-law Edison Charlas, who was injured in the incident. Mr Charlas was treated in hospital and spent a fortnight in prison before he was repatriated to India.

The two men were from the southern Indian state of Kerala where they worked as auto-rickshaw drivers.

An agent had promised them they could get blue-collar jobs in Jordan earning 350,000 rupees ($4,000; £3,110) a month.

Mr Charlas told the BBC he paid 210,000 rupees to an agent before they left India, and paid an additional $600 after reaching Jordan on a tourist visa.

But when the two men arrived in Jordan’s capital city Amman in early February, they were told by the agent that there were no jobs available.

The agent then suggested they should try illegally crossing into Israel, claiming there were plenty of opportunities there.

On 10 February, Mr Charlas and Perera joined a group that drove for hours to Jordan’s border with Israel.

“We were taken in a car. It was a long distance. We got into the car at 2pm and reached the location only around midnight. Then we were made to walk several kilometres along a coastline. It was while walking in the dark that we were shot,” said Mr Charlas.

The BBC has seen a letter sent to Perera’s family by the Indian embassy in Jordan. It states that “security forces tried to stop them but they did not listen to the warning, the guards opened fire on them”.

“One bullet hit Mr Thomas [Perera] in his head and he passed away on the spot.”

Mr Charlas, however, disputed this account and said there was “no such warning (from the guards). They just shot.”

“I was walking slowly behind the others in the dark… That was when the bullet hit me and I lost consciousness. I had no clue what happened to Thomas,” he said.

The BBC has asked India’s foreign ministry and Jordanian authorities for comment on Mr Charlas’ allegation.

Mr Charlas said he was later taken to a hospital for treatment and then moved between several Jordanian government offices before being transferred to prison, where he was kept for 18 days.

While in prison, he managed to contact his wife and told her what had happened, and his wife contacted Indian embassy officials.

Mr Charlas was deported to India on 28 February.

Perera’s body is still in Jordan. In response to BBC queries, India’s foreign ministry said they were working to bring the body back to India as soon as possible.

“I am told that it will take one or two days for the process of documentation and other things to be completed,” said Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for the foreign ministry.

On Monday, Shashi Tharoor, the member of parliament representing Perera’s constituency Thiruvananthapuram, said that members of the Indian embassy in Jordan had verified the victim’s identity and that the process of transportation of the body had begun.

Despite numerous government warnings, many Indians are still falling prey to job scams and taking the risk of entering countries illegally to find work, say observers.

“The modus operandi is to get a tourist visa for one country and then enter the neighbouring country,” said Ajith Kolassery, the CEO of Norka, the Kerala government’s department overseeing migration.

“No country will accept illegal entry. We have been consistently issuing advisories to people to be wary of job rackets, but they are still going.”

In recent years hundreds of Indians have been rescued from scam centres in Cambodia and other parts of South East Asia. They were trafficked to the centres after they were lured overseas by promises of good jobs.

Scores of Indian nationals were also tricked into fighting for Russia in the war with Ukraine after they were offered fake jobs and opportunities to study abroad.

The 100 Indians who were deported from the US last month after being accused of entering the country illegally had also been lured by the hope of a better life, pointed out Irudaya Rajan, who chairs the International Institute of Migration and Development in Thiruvananthapuram.

“They also paid money to agents and were cheated. It’s the struggle to get better wages [that is driving this],” he said.

Two women were gang-raped and a man was killed in an attack near a popular Unesco World Heritage site in southern India, according to police.

The two women – an Israeli tourist and an Indian homestay operator – were stargazing with three male tourists near a lake in Hampi, Karnataka, when they were attacked by a group of men on Thursday night, police superintendent Ram Arasiddi told Reuters.

Arasiddi said the assailants pushed the men into the Tungabhadra River canal before raping the women.

Two of the men, one of them American, survived, and the third man’s body was recovered on Saturday morning, he said.

“Five people – two women and three men – were attacked near Sanapur,” Arasiddi said.

“Two of them are foreigners, an American [man], and another a woman from Israel.”

Police have arrested two of the men accused of the attack and an investigation is ongoing, Arasiddi said.

Police believe the men followed the group.

According to witness testimony from one of the women, the group was stargazing near a temple in Sanapur when three men arrived on a motorcycle and asked them where they could get petrol.

As one member of the group gave them directions, one of the three men demanded 100 rupees ($1.29) from the tourists.

“Since the homestay operator did not know them, she told them they had no money,” police said.

“When the men repeatedly insisted, one of the male tourists gave them 20 rupees.

“After that, the three men allegedly started arguing.”

The body of one of the male tourists was later found in the Tungabhadra canal in Karnataka’s Koppal district.

A case has been registered at Gangavathi Rural Police Station under sections related to extortion, robbery, gang rape and attempted murder.

The victims are receiving medical treatment at a government hospital, the police said.

Hampi, an ancient village in the south Indian state of Karnataka, is home to numerous ruins and temples from the Vijayanagara Empire. It was declared as a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1986.

In a post on X, Chief Minister of Karnataka Siddaramaiah wrote: “The attack and rape of an Israeli citizen and homestay owner is a most heinous act.

“As soon as the incident was reported, I obtained information from the relevant police, conducted a thorough investigation, and instructed them to quickly identify the culprits.

“The police have arrested two accused in connection with the case and are continuing the investigation.”

Attacks on women in India gained international attention last year after the brutal rape-homicide of a junior doctor at a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.

The attack sparked national outrage and protests over a lack of safety for women.

A man has been arrested after scaling Big Ben’s Elizabeth Tower at the Palace of Westminster in central London.

Emergency services were called at 07:24 GMT on Saturday to reports of a protester who had climbed up the tower holding a Palestinian flag.

The barefoot man reached a ledge several metres up the tower and refused to leave.

Emergency crews went up in a crane to negotiate with him, and he eventually came down in a cherry picker as Big Ben struck midnight, after more than 16 hours.

Westminster Police said the man had been arrested once he reached the ground.

“This has been a protracted incident due to the specifics of where the man was located and the need to ensure the safety of our officers, the individual and the wider public,” they added.

“We worked with other agencies including the London Fire Brigade and deployed specialist officers to bring this incident to a close as quickly as possible whilst minimising risk to life.”

The incident led to the closure of Westminster Bridge, one of the exits at Westminster Underground Station and Bridge Street.

Tours of the Parliamentary Estate were also cancelled in response.

Three emergency personnel were lifted several metres up on a fire brigade aerial ladder platform at around 10:00 GMT, with one person using a megaphone to speak to the man on the ledge.

Negotiations then continued throughout the day and into the night.

In a video posted on Instagram on Saturday evening, the protester could be heard telling negotiators he would come down on his “own terms”.

The man was heard saying: “If you come towards me you are putting me in danger and I will climb higher.”

Photographs throughout the day showed him sitting on the ledge with the flag and wrapped a traditional Palestinian keffiyeh scarf around the decorative stonework on the tower.

“Shouts of “Free Palestine” and “You Are A Hero” could be heard from a small group of supporters who were pinned behind the police cordon at Victoria Embankment.

Officers imposed a condition on protest activity near Parliament Square to prevent serious disruption, the Met said.

It meant the pro-Palestinian protesters were ordered to move to a nearby street.

When Branneisha Cooper was overweight, she felt both invisible and like she stood out.

Her friends would get attention when they were out together, while she was overlooked. But she also had a sense that everyone was staring at her, scrutinising her.

Everyday scenarios were daunting: fairground rides (would she fit in the seat?), working out (would it hurt?), clothes shopping (would she find attractive clothing in her size?).

At the end of 2022, Branneisha, now 28 and working in Texas for a major retailer, began using weight-loss injection Mounjaro. She’s lost about six stone (38kg).

Things changed quickly. Suddenly, she could exercise without her body getting sore, colleagues made more small talk with her and she felt comfortable going on adventurous dates with her boyfriend. She was go-karting, dancing and going to arcades – activities that previously made her feel self-conscious.

But despite feeling like she had a “second chance at life”, weight loss was bittersweet.

“It was almost like I had stepped into a different world overnight,” Branneisha recalls. “People were suddenly more friendly, more attentive, and I was given opportunities and respect that didn’t exist before.”

“That rapid shift was jarring and really opened my eyes to just how deeply size bias is ingrained in our culture,” she continues. “Psychologically, it was a lot to process because while I was the same person, the way I was perceived had completely changed.”

Weight-loss transformations are nothing new. In the 90s and 00s, they filled the pages of tabloid newspapers, sold celebrity diet regimes and inspired popular TV series like The Biggest Loser, You Are What You Eat and Celebrity Fit Club.

But in the 2020s, the advent of weight-loss injections like semaglutide and tirzepatide (marketed under brand names Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro) has meant people can lose huge amounts of weight rapidly, without undergoing invasive surgery. The jabs suppress people’s appetites, causing them to feel fuller sooner.

Wegovy has been available on the NHS in England, Wales and Scotland since September 2023 with strict eligibility criteria, but weight-loss drugs are expected to become more accessible when Mounjaro becomes available through NHS England later this year.

The jabs, which are not suitable for everyone and can have severe side effects, are also available from pharmacies in the UK for people who can’t get them prescribed by their GPs.

So other than the physical difference, how does the way you’re perceived change when you lose weight quickly and look different to the world?

People who have used the injections have told BBC News that rapid weight loss has caused a massive shift in the way they are treated – by both strangers and loved ones – as well as a change in how they approach their lives.

Branneisha’s feeling of sticking out and being overlooked at the same time while overweight is one others can relate to.

When you’re overweight, people either avoid eye contact or “really stare and glare at you”, says Jess Phillips, 29, a primary school teacher from Sittingbourne, Kent.

She previously felt uncomfortable taking flights, travelling on public transport and eating at restaurants. Finding suitable seating worried her, as well as the feeling she was “taking other people’s space”.

People had even shouted “fat” at her from cars and at a festival.

A trip in 2023 to Sorrento, on the Italian coast, was a major catalyst for starting weight-loss injections last June.

“Everyone was staring at me the whole time,” she says. “They’re just not used to people being that big out there.”

Since losing weight, Jess has noticed a big difference in how she’s treated in public.

“Strangers seem to be a lot more chatty with me than they ever were before,” she explains.

She feels “more invisible in a nice way”, she continues. “I don’t feel like people are looking at me when I go to different places. I feel nicely anonymous… I’m not standing out in any particular way.”

This is something that Jeannine A Gailey, sociology professor at Texas Christian University, explored in her 2014 book The Hyper(in)visible Fat Woman.

“My argument is that those who are marginalised, including fat people, become hyper-visible and hyper-invisible”, meaning they’re sometimes ignored and sometimes made into a “spectacle”, she tells the BBC.

Amy Toon, 34, a content creator from Solihull, felt this way. Before starting on the drugs, she shopped online “because of the overwhelming fear of people looking at me”, she says. “I just didn’t want to leave the house.”

Since losing weight, “people are a lot more smiley and just make eye contact,” she says. “I never had that before. It’s really strange and it’s also really sad at the same time.”

Society has preconceptions about how overweight people are expected to behave, and treats them accordingly, says Caleb Luna, an assistant professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara specialising in fat studies.

“Fat people are expected to hide and shrink ourselves and not be proud,” says Prof Luna.

Weight isn’t a protected characteristic in the UK or in most other parts of the world, meaning it isn’t illegal to discriminate based on size, except if the person’s weight is classed as a disability.

Academics say that anti-fat bias can have significant implications, from how people are perceived in job interviews to how doctors interact with them. People make “all kinds of personality assumptions” about other people based on their body size, according to Prof Luna.

“I don’t understand why there’s this rage that some people seem to feel upon looking at someone who’s overweight,” says Alix Harvey, a 35-year-old marine biologist from Plymouth who’s lost around three stone (20kg) after starting weight-loss injections last year. “It’s socially acceptable to hate fat people.”

Weight-loss drugs have helped people like Branneisha, Jess, Amy and Alix lose weight – but they’re not right for everyone. Some in the healthcare industry have concerns about the wrong people getting hold of the jabs – including those who are already a healthy weight or have a history of eating disorders.

Common side effects of semaglutide and tirzepatide include diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice). Rarer side effects include acute gallstone disease and pancreatitis, and the NHS warns that there is also a risk of hypoglycaemia, which happens when your blood sugar level drops too low.

Jonathan Pinkney, professor of endocrinology and diabetes at the University of Plymouth, says while there are “great expectations and hope around the drugs”, trials show people “do tend to relapse” after they stop taking them, meaning the weight loss isn’t sustained.

Alix says this worries her. “Am I going to be treated differently again? Because I like the way I’m currently being treated.”

Some people who take the medication say there’s stigma attached to using the drugs to lose weight, too, which Alix says puts some people off taking the injections.

“I didn’t expect the hatred,” she says, noting that some people see the use of weight-loss injections as “cheating” and a “socially unacceptable” way to lose weight.

“A lot of people see it as the lazy way out,” Amy says, referring to comments about weight-loss drugs left on her social media videos.

For sustained weight loss, the injections need to be used as part of a healthy lifestyle, including a balanced diet and regular exercise.

“People think that it’s a magic wand then it’s not,” Amy says. “It doesn’t just melt the fat away.”

“Even if you injected yourself once a week and a pound a week just evaporated from your body, what would that matter?” Alix says. “Why is that cheating?”

“You basically can’t win,” she says, referring to the stigma attached to both being overweight and using injections to lose weight.

People who’ve lost weight using the jabs tell the BBC their self-confidence has massively improved. Many say they feel much happier to take trains and planes. Some say they now wear brighter colours and tighter clothes. Others say they’re more vocal sharing their opinions at work.

Amy says she now feels comfortable taking her children swimming, while Jess says she’s been able to book her first-ever ski trip, something she’d never thought was possible before.

“I actually think it must be annoying how confident I am at the moment,” Jess laughs.

But many of the women we spoke to were left feeling sad for their previous selves, or frustrated at the unfairness of their past treatment.

“It’s so sad that your weight can define you,” Amy says. “I haven’t changed at all as a person. The only thing that has changed my appearance.”

Branneisha echoes these thoughts.

“It makes me sad when I have experiences that are different now because the larger me deserved that same attention and love,” Branneisha says. “Being smaller now makes me sad for my former self because people looked at me differently.”

Gurpreet Singh was handcuffed, his legs shackled and a chain tied around his waist. He was led onto the tarmac in Texas by US Border Patrol, towards a waiting C-17 military transport aircraft.

It was 3 February and, after a months-long journey, he realised his dream of living in America was over. He was being deported back to India. “It felt like the ground was slipping away from underneath my feet,” he said.

Gurpreet, 39, was one of thousands of Indians in recent years to have spent their life savings and crossed continents to enter the US illegally through its southern border, as they sought to escape an unemployment crisis back home.

There are about 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US, the third largest group behind Mexicans and El Salvadoreans, according to the most recent figures from Pew Research in 2022.

Now Gurpreet has become one of the first undocumented Indians to be sent home since President Donald Trump took office, with a promise to make mass deportations a priority.

Gurpreet intended to make an asylum claim based on threats he said he had received in India, but – in line with an executive order from Trump to turn people away without granting them asylum hearings – he said he was removed without his case ever being considered.

About 3,700 Indians were sent back on charter and commercial flights during President Biden’s tenure, but recent images of detainees in chains under the Trump administration have sparked outrage in India.

US Border Patrol released the images in an online video with a bombastic choral soundtrack and the warning: “If you cross illegally, you will be removed.”

“We sat in handcuffs and shackles for more than 40 hours. Even women were bound the same way. Only the children were free,” Gurpreet told the BBC back in India. “We weren’t allowed to stand up. If we wanted to use the toilet, we were escorted by US forces, and just one of our handcuffs was taken off.”

Opposition parties protested in parliament, saying Indian deportees were given “inhuman and degrading treatment”. “There’s a lot of talk about how Prime Minister Modi and Mr Trump are good friends. Then why did Mr Modi allow this?” said Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a key opposition leader.

Gurpreet said: “The Indian government should have said something on our behalf. They should have told the US to carry out the deportation the way it’s been done before, without the handcuffs and chains.”

An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said the government had raised these concerns with the US, and that as a result, on subsequent flights, women deportees were not handcuffed and shackled.

But on the ground, the intimidating images and President Trump’s rhetoric seem to be having the desired effect.

“No-one will try going to the US now through this illegal ‘donkey’ route while Trump is in power,” said Gurpreet.

In the longer term, this could depend on whether there are continued deportations, but for now many of the Indian people-smugglers, locally called “agents”, have gone into hiding, fearing raids against them by Indian police.

Gurpreet said Indian authorities demanded the number of the agent he had used when he landed back home, but the smuggler could no longer be reached.

“I don’t blame them, though. We were thirsty and went to the well. They didn’t come to us,” said Gurpreet.

While the official headline figure puts the unemployment rate at only 3.2%, it conceals a more precarious picture for many Indians. Only 22% of workers have regular salaries, the majority are self-employed and nearly a fifth are “unpaid helpers”, including women working in family businesses.

“We leave India only because we are compelled to. If I got a job which paid me even 30,000 rupees (£270/$340) a month, my family would get by. I would never have thought of leaving,” said Gurpreet, who has a wife, a mother and an 18-month-old baby to look after.

“You can say whatever you want about the economy on paper, but you need to see the reality on the ground. There are no opportunities here for us to work or run a business.”

Gupreet’s trucking company was among the cash-dependent small businesses that were badly hit when the Indian government withdrew 86% of the currency in circulation with four hours notice. He said he didn’t get paid by his clients, and had no money to keep the business afloat. Another small business he set up, managing logistics for other companies, also failed because of the Covid lockdown, he said.

He said he tried to get visas to go to Canada and the UK, but his applications were rejected.

Then he took all his savings, sold a plot of land he owned, and borrowed money from relatives to put together 4 million rupees ($45,000/£36,000) to pay a smuggler to organise his journey, Gurpreet told us.

On 28 August 2024, he flew from India to Guyana in South America to start an arduous journey to the US.

Gurpreet pointed out all the stops he made on a map on his phone. From Guyana he travelled through Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, mostly by buses and cars, partly by boat, and briefly on a plane – handed from one people-smuggler to another, detained and released by authorities a few times along the way.

From Colombia, smugglers tried to get him a flight to Mexico, so he could avoid crossing the dreaded Darién Gap. But Colombian immigration didn’t allow him to board the flight, so he had to make a dangerous trek through the jungle.

A dense expanse of rainforest between Colombia and Panama, the Darién Gap can only be crossed on foot, risking accidents, disease and attacks by criminal gangs. Last year, 50 people died making the crossing.

“I was not scared. I’ve been a sportsman so I thought I would be OK. But it was the toughest section,” said Gurpreet. “We walked for five days through jungles and rivers. In many parts, while wading through the river, the water came up to my chest.”

Each group was accompanied by a smuggler – or a “donker” as Gurpreet and other migrants refer to them, a word seemingly derived from the term “donkey route” used for illegal migration journeys.

At night they would pitch tents in the jungle, eat a bit of food they were carrying and try to rest.

“It was raining all the days we were there. We were drenched to our bones,” he said. They were guided over three mountains in their first two days. After that, he said they had to follow a route marked out in blue plastic bags tied to trees by the smugglers.

“My feet had begun to feel like lead. My toenails were cracked, and the palms of my hands were peeled off and had thorns in them. Still, we were lucky we didn’t encounter any robbers.”

When they reached Panama, Gurpreet said he and about 150 others were detained by border officials in a cramped jail-like centre. After 20 days, they were released, he said, and from there it took him more than a month to reach Mexico, passing through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.

Gurpreet said they waited for nearly a month in Mexico until there was an opportunity to cross the border into the US near San Diego.

“We didn’t scale a wall. There is a mountain near it which we climbed over. And there’s a razor wire which the donker cut through,” he said.

Gurpreet entered the US on 15 January, five days before President Trump took office – believing that he had made it just in time, before the borders became impenetrable and rules became tighter.

Once in San Diego, he surrendered to US Border Patrol, and was then detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

During the Biden administration, illegal or undocumented migrants would appear before an immigration officer who would do a preliminary interview to determine if each person had a case for asylum. While a majority of Indians migrated out of economic necessity, some also left fearing persecution because of their religious or social backgrounds, or their sexual orientation.

If they cleared the interview, they were released, pending a decision on granting asylum from an immigration judge. The process would often take years, but they were allowed to remain in the US in the meantime.

This is what Gurpreet thought would happen to him. He had planned to find work at a grocery store and then to get into trucking, a business he is familiar with.

Instead, less than three weeks after he entered the US, he found himself being led towards that C-17 plane and going back to where he started.

In their small house in Sultanpur Lodhi, a city in the northern state of Punjab, Gurpreet is now trying to find work to repay the money he owes, and fend for his family.

In January visa changes which prevented Ukrainians from bringing their children to join them in the UK were reversed, giving hundreds of families hope they could finally be reunited.

Ivan Vitsyn and his wife Olesia Aladko had been preparing for months for their children to join them in the UK.

The family are from the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine, close to the Russian border, and had left their seven-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter with Ivan’s parents while they found a suitable home for them to live.

The parents – who came to the UK in May 2023 as strawberry pickers on seasonal worker visas – had planned to act as sponsors for their children under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, which allows people in the UK to host those fleeing the war.

Originally living in a caravan, it was several months before they found a family home to rent.

But in February last year – without warning – the previous Conservative government changed eligibility rules so only British or Irish citizens or those with the right to live in the UK permanently could act as sponsors.

“We worked so hard to prepare to reunite with the kids and then overnight we were not able to,” says Ivan, speaking through a translator.

“The dream was shattered to pieces, we didn’t know what to do.”

Meanwhile, their children were stuck in Ukraine, living alongside the sounds of explosions, just 50km (31 miles) from the battlefield.

The pair tried desperately without success to find a British sponsor for their children.

Instead they were faced with scammers asking for thousands of pounds in exchange for their help.

Eventually they were put in touch with the charity Settled, which provides help to Ukrainians with the visa process.

The charity advised applying for a visa naming themselves as sponsors, despite the new rules, in the hope the Home Office would make an exception.

But their application was left in limbo, with no decision, so it could not be challenged.

“Every day we checked our email,” Ivan says, describing the wait as “painful”.

Then in January, the government announced it was reversing the changes brought in under the Conservatives, so Ukrainians could once again sponsor their children to join them in the UK.

When Ivan and Olesia received an email confirming their children’s visas had been approved they were overjoyed.

“I cannot explain that feeling,” says Ivan. “It was the best feeling in the world.”

Settled has supported a number of Ukrainian families like Ivan and Olesia, who are now starting to get their applications approved.

But others hoping to bring relatives such as siblings or parents remain separated.

Although Ukraine has signalled its willingness to enter peace negotiations, with the US pushing for an end to the war, the UK has given Ukrainians the right to apply to stay in the country for a further 18 months.

While Ivan hopes his family can return to Ukraine one day, he adds: “Even if the war stopped tomorrow there is no certainty for our region.”

For Olesia, having her children with her means she can now start to rebuild their lives in the UK.

“There is probably no other feeling like having your children beside you. You don’t worry; you don’t start your day by reading the news about what happened in Ukraine, where there were attacks,” she says.

“You fall asleep peacefully and wake up peacefully because your children are next to you, and nothing else is needed.”

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About 15 years ago, an Indian rapper of humble origins broke onto the country’s then-infertile hip-hop music scene and transformed it forever.

He teased, cajoled and vexed his listeners, daring them to explore the “devilish” contours of his mind, as he sang rash rhymes about parties, drugs and “seducing” women. His songs played in clubs and weddings, blaring from stereos at big parties and roadside tea stalls alike.

Then, at the peak of his career, he vanished. Seven years later, Yo Yo Honey Singh is back – with a new album and an ongoing music tour, claiming to be a changed man after a prolonged battle with drug abuse and mental health struggles.

The 41-year-old singer and producer was once one of India’s biggest music stars, a figure who “moved the cultural gravity of hip-hop music”, says music journalist Bhanuj Kappal in Famous, a recent Netflix documentary on Singh.

But he was also deeply controversial – and, by his own admission, an “aggressive and reckless man”, routinely accused of promoting vulgarity, debauchery and violence through his music.

Many criticised Singh’s lyrics for depicting violence against women and rape, an image that gained further traction in the press after his former wife and childhood sweetheart accused him of domestic violence in her divorce filing. Singh has denied the charge.

Seven years later, the singer is no longer the defiant hitmaker who once ruled the charts with his provocative, foot-tapping anthems.

A lot has changed in the intervening years, including Indian hip-hop, which has evolved into a thriving, dynamic space. Artists once inspired by his sound have now surpassed him as the genre’s leading voices.

Singh also seems different. From someone who described himself as “the all-knowing master of the universe”, he now identifies as a God-fearing man who believes in good energies, the cyclic nature of life and “scientific astrologers”.

He claims his music is now more conscious, moving beyond drugs to something deeper. But loyal fans say it’s lost its edge and his latest tracks haven’t left a mark.

“He has a core audience that will stick with him forever… but his vision is old now. It’s outdated,” Kappal says.

But Singh is not ready to be written off, yet.

Instead of trying to conceal or defend his personal struggles with fame and drugs, he has made it the centrepiece of his comeback.

Since his return, Singh has candidly admitted his struggles with addiction and mental health. “Drugs destroyed me completely,” he told Lallantop, a digital news platform. “I lost myself to fame, money and women. I was like a devil, completely satanic.”

In interviews, he is witty and relaxed, speaking with the clarity of a tormented artist who, after battling his inner demons, seems to have unlocked a spiritual truth

“What goes around comes around, I really believe that,” he said recently. “It took a lot of time for me to get out from where I was stuck. But I am back now.”

Born Hridesh Singh in Punjab state, he grew up in a cramped Delhi neighbourhood. Those tough early years shaped his music and still echo in his work today.

“This ghetto was my home, my hood, always will be,” he’s often heard saying.

Singh always knew he wanted a career in music. He started as a college DJ, later moving into production full-time. “I wanted to make beats and produce music, not sing or write,” he says.

But after years as a small-time producer in Punjab, he realised it wouldn’t be enough. “My sounds were too urban for the place. People didn’t understand it. For that, I had to go beyond the state.”

So he went solo. In 2011, Singh released The International Villager, his breakout album. Blending Punjabi folk – its dhol beats and string melodies – with global hip-hop, he created something entirely new.

For three months, it seemed the formula had failed. Then everything changed. Overnight, the songs went viral, topped charts, won awards – and catapulted Singh into Bollywood.

Brown Rang, a song about a brown man’s global ambition, became YouTube’s most-watched video in 2012. Shot in Dubai on a million-dollar budget, it introduced many Indians to the bling of hip-hop – fast cars, baggy clothes, gem-studded watches and gold chains – set to slick, thumping beats.

Despite mounting criticism over his misogynistic lyrics, Singh packed stadiums and churned out hits, breaking into Bollywood with songs for stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Akshay Kumar.

“A lot of times, my lyrics were trash, even I knew that. But people were still listening to it because the sound was so good and fresh,” he told Lallantop.

But Singh’s ascent to fame coincided with his personal downfall.

“I was drowning in drugs and alcohol, smoking 12-15 joints and downing bottles. I abandoned my family, lost control. This one time, I got so high I bit a friend on his stomach eight times,” he told Lallantop.

In 2017, Singh broke down mid-tour – a moment that shook him. He quit music and substances, returned to Delhi and began recovery with a global team of doctors and therapists. “I told my family I was mentally unwell. I can’t do anything till I get better.”

Singh says he’s been sober for seven years, except for the occasional beer.

“I have been to hell and back,” he says in Famous. “Even now, I wake up hazy because of the medicines.”

Fans, however, appreciate Singh’s raw honesty about his self-destructive tendencies – and his effort to overcome them.

“No-one’s perfect. But at least Singh tries to be better. He may have left the scene briefly but his music never stopped playing,” says Nandini Gupta, a Delhi-based student.

Others see his transformation as performative, noting his new music remains problematic. “Though toned down, he is still objectifying women and talking only about money and fame,” says listener Bushra Neyazi.

No matter how you see it, Singh’s redemption feels like another challenge to his audience – pushing them to accept his complicated past and give his music another chance.

“I was away for seven years, but I will drive everyone mad again in the next seven,” he said recently.

“I am back and I want the same love I received seven years ago.”

“Trump may be the best thing to happen to Starmer,” says a diplomat, suggesting the brash property tycoon busy upending the world order might be just what the strait-laced prime minister – who’s been dragging in the polls – needs.

One of Labour’s business backers calls it “the PM’s finest hour” – a Remainer leader putting Britain at the heart of international action as Trump rattles the Western world’s cage.

Sir Keir Starmer has certainly been incredibly visible – in the White House, leading a European summit at Lancaster House last weekend, hugging Zelensky, plotting a peacekeeping path with Macron.

It’s hard for the Conservatives and other opponents to compete with the prime minister’s international moves dominating the news.

Moments of crisis like the one we’re living through are often when the public tunes into politics and looks to their leaders. With a shaky global situation, does No 10 look more solid than before?

Some of his colleagues are certain. One government source tells me all the international activity is “almost Blair-esque”, or even a moment like Thatcher and the Falklands which enabled the 80s Conservative prime minister to burnish her reputation and win successive election victories.

Another minister suggests other leaders “get their knickers in a twist” publicly reacting to Trump’s unpredictable comments and actions – “but Keir has spent his whole career dealing with extreme circumstances. What he is able to do is get people to focus on the things that really matter.”

But impressive-looking diplomacy doesn’t mean the UK is getting what it wants – missiles are still falling, overnight again in Donetsk and Kharkhiv. Donald Trump’s commitment to guaranteeing Ukraine’s security, even NATO’s future, is shaky too.

So let’s take a calm look. Polling suggests there has been a nudge upwards for Sir Keir’s personal ratings and for Labour, after a dreadful start in office and a steep, fast drop in the polls.

His government would not be the first to be swept away by the intensity and glamour of global diplomacy which, however difficult or worthy, doesn’t necessarily translate into significant brownie points at home.

Perhaps in these wild times, we’re seeing the prime minister carve out a role as “reassurer in chief”. In political circles it’s long been common to find criticisms of Sir Keir Starmer for, frankly, being a bit dull, and not willing to play the minute-by-minute political game. But with Trump in the White House stoking drama the PM’s colleagues believe his steadiness has become an asset.

And he’s shown willingness to take action – increasing defence spending, albeit after months of pressure, getting European leaders together and drawing up military plans for after a peace deal. A senior government source says: “The global crisis means people looking at us again, and the government has been making an argument that people are responding to: that we have got their backs.”

But aligning yourself with an American president doesn’t always work out. Tony Blair’s chinos weren’t the only thing that became uncomfortable about his relationship with George W Bush.

So while there’s evidence the public are looking at Sir Keir a touch more favourably since his White House trip, as one union leader warns, “for it to count he has to show the same mojo at home”.

Take the row over sentencing this week. Or forthcoming arguments over cutting welfare, which ministers have been falling over themselves to soften the ground for.

But overshadowing everything, priority number one: the grisly state of the economy and getting it to grow.

In around a fortnight Rachel Reeves will be on her feet in Parliament, probably announcing cuts to public spending running to billions. Government sources point to some better statistics on wages, and cuts to interest rates, but Reeves is under enormous pressure to explain how the economy is going to escape the doldrums it has been stuck in for ages.

All the Kodak moments, and grip and grins with international leaders in the world won’t change that. The PM “can walk and talk at the same” time, one ally says. But there are, they acknowledge, “only so many hours in the day”.

Helping Ukraine against Putin’s Russia has a clear moral story the prime minister finds easy to tell, and compelling to try to shape. In contrast, “how do you bring prosperity to the regions? That’s a real puzzle.”

In the next few days, starting with the PM’s right-hand man Pat McFadden in the studio tomorrow, you will see the government try to kick up the pace of what is happening at home. First up – perhaps not a box-office hit – they’ll be looking at making the Whitehall machine work better, including making it easier to get rid of civil servants.

Ministers tell me Downing Street is being run more effectively than before Christmas and has a clearer sense of direction, after early embarrassment over being far less prepared than promised.

Sir Keir chairs regular meetings with individual cabinet ministers in charge of the government’s “missions”. I’m told he “cross-examines” them and their officials – and if their answers aren’t up to snuff, they get called in for another meeting. “He is a very nice man, but he is a hard man too,” one of them confides.

As well as slimming down parts of the civil service, there’ll be more on the government’s plans to cut billions off the welfare bill. Labour will argue it’s for good reason, to help people stuck on benefits – while critics will say it’s a way for the government to save money off the backs of some of the most vulnerable people in the country.

On Thursday, the prime minister is expected to make his own speech in an attempt to weave it all together into a grand narrative about safety abroad and at home. One government source said the last few weeks had galvanised Sir Keir’s thinking on this: when things are uncertain on the international stage, “everything feels a bit wobbly” and domestic security is amplified: you look around and feel your job isn’t secure, your street isn’t safe.

This thinking has been a long time coming. “Security” was a word and concept used by Reeves and Sir Keir in opposition – but recently he’s been making a more ideological argument than those close to him are used to hearing.

As well as making the case that what happens around the world is inextricably linked to what happens at home, he holds that the old international consensus among Western leaders has failed for millions of voters.

That argument was crystallised into a long memo he sent to his cabinet ministers and political team in the middle of February. In it he wrote: “The government’s challenge was to shape this new era. Not to defend institutions that are broken or old ideas that have failed, but to be the voice of working people who more than anything want security in their lives, and a country that is on the up again.”

He wrote that politicians were wrong to think markets had solutions for almost everything. “We were cowed by the market – we came to act as if it always knew best and the state should sit it out.”

He also said governments had failed on immigration, failed to understand the public’s concerns and also – to tell the truth. “We ended up treating all immigration as an untrammelled good. Somehow, politics ended up being too scared to say what is obvious – that some people are genuine refugees and some aren’t; that people coming here to work can be a positive, but that an island nation needs to control its borders.”

Some extracts from the letter have been revealed before. But what is notable, reading the whole document, is the prime minister closes his letter to colleagues with a call to provide “security” for the country, alongside renewing public services. He writes: “Now is our moment to be bigger and bolder – to put pedal on metal on wholescale reform and change our politics and our country. Security and renewal are our twin tasks – we must now deliver them.”

You’ll hear more of that argument from ministers in the coming days – we had a glimpse of it in the studio last Sunday morning too.

The profound uncertainty Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House has given the prime minister a moment to step into the spotlight on the world stage.

And his government is now much more overtly weaving an argument that working to establish security round the world is fundamentally connected to sorting out security at home.

There is a reason why, fresh from all the diplomatic handshakes, Sir Keir was back in the more familiar hi-vis and hard hat announcing defence jobs in Belfast.

No 10 wants you to see and believe that crisis abroad can mean opportunity at home. This spasm in global security has given a prime minister sometimes accused of being a blank page a clearer story to tell.

But in the end, for any prime minister, it is what happens on home turf, not foreign adventures that matter the most. A sceptical public will take a lot of convincing to believe government can improve their situation – make it easier to manage the bills, buy a house, or for their kids to find a decent job.

As as a senior figure in the Labour movement concludes, “he likes the statesman role but the bottom line is, change in people’s lives will be the decider.”

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A man drawn into the world of having sex while high on illegal drugs has described how he became a “zombie” whose life was slowly deteriorating.

Chris – whose name has been changed – told the BBC he started to take part in chemsex, short for chemical sex, which helped mask the “the shame and guilt” he said he felt growing up gay.

The Londoner said after becoming addicted to chemsex – which typically involves men who have sex with men using the drugs crystal meth, methedrone and GHB/GBL to enhance their sexual experience – he faced a “wall of silence” from helplines and others within the community.

Campaigners say support is “patchy” due to gay sex stigma and has called for this to change. The government says it is aware of the harm caused by chemsex and has issued guidance to local authorities on managing the issue.

Chris was initially offered drugs at a party, but it was not until a few months later that he then began to actively seek it out more and find people who were taking drugs.

He said at first it took away “a lot of the shame and guilt you have about growing up being gay. It’s kind of quite liberating”.

However, that quickly changed.

“No-one really speaks about it. Everyone is slightly ashamed about it. It’s all behind closed doors. It doesn’t really spill out into the real world. It’s very secretive,” he said.

Chris said his friends told him he was almost like a “zombie”.

“Slowly, your life starts to deteriorate because you are missing work on a Monday. And then your work is obviously not up to standard.

“You can’t do much until Wednesday. And then it all starts again on a Friday,” he said.

“You have to eat, you have to sleep, you have to get on with your life but all you’re really doing is looking forward to the next time you can take drugs,” he added.

“Which is to escape the horror that is your life, the misery that is your life which you’ve created but, in a way, you don’t seem to see that because all you want to do is take drugs.”

Campaigners have said chemsex among some gay men has a stigma attached that meant many were not seeking the help they needed.

Ignacio Labayen De Inza, chief executive of the London-based charity Controlling Chemsex, is calling for people to start a conversation around chemsex to help change that stigma.

He said: “Chemsex is very available but not everyone has access to reliable information.

“Not just the government but no-one is doing very much. People think there is nothing we can do because it’s going to carry on happening, but people could make sure that they set boundaries and to keep safe.”

He said there was a stigma attached to it because “we are talking about sex, we are talking about gay sex, we are talking about drugs”.

Philip Hurd, a specialist adviser at Controlling Chemsex, was involved in chemsex 12 years ago and said it took a near-death overdose for him to realise he needed to stop.

He said: “You get close to the criminal justice system, and you start doing things that are dangerous.

“And then I had a near-death overdose. The doctors said I was very lucky to survive, and I had to get my parents down from the country in their early eighties. That was the point I thought I can’t do this; I’m going to die.”

Mr Hurd, who lives in London and now volunteers at Controlling Chemsex, uses his personal experience to help others.

“I think it’s possible for a person with good psychology, sociology skills to support somebody coming out of chemsex but nothing can replace having been there knowing,” he said.

An Opinium Research poll of 2,000 people for the charity found that 76% of those surveyed were not familiar with chemsex.

Just over a third of those who identified as gay/lesbian were not familiar with the risks of chemsex, the study also found.

Veronika Carruthers, a lecturer at Portsmouth University, has been looking into the current support available across the south of England and found it was still “pretty limited” and “patchy”.

“We consider this to be a bit of a postcode lottery,” she said.

She explained that some people did not know the right services to turn to.

“Particularly if we look at it from a divide of drug counselling services and sexual health clinics, while sexual health clinics are preferred there is still an element of staff not having the appropriate knowledge of what chemsex actually is and in turn not being able to provide the most effect support,” she said.

“In regards to drug counselling services, quite often we have recovery workers who have never actually heard of chemsex and therefore they’re not able to provide any form of support and individuals often don’t feel that is the most appropriate place for them.

“As a result people don’t want to call for help or support from particular organisations over others.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said in addition to issuing guidance to local authorities, it had boosted the Public Health Grant by almost £200m.

“Local authorities can use this to improve drug and alcohol treatment and recovery interventions, including for people involved in chemsex,” the spokesperson said.

“We continue to work with substance misuse commissioners and sexual health commissioners to improve access to support services for those who use drugs in this context.”

Details of information and support with addiction are available

at BBC Action Line.

US President Donald Trump called a meeting of his cabinet secretaries on Thursday to discuss Elon Musk and his efforts to slash government spending and personnel numbers.

It turned heated, according to media reports.

Musk accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio of failing to cut enough staff at the state department, reports the New York Times.

The tech mogul told Rubio he was “good on TV”, according to the newspaper, pointedly skipping any praise of his work as America’s top diplomat.

The billionaire also clashed with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy over whether Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) task force had tried to lay off air traffic controllers who were already in short supply in the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the New York Times.

Duffy’s department has been under scrutiny after two US airline crashes since Trump took office in January.

After listening to the back-and-forth, the Republican president reportedly intervened to make clear he still supported Doge, but from now on cabinet secretaries would be in charge and the Musk team would only advise.

A state department spokeswoman told the newspaper Rubio felt the cabinet meeting was an “open and productive discussion”. The White House has not responded to BBC requests for further comment.

Speaking in the Oval Office after the meeting, Trump said cabinet members should decide who to cut, but if they didn’t, Musk would do the job.

“I had a meeting, and I said I want the cabinet members to go first”, Trump said. “And if they can cut it’s better, if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”

The hastily planned gathering could provide evidence that the president has decided to curtail the sweeping power the SpaceX and Tesla boss and his Doge cost-cutting initiative have commanded in the early weeks of his administration.

Trump first commented on the substance of Thursday’s meeting, which was disclosed only in after-the-fact media reports, through a post that evening on his social media site, Truth Social.

He said that he had instructed his secretaries to work with Doge on “cost-cutting measures”.

“As the secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go,” he wrote, adding that they should use a “scalpel” not a “hatchet”.

Just a few weeks ago, Musk wielded a shiny chainsaw at a conservative conference – a visible symbol of aggressive attempts to slash government spending that have angered Democrats and concerned some officials in the Trump administration.

Musk’s team had sent multiple emails from an official government account to millions of federal workers, encouraging them to accept months of advance pay in exchange for their resignations.

Federal workers were instructed to provide accounts of their weekly accomplishments or risk firing – a request some agencies instructed their employees to ignore.

Doge also ordered the dismissal of many newly hired government employees who, because of their “probationary” status, did not have full civil service protections.

Some government agencies have since rescinded these orders because employees deemed essential, such as those who oversee nuclear weapon security, had been affected.

• Four big things Trump and his team took on this week
• What does the Department of Education do – and can Trump dismantle it?
• Trump team hits pause on tariffs – but still sees them as vital tool

During an Oval Office event on Friday, Trump responded to questions about the cabinet meeting – and reports of its heated exchanges. He insisted there was “no clash”. He praised both Rubio and Musk and said the two got along “great”.

Trump’s Thursday Truth Social post, however, appears to give department heads more authority to push back against Musk.

It also may be an attempt to insulate the Trump administration from lawsuits that allege Musk is wielding too much power for someone who, unlike cabinet secretaries, is not subject to Senate review and confirmation.

Several federal judges overseeing these cases have already expressed concern about Musk’s authority – concerns that may be further fuelled by Trump’s comments during his address to Congress on Tuesday that the billionaire was, in fact, the man in charge of Doge.

Musk and Trump have formed a formidable partnership so far – as the richest man in the world and the most powerful politician in America. Washington has been rife with speculation for months about whether that partnership could ultimately fracture.

Those predictions, however, have usually been followed by renewed signs of comity between the two men.

On Friday night, Musk was seen boarding Air Force One with the president for a flight to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida for the weekend.

The cabinet room dust-up may be the first crack in the foundation – but there is plenty of evidence that Trump still supports Musk’s broader efforts and goals, even if he might prefer he use a scalpel in the days ahead, not a chainsaw.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second presidential term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

We asked our readers to send in their best pictures on the theme of “monochrome”. Here is a selection of the photographs we received from around the world.

The next theme is “my best photo” and the deadline for entries is 18 March.

The pictures will be published later that week and you will be able to find them, along with other galleries, on the In Pictures section of the BBC News website.

You can upload your entries directly here or email them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk.

Terms and conditions apply.

Further details and themes are at: We set the theme, you take the pictures.

All photographs subject to copyright.

Subscribers to Joshuanette Francis’s YouTube channel – set up to document her journey after being diagnosed with osteoarthritis at just 24 – did not see the tears.

Neither were they privy to the days when she tackled the most acute personal struggles, alone behind closed doors.

After being told she could lose the ability to walk by age 40, Joshuanette was determined to embrace life, hiking every nature trail in her native Antigua and visiting each one of the Caribbean island’s touted 365 beaches while she still could.

Consistently upbeat and smiling in her videos and in public, her private tears were amplified when she lost her job as a restaurant supervisor – because of her condition, she says – followed by her mortgage and her dream of building her own home.

Six years on, the young mother’s sunny persona is the one she uses to fight her public battle: championing the rights of others living with a disability in a country where inequity is rife and crucial resources are in short supply.

She channels her energy into a pioneering non-profit she founded in 2023, Good Humans 268, which strives for a brighter future for people with physical challenges.

“Arthritis has changed my life so much, I can only imagine what it must be like for someone with a major disability,” Joshuanette tells the BBC.

Osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease that causes pain and stiffness, typically affects older people, but can strike at any age.

“I couldn’t believe it when I was diagnosed. My biggest fear was, what happens to life now?” Joshuanette says.

Good Humans’ far-reaching work ranges from pushing for the establishment of an equal rights tribunal to preside over purported discriminatory practices, to a recycling programme that in turn employs local residents with disabilities.

The latter has already been implemented in more than 80 local schools, diverting about a million bottles and cans from the national dump site. Eight people have been hired to sort and process, and sometimes repurpose, the waste.

Good Humans has also launched a nationwide educational programme to encourage more residents to recycle, something Kelisha Pigott was employed to assist with.

She says working with the organisation has been life-changing.

“There are a lot of people with disabilities out there who have no one to turn to. Joshuanette has moulded me to believe in myself more. It’s because of her that I took the chance to apply for university and got in,” Kelisha enthuses.

She hopes her online degree in tourism management will help her eventually merge her small travel company with Good Humans to create additional job opportunities.

“Change starts with us. I was amazed to see how much plastic we diverted from landfill in a short space of time; imagine if everyone did it,” she says.

There have been some smaller triumphs too. Like the case of the 10-year-old girl who for several years couldn’t use the toilet at school unassisted because of the lack of wheelchair-friendly facilities. That indignity went largely overlooked until Joshuanette took it on as a personal endeavour, leading to the creation of an accessible bathroom.

“We must shift the way we do things. People with disabilities must be able to do the same things everyone else can,” Joshuanette says passionately. “I’m so excited by what I know Good Humans can achieve.”

Plans include rolling out the recycling scheme to private households and ultimately creating a purpose-built centre to consolidate the group’s diverse work.

Still, she’s aware of the challenges ahead. Even a stroll around the capital, St John’s, is fraught with hazards for many with an impairment, thanks to omnipresent open gutters, crudely covered drains and cracked paving.

“Accessibility is a serious concern,” says Bernard Warner, head of the country’s disability association. “For a start, there’s a lack of access to assistive devices to help people live more meaningfully.”

Both Bernard’s group and Good Humans have been calling for legislation passed in 2017, which seeks to protect the rights of those with disabilities, to be enforced. An equal rights tribunal was a key part of the act, but has never been created.

“There’s a lot of discrimination; people are treated with indifference or turned away from employment opportunities,” Bernard says. “And due to poverty, most don’t have money to hire lawyers.”

Bernard lost his right leg when his motorbike was struck by a drunk driver in 1996. Despite a lengthy court case, which ruled in his favour, he has never received compensation.

“After years of torment, I now rally for a better society,” he explains. “We have to alter our mindset with how we view people with disabilities. We’ve been leaving them out for too long. Even now, I see high-rise buildings going up with no disability access,” he adds.

Kelly Hedges, principal of the Victory Centre for children with special needs, agrees. Her school currently has 27 students aged five to 18.

“The challenge is, when students leave us as young adults, where do they go? People are still wary about hiring people with special needs or disabilities. Unless they have personal connections or can go to work with a parent, they generally just stay home,” she says.

The Victory Centre is among the schools to have joined Good Humans’ recycling scheme.

“As Good Humans becomes bigger and needs more staff, hopefully our children can segue into positions there, become contributing members of society and live more independently,” Kelly adds.

Joshuanette believes that mental health should be a key focus of disability awareness. Despite her largely positive outlook, she admits depression struck again recently when she turned 30 and still could not afford her own home.

She continues to battle for compensation against the company she says fired her unfairly.

“Fighting is exhausting,” she says. “But change will only happen when more people talk about disability and demand change.”

All his adult life, Colonel Soren Knudsen stepped forward when his country called. And when its allies did.

He fought alongside US troops, notably in Afghanistan, and for a time was Denmark’s most senior officer there. He counted 58 rocket attacks during his duty.

“I was awarded a Bronze Star Medal by the United States and they gave me the Stars and Stripes. They have been hanging on my wall in our house ever since and I have proudly shown them to everybody.”

Then something changed.

“After JD Vance’s statement on Greenland, the president’s disrespect for internationally acknowledged borders, I took the Stars and Stripes down and the medal has been put away,” Soren says, his voice breaking a little.

This week before Congress, the US president doubled down on his desire to seize the world’s biggest island: Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.

“My first feeling was that it hurts, and the second is that I’m offended,” Col Knudsen laments.

I meet him in the first weeks of his retirement outside Denmark’s 18th Century royal residence, Amalienborg Palace in the heart of Copenhagen.

Abruptly, pipers strike up and soldiers stream by.

Today’s Changing of the Guard comes at a time when the Trump administration has not just tweaked but defenestrated most assumptions around US-European security that have held fast for 80 years.

“It’s about values and when those values are axed by what we thought was an ally, it gets very tough to watch.” Soren says with his American wife Gina at his side.

“Denmark freely and without question joined those efforts where my husband served,” she says.

“So it comes as a shock to hear threats from a country that I also love and to feel that alliance is being trampled on. This feels personal, not like some abstract foreign policy tactic.”

Soren has not given up all hope though.

“It’s my hope and my prayer that I will one day be able to put [the flag] back on the wall,” he confides.

There’s no sign his prayers will be answered soon.

Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, goes to the polls next week with all the main parties backing independence at some point in the future.

A takeover by Donald Trump – potentially by force – is not on the ballot paper.

Not far from the royal palace stands Denmark’s memorial to its soldiers lost in recent battle.

Carved on the stone-covered walls are the names of those killed alongside their Western allies.

The section honouring the fallen in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan is particularly sizeable.

Denmark lost 44 soldiers in Afghanistan, which as a proportion of its less than six million population, was more than any other ally apart from the US. In Iraq, eight Danish soldiers died.

This is why the president’s words sting so much.

One man very well placed to consider what Trump’s ambitions for Greenland actually amount to is Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

“President Trump’s declaration of intention to maybe take Greenland by force is very similar to President Putin’s rhetoric when it comes to Ukraine,” he tells the BBC.

The former prime minister of Denmark and ex-secretary general of the Nato alliance argues this is the moment Denmark and the rest of Europe must step up to better protect itself if the US is not willing to.

“Since my childhood, I have admired the United States and their role as the world’s policeman. And I think we need a policeman to ensure international law and order but if the United States does not want to execute that role, then Europe must be able to defend itself, to stand on its own feet.”

Fogh Rasmussen doesn’t though believe the policeman is about to turn felon.

“I would like to stress I don’t think at the end of the day that the Americans will take Greenland by force.”

President Trump first talked about a Greenland takeover in his first term of office before returning to the theme at the start of this year.

But now, after blindsiding supposed allies with his latest moves on Ukraine, tariffs, as well as the Middle East, Denmark is urgently trying to assess the true threat.

For many younger Danes, control of Greenland is plain wrong – an unfathomable colonial hangover.

It doesn’t mean they want it handed straight over to the US instead.

“We do have connections to Greenland,” says music student Molly. “Denmark and Greenland are quite separated I would say but I still have friends from there so this does affect me quite personally.”

“I find it really scary,” says 18-year-old music student Luukas.

“Everything he sees, he goes after. And the thing with the oil and money, he doesn’t care about the climate, he doesn’t care about anyone or anything.”

His friend Clara chips in that Trump is now so powerful he can “affect their day-to-day life” from thousands of miles away, in what is an era of unprecedented jeopardy.

In light of President Trump’s suspension of military aid for Ukraine and his deep reluctance to fund Europe’s security, Denmark has been at the heart of the drive to boost defence spending across the continent.

The country has just announced it will allocate more than 3% of its GDP to defence spending in 2025 and 2026 to protect against future aggression from Russia or elsewhere.

Meanwhile, security analyst Hans Tino Hansen stands in front of a huge screen in what he calls his “ops room”, at his Copenhagen headquarters.

“This map is where we update on a daily basis our threat picture based on alerts and incidents all over the world,” says Hans, who has been running Risk Intelligence for the past 25 years.

As part of Denmark’s increased defence spending, it’s bolstering its strength in the “High North” with an extra two billion euros announced in January and three new Arctic naval vessels and investment in long-range drones.

Hans believes Arctic security can be tightened further, not by an American takeover – but with new deals that restore US influence.

“If you make more agreements, both on defence and security, but also economic ones and on raw materials, then we are more or less going back to where we were in the 50s and 60s.”

But the story stretches further back than the mid-20th Century.

“If you look at this globe, Greenland is the most centrally located place on Earth,” says world-renowned geologist Prof Minik Rosing, gesticulating in his wood-panelled office.

The serenity of his room reflects the temperament of a man who grew up in a settlement of just “seven or eight people” in the Nuuk fjord of the island.

But a key reason his homeland is now coming under increasing scrutiny from outsiders is the rich mineral deposits beneath the Arctic ice.

We’ve seen how Ukraine’s natural resources have caught President Trump’s eye in much the same way.

“All these minerals that they talk about like rare metals, rare earth elements – they are actually not rare. What is rare is the use of them,” he reasons.

Prof Rosing says the vastness of Greenland and the lack of infrastructure are just two elements why the island may not be the cashpoint some Americans are hoping for.

“They are a minuscule part of the mining industry and the economy of extracting them is very uncertain, whereas the investment to start extracting is very high. The risk of the investment is too high relative to the potential gain.”

The current Greenlandic government says there will be a vote on independence at some point following next week’s election.

Although surely unintentional, President Trump’s designs on the island have shone a light on a desire found among the Inuit to finally break free from 300 years of Danish control.

But Prof Rosing believes, despite all the latent mineral wealth, his fellow Greenlanders are in no hurry to forego the annual block grant of the equivalent of £480m (€570m) it receives from Copenhagen.

This accounts for easily more than half of the island’s public budget.

“People talk about health services, schools, the next outboard engine they want on their boat and what is the price of gas and all of these things that normal people do,” he says.

“It’s not like they stand up with a big knife, wave it in the air and shout independence, independence.”

In terms of Trump’s apparent obsession with taking Greenland, Fogh Rasmussen fears there may be a troubling conclusion to be drawn.

One that would render the Danes unable to do business with a man whose view on territorial integrity is so wildly incompatible from theirs.

“I understand very well the American strategic interest in the minerals, but when it comes to mining in Greenland, they have shown no interest,” he says.

“That leaves me with the concern that maybe it’s not about security, maybe it’s not about minerals, maybe it is just a question of expanding the territory of the United States.

“And that’s actually a point where we are not able to accommodate President Trump.”

A South Carolina man convicted of bludgeoning his ex-girlfriend’s parents to death has become the first US death row inmate to be executed by firing squad in the last 15 years.

Brad Sigmon was shot to death just after 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Friday by three state corrections department volunteers firing rifles at his chest with specially designed bullets.

Sigmon, 67, was convicted of murdering David and Gladys Larke with a baseball bat in 2001 before kidnapping his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint. She managed to escape as he shot at her.

He had requested death by firing squad over the other two state-approved methods of execution: electric chair and lethal injection.

Chrysti Shain, of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, said Sigmon was pronounced dead by a doctor at 18:08.

Three members of the Larke family were present to witness his death, she said, as well as Sigmon’s spiritual adviser.

Sigmon was strapped to a chair, which had a basin underneath to catch blood, witnesses said.

He told witnesses he wanted his final statement “to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty”.

“An eye for an eye was used as justification to the jury for seeking the death penalty,” he added.

“At that time, I was too ignorant to know how wrong that was. Why? Because we no longer live under the Old Testament law but now live under the New Testament.”

After his final statement, a hood was placed over his head.

A curtain that concealed three volunteers opened at 18:01. At 18:05, the trio fired from 15ft (4.6m) away without any countdown.

Jeffrey Collins, a reporter for the Associated Press news agency, said at a news conference that Sigmon had a red bullseye target placed over his heart.

When he was shot, his chest rose and fell several times, the reporter added.

A doctor performed an exam that took about 90 seconds, before declaring him dead.

The .308 Winchester Tap Urban bullets used are designed to break apart on impact and cause maximum damage. Medical experts have debated the amount of pain they may cause.

Anna Dobbins, a reporter for WHFF-TV, added that Sigmon had worn a black jump suit but his bare arms had “flexed” when he was shot.

All the shots were fired simultaneously, she said, and witnesses were unable to see the guns.

Prison guards also offered witnesses ear plugs to protect their ears from the sound of the shots, added a reporter for the Post and Courier newspaper.

Counselling services are being offered to any prison staff who were traumatised by the execution, said Ms Shain.

Sigmon’s lawyer, Bo King, had been hoping for a last-minute stay of execution by the South Carolina governor and accused the state of withholding information about the lethal injection process.

“Brad only wanted assurances that these drugs were not expired, or diluted, or spoiled – what any of us would want to know about the medication we take, or the food we eat, much less the means of our death,” he said in a statement after his death.

“It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle.”

King said his client had been suffering from mental illness, and that the friendships he formed in prison were proof he had been rehabilitated.

“Brad is someone who, for his last meal, asked to get three buckets of original recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken so he could share with the guys that he’s incarcerated with on death row,” he told WYFF-TV earlier on Friday.

“With his last meal, he wanted to share something special with them,” he said, later telling reporters that the request to share had been denied.

Officials later confirmed his last meal as four pieces of fried chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes with gravy, biscuits, cheesecake and sweet tea. The meal was served on Wednesday evening.

Since 1977 only three people had died by firing squad, all three of them in the state of Utah. The last to die had been Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.

Ahead of Sigmon’s execution, anti-death penalty protesters held a rally outside the jail in the city of Columbia.

They held signs saying “all life is precious” and “thou shalt not kill”.

The state allows witnesses to observe the death from behind bulletproof glass, but the executioners are hidden from view to protect their identities.

South Carolina passed a law in 2023 requiring that the identities of the execution team members remain secret.

Not long after the US imposed their tariffs on Canada, a local neighbourhood pub in Toronto began removing all American products off their menu.

That means nachos, wings – and of course, beer – must all be made now with local Canadian ingredients, or wherever not possible, non-US products from Europe or Mexico.

For Leah Russell, manager at Toronto’s Madison Avenue pub, the boycott was a no-brainer. She adds that it is “pretty set in stone,” even if the tariffs themselves are not.

“I’m glad that we’re getting rid of American products and supporting local businesses,” Ms Russell told the BBC on Thursday. “I think it’s an important thing to do.”

This defiant stance in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats against Canada has been unfolding across the northern country, even as it braces for economic blowback that it could ultimately do little to avoid in the event of a full-blown trade war.

Just ask actor Jeff Douglas, once the face of Molson Canadian Beer’s “I Am Canadian” advertisements, who has filmed and posted a light-hearted, but deeply-patriotic video on Youtube this week addressing Trump’s “51st state” rhetoric.

“We’re not the 51st anything,” declares Mr Douglas in the video, which has since gone viral in Canada.

Some of the backlash has been more symbolic, like one Montreal café changing the Americano on their menu to a “Canadiano” – a small gesture that the owners say is meant to display unity and support for their community and country.

Even the CBC, the country’s public broadcaster, is feeling the full force of this wave of patriotism, after it dared run a programme asking Canadians what they think about Canada becoming “the 51st state”, as Trump has suggested many times.

The show sparked intense backlash and accusations of “treason,” “sedition” and even “betrayal”.

Although Trump has since lifted some of the tariffs imposed this week and put others on pause until 2 April, many Canadians say the damage has already been done.

After Thursday’s reversal, foreign minister Melanie Joly told CNN that Canada has been shown “too much disrespect by the Trump administration at this point, calling us a 51st state, calling our prime minister ‘governor.'”

Meanwhile, Doug Ford, who is the leader of Canada’s most populous province, did not back down from his plan to slap export tariffs on electricity that Canada supplies some US states. The 25% surcharge will affect up to 1.5 million American homes.

“I feel terrible for the American people because it’s not the American people, and it’s not even elected officials, it’s one person,” he told a local radio show on Thursday in reference to Trump.

“He’s coming after his closest friends, closest allies in the world and it’s going to absolutely devastate both economies,” Ford said.

Canadians support their country’s reciprocal actions, saying they should remain in place until US tariffs are completely off the table.

“You go to bed every night and don’t have any idea where you stand,” said Andrew, a shopper at a Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) store in Toronto, which has stopped stocking US-made alcoholic drinks, like bourbon from Kentucky. Trump says he will delay the tariffs, “but what does that mean?” he asks.

“Let’s keep [American-made drinks] off the shelves until we know what things are going to be from day to day.”

The tariffs have been met with deep anxiety in Canada, whose majority of exports are sold to companies and clients in the US. Officials predict up to a million job losses if a 25% across the board levy went ahead, while economists warn that a recession is imminent if they persist.

The potential impact is devastating enough that the Canadian government has announced it will bring in relief measures, similar to those implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic, to help impacted individuals and businesses.

Even with the tariffs being scaled back temporarily, the uncertainty alone is hurting both American and Canadian economies, says Rob Gillezeau, an assistant professor of economic analysis and policy at the University of Toronto.

“The most sensitive thing to uncertainty is business investment,” Prof Gillezeau says, adding that firms are “not going to want to spend a dime anywhere” until they have some clarity.

Analysts suggest the mere whiff of a trade war is likely costing Canadian companies hundreds of thousands of dollars as they try to navigate through these changes, and are likely delaying deals and disrupting trade due to the confusion.

That trepidation is also seen in the stock market, which had erased virtually all its gains since Trump won the presidency in November.

Trump has repeatedly said that tariffs are a response to Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis, which has killed over 250,000 American since 2018.

While only a small portion of the drug originates from Canada, press secretary Karen Leavitt said that even those numbers are significant for “families in this country who have lost loved ones to this deadly poison”. Even small amounts of fentanyl can kill large number of people, she added.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the tariffs, suggesting they align with Trump’s stated desire to see Canada become “the 51st state.”

“What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us,” Trudeau told media in Ottawa Thursday.

Prof Gillezeau notes that it is an especially deep wound from a neighbour whom Canada had long considered its closest friend and ally.

The US and Canada have fought wars together, have boasted about having the longest “undefended” shared border in the world and have even engaged in joint security missions in the Arctic to defend each other’s sovereignty.

“We’ve been allies for 100 years,” he says, adding that many Canadians are likely upset not just with how the US has been treating Canada, but also other allies like Ukraine.

“We’re a decent, honourable people, and we stand by our allies,” Prof Gillezeau says. “I think that’s what is driving the real depth of the discontent we see.”

The Canadian boycotts are already having material impact. Canadian outlet Global News has reported that leisure travel bookings to the US have plunged 40% year over year, citing data from Flight Centre Canada. That decline has also been observed in land border crossings between British Columbia and Washington State.

Before the tariffs, the US was the number one international travel destination for Canadians, who have spent $20.5bn (£15.89bn) into the American tourism economy in 2024 alone.

Asked if this trend will hold, Prof Gillezeau says Canadians ideally want relations to go back to normal with their neighbour. But in absence of that, the consensus in the country is that “Canada needs to find friends elsewhere”.

As dawn approached on the morning of 7 October 2023, many of the partygoers at the Nova music festival near Gaza’s border took illegal recreational drugs like MDMA or LSD.

Hundreds of them were high when, shortly after sunrise, Hamas gunmen attacked the site.

Now neuroscientists working with survivors from the festival say there are early signs that MDMA – also known as ecstasy or molly – may have provided some psychological protection against trauma.

The preliminary results, currently being peer-reviewed with a view to publication in the coming months, suggest that the drug is associated with more positive mental states – both during the event and in the months afterwards.

The study, carried out by scientists at Israel’s Haifa University, could contribute to a growing scientific interest in how MDMA might be used to treat psychological trauma.

It is thought to be the first time scientists have been able to study a mass trauma event where large numbers of people were under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

Hamas gunmen killed 360 people and kidnapped dozens more at the festival site where 3,500 people had been partying.

“We had people hiding under the bodies of their friends for hours while on LSD or MDMA,” said Prof Roy Salomon, one of those leading the research.

“There’s talk that a lot of these substances create plasticity in the brain, so the brain is more open to change. But what happens if you endure this plasticity in such a terrible situation – is it going to be worse, or better?”

The research tracked the psychological responses of more than 650 survivors from the festival. Two-thirds of these were under the influence of recreational drugs including MDMA, LSD, marijuana or psilocybin – the compound found in hallucinogenic mushrooms – before the attacks took place.

“MDMA, and especially MDMA that was not mixed with anything else, was the most protective,” the study has found, according to Prof Salomon.

He said those on MDMA during the attack appeared to cope much better mentally in the first five months afterwards, when a lot of processing takes place.

“They were sleeping better, had less mental distress – they were doing better than people who didn’t take any substance,” he said.

The team believes pro-social hormones triggered by the drug – such as oxytocin, which helps promote bonding – helped reduce fear and boost feelings of camaraderie between those fleeing the attack.

And even more importantly, they say, it appears to have left survivors more open to receiving love and support from their families and friends once they were home.

Clearly, the research is limited only to those who survived the attacks, making it hard to determine with any certainty whether specific drugs helped or hindered victims’ chances of escape.

But researchers found that many survivors, like Michal Ohana, firmly believe it did play a role – and say that belief, in itself, may help them to recover from the event.

“I feel like it saved my life, because I was so high, like I’m not in the real world,” she told me. “Because regular humans can’t see all these things – it’s not normal.”

Without the drug, she believes she would have just frozen or collapsed to the floor, and been killed or captured by the gunmen.

Clinicians in various countries have already experimented with MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a trial setting – though only Australia has approved it as a treatment.

Countries that have rejected it include the US, where the Food and Drug Administration cited concerns about the design of the studies, that the treatment may not offer long-lasting benefits, and about the potential risk for heart problems, injury and abuse.

MDMA is classified as a Class A drug in the UK, and has been linked to liver, kidney and heart problems.

In Israel, where MDMA is also illegal, psychologists can only use it to treat clients on an experimental research basis.

The preliminary findings from the Nova study are being closely followed by some of those Israeli clinicians experimenting with MDMA as treatment for PTSD after 7 October.

Dr Anna Harwood-Gross, a clinical psychologist and director of research at Israel’s Metiv Psychotrauma Centre, described the initial findings as “really important” for therapists like her.

She is currently experimenting with using MDMA to treat PTSD within the Israeli military, and had worried about the ethics of inducing a vulnerable psychological state in clients when there is a war going on.

“At the beginning of the war, we questioned whether we were able to do this,” she said. “Can we give people MDMA when there’s a risk of an air raid siren? That’s going to re-traumatise them potentially. This study has shown us that even if there’s a traumatic event during therapy, the MDMA might also help process that trauma.”

Dr Harwood-Gross says early indications of therapeutic MDMA use are encouraging, even among military veterans with chronic PTSD.

It has also upended old assumptions about the “rules” of therapy – especially the length of sessions, which have to be adjusted when working with clients under the influence of MDMA, she says.

“For example, it’s changed our thoughts about 50-minute therapy sessions, with one patient and one therapist,” Dr Harwood-Gross told me. “Having two therapists, and long sessions – up to eight hours long – is a new way of doing therapy. They’re looking at people very holistically and giving them time.”

She says this new longer format is showing promising results, even without patients taking MDMA, with a success rate of 40% in the placebo group.

Israeli society itself has also changed its approach to trauma and therapy following the 7 October attacks, according to Danny Brom, a founding director of the METIV Psychotrauma Centre at Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, and a senior figure in the industry.

“It’s as if this is the first trauma we’re going through,” he said. “I’ve seen wars here, I’ve seen lots of terrorist attacks and people said, ‘We don’t see trauma here’.

“Suddenly, there seems to be a general opinion that now everyone is traumatised, and everyone needs treatment. It’s a wrong approach.”

What broke, he said, is the sense of security many Jews believed Israel would provide them. These attacks uncovered a collective trauma, he says, linked to the Holocaust and generations of persecution.

“Our history is full of massacres,” psychologist Vered Atzmon Meshulam told me. “As a psychologist now in Israel, we are faced with an opportunity to work with lots of traumas that weren’t previously being treated, like all our narratives for 2,000 years.”

Collective trauma, combat trauma, mind-altering drugs, sexual assault, hostages, survivors, body-collectors, the injured and the bereaved – Israel’s trauma specialists are facing a complex cocktail of issues from the clients now flooding into therapy.

The scale of that mental health challenge is mirrored in Gaza, where vast numbers of people have been killed, injured or left homeless after a devastating 15-month war – and where there are scant resources to help a deeply traumatised population.

The war in Gaza, triggered by the Hamas attacks on Israeli communities in October 2023, was suspended in January in a six-week truce, during which Israeli hostages held by Hamas were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

But there is little sense on either side that the peace and security needed to begin healing has arrived.

The truce expired last weekend, with 59 Israeli hostages still in Hamas captivity. Many Gazans are waiting, with their bags packed, for war to resume.

Meanwhile Nova survivor Michal Ohana says she feels that with the passage of time, some are expecting her to have moved on from the attacks, but she is still affected.

“I wake up with this, and I go to sleep with this, and people don’t understand,” she told me.

“We live this every day. I feel the country supported us in the first months, but now after one year, they feel: ‘OK, you need to go back to work, back to life.’ But we can’t.”

Betsy Arakawa, wife of Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, died from a respiratory illness linked to hantavirus, a rare disease transmitted by infected rodents, officials have confirmed.

Health experts warn that hantavirus can cause flu-like symptoms after exposure to rodent droppings, and in severe cases, it may develop into Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS), a life-threatening lung condition.

Medical investigators believe Ms Arakawa contracted HPS, which led to her death.

It is believed she died a week before her husband, who was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Authorities discovered the deceased couple in their New Mexico home last month.

Here’s what you need to know about hantavirus.

Hantavirus refers to a strain of viruses carried by rodents, primarily transmitted to humans through inhalation of airborne particles from dried rodent droppings.

Infections typically occur when the virus becomes airborne from a rodent’s urine, droppings, or saliva, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Though rare, it can also spread through rodent bites or scratches. In North America, deer mice are the most common carriers, according to the Mayo Clinic.

The virus can cause two severe illnesses. The first, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome – the most common strain in the US – was the illness that led to Ms Arakawa’s death, officials say.

Symptoms often start with fatigue, fever, and muscle aches, followed by headaches, dizziness, chills, and abdominal issues. If respiratory symptoms develop, the mortality rate is approximately 38%, according to the CDC.

The second illness, Haemorrhagic Fever with Renal syndrome, is more severe and primarily affects the kidneys.

The CDC reported 864 cases of hantavirus in the US between 1993 and 2022.

Most of the cases were found in rural areas of western states like California, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.

The agency began surveillance for hantavirus diseases in 1993 during an outbreak of severe respiratory illness near the Four Corners region of the US where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah all meet.

There may be around 150,000 cases of Haemorrhagic Fever with Renal syndrome worldwide each year, according to a report from the National Institutes of Health. More than half occur in China.

There is no specific treatment for hantavirus infections.

The CDC recommends supportive care to treat symptoms.

Patients with severe symptoms may need to be admitted to hospitals in intensive care units. Some may need to be intubated in severe cases.

The CDC recommends eliminating contact with rodents in homes or workplaces to reduce exposure to the virus.

The agency also recommends sealing entry points in basements or attics where rodents may enter homes.

Wearing protective gear is also suggested when cleaning up rodent droppings to avoid inhaling contaminated air.

Gurpreet Singh was handcuffed, his legs shackled and a chain tied around his waist. He was led onto the tarmac in Texas by US Border Patrol, towards a waiting C-17 military transport aircraft.

It was 3 February and, after a months-long journey, he realised his dream of living in America was over. He was being deported back to India. “It felt like the ground was slipping away from underneath my feet,” he said.

Gurpreet, 39, was one of thousands of Indians in recent years to have spent their life savings and crossed continents to enter the US illegally through its southern border, as they sought to escape an unemployment crisis back home.

There are about 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US, the third largest group behind Mexicans and El Salvadoreans, according to the most recent figures from Pew Research in 2022.

Now Gurpreet has become one of the first undocumented Indians to be sent home since President Donald Trump took office, with a promise to make mass deportations a priority.

Gurpreet intended to make an asylum claim based on threats he said he had received in India, but – in line with an executive order from Trump to turn people away without granting them asylum hearings – he said he was removed without his case ever being considered.

About 3,700 Indians were sent back on charter and commercial flights during President Biden’s tenure, but recent images of detainees in chains under the Trump administration have sparked outrage in India.

US Border Patrol released the images in an online video with a bombastic choral soundtrack and the warning: “If you cross illegally, you will be removed.”

“We sat in handcuffs and shackles for more than 40 hours. Even women were bound the same way. Only the children were free,” Gurpreet told the BBC back in India. “We weren’t allowed to stand up. If we wanted to use the toilet, we were escorted by US forces, and just one of our handcuffs was taken off.”

Opposition parties protested in parliament, saying Indian deportees were given “inhuman and degrading treatment”. “There’s a lot of talk about how Prime Minister Modi and Mr Trump are good friends. Then why did Mr Modi allow this?” said Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, a key opposition leader.

Gurpreet said: “The Indian government should have said something on our behalf. They should have told the US to carry out the deportation the way it’s been done before, without the handcuffs and chains.”

An Indian foreign ministry spokesman said the government had raised these concerns with the US, and that as a result, on subsequent flights, women deportees were not handcuffed and shackled.

But on the ground, the intimidating images and President Trump’s rhetoric seem to be having the desired effect.

“No-one will try going to the US now through this illegal ‘donkey’ route while Trump is in power,” said Gurpreet.

In the longer term, this could depend on whether there are continued deportations, but for now many of the Indian people-smugglers, locally called “agents”, have gone into hiding, fearing raids against them by Indian police.

Gurpreet said Indian authorities demanded the number of the agent he had used when he landed back home, but the smuggler could no longer be reached.

“I don’t blame them, though. We were thirsty and went to the well. They didn’t come to us,” said Gurpreet.

While the official headline figure puts the unemployment rate at only 3.2%, it conceals a more precarious picture for many Indians. Only 22% of workers have regular salaries, the majority are self-employed and nearly a fifth are “unpaid helpers”, including women working in family businesses.

“We leave India only because we are compelled to. If I got a job which paid me even 30,000 rupees (£270/$340) a month, my family would get by. I would never have thought of leaving,” said Gurpreet, who has a wife, a mother and an 18-month-old baby to look after.

“You can say whatever you want about the economy on paper, but you need to see the reality on the ground. There are no opportunities here for us to work or run a business.”

Gupreet’s trucking company was among the cash-dependent small businesses that were badly hit when the Indian government withdrew 86% of the currency in circulation with four hours notice. He said he didn’t get paid by his clients, and had no money to keep the business afloat. Another small business he set up, managing logistics for other companies, also failed because of the Covid lockdown, he said.

He said he tried to get visas to go to Canada and the UK, but his applications were rejected.

Then he took all his savings, sold a plot of land he owned, and borrowed money from relatives to put together 4 million rupees ($45,000/£36,000) to pay a smuggler to organise his journey, Gurpreet told us.

On 28 August 2024, he flew from India to Guyana in South America to start an arduous journey to the US.

Gurpreet pointed out all the stops he made on a map on his phone. From Guyana he travelled through Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, mostly by buses and cars, partly by boat, and briefly on a plane – handed from one people-smuggler to another, detained and released by authorities a few times along the way.

From Colombia, smugglers tried to get him a flight to Mexico, so he could avoid crossing the dreaded Darién Gap. But Colombian immigration didn’t allow him to board the flight, so he had to make a dangerous trek through the jungle.

A dense expanse of rainforest between Colombia and Panama, the Darién Gap can only be crossed on foot, risking accidents, disease and attacks by criminal gangs. Last year, 50 people died making the crossing.

“I was not scared. I’ve been a sportsman so I thought I would be OK. But it was the toughest section,” said Gurpreet. “We walked for five days through jungles and rivers. In many parts, while wading through the river, the water came up to my chest.”

Each group was accompanied by a smuggler – or a “donker” as Gurpreet and other migrants refer to them, a word seemingly derived from the term “donkey route” used for illegal migration journeys.

At night they would pitch tents in the jungle, eat a bit of food they were carrying and try to rest.

“It was raining all the days we were there. We were drenched to our bones,” he said. They were guided over three mountains in their first two days. After that, he said they had to follow a route marked out in blue plastic bags tied to trees by the smugglers.

“My feet had begun to feel like lead. My toenails were cracked, and the palms of my hands were peeled off and had thorns in them. Still, we were lucky we didn’t encounter any robbers.”

When they reached Panama, Gurpreet said he and about 150 others were detained by border officials in a cramped jail-like centre. After 20 days, they were released, he said, and from there it took him more than a month to reach Mexico, passing through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala.

Gurpreet said they waited for nearly a month in Mexico until there was an opportunity to cross the border into the US near San Diego.

“We didn’t scale a wall. There is a mountain near it which we climbed over. And there’s a razor wire which the donker cut through,” he said.

Gurpreet entered the US on 15 January, five days before President Trump took office – believing that he had made it just in time, before the borders became impenetrable and rules became tighter.

Once in San Diego, he surrendered to US Border Patrol, and was then detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

During the Biden administration, illegal or undocumented migrants would appear before an immigration officer who would do a preliminary interview to determine if each person had a case for asylum. While a majority of Indians migrated out of economic necessity, some also left fearing persecution because of their religious or social backgrounds, or their sexual orientation.

If they cleared the interview, they were released, pending a decision on granting asylum from an immigration judge. The process would often take years, but they were allowed to remain in the US in the meantime.

This is what Gurpreet thought would happen to him. He had planned to find work at a grocery store and then to get into trucking, a business he is familiar with.

Instead, less than three weeks after he entered the US, he found himself being led towards that C-17 plane and going back to where he started.

In their small house in Sultanpur Lodhi, a city in the northern state of Punjab, Gurpreet is now trying to find work to repay the money he owes, and fend for his family.

Syrian security forces are alleged to have killed hundreds of civilians belonging to the Alawite minority group in continuing violence along the country’s coast, according to a war monitoring group.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said some 745 civilians had been killed in around 30 “massacres” targeting Alawites on Friday and Saturday.

BBC News has not been able to independently verify these claims.

Hundreds of people have reportedly fled their homes in the region – a heartland of deposed president Bashar al-Assad, who also belongs to the Alawite sect.

A total of more than 1,000 people have been killed in the past two days, the SOHR said, in what is the worst violence in Syria since rebels toppled the Assad regime in December.

This figure includes dozens of government troops and gunmen loyal to Assad, who have been locked in clashes in the coastal Latakia and Tartous provinces since Thursday.

Some 125 members of the Islamist-led government security forces and 148 pro-Assad fighters have been killed in the violence, according to the SOHR’s report.

A Syrian defence ministry spokesman told the country’s Sana news agency that the government had re-established control after “treacherous attacks” against its security personnel.

The violence has left the Alawite community in “a state of horror”, an activist in the city told the BBC on Friday, with hundreds of people reportedly fleeing affected areas.

Large crowds sought refuge at a Russian military base at Hmeimim in Latakia, according to the Reuters news agency.

Video footage shared by Reuters showed dozens of people chanting “people want Russian protection” outside the base.

Meanwhile, dozens of families have fled to neighbouring Lebanon, according to local media.

The UN’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said he was “deeply alarmed” by “very troubling reports of civilian casualties” in Syria’s coastal areas.

He called on all sides to refrain from actions which could “destabilise” the country and jeopardise a “credible and inclusive political transition”.

Alawites, whose sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, make up around 10% of Syria’s population, which is majority Sunni Muslim.

Six months ago, a viral TikTok trend made us obsessed with being very demure and very mindful – but now, modesty has taken a back seat among celebrities who have made see-through outfits all the rage on red carpets and catwalks.

At the Brit Awards last week, big winner Charli XCX went full brat as she wore a sheer black dress, prompting hundreds of complaints to media watchdog Ofcom.

She used one of her acceptance speeches to address the controversy of her outfit. “I heard that ITV were complaining about my nipples,” she said. “I feel like we’re in the era of ‘free the nipple’ though, right?”

The nearly-naked look has been a talking point at other award ceremonies – including last Sunday’s Oscars and the Grammys in February, when Kanye West’s girlfriend Bianca Censori dropped her coat on the red carpet to reveal an almost entirely invisible dress.

The love for transparent textiles has continued at London and Paris fashion weeks, with many of the celebrities watching on also getting the memo.

At Stella McCartney’s Paris show, US actress and Michael Jackson’s daughter Paris Jackson wore a translucent black off-the-shoulder maxi dress with only a nude-coloured thong underneath.

Rapper Ice Spice sported a black lace catsuit with a feathered coat at the show.

Naked dressing was a key trend in some designers’ spring/summer collections, and the theme has continued in autumn/winter looks too.

As Vogue wrote in January: “For a period of time, sheerness was few and far between, but nowadays, ‘naked dressing’ is commonplace every season.”

Dior’s latest collection embraced see-through material and presented it in an ethereal way, with intricate detailing and gender-fluid silhouettes.

Creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri described her collection as “demonstrating how clothing is a receptacle that affirms cultural, aesthetic and social codes”.

The trend divides opinion but is certainly part of a wider movement – last summer Charli XCX’s definition of being a brat included wearing “a strappy white top with no bra”.

Sheer dressing is a nod to the minimalist looks of the 1990s – think transparent blouses and Kate Moss wearing a thin slip dress – and with our love for nostalgia fashion, it’s no wonder it is taking off again.

The trend also had a resurgence a decade ago. The “free the nipple” movement was everywhere in the early 2010s, with Rihanna stirring up headlines with her sheer crystal-embellished dress at the CFDA awards in 2014.

Charli XCX’s Brits outfit was praised by some on social media. “Stop policing women’s bodies,” one person wrote, while another said she looked comfortable in her outfit so “why is society judging?”

But many found it too risque for prime-time TV. Ofcom received 825 complaints about the Brits ceremony, the majority relating to Charli’s outfit and Sabrina Carpenter’s eye-opening pre-watershed performance.

“Maybe think about putting this on at a time when kids ain’t gonna be watching,” one person wrote on social media.

Fashion stylist and CEO of clothing brand Mermaid Way, Julia Pukhalskaia, calls the choice to wear revealing dresses a “provocative statement”, but says it’s a “way to reclaim the right to govern one’s body”.

The controversy around it feeds into a wider dialogue about women’s rights and double standards when it comes to dress codes, she adds.

Abhi Madan, creative director of fashion brand Amarra, believes the trend “is about embracing freedom and boldness in fashion”.

The idea of freeing the nipple “isn’t just about exposure – it’s a movement towards body positivity and challenging conventional fashion norms”, she argues.

“Designers are now integrating sheer elements not just for shock value but to create a refined and elegant silhouette that empowers wearers.”

It seems many Hollywood stars this year were feeling empowered as chiffon, lace and tulle were in plentiful supply at the Oscars.

Shock value is surely a factor for some, too, though.

At Vanity Fair’s Oscars afterparty, Julia Fox wore a mesh dress with only long wavy hair to cover some of her modesty.

There were other interpretations of the naked dress – Megan Thee Stallion wore a green dress with strategically-placed foliage and nipple coverings, while Zoe Kravitz opted to cover up the front but expose the back as a beaded mesh panel revealed her buttocks in her Saint Laurent dress.

“This year, naked dressing seemed to particularly thrive at the event,” the New York Times noted.

However, not everyone is on board. The Times fashion director Anna Murphy wrote that she’s over the trend because “it’s only women who do this”.

“It is not an equal opportunities endeavour. It is, rather, a manifestation of the kind of thing that keeps this world unequal. That women’s bodies are for public consumption and men’s, usually, aren’t,” she wrote.

Some men have been embracing the nearly naked trend, though. In 2022, Timothée Chalamet wore striking a backless red top at Venice Film Festival, and at the 2023 Grammys Harry Styles freed the nipple in a plunge harlequin jumpsuit.

It’s the women who will continue to cause more of a stir on runways and red carpets – and society will still be split on whether it’s redefining conventional notions of modesty in fashion, a product of misogyny, or simply seeking attention.

A man drawn into the world of having sex while high on illegal drugs has described how he became a “zombie” whose life was slowly deteriorating.

Chris – whose name has been changed – told the BBC he started to take part in chemsex, short for chemical sex, which helped mask the “the shame and guilt” he said he felt growing up gay.

The Londoner said after becoming addicted to chemsex – which typically involves men who have sex with men using the drugs crystal meth, methedrone and GHB/GBL to enhance their sexual experience – he faced a “wall of silence” from helplines and others within the community.

Campaigners say support is “patchy” due to gay sex stigma and has called for this to change. The government says it is aware of the harm caused by chemsex and has issued guidance to local authorities on managing the issue.

Chris was initially offered drugs at a party, but it was not until a few months later that he then began to actively seek it out more and find people who were taking drugs.

He said at first it took away “a lot of the shame and guilt you have about growing up being gay. It’s kind of quite liberating”.

However, that quickly changed.

“No-one really speaks about it. Everyone is slightly ashamed about it. It’s all behind closed doors. It doesn’t really spill out into the real world. It’s very secretive,” he said.

Chris said his friends told him he was almost like a “zombie”.

“Slowly, your life starts to deteriorate because you are missing work on a Monday. And then your work is obviously not up to standard.

“You can’t do much until Wednesday. And then it all starts again on a Friday,” he said.

“You have to eat, you have to sleep, you have to get on with your life but all you’re really doing is looking forward to the next time you can take drugs,” he added.

“Which is to escape the horror that is your life, the misery that is your life which you’ve created but, in a way, you don’t seem to see that because all you want to do is take drugs.”

Campaigners have said chemsex among some gay men has a stigma attached that meant many were not seeking the help they needed.

Ignacio Labayen De Inza, chief executive of the London-based charity Controlling Chemsex, is calling for people to start a conversation around chemsex to help change that stigma.

He said: “Chemsex is very available but not everyone has access to reliable information.

“Not just the government but no-one is doing very much. People think there is nothing we can do because it’s going to carry on happening, but people could make sure that they set boundaries and to keep safe.”

He said there was a stigma attached to it because “we are talking about sex, we are talking about gay sex, we are talking about drugs”.

Philip Hurd, a specialist adviser at Controlling Chemsex, was involved in chemsex 12 years ago and said it took a near-death overdose for him to realise he needed to stop.

He said: “You get close to the criminal justice system, and you start doing things that are dangerous.

“And then I had a near-death overdose. The doctors said I was very lucky to survive, and I had to get my parents down from the country in their early eighties. That was the point I thought I can’t do this; I’m going to die.”

Mr Hurd, who lives in London and now volunteers at Controlling Chemsex, uses his personal experience to help others.

“I think it’s possible for a person with good psychology, sociology skills to support somebody coming out of chemsex but nothing can replace having been there knowing,” he said.

An Opinium Research poll of 2,000 people for the charity found that 76% of those surveyed were not familiar with chemsex.

Just over a third of those who identified as gay/lesbian were not familiar with the risks of chemsex, the study also found.

Veronika Carruthers, a lecturer at Portsmouth University, has been looking into the current support available across the south of England and found it was still “pretty limited” and “patchy”.

“We consider this to be a bit of a postcode lottery,” she said.

She explained that some people did not know the right services to turn to.

“Particularly if we look at it from a divide of drug counselling services and sexual health clinics, while sexual health clinics are preferred there is still an element of staff not having the appropriate knowledge of what chemsex actually is and in turn not being able to provide the most effect support,” she said.

“In regards to drug counselling services, quite often we have recovery workers who have never actually heard of chemsex and therefore they’re not able to provide any form of support and individuals often don’t feel that is the most appropriate place for them.

“As a result people don’t want to call for help or support from particular organisations over others.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said in addition to issuing guidance to local authorities, it had boosted the Public Health Grant by almost £200m.

“Local authorities can use this to improve drug and alcohol treatment and recovery interventions, including for people involved in chemsex,” the spokesperson said.

“We continue to work with substance misuse commissioners and sexual health commissioners to improve access to support services for those who use drugs in this context.”

Details of information and support with addiction are available

at BBC Action Line.

Not long after the US imposed their tariffs on Canada, a local neighbourhood pub in Toronto began removing all American products off their menu.

That means nachos, wings – and of course, beer – must all be made now with local Canadian ingredients, or wherever not possible, non-US products from Europe or Mexico.

For Leah Russell, manager at Toronto’s Madison Avenue pub, the boycott was a no-brainer. She adds that it is “pretty set in stone,” even if the tariffs themselves are not.

“I’m glad that we’re getting rid of American products and supporting local businesses,” Ms Russell told the BBC on Thursday. “I think it’s an important thing to do.”

This defiant stance in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs and threats against Canada has been unfolding across the northern country, even as it braces for economic blowback that it could ultimately do little to avoid in the event of a full-blown trade war.

Just ask actor Jeff Douglas, once the face of Molson Canadian Beer’s “I Am Canadian” advertisements, who has filmed and posted a light-hearted, but deeply-patriotic video on Youtube this week addressing Trump’s “51st state” rhetoric.

“We’re not the 51st anything,” declares Mr Douglas in the video, which has since gone viral in Canada.

Some of the backlash has been more symbolic, like one Montreal café changing the Americano on their menu to a “Canadiano” – a small gesture that the owners say is meant to display unity and support for their community and country.

Even the CBC, the country’s public broadcaster, is feeling the full force of this wave of patriotism, after it dared run a programme asking Canadians what they think about Canada becoming “the 51st state”, as Trump has suggested many times.

The show sparked intense backlash and accusations of “treason,” “sedition” and even “betrayal”.

Although Trump has since lifted some of the tariffs imposed this week and put others on pause until 2 April, many Canadians say the damage has already been done.

After Thursday’s reversal, foreign minister Melanie Joly told CNN that Canada has been shown “too much disrespect by the Trump administration at this point, calling us a 51st state, calling our prime minister ‘governor.'”

Meanwhile, Doug Ford, who is the leader of Canada’s most populous province, did not back down from his plan to slap export tariffs on electricity that Canada supplies some US states. The 25% surcharge will affect up to 1.5 million American homes.

“I feel terrible for the American people because it’s not the American people, and it’s not even elected officials, it’s one person,” he told a local radio show on Thursday in reference to Trump.

“He’s coming after his closest friends, closest allies in the world and it’s going to absolutely devastate both economies,” Ford said.

Canadians support their country’s reciprocal actions, saying they should remain in place until US tariffs are completely off the table.

“You go to bed every night and don’t have any idea where you stand,” said Andrew, a shopper at a Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) store in Toronto, which has stopped stocking US-made alcoholic drinks, like bourbon from Kentucky. Trump says he will delay the tariffs, “but what does that mean?” he asks.

“Let’s keep [American-made drinks] off the shelves until we know what things are going to be from day to day.”

The tariffs have been met with deep anxiety in Canada, whose majority of exports are sold to companies and clients in the US. Officials predict up to a million job losses if a 25% across the board levy went ahead, while economists warn that a recession is imminent if they persist.

The potential impact is devastating enough that the Canadian government has announced it will bring in relief measures, similar to those implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic, to help impacted individuals and businesses.

Even with the tariffs being scaled back temporarily, the uncertainty alone is hurting both American and Canadian economies, says Rob Gillezeau, an assistant professor of economic analysis and policy at the University of Toronto.

“The most sensitive thing to uncertainty is business investment,” Prof Gillezeau says, adding that firms are “not going to want to spend a dime anywhere” until they have some clarity.

Analysts suggest the mere whiff of a trade war is likely costing Canadian companies hundreds of thousands of dollars as they try to navigate through these changes, and are likely delaying deals and disrupting trade due to the confusion.

That trepidation is also seen in the stock market, which had erased virtually all its gains since Trump won the presidency in November.

Trump has repeatedly said that tariffs are a response to Mexico and Canada’s role in the fentanyl crisis, which has killed over 250,000 American since 2018.

While only a small portion of the drug originates from Canada, press secretary Karen Leavitt said that even those numbers are significant for “families in this country who have lost loved ones to this deadly poison”. Even small amounts of fentanyl can kill large number of people, she added.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the tariffs, suggesting they align with Trump’s stated desire to see Canada become “the 51st state.”

“What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us,” Trudeau told media in Ottawa Thursday.

Prof Gillezeau notes that it is an especially deep wound from a neighbour whom Canada had long considered its closest friend and ally.

The US and Canada have fought wars together, have boasted about having the longest “undefended” shared border in the world and have even engaged in joint security missions in the Arctic to defend each other’s sovereignty.

“We’ve been allies for 100 years,” he says, adding that many Canadians are likely upset not just with how the US has been treating Canada, but also other allies like Ukraine.

“We’re a decent, honourable people, and we stand by our allies,” Prof Gillezeau says. “I think that’s what is driving the real depth of the discontent we see.”

The Canadian boycotts are already having material impact. Canadian outlet Global News has reported that leisure travel bookings to the US have plunged 40% year over year, citing data from Flight Centre Canada. That decline has also been observed in land border crossings between British Columbia and Washington State.

Before the tariffs, the US was the number one international travel destination for Canadians, who have spent $20.5bn (£15.89bn) into the American tourism economy in 2024 alone.

Asked if this trend will hold, Prof Gillezeau says Canadians ideally want relations to go back to normal with their neighbour. But in absence of that, the consensus in the country is that “Canada needs to find friends elsewhere”.

It’s been another turbulent week in global politics.

The world digested the extraordinary exchange between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader visited European allies, who have sprung into action to beef up their defences. Russian bombs hit Ukraine.

But what are these major players thinking ahead of fresh US-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia next week?

Five BBC correspondents have analysed the week’s events.

After Donald Trump and JD Vance’s humiliating attack on Zelensky, the US president on Monday suspended military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine.

Over time, this will have a fundamental impact on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself – and Trump’s Democratic opponents say it’s now beyond question that he is aligned with Russia.

The administration has been plain that it sees the move as pressure on Zelensky to sign the president’s minerals deal and cede to a quick ceasefire.

Trump’s envoy Gen Keith Kellogg characterised the withdrawal of US military support as “like hitting a mule in the face with a [plank of wood]… You got their attention and it’s very significant… and it’s then up to them to do [what the president wants].”

After all the arm-twisting, the week ends with a more conciliatory tone from some of Trump’s top foreign policy team who will meet with the Ukrainians next week in Saudi Arabia.

There was a rare moment of criticism for Moscow by Trump on Friday as he threatened sanctions, even though it is already heavily sanctioned, to try to deter its intensifying bombardment of Ukraine.

But other than that this is an administration that has repeatedly reprimanded its supposed ally but refrained from any such criticism of its adversary.

On Thursday I asked the US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce for her reaction to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov ruling out the presence of European peacekeepers in Ukraine. He had called it a “hostile aim” by the West over which there was “no room for compromise”.

Ms Bruce declined to respond, saying it wasn’t for her to comment on the remarks of foreign leaders or ministers, even though she had just repeated Trump’s label of Zelensky as “not ready for peace”.

Until Trump’s sanctions threat, this was another week when all the pressure seemed to be on Kyiv, giving Russia little reason to tame its appetite.

The suspension of American military aid and intelligence is one of the worst setbacks for Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, and a huge boost to Russia’s chances.

The deadly attacks across Ukraine which have followed suggest that Moscow is happy to continue with business as usual in the war.

It still insists that the original objectives of the “special military operation” must be achieved and more Ukrainian land captured.

It has also rejected efforts by Ukraine supporters to relieve this pressure on Kyiv, through a truce or a peacekeeping force.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks this week that Trump’s America may no longer be “on our side” are music to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ears, too.

It’s a situation in which Putin can sit back and enjoy the spectacle of cracks appearing in the Western alliance. It’s a situation that he’s been working to achieve for years, if not decades.

And he has achieved it not because of shots fired on the battlefield, but because of a breathtaking U-turn by Ukraine’s biggest ally.

Next Tuesday, Ukrainian and US representatives are sitting down for talks in Saudi Arabia. Russia will be watching closely, but feeling confident.

It’s been a bruising, emotional, and relentless week for the embattled Ukrainian president, as he fought to keep Western military support intact while reiterating his commitment to peace.

The fallout from his spectacular Oval Office clash with Trump was compounded in Kyiv after the US suspended military aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine.

“There’s a scent of betrayal in the air,” one source close to the Ukrainian government said. “The whole country feels it – including the president and his team.”

Zelensky refused Trump’s demand for an “explicit public apology”, instead penning a letter to the US president and calling their White House showdown “regrettable”.

To counter the damage, Zelensky was on the road again, seeking to shore up European support in Brussels. But while he secured public displays of solidarity, he didn’t get the firm military commitments he was hoping for.

Meanwhile, Zelensky urged EU leaders to support a limited truce at sea and in the air – an idea backed by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Ukrainian and US delegations will hold talks in Saudi Arabia next week, but the path to peace remains uncertain.

Despite the setbacks, a source close to the president’s team insisted he remains defiant: “Three years ago, he could have been killed, but he decided to stay in Kyiv. The more pressure he’s under, the tougher he gets.”

There have been so many European summits it has been hard to keep up. And more are to come.

Europe’s leaders have suddenly realised the security umbrella they have relied on since World War Two may no longer be there, and proposals are flashing by at warp speed in European terms.

There is a broad consensus Europe needs to help Ukraine. France and the UK are offering “a coalition of the willing” on the ground if a peace deal can be found.

Russia hates the idea but Macron will bring together army chiefs on Tuesday to work on a plan.

But far bigger questions are now being asked about how Europe protects itself from what EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen calls a “clear and present danger”.

“We have to be ready” if the US is not there to help, says Macron. The EU is now talking about a multi-billion euro plan for beefing up defences.

And Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has raised the possibility of France and the UK extending their nuclear deterrent across Europe.

Macron has been receptive to that, although France’s nuclear umbrella would stretch only so far and final decisions would be made in Paris.

That goes to the heart of Europe’s defence problem.

Without the US, can individual European countries pool their resources and rely on each other?

For smaller states such as Lithuania there is no choice.

But the debate has begun, and Poland’s Donald Tusk says clearly it would be safer “if we have our own nuclear arsenal”.

Leading European nations have said they support an Arab-backed plan for the reconstruction of Gaza that would cost $53 billion (£41 billion) and avoid displacing Palestinians from the territory.

The plan, drawn up by Egypt and endorsed by Arab leaders, has been rejected by Israel and by US President Donald Trump, who presented his own vision to turn the Gaza Strip into a “Middle East Riviera”.

On Saturday the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy and Britain welcomed the plan, which calls for Gaza to be rebuilt over five years, as “realistic”.

In a statement, they said the proposal promised “swift and sustainable improvement of the catastrophic living conditions” for the people of Gaza.

The plan calls for Gaza to be governed temporarily by a committee of independent experts and for international peacekeepers to be deployed to the territory.

The committee would be responsible for overseeing humanitarian aid and temporarily managing Gaza’s affairs under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority.

The proposal was drawn up amid growing concern that Gaza’s fragile ceasefire deal could collapse after the six-week first phase expired on 1 March.

Israel has blocked aid from entering the territory to pressure Hamas to accept a new US proposal for a temporary extension of the truce, during which more hostages held in Gaza would be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

But Hamas has insisted that the second phase of the ceasefire, which would see the full withdrawal of Israeli troops, should begin as agreed.

Israel will send a negotiating team to Qatar on Monday to take part in talks on extending the ceasefire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

It remains unclear if or when the second phase of the ceasefire agreement will be implemented. But a Hamas spokesman, Abdel Latif al-Qanoua, spoke of “positive indicators” for next week’s talks.

The Arab-backed plan for Gaza’s future is an alternative to Trump’s idea for the US to take over the territory and resettle its population.

Egypt presented the plan at an emergency Arab League summit on Tuesday and it was welcomed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

But both the White House and Israeli foreign ministry said it failed to address realities in Gaza.

“Residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in debris and unexploded ordnance,” Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for Trump’s National Security Council, said late on Tuesday.

“President Trump stands by his vision to rebuild Gaza free from Hamas,” the statement added.

The statement issued by the four European countries on Saturday said they were “committed to working with the Arab initiative” and they appreciated the “important signal” the Arab states had sent by developing it.

The statement said Hamas “must neither govern Gaza nor be a threat to Israel any more” and that the four countries “support the central role for the Palestinian Authority and the implementation of its reform agenda”.

Almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have had to leave their homes since the start of hostilities. Israel began military operations after Hamas’s October 2023 attack which killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 more taken hostage.

Gaza has suffered vast destruction with a huge humanitarian impact. More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military action, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and much infrastructure across the strip has been levelled by air strikes.

Two women were gang-raped and a man was killed in an attack near a popular Unesco World Heritage site in southern India, according to police.

The two women – an Israeli tourist and an Indian homestay operator – were stargazing with three male tourists near a lake in Hampi, Karnataka, when they were attacked by a group of men on Thursday night, police superintendent Ram Arasiddi told Reuters.

Arasiddi said the assailants pushed the men into the Tungabhadra River canal before raping the women.

Two of the men, one of them American, survived, and the third man’s body was recovered on Saturday morning, he said.

“Five people – two women and three men – were attacked near Sanapur,” Arasiddi said.

“Two of them are foreigners, an American [man], and another a woman from Israel.”

Police have arrested two of the men accused of the attack and an investigation is ongoing, Arasiddi said.

Police believe the men followed the group.

According to witness testimony from one of the women, the group was stargazing near a temple in Sanapur when three men arrived on a motorcycle and asked them where they could get petrol.

As one member of the group gave them directions, one of the three men demanded 100 rupees ($1.29) from the tourists.

“Since the homestay operator did not know them, she told them they had no money,” police said.

“When the men repeatedly insisted, one of the male tourists gave them 20 rupees.

“After that, the three men allegedly started arguing.”

The body of one of the male tourists was later found in the Tungabhadra canal in Karnataka’s Koppal district.

A case has been registered at Gangavathi Rural Police Station under sections related to extortion, robbery, gang rape and attempted murder.

The victims are receiving medical treatment at a government hospital, the police said.

Hampi, an ancient village in the south Indian state of Karnataka, is home to numerous ruins and temples from the Vijayanagara Empire. It was declared as a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1986.

In a post on X, Chief Minister of Karnataka Siddaramaiah wrote: “The attack and rape of an Israeli citizen and homestay owner is a most heinous act.

“As soon as the incident was reported, I obtained information from the relevant police, conducted a thorough investigation, and instructed them to quickly identify the culprits.

“The police have arrested two accused in connection with the case and are continuing the investigation.”

Attacks on women in India gained international attention last year after the brutal rape-homicide of a junior doctor at a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.

The attack sparked national outrage and protests over a lack of safety for women.

All his adult life, Colonel Soren Knudsen stepped forward when his country called. And when its allies did.

He fought alongside US troops, notably in Afghanistan, and for a time was Denmark’s most senior officer there. He counted 58 rocket attacks during his duty.

“I was awarded a Bronze Star Medal by the United States and they gave me the Stars and Stripes. They have been hanging on my wall in our house ever since and I have proudly shown them to everybody.”

Then something changed.

“After JD Vance’s statement on Greenland, the president’s disrespect for internationally acknowledged borders, I took the Stars and Stripes down and the medal has been put away,” Soren says, his voice breaking a little.

This week before Congress, the US president doubled down on his desire to seize the world’s biggest island: Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark.

“My first feeling was that it hurts, and the second is that I’m offended,” Col Knudsen laments.

I meet him in the first weeks of his retirement outside Denmark’s 18th Century royal residence, Amalienborg Palace in the heart of Copenhagen.

Abruptly, pipers strike up and soldiers stream by.

Today’s Changing of the Guard comes at a time when the Trump administration has not just tweaked but defenestrated most assumptions around US-European security that have held fast for 80 years.

“It’s about values and when those values are axed by what we thought was an ally, it gets very tough to watch.” Soren says with his American wife Gina at his side.

“Denmark freely and without question joined those efforts where my husband served,” she says.

“So it comes as a shock to hear threats from a country that I also love and to feel that alliance is being trampled on. This feels personal, not like some abstract foreign policy tactic.”

Soren has not given up all hope though.

“It’s my hope and my prayer that I will one day be able to put [the flag] back on the wall,” he confides.

There’s no sign his prayers will be answered soon.

Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, goes to the polls next week with all the main parties backing independence at some point in the future.

A takeover by Donald Trump – potentially by force – is not on the ballot paper.

Not far from the royal palace stands Denmark’s memorial to its soldiers lost in recent battle.

Carved on the stone-covered walls are the names of those killed alongside their Western allies.

The section honouring the fallen in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan is particularly sizeable.

Denmark lost 44 soldiers in Afghanistan, which as a proportion of its less than six million population, was more than any other ally apart from the US. In Iraq, eight Danish soldiers died.

This is why the president’s words sting so much.

One man very well placed to consider what Trump’s ambitions for Greenland actually amount to is Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

“President Trump’s declaration of intention to maybe take Greenland by force is very similar to President Putin’s rhetoric when it comes to Ukraine,” he tells the BBC.

The former prime minister of Denmark and ex-secretary general of the Nato alliance argues this is the moment Denmark and the rest of Europe must step up to better protect itself if the US is not willing to.

“Since my childhood, I have admired the United States and their role as the world’s policeman. And I think we need a policeman to ensure international law and order but if the United States does not want to execute that role, then Europe must be able to defend itself, to stand on its own feet.”

Fogh Rasmussen doesn’t though believe the policeman is about to turn felon.

“I would like to stress I don’t think at the end of the day that the Americans will take Greenland by force.”

President Trump first talked about a Greenland takeover in his first term of office before returning to the theme at the start of this year.

But now, after blindsiding supposed allies with his latest moves on Ukraine, tariffs, as well as the Middle East, Denmark is urgently trying to assess the true threat.

For many younger Danes, control of Greenland is plain wrong – an unfathomable colonial hangover.

It doesn’t mean they want it handed straight over to the US instead.

“We do have connections to Greenland,” says music student Molly. “Denmark and Greenland are quite separated I would say but I still have friends from there so this does affect me quite personally.”

“I find it really scary,” says 18-year-old music student Luukas.

“Everything he sees, he goes after. And the thing with the oil and money, he doesn’t care about the climate, he doesn’t care about anyone or anything.”

His friend Clara chips in that Trump is now so powerful he can “affect their day-to-day life” from thousands of miles away, in what is an era of unprecedented jeopardy.

In light of President Trump’s suspension of military aid for Ukraine and his deep reluctance to fund Europe’s security, Denmark has been at the heart of the drive to boost defence spending across the continent.

The country has just announced it will allocate more than 3% of its GDP to defence spending in 2025 and 2026 to protect against future aggression from Russia or elsewhere.

Meanwhile, security analyst Hans Tino Hansen stands in front of a huge screen in what he calls his “ops room”, at his Copenhagen headquarters.

“This map is where we update on a daily basis our threat picture based on alerts and incidents all over the world,” says Hans, who has been running Risk Intelligence for the past 25 years.

As part of Denmark’s increased defence spending, it’s bolstering its strength in the “High North” with an extra two billion euros announced in January and three new Arctic naval vessels and investment in long-range drones.

Hans believes Arctic security can be tightened further, not by an American takeover – but with new deals that restore US influence.

“If you make more agreements, both on defence and security, but also economic ones and on raw materials, then we are more or less going back to where we were in the 50s and 60s.”

But the story stretches further back than the mid-20th Century.

“If you look at this globe, Greenland is the most centrally located place on Earth,” says world-renowned geologist Prof Minik Rosing, gesticulating in his wood-panelled office.

The serenity of his room reflects the temperament of a man who grew up in a settlement of just “seven or eight people” in the Nuuk fjord of the island.

But a key reason his homeland is now coming under increasing scrutiny from outsiders is the rich mineral deposits beneath the Arctic ice.

We’ve seen how Ukraine’s natural resources have caught President Trump’s eye in much the same way.

“All these minerals that they talk about like rare metals, rare earth elements – they are actually not rare. What is rare is the use of them,” he reasons.

Prof Rosing says the vastness of Greenland and the lack of infrastructure are just two elements why the island may not be the cashpoint some Americans are hoping for.

“They are a minuscule part of the mining industry and the economy of extracting them is very uncertain, whereas the investment to start extracting is very high. The risk of the investment is too high relative to the potential gain.”

The current Greenlandic government says there will be a vote on independence at some point following next week’s election.

Although surely unintentional, President Trump’s designs on the island have shone a light on a desire found among the Inuit to finally break free from 300 years of Danish control.

But Prof Rosing believes, despite all the latent mineral wealth, his fellow Greenlanders are in no hurry to forego the annual block grant of the equivalent of £480m (€570m) it receives from Copenhagen.

This accounts for easily more than half of the island’s public budget.

“People talk about health services, schools, the next outboard engine they want on their boat and what is the price of gas and all of these things that normal people do,” he says.

“It’s not like they stand up with a big knife, wave it in the air and shout independence, independence.”

In terms of Trump’s apparent obsession with taking Greenland, Fogh Rasmussen fears there may be a troubling conclusion to be drawn.

One that would render the Danes unable to do business with a man whose view on territorial integrity is so wildly incompatible from theirs.

“I understand very well the American strategic interest in the minerals, but when it comes to mining in Greenland, they have shown no interest,” he says.

“That leaves me with the concern that maybe it’s not about security, maybe it’s not about minerals, maybe it is just a question of expanding the territory of the United States.

“And that’s actually a point where we are not able to accommodate President Trump.”

Australian authorities say a body has been found in floodwaters and 13 military workers injured in a vehicle crash as wild weather from a tropical storm lashes the country’s eastern coast.

Cyclone Alfred, which was downgraded to a tropical low on Saturday, made landfall near the Queensland capital city of Brisbane in the evening local time.

Officials have warned residents to stay indoors and remain vigilant, saying the storm’s threat is “not over”.

Winds have brought down trees and power lines and flooded low-lying roads. More than 300,000 properties are without power in the region.

Police said on Saturday they had discovered a body in the search for a 61-year-old man who went missing on Friday after his car was caught in floodwaters in Dorrigo, northern New South Wales (NSW).

Emergency responders witnessed the man escaping his car and climbing onto a tree near the riverbank, but rescuers were not able to reach him before he was swept away.

Police found a body in the area on Saturday and said it “is believed to be that of the missing man”.

In a separate incident on Saturday, 13 military personnel were injured in a convoy crash in Lismore, about 200km south of Brisbane, according to Federal Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh.

One truck overturned while driving on a narrow road. A second truck then collided with it.

The state’s ambulance service had earlier said it treated 36 people in the accident. Keogh clarified to media that while around 36 people were involved, only 13 were injured.

They had been part of military crews deployed to Lismore, near the Queensland border, to help rescue and response operations.

“Our ADF [Australian Defence Force] heroes were on their way to help Australians in need,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement noting some had been “seriously” injured.

Albanese earlier on Saturday had addressed the nation from the capital Canberra, saying millions of residents were “well-prepared” but “we must remain vigilant.”

Four million people across Queensland and northern New South Wales were bracing for the storm’s landfall with dozens of weather warnings in place across both areas.

Around 287,000 customers are experiencing outages in south east Queensland, according to energy provider Energex, while Essential Energy said more than 42,600 homes and businesses in New South Wales had experienced blackouts.

People in Brisbane, Queensland’s capital, went to bed on Friday bracing for strong winds and heavy rain.

They woke up on Saturday to learn that the cyclone had been downgraded and the city would escape the worst of the weather.

But the danger’s not over in other parts of southeastern Queensland and northern New South Wales.

Along the Gold Coast, pummelled by bad weather the past few days, conditions have been very strong with driving rain and strong winds.

Hundreds of trees have been blown over in gardens, parks and along the main roads. There has been lots of debris and emergency services had sectioned off areas most at risk.

“This emergency is not over,” said New South Wales state premier Chris Minns, adding that it was “crucially important” the public did not “dismiss” the storm.

“It really doesn’t matter to us whether it’s been downgraded from a tropical cyclone to a weather event,” he said.

The state’s emergency service operations commander, Stuart Fisher, warned people not to be “complacent” and said authorities in the region expect flooding to continue over the next few days.

As the storm has edged closer to landfall, nearly 1,000 schools have closed, public transport has been suspended and airports are shut. Elective surgeries have also been cancelled.

Flights are not expected to resume until Sunday at the earliest.

The BBC spoke to several people from Brisbane’s homeless community, who took refuge at Emmanuel City Mission, which had become a round-the-clock shelter.

At the Treasure Island Holiday Park in the Gold Coast, just north of Surfer’s Paradise, a gum tree had come down between two cabins, damaging a third. Nearby, a boat was half submerged in one of the canals a block away from the beach.

On the coast itself, many paths down to the beach are now unpassable. Instead, there’s a sudden drop to the ocean where the powerful waves have eaten away at the sand.

But the clean-up operation won’t happen for a few days – the wind is still powerful and there’s driving rain.

Residents are starting to venture out to look at the damage, but plenty are remaining indoors to keep themselves safe.