A group of scientists due to work together for months at a remote Antarctic research station has been rocked after a member of the team was accused of physical assault.

A team of nine researchers were due to spend the Antarctic winter at the South African-run base, which sits about 170km (about 105 miles) from the edge of the ice shelf and is difficult to reach.

But a spokesperson for the South African government told the BBC “there was an assault” at the station, following earlier allegations of inappropriate behaviour from inside the camp.

In a further message seen by the BBC, the South African environment ministry said it was responding to the concerns with “utmost urgency”.

South Africa’s Sunday Times, which was first to report the story, said members of the team had pleaded to be rescued.

The ministry said that those in the team had been subject to “a number of evaluations that include background checks, reference checks, medical assessment as well as a psychometric evaluation by qualified professionals”, which all members had cleared.

In a subsequent statement, the ministry added that it was “not uncommon” for individuals to have an initial adjustment when they arrive at extremely remote areas even if assessments showed no areas of concern.

It said when the vessel departed for Antarctica on 1 February “all was in order”, and the incident was first reported to the ministry on 27 February.

The statement added the department “immediately activated the response plan in order to mediate and restore relations at the base”.

“This process has been ongoing on an almost daily basis in order to ensure that those on the base know that the Department is supportive and willing to do whatever is needed to restore the interpersonal relationships, but also firm in dealing with issues of discipline,” it said.

The department said allegations of sexual harassment were also being investigated, but that reports of sexual assault were incorrect.

The department added that a government minister was personally handling the incident, and the alleged perpetrator had “willingly participated in further psychological evaluation, has shown remorse and is willingly cooperative to follow any interventions that are recommended”.

The alleged perpetrator has also written a formal apology to the victim, it said.

The Sanae IV research base is located more than 4,000km from mainland South Africa and harsh weather conditions mean scientists can be cut off there for much of the year.

The base typically houses staff who stay through the Antarctic winter for approximately 13 months.

South African research expeditions have been taking place since 1959. The team to the Sanae IV base typically comprises a doctor, two mechanics, three engineers, a meteorological technician and a couple of physicists.

These expeditions, with harsh weather conditions mandating a lot of time spent in a confined indoor space, normally run without incident.

But on Sunday, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that one member of the team had sent an email warning of “deeply disturbing behaviour” by a colleague and an “environment of fear”.

A South African government spokesperson told the BBC that the alleged assault was triggered by “a dispute over a task the team leader wanted the team to do – a weather dependant task that required a schedule change”.

Incidents in Antarctica are rare, but not unprecedented. In 2018 there were reports of a stabbing at the Russian-operated Bellingshausen research station.

Psychologists point to the effect that isolation can have on human behaviour.

“One thing we know from these rare occurrences, when something bad happens in enforced isolation or capsule working, is that it’s often the small things, tiny things that can blow up into conflict,” said Craig Jackson, professor of workplace health psychology at Birmingham City University, and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society.

“So issues about hierarchy, about workload allocation, even small things about leisure time or rations or food portions can rapidly flare up to become something much larger than they typically are,” he told the BBC.

Gabrielle Walker, a scientist and author who has been on expeditions to Antarctica, said working in such close proximity to a small group of colleagues had risks.

“You know exactly how they put their coffee cup down and what direction the handle points in; you know that they scratch their nose three times before they sit down; you know everything about them.

“And in the bad circumstances, it can start to irritate you… because there’s nothing else – there’s no other stimulus and you’re with people 24/7,” she said.

Sources within the Antarctic research community have told the BBC that South Africa has access to an ice-capable ship and aircraft if needed.

But any rescue operation would have to contend with the harsh climate, with temperatures well below freezing and the possibility of strong winds.

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The last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, John “Paddy” Hemingway, has died at the age of 105.

Mr Hemingway, who was originally from Dublin, joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a teenager before World War Two.

At 21, he was a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, a three-month period when air force personnel defended the skies against a large-scale assault by the German air force, the Luftwaffe.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer paid tribute to Mr Hemingway, saying his courage and those of all RAF pilots had “helped end WWII and secure our freedom”.

The Prince of Wales also paid tribute, saying that “we owe so much to Paddy and his generation for our freedoms today”.

Prince William added that “their bravery and sacrifice will always be remembered”.

The Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Emma Little-Pengelly described Mr Hemingway as “an absolute hero”.

Speaking in the Northern Ireland Assembly she said: “My goodness when you read his obituary, the things that he experienced.”

She added that the sacrifices of Mr Hemingway’s generation were “absolutely incredible”.

Those who fought in the three-and-a-half-month battle came to be known as “The Few” after a speech by the then Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” he said of their sacrifices in battle.

In a statement, the RAF said that Mr Hemingway had “passed away peacefully” on Monday.

The pilot’s squadron shot down 90 enemy aircraft during an 11-day period in May 1940, and provided fighter cover during the Battle of France.

During the war, Gp Capt Hemingway was shot down four times.

During dogfights – or one-on-one aerial combats – in August 1940, Mr Hemingway was forced to bail out of his Hurricane single-seat fighter on two occasions, landing in the sea off the coast of Essex and in marshland.

The wreckage of his Hurricane was recovered in 2019 with the control column and the gun-button still set to “fire”.

In July 1941, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross – awarded to RAF personnel for an act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty while flying on active operations.

On the way to receive his medal from the King, he was forced to escape from a Blenheim aircraft, which crashed during take-off.

While serving with the 85 Squadron in RAF Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, Mr Hemingway was forced to bail out of his Havoc night fighter at 600ft (183m) due to instrument failure in bad weather.

He broke his hand on the tail section and his parachute failed to open, with the chute catching on the branches of a tree.

He was forced to bail out a fourth time while fighting near Ravenna, Italy, when his Spitfire was hit multiple times. He landed in enemy territory, and made contact with Italian citizens, who helped him back to the Allies.

Speaking to BBC News NI in 2023, Gp Capt Hemingway said he had never looked for fame for being part of “The Few”.

“I don’t think we ever assumed greatness of any form,” he said.

“We were just fighting a war which we were trained to fight.”

Mr Hemingway said that his biggest regret was the loss of friends, in particular that of Richard “Dickie” Lee in August 1940.

The RAF said that Mr Hemingway’s passing marked “the end of an era and a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought for freedom during World War II”.

“His courage in the face of overwhelming odds demonstrated his sense of duty and the importance of British resilience.”

Mr Hemingway “always had a twinkle in his eyes as he recalled the fun times with colleagues in France and London”, the statement said.

“This quiet, composed, thoughtful and mischievous individual may not have wanted to be the last of ‘The Few’, but he embodied the spirit of all those who flew sorties over this green and pleasant land,” it added.

Chief of RAF Air Staff Sir Rich Knighton said he had spent time with Mr Hemingway in Dublin earlier this year.

“Paddy was an amazing character whose life story embodies all that was and remains great about the Royal Air Force.”

Chinese state media has welcomed Donald Trump’s move to cut public funding for news outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have long reported on authoritarian regimes.

The decison affects thousands of employees – some 1,300 staff have been put on paid leave at Voice Of America (VOA) alone since Friday’s executive order.

Critics have called the move a setback for democracy but Beijing’s state newspaper Global Times denounced VOA for its “appalling track record” in reporting on China and said it has “now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag”.

The White House defended the move, saying it will “ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”.

Trump’s cuts target the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is supported by Congress and funds the affected news outlets, such as VOA, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe.

They have won acclaim and international recognition for their reporting in places where press freedom is severely curtailed or non-existent, from China and Cambodia to Russia and North Korea.

Although authorities in some of these countries block the broadcasts – VOA, for instance, is banned in China – people can listen to them on shortwave radio, or get around the restrictions via VPNs.

RFA has often reported on the crackdown on human rights in Cambodia, whose former authoritarian ruler Hun Sen has hailed the cuts as a “big contribution to eliminating fake news”.

It was also among the first news outlets to report on China’s network of detention centres in Xinjiang, where the authorities are accused of locking up hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims without trial. Beijing denies the claims, saying people willingly attend “re-education camps” which combat “terrorism and religious extremism”. VOA’s reporting on North Korean defectors and the Chinese Communist Party’s alleged cover-up of Covid fatalities has won awards.

VOA, primarily a radio outlet, which also broadcasts in Mandarin, was recognised last year for its podcast on rare protests in 2022 in China against Covid lockdowns.

But China’s Global Times welcomed the cuts, calling VOA a “lie factory”.

“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multi-dimensional China, the demonising narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughing stock,” it said in an editorial published on Monday.

Hu Xijin, who was the Global Times’ former editor-in-chief, wrote: “Voice of America has been paralysed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which has been as vicious to China. This is such great news.”

Such responses “would have been easy to predict”, said Valdya Baraputri, a VOA journalist who lost her job over the weekend. She was previously employed by BBC World Service.

“Eliminating VOA, of course, allows channels that are the opposite of accurate and balanced reporting to thrive,” she told the BBC.

The National Press Club, a leading representative group for US journalists, said the order “undermines America’s long-standing commitment to a free and independent press”.

Founded during World War Two in part to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA reaches some 360 million people a week in nearly 50 languages. Over the years it has broadcast in China, North Korea, communist Cuba and the former Soviet Union. It’s also been a helpful tool for many Chinese people to learn English.

VOA’s director Michael Abramowitz said Trump’s order has hobbled VOA while “America’s adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States”.

Ms Baraputri, who is from Indonesia but based in Washington DC, first joined VOA in 2018, but her visa was terminated at the end of Trump’s first administration.

She rejoined in 2023 because she wanted to be part of an organisation that “upholds unbiased, factual reporting that is free from government influence”.

The recent cuts have left her “feeling betrayed by the idea I had about press freedom [in the US]”.

She is also concerned for colleagues who may now be forced to return to hostile home countries, where they could be persecuted for their journalism.

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic has appealed to the European Union to intervene so it can keep Radio Free Europe going. It reports in 27 languages from 23 countries, reaching more than 47 million people every week.

RFA chief executive Bay Fang said in a statement that the organisation plans to challenge the order. Cutting funding to these outlets is a “reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space”, he said.

RFA started in 1996 and reaches nearly 60 million people weekly in China, Myanmar, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. In China, it also broadcasts in minority languages like Tibetan and Uyghur, apart from English and Mandarin.

“[Trump’s order] not only disenfranchises the nearly 60 million people who turn to RFA’s reporting on a weekly basis to learn the truth, but it also benefits America’s adversaries at our own expense,” Mr Fang noted.

While Chinese state media has celebrated the cuts, it’s hard to know how Chinese people feel about it given their internet is heavily censored.

Outside China, those who have listened to VOA and RFA over the years appear disappointed and worried.

“Looking back at history, countless exiles, rebels, intellectuals, and ordinary people have persisted in the darkness because of the voices of VOA and RFA, and have seen hope in fear because of their reports,” Du Wen, a Chinese dissident living in Belgium, wrote on X.

“If the free world chooses to remain silent, then the voice of the dictator will become the only echo in the world.”

A curfew has been imposed in parts of a city in India’s western state of Maharashtra after Hindu groups demanded the removal of the tomb of Aurangzeb, a 17th-Century Mughal emperor, sparking violence on Monday night.

Vehicles were set on fire and stones were thrown in the Mahal area of ​​Nagpur city.

Police say the situation is now under control and are appealing to people to keep the peace.

The tomb of Aurangzeb, who died more than 300 years ago, has in recent years become a political flashpoint amid growing calls for its removal by hardline Hindu groups.

It is located about 500km (311 miles) from Nagpur in the state’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district, which was earlier called Aurangabad after the emperor.

Monday’s violence broke out after two Hindu organisations, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, burnt the emperor’s effigy and chanted slogans demanding the removal of his tomb, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told the state assembly.

This sparked rumours that some religious symbols had been desecrated. Fadnavis said this led to violence that looked like “a well-planned attack”.

He said after evening prayers, a crowd of 250 Muslim men gathered and started shouting slogans. “When people started saying they would set vehicles on fire, police used force,” he added.

More than 50 people have been detained and 33 policemen were injured in the incident, Nagpur police commissioner Ravinder Singal told ANI news agency.

Shops and businesses in the central areas of Nagpur remain closed and security has been tightened across the city.

Meanwhile, opposition parties have criticised the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government saying “law and order in the state has collapsed”.

The trigger for this week’s violence has been a recent Bollywood film about Sambhaji – a Maratha ruler who clashed with Aurangzeb but lost – and its graphic depiction of him being tortured.

The movie has “ignited people’s anger against Aurangzeb”, Fadnavis told the state assembly on Tuesday.

The issue has been making headlines in the state for days with politicians from Hindu nationalist parties criticising Aurangzeb and calling for his tomb to be removed.

The protesters were also angered earlier this month when Abu Azmi, a regional politician, said that Aurangzeb was not a “cruel administrator” and had “built many temples”.

Azmi also said the emperor’s reign saw India’s borders reaching Afghanistan and present-day Myanmar, and the country was referred to as a golden bird, with its gross domestic product accounting for a quarter of the world’s GDP.

He later told a court his remarks were misinterpreted, but he was suspended from Maharashtra’s state assembly and an investigation was ordered against him.

In 2022, Aurangzeb’s name was trending on social media when the dispute over a mosque – built on the ruins of the Vishwanath temple, a grand 17th-Century Hindu shrine destroyed on Aurangzeb’s orders – broke out as a court ordered a survey to ascertain if the mosque had been built over what was originally a Hindu temple.

His tomb was shut for visitors after a regional politician questioned “the need for its existence” and called for its destruction.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke about “Aurangzeb’s atrocities and “his terror” at an event in Varanasi that year. “He tried to change civilisation by the sword. He tried to crush culture with fanaticism,” Modi said.

Aurangzeb was the sixth emperor of the Mughal kingdom who ruled India for nearly five decades from 1658 to 1707.

He is often described as a devout Muslim who lived the life of an ascetic, but was ruthless in his pursuit of expanding the empire, imposing strict sharia laws and discriminatory taxes.

He was accused of razing Hindu temples, though some critics point out he also built a few.

German lawmakers have voted to allow a huge increase in defence and infrastructure spending – a seismic shift for the country that could reshape European defence.

A two-thirds majority of Bundestag parliamentarians, required for the change, approved the vote on Tuesday.

The law will exempt spending on defence and security from Germany’s strict debt rules, and create a €500bn ($547bn; £420bn) infrastructure fund.

This vote is a historic move for traditionally debt-shy Germany, and could be hugely significant for Europe, as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine grinds on, and after US President Donald Trump signalled an uncertain commitment to Nato and Europe’s defence.

However, state government representatives in the upper house, the Bundesrat, still need to approve the moves – also by a two-thirds majority – before they officially become law. That vote is set for Friday.

Friedrich Merz, the man behind these plans and who is expected to soon be confirmed as Germany’s new chancellor, told the lower house during Tuesday’s debate that the country had “felt a false sense of security” for the past decade.

“The decision we are taking today… can be nothing less than the first major step towards a new European defence community,” he said, adding that it includes countries that are “not members of the European Union”.

Germany has long been cautious about defence spending, not just for historical reasons dating back to 1945, but also due to the global debt crisis of 2009.

But despite fears the vote would be tight, lawmakers in the end voted in favour of the changes by 513 to 207 – comfortably over the two-thirds majority required.

One leading German newspaper described this vote as “A day of destiny for our nation”.

Under the measure, any spending on defence that amounts to more than 1% of Germany’s GDP would no longer be subject to a limit on borrowing. Until now, this debt brake has been fixed at 0.35% of GDP.

The change could transform the country’s partially neglected armed forces in an era of great uncertainty for Europe.

And this vote was not just about defence. It was also about freeing up €500bn for German infrastructure – fixing things like bridges and roads, but also to pay for climate change measures, something the Green Party insisted on.

Merz, whose CDU party won Germany’s general election last month, proposed the measures swiftly after the win.

In an interview on Sunday he specifically mentioned fears that the US could pull back from defending Europe and Trump’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the “situation has worsened in recent weeks”.

“That is why we have to act fast,” Merz told public broadcaster ARD.

It is a significant political win for Merz, who will, when he takes power as chancellor, now have access to hundreds of billions of euros to invest in the state – what some in Germany have called a “fiscal bazooka”.

It is also an important moment for Ukraine. The defence plans approved today by the Bundestag also allow spending on aid for states “attacked in violation of international law” to be exempt from the debt brake.

That will enable outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz to release €3bn in aid to Ukraine as early as next week.

Merz chose to push the changes through the old parliament, knowing the vote arithmetic was more favourable now than it would be after 25 March, when the new parliament session begins.

The far-right AFD and far-left Linke, which both performed well in February’s election, oppose Merz’s plans.

Merz has still not agreed a coalition deal to govern Germany after his election win, and has announced ambitious plans to have a government in place by Easter.

Coalition negotiations in Germany, however, can drag on for months at a time.

A jury in the trial of a former nurse accused of murdering a woman on a remote Australian beach has been discharged, after they could not reach a verdict.

Toyah Cordingley was stabbed at least 26 times while out walking her dog in October 2018.

The 24-year-old’s body was discovered by her father, half-buried in sand dunes on Wangetti beach between the popular tourist hotspots of Cairns and Port Douglas.

Rajwinder Singh, 40, who travelled to India the day after Ms Cordingley’s body was found, was charged with murder. He was arrested and then extradited to Australia in 2023.

But jurors at Cairns Supreme Court said they were deadlocked, and unable to reach a unanimous decision on his guilt after two-and-half days of deliberations. The judge thanked the jury for their “diligence”.

Under Queensland law, jury verdicts in murder cases must be unanimous. So Mr Singh will face another trial.

Originally from Buttar Kalan in the Indian state of Punjab, Mr Singh had been living in Innisfail at the time of the killing, a town about two hours south from the crime scene.

Prosecutors said they did not have a motive for the killing of Ms Cordingley – a health store worker and animal shelter volunteer – and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

The trial at Cairns Supreme court heard that DNA highly likely to be Mr Singh’s was discovered on a stick in the victim’s grave.

Data from mobile phone towers also suggested Ms Cordingley’s phone had moved in a similar pattern to Mr Singh’s blue Alfa Romeo car on the day the victim went missing.

The prosecution also suggested the hurried way Mr Singh left Australia without saying goodbye to his family or colleagues pointed to his guilt.

Mr Singh had denied murder – and had told an undercover police officer he had seen the killing, then left the country, leaving behind his wife and children because he feared for his own life.

His defence lawyer said he was “a coward” but not a killer, and accused police of a “flawed” investigation that did not look sufficiently at other possible suspects.

They said DNA found at the scene, including on the victim’s discarded selfie stick, did not match Mr Singh’s profile.

“There is an unknown person’s DNA at that grave site,” defence barrister Angus Edwards told the jury.

A man has been found guilty over the theft of a £4.8m gold toilet from an art exhibition at Blenheim Palace.

Thieves smashed their way in and ripped out the fully functional toilet, hours after a glamorous launch party at the Oxfordshire stately home in September 2019.

Michael Jones was convicted of planning the burglary. The jury are still considering verdicts for Fred Doe and Bora Guccuk who are charged with conspiring to sell the gold.

The heist’s kingpin James Sheen previously admitted being part of the gang that stole the toilet.

Thieves stole the artwork in a raid that took just five minutes, Oxford Crown Court previously heard.

It weighed 98kg (216lbs) and was insured for $6m (£4.8m).

Gold prices at the time would have seen the metal alone worth £2.8m, the court was told.

The artwork, called America, was part of an exhibition by the Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan.

Jurors heard it was most likely broken up, and has never been recovered.

Jones, 39, from Oxford, was found guilty of burglary.

The jury has been given a majority direction on Mr Doe, 36, from Windsor, and Mr Guccuk, 41, from west London, who are both accused of conspiracy to transfer criminal property.

The co-owners of an oil tanker involved in a collision with a cargo ship in the North Sea have released the first picture of some of the crew and praised their “exceptional bravery”.

The Stena Immaculate and cargo ship Solong collided in the North Sea, off East Yorkshire, on 10 March, triggering an explosion and fires, which have been extinguished.

One crew member, a Filipino national, of the Portuguese-flagged Solong is missing and presumed dead. The Russian captain of the cargo vessel has been charged with gross negligence manslaughter.

Cargo vessel owners admitted tiny plastic pellets in containers on board were released and the coastguard said they were being removed from Norfolk beaches.

The Florida-based maritime operations company, Crowley, which was managing the tanker, posted a photo on social media showing 19 crew members.

In a statement, it said: “Our deepest gratitude and respect goes out to our 23 mariners from the Stena Immaculate for their exceptional bravery and quick action during the recent allision to their ship in the North Sea.

“Their decisive efforts and teamwork to execute critical fire and emergency duties helped to save lives, protect the integrity of the vessel and minimize the impact on the environment.

“Against disastrous circumstances, the crew had the operational focus to ensure fire monitors were active in order to provide boundary cooling water, which resulted in limited impact to just one of the 16 cargo holds.”

Crowley thanked all 23 for their courage and “dedication to safety”.

“[It] sets a powerful example for the entire industry,” the company added.

HM Coastguard said 36 people – from both vessels – were rescued and taken safely to shore in Grimsby.

Chief coastguard Paddy O’Callaghan said a “retrieval operation” would continue on Tuesday after small balls of plastic resin, known as nurdles, were sighted off The Wash and along the Norfolk shore between Old Hunstanton and Wells-next-the-Sea.

According to the coastguard, nurdles, which are used in plastics production, are not toxic but can present a risk to wildlife if ingested.

In a statement, shipping company Ernst Russ, which owns the Solong, said: “We can confirm that a number of containers on board Solong contain plastic nurdles.

“We understand that no containers holding nurdles have been lost over the side.

“What we understand may have occurred, is that intense heat during initial firefighting efforts caused one or more of the openings of some of the smaller containers to open, resulting in the release of some contents.”

The firm said it had “proactively deployed assets to mitigate any long-term impact on the marine environment” and was liaising with the coastguard.

Mr O’Callaghan said both the Solong and Stena Immaculate were “stable”, with salvage operations continuing.

“Fires on board the Solong have been extinguished and temperature monitoring has been set up,” he said.

The Wash is a large inlet of the North Sea stretching from south of Skegness, in Lincolnshire, to near Hunstanton, in Norfolk.

“Regular aerial surveillance flights continue to monitor both vessels and the retrieval operation,” added Mr O’Callaghan.

Steve Rowland, an area manager for the RSPB, said pellets the size of lentils were washing up along miles of the Norfolk coast.

The RNLI thanked volunteer lifeboat crews from Bridlington, Cleethorpes, Humber, Mablethorpe and Skegness for their efforts in the search and rescue operation.

George Pickford, the RNLI’s head of region, said: “We recognise their courage and dedication as they spent hours out at sea, facing challenging conditions.”

Mark Angelo Pernia, 38, was named by the Crown Prosecution Service as the missing crew member.

The captain of the Solong, Vladimir Motin, 59, of Primorsky in St Petersburg, Russia, appeared at Hull Magistrates’ Court on Saturday charged with gross negligence manslaughter.

He was remanded in custody to appear before the Central Criminal Court in London on 14 April.

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) is trying to establish the cause of the collision.

Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Soundslatest episode of Look North here.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become one of the few world leaders to join Truth Social, the social media platform owned by US President Donald Trump.

In his first post on Monday, Modi shared a photo with Trump taken in Houston, Texas, during his 2019 US visit and said he was “delighted” to be on the platform.

Trump launched Truth Social in February 2022 after he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden and was temporarily banned from major social networks like Twitter and Facebook, which accused him of inciting violence.

As of 03:30 GMT, Modi had 21,500 followers and was following Trump and US Vice President JD Vance.

On Monday, Trump shared a link to an interview which Modi did with podcaster Lex Fridman where the Indian prime minister spoke on a range of topics, including his life journey, the Gujarat riots of 2002 and India’s relationship with China.

Much of Truth Social’s functionality is identical to X, formerly Twitter. Users are able to post ‘truths’ or ‘retruths’ as well as send direct messages. Adverts on the platform are called ‘sponsored truths’.

Truth Social is owned by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). Trump took the company public in March 2024 and now owns about 57% shares in the firm.

Kuwaiti-headquartered investment firm ARC Global Investments and some former Apprentice contestants also have a sizeable stakes, though those holdings are currently subject to legal fights.

The US president has 9.28m followers on Truth Social, far fewer than the 87m he has on X.

According to data compiled by Bloomberg, traffic at Truth Social remains minuscule relative to its competitors, with its total user numbers trailing X by 400 times.

TMTG reported losses of $400m (£308m) in 2024 and a revenue of $3.6m. It has a market valuation of $4.45bn.

Poland and the Baltic states have announced plans to withdraw from a key international treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, citing the rising threat from Russia.

In a joint statement, the defence ministers of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland said that since signing the Ottawa Treaty, threats from Moscow and its ally Belarus have “significantly increased”.

It is “paramount” to give their troops “flexibility and freedom of choice” to defend Nato’s eastern flank, they said.

The Ottawa Treaty, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty, came into force in 1997. It aims to ban anti-personnel mines – those aimed at humans – worldwide, and has been signed by more than 160 countries.

But some major military powers – including China, India, Russia, Pakistan, and the US – never signed up to it.

All of the Baltic states had signed the convention by 2005, while Poland joined in 2012.

In their joint statement on Tuesday, the nations’ defence ministers said, however, that the security situation in their region since signing the treaty had “significantly deteriorated”.

“In light of these considerations, we… unanimously recommend withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention.

“With this decision, we are sending a clear message: our countries are prepared and can use every necessary measure to defend our territory and freedom,” the defence ministers wrote.

But they stressed that despite plans to leave the treaty, Poland and the Baltic states are still committed to international humanitarian laws, “including the protection of civilians during armed conflict”.

“Our nations will continue to uphold these principles while addressing our security needs,” they wrote.

All four countries are in the Nato alliance, and all four share borders with Russia.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Baltic states and Poland have hugely increased military spending, and leant a great deal of support to Ukraine.

According to the Kiel Institute think tank, by percentage of GDP, the Baltic States and Poland are among the highest donors of aid to Ukraine.

Ukraine is a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty, although it has received land mines from the US during Russia’s full-scale invasion, and in the past has told the UN that due to Russia’s invasion it cannot guarantee it is abiding by the treaty.

Article 20 of the convention specifically states however that a nation cannot withdraw from the treaty if it is currently at war.

The UN estimates the Ukraine is now the most mined nation in the world.

The Chinese government has promised new child care subsidies, increased wages and better paid leave to revive a slowing economy. That is on top of a $41bn discount programme for all sorts of things, from dishwashers and home decor to electric vehicles and smartwatches.

Beijing is going on a spending spree that will encourage Chinese people to crack open their wallets.

Simply put, they are not spending enough.

Monday brought some positive news. Official data said retail sales grew 4% in the first two months of 2025, a positive sign for consumption data. But, with a few exceptions like Shanghai aside, new and existing home prices continued to decline compared to last year.

While the US and other major powers have struggled with post-Covid inflation, China is experiencing the opposite: deflation – when the rate of inflation falls below zero, meaning that prices decrease. In China, prices fell for 18 months in a row in the past two years.

Prices dropping might sound like good news for consumers. But a persistent decline in consumption – a measure of what households buy – signals deeper economic trouble. When people stop spending, businesses cut prices to attract buyers. The more this happens, the less money they make, hiring slows, wages stagnate and economic momentum grinds to a halt.

That is a cycle China wants to avoid, given it’s already battling sluggish growth in the wake of a prolonged crisis in the property market, steep government debt and unemployment.

The cause of low consumption is straightforward: Chinese consumers either don’t have enough money or don’t feel confident enough about their future to spend it.

But their reluctance comes at a critical moment. With the economy aiming to grow at 5% this year, boosting consumption is a top priority for President Xi Jinping. He is hoping that rising domestic consumption will absorb the blow US tariffs will inflict on Chinese exports.

So, will Beijing’s plan work?

To tackle its ailing economy and weak domestic demand, Beijing wrapped up its annual National People’s Congress last week with increased investment in social welfare programmes as part of its grand economic plan for 2025.

Then came this week’s announcement with bigger promises, such as employment support plans, but scant details.

Some say it is a welcome move, with the caveat that China’s leaders need to do more to step up support. Still, it signals Beijing’s awareness of the changes needed for a stronger Chinese consumer market – higher wages, a stronger social safety net and policies that make people feel secure enough to spend rather than save.

A quarter of China’s labour force is made up of low-paid migrant workers, who lack full access to urban social benefits. This makes them particularly vulnerable during periods of economic uncertainty, such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rising wages during the 2010s masked some of these problems, with average incomes growing by around 10% annually. But as wage growth slowed in the 2020s, savings once again became a lifeline.

The Chinese government, however, has been slow to expand social benefits, focusing instead on boosting consumption through short-term measures, such as trade-in programmes for household appliances and electronics. But that has not addressed a root problem, says Gerard DiPippo, a senior researcher at the Rand think tank: “Household incomes are lower, and savings are higher”.

The near-collapse of the property market has also made Chinese consumers more risk-averse, leading them to cut back on spending.

“The property market matters not only for real economic activity but also for household sentiment, since Chinese households have invested so much of their wealth in their homes,” Mr DiPippo says. “I don’t think China’s consumption will fully recover until it’s clear that the property sector has bottomed out and therefore many households’ primary assets are starting to recover.”

Some analysts are encouraged by Beijing’s seriousness in targeting longer-term challenges like falling birth rates as more young couples opt out of the costs of parenthood.

A 2024 study by Chinese think tank YuWa estimated that raising a child to adulthood in China costs 6.8 times the country’s GDP per capita – among the highest in the world, compared to the US (4.1), Japan (4.3) and Germany (3.6).

These financial pressures have only reinforced a deeply ingrained saving culture. Even in a struggling economy, Chinese households managed to save 32% of their disposable income in 2024.

That’s not too surprising in China, where consumption has never been particularly high. To put this in perspective, domestic consumption drives more than 80% of growth in the US and UK, and about 70% in India. China’s share has typically ranged between 50% to 55% over the past decade.

But this wasn’t really a problem – until now.

There was a time when Chinese shoppers joked about the irresistible allure of e-commerce deals, calling themselves “hand-choppers” – only chopping off their hands could stop them from hitting the checkout button.

As rising incomes fuelled their spending power, 11 November in China, or Double 11, came to be crowned as the world’s busiest shopping day. Explosive sales pulled in over 410 billion yuan ($57bn; £44bn) in just 24 hours in 2019.

But the last one “was a dud,” a Beijing-based coffee bean online seller told the BBC. “If anything, it caused more trouble than it was worth.”

Chinese consumers have grown frugal since the pandemic, and this caution has persisted even after restrictions were lifted in late 2022.

That’s the year Alibaba and JD.com stopped publishing their sales figures, a significant shift for companies that once headlined their record-breaking revenues. A source familiar with the matter told the BBC that Chinese authorities cautioned platforms against releasing numbers, fearing that underwhelming results could further dent consumer confidence.

The spending crunch has even hit high-end brands – last year, LVMH, Burberry and Richemont all reported sales declines in China, once a backbone of the global luxury market.

On RedNote, a Chinese social media app, posts tagged with “consumption downgrade” have racked up more than a billion views in recent months. Users are swapping tips on how to replace expensive purchases with budget-friendly alternatives. “Tiger Balm is the new coffee,” said one user, while another quipped, “I apply perfume between my nose and lips now – saving it just for myself.”

Even at its peak, China’s consumer boom was never a match for its exports. Trade was also the focus of generous state-backed investment in highways, ports and special economic zones. China relied on low-wage workers and high household savings, which fuelled growth but left consumers with limited disposable income.

But now, as geopolitical uncertainties grow, countries are diversifying supply chains away from China, reducing reliance on Chinese exports. Local governments are burdened by debt, after years of borrowing heavily to invest, particularly in infrastructure.

Xi Jinping has already vowed “to make domestic demand the main driving force and stabilising anchor of growth”. Caiyun Wang, a National People’s Congress representative, said, “With a population of 1.4 billion, even a 1% rise in demand creates a market of 14 million people.”

But there’s a catch in Beijing’s plan.

For consumption to drive growth, many analysts say, the Chinese Communist Party would have to restore the consumer confidence of a generation of Covid graduates that is struggling to own a home or find a job. It would also require triggering a cultural shift, from saving to spending.

“China’s extraordinarily low consumption level is not an accident,” according to Michael Pettis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It is fundamental to the country’s economic growth model, around which three-four decades of political, financial, legal and business institutions in China have evolved. Changing this won’t be easy.”

The more households spend, the less there is in the pool of savings that China’s state-controlled banks rely on to fund key industries – currently that includes AI and innovative tech that would give Beijing an edge over Washington, both economically and strategically.

That is why some analysts doubt that China’s leaders want to create a consumer-driven economy.

“One way to think about this is that Beijing’s primary goal is not to enhance the welfare of Chinese households, but rather the welfare of the Chinese nation,” David Lubin, a research fellow at Chatham House wrote.

Shifting power from the state to the individual may not be what Beijing wants.

China’s leaders did do that in the past, when they began trading with the world, encouraging businesses and inviting foreign investment. And it transformed their economy. But the question is whether Xi Jinping wants to do that again.

A political storm is brewing in India, with the first waves already hitting the southern part of the country.

Leaders there are calling for mass mobilisation to protect the region’s political interests amid a heated controversy over the redrawing of electoral seats to reflect changes in population over time.

In a high-stakes push, they are urging citizens to “have more children”, using meetings and media campaigns to amplify their message: that the process of delimitation could shift the balance of power.

“Delimitation is a Damocles’ sword hanging over southern India,” says MK Stalin, chief minister of Tamil Nadu, one of India’s five southern states, and an arch rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). (The other four are Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Telangana.)

These five states account for 20% of India’s 1.4 billion people. They also outperform the rest of the country in health, education and economic prospects. A child is less likely to be born here than in the north, due to lower population growth rates.

Their leaders are worried that the more prosperous south may lose parliamentary seats in the future, a “punishment” for having fewer children and generating more wealth. Wealthier southern states have always contributed more to federal revenue, with poorer, highly populated states in the north receiving larger shares based on need.

India’s Constitution mandates that seats be allocated to each state based on its population, with constituencies of roughly equal size. It also requires reallocation of seats after each census, reflecting updated population figures.

So India redrew parliamentary seats three times based on the decennial census in 1951, 1961 and 1971. Since then, governments of all stripes have paused the exercise, fearing an imbalance of representation due to varying fertility rates across states.

The next delimitation exercise is set for 2026, but uncertainty looms as India hasn’t conducted a census since 2011, with no clear timeline for when it will take place.

This has set the stage for a potential crisis. “Tamil Nadu is leading the charge and India is on the brink of a federal deadlock,” says Yamini Aiyar, a senior fellow at Brown University

The number of seats in the Lok Sabha – the lower house of parliament representing directly elected MPs – has risen from 494 to 543 and has remained constant since then. The freeze means that despite India’s growing population since 1971, the number of Lok Sabha seats per state has stayed the same, with no new seats added.

In 1951, each MP represented just over 700,000 people. Today, that number has surged to an average of 2.5 million per MP – more than three times the population represented by a member of the US House of Representatives. In comparison, a UK MP represents around 120,000 people.

Experts say all Indians are underrepresented – though not equally so – because constituencies are too large. (The original Constitution capped the ratio at one MP for 750,000 people)

That’s not all. Using census data and population projections, economist Shruti Rajagopalan of George Mason University has highlighted the “severe malapportionment” – unequal distribution of political representation – in India.

Consider this. In Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state with over 240 million people, each MP represents about three million citizens.

Meanwhile, in Kerala, where fertility rates are similar to many European countries, an MP represents roughly 1.75 million.

This means the average voter in Kerala in the south has 1.7 times more influence in choosing an MP than a voter in UP in the north.

Ms Rajagopalan also notes that Tamil Nadu and Kerala now have nine and six seats more than their population share, while populous, poorer states like Bihar and UP have nine and 12 seats fewer than their proportion. (Stalin warns that Tamil Nadu could lose eight seats if delimitation occurs in 2026, based on projected population figures.)

By 2031, the problem will intensify: UP and Bihar will fall a dozen seats short of their population proportion, while Tamil Nadu will likely have 11 seats more than its proportion, with other states falling “somewhere in between,” according to Ms Rajagopalan.

“Consequently,” she says, “India is no longer living up to its fundamental constitutional principle of ‘one-person, one vote’.” To make this principle meaningful, constituency sizes must be roughly equal.

Experts have proposed several solutions, many of which will require strong bipartisan consensus.

One option is to increase the number of seats in the lower house.

In other words, India should revert to the original constitutional ratio of one MP for every 750,000 people, which would expand the Lok Sabha to 1,872 seats. (The new parliament building has the capacity for 880 seats, so it would need a major upgrade.)

The other option is for the total number of seats in Lok Sabha to increase to the extent that no state loses its current number of electoral seats – to achieve this the number of seats in the Lok Sabha would need to be 848, by several estimations.

Accompanying this move, experts like Ms Rajagopalan advocate for a more decentralised fiscal system.

In this model, states would have greater revenue-raising powers and retain most or all of their revenue. Federal funds would then be allocated based on development needs. Currently, states receive less than 40% of the total revenue but spend about 60% of it, while the rest is raised and spent by the central government.

A third solution is to reform the composition of the upper house of the parliament. The Rajya Sabha represents states’ interests, with seats allocated proportionally to population and capped at 250.

Rajya Sabha members are elected by state legislatures, not directly by the public. Milan Vaishnav of Carnegie Endowment for Peace suggests a radical approach would be to fix the number of seats per state in the upper house, similar to the US Senate.

“Transforming the upper house into a real venue for debate of states’ interests could potentially soften the opposition to a reallocation of seats in the lower house,” he argues.

Then there are other proposals like splitting big states – India’s top five states have more than 45% share of total seats.

Miheer Karandikar of Takshashila Institution, a Bangalore-based think-tank, cites UP as an example of how big states skew things. UP’s share of total votes cast in India is around 14% currently. He estimates this would likely increase to 16% after delimitation, “which allows it to retain its status as the most significant state politically and in terms of legislative influence”. Splitting a state like UP could help matters.

For now, the anxious southern leaders – whose rhetoric is partly political with Tamil Nadu elections looming next summer – have been joined by counterparts in Punjab to urge the government to maintain current seats and freeze electoral boundaries for the next 30 years, beyond 2026. In other words, it’s a call for more of the same, preserving the status quo.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made little significant statement so far. Home Minister Amit Shah claimed southern states would not lose “even a single seat” in the upcoming delimitation, though the meaning remains unclear. Meanwhile, the federal government’s decision to withhold education funds and label Tamil Nadu’s leadership as “undemocratic and uncivilised” over a contentious education policy has deepened divisions.

Political scientist Suhas Palshikar warns that the north-south divide threatens India’s federal structure. “The north-south prism is only likely to persuade people and parties of the north to push for a delimitation that would give them an advantage. Such a counter-mobilisation in the north can make it impossible to arrive at any negotiated settlement, Mr Palshikar noted.

He believes that expanding the size of the Lok Sabha and ensuring that no state loses its current strength is not only “politically prudent step”, but something which will “enrich the idea of democracy in the Indian context.” Balancing representation will be the key to preserving India’s strained federal spirit.

As a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle and himself a victim of the inequities of that racist system of government, Ebrahim Rasool was always unlikely to mince his words when it came to assessing the new US administration.

But in a message to family and friends, South Africa’s top envoy in Washington sounded almost relaxed about the diplomatic ructions that he had caused.

Soon after it was announced at the weekend that he was going to be expelled from the US, Ambassador Rasool wrote that he and his family were “all packed up and looking forward to returning to South Africa” and said he was leaving the US with “no regrets”.

On Friday, his prepared remarks on the new government in the US were delivered in a thoughtful, measured manner – with no hint of the trouble that they would trigger.

In a webinar organised by a South African think-tank, the 62-year-old seasoned politician was speaking about the policies of President Donald Trump and the implications for Africa.

The talk was coming after weeks of pressure on South Africa from Washington over a controversial land law that resulted in the US cutting off funding to the country.

The US government alleged that South Africa’s white minority was being unfairly targeted. An allegation robustly refuted by the government in Pretoria.

In Rasool’s view he thought that President Trump was “mobilising a supremacism” and trying to “project white victimhood as a dog whistle” as the white population faced becoming a minority in the US.

The comments resulted in sharply divided opinions locally and internationally over whether he was walking a “fine line” as a diplomat in giving an “honest assessment” or “crossed a line” that no ambassador should cross.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unequivocal in his response, saying that Rasool was “no longer welcome” in the US because he was a “race-baiting politician who hates America” and Trump.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said the US decision to expel Rasool was “regrettable” as the president himself defended the “great deal of progress” the ambassador had been making prior to his expulsion.

“So this is actually a hiccup… that we are working on straightening out,” Ramaphosa told reporters on Monday repeating a stance aimed at cooling temperatures.

Officials in his government however, were more scathing in their assessment of the diplomat’s actions, telling South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper, in an anonymous briefing, that Rasool’s actions were an “isolated incident of somebody who crossed a line that diplomats know they shouldn’t cross”.

In the US, the chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, lauded Rubio for calling out Rasool’s “disgraceful” remarks.

But to those in South Africa who know Rasool, his views on the White House’s policies and the way he expressed them came as no surprise.

Growing up in Cape Town and classified as “coloured” by the apartheid system, Rasool, as a young boy, along with his family, was forced to leave his home in the centre of the city.

The racial zoning imposed by the government meant that people who were not classified as “white” had to live in poorly provisioned areas a long way from the heart of Cape Town.

Rasool’s activism began in the 1970s during his school years.

“I really had no idea where I was going until after I tasted my first tear gas, saw my first rubber bullet and fled my first whop from the police when I entered high school in 1976,” Georgetown University quoted him as saying for a profile piece in 2015.

“That experience was life-altering. It gave me a crash course in politics.”

This activism would later result in his imprisonment near Cape Town, where he crossed paths with Nelson Mandela, who would go on to be South Africa’s first democratically elected president.

Rasool served in various leadership positions within the governing African National Congress and South Africa before being appointed to his first stint as US ambassador from 2010 to 2015, when Barack Obama was president.

He was named as ambassador again in 2024, because of his previous experience and extensive network of Washington contacts.

Faiez Jacobs, who has known Rasool for over 30 years, first as fellow activists fighting against apartheid and then within the ANC, came to his defence over his recent comments.

He was one of the attendees at the virtual event.

According to Mr Jacobs, Rasool was asked to provide an analysis on the current situation in the US and did so in a “very objective, academic” way. He added that though the envoy was explaining his honestly held views and was not trying to stir up trouble, he detected another motive for the reaction.

“The fact that he [is] a Muslim, the fact that he represented our country’s views on Palestine… Those are all the real reasons why he’s been he’s been targeted,” Mr Jacobs told the BBC.

Last year, South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice alleging that Israel was engaging in “genocidal acts” in Gaza, which it denied.

University of Johannesburg international relations expert Oscar van Heerden said that on his appointment Rasool was “dealt a bad hand” and “knew and understood” what he was getting himself into this time around.

“Knives were already out for Rasool before he even arrived in Washington… [and] by the time he arrived it was a mere formality to find a reason to be able to get rid of him,” Dr Van Heerden said.

The academic first crossed paths with Rasool in 1985 while he was a student and the diplomat was a high school teacher who was “guiding youngsters” like himself and giving them the “necessary political education”.

He described Rasool as a “devout Muslim” who “stands for the Palestinian cause of self-determination”.

On Rasool’s view of the Trump government, Dr Van Heerden said the diplomat was caught in a “difficult position” because he had to deal with an “openly antagonistic” host nation that in his opinion had weaponised diplomacy and foreign policy.

And while plans are reportedly under way to find a replacement for Rasool, Dr Van Heerden argued that no amount of experience or seniority would be enough to appease the Trump administration and that only someone they “completely agree with” may succeed.

Voting, enjoying Christmas dinner and keeping fit in zero gravity – that’s just some of what has kept Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams busy during their prolonged stay on the International Space Station (ISS).

After nine months, the pair are finally making their way home in a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

So what has life been like for the Nasa astronauts orbiting 250 miles (400km) above us, and how have they passed the time?

Of course there was a lot of serious space stuff to keep them occupied.

Suni, 59, and Butch, 62, have been helping ongoing missions at the station with maintenance and experiments, and have conducted spacewalks.

Suni ventured outside in mid-January with fellow astronaut Nick Hague to perform repairs on the craft. She and Butch went out together later in the month.

Their tasks included repairing equipment that governs station orientation, adding light filters on the NICER X-ray telescope, and replacing a reflector device on an international docking adapter.

Butch and Suni have taken the situation in their stride, saying in a news conference in September that they have been trained to “expect the unexpected”.

They have definitely had opportunities for reflection about life back home – and for watching a lot of sunrises and sunsets.

As the space station makes 16 orbits of Earth every 24 hours, it travels through 16 sunrises and sunsets, treating those on board to a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes.

Living with such a unique view of the Earth gives plenty of room for contemplating it, something Suni has acknowledged.

“It opens up the door to making you think a bit differently. It’s the one planet we have and we should be taking care of it,” she said.

“There are so many people on Earth sending us messages it makes you feel right at home with everybody.”

Butch and Suni and the two other Americans who were on board with them, Don Pettit and Nick Hague, each had the opportunity to vote in last year’s US election.

“It’s a very important duty that we have as citizens,” Suni said to reporters.

Butch said Nasa had made it “very easy” for them to be included in elections.

To facilitate their voting, the Mission Control Center in Houston sent ballot papers via encrypted email to the ISS.

The astronauts then filled them out and transmitted them to satellites which relayed them to a ground terminal in New Mexico.

From there, landlines transmitted the ballots to Mission Control, who then electronically sent them to the astronauts’ county clerks for filing.

For Butch, the day starts at 04:30, and as for Suni, she makes a slightly kinder 06:30 start.

Both have said they enjoy the two hours or more of exercise they must do daily to combat the loss of bone density from living in space.

“Your joints don’t hurt, which is quite nice,” Butch has said.

Three different machines help to counter the effect of living in zero gravity.

The Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED) is used for squats, deadlifts, and rows that work all the muscle groups. For treadmills crews must strap in to stop themselves floating away, and there is also a cycle ergometer for endurance training.

At Christmas, astronauts on the International Space Station posted a festive message in which they wished their friends and family on Earth a merry Christmas.

The team dressed in Santa hats and reindeer antlers, throwing the slowly gyrating microphone to each other to speak while candy canes floated around their heads.

It was a chance for the crew to let their hair down, though in Suni’s case it was more a case of letting it ‘up’. Zero gravity has given her a style that would take a lot of product to achieve on Earth.

One of Butch and Suni’s final duties on board the ISS was to make their replacements feel welcome.

On 16 March a SpaceX capsule carrying a new crew arrived at the ISS. It was a deeply significant event for Butch and Suni, as it paved the way for them to come home.

Butch rang a ceremonial bell as Suni handed over command to cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin.

On Tuesday, they finally undocked from the ISS at 05:05 GMT (01:05 EDT) and are set to splash down off the coast of Florida later the same day, at 21:57 GMT (17:57 EDT).

Donald Trump is due to speak on the phone to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss a US-proposed Ukraine ceasefire deal.

The peace proposal on the table was discussed by Ukrainian and American delegates in Saudi Arabia last week.

After hours locked away in a room, they announced proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine said it was ready to accept.

Now Russia and the US will discuss the deal, but what could the two leaders talk about?

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Trump posted on Truth Social that he will speak to Putin on Tuesday morning.

The US president says “many elements” of a peace agreement in Ukraine have been agreed, but “much remains” to be worked upon.

“Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW. I look very much forward to the call with President Putin,” Trump wrote.

He earlier told reporters that “we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it”.

The White House also sounded a more upbeat note on Monday, saying peace in Ukraine had “never been closer”.

However, there have been varying views from within the Trump administration of how advanced the ceasefire talks are.

Speaking after his meeting in Jeddah with Ukrainian officials on 11 March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the “bulk” of the conversation had been “what a negotiation process would look like” and not “the specific conditions”.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met Putin on Thursday in Moscow, has also struck a more measured tone.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on what the leaders would discuss, responding: “We never do that”.

While Putin has previously said he supports a ceasefire, he also set out a list of conditions for achieving peace.

Speaking at a news conference in Moscow on 13 March, Putin said of the ceasefire proposal: “The idea is right – and we support it – but there are questions that we need to discuss.”

Putin also outlined some of his questions over how a ceasefire would work. He asked: “How will those 30 days be used? For Ukraine to mobilise? Rearm? Train people? Or none of that? Then a question – how will that be controlled?

“Who will give the order to end the fighting? At what cost? Who decides who has broken any possible ceasefire, over 2,000km? All those questions need meticulous work from both sides. Who polices it?”

Asked on Sunday what concessions were being considered in the ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants […] We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also told reporters on Monday that Trump was “determined” to secure the peace deal.

On what the talks might cover, she said: “There’s a power plant that is on the border of Russia and Ukraine that was up for discussion with the Ukrainians, and he will address it in his call with Putin tomorrow.”

The facility is likely to be the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. It has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, and fears of a nuclear accident have persisted due to fighting in the area.

Another area of contention is Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a military incursion last August and captured some territory.

Russia had pushed to recapture it in recent weeks, and Putin now claims it is fully back in control of Kursk.

He has also raised numerous questions about how a ceasefire could be monitored and policed along the frontline in the east and has said he would not accept Nato troops on the territory.

France’s President Macron and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who met on Tuesday, stressed their nations would continue their “unwavering” support of Ukraine and demand “clear commitments” from Russia.

In his nightly address on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of prolonging the war.

“This proposal could have been implemented long ago,” he said, adding that “every day in wartime means human lives”.

Meanwhile, the UK and France have urged Putin to prove he wants a peace deal with Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the “courage” of Zelensky in agreeing to a ceasefire proposal, and challenged Russia to do the same.

“Enough deaths. Enough lives destroyed. Enough destruction. The guns must fall silent,” Macron said in a post on X.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Putin should agree to a “full and unconditional ceasefire now”, telling MPs he had seen “no sign” that Putin was serious about a peace deal.

He warned that the UK and its allies had “more cards that we can play” to help force Russia to negotiate “seriously”.

For a few seconds, there was only pure panic, as chaos and fear surged through the crowd at a major anti-government protest in Serbia. What started as confusion has since spiralled into questions over whether an illegal sonic weapon was used to silence the demonstration.

A large crowd of protesters in Belgrade on Saturday evening were observing a 15-minute silence in honour of the 15 people killed when part of a railway station collapsed in Novi Sad in November.

Then, out of nowhere, a loud, jarring noise shattered the quiet.

The mood shifted in an instant. The crowd surged towards the pavement in panic. I was swept along with them. People scattered in all directions.

At first, many thought the noise was an emergency vehicle, after what had sounded like a car crash. But there were no sirens.

Then came the rumours. Claims emerged that a sonic weapon – a device capable of causing pain, dizziness, and hearing damage – had been deployed against the peaceful protesters.

Serbian officials have denied these reports, rejecting allegations that security forces deployed a military-grade Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) – also known as a “sonic cannon” – during the demonstration.

The Serbian army has stated that it neither possesses nor has ever used a sonic cannon.

In an interview with Serbia’s state-owned broadcaster RTS, military Brigadier General Slavko Rakić said: “A sonic cannon uses a sound system that is amplified well above the sound system of humans and other living things. What we saw is nothing like that.

“The effect that is achieved is an amplified sound recording and it should be audible, but that is not present in the recordings.”

The public prosecutor’s office in Belgrade has instructed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to investigate the incident.

Between 275,000 and 325,000 people were estimated to have taken part in the protest. The government put the attendance at 107,000.

One of the places where protesters gathered – was outside Belgrade’s bright-yellow Student Cultural Centre in the heart of the Serbian capital.

For more than four months, students have blockaded their universities and organised protests, demanding that those responsible for the railway station collapse be brought to justice.

Eyewitnesses who spoke to BBC Serbian reported hearing the noise, but the intensity varied depending on where they stood in the crowd.

Some likened it to the roar of a Formula One race, while others said it sounded like an airplane flying low overhead, or even the sound of an MRI machine.

“It was like being on the starting line of a Grand Prix,” said 43-year-old protester Ivan Vasic. “I didn’t feel anything afterwards, but my wife complained of a bad headache that lasted until late in the night.”

Other protesters described feeling vertigo-like sensations.

“It was a horrible sound. It was so powerful, and it felt like something was going to crash on to our heads,” said 37-year-old Lela Sredojevic.

“I had never felt anything like that. I was really scared. It lasted less than a minute, but in that moment, it felt like eternity.”

The tool at the centre of these claims is called a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) – commonly known as a sonic weapon or sonic cannon.

LRADs can focus sound waves at high intensities, causing pain, nausea, and disorientation and their use is prohibited under Serbian police law.

“Sonic systems are a more recent development, emerging in the early 2000s,” BBC Russian’s defence correspondent Pavel Aksenov said.

“They can target either crowds or individuals, and have been used by police and military units in a number of countries to suppress riots, disperse demonstrations, guard checkpoints, or even protect ships from pirate attacks.

He added that although these weapons are classified as non-lethal, they can still cause harm to human health and their impact is hard to regulate.

Trevor Cox, professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford, told the BBC that a sound loud enough to cause the symptoms many reported should be more audible in the footage circulating on social media.

“If people are noticing either a ringing in the ear or a temporary threshold shift – like when you come out of a night club and you are slightly deaf – it indicates sound that is loud enough to cause temporary damage to your hearing.”

“That’s quite serious because that can become permanent,” he said.

However, Professor Cox also suggested the incident might not have involved a “sonic weapon.”

“Even if the sound wasn’t loud enough to cause hearing damage, it could still trigger a fight-or-flight response and a mass crowd reaction. Tinnitus can also be triggered by stress,” he added.

Jürgen Altmann, a physicist who has studied acoustic weapons and their effects, told the BBC that the noise “seems to have been produced by a strong acoustic source, maybe a device from the LRAD family”, but added that “other mechanisms are possible”.

A group of six Serbian NGOs said in a joint statement: “From 500 reports from citizens and their testimonies, it is clear that during the protest on 15 March, there was a strong sonic boom, which caused a series of physical and psychological reactions among those present.”

“According to testimonies, those present felt a strong sound impact, followed by a wave of heat or wind,” they added.

Despite the chaos, there is little expectation that this movement will subside.

Large demonstrations are expected to resume as soon as this week, and smaller protests, like one involving around 500 students on Monday, are becoming routine.

A young female protester summed it up: “Literally everyone I know went to the protest. Usually, people make excuses. Now everyone is on their way.”

Herbie Hancock is an all-time jazz great, so it is reassuring to hear that he suffers from the same modern day procrastination problems as the rest of us mere mortals.

“I fall into rabbit holes on YouTube. A lot of them. New music writing software, things about health, tech things.”

That is his explanation as to why he has not made an album for 15 years.

“I get victimised by it, so to speak, but that’s life,” he chuckles.

Speaking from his house in west Hollywood, the ridiculously sprightly 84-year-old pianist has never been afraid to embrace technology, but normally he is the one doing the mastering, not vice versa.

Discovered by trumpeter Donald Byrd at the start of the 60s, Hancock signed to Blue Note Records, and wrote jazz standards including Watermelon Man, Cantaloupe Island and Maiden Voyage.

In the 70s he was an early adopter of synthesisers, blending genres with the electro-funk classic Head Hunters.

In the 80s, he had a bona fide worldwide hit single with Rockit after embracing turntablism and scratching, winning five awards at the first ever MTV Awards for its classic dancing robots video.

Deee Lite’s Groove Is in the Heart? The riff that drives that song is a sample from Hancock’s Blow-Up soundtrack. Madonna, Janet Jackson and NWA are amonst the plethora of performers to have incorporated his music into their own.

While as recently as 2008, he beat Amy Winehouse and Kanye West to win his first album of the year award at the Grammys.

The reason we are talking is that Hancock has been announced as one of the recipients of this year’s Polar Music Prize, the closest music has to a Nobel prize.

Previous laureates have included Sir Paul McCartney, Dizzy Gillespie, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Quincy Jones.

“It’s a huge, fantastic list of people I’ve admired,” says Hancock before expressing particular delight that the saxophonist Wayne Shorter was chosen for the honour in 2017, six years before his death. Together they made up two fifths of Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet.

Joy comes over Hancock’s face when reminiscing about the period between 1964 to 1968, when he toured the world with the man Rolling Stone magazine called “the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time”.

“I was always frightened playing with Miles,” he laughs.

“It was very intimidating. I always wanted to be at my best, because I admired him so much. He was such a big part in my own development as a musician.

“It was fear on one hand. On the other hand, it was exciting. And when things were at their best, it was really inspiring. When were all in sync, that made life worth living.”

On the pianist’s favourite distraction, YouTube, there is a clip that has been viewed almost five million times, showing a furious Davis, on stage in Milan in 1964, stopping his improvised solo to send dagger eyes at Hancock.

Online there is much debate as to what caused this trumpet temper tantrum. But for Hancock, this was a regular occurrence.

“A lot of times I would be surprised at what would upset Miles, what would make him a little angry. I didn’t always know. He was not always easy to figure out, so I got used to that slight discomfort,” he says grinning.

“That’s life. But I was always looking to learn from those discomforts.”

And when he embarks on his European tour this summer, which includes three UK dates at London’s Barbican, Hancock will be thinking about another lesson he learnt from Davis – this one about the make-up of his audience.

He adopts a low, deep whispering voice and does a full-on Miles Davis impression, recreating the conversation from the mid 1960s, when the trumpeter gave him a stern warning: “If all you see are dudes in the audience, that means your music is dead.”

Herbie Hancock is pretending to be Miles Davis to an audience of me. It is a glorious moment.

“He used more expletives than I just did,” Hancock chortles. “But you get the idea,” clearly enjoying his mimicry as much as I did.

Hancock has been playing the piano for almost 80 years, but the instrument still gives him so much joy, that on occasion, during a session on the keys, he finds himself sobbing.

“If I’ve solved some kind of problem that I’ve had with the tune and made some kind of discovery that surpassed my expectations, I’ve been known to cry, to have tears coming down my face.”

I ask what kind of problem leaves him reaching for Herbie hankies.

“It’s difficult to explain,” he responds, “But, trying to make something work out, where there’s no easy answer. Where, ‘this is not supposed to work’, but ‘how can I make it work?'”

It feels like we have been invited inside Hancock’s brain and are seeing the cogs turn. At speed.

He continues: “There may be something that I want to connect, but all the ways I know of connecting them are not the solution. And I have to find some other means.

“And sometimes that [means] can come from looking at it in a different way. And not necessarily through music.”

This answer goes a long way to explaining the difference between someone who is a musical genius and someone who is not.

Hancock went to college to study electrical engineering, so it is no surprise that he has taken a huge interest in the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

He believes our fears about the technology are overblown, and says he prefers to “embrace it”. Hancock acknowledges concerns that AI lacks an ethical framework but asks: “Who are the worst examples of understanding ethics and being able to live a life with ethics? We, human beings, we’re the worst, right?”

He is on a roll now.

“I have this feeling that AI is going to help us all understand and get closer to becoming more ethically responsible people that are helping each other, instead of hurting or killing each other. Helping the planet instead of killing the planet with environmental issues.”

And the man who once released an album called Future Shock, has some simple advice for us all.

“When I’m using ChatGPT or Siri on my iPhone, I always say thank you and they usually say, ‘You’re welcome.'”

“I try to treat AI like it’s human and it actually manifests itself in an extremely positive way and that makes me feel better.”

At the age of 84, Herbie Hancock is still determined to try and future-proof himself, by getting the robots on his side.

Finally, I ask him a question on behalf of parents all round the world. My 11-year-old Charlie loves playing the piano, but hates practising. What advice would he give anyone in that situation?

He nods.

“I understand your pain. I don’t like practising either.”

Hancock, pauses and thinks before adding: “But you know, I look at it as, ‘OK, this is something, even if I don’t want to do it, I need to do it.’ And once I get into it, then I feel like I’ve conquered an obstacle in my life.”

He pauses again, before concluding: “I don’t always win that battle, but I’ve gotten to this point. So I guess I didn’t lose a lot of battles.”

And has he practised today?

“No. I didn’t today. And I probably won’t.”

Once again he laughs, and with that he departs, ready for the rest of the day and to watch some more YouTube.

A curfew has been imposed in parts of a city in India’s western state of Maharashtra after Hindu groups demanded the removal of the tomb of Aurangzeb, a 17th-Century Mughal emperor, sparking violence on Monday night.

Vehicles were set on fire and stones were thrown in the Mahal area of ​​Nagpur city.

Police say the situation is now under control and are appealing to people to keep the peace.

The tomb of Aurangzeb, who died more than 300 years ago, has in recent years become a political flashpoint amid growing calls for its removal by hardline Hindu groups.

It is located about 500km (311 miles) from Nagpur in the state’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district, which was earlier called Aurangabad after the emperor.

Monday’s violence broke out after two Hindu organisations, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, burnt the emperor’s effigy and chanted slogans demanding the removal of his tomb, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told the state assembly.

This sparked rumours that some religious symbols had been desecrated. Fadnavis said this led to violence that looked like “a well-planned attack”.

He said after evening prayers, a crowd of 250 Muslim men gathered and started shouting slogans. “When people started saying they would set vehicles on fire, police used force,” he added.

More than 50 people have been detained and 33 policemen were injured in the incident, Nagpur police commissioner Ravinder Singal told ANI news agency.

Shops and businesses in the central areas of Nagpur remain closed and security has been tightened across the city.

Meanwhile, opposition parties have criticised the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government saying “law and order in the state has collapsed”.

The trigger for this week’s violence has been a recent Bollywood film about Sambhaji – a Maratha ruler who clashed with Aurangzeb but lost – and its graphic depiction of him being tortured.

The movie has “ignited people’s anger against Aurangzeb”, Fadnavis told the state assembly on Tuesday.

The issue has been making headlines in the state for days with politicians from Hindu nationalist parties criticising Aurangzeb and calling for his tomb to be removed.

The protesters were also angered earlier this month when Abu Azmi, a regional politician, said that Aurangzeb was not a “cruel administrator” and had “built many temples”.

Azmi also said the emperor’s reign saw India’s borders reaching Afghanistan and present-day Myanmar, and the country was referred to as a golden bird, with its gross domestic product accounting for a quarter of the world’s GDP.

He later told a court his remarks were misinterpreted, but he was suspended from Maharashtra’s state assembly and an investigation was ordered against him.

In 2022, Aurangzeb’s name was trending on social media when the dispute over a mosque – built on the ruins of the Vishwanath temple, a grand 17th-Century Hindu shrine destroyed on Aurangzeb’s orders – broke out as a court ordered a survey to ascertain if the mosque had been built over what was originally a Hindu temple.

His tomb was shut for visitors after a regional politician questioned “the need for its existence” and called for its destruction.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke about “Aurangzeb’s atrocities and “his terror” at an event in Varanasi that year. “He tried to change civilisation by the sword. He tried to crush culture with fanaticism,” Modi said.

Aurangzeb was the sixth emperor of the Mughal kingdom who ruled India for nearly five decades from 1658 to 1707.

He is often described as a devout Muslim who lived the life of an ascetic, but was ruthless in his pursuit of expanding the empire, imposing strict sharia laws and discriminatory taxes.

He was accused of razing Hindu temples, though some critics point out he also built a few.

A US federal judge has questioned why the Trump administration failed to obey his order halting the deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members.

James Boasberg, the top federal judge in Washington DC, ordered deportation flights to be turned around on Saturday night.

White House officials argued in a court filing that they did not defy the ruling. The argued in part that because Boasberg’s order was made orally rather than in written form, it was not enforceable – and that the planes had already left the US by the time it was issued.

Boasberg has ordered the administration to give further details about the deportations by noon (16:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

He has requested further details about the timing of the order under which the deportations occurred, as well as details about the flights themselves.

During a hearing on Monday, Boasberg said he clearly ordered the government to turn the planes around.

“You’re saying that you felt you could disregard it because it wasn’t in a written order?” he asked Department of Justice lawyers.

In the same hearing on Monday, the judge said he would not make another ruling in the case until a hearing scheduled for Friday.

In the meantime, government lawyers said that the deportations had been paused. The Trump administration also asked in a court motion that Boasberg be removed from the case.

The dispute began over the weekend when a group of 238 alleged Venezuelan gang members, plus 23 alleged members of the international MS-13 gang, were sent from the US to a prison in El Salvador.

Announcing the move on Saturday, Trump accused the gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) of “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States”.

He cited the Alien Enemies Act – legislation dating to 1798 that allows non-citizens to be deported in wartime. The act was last used during World War Two, when it was invoked to arrest and deport citizens of Axis countries.

Campaign groups have questioned Trump’s justification.

The act was used as the basis to deport 137 of the total of 261 people who were deported, the White House said on Monday. The basis on which the other deportees were removed from the US is unclear.

On Saturday, during the hearing that took place as several of the deportation flights were in the air, Boasberg ordered a 14-day pause.

After lawyers told the judge that planes with deportees already had taken off, he reportedly gave a verbal order for the flights to turn back “immediately”, although that directive was not included in a written ruling published shortly thereafter.

Nonetheless, a timeline of events reported by US media suggests the Trump administration had the opportunity to stop at least some of the deportations.

• White House denies defying judge’s order over deportations
• What is Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang targeted by Trump?
• The 1798 law that Trump used to deport migrants?

Under the US system of checks and balances, government agencies are expected to comply with a federal judge’s ruling.

But Trump’s Department of Justice argued, citing case law in a filing on Monday, that “an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction”.

Administration officials also pointed out that the five named plaintiffs in the lawsuit that prompted the hearing were not among those deported, and also argued that once the flights left US airspace, the judge’s powers no longer applied.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order.”

Neither the US government nor El Salvador has named those who have been deported, or provided details of their alleged criminality or gang membership.

Several relatives of men believed to be among the group told the New York Times that their loved ones did not have gang ties.

The White House, for its part, has insisted that authorities are “sure” that the detainees were gang members, based on intelligence.

Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, told reporters at the White House on Monday that Trump did “exactly the right thing”.

“The plane was already over international waters with a plane full of terrorists and significant public safety threats,” he said.

“We removed terrorists. That should be celebrated in this country.”

El Salvador has agreed to accept the deportees from the US.

The country’s president, Nayib Bukele, appeared to mock the judge’s ruling.

“Oopsie… Too late,” he posted on social media, along with a picture of a headline announcing the ruling and a ‘crying with laughter’ emoji.

His team also published footage of some of the detainees inside one of its mega-jails.

According to the White House, El Salvador’s government received $6m (£4.62m) to take the detainees, which Leavitt said “is pennies on the dollar” compared to the cost of holding inmates in US prisons.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought the lawsuit leading to the judge’s order, questioned Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, a sweeping wartime authority that allows fast-track deportations.

“I think we’re in very dangerous territory here in the United States with the invocation of this law,” said the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt.

The Alien Enemies Act only allowed deportations when the US was in a declared war with that foreign government, or was being invaded, Mr Gelernt said.

“A gang is not invading,” he told BBC News.

Making matters worse was the fact “the administration is saying nobody can review what they’re doing”, Mr Gelernt added.

Amnesty International USA said the deportations were “yet another example of the Trump administration’s racist targeting” of Venezuelans “based on sweeping claims of gang affiliation”.

Venezuela itself criticised Trump, saying he “unjustly criminalises Venezuelan migration”.

The latest deportations under Trump’s second term are part of the president’s long-running campaign against illegal immigration.

The two gangs targeted with the weekend deportations were declared “foreign terrorist organisations” by Trump after returning to the White House in January.

• 17:25 EDT: A first flight believed to be carrying deportees leaves Texas, according to data from tracking site Flightradar24. Take off happens while a hearing held by Judge Boasberg is paused. Earlier that afternoon, the White House said Trump was invoking the Alien Enemies Act
• 17:44 EDT: A second flight believed to be carrying deportees leaves Texas, according to Flightradar24
• 18:05 EDT: Boasberg’s hearing resumes
• 18:46 EDT: During the hearing, Boasberg verbally orders the government to turn around the two planes if they are carrying non-citizens, saying: “Any plane containing these folks – because it’s going to take off or it’s in the air – needs to be returned to the United States… This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately”
• 19:26 EDT: Boasberg issues his written ruling which includes a temporary restraining order on any further flights
• 19:36 EDT: A third flight believed to be carrying deportees leaves Texas, according to Flightradar24

A search has resumed in Thailand for a 26-year-old woman from south London who is missing after a boat carrying tourists caught fire and sank off the coast of the island of Koh Tao during a diving trip.

Alexandra Clarke was among 22 people aboard the vessel when the fire broke out on Sunday morning, the Surat Thani Provincial Public Relations Office said.

On Monday, divers searched the wreckage of the boat and the surrounding area but found no trace of Ms Clarke, from Lambeth, who is believed to have been in the toilet when the fire started.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was “supporting the family of a British woman who is missing in Thailand and are in contact with local authorities”.

Koh Tao Police said it believed the boat’s fuel tank overflowed when it was refilled during the journey. Officers have charged the captain and a crew member with negligence.

The vessel left shore at about 07:30 ITC (00:30 GMT) to carry the group to a popular diving spot, the Southwest Pinnacle, local police said.

Col Sarayuth Buriwachira from Koh Tao Police said the fire broke out at about 10:00 ITC after a crew member put too much fuel in the engine.

“When he started the engine, a spark occurred, causing the engine to catch fire and spread, causing the entire ship to burn and eventually sink into the sea,” Col Buriwachira said.

The fire spread quickly, engulfing the engine room and forcing the divers, instructors and crew to jump into the sea, he added.

The other 15 tourists and seven crew members were rescued by boats which were alerted by an emergency call.

According to the provincial office’s Facebook page, authorities worked with private boat operators and volunteers to help evacuate tourists and crew to another boat safely, but that Ms Clarke was not among them.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become one of the few world leaders to join Truth Social, the social media platform owned by US President Donald Trump.

In his first post on Monday, Modi shared a photo with Trump taken in Houston, Texas, during his 2019 US visit and said he was “delighted” to be on the platform.

Trump launched Truth Social in February 2022 after he lost the presidential election to Joe Biden and was temporarily banned from major social networks like Twitter and Facebook, which accused him of inciting violence.

As of 03:30 GMT, Modi had 21,500 followers and was following Trump and US Vice President JD Vance.

On Monday, Trump shared a link to an interview which Modi did with podcaster Lex Fridman where the Indian prime minister spoke on a range of topics, including his life journey, the Gujarat riots of 2002 and India’s relationship with China.

Much of Truth Social’s functionality is identical to X, formerly Twitter. Users are able to post ‘truths’ or ‘retruths’ as well as send direct messages. Adverts on the platform are called ‘sponsored truths’.

Truth Social is owned by Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). Trump took the company public in March 2024 and now owns about 57% shares in the firm.

Kuwaiti-headquartered investment firm ARC Global Investments and some former Apprentice contestants also have a sizeable stakes, though those holdings are currently subject to legal fights.

The US president has 9.28m followers on Truth Social, far fewer than the 87m he has on X.

According to data compiled by Bloomberg, traffic at Truth Social remains minuscule relative to its competitors, with its total user numbers trailing X by 400 times.

TMTG reported losses of $400m (£308m) in 2024 and a revenue of $3.6m. It has a market valuation of $4.45bn.

Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, the film production company behind franchises such as The Matrix, the Joker and Ocean’s has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, according to a filing with a Delaware court.

The firm has blamed its financial troubles on a legal battle with its former partner Warner Bros (WB) and a “failed and costly endeavour” into the production of independent films and television series.

In a bid to mitigate some of its financial problems, Village Roadshow is proposing to sell its extensive film library for $365m (£281m).

The company’s debts are estimated to be between $500m and $1bn, according to the court documents.

Village RoadShow and WB produced and co-owned dozens of films over the years but their relationship soured in early 2022 after the release of the latest Matrix film – The Matrix Resurrections – on the streaming platform HBO Max.

Village Roadshow alleged WB had shut it out of its rights to any sequels and prequels of the films the two companies had previously worked on together.

“The WB arbitration has caused the company to incur more than $18m in legal fees, nearly all of which remain unpaid”, chief restructuring officer Keith Maib said in a court filing.

That legal battle, according to Mr Maib, has “irreparably decimated the working relationship” between the two companies, ultimately ending “the most lucrative nexus” for Village Roadshow’s historic success.

The other issue faced by Village Roadshow was a costly studio business launched in 2018. None of the films or television series independently produced as part of that endeavour delivered any profits.

Like other film companies in the US, Village Roadshow also struggled with a slump in demand from the pandemic and the disruption from the strike action by Hollywood actors and writers, which started in May 2023.

In December, the Writers Guild of America banned its members from working with Village Roadshow over the company’s alleged failure to pay its contributors.

A jury in the trial of a former nurse accused of murdering a woman on a remote Australian beach has been discharged, after they could not reach a verdict.

Toyah Cordingley was stabbed at least 26 times while out walking her dog in October 2018.

The 24-year-old’s body was discovered by her father, half-buried in sand dunes on Wangetti beach between the popular tourist hotspots of Cairns and Port Douglas.

Rajwinder Singh, 40, who travelled to India the day after Ms Cordingley’s body was found, was charged with murder. He was arrested and then extradited to Australia in 2023.

But jurors at Cairns Supreme Court said they were deadlocked, and unable to reach a unanimous decision on his guilt after two-and-half days of deliberations. The judge thanked the jury for their “diligence”.

Under Queensland law, jury verdicts in murder cases must be unanimous. So Mr Singh will face another trial.

Originally from Buttar Kalan in the Indian state of Punjab, Mr Singh had been living in Innisfail at the time of the killing, a town about two hours south from the crime scene.

Prosecutors said they did not have a motive for the killing of Ms Cordingley – a health store worker and animal shelter volunteer – and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

The trial at Cairns Supreme court heard that DNA highly likely to be Mr Singh’s was discovered on a stick in the victim’s grave.

Data from mobile phone towers also suggested Ms Cordingley’s phone had moved in a similar pattern to Mr Singh’s blue Alfa Romeo car on the day the victim went missing.

The prosecution also suggested the hurried way Mr Singh left Australia without saying goodbye to his family or colleagues pointed to his guilt.

Mr Singh had denied murder – and had told an undercover police officer he had seen the killing, then left the country, leaving behind his wife and children because he feared for his own life.

His defence lawyer said he was “a coward” but not a killer, and accused police of a “flawed” investigation that did not look sufficiently at other possible suspects.

They said DNA found at the scene, including on the victim’s discarded selfie stick, did not match Mr Singh’s profile.

“There is an unknown person’s DNA at that grave site,” defence barrister Angus Edwards told the jury.

President Trump has said “many” pardons issued by Joe Biden are void because the former president signed them with “autopen” – a device which reproduces a person’s signature – rather than by hand.

Trump did not provide evidence for his claim – which was posted on Truth Social.

BBC Verify has found several instances of Biden signing pardons by hand rather than by autopen.

And a sample presidential signature is used on US government documents when they are stored in the Federal Register – a digital archive. This was the case under Trump as well as under Biden.

Legal experts also told us that there is nothing in US law which would invalidate pardons signed by autopen.

On Truth Social, Trump said that: “The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”.

Trump didn’t specify which pardons he was referring to but he has previously referred to the house select committee investigating the 6 January riots as the “unselect committee”, and has criticised Biden for pardoning family members.

BBC Verify looked through official photographs of Biden in the White House and ones posted on the official White House X account and found a number of examples of him signing pardons by hand.

In October 2022, Biden was pictured signing an order pardoning those in jail for marijuana possession.

In the same year, he also signed a pardon for non-violent offenders.

It is not known whether Biden has signed any pardons only using autopen.

In May last year, CNN did report that he signed a bill for a one-week extension for federal aviation funding using autopen.

BBC Verify has asked Biden’s office for his record of using autopen and the White House for the evidence behind Trump’s claim.

Trump appears to have taken his cue from the Oversight Project – part of the Conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation – which has claimed that Biden’s 19 January pardons – of some family members and political figures including Anthony Fauci – all had the same autopen signature.

We have asked the Heritage Foundation for its workings. Previously, it has highlighted other Biden documents which it says had autopen signatures, along with screenshots taken from the Federal Register.

The register is the official, daily publication of various presidential and other government documents – which all have a standard signature created from a single sample.

A National Archives spokesperson told the fact-checking website Snopes that: “At the beginning of each administration, the White House sends a sample of the President’s signature to the Federal Register, which uses it to create the graphic image for all Presidential Documents published in the Federal Register,”

We looked through presidential documents archived by the Federal Register under both Trump administrations and found identical signatures on documents.

That includes Trump’s pardons for the 6 January rioters.

Trump had already signed these pardons by hand, as this video showed in January.

Presidential pardons are also published by the US Department of Justice. We have asked it how these documents are archived.

Legal experts who we spoke to told us that there is nothing in US law which says official documents signed by US presidents – including pardons – are not legally binding if they were signed with autopen.

Andrew Moran, a politics professor at London Metropolitan University, says that previous presidents have used autopen before.

“On lower-level importance documents, it’s not unusual for an autopen to be used.

“But I would have thought that with something as serious as a pardon Biden would have actually signed it [by hand]”, he said.

A 2005 memo from the Department of Justice during the Bush administration stated that the President does not have to physically sign a bill for it to become law.

“The President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen”, the memo said.

Although George W. Bush did not use autopen himself, President Obama used it in 2011.

Autopen has also been used by earlier presidents including JFK and Harry Truman.

Professor Erin Delaney, director of the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism at UCL, says that an attempt by Trump to rescind Biden’s pardons would be a “violation of unwritten constitutional norms”.

Critically, he would not be able to pursue this action without prosecuting, or re-prosecuting the individuals who were given immunity, she argues.

Legally challenging Biden’s pardons because of autopen would also call into question other aspects of US governance that use automatic signatures, such as bills passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, she added.

Professor Moran says that a president revoking his predecessor’s pardon is extremely rare.

“Historically, the only example I’m aware of is towards the end of Andrew Johnson’s presidency in the 1860s, when he issued some pardons which were revoked before they were accepted. But that’s a very small number.

“If he [Trump] decides that he wants to go after the people who were pardoned, that will end up in the courts and then that would become the point where the constitution is really tested”, he said.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Russia’s Kursk region have described scenes “like a horror movie” as they retreated from the front lines.

The BBC has received extensive accounts from Ukrainian troops, who recount a “catastrophic” withdrawal in the face of heavy fire, and columns of military equipment destroyed and constant attacks from swarms of Russian drones.

The soldiers, who spoke over social media, were given aliases to protect their identity. Some gave accounts of a “collapse” as Ukraine lost Sudzha, the largest town it held.

Ukrainian restrictions on travel to the front have meant it is not possible to get a full picture of the situation. But this is how five Ukrainian soldiers described to us what had happened.

On 9 March, “Volodymyr” sent a Telegram post to the BBC saying he was still in Sudzha, where there was “panic and collapse of the front”.

Ukrainian troops “are trying to leave – columns of troops and equipment. Some of them are burned by Russian drones on the road. It is impossible to leave during the day.”

Movement of men, logistics and equipment had been reliant on one major route between Sudzha and Ukraine’s Sumy region.

Volodymyr said it was possible to travel on that road relatively safely a month ago. By 9 March it was “all under the fire control of the enemy – drones around the clock. In one minute you can see two to three drones. That’s a lot,” he said.

“We have all the logistics here on one Sudzha-Sumy highway. And everyone knew that the [Russians] would try to cut it. But this again came as a surprise to our command.”

At the time of writing, just before Russia retook Sudzha, Volodymyr said Ukrainian forces were being pressed from three sides.

By 11 March, Ukrainian forces were battling to prevent the road being cut, according to Telegram messages from “Maksym”.

“A few days ago, we received an order to leave the defence lines in an organised retreat,” he said, adding that Russia had amassed a significant force to retake the town, “including large numbers of North Korean soldiers”.

Military experts estimate Russia had amassed a force of up to 70,000 troops to retake Kursk – including about 12,000 North Koreans.

Russia had also sent its best drone units to the front and was using kamikaze and first-person-view (FPV) variants to “take fire control of the main logistics routes”.

They included drones linked to operators by fibre-optic wires – which are impossible to jam with electronic counter-measures.

Maksym said as a result “the enemy managed to destroy dozens of units of equipment”, and that wrecks had “created congestion on supply routes”.

The situation on that day, 11 March, was described as “catastrophic” by “Anton”.

The third soldier spoken to by the BBC was serving in the headquarters for the Kursk front.

He too highlighted the damage caused by Russian FPV drones. “We used to have an advantage in drones, now we do not,” he said. He added that Russia had an advantage with more accurate air strikes and a greater number of troops.

Anton said supply routes had been cut. “Logistics no longer work – organised deliveries of weapons, ammunition, food and water are no longer possible.”

Anton said he managed to leave Sudzha by foot, at night – “We almost died several times. Drones are in the sky all the time.”

The soldier predicted Ukraine’s entire foothold in Kursk would be lost but that “from a military point of view, the Kursk direction has exhausted itself. There is no point in keeping it any more”.

Western officials estimate that Ukraine’s Kursk offensive involved about 12,000 troops. They were some of their best-trained soldiers, equipped with Western-supplied weapons including tanks and armoured vehicles.

Russian bloggers published videos showing some of that equipment being destroyed or captured. On 13 March, Russia said the situation in Kursk was “fully under our control” and that Ukraine had “abandoned” much of its material.

In social media posts on 11-12 March, a fourth soldier, “Dmytro” likened the retreat from the front to “a scene from a horror movie”.

“The roads are littered with hundreds of destroyed cars, armoured vehicles and ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles). There are a lot of wounded and dead.”

Vehicles were often hunted by multiple drones, he said.

He described his own narrow escape when the car he was travelling in got bogged down. He and his fellow soldiers were trying to push the vehicle free when they were targeted by another FPV drone.

It missed the vehicle, but injured one of his comrades. He said they had to hide in a forest for two hours before they were rescued.

Dmytro said many Ukrainians retreated on foot with “guys walking 15km to 20km”. The situation, he said, had turned from “difficult and critical to catastrophic”.

In a message on 14 March, Dmytro added: “Everything is finished in the Kursk region… the operation was not successful.”

He estimated that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers had died since the first crossing into Russia in August.

A fifth soldier sounded less gloomy about the situation. On 13 March, “Artem” sent a Telegram message from a military hospital, where he was being treated for shrapnel wounds suffered in a drone attack.

Artem said he had been fighting further west – near the village of Loknya, where Ukrainian forces were putting up a stiff resistance and “fighting like lions”.

He believed the operation had achieved some success.

“It’s important that so far the Armed Forces of Ukraine have created this buffer zone, thanks to which the Russians cannot enter Sumy,” he said.

Ukraine’s top general, Oleksandr Syrskyi, insists that Ukrainian forces have pulled back to “more favourable positions”, remain in Kursk, and would do so “for as long as it is expedient and necessary”.

He said Russia had suffered more than 50,000 losses during the operation – including those killed, injured or captured.

However, the situation now is very different to last August. Military analysts estimate two-thirds of the 1,000 sq km gained at the outset have since been lost.

Any hopes that Ukraine would be able to trade Kursk territory for some of its own have significantly diminished.

Last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed the Kursk operation had “accomplished its task” by forcing Russia to pull troops from the east and relieve pressure on Pokrovsk.

But it is not yet clear at what cost.

A curfew has been imposed in parts of a city in India’s western state of Maharashtra after Hindu groups demanded the removal of the tomb of Aurangzeb, a 17th-Century Mughal emperor, sparking violence on Monday night.

Vehicles were set on fire and stones were thrown in the Mahal area of ​​Nagpur city.

Police say the situation is now under control and are appealing to people to keep the peace.

The tomb of Aurangzeb, who died more than 300 years ago, has in recent years become a political flashpoint amid growing calls for its removal by hardline Hindu groups.

It is located about 500km (311 miles) from Nagpur in the state’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district, which was earlier called Aurangabad after the emperor.

Monday’s violence broke out after two Hindu organisations, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, burnt the emperor’s effigy and chanted slogans demanding the removal of his tomb, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told the state assembly.

This sparked rumours that some religious symbols had been desecrated. Fadnavis said this led to violence that looked like “a well-planned attack”.

He said after evening prayers, a crowd of 250 Muslim men gathered and started shouting slogans. “When people started saying they would set vehicles on fire, police used force,” he added.

More than 50 people have been detained and 33 policemen were injured in the incident, Nagpur police commissioner Ravinder Singal told ANI news agency.

Shops and businesses in the central areas of Nagpur remain closed and security has been tightened across the city.

Meanwhile, opposition parties have criticised the state’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government saying “law and order in the state has collapsed”.

The trigger for this week’s violence has been a recent Bollywood film about Sambhaji – a Maratha ruler who clashed with Aurangzeb but lost – and its graphic depiction of him being tortured.

The movie has “ignited people’s anger against Aurangzeb”, Fadnavis told the state assembly on Tuesday.

The issue has been making headlines in the state for days with politicians from Hindu nationalist parties criticising Aurangzeb and calling for his tomb to be removed.

The protesters were also angered earlier this month when Abu Azmi, a regional politician, said that Aurangzeb was not a “cruel administrator” and had “built many temples”.

Azmi also said the emperor’s reign saw India’s borders reaching Afghanistan and present-day Myanmar, and the country was referred to as a golden bird, with its gross domestic product accounting for a quarter of the world’s GDP.

He later told a court his remarks were misinterpreted, but he was suspended from Maharashtra’s state assembly and an investigation was ordered against him.

In 2022, Aurangzeb’s name was trending on social media when the dispute over a mosque – built on the ruins of the Vishwanath temple, a grand 17th-Century Hindu shrine destroyed on Aurangzeb’s orders – broke out as a court ordered a survey to ascertain if the mosque had been built over what was originally a Hindu temple.

His tomb was shut for visitors after a regional politician questioned “the need for its existence” and called for its destruction.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also spoke about “Aurangzeb’s atrocities and “his terror” at an event in Varanasi that year. “He tried to change civilisation by the sword. He tried to crush culture with fanaticism,” Modi said.

Aurangzeb was the sixth emperor of the Mughal kingdom who ruled India for nearly five decades from 1658 to 1707.

He is often described as a devout Muslim who lived the life of an ascetic, but was ruthless in his pursuit of expanding the empire, imposing strict sharia laws and discriminatory taxes.

He was accused of razing Hindu temples, though some critics point out he also built a few.

German lawmakers have voted to allow a huge increase in defence and infrastructure spending – a seismic shift for the country that could reshape European defence.

A two-thirds majority of Bundestag parliamentarians, required for the change, approved the vote on Tuesday.

The law will exempt spending on defence and security from Germany’s strict debt rules, and create a €500bn ($547bn; £420bn) infrastructure fund.

This vote is a historic move for traditionally debt-shy Germany, and could be hugely significant for Europe, as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine grinds on, and after US President Donald Trump signalled an uncertain commitment to Nato and Europe’s defence.

However, state government representatives in the upper house, the Bundesrat, still need to approve the moves – also by a two-thirds majority – before they officially become law. That vote is set for Friday.

Friedrich Merz, the man behind these plans and who is expected to soon be confirmed as Germany’s new chancellor, told the lower house during Tuesday’s debate that the country had “felt a false sense of security” for the past decade.

“The decision we are taking today… can be nothing less than the first major step towards a new European defence community,” he said, adding that it includes countries that are “not members of the European Union”.

Germany has long been cautious about defence spending, not just for historical reasons dating back to 1945, but also due to the global debt crisis of 2009.

But despite fears the vote would be tight, lawmakers in the end voted in favour of the changes by 513 to 207 – comfortably over the two-thirds majority required.

One leading German newspaper described this vote as “A day of destiny for our nation”.

Under the measure, any spending on defence that amounts to more than 1% of Germany’s GDP would no longer be subject to a limit on borrowing. Until now, this debt brake has been fixed at 0.35% of GDP.

The change could transform the country’s partially neglected armed forces in an era of great uncertainty for Europe.

And this vote was not just about defence. It was also about freeing up €500bn for German infrastructure – fixing things like bridges and roads, but also to pay for climate change measures, something the Green Party insisted on.

Merz, whose CDU party won Germany’s general election last month, proposed the measures swiftly after the win.

In an interview on Sunday he specifically mentioned fears that the US could pull back from defending Europe and Trump’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the “situation has worsened in recent weeks”.

“That is why we have to act fast,” Merz told public broadcaster ARD.

It is a significant political win for Merz, who will, when he takes power as chancellor, now have access to hundreds of billions of euros to invest in the state – what some in Germany have called a “fiscal bazooka”.

It is also an important moment for Ukraine. The defence plans approved today by the Bundestag also allow spending on aid for states “attacked in violation of international law” to be exempt from the debt brake.

That will enable outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz to release €3bn in aid to Ukraine as early as next week.

Merz chose to push the changes through the old parliament, knowing the vote arithmetic was more favourable now than it would be after 25 March, when the new parliament session begins.

The far-right AFD and far-left Linke, which both performed well in February’s election, oppose Merz’s plans.

Merz has still not agreed a coalition deal to govern Germany after his election win, and has announced ambitious plans to have a government in place by Easter.

Coalition negotiations in Germany, however, can drag on for months at a time.

Authorities have discovered new information changing the timeline of when they believe Academy Award winning actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, died.

The couple were found dead in their New Mexico home last month with officials saying the pair had been dead for some time before they were discovered by neighbourhood security.

Officials initially said they believed Arakawa died on 11 February and Hackman died one week later.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office now says they have confirmed that Arakawa made multiple calls to a health clinic on 12 February for medical treatment, which the clinic told BBC she never was able to receive.

The sheriff’s office said they learned of the calls when they received cell phone data from her phone.

They said there were three calls made that morning to Cloudberry Health, a personalized concierge medical practice in the area. She received a fourth call, also from the clinic.

The sheriff’s office noted it never reported an official date of death for her and said that initially they’d stated that Arakawa’s last known activity was on 11 February. Authorities say she’d exchanged emails with a massage therapist and visited a grocery store, pharmacy and a pet store. Garage clicker data showed she returned home around 5:15 p.m. that day.

Dr Josiah Child, who leads Cloudberry Health, told the BBC that while the clinic had never treated Hackman or Arakawa, she had reached out for medical advice.

“She called and described some congestion but didn’t mention any respiratory distress, shortness of breath, or chest pain,” he said.

Arakawa initially had scheduled an appointment for 12 February but cancelled on 10 February, explaining that she needed to care for her husband, Dr Child said.

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On the morning of 12 February, she called again seeking treatment but because no doctor-patient relationship had been established, the clinic told her she needed to be seen in person.

“There were a couple calls back and forth to just schedule that appointment for the afternoon, but she never showed up,” Dr Child explained. “Our office called back several times and never got an answer.”

The couple were both found dead on 26 February.

Chief Medical Investigator Dr. Heather Jarrell stated that “based on the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that [Betsy] passed away first.”

The Santa Fe medical examiner determined she died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare rodent-borne respiratory disease.

Authorities believe Hackman died on 18 February – the date of his last recorded pacemaker activity, which showed an abnormal rhythm of atrial fibrillation.

His cause of death was severe heart disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease listed as a contributing factor. Experts believe his Alzheimer’s may have prevented him from realising his wife of more than 30 years was dead in the home where he was living.

If he did, experts told the BBC, he likely went through various stages of confusion and grief, trying to wake her up before the disease caused him to become distracted or too overwhelmed to act – a process that likely repeated for days before he, too, died.

A necropsy report also revealed that one of the couple’s three dogs, which had been crated while recovering from surgery, died from starvation and dehydration.

As the investigation continues, representatives for Hackman and Arakawa’s estate have taken legal action to block the release of body camera footage and other visual evidence from their home when their remains were discovered.

A New Mexico judge has issued a temporary restraining order that prevents their release, with a hearing set for March 31.

Chinese state media has welcomed Donald Trump’s move to cut public funding for news outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have long reported on authoritarian regimes.

The decison affects thousands of employees – some 1,300 staff have been put on paid leave at Voice Of America (VOA) alone since Friday’s executive order.

Critics have called the move a setback for democracy but Beijing’s state newspaper Global Times denounced VOA for its “appalling track record” in reporting on China and said it has “now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag”.

The White House defended the move, saying it will “ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda”.

Trump’s cuts target the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is supported by Congress and funds the affected news outlets, such as VOA, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe.

They have won acclaim and international recognition for their reporting in places where press freedom is severely curtailed or non-existent, from China and Cambodia to Russia and North Korea.

Although authorities in some of these countries block the broadcasts – VOA, for instance, is banned in China – people can listen to them on shortwave radio, or get around the restrictions via VPNs.

RFA has often reported on the crackdown on human rights in Cambodia, whose former authoritarian ruler Hun Sen has hailed the cuts as a “big contribution to eliminating fake news”.

It was also among the first news outlets to report on China’s network of detention centres in Xinjiang, where the authorities are accused of locking up hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims without trial. Beijing denies the claims, saying people willingly attend “re-education camps” which combat “terrorism and religious extremism”. VOA’s reporting on North Korean defectors and the Chinese Communist Party’s alleged cover-up of Covid fatalities has won awards.

VOA, primarily a radio outlet, which also broadcasts in Mandarin, was recognised last year for its podcast on rare protests in 2022 in China against Covid lockdowns.

But China’s Global Times welcomed the cuts, calling VOA a “lie factory”.

“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multi-dimensional China, the demonising narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughing stock,” it said in an editorial published on Monday.

Hu Xijin, who was the Global Times’ former editor-in-chief, wrote: “Voice of America has been paralysed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which has been as vicious to China. This is such great news.”

Such responses “would have been easy to predict”, said Valdya Baraputri, a VOA journalist who lost her job over the weekend. She was previously employed by BBC World Service.

“Eliminating VOA, of course, allows channels that are the opposite of accurate and balanced reporting to thrive,” she told the BBC.

The National Press Club, a leading representative group for US journalists, said the order “undermines America’s long-standing commitment to a free and independent press”.

Founded during World War Two in part to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA reaches some 360 million people a week in nearly 50 languages. Over the years it has broadcast in China, North Korea, communist Cuba and the former Soviet Union. It’s also been a helpful tool for many Chinese people to learn English.

VOA’s director Michael Abramowitz said Trump’s order has hobbled VOA while “America’s adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States”.

Ms Baraputri, who is from Indonesia but based in Washington DC, first joined VOA in 2018, but her visa was terminated at the end of Trump’s first administration.

She rejoined in 2023 because she wanted to be part of an organisation that “upholds unbiased, factual reporting that is free from government influence”.

The recent cuts have left her “feeling betrayed by the idea I had about press freedom [in the US]”.

She is also concerned for colleagues who may now be forced to return to hostile home countries, where they could be persecuted for their journalism.

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic has appealed to the European Union to intervene so it can keep Radio Free Europe going. It reports in 27 languages from 23 countries, reaching more than 47 million people every week.

RFA chief executive Bay Fang said in a statement that the organisation plans to challenge the order. Cutting funding to these outlets is a “reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space”, he said.

RFA started in 1996 and reaches nearly 60 million people weekly in China, Myanmar, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. In China, it also broadcasts in minority languages like Tibetan and Uyghur, apart from English and Mandarin.

“[Trump’s order] not only disenfranchises the nearly 60 million people who turn to RFA’s reporting on a weekly basis to learn the truth, but it also benefits America’s adversaries at our own expense,” Mr Fang noted.

While Chinese state media has celebrated the cuts, it’s hard to know how Chinese people feel about it given their internet is heavily censored.

Outside China, those who have listened to VOA and RFA over the years appear disappointed and worried.

“Looking back at history, countless exiles, rebels, intellectuals, and ordinary people have persisted in the darkness because of the voices of VOA and RFA, and have seen hope in fear because of their reports,” Du Wen, a Chinese dissident living in Belgium, wrote on X.

“If the free world chooses to remain silent, then the voice of the dictator will become the only echo in the world.”

The last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, John “Paddy” Hemingway, has died at the age of 105.

Mr Hemingway, who was originally from Dublin, joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a teenager before World War Two.

At 21, he was a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, a three-month period when air force personnel defended the skies against a large-scale assault by the German air force, the Luftwaffe.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer paid tribute to Mr Hemingway, saying his courage and those of all RAF pilots had “helped end WWII and secure our freedom”.

The Prince of Wales also paid tribute, saying that “we owe so much to Paddy and his generation for our freedoms today”.

Prince William added that “their bravery and sacrifice will always be remembered”.

The Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Emma Little-Pengelly described Mr Hemingway as “an absolute hero”.

Speaking in the Northern Ireland Assembly she said: “My goodness when you read his obituary, the things that he experienced.”

She added that the sacrifices of Mr Hemingway’s generation were “absolutely incredible”.

Those who fought in the three-and-a-half-month battle came to be known as “The Few” after a speech by the then Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” he said of their sacrifices in battle.

In a statement, the RAF said that Mr Hemingway had “passed away peacefully” on Monday.

The pilot’s squadron shot down 90 enemy aircraft during an 11-day period in May 1940, and provided fighter cover during the Battle of France.

During the war, Gp Capt Hemingway was shot down four times.

During dogfights – or one-on-one aerial combats – in August 1940, Mr Hemingway was forced to bail out of his Hurricane single-seat fighter on two occasions, landing in the sea off the coast of Essex and in marshland.

The wreckage of his Hurricane was recovered in 2019 with the control column and the gun-button still set to “fire”.

In July 1941, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross – awarded to RAF personnel for an act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty while flying on active operations.

On the way to receive his medal from the King, he was forced to escape from a Blenheim aircraft, which crashed during take-off.

While serving with the 85 Squadron in RAF Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, Mr Hemingway was forced to bail out of his Havoc night fighter at 600ft (183m) due to instrument failure in bad weather.

He broke his hand on the tail section and his parachute failed to open, with the chute catching on the branches of a tree.

He was forced to bail out a fourth time while fighting near Ravenna, Italy, when his Spitfire was hit multiple times. He landed in enemy territory, and made contact with Italian citizens, who helped him back to the Allies.

Speaking to BBC News NI in 2023, Gp Capt Hemingway said he had never looked for fame for being part of “The Few”.

“I don’t think we ever assumed greatness of any form,” he said.

“We were just fighting a war which we were trained to fight.”

Mr Hemingway said that his biggest regret was the loss of friends, in particular that of Richard “Dickie” Lee in August 1940.

The RAF said that Mr Hemingway’s passing marked “the end of an era and a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by those who fought for freedom during World War II”.

“His courage in the face of overwhelming odds demonstrated his sense of duty and the importance of British resilience.”

Mr Hemingway “always had a twinkle in his eyes as he recalled the fun times with colleagues in France and London”, the statement said.

“This quiet, composed, thoughtful and mischievous individual may not have wanted to be the last of ‘The Few’, but he embodied the spirit of all those who flew sorties over this green and pleasant land,” it added.

Chief of RAF Air Staff Sir Rich Knighton said he had spent time with Mr Hemingway in Dublin earlier this year.

“Paddy was an amazing character whose life story embodies all that was and remains great about the Royal Air Force.”

A jury in the trial of a former nurse accused of murdering a woman on a remote Australian beach has been discharged, after they could not reach a verdict.

Toyah Cordingley was stabbed at least 26 times while out walking her dog in October 2018.

The 24-year-old’s body was discovered by her father, half-buried in sand dunes on Wangetti beach between the popular tourist hotspots of Cairns and Port Douglas.

Rajwinder Singh, 40, who travelled to India the day after Ms Cordingley’s body was found, was charged with murder. He was arrested and then extradited to Australia in 2023.

But jurors at Cairns Supreme Court said they were deadlocked, and unable to reach a unanimous decision on his guilt after two-and-half days of deliberations. The judge thanked the jury for their “diligence”.

Under Queensland law, jury verdicts in murder cases must be unanimous. So Mr Singh will face another trial.

Originally from Buttar Kalan in the Indian state of Punjab, Mr Singh had been living in Innisfail at the time of the killing, a town about two hours south from the crime scene.

Prosecutors said they did not have a motive for the killing of Ms Cordingley – a health store worker and animal shelter volunteer – and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

The trial at Cairns Supreme court heard that DNA highly likely to be Mr Singh’s was discovered on a stick in the victim’s grave.

Data from mobile phone towers also suggested Ms Cordingley’s phone had moved in a similar pattern to Mr Singh’s blue Alfa Romeo car on the day the victim went missing.

The prosecution also suggested the hurried way Mr Singh left Australia without saying goodbye to his family or colleagues pointed to his guilt.

Mr Singh had denied murder – and had told an undercover police officer he had seen the killing, then left the country, leaving behind his wife and children because he feared for his own life.

His defence lawyer said he was “a coward” but not a killer, and accused police of a “flawed” investigation that did not look sufficiently at other possible suspects.

They said DNA found at the scene, including on the victim’s discarded selfie stick, did not match Mr Singh’s profile.

“There is an unknown person’s DNA at that grave site,” defence barrister Angus Edwards told the jury.

Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, the film production company behind franchises such as The Matrix, the Joker and Ocean’s has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, according to a filing with a Delaware court.

The firm has blamed its financial troubles on a legal battle with its former partner Warner Bros (WB) and a “failed and costly endeavour” into the production of independent films and television series.

In a bid to mitigate some of its financial problems, Village Roadshow is proposing to sell its extensive film library for $365m (£281m).

The company’s debts are estimated to be between $500m and $1bn, according to the court documents.

Village RoadShow and WB produced and co-owned dozens of films over the years but their relationship soured in early 2022 after the release of the latest Matrix film – The Matrix Resurrections – on the streaming platform HBO Max.

Village Roadshow alleged WB had shut it out of its rights to any sequels and prequels of the films the two companies had previously worked on together.

“The WB arbitration has caused the company to incur more than $18m in legal fees, nearly all of which remain unpaid”, chief restructuring officer Keith Maib said in a court filing.

That legal battle, according to Mr Maib, has “irreparably decimated the working relationship” between the two companies, ultimately ending “the most lucrative nexus” for Village Roadshow’s historic success.

The other issue faced by Village Roadshow was a costly studio business launched in 2018. None of the films or television series independently produced as part of that endeavour delivered any profits.

Like other film companies in the US, Village Roadshow also struggled with a slump in demand from the pandemic and the disruption from the strike action by Hollywood actors and writers, which started in May 2023.

In December, the Writers Guild of America banned its members from working with Village Roadshow over the company’s alleged failure to pay its contributors.

A group of scientists due to work together for months at a remote Antarctic research station has been rocked after a member of the team was accused of physical assault.

A team of nine researchers were due to spend the Antarctic winter at the South African-run base, which sits about 170km (about 105 miles) from the edge of the ice shelf and is difficult to reach.

But a spokesperson for the South African government told the BBC “there was an assault” at the station, following earlier allegations of inappropriate behaviour from inside the camp.

In a further message seen by the BBC, the South African environment ministry said it was responding to the concerns with “utmost urgency”.

South Africa’s Sunday Times, which was first to report the story, said members of the team had pleaded to be rescued.

The ministry said that those in the team had been subject to “a number of evaluations that include background checks, reference checks, medical assessment as well as a psychometric evaluation by qualified professionals”, which all members had cleared.

In a subsequent statement, the ministry added that it was “not uncommon” for individuals to have an initial adjustment when they arrive at extremely remote areas even if assessments showed no areas of concern.

It said when the vessel departed for Antarctica on 1 February “all was in order”, and the incident was first reported to the ministry on 27 February.

The statement added the department “immediately activated the response plan in order to mediate and restore relations at the base”.

“This process has been ongoing on an almost daily basis in order to ensure that those on the base know that the Department is supportive and willing to do whatever is needed to restore the interpersonal relationships, but also firm in dealing with issues of discipline,” it said.

The department said allegations of sexual harassment were also being investigated, but that reports of sexual assault were incorrect.

The department added that a government minister was personally handling the incident, and the alleged perpetrator had “willingly participated in further psychological evaluation, has shown remorse and is willingly cooperative to follow any interventions that are recommended”.

The alleged perpetrator has also written a formal apology to the victim, it said.

The Sanae IV research base is located more than 4,000km from mainland South Africa and harsh weather conditions mean scientists can be cut off there for much of the year.

The base typically houses staff who stay through the Antarctic winter for approximately 13 months.

South African research expeditions have been taking place since 1959. The team to the Sanae IV base typically comprises a doctor, two mechanics, three engineers, a meteorological technician and a couple of physicists.

These expeditions, with harsh weather conditions mandating a lot of time spent in a confined indoor space, normally run without incident.

But on Sunday, South Africa’s Sunday Times reported that one member of the team had sent an email warning of “deeply disturbing behaviour” by a colleague and an “environment of fear”.

A South African government spokesperson told the BBC that the alleged assault was triggered by “a dispute over a task the team leader wanted the team to do – a weather dependant task that required a schedule change”.

Incidents in Antarctica are rare, but not unprecedented. In 2018 there were reports of a stabbing at the Russian-operated Bellingshausen research station.

Psychologists point to the effect that isolation can have on human behaviour.

“One thing we know from these rare occurrences, when something bad happens in enforced isolation or capsule working, is that it’s often the small things, tiny things that can blow up into conflict,” said Craig Jackson, professor of workplace health psychology at Birmingham City University, and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society.

“So issues about hierarchy, about workload allocation, even small things about leisure time or rations or food portions can rapidly flare up to become something much larger than they typically are,” he told the BBC.

Gabrielle Walker, a scientist and author who has been on expeditions to Antarctica, said working in such close proximity to a small group of colleagues had risks.

“You know exactly how they put their coffee cup down and what direction the handle points in; you know that they scratch their nose three times before they sit down; you know everything about them.

“And in the bad circumstances, it can start to irritate you… because there’s nothing else – there’s no other stimulus and you’re with people 24/7,” she said.

Sources within the Antarctic research community have told the BBC that South Africa has access to an ice-capable ship and aircraft if needed.

But any rescue operation would have to contend with the harsh climate, with temperatures well below freezing and the possibility of strong winds.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to get exclusive insight on the latest climate and environment news from the BBC’s Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt, delivered to your inbox every week. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Donald Trump is due to speak on the phone to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss a US-proposed Ukraine ceasefire deal.

The peace proposal on the table was discussed by Ukrainian and American delegates in Saudi Arabia last week.

After hours locked away in a room, they announced proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine said it was ready to accept.

Now Russia and the US will discuss the deal, but what could the two leaders talk about?

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Trump posted on Truth Social that he will speak to Putin on Tuesday morning.

The US president says “many elements” of a peace agreement in Ukraine have been agreed, but “much remains” to be worked upon.

“Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW. I look very much forward to the call with President Putin,” Trump wrote.

He earlier told reporters that “we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it”.

The White House also sounded a more upbeat note on Monday, saying peace in Ukraine had “never been closer”.

However, there have been varying views from within the Trump administration of how advanced the ceasefire talks are.

Speaking after his meeting in Jeddah with Ukrainian officials on 11 March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the “bulk” of the conversation had been “what a negotiation process would look like” and not “the specific conditions”.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met Putin on Thursday in Moscow, has also struck a more measured tone.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on what the leaders would discuss, responding: “We never do that”.

While Putin has previously said he supports a ceasefire, he also set out a list of conditions for achieving peace.

Speaking at a news conference in Moscow on 13 March, Putin said of the ceasefire proposal: “The idea is right – and we support it – but there are questions that we need to discuss.”

Putin also outlined some of his questions over how a ceasefire would work. He asked: “How will those 30 days be used? For Ukraine to mobilise? Rearm? Train people? Or none of that? Then a question – how will that be controlled?

“Who will give the order to end the fighting? At what cost? Who decides who has broken any possible ceasefire, over 2,000km? All those questions need meticulous work from both sides. Who polices it?”

Asked on Sunday what concessions were being considered in the ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants […] We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also told reporters on Monday that Trump was “determined” to secure the peace deal.

On what the talks might cover, she said: “There’s a power plant that is on the border of Russia and Ukraine that was up for discussion with the Ukrainians, and he will address it in his call with Putin tomorrow.”

The facility is likely to be the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. It has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, and fears of a nuclear accident have persisted due to fighting in the area.

Another area of contention is Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a military incursion last August and captured some territory.

Russia had pushed to recapture it in recent weeks, and Putin now claims it is fully back in control of Kursk.

He has also raised numerous questions about how a ceasefire could be monitored and policed along the frontline in the east and has said he would not accept Nato troops on the territory.

France’s President Macron and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who met on Tuesday, stressed their nations would continue their “unwavering” support of Ukraine and demand “clear commitments” from Russia.

In his nightly address on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of prolonging the war.

“This proposal could have been implemented long ago,” he said, adding that “every day in wartime means human lives”.

Meanwhile, the UK and France have urged Putin to prove he wants a peace deal with Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the “courage” of Zelensky in agreeing to a ceasefire proposal, and challenged Russia to do the same.

“Enough deaths. Enough lives destroyed. Enough destruction. The guns must fall silent,” Macron said in a post on X.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Putin should agree to a “full and unconditional ceasefire now”, telling MPs he had seen “no sign” that Putin was serious about a peace deal.

He warned that the UK and its allies had “more cards that we can play” to help force Russia to negotiate “seriously”.