This is the gravest crisis for Western security since the end of World War Two, and a lasting one. As one expert puts it, “Trumpism will outlast his presidency”. But which nations are equipped to step to the fore as the US stands back?

At 09.00 one morning in February 1947, the UK ambassador in Washington, Lord Inverchapel, walked into the State Department to hand the US Secretary of State, George Marshall, two diplomatic messages printed on blue paper to emphasise their importance: one on Greece, the other on Turkey.

Exhausted, broke and heavily in debt to the United States, Britain told the US that it could no longer continue its support for the Greek government forces that were fighting an armed Communist insurgency. Britain had already announced plans to pull out of Palestine and India and to wind down its presence in Egypt.

The United States saw immediately that there was now a real danger that Greece would fall to the Communists and, by extension, to Soviet control. And if Greece went, the United States feared that Turkey could be next, giving Moscow control of the Eastern Mediterranean including, potentially, the Suez Canal, a vital global trade route.

Almost overnight, the United States stepped into the vacuum left by the departing British.

“It must be a policy of the United States,” President Harry Truman announced, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.”

It was the start of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. At its heart was the idea that helping to defend democracy abroad was vital to the United States’ national interests.

There followed two major US initiatives: the Marshall Plan, a massive package of assistance to rebuild the shattered economies of Europe, and the creation of Nato in 1949, which was designed to defend democracies from a Soviet Union that had now extended its control over the eastern part of Europe.

It is easy to see this as the moment that leadership of the western world passed from Britain to the United States. More accurately it is the moment that revealed that it already had.

The United States, traditionally isolationist and safely sheltered by two vast oceans, had emerged from World War Two as the leader of the free world. As America projected its power around the globe, it spent the post-war decades remaking much of the world in its own image.

The baby boomer generation grew up in a world that looked, sounded and behaved more like the United States than ever before. And it became the western world’s cultural, economic and military hegemon.

Yet the fundamental assumptions on which the United States has based its geostrategic ambitions now look set to change.

Donald Trump is the first US President since World War Two to challenge the role that his country set for itself many decades ago. And he is doing this in such a way that, to many, the old world order appears to be over – and the new world order has yet to take shape.

The question is, which nations will step forward? And, with the security of Europe under greater strain than at any time almost in living memory, can its leaders, who are currently scrabbling around, find an adequate response?

President Trump’s critique of the post-1945 international order dates back decades. Nearly 40 years ago he took out full-page advertisements in three US newspapers to criticise the United States’ commitment to the defence of the world’s democracies.

“For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States,” he wrote in 1987. “Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?

“The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”

It’s a position he has repeated since his second inauguration.

And the fury felt by some in his administration for what they perceive as European reliance on the United States was apparently shown in the leaked messages about air strikes on Houthis in Yemen that emerged this week.

In the messages, an account named Vice-President JD Vance wrote that European countries might benefit from the strikes. It said: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

Another account, identified as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

Trump’s own position appears to go beyond criticising those he says are taking advantage of the United State’s generosity. At the start of his second presidency, he seemed to embrace Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling Russia that Ukraine would not be granted Nato membership and that it should not expect to get back the territory it has lost to Russia.

Many saw this as giving away two major bargaining chips before talks had even started. He apparently asked Russia for nothing in return.

On the flipside, certain Trump supporters see in Putin a strong leader who embodies many of the conservative values they themselves share.

To some, Putin is an ally in a “war on woke”.

The United States’ foreign policy is now driven, in part at least, by the imperatives of its culture wars. The security of Europe has become entangled in the battle between two polarised and mutually antagonistic visions of what the United States stands for.

Some think the division is about more than Trump’s particular views and that Europe can not just sit tight waiting for his term in office to end.

“The US is becoming divorced from European values,” argues Ed Arnold, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London. “That’s difficult [for Europeans] to swallow because it means that it’s structural, cultural and potentially long-term. “

“I think the current trajectory of the US will outlast Trump, as a person. I think Trumpism will outlast his presidency.”

The Trump White House has said it will no longer be the primary guarantor of European security, and that European nations should be responsible for their own defence and pay for it.

“If [Nato countries] don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them. No, I’m not going to defend them,” the president said earlier this month.

For almost 80 years, the cornerstone of European security has been embedded in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one member state of the alliance is an attack on all.

In Downing Street last month, just before his visit to the White House, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told me during an interview that he was satisfied that the United States remained the leading member of Nato and that Trump personally remained committed to Article 5.

Others are less sure.

Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary in the last Conservative government, told me earlier this month: “I think Article 5 is on life support.

“If Europe, including the United Kingdom, doesn’t step up to the plate, invest a lot on defence and take it seriously, it’s potentially the end of the Nato that we know and it’ll be the end of Article 5.

“Right now, I wouldn’t bet my house that Article 5 would be able to be triggered in the event of a Russian attack… I certainly wouldn’t take for granted that the United States would ride to the rescue.”

According to polling by the French company Institut Elabe, nearly three quarters of French people now think that the United States is not an ally of France. A majority in Britain and a very large majority in Denmark, both historically pro-American countries, now have unfavourable views of the United States as well.

“The damage Trump has done to Nato is probably irreparable,” argues Robert Kagan, a conservative commentator, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC who has been a long time critic of Trump.

“The alliance relied on an American guarantee that is no longer reliable, to say the least”.

And yet Trump is by no means the first US president to tell Europe to get its defence spending in order. In 2016 Barack Obama urged Nato allies to increase theirs, saying: “Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence.”

All of this is great news for Putin. “The entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes,” he said last year. “Europe is being marginalised in global economic development, plunged into the chaos of challenges such as migration, and losing international agency and cultural identity.”

In early March, three days after Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous meeting with Trump and Vance in the White House, a Kremlin spokesman declared “the fragmentation of the West has begun”.

“Look at Russia’s objectives in Europe,” says Armida van Rij, head of the Europe programme at Chatham House. “Its objectives are to destabilise Europe. It is to weaken Nato, and get the Americans to withdraw their troops from here.

“And at the moment you could go ‘tick, tick and almost tick’. Because it is destabilising Europe. It is weakening Nato. It hasn’t gone as far as to get the US to withdraw troops from Europe, but in a few months time, who knows where we’ll be?”

One of the great challenges Europe, in particular, faces from here is the question of how to arm itself adequately. Eighty years of reliance on the might of the United States has left many European democracies exposed.

Britain, for example, has cut military spending by nearly 70% since the height of the Cold War. (At the end of the Cold War, in the early 1990s, Europe allowed itself a peace dividend and began a decades-long process of reducing defence spending.)

“We had a big budget [during the Cold War] and we took a peace dividend,” says Wallace. “Now, you could argue that that was warranted.

“The problem is we went from a peace dividend to corporate raiding. [Defence] just became the go-to department to take money from. And that is where we just forgot the lessons of our history.”

The prime minister told parliament last month that Britain would increase defence spending from 2.3% of GDP to 2.5% by 2027. But is that enough?

“It is enough just to stand still,” argues Wallace. “It wouldn’t be enough to fix the things we need to make ourselves more deployable, and to plug the gaps if the Americans left.”

Then there is the wider question of military recruitment. “The West is in freefall in its military recruiting, it’s not just Britain,” argues Wallace.

“At the moment, young people aren’t joining the military. And that’s a problem.”

But Germany’s new Chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has said Europe must make itself independent of the United States. And “Europeanising” NATO will require the build up of an indigenous European military-industrial complex capable of delivering capabilities that currently only the United States has.

Others share the view that Europe must become more self reliant militarily – but some are concerned that not all of Europe is on board with this.

“Where we are at the moment is that the East Europeans by and large, don’t need to get the memo,” says Ian Bond, deputy director, Centre for European Reform. “The further west you go, the more problematic it becomes until you get to Spain and Italy.”

Mr Arnold agrees: “The view in Europe now is this isn’t really a debate anymore, it’s a debate of how we do it and maybe how quickly we do it, but we need to do this now.”

There is a short list of “very important things” that only the United States currently provides, according to historian Timothy Garton Ash.

“These are the so-called strategic enablers,” he says. “The satellites, the intelligence, the Patriot air defence batteries, which are the only ones that can take down Russian ballistic missiles. And within three to five years we [countries other than the US] should aim to have our own version of these.

“And in this process of transition, from the American-led Nato [the idea is] you will have a Nato that is so Europeanised that its forces, together with national forces and EU capacities, are capable of defending Europe – even if an American president says ‘leave us out of this’.”

The question is how to achieve this.

Ms van Rij stresses that, in her view, Europe does need to build a Europe-owned European defence industrial base – but she foresees difficulties.

“What’s really difficult are the divisions within Europe on how to actually do this and whether to actually do this.”

The European Commission and experts have been trying to figure out how this defence may work for several decades. “It has traditionally been very difficult because of vested national interests… So this is not going to be easy.”

In the meantime, Trump appears ready to turn the page on the post-Cold War rules-based international order of sovereign states that are free to choose their own destinies and alliances.

Donald Trump appears ready to turn the page on the post-Cold War rules-based international order, of sovereign states that are free to choose their own destinies and alliances. What he seems to share with Vladimir Putin is a desire for a world in which the major powers, unconstrained by internationally agreed laws, are free to impose their will on smaller, weaker nations, as Russia has traditionally done in both its Tsarist and Soviet Empires. That would mean a return to the “spheres of interest” system that prevailed for forty years after the Second World War.

We don’t know exactly what Donald Trump would do were a Nato country to be attacked. But the point is that the guarantee of US help can no longer be taken for granted. That means Europe has to react. Its challenge appears to be to stay united, finally make good on funding its own defence, and avoid being drawn into the “sphere of influence” of any of the big powers.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a naval ceasefire in the Black Sea in separate deals with the US, after three days of peace talks in Saudi Arabia.

Washington said all parties would continue working toward a “durable and lasting peace” in statements announcing the agreements, which would reopen an important trade route.

They have also committed to “develop measures” to implement a previously agreed ban on attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, the White House said.

But Russia said the naval ceasefire would only come into force after a number of sanctions against its food and fertiliser trade were lifted.

US officials have been separately meeting negotiators from Moscow and Kyiv in Riyadh with the aim of brokering a truce between the two sides. The Russian and Ukrainian delegations have not met directly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the deal to halt strikes in the Black Sea was a step in the right direction.

“It is too early to say that it will work, but these were the right meetings, the right decisions, the right steps,” he told a press conference in Kyiv.

“No-one can accuse Ukraine of not moving towards sustainable peace after this,” he added, after US President Donald Trump had previously accused him of blocking a peace deal.

But shortly after Washington’s announcement, the Kremlin said the Black Sea ceasefire would not take effect until sanctions were lifted from Russian banks, producers and exporters involved in the international food and fertiliser trades.

The measures demanded by Russia include reconnecting the banks concerned to the SwiftPay payment system, lifting restrictions on servicing ships under the Russian flag involved in the food trade, and on the supply of agricultural machinery and other goods needed for the production of food.

It was unclear from the White House’s statement when the agreement is meant to come into force.

When asked about lifting the sanctions, Trump told reporters: “We’re thinking about all of them right now. We’re looking at them.”

Washington’s statement on the US-Russia talks does say the US will “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports”.

Speaking in Kyiv, Zelensky described this as a “weakening of positions”.

He also said Ukraine would push for further sanctions on Russia and more military support from the US if Moscow reneged on its commitments.

Later, in his nightly address to Ukrainians, Zelensky accused the Kremlin of lying when it said the Black Sea ceasefire depended on sanctions being lifted.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said “third countries” could oversee parts of the deal.

But he warned that the movement of Russian warships beyond the “eastern part of the Black Sea” would be treated as a violation of the agreement and a “threat to the national security of Ukraine”.

“In this case Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defence,” he added.

A previous arrangement allowing safe passage of commercial ships in the Black Sea was agreed in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.

Both Ukraine and Russia are major grain exporters, and prices rocketed after the start of the war.

The “Black Sea grain deal” was put in place to allow cargo ships travelling to and from Ukraine to safely navigate without being attacked by Russia.

The deal facilitated the movement of grain, sunflower oil and other products required for food production, such as fertiliser, through the Black Sea.

It was initially in place for a period of 120 days but, after multiple extensions, Russia pulled out in July 2023, claiming key parts of the agreement had not been implemented.

After this week’s talks, both countries have also agreed to “develop measures” to implement a ban on attacking energy infrastructure on each other’s territory.

Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power supply have caused widespread blackouts throughout the war, leaving thousands of people without heating in the cold of winter.

Attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear power stations have led the UN’s atomic watchdog to call for restraint.

A ban was initially agreed in a call between Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin last week, but within hours of it being announced, both Moscow and Kyiv accused the other of breaching it.

Earlier on Tuesday, Moscow said Ukraine had continued to target Russia’s civilian energy infrastructure while the peace talks in Riyadh were under way.

The alleged attack showed Zelensky was “incapable of sticking to agreements”, Russia’s defence ministry said.

It came after Russia launched a missile strike targeting north-eastern Ukraine on Monday, leaving more than 100 people wounded in the city of Sumy.

On Tuesday morning, Ukraine said Russia launched some 139 drones and one ballistic missile overnight.

Up to 30 Russian troops were killed in an air strike on military infrastructure in Kursk, Kyiv added.

US Vice-President JD Vance will join his wife Usha in travelling to Greenland on Friday, a visit that follows Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island.

The couple will go to the Pituffik Space Base to receive a briefing on Arctic security issues and meet members of US forces stationed there, according to the White House.

Usha Vance had planned to travel to the Danish territory on a cultural visit before her husband announced his plans. Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz is also set to visit this week on a separate trip.

Officials in Greenland have fiercely criticised the planned visits as disrespectful.

Greenland – the world’s biggest island, situated between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans – has been controlled by Denmark, nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away, for about 300 years.

It governs its own domestic affairs, but decisions on foreign and defence policy are made in Copenhagen. The US has long held a security interest and a military presence there since World War Two.

The Pituffik Space Base, located in the north-west of Greenland, supports missile warning, air defence and space surveillance missions.

In a video posted on social media platform X, Vance said there was a lot of excitement around his wife’s trip to Greenland. He is joining her because he “didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself”.

He said the visit to the military installation was to check on the island’s security, as “a lot of other countries have threatened Greenland, have threatened to use its territories and its waterways to threaten the United States, to threaten Canada, and of course, to threaten the people of Greenland”.

He added that the Trump administration wants to “reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland”, and that the United States and Denmark have ignored it for “far too long”.

It is unclear if Mike Waltz is still scheduled to visit. The BBC has reached out to the White House for confirmation.

Dr Dwayne Ryan Menezes, founder and managing director of Polar Research and Policy Initiative think tank, based in London, criticised the visit.

He said it is “highly unusual” that a high-level delegation of US officials are visiting Greenland without being invited, especially after a national election in the country, where the parties are still in talks to form the next government.

The US’ interest in Greenland’s security, given its strategic importance, makes sense, he said. But he added that it is “inexplicable” for Washington DC to have taken such an aggressive approach, especially in light of Trump’s comments about acquiring the territory.

“Disrespecting the people of Greenland by saying the US will acquire it ‘one way or the other’ is unhelpful and counter-productive as a tactic,” he added.

According to recent polls, almost 80% of Greenlanders back independence from Denmark. But an opinion survey in January suggested an even greater number rejected the idea of becoming part of the US.

US President Donald Trump and his intelligence chiefs have played down a security breach that saw a journalist invited into a Signal group chat where he reported seeing national security officials plan airstrikes in Yemen.

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe denied at a Senate hearing that any classified information was shared in the message chain. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth also faced scrutiny for the messages, though he did not testify.

Democrats on the panel rebuked the cabinet members as “incompetent” with national security.

Over at the White House, Trump stood by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who was at the centre of the leak.

The revelation has sent shockwaves through Washington, prompting a lawsuit and questions about why high-ranking officials discussed such sensitive matters on a potentially vulnerable civilian app.

Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the 18-member group, apparently by accident, and reported that he initially thought it was a hoax.

But he said he realised the messages were authentic once the planned raid was carried out in Yemen.

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Some 53 people were killed in the 15 March airstrikes, which US officials said targeted Iran-aligned Houthi rebels who have threatened maritime trade and Israel.

The American raids have continued since then, including early on Tuesday morning.

In addition to Ratcliffe and Gabbard, the Signal group chat included Vice-President JD Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

The controversy overshadowed Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was originally meant to focus on drug cartels and people trafficking.

During the at-times combative session, Ratcliffe said he was not aware of any specific operational information on weapons, targets or timings discussed in the chat, as Goldberg had reported.

Asked if he believed the leak was a huge mistake, Ratcliffe said: “No.”

Gabbard repeatedly said “no classified information” was divulged and maintained there was a difference between “inadvertent release” and “malicious leaks” of information.

• Disdain for Europe in US Signal chat horrifies EU
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Both pointed to Hegseth as being the authority on whether the information was classified. Goldberg reported that much of the most sensitive information shared in the chat came from the account under Hegseth’s name.

“The Secretary of Defense is the original classification authority for DoD in deciding what would be classified information,” Ratcliffe said.

Senate Democrats assailed the Gabbard and Ratcliffe.

Colorado’s Michael Bennet accused those involved in the chat of sloppiness, incompetence and disrespect for US intelligence agencies.

Georgia’s Jon Ossoff described the episode – which Washington has dubbed Signalgate – as an “embarrassment”.

“This is utterly unprofessional. There’s been no apology,” Ossoff said. “There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error.”

Republicans on the panel were far more muted in their misgivings.

“We dodged a bullet,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker, who leads the the Senate’s armed services committee, later told reporters that lawmakers will investigate the Signal chat leak.

Wicker told reporters that he wants the investigation to be bipartisan and for the committee to have full access to the group chat’s transcript.

“We need to find out if it’s completely factual, and then make recommendations,” he told the NewsNation network. “But I expect we’ll have the co-operation of the administration.”

Republican Jim Risch of Idaho, who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also said that he expects the matter to be investigated.

“This is a matter that’s going to be investigated, obviously, we’re going to know a lot more about it as the facts role out,” he said, quoted by The Hill newspaper.

Trump and his White House team cast the controversy as a “co-ordinated effort” to distract from the president’s accomplishments.

Throughout the day, Trump played down the leak and defended his national security adviser who was reported to have admitted Goldberg to the group chat.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC in a morning phone interview. He also said Goldberg’s addition to the group was a “glitch” that had “no impact at all” operationally.

The Republican president indicated it was one of Waltz’s aides who had invited the journalist to the chat.

“A staffer had his number on there,” said Trump, who has long pilloried reporting by Goldberg going back to the 2020 election.

At an event later at the White House, Trump was joined by Waltz.

“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” said the president. “They used an app, if you want to call it an app, that a lot of people use, a lot of people in government use, a lot of people in the media use.”

In his own brief remarks, Waltz took aim at Goldberg. He said he had never had any contact with the reporter and accused him of wanting to focus on “more hoaxes”, rather than Trump administration successes.

Trump later spoke to Newsmax, where he told the conservative network that “somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that was with Mike Waltz, worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had, I guess Goldberg’s” phone number.

Waltz came close to apologising by Tuesday evening, telling Fox News: “I take full responsibility. I built the group.”

“It’s embarrassing. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

Asked if he had identified who on his staff was at fault, he responded, “a staffer wasn’t responsible,” and repeated that the error was his “full responsibility”.

Waltz also said that he had spoken to Elon Musk, who is leading the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency and has touted himself as “tech support” for the federal government.

“We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened,” Waltz continued, adding that Goldberg “wasn’t on my phone”.

Some national security experts have argued that the leak was a major operational lapse, and archive experts warned that it violated laws on presidential record keeping.

On Tuesday, the non-partisan watchdog group American Oversight sued the individual officials who participated in the chat for alleged violations of the Federal Records Act and Administrative Procedure Act.

The group said that by setting the chat to automatically delete messages, the group violated a law requiring White House officials to submit their records to the National Archives.

The National Security Agency warned employees only last month of vulnerabilities in Signal, according to documents obtained by the BBC’s US partner CBS.

Signal issued a new statement on Tuesday disputing “vulnerabilities” in its messaging platform.

“Signal is open source, so our code is regularly scrutinized in addition to regular formal audits,” the statement said, calling the app “the gold standard for private, secure communications”.

Mick Mulroy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence (DASD) for the Middle East and a retired CIA paramilitary officer, told the BBC that holding sensitive discussions on a “unsure commercial application” was “unacceptable”.

“And everyone on that chat knew it,” he added. “You do not need to be a member of the military or intelligence community to know that this information is exactly what the enemy would want to know.”

At least 18 people have been killed and 19 injured as South Korea’s wildfires continue to ravage the country’s southeast, according to the latest numbers from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.

The “unprecedented” crisis remains critical, according to acting president Han Duck-soo, who said the fires are “rewriting the record books for the worst wildfires in our nation’s history”.

More than 23,000 people have been evacuated and hundreds of structures damaged, with strong winds fuelling the blaze.

Several heritage cultural sites have also been affected, including a 1,300-year-old Buddhist temple that was destroyed, while other national treasures are being relocated.

Thousands of firefighters and about 5,000 military personnel have been deployed to contain multiple blazes, including helicopters from the US military stationed in Korea.

On Tuesday, the national fire agency said it had raised the crisis to the highest fire response level, the first time this year such an alert has been issued.

Wildfires are relatively uncommon in South Korea, and related fatalities are rare. The current fires, which have killed 18 people within the past few days, are already the deadliest in the country’s history.

About 17,000 hectares of forest have also been destroyed, making the fires the third largest in South Korea’s history in terms of area.

The Korea Heritage Service, an agency charged with preserving and promoting Korean cultural heritage, upgraded its disaster warning to the highest “serious” level on Tuesday due to very high risk of damage to heritage sites.

The blazes raging in the city of Uiseong burned down the Gounsa Temple, built in 618 AD, which was one of the largest temples in the province.

A Buddhist architectural structure deemed a national treasure from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) was also destroyed, forestry authorities confirmed.

Acting president Han said all available personnel and equipment have been deployed, but strong winds continue to hamper the support efforts.

“We were desperately hoping for rain today or tomorrow to help extinguish the flames,” Han added.

“This level of wildfire damage is unlike anything we’ve experienced before.”

There was no rain forecast for the region on Wednesday and only a small amount – five to 10mm – expected on Thursday, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration.

Han said the government will thoroughly review all shortcomings in the wildfire response once the crisis is controlled and seek to improve prevention strategies for the future.

“Once a wildfire starts, extinguishing it requires tremendous resources and puts precious lives in danger,” he said.

South Korea has been experiencing drier than normal conditions with less rainfall than average. There have already been 244 wildfires this year – 2.4 times more than the same period last year.

The government also promised to strengthen enforcement against illegal burning -one of the main causes of wildfires – and crack down on individual carelessness.

The wildfires first broke out last Friday in Sancheong County, in the country’s southeast, but have now spread to neighbouring cities of Uiseong, Andong, Cheongsong, Yeongyang and Yeongdeok.

Bollywood actress Rhea Chakraborty was called “a gold digger” and “a murderer”. She was slut-shamed and spent 27 days in prison after a hate-filled vicious media campaign in 2020 alleged she had been involved in the death of her actor boyfriend Sushant Singh Rajput.

Now, India’s federal investigators have told a court that Rajput, a rising star in India’s popular Hindi film industry, died by suicide and that neither Chakraborty nor her family had a role in his death.

In a statement shared with the BBC, senior lawyer Satish Maneshinde, who fought Chakraborty’s case, said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had “thoroughly investigated every aspect of the case from all angles and closed it”.

The findings have been presented in a special court in Mumbai, which will now decide whether to close the case or to order further investigation.

Mr Maneshinde said Chakraborty went through “untold miseries” and was jailed “for no fault of hers”.

“The false narrative in the social media and electronic media was totally uncalled for,” he said, calling on media bosses to “reflect upon what they did”.

“Innocent people were hounded and paraded before the media and investigative authorities. I hope this does not repeat in any case.”

Feminist lawyer Payal Chawla, meanwhile, described the “misogynistic narrative surrounding Chakraborty” as “deeply troubling” and said the case “should serve as a cautionary reminder of the perils of being judgmental”.

Chakraborty herself has offered no comment since news of CBI wanting to close the case broke at the weekend. On Monday, she was seen visiting a temple along with her brother and father – who were also named in a police complaint filed over Rajput’s death.

Perhaps the only sign that the family feel vindicated comes from her brother Showik – who spent three months in prison before being freed on bail. He shared a photo with Rhea and the caption “Satyamev Jayate” – Sanskrit for “truth alone prevails”.

Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai apartment on 14 June 2020. Mumbai police said the 34-year-old had mental health issues, for which he was under treatment, and appeared to have taken his own life.

Chakraborty, who had been dating Rajput for a year and was living with him, had gone to live with her parents a few days before his death.

“Still struggling to face my emotions… an irreparable numbness in my heart… I will never come to terms with you not being here anymore,” she later wrote on social media about her grief.

But within weeks, the actress found herself at the centre of a firestorm after Rajput’s father lodged a police complaint, accusing Chakraborty of stealing his son’s money and contributing to his suicide. He also denied that his son had any mental health issues.

The Rajput family has not commented on the latest developments regarding his death.

Chakraborty, who consistently denied all the allegations against her, appealed to the government to order a fair probe into the death.

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However, the tragedy – which came in the midst of a lockdown while India was struggling with the coronavirus pandemic – became the biggest prime-time story for a nation glued to their television sets.

And Chakraborty became the subject of misogynistic abuse, with trolls calling her a “witch”, a “fortune huntress”, a “mafia moll” and “sex bait to trap rich men”. She received rape and death threats.

Some of India’s most high-profile television hosts dedicated their entire shows to discussing the case, describing her as a “manipulative” woman who “performed black magic” and “drove Sushant to suicide”.

A video that went viral at the time showed a prominent news anchor hysterically gesticulating and accusing Chakraborty of being “a druggie”. Another channel had a female anchor walk in on the live set, claiming she had “a bagful of documents” that could prove the actress’s guilt.

The vicious hate campaign continued until Chakraborty was arrested three months after Rajput’s death.

She was released a month later and has since tried her hand at motivational speaking and has now reinvented herself as a businesswoman who has launched a clothing line and her own podcast with celebrity interviews. She is also doing a reality TV show.

Chakraborty has also spoken about her ordeal, including how the name-calling and character assassination cost her work and how her family were also hounded.

“I tried contacting people in the [Hindi film] industry, asking for roles, any roles. But then I realised that people won’t cast you because of all that had happened,” she told Humans of Bombay last year.

“I was very angry for a long time. But it gave me acidity and I suffered from gut issues. So, it became important for me to forgive,” she said, adding ” I have not forgiven everyone. Some people are on my hit list.

It is not clear what action she is contemplating against those who vilified her, but many are now suggesting on social media that she sue them for damages.

While neither the actress or her lawyer have not yet said what they intend to do, columnist Namita Bhandare points out that seeking compensation in India, with its overburdened judiciary and millions of pending court cases, is anything but easy.

“A defamation case can go on for a decade and she would possibly get an apology at the end of it. So would she even bother to do that?”

According to Ms Bhandare, Chakraborty “became expendable in the pursuit of a juicy story” since she “was not a big name and had no powerful people backing her in the film industry”.

What happened, the columnist continued, “was in keeping with the traditional Indian thinking” to blame the female partner left behind, and also highlighted the “dark side of social media, which tends to find a villain and then sets about demolishing their reputation”.

Some of the videos of prominent news anchors making slanderous comments against Chakraborty have now resurfaced, and are being shared extensively on social media. Many people, including some of the actress’s Bollywood colleagues, are demanding that the presenters apologise to her.

“You went on a witch-hunt. You caused deep anguish and harassment just for TRPs [a metric used to gauge advertising reach]. Apologise. That’s the very least you can do,” Bollywood actress Dia Mirza said on Instagram.

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• Mystery and voyeurism around Bollywood star’s death

Journalist Rohini Singh named specific TV channels and asked if they would apologise to Chakraborty.

“If they have any shame, any shred of human decency they should issue a grovelling apology for slandering her, telling outrageous lies, getting her imprisoned only because they were determined to run an agenda,” she posted on X.

The issue was also raised in parliament on Tuesday. Journalist-turned-MP Sagarika Ghosh questioned the character assassination Chakraborty was subjected to.

“News channels ran motivated campaigns against her. Today she’s proven innocent. But who will give those years back to her when she endured such humiliation at the hand of media?” she asked.

Papua New Guinea has blocked access to Facebook in what authorities call a “test” to limit hate speech, misinformation and pornography.

The sudden ban, which started on Monday, has drawn criticism from opposition MPs and political critics, who called it a violation of human rights.

Defending the move, Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr said the government is not trying to suppress free speech, but that it has the “responsibility to protect citizens from harmful content”.

Facebook is the most popular social media platform in Papua New Guinea, with an estimated 1.3 million users – including many small businesses that rely on it for sales.

Social media has also been key in facilitating public discourse amid declining press freedom in the country.

Neville Choi, president of Papua New Guinea’s media council, said the move “borders on political autocracy, and an abuse of human rights”.

More concerning was the fact that at least two government agencies that oversee communication and technology said they were unaware of the government’s plans, Mr Choi pointed out, despite the police saying its “test” was done in partnership with these agencies.

“We are now heading into dangerous territory and everyone is powerless to stop this tyranny,” opposition MP Allan Bird wrote on Facebook.

Monday’s ban comes months after the passing of new counter-terrorism laws, which gives the government powers to monitor and restrict online communications, , among other things.

“It is draconian law designed to take away our freedoms,” Bird wrote, adding that the blocking of Facebook was “just step one”.

Despite the ban, many users have still been able to access Facebook using virtual private networks, or VPNs.

John Pora, who chairs the Small and Medium Enterprises Corporation, is more concerned about the thousands of retailers who earn their livelihoods on Facebook.

“We have a couple of hundred thousand people in the informal sector and they’ll be feeling uncertain, so I’m hoping the systems come back online soon to allow them to trade,” he said.

Papua New Guinea authorities have long threatened to make a move against Facebook. In 2018, the country banned the platform for a month while authorities attempted to root out fake profiles. At the time, authorities mooted the idea of a state-run alternative.

In 2023 Papua New Guinea launched a parliamentary inquiry into “fake news, bad news reporting and social media [platforms]” in the country.

The US has removed millions of dollars in bounties from senior members of the Haqqani militant network in Afghanistan, including one on its leader Sirajuddin Haqqani who is also the Taliban government’s interior minister.

It is a significant move given that the Haqqani network is accused of carrying out some of the most high-profile and deadly attacks in Afghanistan during the US-led war in the country, including attacks on the American and Indian embassies, and NATO forces.

Currently, the network is a key part of the Taliban government, which has controlled Afghanistan since foreign troops withdrew from the country in 2021, following a deal struck between the US and the Taliban during President Trump’s first term.

The move to lift the bounties comes weeks into President Trump’s second term, and just days after US officials met with the Taliban government in Kabul to secure the release of an American tourist, detained since 2022.

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A US state department spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that “there is no current reward” for Sirajuddin Haqqani, his brother Abdul Aziz Haqqani and brother-in-law Yahya Haqqani, but they remain ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorists and the Haqqani Network remains designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization”.

An FBI webpage, which on Monday showed a $10 million dollar bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani, has now been updated to remove the reward offer.

Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told the BBC that the lifting of bounties “was a result of continued diplomatic efforts” by his government. “It is a good step and this shows our new interaction with the world and particularly with the United States. They (the US delegation) told us they want to increase positive interaction and confidence building between us,” he added.

On Saturday, a US delegation including hostage envoy Adam Boehler and former envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad met with the Taliban government’s foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and other Taliban officials in Kabul. Afterwards, US national George Glezmann, detained in December 2022 while visiting Afghanistan as a tourist, was released by the Taliban government.

It is unclear if lifting the bounties was a part of the negotiations.

Founded by Sirajuddin Haqqani’s father, Jalaluddin Haqqani in the 1980s, the Haqqani network started out as a CIA-backed anti-Soviet outfit operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it grew into one of the most feared anti-Western militant organisations in the region.

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The group allied with the Taliban when they first took power in Afghanistan in 1996. Jalaluddin Haqqani died of a prolonged illness in 2018.

Currently, Sirajuddin Haqqani is emerging as a power centre in Afghanistan’s Taliban government, as rifts between him and the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada grow.

Members of the Taliban government have told the BBC that the issue of women’s education is a key point of disagreement between the two sides.

The Haqqanis have sought to project themselves as more moderate, galvanising support among people in the country who are frustrated by the supreme leader’s intransigence on women’s education.

The dropping of bounties by the US government is evidence that its stature is also growing externally, among parts of the international community keen to engage with the Taliban.

Thousands of people in Turkey have turned out for a seventh night of protests which have so far seen more than 1,400 people detained, including students, journalists and lawyers.

The nightly unrest began last Wednesday when the city’s Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu – who is seen as the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival – was arrested on corruption charges.

Rights groups and the UN have condemned the arrests and the use of force by police on the protesters.

Imamoglu said the allegations against him were politically motivated, a claim the Turkish president has denied.

Speaking to a group of young people at a Ramadan fast-breaking meal in Ankara on Tuesday, President Erdogan urged patience and common sense amid what he described as “very sensitive days.”

He added that people who want “to turn this country into a place of chaos have nowhere to go”, and the path protesters have taken is “a dead end”.

On Tuesday evening, thousands of students from many universities in Istanbul met in Maçka Park and then marched towards Şişli.

Authorities in Istanbul banned protests and closed some roads “in order to maintain public order” and “prevent any provocative actions that may occur”.

As students marched through the Nisantasi district they chanted “government, resign!” and waved flags and banners as they were watched by a large deployment of riot police.

Many students had their faces covered with scarves or masks, and acknowledged they feared being identified by the police.

• Why are people protesting in Turkey?
• Turkey protests are about far more than fate of Istanbul’s mayor
• Erdogan: Turkey’s all-powerful leader of 20 years
• Who is Turkish opposition leader Ekrem Imamoglu?

Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), said that Tuesday’s rally outside Istanbul’s City Hall would be its last in a run of nightly gatherings – and that it is planning a rally in the city on Saturday.

“Are you ready for a big rally in a large square in Istanbul on Saturday?” Ozgur Ozel told crowds.

“To support Imamoglu, to object to his arrest, to object to the detention of each of our mayors. To demand transparent, open, live broadcast trials, to say that we have had enough and we want early elections.”

Since last Wednesday, Turkey’s interior minister said 1,418 protesters have been detained following the days of demonstrations that the government has deemed “illegal.”

Posting on social media Ali Yerlikaya wrote: “While there are currently 979 suspects in custody, 478 people will be brought to court today.

“No concessions will be made to those who attempt to terrorise the streets, to attack our national and moral values, and to our police officers.”

Elsewhere on Tuesday, seven journalists appeared in court including AFP news agency photographer Yasin Akgül who had been covering the demonstrations.

AFP chairman Fabrice Fries has written a letter addressed to the Turkish presidency urging Erdogan to “intervene” in Akgul’s imprisonment which he described as “unacceptable”.

“Yasin Akgül was not part of the protest,” Fries said. “As a journalist, he was covering one of the many demonstrations that have been organized in the country since Wednesday 19 March.

“He has taken exactly 187 photographs since the start of the protests, each one a witness to his work as a journalist.”

Imamoglu was one of more than 100 people detained last week as part of an investigation. Others arrested included politicians, journalists and businessmen.

His arrest does not prevent his candidacy or election as president, but he will not be able to run if he is convicted of any of the charges against him.

The opposition mayor is seen as one of the most formidable rivals of Erdogan, who has held office in Turkey for 22 years as both prime minister and president.

Erdogan’s term in office is due to expire in 2028, and under the current rules, he cannot stand again – but he could call an early election or try to change the constitution to allow him to remain in power for longer.

Turkey’s Ministry of Justice has criticised those connecting Erdogan to the arrests, and insisted on its judicial independence.

Popular Indian comedian Kunal Kamra has refused to apologise after jokes he made during a stand-up show angered supporters of a top politician in Maharashtra state.

Clips of the jokes – some of them were directed at the state’s Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde – had gone viral.

Members of the Shiv Sena party, which is led by Shinde, vandalised the hotel in Mumbai – the capital of Maharashtra – where the show was held.

A police case was also registered against Kamra and politicians from the state’s ruling coalition have asked him to apologise.

In a statement released on Monday night, Kamra said he would “co-operate with the police and courts for any lawful action” taken against him.

“But will the law be fairly and equally deployed against those who have decided that vandalism is the appropriate response to being offended by a joke?” he added.

Police arrested 12 people for the vandalism at the hotel, which housed a comedy club where the show was filmed. They were later released on bail.

As the controversy raged, Shinde said he did not support the vandalism, but added that “the other person should also maintain a certain standard”.

“There is freedom of expression. We understand satire. But there should be a limit,” he told BBC Marathi.

Kamra is a well-known name in the Indian comedy scene, with his political satire and stand-up shows getting millions of views on social media.

In his latest show – called Naya Bharat (New India) – Kamra refers to Shinde’s 2022 defection from the Shiv Sena party which triggered a major political crisis in the state.

The move led to a split in the Shiv Sena – India’s Election Commission later recognised Shinde’s group as the “real” Shiv Sena. The party is now part of the governing coalition in Maharashtra along with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Nationalist Congress Party.

In the show, Kamra sang a parody of a Bollywood song where he indirectly referred to Shinde as a traitor, outraging his supporters.

It’s not clear when the show was filmed at the hotel but the reactions this week were swift.

After Shiv Sena workers ransacked the venue, the studio Habitat – which often hosted stand-up comedy shows – said it was shutting down until it figured out “the best way to provide a platform for free expression without putting ourselves and our property in jeopardy”.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Mumbai’s civic authorities, also demolished some structures at the hotel, citing alleged building violations.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is from the BJP, criticised Kamra, asking him to apologise. “None of us are against freedom of speech. We support satire or even political satire and we do not paint it differently,” he said.

Both he and Shinde accused Kamra of speaking on behalf of the opposition.

A lawmaker from Shinde’s party also said in a video that Shiv Sena workers would pursue Kamra across the country and he would be forced to leave India.

In his statement, Kamra said he would not “hide under [his] bed”, waiting for the outrage to die down.

“As far as I know, it is not against the law to poke fun at our leaders and the circus that is our political system,” he said.

Opposition leaders have supported Kamra.

Uddhav Thackeray, chief of Shinde’s former party – the Shiv Sena (UBT) – said Kamra had not done anything wrong.

“He stated the facts and voiced the public opinion,” he added.

Indian comedians have often faced legal action over comments and jokes. In 2021, Munawar Faruqui spent days in jail after being accused of hurting Hindu religious sentiments in jokes that – it turned out – he didn’t actually crack.

Actor and comedian Vir Das also faced outrage and police complaints after a show in the US where he described India as a country of two sides where people “worship women during the day but gang rape them at night”.

Three weeks ago, Palestinian film-maker Hamdan Ballal stood in front of the world’s cameras in Hollywood, picking up an Oscar for best documentary film.

The cameras were watching him again on Tuesday, a hand to his bruised face, as he walked awkwardly away in bloodstained clothes after almost 24 hours in Israeli detention.

The night before, he told reporters who had gathered outside, “settlers and soldiers [were] attacking my home”. They started “beating me and threaten me with the guns”, he added, in quotes reported by news agency AP. The soldiers, he said, shot three times in the air.

In detention – where he said he was blindfolded and held beneath a cold air conditioner – soldiers joked about him being an Oscar winner.

Just a short while earlier, outside the hilltop farmhouse he shares with his wife and children, a grey family car sits on flattened, slashed tyres, with its windows smashed and wipers torn off.

It’s a sign of the seriousness of the violence on Monday night, here on the edge of Susya in the southern occupied West Bank.

Hamdan’s co-director Basel Adra is outside the house on his phone, nervously trying to get news of his friend’s detention. He tells me how he heard of trouble starting last night and came to help.

“I saw around 15 settlers vandalising one of the homes and smashing the car, stabbing the water tanks and throwing rocks at anyone moving.

“It was dangerous. I was afraid for my life. I started to tell people to run away. We started running in different directions.”

He says Hamdan locked himself inside and tried to protect his family but realised he was bleeding and needed emergency medical aid. Then he was arrested.

Hamdan is a well-known journalist and activist. Colleagues say he’s been targeted by settlers in the past.

Israel Defense Forces says Monday’s violence began when “terrorists hurled rocks at Israeli citizens, damaging their vehicles”.

“Following this, a violent confrontation broke out, involving mutual rock-hurling between Palestinians and Israelis”.

Josh Kimelman also came to help. He’s a 28-year-old American living in the West Bank for three months with the Centre for Jewish Non-Violence. He disputes the IDF’s version of how the violence started.

“What I know is that there were Palestinian shepherds who were harassed by settlers and then a settler mob started to attack houses here.”

Josh, from New Jersey, describes how his car and his colleagues were attacked when they arrived.

“Our three friends got out of the car and were immediately attacked by settlers,” he says.

“There was one who started it and then a mob followed of maybe 15 to 20 masked settlers. They punched one of my friends in the face and neck, and hit another with a stick and shoved her. And they started throwing rocks at our car.”

Josh feels the violence was started deliberately.

“It’s likely this attack was planned. It was definitely coordinated. You don’t get a mob of 20 settlers attacking in the way that they did without some pre-planning, and so they had specific people in mind.”

Basel Adra says violence from settlers has increased here in recent months.

“There have been 45 attacks since the beginning of the year – just in this small village, not the entire Masafa Yatta.

“That’s like hundreds of attacks, every day something happening around in the community leaving us living in fright and freaking out.

“We are innocents, people living in our homes surrounded with these terrorist settlers with guns, with cars, with the army and the police not supporting us.”

Basel has just heard news that Hamdan is about to be released after paying bail, but he’s heading to hospital for further treatment before coming home.

Basel shows me the Oscar statue they were presented with earlier this month a world away in Los Angeles. He had high hopes such global recognition might help improve life for people here.

“It’s disappointing,” he says. “The movie reached the biggest stage of the world, the name of Musafa Yatta became known but that does not help us on the ground here.”

Four people, including the grandparents of Emile Soleil, have been arrested over the two-year-old’s disappearance and death in the French Alps in July 2023.

The two other people arrested on suspicion of voluntary homicide and concealment of a corpse are adult children of Emile’s grandparents, prosecutors said in a statement.

The grandparents’ lawyer, Isabelle Colombani, told AFP on Tuesday morning that she had no comment, having “only just heard” about the development.

Last year, some of the toddler’s bones and clothes were found by a hiker near the home of Emile’s maternal grandparents in the French Alps, where the boy had gone missing the previous summer.

But prosecutors at the time said that the remains offered no further clues as to the cause of Emile’s death, adding that it could have been as a result of “a fall, manslaughter or murder”.

Tuesday’s sudden twist, in a case that seemed to have gone cold, made headlines in France, where the search for Emile has been extensively covered by the media. When the toddler disappeared, dozens of journalists flocked to Haut-Vernet, often outnumbering the 25 residents of the tiny Alpine hamlet.

The last sighting of Emile had been on 8 July 2023, when two neighbours saw him walking by himself on the only street in the village.

Police were alerted by his grandmother shortly afterwards. Hundreds of people joined police, sniffer dogs and the military in a search the following day.

Initially, French reports focused on Emile’s grandfather – but his lawyer said that she hoped investigators would not “waste too much time on him to the detriment of other lines of inquiry”.

Emile’s remains were found days after police summoned 17 people – including members of Emile’s family, neighbours and witnesses – to reconstruct the final moments before the boy disappeared.

The toddler’s funeral took place in February this year. Soon after, his maternal grandparents said that “silence had made space for truth” and that they could no longer “live without answers”.

“We have had 19 months without a single certainty. We need to understand, we need to know,” they said.

In a statement, Aix-en-Provence chief prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon said that Tuesday’s arrests were the result of investigations carried out over recent months, and that police were examining “several spots in the area”.

French media reported on Tuesday that the grandparents’ home in the Provence region was being searched and that police had seized one of their vehicles.

In France, people can be placed under arrest for questioning while police investigate whether they may have been involved in a crime. It does not mean legal proceedings will necessarily be started against them.

After three days of talks in Saudi Arabia, at last some progress.

Two separate texts outlining agreements between the US and Russia, and the US and Ukraine.

There were some differences but much was the same. All sides agreed “to ensure safe navigation, eliminate the use of force, and prevent the use of commercial vessels for military purposes in the Black Sea”.

They also agreed “to develop measures for implementing… the agreement to ban strikes against energy facilities of Russia and Ukraine”.

President Zelensky regretted there was no explicit ban on attacks on civilian infrastructure but sounded broadly content.

He told reporters Ukraine would implement the Black Sea and energy ceasefires immediately.

He also got a nod to his agenda with the US saying that it would “remain committed to helping achieve the exchange of prisoners of war, the release of civilian detainees, and the return of forcibly transferred Ukrainian children”.

But then came a third document, issued by the Kremlin, which muddied the waters.

It imposed conditions that did not appear in the original agreement between the US and Russia.

It said the Black Sea ceasefire would come into force only when sanctions were lifted on Russian banks, insurers, companies, ports and ships that would allow it to export more agriculture and fertiliser goods.

In other words, they saw this deal not just as a revival of the old Black Sea Grain Initiative they pulled out of in 2023, but also an opportunity to roll back a significant number of economic sanctions.

However, doing this may take some time and thus delay any maritime ceasefire.

It also may not entirely be in the gift of the US to make all the changes Russia requested.

For example, any return to the SWIFT financial messaging system would require EU approval.

The Kremlin also said the 30-day pause on energy strikes would be back-dated to start on 18 March and could be suspended if one side violated the deal.

In other words, what has been agreed is a fragile step towards some diminution of the fighting in Ukraine but with no guarantee of success amid an atmosphere of mutual distrust.

Even if today’s agreement were to survive, it is still a long way from the comprehensive countrywide ceasefire the US originally wanted.

It is often said that ceasefires are processes, not events. And that is as true as ever for this agreement.

What matters is not the announcement of any ceasefire, but if and how it is implemented. In other words, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Will both sides make this deal work and then live up to it? Because in the answer to those questions we will learn much about what both sides really want.

Do they want a ceasefire to turn into a longer-term peace? Or do they just want to trade while pressing home their advantage on the battlefield?

Millions of tyres being sent from the UK to India for recycling are actually being “cooked” in makeshift furnaces causing serious health problems and huge environmental damage, the BBC has discovered.

The majority of the UK’s exported waste tyres are sold into the Indian black market, and this is well known within the industry, BBC File on 4 Investigates has been told.

“I don’t imagine there’s anybody in the industry that doesn’t know it’s happening,” says Elliot Mason, owner of one of the biggest tyre recycling plants in the UK.

Campaigners and many of those in the industry – including the Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) – say the government knows the UK is one of the worst offenders for exporting waste tyres for use in this way.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has told us it has strict controls on exporting waste tyres, including unlimited fines and jail time.

When drivers get their tyres changed, garages charge a small recycling fee – it can vary, but it is normally about £3-6 for each end-of-life tyre.

This should guarantee that they are recycled – either in the UK or abroad – at facilities like Elliot Mason’s Rubber World, in Rushden, Northampton.

His facility has repurposed tyres into tiny rubber crumbs since 1996. Rubber crumb is often used as flooring for equestrian centres and children’s playgrounds.

The UK ends up with about 50 million waste tyres (nearly 700,000 tonnes) in need of recycling every year and around half of those are exported to India – according to official figures – where they should end up in recycling plants.

Before tyres leave the UK they are compressed into huge rubber cubes known as “bales”.

“The pretence is that baled tyres are being sent to India and then shredded and granulated in a factory very similar to ours,” explains Mr Mason.

However, some 70% of tyres imported by India from the UK and the rest of the world end up in makeshift industrial plants, where they are subjected to what amounts to an extreme form of cooking, the TRA estimates.

In an oxygen-free environment, in temperatures of about 500C, a process known as pyrolysis takes place. Steel and small amounts of oil are extracted, as well as carbon black – a powder or pellet that can be used in various industries.

The pyrolysis plants – often in rural backwaters – are akin to homemade pressure cookers and produce dangerous gases and chemicals.

UK tyres are ending up in these Indian pyrolysis plants, despite legitimate official paperwork stating they are headed for legal Indian recycling centres.

Together with SourceMaterial – a non-profit journalism group – we wanted to follow the long journey UK tyres make. Trackers were hidden in shipments of tyres to India by an industry insider.

The shipments went on an eight-week journey and eventually arrived in an Indian port, before being driven 800 miles cross-country, to a cluster of soot-covered compounds beside a small village.

Drone footage, taken in India and shared with the BBC, showed the tyres reaching a compound – where thousands were waiting to be thrown into huge furnaces to undergo pyrolysis.

BBC File on 4 Investigates approached one of the companies operating in the compound. It confirmed it was processing some imported tyres but said what it was doing wasn’t dangerous or illegal.

There are up to 2,000 pyrolysis plants in India, an environmental lawyer in India told the BBC. Some are licensed by the authorities but around half are unlicensed and therefore illegal, he said.

At a different cluster of makeshift plants in Wada, just outside Mumbai, a team from BBC Indian Languages saw soot, dying vegetation and polluted waterways around the sites. Villagers complained of persistent coughs and eye problems.

“We want these companies moved from our village,” one witness told us, “otherwise we will not be able to breathe freely.”

Scientists at Imperial College London told the BBC plant workers continually exposed to the atmospheric pollutants produced by pyrolysis, were at risk of respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological diseases and certain types of cancer.

At the site the BBC visited in Wada, two women and two children were killed in January when there was an explosion at one of the plants. It had been processing European-sourced tyres.

The BBC approached the owners of the plant where the explosion happened but they haven’t responded.

Following the blast, a public meeting was held and a minister for the district of Wada promised that the local government would take action. Seven pyrolysis plants have since been shut down by the authorities.

The Indian government has also been approached for comment.

Many UK businesses will bale tyres and send them to India because it is more profitable and investing in shredding machinery is expensive, according to Mr Mason.

But he says he isn’t prepared to do this himself because he has a duty of care to make sure his company’s waste is going to the right place – and it is very difficult to track where tyre bales end up.

Bigger businesses, like Rubber World, have tightly regulated environmental permits and are inspected regularly. But smaller operators can apply for an exemption and trade and lawfully export more easily.

This is called a T8 exemption and allows these businesses to store and process up to 40 tonnes of car tyres a week.

But many traders told the BBC that they exported volumes of tyres in excess of the permitted limit, meaning they would have been exporting more tyres than they should.

The BBC was tipped off about several of these companies and teamed up with an industry insider who posed as a broker with a contract to sell waste tyres to India.

Four of the six dealers we contacted said they processed large numbers of waste tyres.

One told us he had exported 10 shipping containers that week – about 250 tonnes of tyres, more than five times his permitted limit.

Another dealer first showed us paperwork which suggested his tyres were baled and sent to India for recycling which would have been allowed – but he then admitted he knew they were going to India for pyrolysis. The Indian government has made it illegal for imported tyres to be used for pyrolysis.

“There are plenty of companies [that do it]… 90% of English people [are] doing this business,” he told us, adding that he cannot control what happens when tyres arrive in India.

When we asked if he had concerns about the health of those people living and working near the pyrolysis plants he responded: “These issues are international. Brother, we can’t do anything… I’m not a health minister.”

Defra told the BBC that the UK government is considering reforms on waste exemptions.

“This government is committed to transitioning to a circular economy, moving to a future where we keep our resources in use for longer while protecting our natural environment,” a spokesperson said.

In 2021, Australia banned exports of baled tyres after auditors checked to see where they were really ending up. Lina Goodman, the CEO of Tyre Stewardship Australia, told the BBC that “100% of the material was not going to the destinations that were on the paperwork”.

Fighting Dirty founder Georgia Elliott-Smith says sending tyres from the UK to India for pyrolysis is a “massive unrecognised problem” which the UK government should deal with. She wants tyres redefined as “hazardous waste”.

Dr Alan Borthwick, softly spoken in his blazer and tie, looks every bit the typical historian.

But this archivist has spent the past 30 years solving a mystery.

How did thousands of historical documents that belong in Scotland’s national archives end up across the Atlantic Ocean in Canada?

The answer is that they were stolen. By one man. With a particular interest in stamps.

Dr Borthwick explains that “panic” first set in when a National Records of Scotland (NRS) employee attended an auction in London in 1994.

They discovered that 200 of the items up for sale belonged to NRS.

These should have been safely in Scotland’s archives, not being offloaded to the highest bidder via a bang of the auctioneer’s gavel.

NRS can date back all their archive users to 1847. After some cross referencing, Dr Borthwick and his team realised that the auction items all linked back to one person – Prof David Stirling Macmillan.

Prof Macmillan was born in 1925 and was from Girvan, Ayrshire. He served in the Royal Navy during World War Two and studied history at the University of Glasgow.

His right to use the national archives had been revoked in 1980 when he was caught removing a document. Staff assumed this was a one-off.

But the truth was that Prof Macmillan had been helping himself since 1949.

The 200 items that turned up in the London auction were the tip of the iceberg.

Now National Records of Scotland are revealing the scale of his thefts. And the odd nature of them.

Prof Macmillan wasn’t pinching documents that were worth a lot of money, or even those that were particularly historically significant.

The archives include letters from Robert Burns and Mary Queen of Scots. But these weren’t his targets.

The contents of many of the letters he took are mundane, perhaps even boring.

But a lifelong interest in stamps and postmarks seem to have led to him taking letters that caught his eye. Including documents dating back to 1637.

One example was a letter from a Scot who’d moved to the island of Madeira, off the north west coast of Africa. In 1813 they wrote to a friend with some news and gossip. Not exactly explosive stuff.

And yet Prof Macmillan ripped it out of the book it was stored in and pocketed it.

We can’t be certain about the motivations involved, but the interesting postmark and wax seal on the document are thought to be what tempted the professor.

The thief went to great lengths to cover his tracks.

He would remove reference numbers from documents and sometimes replace what he had taken with forgeries.

Ironically, Prof Macmillan was himself a professional archivist. He held that role at the University of Sydney and even placed an appeal for historical papers in the university newspaper.

The man who spent years stealing documents stressed they would be “properly looked after” and bemoaned the fact that so much of history had been “destroyed or lost”.

The academic moved to Trent University in Canada in 1968 and spent 20 years teaching history, though he still seems to have made annual visits to Scotland’s archives. He died in 1987, leaving no immediate family.

Much of his collection then found its way into the archives of Trent University, where they remained for some time. They were catalogued and descriptions were put online.

In 2012. Dr Alan Borthwick was still trying to track down what had been taken. He realised that thousands of the Trent University items rightly belonged to NRS and other UK institutions.

Dr Borthwick was dispatched to North America to investigate.

He says he was amazed by the “sheer quantity of documents” he found that had been stolen by Prof Macmillan.

The chief executive of NRS, Alison Byrne, echoes this. She described the scale of Prof Macmillan’s thefts as “unprecedented”.

She only took up her role six months ago, and was appalled when she was filled in on the situation.

Securing the return of these documents was one thing. But finding their rightful home was arguably the bigger task.

For decades, Dr Borthwick and his team have been “piecing together the jigsaw”, undertaking the painstaking process of finding the correct place for all of these stolen items.

For context, National Records of Scotland are the custodians of 38 million documents.

They have 50 miles (80km) of shelving – enough to stretch from Edinburgh to Glasgow.

Their archives are all about precision – every document has an exact home that makes locating it straightforward.

The team wanted to get each item that Prof Macmillan had taken brought back to its rightful place.

Fortunately, NRS “daybooks” show what he was signing out of the archives. But his attempts to cover his tracks and remove identifying marks complicated the challenge.

Now National Records of Scotland say they have got almost everything back where it should be, ready to be pored over by a new generation of historians.

But, for Dr Borthwick, how does it feel to know that a fellow archivist so egregiously abused the trust that was put in him?

The historian labels it “a kick in the teeth”. He’s been trying to undo the damage done by Prof Macmillan for almost all of his working life.

That time could have been spent on other historical projects.

But Dr Borthwick reflects that there’s a “sense of satisfaction” in solving the mystery of the missing documents.

Documents that, these days, are kept under the watchful eye of CCTV.

The roar of the Zambezi is deafening as millions of gallons of water crash over rocks and tumble down rapids.

But there’s another sound cutting through the trees of the Zambian bush – the unmistakable high-pitched whine of a bitcoin mine.

“It’s the sound of money!” says a smiling Philip Walton as he surveys the shipping container with 120 computers busily crunching through complex calculations that verify bitcoin transactions.

In exchange they are automatically rewarded bitcoin by the network.

We’re in the far north-western tip of Zambia near the border with the DRC, and of all the bitcoin mines I’ve visited – this one is the strangest.

Water and electronic equipment don’t usually mix well but it’s precisely the proximity to the river that’s drawn bitcoiners here.

Philip’s mine is plugged directly into a hydro-electric power plant that channels some of the Zambezi’s torrent through enormous turbines to generate continuous, clean electricity.

More importantly for bitcoin mining – it’s cheap.

So cheap it made business sense for Philip’s Kenya-based company Gridless to drag its shipping container full of delicate bitcoin mining computers across bumpy narrow roads 14 hours from the nearest major city to set up here.

Each machine makes about $5 (£3.90) a day. More if the price of coins is high, less if it drops.

Occasionally Philip glances down at his smart watch – the home screen showing the ever-changing squiggly line of bitcoin’s dollar value.

At the moment it’s around $80,000 a coin, but Philip says they can make a profit even when the value of the bitcoin goes low thanks to the cheap electricity on the site and the partnership they have with the energy company.

“We recognised that in order to get better mining economics we needed to partner with the power company here and give them a revenue share. And so the reason we’re willing to come out here somewhere so remote is it allows us to effectively get cheaper power,” he says.

Zengamina hydro-power plant is huge but technically it’s a mini grid – a standalone island of power for the local community.

It was built in the early 2000s thanks to $3m raised from charity donations.

British-Zambian Daniel Rea runs the site after his missionary family led the building project, primarily to power the local hospital.

Now it provides power for around 15,000 people in the local area but the project hasn’t been able to make ends meet because of slow take-up from the community.

Allowing the bitcoiners to set up shop here has been transformational to the business.

“Every day we were wasting over half of the energy we could generate which also meant we’re not earning from that to meet our operating expenses. We needed a major user of power in the area and that’s where the game-changing partnership with Gridless came in,” Daniel says.

The bitcoin mine now accounts for around 30% of the plant’s revenue allowing them to keep the prices down for the local town.

Bitcoin and its economics are of course far from the minds of the people in Zengamina.

The town itself is a few miles from the plant and comprises not much more than a few dozen shed-like buildings peppering a cross roads.

Only one shop has a fridge and a dozen kids crowd around a communal computer taking turns to choose a song to blare out, causing adults to wince as they go about their day.

Although the hydro-electric plant came online in 2007, it took a few more years to connect it to the local town, and then more time to connect individual homes and businesses.

So, some people like barber Damian are still enjoying the novelty of getting wired up only a year and a half ago.

“Until I got power I had nothing and couldn’t do anything. When I got power I bought everything at the same time.”

He’s not joking. At night his tiny barber shop is a beacon of power with a TV playing music videos, strings of Christmas lights and the buzz of his hair clipper. Like moths, young people hang out in his barber shop like a youth hostel.

“Getting power has changed my life,” he smiles. “The money I’m earning now from the barbershop is helping me pay for school fees again.”

Embracing electricity is very much a business decision for Damian. At home he shares one light bulb between the two rooms that make up the small house.

Elsewhere in the town sisters Tumba and Lucy Machayi sit on the crossroads watching the world go by.

Like many young people, they’re glued to their phones.

“Before the town got power, it was basically just the bush,” says Lucy.

The little electricity they had used to come from small solar panels, they say.

“No fridge, no TV, no mobile phone network,” says Tumba.

“Electricity completely changed the lives of people here,” Lucy adds.

“We can charge our phones, we have network. We can communicate with each other.”

Not many people here know or care about the bitcoin mine that’s played a part in helping the hydro-plant keep things going.

But soon they’ll watch as that container once again rattles its way through the town on its way to another location.

Zengamina Hydro has secured a large investment to help them expand to more villages and join up to the national grid.

Soon the excess energy the mine was harvesting will be sold back to the national grid and mining bitcoin will no longer be profitable at Zengamina.

Phillip and team are sanguine about this and insist this is good news. They will have had a successful few years here and ultimately they are happy to have helped Zengamina. And made a tidy profit in bitcoin of course.

The company says there are plenty of places with so-called stranded energy that they can plonk their bitcoin mine next to.

Gridless already has six sites like this in three different African countries.

North of Zengamina another bitcoin mine slurps up excess energy from a hydro-electric plant run by Virunga National Park in the Congo. It’s helping to fund conservation projects, the park says.

But Gridless now plans an ambitious next move – to build their own hydro-plants from scratch to mine for bitcoin and bring electricity to rural areas.

The company’s co-founder Janet Maingi says the company is busy raising tens of millions of dollars for the project.

They’re focusing on so-called run-of-river hydroelectric models like at Zengamina and the continent has an abundance of “untapped hydro potential” she says.

“A consumer-driven, adaptive energy model is essential for scalable, affordable, and sustainable energy access that meets the needs of African communities,” she explains.

The company is not a charity and believes that ensuring long-term economic viability for developers and investors can only be done through bitcoin.

Finding locations for a new plant or to tap into existing ones is the easy part though.

The company still faces resistance from some authorities and companies which see bitcoin as an energy-greedy and selfish use of electricity that might otherwise be used by rural people.

But the company insists that the incentive is always to sell to the highest buyer and that will always, they say, be the local community.

History tells us that without incentives or rules in place, bitcoin mining at scale can put strain on public energy grids. In Kazakhstan in 2020-2021 a mining boom increased energy usage in the country by 7% before the government clamped down and clipped the wings of the burgeoning industry.

In the US – bitcoin mining’s new mecca – conflicts between miners, locals and residents have been common when electricity is in high demand.

Authorities have created agreements with some mining giants to ensure that they power down their warehouses chock full of computers at times when the grid needs balancing.

For example, Greenidge gas power plant in New York which was renovated to mine bitcoin was mandated to power down mining in January to supply electricity to the grid during a cold snap.

Agreements like these will need to be widespread if President Donald Trump’s ambition for bitcoin to be “mined, minted and made in the USA” is to be achieved.

The environmental impact of the industry is also a major concern. It’s estimated that bitcoin mining uses as much energy as a small country like Poland.

But according to researchers at Cambridge University which does annual estimates on bitcoin’s energy usage, there is a shift taking place to a more sustainable energy mix.

Set ups like this Zengamina are a tiny part of the overall mining picture.

But they are also a rare example of a controversial industry creating much more than just digital coins.

A Ming vase stolen from a Swiss museum. A shooting at a comedian’s house in Woodford, east London. The robbery of a luxury apartment in Sevenoaks, Kent.

These seemingly unconnected events were all part of a web of international organised crime that police untangled after a six-year-long investigation.

A key piece of evidence – an iPad, found under an inch of sand on the foreshore of the River Thames just downstream from the O2 Arena.

Its discovery was pivotal to the investigation that has led to three people being found guilty at the Old Bailey of the near-assassination of one of Britain’s most notorious armed robbers.

When found by a police officer with a metal detector on a cold November morning last year, the iPad was found caked in mud having been underwater for more than five years.

Forensics were able to clean it and open the Sim tray – which still contained a pink Vodafone Sim card.

Call data that was subsequently salvaged provided damning evidence on three men – Louis Ahearne, Stewart Ahearne and Daniel Kelly – who were all also involved in a heist at a museum in Switzerland a month earlier.

“I’ve questioned this a lot,” Det Supt Matthew Webb ponders. “Is it calamitous blunders tripping them up or was it just they were so blasé they wouldn’t get caught?”

The Ahearne brothers and Kelly first caught the attention of police after gunshots pierced the silence of a late summer evening in an affluent Woodford area on 11 July 2019.

Six bullets tore through a glass conservatory at a luxury property owned by comedian Russell Kane that had been rented out to Paul Allen.

One severed one of Allen’s fingers, the other went through his throat and became lodged in his spinal cord, leaving him struggling to breathe and bleeding profusely.

“He’s been shot, he’s been shot!” Allen’s partner, Jade Bovington, screamed.

As she frantically called an ambulance, neighbours and a private security guard heard the cries and rushed to render first aid.

One eyewitness described seeing an unidentified man vault a low wall, run between some bushes and get straight into a waiting vehicle which immediately sped off.

To this day, Allen relies on a wheelchair, paralysed below his upper chest.

Allen gained notoriety as one of the ringleaders of what remains Britain’s biggest ever armed robbery. In 2006, Allen was part of a balaclava-wearing gang toting guns including an AK-47 assault rifle who threatened to kill staff at the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent. They stole £53m in Bank of England cash notes – leaving behind £154m which would not fit into their lorry.

Allen fled to Morocco four days later, but was arrested in Rabat alongside friend and fellow robber Lee Murray, who remains in jail in nearby Tiflet. In January 2008, Allen was extradited to the UK and subsequently sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Allen was released in 2016 and moved back to his roots in south-east London. But he relocated to Woodford with his partner and two younger children after a gunman opened fire at him and his pregnant daughter in the doorway of their Woolwich home in September 2018.

Ten months later, Allen almost died after those two bullets hit him as he stood in the kitchen of his Woodford haven.

Prosecutors argued the Ahearnes and Kelly were equally culpable in the plot to murder Allen – which involved a hired car, surveillance and unregistered pay-as-you-go phones.

“This was a meticulously researched and planned assassination attempt by a team of men well versed in the level of criminality to pull it off,” prosecutor Michael Shaw KC said.

In discovering how the three knew where to find Allen, police would uncover their criminality stretched into mainland Europe.

Just one month before the shooting, the Ahearne brothers and Kelly stood outside the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva equipped with a sledgehammer, angle grinders and crowbars.

Within seconds of forcing their way through the front door, they shattered glass casings housing 14th Century Chinese Ming Dynasty antiques. Three items were seized – a rare pomegranate vase; a doucai-style wine cup and a porcelain bowl – and had a combined insured value of £2.8m.

In their hurry to flee, Stewart scraped his stomach against the sides of the hole the gang had made in the front wooden door – leaving traces of his DNA. He also hired the getaway car, a Renault Koleos from Avis at Geneva Airport. Louis was caught on CCTV filming the inside and outside of the museum the day before the raid.

Within days of returning to south-east London with the stolen goods, the trio set about attempting to dispose of the items they had pinched.

The brothers flew to Hong Kong with Kelly as they tried to sell one of the stolen items at an auction house.

The auction house tipped off police in London, who were able to send undercover officers posing as art dealers to catch some other gang members in a sting operation as two of them tried to sell another plundered item which had been concealed in a JD Sports bag.

During a seven-week trial at the Old Bailey, prosecutors argued that international burglary proved the Ahearnes and Kelly were “at the top end” of criminality.

But little did police know while pursuing the stolen antiquities, the three would leave behind near-enough similar clues to give away their presence in the Woodford shooting.

In the hours after the shooting, the crime scene in Woodford was forensically examined. Six bullet casings fired from a Glock self-loading handgun were found, as were scuff marks on the property’s rear garden fence from the direction the shots had been fired.

DNA samples collected from the fence were found to most probably belong to Louis and Kelly.

Trawling through CCTV footage, police were then able to identify the number plate of a silver-grey Renault Captur owned by hire company Avis.

Records showed it had been rented by Stewart from a Dartford branch two days before the shooting, and returned the following day.

Further CCTV checks revealed that 90 minutes before the shooting the Renault had pulled into a Shell garage on Shooters Hill Road, near Greenwich Park.

“They stopped at a petrol station because Louis Ahearne was thirsty,” Shaw told the court.

“The problem with petrol stations is they have very good CCTV,” Shaw added.

Two days prior, Kelly and Louis had been driven by Stewart in the same Renault Captur to Ide Hill Hall, a 16th Century mansion converted into luxury apartments in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Posing as police officers – with a blue flashing light on top of the Renault – the trio and another man forced their way into the gated property and stole designer items.

They were later convicted at Maidstone Crown Court of burglary and the attempted burglary of another apartment.

The following day, 10 July, Stewart was said to have used the Renault to drive around parts of east London including Bethnal Green, Snaresbrook – and Woodford.

A closer look at traffic cameras showed the Renault following a silver Mercedes that belonged to the Allens.

But detectives would have to wait more than five years to learn how the men knew Allen’s whereabouts.

In October 2024 – four months before the Old Bailey trial started and not long after being extradited from Switzerland back to the UK – Louis issued his defence statement which contained one intriguing detail.

He stated that, while heading back to Woolwich, the Renault had stopped at John Harrison Way. Louis said he hoped CCTV would be recovered from the street which would show him “getting some air” while Kelly disappeared in the direction of the Thames.

Det Supt Webb recalls: “We knew the vehicle had stopped in John Harrison Way and that Kelly got out of the vehicle – but no more than that. Didn’t know where he went, didn’t know what happened – just John Harrison Way.

“Straight away, we were thinking if somebody wants to discard something critical it’s probably going to be a firearm.”

Louis’s defence statement drew attention to that stop which led to the iPad being discovered in the River Thames – which infuriated Kelly, who only found out just before the trial began.

On the second day of the trial, footage from a prison van caught Kelly shouting “how is the snitch life treating you?” at Louis.

Kelly and Stewart sat in the dock in silence throughout the trial, and declined to give evidence, having both previously expressed fears over their safety. Louis implied to jurors that it was Kelly who had pulled the trigger in the Woodford shooting.

But Det Supt Webb said the iPad was the key to unravelling it all.

“Talk about people being flabbergasted and gobsmacked,” he recalls. “Det Insp Matthew Freeman called me and said we have gone to the Thames and found an iPad.

“I can’t repeat the words I used but my jaw dropped. What a beautiful piece of the puzzle to put together.”

Call data showed both the iPad and an iPhone 6 belonging to Kelly had contacted a select few numbers, including the Ahearne brothers.

The Sim card was also linked to GPS tracking devices which were found inside a car when Louis and Kelly were arrested in August 2019.

Email accounts were then linked to Kelly and a close associate. From that, police were able to examine 59 Amazon and eBay purchases – some included unregistered Nokia burner phones used to communicate in the murder plot.

The Sim had been in use until it vanished from the network shortly before Allen was shot.

The three men – shown to be experienced international criminals – had been undone by tenacious detectives who found their throwaway piece of tech.

They were each found guilty on Monday of conspiracy to murder and will be sentenced on 25 April.

But Det Supt Webb suggests these verdicts are far from being the end of their deep investigations.

“It is one of those cases where you keep scratching and you keep finding,” he adds.

A rare new species of two-clawed dinosaur has been discovered by scientists in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert.

The species, named Duonychus tsogtbaatari, was unique within a group of dinosaurs called Therizinosaurs, which stood on their hind legs and usually had three claws.

It was medium-sized, with an estimated weight of approximately 260kg.

Researchers believe the species’ long, curved claws and its ability to strongly flex them would have made it an efficient grasper of vegetation.

Therizinosaurs were a group of either herbivorous or omnivorous theropod dinosaurs that lived in Asia and North America during the Cretaceous Period, which began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago.

They are exemplified by the massive, long-clawed form Therizinosaurus, featured in the film Jurassic World Dominion, and were “awkward looking”, according to one of the study’s authors Dr Darla Zelenitsky, associate professor at the University of Calgary.

The specimen was recovered from the Bayanshiree formation in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, which dates back to the Late Cretaceous period (between 100.5 to 66 million years ago).

Unesco, the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, calls the Mongolian Gobi Desert the largest dinosaur fossil reservoir in the world.

The region is an especially important source of fossils from the later Cretaceous period, which is the last of the main three periods of the dinosaur age, representing the final phase of dinosaur evolution.

At nearly a foot long, the claws themselves were much larger than their underlying bone, the study revealed.

Besides better grasping, the two-fingered hands may have been used for display, digging, or as formidable weapons.

The most famous two-fingered theropods are species within the group tyrannosaurids, which includes Tyrannosaurus rex, but Duonychus evolved its two-fingered hands separately from them and from other two-fingered theropods.

The specimen also preserves the first keratinous sheath of a therizinosaur, an element that covers the claw much like human fingernails, aiding defence, movement, or prey catching.

The King and Queen have postponed their state visit to the Vatican, after doctors said the Pope needed to rest following a recent illness.

The visit to the Vatican was postponed by “mutual agreement”, according to a statement released by Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.

The wider state visit to Italy will continue in April with some alterations to the planned programme.

“Their Majesties send The Pope their best wishes for his convalescence and look forward to visiting him in The Holy See, once he has recovered,” the palace said.

The royal trip had been billed as a “historic visit” during the year of the Papal Jubilee.

It would have marked the building of symbolic links between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, of which King Charles is the Supreme Governor.

Pope Francis, 88, was only recently discharged from hospital in Rome after being admitted with breathing difficulties in February.

The Pope was diagnosed with pneumonia in both of his lungs shortly after his admission to hospital.

Later that month, the Vatican warned the pontiff was in a “critical” condition after developing both respiratory and kidney problems.

He is susceptible to infections after having part of a lung removed as a young man.

Catholics have been united in their prayers for the Pope’s health in recent weeks.

His condition improved following treatment at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.

The Pope made his first public appearance since his admission to hospital on the weekend.

The wider trip to Italy has been planned to support relationships between the UK and Italy, reflecting “values, history and culture” shared by the two countries.

The king is expected to meet Italy’s president and prime minister and become the first UK monarch to address both houses of the Italian parliament.

The royals have also been invited to be guests at a state banquet.

There will be disappointment that the Vatican elements of the visit will no longer take place.

The trip was planned this year as it is Jubilee Year for all Catholics – something that only happens once very 25 years.

An audience with the Pope and a service in the Sistine Chapel were key elements of the visit to the Vatican planned for the start of next month.

Just last week, Buckingham Palace said that the King and Queen shared their “hopes and prayers” that the health of Pope Francis would enable the trip to go ahead.

Royal sources said the “outlook was positive” although also warned that the programme would be reviewed on the advice of the Pope’s medical team.

This is the first state visit for the king and queen this year. They will also celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary while in Italy.

A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country’s largest-ever payout in a criminal case.

Iwao Hakamata, 89, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, his boss’s wife and their two children, but was acquitted last year after a retrial.

Mr Hakamata’s lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention – which made him the world’s longest-serving death row inmate – took a toll on his mental health.

Judge Kunii Koshi, who granted the request on Monday, agreed that he had suffered “extremely severe” mental and physical pain.

The Japanese government will pay Mr Hakamata’s financial compensation, in what local media is widely reporting as the biggest payout for a criminal case in the country’s history.

Mr Hakamata’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas.

He was granted a rare retrial and released from prison in 2014, amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction.

Last September, hundreds of people gathered at a court in Shizuoka, a city on Japan’s south coast, where a judge handed down the acquittal – to loud cheers of “banzai”, or “hurray” in Japanese.

Mr Hakamata, however, was unfit to attend the hearing. He was exempted from all prior hearings because of his deteriorated mental state.

He had lived under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since being granted a retrial and released from prison in 2014. Hideko had fought for decades to clear her brother’s name.

Mr Hakamata was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his boss, his boss’ wife and their two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Mr Hakamata of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Mr Hakamata initially denied doing so, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession, following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968 he was sentenced to death.

For years, Mr Hakamata’s lawyers had argued that DNA recovered from the victims’ clothes did not match his, and alleged that the evidence was planted.

Although he was granted a retrial in 2014, prolonged legal proceedings meant it took until last October for the retrial to begin.

The case has raised questions about Japan’s justice system, including the time taken for a retrial and the allegations of forced confessions.

A court in Japan has ordered the disbandment of the controversial Unification Church, which came under scrutiny after the shock killing of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.

The alleged assassin had confessed that he held a grievance against Abe because of the ex-leader’s ties with the church – he blamed the church for bankrupting his family.

Japan’s education and culture ministry sought the church’s dissolution and accused it of manipulating followers into making huge donations and other financial sacrifices.

But the church, more popularly known as the “Moonies”, argued that the donations were part of legitimate religious activities. It can appeal to overturn Tuesday’s ruling.

The order handed down by a Tokyo district court will strip the church of its tax-exempt status and require it to liquidate its assets, but it will still be allowed to operate in Japan.

During their investigation, authorities found that the church coerced followers into buying expensive items by exploiting fears about their spiritual well-being.

They interviewed nearly 200 people who said they were victimised by the church.

The Unification Church, which was started in South Korea, has established a presence in Japan since the 1960s. The name “Moonies” was derived from the name of its founder, Sun Myung Moon.

It has drawn controversy even before Abe’s assassination for teaching that marriage is central to spiritual salvation. It is known for holding mass wedding ceremonies involving thousands of couples.

Since 2023, some 200 former believers who said they were forced to donate to the group have demanded compensations amounting to 5.7 billion yen ($38.5m) in total, according their lawyers.

Investigations following Abe’s assassination revealed close ties between the secretive sect and many conservative ruling-party lawmakers, leading to the resignation of four ministers.

An internal investigation by former prime minister Fumio Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party found that 179 of its 379 lawmakers had interacted with the Unification Church.

The relationships ranged from attending church events to accepting donations and receiving election support.

The revelations about the extent and level of involvement of the controversial church and the LDP shocked the nation.

A Sudanese war monitor has accused the military of killing hundreds of people in an air strike on a market in the country’s western Darfur region.

The Emergency Lawyers group – which documents abuses by both sides in Sudan’s civil war that erupted in April 2023 – said the bombing of Tur’rah market was a “horrific massacre” that had also left hundreds injured.

Videos posted on social media – some by the army’s rival the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that controls much of Darfur – showed the smoking ruins of market stalls and bodies charred beyond recognition.

A military spokesperson denied targeting civilians, saying it only attacked legitimate hostile targets.

Both the Sudanese armed forces and RSF have repeatedly been accused of shelling civilian areas.

The RSF has deployed drones in Darfur, but the army has the warplanes – and regularly strikes RSF positions across the region.

The BBC has not been able to confirm the death toll or the exact date of the attack on the market, which is located about 35km (21 miles) north of the army-held city of el-Fasher.

A Darfur activist group – the Darfur Initiative for Justice and Peace – said it happened on Monday and called it the “deadliest single bombing since the beginning of the war”.

Civilian deaths in bombing and shelling attacks have intensified in recent months with the escalation of fighting in the country’s brutal civil conflict.

Some 12 million Sudanese people have fled their homes since war broke out – that is equivalent to Belgium or Tunisia’s entire population.

Famine has taken hold and starvation is widespread, the UN says, with over half the country experiencing “high levels of acute food insecurity”.

Estimates vary, but it is said that at least 150,000 people have been killed by the fighting.

The RSF has denied evidence that it is committing a genocide in Darfur, including the murder of thousands of civilians, and the rape of non-Arab women as a means of “ethnic cleansing”.

According the UN, Sudan is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

• The gravedigger ‘too busy to sleep’ as Khartoum fighting rages
• Sudan’s el-Fasher siege: Last surgeons standing in city’s only hospital
• One-year-olds among those raped during Sudan civil war, UN says

The US has removed millions of dollars in bounties from senior members of the Haqqani militant network in Afghanistan, including one on its leader Sirajuddin Haqqani who is also the Taliban government’s interior minister.

It is a significant move given that the Haqqani network is accused of carrying out some of the most high-profile and deadly attacks in Afghanistan during the US-led war in the country, including attacks on the American and Indian embassies, and NATO forces.

Currently, the network is a key part of the Taliban government, which has controlled Afghanistan since foreign troops withdrew from the country in 2021, following a deal struck between the US and the Taliban during President Trump’s first term.

The move to lift the bounties comes weeks into President Trump’s second term, and just days after US officials met with the Taliban government in Kabul to secure the release of an American tourist, detained since 2022.

• Family of couple held by Taliban fear for their health
• Inside the Taliban’s surveillance network monitoring millions

A US state department spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that “there is no current reward” for Sirajuddin Haqqani, his brother Abdul Aziz Haqqani and brother-in-law Yahya Haqqani, but they remain ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorists and the Haqqani Network remains designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization”.

An FBI webpage, which on Monday showed a $10 million dollar bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani, has now been updated to remove the reward offer.

Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told the BBC that the lifting of bounties “was a result of continued diplomatic efforts” by his government. “It is a good step and this shows our new interaction with the world and particularly with the United States. They (the US delegation) told us they want to increase positive interaction and confidence building between us,” he added.

On Saturday, a US delegation including hostage envoy Adam Boehler and former envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad met with the Taliban government’s foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and other Taliban officials in Kabul. Afterwards, US national George Glezmann, detained in December 2022 while visiting Afghanistan as a tourist, was released by the Taliban government.

It is unclear if lifting the bounties was a part of the negotiations.

Founded by Sirajuddin Haqqani’s father, Jalaluddin Haqqani in the 1980s, the Haqqani network started out as a CIA-backed anti-Soviet outfit operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it grew into one of the most feared anti-Western militant organisations in the region.

• Taliban frees US man held in Afghanistan for two years
• Teenage Afghan girls were banned from school – now these classes are their only option

The group allied with the Taliban when they first took power in Afghanistan in 1996. Jalaluddin Haqqani died of a prolonged illness in 2018.

Currently, Sirajuddin Haqqani is emerging as a power centre in Afghanistan’s Taliban government, as rifts between him and the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada grow.

Members of the Taliban government have told the BBC that the issue of women’s education is a key point of disagreement between the two sides.

The Haqqanis have sought to project themselves as more moderate, galvanising support among people in the country who are frustrated by the supreme leader’s intransigence on women’s education.

The dropping of bounties by the US government is evidence that its stature is also growing externally, among parts of the international community keen to engage with the Taliban.

Canada’s Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has said he won his leadership “fair and square” after reports emerged that India allegedly meddled in the party’s contest.

Citing a source with top-security clearance, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported allegations that Indian agents were involved in fundraising and organising within Canada’s South Asian community for Poilievre in the 2022 leadership race.

There is no evidence that Poilievre or his team were aware of the alleged interference.

The allegation dominated the second full day of campaigning in Canada’s general election, which will be held on 28 April.

India has been accused of interfering in Canada’s elections in the past. Its government has repeatedly denied those allegations.

On Monday night, the Globe and Mail reported that Canadian intelligence agents were unable to raise the issue of India’s alleged interference with Poilievre because he has not obtained the necessary security clearance.

The report said India’s alleged attempts to interfere were part of a larger effort to influence Canadian politicians of all parties.

Poilievre is the only Canadian federal party leader running for prime minister that has refused the security clearance.

He defended his decision on Tuesday, calling the process politicised and saying it would bar him from being able to speak publicly about issues of national importance.

“What I will not do is commit to the oath of secrecy that the Liberals want to impose on me,” Poilievre told reporters.

“They don’t want me to speak about these matters, so they bring me into a dark room and they say: ‘We’re going to give you a little bit of bread crumbs of intel and then we’ll tell you you can’t talk about this stuff any more.'”

Poilievre won the 2022 leadership race with 68% of the vote. Canadian intelligence agents said there is no indication the alleged interference attempt influenced the outcome, the Globe and Mail reported.

The Globe’s reporting was also confirmed by broadcaster Radio-Canada.

The allegations served as political ammunition for Liberal leader Mark Carney, who criticised Poilievre for not obtaining the clearance, telling reporters on Tuesday that it was “beyond baffling”.

“I find it downright irresponsible that the Leader of the Opposition day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year refuses to obtain a security clearance,” Carney said.

Foreign meddling in Canada’s elections has been a growing concern in recent years, and a public inquiry was launched last year to look into the issue.

The foreign interference inquiry concluded that China and India had attempted to interfere in Canada’s two previous elections.

While these attempts were “troubling” they had “minimal impact”, a final report by the inquiry said – but it warned that disinformation posed an “existential threat” to the country’s democracy.

A Canadian election integrity task force cautioned on Monday that agents tied to China, Russia and India will try to influence the ongoing campaign.

The Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) task force said foreign agents could use tools like artificial intelligence, proxies and online disinformation to target diaspora communities in Canada to try and influence how they vote.

Officials said Canadians will likely see a “more active” federal government response on issues of disinformation as a result.

This is the gravest crisis for Western security since the end of World War Two, and a lasting one. As one expert puts it, “Trumpism will outlast his presidency”. But which nations are equipped to step to the fore as the US stands back?

At 09.00 one morning in February 1947, the UK ambassador in Washington, Lord Inverchapel, walked into the State Department to hand the US Secretary of State, George Marshall, two diplomatic messages printed on blue paper to emphasise their importance: one on Greece, the other on Turkey.

Exhausted, broke and heavily in debt to the United States, Britain told the US that it could no longer continue its support for the Greek government forces that were fighting an armed Communist insurgency. Britain had already announced plans to pull out of Palestine and India and to wind down its presence in Egypt.

The United States saw immediately that there was now a real danger that Greece would fall to the Communists and, by extension, to Soviet control. And if Greece went, the United States feared that Turkey could be next, giving Moscow control of the Eastern Mediterranean including, potentially, the Suez Canal, a vital global trade route.

Almost overnight, the United States stepped into the vacuum left by the departing British.

“It must be a policy of the United States,” President Harry Truman announced, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.”

It was the start of what became known as the Truman Doctrine. At its heart was the idea that helping to defend democracy abroad was vital to the United States’ national interests.

There followed two major US initiatives: the Marshall Plan, a massive package of assistance to rebuild the shattered economies of Europe, and the creation of Nato in 1949, which was designed to defend democracies from a Soviet Union that had now extended its control over the eastern part of Europe.

It is easy to see this as the moment that leadership of the western world passed from Britain to the United States. More accurately it is the moment that revealed that it already had.

The United States, traditionally isolationist and safely sheltered by two vast oceans, had emerged from World War Two as the leader of the free world. As America projected its power around the globe, it spent the post-war decades remaking much of the world in its own image.

The baby boomer generation grew up in a world that looked, sounded and behaved more like the United States than ever before. And it became the western world’s cultural, economic and military hegemon.

Yet the fundamental assumptions on which the United States has based its geostrategic ambitions now look set to change.

Donald Trump is the first US President since World War Two to challenge the role that his country set for itself many decades ago. And he is doing this in such a way that, to many, the old world order appears to be over – and the new world order has yet to take shape.

The question is, which nations will step forward? And, with the security of Europe under greater strain than at any time almost in living memory, can its leaders, who are currently scrabbling around, find an adequate response?

President Trump’s critique of the post-1945 international order dates back decades. Nearly 40 years ago he took out full-page advertisements in three US newspapers to criticise the United States’ commitment to the defence of the world’s democracies.

“For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States,” he wrote in 1987. “Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?

“The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”

It’s a position he has repeated since his second inauguration.

And the fury felt by some in his administration for what they perceive as European reliance on the United States was apparently shown in the leaked messages about air strikes on Houthis in Yemen that emerged this week.

In the messages, an account named Vice-President JD Vance wrote that European countries might benefit from the strikes. It said: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

Another account, identified as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, responded three minutes later: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

Trump’s own position appears to go beyond criticising those he says are taking advantage of the United State’s generosity. At the start of his second presidency, he seemed to embrace Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling Russia that Ukraine would not be granted Nato membership and that it should not expect to get back the territory it has lost to Russia.

Many saw this as giving away two major bargaining chips before talks had even started. He apparently asked Russia for nothing in return.

On the flipside, certain Trump supporters see in Putin a strong leader who embodies many of the conservative values they themselves share.

To some, Putin is an ally in a “war on woke”.

The United States’ foreign policy is now driven, in part at least, by the imperatives of its culture wars. The security of Europe has become entangled in the battle between two polarised and mutually antagonistic visions of what the United States stands for.

Some think the division is about more than Trump’s particular views and that Europe can not just sit tight waiting for his term in office to end.

“The US is becoming divorced from European values,” argues Ed Arnold, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London. “That’s difficult [for Europeans] to swallow because it means that it’s structural, cultural and potentially long-term. “

“I think the current trajectory of the US will outlast Trump, as a person. I think Trumpism will outlast his presidency.”

The Trump White House has said it will no longer be the primary guarantor of European security, and that European nations should be responsible for their own defence and pay for it.

“If [Nato countries] don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them. No, I’m not going to defend them,” the president said earlier this month.

For almost 80 years, the cornerstone of European security has been embedded in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one member state of the alliance is an attack on all.

In Downing Street last month, just before his visit to the White House, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told me during an interview that he was satisfied that the United States remained the leading member of Nato and that Trump personally remained committed to Article 5.

Others are less sure.

Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary in the last Conservative government, told me earlier this month: “I think Article 5 is on life support.

“If Europe, including the United Kingdom, doesn’t step up to the plate, invest a lot on defence and take it seriously, it’s potentially the end of the Nato that we know and it’ll be the end of Article 5.

“Right now, I wouldn’t bet my house that Article 5 would be able to be triggered in the event of a Russian attack… I certainly wouldn’t take for granted that the United States would ride to the rescue.”

According to polling by the French company Institut Elabe, nearly three quarters of French people now think that the United States is not an ally of France. A majority in Britain and a very large majority in Denmark, both historically pro-American countries, now have unfavourable views of the United States as well.

“The damage Trump has done to Nato is probably irreparable,” argues Robert Kagan, a conservative commentator, author and senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC who has been a long time critic of Trump.

“The alliance relied on an American guarantee that is no longer reliable, to say the least”.

And yet Trump is by no means the first US president to tell Europe to get its defence spending in order. In 2016 Barack Obama urged Nato allies to increase theirs, saying: “Europe has sometimes been complacent about its own defence.”

All of this is great news for Putin. “The entire system of Euro-Atlantic security is crumbling before our eyes,” he said last year. “Europe is being marginalised in global economic development, plunged into the chaos of challenges such as migration, and losing international agency and cultural identity.”

In early March, three days after Volodymyr Zelensky’s disastrous meeting with Trump and Vance in the White House, a Kremlin spokesman declared “the fragmentation of the West has begun”.

“Look at Russia’s objectives in Europe,” says Armida van Rij, head of the Europe programme at Chatham House. “Its objectives are to destabilise Europe. It is to weaken Nato, and get the Americans to withdraw their troops from here.

“And at the moment you could go ‘tick, tick and almost tick’. Because it is destabilising Europe. It is weakening Nato. It hasn’t gone as far as to get the US to withdraw troops from Europe, but in a few months time, who knows where we’ll be?”

One of the great challenges Europe, in particular, faces from here is the question of how to arm itself adequately. Eighty years of reliance on the might of the United States has left many European democracies exposed.

Britain, for example, has cut military spending by nearly 70% since the height of the Cold War. (At the end of the Cold War, in the early 1990s, Europe allowed itself a peace dividend and began a decades-long process of reducing defence spending.)

“We had a big budget [during the Cold War] and we took a peace dividend,” says Wallace. “Now, you could argue that that was warranted.

“The problem is we went from a peace dividend to corporate raiding. [Defence] just became the go-to department to take money from. And that is where we just forgot the lessons of our history.”

The prime minister told parliament last month that Britain would increase defence spending from 2.3% of GDP to 2.5% by 2027. But is that enough?

“It is enough just to stand still,” argues Wallace. “It wouldn’t be enough to fix the things we need to make ourselves more deployable, and to plug the gaps if the Americans left.”

Then there is the wider question of military recruitment. “The West is in freefall in its military recruiting, it’s not just Britain,” argues Wallace.

“At the moment, young people aren’t joining the military. And that’s a problem.”

But Germany’s new Chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, has said Europe must make itself independent of the United States. And “Europeanising” NATO will require the build up of an indigenous European military-industrial complex capable of delivering capabilities that currently only the United States has.

Others share the view that Europe must become more self reliant militarily – but some are concerned that not all of Europe is on board with this.

“Where we are at the moment is that the East Europeans by and large, don’t need to get the memo,” says Ian Bond, deputy director, Centre for European Reform. “The further west you go, the more problematic it becomes until you get to Spain and Italy.”

Mr Arnold agrees: “The view in Europe now is this isn’t really a debate anymore, it’s a debate of how we do it and maybe how quickly we do it, but we need to do this now.”

There is a short list of “very important things” that only the United States currently provides, according to historian Timothy Garton Ash.

“These are the so-called strategic enablers,” he says. “The satellites, the intelligence, the Patriot air defence batteries, which are the only ones that can take down Russian ballistic missiles. And within three to five years we [countries other than the US] should aim to have our own version of these.

“And in this process of transition, from the American-led Nato [the idea is] you will have a Nato that is so Europeanised that its forces, together with national forces and EU capacities, are capable of defending Europe – even if an American president says ‘leave us out of this’.”

The question is how to achieve this.

Ms van Rij stresses that, in her view, Europe does need to build a Europe-owned European defence industrial base – but she foresees difficulties.

“What’s really difficult are the divisions within Europe on how to actually do this and whether to actually do this.”

The European Commission and experts have been trying to figure out how this defence may work for several decades. “It has traditionally been very difficult because of vested national interests… So this is not going to be easy.”

In the meantime, Trump appears ready to turn the page on the post-Cold War rules-based international order of sovereign states that are free to choose their own destinies and alliances.

Donald Trump appears ready to turn the page on the post-Cold War rules-based international order, of sovereign states that are free to choose their own destinies and alliances. What he seems to share with Vladimir Putin is a desire for a world in which the major powers, unconstrained by internationally agreed laws, are free to impose their will on smaller, weaker nations, as Russia has traditionally done in both its Tsarist and Soviet Empires. That would mean a return to the “spheres of interest” system that prevailed for forty years after the Second World War.

We don’t know exactly what Donald Trump would do were a Nato country to be attacked. But the point is that the guarantee of US help can no longer be taken for granted. That means Europe has to react. Its challenge appears to be to stay united, finally make good on funding its own defence, and avoid being drawn into the “sphere of influence” of any of the big powers.

US Vice-President JD Vance will join his wife Usha in travelling to Greenland on Friday, a visit that follows Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island.

The couple will go to the Pituffik Space Base to receive a briefing on Arctic security issues and meet members of US forces stationed there, according to the White House.

Usha Vance had planned to travel to the Danish territory on a cultural visit before her husband announced his plans. Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz is also set to visit this week on a separate trip.

Officials in Greenland have fiercely criticised the planned visits as disrespectful.

Greenland – the world’s biggest island, situated between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans – has been controlled by Denmark, nearly 3,000km (1,860 miles) away, for about 300 years.

It governs its own domestic affairs, but decisions on foreign and defence policy are made in Copenhagen. The US has long held a security interest and a military presence there since World War Two.

The Pituffik Space Base, located in the north-west of Greenland, supports missile warning, air defence and space surveillance missions.

In a video posted on social media platform X, Vance said there was a lot of excitement around his wife’s trip to Greenland. He is joining her because he “didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself”.

He said the visit to the military installation was to check on the island’s security, as “a lot of other countries have threatened Greenland, have threatened to use its territories and its waterways to threaten the United States, to threaten Canada, and of course, to threaten the people of Greenland”.

He added that the Trump administration wants to “reinvigorate the security of the people of Greenland”, and that the United States and Denmark have ignored it for “far too long”.

It is unclear if Mike Waltz is still scheduled to visit. The BBC has reached out to the White House for confirmation.

Dr Dwayne Ryan Menezes, founder and managing director of Polar Research and Policy Initiative think tank, based in London, criticised the visit.

He said it is “highly unusual” that a high-level delegation of US officials are visiting Greenland without being invited, especially after a national election in the country, where the parties are still in talks to form the next government.

The US’ interest in Greenland’s security, given its strategic importance, makes sense, he said. But he added that it is “inexplicable” for Washington DC to have taken such an aggressive approach, especially in light of Trump’s comments about acquiring the territory.

“Disrespecting the people of Greenland by saying the US will acquire it ‘one way or the other’ is unhelpful and counter-productive as a tactic,” he added.

According to recent polls, almost 80% of Greenlanders back independence from Denmark. But an opinion survey in January suggested an even greater number rejected the idea of becoming part of the US.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a naval ceasefire in the Black Sea in separate deals with the US, after three days of peace talks in Saudi Arabia.

Washington said all parties would continue working toward a “durable and lasting peace” in statements announcing the agreements, which would reopen an important trade route.

They have also committed to “develop measures” to implement a previously agreed ban on attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, the White House said.

But Russia said the naval ceasefire would only come into force after a number of sanctions against its food and fertiliser trade were lifted.

US officials have been separately meeting negotiators from Moscow and Kyiv in Riyadh with the aim of brokering a truce between the two sides. The Russian and Ukrainian delegations have not met directly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the deal to halt strikes in the Black Sea was a step in the right direction.

“It is too early to say that it will work, but these were the right meetings, the right decisions, the right steps,” he told a press conference in Kyiv.

“No-one can accuse Ukraine of not moving towards sustainable peace after this,” he added, after US President Donald Trump had previously accused him of blocking a peace deal.

But shortly after Washington’s announcement, the Kremlin said the Black Sea ceasefire would not take effect until sanctions were lifted from Russian banks, producers and exporters involved in the international food and fertiliser trades.

The measures demanded by Russia include reconnecting the banks concerned to the SwiftPay payment system, lifting restrictions on servicing ships under the Russian flag involved in the food trade, and on the supply of agricultural machinery and other goods needed for the production of food.

It was unclear from the White House’s statement when the agreement is meant to come into force.

When asked about lifting the sanctions, Trump told reporters: “We’re thinking about all of them right now. We’re looking at them.”

Washington’s statement on the US-Russia talks does say the US will “help restore Russia’s access to the world market for agricultural and fertiliser exports”.

Speaking in Kyiv, Zelensky described this as a “weakening of positions”.

He also said Ukraine would push for further sanctions on Russia and more military support from the US if Moscow reneged on its commitments.

Later, in his nightly address to Ukrainians, Zelensky accused the Kremlin of lying when it said the Black Sea ceasefire depended on sanctions being lifted.

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said “third countries” could oversee parts of the deal.

But he warned that the movement of Russian warships beyond the “eastern part of the Black Sea” would be treated as a violation of the agreement and a “threat to the national security of Ukraine”.

“In this case Ukraine will have full right to exercise right to self-defence,” he added.

A previous arrangement allowing safe passage of commercial ships in the Black Sea was agreed in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.

Both Ukraine and Russia are major grain exporters, and prices rocketed after the start of the war.

The “Black Sea grain deal” was put in place to allow cargo ships travelling to and from Ukraine to safely navigate without being attacked by Russia.

The deal facilitated the movement of grain, sunflower oil and other products required for food production, such as fertiliser, through the Black Sea.

It was initially in place for a period of 120 days but, after multiple extensions, Russia pulled out in July 2023, claiming key parts of the agreement had not been implemented.

After this week’s talks, both countries have also agreed to “develop measures” to implement a ban on attacking energy infrastructure on each other’s territory.

Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power supply have caused widespread blackouts throughout the war, leaving thousands of people without heating in the cold of winter.

Attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear power stations have led the UN’s atomic watchdog to call for restraint.

A ban was initially agreed in a call between Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin last week, but within hours of it being announced, both Moscow and Kyiv accused the other of breaching it.

Earlier on Tuesday, Moscow said Ukraine had continued to target Russia’s civilian energy infrastructure while the peace talks in Riyadh were under way.

The alleged attack showed Zelensky was “incapable of sticking to agreements”, Russia’s defence ministry said.

It came after Russia launched a missile strike targeting north-eastern Ukraine on Monday, leaving more than 100 people wounded in the city of Sumy.

On Tuesday morning, Ukraine said Russia launched some 139 drones and one ballistic missile overnight.

Up to 30 Russian troops were killed in an air strike on military infrastructure in Kursk, Kyiv added.

Bollywood actress Rhea Chakraborty was called “a gold digger” and “a murderer”. She was slut-shamed and spent 27 days in prison after a hate-filled vicious media campaign in 2020 alleged she had been involved in the death of her actor boyfriend Sushant Singh Rajput.

Now, India’s federal investigators have told a court that Rajput, a rising star in India’s popular Hindi film industry, died by suicide and that neither Chakraborty nor her family had a role in his death.

In a statement shared with the BBC, senior lawyer Satish Maneshinde, who fought Chakraborty’s case, said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had “thoroughly investigated every aspect of the case from all angles and closed it”.

The findings have been presented in a special court in Mumbai, which will now decide whether to close the case or to order further investigation.

Mr Maneshinde said Chakraborty went through “untold miseries” and was jailed “for no fault of hers”.

“The false narrative in the social media and electronic media was totally uncalled for,” he said, calling on media bosses to “reflect upon what they did”.

“Innocent people were hounded and paraded before the media and investigative authorities. I hope this does not repeat in any case.”

Feminist lawyer Payal Chawla, meanwhile, described the “misogynistic narrative surrounding Chakraborty” as “deeply troubling” and said the case “should serve as a cautionary reminder of the perils of being judgmental”.

Chakraborty herself has offered no comment since news of CBI wanting to close the case broke at the weekend. On Monday, she was seen visiting a temple along with her brother and father – who were also named in a police complaint filed over Rajput’s death.

Perhaps the only sign that the family feel vindicated comes from her brother Showik – who spent three months in prison before being freed on bail. He shared a photo with Rhea and the caption “Satyamev Jayate” – Sanskrit for “truth alone prevails”.

Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai apartment on 14 June 2020. Mumbai police said the 34-year-old had mental health issues, for which he was under treatment, and appeared to have taken his own life.

Chakraborty, who had been dating Rajput for a year and was living with him, had gone to live with her parents a few days before his death.

“Still struggling to face my emotions… an irreparable numbness in my heart… I will never come to terms with you not being here anymore,” she later wrote on social media about her grief.

But within weeks, the actress found herself at the centre of a firestorm after Rajput’s father lodged a police complaint, accusing Chakraborty of stealing his son’s money and contributing to his suicide. He also denied that his son had any mental health issues.

The Rajput family has not commented on the latest developments regarding his death.

Chakraborty, who consistently denied all the allegations against her, appealed to the government to order a fair probe into the death.

• Rhea Chakraborty on ‘media trial’ after Bollywood star’s death
• Why is Indian TV obsessed with Sushant Singh Rajput’s death?

However, the tragedy – which came in the midst of a lockdown while India was struggling with the coronavirus pandemic – became the biggest prime-time story for a nation glued to their television sets.

And Chakraborty became the subject of misogynistic abuse, with trolls calling her a “witch”, a “fortune huntress”, a “mafia moll” and “sex bait to trap rich men”. She received rape and death threats.

Some of India’s most high-profile television hosts dedicated their entire shows to discussing the case, describing her as a “manipulative” woman who “performed black magic” and “drove Sushant to suicide”.

A video that went viral at the time showed a prominent news anchor hysterically gesticulating and accusing Chakraborty of being “a druggie”. Another channel had a female anchor walk in on the live set, claiming she had “a bagful of documents” that could prove the actress’s guilt.

The vicious hate campaign continued until Chakraborty was arrested three months after Rajput’s death.

She was released a month later and has since tried her hand at motivational speaking and has now reinvented herself as a businesswoman who has launched a clothing line and her own podcast with celebrity interviews. She is also doing a reality TV show.

Chakraborty has also spoken about her ordeal, including how the name-calling and character assassination cost her work and how her family were also hounded.

“I tried contacting people in the [Hindi film] industry, asking for roles, any roles. But then I realised that people won’t cast you because of all that had happened,” she told Humans of Bombay last year.

“I was very angry for a long time. But it gave me acidity and I suffered from gut issues. So, it became important for me to forgive,” she said, adding ” I have not forgiven everyone. Some people are on my hit list.

It is not clear what action she is contemplating against those who vilified her, but many are now suggesting on social media that she sue them for damages.

While neither the actress or her lawyer have not yet said what they intend to do, columnist Namita Bhandare points out that seeking compensation in India, with its overburdened judiciary and millions of pending court cases, is anything but easy.

“A defamation case can go on for a decade and she would possibly get an apology at the end of it. So would she even bother to do that?”

According to Ms Bhandare, Chakraborty “became expendable in the pursuit of a juicy story” since she “was not a big name and had no powerful people backing her in the film industry”.

What happened, the columnist continued, “was in keeping with the traditional Indian thinking” to blame the female partner left behind, and also highlighted the “dark side of social media, which tends to find a villain and then sets about demolishing their reputation”.

Some of the videos of prominent news anchors making slanderous comments against Chakraborty have now resurfaced, and are being shared extensively on social media. Many people, including some of the actress’s Bollywood colleagues, are demanding that the presenters apologise to her.

“You went on a witch-hunt. You caused deep anguish and harassment just for TRPs [a metric used to gauge advertising reach]. Apologise. That’s the very least you can do,” Bollywood actress Dia Mirza said on Instagram.

• Bollywood speaks up for ‘vilified’ actor
• Mystery and voyeurism around Bollywood star’s death

Journalist Rohini Singh named specific TV channels and asked if they would apologise to Chakraborty.

“If they have any shame, any shred of human decency they should issue a grovelling apology for slandering her, telling outrageous lies, getting her imprisoned only because they were determined to run an agenda,” she posted on X.

The issue was also raised in parliament on Tuesday. Journalist-turned-MP Sagarika Ghosh questioned the character assassination Chakraborty was subjected to.

“News channels ran motivated campaigns against her. Today she’s proven innocent. But who will give those years back to her when she endured such humiliation at the hand of media?” she asked.

US President Donald Trump and his intelligence chiefs have played down a security breach that saw a journalist invited into a Signal group chat where he reported seeing national security officials plan airstrikes in Yemen.

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe denied at a Senate hearing that any classified information was shared in the message chain. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth also faced scrutiny for the messages, though he did not testify.

Democrats on the panel rebuked the cabinet members as “incompetent” with national security.

Over at the White House, Trump stood by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who was at the centre of the leak.

The revelation has sent shockwaves through Washington, prompting a lawsuit and questions about why high-ranking officials discussed such sensitive matters on a potentially vulnerable civilian app.

Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the 18-member group, apparently by accident, and reported that he initially thought it was a hoax.

But he said he realised the messages were authentic once the planned raid was carried out in Yemen.

• Trump’s national security team’s chat app leak stuns Washington
• Five takeaways from leaked US top military chat group

Some 53 people were killed in the 15 March airstrikes, which US officials said targeted Iran-aligned Houthi rebels who have threatened maritime trade and Israel.

The American raids have continued since then, including early on Tuesday morning.

In addition to Ratcliffe and Gabbard, the Signal group chat included Vice-President JD Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

The controversy overshadowed Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was originally meant to focus on drug cartels and people trafficking.

During the at-times combative session, Ratcliffe said he was not aware of any specific operational information on weapons, targets or timings discussed in the chat, as Goldberg had reported.

Asked if he believed the leak was a huge mistake, Ratcliffe said: “No.”

Gabbard repeatedly said “no classified information” was divulged and maintained there was a difference between “inadvertent release” and “malicious leaks” of information.

• Disdain for Europe in US Signal chat horrifies EU
• Three rules potentially breached by the leak

Both pointed to Hegseth as being the authority on whether the information was classified. Goldberg reported that much of the most sensitive information shared in the chat came from the account under Hegseth’s name.

“The Secretary of Defense is the original classification authority for DoD in deciding what would be classified information,” Ratcliffe said.

Senate Democrats assailed the Gabbard and Ratcliffe.

Colorado’s Michael Bennet accused those involved in the chat of sloppiness, incompetence and disrespect for US intelligence agencies.

Georgia’s Jon Ossoff described the episode – which Washington has dubbed Signalgate – as an “embarrassment”.

“This is utterly unprofessional. There’s been no apology,” Ossoff said. “There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error.”

Republicans on the panel were far more muted in their misgivings.

“We dodged a bullet,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker, who leads the the Senate’s armed services committee, later told reporters that lawmakers will investigate the Signal chat leak.

Wicker told reporters that he wants the investigation to be bipartisan and for the committee to have full access to the group chat’s transcript.

“We need to find out if it’s completely factual, and then make recommendations,” he told the NewsNation network. “But I expect we’ll have the co-operation of the administration.”

Republican Jim Risch of Idaho, who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also said that he expects the matter to be investigated.

“This is a matter that’s going to be investigated, obviously, we’re going to know a lot more about it as the facts role out,” he said, quoted by The Hill newspaper.

Trump and his White House team cast the controversy as a “co-ordinated effort” to distract from the president’s accomplishments.

Throughout the day, Trump played down the leak and defended his national security adviser who was reported to have admitted Goldberg to the group chat.

“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC in a morning phone interview. He also said Goldberg’s addition to the group was a “glitch” that had “no impact at all” operationally.

The Republican president indicated it was one of Waltz’s aides who had invited the journalist to the chat.

“A staffer had his number on there,” said Trump, who has long pilloried reporting by Goldberg going back to the 2020 election.

At an event later at the White House, Trump was joined by Waltz.

“There was no classified information, as I understand it,” said the president. “They used an app, if you want to call it an app, that a lot of people use, a lot of people in government use, a lot of people in the media use.”

In his own brief remarks, Waltz took aim at Goldberg. He said he had never had any contact with the reporter and accused him of wanting to focus on “more hoaxes”, rather than Trump administration successes.

Trump later spoke to Newsmax, where he told the conservative network that “somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that was with Mike Waltz, worked with Mike Waltz at a lower level, had, I guess Goldberg’s” phone number.

Waltz came close to apologising by Tuesday evening, telling Fox News: “I take full responsibility. I built the group.”

“It’s embarrassing. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”

Asked if he had identified who on his staff was at fault, he responded, “a staffer wasn’t responsible,” and repeated that the error was his “full responsibility”.

Waltz also said that he had spoken to Elon Musk, who is leading the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency and has touted himself as “tech support” for the federal government.

“We’ve got the best technical minds looking at how this happened,” Waltz continued, adding that Goldberg “wasn’t on my phone”.

Some national security experts have argued that the leak was a major operational lapse, and archive experts warned that it violated laws on presidential record keeping.

On Tuesday, the non-partisan watchdog group American Oversight sued the individual officials who participated in the chat for alleged violations of the Federal Records Act and Administrative Procedure Act.

The group said that by setting the chat to automatically delete messages, the group violated a law requiring White House officials to submit their records to the National Archives.

The National Security Agency warned employees only last month of vulnerabilities in Signal, according to documents obtained by the BBC’s US partner CBS.

Signal issued a new statement on Tuesday disputing “vulnerabilities” in its messaging platform.

“Signal is open source, so our code is regularly scrutinized in addition to regular formal audits,” the statement said, calling the app “the gold standard for private, secure communications”.

Mick Mulroy, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence (DASD) for the Middle East and a retired CIA paramilitary officer, told the BBC that holding sensitive discussions on a “unsure commercial application” was “unacceptable”.

“And everyone on that chat knew it,” he added. “You do not need to be a member of the military or intelligence community to know that this information is exactly what the enemy would want to know.”

Hundreds of people have taken part in the largest anti-Hamas protest in Gaza since the war with Israel began, taking to the streets to demand the group step down from power.

Masked Hamas militants, some armed with guns and others carrying batons, intervened and forcibly dispersed the protesters, assaulting several of them.

Videos shared widely on social media by activists typically critical of Hamas showed young men marching through the streets of Beit Lahia, northern Gaza on Tuesday, chanting “out, out, out, Hamas out”.

Pro-Hamas supporters defended the group, downplayed the significance of the demonstrations and accused the participants of being traitors. Hamas is yet to comment.

The protests in northern Gaza came a day after Islamic Jihad gunmen launched rockets at Israel, prompting an Israeli decision to evacuate large parts of Beit Lahia, which sparked public anger in the area.

Israel has resumed its military campaign in Gaza following nearly two months of ceasefire, blaming Hamas for rejecting a new US proposal to extend the truce. Hamas, in turn, has accused Israel of abandoning the original deal agreed in January.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and thousands displaced since Israeli military operations resumed with air strikes on 18 March.

One of the protesters, Beit Lahia resident Mohammed Diab, had his home destroyed in the war and lost his brother in an Israeli airstrike a year ago.

“We refuse to die for anyone, for any party’s agenda or the interests of foreign states,” he said.

“Hamas must step down and listen to the voice of the grieving, the voice that rises from beneath the rubble – it is the most truthful voice.”

Footage from the town also showed protesters shouting “down with Hamas rule, down with the Muslim Brotherhood rule”.

Hamas has been the sole ruler in Gaza since 2007, after winning Palestinian elections a year prior and then violently ousting rivals.

Open criticism of Hamas has grown in Gaza since war began, both on the streets and online, though there are still those that are fiercely loyal and it is hard to accurately gauge how far support for the group has shifted.

There was opposition to Hamas long before the war, though much of it remained hidden for fear of reprisals.

Mohammed Al-Najjar, from Gaza, posted on his Facebook: “Excuse me, but what exactly is Hamas betting on? They’re betting on our blood, blood that the whole world sees as just numbers.

“Even Hamas counts us as numbers. Step down and let us tend to our wounds.”

The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, during which around 1,200 people, mainly civilians, were killed and 251 others taken hostage.

Israel responded to the attack with a military offensive in Gaza to destroy Hamas, which has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

Most of Gaza’s 2.1 million population has also been displaced, many of them several times.

An estimated 70% of buildings have been damaged or destroyed in Gaza, healthcare, water and sanitation systems have collapsed and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that aims to overhaul US federal elections, including by requiring voters to show proof of citizenship and limiting when states can receive mail-in ballots.

Experts warn the move could disenfranchise millions of Americans who do not have easy access to a passport or other legal documents proving they have the right to vote.

It is unclear how enforceable the order is, given US states have wide legal leeway to determine how they run their elections. It is expected to be challenged in court.

The order, titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”, was signed by Trump on Tuesday at the White House.

“Election fraud. You’ve heard the term. We’re going to end it, hopefully. At least this will go a long way toward ending it,” Trump said as he signed the order on Tuesday.

The order says that the US has failed “to enforce basic and necessary election protections” and calls on states to co-operate with the the White House or risk losing access to federal funding if they do not require proof of citizenship.

It is already illegal for non-citizens to vote in elections.

The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections.

Every state is required to use a common registration form that requires people to confirm they are US citizens, under penalty of perjury for false claims, but does not require documentary proof.

Experts say there have been very few cases of immigrants voting illegally in US elections.

The order also seeks to bar states from accepting postal ballots received after election day. Currently, 18 states allow ballots to be received after election day as long as they were mailed on or before the day of the vote.

The order would withdraw federal funding for US states that do not comply.

Trump has been accused of spreading election misinformation, including by claiming that “millions” of illegal immigrants voted in his first election campaign. He also continues to deny that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Previous efforts to pass a voter ID law in Congress have failed.

Democrats who have criticised similar past reform attempts have pointed to statistics showing that a large number of Americans do not have an enhanced drivers licence or passport for ID.

The legal basis for the order is expected to be challenged in court.

“The president cannot override a statute passed by Congress that says what is required to register to vote on the federal voter registration form,” Wendy Weiser, from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, told the Washington Post.

UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said on his blog that elections are largely run by each individual state government, and that if allowed to stand, the order would radically shift power to the federal government.

Popular Indian comedian Kunal Kamra has refused to apologise after jokes he made during a stand-up show angered supporters of a top politician in Maharashtra state.

Clips of the jokes – some of them were directed at the state’s Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde – had gone viral.

Members of the Shiv Sena party, which is led by Shinde, vandalised the hotel in Mumbai – the capital of Maharashtra – where the show was held.

A police case was also registered against Kamra and politicians from the state’s ruling coalition have asked him to apologise.

In a statement released on Monday night, Kamra said he would “co-operate with the police and courts for any lawful action” taken against him.

“But will the law be fairly and equally deployed against those who have decided that vandalism is the appropriate response to being offended by a joke?” he added.

Police arrested 12 people for the vandalism at the hotel, which housed a comedy club where the show was filmed. They were later released on bail.

As the controversy raged, Shinde said he did not support the vandalism, but added that “the other person should also maintain a certain standard”.

“There is freedom of expression. We understand satire. But there should be a limit,” he told BBC Marathi.

Kamra is a well-known name in the Indian comedy scene, with his political satire and stand-up shows getting millions of views on social media.

In his latest show – called Naya Bharat (New India) – Kamra refers to Shinde’s 2022 defection from the Shiv Sena party which triggered a major political crisis in the state.

The move led to a split in the Shiv Sena – India’s Election Commission later recognised Shinde’s group as the “real” Shiv Sena. The party is now part of the governing coalition in Maharashtra along with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Nationalist Congress Party.

In the show, Kamra sang a parody of a Bollywood song where he indirectly referred to Shinde as a traitor, outraging his supporters.

It’s not clear when the show was filmed at the hotel but the reactions this week were swift.

After Shiv Sena workers ransacked the venue, the studio Habitat – which often hosted stand-up comedy shows – said it was shutting down until it figured out “the best way to provide a platform for free expression without putting ourselves and our property in jeopardy”.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Mumbai’s civic authorities, also demolished some structures at the hotel, citing alleged building violations.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is from the BJP, criticised Kamra, asking him to apologise. “None of us are against freedom of speech. We support satire or even political satire and we do not paint it differently,” he said.

Both he and Shinde accused Kamra of speaking on behalf of the opposition.

A lawmaker from Shinde’s party also said in a video that Shiv Sena workers would pursue Kamra across the country and he would be forced to leave India.

In his statement, Kamra said he would not “hide under [his] bed”, waiting for the outrage to die down.

“As far as I know, it is not against the law to poke fun at our leaders and the circus that is our political system,” he said.

Opposition leaders have supported Kamra.

Uddhav Thackeray, chief of Shinde’s former party – the Shiv Sena (UBT) – said Kamra had not done anything wrong.

“He stated the facts and voiced the public opinion,” he added.

Indian comedians have often faced legal action over comments and jokes. In 2021, Munawar Faruqui spent days in jail after being accused of hurting Hindu religious sentiments in jokes that – it turned out – he didn’t actually crack.

Actor and comedian Vir Das also faced outrage and police complaints after a show in the US where he described India as a country of two sides where people “worship women during the day but gang rape them at night”.

A Ming vase stolen from a Swiss museum. A shooting at a comedian’s house in Woodford, east London. The robbery of a luxury apartment in Sevenoaks, Kent.

These seemingly unconnected events were all part of a web of international organised crime that police untangled after a six-year-long investigation.

A key piece of evidence – an iPad, found under an inch of sand on the foreshore of the River Thames just downstream from the O2 Arena.

Its discovery was pivotal to the investigation that has led to three people being found guilty at the Old Bailey of the near-assassination of one of Britain’s most notorious armed robbers.

When found by a police officer with a metal detector on a cold November morning last year, the iPad was found caked in mud having been underwater for more than five years.

Forensics were able to clean it and open the Sim tray – which still contained a pink Vodafone Sim card.

Call data that was subsequently salvaged provided damning evidence on three men – Louis Ahearne, Stewart Ahearne and Daniel Kelly – who were all also involved in a heist at a museum in Switzerland a month earlier.

“I’ve questioned this a lot,” Det Supt Matthew Webb ponders. “Is it calamitous blunders tripping them up or was it just they were so blasé they wouldn’t get caught?”

The Ahearne brothers and Kelly first caught the attention of police after gunshots pierced the silence of a late summer evening in an affluent Woodford area on 11 July 2019.

Six bullets tore through a glass conservatory at a luxury property owned by comedian Russell Kane that had been rented out to Paul Allen.

One severed one of Allen’s fingers, the other went through his throat and became lodged in his spinal cord, leaving him struggling to breathe and bleeding profusely.

“He’s been shot, he’s been shot!” Allen’s partner, Jade Bovington, screamed.

As she frantically called an ambulance, neighbours and a private security guard heard the cries and rushed to render first aid.

One eyewitness described seeing an unidentified man vault a low wall, run between some bushes and get straight into a waiting vehicle which immediately sped off.

To this day, Allen relies on a wheelchair, paralysed below his upper chest.

Allen gained notoriety as one of the ringleaders of what remains Britain’s biggest ever armed robbery. In 2006, Allen was part of a balaclava-wearing gang toting guns including an AK-47 assault rifle who threatened to kill staff at the Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent. They stole £53m in Bank of England cash notes – leaving behind £154m which would not fit into their lorry.

Allen fled to Morocco four days later, but was arrested in Rabat alongside friend and fellow robber Lee Murray, who remains in jail in nearby Tiflet. In January 2008, Allen was extradited to the UK and subsequently sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Allen was released in 2016 and moved back to his roots in south-east London. But he relocated to Woodford with his partner and two younger children after a gunman opened fire at him and his pregnant daughter in the doorway of their Woolwich home in September 2018.

Ten months later, Allen almost died after those two bullets hit him as he stood in the kitchen of his Woodford haven.

Prosecutors argued the Ahearnes and Kelly were equally culpable in the plot to murder Allen – which involved a hired car, surveillance and unregistered pay-as-you-go phones.

“This was a meticulously researched and planned assassination attempt by a team of men well versed in the level of criminality to pull it off,” prosecutor Michael Shaw KC said.

In discovering how the three knew where to find Allen, police would uncover their criminality stretched into mainland Europe.

Just one month before the shooting, the Ahearne brothers and Kelly stood outside the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva equipped with a sledgehammer, angle grinders and crowbars.

Within seconds of forcing their way through the front door, they shattered glass casings housing 14th Century Chinese Ming Dynasty antiques. Three items were seized – a rare pomegranate vase; a doucai-style wine cup and a porcelain bowl – and had a combined insured value of £2.8m.

In their hurry to flee, Stewart scraped his stomach against the sides of the hole the gang had made in the front wooden door – leaving traces of his DNA. He also hired the getaway car, a Renault Koleos from Avis at Geneva Airport. Louis was caught on CCTV filming the inside and outside of the museum the day before the raid.

Within days of returning to south-east London with the stolen goods, the trio set about attempting to dispose of the items they had pinched.

The brothers flew to Hong Kong with Kelly as they tried to sell one of the stolen items at an auction house.

The auction house tipped off police in London, who were able to send undercover officers posing as art dealers to catch some other gang members in a sting operation as two of them tried to sell another plundered item which had been concealed in a JD Sports bag.

During a seven-week trial at the Old Bailey, prosecutors argued that international burglary proved the Ahearnes and Kelly were “at the top end” of criminality.

But little did police know while pursuing the stolen antiquities, the three would leave behind near-enough similar clues to give away their presence in the Woodford shooting.

In the hours after the shooting, the crime scene in Woodford was forensically examined. Six bullet casings fired from a Glock self-loading handgun were found, as were scuff marks on the property’s rear garden fence from the direction the shots had been fired.

DNA samples collected from the fence were found to most probably belong to Louis and Kelly.

Trawling through CCTV footage, police were then able to identify the number plate of a silver-grey Renault Captur owned by hire company Avis.

Records showed it had been rented by Stewart from a Dartford branch two days before the shooting, and returned the following day.

Further CCTV checks revealed that 90 minutes before the shooting the Renault had pulled into a Shell garage on Shooters Hill Road, near Greenwich Park.

“They stopped at a petrol station because Louis Ahearne was thirsty,” Shaw told the court.

“The problem with petrol stations is they have very good CCTV,” Shaw added.

Two days prior, Kelly and Louis had been driven by Stewart in the same Renault Captur to Ide Hill Hall, a 16th Century mansion converted into luxury apartments in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Posing as police officers – with a blue flashing light on top of the Renault – the trio and another man forced their way into the gated property and stole designer items.

They were later convicted at Maidstone Crown Court of burglary and the attempted burglary of another apartment.

The following day, 10 July, Stewart was said to have used the Renault to drive around parts of east London including Bethnal Green, Snaresbrook – and Woodford.

A closer look at traffic cameras showed the Renault following a silver Mercedes that belonged to the Allens.

But detectives would have to wait more than five years to learn how the men knew Allen’s whereabouts.

In October 2024 – four months before the Old Bailey trial started and not long after being extradited from Switzerland back to the UK – Louis issued his defence statement which contained one intriguing detail.

He stated that, while heading back to Woolwich, the Renault had stopped at John Harrison Way. Louis said he hoped CCTV would be recovered from the street which would show him “getting some air” while Kelly disappeared in the direction of the Thames.

Det Supt Webb recalls: “We knew the vehicle had stopped in John Harrison Way and that Kelly got out of the vehicle – but no more than that. Didn’t know where he went, didn’t know what happened – just John Harrison Way.

“Straight away, we were thinking if somebody wants to discard something critical it’s probably going to be a firearm.”

Louis’s defence statement drew attention to that stop which led to the iPad being discovered in the River Thames – which infuriated Kelly, who only found out just before the trial began.

On the second day of the trial, footage from a prison van caught Kelly shouting “how is the snitch life treating you?” at Louis.

Kelly and Stewart sat in the dock in silence throughout the trial, and declined to give evidence, having both previously expressed fears over their safety. Louis implied to jurors that it was Kelly who had pulled the trigger in the Woodford shooting.

But Det Supt Webb said the iPad was the key to unravelling it all.

“Talk about people being flabbergasted and gobsmacked,” he recalls. “Det Insp Matthew Freeman called me and said we have gone to the Thames and found an iPad.

“I can’t repeat the words I used but my jaw dropped. What a beautiful piece of the puzzle to put together.”

Call data showed both the iPad and an iPhone 6 belonging to Kelly had contacted a select few numbers, including the Ahearne brothers.

The Sim card was also linked to GPS tracking devices which were found inside a car when Louis and Kelly were arrested in August 2019.

Email accounts were then linked to Kelly and a close associate. From that, police were able to examine 59 Amazon and eBay purchases – some included unregistered Nokia burner phones used to communicate in the murder plot.

The Sim had been in use until it vanished from the network shortly before Allen was shot.

The three men – shown to be experienced international criminals – had been undone by tenacious detectives who found their throwaway piece of tech.

They were each found guilty on Monday of conspiracy to murder and will be sentenced on 25 April.

But Det Supt Webb suggests these verdicts are far from being the end of their deep investigations.

“It is one of those cases where you keep scratching and you keep finding,” he adds.

The US has removed millions of dollars in bounties from senior members of the Haqqani militant network in Afghanistan, including one on its leader Sirajuddin Haqqani who is also the Taliban government’s interior minister.

It is a significant move given that the Haqqani network is accused of carrying out some of the most high-profile and deadly attacks in Afghanistan during the US-led war in the country, including attacks on the American and Indian embassies, and NATO forces.

Currently, the network is a key part of the Taliban government, which has controlled Afghanistan since foreign troops withdrew from the country in 2021, following a deal struck between the US and the Taliban during President Trump’s first term.

The move to lift the bounties comes weeks into President Trump’s second term, and just days after US officials met with the Taliban government in Kabul to secure the release of an American tourist, detained since 2022.

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A US state department spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that “there is no current reward” for Sirajuddin Haqqani, his brother Abdul Aziz Haqqani and brother-in-law Yahya Haqqani, but they remain ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorists and the Haqqani Network remains designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization”.

An FBI webpage, which on Monday showed a $10 million dollar bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani, has now been updated to remove the reward offer.

Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told the BBC that the lifting of bounties “was a result of continued diplomatic efforts” by his government. “It is a good step and this shows our new interaction with the world and particularly with the United States. They (the US delegation) told us they want to increase positive interaction and confidence building between us,” he added.

On Saturday, a US delegation including hostage envoy Adam Boehler and former envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad met with the Taliban government’s foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and other Taliban officials in Kabul. Afterwards, US national George Glezmann, detained in December 2022 while visiting Afghanistan as a tourist, was released by the Taliban government.

It is unclear if lifting the bounties was a part of the negotiations.

Founded by Sirajuddin Haqqani’s father, Jalaluddin Haqqani in the 1980s, the Haqqani network started out as a CIA-backed anti-Soviet outfit operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it grew into one of the most feared anti-Western militant organisations in the region.

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The group allied with the Taliban when they first took power in Afghanistan in 1996. Jalaluddin Haqqani died of a prolonged illness in 2018.

Currently, Sirajuddin Haqqani is emerging as a power centre in Afghanistan’s Taliban government, as rifts between him and the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada grow.

Members of the Taliban government have told the BBC that the issue of women’s education is a key point of disagreement between the two sides.

The Haqqanis have sought to project themselves as more moderate, galvanising support among people in the country who are frustrated by the supreme leader’s intransigence on women’s education.

The dropping of bounties by the US government is evidence that its stature is also growing externally, among parts of the international community keen to engage with the Taliban.