Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Donald Trump to visit his country ahead of any deal with Russia to end the war.

“Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” Zelensky said in an interview for CBS’s 60 Minutes programme.

The interview was recorded before Sunday’s devastating Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy, which killed 34 people – including two children – and injured 117 others.

Trump described the attack as a “horrible thing” while Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, accused Russia of committing a war crime.

There was no immediate official comment on the attack from Russia, whose forces across the nearby border are said to be preparing for a major offensive.

The attack comes as the US, Ukraine’s strongest military ally, has been pursuing an end to the war – now in its fourth year – through negotiation under Trump.

Asked about the attack, the US president said it was “terrible” and that he had been “told they made a mistake”, but did not elaborate.

Earlier, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt-Gen Keith Kellogg, said the attack had crossed “any line of decency”.

Merz, who is expected to take over as Germany’s new chancellor next month, told German public broadcaster ARD that the attack on Sumy constituted a “serious war crime”.

“It was a perfidious act.. and it is a serious war crime, deliberate and intended,” the conservative politician said.

Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, said the attack showed “just what Russia’s supposed readiness for peace [was] worth”.

French President Emmanuel Macron accused Russia of “blatant disregard of human lives, international law, and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump”.

“Strong measures are needed to impose a ceasefire on Russia,” he said. “France is working tirelessly toward this goal, alongside its partners.”

Describing the attack as “barbaric”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen added: “Russia was and remains the aggressor, in blatant violation of international law.

“Strong measures are urgently needed to enforce a ceasefire. Europe will continue to reach out to partners and maintain strong pressure on Russia until the bloodshed ends and a just and lasting peace is achieved, on Ukraine’s terms and conditions.”

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also gave a view, saying he was “appalled at Russia’s horrific attacks on civilians in Sumy”.

A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed and shocked” to learn of the missile attack.

“Attacks against civilians and civilian objects are prohibited under international humanitarian law, and that any such attacks, wherever they occur, must end immediately”, he added.

Guterres stressed the UN’s support for “meaningful efforts towards a just, lasting and comprehensive peace that fully upholds Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”.

Sunday’s double missile strike was the deadliest attack on civilians in Ukraine this year.

Another Russian missile attack, earlier this month on 4 April, killed 20 people and injured 61 in the city of Kryvyi Rih.

On that occasion, Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted a meeting of “unit commanders and Western instructors” in a restaurant. No evidence was provided.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

The UN estimates that nearly seven million Ukrainians are currently living as refugees.

The conflict goes back more than a decade, to 2014, when Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was overthrown. Russia then annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and backed insurgents in bloody fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Bangladeshi authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the British MP and former Labour minister Tulip Siddiq.

The country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has been investigating allegations Siddiq illegally received land as part of its wider probe of the regime of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed as prime minister in August.

The Hampstead and Highgate MP, who quit as economic secretary to the Treasury in January, was named in the arrest warrant alongside more than 50 others.

Lawyers acting for Siddiq denied the charges, which they said were “politically motivated”.

The ACC had not presented any evidence or informed Siddiq about an arrest warrant, the lawyers added.

The UK lists Bangladesh as a 2B extradition country – meaning clear evidence must be presented before ministers and judges make a decision.

The ACC is examining claims Sheikh Hasina and her family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh.

The investigation is based on a series of allegations made by Bobby Hajjaj, a political opponent of Hasina.

Court documents seen by the BBC show Hajjaj has accused Siddiq of helping to broker a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of a new nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

In a statement seen by the BBC, Siddiq’s lawyers Stephenson Harwood said: “The allegations are completely false and have been dealt with in writing by Siddiq’s lawyers.

“The ACC has not responded to Siddiq or put any allegations to her directly or through her lawyers.

“Siddiq knows nothing about a hearing in Dhaka relating to her and she has no knowledge of any arrest warrant that is said to have been issued.

“To be clear, there is no basis at all for any charges to be made against her, and there is absolutely no truth in any allegation that she received a plot of land in Dhaka through illegal means.

“She has never had a plot of land in Bangladesh, and she has never influenced any allocation of plots of land to her family members or anyone else.

“No evidence has been provided by the ACC to support this or any other allegation made against Siddiq, and it is clear to us that the charges are politically motivated.”

Before resigning, Siddiq had referred herself to the PM’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus when the corruption allegations first surfaced.

Sir Laurie said in his report that he had “not identified evidence of improprieties”.

But he added it was “regrettable” that Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt Sheikh Hasina, the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh and leader of Awami League party.

ACC chairman Mohammad Abdul Momen has previously told the BBC the allegations “are by no means ‘targeted and baseless'” and its investigation was “based on documentary evidence of corruption”.

“Tulip Siddiq must not shy away from the court proceedings in Bangladesh.

“I would welcome Siddiq come and defend her case and with the best possible legal support accompanying her,” he added.

He also rejected her lawyer’s claims that the ACC was interfering in UK politics, adding: “ACC briefing to the media is a regular phenomenon, it is delivered professionally and with all accuracy.”

Mario Vargas Llosa, who has died at the age of 89 in his native Peru, was a towering figure in Latin American literature and culture who rarely shied away from controversy.

With more than 50 works to his name, many of which have been widely translated, Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 when judges dubbed him a “divinely gifted story-teller”. His depictions of authoritarianism, violence and machismo, using rich language and imagery, made him a star of the Latin American Boom literary movement that shone a global spotlight on the continent.

At first sympathetic to left-wing ideas, he grew disillusioned with Latin America’s revolutionary causes, eventually running unsuccessfully for the Peruvian presidency with a centre-right party in 1990.

Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 to a middle-class family in Arequipa in southern Peru. After his parents separated while he was an infant, he moved to Cochabamba in Bolivia with his great-grandparents. He returned to Peru aged 10 and six years later he wrote his first play, The Escape of the Inca. He graduated from Lima University, studied in Spain and later moved to Paris.

His first novel, The Time of the Hero, was an indictment of corruption and abuse at a Peruvian military school. Written at a time when the country’s military wielded significant political and social power, it was published in 1962.

Its forceful, menacing imagery was condemned by several Peruvian generals. One accused Vargas Llosa of having a “degenerate mind”.

It was based on the writer’s own time as a teenager at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy, which he described in 1990 as “an extremely traumatic experience”. His two years there made him see his country “as a violent society, filled with bitterness, made up of social, cultural, and racial factions in complete opposition”. The school itself burnt 1,000 copies of the novel on its grounds, Vargas Llosa claimed.

His experimental second novel The Green House (1966) was set in the Peruvian desert and jungle, and described an alliance of pimps, missionaries and soldiers based around a brothel.

The two novels helped found the Latin American Boom literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The Boom was characterised by experimental and explicitly political works that reflected a continent in turmoil.

Its leading authors, who included Vargas Llosa’s Colombian friend and sometime rival Gabriel García Márquez – who pioneered the kaleidoscopic magical realism style of writing – became household names and their works were read around the world.

Famously the two authors did not speak to each other for decades after Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez in the face in a Mexican cinema in 1976. Reports of why Vargas Llosa punched his Colombian friend differ.

Friends of García Márquez said the dispute had revolved around García Márquez’s friendship with Vargas Llosa’s then-wife, Patricia, but Vargas Llosa told students at a Madrid university in 2017 that it had been down to their opposing views on Cuba and its communist leader, Fidel Castro.

They reconciled in 2007 and three years later, in 2010, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize – the first South American writer to be chosen for the literature prize since Gabriel García Márquez took the honour in 1982.

Much of Vargas Llosa’s work is inseparable from the instability and violence in parts of Latin America in the second half of the 20th Century as the region experienced waves of revolutions and military rule.

His novel Conversations in the Cathedral (1969) was celebrated for exposing how the Peruvian dictatorship of 1948-56 under Manuel Odría controlled and eventually ruined the lives of ordinary people.

Like many intellectuals, Vargas Llosa supported Fidel Castro but became disillusioned with the communist leader following the “Padilla Affair” when poet Heberto Padilla was imprisoned for criticising the Cuban government in 1971.

In 1983 Vargas Llosa was appointed president of a commission investigating the gruesome killing in a village in the Peruvian Andes of eight journalists, which became known as the Uchuraccay massacre.

Peruvian officials maintained that the journalists had been killed by indigenous villagers who had mistaken the journalists for members of the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group.

The commission’s report backed the official line, leading to fierce criticism of Vargas Llosa by those who believed that the gruesome nature of the crime and the horrific mutilations inflicted on the body were the hallmark of an infamous anti-terrorist police rather than signs of “indigenous violence”.

Moving further right on the political spectrum, in 1990 Vargas Llosa ran for the Peruvian presidency with the centre-right Frente Democrático coalition on a neo-liberal platform. He lost to Alberto Fujimori, who went on to govern Peru for the following 10 years.

Despite the criticism levelled against him over the investigation into the Uchuraccay massacre, Vargas Llosa continued to expose state terror and abuse of power through literature.

His novel The Feast of the Goat, published in 2000, focused on dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic for 31 years until his assassination in 1961. The novel won praise from the Nobel Prize Committee for its attention to “structures of power” and “images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”.

Other works were adapted for the big screen. His book Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, based on his first marriage, was adapted in 1990 into a Hollywood feature film, Tune in Tomorrow.

His later work covered figures as diverse as Irish nationalist Roger Casement (The Dream of the Celt, 2012).

He spent the latter years of his life in Peru as well as Madrid.

The author appeared in the pages of Spanish gossip magazine Hola after he left his wife of 50 years in 2015 to be with Spanish-Filipino socialite Isabel Preysler, the mother of popular Latin singer Enrique Iglesias.

He also continued to attract criticism for controversial remarks.

In 2019 he was condemned for blaming the rise in killings of journalists in Mexico – more than 100 in the past decade – on the expansion of press freedom “which allows journalists to say things that were not permitted previously”. While he also said that “narcotics trafficking plays an absolutely central part in all of this”, some commentators felt that he failed to express sympathy with the victims and their families.

And in 2018 he caused a stir when, in a column for Spanish newspaper El País, he called feminism “the most determined enemy of literature, trying to decontaminate it from machismo, multiple prejudices and immoralities”.

He died in Lima on 13 April surrounded by his family and “at peace”, his son Álvaro Vargas Llosa announced.

With his death, the last of the Latin American Boom’s great stars has gone.

A Liberal Democrat MP barred from entering Hong Kong has told the BBC she believes it was to “shut me up and to silence me”.

Wera Hobhouse flew to Hong Kong with her husband on Thursday to visit her son and newborn grandson. However she was detained at the airport, questioned and deported.

The MP for Bath, one of more than 40 parliamentarians of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (Ipac) which criticises Beijing’s handling of human rights, said she was given no reason for being refused entry.

Speaking on the BBC’s Newscast show on Sunday, she said she wants “some answers”, and said she was not very “outspoken about China”.

Hobhouse told Newscast she and her husband had been “looking forward” to visiting their son, who has lived in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, since 2019.

While her husband “got processed quite quickly” and was allowed entry, she was taken aside for questioning, held for five hours and then put on a return flight.

Asked by presenter Laura Kuenssberg what the authorities said about why she was being detained, Hobhouse responded: “Nothing.”

“They said not to worry at first, just a few questions to answer.”

In response to the suggestion it could be due to her involvement in Ipac, which scrutinises Beijing’s human rights record, Hobhouse said she was not very “outspoken about China”.

“I was only standing up for our values,” she said.

“It would be terrible if China uses this now to intimidate me, to stop me from speaking out for human rights and liberty and democracy.

“That is the last thing that should happen, but that is, of course probably the intention, to shut me up and to silence me.”

Hobhouse said she had experienced huge amount of solidarity from “very worried” MPs.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has promised to “urgently” raise the issue with authorities in Hong Kong and Beijing and “demand an explanation”

He added it would be “unacceptable for an MP to be denied entry for simply expressing their views as a parliamentarian”.

Lib Dem Leader Sir Ed Davey has called for Lammy to summon the Chinese ambassador, adding the Chinese government cannot be allowed to “undermine our democracy by intimidating our parliamentarians.”

“I want some answers,” Hobhouse said, calling for Lammy to “reassure parliamentarians that this is not the way the Chinese communist parties can treat [them]”.

It comes a week after two Labour MPs were denied entry to Israel while on a trip to visit the occupied West Bank.

“It is very chilling that authoritarian countries can treat us in this way,” said Hobhouse, adding the “diplomatic understanding” in which we allow politicians into each other’s countries seemed to be “collapsing”.

She has ruled out approaching the Chinese embassy for permission enter Hong Kong, saying they will see their relatives elsewhere.

Asked about the timing of the incident in the week the UK government sought to take control of the Chinese-owned British Steel plant in Scunthorpe, Lincs, Hobhouse said she could only speculate.

She called for a “clear-eyed” approach to what China wants from Britain, saying “it’s not just fluffy, friendly relationships”.

“They want something from us. They use us and we must not be naïve about giving them access to too much, for example our critical national infrastructure.”

The Chinese Embassy has been approached for comment.

The Caribbean nation of Guyana is breathing a sigh of relief after US President Donald Trump announced a 90-day pause on the introduction of higher tariffs on a number of countries.

Guyana, which is nestled between Venezuela and Suriname on the South American mainland, had been singled out for rates of 38% on many of its exports.

Following Trump’s change in policy, it now faces tariffs of only 10% – the same as all countries apart from Canada, China and Mexico.

But why had Guyana been facing a higher levy in the first place?

Guyanese political commentator Francis Bailey says the country is caught in a geopolitical battle between the US and China. Or more specifically – Washington objects to Beijing’s “very strong foothold” in Guyana.

Recent years have seen billions of dollars of investment in Guyana by Chinese entities, in everything from roads and hospitals, to hotels and shopping centres. And a crucial new bridge linking the capital Georgetown to the western region of Demerara-Mahaica is currently under construction by a Beijing-based company.

For its part, the US continues to be happy to buy Guyana’s key exports of crude oil, gold and bauxite, which is the ore from which aluminium is extracted. These were all to be exempt from the planned 38% tariff, which instead would have hit Guyana’s fishing and sugar industries.

The US also backs Guyana in its territorial dispute with Venezuela over the vast Essequibo region that forms the western two thirds of Guyana. During a visit to Georgetown in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Venezuela of “consequences” if it were to use force against Guyana.

But the planned high tariff showed Washington’s ire, says Mr Bailey. “I think the reason we had been given such high tariffs is to apply pressure on Guyana.

“The US is saying, ‘if you want our protection you need to chase the Chinese out of your country’. Trump is a very transactional president – and Guyana is in a very precarious position against its sabre-rattling adversary Venezuela which has been ramping up acts of aggression.”

The Guyanese government did not respond to requests for comments. The country, once one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere, and a former British colony, has been enjoying a surge in wealth since it first discovered oil in its territorial waters in 2015.

Last year it exported $3.13bn (£2.4bn) of crude oil to the US, according to United Nations figures.

Across the Caribbean all countries now face a 10% tariff on their exports to the US. However, it is the price impact of Trump’s global tariffs on what they import from the US that is of most concern.

This is because the Caribbean’s love for, and reliance on, US products is immediately apparent when you glance at a High Street or supermarket shelf across the region. In fact, some islands are said to import as much as 70% of their consumer goods from their North American neighbour.

And with American goods that rely on overseas raw materials or components set to go up in price, this will inevitably be passed on to consumers in the Caribbean.

Also, much of what Caribbean nations buy from other countries around the world comes to them via the US.

So with the White House now hitting Chinese goods coming into the US with tariffs of 125%, Chinese items that are then reexported to the Caribbean should see price hikes of a similar amount. And by around 10% for goods from other countries that arrive via the US.

With already ever-increasing shipping costs in the Caribbean, and high local import duties causing exorbitant prices in a region beset by low wages, the impact of Trump’s tariffs could be profound and keenly felt.

In Antigua and Barbuda, interior designer Carissa Warner tells the BBC that 70% of her materials are imported from the US, and 20% from China.

“Some of my projects are on hold while we wait to see what happens,” she explains. “I am extremely worried from a business aspect but also just as a local consumer.

“I’m so worried about the cost of food I have been looking online for pots to start growing fresh produce. I don’t think people realise the impact it will have on us.”

Ms Warner believes one way Caribbean governments could ease the squeeze on their people is by lowering their own import duties, which are partially calculated using a percentage of an item’s cost.

Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne has dubbed global tariffs “extremely worrisome” and is urging citizens to “buy smarter and buy local”.

Trump’s tariffs come as the Caribbean is already grappling with a confluence of harsh economic conditions from the cost of cleaning up after frequent natural disasters like hurricanes, to the aftereffects of the Covid pandemic.

Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the US, Sir Ronald Sanders, says that the US has long enjoyed a trade surplus with most Caribbean countries.

“For decades, we have helped sustain American prosperity by collectively importing far more from the United States than we export,” he says.

“The problem we have created for ourselves is that we have been dependent on the US market for such a long time and have not sought to diversify into other markets.”

As for the 10% tariff on Caribbean exports to the US, Sir Ronald says: “Any loss is not a good thing for our small economies, but the 10% that we face is not going to disrupt our goods from going to the US market.”

The Caribbean islands’ small market sizes, high labour costs and remoteness from principle markets has kept their manufacturing sectors relatively modest. Their exports include many niche products like specialist rums and indigenous foods such as ackee, a fruit from Jamaica.

“These kinds of products are all orientated to a certain kind of market and will not face any competition because the US does not produce them, and the countries that do face their own tariffs,” Sir Ronald continues.

Exacerbating worries in the Caribbean are potential additional taxes on Chinese-built ships entering US ports of up to $1.5m per docking. This idea was mooted by the White House in February.

Many fear that will aggravate freight costs in the Caribbean, and lead to further hikes in the price of everyday goods, given the large volume of items sold in the region that are manufactured in China.

Sir Ronald adds that tacking the problem of an overreliance on the US “can only come from diversifying the market, but that’s not an overnight achievement”.

He adds: “It’s not as easy to set up new markets as people think. It’s not governments who control trade; it’s the private sector. And much of what we buy will still come via the US.”

Many Caribbean leaders feel the best strategy to thwart the fallout from tariffs is to negotiate as a bloc.

Mia Mottley, chair of the intergovernmental group Caricom, said the region was facing the most challenging of times since its 15 member states gained independence several decades ago.

“We are working and will continue to work to become more self-sufficient, but… this trade war will mean higher prices for all of us,” she said in a recent statement.

Ms Mottley added that it was vital to redouble efforts to “invest in Caribbean agricultural production and light manufacturing”.

“We must build our ties with Africa, Central and Latin America, and renew those ties with some of our older partners around the world, in the United Kingdom and Europe, and in Canada. We must not rely solely on one or two markets.”

Ms Mottley, who is also the prime minister of Barbados, is calling for Washington to “work with” the Caribbean to keep prices down.

She added: “To the United States, I say this simply: ‘We are not your enemy. We are your friends’.”

Relatives of a nine-year-old boy who was killed by an accidental gunshot in Australia have been charged over his death.

Paramedics treated the child for serious neck injuries at a farm in Windellama – near Goulburn in New South Wales (NSW) – on Sunday, following reports of a shooting. The boy died at the scene.

Local police have since arrested two people, including a 14-year-old, and charged them with unauthorised firearm offences.

An investigation into the incident is underway. It is not known what relation the family members had to the child.

“It’s rare to hear one shot here,” Ron Wenban, who lives near the farm with his partner, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

“To have a gunshot like that happen, that was a concern, neither of us wanted to go over there.”

Mr Wenban said the family were based in Sydney and had bought the property as a holiday home.

Both of the relatives who were arrested will appear before court in May, with the teen attending the NSW Children’s Court.

The man was charged with allowing an unauthorised person to possess a firearm, as well as not keeping a firearm safely, while the teenager was charged with unauthorised possession.

The teen has been granted bail.

The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood has called a Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketch that impersonated her using exaggerated prosthetic teeth “mean and unfunny”.

The British actress said the US comedy programme “punched down” on her and suggested the sketch was misogynistic.

In a series of Instagram posts, Wood wrote that she was happy to be made fun of “when it’s clever and in good spirits” but that there “must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way”.

Wood, 31, said she had received “apologies from SNL” after sharing her criticism. The BBC has contacted broadcaster NBC for a response.

The Manchester-born actress’s role in the third series of The White Lotus, which follows a group of guests at a resort, prompted significant media attention surrounding what she calls her “big gap teeth”.

The SNL sketch, which aired this week, imagined US President Donald Trump and his top team spending time at the fictional hotel.

Wood’s character Chelsea was portrayed by cast member Sarah Sherman using a pronounced accent and fake teeth.

At one point, in a reference to the actress’s teeth, she asks: “Fluoride? What’s that?”

Wood, who burst onto screens in Netflix’s Sex Education, said she was “not thin skinned” and understood that SNL was about “caricature”.

“But the whole joke was about fluoride,” she wrote on Sunday.

“I have big gap teeth not bad teeth.”

“The rest of the skit was punching up,” Wood added, “and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on”.

She said that she was not “hating on” Sarah Sherman, but “hating on the concept”.

Wood also shared a comment by an unnamed user describing the sketch as “sharp and funny” before taking “a screeching turn into 1970s misogyny”.

“This sums up my view,” the actress added.

She also criticised Sherman’s accent, writing: “I respect accuracy even if it’s mean.”

Wood wrote that she had received “thousands of messages” agreeing with her since sharing her posts, and that she was glad she “said something”.

Speaking to GQ magazine last week, Wood said that the conversation surrounding her teeth made her “a bit sad because I’m not getting to talk about my work”.

“It makes me really happy that it’s symbolising rebellion and freedom, but there’s a limit,” she said.

Wood added: “I don’t know if it was a man would we be talking about it this much? It’s still going on about a woman’s appearance.”

A trial in the landmark antitrust case against social media giant Meta kicks off in Washington on Monday.

The US competition and consumer watchdog alleges that Meta, which already owned Facebook, bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate competition, effectively giving itself a monopoly.

The FTC reviewed and approved those acquisitions but committed to monitor the outcomes. If the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wins the case it could force Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell off both Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta previously said it was sure it would win and experts have told the BBC it is likely to argue that Instagram users have had a better experience since it was taken over.

“The [FTC’s] argument is the acquisition of Instagram was a way of neutralizing this rising competitive threat to Facebook,” says Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor of antitrust at Vanderbilt Law School.

Ms Allensworth says Mr Zuckerberg’s own words, including those from his emails, may offer the most convincing evidence at trial.

“He said it’s better to buy than to compete. It’s hard to get more literal than that,” Ms Allensworth says.

Meta, on the other hand, is likely to argue that intent is not particularly relevant in an antitrust case.

“They’re going to say the real question is: are consumers better off as a result of this merger?,” she said. “They’ll put on a lot of evidence that Instagram became what it is today because it benefited from being owned by Facebook.”

Mr Zuckerberg and the company’s former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg are both expected to testify at the trial, which could run for several weeks.

The case, FTC v Meta, was filed during US President Donald Trump’s first administration but risks becoming politicized during his second term.

Mr Zuckerberg has lobbied Trump in person to have the FTC drop the case, according to the Wall Street Journal.

When asked by the BBC to confirm that report, Meta sidestepped the question but said in a statement: “The FTC’s lawsuits against Meta defies reality.”

“More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.

Relations between Mr Zuckerberg and Trump had been frosty partly because Trump was barred from Meta’s social media platforms after the US Capitol riot in January 2021.

Since then, the relationship has thawed somewhat.

Meta contributed $1m (£764,400) to Trump’s inaugural fund, and in January announced Ultimate Fighting Championship Fighter (UFC) boss Dana White, a close Trump ally, would join its board of directors.

The company also announced in January that it was doing away with independent fact-checkers.

President Trump’s move to fire two FTC commissioners in March also hangs over the case.

As Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya were in the minority on the five-seat commission.

Until Wednesday, just two seats of those seats were filled, both by Republicans. Another Republican was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.

Slaughter and Bedoya – who are suing the Trump administration to be reinstated – say the move to push them out was meant to intimidate.

“The president sent a very clear signal not only to us but to Chairman Ferguson and Commissioner [Melissa] Holyoak that if they do something he doesn’t like, he could fire them too,” Slaughter told the BBC in a recent interview.

“So if they don’t want to do a favor for his political allies, they’re on the chopping block as well,” Slaughter said.

Slaughter and Bedoya both expressed alarm at recent reports about Zuckerberg’s lobbying efforts.

“My hope is that there is no political interference,” Mr Bedoya told the BBC.

The FTC did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

Ferguson, who was appointed as FTC chair by Trump, recently told The Verge he would “obey lawful orders” when asked what he would do if the president directed him to drop a lawsuit like the one against Meta.

Ferguson added that he would be very surprised if anything like that ever happened.

The FTC is considered a key antitrust watchdog. In recent years, it has returned hundreds of millions of dollars to victims of fraud, in addition to passing laws that ban junk fees and subscription traps.

But as the Meta trial begins, it’s among the many independent regulatory agencies that the administration seems keen to rein in.

Chair Ferguson is also recently quoted reaffirming his belief that independent regulatory bodies are “not good for democracy.”

FTC v Meta begins as another major antitrust case – USA v Google – enters what’s known as the remedies phase.

The Department of Justice won the first phase of that case last summer when Judge Amit Mehta found that Google holds a monopoly in online search, with a market share of around 90%.

Last month, the DOJ reiterated a demand made during the Biden administration that a court break up Google’s search monopoly.

The FTC’s case against Meta will be tougher to prove, says Laura Phillips-Sawyer, an associate professor of business law at the University of Georgia.

“I think they have a real uphill battle,” Ms Phillips-Sawyer said of the FTC.

“They have a long road before any consideration of divestiture of Instagram or WhatsApp is considered.”

That’s because compared to online search, there’s more competition in the personal network services space that Meta operates in, Ms Phillips-Sawyer said.

Meta in a statement said the evidence at trial “will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”

A 38-year-old man has been arrested and is due to be charged following an alleged arson attack on the official residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, authorities have said.

Cody Balmer faces charges of attempted murder, terrorism, aggravated arson and aggravated assault.

The arrest came hours after Shapiro, often touted as a future White House contender, woke up in the middle of the night to authorities banging on the door of his home as a fire spread.

At a news conference on Sunday, Shapiro said he was “obviously emotional” as he recalled what had happened. The Democrat and his family were able to evacuate unscathed, but their home in the state capital of Harrisburg was severely damaged.

“I refuse to be trapped by the bondage that someone attempted to put on me by attacking us as they did last night,” he told reporters.

Hours before the fire, Shapiro and his family had celebrated the first night of Passover, a Jewish holiday, at home.

“When we were in the state dining room last night, we told the story of Passover,” he said – adding that Balmer’s motives were not known.

Police Deputy Commissioner George Bivens said the suspect had a homemade incendiary device in his possession and was arrested in the Harrisburg area.

Authorities believe the suspect was able to hop a fence surrounding the home and get inside to start the blaze, which is still being investigated.

State authorities said the blaze – which was extinguished – had caused “a significant amount of damage to a portion of the residence”.

The governor and his family were in a different part of the brick home when the fire was set, police explained.

The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire said it had worked to put out the blaze while police focused on evacuating Shapiro and his family.

Authorities had offered a $10,000 (£7,600) reward for information that led to any arrest. It is unclear whether a tip led to the arrest of Balmer, who remains in custody.

Shapiro and his wife, Lori, have four children together: Sophia, Jonah, Max and Reuben.

The governor was considered as a possible running mate for former Vice-President Kamala Harris during her run for president last year. She ultimately chose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

The Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence, in Harrisburg, is a 29,000 sq ft Georgian-style home from 1968 that has housed eight governors.

Shapiro has served as Pennsylvania’s governor since 2023, after working as the state’s attorney general.

Sitting centre-right President Daniel Noboa has won the run-off round of Ecuador’s presidential election, meaning he will now serve a full four-year term.

Noboa, who described his victory as “historic”, has only been in power since November 2023 after winning a snap election.

He has defined his presidency, so far, through a tough military crackdown on violent criminal gangs in the country, which has become the most violent in the region.

His left-wing challenger, Luisa González, said she did not accept the result and claimed fraud, without providing evidence.

According to figures from Ecuador’s national electoral council, this is a decisive win for Noboa – with about 56% of the vote – after polls before the election suggested it was neck and neck.

“A victory of more than ten points and over 1 million votes, leaving no doubt as to who the winner is,” he said after the result was announced.

“This has been achieved through the perseverance, the struggle, and the hard work of every member of this team,” he added.

Noboa’s win means he has a mandate to continue his self-described “war” on criminal drug gangs, which has included militarising Ecuador’s streets and prisons, and constructing new maximum-security prisons.

He recently told the BBC he wanted foreign armies from places such as the US and Europe to join his fight against gangs in the country.

He is hoping to change the constitution to allow foreign military bases in the country again, which were banned under the presidency of Rafael Correa – the mentor of González.

Homicides have fallen slightly during Noboa’s tenure but violence remains very high. This January, more than 780 people were murdered in the country, making it one of Ecuador’s bloodiest months on record.

Polls before the election suggested that security was the top concern for voters.

Noboa’s challenge now is to prove to the country that his plan is working if he wants to avoid unrest and discontent.

This means there will be pressure on him to show that violent crime is going down, as well as unemployment.

Noboa’s ratings fell last year, in particular after widespread drought caused extreme power cuts across the country.

He has proposed investing more money in renewable energy to diversify the country’s energy supply, the majority of which currently comes from hydropower.

He has also signalled a desire to boost relations with the US and President Donald Trump. In February, he announced 27% tariffs on Mexican imports and also repealed his presidential decree that had granted amnesty to undocumented Venezuelan migrants in the country.

His campaign was notable for its focus on young people – he is 37 – with a strong emphasis on job creation and slick social media videos. He also pledged to invest in infrastructure in the country and tackle corruption.

After her defeat, González accused the electoral authorities of trampling on democracy, and demanded a recount. She would need to provide evidence of her claims for this to happen.

This will leave Ecuador deeply polarised, which will prove another challenge for Noboa if he wants to avoid unrest and division.

Many González supporters are nostalgic for what they perceive as a “better time” under Correa’s presidency (2007-17), when oil revenues boosted the economy and poverty was reduced.

He is a deeply divisive figure, though.

His critics in the country decry his rule as authoritarian, and he has since been convicted of corruption and lives in exile. González’s association with him remains controversial.

From the end of April, the 500-year-old Royal Mail will be controlled by a Czech billionaire who co-owns a football club and is a major investor in a British supermarket – so, why would he want this ailing institution?

“A pair of scissors, one empty teapot and some hot water, please.” The slightly baffled staff at Claridge’s scrambled to comply with Daniel Kretinsky’s breakfast order as he sanitised and moisturised his hands.

The upscale hotel has been serving tea to the global elite for decades but Mr Kretinsky brought along his own packet of Chinese green tea, which he snipped open (hence the scissors) and poured into the empty pot.

He was tall, perfectly groomed, steely-eyed but unfalteringly polite and thoughtful. If you told anyone in the dining room he was a billionaire, they would have no problem believing it.

Known as the Czech Sphinx for his enigmatic style, Mr Kretinsky, who is 49, is worth £6bn according to the Sunday Times Rich List. He lives in plush mansions in Paris and London, was originally a lawyer and made his fortune in European energy markets.

Our meeting was at Claridge’s in June 2024 – I was trying to convince him to give me an interview about his audacious attempt to buy a British institution that was once seen as a national treasure: Royal Mail.

His profile as a buyer was one that unions and ministers typically would be wary of because of his historic connections with Russia – his companies own a gas pipeline that has transported Russian gas to Europe.

But six months on, his bid to buy Royal Mail’s parent company was cleared by the UK government after he agreed “legally binding” undertakings.

It was agreed that the government would retain a so-called “golden share”, requiring it to approve any major changes to Royal Mail’s ownership, headquarters location and tax residency. The deal was also blessed by unions.

Earlier this month, the owner of Royal Mail said that the takeover could be completed by the end of April as the deal cleared the final regulatory hurdles standing in the way.

But step back and Royal Mail seems a strange target for a globally mobile oil and gas billionaire investor to set his sights on. It begs the question why would anyone, let alone a successful international entrepreneur, want to buy this faded relic?

Royal Mail was founded by Henry VIII more than 500 years ago and still carries the royal cipher on its vans. It is part of the fabric of British life and many people still have a fond relationship with their ‘postie’, who walks down their path bringing their letters and parcels to their door.

But in recent years Royal Mail’s crown has slipped. It is losing money and market share, has been fined for missing delivery targets and has made an enemy of its own workforce through a series of bitter strikes.

Royal Mail’s letter business is in steep decline too. It has gone from a peak of 20 billion letters sent in 2004 to under seven billion sent last year.

In December 2024, it was fined £10.5m by the regulator Ofcom for failing to meet delivery targets for first and second class mail.

While the boom in e-commerce has seen the volume of parcels rise, Royal Mail’s share of that more profitable business has been falling as new competitors like DPD, DHL, Amazon and Evri have eaten into its market share.

Royal Mail was split off from the Post Office in 2012 and privatised in 2013 at a value of £3.3bn. Its shares immediately rocketed by 38% on the first day of trading, leading to criticism – from the National Audit Office, among others – that it had been sold on the cheap.

At its peak in Covid-era May 2021, the company was worth more than £6bn but had slumped to just over £2bn when Mr Kretinsky launched his takeover bid last April.

He sealed the deal at £3.6bn – 63% higher than before he signalled his intent, but barely more than it was worth at privatisation over a decade ago.

“Royal Mail is a business that has historically found it difficult to grow revenues by more than costs,” says Alex Paterson, an analyst at Peel Hunt stockbrokers. “It has seen its parcels market share eroded by more dynamic competition that has been able to invest more in technology, and it has struggled with industrial relations to keep staff working towards a common goal.

“This is not a challenge to underestimate nor one that can be overcome quickly, but that requires considerable long-term investment in infrastructure, technology and staff.”

Part of the challenge, and one that puts Royal Mail at a disadvantage compared with its rivals, is that unlike them, Royal Mail has to meet a string of legal and regulatory obligations, says Hazel King, the editor of Parcel and Post Technology International.

Under what is called the universal service obligation (USO), Royal Mail is required by law to deliver letters six days a week and parcels five days a week to every address in the UK. So it cannot pick and choose which business it wants to do.

“Royal Mail must meet their universal service obligation while trying to compete with private firms who often cherry-pick the most profitable business,” says Ms King.

Mr Kretinsky says he has a plan. His success in the energy sector allowed him to buy a 27.5% stake in Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services (IDS). And his company – EP Group – intends to build a pan-European conglomerate built on three pillars: energy, retail and logistics.

He sees IDS as the cornerstone of the logistics pillar, with a plan to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Deutsche Post DHL, DPD and Amazon.

The USO has been under review by Ofcom, with Royal Mail hoping that the regulator will reduce the requirement to deliver second-class letters from six days a week to every other weekday. That single move could save Royal Mail £300m a year – putting it back on a break-even footing.

Mr Kretinsky told me during our interview that he would honour the USO “as long as I am alive”, but he is unsurprisingly very much in favour of changing its terms. He said he hopes that “rational minds prevail” when reforming a service that is unsustainable in its current form.

So far, the noises from Ofcom seem to be supportive. The regulator’s chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes told the BBC there were “real questions about what the service needs to be going into the future”.

Given letter numbers are falling, “we have to think about what is economical”, she said, adding Ofcom would be publishing plans for the regulation of Royal Mail “to make sure it is sustainable”.

While Royal Mail generally welcomed the proposed changes to the Universal Service Obligation, Royal Mail pushed back against proposed new delivery time and business customer requirements.

Royal Mail said last week that the level at which Ofcom is proposing to set the new delivery targets – 99.5% of First Class letters delivered within three days, and the same percentage of Second Class letters within five – is “over specified and will add significant cost to the delivery of the Universal Service”.

It also expressed concerns that proposals to add a new category of regulation to ensure timely delivery for business users like direct mail companies “goes against the wider government drive to reduce unnecessary regulation”.

But there are other factors that may have driven the sale. Some analysts have speculated that there is another jewel in the crown of IDS – and that Mr Kretinsky may really be after a different part of the business.

Along with Royal Mail, IDS also owns a European parcels business called GLS which it acquired in 1999 – long before Royal Mail was split off from the Post Office and privatised.

Last year GLS made a profit of £320m, compared to Royal Mail, which lost £348m as letter volumes continued to plunge and new competitors ate into its market share of the more profitable parcels business.

“GLS has been a profitable growth business, which has seen investment whereas Royal Mail has been a perpetual underperformer, as the board of parent company IDS has invested where it thinks it will see the best returns,” says Mr Paterson.

Mr Kretinsky rejects suggestions from some quarters that he wants to break up the group and has committed to keeping it together for at least five years. Even beyond that, he says the plan is to grow the company rather than shrink it, so a disposal of GLS would be “nonsensical”.

In fact, Mr Kretinsky says he hopes to bring the European parcel know-how at GLS to bear on Royal Mail’s operations.

What the unions are hoping, and Kretinsky is promising, is that Royal Mail will see greater investment and over time begin to look a bit more like GLS and its European counterparts such as Deutche Post DHL.

Given all the challenges Royal Mail faces, there’s an obvious question – why would a billionaire want to chance his arm on turning round something that others couldn’t, while up against powerful competitors?

Well, if you believe as Kretinsky does – and he is surely right – that getting parcels to people is a profitable and growing industry, then buying Royal Mail and GLS gives you a way to become a big European player in logistics quickly.

Add to that a powerful and historic brand, a database with every single UK address and a frontline workforce that most of its customers are fond of and pleased to see when they walk down the path – then, despite the challenges, it begins to make sense.

Mr Kretinsky is convinced future growth lies in out-of-home (OOH) delivery. The parcel lockers found in supermarket car parks and elsewhere, operated by the likes of Amazon, Evri and UPS, have grown quickly across Europe.

Earlier this month it was reported that Sainsbury’s would be the first supermarket to partner with Royal Mail and install parcel lockers at supermarkets. Some are already operating at several stores including ones in Clapham, Kidderminster and Chislehurst.

Royal Mail has also trialled a new postbox that can take small parcels. Customers procure a barcode from an app, then at the postbox they scan the barcode and drop the parcel into a drawer – this is all powered by solar panels on the box.

Emma Gilthorpe, Royal Mail chief executive, called it an “historic change” to give postboxes “a new lease of life”.

All of this boils down to the same thing: convenience. It means customers don’t have to wait at home for a delivery – the sender or parcel business emails or texts a code to unlock the locker. For the business it’s more efficient, allowing couriers to deliver lots of parcels to one place – meaning fewer miles on the road and less time.

“If they can grow the parcels business and claw back market share, there is every chance that they can add new jobs that could offset the reduction in jobs in the declining letters business,” says Mr Paterson.

“There is a significant long-term opportunity to run Royal Mail more successfully with regulatory changes to the USO and greater investment in technology and out-of-home deliveries.”

But Royal Mail still has a lot of catching up to do with its competitors. It currently has 1,500 lockers in the UK and aims to grow this figure to at least 20,000 over time. By contrast, Amazon already has 5,000 lockers across the UK and InPost has 7,500 across the UK.

That Mr Kretinsky has pulled off the takeover is no easy feat. Royal Mail is, after all, considered vital national infrastructure and as such the deal required review under national security laws.

Then there is the fact that his companies own a gas pipeline that has transported Russian gas to Europe – paid for and approved by EU member states. The small amount that was transported was reduced to zero at the end of 2024 when Ukraine refused to renew permission for any gas to flow across its borders.

Speaking in front of MPs in November, UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds referred to Mr Kretinsky as a “legitimate business figure” whose alleged links to Russia had already been reviewed and dismissed when he became the biggest shareholder in the company two years ago.

Getting the unions on board seemed even more of a challenge and the Communication Workers Union was wary of Mr Kretinsky. “The CWU believes Royal Mail should be in public hands,” Dave Ward, the CWU’s general secretary, told the BBC in June. “We know there are legitimate concerns about Royal Mail Group being owned by a foreign private equity investor.”

But during negotiations, union representatives secured a series of time-limited commitments from him, including guarantees that he will protect Royal Mail’s pension surplus, that there will be no compulsory redundancies for two years, no sell-off or break-up of any operational part of the existing company and no outsourcing of grades represented by the CWU.

Mr Kretinsky also agreed to restrictions on moving dividends out of Royal Mail Group and to respect agreements with and recognition of the CWU. He said he would keep the brand name and Royal Mail’s headquarters and tax residency in the UK for the next five years.

Union bosses told me that a life under Mr Kretinsky “couldn’t be any worse than what we have had for the last 10 years”.

So, as Mr Kretinsky looks certain to pull off the sale, what will customers notice?

The frequency of second-class deliveries may be reduced after the Ofcom review. We will see new Royal Mail lockers appearing in our neighbourhoods. And the price of first-class mail may go up: second-class stamps are regulated by Ofcom, while first-class ones are not.

The monarch’s head will still be on those stamps, but there is a new king of our mail system. And his name is Daniel Kretinsky.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

Devastating attacks on a camp hosting hundreds of thousands of people who had fled Sudan’s civil war have continued for a third day, residents have told the BBC.

One person in the Zamzam camp described the situation as “extremely catastrophic” while another said things were “dire”.

More than 100 civilians, among them at least 20 children and a medical team, have been killed in a series of assaults that began late last week in Sudan’s western Darfur region, the UN has said.

The attacks – on the city of el-Fasher and two nearby camps – have been blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It has said reports of atrocities were fabricated.

The camps, Zamzam and Abu Shouk, provide temporary homes to more than 700,000 people, many of whom are facing famine-like conditions.

News of the attacks comes on the eve of the second anniversary of the start of the civil war between the RSF and the army.

Contacting the BBC on Sunday morning, one Zamzam resident who works at a community kitchen providing food for those in the camp, said “a large number of young people” had been killed.

“Those who were working in the community kitchen have been killed, and the doctors who were part of the initiative to reopen the hospital were also killed,” Mustafa, 34, said in a WhatsApp audio message.

“My uncle and my cousin were killed. People are wounded, and there is no medicine or hospital to save them – they are dying from bleeding.

“The shelling is still ongoing, and we are expecting more attacks in the morning.”

He added that all routes out of the camp were closed and it was “surrounded from all four directions”.

• BBC finds fear, loss and hope in Sudan’s ruined capital
• Sudan war: A simple guide to what is happening
• Fear and prayers in Sudan city under siege

Another resident, Wasir, said that “nothing [was] left in Zamzam”.

“A large number of civilians have fled, and we are still trying to leave, but we haven’t succeeded, all the roads are blocked, and we have children with us.

“Death is everywhere. As I speak to you now from inside the trench, there is shelling happening.”

Some camp residents have got out and made the 15km (nine mile) journey to el-Fasher, according to North Darfur’s Health Minister Ibrahim Khater.

“I am observing many people walking from Zamzam – mostly children, women and the elderly,” he said in a message to the BBC.

“Some were injured, tired and saying they lost their family – dead on the streets. The situation is catastrophic.”

The UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said she was “appalled and gravely alarmed” by reports from Darfur.

“This represents yet another deadly and unacceptable escalation in a series of brutal attacks on displaced people and aid workers,” she added in a statement.

The US State Department also said it was “deeply alarmed by reports of attacks by the RSF on Zamzam and Abu Shouk”, adding: “We condemn the RSF’s attacks on the most vulnerable of civilians.”

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who is hosting a conference on Sudan on Tuesday, described the reports of “indiscriminate RSF attacks” as “shocking”.

Aid organisation Relief International said nine of its workers “were mercilessly killed including doctors, referral drivers and a team leader” in the attack on Zamzam.

The charity, which said it was the last provider of critical health services in the camp, alleged RSF fighters were to blame.

“We understand that this was a targeted attack on all health infrastructure in the region to prevent access to healthcare for internally displaced people.

“We are horrified that one of our clinics was also part of this attack – along with other health facilities in el-Fasher.”

Kashif Shafique, the charity’s Sudan director, told the BBC’s Newshour programme that what happened was not random.

Relaying what two surviving female members of staff had described, he said RSF fighters went into a safety bunker and shot the nine victims in the head and chest.

In a statement released on Saturday, the RSF said it was not responsible for attacks on civilians and that scenes of killing in Zamzam were staged to discredit its forces.

Assessing satellite images, a team of specialists at Yale University in the US said on Friday that “this attack conservatively represents the most significant ground-based attack on Zamzam… since fighting erupted in the el-Fasher area in spring of 2024”.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab said it had observed that “arson attacks have burned multiple structures and significant areas of the camp in the center, south, and southeast portions of the camp”.

The war – a power struggle between the army and the RSF – has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, forcing more than 12 million people from their homes and pushing communities into hunger.

It began on 15 April 2023, after the leaders of the army and RSF fell out over the political future of the country.

El-Fasher is the last major town in Darfur under army control and has been under siege by the RSF for a year.

• The children living between starvation and death in Darfur
• Civil war survivors tell of killings and rapes
• Thousands flee fresh ethnic killings in Darfur
• ‘I saw bodies dumped in Darfur mass grave’

Fifty-seven years into his career, Neil Young has harvested millions of fans – but none of those followers is more devoted than his pet dogs.

“They love the music,” says the musician’s wife, actress Daryl Hannah.

“They go to every sound check and lay under the piano on the stage. Whenever Neil is playing, the dogs just migrate right to him and lay at his feet.”

It’s not just the dogs. During the 2020 lockdown, Young performed a livestream concert from the barn at his Colorado farm, surrounded by alpacas, ducks, chickens and even a horse.

“And every single one of the animals came over and laid down and watched him,” Hannah says. “It was so cool. I think they’re really drawn to the music.”

Hannah, known for appearing in films such as Blade Runner, Splash and Kill Bill, directed that livestream – and she’s stayed behind the camera to make a documentary about Young’s 2023 solo tour.

Filmed largely on her phone (“and it’s not even the most recent model”), it captures the star’s return to the stage, aged 75, after a four-year break, with his dogs in tow.

“He was very nervous about it,” she recalls.

“There’s always a point where he’s like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this… We’ll see’.”

“It’s funny, because he didn’t do any rehearsals before the tour. He likes things to be real and spontaneous. But as soon as he walked out on stage, he was fine.”

Playing without a band, the shows were loose and unpredictable. The setlist changed every night, and even recurring songs like Heart of Gold and Like A Hurricane would be played in different settings, on different instruments, without warning.

It’s a set-up that caused his director a few headaches.

“It was really hit or miss because every day he would go out to do sound check, and he would choose one of his three pianos and play something like Expecting To Fly,” says Hannah.

“So we’d set a camera on that piano but, when it came to show time, he wouldn’t go near it. There were quite a few shows where we literally got no footage.

“I was frustrated in the editing room, trust me.”

Despite those challenges, Hannah captured spellbinding, stripped back versions of rarely-played tracks like Vampire Blues, If You Got Love and Prime Of Life.

More revealing, however, was the footage she shot off the stage.

Large stretches of the film take place on a silver eagle tour bus, where Young rides shotgun beside his longtime driver, Jerry Don Burden.

Together, they shoot the breeze like Vladimir and Estragon – but rather than waiting for Godot, they’re waiting for the next arena car park.

The conversations are wonderfully mundane. There is ample discussion of scenery, snacks and setlists (“people think they want to hear the hits, because that’s all they’ve ever heard”, Young observes.)

It’s punctuated by stretches of companionable silence, where Young drums on his knees, or interacts with his son Ben, who was born with severe cerebral palsy.

Later, the musician emerges from the bathroom, stares into the camera and deadpans: “Now there’s no risk of having to pee in the middle of the show”.

Capturing that day-to-day normality was Hannah’s motivation from the start.

“So many performers put on a persona, and Neil just does not have that quality at all. Whatever he’s talking about with his bus driver, he continues talking about with the audience.

“People think of him as this intimidating, inscrutable person who’ll make an album the record company refuses to put out,” she continues, referring to the time Geffen Records sued Young for submitting two albums it considered “musically uncharacteristic”.

Hannah says people who judge him on that basis have got it wrong.

“He just has an absolute, uncanny commitment to his creative muse,” she argues.

“He’s not driven by financial interests, he’s not driven by self-aggrandisement, he’s not driven by anything other than that creative force, and it’s pretty incredible to witness.

“Having spent so much time with him, my perception is that he’s completely guileless. He has a lot of warmth and innocence, so I wanted to show that.”

Young recently made headlines for pulling out of the Glastonbury Festival, saying the BBC had asked him “to do a lot of things” he was “not interested in”.

He later backtracked, saying he’d received bad information, and will top the bill on the Pyramid Stage this June (Hannah jokes he’ll serenade Glastonbury’s livestock, in the style of his lockdown sessions).

But his European tour isn’t without peril. Writing on his website, Young has shared concerns that he could be barred from the US upon his return, following a rise in the number of people being detained and deported upon entering the country.

“If I talk about Donald J Trump, I may be one of those returning to America who is barred or put in jail to sleep on a cement floor with an aluminium blanket,” he wrote.

Young, who holds dual Canadian-American citizenship, has long been an outspoken critic of President Trump, calling him “a disgrace to my country” and suing him for using the song Rockin’ In the Free World on the campaign trail.

Hannah reveals her husband was harassed during the first Trump administration, as he went through the process of becoming a US citizen.

“They tried to every trick in the book to mess him up, and made him keep coming back to be re-interviewed and re-interviewed. It’s ridiculous [because] he’s been living in America and paying taxes here since he was in his 20s.”

Despite that, she doesn’t think Young will be prevented from entering the country.

“They’ve been detaining people who have green cards or visas – which is hideous and horrifying – but they have not, so far, been refusing to let American citizens back in the country, so I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Hannah will accompany Young to Glastonbury, and says she’ll film his performance from the side of the stage (perhaps the BBC can use that footage, if all else fails).

The trip happens to fall on the 25th anniversary of her West End debut, in The Seven Year Itch. So, has she any desire to tread the boards again?

“Oh God, no,” she exclaims. “I really loving directing, because I don’t have to be the focus of things, and that’s a much more comfortable position for me.

“I mean, never say never, but that’s how I feel right now.”

In response to why Beijing is not backing down to Donald Trump on tariffs, the answer is that it doesn’t have to.

China’s leaders would say that they are not inclined to cave in to a bully – something its government has repeatedly labelled the Trump administration as – but it also has a capacity to do this way beyond any other country on Earth.

Before the tariff war kicked in, China did have a massive volume of sales to the US but, to put it into context, this only amounted to 2% of its GDP.

That said, the Communist Party would clearly prefer not to be locked in a trade war with the US at a time when it has been struggling to fix its own considerable economic headaches, after years of a real estate crisis, overblown regional debt and persistent youth unemployment.

However, despite this, the government has told its people that it is in a strong position to resist the attacks from the US.

It also knows its own tariffs are clearly going to hurt US exporters as well.

Trump has been bragging to his supporters that it would be easy to force China into submission by simply hitting the country with tariffs, but this has proven to be misleading in the extreme.

Beijing is not going to surrender.

China’s leader Xi Jinping told the visiting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Friday that his country and the European Union should “jointly resist the unilateral bullying practices” of the Trump administration.

Sanchez, in turn, said that China’s trade tensions with the US should not impede its cooperation with Europe.

Their meeting took place in the Chinese capital in the hours before Beijing again increased its tariffs on goods from the US – though it has said it will not respond to further US tariff increases.

Next week Xi will visit Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia. These are all countries which have been hit hard by Trump’s tariffs.

His ministers have been meeting counterparts from South Africa, Saudi Arabia and India, talking up greater trade co-operation.

In addition, China and the EU are reportedly in talks about potentially removing European tariffs on Chinese cars, to be replaced by a minimum price instead, to rein in a new round of dumping.

In short, wherever you look, you can see that China has options.

And analysts have said that these mutual tariff increases by the two superpowers are now becoming almost meaningless, as they’ve already passed the point of cutting out much of the trade between them.

So, the tit-for-tat tariff increases in both directions have become more like symbolism.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has, over the past two days, posted images of Chairman Mao on social media, including a clip during the Korean War when he told the US that “no matter how long this war lasts we will never yield”.

Above this, she posted her own comments, saying: “We are Chinese. We are not afraid of provocations. We won’t back down.”

When the Chinese government wheels out Chairman Mao, you know they’re getting serious.

This week, The Last of Us returns to our screens – two years after the drama won over critics and fans alike.

But that’s not all the week has in store.

It’s The Apprentice final on BBC One, Alex Garland’s new film Warfare is out, and gaming fans have Indiana Jones and the Great Circle to look forward to.

Read on for what’s coming up this week…

The first season of The Last of Us was haunting, terrifying, and moving in equal measure.

So there’s a lot to live up to when season two kicks off on Monday.

The TV adaptation of the hit video game stars Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal as lead characters Ellie and Joel.

Having dodged zombies and ruthless militia in an arduous journey across America in season one, they are now living in Jackson, Wyoming – but danger is never far away.

I’ve had a sneak preview, and can tell you that the first episode alone is fraught with tension.

And the reviews, so far, have been glowing.

Empire gives it five stars, calling it “television at its peak”, while The Telegraph – which also gives it five stars – says it is “superb”.

A pizza company boss and the owner of an air conditioning firm walk into a boardroom…

Not the start of a bad joke, but something you can actually expect to see in the final of BBC One’s The Apprentice, which takes place on Thursday at 9pm.

There were 18 candidates at the start of season 19. Now, after weeks of tasks, firings and cringe-inducing moments, there are just two.

Anisa Khan and Dean Franklin have one last chance to impress business tycoon Lord Sugar, and to win the £250,000 investment.

Anisa said winning wouldn’t just be for her, but also “a win for people who feel like I represent them as well”.

Meanwhile, Dean said he wanted to make his kids proud: “For them to go into school the next morning and say, “My dad’s won The Apprentice.”

It’s an intense, immersive experience watching Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s latest film Warfare, which plunges you almost immediately into the thick of a US military surveillance mission which goes wrong, in Iraq in 2006.

The film’s ensemble cast includes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3’s Will Poulter and Heartstopper’s Kit Connor. They told the BBC they bonded at a tough military bootcamp, where they learned military jargon, gun safety and were pushed beyond their limits.

The cast also shaved each other’s heads before filming and got shared tattoos afterwards, speaking about how they wanted to mark what had been a “formative” experience, building lasting friendships.

Based on the memories of soldiers on the surveillance mission in Ramadi, an area controlled by Al Qaeda, the cast also includes Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Shōgun’s Cosmo Jarvis, Stranger Things and the forthcoming Beatles biopic’s Joseph Quinn, and Riverdale’s Charles Melton.

Warfare is out in cinemas on Friday.

Gaming. Waiting. Two things that often go hand in hand when it comes to new releases (GTA 6, anyone?).

But one wait comes to an end this week with the release of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PlayStation 5. First released on Xbox and PC last December, it was one of 2024’s best-reviewed games.

It was praised for its compelling stealth gameplay, puzzling and immersive environments, as well as an uncanny performance from celebrated video game actor Troy Baker in the main role. His portrayal of the world’s luckiest archaeologist even got the seal of approval from original Indy Harrison Ford.

PlayStation fans had to hold out because The Great Circle’s Swedish developer MachineGames is part of ZeniMax, one of the many gaming companies bought up by Microsoft. The formerly bitter rival has softened its stance on exclusivity of late – a move which has upset some Xbox fans but pleased PS5 owners.

Also out this week is Lost Records: Bloom & Rage Tape 2, the concluding part of the Yellowjackets-meets-Stranger-Things narrative adventure from the original makers of the Life is Strange series. There’s no platform-exclusive shenanigans with this one – it lands on PS5, Xbox and PC from Tuesday.

• Krapp’s Last Tape, starring Gary Oldman, opens at York Theatre Royal on Monday
• My Master Builder, starring Ewan McGregor and Elizabeth Debicki, opens at Wyndham’s Theatre on Thursday
• The London International Ska Festival starts on Thursday
• Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, hits cinemas on Friday
• The Penguin Lessons also hits cinemas on Friday
• The Fever, starring Cate Blanchett, drops on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday

Popstars sneaked into the audience at Coachella to watch each other perform this weekend – as Lady Gaga wowed festivalgoers with a dramatic main stage set.

Fans swarmed to catch the Poker Face singer perform songs from her new album Mayhem, delivering a visual spectacle by opening her set with what can only be described as a satanic ritual to her 2011 song Bloody Mary.

Spotted watching on were South Korean pop group Blackpink, whose member Lisa was also seen dancing to K-pop boy band Enhypen after performing herself.

Meanwhile, Beautiful Things singer Benson Boone surprised the crowd by bringing out Sir Brian May for a rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody while executing a trademark front flip.

Actor Timothee Chalamet and partner Kylie Jenner were seen mingling with the crowd on the second day of the music festival, which is taking place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.

Blackpink’s Lisa, who recently starred in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus, was supported during her set by co-star Patrick Schwarzenegger, who posted a clip of himself singing along to her hit Money.

Meanwhile, Justin and Hailey Bieber, singer Tate McRae and Austrailian rapper The Kid Laroi were spotted dancing at Yeat’s set on Friday night.

Headline acts this year include Megan Thee Stallion, rapper Post Malone and US punk-rock band Green Day at the 100,000-attendees-a-day event.

Fresh from her five wins at the 2025 Brit Awards in March, Charli XCX had fans reliving their “brat summer” on Saturday, performing such hits as Von Dutch and 360 to a bumper crowd.

The British singer also brought out a number of guests during her set, including Troye Sivan, Lorde and Billie Eilish, who appeared on the chart topping hit Guess.

Before the performances could even begin, however, there was chaos at the gates, with ticket holders queuing in heavy traffic to get into the festival.

This year Coachella replaced its first come first-served system for campers with a reservation-style programme, forcing attendees to wait up to 12 hours in their vehicles in scorching desert temperatures with limited facilities.

Most music festivals are never short of political activism and this year’s Coachella was no different.

Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders took the stage before singer songwriter Clairo’s Saturday set to attack US President Donald Trump’s administration.

“This country faces some very difficult challenges,” he told the crowd. “The future of what happens to America is dependent upon your generation.”

Green Day also reworded lyrics from some of their hits during the band’s headline performance, referencing the war in Gaza and railing against what frontman Billy Joe Armstong has repeatedly called “the Maga agenda”.

Following their success at the Bafta awards for their self titled feature film, Irish rap group Kneecap took to the Sonora stage and had the crowd chanting about former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The online livestream of the performance cut out at the exact moment the band made their political remarks.

Coachella has come under scrutiny in recent years, with one survey reporting in 2024 that 75% of 3,000 US respondents thought the festival was being overshadowed by influencers.

The festival also suffered a number of talent-related incidents last year.

Blur frontman Damon Albarn berrated the crowd in 2024, accusing them of being “lacklustre” in their singing.

“You’re never seeing us again so you might as well sing it,” he said. “Know what I’m saying?”

Grimes was also forced to apologise for “major technical difficulties” during her Coachella DJ set.

Fans watched the singer scream in frustration after a string of problems including songs playing at double speed.

The festival will continue on Sunday and resume next weekend.

Hundreds of homes and roads on Lanzarote have been flooded, after torrential rainfall swept across the Canary Island on Saturday.

Lanzarote’s government declared a state of emergency overnight after 6cm (2.4 inches) of rain poured down on the popular holiday destination in just two hours.

No injuries have been reported by the Spanish authorities – and the state of emergency was lifted on Sunday morning.

The head of Lanzarote’s emergency services told local media some homes had been submerged, with floodwaters leaving behind a “great quantity of mud”.

“We have been working all night, attending 300 calls overnight, many of them in Arrecife and Teguise,” Enrique Espinosa said on Sunday.

Emergency services attended more than 150 incidents in Costa Teguise and in excess of 70 in Arrecife, local media reports.

The area of San Bartolomé was badly hit, according to Lanzarote’s government.

Dramatic footage circulating on social media shows a large surge of floodwater flowing rapidly under a bridge, leaving cars stranded on flooded roads.

The Canaries are particularly vulnerable to floods when hit with intense rain, as their dry climate and volcanic rock mean the ground does not absorb large volumes of water well.

The torrential rain came off the back of Storm Olivier, which swept over the Canaries, mainland Spain and Portugal in recent days – triggering several weather alerts.

Spain’s meteorological service has issued weather warnings for many areas of the country from Sunday to Tuesday – including storms in the north east, rain in the Balearic islands and wind in parts of both the north and south coast.

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled and trains suspended as gales hit Beijing and northern China on Saturday.

By 11:30 local time (03:30 GMT) on Saturday, 838 flights had been cancelled at the capital’s two major airports, according to the news agency Reuters.

Wind gusts of up to 93mph (150kph) – the strongest in the Chinese capital for more than half a century – are set to continue through the weekend, forcing the closure of attractions and historic sites.

Millions were urged to stay indoors on Friday, with some state media outlets warning that people weighing less than 50kg may be “easily blown away”.

Train services, including the airport’s express subway line and some high-speed rail lines, have been suspended.

Parks were also shut, with some old trees reinforced or trimmed in preparation – but almost 300 trees have already fallen over in the capital.

A number of vehicles were damaged, but no injuries were reported. In Beijing, most residents followed authorities’ advice to stay indoors after the city warned 22 million residents to avoid non-essential travel.

“Everyone in Beijing was really nervous about it. Today there are hardly any people out on the streets. However, it wasn’t as severe as I had imagined,” a local resident told Reuters.

Meanwhile, a businessman from the Zhejiang province, near Shanghai, had his flight home cancelled.

“Because of the severe winds, all flights scheduled for last night and today were cancelled. So I will probably rebook my flight in a couple of days. I’m now basically stranded in Beijing,” he said.

The strong winds are from a cold vortex system over Mongolia and are expected to last through the weekend.

Winds bringing sand and dust from Mongolia are routine in spring, but climate change can make storms stronger and more severe.

Beijing issued its first orange alert for strong winds in a decade, with the strongest winds expected to arrive on Saturday.

China measures wind speed on a scale that goes from one to 17. A level 11 wind, according to the China Meteorological Administration, can cause “serious damage”, while a level 12 wind brings “extreme destruction”.

The winds this weekend are expected to range from level 11 to 13, with conditions expected to ease by Sunday.

A high school student from Wisconsin killed his parents as part of a larger plot to assassinate US President Donald Trump, the FBI has said.

Nikita Casap, 17, has been charged with the killing of his mother, Tatiana Casap, 35, and his stepfather Donald Mayer, 51, who were found dead at their home on 28 February.

A newly unsealed search warrant also alleges that the suspect’s phone contained material relating to a neo-Nazi group called the Order of Nine Angles and praise for Adolf Hitler.

Investigators also discovered antisemitic writings in which the accused allegedly detailed his plans to kill Trump as a part of a broader goal to overthrow the government, according to the court document.

The suspect is accused of first-degree intentional homicide and seven other felony counts, including hiding a corpse and identity theft.

The parents were found dead when local officials visited their home in the village of Waukesha, near Milwaukee, after the boy failed to attend school for two weeks.

Mr Mayer had died from a gunshot wound to the head, while Ms Casap died from multiple gunshot wounds on or about 11 February, according to a criminal complaint concerning the teenager.

The same day their bodies were discovered, the defendant was pulled over by police in the state of Kansas while driving a 2018 Volkswagen Atlas belonging to Mr Mayer, investigators said.

In the car was Mr Mayer’s Smith & Wesson .357 pistol, four credit cards belonging to the couple, “multiple pieces” of valuable jewelry, a pried-open safe and $14,000 (£10,700) in currency, most of which was inside a Bible, said the criminal complaint.

In writings found by investigators, the suspect expressed white supremacist beliefs and called for Trump’s assassination to start a political revolution, according to the search warrant.

The alleged double murder “appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carrying out his plan”, investigators wrote.

The court documents allege the suspect was speaking with people in Russia about plans to kill his parents.

Authorities said the teenager paid for a drone and explosives to use in an attack – and had plans to escape to Ukraine.

“He was in touch with other parties about his plan to kill the president and overthrow the government of the Unites States,” investigators wrote.

The suspect had a preliminary court hearing on 9 April. He has not entered a plea to the charges.

He is next due to appear in court for an arraignment – where he will be formally given the charges against him – on 7 May, according to the Waukesha County Court. He is being held on a $1m (£764,000) bond.

Buying or renting a home has become unaffordable for the average Australian, driven by a perfect storm of astronomical house prices, relentless rental increases and a lack of social housing.

With less than a month until the federal election, housing remains among the top issues for voters, and the country’s two major parties – the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition – have both pledged to tackle the crisis in a range of ways.

Australians are already struggling under cost-of-living pressures and bracing for the effects of Donald Trump’s global tariff war. And it remains to be seen whether either party will sway voters with their promise of restoring the Australian dream.

Simply put, Australia has not been building enough homes to meet the demands of its rapidly growing population, creating a scarcity that makes any available home more expensive to buy or rent.

Compounding the issue are Australia’s restrictive planning laws, which prevent homes being built where most people want to live, such as in major cities.

Red tape means that popular metropolitan areas like Melbourne and Sydney are far less dense than comparably sized cities around the world.

The steady decline of public housing and ballooning waitlists have made matters worse, tipping people into homelessness or overcrowded living conditions.

Climate change has also made many areas increasingly unliveable, with natural disasters such as bushfires and severe storms destroying large swathes of properties.

Meanwhile, decades of government policies have commercialised property ownership. So the ideal of owning a home, once seen as a right in Australia, has turned into an investment opportunity.

In short: it depends where you live.

Sydney is currently the second least affordable city in the world to buy a property, according to a 2023 Demographia International Housing Affordability survey.

The latest data from property analytics company CoreLogic shows the average Sydney home costs almost A$1.2m (£570,294, $742,026).

Across the nation’s capital cities, the combined average house price sits at just over A$900,000.

House prices in Australia overall have also jumped 39.1% in the last five years – and wages have failed to keep up.

It now takes the average prospective homeowner around 10 years to save the 20% deposit usually required to buy an average home, according to a 2024 State of the Housing System report.

The rental market has provided little relief, with rents increasing by 36.1% nationally since the onset of Covid – an equivalent rise of A$171 per week.

Sydney topped the charts with a median weekly rent of A$773, according to CoreLogic’s latest rental review. Perth came in second with average rents at A$695 per week, followed by Canberra at A$667 per week.

Immigration and foreign property purchases are often cited as causes for Australia’s housing crisis. But experts say that they are not significant contributors statistically.

Many people who move to Australia are temporary migrants, such as international students who live in dedicated student accommodation rather than entering the housing market, according to Michael Fotheringham, head of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.

“The impact [of migrants] on the housing market is not as profound as some commentators have suggested,” Mr Fotheringham tells the BBC.

The federal government also recently sought to crack down on foreign homebuyers, by tripling fees.

However that is “a very small issue” with not much meaningful impact on housing strain, says Brendan Coates, from the Grattan Institute public policy think tank.

The latest data released by the Australian Taxation Office supports this, with homes purchased by foreign buyers in 2022-23 representing less than one percent of all sales.

“It’s already very difficult for foreigners to purchase homes under existing foreign investment rules. They are subject to a wide range of taxes, particularly in some states,” Mr Coates explains.

Labor and the Coalition have both promised to invest in building more homes – with Labor offering 1.2 million by 2029, and the Coalition vowing to unlock 500,000.

In their respective campaign launches, both parties promote housing initiatives aimed at first homebuyers.

Labor has pledged to expand an existing shared-equity scheme to allow all first homebuyers to purchase homes with a 5% deposit, an ease on the 20% deposit typically needed.

Albanese also promised 100,000 of the new homes his government creates will only be available to first homebuyers, in addition to building more social housing and introducing subsidies to help low-to-moderate-income earners.

The Coalition, if elected, will allow first-time buyers to use up to $50,000 from their superannuation retirement savings to fund a house purchase. They will make mortgage payments partially tax free for up to five years for all first homebuyers with newly built properties.

Central to the Coalition’s housing affordability policy is cutting migration, reducing the number of international students and implementing a two-year ban on foreign investment in existing properties.

Additionally, they have promised a A$5bn boost to infrastructure to support local councils by paying for water, power and sewerage at housing development sites.

The Greens’ policies, meanwhile, have focused on alleviating pressures on renters by calling for national rent freezes and caps.

They have also said that in the event of a minority government, they will be pushing to reform tax incentives for investors.

In short, experts say that while both Labor and the Coalition’s policies are steps in the right direction, neither are sufficient to solve the housing problem.

“A combination of both parties’ platforms would be better than what we’re seeing from either side individually,” Mr Coates tells the BBC.

A 2025 State of the Land report by the Urban Development Institute of Australia says the federal government will fail to meet its target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 – falling short by almost 400,000.

The Coalition’s focus on reducing immigration, meanwhile, will only make housing marginally cheaper while making Australia poorer in the long-term, according to Mr Coates.

The cuts to migration will mean fewer skilled migrants, he explains, and the loss of revenue from those migrants will result in higher taxes for Australians.

Decades of underinvestment in social housing also means demand in that area is massively outstripping supply – which at 4% of housing stock is significantly lower than many other countries, according to Mr Fotheringham.

There’s also concern about grants for first homebuyers, which drive prices up further.

While commending the fact that these issues are finally being treated seriously, Mr Fotheringham believes it will take years to drag Australia out of a housing crisis that has been building for decades.

“We’ve been sleepwalking into this as a nation for quite some time,” he says. “[Now] the nation is paying attention, the political class is paying attention.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Donald Trump to visit his country ahead of any deal with Russia to end the war.

“Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” Zelensky said in an interview for CBS’s 60 Minutes programme.

The interview was recorded before Sunday’s devastating Russian missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy, which killed 34 people – including two children – and injured 117 others.

Trump described the attack as a “horrible thing” while Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, accused Russia of committing a war crime.

There was no immediate official comment on the attack from Russia, whose forces across the nearby border are said to be preparing for a major offensive.

The attack comes as the US, Ukraine’s strongest military ally, has been pursuing an end to the war – now in its fourth year – through negotiation under Trump.

Asked about the attack, the US president said it was “terrible” and that he had been “told they made a mistake”, but did not elaborate.

Earlier, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, retired Lt-Gen Keith Kellogg, said the attack had crossed “any line of decency”.

Merz, who is expected to take over as Germany’s new chancellor next month, told German public broadcaster ARD that the attack on Sumy constituted a “serious war crime”.

“It was a perfidious act.. and it is a serious war crime, deliberate and intended,” the conservative politician said.

Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meanwhile, said the attack showed “just what Russia’s supposed readiness for peace [was] worth”.

French President Emmanuel Macron accused Russia of “blatant disregard of human lives, international law, and the diplomatic efforts of President Trump”.

“Strong measures are needed to impose a ceasefire on Russia,” he said. “France is working tirelessly toward this goal, alongside its partners.”

Describing the attack as “barbaric”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen added: “Russia was and remains the aggressor, in blatant violation of international law.

“Strong measures are urgently needed to enforce a ceasefire. Europe will continue to reach out to partners and maintain strong pressure on Russia until the bloodshed ends and a just and lasting peace is achieved, on Ukraine’s terms and conditions.”

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also gave a view, saying he was “appalled at Russia’s horrific attacks on civilians in Sumy”.

A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed and shocked” to learn of the missile attack.

“Attacks against civilians and civilian objects are prohibited under international humanitarian law, and that any such attacks, wherever they occur, must end immediately”, he added.

Guterres stressed the UN’s support for “meaningful efforts towards a just, lasting and comprehensive peace that fully upholds Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”.

Sunday’s double missile strike was the deadliest attack on civilians in Ukraine this year.

Another Russian missile attack, earlier this month on 4 April, killed 20 people and injured 61 in the city of Kryvyi Rih.

On that occasion, Russia’s defence ministry said it had targeted a meeting of “unit commanders and Western instructors” in a restaurant. No evidence was provided.

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people – the vast majority of them soldiers – have been killed or injured on all sides since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

The UN estimates that nearly seven million Ukrainians are currently living as refugees.

The conflict goes back more than a decade, to 2014, when Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was overthrown. Russia then annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and backed insurgents in bloody fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood has called a Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketch that impersonated her using exaggerated prosthetic teeth “mean and unfunny”.

The British actress said the US comedy programme “punched down” on her and suggested the sketch was misogynistic.

In a series of Instagram posts, Wood wrote that she was happy to be made fun of “when it’s clever and in good spirits” but that there “must be a cleverer, more nuanced, less cheap way”.

Wood, 31, said she had received “apologies from SNL” after sharing her criticism. The BBC has contacted broadcaster NBC for a response.

The Manchester-born actress’s role in the third series of The White Lotus, which follows a group of guests at a resort, prompted significant media attention surrounding what she calls her “big gap teeth”.

The SNL sketch, which aired this week, imagined US President Donald Trump and his top team spending time at the fictional hotel.

Wood’s character Chelsea was portrayed by cast member Sarah Sherman using a pronounced accent and fake teeth.

At one point, in a reference to the actress’s teeth, she asks: “Fluoride? What’s that?”

Wood, who burst onto screens in Netflix’s Sex Education, said she was “not thin skinned” and understood that SNL was about “caricature”.

“But the whole joke was about fluoride,” she wrote on Sunday.

“I have big gap teeth not bad teeth.”

“The rest of the skit was punching up,” Wood added, “and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on”.

She said that she was not “hating on” Sarah Sherman, but “hating on the concept”.

Wood also shared a comment by an unnamed user describing the sketch as “sharp and funny” before taking “a screeching turn into 1970s misogyny”.

“This sums up my view,” the actress added.

She also criticised Sherman’s accent, writing: “I respect accuracy even if it’s mean.”

Wood wrote that she had received “thousands of messages” agreeing with her since sharing her posts, and that she was glad she “said something”.

Speaking to GQ magazine last week, Wood said that the conversation surrounding her teeth made her “a bit sad because I’m not getting to talk about my work”.

“It makes me really happy that it’s symbolising rebellion and freedom, but there’s a limit,” she said.

Wood added: “I don’t know if it was a man would we be talking about it this much? It’s still going on about a woman’s appearance.”

Relatives of a nine-year-old boy who was killed by an accidental gunshot in Australia have been charged over his death.

Paramedics treated the child for serious neck injuries at a farm in Windellama – near Goulburn in New South Wales (NSW) – on Sunday, following reports of a shooting. The boy died at the scene.

Local police have since arrested two people, including a 14-year-old, and charged them with unauthorised firearm offences.

An investigation into the incident is underway. It is not known what relation the family members had to the child.

“It’s rare to hear one shot here,” Ron Wenban, who lives near the farm with his partner, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

“To have a gunshot like that happen, that was a concern, neither of us wanted to go over there.”

Mr Wenban said the family were based in Sydney and had bought the property as a holiday home.

Both of the relatives who were arrested will appear before court in May, with the teen attending the NSW Children’s Court.

The man was charged with allowing an unauthorised person to possess a firearm, as well as not keeping a firearm safely, while the teenager was charged with unauthorised possession.

The teen has been granted bail.

Bangladeshi authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the British MP and former Labour minister Tulip Siddiq.

The country’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has been investigating allegations Siddiq illegally received land as part of its wider probe of the regime of her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed as prime minister in August.

The Hampstead and Highgate MP, who quit as economic secretary to the Treasury in January, was named in the arrest warrant alongside more than 50 others.

Lawyers acting for Siddiq denied the charges, which they said were “politically motivated”.

The ACC had not presented any evidence or informed Siddiq about an arrest warrant, the lawyers added.

The UK lists Bangladesh as a 2B extradition country – meaning clear evidence must be presented before ministers and judges make a decision.

The ACC is examining claims Sheikh Hasina and her family embezzled up to £3.9bn from infrastructure spending in Bangladesh.

The investigation is based on a series of allegations made by Bobby Hajjaj, a political opponent of Hasina.

Court documents seen by the BBC show Hajjaj has accused Siddiq of helping to broker a deal with Russia in 2013 that overinflated the price of a new nuclear power plant in Bangladesh.

In a statement seen by the BBC, Siddiq’s lawyers Stephenson Harwood said: “The allegations are completely false and have been dealt with in writing by Siddiq’s lawyers.

“The ACC has not responded to Siddiq or put any allegations to her directly or through her lawyers.

“Siddiq knows nothing about a hearing in Dhaka relating to her and she has no knowledge of any arrest warrant that is said to have been issued.

“To be clear, there is no basis at all for any charges to be made against her, and there is absolutely no truth in any allegation that she received a plot of land in Dhaka through illegal means.

“She has never had a plot of land in Bangladesh, and she has never influenced any allocation of plots of land to her family members or anyone else.

“No evidence has been provided by the ACC to support this or any other allegation made against Siddiq, and it is clear to us that the charges are politically motivated.”

Before resigning, Siddiq had referred herself to the PM’s ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus when the corruption allegations first surfaced.

Sir Laurie said in his report that he had “not identified evidence of improprieties”.

But he added it was “regrettable” that Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt Sheikh Hasina, the deposed prime minister of Bangladesh and leader of Awami League party.

ACC chairman Mohammad Abdul Momen has previously told the BBC the allegations “are by no means ‘targeted and baseless'” and its investigation was “based on documentary evidence of corruption”.

“Tulip Siddiq must not shy away from the court proceedings in Bangladesh.

“I would welcome Siddiq come and defend her case and with the best possible legal support accompanying her,” he added.

He also rejected her lawyer’s claims that the ACC was interfering in UK politics, adding: “ACC briefing to the media is a regular phenomenon, it is delivered professionally and with all accuracy.”

Chinese officials are calling on US President Donald Trump to “completely cancel” his so-called reciprocal tariffs, as a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies grinds on.

This week, Trump announced a 90-day pause on a host of global tariffs he had planned, but increased levies on Chinese imports to 145%.

“We urge the US to take a big step to correct its mistakes, completely cancel the wrong practice of ‘reciprocal tariffs’ and return to the right path of mutual respect,” China’s commerce ministry said in a statement.

The Trump administration seemed ready to offer a concession on Friday by announcing that some electronic products – including those produced in China – would be exempt.

But US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told ABC News on Sunday that such exemptions would only be temporary.

He said the administration planned to impose such levies in a separate “semiconductor tariff”, which he said would be announced at a later date.

“We need to have these things made in America,” Lutnick said.

President Trump chimed in on social media, saying there was no exemption for these products and called such reports false. Instead, he said that “they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket'”.

Trump added: “We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations.”

The comments inject uncertainty into the just-announced tariff exemptions for technology products such as smartphones, computers and semiconductors.

• Trump’s iPhone olive branch is a significant trade war retreat
• Trump’s changing tariffs leave shoppers feeling paralysed

The Chinese commerce ministry had called the exemptions a “small step” by the US, and said that Beijing was “evaluating the impact” of the move.

But the suggestion by Trump administration officials of plans for future levies may dampen hopes of a thaw in the two rivals’ protectionist posture.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was asked on Sunday whether there were any plans for Trump to speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

“Right now we don’t have any plans on that,” he said during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Trump imposed a tariff amounting to 54% on imports of products from China at the beginning of April, before escalating to the current 145% rate.

In its own tit-for-tat tariffs, China imposed levies of 34% on US goods, before increasing it to 84% and then 125%, which took effect on Saturday.

In announcing its latest tariffs, China’s commerce ministry said last week that it would “fight to the end” if the US “insists on provoking a tariff war or trade war”.

Late on Saturday, while travelling to Miami, Florida, Trump said he would give more details of the exemptions at the start of next week.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• US coffee shops worried about bitter price hike after tariffs

The White House has argued that it is using tariffs as a negotiating tactic to extract more favourable trade terms from other countries.

Trump has said his policy will redress unfairness in the global trading system, as well as bring jobs and factories back to the US.

However, his interventions have seen massive fluctuations in the stock market and raised fears of a decrease in global trade that could have a knock-on effect on jobs and individual economies.

A trial in the landmark antitrust case against social media giant Meta kicks off in Washington on Monday.

The US competition and consumer watchdog alleges that Meta, which already owned Facebook, bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate competition, effectively giving itself a monopoly.

The FTC reviewed and approved those acquisitions but committed to monitor the outcomes. If the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wins the case it could force Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to sell off both Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta previously said it was sure it would win and experts have told the BBC it is likely to argue that Instagram users have had a better experience since it was taken over.

“The [FTC’s] argument is the acquisition of Instagram was a way of neutralizing this rising competitive threat to Facebook,” says Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor of antitrust at Vanderbilt Law School.

Ms Allensworth says Mr Zuckerberg’s own words, including those from his emails, may offer the most convincing evidence at trial.

“He said it’s better to buy than to compete. It’s hard to get more literal than that,” Ms Allensworth says.

Meta, on the other hand, is likely to argue that intent is not particularly relevant in an antitrust case.

“They’re going to say the real question is: are consumers better off as a result of this merger?,” she said. “They’ll put on a lot of evidence that Instagram became what it is today because it benefited from being owned by Facebook.”

Mr Zuckerberg and the company’s former chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg are both expected to testify at the trial, which could run for several weeks.

The case, FTC v Meta, was filed during US President Donald Trump’s first administration but risks becoming politicized during his second term.

Mr Zuckerberg has lobbied Trump in person to have the FTC drop the case, according to the Wall Street Journal.

When asked by the BBC to confirm that report, Meta sidestepped the question but said in a statement: “The FTC’s lawsuits against Meta defies reality.”

“More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final,” a Meta spokesperson told the BBC.

Relations between Mr Zuckerberg and Trump had been frosty partly because Trump was barred from Meta’s social media platforms after the US Capitol riot in January 2021.

Since then, the relationship has thawed somewhat.

Meta contributed $1m (£764,400) to Trump’s inaugural fund, and in January announced Ultimate Fighting Championship Fighter (UFC) boss Dana White, a close Trump ally, would join its board of directors.

The company also announced in January that it was doing away with independent fact-checkers.

President Trump’s move to fire two FTC commissioners in March also hangs over the case.

As Democrats, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya were in the minority on the five-seat commission.

Until Wednesday, just two seats of those seats were filled, both by Republicans. Another Republican was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday.

Slaughter and Bedoya – who are suing the Trump administration to be reinstated – say the move to push them out was meant to intimidate.

“The president sent a very clear signal not only to us but to Chairman Ferguson and Commissioner [Melissa] Holyoak that if they do something he doesn’t like, he could fire them too,” Slaughter told the BBC in a recent interview.

“So if they don’t want to do a favor for his political allies, they’re on the chopping block as well,” Slaughter said.

Slaughter and Bedoya both expressed alarm at recent reports about Zuckerberg’s lobbying efforts.

“My hope is that there is no political interference,” Mr Bedoya told the BBC.

The FTC did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

Ferguson, who was appointed as FTC chair by Trump, recently told The Verge he would “obey lawful orders” when asked what he would do if the president directed him to drop a lawsuit like the one against Meta.

Ferguson added that he would be very surprised if anything like that ever happened.

The FTC is considered a key antitrust watchdog. In recent years, it has returned hundreds of millions of dollars to victims of fraud, in addition to passing laws that ban junk fees and subscription traps.

But as the Meta trial begins, it’s among the many independent regulatory agencies that the administration seems keen to rein in.

Chair Ferguson is also recently quoted reaffirming his belief that independent regulatory bodies are “not good for democracy.”

FTC v Meta begins as another major antitrust case – USA v Google – enters what’s known as the remedies phase.

The Department of Justice won the first phase of that case last summer when Judge Amit Mehta found that Google holds a monopoly in online search, with a market share of around 90%.

Last month, the DOJ reiterated a demand made during the Biden administration that a court break up Google’s search monopoly.

The FTC’s case against Meta will be tougher to prove, says Laura Phillips-Sawyer, an associate professor of business law at the University of Georgia.

“I think they have a real uphill battle,” Ms Phillips-Sawyer said of the FTC.

“They have a long road before any consideration of divestiture of Instagram or WhatsApp is considered.”

That’s because compared to online search, there’s more competition in the personal network services space that Meta operates in, Ms Phillips-Sawyer said.

Meta in a statement said the evidence at trial “will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others.”

A Lawton has worked in Canada’s auto sector for more than a century.

Their children are “fifth generation Ford workers”, Kathryn Lawton said, and she and her husband both work for the carmaker in Windsor, the heart of Canada’s automobile sector, just a bridge away from the US state of Michigan.

So when US President Donald Trump suggested that Canada stole the American auto industry, Chad Lawton calls it “ludicrous”.

“These were never American jobs. These were Canadian jobs,” he told the BBC, on the day that Trump’s auto tariffs came into force.

“They’ve always been Canadian jobs, and they’re going to stay Canadian jobs because we didn’t take them from them. We created them, we sustained them.”

Kathryn agreed: “This is Ford City right here.”

Tucked away in southwestern Ontario, Windsor and the surrounding Essex county now finds itself on one of the front lines of Trump’s trade war as it faces a 25% tariff on foreign-made vehicles (though for Canada, that will be reduced by half for cars made with 50% US-made components or more) as well as blanket 25% US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

US tariffs on auto parts are expected next month.

The region of just over 422,000 grew alongside Detroit – nicknamed Motor City for its role as an auto manufacturing hub – turning the region into an important centre for North American automobile production.

Ford first established its presence in Windsor in 1896, while the first Stellantis (then Chrysler) factory arrived in 1928, with dozens of factories and suppliers springing up around the city and surrounding region in the ensuing decades.

Much of the manufacturing has since left the city, though it still boasts two Ford engine factories and a Stellantis assembly plant, which employ thousands.

• WATCH: Is the US heading for a recession?
• EXPLAINER: What are tariffs, and why is Trump using them?

Workers on both sides of the border have built iconic vehicles over the decades, most recently models like the Dodge Charger and the Ford F-150.

Some 24,000 people work directly in the automotive industry in Windsor-Essex, while an estimated 120,000 other jobs depend on the sector.

A drive through the neighbourhood around the Ford factory feels like a trip back in time, showcasing classic bungalows from the last century. Many have seen better days, though each boasts a verandah and small front yard. Large murals celebrating the city’s automotive history punctuate the scenery.

Windsor has weathered the challenges of the North American auto sector alongside Michigan, as the industry shares a deeply integrated supply chain.

Chad Lawton points to the 2008 financial crisis, when the Big Three American automakers – Ford, General Motors and Chrysler – faced staggering losses, and GM and Chrysler received billions in US bailouts to avoid bankruptcy.

That period was “bad, not just for next door, but also we went through a very, very rough time”, he said.

“This feels the same. The level of anxiety with the workers, the level of fear, the idea and the belief that this is just something that is so completely out of your control that you can’t wrap your head around what to do.”

John D’Agnolo, president of Unifor Local 200, which represents Ford workers in Windsor, said the situation “has created havoc”.

“I think we’re going to see a recession,” he said.

He continued: “People aren’t going to buy anything. I gotta tell my members not to buy anything. They gotta pay rent and food for their kids.”

What makes the tariffs such a hard pill to swallow for auto workers the BBC spoke to is that this situation has been brought about by the US, Canada’s closest economic and security ally.

“It seems like a stab in the back,” said Austin Welzel, 27, an assembly line worker at Stellantis. “It’s almost like our neighbors, our friends – they don’t want to work with us.”

Christina Grossi, who has worked at Ford for 25 years, said the prospect of losing her job, and what it will mean to her family, is “terrifying”.

But Ms Grossi also fears losing the meaning she gets from her work.

“You’ve been doing this job for so long and you really take pride in it, you’re proud of what you’re putting out to the public,” she said. “And now someone’s taking away the opportunity to do that.”

Laura Dawson, the executive director of Future Borders Coalition, said the tariffs could cause major upheavals throughout the sector due to its deep integration, with ripple effects felt across the continent if exports from Canada stop for more than a week.

She said the US tariffs structure is extremely complicated.

Cars crossing the border will need every component to be assessed for “qualifying content” – where it originates, the cost of labour to produce it, and – if it contains steel or aluminium – where that metal came from.

“Every part of an automobile is literally under a microscope for where it was produced and how,” she said.

The US tariffs have been a major factor in Canada’s general election, which is on 28 April, with Canada’s political parties rolling out suites of plans on the campaign trail to help the auto sector.

• A simple guide to Canada’s federal election
• Who’s who in Canada’s federal election
• LISTEN: World Questions programme – Canada

Liberal leader Mark Carney, the current prime minister, has pledged to create a C$2bn ($1.4bn; £1.1bn) fund to boost competitiveness and protect manufacturing jobs, alongside plans to build an “all-in-Canada” auto component parts network.

In his role as prime minister, he imposed last week a reported C$35bn in counter auto tariffs, in addition to previously announced reciprocal measures on the US.

Carney’s main rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, has vowed to remove sales tax on Canadian vehicles, and to create a fund for companies affected by the tariffs to help keep their employees.

Jagmeet Singh, whose left-wing New Democratic Party is fighting for a competitive seat in Windsor, has pledged to use every dollar from counter tariffs to help workers, and to stop manufacturers from moving equipment to the US.

Still, Windsor’s economy is dependent on automakers, and heavily relies on trade with the United States. If it falters, everything – from restaurants to charities – will feel the effects.

The Penalty Box is a sports bar just down the road from the Stellantis plant, and popular with the workers there.

“We’re one of the busiest restaurants. I don’t want to say it, but if you ask around about the Penalty Box, they’ll tell you,” its 70-year-old owner, Van Niforos, said. “We do close to 1,000 meals a day.”

With a white apron and a wide smile, he relates its 33-year history. But his demeanour darkens when asked about threats the auto sector faces.

“It’s a devastating situation. I don’t want to think about it,” he said.

“We employ 60 people and we’re open six days a week. [If something happens to the Stellantis plant], will we be able to keep 60 people working? Absolutely no.”

Chad Lawton, sitting in his office at the local union, takes a deep breath as he contemplates how precarious his life feels.

He doesn’t think Carney’s counter tariffs help the current situation, arguing they “just makes a really bad situation a little bit worse”.

He hopes there is room for trade negotiation, but said he will be the first to say that Canada “cannot just concede and roll over”.

“I’ve worked for a Ford Motor Company for almost 31 years, and I have never seen anything close to this,” he said.

“That includes Covid, because at least with Covid, we knew what we were dealing with. And there was some certainty there.”

“This is all over the map.”

From the end of April, the 500-year-old Royal Mail will be controlled by a Czech billionaire who co-owns a football club and is a major investor in a British supermarket – so, why would he want this ailing institution?

“A pair of scissors, one empty teapot and some hot water, please.” The slightly baffled staff at Claridge’s scrambled to comply with Daniel Kretinsky’s breakfast order as he sanitised and moisturised his hands.

The upscale hotel has been serving tea to the global elite for decades but Mr Kretinsky brought along his own packet of Chinese green tea, which he snipped open (hence the scissors) and poured into the empty pot.

He was tall, perfectly groomed, steely-eyed but unfalteringly polite and thoughtful. If you told anyone in the dining room he was a billionaire, they would have no problem believing it.

Known as the Czech Sphinx for his enigmatic style, Mr Kretinsky, who is 49, is worth £6bn according to the Sunday Times Rich List. He lives in plush mansions in Paris and London, was originally a lawyer and made his fortune in European energy markets.

Our meeting was at Claridge’s in June 2024 – I was trying to convince him to give me an interview about his audacious attempt to buy a British institution that was once seen as a national treasure: Royal Mail.

His profile as a buyer was one that unions and ministers typically would be wary of because of his historic connections with Russia – his companies own a gas pipeline that has transported Russian gas to Europe.

But six months on, his bid to buy Royal Mail’s parent company was cleared by the UK government after he agreed “legally binding” undertakings.

It was agreed that the government would retain a so-called “golden share”, requiring it to approve any major changes to Royal Mail’s ownership, headquarters location and tax residency. The deal was also blessed by unions.

Earlier this month, the owner of Royal Mail said that the takeover could be completed by the end of April as the deal cleared the final regulatory hurdles standing in the way.

But step back and Royal Mail seems a strange target for a globally mobile oil and gas billionaire investor to set his sights on. It begs the question why would anyone, let alone a successful international entrepreneur, want to buy this faded relic?

Royal Mail was founded by Henry VIII more than 500 years ago and still carries the royal cipher on its vans. It is part of the fabric of British life and many people still have a fond relationship with their ‘postie’, who walks down their path bringing their letters and parcels to their door.

But in recent years Royal Mail’s crown has slipped. It is losing money and market share, has been fined for missing delivery targets and has made an enemy of its own workforce through a series of bitter strikes.

Royal Mail’s letter business is in steep decline too. It has gone from a peak of 20 billion letters sent in 2004 to under seven billion sent last year.

In December 2024, it was fined £10.5m by the regulator Ofcom for failing to meet delivery targets for first and second class mail.

While the boom in e-commerce has seen the volume of parcels rise, Royal Mail’s share of that more profitable business has been falling as new competitors like DPD, DHL, Amazon and Evri have eaten into its market share.

Royal Mail was split off from the Post Office in 2012 and privatised in 2013 at a value of £3.3bn. Its shares immediately rocketed by 38% on the first day of trading, leading to criticism – from the National Audit Office, among others – that it had been sold on the cheap.

At its peak in Covid-era May 2021, the company was worth more than £6bn but had slumped to just over £2bn when Mr Kretinsky launched his takeover bid last April.

He sealed the deal at £3.6bn – 63% higher than before he signalled his intent, but barely more than it was worth at privatisation over a decade ago.

“Royal Mail is a business that has historically found it difficult to grow revenues by more than costs,” says Alex Paterson, an analyst at Peel Hunt stockbrokers. “It has seen its parcels market share eroded by more dynamic competition that has been able to invest more in technology, and it has struggled with industrial relations to keep staff working towards a common goal.

“This is not a challenge to underestimate nor one that can be overcome quickly, but that requires considerable long-term investment in infrastructure, technology and staff.”

Part of the challenge, and one that puts Royal Mail at a disadvantage compared with its rivals, is that unlike them, Royal Mail has to meet a string of legal and regulatory obligations, says Hazel King, the editor of Parcel and Post Technology International.

Under what is called the universal service obligation (USO), Royal Mail is required by law to deliver letters six days a week and parcels five days a week to every address in the UK. So it cannot pick and choose which business it wants to do.

“Royal Mail must meet their universal service obligation while trying to compete with private firms who often cherry-pick the most profitable business,” says Ms King.

Mr Kretinsky says he has a plan. His success in the energy sector allowed him to buy a 27.5% stake in Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services (IDS). And his company – EP Group – intends to build a pan-European conglomerate built on three pillars: energy, retail and logistics.

He sees IDS as the cornerstone of the logistics pillar, with a plan to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Deutsche Post DHL, DPD and Amazon.

The USO has been under review by Ofcom, with Royal Mail hoping that the regulator will reduce the requirement to deliver second-class letters from six days a week to every other weekday. That single move could save Royal Mail £300m a year – putting it back on a break-even footing.

Mr Kretinsky told me during our interview that he would honour the USO “as long as I am alive”, but he is unsurprisingly very much in favour of changing its terms. He said he hopes that “rational minds prevail” when reforming a service that is unsustainable in its current form.

So far, the noises from Ofcom seem to be supportive. The regulator’s chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes told the BBC there were “real questions about what the service needs to be going into the future”.

Given letter numbers are falling, “we have to think about what is economical”, she said, adding Ofcom would be publishing plans for the regulation of Royal Mail “to make sure it is sustainable”.

While Royal Mail generally welcomed the proposed changes to the Universal Service Obligation, Royal Mail pushed back against proposed new delivery time and business customer requirements.

Royal Mail said last week that the level at which Ofcom is proposing to set the new delivery targets – 99.5% of First Class letters delivered within three days, and the same percentage of Second Class letters within five – is “over specified and will add significant cost to the delivery of the Universal Service”.

It also expressed concerns that proposals to add a new category of regulation to ensure timely delivery for business users like direct mail companies “goes against the wider government drive to reduce unnecessary regulation”.

But there are other factors that may have driven the sale. Some analysts have speculated that there is another jewel in the crown of IDS – and that Mr Kretinsky may really be after a different part of the business.

Along with Royal Mail, IDS also owns a European parcels business called GLS which it acquired in 1999 – long before Royal Mail was split off from the Post Office and privatised.

Last year GLS made a profit of £320m, compared to Royal Mail, which lost £348m as letter volumes continued to plunge and new competitors ate into its market share of the more profitable parcels business.

“GLS has been a profitable growth business, which has seen investment whereas Royal Mail has been a perpetual underperformer, as the board of parent company IDS has invested where it thinks it will see the best returns,” says Mr Paterson.

Mr Kretinsky rejects suggestions from some quarters that he wants to break up the group and has committed to keeping it together for at least five years. Even beyond that, he says the plan is to grow the company rather than shrink it, so a disposal of GLS would be “nonsensical”.

In fact, Mr Kretinsky says he hopes to bring the European parcel know-how at GLS to bear on Royal Mail’s operations.

What the unions are hoping, and Kretinsky is promising, is that Royal Mail will see greater investment and over time begin to look a bit more like GLS and its European counterparts such as Deutche Post DHL.

Given all the challenges Royal Mail faces, there’s an obvious question – why would a billionaire want to chance his arm on turning round something that others couldn’t, while up against powerful competitors?

Well, if you believe as Kretinsky does – and he is surely right – that getting parcels to people is a profitable and growing industry, then buying Royal Mail and GLS gives you a way to become a big European player in logistics quickly.

Add to that a powerful and historic brand, a database with every single UK address and a frontline workforce that most of its customers are fond of and pleased to see when they walk down the path – then, despite the challenges, it begins to make sense.

Mr Kretinsky is convinced future growth lies in out-of-home (OOH) delivery. The parcel lockers found in supermarket car parks and elsewhere, operated by the likes of Amazon, Evri and UPS, have grown quickly across Europe.

Earlier this month it was reported that Sainsbury’s would be the first supermarket to partner with Royal Mail and install parcel lockers at supermarkets. Some are already operating at several stores including ones in Clapham, Kidderminster and Chislehurst.

Royal Mail has also trialled a new postbox that can take small parcels. Customers procure a barcode from an app, then at the postbox they scan the barcode and drop the parcel into a drawer – this is all powered by solar panels on the box.

Emma Gilthorpe, Royal Mail chief executive, called it an “historic change” to give postboxes “a new lease of life”.

All of this boils down to the same thing: convenience. It means customers don’t have to wait at home for a delivery – the sender or parcel business emails or texts a code to unlock the locker. For the business it’s more efficient, allowing couriers to deliver lots of parcels to one place – meaning fewer miles on the road and less time.

“If they can grow the parcels business and claw back market share, there is every chance that they can add new jobs that could offset the reduction in jobs in the declining letters business,” says Mr Paterson.

“There is a significant long-term opportunity to run Royal Mail more successfully with regulatory changes to the USO and greater investment in technology and out-of-home deliveries.”

But Royal Mail still has a lot of catching up to do with its competitors. It currently has 1,500 lockers in the UK and aims to grow this figure to at least 20,000 over time. By contrast, Amazon already has 5,000 lockers across the UK and InPost has 7,500 across the UK.

That Mr Kretinsky has pulled off the takeover is no easy feat. Royal Mail is, after all, considered vital national infrastructure and as such the deal required review under national security laws.

Then there is the fact that his companies own a gas pipeline that has transported Russian gas to Europe – paid for and approved by EU member states. The small amount that was transported was reduced to zero at the end of 2024 when Ukraine refused to renew permission for any gas to flow across its borders.

Speaking in front of MPs in November, UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds referred to Mr Kretinsky as a “legitimate business figure” whose alleged links to Russia had already been reviewed and dismissed when he became the biggest shareholder in the company two years ago.

Getting the unions on board seemed even more of a challenge and the Communication Workers Union was wary of Mr Kretinsky. “The CWU believes Royal Mail should be in public hands,” Dave Ward, the CWU’s general secretary, told the BBC in June. “We know there are legitimate concerns about Royal Mail Group being owned by a foreign private equity investor.”

But during negotiations, union representatives secured a series of time-limited commitments from him, including guarantees that he will protect Royal Mail’s pension surplus, that there will be no compulsory redundancies for two years, no sell-off or break-up of any operational part of the existing company and no outsourcing of grades represented by the CWU.

Mr Kretinsky also agreed to restrictions on moving dividends out of Royal Mail Group and to respect agreements with and recognition of the CWU. He said he would keep the brand name and Royal Mail’s headquarters and tax residency in the UK for the next five years.

Union bosses told me that a life under Mr Kretinsky “couldn’t be any worse than what we have had for the last 10 years”.

So, as Mr Kretinsky looks certain to pull off the sale, what will customers notice?

The frequency of second-class deliveries may be reduced after the Ofcom review. We will see new Royal Mail lockers appearing in our neighbourhoods. And the price of first-class mail may go up: second-class stamps are regulated by Ofcom, while first-class ones are not.

The monarch’s head will still be on those stamps, but there is a new king of our mail system. And his name is Daniel Kretinsky.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

A high school student from Wisconsin killed his parents as part of a larger plot to assassinate US President Donald Trump, the FBI has said.

Nikita Casap, 17, has been charged with the killing of his mother, Tatiana Casap, 35, and his stepfather Donald Mayer, 51, who were found dead at their home on 28 February.

A newly unsealed search warrant also alleges that the suspect’s phone contained material relating to a neo-Nazi group called the Order of Nine Angles and praise for Adolf Hitler.

Investigators also discovered antisemitic writings in which the accused allegedly detailed his plans to kill Trump as a part of a broader goal to overthrow the government, according to the court document.

The suspect is accused of first-degree intentional homicide and seven other felony counts, including hiding a corpse and identity theft.

The parents were found dead when local officials visited their home in the village of Waukesha, near Milwaukee, after the boy failed to attend school for two weeks.

Mr Mayer had died from a gunshot wound to the head, while Ms Casap died from multiple gunshot wounds on or about 11 February, according to a criminal complaint concerning the teenager.

The same day their bodies were discovered, the defendant was pulled over by police in the state of Kansas while driving a 2018 Volkswagen Atlas belonging to Mr Mayer, investigators said.

In the car was Mr Mayer’s Smith & Wesson .357 pistol, four credit cards belonging to the couple, “multiple pieces” of valuable jewelry, a pried-open safe and $14,000 (£10,700) in currency, most of which was inside a Bible, said the criminal complaint.

In writings found by investigators, the suspect expressed white supremacist beliefs and called for Trump’s assassination to start a political revolution, according to the search warrant.

The alleged double murder “appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carrying out his plan”, investigators wrote.

The court documents allege the suspect was speaking with people in Russia about plans to kill his parents.

Authorities said the teenager paid for a drone and explosives to use in an attack – and had plans to escape to Ukraine.

“He was in touch with other parties about his plan to kill the president and overthrow the government of the Unites States,” investigators wrote.

The suspect had a preliminary court hearing on 9 April. He has not entered a plea to the charges.

He is next due to appear in court for an arraignment – where he will be formally given the charges against him – on 7 May, according to the Waukesha County Court. He is being held on a $1m (£764,000) bond.

Mario Vargas Llosa, who has died at the age of 89 in his native Peru, was a towering figure in Latin American literature and culture who rarely shied away from controversy.

With more than 50 works to his name, many of which have been widely translated, Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010 when judges dubbed him a “divinely gifted story-teller”. His depictions of authoritarianism, violence and machismo, using rich language and imagery, made him a star of the Latin American Boom literary movement that shone a global spotlight on the continent.

At first sympathetic to left-wing ideas, he grew disillusioned with Latin America’s revolutionary causes, eventually running unsuccessfully for the Peruvian presidency with a centre-right party in 1990.

Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 to a middle-class family in Arequipa in southern Peru. After his parents separated while he was an infant, he moved to Cochabamba in Bolivia with his great-grandparents. He returned to Peru aged 10 and six years later he wrote his first play, The Escape of the Inca. He graduated from Lima University, studied in Spain and later moved to Paris.

His first novel, The Time of the Hero, was an indictment of corruption and abuse at a Peruvian military school. Written at a time when the country’s military wielded significant political and social power, it was published in 1962.

Its forceful, menacing imagery was condemned by several Peruvian generals. One accused Vargas Llosa of having a “degenerate mind”.

It was based on the writer’s own time as a teenager at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy, which he described in 1990 as “an extremely traumatic experience”. His two years there made him see his country “as a violent society, filled with bitterness, made up of social, cultural, and racial factions in complete opposition”. The school itself burnt 1,000 copies of the novel on its grounds, Vargas Llosa claimed.

His experimental second novel The Green House (1966) was set in the Peruvian desert and jungle, and described an alliance of pimps, missionaries and soldiers based around a brothel.

The two novels helped found the Latin American Boom literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The Boom was characterised by experimental and explicitly political works that reflected a continent in turmoil.

Its leading authors, who included Vargas Llosa’s Colombian friend and sometime rival Gabriel García Márquez – who pioneered the kaleidoscopic magical realism style of writing – became household names and their works were read around the world.

Famously the two authors did not speak to each other for decades after Vargas Llosa punched García Márquez in the face in a Mexican cinema in 1976. Reports of why Vargas Llosa punched his Colombian friend differ.

Friends of García Márquez said the dispute had revolved around García Márquez’s friendship with Vargas Llosa’s then-wife, Patricia, but Vargas Llosa told students at a Madrid university in 2017 that it had been down to their opposing views on Cuba and its communist leader, Fidel Castro.

They reconciled in 2007 and three years later, in 2010, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize – the first South American writer to be chosen for the literature prize since Gabriel García Márquez took the honour in 1982.

Much of Vargas Llosa’s work is inseparable from the instability and violence in parts of Latin America in the second half of the 20th Century as the region experienced waves of revolutions and military rule.

His novel Conversations in the Cathedral (1969) was celebrated for exposing how the Peruvian dictatorship of 1948-56 under Manuel Odría controlled and eventually ruined the lives of ordinary people.

Like many intellectuals, Vargas Llosa supported Fidel Castro but became disillusioned with the communist leader following the “Padilla Affair” when poet Heberto Padilla was imprisoned for criticising the Cuban government in 1971.

In 1983 Vargas Llosa was appointed president of a commission investigating the gruesome killing in a village in the Peruvian Andes of eight journalists, which became known as the Uchuraccay massacre.

Peruvian officials maintained that the journalists had been killed by indigenous villagers who had mistaken the journalists for members of the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group.

The commission’s report backed the official line, leading to fierce criticism of Vargas Llosa by those who believed that the gruesome nature of the crime and the horrific mutilations inflicted on the body were the hallmark of an infamous anti-terrorist police rather than signs of “indigenous violence”.

Moving further right on the political spectrum, in 1990 Vargas Llosa ran for the Peruvian presidency with the centre-right Frente Democrático coalition on a neo-liberal platform. He lost to Alberto Fujimori, who went on to govern Peru for the following 10 years.

Despite the criticism levelled against him over the investigation into the Uchuraccay massacre, Vargas Llosa continued to expose state terror and abuse of power through literature.

His novel The Feast of the Goat, published in 2000, focused on dictator Rafael Trujillo, who ruled the Dominican Republic for 31 years until his assassination in 1961. The novel won praise from the Nobel Prize Committee for its attention to “structures of power” and “images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”.

Other works were adapted for the big screen. His book Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, based on his first marriage, was adapted in 1990 into a Hollywood feature film, Tune in Tomorrow.

His later work covered figures as diverse as Irish nationalist Roger Casement (The Dream of the Celt, 2012).

He spent the latter years of his life in Peru as well as Madrid.

The author appeared in the pages of Spanish gossip magazine Hola after he left his wife of 50 years in 2015 to be with Spanish-Filipino socialite Isabel Preysler, the mother of popular Latin singer Enrique Iglesias.

He also continued to attract criticism for controversial remarks.

In 2019 he was condemned for blaming the rise in killings of journalists in Mexico – more than 100 in the past decade – on the expansion of press freedom “which allows journalists to say things that were not permitted previously”. While he also said that “narcotics trafficking plays an absolutely central part in all of this”, some commentators felt that he failed to express sympathy with the victims and their families.

And in 2018 he caused a stir when, in a column for Spanish newspaper El País, he called feminism “the most determined enemy of literature, trying to decontaminate it from machismo, multiple prejudices and immoralities”.

He died in Lima on 13 April surrounded by his family and “at peace”, his son Álvaro Vargas Llosa announced.

With his death, the last of the Latin American Boom’s great stars has gone.