Headlines scream for Joe Biden to quit. Donors threaten to withhold campaign funds, and a growing list of Democrats call time on the president’s career.

But for all the stories dominated by the latest politician, fundraiser or left-wing actor to voice their displeasure, a longer list of Democrats are sticking by him.

At least 80 Democratic politicians have publicly backed the 81-year-old, and more are joining them as he insists he is going nowhere.

To many, his political record, his principles and his 2020 victory over Donald Trump mean more than the damage of a rambling performance in any debate or public appearance, or health fears during a new four-year term.

Mr Biden’s first solo news conference of the year on Thursday, though filled with gaffes and drifting statements, sparked several more expressions of public support.

“Tonight, President Biden was knowledgeable, engaging, and capable,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons said on social media afterwards. “No one is more prepared to lead our nation forward than Joe Biden.”

Gavin Newsom, the California governor touted as a possible successor, told CBS on Friday he was “all in” for Mr Biden, adding that there was “no daylight” between them.

Representative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania said Mr Biden “showed he knows a million times more about policy” than Trump, “the convict conman”.

Experts say these politicians have a host of reasons for their support, including Mr Biden’s record in office, his 2020 victory against Trump and the gamble of putting in a new candidate so close to the November election.

“The president has made it clear he wants to continue to run, and I think people are being very respectful of that,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist.

“And it’s also true that in our system, replacing a candidate for president this late is hard and is unprecedented, and so there’s enormous reticence about making a big change.”

He added that there was a “healthy debate” about who the nominee should be.

However, a range of groups have said that the candidate should be Mr Biden, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which has about 40 members, and the 60-member Congressional Black Caucus, which Mr Biden met earlier this week.

Ameshia Cross, a former Obama campaign adviser, said that the black caucus, as well as many black voters, see Mr Biden as a president committed to civil rights, unlike his rival, Trump.

“They understand what is at stake with a Donald J Trump presidency,” she said. “This is a guy who has stood against DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.”

Mr Biden has received public support from several politicians on the left, including the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who have previously criticised Mr Biden for an agenda they have said is not progressive enough.

Ms Cross said many recognise the risks a Trump presidency brings to civil and LGBTQ rights, and climate change.

“These are things that matter to the progressive left, and the president has actually worked on those things,” she said.

To date, most of Mr Biden’s support comes from politicians running for re-election in safer districts, rather than those who worry Mr Biden could harm their own election chances in tougher seats.

Mr Rosenberg said that the White House “needs to be respectful of their concerns and deal with them, I think, in a far more aggressive manner”.

Even as calls grow for Mr Biden to exit the race, the most recent poll seems to suggest that he has not lost much voter support.

The Biden campaign has touted a survey from the Washington Post, ABC News and Ipsos published this week, which shows Mr Biden and Trump in a dead-heat, similar to survey results from before the debate. But the poll also found two-thirds of Americans want Mr Biden to step aside.

Mr Biden has also lost support from some donors, including Democratic fundraiser and actor George Clooney, who wrote a damning op-ed this week calling on Mr Biden to step down.

Other top donors, however, are sticking by the president.

Shekar Narasimhan, who has been organising fundraisers for Democrats for more than two decades, said there had been no change in his plans.

“Our eyes can see what’s going on, our ears can hear what’s being talked about but we are keeping our heads down to get the work done,” said Mr Narsimhan, who is the founder of the Asian American Pacific Islander Victory Fund Super-PAC.

“It’s the president’s decision to make, whether he wants to run or not, and we will go with whatever he decides,” he said. “But it’s better to end this discussion as soon as possible.”

He said his support for Mr Biden came from the belief that he would win.

“This election will be decided by no more than a total of 50,000 votes in three states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – and we have the ground game and infrastructure to win there,” he said.

Frank Islam, who sits on the National Finance Committee, said he had a fundraiser planned at his Maryland home later this month. “I am absolutely going ahead with it because I know he [Mr Biden] will win,” he said.

A number of children have died and more than 100 others are trapped after a school building collapsed in Nigeria’s central Plateau state, local officials say.

Saint Academy in the state capital Jos caved in while students were in class on Friday morning.

Trapped pupils were calling for help from under the rubble, AFP reported, with parents frantically searching for their children.

The National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) said “the exact number of deaths is still being confirmed”. Media reports say at least 17 students were killed.

In a post on X, Nema said more than 40 trapped students were rescued and taken to local hospitals.

Nigeria’s Punch newspaper reported 17 dead while the AFP news agency quoted Red Cross spokesman Nuruddeen Hussain Magaji as saying 21 people were killed.

The school is believed to have more than 1,000 pupils.

Local resident, Abel Fuandai, told the BBC that his friend’s son had been killed and said “the scale of the tragedy is frightening”.

He said rescue workers and emergency officials were racing to save those trapped and using excavators to dig through the rubble.

The cause of the collapse is not known but residents said it came after three days of heavy rains in Plateau.

Speaking from hospital, injured student Wulliya Ibrahim told AFP: “I entered the class not more than five minutes, when I heard a sound, and the next thing is I found myself here.

“We are many in the class, we are writing our exams,” he said.

Resident Chika Obioha said he had seen a number of dead bodies and that dozens of people had been rescued.

“Everyone is helping out to see if we can rescue more people,” he said.

There have been several major building collapses in Nigeria in recent years, with observers blaming a mix of bad workmanship, poor quality materials and corruption.

In 2021, at least 45 people were killed when a high-rise building under construction collapsed in a wealthy Lagos neighbourhood.

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Two French international rugby players have been charged with the aggravated rape of a woman following a match in Argentina, prosecutors in the South American country say.

Hugo Auradou, 20, and Oscar Jegou, 21, are accused of raping a 39-year-old woman after France beat Argentina on Saturday.

She alleges that they raped her multiple times and beat her in a hotel room in the city of Mendoza.

The pair, who chose “not to testify” at a hearing in the city, say they had consensual sex with the woman and deny rape. They will remain in custody while authorities investigate further.

The woman alleged the attack took place at the Diplomatic Hotel, where France’s players and staff were staying as part of a tour of South America.

Her lawyer says she left a nightclub with one of the men and accompanied him to the hotel room, where she alleges that she was raped “at least six times” by one of the men and once by the other.

Ms Romano told AFP that her client suffered “fierce” violence, with injuries to her face, back, breasts, legs and ribs as well as various bite and scratch marks.

The woman was held against her will for several hours and tried to escape several times, Ms Romano said.

Her client went to hospital on Thursday after feeling ill emotionally and physically because of the incident and is receiving treatment at a health facility, she added.

On Friday a lawyer for the players said his clients were confident in their version of events.

“They are well and sure of their version, they are calm because they know they are innocent, but of course they are worried about this whole situation that they have had to live through,” German Hnatow told reporters.

On Wednesday another lawyer said the “sexual relations” had been consensual.

“There are witnesses who saw her leave [the hotel]. There are cameras that saw her leave. Apparently no injuries are seen in the footage,” Mariano Cuneo Libarona told journalists.

French Rugby Federation (FFR) president Florian Gill, who is in Argentina, also told AFP that the players had “quite a different version of events”.

“We are not judges. We are not investigators. But we think that the Argentine justice system should look at the case very quickly,” he said.

Mr Auradou and Mr Jegou have been replaced by lock Mickael Guillard and flanker Judicael Cancoriet for Saturday’s second match against Argentina in Buenos Aires.

The things they see. The dead girl lowered by a rope from a ruined building. She sways slightly, then comes to rest, legs folding beneath her on the rubble.

They see people and parts of people lying out in the open where the blast or the bullet caught them. Violent death in all of its contortions.

Bodies lying in the streets, in the blasted open sitting rooms of houses, under the rubble. Sometimes covered by so much concrete the men will never reach them, and only in the future when the war is over will somebody come and give them a decent burial.

The men of the Gaza Civil Defence cannot close their eyes to any of this. There is no shutting out the smell. Every sense is on alert. Death can come from the skies in an instant.

When the fighting in places like Shejaiya in eastern Gaza City, or Tal Al-Sultan, near Rafah, in the south, is as fierce as it has been in the last few days, the ambulances of the Civil Defence dare not venture out.

“Entering areas close to the Israeli occupation is dangerous, but we try to intervene to save lives and souls,” says Muhammed Al Mughayer, a local Civil Defence official.

He and his men seize any lull in the conflict to recover the dead and the wounded. Families constantly ask about missing relatives.

“It is very difficult to identify the bodies,” explains Mr Mughayer. “Some remain unidentified due to complete decomposition.”

Stray animals also prey on the corpses, tearing off clothes and scattering papers that might be used to identify them.

The ambulance crews are short of fuel. Two days ago one broke down in Tal Al-Sultan and had to be towed out, a nerve-wracking experience for the crews. The risk of being fired on by the Israeli forces, says Mr Mughayer, means seriously injured people often cannot be rescued.

“There is currently a report of an injured person near Al-Salihin Mosque from two days ago, but we can’t reach them due to delays in coordination. It may result in their death.”

Refugees are continuing to flee from Gaza city and areas like Shejaiya. Many have been displaced multiple times.

For them it is a world without laws or rules. World leaders express concern. But nobody is coming to rescue them. Nothing is more acute for these people than the sense that they can die at any moment.

Sharif Abu Shanab stands outside the ruins of his family home in Shejaiya with an expression that is part bewilderment, part grief.

“My house had four floors, and I can’t enter it,” he says. “I can’t take anything out of it, not even a can of tuna. We have nothing, no food or drink. They bulldozed all the houses, and it is not our fault. Why do they hold us accountable for the fault of others? What did we do? We are citizens. Look at the destruction around you…

“Where do we go, and to whom? We are thrown in the streets now, we have no home or anything, where do we go? There is only one solution and that is to hit us with a nuclear bomb and relieve us of this life.”

There are occasional glimpses of reprieve. The Al-Fayoumi family, arriving close to Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, were relieved to have escaped from Gaza City. This after a warning this week to evacuate from the Israel Defense Forces sent thousands of people onto the road south.

In the boiling heat of the asphalt road, without shade, family members were reunited with others who had gone ahead of them.

The new arrivals were given water and soft drinks. A boy sucked from a carton of juice, then squeezed it with all his strength to coax out a last few drops.

Nobody in the group took their survival for granted. So to see everyone alive, all in the one place, brought smiles and cries of happiness. An aunt reached into a car to hug her young niece. At first the child smiled. Then she turned her head and sobbed.

Where will they be tomorrow, next week, next month? They have no way of knowing. It depends on where the fighting moves next, on the next Israeli evacuation order, on the mediators and whether Hamas and Israel can agree a ceasefire.

These lines could have been written at any time in the last few months. Civilians dying. Taking to the roads. Hunger. Hospitals struggling. Talks about a ceasefire.

Since February, we have been following the story of Nawara al-Najjar whose husband Abed-Alrahman was among more than 70 people killed when Israeli forces launched an operation to rescue two hostages in Rafah.

They had fled Khan Younis 9km (6 miles) to the north, and took refuge closer to Rafah when bullets and shrapnel tore through the tented camp where they slept.

Nawara was six months pregnant when she was widowed, and taking care of six children, aged from four to 13. When a BBC colleague found her again today, Nawara was nursing her newborn baby, Rahma, just one month old.

She gave birth on a night of heavy airstrikes, rushed to the hospital by her in-laws.

“I kept saying: ‘Where are you Abed-Alrahman? This is your daughter coming into the world without a father.’” Baby Rahma has red hair like her dead father.

The Israeli advance into Rafah last month sent Nawara and her children fleeing again, back to their old home in Khan Younis. She struggled to settle there again.

“My husband’s things were there, his laugh, his voice. I couldn’t open the house. I tried to be strong. Then I took my children and opened the door, and we wandered around the house, but it was hard. I cried for my husband…He was the one who cleaned the house, cooked for us, made sure I was comfortable.”

There has been fighting around Khan Younis again in the last week. An Israeli air strike close to a school killed 29 people, local hospital sources say, and wounded dozens more.

But Nawara is adamant she will not move again. Here she is close to the memory of the man she loves. She imagines her husband as a still living presence. She sends texts to his phone: “I complain to him, and I cry to him…I try to reassure myself, telling myself that I need to be patient. I imagine he’s the one telling me.”

German political figures have reacted angrily to a report that Russia had plotted to kill the head of Germany’s biggest arms company Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger.

The CNN report said US officials had told their counterparts in Berlin earlier this year and security around him was stepped up.

Germany’s interior ministry refused to comment but Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock appeared to confirm the details.

“In view of latest reports on Rheinmetall, this is what we have actually been communicating more and more clearly in recent months,” she told reporters at the Nato summit in Washington. “Russia is waging a hybrid war of aggression.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations. “It’s all presented in the style of another fake story, so such reports cannot be taken seriously.”

Rheinmetall avoided commenting on issues of “corporate security”, but Mr Papperger is now being described as the most highly protected figure in Germany’s economy. He told the Financial Times that German authorities had imposed a “great deal of security around my person”.

The company is one of the world’s biggest producers of ammunition and has become key to supplying Ukraine with arms, armoured vehicles and other military equipment.

Rheinmetall recently opened a tank repair plant in western Ukraine. Last month, it signed an agreement with Ukraine to expand co-operation in the coming years, including a joint venture to produce artillery shells.

Mr Papperger said at the time his company wanted to hand over the first Lynx infantry fighting vehicles later this year and to start producing them in Ukraine soon.

Although Chancellor Olaf Scholz avoided commenting on the reported assassination plot directly, he said it was well known that Germany was exposed to a variety of Russian threats and was paying close attention to them.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said “we are taking very seriously the significantly heightened threat of Russian aggression”.

Earlier this week, a senior Nato official told the BBC that Russia was “engaging in aggressive covert operations across Europe – involving sabotage, arson and assassination plots – aimed at weakening public support for Ukraine”.

The German foreign minister said the Baltic states had already highlighted the various methods deployed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin in his war on Ukraine. As well as sabotage, she spoke of cyberattacks and disrupting GPS signals so that Baltic flights could no longer land in neighbouring countries.

“We have seen that there have been attacks on factories, and that again underlines that, together, we as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naive,” Ms Baerbock told reporters.

In early May, a building complex owned by the Diehl Metall firm went up in flames in south-west Berlin. Although a technical fault was blamed for the fire, sabotage has not been ruled out. Suspicious fires have also been reported in Poland and Lithuania.

Last April, Mr Papperger’s garden house was set alight at Hermannsburg in northern Germany, although there has been no evidence of a Russian link.

The fire was quickly brought under control and a rambling, anonymous confession purportedly from leftist militants appeared on activist network Indymedia.

The reported plot against such a high-profile German CEO has prompted widespread alarm.

Leading conservative figure Roderich Kiesewetter said the chancellor should come clean with the German population about how great the threat from Russia really was. German intelligence needed to be boosted to the level of neighbouring countries, he said.

“We must take it very seriously and also prepare ourselves accordingly,” he told public broadcaster ZDF.

Michael Roth, who chairs Germany’s foreign affairs committee told Bild newspaper that Vladimir Putin was waging a “war of extermination not only against Ukraine, but against its supporters and our values”.

The head of the defence committee, Marcus Faber, added his condemnation, saying if information about Russian intelligence involvement came to light, then “the expulsion of diplomats must follow and, if necessary, international arrest warrants must be issued”.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has said Warsaw is considering a proposal from Kyiv to shoot down Russian missiles heading towards Polish territory while they are still in Ukrainian airspace.

The proposal was included in a joint defence agreement between the two countries signed during President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Warsaw earlier this week.

“At this stage, this is an idea. What our agreement said is we will explore this idea,” Mr Sikorski told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

He said some Russian missiles fired from the St Petersburg area towards Ukrainian targets near the western city of Lviv, not far from the Polish border, traversed Belarus and entered Polish airspace for about 40 seconds before turning towards their targets in Ukraine.

Mr Sikorski acknowledged that such a short time gave Poland little time to react.

However the proposal would theoretically cover any missile traversing western Ukraine in the direction of Poland.

“We are a frontline state and Russian missiles breach our airspace. We assume by mistake,” Mr Sikorski said.

“Our dilemma is the following. If we shoot them down only when they enter our airspace the debris is a threat to our citizens and to our property.

“And the Ukrainians are saying, ‘Please, we will not mind, do it over our airspace when they’re in imminent danger of crossing into Polish territory.

“To my mind, that’s self-defence but we are exploring the idea,” Mr Sikorski said.

Mr Sikorski said an unarmed Russian missile landed near his home in Bydgoszcz about 500km (311 miles) from the Belarusian border, without harming anyone, in December 2022.

Two Polish citizens had been killed by falling debris when Ukraine shot down a Russian missile near the Polish border a month earlier.

Earlier this week, Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said Warsaw would consult with its Nato allies and seek their agreement before attempting to shoot down any Russian missiles.

“If there would be such a decision, it can only be an allied decision. It will never be an individual decision,” Mr Kosiniak-Kamysz told Poland’s TVN broadcaster at a Nato summit in Washington DC.

“The key opinion is the United States, who is quite sceptical in this matter, so Poland will certainly not make such a decision on its own,” he added.

Marek Swierczynski, a defence analyst for Polityka Insight, told the BBC the idea could prove perilous for Poland.

“Without robust allied support, which there isn’t, this proposal is very risky,” he said.

“From the point of view of our air defence assets and the fact we might be subject to some kind of Russian response.”

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poland has provided Ukraine with 44 packages of weapons and ammunition, including more than 250 tanks, MiG-29 fighter jets, combat helicopters, artillery systems and portable air defence missile systems worth more than €4bn ($4.4bn; £3.4bn).

Poland plans to provide additional military assistance to Ukraine this year.

After months of lavish celebrations, the wedding ceremony of the son of Asia’s richest man is finally under way in the Indian city of Mumbai.

Anant Ambani, son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, is tying the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant.

The four-day extravaganza is the final stop in a string of elaborate parties the family has hosted since March, which have featured performances by popstars including Rihanna and Justin Bieber.

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian, and former UK PMs Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, were among the international guests. Also spotted was US wrestler and actor John Cena, who was seen hugging and congratulating relatives of the host.

Key roads in Mumbai are being sealed off for several hours a day until the festivities end on Monday.

Social media is awash with updates on the wedding, with people sharing minute-by-minute details of Bollywood stars and celebrities arriving.

But the extraordinary opulence has also led to backlash – city dwellers have complained the road closures have worsened traffic snarls caused by monsoon flooding, while others have questioned the ostentatious display of wealth at the seemingly never-ending celebrations.

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Mukesh Ambani, 66, is at present the world’s 10th richest man with a net worth of $115bn, according to Forbes. Reliance Industries, founded by his father in 1966, is a massive conglomerate that operates in sectors ranging from petroleum and retail, to financial services and telecoms.

Anant Ambani is the youngest of his three children, all of whom are on the board of Reliance Industries. The 29-year-old is involved in Reliance’s energy businesses and is on the board of Reliance Foundation.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them but wedding planners estimate they’ve already spent anywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m]. It was rumoured Rihanna had been paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Justin Bieber is $10m.

One unnamed executive at Reliance claimed the event was a “powerful symbol of India’s growing stature on the global stage” in a note shared with reporters.

But opposition politician Thomas Isaac said it was “obscene”.

“Legally it may be their money but such ostentatious expenditure is a sin against mother earth and (the) poor,” he posted on X.

On Friday, the groom set off from his residence in a luxurious red car covered in strings of white flowers, as joyful guests danced around it.

A convoy of cars, also decorated with flowers and carrying family members, followed him with music and cheers.

The grand procession, known as the baraat, culminated at the wedding venue – a convention centre owned by the Ambanis – where several Bollywood stars joined in another round of singing and dancing.

Reports say the bride and groom will exchange garlands to kick off the wedding. The pheras – the main wedding ritual of the couple walking around the sacred fire seven times – is set for 21:30 (1600GMT).

Guests will reportedly bless the newly-weds in a formal ceremony on Saturday – followed by a grand party where unconfirmed reports say pop stars Drake, Lana Del Ray and Adele are likely to perform.

Pictures and videos of Kim Kardashian, who is in the city with her sister Khloé Kardashian, are being widely shared online.

Reports say the sisters have brought a team of stylists, including celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton, along with a group of producers to capture every detail of their trip.

Former Indian president Ram Nath Kovind, British High Commissioner to India Lindy Cameron, and US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti are also in the city to attend the wedding.

Rajan Mehra, CEO of air charter company Club One Air, told Reuters that the family had rented three Falcon-2000 jets to ferry wedding guests to the event.

“The guests are coming from all over and each aircraft will make multiple trips across the country,” he said.

The wedding festivities began in March when the family held a three-day pre-wedding party in their home state of Gujarat.

Among the 1,200 guests to attend that celebration were Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

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The party started with a performance by Rihanna on the first night. Diljit Dosanjh, the first Punjabi singer to perform at Coachella, took the stage on the second night, while rapper Akon closed the show on the final day of celebrations.

In June, the Ambanis organised another pre-wedding celebration, this time, a luxury cruise from Italy to France. The Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry and Pitbull performed for the 800 guests, which included Bollywood stars and cricketers.

Money was also lavished on constructing 14 temples inside a sprawling complex in Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples.

On Wednesday, the family hosted a bhandara – a community feast for underprivileged people.

A Russian passenger plane with only crew on board has crashed near Moscow, the country’s emergencies ministry says.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 went down in a forest and all three crew members are believed to have been killed, it said. There were no passengers on board.

Russia’s state-run media report that the plane went down during a test flight following repair works.

Russia’s has been developing the Sukhoi Superjet – a regional jet – for some time to replace Western-made aircraft.

Heavily sanctioned over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has struggled to replace its ageing aircraft fleet.

In a short statement on Friday, Russia’s emergencies ministry said the aircraft crashed in the forested area.

“There were no casualties among the population,” it said.

Transport prosecutors said the plane went down not far from the town of Kolomna.

The aircraft belonged to Gazprom Avia, the airline of the country’s energy giant, the prosecutors added.

A criminal investigation is now under way.

State-owned defence conglomerate Rostech said the aircraft went into service in 2014. It urged people not to “rush with conclusions” on what caused the crash.

It is the third air disaster involving a Sukhoi Superjet 100 since 2012.

Over the years, the Superjet project has been marred by engineering setbacks and delays in production as designers have struggled to replace key Western avionics components.

Four migrants have died after a boat capsized during an attempt to cross the English Channel, according to the French coastguard.

Overnight, a navy patrol boat reported that migrants had fallen into the sea off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France.

Four people found “unconscious” could not be saved, police added, while 63 were rescued.

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the incident as “truly awful”.

The coastguard said several people fell into the sea after part of their boat “deflated”.

The initial alert was raised at 04:30 local time (03:30 BST), with a helicopter arriving about 30 minutes later. It found several people “drifting in the water while others were still clinging to the broken rubber dingy”.

Fourteen people were rescued by a fishing vessel and 49 others by the French navy ship, the coastguard said.

“All the shipwrecked individuals were then brought ashore in Boulogne and taken care of by the emergency services on land.”

Two boats, one from UK sea rescue charity RNLI and one from Border Force, were initially sent from Dover to provide support but were not required to attend the scene, the UK coastguard said.

Jacques Billant, prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region, told reporters nine people were in serious condition.

He said only one person on board was wearing a life jacket, while “a few others had bike tubes”.

“Week after week, we observe overloaded boats like this morning’s, boats of very poor quality: under inflated, without a floor, without life jackets,” he said.

“These are also underpowered boats, which obviously increase the risks of breakdown and sinking.”

UK Home Office figures show 484 migrants crossed the English Channel on Monday and Tuesday.

On 18 June, 882 people crossed the Channel on 15 small boats – a new record for the year so far.

According to Home Office data, those arrivals were the highest in a single day since October 2022.

Over 13,000 people have successfully reached the UK via the Channel so far this year.

According to the UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM) the most recent deaths mean more than 20 people are known to have died while trying to cross the Channel this year.

This includes a seven-year-old girl who died in March after a small boat attempting to reach the English Channel capsized a few kilometres from the coast of Dunkirk.

A month later five people, including another seven-year-old girl, died while a boat carrying 112 migrants ran aground on a sandbank after leaving Wimereux, near Boulogne, before continuing on.

Reacting to the latest deaths, Mrs Cooper, the UK home secretary, said: “Criminal gangs are making vast profit from putting lives at risk.

“We are accelerating action with international partners to pursue and bring down dangerous smuggler gangs.”

Earlier this week, the new Labour government set out plans to tackle the small boat crisis.

Ms Cooper said she would appoint a leader of the UK’s new Border Security Command within weeks.

The government hopes the new body will reduce small boat crossings in the English Channel.

Mr Billant, the Pas-de-Calais prefect, said over 1,000 police officers were currently deployed along the entire French northern coastline, “amid heightened aggression from smugglers and migrants alike”.

He said 344 crossing attempts had been foiled so far this year.

The previous Tory government had a flagship policy of countering illegal migration by sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda. But the controversial scheme was axed in the early days of the new Labour government without a single migrant ever having been deported to the east African country.

But despite recent elections in both countries there has been no change of policy in France since Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron signed a cooperation agreement in March last year.

It was the latest of many such deals under in which the UK supplies money and the French step up their policing of the coast, using more manpower and better equipment.

France will be keen to see how the Labour government might change things.

The scrapping of the Rwanda scheme came as no surprise, because the French never thought it was either right or effective.

The scheme had shown no clear sign of having a deterrent effect. Numbers kept going up.

The French view remains that the UK should address the pull factors that keep drawing so many migrants, such as the ease of entering the jobs market undetected and the lack of identity cards.

Governments of all stripes in Paris know the Calais problem is perennial, and the most to be hoped for is more effective operational cooperation with London.

Elon Musk’s social media site X has been accused by the European Union of breaching its online content rules, with its “verified” blue tick accounts having the potential to “deceive” users.

The bloc’s tech regulator said users could be duped into thinking the identity of those with blue tick marks was verified, when in fact anybody can pay for a blue tick. It said it had found evidence of “malicious actors” abusing the system.

The investigation began under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) – it could lead to X being fined up to 6% of its global annual turnover and being forced to change how it operates in the bloc.

Mr Musk has reacted angrily: “The DSA is misinformation,” he wrote on X.

Mr Musk – who bought the platform for $44bn in 2022 – said the DSA rules amounted to “censored speech” which he said he found unacceptable.

The tech regulator also found a lack of transparency around advertising and said X did not provide data for research use as required under EU rules.

The findings follow a seven month investigation under the DSA which requires big tech firms, like X, to take action to stop illegal content and safeguard the public.

The DSA was introduced in 2022. ByteDance’s TikTok, AliExpress and Meta Platforms are also being investigated under the act.

The Commission said that the way X designed and operated its interface for blue tick verified accounts “does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users”.

“Since anyone can subscribe to obtain such a ‘verified’ status, it negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with,” it added.

“There is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the ‘verified account’ to deceive users.”

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market, said: “Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information.

“Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA,” he added.

“X has now the right of defence — but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines and require significant changes.”

X was also charged with blocking researchers from accessing its public data.

“In particular, X prohibits eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping, as stated in its terms of service”, the Commission said.

If found to be in breach, X would also be subject to an “enhanced supervision period to ensure compliance”.

The Commission will also continue investigations into X’s practices around dissemination of illegal content, and how well it combats the spread of fake news.

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has hit back at Nato’s “groundless accusations” that Beijing is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

He has also warned the Western alliance against stirring up confrontation.

Mr Wang’s comments, made in a call with his Dutch counterpart, came hours after leaders of Nato member states gathered in Washington DC and issued a declaration that mentioned the war.

They accused China of being a “decisive enabler” of Russia through its “large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base”, in some of their harshest remarks yet about Beijing.

They called on China to stop “all material and political support” to Russia’s war effort such as the supply of dual-use materials, which are items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Western states have previously accused Beijing of transferring drone and missile technology and satellite imagery to Moscow. The US estimates about 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the microelectronics Russia imports now come from China.

Beijing was also accused of conducting “malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation” on Nato states.

In a press conference on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that he had discussions with other leaders about spelling out the consequences for China.

“China has to understand that if they are supplying Russia with information and capacity, working with North Korea and others to help Russia and [their] armament, that they’re not going to benefit economically as a consequence of that,” he said.

“I think you’ll see that some of our European friends are going to be curtailing their investment in China.”

Pointing out that Russia had been seeking weapons from China and North Korea, he added that Nato states were looking into a new policy to turn the West into an “industrial base” for munitions and to develop new weapons systems.

On Thursday, while speaking to the Netherlands’ new foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp, Mr Wang said “China absolutely does not accept” all these accusations and insisted that they have “always been a force for peace and force for stability”.

In comments carried by state media, he said that China’s different political system and values “should not be used as a reason for Nato to incite confrontation with China”, and called for Nato to “stay within its bounds”.

His remarks was the latest in a flurry of angry responses from Beijing.

Earlier on Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Nato was smearing China with “fabricated disinformation”, while Beijing’s mission to the EU told the alliance to “stop hyping up the so-called China threat”.

Beijing has long rebutted accusations that it has been aiding Russia in the war and insists that it remains a neutral party. It has called for an end to the conflict and proposed a peace plan, which Ukraine has rejected.

But, besides the growing accusations of military support, observers have also pointed out that Beijing’s purchases of vast amounts of oil and gas have helped prop up Russia’s economy crippled by sanctions and replenish coffers drained by war spending.

Beijing’s official rhetoric on the conflict often mirrors Moscow’s – like them, China still does not call it a war. Chinese President Xi Jinping has maintained a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with both of them famously declaring their partnership has “no limits”.

Beijing has accused the US and other Western states of pouring “fuel on the fire” by supplying lethal weapons and technology to Ukraine for its defence.

In recent weeks, several countries have gone a step further and allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

During Nato’s three-day summit, which ended on Thursday, the alliance continued to underscore its commitment to Ukraine. Member states said they would support Ukraine on its “irreversible path” to future membership, adding that “Ukraine’s future in Nato”.

They also announced further integration with Ukraine’s military and support for its defence. The alliance has committed at least €40bn ($43.3bn, £33.7bn) in aid in the next year, including F-16 fighter jets and air defence support.

Rescuers are searching for more than 60 missing people in Nepal after a massive landslide swept two buses into a river.

Some spoke of their terrifying ordeal, with one saying he was “thrown out of the window of the bus into the river”.

Only three people appeared to have survived the accident, which took place in the early hours of Friday.

Authorities said the landslide had been triggered by heavy rains.

Nepal, along with other parts of South Asia, is in the midst of the monsoon season and has seen heavy rainfall in recent weeks, triggering floods and landslides that have affected millions.

The accident took place at 03:30 local time (21:45 GMT Thursday) on Friday in Chitwan along the Narayanghat-Mugling highway, about 100km (60 miles) from the capital Kathmandu.

Survivor Nandan Das told the BBC’s Nepali Service that the bus had been on the road for about an hour and a half when it “started rolling down all of a sudden into the river… I felt like I was going to die”.

He said he managed to swim to safety even though it was “very dark at night… I found the river full of huge boulders and some foliage.

“We were chanting the name of God and swam and swam and swam. God saved us.

“I did not know if I was swimming out to the river or inward… but I came to the bank at last. Then I started climbing the slope.”

He said that he and another survivor reached the highway at the same time, and were shortly joined by a third person. They managed to get help from a driver, who called the police.

Another survivor, Jogishwar Raya, described the bus as “trembling and overturning four or five times before plunging into the river”.

He said he managed to swim out of the bus, but his family members were still missing.

“My son, daughter-in-law , grandson, and a granddaughter were on the same bus. Out of five family members, I was alone to survive; the rest vanished,” he said.

Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has called for all government agencies to join in the search and rescue operation.

Scores of people are estimated to have died this monsoon season, with key highways blocked and some bridges swept away by swollen rivers.

Authorities have urged residents in the south-east of the country to be on alert as the Koshi river, which courses through Nepal and India, is flowing above the danger level.

Nepal also often sees deadly crashes due to poorly maintained roads and reckless driving.

Only one US president has been at the Nato summit in Washington this week, but the shadow of another – his predecessor – has loomed over this meeting of the world’s most powerful military alliance.

While the host Joe Biden has presided over a message of unity from the group’s 32 members, the Nato-sceptic views of his rival for power, Donald Trump, have imbued conversations here with an urgency and an anxiety.

At times the smiles from world leaders in the conference hall have felt fragile. Trump “hangs over every conversation here”, said one Eastern European diplomat who asked to remain nameless.

The Republican’s election as president in November “could change everything”, the diplomat said. The fact that Mr Biden has been trying to fend off a political crisis over his frailty has only sharpened the sense that a second Trump term could bring far-reaching changes to an alliance forged in the ashes of the World War Two and still reliant on hard US military power to deter adversaries.

So does Nato need to “Trump-proof” itself – as some describe it – and if so, is it possible?

There is a lot of evidence of efforts by Nato allies to reach out already to those in Trump’s political orbit to try to manage relationships and limit what they would see as the potential damage of a second term. But others suggest something more unmanageable.

Camille Grand, a French former official who was one of Nato’s deputy leaders throughout the Trump administration, described himself as “much more worried” than colleagues who think a second term may be “Trump [term] one on steroids” but ultimately workable for the alliance.

“He doesn’t have the same sort of guardrails, he doesn’t have the same sort of adults in the room. And he has around him a team that is trying to turn his instinct into policy,” said Mr Grand, who is now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Four members of visiting delegations, who asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC their concern was not necessarily that a Trump administration would withdraw entirely from Nato, as he has threatened before.

• What is Nato and which countries are members?

Rather it is a fear that the US commitment to the alliance’s core principle of collective security – “all for one and one for all”, meaning any ally under attack can expect defence from the others – could wane.

Trump’s positions on Nato have veered erratically from outright hostility – portraying the alliance as a bunch of freeloading Europeans surviving off protection paid for by US taxpayers – to suggesting his outbursts are simply part of a cunning negotiating tactic to compel more of Nato’s members to meet its defence spending targets.

He has frequently tried to rally crowds of supporters with attacks on the organisation. As the summit began, he posted to his Truth Social network that when he started as president most Nato members were “delinquent” until they “paid up” due to his pressure.

By the end of Trump’s presidency, four more Nato countries had hit the alliance’s guidelines of spending at least 2% of national income on defence. So far during President Biden’s term, another 13 countries have reached the target.

That progress is frequently touted by the Biden administration and its backers, although in reality much of the increase was triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

At a February campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump said he would let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato countries that did not spend enough.

That sparked outrage from some quarters in Washington, but privately his threats are said to have gone further.

At a panel event in January, European Union commissioner Thierry Breton described a meeting he had attended in 2020 between Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“Donald Trump said to Ursula: ‘You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you. And by the way, Nato is dead. And we will leave, we will quit Nato.’

“It was the president of the United States of America,” recalled Mr Breton. “He may come back.”

Trump’s campaign has been approached by the BBC with a request to confirm whether the account was accurate. Evelyn Farkas, a former senior official at the Pentagon in the Obama administration, believes there remains a real concern even over Nato’s existence under Mr Trump.

“I think there is a danger with Trump that he tries to pull us out of Nato. I won’t sugarcoat that,” said Dr Farkas, now executive director at public policy think tank the McCain Institute.

“The reality is Trump is dangerous to the alliance in that America is still the strongest economic, political, military power and Nato is stronger if Nato has the United States inside the alliance.”

But one of those familiar with the thinking in Trump’s political orbit, Dan Caldwell from the right-wing think tank Defence Priorities, believes the former president’s priority is to push European nations to invest more in their own militaries.

“I don’t think he wants to withdraw from Nato, but he has said that the United States should re-evaluate its role and the purpose of Nato going forward,” he said.

“Not only the former president but more and more national security experts on the right believe the United States has really no choice but to do less in Europe. So I think that there’s some larger forces at play, that will eventually force the next president, regardless of who it is… to substantially pull back from Nato.”

The most detailed account of policy positions that might influence a second Trump term comes from an initiative being brought up by supporters and detractors of Trump alike. Overseen by the conservative Heritage Foundation, “Project 2025” is a 900-page detailed blueprint for a Republican president to usher in a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch.

The initiative says a future president should “transform Nato” so that America’s role is primarily for its nuclear deterrent, while other members should field “the great majority” of conventional forces required to deter Russia.

This is in keeping with the project’s foreign policy position, seeing the main threat to US primacy as China and therefore calling for the next president to “bring resolution to the foreign policy tensions” sparked by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Trump himself has equivocated over the war but has said he would end it in “24 hours”. He favours brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine on terms that many Nato allies would see as surrender for Kyiv.

Trump has partially disavowed Project 2025, saying he does not know who is behind it but many of his former officials had a hand in writing it, including a former acting defense secretary.

Since Trump left office, the increase in the number of Nato members spending at least 2% of their income on defence has better insulated the alliance for the future, said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Asked about “Trump-proofing”, he said Congress had also moved to shield America’s membership of Nato from the whims of the White House, in a law passed last year. “We clarified no president can unilaterally withdraw from Nato without a vote of approval from the Senate,” Mr Coons told the BBC.

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He also highlighted the $60bn military assistance package for Ukraine finally passed in April in a bipartisan effort following nine months of paralysis, after allies of Trump blocked passage of the bill through Congress.

“It is my hope that we will continue to be a counterweight and a counterbalance to the president should we, I think, make the tragic mistake of moving forward with a second Trump term.”

But Trump has repeatedly challenged current levels of US military provision for Ukraine, again arguing he could negotiate the war’s end with Russia.

Another possible attempt to future-proof US support for Ukraine is by moving more co-ordination for arms supply to Nato itself – taking it further out of reach of a future American president. Such a move has been pitched by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as a way to “shield” Ukraine’s supply of aid “against the winds of political change”, officials told The Financial Times.

At the summit the alliance agreed to launch a new program in which Nato will supplement, but not replace, a 50-nation “contact group” that co-ordinates delivery of weapons. Camille Grand, the former Nato official, thinks the summit may have “raised the cost” for a future President Trump to roll back the “messaging” from Nato, but in the end, he said, Trump-proofing was impossible.

“If the US, as the biggest shareholder in the alliance, decides to be tough on the alliance, on Ukraine, there is no nothing in the [summit agreement] and previous summits that prevent it from doing that.

“But I think it’s sending an important message to Trump and his team, which is that the Europeans have turned the corner when it comes to [increased] spending.”

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský reiterated that, telling me that any future president of the US that wanted to change things on Nato had the power to do so.

The real work of “Trump-proofing” at this summit has instead felt like Nato supporters pitching the alliance to conservative Americans to try to change their view. This found its most striking moment when President Zelensky appeared at the Reagan Institute for an on-stage conversation with Fox News host Bret Baier.

Mr Zelensky repeatedly raised the memory of the late Republican President Ronald Reagan, quoting Cold War lines on deterring enemies through working with allies.

Reagan is a favoured reference for Democrats trying to expose Republican divisions and what they see as the maverick isolationism of Trump. The subtext is: Reagan would turn in his grave at Trump’s Nato-sceptic stance. But it’s a message that may fall flat with those who Mr Zelensky thinks need to hear it.

Celebrities from across the globe are arriving in Mumbai for the wedding of the youngest son of Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani.

Anant Ambani is expected to tie the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of Indian pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant, in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Mumbai city on Friday.

The wedding events began with parties and celebrations in March.

The months-long festivities have been attended by top Bollywood stars, musicians and business tycoons like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

On Friday, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former UK PM Tony Blair and Nigerian rapper Rema were among those who landed in India’s financial capital to attend the festivities.

The couple’s wedding celebrations are likely to continue over several days. Parties have been reportedly planned for Saturday and Sunday and a grand reception is scheduled for Monday.

Every day, for the last seven years, Arun Kumar has set up his fruit stall on a busy Mumbai street.

It’s not an easy way to make a living.

“Being a street vendor is a challenge. There’s the fear of being robbed or, as I am not a licensed vendor, the local body can come and dismantle my store anytime,” he says.

But over the past four years at least one aspect of his work has become easier.

“Prior to Covid everything was in cash. But now everyone pays with UPI. Scan the code and the payment is done within seconds.

“No issues of handling cash, giving change to customers. It has made my life and business smooth,” he says.

UPI, or to give it its full name the Unified Payments Interface, was launched in 2016 in a collaboration between India’s central bank and the nation’s banking industry.

It’s an app-based instant payment system, which allows users to send and receive money, pay bills and authorise payments in a single step – no need to enter bank details or any other personal information. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s free.

It has become so popular that India is now the biggest real-time payments market.

In May, UPI recorded 14 billion transactions, up from nine billion the year before.

But the popularity and ease of use has made it a rich feeding ground for scammers.

“While digital payments are convenient, they do come with vulnerabilities,” says Shashank Shekhar, founder of the Delhi-based Future Crime Research Foundation.

Mr Shekhar says that scammers use a variety of ways to trick people, including persuading them to share their UPI pin number, which is needed to authorise payments.

Some scammers have also created fake UPI apps, that are clones of legitimate banking apps, and then steal login details or other valuable information.

“The pace at which digital transformation took place in the country means unfortunately digital literacy and safe internet practice could not catch up,” says Mr Shekhar.

He says that between January 2020 and June 2023 almost half of all financial fraud involved the use of the UPI system.

According to government figures there were more than 95,000 cases of fraud involving UPI in the financial year ending April 2023, up from 77,000 in the previous year.

Shivkali was one such victim. She had always wanted to own a scooter, but they were beyond her budget.

However, earlier in the year the 22-year-old, who lives in Bihar state in northeastern India, spotted one for sale on Facebook that looked like a great deal.

“I grabbed the opportunity without thinking,” she says.

A couple of clicks later and she was talking to the owner, who said that for $23 he would send over the vehicle papers.

That went smoothly, so Shivkali continued to send the owner money, via instant transfers. She eventually ended up paying $200, but the scooter (also commonly called a Scooty in India), was never delivered.

Shivkali realised she had been scammed.

“I did not think I could be cheated, as I have some education background and know what is happing in the world. But scammers are smart. They have an art of speaking to convince the opposite person,” she says.

The government and the central bank are looking at ways to protect UPI users from scammers.

But at the moment, if a victim wants compensation, they have to approach their bank.

“The problem is deep rooted,” says Dr Durgesh Pandey, an expert in financial crime.

“Most of the onus lies with banks and telecom companies. They are lax in making identity checks, that’s why the fraudster can’t be traced.

“But the challenge for banks particularly is that they have to balance between inclusivity, ease of business and enforcement of identity checks. If they are too rigid, the vulnerable section of society will remain without banking facilities.”

But Dr Pandey argues that in most cases of fraud, the bank is not totally to blame.

“It’s a complex question because the problem lies with banks, but it’s the victim who is giving his credentials in most case. I would say both victim and bank should bear the loss.”

Despite those problems, UPI is being promoted in rural areas where access to banking services can be difficult.

Poonam Untwal from Rajasthan runs a guidance centre which helps people use the internet and digital banking.

“Most of us are not that educated, nor know the proper use of smartphones. I teach them that phones are no longer a device just to talk to people but banks at their fingertips,” she says.

She believes that UPI will help develop the local economy.

“Many women like me have a small business that we run from our home. Now we can receive and send money with UPI. People who don’t have smart phones come to my centre to get their transactions done,” she says.

As well as making inroads into rural areas, UPI is spreading overseas.

Retailers in Bhutan, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and UAE will take UPI payments.

And this year, France become the first European country to accept UPI payments, starting with tickets to the Eiffel Tower.

Back in Mumbai, Mr Kumar is happy that he no longer has to use cash, but remains wary.

If he can’t get a good internet connection then customers can, by accident or design, make off without paying.

“For a small vendor like me it [UPI] made receiving money very easy. But I am always scared of fraud. I keep hearing in the news how the UPI frauds are increasing. Hopefully some mechanisms are invented so a small vendor like me doesn’t face losses.”

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton has gone from rough sleeping as a teenager to visiting the Prince of Wales in Windsor Castle to give him advice on tackling homelessness.

She was able to give her own story to Prince William as proof that homeless people should not be “written off”.

“I sit in front of you now with a job, a home, a family and a PhD,” said Sabrina, who works as a fire service chief.

Prince William marked the first year of his Homewards project with a visit to Lambeth in south London where he pleged: “It is possible to end homelessness.”

The prince delivered the message that there is nothing inevitable about homelessness and that it shouldn’t be normalised.

Meeting Homewards representatives in Brixton he said: “Homelessness is a complex societal issue, and one that touches the lives of far too many people in our society. However, I truly believe that it can be ended.”

He spoke of the importance of “shifting perspectives” about homeless people and the need to “focus on prevention, rather than simply managing the crisis”.

Homewards is a five-year project based around six areas around the UK.

That includes Newport in South Wales – and as a 15- and 16-year-old that was where Sabrina was sleeping rough, after the death of a parent and problems at home.

Her way out was selling the Big Issue – “I credit them with saving my life” – and once she had secure accommodation she was able to get a job in the fire service, which became her career.

She used this “lived experience” to tell Prince William and the Homewards project about what was needed.

“There were lots of closed doors in my face,” she said. Even when support was meant to be available, she said in practice it could be hard for homeless people to have the confidence to access it.

Or there can be practical barriers. She said she relied on her dog, called Menace, but many hostels wouldn’t let people stay with pets.

Sabrina also warned of how homelessness was linked to the “pernicious” long-term impact of poverty.

She went on to become chief fire officer of West Sussex and has spoken widely about her own journey, including this latest role as an advocate for Homewards.

Sabrina said Prince William showed a lot of “empathy” towards the issue of homelessness, which she suggested reflected some of the “trauma” in his early life.

At the event in Brixton, Sabrina spoke alongside Chris Lynam, who recalled the intense “loneliness” that accompanied his own homelessness and drug addiction.

“It’s a very isolating experience… society is quite hostile to homeless people,” said Chris, who is now supporting Homewards’ work in Sheffield.

Prince William described it as an “honour” to hear Chris talk about his experiences.

The homelessness project, operating in Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Lambeth, Newport, Sheffield and Northern Ireland, wants to find successful approaches that can be replicated elsewhere.

There are links with employers about helping people into work. A partnership with Homebase provides starter packs of furniture to help those moving from homelessness into accommodation.

There are efforts to identify sofa-surfing and addressing links between relationship breakdown and homelessness.

Putting housing officers in schools has been tried to identify young people who might be at risk.

Through the Duchy of Cornwall there are 24 homes being built with “wrap-around support” for people leaving homelessness – and Prince William is now involved in developing further plans.

There is a push to change attitudes towards homelessness – and Sabrina talked about the need to get rid of the stigma. She said that for 20 years she hadn’t told anyone about her own experiences, before becoming such a public speaker about homelessness.

Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, says the Homewards project can challenge the “cynicism and fatalism” that says homelessness is inevitable.

He says that even though the big picture has seen homelessness getting worse, the evidence exists to prevent it.

Finland is given as an example of a sustained drive to end homelessness, with the claim that there are now only about 150 homeless families. In contrast in the UK, there are more than 100,000 households categorised as homeless.

There have also been questions about whether a wealthy royal should be pronouncing on homelessness.

The anti-monarchy group Republic has previously described it as “crass and hypocritical”.

But George Anderson, a Big Issue seller and medical researcher in London, welcomes that Prince William has used his high public profile to talk about homelessness.

“He encourages people who are distant from homelessness to feel empathy and care,” says George.

“Given the pomp and ceremony around his official role, it is easy for people to question as to what he really knows about homelessness,” says George.

“I am sure that he is aware of that whilst also knowing he is in a position, like his mother, to highlight the plight of homelessness to the media.

“His mother would have experienced similar, being photographed in a tiara at a ball one day, whilst serving soup in a homeless kitchen the next,” says George, who sees the prince’s interest as being linked to Princess Diana bringing her sons to homelessness charities when they were children.

Guess who’s back, back again?

Eminem’s latest album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), has been released and is being met with mixed reviews by critics.

In the US rapper’s 12th album, his alter ego Slim Shady is killed off – the artwork shows Shady in a body bag, and in the music video for Tobey, Eminem takes a chainsaw to him.

Clash called the album “a mixed bag” and described it as “at once an effective piece of fan service, while also being a record that disappoints”.

“It doesn’t quite feel like an ending, but neither does it feel like a continuation,” Robin Murray wrote.

“A mixed, often muddled album, it features some of Eminem’s best rapping in a decade – those fast, skippy-yet-intricate flows will never fail to thrill – but his pen is often blunted.”

Ahead of the release, Eminem told fans this is a “conceptual album” and the songs should be listened to in order.

The 19 tracks include previously released singles Tobey and Houdini, as well as a sequel to his 1999 hit Guilty Conscience with Dr Dre.

Billboard ranked the latter song as one of the best on the new album and said “it’s not the original, but is a worthy second coming”.

“At one point, Slim Shady puts Marshall on blast for creating him as an alter-ego to stir up controversy and essentially be a shield to say jarring things that he didn’t really have the courage to stand on,” Michael Saponara wrote.

USA Today said the 51-year-old is a “lyrical pugilist throughout, except when he turns misty-eyed dad rapping about daughter Hailie Jade”.

His song Temporary starts with old recordings of the rapper and his daughter talking as a child.

Melissa Ruggieri said it was the most memorable song on the album “because it gives Eminem permission to drop the shtick and explore his vulnerability – which isn’t often apparent elsewhere on the album”.

Eminem calls on his 28-year-old daughter to “be strong” and that he will always be her rock.

On his track Fuel, Eminem references the multiple sexual assault allegations against fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.

“I’m like an R-A-P-E-R/I got so many S-As/S-As/Wait, he didn’t just spell the word rapper and leave out a ‘P’, did he?” the lyrics say.

Pitchfork said Eminem, real name Marshall Mathers III, “reckons with his controversies while taking pains to create new one”.

The track Antichrist “take pains to offend as crudely as possible” with references to pronouns, woke society and “the harrowing video of Diddy attacking his then-girlfriend Cassie in a hotel in 2016”.

Mr Combs, one of rap’s most successful moguls, apologised for his “inexcusable” actions shown in that video, and has denied all allegations of sexual assault.

A review by the Independent gave the album two stars and said the rapper was “punching downwards, joylessly and without inspiration”.

“Much of The Death Of Slim Shady resembles a Telegraph op-ed: the ham-fisted mashing of people’s buttons, the blethering about ‘the PC police’ and ‘Gen Z’ coming to get him. Anything to get a reaction,” Stevie Chick wrote.

Joe Biden took to the stage at his Thursday night news conference with everything on the line – his presidency, his re-election hopes, his political life.

If those were the stakes, he barely acknowledged them at the hour-long session to mark the end of a Nato summit, having earlier introduced Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “President Putin” at a separate event.

The news conference was his first unscripted appearance after a disastrous debate with his rival Donald Trump, leading to calls from several Democratic politicians and donors for him to drop out of the race for president.

Mr Biden, 81, has faced continuous questions over his age and ability to serve another term, which intensified after the debate.

But at the highly anticipated news conference, he dismissed the concerns about his campaign that were posed again and again by a room full of reporters, and promised that he was fighting not for his legacy, but to finish the job he started when he took office in 2021.

“If I slow down and can’t get the job done, that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “But there’s no indication of that yet.”

Depending on perspective, it was either a sign of dogged determination or of a man in denial about how dire his situation has become.

Minutes after the news conference finished, several more Democratic members of Congress publicly called on Mr Biden to step down, joining at least a dozen other lawmakers in the president’s own party who have done so.

The question for Joe Biden’s campaign is whether the floodgates will now open, or if the tide will hold.

The situation will not be helped by two excruciating gaffes that will be remembered by anyone who watched.

In his very first answer, he called his own Vice-President Kamala Harris “Vice-President Trump” – a painful faceplant in front of a national television audience.

That came just an hour after another headline-grabbing mistake at a Nato event, when Mr Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”, prompting loud gasps in the audience.

He corrected the first verbal misstep involving Ukraine’s leader quickly. The second one he didn’t catch, even as some reporters in the room murmured in surprise and several of his top Cabinet secretaries sat stone-faced in the front row of the audience.

Those moments – the only major stumbles in an otherwise steady if not vigorous, appearance – will surely prompt nervous Democrats to wonder if there are more gaffes to come if the president presses ahead with his campaign.

But for now at least, Mr Biden seemed the happy warrior, insisting he will push on. He laughed and smiled as he was peppered with questions, and said he could keep up with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, even if the hoarseness and cough that had been on display during his debate two weeks ago still appeared to linger.

He again insisted he didn’t need cognitive tests, telling reporters that if he even saw “two doctors or seven”, his critics wouldn’t be satisfied.

The election campaign, he said, had barely started, and he again repeated that he was confident he could beat Donald Trump in November’s election.

The Democratic delegates who will back him officially as the party’s nominee at next month’s convention were free to change their minds as they pleased, he said, before mock whispering: “It’s not going to happen.”

He said he would consider stepping aside if his staff gave him data that he couldn’t win, but that polls still show the race a dead heat.

In that regard, he is on firm ground. An Ipsos survey released earlier on Thursday, for instance, had Mr Biden only one point behind his opponent – well within the margin of error. If there’s one thing that has been clear since the start of the year, support for the two candidates has remained remarkably stable despite unprecedented drama surrounding both men.

Polling alone won’t calm the panic that has set in among many Democratic officials, however, and the storm clouds that linger around Biden’s campaign won’t be so easily dispelled.

More Democratic politicians are waiting in the wings, according to reports, poised to announce their own break with the president, having waited until the conclusion of this Nato summit to voice their concerns.

And that’s just the first round of tests for the embattled president. He has another high-profile sit-down interview, with NBC’s Lester Holt, on Monday. Donors are anxious, and earlier on Thursday several reports suggested that even figures in the president’s own campaign were plotting ways to usher their candidate toward the exit.

Despite all of this, Mr Biden made clear that it will be a challenging task to pry the nomination away from him. The 81-year-old man who at times gripped the lectern with two hands and insisted he was the “best-qualified person” to run the country is not going to exit the stage quietly.

• POLICIES: Where Biden and Trump stand on key issues
• GLOBAL: What Moscow and Beijing think of rematch
• ANALYSIS: Could US economy be doing too well?
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

A selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent:

A team of imaging experts, scientists and historians will set sail for the Titanic on Friday to gather the most detailed photographic record ever made of the wreck.

The BBC has had exclusive access to expedition members here in the US city of Providence, Rhode Island, as they make preparations to leave port.

They’ll be using state of the art technology to scan every nook and cranny of the famous liner to gain new insights into its sinking.

This will be the first commercial mission to Titanic since last year’s OceanGate tragedy. Five men died while trying to visit the lost ship in a novel submersible.

A joint memorial service will be held at sea in the coming days for them and the 1,500 passengers and crew who went down with Titanic in 1912.

The new expedition is being mounted by the US company that has sole salvage rights and which to date has brought up some 5,500 objects from the wreck.

But this latest visit is purely a reconnaissance mission, says RMS Titanic Inc, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two robotic vehicles will dive to the ocean bottom to capture millions of high-resolution photographs and to make a 3D model of all the debris.

“We want to see the wreck with a clarity and precision that’s never before been achieved,” explained co-expedition lead David Gallo.

The logistics ship Dino Chouest is going to be the base for operations out in the North Atlantic.

Weather permitting, it should spend 20 days above the wreck, which lies in 3,800m (12,500ft) of water.

It will be a poignant few weeks for all involved.

One of the five who died on the OceanGate sub was Frenchman Paul-Henri (“PH”) Nargeolet. He was the director of research at RMS Titanic Inc and was due to lead this expedition.

A plaque will be laid on the seabed in his honour.

“It’s tough but the thing about exploration is that there’s an urge and a drive to keep going. And we’re doing that because of that passion PH had for continuous exploration,” explained friend and historian Rory Golden, who will be “chief morale officer” on Dino Chouest.

There can be few people on Earth who don’t know the story of the supposedly unsinkable Titanic and how it was holed by an iceberg, east of Canada, on the night of 15 April 1912.

There are countless books, movies and documentaries about the event.

But although the wreck site has been the target of repeated study since its discovery in 1985, there still isn’t what could be described as a definitive map.

And while the bow and stern sections of the broken ship are reasonably well understood, there are extensive areas of the surrounding debris field that have received only cursory inspection.

Two six-tonne remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) intend to put that right. One will be fitted with an array of ultra-high-definition optical cameras and a special lighting system; the other will carry a sensor package that includes a lidar (laser) scanner.

Together, they’ll track back and forth across a 1.3km-by-0.97km section of seafloor.

Evan Kovacs, who’s in charge of the imaging programme, says his camera systems should produce millimetre resolution.

“If all of the weather gods, the computer gods, the ROV gods, the camera gods – if all those gods align, we should be able to capture Titanic and the wreck site in as close to digital perfection as you can get. You would be able to quite literally count grains of sand,” he told BBC News.

There’s huge anticipation for what the magnetometer aboard the sensor ROV might produce. This is a first for Titanic.

The instrument will detect all the metals at the wreck site, even material that is buried out of sight in the sediment.

“It would be an absolute dream to determine what has happened with Titanic’s bow below the seafloor,” explained geophysics engineer Alison Proctor.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to deduce whether or not the bow was crushed when it hit the seabed, or if it might actually extend down well into the sediment intact.”

The team wants to review the state of some well known objects in the debris field, such as the boilers that spilled out as the opulent steamliner broke in half.

There’s the desire, too, to locate items thought to have been sighted on previous visits. These include an electric candelabra, which in its day would have been a fascinating curio, as well as the possibility of a second Steinway grand piano.

The musical instrument’s wooden surround would have long since decayed away, but the cast iron plate, or frame, that held the strings should still be there, perhaps even some of the keys.

“For me, it’s the passengers’ possessions, especially their bags, that are of greatest interest,” said Tomasina Ray, who curates the collection of Titanic artefacts held by the company.

“It’s their belongings – if we are able to retrieve more in the future – that help flesh out their stories. For so many passengers, they are just names on a list, and it’s a way to keep them meaningful.”

This will be RMS Titanic Inc’s ninth visit to the wreck site. The firm has attracted controversy in recent years with its stated desire to try to bring up part of the Marconi radio equipment that transmitted the distress calls on the night of the sinking.

It won’t happen on this expedition but if and when it does occur, it would mean extracting an object from inside the disintegrating ship.

For many, Titanic is the gravesite to the 1,500 who died that night in 1912 and should not be touched, its interior especially.

“We get that and understand it,” said company researcher James Penca.

“We dive to Titanic to learn as much as we can from her; and like you should with any archaeological site, we do it with the utmost respect. But to leave her alone, to just let her passengers and crew be lost to history – that would be the biggest tragedy of all.”

Kenya’s police chief Japhet Koome has resigned, following weeks of violent protests against proposed tax hikes in which more than 40 people died.

Human rights groups have accused police of shooting dozens of protestors, some of them fatally, and abducting or arbitrarily arresting hundreds more.

The resignation comes a day after President William Ruto sacked most of his cabinet, following pressure from the protest movement which is largely coordinated online by young Kenyans.

Two weeks ago protesters stormed parliament, shortly after legislators passed the controversial finance bill. Police responded by opening fire on demonstrators in the streets.

President Ruto later withdrew the bill but that has failed to satisfy the demonstrators, who want him to step down and are planning more protests to demand further reforms.

Deputy police chief Douglas Kanja takes over running the force with immediate effect, the Kenyan presidency has said.

Mr Koome’s resignation has been welcomed by Kenyans, yet police officers who caught on film firing at protesters remain at large.

Last week during an unprecedented discussion on X, formerly Twitter, President Ruto promised Kenyans he would take action against those police officers once he received video evidence. It is not clear whether this has happened.

On Friday at least 11 dead bodies, some of them dismembered, were found at a rubbish tip in the capital, Nairobi, after residents raised the alarm. It is not yet clear whether their deaths have any connection with the protests.

In the midst of the biggest crisis of his two-year presidency, Mr Ruto earlier this week met opposition leader Raila Odinga and announced plans to form a 150-member dialogue panel to help find a solution to the country’s problems.

After sacking key cabinet members on Thursday including the attorney-general, the president said he would now consult widely in order to set up a broad-based government.

The proposed tax measures were intended to help ease the country’s debt burden of over $80bn (£63bn). About 60% of Kenya’s collected revenues goes to servicing debt.

But protesters have insisted the government should first cut spending, saying there was too much waste and corruption. In response to this demand, the presidency last week announced a number of austerity measures.

Additional reporting by Natasha Booty

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An Australian soldier and her husband have been arrested and each charged with spying for Russia.

Investigators say the couple – both Russian-born Australian citizens – obtained Australian Defence Force (ADF) material to share with Moscow.

However, Australian police say “no significant compromise” of military secrets has been identified.

It is the first time stricter foreign interference laws – introduced by Australia in 2018 – have been used to lay espionage charges.

Kira Korolev, a 40-year-old army private, and her 62-year-old husband Igor Korolev faced court in Brisbane on Friday, each on one count of preparing for an espionage offence – which carries a maximum 15-year jail sentence.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been “briefed extensively” by the nation’s security agencies but would not comment on the case directly as it is now before the courts.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the couple had been in Australia for more than a decade before the alleged offending and had both become citizens several years ago.

Igor worked as a self-employed labourer, and Kira was an information systems technician in the army, a role for which she had obtained a security clearance, police say.

Mr Kershaw alleged she secretly travelled to Russia while on leave from the ADF, then instructed Igor to access her work account and send sensitive material so that she could forward it on to Russian authorities.

An investigation in to whether any of the material was ever delivered to them is still underway, Mr Kershaw said, adding that the charges could be upgraded.

Both Mr Kershaw and Australia’s spy agency boss Mike Burgess – who addressed media together on Friday – declined to answer questions about the nature of the documents or how authorities were tipped off about the alleged crimes.

But Mr Burgess said that the ongoing threat of espionage is “real”.

“Multiple countries are seeking to steal Australia’s secrets. We cannot be naive, and we cannot be complacent.”

“If you are spying in this country, we are looking for you. If you are being spied on in this country, we are looking out for you,” he added.

Mr Kershaw stressed that Australia’s allies could be “confident” that the country would “continue to identify and disrupt espionage and foreign interference activity”.

In a statement, the ADF said it was aware one of its members had been arrested and that it “takes all breaches of security seriously”.

German political figures have reacted angrily to a report that Russia had plotted to kill the head of Germany’s biggest arms company Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger.

The CNN report said US officials had told their counterparts in Berlin earlier this year and security around him was stepped up.

Germany’s interior ministry refused to comment but Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock appeared to confirm the details.

“In view of latest reports on Rheinmetall, this is what we have actually been communicating more and more clearly in recent months,” she told reporters at the Nato summit in Washington. “Russia is waging a hybrid war of aggression.”

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations. “It’s all presented in the style of another fake story, so such reports cannot be taken seriously.”

Rheinmetall avoided commenting on issues of “corporate security”, but Mr Papperger is now being described as the most highly protected figure in Germany’s economy. He told the Financial Times that German authorities had imposed a “great deal of security around my person”.

The company is one of the world’s biggest producers of ammunition and has become key to supplying Ukraine with arms, armoured vehicles and other military equipment.

Rheinmetall recently opened a tank repair plant in western Ukraine. Last month, it signed an agreement with Ukraine to expand co-operation in the coming years, including a joint venture to produce artillery shells.

Mr Papperger said at the time his company wanted to hand over the first Lynx infantry fighting vehicles later this year and to start producing them in Ukraine soon.

Although Chancellor Olaf Scholz avoided commenting on the reported assassination plot directly, he said it was well known that Germany was exposed to a variety of Russian threats and was paying close attention to them.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said “we are taking very seriously the significantly heightened threat of Russian aggression”.

Earlier this week, a senior Nato official told the BBC that Russia was “engaging in aggressive covert operations across Europe – involving sabotage, arson and assassination plots – aimed at weakening public support for Ukraine”.

The German foreign minister said the Baltic states had already highlighted the various methods deployed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin in his war on Ukraine. As well as sabotage, she spoke of cyberattacks and disrupting GPS signals so that Baltic flights could no longer land in neighbouring countries.

“We have seen that there have been attacks on factories, and that again underlines that, together, we as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naive,” Ms Baerbock told reporters.

In early May, a building complex owned by the Diehl Metall firm went up in flames in south-west Berlin. Although a technical fault was blamed for the fire, sabotage has not been ruled out. Suspicious fires have also been reported in Poland and Lithuania.

Last April, Mr Papperger’s garden house was set alight at Hermannsburg in northern Germany, although there has been no evidence of a Russian link.

The fire was quickly brought under control and a rambling, anonymous confession purportedly from leftist militants appeared on activist network Indymedia.

The reported plot against such a high-profile German CEO has prompted widespread alarm.

Leading conservative figure Roderich Kiesewetter said the chancellor should come clean with the German population about how great the threat from Russia really was. German intelligence needed to be boosted to the level of neighbouring countries, he said.

“We must take it very seriously and also prepare ourselves accordingly,” he told public broadcaster ZDF.

Michael Roth, who chairs Germany’s foreign affairs committee told Bild newspaper that Vladimir Putin was waging a “war of extermination not only against Ukraine, but against its supporters and our values”.

The head of the defence committee, Marcus Faber, added his condemnation, saying if information about Russian intelligence involvement came to light, then “the expulsion of diplomats must follow and, if necessary, international arrest warrants must be issued”.

Two French international rugby players have been charged with the aggravated rape of a woman following a match in Argentina, prosecutors in the South American country say.

Hugo Auradou, 20, and Oscar Jegou, 21, are accused of raping a 39-year-old woman after France beat Argentina on Saturday.

She alleges that they raped her multiple times and beat her in a hotel room in the city of Mendoza.

The pair, who chose “not to testify” at a hearing in the city, say they had consensual sex with the woman and deny rape. They will remain in custody while authorities investigate further.

The woman alleged the attack took place at the Diplomatic Hotel, where France’s players and staff were staying as part of a tour of South America.

Her lawyer says she left a nightclub with one of the men and accompanied him to the hotel room, where she alleges that she was raped “at least six times” by one of the men and once by the other.

Ms Romano told AFP that her client suffered “fierce” violence, with injuries to her face, back, breasts, legs and ribs as well as various bite and scratch marks.

The woman was held against her will for several hours and tried to escape several times, Ms Romano said.

Her client went to hospital on Thursday after feeling ill emotionally and physically because of the incident and is receiving treatment at a health facility, she added.

On Friday a lawyer for the players said his clients were confident in their version of events.

“They are well and sure of their version, they are calm because they know they are innocent, but of course they are worried about this whole situation that they have had to live through,” German Hnatow told reporters.

On Wednesday another lawyer said the “sexual relations” had been consensual.

“There are witnesses who saw her leave [the hotel]. There are cameras that saw her leave. Apparently no injuries are seen in the footage,” Mariano Cuneo Libarona told journalists.

French Rugby Federation (FFR) president Florian Gill, who is in Argentina, also told AFP that the players had “quite a different version of events”.

“We are not judges. We are not investigators. But we think that the Argentine justice system should look at the case very quickly,” he said.

Mr Auradou and Mr Jegou have been replaced by lock Mickael Guillard and flanker Judicael Cancoriet for Saturday’s second match against Argentina in Buenos Aires.

Western leaders have rallied round Joe Biden at the Nato summit, amid concerns about the US president’s age and ability to serve another term.

Calls are growing for Mr Biden to drop out of the presidential race this November, and his attempts to diminish fears about his re-election bid at the summit were marred by two serious gaffes.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Mr Biden was “in charge” and “clear on the issues he knows well”, while UK PM Sir Keir Starmer said he was “on good form”.

But Mr Biden’s first gaffe, in which he introduced Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky as President Putin, was ridiculed in the Russian media.

And later in a news conference – Mr Biden’s first unscripted public appearance since the debate – he referred to his “Vice-President Trump” when meaning to say Kamala Harris.

The US president has been under pressure to quit since a disastrous performance two weeks ago in a debate with his Republican rival in the upcoming elections, Donald Trump.

But throughout the summit, other Nato leaders have defended him and his ability to lead.

Mr Macron, speaking after Thursday’s White House dinner, said he had had a long discussion with Mr Biden during the meal, and appealed for understanding of his flaws.

“I saw him as always a president who is in charge, clear on the issues he knows well,” he said.

“We all make slips of the tongue sometimes. It has happened to me before, it will probably happen to me tomorrow.

“I would ask you to show the same leniency that should be shown between caring people.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also addressed the gaffes.

“Slips of the tongue happen, and if you always monitor everyone, you will find enough of them,” he said.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir said repeatedly during the summit that the US president had achieved much to be proud of there, and was “across all the detail”.

On Friday he added: “We’ve been through two days of this council and come to a very good outcome… And I think he should be given credit for that.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was a privilege and a pleasure to work with Mr Biden.

“[Biden’s] depth of experience, his thoughtfulness, his steadfastness on the greatest issues and challenges of our time is a credit to the work that we’re all doing together,” he said.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, seen as being close to former President Trump, said, quoted by AFP: “I talked with President Biden, and there is no doubt that everything is ok.”

Meanwhile Finnish President Alexander Stubb combined a defence of Mr Biden with fears about the atmosphere in the US elections.

“I have absolutely no concern about the capacity of the current president of the United States to lead his country and to lead our fight for Ukraine and to lead Nato,” he said, quoted by AFP.

“The only thing I’m worried about is that the political climate in the United States right now is too toxic, is very polarised, and that doesn’t leave enough room for a civilised and constructive debate.”

Not all Nato leaders were prepared to weigh in on behalf of Mr Biden, though.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reportedly made almost no comments to the media in Washington.

Instead he left immediately after the end of the summit for Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump’s Florida residence, where the two men talked about the war in Ukraine.

“We discussed ways to make peace,” Mr Orbán said on social media. “The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

But if leaders of allied countries have been unwilling to criticise the US president for his frailties, Moscow has been similarly restrained.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the gaffes were clearly slips of the tongue and “not our business, an internal matter for the USA”.

Not so the Russian media, which have been all over Mr Biden’s confusion of Mr Putin with Mr Zelensky.

Official Rossiya TV showed it at the top of its 9pm bulletin, saying that “America’s vassals pretended that they’d not noticed anything”.

NTV said Biden had never been so close to a fiasco and that his “latest slip of the tongue is worthy of an Oscar”.

And popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets ran an article headlined “Senile Leaders”, comparing Joe Biden to the elderly Communist leaders of the USSR.

“What’s more dangerous, a monkey with a grenade or a shaking hand on the nuclear button?” it asked.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has said Warsaw is considering a proposal from Kyiv to shoot down Russian missiles heading towards Polish territory while they are still in Ukrainian airspace.

The proposal was included in a joint defence agreement between the two countries signed during President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Warsaw earlier this week.

“At this stage, this is an idea. What our agreement said is we will explore this idea,” Mr Sikorski told the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

He said some Russian missiles fired from the St Petersburg area towards Ukrainian targets near the western city of Lviv, not far from the Polish border, traversed Belarus and entered Polish airspace for about 40 seconds before turning towards their targets in Ukraine.

Mr Sikorski acknowledged that such a short time gave Poland little time to react.

However the proposal would theoretically cover any missile traversing western Ukraine in the direction of Poland.

“We are a frontline state and Russian missiles breach our airspace. We assume by mistake,” Mr Sikorski said.

“Our dilemma is the following. If we shoot them down only when they enter our airspace the debris is a threat to our citizens and to our property.

“And the Ukrainians are saying, ‘Please, we will not mind, do it over our airspace when they’re in imminent danger of crossing into Polish territory.

“To my mind, that’s self-defence but we are exploring the idea,” Mr Sikorski said.

Mr Sikorski said an unarmed Russian missile landed near his home in Bydgoszcz about 500km (311 miles) from the Belarusian border, without harming anyone, in December 2022.

Two Polish citizens had been killed by falling debris when Ukraine shot down a Russian missile near the Polish border a month earlier.

Earlier this week, Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said Warsaw would consult with its Nato allies and seek their agreement before attempting to shoot down any Russian missiles.

“If there would be such a decision, it can only be an allied decision. It will never be an individual decision,” Mr Kosiniak-Kamysz told Poland’s TVN broadcaster at a Nato summit in Washington DC.

“The key opinion is the United States, who is quite sceptical in this matter, so Poland will certainly not make such a decision on its own,” he added.

Marek Swierczynski, a defence analyst for Polityka Insight, told the BBC the idea could prove perilous for Poland.

“Without robust allied support, which there isn’t, this proposal is very risky,” he said.

“From the point of view of our air defence assets and the fact we might be subject to some kind of Russian response.”

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Poland has provided Ukraine with 44 packages of weapons and ammunition, including more than 250 tanks, MiG-29 fighter jets, combat helicopters, artillery systems and portable air defence missile systems worth more than €4bn ($4.4bn; £3.4bn).

Poland plans to provide additional military assistance to Ukraine this year.

After months of lavish celebrations, the wedding ceremony of the son of Asia’s richest man is finally under way in the Indian city of Mumbai.

Anant Ambani, son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, is tying the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant.

The four-day extravaganza is the final stop in a string of elaborate parties the family has hosted since March, which have featured performances by popstars including Rihanna and Justin Bieber.

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian, and former UK PMs Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, were among the international guests. Also spotted was US wrestler and actor John Cena, who was seen hugging and congratulating relatives of the host.

Key roads in Mumbai are being sealed off for several hours a day until the festivities end on Monday.

Social media is awash with updates on the wedding, with people sharing minute-by-minute details of Bollywood stars and celebrities arriving.

But the extraordinary opulence has also led to backlash – city dwellers have complained the road closures have worsened traffic snarls caused by monsoon flooding, while others have questioned the ostentatious display of wealth at the seemingly never-ending celebrations.

• In photos: Kim Kardashian, Bieber and Rihanna at grand India wedding
• The marathon Indian wedding turning heads around the world

Mukesh Ambani, 66, is at present the world’s 10th richest man with a net worth of $115bn, according to Forbes. Reliance Industries, founded by his father in 1966, is a massive conglomerate that operates in sectors ranging from petroleum and retail, to financial services and telecoms.

Anant Ambani is the youngest of his three children, all of whom are on the board of Reliance Industries. The 29-year-old is involved in Reliance’s energy businesses and is on the board of Reliance Foundation.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them but wedding planners estimate they’ve already spent anywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m]. It was rumoured Rihanna had been paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Justin Bieber is $10m.

One unnamed executive at Reliance claimed the event was a “powerful symbol of India’s growing stature on the global stage” in a note shared with reporters.

But opposition politician Thomas Isaac said it was “obscene”.

“Legally it may be their money but such ostentatious expenditure is a sin against mother earth and (the) poor,” he posted on X.

On Friday, the groom set off from his residence in a luxurious red car covered in strings of white flowers, as joyful guests danced around it.

A convoy of cars, also decorated with flowers and carrying family members, followed him with music and cheers.

The grand procession, known as the baraat, culminated at the wedding venue – a convention centre owned by the Ambanis – where several Bollywood stars joined in another round of singing and dancing.

Reports say the bride and groom will exchange garlands to kick off the wedding. The pheras – the main wedding ritual of the couple walking around the sacred fire seven times – is set for 21:30 (1600GMT).

Guests will reportedly bless the newly-weds in a formal ceremony on Saturday – followed by a grand party where unconfirmed reports say pop stars Drake, Lana Del Ray and Adele are likely to perform.

Pictures and videos of Kim Kardashian, who is in the city with her sister Khloé Kardashian, are being widely shared online.

Reports say the sisters have brought a team of stylists, including celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton, along with a group of producers to capture every detail of their trip.

Former Indian president Ram Nath Kovind, British High Commissioner to India Lindy Cameron, and US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti are also in the city to attend the wedding.

Rajan Mehra, CEO of air charter company Club One Air, told Reuters that the family had rented three Falcon-2000 jets to ferry wedding guests to the event.

“The guests are coming from all over and each aircraft will make multiple trips across the country,” he said.

The wedding festivities began in March when the family held a three-day pre-wedding party in their home state of Gujarat.

Among the 1,200 guests to attend that celebration were Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

• World’s rich in India for tycoon son’s pre-wedding gala

The party started with a performance by Rihanna on the first night. Diljit Dosanjh, the first Punjabi singer to perform at Coachella, took the stage on the second night, while rapper Akon closed the show on the final day of celebrations.

In June, the Ambanis organised another pre-wedding celebration, this time, a luxury cruise from Italy to France. The Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry and Pitbull performed for the 800 guests, which included Bollywood stars and cricketers.

Money was also lavished on constructing 14 temples inside a sprawling complex in Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples.

On Wednesday, the family hosted a bhandara – a community feast for underprivileged people.

A Russian passenger plane with only crew on board has crashed near Moscow, the country’s emergencies ministry says.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 went down in a forest and all three crew members are believed to have been killed, it said. There were no passengers on board.

Russia’s state-run media report that the plane went down during a test flight following repair works.

Russia’s has been developing the Sukhoi Superjet – a regional jet – for some time to replace Western-made aircraft.

Heavily sanctioned over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has struggled to replace its ageing aircraft fleet.

In a short statement on Friday, Russia’s emergencies ministry said the aircraft crashed in the forested area.

“There were no casualties among the population,” it said.

Transport prosecutors said the plane went down not far from the town of Kolomna.

The aircraft belonged to Gazprom Avia, the airline of the country’s energy giant, the prosecutors added.

A criminal investigation is now under way.

State-owned defence conglomerate Rostech said the aircraft went into service in 2014. It urged people not to “rush with conclusions” on what caused the crash.

It is the third air disaster involving a Sukhoi Superjet 100 since 2012.

Over the years, the Superjet project has been marred by engineering setbacks and delays in production as designers have struggled to replace key Western avionics components.

Only one US president has been at the Nato summit in Washington this week, but the shadow of another – his predecessor – has loomed over this meeting of the world’s most powerful military alliance.

While the host Joe Biden has presided over a message of unity from the group’s 32 members, the Nato-sceptic views of his rival for power, Donald Trump, have imbued conversations here with an urgency and an anxiety.

At times the smiles from world leaders in the conference hall have felt fragile. Trump “hangs over every conversation here”, said one Eastern European diplomat who asked to remain nameless.

The Republican’s election as president in November “could change everything”, the diplomat said. The fact that Mr Biden has been trying to fend off a political crisis over his frailty has only sharpened the sense that a second Trump term could bring far-reaching changes to an alliance forged in the ashes of the World War Two and still reliant on hard US military power to deter adversaries.

So does Nato need to “Trump-proof” itself – as some describe it – and if so, is it possible?

There is a lot of evidence of efforts by Nato allies to reach out already to those in Trump’s political orbit to try to manage relationships and limit what they would see as the potential damage of a second term. But others suggest something more unmanageable.

Camille Grand, a French former official who was one of Nato’s deputy leaders throughout the Trump administration, described himself as “much more worried” than colleagues who think a second term may be “Trump [term] one on steroids” but ultimately workable for the alliance.

“He doesn’t have the same sort of guardrails, he doesn’t have the same sort of adults in the room. And he has around him a team that is trying to turn his instinct into policy,” said Mr Grand, who is now a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Four members of visiting delegations, who asked to remain anonymous, told the BBC their concern was not necessarily that a Trump administration would withdraw entirely from Nato, as he has threatened before.

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Rather it is a fear that the US commitment to the alliance’s core principle of collective security – “all for one and one for all”, meaning any ally under attack can expect defence from the others – could wane.

Trump’s positions on Nato have veered erratically from outright hostility – portraying the alliance as a bunch of freeloading Europeans surviving off protection paid for by US taxpayers – to suggesting his outbursts are simply part of a cunning negotiating tactic to compel more of Nato’s members to meet its defence spending targets.

He has frequently tried to rally crowds of supporters with attacks on the organisation. As the summit began, he posted to his Truth Social network that when he started as president most Nato members were “delinquent” until they “paid up” due to his pressure.

By the end of Trump’s presidency, four more Nato countries had hit the alliance’s guidelines of spending at least 2% of national income on defence. So far during President Biden’s term, another 13 countries have reached the target.

That progress is frequently touted by the Biden administration and its backers, although in reality much of the increase was triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

At a February campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump said he would let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato countries that did not spend enough.

That sparked outrage from some quarters in Washington, but privately his threats are said to have gone further.

At a panel event in January, European Union commissioner Thierry Breton described a meeting he had attended in 2020 between Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“Donald Trump said to Ursula: ‘You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you. And by the way, Nato is dead. And we will leave, we will quit Nato.’

“It was the president of the United States of America,” recalled Mr Breton. “He may come back.”

Trump’s campaign has been approached by the BBC with a request to confirm whether the account was accurate. Evelyn Farkas, a former senior official at the Pentagon in the Obama administration, believes there remains a real concern even over Nato’s existence under Mr Trump.

“I think there is a danger with Trump that he tries to pull us out of Nato. I won’t sugarcoat that,” said Dr Farkas, now executive director at public policy think tank the McCain Institute.

“The reality is Trump is dangerous to the alliance in that America is still the strongest economic, political, military power and Nato is stronger if Nato has the United States inside the alliance.”

But one of those familiar with the thinking in Trump’s political orbit, Dan Caldwell from the right-wing think tank Defence Priorities, believes the former president’s priority is to push European nations to invest more in their own militaries.

“I don’t think he wants to withdraw from Nato, but he has said that the United States should re-evaluate its role and the purpose of Nato going forward,” he said.

“Not only the former president but more and more national security experts on the right believe the United States has really no choice but to do less in Europe. So I think that there’s some larger forces at play, that will eventually force the next president, regardless of who it is… to substantially pull back from Nato.”

The most detailed account of policy positions that might influence a second Trump term comes from an initiative being brought up by supporters and detractors of Trump alike. Overseen by the conservative Heritage Foundation, “Project 2025” is a 900-page detailed blueprint for a Republican president to usher in a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch.

The initiative says a future president should “transform Nato” so that America’s role is primarily for its nuclear deterrent, while other members should field “the great majority” of conventional forces required to deter Russia.

This is in keeping with the project’s foreign policy position, seeing the main threat to US primacy as China and therefore calling for the next president to “bring resolution to the foreign policy tensions” sparked by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Trump himself has equivocated over the war but has said he would end it in “24 hours”. He favours brokering a deal between Russia and Ukraine on terms that many Nato allies would see as surrender for Kyiv.

Trump has partially disavowed Project 2025, saying he does not know who is behind it but many of his former officials had a hand in writing it, including a former acting defense secretary.

Since Trump left office, the increase in the number of Nato members spending at least 2% of their income on defence has better insulated the alliance for the future, said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Asked about “Trump-proofing”, he said Congress had also moved to shield America’s membership of Nato from the whims of the White House, in a law passed last year. “We clarified no president can unilaterally withdraw from Nato without a vote of approval from the Senate,” Mr Coons told the BBC.

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He also highlighted the $60bn military assistance package for Ukraine finally passed in April in a bipartisan effort following nine months of paralysis, after allies of Trump blocked passage of the bill through Congress.

“It is my hope that we will continue to be a counterweight and a counterbalance to the president should we, I think, make the tragic mistake of moving forward with a second Trump term.”

But Trump has repeatedly challenged current levels of US military provision for Ukraine, again arguing he could negotiate the war’s end with Russia.

Another possible attempt to future-proof US support for Ukraine is by moving more co-ordination for arms supply to Nato itself – taking it further out of reach of a future American president. Such a move has been pitched by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as a way to “shield” Ukraine’s supply of aid “against the winds of political change”, officials told The Financial Times.

At the summit the alliance agreed to launch a new program in which Nato will supplement, but not replace, a 50-nation “contact group” that co-ordinates delivery of weapons. Camille Grand, the former Nato official, thinks the summit may have “raised the cost” for a future President Trump to roll back the “messaging” from Nato, but in the end, he said, Trump-proofing was impossible.

“If the US, as the biggest shareholder in the alliance, decides to be tough on the alliance, on Ukraine, there is no nothing in the [summit agreement] and previous summits that prevent it from doing that.

“But I think it’s sending an important message to Trump and his team, which is that the Europeans have turned the corner when it comes to [increased] spending.”

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský reiterated that, telling me that any future president of the US that wanted to change things on Nato had the power to do so.

The real work of “Trump-proofing” at this summit has instead felt like Nato supporters pitching the alliance to conservative Americans to try to change their view. This found its most striking moment when President Zelensky appeared at the Reagan Institute for an on-stage conversation with Fox News host Bret Baier.

Mr Zelensky repeatedly raised the memory of the late Republican President Ronald Reagan, quoting Cold War lines on deterring enemies through working with allies.

Reagan is a favoured reference for Democrats trying to expose Republican divisions and what they see as the maverick isolationism of Trump. The subtext is: Reagan would turn in his grave at Trump’s Nato-sceptic stance. But it’s a message that may fall flat with those who Mr Zelensky thinks need to hear it.

The things they see. The dead girl lowered by a rope from a ruined building. She sways slightly, then comes to rest, legs folding beneath her on the rubble.

They see people and parts of people lying out in the open where the blast or the bullet caught them. Violent death in all of its contortions.

Bodies lying in the streets, in the blasted open sitting rooms of houses, under the rubble. Sometimes covered by so much concrete the men will never reach them, and only in the future when the war is over will somebody come and give them a decent burial.

The men of the Gaza Civil Defence cannot close their eyes to any of this. There is no shutting out the smell. Every sense is on alert. Death can come from the skies in an instant.

When the fighting in places like Shejaiya in eastern Gaza City, or Tal Al-Sultan, near Rafah, in the south, is as fierce as it has been in the last few days, the ambulances of the Civil Defence dare not venture out.

“Entering areas close to the Israeli occupation is dangerous, but we try to intervene to save lives and souls,” says Muhammed Al Mughayer, a local Civil Defence official.

He and his men seize any lull in the conflict to recover the dead and the wounded. Families constantly ask about missing relatives.

“It is very difficult to identify the bodies,” explains Mr Mughayer. “Some remain unidentified due to complete decomposition.”

Stray animals also prey on the corpses, tearing off clothes and scattering papers that might be used to identify them.

The ambulance crews are short of fuel. Two days ago one broke down in Tal Al-Sultan and had to be towed out, a nerve-wracking experience for the crews. The risk of being fired on by the Israeli forces, says Mr Mughayer, means seriously injured people often cannot be rescued.

“There is currently a report of an injured person near Al-Salihin Mosque from two days ago, but we can’t reach them due to delays in coordination. It may result in their death.”

Refugees are continuing to flee from Gaza city and areas like Shejaiya. Many have been displaced multiple times.

For them it is a world without laws or rules. World leaders express concern. But nobody is coming to rescue them. Nothing is more acute for these people than the sense that they can die at any moment.

Sharif Abu Shanab stands outside the ruins of his family home in Shejaiya with an expression that is part bewilderment, part grief.

“My house had four floors, and I can’t enter it,” he says. “I can’t take anything out of it, not even a can of tuna. We have nothing, no food or drink. They bulldozed all the houses, and it is not our fault. Why do they hold us accountable for the fault of others? What did we do? We are citizens. Look at the destruction around you…

“Where do we go, and to whom? We are thrown in the streets now, we have no home or anything, where do we go? There is only one solution and that is to hit us with a nuclear bomb and relieve us of this life.”

There are occasional glimpses of reprieve. The Al-Fayoumi family, arriving close to Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, were relieved to have escaped from Gaza City. This after a warning this week to evacuate from the Israel Defense Forces sent thousands of people onto the road south.

In the boiling heat of the asphalt road, without shade, family members were reunited with others who had gone ahead of them.

The new arrivals were given water and soft drinks. A boy sucked from a carton of juice, then squeezed it with all his strength to coax out a last few drops.

Nobody in the group took their survival for granted. So to see everyone alive, all in the one place, brought smiles and cries of happiness. An aunt reached into a car to hug her young niece. At first the child smiled. Then she turned her head and sobbed.

Where will they be tomorrow, next week, next month? They have no way of knowing. It depends on where the fighting moves next, on the next Israeli evacuation order, on the mediators and whether Hamas and Israel can agree a ceasefire.

These lines could have been written at any time in the last few months. Civilians dying. Taking to the roads. Hunger. Hospitals struggling. Talks about a ceasefire.

Since February, we have been following the story of Nawara al-Najjar whose husband Abed-Alrahman was among more than 70 people killed when Israeli forces launched an operation to rescue two hostages in Rafah.

They had fled Khan Younis 9km (6 miles) to the north, and took refuge closer to Rafah when bullets and shrapnel tore through the tented camp where they slept.

Nawara was six months pregnant when she was widowed, and taking care of six children, aged from four to 13. When a BBC colleague found her again today, Nawara was nursing her newborn baby, Rahma, just one month old.

She gave birth on a night of heavy airstrikes, rushed to the hospital by her in-laws.

“I kept saying: ‘Where are you Abed-Alrahman? This is your daughter coming into the world without a father.’” Baby Rahma has red hair like her dead father.

The Israeli advance into Rafah last month sent Nawara and her children fleeing again, back to their old home in Khan Younis. She struggled to settle there again.

“My husband’s things were there, his laugh, his voice. I couldn’t open the house. I tried to be strong. Then I took my children and opened the door, and we wandered around the house, but it was hard. I cried for my husband…He was the one who cleaned the house, cooked for us, made sure I was comfortable.”

There has been fighting around Khan Younis again in the last week. An Israeli air strike close to a school killed 29 people, local hospital sources say, and wounded dozens more.

But Nawara is adamant she will not move again. Here she is close to the memory of the man she loves. She imagines her husband as a still living presence. She sends texts to his phone: “I complain to him, and I cry to him…I try to reassure myself, telling myself that I need to be patient. I imagine he’s the one telling me.”

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has hit back at Nato’s “groundless accusations” that Beijing is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

He has also warned the Western alliance against stirring up confrontation.

Mr Wang’s comments, made in a call with his Dutch counterpart, came hours after leaders of Nato member states gathered in Washington DC and issued a declaration that mentioned the war.

They accused China of being a “decisive enabler” of Russia through its “large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base”, in some of their harshest remarks yet about Beijing.

They called on China to stop “all material and political support” to Russia’s war effort such as the supply of dual-use materials, which are items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Western states have previously accused Beijing of transferring drone and missile technology and satellite imagery to Moscow. The US estimates about 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the microelectronics Russia imports now come from China.

Beijing was also accused of conducting “malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation” on Nato states.

In a press conference on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that he had discussions with other leaders about spelling out the consequences for China.

“China has to understand that if they are supplying Russia with information and capacity, working with North Korea and others to help Russia and [their] armament, that they’re not going to benefit economically as a consequence of that,” he said.

“I think you’ll see that some of our European friends are going to be curtailing their investment in China.”

Pointing out that Russia had been seeking weapons from China and North Korea, he added that Nato states were looking into a new policy to turn the West into an “industrial base” for munitions and to develop new weapons systems.

On Thursday, while speaking to the Netherlands’ new foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp, Mr Wang said “China absolutely does not accept” all these accusations and insisted that they have “always been a force for peace and force for stability”.

In comments carried by state media, he said that China’s different political system and values “should not be used as a reason for Nato to incite confrontation with China”, and called for Nato to “stay within its bounds”.

His remarks was the latest in a flurry of angry responses from Beijing.

Earlier on Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Nato was smearing China with “fabricated disinformation”, while Beijing’s mission to the EU told the alliance to “stop hyping up the so-called China threat”.

Beijing has long rebutted accusations that it has been aiding Russia in the war and insists that it remains a neutral party. It has called for an end to the conflict and proposed a peace plan, which Ukraine has rejected.

But, besides the growing accusations of military support, observers have also pointed out that Beijing’s purchases of vast amounts of oil and gas have helped prop up Russia’s economy crippled by sanctions and replenish coffers drained by war spending.

Beijing’s official rhetoric on the conflict often mirrors Moscow’s – like them, China still does not call it a war. Chinese President Xi Jinping has maintained a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with both of them famously declaring their partnership has “no limits”.

Beijing has accused the US and other Western states of pouring “fuel on the fire” by supplying lethal weapons and technology to Ukraine for its defence.

In recent weeks, several countries have gone a step further and allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

During Nato’s three-day summit, which ended on Thursday, the alliance continued to underscore its commitment to Ukraine. Member states said they would support Ukraine on its “irreversible path” to future membership, adding that “Ukraine’s future in Nato”.

They also announced further integration with Ukraine’s military and support for its defence. The alliance has committed at least €40bn ($43.3bn, £33.7bn) in aid in the next year, including F-16 fighter jets and air defence support.

Hackers stole call and text records data from “nearly all” of 109 million AT&T Wireless customers, the telecommunications company disclosed on Friday.

The firm said one suspect had been arrested after the records – from May to October 2022 – were illegally downloaded and copied to a third-party platform this April.

The stolen data did not contain the content of calls or texts, but did record the numbers contacted, as well as the number and lengths of interactions, the company said.

The Justice Department said the delayed announcement of the hack was justified on national security grounds.

“We sincerely regret this incident occurred and remain committed to protecting the information in our care,” AT&T said in a statement.

The company said in its filing to the securities and exchange commission it had secured its systems from further similar hacks and did not believe what was stolen was publicly available.

It said it first learned of the breach five days after hackers started stealing data on 14 April. They continued to do so until 25 April, the company said.

Experts have warned that the information could be used to identify work places, approximate home locations, as well as potential colleagues and friends.

The breach comes months after AT&T disclosed that data from 2019 of 73 million former and current customers had been stolen and placed on the “dark web” by fraudsters.

AT&T said it would alert affected customers. Users could also log into their account to see if their data was affected, and request a report that would provide a more “user-friendly” version showing what was compromised.

It warned users to be cautious about email or text requests that ask for personal information.