At least two dozen people have been killed after gunmen opened fire on a group of domestic tourists visiting a popular beauty spot in Indian-administered Kashmir, authorities have told the BBC.

The attack took place in Pahalgam, a picturesque town in the Himalayas often described as the “Switzerland of India”.

The region’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, said the attack was “much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians in recent years”. Reports suggest that there are a large number of wounded, with some in critical condition.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the perpetrators would “be brought to justice”.

“Our resolve to fight terrorism is unshakeable and it will get even stronger,” Modi wrote in a statement on X.

Modi added that Home Minister Amit Shah would travel to Srinagar, Kashmir’s largest city, to hold an emergency security meeting.

The region’s Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, said the army and police had been deployed to the scene.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. There has been a long-running insurgency in the Muslim-majority region since 1989, although violence has waned in recent years.

The attack took place in Baisaran, a mountain-top meadow three miles (5km) from Pahalgam.

Vehicles are unable to reach the area where the shooting occurred, Inspector General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Vidi Kumar Birdi told BBC Hindi.

A tourist from Gujarat, who was part of a group that was fired upon, said that chaos broke out after the sudden attack, and everybody started running, crying and shouting.

Video footage shared by Indian media outlets appears to show Indian troops running towards the scene of the attack, while in other footage victims can be heard saying that the gunmen had singled out non-Muslims.

Footage on social media, which has not been verified by the BBC, appears to show bodies lying on a meadow with people crying and asking for help.

Police said multiple tourists had been taken to hospital with gunshot wounds. The area has been cordoned off with soldiers stopping vehicles at checkpoints while a search is underway to find the perpetrators.

Since the 1990s, an armed separatist insurgency against Indian rule in the region has claimed tens of thousands of lives, including those of civilians and security forces.

The Himalayan region was divided following India’s independence from Britain, partition and the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

The two nuclear-armed states both claim the region in its entirety and have fought two wars and a limited conflict over it in the decades since.

Some 500,000 Indian soldiers are permanently deployed in the territory.

While fighting has decreased since Modi revoked Kashmir’s partial autonomy in 2019, there are still incidents of violence.

The last major attack on civilians occurred in June 2024 when nine people were killed and 33 injured after militants opened fire on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims.

In 2019, a suicide bombing in Indian-administered Kashmir killed at least 46 soldiers and prompted Indian airstrikes on targets in Pakistan.

Pahalgam is a popular tourist destination, both domestically and internationally, and in recent years the government has attempted to encourage further tourism to the region.

Around 3.5 million tourists visited Kashmir in 2024, according to official figures.

The US Commerce Department has announced plans to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from four South East Asian countries.

It comes after an investigation that began a year ago when several major solar equipment producers asked the administration of then-President Joe Biden to protect their US operations.

The proposed levies – targeting companies in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam – are in response to allegations of subsidies from China and the dumping of unfairly cheap products in the US market.

A separate US government agency, the International Trade Commission, is due to reach a final decision on the new tariffs in June.

The countervailing and anti-dumping duties, as these tariffs are known, vary between companies and the countries their products are made in.

Some solar equipment exporters in Cambodia face the highest duties of 3,521% because of what was seen as a lack of cooperation with the Commerce Department investigation.

Products made in Malaysia by Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar faced some of the lowest duties of just over 41%.

Another China-based firm, Trina Solar, faces tariffs of 375% for the products it makes in Thailand.

Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment from BBC News.

In recent years, many Chinese firms have moved operations to South East Asia in a bid to avoid tariffs imposed since the start of US President Donald Trump’s first term.

The US Commerce Department’s findings were welcomed by the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee – a group of manufacturers that called on the US government to launch the investigation.

“This is a decisive victory for American manufacturing and confirms what we’ve long known: that Chinese-headquartered solar companies have been cheating the system,” said Tim Brightbill, lead counsel to the Alliance.

In 2023, America imported almost $12bn (£8.9bn) in solar equipment from the four countries, according to US Census Bureau figures.

While the planned tariffs are likely to help US solar panel manufacturers, they could also mean extra costs for businesses and consumers who have benefited from the availability of cheaper solar products.

The levies would be imposed on top of other tariffs already rolled out by the Trump administration.

The planned tariffs were announced just days after Chinese President Xi Jinping completed a tour of Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia.

The trip was aimed to boost ties with the region and encourage those nations to resist what he called “unilateral bullying” by the US.

Trump has so far imposed taxes of up to 145% on imports from China. Other countries are now facing a blanket US tariff of 10% until July.

His administration said last week that when the new tariffs are added on to existing ones, the levies on some Chinese goods could reach 245%.

China has hit back with a 125% tax on products from the US and vowed to “fight to the end”.

Vladimir Putin signalled he was open to talks with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since the early stages of the war, but Russian strikes continued hours after his comments.

Speaking to Russian state TV on Monday, Putin said Russia had “always looked positively on any peace initiatives. We hope that representatives of the Kyiv regime will feel the same way”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s comments indicated a willingness to engage in direct talks with Ukraine about not striking civilian targets.

However, Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities continued on Tuesday with a wave of strikes across the country.

A strike on an apartment block in Zaporizhzhia killed one woman and injured 20 others, including four children.

In Kharkiv in the country’s east, authorities said a massive drone attack on Tuesday during the daytime injured at least seven people.

President Zelensky said on Tuesday afternoon there had also been strikes on Odesa, Sumy, Donetsk and other southern regions, while Ukrainian media also reported a strike in south-east Kherson.

The Monday night strike on Odesa had targeted a five-storey unit block and injured three people, local media reported.

President Zelensky described the wave of attacks as “deliberate Russian terror” which could be “stopped by a single order”.

This had been proven by the short-lived Easter truce on Saturday, “when there were no airstrikes in Ukraine”, he wrote on Telegram.

He again reiterated that Ukraine had proposed to extend that truce. He also again raised his proposal, voiced on Sunday, for a 30-day period for a cease to “any strikes using long-range drones and missiles on civilian infrastructure for a period of at least 30 days”.

Putin’s remarks on Monday evening were believed to be in response to this proposal.

There have been no direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since the initial weeks after the former launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“When the president said that it was possible to discuss the issue of not striking civilian targets, including bilaterally, the president had in mind negotiations and discussions with the Ukrainian side,” Peskov told the Interfax news agency, clarifying Putin’s remarks.

Zelensky, in his nightly video address, on Monday said Ukraine needed a “clear answer from Moscow” on whether it would agree to stop attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Referring to the short-lived and limited truce declared by Putin over Easter, the Ukrainian leader proposed a follow-up that would “cease any strikes using long-range drones and missiles on civilian infrastructure for a period of at least 30 days”.

“If Russia does not agree to such a step, it will be proof that it wants to continue doing only things that destroy people’s lives and continue the war,” he said.

Putin said the Kremlin would “analyse” the idea, telling journalists that “as for the proposal not to strike at civilian infrastructure facilities… this needs to be sorted out”.

In a rare admission, he acknowledged that the military had targeted a civilian building when Russian missiles killed 35 people and wounded more than 100 others in the centre of the north-eastern city of Sumy earlier this month.

This was the worst Russian attack on civilians in Ukraine this year.

“Everyone is well aware of the strike by our Armed Forces on a congress centre, I think, in Sumy Region. Is it a civilian facility or not? Civilian,” Putin said.

“But there was an award ceremony for those who committed crimes in Kursk Region,” he added referring to gathering of Ukrainian soldiers in the city centre at the time.

The centre of Sumy was busy at the time, with people out on the streets marking Palm Sunday. The region’s deputy leader was later fired after reports of the medal ceremony taking place in a local congress hall emerged.

Ukraine is due to participate in talks with US and European countries in London on Wednesday, following a meeting in Paris last week where leaders discussed pathways to end the war.

Zelensky said the “primary task” of the talks would be “to push for an unconditional ceasefire”.

The US President said earlier this week that he was hopeful Russia and Ukraine would reach a deal this week, after he had threatened to “take a pass” on further peace negotiations if no progress is made.

Some critics had called Putin’s 30-hour Easter truce a marketing stunt by Moscow. France’s foreign minister, Jean- Noël Barrot, said it had been designed to prevent Donald Trump from getting impatient and angry.

Indian yoga guru Baba Ramdev has told a Delhi court that he will take down adverts in which he made controversial remarks about a rival firm’s drink, criticised by a judge as “indefensible”.

Ramdev alleged that some brands used their profits to build mosques and madrassas in a video promoting a sweet drink made by his company Patanjali.

He did not name the brand, but it was widely seen to be a reference to Rooh Afza, a popular drink made for more than a century by Hamdard Laboratories, an Islamic charitable organisation.

The video went viral, sparking outrage. Hamdard also filed a case, asking for the advertisements to be removed.

Rooh Afza is a non-alcoholic sweet drink in syrup form which is popular in South Asian countries, including India and Pakistan, and is usually referred to as sherbet. The syrup, introduced in 1906 by Hamdard, is usually mixed with milk or water and is very popular among Muslims breaking their fast during the month of Ramadan.

In the video, Ramdev also used the phrase “sherbet jihad” – a play on terms like “love jihad”, used by radical Hindu groups to accuse Muslim men of converting Hindu women by marriage. In this case, it is appears to be suggesting Muslims are profiting from money spent by Hindus.

On Tuesday, a judge in the Delhi high court criticised Ramdev’s remarks, calling them “indefensible”.

“It shocks the conscience of the court,” Justice Amit Bansal said, according to legal website LiveLaw.

The court also asked Ramdev to file an affidavit within five days, saying that he would not issue any such statements, advertisements, or social media posts in the future. The next hearing is on 1 May.

Hamdard lawyer Mukul Rohatgi said that the case went beyond criticism of a product and represented a “communal divide”. He also called Ramdev’s comments “hate speech”.

Rajiv Nayar, who represented Ramdev and Patanjali, said that his client was not against any religion and that the advertisements would be removed.

Ramdev shot to fame in the early 2000s with his televised yoga classes. He soon amassed a huge following and was praised for guiding people towards a healthy lifestyle.

In 2006, along with his close aide Acharya Balkrishna, Ramdev launched Patanjali Ayurveda to sell herbal medicines. The company now sells a range of products from flour and soaps to toothpastes and instant noodles.

This is not the first time the guru has come under fire from the courts.

Last year, the Indian Supreme Court ordered him to apologise for falsely claiming that his company’s products could “cure” serious illnesses.

The court also banned the ads, saying the yoga guru was spreading misinformation and misleading consumers with his remarks about modern medicine.

A senior Palestinian official familiar with Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations has told the BBC that Qatari and Egyptian mediators have proposed a new formula to end the war in Gaza.

According to the official, it envisages a truce lasting between five and seven years, the release of all Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, a formal end to the war, and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

A senior Hamas delegation was due to arrive in Cairo for consultations.

The last ceasefire collapsed a month ago when Israel resumed bombing Gaza, with both sides blaming each other for the failure to keep it going.

Israel has not commented on the mediators’ plan.

Meanwhile, at least 26 Palestinians were killed and 60 others injured by Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday.

Local residents and eyewitnesses described the air strikes as “extremely intense.”

According to witnesses, the attacks destroyed dozens of bulldozers and heavy machinery – equipment used by Hamas-run municipalities to reopen roads, clear rubble, and rescue victims trapped beneath the debris.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had struck “approximately 40 engineering vehicles used for terror purposes, including during the October 7th massacre”.

“Hamas has used these vehicles for planting explosives, digging underground routes, breaching fences, and clearing rubble to locate weapons and military equipment hidden by the terrorist organisation beneath the rubble,” it said.

Tanks have also been seen moving in the southern part of Rafah city in the south of Gaza.

As Israel pushes on with its offensive, talks were due to take place in Cairo with Hamas represented at a senior level by the head of its political council, Mohammed Darwish, and its lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya.

The meeting comes days after the movement rejected Israel’s latest proposal, which included a demand for Hamas to disarm in return for a six-week truce.

On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not end the war before Hamas was destroyed and all the hostages returned. Hamas has demanded Israel commit to ending the war before the hostages are freed.

The Palestinian official familiar with the talks told the BBC that Hamas has signalled its readiness to hand over governance of Gaza to any Palestinian entity agreed upon “at the national and regional level”. The official said this could be the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) or a newly formed administrative body.

Netanyahu has ruled out any role for the PA in the future governance of Gaza, which has been ruled by Hamas since 2007.

While it is still too early to assess the likelihood of success, the source described the current mediation effort as serious and said Hamas had shown “unprecedented flexibility”.

Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages. Israel launched a massive military offensive in response, which has killed 51,240 Palestinians – mainly civilians – according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry figures on Monday.

Elsewhere, the Palestinian Embassy in Cairo has instructed its staff – who had been co-ordinating medical evacuations from Gaza to Egyptian hospitals and facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid – to relocate with their families to the Egyptian city of Arish, near the Gaza border.

China has executed a man for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese boy last September, the Japanese embassy in China has told the BBC.

Zhong Changchun was sentenced to death in January for attacking the boy, who had been walking to a Japanese school in south-eastern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The case had sent shockwaves through both countries and fuelled diplomatic tensions amid allegations of it being a xenophobic attack.

“The Government of Japan considers the murder of a completely innocent child to be an unforgivable crime, and we take this execution with the utmost solemnity,” the Japanese embassy said in its statement to the BBC.

“In light of this incident, the Japanese government will continue to take all possible safety measures and strongly urge the Chinese side to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in China.”

It said that it had been informed of the execution by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The incident heightened fears among Japanese living in China and prompted Japanese companies including Toyota to ask their staff to take precautions. Others, like Panasonic, offered employees free flights home.

The verdict on Zhong’s case made no mention of Japan, Japanese officials previously said. Kenji Kanasugi, Japan’s ambassador to China said Zhong had requested to speak to the victim’s family, but did not say if he had been targeting Japanese nationals.

The incident has also shone a light on the unchecked nationalism on Chinese social media, which has fuelled anti-foreigner sentiment in recent years.

Online commentators noted that the schoolboy’s killing had happened on a politically sensitive date – 18 September, the anniversary of an incident that led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in China in the early 1930s.

Historical grievances have long overshadowed political tensions between China and Japan. China has long demanded an apology from Japan for its colonial and wartime aggression in the early and mid 20 Century. It has also accused Japan of glossing over its brutal military actions in China in its history textbooks.

The stabbing also came amid a spate of high-profile attacks on foreigners in China, including the stabbing of four American teachers in Jilin.

Last June, a man attacked a Japanese mother and her child at a bus stop in Suzhou but ended up killing a Chinese woman trying to protect them. The man has also been executed, Japanese officials said last week.

India and the US need to work together successfully for a “prosperous and peaceful” 21st Century, US Vice-President JD Vance said in a speech calling for closer ties between the countries across sectors.

Vance, who is on a four-day visit to India, was speaking at a programme in the western city of Jaipur.

“But I also believe that if we fail to work together successfully, the 21st Century could be a very dark time for all of humanity,” he added.

The vice-president’s remarks came a day after he met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and both countries said they had made progress in negotiating a bilateral trade deal which Delhi hopes will help it avoid higher tariffs.

India is among a number of countries rushing to negotiate trade deals with the US during President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on higher tariffs, which ends on 9 July.

India was set to face 27% US tariffs before the pause was announced. Since then, Delhi and Washington have been working towards an early conclusion of trade negotiations.

In his speech in Jaipur, Vance said that the two countries had finalised the terms of reference for the negotiation.

“This is a vital step toward realising President Trump and Prime Minister Modi’s vision because it sets a roadmap toward a final deal between our nations,” Vance said.

He also called Modi a “tough negotiator” and someone “who drives a hard bargain”, drawing applause from the audience.

Modi and Trump share a warm personal relationship: the Indian prime minister was among the first global leaders to visit Trump after his second term began. But the US president has repeatedly taken aim at India’s high tariffs, branding it a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties.

Even in the statement issued on Monday after Vance’s meeting with Modi, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer highlighted the “serious lack of reciprocity in the trade relationship with India”.

India has already cut tariffs on a number of goods in the past few months and is reportedly considering more wide-ranging cuts to pacify Trump. But sectors like agriculture – where Washington wants greater access, but India fiercely protects – are still sticking points.

Vance also said in Jaipur that the US is seeking to sell more energy and defence equipment to Delhi. On Monday, in addition to trade, the two leaders had also discussed cooperation in defence, strategic technologies and energy.

• Trump wants India to buy US corn – but here’s why it probably won’t
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The Indian prime minister also said after the meeting that he was looking forward to welcoming Trump to India this year. Delhi is hosting the Quad summit later this year and the US president is expected to attend it.

The bilateral meeting was followed by delegation-level talks and a dinner hosted by Modi for Vance and his family.

Vance arrived in India on Monday morning, accompanied by his wife Usha and their three children. Usha Vance’s parents migrated to the US from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, and some media reports have said that Vance and his wife are keen to introduce their children to their Indian heritage.

Photographs of the three children wearing Indian-style outfits – the two boys in kurta-pyjamas and three-year-old Mirabel wearing a lehenga – on their arrival in India were splashed across Indian newspapers and websites.

The rest of Vance’s visit is largely personal. After the meeting with Modi, the family visited Jaipur city, where they visited the historic Amer Fort on Tuesday.

The family is also set to visit the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra city on Wednesday before flying to the US the next day.

Who will be the next pope? The decision could have a profound impact on the Catholic Church and the world’s 1.4 billion baptised Roman Catholics.

It also promises to be a highly unpredictable and open process for a host of reasons.

The College of Cardinals will meet in conclave in the Sistine Chapel to debate and then vote for their preferred candidates until a single name prevails.

With 80% of the cardinals appointed by Pope Francis himself, they are not only electing a pope for the first time, but will offer a broad global perspective.

For the first time in history, fewer than half of those given a vote will be European.

And although the college may be dominated by his appointments, they were not exclusively “progressive” or “traditionalist”.

For those reasons, it is harder than ever to predict who will be elected the next Pope.

Could the cardinals elect an African or an Asian Pope, or might they favour one of the old hands of the Vatican administration?

Here is a selection of names being mentioned as Francis’s potential successor, and we expect more to emerge in the coming days.

Pietro Parolin

Nationality: Italian

Age: 70

Softly spoken Italian Cardinal Parolin was the Vatican’s secretary of state under Pope Francis – making him the Pope’s chief adviser. The secretary of state also heads the Roman Curia, the Church’s central administration.

Having acted effectively as deputy pope, he could be considered a frontrunner.

He is viewed by some as more likely to prioritise diplomacy and a global outlook than the purity of Catholic dogma. His critics consider that a problem, while his supporters see a strength.

But he has been critical of the legalisation of same-sex marriage around the world, calling a landmark 2015 vote in favour in the Republic of Ireland “a defeat for humanity”.

The bookmakers may back him but Cardinal Parolin will be well aware of an old Italian saying that stresses the uncertainty of the pope-picking process: “He who enters a conclave as a pope, leaves it as a cardinal.”

Some 213 of the previous 266 popes have been Italian and even though there has not been an Italian pope in 40 years, the pivot of the upper echelons of the Church away from Italy and Europe may mean there may not be another for now.

Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle

Nationality: Filipino

Age: 67

Could Cardinal Tagle become the first Asian Pope? Unlike Parolin, he has decades of pastoral experience – meaning he has been an active Church leader among the people as opposed to a diplomat for the Vatican or cloistered expert on Church law.

The Church is massively influential in the Philippines, where about 80% of the population is Catholic. The country currently has a record five members of the College of Cardinals – which could make for a significant lobbying faction if they all back Cardinal Tagle.

He is considered a moderate within the Catholic definition, and has been dubbed the “Asian Francis” because of a dedication to social issues and sympathy for migrants that he shared with the late pope.

He has opposed abortion rights, calling them “a form of murder” – a position in line with the Church’s broader stance that life begins at conception. He has also spoken against euthanasia.

But in 2015 when he was Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Tagle called for the Church to reassess its “severe” stance towards gay people, divorcees and single mothers, saying past harshness had done lasting harm and left people feeling “branded”, and that each individual deserved compassion and respect.

The cardinal was considered a candidate to be pope as far back as the 2013 conclave in which Francis was elected.

Asked a decade ago how he viewed suggestions he could be next, he replied: “I treat it like a joke! It’s funny.”

Fridolin Ambongo Besungu

Nationality: Congolese

Age: 65

It’s very possible the next Pope could be from Africa, where the Catholic Church continues to add millions of members. Cardinal Ambongo is a leading candidate, hailing from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

He has been Archbishop of Kinshasa for seven years, and was appointed cardinal by Pope Francis.

He is a cultural conservative, opposing blessings for same-sex marriage, stating that “unions of persons of the same sex are considered contradictory to cultural norms and intrinsically evil”.

Though Christianity is the majority religion in the DRC, Christians there have faced death and persecution at the hands of jihadist group Islamic State and associated rebels. Against that backdrop, Cardinal Ambongo is viewed as a fierce advocate for the Church.

But in a 2020 interview, he spoke in favour of religious plurality, saying: “Let Protestants be Protestants and Muslims be Muslims. We are going to work with them. But everyone has to keep their own identity.”

Such comments could lead some cardinals to wonder if he fully embraces their sense of mission – in which Catholics hope to spread the Church’s word throughout the world.

Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson

Nationality: Ghanaian

Age: 76

If chosen by his peers, the influential Cardinal Turkson would likewise have the distinction of being the first African pope for 1,500 years.

Like Cardinal Ambongo, he has claimed not to want the job. “I’m not sure whether anyone does aspire to become a Pope,” he told the BBC in 2013.

Asked if Africa had a good case to provide the next Pope based on the Church’s growth on the continent, he said he felt the Pope shouldn’t be chosen based on statistics, because “those types of considerations tend to muddy the waters”.

He was the first Ghanaian to be made a cardinal, back in 2003 under Pope John Paul II.

Like Cardinal Tagle, Cardinal Turkson was considered a potential Pope a decade later, when Francis was chosen. In fact, bookmakers made him the favourite ahead of voting.

A guitarist who once played in a funk band, Cardinal Turkson is known for his energetic presence.

Like many cardinals from Africa, he leans conservative. However, he has opposed the criminalisation of gay relationships in African countries including his native Ghana.

In a BBC interview in 2023, while Ghana’s parliament was discussing a bill imposing harsh penalties on LGBTQ+ people, Turkson said he felt homosexuality should not be treated as an offence.

Back in 2012, he was accused of making fear-mongering predictions over the spread of Islam in Europe at a Vatican conference of bishops, for which he later apologised.

The Vatican has released several photographs of Pope Francis lying in an open coffin in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta, his former residence.

We’ve taken a look at who was in the chapel and some of the symbolism on show in the images.

The most notable figure in the room is Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who is the Pope’s “camerlengo” or chamberlain and runs the Vatican until a new Pope is chosen. The cardinal – in red and cassock – is shown blessing the body of the late Pope during the rite of the declaration of death.

Pope Francis is dressed in red robes, holding a rosary and wearing the papal mitre – the large white ceremonial headdress. He is also wearing a simple silver ring.

During his inauguration, Pope Francis was given the Fisherman’s Ring – a symbol of his office – which Cardinal Farrell has the responsibility to destroy so it cannot be used by anyone else. Pope Francis sometimes used this ring during ceremonies but was more often seen using the simple silver ring adorned with a cross.

One of the significant changes in tradition is the coffin that Pope Francis will be buried in. The coffins used for previous papal burials consisted of three nesting coffins made of cypress, lead and oak – but Pope Francis asked to be buried in a simple wooden casket.

He will remain in the open coffin for the lying in state, whereas other popes have been laid out resting on cushions on a platform.

The chapel itself is nestled within the Casa Santa Marta, a residential building containing more than 100 simple rooms that was built in 1996.

Triangular shapes are present throughout the chapel, in the construction of the ceiling and on the floor tiles, representing the Holy Trinity – a key belief in Christianity where God exists as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

On the ceiling behind the coffin is an inscription in Latin, which translates as “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful”.

The Pope’s body is guarded by members of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. They have protected the Pope since 1506, when Julius II first hired Swiss mercenaries for his personal protection.

Pope Francis will stay in the chapel until Wednesday morning, when his body will be transferred to St Peter’s Basilica in a procession starting at 09:00 local time. From then, he will lie in an open casket in the basilica, where mourners can pay their respects ahead of his funeral on Saturday.

• LIVE UPDATES: Follow the latest after the Pope’s death
• IN PICTURES: Defining images of Pope Francis’s life
• PROFILE: Acting head of the Vatican Cardinal Kevin Farrell
• EXPLAINER: How the next pope is chosen

When the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, left Argentina’s capital to participate in the Vatican conclave to elect Pope Benedict XVI’s successor, he did not know it would be the last time he would see his hometown.

The fact that Pope Francis never returned to his country after becoming the pontiff left some Argentines with a heavy heart.

Speaking on Monday, Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva said his parish were “orphans of a father who profoundly loved his country and had to learn to become the father of the whole world”.

He also added that Francis becoming Pope “cost us as Argentines a little bit… Bergoglio left us to become Francis”.

• LIVE UPDATES: Follow the latest after the Pope’s death
• IN PICTURES: Defining images of Pope Francis’s life
• PROFILE: Acting head of the Vatican Cardinal Kevin Farrell
• EXPLAINER: How the next pope is chosen

It came as a surprise to many – including Bergoglio himself – that he was elected to the highest office in the Catholic Church in the first place.

At 76 years old at the time – one year older than the typical age of bishops and cardinals when they submit their resignation to the pope – he was not seen as a real candidate to fill the vacancy, according to analysts.

“When he left Buenos Aires for the conclave, he seemed somewhat sad; he was getting ready to retire in a room at the Priests’ Home in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Flores,” Guillermo Marcó, a priest from the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, told Argentine newspaper Clarín.

However, Bergoglio would soon begin a papacy that lasted 12 years.

His death has been particularly keenly felt in his home country, where seven days of national mourning have been declared – as Argentina grieves a man many regarded as simple and humble, despite holding one of the most powerful offices in the world.

Those qualities were praised by Elenir Ramazol, a nun who spoke to BBC Mundo during a vigil at the Buenos Aires cathedral on Monday.

The fact he did not return to his homeland was “a sign of the total commitment he made to the whole Church, not just to his people, to his country”, Ms Ramazol said.

Gustavo Vera exchanged hundreds of letters with Francis, having become friends with him when he was still archbishop. He agreed that the pontiff always showed an enduring interest in what was happening in his home country.

“Sometimes he commented on soccer, sometimes on tango, sometimes on cultural events,” Mr Vera, the leader of La Alameda, an Argentine anti-trafficking and slavery organisation, said. Francis followed Argentine news “in detail”, he added.

During his papacy, Francis visited four of the five countries that border Argentina – but never his home country, despite continuing to take a keen interest in it.

He was loved by many there who now mourn him, but others remember him as a controversial figure.

The initial pride felt by most Argentines after the announcement that a fellow countryman would be the first Latin American pope gave way to disenchantment among some over the years.

A Pew Research Center survey suggested that the proportion of people who held a positive view of the pontiff fell from 91% in 2013 to 64% in 2024.

Of six Latin American countries surveyed, the largest drop in favourable attitudes was recorded in Argentina.

Conservatives in Argentina accused him of undermining historical traditions they held sacred, while reformers hoped for more profound changes.

Critics felt he failed to do enough to oppose the country’s brutal military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s and to criticise the complicity of some figures in the Church.

Every time he was asked about a possible trip, Pope Francis gave vague answers.

“I would like to go. It’s my people, but it hasn’t been planned yet. There are several things to sort out first,” he said the last time he was publicly asked about the subject, in September 2024.

Some fellow Argentines found this hesitation difficult to understand.

The pontiff’s absence has been felt more acutely in recent years, as Argentina has endured a profound economic crisis, with annual inflation reaching nearly 300% and a sharp increase in poverty.

Mr Vera suggests that Francis was planning to visit, but had not yet done so because he wanted to avoid his presence being used for political purposes.

“He always used to say he would go to Argentina when he felt that he was an instrument to bring about national unity, to help overcome the rift, to try to bring Argentines back together,” Mr Vera said.

The “rift” refers to the vast, decades-long gulf in Argentine politics and society between supporters and opponents of the populist political movement Peronism, founded by late President Juan Perón in the 1940s.

There is a widespread belief in the country that Pope Francis was a Peronist – something he denied in a book in 2023, while adding: “If we had a Peronist conception of politics, what would be wrong with that?”

The comment was seized upon by conservative detractors who accused him of being too closely aligned with social justice causes and left-wing politics.

Before taking office, Javier Milei, the current president who has demonised left-wing politics, even called Pope Francis “the representation of evil on Earth” – although he softened his tone after coming to power.

The two had a cordial meeting in the Vatican and President Milei officially invited the pontiff to Argentina. And following the Pope’s death, Milei said he was deeply pained by his loss, and praised the pontiff’s benevolence and wisdom.

Some Argentines accused him of being too close to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a divisive left-leaning populist politician, who was president from 2007 to 2015.

But according to Mr Vera, the Pope met with people “from the whole political and social spectrum of Argentina”.

The late pontiff’s friend also pointed out that, while there was some criticism of Pope Francis in the media and major urban centres, he was loved in other parts of the country.

Although he maintained his connection with Argentina, Mr Vera said, Pope Francis no longer felt he belonged to just one country.

“Argentines believe he was Argentinian, but in reality, he was a citizen of the world,” he added.

It is a view shared by Alejandra Castro, a social worker who was among the mourners who gathered on Monday night at Buenos Aires cathedral.

Argentina was “always in his prayers”, Ms Castro said. “In one way or another, he was always present, and I think that shows that in his heart, Argentina was always present.”

But Mr Vera acknowledged that not everyone felt the same way, and suggested it was up to Argentines to look within themselves for answers: “Rather than blaming Francis, we Argentines should ask ourselves what we were doing that meant we did not deserve the Pope’s visit.”

You can get in touch by following this link

The funeral of Pope Francis will take place on Saturday, in front of St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.

Preparations have begun for the conclave, the process by which cardinals will elect the next Pope.

Pope Francis, the first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church, died on Easter Monday aged 88.

The Vatican said he died following a stroke and subsequent irreversible heart failure at 07:35 local time (06:35 BST).

His death was announced less than 24 hours after he led an Easter Sunday address in front of thousands of worshipers in St Peter’s Square.

It followed a period of ill-health that saw the Pope spend five weeks in hospital with double pneumonia.

Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Argentina, was elected Pope in 2013.

Read more:

• LIVE: Pope Francis’s funeral to be held on Saturday
• In pictures: Symbolism on show as Pope Francis lies in open coffin
• Who will be the next Pope? Key candidates in an unpredictable contest

The person who runs the Vatican after the death or resignation of a pope is known as the “camerlengo” – currently Irish-American cardinal Kevin Farrell.

He confirmed the Pope’s death, with a doctor and death certificate. No autopsy is performed.

Cardinal Farrell also locks and seals the Pope’s home, and destroys the Pope’s ring and lead seal, which is used to authenticate official documents.

The camerlengo is also responsible for organising the conclave.

They can become pope, but this has only happened twice: Gioacchino Pecci (Pope Leo XIII) in 1878 and Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) in 1939.

Read more:

• Who is Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the acting head of the Vatican?
• The Pope from Latin America who changed Catholic Church
• Pope Francis’s life in pictures

The Pope’s funeral will take place on Saturday, 26 April at 10:00 local time (09:00 BST).

Papal funerals have historically been very elaborate, but instructions set out by Francis are much simpler.

He will be the first Pope in more than a century not to be buried in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Instead, he will be laid to rest in Rome’s Basilica of St Mary Major.

Francis asked to be buried in a simple wooden casket lined with zinc – unlike his predecessors, who were buried in three nesting coffins made of cypress, lead and oak.

Dozens of world leaders and religious figures are expected to attend the funeral, alongside thousands of worshippers.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, US President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and French President Emmanuel Macron have said they will attend, as has EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

From Wednesday, the Pope’s casket will be displayed in St Peter’s Basilica for members of the public to pay their respects.

Read more:

• How a frail Pope defied doctors’ advice during hectic Easter weekend
• Francis was a vocal critic of the powerful, his influence felt far beyond faith

The new Pope is elected by the College of Cardinals. They are all men who were appointed by the Pope and are usually ordained bishops.

There are currently 252 Catholic cardinals, but only 135 can cast ballots as those over the age of 80 can take part in debate but cannot vote.

Traditionally the conclave doesn’t start until after a 15-day mourning period.

However, in 2013, Francis’s predecessor Benedict changed the rules to allow it to begin earlier if the cardinals wished.

Read more:

• Why Pope’s death leaves Argentines ‘orphaned’ in more ways than one
• Africa remembers Pope who spoke for the continent

During the voting period, the cardinals are cut off from the outside world – denied phones and access to the internet or newspapers.

They sleep in Casa Santa Marta, a five-story guesthouse within the Vatican complex.

The election is held in strict secrecy inside the Sistine Chapel, famously painted by Michelangelo.

Each cardinal votes for the candidate they wish to become Pope. They can vote for themselves if they wish.

A new Pope is elected when a candidate has 90 votes – which can take several rounds.

In previous centuries, conclaves have gone on for weeks or months. Some cardinals have even died during the process.

Read more:

• How the next Pope is chosen

To the outside world, the only information about how the conclave is progressing is smoke from the chapel’s chimney when ballot papers are burned after each round of voting.

Black smoke signals failure. White smoke means a new Pope has been chosen.

The new Pope normally appears on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square within an hour of his selection.

The senior cardinal confirms the decision with the words “Habemus Papam” – Latin for “we have a Pope” – and introduces the new pontiff by his chosen papal name, which may not be his original given name.

For example, Pope Francis was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but chose his papal name to honour St Francis of Assisi.

In theory, any Roman Catholic man who has been baptised can be considered.

In practice, however, the cardinals prefer to select one of their own.

In 2013, Francis became the first pontiff to hail from South America – a region that accounts for around 28% of the world’s Catholics – and the southern hemisphere.

Historical precedent suggests the cardinals are far more likely to pick a European – and especially an Italian. Of the 266 popes chosen to date, 217 have been from Italy.

Several Vatican analysts have suggested Francis’s successor could come from outside Europe – not least because the late Pope appointed more than 140 cardinals from beyond the continent.

The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and is an important source of authority for the world’s roughly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.

They believe the Pope represents a direct line back to Jesus Christ. He is considered a living successor to St Peter, who was chief among Christ’s initial disciples, the Apostles.

About half of all Christians worldwide are Roman Catholics. Other denominations, including Protestants and Orthodox Christians, do not recognise the Pope’s authority.

The Pope lives in Vatican City, the smallest independent state in the world. It is surrounded by the Italian capital, Rome.

The Pope does not receive a salary, but all his travel costs and living expenses are paid for by the Vatican.

You can get in touch by following this link

Megan Dixon was 13 years old when she started feeling unwell.

By 16, her health had deteriorated to such an extent that she was taken to hospital after losing the ability to speak. Doctors believed she may have had a stroke.

She had only been due to remain there for four days for tests, but came out two years later completely paralysed. Unable to walk, talk or open her eyes, she was told she would never move again.

Megan was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), which meant there was a problem with how her brain received and sent information to the rest of the body.

Having stayed in a neurological care home in Peterborough, she is now preparing to move into her own home with the hope of becoming a nail technician.

Megan said at the age of 18, when she moved to Eagle Wood Neurological Care Centre, she was “still just a baby”.

She had never been on her own before and had to move away from her family near Bath to receive the care she needed.

“It was not easy. I think it was a lot harder for my mum and dad to have to leave me there on my own, but I couldn’t do anything for myself. I was paralysed from the neck down,” she told the BBC.

“I couldn’t see, I couldn’t talk. I hate the word, but I was very vulnerable at the time.

“I started feeling poorly when I was 13. It started off very slowly, very gradually and then in 2021, things just declined rapidly.

“I was taken into hospital because they were concerned I had had a stroke, or something, because I lost the ability to talk.

“I was taken for four days of tests and came out of hospital two years later.”

Her illness was eventually diagnosed as FND.

“It stops the functioning of signals from the brain to your body from working properly and causes all sorts of neurological symptoms,” she said.

“I couldn’t do anything for myself, I lost the ability to talk.

“I couldn’t see, so I wasn’t able to open my eyes. My brain couldn’t register the difference between eyes closed and eyes being open.”

She also lost the ability to swallow and was fed by a feeding tube in her mouth, which has been replaced by one straight into her stomach.

At her worst, she had 50 seizures a day, but that has now reduced to between 10 and 15.

After 18 months of extensive therapy, her life is completely different.

She said: “I can move everything now. Obviously I can talk, I can see. I can’t walk and I’m never going to be able to walk again, but that’s because I’ve got contractions in my knees.

“I need surgery in order to bend them because my legs are stuck straight. It’s very painful, but I’m waiting on surgery, and it means I’m never going to be able to walk again.

“Honestly, it was something I never thought I would be planning when my parents took me to the care home. They thought that was it – that it was going to be my home for the rest of my life.

“I was getting to the point that I nearly died in hospital, my body just shut down that much.

“The doctors did have to tell my parents to prepare for the worst – they didn’t think I would make it to 18 and here I am at 20.”

Her dream is to be a nail technician and she is saving up to complete an online course.

“I really can’t wait to finally move out and get a place with my boyfriend,” she said. “I’m very excited.”

FND Action said the brain network disorder encompassed neurological symptoms including limb weakness, paralysis, seizures, walking difficulties, spasms, twitching, sensory issues and more.

“For many, symptoms are severe and disabling, and life-changing for all,” it said.

It added that while the basic wiring of the nervous system was intact, people with the disorder had a problem with how the brain or nervous system was “functioning”, and the brain failed to send or receive signals correctly.

“Historically FND has often been viewed as resulting purely from psychological and emotional trauma, this has frequently led to stigma and dismissal from medical professionals,” it added.

“This view is now seen as outdated, and psychological trauma is now viewed as a risk factor for developing the condition rather than the root cause.”

Megan said she had been left isolated, frustrated and exhausted at times due to how “unpredictable” life with FND had been.

She now shares her experiences on TikTok.

“Every small victory, whether it’s moving a finger, speaking a word, or simply making it through another day is worth celebrating,” she said.

On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring an emergency at the US southern border and directed his top officials to evaluate whether to invoke a rarely used 19th-century law in response to immigration concerns.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to use active-duty military personnel to perform law-enforcement duties inside the US.

US media report that Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, who were tasked with the assessment, will announce their recommendations later this week.

Since returning to office, Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration a central focus, and border crossings have reached a quarter-century low. But the statute could further expand the president’s powers.

Here’s what to know.

The 19th-century law would allow the use of active-duty military personnel to perform law-enforcement duties within the US.

This includes the National Guard – a branch of the US armed forces traditionally reserved for domestic emergencies and disasters.

US presidents can invoke the law if they determine that “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” against the government make it “impracticable to enforce” US law “by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings”.

Once invoked, troops could be tasked with a range of duties, from quelling civil unrest and enforcing court orders to arresting and detaining migrants.

Because the Insurrection Act was written in broad terms, with little specific guidance on how and when the powers can be used, it gives presidents wide latitude in deciding when to mobilise military personnel for domestic operations.

Throughout his election campaign, Trump vowed to crackdown on illegal immigration, calling the southern border situation a “national emergency” that could be better tamed by invoking the 19th-century statute.

On his first day in office in January, he asked for “recommendations regarding additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807”.

The administration has already rolled out a series of sweeping measures targeting the border. These include a nationwide deportation sweep and the controversial move to transfer alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador – a decision now facing legal challenges.

This comes as US Border Patrol has recorded just 8,300 migrant apprehensions, marking the lowest number of border crossings since 2000.

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The Insurrection Act has been invoked a handful of times in American history.

Abraham Lincoln used it when the southern states rebelled during the US Civil War, and former President Ulysses S Grant invoked it against a wave of racist violence by the Ku Klux Klan after the war.

In the 20th century, former President Dwight D Eisenhower invoked it so the US Army would escort black students into their high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, after the state’s governor refused to comply with a federal desegregation order.

More recently, it was used in 1992 when massive riots broke out in Los Angeles over the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, a black man. Then-President George Bush sent in active-duty members of the Marines and Army as well as National Guard troops.

The US government has traditionally worked to limit the use of military force on American soil, especially against its own citizens.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was enacted to restrict the military from acting as domestic law enforcement. In times of unrest, states typically deploy the National Guard to help maintain order.

Since returning to office, Trump has expanded his authority by declaring national emergencies – a move that grants the presidency access to powers and resources that are normally restricted. He has used this authority to impose tariffs and, more controversially, to take action on immigration.

In March, following his emergency declaration at the border, Trump invoked the rarely used Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport migrants he alleged were gang members. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked that effort.

If Trump chooses to invoke the Insurrection Act, it remains unclear what legal challenges he might face.

Steak, mashed potatoes and desserts for astronauts could soon be grown from individual cells in space if an experiment launched into orbit today is successful.

A European Space Agency (ESA) project is assessing the viability of growing so-called lab-grown food in the low gravity and higher radiation in orbit and on other worlds.

ESA is funding the research to explore new ways of reducing the cost of feeding an astronaut, which can cost up to £20,000 per day.

The team involved say the experiment is a first step to developing a small pilot food production plant on the International Space Station in two years’ time.

Lab-grown food will be essential if Nasa’s objective of making humanity a multi-planetary species were to be realised, claims Dr Aqeel Shamsul, CEO and founder of Bedford-based Frontier Space, which is developing the concept with researchers at Imperial College, London.

“Our dream is to have factories in orbit and on the Moon,” he told BBC News.

“We need to build manufacturing facilities off world if we are to provide the infrastructure to enable humans to live and work in space”.

Lab-grown food involves growing food ingredients, such as protein, fat and carbohydrates in test tubes and vats and then processing them to make them look and taste like normal food.

Lab-grown chicken is already on sale in the US and Singapore and lab grown steak is awaiting approval in the UK and Israel. On Earth, there are claimed environmental benefits for the technology over traditional agricultural food production methods, such as less land use and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. But in space the primary driver is to reduce costs.

The researchers are doing the experiment because it costs so much to send astronauts food on the ISS – up to £20,000 per astronaut per day, they estimate.

Nasa, other space agencies and private sector firms plan to have a long-term presence on the Moon, in orbiting space stations and maybe one day on Mars. That will mean sending up food for tens and eventually hundreds of astronauts living and working in space – something that would be prohibitively expensive if it were sent up by rockets, according to Dr Shamsul.

Growing food in space would make much more sense, he suggests.

“We could start off simply with protein-enhanced mashed potatoes on to more complex foods which we could put together in space,” he tells me.

“But in the longer term we could put the lab-grown ingredients into a 3D printer and print off whatever you want on the space station, such as a steak!”

This sounds like the replicator machines on Star Trek, which are able to produce food and drink from pure energy. But it is no longer the stuff of science fiction, says Dr Shamsul.

He showed me a set-up, called a bioreactor, at Imperial College’s Bezos Centre for Sustainable Proteins in west London. It comprised a brick-coloured concoction bubbling away in a test tube. The process is known as precision fermentation, which is like the fermentation used to make beer, but different: “precision” is a rebranding word for genetically engineered.

In this case a gene has been added to yeast to produce extra vitamins, but all sorts of ingredients can be produced in this way, according to Dr Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, Director of the Bezos Centre.

“We can make all the elements to make food,” says Dr Ledesma-Amaro proudly.

“We can make proteins, fats, carbohydrates, fibres and they can be combined to make different dishes.”

A much smaller, simpler version of the biorector has been sent into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the ESA mission. There is plenty of evidence that foods can be successfully grown from cells on Earth, but can the process be repeated in the weightlessness and higher radiation of space?

Drs Ledesma-Amaro and Shamsul have sent small amounts of the yeast concoction to orbit the Earth in a small cube satellite on board Europe’s first commercial returnable spacecraft, Phoenix. If all goes to plan, it will orbit the Earth for around three hours before falling back to Earth off the coast of Portugal. The experiment will be retrieved by a recovery vessel and sent back to the lab in London to be examined.

The data they gather will inform the construction of a larger, better bioreactor which the scientists will send into space next year, according to Dr Ledesma-Amaro.

The problem, though, is that the brick-coloured goo, which is dried into a powder, looks distinctly unappetising – even less appetising than the freeze-dried fare that astronauts currently have to put up with.

That is where Imperial College’s master chef comes in. Jakub Radzikowski is the culinary education designer tasked with turning chemistry into cuisine.

He isn’t allowed to use lab grown ingredients to make dishes for people just yet, because regulatory approval is still pending. But he’s getting a head start. For now, instead of lab-grown ingredients, Jakub is using starches and proteins from naturally occurring fungi to develop his recipes. He tells me all sorts of dishes will be possible, once he gets the go-ahead to use lab-grown ingredients.

“We want to create food that is familiar to astronauts who are from different parts of the world so that it can provide comfort.

“We can create anything from French, Chinese, Indian. It will be possible to replicate any kind of cuisine in space.”

Today, Jakub is trying out a new recipe of spicy dumplings and dipping sauce. He tells me that I am allowed to try them out, but taster-in-chief is someone far more qualified: Helen Sharman, the UK’s first astronaut, who also has a PhD in chemistry.

We tasted the steaming dumplings together.

My view: “They are absolutely gorgeous!”

Dr Sharman’s expert view, not dissimilar: “You get a really strong blast from the flavour. It is really delicious and very moreish,” she beamed.

“I would love to have had something like this. When I was in space, I had really long-life stuff: tins, freeze dried packets, tubes of stuff. It was fine, but not tasty.”

Dr Sharman’s more important observation was about the science. Lab-grown food, she said, could potentially be better for astronauts, as well as reduce costs to the levels required to make long-term off-world habitation viable.

Research on the ISS has shown that the biochemistry of astronauts’ bodies changes during long duration space missions: their hormone balance and iron levels alter, and they lose calcium from their bones. Astronauts take supplements to compensate, but lab-grown food could in principle be tweaked with the extra ingredients already built in, says Dr Sharman.

“Astronauts tend to lose weight because they are not eating as much because they don’t have the variety and interest in their diet,” she told me.

“So, astronauts might be more open to having something that has been cooked from scratch and a feeling that you are really eating wholesome food.”

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As the threat posed by US President Donald Trump tops Canada’s federal election agenda, the issue of the country’s contribution to global warming has been largely overshadowed.

The two main contenders are pushing plans for new energy infrastructure as the country seeks to pivot away from its reliance on the US.

Mark Carney’s Liberals are promising to make Canada a global superpower in both conventional and green energy. The Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre want to invigorate the oil and gas sector and scrap the industrial carbon tax.

It’s a big shift from the 2021 election, when the environment topped the list of voter concerns.

In that vote, there was a consensus between the two major parties that Canada should rapidly transition to a green economy, with a net-zero emissions law passed in June of that year.

That sense of unity is now long gone.

Carney, who became leader of the Liberals and prime minister in early March, has a long track record as an international champion of climate change.

As well as being a governor of the Bank of England, he was a UN Special Envoy on climate action and finance and was co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, one of the big outcomes of COP26.

However, his first action as prime minister was to repeal the consumer carbon levy.

The tax – a signature climate policy of the governing Liberals – was introduced in 2019, and placed an added charge on consumers using coal, oil or gas products.

It was unpopular, and for the Conservatives it became an easy target of blame for the rising cost of living in recent years. Poilievre even sought to paint his rival as “Carbon Tax Carney”.

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Some observers believe that cancelling the tax was a smart political move, others feel it was a mistake.

“By making one of your first moves the removal of the carbon price, you’re accepting this narrative that climate change policy costs us too much money and isn’t good for us, when, in fact, that is not the case,” said Catherine Abreu, who is director of the International Climate Politics Hub and a member of Canada’s Net Zero Advisory Body.

“I think there’s a missed opportunity here to set a new narrative framework around this in the election.”

Carney’s election pitch on energy is to turn Canada into “a world leading superpower in both clean and conventional energy”.

He is emphasising his pragmatic approach, and his campaign talks about fast-tracking green energy projects and encouraging green transport and buildings, without giving too many details. He has also called for investment in technologies like carbon capture.

There are other important factors that have helped cool some of the Carney climate rhetoric.

Opinion polls indicate that, since late 2023, Canadian concerns over the climate fell as worries over rising prices, energy and housing costs came to the fore.

The war in Ukraine has also put new emphasis on the country’s bountiful natural resources in oil, gas and critical minerals.

“We have had a parade of geopolitical allies turning up on our doorstep saying, we want your rocks, we want Canada to be the geopolitically secure primary resource commodity provider, in place of Russia,” said Mark Winfield, a professor in the faculty of environmental and urban change at Toronto’s York University.

“And that’s created another sort of dynamic in all of this, which was not present in previous elections.”

Pierre Poilievre is the man seeking to replace Carney as PM.

He is running on cost of living issues, and advocating for tougher policies on law and order and what he considers “woke” cultural issues.

Poilievre, whose party has a strong voter base in energy-rich regions of the country, is pushing for a major expansion of the oil and gas industries and the removal of the carbon tax on industry.

While he has remained tight-lipped on whether he supports Canada’s net-zero goals, he has argued that it would be better for the world if India and other Asian countries were to replace “dirty coal” with cleaner Canadian oil and gas.

According to Prof Winfield, the Conservative proposals to boost oil and gas is likely to prove attractive to voters, even if the merits of expanding production don’t stand up to scrutiny.

He told the BBC it’s more “at the in-principal level as a response to Trump, as opposed to any real thinking through of what are the implications on climate, and whether this is actually economically viable”.

Regardless of climate or energy, the key question in the minds of voters in this election is which leader is best placed to deal with the combative US president.

That is especially important when it comes to the oil and gas industry.

Canada is America’s largest foreign supplier of oil, with around 90% of crude production heading south of the border, and the impact of energy tariffs could well be disastrous for jobs and the economy.

“Our relationship with the US has completely changed,” Carney said last week in the first of two election debates.

“The pipelines are a national security problem for us.”

That concern over US dependence has revived interest in pipelines that would move oil and gas from the western provinces, where they are mainly produced, to the east, where they could be exported to new overseas markets.

A previous attempt called the Energy East pipeline was shelved in 2017 due to a number of factors, including fierce opposition from some regions of the country and regulatory hurdles.

In this campaign, both the Liberals and Conservatives have promised to fast track “energy corridors”, though Carney has flip-flopped on his support for pipelines, knowing they are deeply unpopular with environmentalists.

He is trying to walk a fine line between defending Canada as a nation under threat from Trump, and taking action on a warming climate.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada reported that in 2024, there were C$8.5bn ($6.1bn; £4.6bn) in weather-related insured losses, triple the figure for 2023.

And while the two election frontrunners are advocating a major role for fossil fuels in Canada’s economy, this approach will clash head on with the country’s climate commitments.

Yves-François Blanchet, leader of the Bloc Québécois, a federal party based in Quebec, has accused the pair of being in a “denial situation about climate change”.

“I’m sorry to crash your party guys, but you are telling fairy tales” about clean oil and gas, he said in last week’s debates.

Canada has promised on the international stage to curb carbon emissions by 40-45% by 2030 based on the levels in 2005.

As of 2023, carbon output was only down 8.5%.

Whoever wins the election will have a real challenge to square that circle.

Canadians go to the polls on 28 April.

Films made with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) will be able to win top awards at the Oscars, according to its organisers.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued new rules on Monday which said the use of AI and other digital tools would “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination”.

Generative AI – which can create text, images, audio and video in response to simple text prompts – helped to produce some of the films awarded top industry accolades in March.

But the Academy said it would still consider human involvement when selecting its winners.

The Academy said its new language around eligibility for films made using generative AI tools was recommended by its Science and Technology Council.

Under further rule changes announced on Monday, Academy members must now watch all nominated films in each category in order to be able to take part in the final round of voting, which decides upon winners.

The use of AI in film became a hot topic after Adrian Brody took home the award for Best Actor for his role in The Brutalist at this year’s Oscars ceremony in March.

The movie used generative AI to improve the actor’s accent when he spoke Hungarian.

It then emerged similar voice-cloning technology was used to enhance singing voices in the Oscar-winning musical Emilia Perez.

The technology’s ability to quickly alter or match the tone and style of an artist, or perform edits such as subtly changing someone’s appearance, has helped it become more popular in the production of music and film.

• What is AI and how do programmes like ChatGPT work?

But AI use remains controversial, and artists and actors have voiced concerns over the material used to train such tools and its impact upon their livelihoods.

Actors and screenwriters previously highlighted fears about losing work to AI during the 2023 strikes in Hollywood.

“If you can take my face, my body and my voice and make me say or do something that I had no choice about, that’s not a good thing,” actress Susan Sarandon told the BBC from a picket line.

And screenwriters are concerned studios would seek to cut costs and save time by using tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT for tasks such as researching, treatment and script writing, instead of humans.

Safeguards around the use of AI were established as part of the agreements reached between unions and studios that marked the end of the strikes.

But while some actors have seemingly embraced the technology, others, such as Scarlett Johansson, have issued warnings about its potential to allow abuse of their image or likeness.

Animators told the BBC in 2024 generative AI tools were not yet good enough to be able to replicate the quality of their work – certainly not to an award-winning standard.

“It’s like having a bad writer help you,” said Jonathan Kendrick, co-founder and chairman of global streaming service Rokit Flix.

“Sure it will get an outline done, but if you need something with emotional weight, an AI isn’t going to get you an Oscar.”

Indian yoga guru Baba Ramdev has told a Delhi court that he will take down adverts in which he made controversial remarks about a rival firm’s drink, criticised by a judge as “indefensible”.

Ramdev alleged that some brands used their profits to build mosques and madrassas in a video promoting a sweet drink made by his company Patanjali.

He did not name the brand, but it was widely seen to be a reference to Rooh Afza, a popular drink made for more than a century by Hamdard Laboratories, an Islamic charitable organisation.

The video went viral, sparking outrage. Hamdard also filed a case, asking for the advertisements to be removed.

Rooh Afza is a non-alcoholic sweet drink in syrup form which is popular in South Asian countries, including India and Pakistan, and is usually referred to as sherbet. The syrup, introduced in 1906 by Hamdard, is usually mixed with milk or water and is very popular among Muslims breaking their fast during the month of Ramadan.

In the video, Ramdev also used the phrase “sherbet jihad” – a play on terms like “love jihad”, used by radical Hindu groups to accuse Muslim men of converting Hindu women by marriage. In this case, it is appears to be suggesting Muslims are profiting from money spent by Hindus.

On Tuesday, a judge in the Delhi high court criticised Ramdev’s remarks, calling them “indefensible”.

“It shocks the conscience of the court,” Justice Amit Bansal said, according to legal website LiveLaw.

The court also asked Ramdev to file an affidavit within five days, saying that he would not issue any such statements, advertisements, or social media posts in the future. The next hearing is on 1 May.

Hamdard lawyer Mukul Rohatgi said that the case went beyond criticism of a product and represented a “communal divide”. He also called Ramdev’s comments “hate speech”.

Rajiv Nayar, who represented Ramdev and Patanjali, said that his client was not against any religion and that the advertisements would be removed.

Ramdev shot to fame in the early 2000s with his televised yoga classes. He soon amassed a huge following and was praised for guiding people towards a healthy lifestyle.

In 2006, along with his close aide Acharya Balkrishna, Ramdev launched Patanjali Ayurveda to sell herbal medicines. The company now sells a range of products from flour and soaps to toothpastes and instant noodles.

This is not the first time the guru has come under fire from the courts.

Last year, the Indian Supreme Court ordered him to apologise for falsely claiming that his company’s products could “cure” serious illnesses.

The court also banned the ads, saying the yoga guru was spreading misinformation and misleading consumers with his remarks about modern medicine.

Burkina Faso’s military government has said it foiled a “major plot” to overthrow junta leader Capt Ibrahim Traoré, with the army alleging the plotters were based in neighbouring Ivory Coast.

Security Minister Mahamadou Sana said the coup attempt was led by current and former soldiers working with “terrorist leaders”. The intention was to attack the presidential palace last week, he added.

The aim of the plan was to “sow total chaos, and place the country under the supervision of an international organisation”, Sana said on state television on Monday.

It is the latest of several claims of attempts to remove the junta leader who seized power in 2022 amid increasing militant attacks.

Burkina Faso, like its Sahel neighbours, has been battling armed jihadist groups, with an estimated 40% of the country under their control.

Despite promises by Capt Traoré’s military government to improve security and even seeking new security partnerships with Russia, the situation remains dire with frequent attacks from insurgents.

• The region with more ‘terror deaths’ than rest of world combined

In this latest coup attempt, which happened last week but details of which have only just been released, Sana said the plotters attempted to use Burkinabe religious and traditional leaders to sway army officers into backing the plan.

“The manoeuvre was to culminate, according to the terrorist plotters’ plan, on Wednesday 16 April, 2025 in an assault on the presidency of (Burkina) Faso by a group of soldiers recruited by the nation’s enemies,” he said.

“The brains outside the country are all located in Ivory Coast,” he added, naming in particular two former army officers, believed to be behind the plot.

He said “sensitive information was passed on to “terrorists” to increase attacks on the military and civilians and “incite a revolt against the authorities”.

Last week, several military personnel, including two officers, were arrested for planning to “destabilise” the government, security sources told the AFP news agency.

The Ivorian authorities have not yet commented on claims it hosted the plotters but the Burkinabe junta has often blamed its southern neighbour of supporting its opponents in exile.

The latest claim comes months after Ouagadougou said it thwarted another “destabilisation” plot against the junta last November.

Burkina Faso, along with two other military-led states – Mali and Niger, has broken away from the regional West African bloc, Ecowas, to form a new alliance.

They have cut ties with former colonial power France and allied with Russia instead.

• Capt Ibrahim Traoré: From shy schoolboy to military leader
• Why Russia’s Africa propaganda warrior was sent home
• Gruesome machete video prompts Burkina Faso investigation
• Junta chiefs ‘turn their backs’ on West Africa bloc

India and the US need to work together successfully for a “prosperous and peaceful” 21st Century, US Vice-President JD Vance said in a speech calling for closer ties between the countries across sectors.

Vance, who is on a four-day visit to India, was speaking at a programme in the western city of Jaipur.

“But I also believe that if we fail to work together successfully, the 21st Century could be a very dark time for all of humanity,” he added.

The vice-president’s remarks came a day after he met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and both countries said they had made progress in negotiating a bilateral trade deal which Delhi hopes will help it avoid higher tariffs.

India is among a number of countries rushing to negotiate trade deals with the US during President Donald Trump’s 90-day pause on higher tariffs, which ends on 9 July.

India was set to face 27% US tariffs before the pause was announced. Since then, Delhi and Washington have been working towards an early conclusion of trade negotiations.

In his speech in Jaipur, Vance said that the two countries had finalised the terms of reference for the negotiation.

“This is a vital step toward realising President Trump and Prime Minister Modi’s vision because it sets a roadmap toward a final deal between our nations,” Vance said.

He also called Modi a “tough negotiator” and someone “who drives a hard bargain”, drawing applause from the audience.

Modi and Trump share a warm personal relationship: the Indian prime minister was among the first global leaders to visit Trump after his second term began. But the US president has repeatedly taken aim at India’s high tariffs, branding it a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties.

Even in the statement issued on Monday after Vance’s meeting with Modi, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer highlighted the “serious lack of reciprocity in the trade relationship with India”.

India has already cut tariffs on a number of goods in the past few months and is reportedly considering more wide-ranging cuts to pacify Trump. But sectors like agriculture – where Washington wants greater access, but India fiercely protects – are still sticking points.

Vance also said in Jaipur that the US is seeking to sell more energy and defence equipment to Delhi. On Monday, in addition to trade, the two leaders had also discussed cooperation in defence, strategic technologies and energy.

• Trump wants India to buy US corn – but here’s why it probably won’t
• China warns nations against ‘appeasing’ US in trade deals

The Indian prime minister also said after the meeting that he was looking forward to welcoming Trump to India this year. Delhi is hosting the Quad summit later this year and the US president is expected to attend it.

The bilateral meeting was followed by delegation-level talks and a dinner hosted by Modi for Vance and his family.

Vance arrived in India on Monday morning, accompanied by his wife Usha and their three children. Usha Vance’s parents migrated to the US from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, and some media reports have said that Vance and his wife are keen to introduce their children to their Indian heritage.

Photographs of the three children wearing Indian-style outfits – the two boys in kurta-pyjamas and three-year-old Mirabel wearing a lehenga – on their arrival in India were splashed across Indian newspapers and websites.

The rest of Vance’s visit is largely personal. After the meeting with Modi, the family visited Jaipur city, where they visited the historic Amer Fort on Tuesday.

The family is also set to visit the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra city on Wednesday before flying to the US the next day.

A swimmer is missing following an extremely rare shark attack off the coast of northern Israel on Monday.

It happened in the sea at Hadera, about 40km (25 miles) north of Tel Aviv.

The incident was witnessed by people on Olga Beach, who can be heard yelling in shock in footage posted on social media.

Sharks are known to gather there where warm water is discharged by a local power plant, and especially at this time of year, but they are usually harmless.

There have been no recorded fatal shark attacks in waters off Israel since the country was founded in 1948.

Police have closed the beach and a search is under way for the missing man.

In video shared online, a man can be seen at a distance of what appears to be a few hundred feet out to sea. He is seen flailing around as people on the beach shout that he is being attacked.

“I was in the water, I saw blood and there were screams,” a witness, Eliya Motai, told Ynet news site.

“I was a few meters from shore,” he said. “It’s terrifying. We were here yesterday and saw the sharks circling us.”

Dusky and sandbar sharks are known to cluster in the area, which is dominated by the Orot Rabin power station, the largest in Israel.

They are attracted by the water warmed up by the plant and by fish which are carried down there from a nearby stream.

Monday’s incident is only the fourth documented shark attack in Israel’s history, according to YNet.

China has executed a man for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese boy last September, the Japanese embassy in China has told the BBC.

Zhong Changchun was sentenced to death in January for attacking the boy, who had been walking to a Japanese school in south-eastern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The case had sent shockwaves through both countries and fuelled diplomatic tensions amid allegations of it being a xenophobic attack.

“The Government of Japan considers the murder of a completely innocent child to be an unforgivable crime, and we take this execution with the utmost solemnity,” the Japanese embassy said in its statement to the BBC.

“In light of this incident, the Japanese government will continue to take all possible safety measures and strongly urge the Chinese side to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in China.”

It said that it had been informed of the execution by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The incident heightened fears among Japanese living in China and prompted Japanese companies including Toyota to ask their staff to take precautions. Others, like Panasonic, offered employees free flights home.

The verdict on Zhong’s case made no mention of Japan, Japanese officials previously said. Kenji Kanasugi, Japan’s ambassador to China said Zhong had requested to speak to the victim’s family, but did not say if he had been targeting Japanese nationals.

The incident has also shone a light on the unchecked nationalism on Chinese social media, which has fuelled anti-foreigner sentiment in recent years.

Online commentators noted that the schoolboy’s killing had happened on a politically sensitive date – 18 September, the anniversary of an incident that led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in China in the early 1930s.

Historical grievances have long overshadowed political tensions between China and Japan. China has long demanded an apology from Japan for its colonial and wartime aggression in the early and mid 20 Century. It has also accused Japan of glossing over its brutal military actions in China in its history textbooks.

The stabbing also came amid a spate of high-profile attacks on foreigners in China, including the stabbing of four American teachers in Jilin.

Last June, a man attacked a Japanese mother and her child at a bus stop in Suzhou but ended up killing a Chinese woman trying to protect them. The man has also been executed, Japanese officials said last week.

Georgian-Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli, known for his gigantic and often controversial monuments, has died aged 91.

The Tbilisi-born sculptor, painter and architect divided opinion with a series of large-scale projects in Moscow, including a massive 98m (321ft) monument to Tsar Peter the Great, who famously detested the city.

Rising to fame during the Soviet era, Tsereteli led the team of designers for Moscow’s 1980 Olympic Games, and later built large sculptures in cities across the world.

He was also known for his closeness to the Russian political elite, once saying that Vladimir Putin’s “healthy soul” had inspired him to make a bronze study of the Russian president.

Tsereteli was a close friend of Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and his position as part of the Soviet Union’s upper crust allowed him to travel outside of the country, where he met Pablo Picasso in Paris.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Tsereteli was “an artist of world renown, a public figure who knew no boundaries or obstacles in strengthening peace and supporting creativity” in a social media post after his death.

“He will live not only in our hearts, but also in his works,” she added.

During a row over the Peter the Great monument’s future in 2010, several Moscow residents told the BBC they hated the sculpture, which at 98m is slightly taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Despite the sometimes frosty reception his works received, Tsereteli was widely respected throughout the art world, and served as the president of the Russian Academy of Arts.

His enormous constructions can be found in cities around the globe, including a monument to Christopher Columbus in Seville, Spain, and the Chronicle of Georgia monument in his hometown of Tbilisi.

They also include the ten-storey Tear of Grief monument, commemorating victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks, which stands in New Jersey. It was presented to the US by the Russian government.

Another sculpture, Good Defeats Evil, sits at the UN Headquarters in New York. It depicts St George slaying a dragon, which lies among broken fragments of US and Soviet missiles.

The work represents “the vanquishing of nuclear war through the historic treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States”, according to the UN website.

In 2006, Tsereteli caused controversy in a small French town, which erected his huge 8.75m-tall (29 ft) bronze statue of Pope John Paul II. Opponents said the statue violated France’s secularity laws.

At 110m (360ft), Tsereteli’s colossal monument to Christopher Columbus’s first voyage, Birth of the New World, is one of the tallest sculptures on earth. It was eventually constructed in Puerto Rico, after several US cities rejected it.

He also made smaller bronze studies of major figures including Princess Diana and Putin.

Tsereteli was also a painter – notably of flowers – and an architect who took a key role in reconstructing Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

At least two dozen people have been killed after gunmen opened fire on a group of domestic tourists visiting a popular beauty spot in Indian-administered Kashmir, authorities have told the BBC.

The attack took place in Pahalgam, a picturesque town in the Himalayas often described as the “Switzerland of India”.

The region’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, said the attack was “much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians in recent years”. Reports suggest that there are a large number of wounded, with some in critical condition.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the perpetrators would “be brought to justice”.

“Our resolve to fight terrorism is unshakeable and it will get even stronger,” Modi wrote in a statement on X.

Modi added that Home Minister Amit Shah would travel to Srinagar, Kashmir’s largest city, to hold an emergency security meeting.

The region’s Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, said the army and police had been deployed to the scene.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. There has been a long-running insurgency in the Muslim-majority region since 1989, although violence has waned in recent years.

The attack took place in Baisaran, a mountain-top meadow three miles (5km) from Pahalgam.

Vehicles are unable to reach the area where the shooting occurred, Inspector General of Jammu and Kashmir Police Vidi Kumar Birdi told BBC Hindi.

A tourist from Gujarat, who was part of a group that was fired upon, said that chaos broke out after the sudden attack, and everybody started running, crying and shouting.

Video footage shared by Indian media outlets appears to show Indian troops running towards the scene of the attack, while in other footage victims can be heard saying that the gunmen had singled out non-Muslims.

Footage on social media, which has not been verified by the BBC, appears to show bodies lying on a meadow with people crying and asking for help.

Police said multiple tourists had been taken to hospital with gunshot wounds. The area has been cordoned off with soldiers stopping vehicles at checkpoints while a search is underway to find the perpetrators.

Since the 1990s, an armed separatist insurgency against Indian rule in the region has claimed tens of thousands of lives, including those of civilians and security forces.

The Himalayan region was divided following India’s independence from Britain, partition and the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

The two nuclear-armed states both claim the region in its entirety and have fought two wars and a limited conflict over it in the decades since.

Some 500,000 Indian soldiers are permanently deployed in the territory.

While fighting has decreased since Modi revoked Kashmir’s partial autonomy in 2019, there are still incidents of violence.

The last major attack on civilians occurred in June 2024 when nine people were killed and 33 injured after militants opened fire on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims.

In 2019, a suicide bombing in Indian-administered Kashmir killed at least 46 soldiers and prompted Indian airstrikes on targets in Pakistan.

Pahalgam is a popular tourist destination, both domestically and internationally, and in recent years the government has attempted to encourage further tourism to the region.

Around 3.5 million tourists visited Kashmir in 2024, according to official figures.

Who will be the next pope? The decision could have a profound impact on the Catholic Church and the world’s 1.4 billion baptised Roman Catholics.

It also promises to be a highly unpredictable and open process for a host of reasons.

The College of Cardinals will meet in conclave in the Sistine Chapel to debate and then vote for their preferred candidates until a single name prevails.

With 80% of the cardinals appointed by Pope Francis himself, they are not only electing a pope for the first time, but will offer a broad global perspective.

For the first time in history, fewer than half of those given a vote will be European.

And although the college may be dominated by his appointments, they were not exclusively “progressive” or “traditionalist”.

For those reasons, it is harder than ever to predict who will be elected the next Pope.

Could the cardinals elect an African or an Asian Pope, or might they favour one of the old hands of the Vatican administration?

Here is a selection of names being mentioned as Francis’s potential successor, and we expect more to emerge in the coming days.

Pietro Parolin

Nationality: Italian

Age: 70

Softly spoken Italian Cardinal Parolin was the Vatican’s secretary of state under Pope Francis – making him the Pope’s chief adviser. The secretary of state also heads the Roman Curia, the Church’s central administration.

Having acted effectively as deputy pope, he could be considered a frontrunner.

He is viewed by some as more likely to prioritise diplomacy and a global outlook than the purity of Catholic dogma. His critics consider that a problem, while his supporters see a strength.

But he has been critical of the legalisation of same-sex marriage around the world, calling a landmark 2015 vote in favour in the Republic of Ireland “a defeat for humanity”.

The bookmakers may back him but Cardinal Parolin will be well aware of an old Italian saying that stresses the uncertainty of the pope-picking process: “He who enters a conclave as a pope, leaves it as a cardinal.”

Some 213 of the previous 266 popes have been Italian and even though there has not been an Italian pope in 40 years, the pivot of the upper echelons of the Church away from Italy and Europe may mean there may not be another for now.

Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle

Nationality: Filipino

Age: 67

Could Cardinal Tagle become the first Asian Pope? Unlike Parolin, he has decades of pastoral experience – meaning he has been an active Church leader among the people as opposed to a diplomat for the Vatican or cloistered expert on Church law.

The Church is massively influential in the Philippines, where about 80% of the population is Catholic. The country currently has a record five members of the College of Cardinals – which could make for a significant lobbying faction if they all back Cardinal Tagle.

He is considered a moderate within the Catholic definition, and has been dubbed the “Asian Francis” because of a dedication to social issues and sympathy for migrants that he shared with the late pope.

He has opposed abortion rights, calling them “a form of murder” – a position in line with the Church’s broader stance that life begins at conception. He has also spoken against euthanasia.

But in 2015 when he was Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Tagle called for the Church to reassess its “severe” stance towards gay people, divorcees and single mothers, saying past harshness had done lasting harm and left people feeling “branded”, and that each individual deserved compassion and respect.

The cardinal was considered a candidate to be pope as far back as the 2013 conclave in which Francis was elected.

Asked a decade ago how he viewed suggestions he could be next, he replied: “I treat it like a joke! It’s funny.”

Fridolin Ambongo Besungu

Nationality: Congolese

Age: 65

It’s very possible the next Pope could be from Africa, where the Catholic Church continues to add millions of members. Cardinal Ambongo is a leading candidate, hailing from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

He has been Archbishop of Kinshasa for seven years, and was appointed cardinal by Pope Francis.

He is a cultural conservative, opposing blessings for same-sex marriage, stating that “unions of persons of the same sex are considered contradictory to cultural norms and intrinsically evil”.

Though Christianity is the majority religion in the DRC, Christians there have faced death and persecution at the hands of jihadist group Islamic State and associated rebels. Against that backdrop, Cardinal Ambongo is viewed as a fierce advocate for the Church.

But in a 2020 interview, he spoke in favour of religious plurality, saying: “Let Protestants be Protestants and Muslims be Muslims. We are going to work with them. But everyone has to keep their own identity.”

Such comments could lead some cardinals to wonder if he fully embraces their sense of mission – in which Catholics hope to spread the Church’s word throughout the world.

Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson

Nationality: Ghanaian

Age: 76

If chosen by his peers, the influential Cardinal Turkson would likewise have the distinction of being the first African pope for 1,500 years.

Like Cardinal Ambongo, he has claimed not to want the job. “I’m not sure whether anyone does aspire to become a Pope,” he told the BBC in 2013.

Asked if Africa had a good case to provide the next Pope based on the Church’s growth on the continent, he said he felt the Pope shouldn’t be chosen based on statistics, because “those types of considerations tend to muddy the waters”.

He was the first Ghanaian to be made a cardinal, back in 2003 under Pope John Paul II.

Like Cardinal Tagle, Cardinal Turkson was considered a potential Pope a decade later, when Francis was chosen. In fact, bookmakers made him the favourite ahead of voting.

A guitarist who once played in a funk band, Cardinal Turkson is known for his energetic presence.

Like many cardinals from Africa, he leans conservative. However, he has opposed the criminalisation of gay relationships in African countries including his native Ghana.

In a BBC interview in 2023, while Ghana’s parliament was discussing a bill imposing harsh penalties on LGBTQ+ people, Turkson said he felt homosexuality should not be treated as an offence.

Back in 2012, he was accused of making fear-mongering predictions over the spread of Islam in Europe at a Vatican conference of bishops, for which he later apologised.

The US Commerce Department has announced plans to impose tariffs of up to 3,521% on imports of solar panels from four South East Asian countries.

It comes after an investigation that began a year ago when several major solar equipment producers asked the administration of then-President Joe Biden to protect their US operations.

The proposed levies – targeting companies in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam – are in response to allegations of subsidies from China and the dumping of unfairly cheap products in the US market.

A separate US government agency, the International Trade Commission, is due to reach a final decision on the new tariffs in June.

The countervailing and anti-dumping duties, as these tariffs are known, vary between companies and the countries their products are made in.

Some solar equipment exporters in Cambodia face the highest duties of 3,521% because of what was seen as a lack of cooperation with the Commerce Department investigation.

Products made in Malaysia by Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar faced some of the lowest duties of just over 41%.

Another China-based firm, Trina Solar, faces tariffs of 375% for the products it makes in Thailand.

Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment from BBC News.

In recent years, many Chinese firms have moved operations to South East Asia in a bid to avoid tariffs imposed since the start of US President Donald Trump’s first term.

The US Commerce Department’s findings were welcomed by the American Alliance for Solar Manufacturing Trade Committee – a group of manufacturers that called on the US government to launch the investigation.

“This is a decisive victory for American manufacturing and confirms what we’ve long known: that Chinese-headquartered solar companies have been cheating the system,” said Tim Brightbill, lead counsel to the Alliance.

In 2023, America imported almost $12bn (£8.9bn) in solar equipment from the four countries, according to US Census Bureau figures.

While the planned tariffs are likely to help US solar panel manufacturers, they could also mean extra costs for businesses and consumers who have benefited from the availability of cheaper solar products.

The levies would be imposed on top of other tariffs already rolled out by the Trump administration.

The planned tariffs were announced just days after Chinese President Xi Jinping completed a tour of Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia.

The trip was aimed to boost ties with the region and encourage those nations to resist what he called “unilateral bullying” by the US.

Trump has so far imposed taxes of up to 145% on imports from China. Other countries are now facing a blanket US tariff of 10% until July.

His administration said last week that when the new tariffs are added on to existing ones, the levies on some Chinese goods could reach 245%.

China has hit back with a 125% tax on products from the US and vowed to “fight to the end”.

His ascension to the papacy heralded many firsts.

Francis was the first Pope from the Americas or the Southern Hemisphere. Not since Syrian-born Gregory III died in 741 had there been a non-European Bishop of Rome.

He was also the first Jesuit to be elected to the throne of St Peter – Jesuits were historically looked on with suspicion by Rome.

His predecessor, Benedict XVI, was the first Pope to retire voluntarily in almost 600 years and for almost a decade the Vatican Gardens hosted two popes.

Many Catholics had assumed the new pontiff would be a younger man – but Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina was already in his seventies when he became Pope in 2013.

He had presented himself as a compromise candidate: appealing to conservatives with orthodox views on sexual matters while attracting the reformers with his liberal stance on social justice.

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It was hoped his unorthodox background would help rejuvenate the Vatican and reinvigorate its holy mission.

But within the Vatican bureaucracy some of Francis’s attempts at reform met with resistance and his predecessor, who died in 2022, remained popular among traditionalists.

From the moment of his election, Francis indicated he would do things differently. He received his cardinals informally and standing – rather than seated on the papal throne.

On 13 March 2013, Pope Francis emerged on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square.

Clad simply in white, he bore a new name which paid homage to St Francis of Assisi, the 13th Century preacher and animal lover.

He was determined to favour humility over pomp and grandeur. He shunned the papal limousine and insisted on sharing the bus taking other cardinals home.

The new Pope set a moral mission for the 1.2 billion-strong flock. “Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor,” he remarked.

His last act as head of the Catholic Church was to appear on Easter Sunday on the balcony of St Peter’s Square, waving at thousands of worshippers after weeks in hospital with double pneumonia.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 17 December 1936 – the eldest of five children. His parents had fled their native Italy to escape the evils of fascism.

He enjoyed tango dancing and became a supporter of his local football club, San Lorenzo.

He was lucky to escape with his life after an initial and serious bout of pneumonia, undergoing an operation to remove part of a lung. It would leave him susceptible to infection throughout his life.

As an elderly man he also suffered from pain in his right knee, which he described as a “physical humiliation”.

The young Bergoglio worked as a nightclub bouncer and floor sweeper, before graduating as a chemist.

At a local factory, he worked closely with Esther Ballestrino, who campaigned against Argentina’s military dictatorship. She was tortured, her body never found.

He became a Jesuit, studied philosophy and taught literature and psychology. Ordained a decade later, he won swift promotion, becoming provincial superior for Argentina in 1973.

Some felt he failed to do enough to oppose the generals of Argentina’s brutal military regime.

He was accused of involvement in the military kidnapping of two priests during Argentina’s Dirty War, a period when thousands of people were tortured or killed, or disappeared, from 1976 to 1983.

The two priests were tortured but eventually found alive – heavily sedated and semi-naked.

Bergoglio faced charges of failing to inform the authorities that their work in poor neighbourhoods had been endorsed by the Church. This, if true, had abandoned them to the death squads. It was an accusation he flatly denied, insisting he had worked behind the scenes to free them.

Asked why he did not speak out, he reportedly said it was too difficult. In truth – at 36 years old – he found himself in a chaos that would have tried the most seasoned leader. He certainly helped many who tried to flee the country.

He also had differences with fellow Jesuits who believed Bergoglio lacked interest in liberation theology – that synthesis of Christian thought and Marxist sociology which sought to overthrow injustice. He, by contrast, preferred a gentler form of pastoral support.

At times, the relationship bordered on estrangement. When he sought initially to become Pope in 2005 some Jesuits breathed a sigh of relief.

He was named Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires in 1992 and then became Archbishop.

Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal in 2001 and he took up posts in the Church’s civil service, the Curia.

He cultivated a reputation as a man of simple tastes, eschewing many of the trappings of a senior cleric. He usually flew economy and preferred to wear the black gown of a priest – rather than the red and purple of his new position.

In his sermons, he called for social inclusion and criticised governments that failed to pay attention to the poorest in society.

“We live in the most unequal part of the world,” he said, “which has grown the most, yet reduced misery the least.”

As Pope, he made great efforts to heal the thousand-year rift with the Eastern Orthodox Church. In recognition, for the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the Patriarch of Constantinople attended the installation of a new Bishop of Rome.

Francis worked with Anglicans, Lutherans and Methodists and persuaded the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to join him to pray for peace.

After attacks by Muslim militants, he said it was not right to identify Islam with violence. “If I speak of Islamic violence, then I have to speak of Catholic violence too,” he declared.

Politically, he allied himself with the Argentine government’s claim on the Falklands, telling a service: “We come to pray for those who have fallen, sons of the homeland who set out to defend their mother, the homeland, to claim the country that is theirs.”

And, as a Spanish-speaking Latin American, he provided a crucial service as mediator when the US government edged towards historic rapprochement with Cuba. It is difficult to imagine a European Pope playing such a critical diplomatic role.

On many of the Church’s teachings, Pope Francis was a traditionalist.

He was “as uncompromising as Pope John Paul II… on euthanasia, the death penalty, abortion, the right to life, human rights and the celibacy of priests”, according to Monsignor Osvaldo Musto, who was at seminary with him.

He said the Church should welcome people regardless of their sexual orientation, but insisted gay adoption was a form of discrimination against children.

There were warm words in favour of some kind of same-sex unions for gay couples, but Francis did not favour calling it marriage. This, he said, would be “an attempt to destroy God’s plan”.

Shortly after becoming Pope in 2013, he took part in an anti-abortion march in Rome – calling for rights of the unborn “from the moment of conception”.

He called on gynaecologists to invoke their consciences and sent a message to Ireland – as it held a referendum on the subject – begging people there to protect the vulnerable.

He resisted the ordination of women, declaring that Pope John Paul II had once and for all ruled out the possibility.

And, although he seemed at first to allow that contraception might be used to prevent disease, he praised Paul VI’s teaching on the subject – which warned it might reduce women to instruments of male satisfaction.

In 2015, Pope Francis told an audience in the Philippines that contraception involved “the destruction of the family through the privation of children”. It was not the absence of children itself that he saw as so damaging, but the wilful decision to avoid them.

The greatest challenge to his papacy, however, came on two fronts: from those who accused him of failing to tackle child abuse and from conservative critics who felt that he was diluting the faith. In particular, they had in mind his moves to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to take Communion.

Conservatives also adopted the issue of child abuse as a weapon in their long-running campaign.

In August 2018, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Apostolic Nuncio to the US, published an 11-page declaration of war. He released a letter describing a series of warnings made to the Vatican about the behaviour of a former cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.

It was alleged that McCarrick had been a serial abuser who attacked both adults and minors. The Pope, Archbishop Viganò said, had made him a “trusted councillor” despite knowing he was deeply corrupted. The solution was clear, he said: Pope Francis should resign.

“These homosexual networks,” the archbishop claimed, “act under the concealment of secrecy and lie with the power of octopus tentacles… and are strangling the entire Church.”

The ensuing row threatened to engulf the Church. McCarrick was eventually defrocked in February 2019, after an investigation by the Vatican.

During the Covid pandemic, Francis cancelled his regular appearances in St Peter’s Square – to prevent the virus circulating. In an important example of moral leadership, he also declared that being vaccinated was a universal obligation.

In 2022, he became the first Pope for more than a century to bury his predecessor – after Benedict’s death at the age of 95.

By now, he had his own health problems – with several hospitalisations. But Francis was determined to continue with his efforts to promote global peace and inter-religious dialogue.

In 2023, he made a pilgrimage to South Sudan, pleading with the country’s leaders to end conflict.

He appealed for an end to the “absurd and cruel war” in Ukraine, although he disappointed Ukrainians by appearing to swallow Russia’s propaganda message of having been provoked into its invasion.

And a year later, he embarked on an ambitious four-country, two-continent odyssey; with stops in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore.

In recent months, Francis had struggled with his health. In March 2025, he spent five weeks in hospital with pneumonia in both lungs.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio came to the throne of St Peter determined to change it.

There will be some who would have preferred a more liberal leader, and critics will point to his perceived weakness in confronting the institution’s legacy of clerical sexual abuse.

But change it, he did.

He appointed more than 140 cardinals from non-European countries and bequeaths his successor a Church that is far more global in outlook than the one he inherited.

And, to set an example, he was the no-frills Pope who elected not to live in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace – complete with Sistine Chapel – but in the modern block next door (which Pope John Paul II had built as a guest house).

He believed anything else would be vanity. “Look at the peacock,” he said, “it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth.”

He also hoped he could shake up the institution itself, enhancing the Church’s historic mission by cutting through internal strife, focusing on the poor and returning the Church to the people.

“We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a Church that is wrapped up in its own world,” he said shortly after his election.

“If I had to choose between a wounded Church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn Church, I would choose the first.”

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A swimmer is missing following an extremely rare shark attack off the coast of northern Israel on Monday.

It happened in the sea at Hadera, about 40km (25 miles) north of Tel Aviv.

The incident was witnessed by people on Olga Beach, who can be heard yelling in shock in footage posted on social media.

Sharks are known to gather there where warm water is discharged by a local power plant, and especially at this time of year, but they are usually harmless.

There have been no recorded fatal shark attacks in waters off Israel since the country was founded in 1948.

Police have closed the beach and a search is under way for the missing man.

In video shared online, a man can be seen at a distance of what appears to be a few hundred feet out to sea. He is seen flailing around as people on the beach shout that he is being attacked.

“I was in the water, I saw blood and there were screams,” a witness, Eliya Motai, told Ynet news site.

“I was a few meters from shore,” he said. “It’s terrifying. We were here yesterday and saw the sharks circling us.”

Dusky and sandbar sharks are known to cluster in the area, which is dominated by the Orot Rabin power station, the largest in Israel.

They are attracted by the water warmed up by the plant and by fish which are carried down there from a nearby stream.

Monday’s incident is only the fourth documented shark attack in Israel’s history, according to YNet.

The Vatican has released several photographs of Pope Francis lying in an open coffin in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta, his former residence.

We’ve taken a look at who was in the chapel and some of the symbolism on show in the images.

The most notable figure in the room is Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who is the Pope’s “camerlengo” or chamberlain and runs the Vatican until a new Pope is chosen. The cardinal – in red and cassock – is shown blessing the body of the late Pope during the rite of the declaration of death.

Pope Francis is dressed in red robes, holding a rosary and wearing the papal mitre – the large white ceremonial headdress. He is also wearing a simple silver ring.

During his inauguration, Pope Francis was given the Fisherman’s Ring – a symbol of his office – which Cardinal Farrell has the responsibility to destroy so it cannot be used by anyone else. Pope Francis sometimes used this ring during ceremonies but was more often seen using the simple silver ring adorned with a cross.

One of the significant changes in tradition is the coffin that Pope Francis will be buried in. The coffins used for previous papal burials consisted of three nesting coffins made of cypress, lead and oak – but Pope Francis asked to be buried in a simple wooden casket.

He will remain in the open coffin for the lying in state, whereas other popes have been laid out resting on cushions on a platform.

The chapel itself is nestled within the Casa Santa Marta, a residential building containing more than 100 simple rooms that was built in 1996.

Triangular shapes are present throughout the chapel, in the construction of the ceiling and on the floor tiles, representing the Holy Trinity – a key belief in Christianity where God exists as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

On the ceiling behind the coffin is an inscription in Latin, which translates as “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful”.

The Pope’s body is guarded by members of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. They have protected the Pope since 1506, when Julius II first hired Swiss mercenaries for his personal protection.

Pope Francis will stay in the chapel until Wednesday morning, when his body will be transferred to St Peter’s Basilica in a procession starting at 09:00 local time. From then, he will lie in an open casket in the basilica, where mourners can pay their respects ahead of his funeral on Saturday.

• LIVE UPDATES: Follow the latest after the Pope’s death
• IN PICTURES: Defining images of Pope Francis’s life
• PROFILE: Acting head of the Vatican Cardinal Kevin Farrell
• EXPLAINER: How the next pope is chosen

China has executed a man for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese boy last September, the Japanese embassy in China has told the BBC.

Zhong Changchun was sentenced to death in January for attacking the boy, who had been walking to a Japanese school in south-eastern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

The case had sent shockwaves through both countries and fuelled diplomatic tensions amid allegations of it being a xenophobic attack.

“The Government of Japan considers the murder of a completely innocent child to be an unforgivable crime, and we take this execution with the utmost solemnity,” the Japanese embassy said in its statement to the BBC.

“In light of this incident, the Japanese government will continue to take all possible safety measures and strongly urge the Chinese side to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals in China.”

It said that it had been informed of the execution by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The incident heightened fears among Japanese living in China and prompted Japanese companies including Toyota to ask their staff to take precautions. Others, like Panasonic, offered employees free flights home.

The verdict on Zhong’s case made no mention of Japan, Japanese officials previously said. Kenji Kanasugi, Japan’s ambassador to China said Zhong had requested to speak to the victim’s family, but did not say if he had been targeting Japanese nationals.

The incident has also shone a light on the unchecked nationalism on Chinese social media, which has fuelled anti-foreigner sentiment in recent years.

Online commentators noted that the schoolboy’s killing had happened on a politically sensitive date – 18 September, the anniversary of an incident that led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in China in the early 1930s.

Historical grievances have long overshadowed political tensions between China and Japan. China has long demanded an apology from Japan for its colonial and wartime aggression in the early and mid 20 Century. It has also accused Japan of glossing over its brutal military actions in China in its history textbooks.

The stabbing also came amid a spate of high-profile attacks on foreigners in China, including the stabbing of four American teachers in Jilin.

Last June, a man attacked a Japanese mother and her child at a bus stop in Suzhou but ended up killing a Chinese woman trying to protect them. The man has also been executed, Japanese officials said last week.

At midday on Monday, church bells across Italy began to toll. Pope Francis was dead.

Not even 24 hours had passed since he had made a surprise appearance on the balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square, blessing the 35,000 people gathered to celebrate Easter at the Vatican.

The Pope was breathing on his own, without oxygen tubes, despite being told by his doctors to spend two months convalescing after 38 days in hospital with double pneumonia.

Over the past two weeks Francis had done what he had always done, received visitors and met people from every walk of life.

When he appeared on Easter Sunday, the crowd below erupted in cheers as he appeared; then it fell silent.

“Dear brothers and sisters, I wish you a happy Easter,” he said, his voice heavy with effort.

They were to be his final words in public.

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“I think people could feel something – as if they could tell it was the last time they’d see him,” said Mauro, a Rome resident who was in St Peter’s Square for Easter Mass and had now returned to pay his respects.

“Usually everyone shouts ‘Long live the Pope!’… this time it was much quieter than usual, there was maybe more respect for his suffering.”

“He blessed us but his voice was a husk,” a man called Alberto told the BBC. “I think he was giving us his last goodbye.”

Doctors who treated Francis at Rome’s Gemelli hospital had prescribed a regimen of complete rest – but it was never likely that a typically active Pope who spent much of his papacy meeting people would keep to that.

Francis had already made it clear he wanted to be back in the Vatican in time for Easter, as soon as the specialists treating him explained that his health issues would not be resolved quickly.

For Christians, Easter is even more important than Christmas as it symbolises a core tenet of their faith – the resurrection of Christ, three days after his nailing to the cross.

Before he was discharged on 23 March, Francis waved to crowds from the hospital too, and then headed back to his quarters in the Casa Santa Marta guest house he had made his home.

His medical team said all he needed was oxygen, and convalescing there was better than hospital with all its infections.

Easter was just three weeks away and, as it approached, the Pope’s schedule became increasingly busy.

He met King Charles and Queen Camilla at the Casa San Marta and then appeared on the Vatican balcony for Palm Sunday four days later on 13 April, mingling with a crowd of 20,000 people in St Peter’s Square, against doctors’ advice.

But for the Pope, Easter was most important time of all.

• How the next Pope is chosen
• A vocal critic of the powerful whose influence was felt far beyond faith

Last Thursday, as he had done many times previously and as he used to do in his native Argentina before becoming Pope, he made a visit to the Regina Coeli jail in Rome where he spent half an hour meeting prisoners and he was greeted by applause from staff and guards as he arrived in a wheelchair.

In previous years he had washed inmates’ feet, mirroring what Jesus is said to have done with his disciples the night before his death.

“This year I’m unable to do that, but I can and want to still be near you,” he said in a feeble voice to the dozens of prisoners who had come to see him, and who cheered him on as he toured the jail.

“We are so lucky. Those on the outside don’t get to see him and we do,” one man told Italian media.

As he was leaving the prison, Francis was asked by a journalist how he would experience Easter this year.

“Whichever way I can,” he replied.

And, on Sunday, he kept his promise.

He held a short meeting with US Vice-President JD Vance before appearing before the crowds in St Peter’s Square as the crowd below erupted in cheers.

He made his final blessing – the Urbi et Orbi address in Latin, meaning “to the city and to the world”. Then, Archbishop Diego Ravelli read out a speech written by the Pope as Francis sat silently beside him.

Then, to everyone’s surprise, he descended down to St Peter’s Square, where he was driven around in an open-top popemobile – the distinctive little white Mercedes-Benz used by popes to meet crowds.

A camera followed him around as he raised his arm to bless the faithful lining the sunny square, and a few babies were brought up closer to him. It was the last time the world saw him alive.

Watching Francis’s blessing on Sunday, Alberto from Rome felt he would not last much longer, although the Pope’s death still came as a shock.

“I didn’t feel happy seeing him, I could tell he was in pain,” he said. “But it was an honour to see him one last time.”

Francis died early on Monday in his beloved Casa Santa Marta – a residenceof 100-odd simple rooms, run by nuns and open to pilgrims and visitors.

A little over two hours later, the cardinal chamberlain, or camerlengo, stood in the Casa Santa Marta and made the news public.

The Vatican said on Monday evening he had died of a stroke and irreversible heart failure.

The Pope’s rooms were a far cry from the opulence of the Vatican quarters typically destined to pontiffs, which Francis had turned down at the start of his papacy saying he felt the need to “live among people”.

“If I lived by myself, maybe even a bit in isolation, it would be of no use to me,” he said back then.

In the coming days, cardinals from across the world will be staying at Casa Santa Marta as they gather in Rome for the conclave that will choose Francis’ successor.

Outside, in the bright sunshine in St Peter’s Square, people mingled with priests and friars under the imposing basilica.

A group of nuns clad in grey and white glared at a man who, headphones in, was dancing around the square. “No respect,” they tutted.

The same large screens that broadcast the Pope’s blessing for Easter now displayed a photo of Francis smiling and a notice that a special rosary was being held for him 12 hours after his death.

It would allow Catholics near and far to pray for their Pope – and thank him for celebrating one last Easter with them.

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Megan Dixon was 13 years old when she started feeling unwell.

By 16, her health had deteriorated to such an extent that she was taken to hospital after losing the ability to speak. Doctors believed she may have had a stroke.

She had only been due to remain there for four days for tests, but came out two years later completely paralysed. Unable to walk, talk or open her eyes, she was told she would never move again.

Megan was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), which meant there was a problem with how her brain received and sent information to the rest of the body.

Having stayed in a neurological care home in Peterborough, she is now preparing to move into her own home with the hope of becoming a nail technician.

Megan said at the age of 18, when she moved to Eagle Wood Neurological Care Centre, she was “still just a baby”.

She had never been on her own before and had to move away from her family near Bath to receive the care she needed.

“It was not easy. I think it was a lot harder for my mum and dad to have to leave me there on my own, but I couldn’t do anything for myself. I was paralysed from the neck down,” she told the BBC.

“I couldn’t see, I couldn’t talk. I hate the word, but I was very vulnerable at the time.

“I started feeling poorly when I was 13. It started off very slowly, very gradually and then in 2021, things just declined rapidly.

“I was taken into hospital because they were concerned I had had a stroke, or something, because I lost the ability to talk.

“I was taken for four days of tests and came out of hospital two years later.”

Her illness was eventually diagnosed as FND.

“It stops the functioning of signals from the brain to your body from working properly and causes all sorts of neurological symptoms,” she said.

“I couldn’t do anything for myself, I lost the ability to talk.

“I couldn’t see, so I wasn’t able to open my eyes. My brain couldn’t register the difference between eyes closed and eyes being open.”

She also lost the ability to swallow and was fed by a feeding tube in her mouth, which has been replaced by one straight into her stomach.

At her worst, she had 50 seizures a day, but that has now reduced to between 10 and 15.

After 18 months of extensive therapy, her life is completely different.

She said: “I can move everything now. Obviously I can talk, I can see. I can’t walk and I’m never going to be able to walk again, but that’s because I’ve got contractions in my knees.

“I need surgery in order to bend them because my legs are stuck straight. It’s very painful, but I’m waiting on surgery, and it means I’m never going to be able to walk again.

“Honestly, it was something I never thought I would be planning when my parents took me to the care home. They thought that was it – that it was going to be my home for the rest of my life.

“I was getting to the point that I nearly died in hospital, my body just shut down that much.

“The doctors did have to tell my parents to prepare for the worst – they didn’t think I would make it to 18 and here I am at 20.”

Her dream is to be a nail technician and she is saving up to complete an online course.

“I really can’t wait to finally move out and get a place with my boyfriend,” she said. “I’m very excited.”

FND Action said the brain network disorder encompassed neurological symptoms including limb weakness, paralysis, seizures, walking difficulties, spasms, twitching, sensory issues and more.

“For many, symptoms are severe and disabling, and life-changing for all,” it said.

It added that while the basic wiring of the nervous system was intact, people with the disorder had a problem with how the brain or nervous system was “functioning”, and the brain failed to send or receive signals correctly.

“Historically FND has often been viewed as resulting purely from psychological and emotional trauma, this has frequently led to stigma and dismissal from medical professionals,” it added.

“This view is now seen as outdated, and psychological trauma is now viewed as a risk factor for developing the condition rather than the root cause.”

Megan said she had been left isolated, frustrated and exhausted at times due to how “unpredictable” life with FND had been.

She now shares her experiences on TikTok.

“Every small victory, whether it’s moving a finger, speaking a word, or simply making it through another day is worth celebrating,” she said.

Indian yoga guru Baba Ramdev has told a Delhi court that he will take down adverts in which he made controversial remarks about a rival firm’s drink, criticised by a judge as “indefensible”.

Ramdev alleged that some brands used their profits to build mosques and madrassas in a video promoting a sweet drink made by his company Patanjali.

He did not name the brand, but it was widely seen to be a reference to Rooh Afza, a popular drink made for more than a century by Hamdard Laboratories, an Islamic charitable organisation.

The video went viral, sparking outrage. Hamdard also filed a case, asking for the advertisements to be removed.

Rooh Afza is a non-alcoholic sweet drink in syrup form which is popular in South Asian countries, including India and Pakistan, and is usually referred to as sherbet. The syrup, introduced in 1906 by Hamdard, is usually mixed with milk or water and is very popular among Muslims breaking their fast during the month of Ramadan.

In the video, Ramdev also used the phrase “sherbet jihad” – a play on terms like “love jihad”, used by radical Hindu groups to accuse Muslim men of converting Hindu women by marriage. In this case, it is appears to be suggesting Muslims are profiting from money spent by Hindus.

On Tuesday, a judge in the Delhi high court criticised Ramdev’s remarks, calling them “indefensible”.

“It shocks the conscience of the court,” Justice Amit Bansal said, according to legal website LiveLaw.

The court also asked Ramdev to file an affidavit within five days, saying that he would not issue any such statements, advertisements, or social media posts in the future. The next hearing is on 1 May.

Hamdard lawyer Mukul Rohatgi said that the case went beyond criticism of a product and represented a “communal divide”. He also called Ramdev’s comments “hate speech”.

Rajiv Nayar, who represented Ramdev and Patanjali, said that his client was not against any religion and that the advertisements would be removed.

Ramdev shot to fame in the early 2000s with his televised yoga classes. He soon amassed a huge following and was praised for guiding people towards a healthy lifestyle.

In 2006, along with his close aide Acharya Balkrishna, Ramdev launched Patanjali Ayurveda to sell herbal medicines. The company now sells a range of products from flour and soaps to toothpastes and instant noodles.

This is not the first time the guru has come under fire from the courts.

Last year, the Indian Supreme Court ordered him to apologise for falsely claiming that his company’s products could “cure” serious illnesses.

The court also banned the ads, saying the yoga guru was spreading misinformation and misleading consumers with his remarks about modern medicine.