Halfway through Leo XIV’s first speech as pope, which he delivered in Italian, he stopped and asked if he might say a few words in Spanish.

Smiling, he continued: “A greeting to all and in particular to my dear Diocese of Chiclayo, in Peru.”

The first American pope is a citizen of Peru and has spent much of his life there, travelling between the two countries for decades until 2014, when Pope Francis appointed him bishop of the Chiclayo Diocese in the country’s north.

On Thursday, Peruvians rejoiced at the appointment of one of their own to the highest position in the Catholic Church.

Standing near Lima’s cathedral shortly after bells rang out in celebration of the appointment, elementary school teacher Isabel Panez said: “For us Peruvians, it is a source of pride that this is a pope who represents our country.”

Prevost would often say that he had “come from Chicago to Chiclayo – the only difference is a few letters,” Diana Celis, who attended several Masses officiated by the then Bishop Robert Prevost, told the Associated Press news agency.

He reportedly referred to Peru, where around three quarters of people are Catholic, as “mi segunda patria” – my second homeland.

Peru’s president, Dina Voluarte, described Pope Leo as Peruvian “by choice and conviction”.

“The pope is Peruvian; God loves Peru,” she said.

Born in Chicago in 1955, he is the son of Louis Marius Prevost, of French and Italian descent, and Mildred Martinez, of Spanish descent.

After completing studies in theology in Chicago and in canon law in Rome, the Catholic Church sent him to Peru for the first time.

He arrived at the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, in the Peruvian department of Piura, in 1985, aged 30, and the following year, joined the mission in Trujillo. For almost three decades, he worked between the US and Peru.

Then, in 2014, Pope Francis appointed Prevost bishop of Chiclayo, a position he assumed the following year, after becoming a Peruvian citizen.

Jose Luis Perez Guadalupe, who was the minister responsible for signing Prevost’s naturalisation, told BBC Mundo that he was “a very attentive and very thoughtful man, who listened more than he spoke.”

These were his first encounters with a country that would come to shape his life.

Janinna Sesa, who met Prevost while she worked for the church’s Caritas nonprofit, told the Associated Press during torrential rains in 2022 he waded through mud to help people in Chiclayo and nearby villages.

He also delivered food and blankets to remote Andean villages, driving a white pickup truck and sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor. There, Sesa said, Prevost ate whatever was offered to him, including the peasant diet consisting of potatoes, cheese and sweet corn.

But, if the opportunity came up, he would enjoy carne asada – one of his favorite dishes – accompanied by a glass of Coca-Cola.

He also had an interest in cars. “He has no problem fixing a broken-down truck until it runs,” Sesa said.

Prevost was the driving force for the purchase of two oxygen-production plants during the coronavirus pandemic, which killed more than 217,000 people across Peru.

“He worked so hard to find help, that there was not only enough for one plant, but for two oxygen plants,” Sesa said.

Edinson Farfán, the Peruvian Bishop of Chiclayo since 2024, said Pope Leo would continue Pope Francis’s legacy of working with the poor and advocating for “a Church with open doors”. He was “very close to Pope Francis”, he said.

“He was undoubtedly deeply influenced by this particular Church of Chiclayo. Chiclayo is a city that greatly values the simple faith of its people. He has a special affection for the diocese.”

“It’s his beloved diocese, it’s his life. He learned here everything he can share and will share with the entire world.”

But not all in the country are proud of his record.

Serious accusations have been made about his handling of sexual abuse cases during his time as Bishop of Chiclayo.

In 2023, three Peruvian women went public with claims that as bishop he failed to investigate their reports of having been abused as teenagers by two priests in Chiclayo, dating back to 2007. They said that when they raised their allegations with the diocese in 2022, no proper inquiry was opened.

Church officials in Chiclayo said that action was taken and the accused priests were put on precautionary suspension, and that the case was referred to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles serious abuse cases.

The diocese said it was Rome’s decision to shelve the case without a full canonical trial and that it conducted a preliminary investigation.

These allegations about his leadership are one of the challenges he will face as he now heads the Church worldwide.

Perez Guadalupe said that while Prevost primarily remained focused on church matters in Peru, he was “very attentive to the reality” of the country.

In 2023, when violent anti-government protests following the ousting of then-president Pedro Castillo left 49 dead, Prevost told Peruvian media he felt “much sorrow and much pain”.

That year, Pope Francis called Prevost to Rome to serve as the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, the powerful head of the office that vets bishop nominations from around the world and one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church. He was also appointed president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

Prevost said that he had asked Pope Francis to allow him to remain in Peru longer.

As he heard Prevost was the new pope, Thomas Nicolini, a Peruvian who studies economics in Rome, went to St Peter’s Square.

He told the AP that Chiclayo is, “A beautiful area, but one of the regions that needs lots of hope.”

“So, now I’m expecting that the new pope helps as many people as possible, and tries to reignite, let’s say, the faith young people have lost.”

Even before his name was announced from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, the crowds below were chanting “Viva il Papa” – Long live the Pope.

Robert Francis Prevost, 69, will be the 267th occupant of the throne of St Peter and he will be known as Leo XIV.

He is the first American to fill the role of pope, although he is considered as much a cardinal from Latin America because of the many years he spent as a missionary in Peru.

Born in Chicago in 1955 to parents of Spanish and Franco-Italian descent, Prevost served as an altar boy and was ordained in 1982.

Although he moved to Peru three years later, he returned regularly to the US to serve as a pastor and a prior in his home city.

He has Peruvian nationality and is fondly remembered as a figure who worked with marginalised communities and helped build bridges.

He spent 10 years as a local parish pastor and as a teacher at a seminary in Trujillo in north-western Peru.

• LIVE UPDATES: The first American elected pontiff
• Pope Leo XIV’s first speech in full
• Pope Leo’s first public address from the Vatican balcony – watch in full
• US President Donald Trump calls election of first American pope a ‘great honour’

In his first words as pope, Leo XIV spoke fondly of his predecessor Francis.

“We still hear in our ears the weak but always courageous voice of Pope Francis who blessed us,” he said.

“United and hand in hand with God, let us advance together,” he told cheering crowds.

The Pope also spoke of his role in the Augustinian Order.

In 2014, Francis made him Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru.

He is well known to cardinals because of his high-profile role as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Latin America which has the important task of selecting and supervising bishops.

He became archbishop in January 2023 and within a few months Francis made him a cardinal.

Early attention will focus on Leo XIV’s pronouncements to see whether he will continue his predecessor’s reforms in the Roman Catholic Church.

Prevost is believed to have shared Francis’ views on migrants, the poor and the environment.

A former roommate of his, Reverend John Lydon, described Prevost to the BBC as “outgoing”, “down to earth” and “very concerned with the poor”.

On his personal background, Prevost told Italian network Rai before his election that he grew up in a family of immigrants.

“I was born in the United States… But my grandparents were all immigrants, French, Spanish… I was raised in a very Catholic family, both of my parents were very engaged in the parish,” he said.

Although Prevost was born in the US, the Vatican described him as the second pope from the Americas (Francis was from Argentina).

During his time in Peru, he was unable to escape the sexual abuse scandals that have clouded the Church, even though his diocese has fervently denied he has been involved in any attempted cover-up.

In choosing the name Leo, Prevost has signified a commitment to dynamic social issues, according to experts.

The first pontiff to use the name Leo, whose papacy ended in 461, met Attila the Hun and persuaded him not to attack Rome. The last Pope Leo led the Church from 1878 to 1903 and wrote an influential treatise on workers’ rights.

Former Archbishop of Boston Seán Patrick O’Malley wrote on his blog that the new pontiff “has chosen a name widely associated with the social justice legacy of Pope Leo XIII, who was pontiff at a time of epic upheaval in the world, the time of the industrial revolution, the beginning of Marxism, and widespread immigration”.

The new Pope’s LGBT views are unclear, but some groups, including the conservative College of Cardinals, believe he may be less supportive than Francis.

Leo XIV has shown support for a declaration from Francis to permit blessings for same-sex couples and others in “irregular situations”, although he has added that bishops must interpret such directives in accordance with local contexts and cultures.

Speaking last year about climate change, Cardinal Prevost said that it was time to move “from words to action”.

He called on mankind to build a “relationship of reciprocity” with the environment.

And he has spoken about concrete measures at the Vatican, including the installation of solar panels and the adoption of electric vehicles.

Pope Leo XIV has supported Pope Francis’ decision to allow women to join the Dicastery for Bishops for the first time.

“On several occasions we have seen that their point of view is an enrichment,” he told Vatican News in 2023.

In 2024, he told the Catholic News Service that women’s presence “contributes significantly to the process of discernment in looking for who we hope are the best candidates to serve the Church in episcopal ministry”.

US President Donald Trump has called the election of the first American pope a “great honour” for the country and said he looks forward to meeting him.

Trump is among the many American political figures applauding the historic appointment of Robert Francis Prevost, who will be known as Pope Leo XIV, to lead the Catholic Church.

“To have the Pope from America is a great honour,” Trump said when asked for reaction to the news.

Pope Leo, 69, was born in Chicago and attended university outside Philadelphia, before becoming a missionary in Peru.

The US has the fourth largest number of Catholics in the world, and congratulations started pouring in soon after the first American pope’s name was announced.

Vice-President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, praised the pope’s election.

“I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the Church,” Vance wrote on X.

Former President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic who has spoken about his warm relationship with Pope Francis, also offered his congratulations.

“Habemus papam – May God bless Pope Leo XIV of Illinois,” Biden, the second Catholic president in US history, wrote on social media.

Former President Barack Obama, who launched his political career in Chicago, wrote on X: “Michelle and I send our congratulations to a fellow Chicagoan, His Holiness Pope Leo XIV.”

“This is a historic day for the United States, and we will pray for him as he begins the sacred work of leading the Catholic Church and setting an example for so many, regardless of faith.”

Former President George Bush issued a statement, saying that he and his wife Laura were “delighted” by the news.

“This an historic and hopeful moment for Catholics in America and for the faithful around the world,” he said.

“We join those praying for the success of Pope Leo XIV as he prepares to lead the Catholic church, serve the neediest, and share God’s love.”

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson also congratulated the new pope and wrote on social media: “May God bless the first American papacy in these historic days.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Catholic, also extended his congratulations.

“This is a moment of profound significance for the Catholic Church, offering renewed hope and continuity amid the 2025 Jubilee Year to over a billion faithful worldwide,” Rubio said.

“The United States looks forward to deepening our enduring relationship with the Holy See with the first American pontiff.”

As cardinal, it appears Prevost did not shy away from occasionally challenging the views of the Trump administration.

An account under his name reposted a post on social media platform X which was critical of the Trump administration’s deportation of a US resident to El Salvador, and shared a critical comment piece written about a TV interview given by Vance to Fox News.

“JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” read the post, repeating the headline from the commentary on the National Catholic Reporter website.

The BBC has contacted the Vatican but has not independently confirmed the account, which was created in 2011, belongs to the new pontiff.

• Who is Robert Prevost, the new Pope?
• Watch Pope Leo XIV being unveiled as new pontiff
• Pope Leo’s first public address from the Vatican balcony – watch in full

Meanwhile, in Prevost’s hometown, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson offered a note of congratulations.

“Everything dope, including the Pope, comes from Chicago! Congratulations to the first American Pope Leo XIV! We hope to welcome you back home soon,” he wrote.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker called the moment “historic”.

“Hailing from Chicago, Pope Leo XIV ushers in a new chapter that I join those in our state welcoming in at a time when we need compassion, unity, and peace,” he wrote on social media.

US President Donald Trump has hinted that US tariffs on goods from China may come down as top trade officials from the world’s two biggest economies are set to hold talks.

“You can’t get any higher. It’s at 145, so we know it’s coming down,” he said, referring to the new import taxes of up to 145% imposed on China since he returned to the White House.

Trump made the comments during an event to unveil a tariffs deal with the UK – the first such agreement since he hit countries around the world with steep levies in April.

The meeting in Switzerland this weekend is the strongest signal yet that the two sides are ready to deescalate a trade war that has sent shockwaves through financial markets.

“I think it’s a very friendly meeting. They look forward to doing it in an elegant way,” Trump said of the talks with China.

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Hua Chunying also struck a confident note ahead of the talks, saying Beijing has “full confidence” in its ability to manage trade issues with the US.

Officials in both Washington and Beijing are “under growing economic pressure”, Dan Wang from political risk consultancy Eurasia Group told the BBC.

“The recent signals from both sides suggest a transactional de-escalation is on the table”, she added.

The announcement earlier this week of the talks was welcomed as an important first step towards easing tensions but analysts have warned that this marks the start of what are likely to be lengthy negotiations.

“The systemic frictions between the US and China will not be resolved any time soon,” said former US trade negotiator, Stephen Olson.

Any cuts to tariffs as a result of this meeting are likely to be “minor”, he added.

The initial negotiations will be led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice Premier and economic tsar He Lifeng.

But “I think everyone recognises that any final deal will require the active engagement of both presidents,” Mr Olson said.

Another trade expert said that even if the new tariffs imposed by Trump were lifted, the two countries would still have major issues to overcome.

“A realistic goal is probably at best a pullback from the sky-high bilateral tariffs but that would still leave in place high tariff barriers and various other restrictions”, the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) China division, Eswar Prasad told BBC News.

On Friday, official figures for April showed China’s exports to the US fell by more than 20% compared to a year earlier. But at the same time its total exports rose by a better-than-expected 8.1%.

The talks between China and the US are set to take place just two days after the UK became the first country to strike a tariffs deal with the Trump administration.

The US has agreed to reduce import taxes on a set number of British cars and allow some steel and aluminium into the country tariff-free, as part of a new agreement.

It also offers relief for other key UK industries from some of the new tariffs announced by Trump since his inauguration in January.

Countries around the world are scrambling to make similar deals before steep US import taxes are due to take effect next month.

Trump announced what he called “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries in April but paused them shortly afterwards for 90 days to give their governments time to negotiate with his administration.

The auction house Sotheby’s has postponed its sale in Hong Kong of hundreds of sacred jewels linked to the Buddha’s remains, after a threat of legal action by the Indian government.

The sale of the collection – described as one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era – had drawn criticism from Buddhist academics and monastic leaders. India had said it offended the global Buddhist community.

Sotheby’s said the suspension would allow for discussions between the parties.

A British official named William Claxton Peppé unearthed the relics in northern India nearly 130 years ago, alongside bone fragments identified as belonging to the Buddha himself.

The auction of the collection, known as the Piprahwa Gems of the Historical Buddha Mauryan Empire, Ashokan Era, circa 240-200 BCE, was due to take place on 7 May.

In a letter to the auction house two days earlier, the Indian government said that the relics constituted “inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community. Their sale violates Indian and international laws, as well as United Nations conventions”.

A high-level Indian government delegation then held discussions with Sotheby’s representatives on Tuesday.

In an emailed statement, Sotheby’s said that in light of the matters raised by India’s government “and with the agreement of the consignors, the auction … has been postponed”.

It said updates on the discussions would be shared “as appropriate”.

Notice of the gems sale had been removed from its auction house by Wednesday and the website page promoting the auction is no longer available.

William Claxton Peppé was an English estate manager who excavated a stupa at Piprahwa, just south of Lumbini, the believed birthplace of Buddha. He uncovered relics inscribed and consecrated nearly 2,000 years ago.

The findings included nearly 1,800 gems, including rubies, topaz, sapphires and patterned gold sheets, stored inside a brick chamber. This site is now in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Sotheby’s had said in February that the 1898 discovery ranked “among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time”.

Hours into the ceasefire Russia had called for, we drove into the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine to see what, if any, impact it was having.

The Ukrainian military escorted us to an artillery position, south-west of the fiercely contested city of Pokrovsk.

Overcast skies made the drive through mud tracks running past wide open fields slightly less vulnerable to attacks from drones.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had proposed a three-day ceasefire starting at midnight local time on 8 May, to coincide with the anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe – a public holiday in Russia on Friday known as Victory Day.

But from the artillery position we heard the sounds of continuous explosions – incoming and outgoing mortar fire – evidence that there was no ceasefire in the trenches and on the frontlines.

I asked Serhii, one of the soldiers of the 3rd Operational Brigade of the National Guard if there had been any attacks from Russia overnight.

“Yes, they have been attacking overnight. We have had glide bombs and drones here. Russia can’t be trusted. In the evening they call a truce and in the morning they attack. There is no truce. We are always prepared for anything,” he said.

Some minutes later, he was sent the co-ordinates of a target over the radio. A few soldiers ran through deep muddy trenches, to a clearing where a howitzer was hidden from sight, covered by branches and leaves. They uncovered it, pointed it in the right direction and fired. It let out a deafening sound, and the recoil blew up leaves and dust from the ground.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had rejected Russia’s unilateral three-day ceasefire. Instead, he has called for a longer 30-day truce, as proposed by the US, a proposal that has once again been reiterated by its President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform on Thursday night.

Trump has even threatened that Washington and its partners would impose further sanctions if the ceasefire is not respected.

As the war of attrition grinds on, each side trying to wear the other down, I asked, Max, a 26-year-old soldier how he felt about global diplomatic efforts pushing for a ceasefire.

“You don’t think about things like that when you are here. You have to have ‘tunnel vision’. You can’t let emotions dictate your actions. You wait for a command and act, and if there is no command you find a way to spend your time. But you don’t let thoughts like this enter your mind,” he said.

We drive north from the artillery position, to the city of Dobropillya, which is roughly 12 miles (19km) from Russian positions. Thousands of people still live in the city, among them are many of those who’ve been forced to move here because their home towns have become too dangerous to live in.

We meet Svitlana who is from Pokrovsk but has now relocated to Dobropillya. I asked her if she thought Russia’s ceasefire call had made any difference on the ground. “You can hear the sounds here,” she said, referring to the continuous sounds of explosion, like rolling thunder, that we could hear from the outskirts of the city. “That is the sound of Russia’s ceasefire. That’s why I say we should never trust them.”

Twenty-six-year-old Serhiy chimes in: “The ceasefire is announced just to confuse people and deceive them, and so they (Russia) can say to the world ‘we are so good, we are trying to get Ukraine through peaceful means’ but in reality, everything they do is the opposite of it.”

In Dobropillya’s main market, we meet 65-year-old Oleksandr. “It was quieter last night. Before that we used to hear Shahed drones flying regularly,” he said. “But now we are hearing alarms again, and I’m not sure I can see any truce.”

As he talks, his face crumples into a sob. “I’m afraid. I have my wife and son here. I’m very scared for my family. I’m scared we might be forced to flee our homes,” he said, breaking down.

The fact that the conclave was over quickly suggests that from the outset, a significant number of the voting cardinals felt Robert Prevost was the one amongst them best equipped to take on the challenges a pope faces.

In the lead up to the election – during the formal meetings of cardinals, and the informal dinners and coffees they had to discuss the type of person they were looking for – it was apparent that two words kept coming up, “continuity” and “unity”.

There was a recognition among many that Pope Francis had started something hugely impactful, through reaching out to the those living on the margins of society, to those on the peripheries of the Catholic world and also to those outside the faith.

• Conclave live: Follow the latest updates
• The cardinals who will choose the next pope
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There was appreciation for his endeavour to become a voice for the voiceless and focus on the poor and those whose destinies were not in their own hands.

But there was also a sense that work had to be done to resolve the (sometimes very public) splits between those of different schools of thought within the Church hierarchy, often characterised as traditionalist and progressive.

It was in that context that Robert Prevost’s name started to be talked of as a serious contender. As someone who supported Pope Francis behind the scenes, but who different factions could still think of as one of their own.

But the voting cardinals had been tasked by the Church with considering not just what the institution and Catholic believers needed, but also what humanity needed at a difficult juncture, with war and division the backdrop.

Again, Cardinal Prevost – the US-Peruvian dual national, who was talked of as feeling as at home with his North American peers as he was with Latin American colleagues – was seen as someone who, as pope, could connect different worlds.

Pope Francis was sometimes criticised for lacking an ability to win more allies in the US on the big issues of migration, climate change and inequality, because of a disconnect in understanding the most effective ways of communicating his arguments to them.

For those who had in their minds that the primary requirement being sought of a new pope was an ability to bring “continuity” and “unity”, during his speech on St Peter’s balcony, Leo XIV gave strong clues as to why the cardinals chose him.

In his talk of “building bridges” and people globally being “one people” he evoked echoes of Pope Francis and also talked of unity at its fullest.

In these early days, his past will be heavily scrutinised. His political views examined, his track record on dealing with abuse dissected, and his comments over the years on social issues charted.

Much of this is already in the public domain so it can only be assumed that the cardinal electors felt there was nothing of enough consequence to impair his ability to lead the Catholic Church and be the global moral voice they were looking for.

Huge challenges lie ahead. But with resolution after just four conclave votes, he starts out with a strong mandate from the men he will need the most through his papacy.

Vladimir Putin is leading Russia’s Victory Day commemorations with a parade in Red Square and heightened security after days of Ukrainian strikes targeting the capital.

Chinese President Xi Jingping is among more than 20 international leaders who have made the journey to Moscow.

A unilateral, three-day ceasefire was announced by Russia to coincide with the lavish 80th anniversary event, which Ukraine has rejected as a “theatrical show” designed to protect the parade.

Ukraine’s military said it has come under thousands of attacks since the ceasefire came into force on 8 May. Russia has insisted the ceasefire is being observed and accused Ukraine of hundreds of violations.

In the days ahead of the proposed truce, Moscow and Kyiv exchanged a barrage of strikes.

Flights at airports across Russia were cancelled and some 60,000 passengers left stranded in the wake of Ukrainian drone attacks.

Heavy restrictions are in place in the centre of Moscow as Russia prepares to mark the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.

Russia says 27 world leaders are attending the military parade, where thousands of troops will march past the Kremlin and Moscow will showcase some of its latest weaponry.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier warned that he could not guarantee the safety of anyone attending the event and has urged heads of state not to travel to Moscow.

Mykhailo Samus, a Ukrainian military analyst and director of the New Geopolitics Research Network, told the BBC he believed that Ukraine would forego attacking the parade, largely because of the presence of foreign leaders.

But should Ukraine choose to do so, it would constitute a legitimate military target, Samus said.

During his evening address on Thursday, Zelensky said that Ukraine was “ready for a full ceasefire starting right now”.

“But it must be real,” he said in a video on X. “No missile or drone strikes, no hundreds of assaults on the front.”

He called on Russia to support the ceasefire and “prove their willingness to end the war”.

Ukraine has accused Russia of violating its own truce thousands of times since it was supposed to come into effect on Wednesday night.

On the second day of the truce, Ukraine said there had been nearly 200 clashes along the front line, eighteen Russian air strikes and almost four thousand instances of shelling by Russian troops.

In Prymorske, a village in the Zaporizhzhia region, a woman was reportedly killed after a Russian drone struck her car.

Russia’s defence ministry has said that all groups of Russian forces in Ukraine “completely ceased combat operations and remained on the previously occupied lines and positions”. However, they were reacting in a “mirror-like manner” to violations by Ukrainian forces.

Zelensky has repeatedly dismissed Putin’s proposal as a “game” and called for a longer truce of at least 30 days, something that is supported by Ukraine’s allies in Europe and the US.

He said he had spoken with US President Donald Trump to reiterate his readiness for a “long and lasting peace” and talks “in any format”. He said he had told Trump that a 30-day ceasefire was a “real indicator” of moving towards peace.

Writing on Truth Social on Thursday, the US president reiterated the call for an unconditional ceasefire and warned of further sanctions for any party failing to sign up to it.

From a woman waving a colonial-era flag in a shopping mall, to bakery staff selling cakes with protest symbols on them – dozens of Hongkongers have been reported to the police by one man for what he believes were national security violations.

“We’re in every corner of society, watching, to see if there is anything suspicious which could infringe on the national security law,” former banker Innes Tang tells the BBC World Service.

“If we find these things, we go and report it to the police.”

When the UK returned Hong Kong to China 28 years ago, internationally binding treaties guaranteed the city’s rights and freedoms for 50 years. But the national security law (NSL), imposed by Beijing a year after Hong Kong’s 2019 mass pro-democracy protests, has been criticised for scuttling free speech and press, and for ushering in a new culture of informing.

The law criminalises activities considered to be calls for “secession” (breaking away from China), “subversion” (undermining the power or authority of the government), and collusion with foreign forces.

An additional security law called Article 23, voted in last year, has further tightened restrictions.

With new laws and arrests, there has been limited reporting on Hong Kong’s pro-China “patriots” – the people who are now running and policing the city, as well as the ordinary citizens who openly support them. But the BBC has spent weeks interviewing Innes Tang, 60, a prominent self-described patriot.

He and his volunteers have taken screen grabs from social media of any activities or comments they believe could be in breach of the NSL.

He also established a hotline for tip-offs from the public and encouraged his online followers to share information on the people around them.

Nearly 100 individuals and organisations have been reported to the authorities by him and his followers, he says.

“Does reporting work? We wouldn’t do it if it didn’t,” Mr Tang says. “Many had cases opened by the police… with some resulting in jail terms.”

Mr Tang says he hasn’t investigated alleged law breakers himself, but simply reported incidents he thinks warrant scrutiny – describing it as “proper community-police co-operation”.

Mr Tang is not the only so-called patriot to engage in this kind of surveillance.

Hong Kong’s authorities have set up their own national security hotline, receiving 890,000 tip-offs from November 2020 to February this year – the city’s security bureau told the BBC.

For those who are reported to the authorities, pressure can be relentless.

Since the NSL was enacted in 2020, up until February this year, more than 300 people had been arrested for national security offences. And an estimated 300,000 or more Hongkongers have permanently left the city in recent years.

Pong Yat-ming, the owner of an independent bookshop that hosts public talks, says he often receives inspections from government departments which cite “anonymous complaints”.

He received 10 visits in one 15-day period, he says.

Kenneth Chan, political scientist and university lecturer, who has been involved in the city’s pro-democracy movement since the 1990s, jokes he has “become a bit radioactive these days”.

Some friends, students and colleagues now keep their distance because of his outspoken views, he says. “But I would be the last person to blame the victims. It’s the system.”

In response, Hong Kong’s government said it “attaches great importance to upholding academic freedom and institutional autonomy”. But it adds that academic institutions “have the responsibility to ensure their operations are in compliance with the law and meet the interests of the community at large”.

Innes Tang says he is motivated to report people by a love of Hong Kong, and that his views on China were cultivated when he was young, when the city was still a British colony.

“The colonial policies weren’t really that great,” he says. “The best opportunities were always given to the British and we [the locals] did not really have access.”

Like many of his generation, he nursed a longing to be united with China and taken out of colonial governance. But he says many other Hongkongers at the time were more concerned with their livelihoods than their rights.

“Democracy or freedom. These were all very abstract ideas which we didn’t really understand,” he says.

An average citizen should not become too involved in politics, he says, explaining he only became politically active to restore what he calls “balance” to Hong Kong society following the turbulence of 2019.

He is giving a voice, he says, to what he calls “the silent majority” of Hongkongers who do not support independence from China, nor the disruption created by the protests.

But other Hongkongers consider rallies and demonstrations a longstanding tradition, and one of the only ways to voice public opinion in a city that now does not have a fully democratically elected leadership.

“We are no longer a city of protests,” says Kenneth Chan, who specialises in Eastern European politics. “So what are we? I don’t have the answer yet.”

And patriotism isn’t inherently a negative thing, he says.

It is “a value, maybe even a virtue”, he argues, although it needs to allow citizens to keep “a critical distance” – something that is not happening in Hong Kong.

Electoral reform was pushed through in 2021 – stating that only “patriots” who “swore loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party” could hold important positions in government or the Legislative Council [LegCo] – Hong Kong’s parliament.

As a result, the council struggles to function, believes Hong Kong-based China commentator Lew Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese government advisory body, the CPPCC.

“The public think a lot of these patriots are ‘verbal revolutionaries’ or political opportunists – they don’t really represent the people,” he says.

“That’s why ridiculous policies still pass with a huge majority. There is no-one to constrain or oppose, no-one to scrutinise.”

Even patriot Innes Tang says he wants to see the current system challenged.

“I don’t want to see every policy passing with 90% of the vote,” he tells the BBC.

There is a danger the National Security Law will be weaponised, he says, with people saying: “If you don’t agree with me, I accuse you of infringement of the national security law.”

“I don’t agree with this type of stuff,” says Mr Tang.

Hong Kong’s government said: “The improved LegCo is now rid of extremists who wish to obstruct and even paralyse the operation of the government without any intention of entering into constructive dialogue to represent the interests of all Hong Kong people.”

For now, says Mr Tang, he has stopped reporting on people. Balance and stability, he believes, has returned to Hong Kong.

The number of large-scale protests has dwindled to none at all.

In academia, fear of surveillance – and how life might change for someone who infringes the laws – means self-censorship and censorship have become the “order of the day”, says Kenneth Chan.

Pro-democracy parties are no longer represented in the Legislative Council and many have disbanded – including the Democratic Party of Hong Kong, once the most powerful party.

Innes Tang has now set his sights overseas.

“There aren’t any particular issues in Hong Kong now, so I asked myself – shouldn’t I have a look at how I can continue to serve my community and my country?” he says.

“For a non-politician and civilian like me, this is an invaluable opportunity.”

He now works as a representative for one of several pro-Beijing non-profit groups, regularly visiting the UN in Geneva to speak at conventions giving China’s perspective on Hong Kong, human rights and other issues.

Mr Tang is also in the process of establishing a media company in Switzerland, and registering as a member of the press.

For Kenneth Chan in Hong Kong, his future hangs in the balance.

“One third of my friends and students are now in exile, another third of my friends and students are in jail, and I’m sort of… in limbo,” he says.

“Today I’m speaking freely with you… no-one would promise me that I would continue doing it for the rest of my life.”

In a written reply to the BBC, a Hong Kong government spokesperson said that national security is a top priority and inherent right for any country. It “only targets an extremely small minority of people and organisations that pose a threat to national security, while protecting the lives and property of the general public”.

The first samples of Moon rock brought back to Earth in nearly 50 years have arrived in the UK – on loan from China.

The tiny grains of dust are now locked inside a safe in a high security facility in Milton Keynes – we were given the first look at them.

Professor Mahesh Anand is the only scientist in the UK to have been loaned this extremely rare material, which he describes as “more precious than gold dust”.

“Nobody in the world had access to China’s samples, so this is a great honour and a huge privilege,” he says.

After grinding and zapping the dust with lasers, Prof Anand’s team hope to answer fundamental questions about how the Moon formed and about the early years of planet Earth.

Inside the grains of dust could be evidence to back up scientists’ theory that the Moon was made from the debris thrown out when Earth struck a Mars-sized planet 4.5 billion years ago.

China collected the rocks on its Chang’e 5 space mission in 2020 when it landed on a volcanic area called Mons Rümker.

A robotic arm drilled into the soil to collect 2kg of material, which was brought back to Earth in a capsule which landed in Inner Mongolia.

It was the first successful lunar sampling since a Soviet mission in 1976 and catapulted China into a leading position in the new space race.

Now, following a long tradition of global collaboration between space scientists, China has for the first time granted seven international researchers samples to make new discoveries.

The tiny vials were handed to Prof Anand at a glamorous ceremony in Beijing last week, where he met colleagues from Russia, Japan, Pakistan and Europe.

“It was almost like a parallel universe – and China is so far ahead of us in terms of their investment in space programmes,” he said.

He returned to the UK with the precious cargo in the safest place he could think of – his hand luggage.

At his lab at the Open University in Milton Keynes, we step onto sticky mats to clean our shoes and put on plastic gloves, gowns, hair nets and hoods.

The environment inside this high security room must be spotless to prevent contamination.

If Earthly material mixes with these extra-terrestrial specs, it could permanently ruin the analysis Prof Anand’s team will do.

We crouch down on the floor in front of a row of safes. Prof Anand unlocks one and carefully pulls out a ziplock bag with three containers the size of boxes that could keep a necklace.

Wedged firmly in each one is a see-through vial with a dusting of dark grey at the bottom.

That is the Moon dust.

It looks underwhelming, but it is humbling to think of its cosmic journey.

And Prof Anand says they don’t need any more than this 60mg in total.

“Here, the small is mighty. Believe me, it is enough to keep us busy for years to come because we specialise in working on the micro,” he adds.

In a lab down the corridor, technician Kay Knight will be the first person to actually work on the grains when the vials are opened.

She’s been cutting and grindings pieces of rocks for 36 years, but this will be the first time she’s worked on something straight from the lunar surface.

“I’m extremely excited,” she says, after showing us how she cuts meteorites using a diamond blade.

“But I’m nervous – there’s not much of the samples and they can’t really go and get more very easily. This is high stakes,” she adds.

After she prepares the samples, they will go into two more labs.

In one, we see a machine with an intricate network of countless tubes, valves and wires.

Technician Sasha Verchovskyhas been building it since the early 1990s. He shows us the small cylinder where the specs of dust can be heated to 1400 Celsius. That will help them extract carbon, nitrogen and nobel gases.

This is completely unique, and is one of the reasons Prof Anand believes his lab was chosen to receive the rare samples.

James Malley, a research technician, operates a machine that can work out how much oxygen is contained within the specs of dust.

He shows us a test run of what he will do.

“I’m going to hit that grain on the tray with a laser,” he says, showing the scene magnified on a computer screen.

“It’s going to start to glow, and you will see it melt inwards,” he says.

The team has a year to finish their research. By the end, their search for answers will probably end up destroying the samples.

But China has gone further since the Chang’e 5 mission.

In 2024 its Chang’e 6 launch brought back the first samples from the far side of the Moon. It’s a deeply mysterious place that might have evidence of long-quiet volcanic lava flows.

“I very much hope that this is the beginning of a long-term collaboration between China and international scientists,” says Prof Anand.

“A lot of us built our careers working on samples returned by Apollo missions, and I think this is a fantastic tradition to follow. I hope that other countries will follow suit,” he adds.

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A fleet of Russian oil tankers which have been used to avoid existing sanctions on oil and gas exports are set to be hit with new restrictions.

Downing Street has said action will be taken against up to 100 vessels which have carried more than £18 billion worth of cargo since the start of 2024.

Sir Keir Starmer is due to make the announcement at a summit of north European leaders known as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) in Oslo, Norway.

The PM has vowed the UK will do everything in its power to “destroy” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “shadow fleet operation, starve his war machine of oil revenues and protect the subsea infrastructure”.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many western countries imposed sanctions on Russian energy, by limiting imports and capping the price of its oil.

To get round these penalties, Moscow built up what has been referred to as a “shadow fleet” of tankers whose ownership and movements could be obscured.

Downing Street has accused the operation of “bankrolling the Kremlin’s illegal war in Ukraine”.

The government has referred to the ships as being “decrepit and dangerous” as well as being responsible for “reckless seafaring”. It follows reports of damage to a major undersea cable in the Baltic Sea.

Under the measures, the sanctioned tankers will be banned from British ports and risk being detained in UK waters.

Starmer said every step that increases pressure on Moscow and works towards peace for Ukraine “is another step towards security and prosperity in the UK”.

The JEF consists of ten nations including Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands.

Members of the JEF are also expected to announce further support for Ukraine’s war efforts.

The UK previously imposed sanctions against 133 “shadow” vessels during a meeting of the JEF in December 2024.

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Armed Israeli security forces have forced the closure of three schools run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

Hundreds of Palestinian students were sent home from the schools in Shuafat refugee camp just after classes began on Thursday morning.

Unrwa’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, said Israeli authorities were denying children their basic right to learn and accused them of a “blatant disregard of international law”.

An Israeli ban on Unrwa took effect earlier this year and Israel accuses the agency of being infiltrated by Hamas. Unrwa denies this claim and insists on its impartiality.

Videos showed girls in uniform hugging each other outside one school in Shuafat following the arrival of Israeli forces outside.

A closure order fixed to the wall of the school read: “It will be prohibited to operate educational institutions, or employ teachers, teaching staff or any other staff, and it will be forbidden to accommodate students or allow the entry of students into this institution.”

Unrwa said that more than 550 pupils aged six to 15 were present and that one of its staff members was detained, in what its director in the occupied West Bank called “a traumatising experience for young children who are at immediate risk of losing their access to education”.

The agency said that Israeli police were also deployed at three other schools in East Jerusalem, forcing them to send their students home too.

“Storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law,” Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. “These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations.”

He added: “By enforcing closure orders issued last month, the Israeli authorities are denying Palestinian children their basic right to learn.

“Unrwa schools must continue to be open to safeguard an entire generation of children.”

The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank not under Israeli control, said the move was a “violation of children’s right to education”.

The British consulate in Jerusalem said the UK, EU, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and Japan strongly opposed the closure orders issued against the Unrwa schools and stood “in solidarity with students, parents, and teachers”.

“Unrwa has operated in East Jerusalem under its UN General Assembly mandate since 1950. Israel is obliged under international humanitarian law to facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the education of children,” they added.

Last year, Israel’s parliament passed laws forbidding contact between Israeli officials and Unrwa, as well as banning activity by the agency in Israeli territory.

Israel captured East Jerusalem, along with the rest of the West Bank, in the 1967 Middle East war.

It effectively annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 in a move not recognised by most of the international community, and sees the whole city as its capital.

Palestinians see East Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for future state.

Approximately 230,000 Israeli settlers currently live in East Jerusalem alongside 390,000 Palestinians.

Most of the international community considers the settlements built there and elsewhere in the West Bank to be illegal under international law – a position supported by an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last year – although Israel disputes this.

Royals, politicians and veterans have commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe – on what could be the last major VE Day attended by veterans.

The King and the Prince of Wales attended a Service of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey, before leading a two-minute silence that was observed across the UK.

Then as night fell over London, VE Day celebrations continued with a concert at Horse Guards Parade attended by 10,000 people.

There the King called for a global commitment to restoring peace, as he paid tribute to service and sacrifice of the wartime generation.

The event, presented by Zoe Ball, featured performances by artists including Fleur East, Calum Scott and The Darkness, as well as storytelling and tributes to veterans.

Eighty years to the hour since his grandfather, King George VI, announced that war had passed, the King said that veterans’ debt “can never truly be repaid”.

But he reminded all that as the wartime generation diminishes, the duty falls on the public to carry their stories forward – just as communities across the country have done all week in countless acts of remembrance.

The King also said that while we rejoice, “we must also remember those” who are “still fighting, still living with conflict and starvation on the other side of the world”.

He called on Britons to “re-dedicate” themselves “not only to the cause of freedom”, but to “renewing global commitments to restoring a just peace where there is war, to diplomacy, and to the prevention of conflict.”

Earlier in the day, MPs and peers re-enacted a historic walk from Parliament to the abbey that had taken place when victory in Europe was declared in 1945.

After the laying of wreaths and a welcome, an excerpt of Winston Churchill’s speech announcing the unconditional surrender of Germany rang throughout the abbey.

The former prime minister’s great-great-grandson, Alexander Churchill, 10, lit a candle for peace and invited people to “pray for peace in Europe and around the world”.

Children handed veterans white roses, while service members carried conflict artefacts, including a child’s gas mask.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer delivered a reading from the Bible, while others read memoirs and re-dedications to peace.

In a message to the crowd, the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell thanked those “whose sacrifice made our victory possible”.

“All this good is under threat again in our world today,” he said. “Let us then, on this 80th anniversary, with some of the veterans who fought for those freedoms with us here, make a new commitment to be those who, in the words of Jesus, make peace.”

• Watch VE Day 80 celebrations live
• Three women’s bittersweet memories of VE Day

After the service, royals greeted and chatted to World War Two veterans, some of whom were in wheelchairs and decorated with medals.

Among the guests was Harry Winter, a 103-year-old RAF veteran.

He told the BBC he was shot down over Germany in January 1945 and held as a prisoner of war until VE Day five months later. While in captivity, he had to walk 150 miles in 17 days without any food, pushing cattle trucks in extremely cold temperatures, he said.

On 8 May 1945, he was met by American trucks and crossed out of Germany.

“I just felt, ‘I’m free! I can do as I like again! I can go around without anybody trying to hold me back’,” he said.

Speaking outside Westminster Abbey, D-Day veteran Peter Kent said it meant “a lot” to see people still honouring those who served.

The 100-year-old, from Westminster, served in the Royal Navy aboard HMS Adventurer and took part in the Normandy landings.

The father-of-two said: “So many young boys got killed, so many dead bodies on the beach – it was just a big waste of life. It was terrible.

We wouldn’t have the freedom we have today if it wasn’t for those men.”

At 18:30 BST, churches and cathedrals across the country rang their bells, which the Church of England said echoed the sounds that swept across the country in 1945.

In Scotland, the national piper played a lament at dawn for the fallen on Portobello Beach in Edinburgh, and a convoy of Norwegian fishing boats were travelling to Shetland to commemorate the “Shetland Bus” operation that rescued many refugees during the war.

Northern Ireland marked VE Day with a series of events, including a tea dance at Belfast City Hall.

In Wales, attendees at church services observed silence and laid wreaths, and a knitted poppy cascade of 1,000 individual flowers was displayed outside the veterans’ hub in Connah’s Quay.

The Royal British Legion hosted a tea party with veterans at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, England.

Celebrations are likely to continue until late into the night, with pubs and bars given permission to stay open for two extra hours.

The 80th anniversary celebrations of VE day began on Monday with a military procession and Red Arrows flypast, with thousands lining the Mall near Buckingham Palace to watch.

An exhibit of nearly 30,000 ceramic poppies also returned to the Tower of London.

Two weeks after a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, India has launched a series of strikes on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The Indian defence ministry said the strikes – named “Operation Sindoor” – were part of a “commitment” to hold “accountable” those responsible for the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead.

But Pakistan, which has denied any involvement in that attack, described the strikes as “unprovoked”, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saying the “heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished”.

Sharif on Wednesday said the Pahalgam attack “wasn’t related” to Pakistan, and that his country was “accused for the wrong” reasons.

• Follow the latest updates
• Why India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir
• BBC reports from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir

Pakistan’s military said at least 31 people were killed and 57 injured in the strikes on Tuesday night. India’s army said at least 15 civilians were killed and 43 injured by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

Pakistan’s military says it shot down five Indian aircraft and a drone. India has yet to respond to these claims.

Late on Wednesday, Sharif said the air force made its defence – which was a “reply from our side to them”.

Delhi said in the early hours of Wednesday morning that nine different locations had been targeted in both Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan.

It said these sites were “terrorist infrastructure” – places where attacks were “planned and directed”.

It emphasised that it had not hit any Pakistani military facilities, saying its “actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”.

In the initial aftermath of the attacks, Pakistan said three different areas were hit: Muzaffarabad and Kotli in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Bahawalpur in the Pakistani province of Punjab. Pakistan’s military spokesperson, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif, later said six locations had been hit.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told GeoTV in the early hours of Wednesday that the strikes hit civilian areas, adding that India’s claim of “targeting terrorist camps” was false.

The strikes come after weeks of rising tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours over the shootings in the picturesque resort town of Pahalgam.

The 22 April attack by a group of militants saw 26 people killed, with survivors saying the militants were singling out Hindu men.

It was the worst attack on civilians in the region in two decades, and the first major attack on civilians since India revoked Article 370, which gave Kashmir semi-autonomous status, in 2019.

Following the decision, the region saw protests but also witnessed militancy wane and a huge increase in the number of tourists.

The killings have sparked widespread anger in India, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the country would hunt the suspects “till the ends of the Earth” and that those who planned and carried it out “will be punished beyond their imagination”.

However, India initially did not name any group it believed was behind the attack in Pahalgam.

But Indian police alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, with Delhi accusing Pakistan of supporting militants – a charge Islamabad denies. It says it has nothing to do with the 22 April attacks.

On 7 May, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group carried out the attack.

In the two weeks since, both sides had taken tit-for-tat measures against each other – including expelling diplomats, suspending visas and closing border crossings.

But many expected it would escalate to some sort of cross-border strike – as seen after the Pulwama attacks which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead in 2019.

Kashmir is claimed in full by India and Pakistan, but administered only in part by each since they were partitioned following independence from Britain in 1947.

The countries have fought two wars over it.

But more recently, it has been attacks by militants which have brought the two countries to the brink. Indian-administered Kashmir has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, with militants targeting security forces and civilians alike.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control – the de facto border between India and Pakistan – targeting militant bases.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Neither spiralled, but the wider world remains alert to the danger of what could happen if it did. Attempts have been made by various nations and diplomats around the world to prevent this.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres quickly called for “maximum restraint” – a sentiment echoed by the European Union and numerous countries, including Bangladesh.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged “dialogue” and “de-escalation”.

US President Donald Trump – who was one of the first to respond – told reporters at the White House that he hoped the fighting “ends very quickly”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, said he was keeping a close eye on developments.

In a dramatic overnight operation, India said it launched missile and air strikes on nine sites across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, targeting what it called militant positions based on “credible intelligence”.

The strikes, lasting just 25 minutes between 01:05 and 01:30 India time (19:35 and 20:00 GMT on Tuesday), sent shockwaves through the region, with residents jolted awake by thunderous explosions.

Pakistan said only six locations were hit and claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets and a drone – a claim India has not confirmed.

Islamabad said 26 people were killed and 46 injured in Indian air strikes and shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) – the de facto border between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, India’s army reported that 10 civilians were killed by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

• Follow the latest updates
• What we know about the air strikes

This sharp escalation comes after last month’s deadly militant attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, pushing tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to dangerous new heights. India says it has clear evidence linking Pakistan-based terrorists and external actors to the attack – a claim Pakistan flatly denies. Islamabad has also pointed out that India has not offered any evidence to support its claim.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the LoC.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Experts say the retaliation for the Pahalgam attack stands out for its broader scope, targeting the infrastructure of three major Pakistan-based militant groups simultaneously.

India says it struck nine militant targets across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, hitting deep into key hubs of Lashkar-e- Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen.

Among the closest targets were two camps in Sialkot, just 6-18km from the border, according to an Indian spokesperson.

The deepest hit, says India, was a Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur, 100km inside Pakistan. A LeT camp in Muzaffarabad, 30km from the LoC and capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, was linked to recent attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir, the spokesperson said.

Pakistan says six locations have been hit, but denies allegations of there being terror camps.

“What’s striking this time is the expansion of India’s targets beyond past patterns. Previously, strikes like Balakot focused on Pakistan-administered Kashmir across the Line of Control – a militarised boundary,” Srinath Raghavan, a Delhi-based historian, told the BBC.

“This time, India has hit into Pakistan’s Punjab, across the International Border, targeting terrorist infrastructure, headquarters, and known locations in Bahawalpur and Muridke linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba. They’ve also struck Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen assets. This suggests a broader, more geographically expansive response, signalling that multiple groups are now in India’s crosshairs – and sending a wider message,” he says.

The India-Pakistan International Border is the officially recognised boundary separating the two countries, stretching from Gujarat to Jammu.

Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, told the BBC that what India did was a “Balakot plus response meant to establish deterrence, targeting known terrorist hubs, but accompanied by a strong de-escalatory message”.

“These strikes were more precise, targeted and more visible than in the past. Therefore, [they are] less deniable by Pakistan,” Mr Bisaria says.

Indian sources say the strikes were aimed at “re-establishing deterrence”.

“The Indian government thinks that the deterrence established in 2019 has worn thin and needs to be re-established,” says Prof Raghavan.

“This seems to mirror Israel’s doctrine that deterrence requires periodic, repeated strikes. But if we assume that hitting back alone will deter terrorism, we risk giving Pakistan every incentive to retaliate – and that can quickly spiral out of control.”

The majority of experts agree that a retaliation from Pakistan is inevitable – and diplomacy will come into play.

“Pakistan’s response is sure to come. The challenge would be to manage the next level of escalation. This is where crisis diplomacy will matter,” says Mr Bisaria.

“Pakistan will be getting advice to exercise restraint. But the key will be the diplomacy after the Pakistani response to ensure that both countries don’t rapidly climb the ladder of escalation.”

• India and Pakistan are in crisis again – here’s how they de-escalated in the past

Pakistan-based experts like Ejaz Hussain, a Lahore-based political and military analyst, say Indian surgical strikes targeting locations such as Muridke and Bahawalpur were “largely anticipated given the prevailing tensions”.

Dr Hussain believes retaliatory strikes are likely.

“Given the Pakistani military’s media rhetoric and stated resolve to settle the scores, retaliatory action, possibly in the form of surgical strikes across the border, appears likely in the coming days,” he told the BBC.

But Dr Hussain worries that surgical strikes on both sides could “escalate into a limited conventional war”.

Christopher Clary of the University at Albany in the US believes given the scale of India’s strikes, “visible damage at key sites”, and reported casualties, Pakistan is highly likely to retaliate.

“Doing otherwise essentially would give India permission to strike Pakistan whenever Delhi feels aggrieved and would run contrary to the Pakistan military’s commitment to retaliating with ‘quid pro quo plus’,” Mr Clary, who studies the politics of South Asia, told the BBC.

“Given India’s stated targets of groups and facilities associated with terrorism and militancy in India, I think it is likely – but far from certain – that Pakistan will confine itself to attacks on Indian military targets,” he said.

Despite the rising tensions, some experts still hold out hope for de-escalation.

“There is a decent chance we escape this crisis with just one round of reciprocal standoff strikes and a period of heightened firing along the Line of Control,” says Mr Clary.

However, the risk of further escalation remains high, making this the “most dangerous” India-Pakistan crisis since 2002 – and even more perilous than the 2016 and 2019 standoffs, he adds.

Experts in Pakistan note that despite a lack of war hysteria leading up to India’s strike, the situation could quickly shift.

“We have a deeply fractured political society, with the country’s most popular leader behind bars. Imran Khan’s imprisonment triggered a strong anti-military public backlash,” says Umer Farooq, an Islamabad-based analyst and a former correspondent of Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“Today, the Pakistani public is far less eager to support the military compared to 2016 or 2019 – the usual wave of war hysteria is noticeably absent. But if public opinion shifts in central Punjab where anti-India feelings are more prevalent, we could see increased civilian pressure on the military to take action. And the military will regain popularity because of this conflict.”

Dr Hussain echoes a similar sentiment.

“I believe the current standoff with India presents an opportunity for the Pakistani military to regain public support, particularly from the urban middle classes who have recently criticised it for perceived political interference,” he says.

“The military’s active defence posture is already being amplified through mainstream and social media, with some outlets claiming that six or seven Indian jets were shot down.

“Although these claims warrant independent verification, they serve to bolster the military’s image among segments of the public that conventionally rally around national defence narratives in times of external threat.”

India is once again walking a fine line between escalation and restraint.

Shortly after the attack in Pahalgam, India swiftly retaliated by closing the main border crossing, suspending a water-sharing treaty, expelling diplomats and halting most visas for Pakistani nationals. Troops on both sides have exchanged small-arms fire, and India barred all Pakistani aircraft from its airspace, mirroring Pakistan’s earlier move. In response, Pakistan suspended a 1972 peace treaty and took its own retaliatory measures.

This mirrors India’s actions after the 2019 Pulwama attack, when it swiftly revoked Pakistan’s most-favoured-nation status, imposed heavy tariffs and suspended key trade and transport links.

The crisis had escalated when India launched air strikes on Balakot, followed by retaliatory Pakistani air raids and the capture of Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, further heightening tensions. However, diplomatic channels eventually led to a de-escalation, with Pakistan releasing the pilot in a goodwill gesture.

“India was willing to give old-fashioned diplomacy another chance…. This, with India having achieved a strategic and military objective and Pakistan having claimed a notion of victory for its domestic audience,” Mr Bisaria told me last week.

In the village of Salamabad in Indian-administered Kashmir on Wednesday morning, ruined homes were still smouldering.

This small settlement lies close to the Line of Control which separates Indian-administered and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, the scene of rapidly escalating tensions in recent weeks that led to strikes from India on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Tuesday night.

The streets of Salamabad were almost completely empty the next morning. Locals said the village was struck by Pakistani shelling.

Most of the residents had fled the bombardment, leaving chickens pecking in their cages in gardens.

Bashir Ahmad, a local shopkeeper who witnessed the destruction, told the BBC that around 02:00 local time (20:30 GMT), “while we were fast asleep, a loud explosion jolted us awake.

Mortar shells had landed near a water dam, and by 03:00 more shells struck several houses, setting them ablaze.

The government issued no warning or advisory about the cross-border shelling, and we have no safety bunkers to take shelter in.”

Salamabad is no stranger to this kind of shelling: until 2021, incidents of cross-border fire were reported regularly.

However, a ceasefire agreement signed between the militaries of both countries saw the number of attacks sharply decrease.

Life returned to normal for most, free of fear – that was, until Wednesday morning.

Uncertainty now hangs over the villages scattered along the Line of Control once more.

Mr Ahmad estimated that only a handful of Salamabad’s 100 or so residents had remained, the rest having left in search of safety from what he described as the most intense shelling in years.

In the village, two homes had been torn apart by mortars.

Through a hole in the wall of one house, some crockery had remained impossibly upright on a shelf – while everything else around lay shattered or burned.

The small homes were no match for the scale of the firepower they encountered overnight.

They had been entirely hollowed out by explosions and fire, their tin roofs buckled above them.

At a hospital 40km away, Badrudin said he was injured in the shelling, along with this eight-year-old son and sister-in-law.

He identified one of the destroyed houses in a picture as his.

He said: “We were all in deep sleep when… a mortar shell landed near our homes. The children were also asleep.

The shelling was intense, we somehow managed to flee.”

Badrudin said he had taken out a loan of ₹3 lakh ($3,540 ; £2,653) to build his home in Salamabad.

“Everything is gone now,” he said. “We’re too afraid to return.”

He continued: “Rebuilding the house will be incredibly difficult—we need the government to step in and help.

We want peace, not war.”

On Wednesday morning, dozens of people gathered on the perimeter of a sprawling complex in the Pakistani city of Muridke to see the damage for themselves.

Overnight, Indian missiles had pounded buildings at this site, which lies not far from the border with India in Pakistan’s Punjab region, and just a short drive from the major city of Lahore.

No one was being allowed into the complex – but even from a distance as BBC reporters peered through the barbed wire fence surrounding it, the damage was unmistakable.

The BBC spoke to people on the ground who witnessed the bombardment first-hand.

“It was the main mosque that got targeted,” one man said. “The sky lit up and it felt like the sky turned red.”

Another said: “A sudden missile appeared and there was a blast. I immediately got out the house.

“I had only reached the mosque near my house when there were three more consecutive blasts. I heard all three, they were really loud.”

When a BBC team arrived in Muridke, security service personnel were closely controlling access to the site.

From a road surrounded by dense housing, the BBC’s team could see a partially collapsed building and rubble spread over a huge area.

Emergency workers were still searching the wreckage for any injured or dead.

This complex houses a hospital, school and mosque, while India said it had hit sites linked to what it calls terror organisations – so why was it targeted? The answer appears to lie in its past.

Until a few years ago, it was originally used by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based militant group which is designated as a terror organisation by the United Nations.

It was later used by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which observers have described as a front group for LeT.

Both groups have been banned by the Pakistani government, which has since taken over the facilities in Muridke.

But on Tuesday night, this complex was in the crosshairs of an Indian military which has vowed to respond to the killing of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

India’s government says its strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir targeted what it described as terrorist infrastructure. Pakistan’s government has denied any links to the Pahalgam attack.

One man told us the Muridke complex usually houses children from miles around who come to study at the madrasa, though it was largely evacuated a week ago.

Later in the day, camera crews were allowed to access the site and see the damage up close.

The roof of one building had crumpled under the force of an explosion.

Holes had been torn through the walls of another and a large amount of debris was scattered across the ground.

Across this region, people are hoping there is not more debris before long.

Nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan have fought two wars and a limited conflict over Kashmir.

But why do they dispute the territory – and how did it start?

• What we know about India’s strike on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir
• Indian air strikes – how will Pakistan respond? Four key questions
• LIVE: Tensions escalate as Pakistan vows response to Indian strikes after Pahalgam killings

Kashmir is an ethnically diverse Himalayan region famed for the beauty of its lakes, meadows and snow-capped mountains.

Even before India and Pakistan won their independence from Britain in August 1947, the area was hotly contested.

Under the partition plan provided by the Indian Independence Act, Muslim-majority Kashmir was free to accede to either India or Pakistan.

The maharaja (local ruler), Hari Singh, initially wanted Kashmir to become independent – but in October 1947 chose to join India, in return for its help against an invasion of tribesmen from Pakistan.

• Kashmir profile – Timeline

A war erupted and India asked the United Nations to intervene. The UN recommended holding a plebiscite to settle the question of whether the state would join India or Pakistan. However, the two countries could not agree to a deal to demilitarise the region before the referendum could be held.

In July 1949, India and Pakistan signed an agreement to establish a ceasefire line as recommended by the UN and the region became divided.

A second war followed in 1965. Then in 1999, India fought a brief but bitter conflict with Pakistani-backed forces.

By that time, India and Pakistan were declared nuclear powers. Today, Delhi and Islamabad both claim Kashmir in full, but control only parts of it.

Within Indian-administered Kashmir, opinions about the territory’s rightful allegiance are diverse and strongly held. Many do not want it to be governed by India, or prefer a return to the semi-autonomous status that they had until 2019. Some also want outright independence.

Religion is also an important factor: Indian-administered Kashmir is more than 60% Muslim, making it the only part of India where Muslims are in the majority.

An armed revolt has been waged against Indian rule in the region since 1989, claiming tens of thousands of lives.

India accuses Pakistan of backing militants in Kashmir – a charge its neighbour denies.

In 2019, Indian-administered Kashmir was stripped of its semi-autonomous status by the government in Delhi amid a huge security crackdown.

For several years after the revocation of the region’s special status, militancy waned and tourist visits soared.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control – the de facto border between India and Pakistan – targeting alleged militant bases.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left more than 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted Indian airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Tensions rose again in April 2025 after years of relative calm when militants killed 26 people in an attack on tourists near the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. It was the deadliest attack on civilians in two decades.

India responded two weeks later with missile strikes on targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, once again raising fears of further escalation and calls for restraint.

Kashmir remains one of the most militarised zones in the world.

India and Pakistan did agree a ceasefire in 2003.

In 2014, India’s current Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power promising a tough line on Pakistan, but also showed interest in holding peace talks.

Nawaz Sharif, then prime minister of Pakistan, attended Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in Delhi.

But a year later, India blamed Pakistan-based groups for an attack on its airbase in Pathankot in the northern state of Punjab. Modi also cancelled a scheduled visit to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, for a regional summit in 2017.

Since then, there hasn’t been any progress in talks between the neighbours.

For the past three years, when peers of Australia’s former Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton were grilled over his divisive persona, they’d often profess his celebrity status in the north.

“Peter is one of us… He’s very popular in Queensland,” said the leader of the Nationals, the Liberal’s coalition partner, earlier this year.

But on election night, it was Dutton’s home state that delivered Labor its election win, with the red landslide ousting the veteran MP from his own seat of Dickson.

While votes are still being counted, Labor could pick up as many electorates in Queensland as it did across every other state and territory combined.

And that’s thanks, in no small part, to a new bloc of young voters and women who are disillusioned with the Coalition, and attribute the party’s emphatic loss to the “Dutton effect”.

As 65-year-old coalition voter Sue, who didn’t share her last name, bluntly puts it: “This is where [Dutton’s] from… People know him and they don’t like him.”

The Moreton Bay region, about an hour north of Brisbane, is supposed to be Dutton heartland. Before Australia’s federal election on 3 May, all three seats here were Liberal-held – though only by small leads, with Dutton’s electorate of Dickson having the narrowest in the state.

Dutton’s family have deep roots here, with his dairy farming great-grandparents having settled in the area in the 1860s.

When he first entered parliament 24 years ago, the region was made up of urban pockets and industrial estates surrounded by swathes of semi-rural land. Not quite metropolitan or rural, is how the former police officer described it in his maiden speech as MP.

Now Brisbane is one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, and these outer northern suburbs are one of the main places it is squeezing people in. Residential development has exploded, and more families, priced out of locations closer to the city, have moved in to Moreton Bay.

Full of the “quiet Australians” Dutton said would deliver him the election, outer-suburban neighbourhoods like these were at the heart of the Coalition’s strategy.

The average household in Moreton Bay earns less than both the state and national average, with many of them relying on the health, trade and hospitality sectors for work. The Coalition hoped promises to cut fuel expenses, improve housing affordability and back small businesses would woo voters concerned about the cost of living.

Many Moreton Bay residents, like campaign volunteer Kenneth King, also felt Dutton’s links to the area would give them a boost.

“I’ve known Peter Dutton for a lot of years,” the Dickson local told the BBC on polling day. “He’s always been someone of high character, serious about effective policies and a lot of empathy for ordinary Australians.”

“He’s very well respected in the community… People know him.”

But there’s a difference between being well known and well liked, says Aleysha, a swing voter in the neighbouring electorate of Petrie, who declined to give her surname.

“I don’t know whether he appeals to the everyday person,” the 26-year-old nurse says. “He doesn’t put himself in the people’s shoes.”

Her vote over the years has gone to a range of parties from right across the political spectrum – except the Greens, she adds with a quick laugh.

“I don’t sit with any party. Being a Christian, it’s whatever party aligns closest to my values,” she says, adding that the future of her two young children is the other major consideration.

This election, that meant her vote went to Coalition incumbent Luke Howarth, who she knows personally from her church.

But while she’s praying for a miracle, with the final votes still being counted, she’s not surprised to find Howarth may be on his way out.

She says Labor ran very visible campaigns in the area, but tells the BBC that it was driving past the image of Howarth and his leader on billboards which stuck in her mind.

“Unfortunately I think that’s what did it,” she says.

“Peter Dutton’s face behind him was a huge turnoff – for me personally too.”

Sue, who lives in the same electorate and is generally a conservative voter, says this election she was torn at the ballot box.

“I had a huge hesitation over it,” she says. “I don’t like Albanese; I think he’s like, weak.

“[But] Dutton’s an unattractive personality… He thinks he’s presenting himself as strong, but he presents himself as a bit of a bully.”

“Way back when, he seemed like a really good local member, but as he climbed the ladder, I don’t know, something changed.”

Ultimately Sue also voted for Howarth – and she’s similarly convinced Dutton lost him the seat.

“I spoke to a few friends… some did change their votes because of Peter Dutton,” she says. “People, rightly or wrongly, aligned Dutton with Trump. And that’s very negative for just about any sane person.”

Many of the constituents the BBC spoke to stressed they did not want American style politics here.

Drew Cutler grew up in the seat of Longman, which shares borders with both Dickson and Petrie – and though he no longer lives in the area, the 28-year-old was so invested in the outcome he came back to campaign for Labor.

Won by Coalition MP Terry Young on a margin of 3% last election, it is now too close to call.

Mr Cutler, a former Labor party staffer, believes Labor ran very strong local campaigns. But he also thinks Dutton’s policy flip-flopping and the aura of instability that projected was potent.

That included announcing, and then walking back, public service job cuts and plans to end work-from-home arrangements, as well as a fluctuating stance on electric vehicle taxes.

Such optics were especially damaging, Mr Cutler argues, when contrasted with the image of strong, decisive leadership Dutton tries to convey.

“I almost think the Australian people would have respected him more if he stuck to it… and said, ‘This is what I’m putting forward – if you don’t like it, don’t vote for it’,” Mr Cutler tells the BBC.

Back in Dickson, Rick – a retiree and fresh Liberal Party member – said on election night that he also felt confusion played a role in the party’s defeat, particularly among young people.

“I think people couldn’t understand Dutton’s policies,” he said.

But 30-year-old April, who didn’t provide her last name, says it is Dutton who didn’t understand.

She can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in power in Dickson, and feels that over time he has lost touch with his own constituents and the country more broadly.

For her, the last straw was his instrumental role in the defeat of the Voice to Parliament referendum, which sought to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the constitution and simultaneously establish a parliamentary advisory body for them.

“I think he has caused a lot of harm to a lot of minority groups across the scale,” she says.

For others in the electorate though, the last straw was watching Dutton fly to a fundraiser in Sydney as the area in and around Dickson was hit by Cyclone Alfred in February.

April didn’t feel like Labor Party’s offering was strong either, especially on climate action, so she decided to campaign for Ellie Smith, the so-called ‘teal’ independent running in the seat.

Disappointment – borderline embarrassment – that Dutton was from her local area had crystallised into determination: “I felt like it was a duty in a way… our responsibility to get him out.”

Ultimately, the Coalition lost at least six seats to Labor in Queensland – all bar one in Brisbane. And while they are a few votes ahead in Longman as the count continues, they could still lose that too.

Queensland has long been a bit of a political wildcard, and often finds itself in the “spotlight” at federal elections, says Frank Mols.

The University of Queensland politics lecturer points out the state helped deliver Kevin Rudd’s historic election win in 2007 and Scott Morrison’s “miracle” victory in 2019. Last election, as a record number of people across the nation voted for candidates outside the two major parties, Queensland surprised the nation by giving the Greens three seats – up from none.

There are a couple of factors that make the state more “volatile” and likely to deliver upsets, Dr Mols says.

Firstly, it is the only state or territory, except for the island of Tasmania, where more than half of the population live outside the capital city of Brisbane.

“We talk about Queensland always being two elections, one in the south-east corner, and then the rest – and they often get very different patterns.”

There’s also more political fragmentation in the state, Dr Mols says, which combined with Australia’s preferential voting system can make political equations here tighter, and trends harder to predict.

But he – like many of the voters the BBC spoke to – largely puts last weekend’s surprise for the Coalition down to Dutton and his broadly-criticised campaign performance.

While there’s a tendency to attribute success or failure to policy issues, more often its really about voters’ emotional response to candidates and leaders, Dr Mols says.

“If you do the barbecue test, is Dutton a person you would walk up to? Is he somebody you would warm to or gravitate towards?

“You can wonder: was Peter Dutton, in hindsight, the Labor Party’s best asset?”

But Dutton may have had the opposite effect for the Greens Party, which has lost at least two of the three seats it gained in Brisbane in 2022. Their party leader, Adam Bandt, also appears to have been defeated in Melbourne, an electorate he’d held for 15 years.

“Perhaps in desperation, [Dutton] was gravitating towards culture war issues, sort of echoing Trumpian themes, if you like, and that has been punished,” Dr Mols says. “But also the Greens… who were perhaps seen as being at the other end of that shouting match, have not done well.”

Dr Mols also believes that desperation to keep Dutton out may have seen some former Greens voters prioritise Labor this time – though he points out more centrist Teal independents appear to have bucked that trend.

In any case, he doesn’t see the result in Queensland as a groundswell of love for Labor. The state was still the only jurisdiction in Australia where there were more first preference votes for the Coalition than Labor.

“There has to be enough of a swing towards a party, but it’s often that preferencing that actually tilts it over the line,” he says.

“This is more of a Liberal loss.”

For many Coalition voters, that loss is deeply felt. Rick describes it as a “real rout”.

But among others, like Aleysha, there is an inexplicable element of mirth.

“I think it’s quite funny, that he slipped as much as he did,” she says. “And I can’t tell you why.”

This week saw Roman Catholic cardinals meet to choose the next pope, people across Europe mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two, and Donald Trump declare war on foreign films.

But how much attention did you pay to what else has been going on in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz compiled by Ben Fell.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

Former Antrim camogie All-Star Jane Adams has said the enforcement of skort wearing in camogie “screams sexism” and has urged the Camogie Association to “be transformational” and change the rule.

County and club teams have been mounting pressure on the Camogie Association to relax the rule and give women and girls the choice between wearing skorts or shorts in camogie matches.

It comes after the Kilkenny and Dublin teams were forced to change into skorts before their Leinster Championship semi-final could go ahead last Saturday.

On Thursday the Camogie Association called a Special Congress for 22 May to vote on the issue.

The current rules governing playing gear for camogie state that it must include a skirt, skort (a pair of shorts with an overlapping fabric panel which resembles a skirt) or a divided skirt.

This is in contrast to women’s gaelic football where shorts are allowed.

Camogie is governed by the Camogie Association of Ireland, which is closely linked to the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and alongside the Ladies Gaelic Football Association which is scheduled to formally integrate into the wider GAA in 2027.

Ms Adams told BBC News NI that throughout her “20-year career, this has always been an issue for players”.

She retired in 2016 and said she “can’t understand or believe that in 2025, this is still a debate and not a choice”.

“Personally, it does scream sexism – girls shouldn’t be being told what they have to wear. Skorts and shorts look similar, but it’s all about comfort.”

Ms Adams described the issue as “a no-brainer” and “should have been changed a long time ago”.

“I guarantee that one of the reasons why girls are dropping out of camogie is because of this issue.

“So let’s look at a solution instead of turning it into a fight.”

She said during her career, there was a lot of things she “didn’t agree with in the Camogie Association”, which caused her to retire sooner than she would have liked.

A recent Gaelic Players Association survey highlighted how 70% of players experienced discomfort while wearing the skort, and that 83% of players wanted an option to choose to wear shorts.

Speaking to RTÉ News on Wednesday, Cork camogie player Ashling Thompson said Cork will wear shorts in Saturday’s Munster senior camogie final and if they are asked to change to skorts they will refuse to do so, even if it risks the game being abandoned or forfeiting the Munster title to Waterford.

Aislín Ní Choinn from St John’s in west Belfast told BBC News NI that skorts “aren’t fit for purpose” and that “it would always be the talk in the changing rooms”.

“It would always be something that would annoy everybody but we just never challenged it,” she told BBC News NI.

“No one would ever come to training in a skort, all training is done in shorts because it’s the most convenient and comfortable,” she said.

She said player welfare should be the focus, and the skort causes a problem for that.

“If you’re on your period, if you’re having a week like that and you’re bloated, the skorts are very uncomfortable, they’re very tight.

“When you’re playing and you’re bending down to go for the ball, you’re worrying: ‘Am I exposed here, are people going to be able to see?’ when your skort comes up.

“You’re very, very vulnerable, and if you’re worrying about that, you’re not focused on the game,” she added.

However, the captain of Ballycastle’s senior camogie team, Elen McIntosh, said she does not “feel that strongly about players having to wear skorts or shorts”.

“There are much bigger issues facing women’s sports, like access to facilities, funding and media coverage.

“I don’t think skorts should overshadow these bigger issues,” she added.

However, she added that the choice should come from the players and it should not be “imposed”.

Caoimh Mallon is the club secretary for Fullen Gaels, the only senior camogie team in the north of England.

The Manchester club was set up in the early 2000s, and Caoimh said the same rules apply in England.

“I play both Gaelic football and camogie, and I don’t understand the need for women to have to wear skorts for camogie and not football.

“It’s not the issue that we have to wear them, it’s the fact we have no choice,” she said.

“We are playing Gaelic games in Britain, we are making a name for ourselves here.

“Why does it matter what we wear? It matters what game we play and how we perform,” she added.

It’s going to be a very sexy summer, a touch of romantic, cowboy and rock and roll.

That’s according to Mehdi Sousanne, at least. And he should know. He’s a designer for Zara who helps create the clothes for a brand that’s one of the most successful stories in High Street fashion.

Zara is owned by Inditex, the world’s biggest fashion retailer, which runs a string of store chains including Massimo Dutti and Pull & Bear.

It relies on 1,800 suppliers across the world, but nearly all the clothes are brought to Spain where the company is based, to be despatched to stores in 97 countries.

Zara doesn’t advertise and rarely gives interviews. But as it marks 50 years since the opening of its first store, I’ve come to its vast campus in Galicia to meet the boss and workers for a rare glimpse into how the secretive brand operates.

It’s a time when the company finds itself having to navigate fast-changing markets, with growing competition from ultra-cheap online players Shein and Temu, who ship their goods direct from China, as well as uncertainty surrounding US tariffs.

But Oscar Garcia Maceiras, Inditex’s CEO, says US President Donald Trump’s tariffs won’t disrupt its supply chains or change Zara’s plans to expand further in the US, now its second biggest market.

“Bear in mind that for us, diversification is key. We are producing in almost 50 different markets with non-exclusive suppliers so we are more than used to adapt ourselves to change,” he tells me.

The business has certainly adapted and grown since its first store opened a short drive away in the town of A Coruna.

It now has 350 designers, with the staff coming from some 40 different countries.

“There are no rules in general. It’s all about feelings,” says Mehdi, who works on delivering the key pieces for the season.

He says inspiration can come from anyone ranging from the “street” to the cinema  as well as the catwalks. He likes to sketch his ideas once an all-important mood board has been created.

• Listen as the BBC goes behind the scenes at Zara’s headquarters

In the pattern cutting room, the designs are turned into paper samples, and are pinned on to mannequins. Dozens of seamstresses then run up the first fabric samples on the spot for a first fitting.

Pattern maker Mar Marcote has been with the business 42 years and still uses a magnifying glass to examine each item of clothing before it finally goes into production.

“When you finish the item and see that it looks good, and then sometimes sells out, it’s marvellous,” she says.

Zara is a business that has changed the way we shop.

In the old days, retailers released just two main collections a year, Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter. For decades, most chains have outsourced manufacturing to lower-cost factories in the far east with the clothes arriving up to six months later.

Zara went against conventional wisdom by sourcing a lot of its clothes closer to home and changing products much more frequently. That meant it could respond much faster to the latest trends and drop new items into stores every week.

Just over half of its clothes are made in Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Turkey. There’s a factory doing small production runs on site at HQ, with another seven nearby, which it also owns.

As a result, it can turn around products in a matter of weeks.

More basic fashion staples are produced with longer lead times in countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh.

Logistics and data are other factors behind its success. Every piece of clothing is packaged and despatched from its distribution centres in Spain, as well as one in the Netherlands.

“What is absolutely critical is the level of accuracy,” says CEO Mr Maceiras.

“It’s something that allows us to make the right decision in the last possible minute, in order to assess properly the appetite from our customers, in order to adapt our fashion proposition to the profile of our customers in different locations.”

In other words, getting the right products to the right shops.

At HQ, product managers then receive real-time data on how clothes are selling in stores worldwide, and – crucially – feedback from customers, which is then shared with designers and buyers, who can adjust the ranges along the season according to demand.

Unlike some other High Street rivals, it only discounts when it stages its twice-yearly sales.

But is Zara starting to lose its shine after posting slower sales growth at the start of this year?

“The key challenge for Inditex is continuing to be relevant in a fashion world that continues to get faster and cheaper,” says William Woods, European retail analyst for Bernstein.

Not only are mainstream rivals like H&M, Mango and Uniqlo trying to catch up, the market has been disrupted by Shein and Temu.

Shein racked up $38bn in global sales last year, just a whisker behind Inditex.

Asked how much of a threat Shein and Temu’s success poses to Zara, Mr Maceiras stresses that its business model doesn’t rely on price.

“Of course, we are looking at providing our customers our products at an affordable price. But for us, it’s critical to provide customers fashion that should be inspirational, with quality, creativity and sustainable.”

Zara has come a long way since its founder Amancio Ortega started the business.

The company is still majority-owned by his family and his daughter Marta is now chairwoman of the group.

Now aged 89, Mr Ortega remains famously reclusive but still pops in, according to Mr Maceiras.

“He’s a presence, a physical or moral presence, absolutely every day.”

When President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping taxes on imports from around the world last month, he said the measures aimed to right America’s trade relationships.

In his new pact with the UK, we got a glimpse of the kind of agreements he might seek to negotiate across the globe.

Both the US and UK have so far offered limited details about the new trade deal, which both say is still being worked out in the weeks ahead.

But anyone hoping the White House will either significantly roll back its tariffs – or win major concessions abroad – seem bound for disappointment.

Under the outline presented on Thursday, the 10% import tax that Trump announced last month on most UK goods will remain intact.

Otherwise, the plans mostly amounted to the White House agreeing to walk back some of the import taxes it has unveiled on strategic sectors, such as cars and steel.

In exchange, the White House said it had won changes – which were unspecified – that would expand opportunities for sales of American beef, ethanol and other agricultural products in the UK.

“The actual substantive items that they negotiated are pretty narrow,” said Stan Veuger, a senior fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “In some sense you could say they basically took the status quo, made marginal changes and called it a deal.”

• US and UK agree deal slashing Trump tariffs on cars and metals
• What is in the UK-US tariff deal?
• What tariffs has Trump announced and why?

The Trump administration, which has seen markets panic at its tariff announcements, was eager to sell the announcement as significant, describing it as a “breakthrough”.

In the UK, Sir Keir Starmer, who also has incentive to want to be seen as a solid negotiator, called it “historic”, while noting there was more work to be done.

Steelmakers and car firms in the UK did express relief, saying the tariff rollback would help save jobs.

But it was hardly missed on anyone that despite progress, goods from the UK are still facing higher tariffs than they were a few weeks ago.

In the US, most analysts agreed that substantive benefits would be limited, despite the two sides discussing trade on and off for nearly a decade.

Mr Veuger noted that Trump in his first term was similarly willing to declare victory on deals with China, Mexico and Canada that experts likewise said would have narrow impact.

“I think for Trump the goal really is to have a deal and it doesn’t really matter what it looks like in the substance, ” he said. “It tells me it’s not that hard to get to a deal but it also tells me there’s not that much room to make changes.”

Thursday’s announcements drew an unusually sharp rebuke from American carmakers, which noted that the plans made UK-made cars less expensive to import than many of the models made by their companies, which have operations in Mexico and Canada.

Other analysts pounced on the irony of the president dismissing concerns that tariffs are driving up prices for dolls while he agrees to lower taxes on imported cars for the ultra-wealthy like Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, which are UK companies.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said it welcomed the deal but other groups representing farmers, a key part of Trump’s political base, were notably muted.

The American Farm Bureau Federation called it an “important first step”, while noting “more work is needed”.

“This is a good deal for American farmers … but it is at the end of the day a fairly narrowly-focused framework,” said Lewis Lukens, former acting US Ambassador to the UK and deputy chief of mission to the US embassy in London during part of Trump’s first term.

“It gives Trump a political victory with not too much really to show behind it.”

Republicans, traditionally a free-trade party, were quick to celebrate the achievement.

Rep Adrian Smith, a Republican from Nebraska, who chairs a subcommittee on trade, told the BBC he was “pleased” over the initial trade pact.

“This is a significant step toward eliminating barriers to American products in foreign markets and friendshoring supply chains,” he said, commending the administration for the swift negotiations, though noting he was happy to see details of the deal were still being negotiated “to address additional concerns”.

In a note to clients after the press conference, Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist at Capital Economics, said the announcement indicated “rising desperation” in the White House to ease its tariffs before they caused significant economic damage.

But those economic risks are coming not from the UK, but America’s relationship with China, which sent more than $400bn worth of goods to the US last year, more than six times that of the UK.

Trump has hiked import taxes on Chinese products to at least 145%, prompting Beijing to retaliate with its own duties on American goods.

Trade traffic between the two countries has dropped precipitously since last month, raising fears that the tariffs will lead not only to price rises, as had been widely predicted, but shortages as well.

The two sides are set to have their first talks this weekend, but what will come out of them remain unclear.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on a 90-day pause that Trump placed on some of the highest tariffs he had announced last month on partners such as the European Union, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Earlier this week, Trump appeared testy when asked by reporters about his trade negotiations.

“Everyone says, ‘When, when, when are you going to sign deals?'” he said. “I wish they’d … stop asking.”

But it seems unlikely that this announcement with the UK will be the one to get the critics off his back.

Events are taking place across the UK to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Europe.

The King and Queen, as well as the prime minister and other senior royals, attended a service of thanksgiving and remembrance at Westminster Abbey.

The service was preceded by a two-minute national silence to remember those who served in World War Two.

King Charles and the Prince of Wales laid wreaths at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier.

The Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle, the dean of Westminster, led the service with a tribute to those “who have died the death of honour”.

Alexander Churchill, the 10-year-old great-great-grandson of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill lit a Candle of Peace, whilst young members of the congregation handed out flowers to veterans.

Artefacts from the Second World War were processed through Westminster Abbey by members of the Armed Services.

The Princess of Wales placed flowers at the Innocent Victims’ Memorial, following a Service of Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey.

MPs and peers walked in procession from the Palace of Westminster to Westminster Abbey, re-enacting the historic walk MPs did from Parliament on VE Day in 1945.

Speaker Lindsay Hoyle was towards the front of the procession, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, a little way behind.

Some 1,800 guests attended the service including many veterans.

Among the politicians attending today’s service, were several former PMs, including Lord David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Sir John Major.

Members of the public observed the two-minute national silence.

Earlier, Scotland’s National Piper, Louise Marshall, played a lament at dawn to the fallen on Portobello Beach in Edinburgh.

US President Donald Trump has appointed Fox News host and former New York prosecutor Jeanine Pirro as interim US attorney for Washington DC.

The announcement comes after Trump withdrew his first pick for the job after he lost key Republican support in the Senate, which votes on such positions.

After Trump’s 2020 loss to Joe Biden, Pirro made false statements about the election that were part of a lawsuit against Fox News by a company that makes voting machines. The case was settled for more than $787m (£594m).

Trump called Pirro “a powerful crusader for victims of crime” in a social media post announcing his selection.

The president did not indicate whether Pirro, 73, would serve permanently in the job, which requires Senate confirmation, or how long her term would last.

In the Truth Social post on Thursday night, Trump noted that she previously served as a Republican district attorney in Westchester, New York, as well as a judge. He also touted her roles on various shows on Fox News, which he called “one of the Highest Rated Shows on Television”.

Pirro has been a close ally of Trump for decades. In one of his last actions during his first term, Trump issued a pardon to her husband, who had been convicted of tax evasion decades earlier.

Pirro replaces current interim US attorney Ed Martin, a former conservative podcaster that Trump appointed this January.

He was replaced after North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a key swing vote, said he would refuse to confirm Martin for the role on a permanent basis, saying there was “friction” over how Martin viewed those involved in the 6 January riots at the US Capitol.

Tillis told reporters this week that he had “no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January 6”.

Martin has been a staunch critic of the investigation into the Capitol riot. While serving in the role on an interim basis, he fired prosecutors who oversaw rioter cases.

Trump said Martin will remain at the US Justice Department and serve as director of the “weaponization working group”, which looks into officials who investigated Trump, the president said in another post on social media.

Since taking office, Trump has issued pardons and ended prosecutions against 6 January rioters who stormed the US Capitol in an effort to block Biden’s election win over Trump in the 2020 election.

Two men have been found guilty of the murder of Cassius Turvey, an Aboriginal schoolboy who was chased down by a vigilante gang and beaten, in a case which outraged Australia.

The 15-year-old Noongar Yamatji boy died of head injuries in October 2022, 10 days after he was brutally assaulted on the outskirts of Perth – prompting vigils and protests nationwide.

Four people were charged with his murder and Jack Steven James Brearley, 24, and Brodie Lee Palmer, 29, were on Thursday found guilty after a 12-week trial.

Mitchell Colin Forth, 27, was instead found guilty of manslaughter, and a woman who was with the trio in the moments before the attack was acquitted.

Speaking outside court, Cassius’ mum Mechelle Turvey said she was “numb with relief” at the verdict after “three months of hell”.

But she added that “justice, to me, will never be served because I don’t have my son, and he’s not coming back”.

The trial was told the attack on Cassius was the culmination of a complex series of tit-for-tat events “that had absolutely nothing to do with him”, according to the Australian Associated Press.

The group had been “hunting for kids” because somebody had damaged Brearley’s car windows, prosecutors said.

“Somebody smashed my car, they’re about to die,” Brearley was heard saying on CCTV footage captured shortly before the incident and played to the court.

There is no suggestion Cassius had any involvement in what happened to the car, but he was among a throng of kids who were confronted by the trio of men while walking along a suburban street after school.

A boy on crutches was assaulted, sending the others scattering through nearby bushland to escape.

Prosecutors alleged the trio caught Cassius and knocked him to the ground, where he was hit on the head at least twice with a short metal pole, leaving him with a brain bleed.

In the days after the attack, Cassius underwent surgeries in hospital, aimed at relieving the pressure on his brain and saving his life. Meanwhile, Brearley was caught on camera boasting about beating the child.

“He was laying in the field and I was just smacking him with a trolley pole so hard, he learnt his lesson,” he was heard saying on a phone call played at the trial, according to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Brearley told the court his assault on Cassius was self-defence, and claimed it was Palmer who had hit him with the metal pole. Palmer said the opposite, blaming Brearley.

Ultimately the jury found both responsible for his murder, and Forth guilty of manslaughter.

The men are due to return to court for sentencing hearing on 26 June.

Outside court, Mrs Turvey embarked on a list of thank yous, including for the trial witnesses, most of whom were “young children that are scarred for life”.

“I’d like to thank all of Australia, people that know us, for all of their love and support,” she added.

Speaking to the BBC the month after his death, Mrs Turvey said her son was beloved in the local community.

Along with two of his friends, he had set up a small business in order to reach out to neighbours and mow lawns. He wanted to change the negative stereotypes about Aboriginal youth in Australia.

“He was funny. He loved posing,” Mechelle Turvey said, showing photos of Cassius smiling.

His killing in 2022 sparked national grief and anger. Thousands of people attended vigils for Cassius in more than two dozen places across the country, with events also being held in the US and New Zealand.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed the attack was “clearly” racially motivated – though this was not advanced as a motive in court – and it reopened a national debate about racial discrimination.

“Australia does have a shocking reputation around the world for this kind of violence,” Human rights lawyer Hannah McGlade told the BBC at the time.

A major conservation charity linked to Prince Harry has admitted that human rights abuses were committed by its rangers in Congo-Brazzaville, following an independent review into allegations made by members of the Baka community against African Parks rangers.

In a report published last year by the British newspaper the Mail on Sunday, community members accused African Parks rangers of beating, waterboarding and raping locals to stop them from accessing their ancestral forests, which are now in a conservation area.

Despite commissioning an independent review into the actions of its rangers in Congo-Brazzaville, African Parks has not made the findings of the review public.

Instead, it has published a statement acknowledging that human rights abuses occurred in the Odzala-Kokoua National Park, which it manages. It has excluded details of the abuse.

The review, carried out by Omnia Strategy LLP, a London-based law firm, was handed directly to African Parks.

In a statement, Omnia said it has been carrying out an independent investigation into the alleged abuse in Odzala-Kokoua since December 2023.

Its statement did not include its findings and recommendations, which it said had been sent directly to African Parks.

The BBC reached out to both Omnia and barristers from Doughty Street Chambers, which was involved in the investigation, to request their findings, but they declined to comment beyond their published statement.

Prince Harry sits on the board of African Parks and has been involved with the charity since 2016. In 2023, after serving six years as president, he was made a member of the Board of Directors, the governing body of the organisation.

The BBC has requested comment from Prince Harry.

African Parks said it had improved its safeguarding processes in the past five years both in the Odzala-Kokoua National Park and institutionally. Additional measures it has put in place include appointing an anthropologist to ensure the Baka communities are better supported and working with local human rights NGOs to support the local community. It also said it would carry out an independent human rights impact assessment.

The charity Survival International, which lobbies for the rights of indigenous people, and has raised the issue of the abuse of the Baka people with Prince Harry, criticised African Park’s decision not to make the findings of the investigation public.

Survival told the BBC “African Parks has committed to more reports, more staff and more guidelines – but such approaches have not prevented horrific abuses and violations of international human rights law in the decade or more that African Parks has known of these atrocities, and there is no reason to believe they will do so now”.

When the allegation were first made public last year, Survival said that African Parks had known about the alleged abuse of the Baka people since 2013.

At the time, African Parks said it had reached out to Survival to find out more, but that the latter had refused to cooperate.

Survival said it wished to protect its sources in the local community for fear of retaliation.

African Parks, which is headquartered in Johannesburg, is arguably one of Africa’s largest conservation charities. It manages 23 protected areas in 13 African countries, and is backed by powerful patrons.

On its website, African Parks lists a number of high-profile donors including the European Union, Rob Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune, and Howard Buffett, son of Warren Buffet.

In its 2023 annual report, the charity said its funders provided it with more than $500,000 (£375,000) per year.

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The bodies of a journalist and his partner have been found in South Africa in an advanced stage of decomposition, more than two months after they went missing, local media groups have said.

Police said they had found human remains, but DNA tests still needed to be conducted to confirm they were those of radio journalist Sibusiso Aserie Ndlovu and his partner Zodwa Precious Mdhluli.

In a joint statement, two media groups said that police had achieved a breakthrough after arresting five suspects.

The couple were murdered and their bodies dumped in a bush in northern Limpopo province, the media groups said, adding that the deaths had left them in shock and disbelief.

The suspects had reportedly been arrested with stolen furniture, appliances and the parts of a car belonging to the couple who had been missing since 18 February.

Ndlovu was the founder of a local radio station, Capital Live, in South Africa’s capital Pretoria.

The African Media and Communicators Forum (AMCF) and the National Press Club (NPC) said that a forensic team had already identified the remains as those of the couple.

“I am terribly sad. We held out hope that despite the number of days that the couple had gone missing, they would still be found alive. Our deepest condolences go out to the families of our brother and sister,” said AMCF chairperson Elijah Mhlanga.

South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world, with many people living in fear.

Official data showed that 26,232 murders took place in 2024, an average of 72 per day.

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The leader of Australia’s third-largest political party, the Greens, has conceded his seat in Melbourne after a tight electoral vote count that lasted several days.

Adam Bandt, who had safely held the seat of Melbourne since 2010, told reporters on Thursday afternoon that he had called Labor candidate Sarah Witty to congratulate her on her victory.

Australia’s centre-left Labor party won Saturday’s federal election by a landslide, decimating the conservative Liberal-National Coalition while also gutting the left-leaning Greens.

While the Greens got the highest vote in Melbourne, Bandt said the main reason for their loss was the preference votes for Liberal and the far-right One Nation party.

Australia uses a preferential voting system, where candidates are ranked in order of preference.

If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in the first tally, the votes from the least popular candidates are redistributed, and that process is repeated until someone secures a majority.

“To win in Melbourne we needed to overcome Liberal, Labor and One Nation combined, and it’s an Everest we’ve climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short,” Bandt said.

“We came very close,” he added, “but we couldn’t quite get there.”

Bandt also cited the so-called Trump effect as a “key defining feature of the election” – the Coalition’s PM candidate Peter Dutton was often compared to the US President, which he rejected but it stuck.

Bandt said that contributed to a five-week “riptide” that saw votes swing away from Liberal and Dutton, and towards Labor.

This same effect also pulled votes away from the Greens, he added: “The riptide from Liberal to Labor had an effect on us as well.”

“People in Melbourne hate Peter Dutton, and with very good reason. They’ve seen his brand of toxic racism for many years… and like me, many wanted him as far away from power as possible.

“My initial take is some votes leaked away from us, as people saw Labor as the best option to stop Dutton.”

Like Bandt, Dutton also lost his seat in the election, adding to his resounding defeat at the polls by incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Bandt, who has been leader of the Greens since 2020, said he wanted to thank the Melbourne community for “regularly giving me the highest vote, including this election, and to thank you for the last 15 years and the chance to do some amazing things together”.

He listed off a string of achievements by the Greens under his leadership, including the party’s pivotal role in the marriage equality plebiscite, the First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum, and advancing “world-leading climate legislation”.

“Fighting the climate crisis is the reason I got into politics, and I want to thank everyone in Melbourne for helping us make a difference,” Bandt said.

He also thanked his party colleagues, noting that he leaves the party with “the vote for the Greens higher than when i started, and our biggest ever representation in parliament”.

Bandt thanked the African and Muslim communities in Melbourne, as well as “everyone that had the courage to speak up against the invasion of Gaza, and spoke up for peace in Palestine”.

Finally, he thanked his wife, Claudia.

“Not only could I have not done this without her, we’ve done it together,” he said.

In his closing remarks, Bandt offered some “free advice to the media”.

“We’re in a climate crisis,” he said. “I really want the media to stop reporting on climate as a political issue, and start thinking of it as if our country were being invaded. We should treat the climate crisis as if there was a war on.”

“Please, please start taking the climate crisis seriously, and holding this government and any future government to account.”

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said he intends to give away 99% of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.

Gates said he would accelerate his giving via his foundation, with plans to end its operations in 2045.

“People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” he wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

Mr Gates, 69, said his eponymous foundation has already given $100bn (£75bn) towards health and development projects, and that he expects it will spend another $200bn, depending on markets and inflation, over the next two decades.

In his blog post, Mr Gates cited a 1889 essay by tycoon Andrew Carnegie called The Gospel of Wealth, which argues that wealthy people have a duty to return their fortunes to society.

Mr Gates quoted Mr Carnegie, who wrote: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”

His latest pledge represents an acceleration in charitable giving. Initially, he and his ex-wife Melinda had planned for the Gates Foundation to continue working for several decades after their deaths.

When asked about this shift, Mr Gates told the BBC’s Newshour on Thursday that there will be other wealthy people in 20 years who can better tackle future challenges.

“It’s really about the urgency,” he said. “We can spend a lot more if we’re not trying to be perpetual, and I know that the spending will be in line with my values.”

Giving away 99% of his fortune could still leave Mr Gates a billionaire – according to Bloomberg, the Microsoft founder is the fifth-richest person in the world.

In the blog post, he shared a timeline of his wealth that showed his current net worth at $108bn and a large hand-drawn arrow going down to close to zero in 2045.

Mr Gates also said the foundation would draw from its endowment to give away $200bn.

Along with Paul Allen, Mr Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, and the company became a dominant force in computer software and other tech industries. Mr Gates has gradually stepped back from the company this century, resigning as chief executive in 2000 and as chairman in 2014.

He said he has been inspired to give away money by investor Warren Buffett and other philanthropists, however critics of his foundation say Mr Gates uses its charitable status to avoid tax and that it has undue influence over the global health system.

In his blog post, he outlined three main goals for his foundation: eliminating preventable diseases which kill mothers and children; eliminating infectious diseases including malaria and measles; and eliminating poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

Mr Gates criticised the US, UK and France for cutting their foreign aid budgets.

“It’s unclear whether the world’s richest countries will continue to stand up for its poorest people,” he wrote. “But the one thing we can guarantee is that, in all of our work, the Gates Foundation will support efforts to help people and countries pull themselves out of poverty.”

He was more pointed in the interview with Newshour, where he was asked about comments he had made accusing tech billionaire Elon Musk of killing children through cuts to US aid made by Department of Government Efficiency, or Doge.

“These cuts will kill not just children, but millions of children,” Mr Gates replied.

“You wouldn’t have expected the world’s richest person to do it.”

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Gates raised the issue of cancelled grants to a hospital in Gaza Province, Mozambique, which Donald Trump erroneously claimed was funding condoms “for Hamas” in the Gaza Strip. Mr Musk later acknowledged the claim was wrong and said “we will make mistakes”, however the cost-cutting continued.

“I’d love for [Musk] to go in and meet the children that have now been infected with HIV because he cut that money,” Mr Gates told the FT.

The BBC has contacted Mr Musk for comment.

The Gates Foundation is a donor to BBC Media Action, the BBC’s charitable arm which is separate from the Corporation’s news operations.

Even before his name was announced from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, the crowds below were chanting “Viva il Papa” – Long live the Pope.

Robert Francis Prevost, 69, will be the 267th occupant of the throne of St Peter and he will be known as Leo XIV.

He is the first American to fill the role of pope, although he is considered as much a cardinal from Latin America because of the many years he spent as a missionary in Peru.

Born in Chicago in 1955 to parents of Spanish and Franco-Italian descent, Prevost served as an altar boy and was ordained in 1982.

Although he moved to Peru three years later, he returned regularly to the US to serve as a pastor and a prior in his home city.

He has Peruvian nationality and is fondly remembered as a figure who worked with marginalised communities and helped build bridges.

He spent 10 years as a local parish pastor and as a teacher at a seminary in Trujillo in north-western Peru.

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In his first words as pope, Leo XIV spoke fondly of his predecessor Francis.

“We still hear in our ears the weak but always courageous voice of Pope Francis who blessed us,” he said.

“United and hand in hand with God, let us advance together,” he told cheering crowds.

The Pope also spoke of his role in the Augustinian Order.

In 2014, Francis made him Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru.

He is well known to cardinals because of his high-profile role as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Latin America which has the important task of selecting and supervising bishops.

He became archbishop in January 2023 and within a few months Francis made him a cardinal.

Early attention will focus on Leo XIV’s pronouncements to see whether he will continue his predecessor’s reforms in the Roman Catholic Church.

Prevost is believed to have shared Francis’ views on migrants, the poor and the environment.

A former roommate of his, Reverend John Lydon, described Prevost to the BBC as “outgoing”, “down to earth” and “very concerned with the poor”.

On his personal background, Prevost told Italian network Rai before his election that he grew up in a family of immigrants.

“I was born in the United States… But my grandparents were all immigrants, French, Spanish… I was raised in a very Catholic family, both of my parents were very engaged in the parish,” he said.

Although Prevost was born in the US, the Vatican described him as the second pope from the Americas (Francis was from Argentina).

During his time in Peru, he was unable to escape the sexual abuse scandals that have clouded the Church, even though his diocese has fervently denied he has been involved in any attempted cover-up.

In choosing the name Leo, Prevost has signified a commitment to dynamic social issues, according to experts.

The first pontiff to use the name Leo, whose papacy ended in 461, met Attila the Hun and persuaded him not to attack Rome. The last Pope Leo led the Church from 1878 to 1903 and wrote an influential treatise on workers’ rights.

Former Archbishop of Boston Seán Patrick O’Malley wrote on his blog that the new pontiff “has chosen a name widely associated with the social justice legacy of Pope Leo XIII, who was pontiff at a time of epic upheaval in the world, the time of the industrial revolution, the beginning of Marxism, and widespread immigration”.

The new Pope’s LGBT views are unclear, but some groups, including the conservative College of Cardinals, believe he may be less supportive than Francis.

Leo XIV has shown support for a declaration from Francis to permit blessings for same-sex couples and others in “irregular situations”, although he has added that bishops must interpret such directives in accordance with local contexts and cultures.

Speaking last year about climate change, Cardinal Prevost said that it was time to move “from words to action”.

He called on mankind to build a “relationship of reciprocity” with the environment.

And he has spoken about concrete measures at the Vatican, including the installation of solar panels and the adoption of electric vehicles.

Pope Leo XIV has supported Pope Francis’ decision to allow women to join the Dicastery for Bishops for the first time.

“On several occasions we have seen that their point of view is an enrichment,” he told Vatican News in 2023.

In 2024, he told the Catholic News Service that women’s presence “contributes significantly to the process of discernment in looking for who we hope are the best candidates to serve the Church in episcopal ministry”.

India has accused Pakistan of attacking three of its military bases with drones and missiles, a claim which has been denied by Islamabad.

The Indian Army said it had foiled Pakistan’s attempts to attack its bases in Jammu and Udhampur, in Indian-administered Kashmir, and Pathankot, in India’s Punjab state.

Blasts were reported on Thursday evening in Jammu city in Indian-administered Kashmir as the region went into a blackout.

Pakistan’s defence minister told the BBC they were not behind the attack.

“We deny it, we have not mounted anything so far,” Khawaja Asif told the BBC, adding: “We will not strike and then deny”.

Earlier on Thursday, India said it had struck Pakistan’s air defences and “neutralised” Islamabad’s attempts to hit military targets in India on Wednesday night.

Pakistan called that action another “act of aggression”, following Indian missile strikes on Wednesday on targets in Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

India’s strikes on Wednesday sparked a chorus of calls for de-escalation from the international community with the UN and world leaders calling for calm.

The attacks and incidents of shelling along the border have fanned fears of wider conflict erupting between the nuclear-armed states.

It is being viewed as the worst confrontation between the two countries in more than two decades.

India said it hit nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites on Wednesday in retaliation for a militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

Pakistan has strongly denied Indian claims that it backed the militants who killed 26 civilians in the mountainous town of Pahalgam.

It was the bloodiest attack on civilians in the region for years, sending tensions soaring. Most of the victims were Indian tourists.

Indian-administered Kashmir has seen a decades-long insurgency against Indian rule which has claimed thousands of lives.

Kashmir has been a flashpoint between the countries since they became independent after British India was partitioned in 1947. Both claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over it.

There were calls for restraint from around the world after India launched “Operation Sindoor” early on Wednesday.

But on Thursday both sides accused each other of further military action.

Pakistan’s military spokesman said drones sent by India had been engaged in multiple locations.

“Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said. “These locations are Lahore, Gujranwala, Chakwal, Rawalpindi, Attock, Bahawalpur, Miano, Chor and near Karachi.”

He said one civilian had been killed in Sindh province and four troops injured in Lahore.

The US consulate in Lahore told its staff to shelter in the building.

India said its latest action had been taken in response to Pakistan’s attempts to “engage a number of military targets in northern and western India” overnight.

“It has been reliably learnt that an Air Defence system at Lahore has been neutralised,” a Defence Ministry statement said. Pakistan denied the claim.

There was no independent confirmation of the two countries’ versions of events.

Later in the day India’s foreign secretary Vikram Misri told a news conference in Delhi: “Our intention has not been to escalate matters, we are only responding to the original escalation.”

Meanwhile, casualty numbers continue to rise. Pakistan says 31 people have been killed and 57 injured by Indian air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and firing along the Line of Control, since Wednesday morning.

India’s army said the number of people killed by Pakistani firing in the disputed Kashmir region had risen to 16, including three women and five children.

India initially did not name any group it believed was behind the attack in Pahalgam but on 7 May it accused the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group of carrying it out.

Indian police have alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, a claim denied by Islamabad. It says it has nothing to do with the 22 April attacks.

In a late-night address on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to avenge those killed in India’s strikes.

He repeated Pakistan’s claim that it had shot down five Indian fighter jets, saying that was a “crushing response”. India has not commented on that claim.

Following the reports of Thursday’s explosions in Jammu, local media cited Indian military sources on Thursday in reporting that blasts across the Jammu region were also reported in the towns of Akhnoor, Samba and Kathua.

From a woman waving a colonial-era flag in a shopping mall, to bakery staff selling cakes with protest symbols on them – dozens of Hongkongers have been reported to the police by one man for what he believes were national security violations.

“We’re in every corner of society, watching, to see if there is anything suspicious which could infringe on the national security law,” former banker Innes Tang tells the BBC World Service.

“If we find these things, we go and report it to the police.”

When the UK returned Hong Kong to China 28 years ago, internationally binding treaties guaranteed the city’s rights and freedoms for 50 years. But the national security law (NSL), imposed by Beijing a year after Hong Kong’s 2019 mass pro-democracy protests, has been criticised for scuttling free speech and press, and for ushering in a new culture of informing.

The law criminalises activities considered to be calls for “secession” (breaking away from China), “subversion” (undermining the power or authority of the government), and collusion with foreign forces.

An additional security law called Article 23, voted in last year, has further tightened restrictions.

With new laws and arrests, there has been limited reporting on Hong Kong’s pro-China “patriots” – the people who are now running and policing the city, as well as the ordinary citizens who openly support them. But the BBC has spent weeks interviewing Innes Tang, 60, a prominent self-described patriot.

He and his volunteers have taken screen grabs from social media of any activities or comments they believe could be in breach of the NSL.

He also established a hotline for tip-offs from the public and encouraged his online followers to share information on the people around them.

Nearly 100 individuals and organisations have been reported to the authorities by him and his followers, he says.

“Does reporting work? We wouldn’t do it if it didn’t,” Mr Tang says. “Many had cases opened by the police… with some resulting in jail terms.”

Mr Tang says he hasn’t investigated alleged law breakers himself, but simply reported incidents he thinks warrant scrutiny – describing it as “proper community-police co-operation”.

Mr Tang is not the only so-called patriot to engage in this kind of surveillance.

Hong Kong’s authorities have set up their own national security hotline, receiving 890,000 tip-offs from November 2020 to February this year – the city’s security bureau told the BBC.

For those who are reported to the authorities, pressure can be relentless.

Since the NSL was enacted in 2020, up until February this year, more than 300 people had been arrested for national security offences. And an estimated 300,000 or more Hongkongers have permanently left the city in recent years.

Pong Yat-ming, the owner of an independent bookshop that hosts public talks, says he often receives inspections from government departments which cite “anonymous complaints”.

He received 10 visits in one 15-day period, he says.

Kenneth Chan, political scientist and university lecturer, who has been involved in the city’s pro-democracy movement since the 1990s, jokes he has “become a bit radioactive these days”.

Some friends, students and colleagues now keep their distance because of his outspoken views, he says. “But I would be the last person to blame the victims. It’s the system.”

In response, Hong Kong’s government said it “attaches great importance to upholding academic freedom and institutional autonomy”. But it adds that academic institutions “have the responsibility to ensure their operations are in compliance with the law and meet the interests of the community at large”.

Innes Tang says he is motivated to report people by a love of Hong Kong, and that his views on China were cultivated when he was young, when the city was still a British colony.

“The colonial policies weren’t really that great,” he says. “The best opportunities were always given to the British and we [the locals] did not really have access.”

Like many of his generation, he nursed a longing to be united with China and taken out of colonial governance. But he says many other Hongkongers at the time were more concerned with their livelihoods than their rights.

“Democracy or freedom. These were all very abstract ideas which we didn’t really understand,” he says.

An average citizen should not become too involved in politics, he says, explaining he only became politically active to restore what he calls “balance” to Hong Kong society following the turbulence of 2019.

He is giving a voice, he says, to what he calls “the silent majority” of Hongkongers who do not support independence from China, nor the disruption created by the protests.

But other Hongkongers consider rallies and demonstrations a longstanding tradition, and one of the only ways to voice public opinion in a city that now does not have a fully democratically elected leadership.

“We are no longer a city of protests,” says Kenneth Chan, who specialises in Eastern European politics. “So what are we? I don’t have the answer yet.”

And patriotism isn’t inherently a negative thing, he says.

It is “a value, maybe even a virtue”, he argues, although it needs to allow citizens to keep “a critical distance” – something that is not happening in Hong Kong.

Electoral reform was pushed through in 2021 – stating that only “patriots” who “swore loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party” could hold important positions in government or the Legislative Council [LegCo] – Hong Kong’s parliament.

As a result, the council struggles to function, believes Hong Kong-based China commentator Lew Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese government advisory body, the CPPCC.

“The public think a lot of these patriots are ‘verbal revolutionaries’ or political opportunists – they don’t really represent the people,” he says.

“That’s why ridiculous policies still pass with a huge majority. There is no-one to constrain or oppose, no-one to scrutinise.”

Even patriot Innes Tang says he wants to see the current system challenged.

“I don’t want to see every policy passing with 90% of the vote,” he tells the BBC.

There is a danger the National Security Law will be weaponised, he says, with people saying: “If you don’t agree with me, I accuse you of infringement of the national security law.”

“I don’t agree with this type of stuff,” says Mr Tang.

Hong Kong’s government said: “The improved LegCo is now rid of extremists who wish to obstruct and even paralyse the operation of the government without any intention of entering into constructive dialogue to represent the interests of all Hong Kong people.”

For now, says Mr Tang, he has stopped reporting on people. Balance and stability, he believes, has returned to Hong Kong.

The number of large-scale protests has dwindled to none at all.

In academia, fear of surveillance – and how life might change for someone who infringes the laws – means self-censorship and censorship have become the “order of the day”, says Kenneth Chan.

Pro-democracy parties are no longer represented in the Legislative Council and many have disbanded – including the Democratic Party of Hong Kong, once the most powerful party.

Innes Tang has now set his sights overseas.

“There aren’t any particular issues in Hong Kong now, so I asked myself – shouldn’t I have a look at how I can continue to serve my community and my country?” he says.

“For a non-politician and civilian like me, this is an invaluable opportunity.”

He now works as a representative for one of several pro-Beijing non-profit groups, regularly visiting the UN in Geneva to speak at conventions giving China’s perspective on Hong Kong, human rights and other issues.

Mr Tang is also in the process of establishing a media company in Switzerland, and registering as a member of the press.

For Kenneth Chan in Hong Kong, his future hangs in the balance.

“One third of my friends and students are now in exile, another third of my friends and students are in jail, and I’m sort of… in limbo,” he says.

“Today I’m speaking freely with you… no-one would promise me that I would continue doing it for the rest of my life.”

In a written reply to the BBC, a Hong Kong government spokesperson said that national security is a top priority and inherent right for any country. It “only targets an extremely small minority of people and organisations that pose a threat to national security, while protecting the lives and property of the general public”.

US President Donald Trump has hinted that US tariffs on goods from China may come down as top trade officials from the world’s two biggest economies are set to hold talks.

“You can’t get any higher. It’s at 145, so we know it’s coming down,” he said, referring to the new import taxes of up to 145% imposed on China since he returned to the White House.

Trump made the comments during an event to unveil a tariffs deal with the UK – the first such agreement since he hit countries around the world with steep levies in April.

The meeting in Switzerland this weekend is the strongest signal yet that the two sides are ready to deescalate a trade war that has sent shockwaves through financial markets.

“I think it’s a very friendly meeting. They look forward to doing it in an elegant way,” Trump said of the talks with China.

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Hua Chunying also struck a confident note ahead of the talks, saying Beijing has “full confidence” in its ability to manage trade issues with the US.

Officials in both Washington and Beijing are “under growing economic pressure”, Dan Wang from political risk consultancy Eurasia Group told the BBC.

“The recent signals from both sides suggest a transactional de-escalation is on the table”, she added.

The announcement earlier this week of the talks was welcomed as an important first step towards easing tensions but analysts have warned that this marks the start of what are likely to be lengthy negotiations.

“The systemic frictions between the US and China will not be resolved any time soon,” said former US trade negotiator, Stephen Olson.

Any cuts to tariffs as a result of this meeting are likely to be “minor”, he added.

The initial negotiations will be led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and China’s Vice Premier and economic tsar He Lifeng.

But “I think everyone recognises that any final deal will require the active engagement of both presidents,” Mr Olson said.

Another trade expert said that even if the new tariffs imposed by Trump were lifted, the two countries would still have major issues to overcome.

“A realistic goal is probably at best a pullback from the sky-high bilateral tariffs but that would still leave in place high tariff barriers and various other restrictions”, the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) China division, Eswar Prasad told BBC News.

On Friday, official figures for April showed China’s exports to the US fell by more than 20% compared to a year earlier. But at the same time its total exports rose by a better-than-expected 8.1%.

The talks between China and the US are set to take place just two days after the UK became the first country to strike a tariffs deal with the Trump administration.

The US has agreed to reduce import taxes on a set number of British cars and allow some steel and aluminium into the country tariff-free, as part of a new agreement.

It also offers relief for other key UK industries from some of the new tariffs announced by Trump since his inauguration in January.

Countries around the world are scrambling to make similar deals before steep US import taxes are due to take effect next month.

Trump announced what he called “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries in April but paused them shortly afterwards for 90 days to give their governments time to negotiate with his administration.

Halfway through Leo XIV’s first speech as pope, which he delivered in Italian, he stopped and asked if he might say a few words in Spanish.

Smiling, he continued: “A greeting to all and in particular to my dear Diocese of Chiclayo, in Peru.”

The first American pope is a citizen of Peru and has spent much of his life there, travelling between the two countries for decades until 2014, when Pope Francis appointed him bishop of the Chiclayo Diocese in the country’s north.

On Thursday, Peruvians rejoiced at the appointment of one of their own to the highest position in the Catholic Church.

Standing near Lima’s cathedral shortly after bells rang out in celebration of the appointment, elementary school teacher Isabel Panez said: “For us Peruvians, it is a source of pride that this is a pope who represents our country.”

Prevost would often say that he had “come from Chicago to Chiclayo – the only difference is a few letters,” Diana Celis, who attended several Masses officiated by the then Bishop Robert Prevost, told the Associated Press news agency.

He reportedly referred to Peru, where around three quarters of people are Catholic, as “mi segunda patria” – my second homeland.

Peru’s president, Dina Voluarte, described Pope Leo as Peruvian “by choice and conviction”.

“The pope is Peruvian; God loves Peru,” she said.

Born in Chicago in 1955, he is the son of Louis Marius Prevost, of French and Italian descent, and Mildred Martinez, of Spanish descent.

After completing studies in theology in Chicago and in canon law in Rome, the Catholic Church sent him to Peru for the first time.

He arrived at the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, in the Peruvian department of Piura, in 1985, aged 30, and the following year, joined the mission in Trujillo. For almost three decades, he worked between the US and Peru.

Then, in 2014, Pope Francis appointed Prevost bishop of Chiclayo, a position he assumed the following year, after becoming a Peruvian citizen.

Jose Luis Perez Guadalupe, who was the minister responsible for signing Prevost’s naturalisation, told BBC Mundo that he was “a very attentive and very thoughtful man, who listened more than he spoke.”

These were his first encounters with a country that would come to shape his life.

Janinna Sesa, who met Prevost while she worked for the church’s Caritas nonprofit, told the Associated Press during torrential rains in 2022 he waded through mud to help people in Chiclayo and nearby villages.

He also delivered food and blankets to remote Andean villages, driving a white pickup truck and sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor. There, Sesa said, Prevost ate whatever was offered to him, including the peasant diet consisting of potatoes, cheese and sweet corn.

But, if the opportunity came up, he would enjoy carne asada – one of his favorite dishes – accompanied by a glass of Coca-Cola.

He also had an interest in cars. “He has no problem fixing a broken-down truck until it runs,” Sesa said.

Prevost was the driving force for the purchase of two oxygen-production plants during the coronavirus pandemic, which killed more than 217,000 people across Peru.

“He worked so hard to find help, that there was not only enough for one plant, but for two oxygen plants,” Sesa said.

Edinson Farfán, the Peruvian Bishop of Chiclayo since 2024, said Pope Leo would continue Pope Francis’s legacy of working with the poor and advocating for “a Church with open doors”. He was “very close to Pope Francis”, he said.

“He was undoubtedly deeply influenced by this particular Church of Chiclayo. Chiclayo is a city that greatly values the simple faith of its people. He has a special affection for the diocese.”

“It’s his beloved diocese, it’s his life. He learned here everything he can share and will share with the entire world.”

But not all in the country are proud of his record.

Serious accusations have been made about his handling of sexual abuse cases during his time as Bishop of Chiclayo.

In 2023, three Peruvian women went public with claims that as bishop he failed to investigate their reports of having been abused as teenagers by two priests in Chiclayo, dating back to 2007. They said that when they raised their allegations with the diocese in 2022, no proper inquiry was opened.

Church officials in Chiclayo said that action was taken and the accused priests were put on precautionary suspension, and that the case was referred to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles serious abuse cases.

The diocese said it was Rome’s decision to shelve the case without a full canonical trial and that it conducted a preliminary investigation.

These allegations about his leadership are one of the challenges he will face as he now heads the Church worldwide.

Perez Guadalupe said that while Prevost primarily remained focused on church matters in Peru, he was “very attentive to the reality” of the country.

In 2023, when violent anti-government protests following the ousting of then-president Pedro Castillo left 49 dead, Prevost told Peruvian media he felt “much sorrow and much pain”.

That year, Pope Francis called Prevost to Rome to serve as the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, the powerful head of the office that vets bishop nominations from around the world and one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church. He was also appointed president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

Prevost said that he had asked Pope Francis to allow him to remain in Peru longer.

As he heard Prevost was the new pope, Thomas Nicolini, a Peruvian who studies economics in Rome, went to St Peter’s Square.

He told the AP that Chiclayo is, “A beautiful area, but one of the regions that needs lots of hope.”

“So, now I’m expecting that the new pope helps as many people as possible, and tries to reignite, let’s say, the faith young people have lost.”

The auction house Sotheby’s has postponed its sale in Hong Kong of hundreds of sacred jewels linked to the Buddha’s remains, after a threat of legal action by the Indian government.

The sale of the collection – described as one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the modern era – had drawn criticism from Buddhist academics and monastic leaders. India had said it offended the global Buddhist community.

Sotheby’s said the suspension would allow for discussions between the parties.

A British official named William Claxton Peppé unearthed the relics in northern India nearly 130 years ago, alongside bone fragments identified as belonging to the Buddha himself.

The auction of the collection, known as the Piprahwa Gems of the Historical Buddha Mauryan Empire, Ashokan Era, circa 240-200 BCE, was due to take place on 7 May.

In a letter to the auction house two days earlier, the Indian government said that the relics constituted “inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community. Their sale violates Indian and international laws, as well as United Nations conventions”.

A high-level Indian government delegation then held discussions with Sotheby’s representatives on Tuesday.

In an emailed statement, Sotheby’s said that in light of the matters raised by India’s government “and with the agreement of the consignors, the auction … has been postponed”.

It said updates on the discussions would be shared “as appropriate”.

Notice of the gems sale had been removed from its auction house by Wednesday and the website page promoting the auction is no longer available.

William Claxton Peppé was an English estate manager who excavated a stupa at Piprahwa, just south of Lumbini, the believed birthplace of Buddha. He uncovered relics inscribed and consecrated nearly 2,000 years ago.

The findings included nearly 1,800 gems, including rubies, topaz, sapphires and patterned gold sheets, stored inside a brick chamber. This site is now in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Sotheby’s had said in February that the 1898 discovery ranked “among the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of all time”.

For Wayne Birkett and Sharon Miller, the morning of 13 June 2023 started like any other.

They both, separately, got ready for work and caught buses into Nottingham city centre, but what happened shortly after would change their lives forever.

They – along with Marcin Gawronski – were struck by a van driven by Valdo Calocane, leaving all three pedestrians seriously injured.

Earlier in the day, Calocane had fatally stabbed Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, and caretaker Ian Coates, 65.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Sharon and Wayne have told their stories for the first time and explained how they feel a strong sense of survivor’s guilt.

Sharon’s day started at home with her partner Martin, who she was looking forward to marrying after more than 30 happy years together.

After finishing her morning cup of tea, the mother-of-one made her way to the bus stop, ready to catch her daily ride to her job as a cleaner.

It was early in the morning – shortly before 05:00 BST – and her bus was delayed, leaving her worried she would be late for her shift.

Sharon made her way into the city centre and got off the bus as normal, but her journey to work ended as she crossed Market Street.

“I saw the van, and the next minute I’m in the air,” she said. “I thought I was dying – all I could see was white.”

Sharon was rushed to Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre with life-changing injuries.

“I broke my toe, five ribs, I lacerated my spleen, and I’ve got a big hole in the back of my leg that got badly infected,” she said.

Sharon, 46, now uses a walking stick and, given the physical demands of her job, has been unable to return to work after suffering serious orthopaedic and psychological trauma.

“I’m still in a lot of pain with my leg and my back, but I’m getting there,” she said.

Once a happy and sociable person who enjoyed trips out with friends and family, Sharon now only feels safe in the comfort of her own home.

“Martin and my family, and my grandkids make me happy, but I don’t like going out,” Sharon explained.

“I was never like that before.”

Wayne had been on his way to his job as a forklift driver in the city centre when Calocane deliberately swerved across the road and drove into the back of him.

He spent more than six weeks in hospital with complex brain and physical injuries and, unlike Sharon, has no recollection of what happened.

In fact, the 61-year-old struggles to recall any part of his life prior to 13 June 2023.

His injuries were so severe that he has had to re-learn basic skills such as reading, cleaning his teeth, and holding his knife and fork.

Even a tattoo on his arm – a tribute to his beloved Leeds United – was unfamiliar, and when he looked at it, he had to ask his family what it represented.

“My legs hurt all the time, my back hurts, I get headaches all the time and it’s horrible not having any memory and not remembering people you’ve known and worked for,” said Wayne, whose partner Tracey has cared for him since the attacks.

One thing Sharon and Wayne have in common is the survivor’s guilt they have both lived with since the attacks.

“Tracey tells me off for saying this, but I would have swapped my life for one of those poor students – without a doubt,” Wayne said.

“It was awful hearing what happened to them [in the court case]. What happened to me was nothing compared to that.”

Sharon added: “When I heard what had happened to Barnaby or Grace, I thought, ‘I wish he’d took me instead of them’.

“They were so young and still had their lives ahead of them – you just feel so guilty.

“You should be able to go to work, and they should be able to walk around; Ian should have been able to get into his van and go to work.

“It’s just so wrong.”

Calocane, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia before the attacks, was sentenced to a hospital order in January 2024 after admitting three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and three counts of attempted murder.

The BBC has taken the decision not to publish a picture of Calocane in this feature at the request of the surviving victims.

Sharon said: “It’s constantly on the news all the time, and I’m constantly seeing his face on the news.

“Why keep showing his face?”

The case has prompted a number of reviews, including a mental health homicide review commissioned by NHS England.

And earlier this year, Sharon and Wayne, alongside the families of Mr Webber, Ms O’Malley-Kumar and Mr Coates, were invited to Downing Street to discuss plans for a judge-led public inquiry.

They both plan to engage fully with the inquiry, set to be chaired by Her Honour Deborah Taylor, and hope it will provide answers that lead to meaningful changes to help prevent similar incidents in the future.

Greg Almond, partner and solicitor at Rothera Bray, representing both Sharon and Wayne, said it was “crucial for the survivors to be central to the inquiry”.

“They want to put their story across and make sure they’re not forgotten survivors,” he added.

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The first samples of Moon rock brought back to Earth in nearly 50 years have arrived in the UK – on loan from China.

The tiny grains of dust are now locked inside a safe in a high security facility in Milton Keynes – we were given the first look at them.

Professor Mahesh Anand is the only scientist in the UK to have been loaned this extremely rare material, which he describes as “more precious than gold dust”.

“Nobody in the world had access to China’s samples, so this is a great honour and a huge privilege,” he says.

After grinding and zapping the dust with lasers, Prof Anand’s team hope to answer fundamental questions about how the Moon formed and about the early years of planet Earth.

Inside the grains of dust could be evidence to back up scientists’ theory that the Moon was made from the debris thrown out when Earth struck a Mars-sized planet 4.5 billion years ago.

China collected the rocks on its Chang’e 5 space mission in 2020 when it landed on a volcanic area called Mons Rümker.

A robotic arm drilled into the soil to collect 2kg of material, which was brought back to Earth in a capsule which landed in Inner Mongolia.

It was the first successful lunar sampling since a Soviet mission in 1976 and catapulted China into a leading position in the new space race.

Now, following a long tradition of global collaboration between space scientists, China has for the first time granted seven international researchers samples to make new discoveries.

The tiny vials were handed to Prof Anand at a glamorous ceremony in Beijing last week, where he met colleagues from Russia, Japan, Pakistan and Europe.

“It was almost like a parallel universe – and China is so far ahead of us in terms of their investment in space programmes,” he said.

He returned to the UK with the precious cargo in the safest place he could think of – his hand luggage.

At his lab at the Open University in Milton Keynes, we step onto sticky mats to clean our shoes and put on plastic gloves, gowns, hair nets and hoods.

The environment inside this high security room must be spotless to prevent contamination.

If Earthly material mixes with these extra-terrestrial specs, it could permanently ruin the analysis Prof Anand’s team will do.

We crouch down on the floor in front of a row of safes. Prof Anand unlocks one and carefully pulls out a ziplock bag with three containers the size of boxes that could keep a necklace.

Wedged firmly in each one is a see-through vial with a dusting of dark grey at the bottom.

That is the Moon dust.

It looks underwhelming, but it is humbling to think of its cosmic journey.

And Prof Anand says they don’t need any more than this 60mg in total.

“Here, the small is mighty. Believe me, it is enough to keep us busy for years to come because we specialise in working on the micro,” he adds.

In a lab down the corridor, technician Kay Knight will be the first person to actually work on the grains when the vials are opened.

She’s been cutting and grindings pieces of rocks for 36 years, but this will be the first time she’s worked on something straight from the lunar surface.

“I’m extremely excited,” she says, after showing us how she cuts meteorites using a diamond blade.

“But I’m nervous – there’s not much of the samples and they can’t really go and get more very easily. This is high stakes,” she adds.

After she prepares the samples, they will go into two more labs.

In one, we see a machine with an intricate network of countless tubes, valves and wires.

Technician Sasha Verchovskyhas been building it since the early 1990s. He shows us the small cylinder where the specs of dust can be heated to 1400 Celsius. That will help them extract carbon, nitrogen and nobel gases.

This is completely unique, and is one of the reasons Prof Anand believes his lab was chosen to receive the rare samples.

James Malley, a research technician, operates a machine that can work out how much oxygen is contained within the specs of dust.

He shows us a test run of what he will do.

“I’m going to hit that grain on the tray with a laser,” he says, showing the scene magnified on a computer screen.

“It’s going to start to glow, and you will see it melt inwards,” he says.

The team has a year to finish their research. By the end, their search for answers will probably end up destroying the samples.

But China has gone further since the Chang’e 5 mission.

In 2024 its Chang’e 6 launch brought back the first samples from the far side of the Moon. It’s a deeply mysterious place that might have evidence of long-quiet volcanic lava flows.

“I very much hope that this is the beginning of a long-term collaboration between China and international scientists,” says Prof Anand.

“A lot of us built our careers working on samples returned by Apollo missions, and I think this is a fantastic tradition to follow. I hope that other countries will follow suit,” he adds.

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In a dramatic overnight operation, India said it launched missile and air strikes on nine sites across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, targeting what it called militant positions based on “credible intelligence”.

The strikes, lasting just 25 minutes between 01:05 and 01:30 India time (19:35 and 20:00 GMT on Tuesday), sent shockwaves through the region, with residents jolted awake by thunderous explosions.

Pakistan said only six locations were hit and claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets and a drone – a claim India has not confirmed.

Islamabad said 26 people were killed and 46 injured in Indian air strikes and shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) – the de facto border between India and Pakistan. Meanwhile, India’s army reported that 10 civilians were killed by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

• Follow the latest updates
• What we know about the air strikes

This sharp escalation comes after last month’s deadly militant attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, pushing tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to dangerous new heights. India says it has clear evidence linking Pakistan-based terrorists and external actors to the attack – a claim Pakistan flatly denies. Islamabad has also pointed out that India has not offered any evidence to support its claim.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the LoC.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Experts say the retaliation for the Pahalgam attack stands out for its broader scope, targeting the infrastructure of three major Pakistan-based militant groups simultaneously.

India says it struck nine militant targets across Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, hitting deep into key hubs of Lashkar-e- Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen.

Among the closest targets were two camps in Sialkot, just 6-18km from the border, according to an Indian spokesperson.

The deepest hit, says India, was a Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur, 100km inside Pakistan. A LeT camp in Muzaffarabad, 30km from the LoC and capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, was linked to recent attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir, the spokesperson said.

Pakistan says six locations have been hit, but denies allegations of there being terror camps.

“What’s striking this time is the expansion of India’s targets beyond past patterns. Previously, strikes like Balakot focused on Pakistan-administered Kashmir across the Line of Control – a militarised boundary,” Srinath Raghavan, a Delhi-based historian, told the BBC.

“This time, India has hit into Pakistan’s Punjab, across the International Border, targeting terrorist infrastructure, headquarters, and known locations in Bahawalpur and Muridke linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba. They’ve also struck Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen assets. This suggests a broader, more geographically expansive response, signalling that multiple groups are now in India’s crosshairs – and sending a wider message,” he says.

The India-Pakistan International Border is the officially recognised boundary separating the two countries, stretching from Gujarat to Jammu.

Ajay Bisaria, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, told the BBC that what India did was a “Balakot plus response meant to establish deterrence, targeting known terrorist hubs, but accompanied by a strong de-escalatory message”.

“These strikes were more precise, targeted and more visible than in the past. Therefore, [they are] less deniable by Pakistan,” Mr Bisaria says.

Indian sources say the strikes were aimed at “re-establishing deterrence”.

“The Indian government thinks that the deterrence established in 2019 has worn thin and needs to be re-established,” says Prof Raghavan.

“This seems to mirror Israel’s doctrine that deterrence requires periodic, repeated strikes. But if we assume that hitting back alone will deter terrorism, we risk giving Pakistan every incentive to retaliate – and that can quickly spiral out of control.”

The majority of experts agree that a retaliation from Pakistan is inevitable – and diplomacy will come into play.

“Pakistan’s response is sure to come. The challenge would be to manage the next level of escalation. This is where crisis diplomacy will matter,” says Mr Bisaria.

“Pakistan will be getting advice to exercise restraint. But the key will be the diplomacy after the Pakistani response to ensure that both countries don’t rapidly climb the ladder of escalation.”

• India and Pakistan are in crisis again – here’s how they de-escalated in the past

Pakistan-based experts like Ejaz Hussain, a Lahore-based political and military analyst, say Indian surgical strikes targeting locations such as Muridke and Bahawalpur were “largely anticipated given the prevailing tensions”.

Dr Hussain believes retaliatory strikes are likely.

“Given the Pakistani military’s media rhetoric and stated resolve to settle the scores, retaliatory action, possibly in the form of surgical strikes across the border, appears likely in the coming days,” he told the BBC.

But Dr Hussain worries that surgical strikes on both sides could “escalate into a limited conventional war”.

Christopher Clary of the University at Albany in the US believes given the scale of India’s strikes, “visible damage at key sites”, and reported casualties, Pakistan is highly likely to retaliate.

“Doing otherwise essentially would give India permission to strike Pakistan whenever Delhi feels aggrieved and would run contrary to the Pakistan military’s commitment to retaliating with ‘quid pro quo plus’,” Mr Clary, who studies the politics of South Asia, told the BBC.

“Given India’s stated targets of groups and facilities associated with terrorism and militancy in India, I think it is likely – but far from certain – that Pakistan will confine itself to attacks on Indian military targets,” he said.

Despite the rising tensions, some experts still hold out hope for de-escalation.

“There is a decent chance we escape this crisis with just one round of reciprocal standoff strikes and a period of heightened firing along the Line of Control,” says Mr Clary.

However, the risk of further escalation remains high, making this the “most dangerous” India-Pakistan crisis since 2002 – and even more perilous than the 2016 and 2019 standoffs, he adds.

Experts in Pakistan note that despite a lack of war hysteria leading up to India’s strike, the situation could quickly shift.

“We have a deeply fractured political society, with the country’s most popular leader behind bars. Imran Khan’s imprisonment triggered a strong anti-military public backlash,” says Umer Farooq, an Islamabad-based analyst and a former correspondent of Jane’s Defence Weekly.

“Today, the Pakistani public is far less eager to support the military compared to 2016 or 2019 – the usual wave of war hysteria is noticeably absent. But if public opinion shifts in central Punjab where anti-India feelings are more prevalent, we could see increased civilian pressure on the military to take action. And the military will regain popularity because of this conflict.”

Dr Hussain echoes a similar sentiment.

“I believe the current standoff with India presents an opportunity for the Pakistani military to regain public support, particularly from the urban middle classes who have recently criticised it for perceived political interference,” he says.

“The military’s active defence posture is already being amplified through mainstream and social media, with some outlets claiming that six or seven Indian jets were shot down.

“Although these claims warrant independent verification, they serve to bolster the military’s image among segments of the public that conventionally rally around national defence narratives in times of external threat.”

India is once again walking a fine line between escalation and restraint.

Shortly after the attack in Pahalgam, India swiftly retaliated by closing the main border crossing, suspending a water-sharing treaty, expelling diplomats and halting most visas for Pakistani nationals. Troops on both sides have exchanged small-arms fire, and India barred all Pakistani aircraft from its airspace, mirroring Pakistan’s earlier move. In response, Pakistan suspended a 1972 peace treaty and took its own retaliatory measures.

This mirrors India’s actions after the 2019 Pulwama attack, when it swiftly revoked Pakistan’s most-favoured-nation status, imposed heavy tariffs and suspended key trade and transport links.

The crisis had escalated when India launched air strikes on Balakot, followed by retaliatory Pakistani air raids and the capture of Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, further heightening tensions. However, diplomatic channels eventually led to a de-escalation, with Pakistan releasing the pilot in a goodwill gesture.

“India was willing to give old-fashioned diplomacy another chance…. This, with India having achieved a strategic and military objective and Pakistan having claimed a notion of victory for its domestic audience,” Mr Bisaria told me last week.

Two weeks after a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, India has launched a series of strikes on sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The Indian defence ministry said the strikes – named “Operation Sindoor” – were part of a “commitment” to hold “accountable” those responsible for the 22 April attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 25 Indians and one Nepali national dead.

But Pakistan, which has denied any involvement in that attack, described the strikes as “unprovoked”, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif saying the “heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished”.

Sharif on Wednesday said the Pahalgam attack “wasn’t related” to Pakistan, and that his country was “accused for the wrong” reasons.

• Follow the latest updates
• Why India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir
• BBC reports from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir

Pakistan’s military said at least 31 people were killed and 57 injured in the strikes on Tuesday night. India’s army said at least 15 civilians were killed and 43 injured by Pakistani shelling on its side of the de facto border.

Pakistan’s military says it shot down five Indian aircraft and a drone. India has yet to respond to these claims.

Late on Wednesday, Sharif said the air force made its defence – which was a “reply from our side to them”.

Delhi said in the early hours of Wednesday morning that nine different locations had been targeted in both Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan.

It said these sites were “terrorist infrastructure” – places where attacks were “planned and directed”.

It emphasised that it had not hit any Pakistani military facilities, saying its “actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”.

In the initial aftermath of the attacks, Pakistan said three different areas were hit: Muzaffarabad and Kotli in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Bahawalpur in the Pakistani province of Punjab. Pakistan’s military spokesperson, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif, later said six locations had been hit.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told GeoTV in the early hours of Wednesday that the strikes hit civilian areas, adding that India’s claim of “targeting terrorist camps” was false.

The strikes come after weeks of rising tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours over the shootings in the picturesque resort town of Pahalgam.

The 22 April attack by a group of militants saw 26 people killed, with survivors saying the militants were singling out Hindu men.

It was the worst attack on civilians in the region in two decades, and the first major attack on civilians since India revoked Article 370, which gave Kashmir semi-autonomous status, in 2019.

Following the decision, the region saw protests but also witnessed militancy wane and a huge increase in the number of tourists.

The killings have sparked widespread anger in India, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the country would hunt the suspects “till the ends of the Earth” and that those who planned and carried it out “will be punished beyond their imagination”.

However, India initially did not name any group it believed was behind the attack in Pahalgam.

But Indian police alleged that two of the attackers were Pakistani nationals, with Delhi accusing Pakistan of supporting militants – a charge Islamabad denies. It says it has nothing to do with the 22 April attacks.

On 7 May, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group carried out the attack.

In the two weeks since, both sides had taken tit-for-tat measures against each other – including expelling diplomats, suspending visas and closing border crossings.

But many expected it would escalate to some sort of cross-border strike – as seen after the Pulwama attacks which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead in 2019.

Kashmir is claimed in full by India and Pakistan, but administered only in part by each since they were partitioned following independence from Britain in 1947.

The countries have fought two wars over it.

But more recently, it has been attacks by militants which have brought the two countries to the brink. Indian-administered Kashmir has seen an armed insurgency against Indian rule since 1989, with militants targeting security forces and civilians alike.

In 2016, after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in Uri, India launched “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control – the de facto border between India and Pakistan – targeting militant bases.

In 2019, the Pulwama bombing, which left 40 Indian paramilitary personnel dead, prompted airstrikes deep into Balakot – the first such action inside Pakistan since 1971 – sparking retaliatory raids and an aerial dogfight.

Neither spiralled, but the wider world remains alert to the danger of what could happen if it did. Attempts have been made by various nations and diplomats around the world to prevent this.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres quickly called for “maximum restraint” – a sentiment echoed by the European Union and numerous countries, including Bangladesh.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged “dialogue” and “de-escalation”.

US President Donald Trump – who was one of the first to respond – told reporters at the White House that he hoped the fighting “ends very quickly”. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, said he was keeping a close eye on developments.