Nine people have been killed in a Russian drone attack on a civilian bus in north-eastern Ukraine, local officials say.

The Sumy regional military administration said four other people were injured in the town of Bilopillia on Saturday morning as the bus travelled to the regional capital Sumy, close to Russia’s border.

The reported attack comes just hours after Russia and Ukraine held their first direct peace talks since 2022. No breakthrough was achieved, although a swap of prisoners of war was agreed.

Ukraine’s national police described the bus attack as a “cynical war crime”. Russia has not commented directly but said it had hit a “military staging area” in Sumy.

In a statement, the police service said: “The Russian army has once again struck a civilian object, disregarding all norms or international law and humanity.”

Citing preliminary information, Sumy regional head Oleh Hryhorov said the bus was hit by a Russian Lancet drone at 06:17 local time on Saturday (03:17 GMT).

He described the attack as “inhumane”.

Friday’s talks in Istanbul, Turkey, did not lead to any breakthrough as Ukraine and Russia remain far apart on how to end the war.

However, it was agreed that each side would return 1,000 prisoners of war to the other in the coming days.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine used Sumy to launch offensives into Russia’s Kursk region in August. Russia drove the majority of Ukraine’s troops back earlier this year and has intensified cross-border artillery and air attacks in recent months.

More than three years into Europe’s deadliest war since 1945, there was a small step forward for diplomacy on Friday.

Delegations from Ukraine and Russia came face-to-face for talks for the first time since March 2022 – one month after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour. The setting was an Ottoman- era palace on the shores of the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

Pressure and encouragement from Turkey and the US helped get the warring parties there.

There were no handshakes, and half the Ukrainian delegation wore camouflage military fatigues – a reminder that their nation is under attack.

The room was decked with Ukrainian, Turkish and Russian flags – two of each – and a large flower arrangement – a world away from the shattered cities and swollen graveyards of Ukraine.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, told the delegations there were two paths ahead – one road leading to peace, and the other leading to more death and destruction.

The talks lasted less than two hours and sharp divisions soon emerged. The Kremlin made “new and unacceptable demands”, according to a Ukrainian official. That included insisting Kyiv withdraw its troops from large parts of its own territory, he said, in exchange for a ceasefire.

While there was no breakthrough on the crucial issue of a truce – as expected – there is news of one tangible result.

Each side will return 1,000 prisoners of war to the other.

“This was the very good end to a very difficult day,” said Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Serhiy Kyslytsya, and “potentially excellent news for 1,000 Ukrainian families.”

The swap will take place soon, said Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who led his country’s delegation. “We know the date,” he said, “we’re not announcing it just yet.”

He said “the next step” should be a meeting between Zelensky and Putin.

That request was “noted” according to the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky – a presidential aide.

He said the Russian delegation was satisfied with the talks, and ready to continue contacts.

That was a change from Thursday when Russia’s Foreign Ministry called President Zelensky “a clown and a loser.”

But there are fears – among Ukraine and some of its allies – that Russia is engaging in diplomacy simply to buy time, to distract from international pressure for a ceasefire, and to try to stave off the 18th round of European sanctions. The EU says they are already in the works.

And while the two sides have now sat around the table, President Trump has said the only talks that count will be those between him and President Putin.

He announced on Thursday, mid-flight on Air Force One, that “nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together.”

It’s unclear when that meeting will be. The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says top-level talks are “certainly needed,” but preparing a summit will take time.

Whenever those talks happen, President Zelensky is unlikely to be invited.

Two British men accused of robbing a luxury jewellery store in Tokyo can be sent to Japan following a landmark ruling.

For almost a decade, Japanese authorities have pursued the extradition of Kaine Wright, 28, Joe Chappell, 38, and a third man over allegations they posed as customers to steal items worth £679,000 (¥106m) from a Harry Winston store.

On Friday, chief magistrate Judge Goldspring rejected Wright and Chappell’s challenges against extradition. Their case now passes to the home secretary to decide whether they should be sent to Japan.

No extradition treaty exists between the UK and Japan, meaning it would be the first time Japan have successfully received fugitives.

Japan’s initial request was rejected, but the High Court overturned the original decision following an appeal lodged by the Japanese government.

In Friday’s judgement – seen by the BBC – Wright, of Plumstead, and Chappell, of Belvedere, both in London, had raised concerns over prison conditions in Japan which they argued were “arbitrary, excessive and breach international standards”.

The Japanese government said the submissions were “fundamentally flawed both legally and factually”.

District Judge Goldspring, chief magistrate of England and Wales, found there was a “prima facie case” – enough evidence to support a charge at first glance – against Chappell and that extradition would be “compatible” with his and Wright’s human rights.

Friday’s ruling follows a recent High Court judgement that the Japanese government had a case to extradite Wright, Chappell and a third man named in papers as Daniel Kelly – who is Wright’s father.

Japan’s case against Kelly will be heard at the end of this month. He has not appeared in previous extradition hearings due to a conspiracy to murder case against him taking precedence.

Details from January’s High Court judgement state that the Japanese “relied upon a range of evidence” which demonstrated that Kelly, Wright and Chappell travelled to Tokyo around the time of the jewellery raid in November 2015.

CCTV captured all three arriving at Narita International Airport on 18 November 2015 and staying at “the Elm Share House”, Japanese authorities said.

Ch Insp Suzuki set out a record of the investigation to the High Court which indicated the trio “took taxis” to Harry Winston’s branch in Omotesando Hills.

In their efforts to escape, the trio left a number of items behind including an Armani jacket, he said.

Ch Insp Suzuki added: “Goggles were left at the shop and a jacket was left on the route the robbers took to flee from the scene.”

A professor at the Tokyo Dental College compared ePassport images taken at Narita Airport and compared it to CCTV stills of three men taken at the Harry Winston store.

“The possibility that two (or three) persons in the relevant comparison are the same is extremely high,” Ch Insp Suzuki said in his report, citing the professor’s “expert” findings.

As well as other DNA matches, Ch Insp Suzuki’s report referred to “expert evidence that glass shards found at the property where the three stayed that matched the glass in the display case at the jewellery shop”.

Findings in the reports were challenged at the High Court by lawyers representing Wright and Chappell.

The Japanese government said it would ensure that the three men would have the right to consult with a lawyer in private, have any interviews recorded and have the right not to answer any questions.

Wright, once a promising footballer on the books of West Ham United and Brentford, served time in prison after being convicted in 2023 of trying to sell a Ming vase which was stolen from a museum in Switzerland.

Subject to any further appeals, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper now has 28 days to decide whether to extradite Chappell and Wright or reject Japan’s request.

Former FBI director James Comey has been interviewed by the US Secret Service after he shared then deleted a social media post that Republicans alleged was an incitement to violence against US President Donald Trump.

Comey voluntarily participated in the questioning for about an hour at the law enforcement agency’s Washington DC headquarters and was not held in custody.

It comes a day after he posted on Instagram a photo of seashells that spelled the numbers “8647”.

The number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include “to reject” or “to get rid of”, however, it has more recently been used as a term to mean “kill”. Trump is the 47th US president.

Trump said earlier in the day during an interview with Fox News that Comey, whom he fired as FBI director in 2017, was calling for him to be killed.

• What does ’86’ mean?

“He knew exactly what that meant,” said Trump, who survived two attempts on his life last year. “A child knows what that meant.

“If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”

Trump said any decision on whether charges should be filed against Comey would be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Comey posted the seashell photo on Thursday then deleted it amid conservative uproar.

He wrote in a follow-up message on Instagram that he had seen the shells during a walk on the beach, “which I assumed were a political message”.

“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took down the post.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X on Friday evening that the Secret Service had “interviewed disgraced former FBI Director Comey regarding a social media post calling for the assassination of President Trump”.

“I will continue to take all measures necessary to ensure the protection of @POTUS Trump,” she added. “This is an ongoing investigation.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the highest-ranking spymaster in the US, called earlier for Comey to be jailed for “issuing a hit” on Trump while he was travelling in the Middle East.

In a trial that is undoing the legacy of one of music’s biggest moguls of the 2000s, the focus of the opening week of proceedings was not Sean “Diddy” Combs himself – but his ex-girlfriend.

R&B singer Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura took the witness stand for four days, describing in emotion details the years of beatings and drug-fuelled sex encounters with prostitutes that she alleges she endured at the hands of the rap superstar, who she dated for more than a decade.

But while her story clearly left an impression on those in the courtroom, which one onlooker described as an “aura of sadness”, it is just one piece in the puzzle that prosecutors must present to prove that Mr Combs was not just an abuser, but a mastermind of a criminal, sexual enterprise.

On Tuesday, gasps erupted in a Manhattan overflow courtroom when prosecutors called Ms Ventura – their star witness – to the stand. All eyes were fixed on the eight-months pregnant singer, as she strolled past her ex-boyfriend, whom she had not seen in six years.

Ms Ventura was there to testify in the federal sex trafficking, racketeering and prostitution case against Mr Combs, whom she accuses of abusing her and coercing her into unwanted sex acts – so-called “freak-offs” – during their 11-and-a-half year relationship.

• Cassie settles civil case against Sean “Diddy” Combs
• Who is the US rapper accused of sex trafficking?
• The parties that led to Diddy’s downfall

Mr Combs is charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution – all of which he has vehemently denied.

Surrounded by his children and dozens of family and friends, Mr Combs has watched Ms Ventura from his chair at the defence table just a few dozen feet away.

All the while, US District Judge Arun Subramanian has pushed attorneys to stay on schedule, as prosecutors have expressed worry their star witness could go into labour with her third child as soon as this weekend.

On her first day on the stand, Ms Ventura began by taking prosecutors through the start of her tumultuous relationship with Mr Combs, whom she met when she was a 19-year-old aspiring musician. Mr Combs, 17 years her senior, signed her onto his record label.

Their romantic relationship began soon after, when Ms Ventura fell in love with the “larger-than-life” musician and entrepreneur, she said. But it was not long before she noticed a “different” side to him, Ms Ventura testified, at times wiping the tears from her eyes.

Mr Combs, she said, wanted to control every aspect of her life. He paid for her rent, her car, and her phone, sometimes taking the items away to “punish” her when he was upset, she said.

Eventually, the relationship turned violent. She testified about the time when he attacked her because she was sleeping, slashing her eyebrow as he threw her onto the corner of her bed as her two friends tried to stop him. The court was shown a photo of the gash that Ms Ventura said Mr Combs hired a plastic surgeon to fix secretly. There was another time at a party where he kicked her head as she cowered behind a toilet in a bathroom stall, she said.

While jurors remained concentrated on her testimony and the evidence, betraying little emotion, some in the courtroom wiped away tears or looked away from the graphic photos and videos – including the viral video of Mr Combs beating and dragging Ms Ventura in the hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016.

Published by CNN last year, the video has been viewed by millions – including many of the jurors before they were seated in the trial – and Ms Ventura, who was forced to rewatch the incident of abuse several times this week.

Ms Ventura testified that the hotel incident took place after she tried to leave a “freak-off”, a sexual encounter in which the couple would hire male escorts to have sex with Ms Ventura while Mr Combs watched and recorded from the corner.

Ms Ventura said the rapper introduced her to freak-offs around a year into their relationship, and at first, she did it to make him happy.

But over time, the encounters humiliated her, she said. They would sometimes last as long as four days, and require Ms Ventura to take countless drugs to stay awake, she said. She endured injuries like painful urinary tract infections – and once even blacked out, waking up in the shower, she said.

“It made me feel worthless,” she told the court. “Freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again.”

The couple would go on to have “hundreds” of freak-offs, Ms Ventura estimated.

After years of temporary break-ups – some fuelled by Mr Combs’ affairs – Ms Ventura ended her relationship with Mr Combs for good in 2018, the same year she alleges the rapper raped her in her home as she cried.

Ms Ventura went on to date and marry her personal trainer, Alex Fine, with whom she has two children, but the trauma of her relationship has stayed with her.

Through tears, Ms Ventura told the court of a time two years ago when she considered taking her own life, when traumatic flashbacks of her time with Mr Combs became too much to handle. Her husband helped her seek therapy to recover, she said.

Get all the latest trial updates on the BBC Sounds ‘Diddy on Trial’ podcast available wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Throughout Ms Ventura’s harrowing story of domestic violence, prosecutors have tried to thread in elements of their larger sex trafficking and racketeering case against Mr Combs.

Mr Combs’s attorneys have already conceded that the rapper was abusive – and have argued they would not have fought a domestic violence case against him. But, “domestic violence is not sex trafficking”, Mr Combs’ attorney Teny Geragos argued this week.

The federal government has charged Mr Combs with transportation to engage in prostitution and sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion.

He is also charged with leading a racketeering conspiracy, or directing an illegal enterprise under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The statute was created to take on mob bosses, but has since been used in other cases, including sex trafficking, such as the case against disgraced R&B singer R Kelly.

Assistant US Attorney Emily Johnson used parts of Ms Ventura’s story to boost this case, asking her about the guns the rapper had access to and the ways he allegedly blackmailed her.

Ms Ventura told the court of a time when she said Mr Combs pulled up videos he recorded of their freak-offs on his laptop, in view of others on a commercial flight. She said he told her he would release them if she didn’t behave.

“I felt trapped,” Ms Ventura said.

Arick Fudali, a lawyer who represents an unnamed victim in the government’s case against Mr Combs, said “the fear of what would happen if they didn’t comply” is a crucial element of the government’s case.

“Someone can consent to a sexual act of course,” Mr Fudali told the BBC. “But someone can also be coerced into being compliant, and that’s different.”

The government has also used Ms Ventura’s testimony to try to build up their racketeering argument – the allegation that Mr Combs used his loyal network of associates to run a criminal enterprise and cover up his alleged crimes.

Prosecutors have asked Ms Ventura about security guards who she said stood by while Mr Combs abused her. Ms Ventura has testified about Mr Combs’ employees’ involvement in setting up freak-offs with supplies like baby oil, and booking travel for the male escorts they hired.

After a day and a half on the stand, it was Mr Combs’ attorneys turn to question Ms Ventura.

The rapper’s lawyer, Anna Estevao, relied on hundreds of pages of text messages between Mr Combs and Ms Ventura to help push her team’s broader arguments: that Ms Ventura was a willing participant in freak-offs in a toxic relationship fuelled by drugs and jealousy.

Mr Combs’ legal team showed messages from Ms Ventura to Mr Combs in which she said she was “always ready” for a freak-off, and another time when she said she wished they could have had one.

Ms Ventura acknowledged writing the messages while adding that those were “just words at that point”.

Ms Estevao also kept bringing Ms Ventura back to the couple’s moments of infidelity, like when Mr Combs would spend holidays with his family and former girlfriend Kim Porter, or when Ms Ventura began dating rapper Kid Cudi while she and Mr Combs were on a break.

She repeatedly asked Ms Ventura about her drug use and how both she and Mr Combs struggled with opioid addiction at times.

In these moments, the defence was trying to show jurors that it was a toxic, violent and complicated relationship – but not a case of racketeering or sex trafficking, former federal prosecutor Sarah Krissoff told the BBC.

The defence also made efforts to try to chip away at the government’s racketeering case, asking Ms Ventura whether Mr Combs’ employees had actually witnessed the freak-offs, to which Ms Ventura said she did not think so.

Ultimately, Mr Fudali said, the prosecution’s case will hinge on this question of compliance versus consent – whether Mr Combs’ girlfriends were willing participants in his sexual fantasies or acted out of fear.

“Did Ms Ventura consent or was she coerced into complying?” Mr Fudali said. “That seems to be the question for the jury.”

With a pair of bright pink tweezers in hand, Emma Teni is delicately wrestling a large and leggy spider in a small plastic pot.

“He’s posing,” the spider-keeper jests as it rears up on its back legs. It is exactly what she’s trying to achieve – that way she can suck the venom from its fangs using a small pipette.

Emma works from a tiny office known as the spider milking room. On a typical day, she milks – or extracts the venom from – 80 of these Sydney funnel-web spiders.

On three of the four walls there are floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked full of the arachnids, with a black curtain pulled across to keep them calm.

The remaining wall is actually a window. Through it, a small child stares, both fascinated and horrified, as Ms Teni works. Little do they know that the palm-sized spider she’s handling could kill them in a matter of minutes.

“Sydney funnel-webs are arguably the most deadly spider in the world,” Emma says matter-of-factly.

Australia is famously full of such deadly animals – and this room at the Australian Reptile Park plays a critical part in a government antivenom programme, which saves lives on a continent where it’s often joked that everything wants to kill you.

While the quickest recorded death from a Sydney funnel-web spider was a toddler at 13 minutes, the average is closer to 76 minutes – and first aid gives you an even better chance of surviving.

So successful is the antivenom programme here at the Australian Reptile Park that nobody has been killed by one since it started in 1981.

The scheme relies, however, on members of the public either catching the spiders or collecting their egg sacs.

In a van plastered with a giant crocodile sticker, each week Ms Teni’s team drives all over Australia’s most famous city, picking up Sydney funnel-webs that have been handed in at drop-off points such as local veterinary practices.

There are two reasons why these spiders are so dangerous, she explains: not only is their venom extremely potent, but they also live exclusively in a densely populated region where they’re more likely to encounter humans.

Handyman Charlie Simpson is one such person. He moved into his first home with his girlfriend a few months ago, and the keen gardener has already found two Sydney funnel-webs. He took the second spider to the vet, where Ms Teni picked it up shortly after.

“I had gloves on at the time, but realistically I should have had leather gloves on because their fangs are so big and strong,” the 26-year-old says.

“I [just thought] I had better catch it because I kept getting told you’re meant to take them back to be milked, because it’s so critical.”

“This is curing my fear of spiders,” he jokes.

As Ms Teni offloads one arachnid that was delivered to her in a Vegemite jar, she stresses her team isn’t telling Australians to go looking for the spiders and “throw themselves into danger”.

Rather, they’re asking that if someone comes across one, they safely capture it rather than kill it.

“Saying that this is the world’s most deadly spider and then [asking the public to] catch it and bring it to us does sound counter-intuitive,” she says.

“[But] that spider there now, thanks to Charlie, will… effectively save someone’s life.”

All of the spiders her team collects get brought back to the Australian Reptile Park where they are catalogued, sorted by sex and stored.

Any females that get dropped off are considered for a breeding programme, which helps supplement the number of spiders donated by the public.

Meanwhile, the males, which are six to seven times more toxic than the females, are used for the antivenom programme and milked every two weeks, Emma explains.

The pipette she uses to remove the venom from the fangs is attached to a suction hose – crucial for collecting as much venom as possible, since each spider provides only small amounts.

While a few drops is enough to kill, scientists need to milk 200 of these spiders to have enough to fill one vial of antivenom.

A marine biologist by training, Emma never expected to spend her days milking spiders. In fact, she started off working with seals.

But now she wouldn’t have it any other way. Emma loves all things arachnid, and goes under various nicknames – spider girl, spider mama, even “weirdo”, as her daughter calls her.

Friends, family and neighbours rely on her for her knowledge of Australia’s creepy crawlies.

“Some girls arrive home to flowers on their doorstep,” jokes Emma. “For me it’s not unusual to arrive home to a spider in a jar.”

Spiders represent just one small part of what the Australian Reptile Park does. It’s also been providing snake venom to the government since the 1950s.

According to the World Health Organisation, as many as 140,000 people die across the world from snake bites every year, and three times that many are left disabled.

In Australia though, those numbers are far lower: between one and four people each year, thanks to its successful antivenom programme.

Removing a King Brown snake from its storage locker, Billy Collett, the park’s operations manager, brings it to the table in front of him.

With his bare hands, he secures its head and puts its jaws over a shot glass covered in cling film.

“They are very uninclined to bite but once they go, you just see it pouring out of the fangs,” Mr Collett says, as yellow venom drips to the bottom.

“That is enough to kill all of us in the room five times over – maybe more.”

Then he switches to a more reassuring tone: “They’re not looking for people to bite. We’re too big for them to eat; they don’t want to waste their venom on us. They just want to be left alone.”

“To get bitten by a venomous snake, you’ve got to really annoy it, provoke it,” he adds, noting that bites often occur when someone is trying to kill one of the reptiles.

There’s a fridge in the corner of the room where the raw venom Mr Collett is collecting is stored. It’s full of vials labelled “Death Adder”, “Taipan”, “Tiger Snake” and “Eastern Brown”.

The last of these is the second-most venomous snake in the world, and the one that’s most likely to bite you here, in Australia.

This venom gets freeze-dried and sent to CSL Seqirus, a lab in Melbourne, where it’s turned into an antidote in a process that can take up to 18 months.

The first step is to produce what’s known as hyper-immune plasma. In the case of snakes, controlled doses of the venom are injected into horses, because they are larger animals with a strong immune system.

The venom of Sydney funnel-web spiders goes into rabbits, which are immune to the toxins. The animals are injected with increasing doses to build up their antibodies. In some cases, that step alone can take almost a year.

The animal’s supercharged plasma is removed from the blood, and then the antibodies are isolated from the plasma before they’re bottled, ready to be administered.

CSL Seqirus makes 7,000 vials a year – including snake, spider, stonefish and box jellyfish antivenoms – and they are valid for 36 months. The challenge then is to ensure everyone who needs it has supplies.

“It’s an enormous undertaking,” says Dr Jules Bayliss, who leads the antivenom development team at CSL Seqirus.

“First and foremost we want to see them in major rural and remote areas that these creatures are likely to be in.”

Vials are distributed depending on the species in each area. Taipans, for example, are in northern parts of Australia, so there’s no need for their antivenom in Tasmania.

Antivenom is also given to the Royal Flying Doctors, who access some of the nation’s most remote communities, as well as Australian navy and cargo ships for sailors at risk of sea snake bites.

Papua New Guinea also receives about 600 vials a year. The country was once connected to Australia by a land bridge, and shares many of the same snake species, so the Australian government gives the antivenom for free – snake diplomacy, if you like.

“To be honest, we probably have the most impact in Papua New Guinea, more so than Australia, because of the number of snake bites and deaths they have,” says CSL Seqirus executive Chris Larkin. To date, they reckon they’ve saved 2,000 lives.

Back at the park, Mr Collett jokes about the nickname of “danger noodles” that is sometimes given to his serpentine colleagues – a classic Australian trait of making light of something that gives so many visitors nightmares.

Mr Collett, though, is clear: these animals should not put people off from visiting.

“Snakes aren’t just cruising down the streets attacking Brits – it doesn’t work like that,” he jokes.

“If you’re going to get bitten by a snake, Australia’s the best place – we’ve got the best antivenom. It’s free. The treatment is unreal.”

An Australian man who was captured by Russian forces while fighting alongside Ukraine has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security prison, Russian-installed prosecutors have said.

Oscar Jenkins, 33, was convicted in a Russian-controlled court in occupied eastern Ukraine on Friday of fighting in an armed conflict as a mercenary.

Mr Jenkins, a teacher from Melbourne, was captured last December in the Luhansk region.

Prosecutors said he arrived in Ukraine in February 2024, alleging he was paid between 600,000 and 800,000 rubles (£5,504 and £7,339) a month to take part in military operations against Russian troops.

A video surfaced in December last year showing Mr Jenkins with his hands tied, being hit in the face and questioned by Russian forces. They ask him if he is being paid to fight in Ukraine.

In January, Australia summoned the Russian ambassador over false reports that Mr Jenkins had been killed following his capture.

Since then, the Australian government has repeatedly called for his release.

“We’ll continue to make representations to the reprehensible regime of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin on behalf of Mr Jenkins,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told 9News in April.

In March, a British man James Scott Rhys Anderson was jailed for 19 years by a Russian military court after being charged with terrorism and mercenary activity, becoming the first British national convicted by Russia during the war.

The 22-year-old was captured last November in Russia’s Kursk region – where Ukrainian forces began a surprise incursion last August before retreating in recent months.

Just before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised all of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent of Ukraine. Russian proxy forces began an insurgency there in 2014.

Tucked away in a lane in the southern end of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, is a museum dedicated to the followers of one of the world’s oldest religions, Zoroastrianism.

The Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla Museum documents the history and legacy of the ancient Parsi community – a small ethnic group that’s fast dwindling and resides largely in India.

Now estimated at just 50,000 to 60,000, the Parsis are believed to be descendants of Persians who fled religious persecution by Islamic rulers centuries ago.

Despite their significant contributions to India’s economic and cultural fabric, much about the Parsi community remains little known to the mainstream population and the wider world.

“The newly-renovated museum hopes to shake off some of this obscurity by inviting people to explore the history, culture and traditions of the Parsi community through the rare historical artefacts on display,” says Kerman Fatakia, curator of the museum.

Some of these include cuneiform bricks, terracotta pots, coins and other objects sourced from places like Babylon, Mesopotamia, Susa and Iran and are dated to 4000-5000 BCE.

These are places where Zoroastrian Iranian kings once ruled, like the Achaemenian, Parthian and Sasanian dynasties.

There are also artefacts from Yazd, a city in central Iran which was once a barren desert and the place where many Zoroastrians settled after fleeing other regions of Iran after the Arab invasion in 7th Century BCE.

One of the notable artefacts on display is a replica of a clay cylinder of Cyrus the Great, a Persian king who was the founder of the Achaemenid empire.

Fatakia says the clay cylinder – also known as the “Edict of Cyrus” or the “Cyrus Cylinder” – is one of the most important discoveries of the ancient world. Inscribed in cuneiform script, it outlines the rights granted by Cyrus to his subjects in Babylon. Widely seen as the first human rights charter, a replica is also displayed at the United Nations.

Then there are maps that trace the migration routes of thousands of Iranian Zoroastrians who fled their home country fearing persecution and travelled to India in the 8th to10th centuries, and again in the 19th century.

The collection also features furniture, manuscripts, paintings, and portraits of prominent Parsis – among them Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, founder of the iconic Tata Group, which owns brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley tea.

Another striking section showcases artefacts collected by Parsis who grew wealthy in the early 19th century trading tea, silk, cotton – and notably, opium – with China. The exhibits include traditional Parsi sarees influenced by designs from China, France, and other regions shaped by these global trade ties.

Two of the museum’s most compelling exhibits are replicas of a Tower of Silence and a Parsi fire temple.

The Tower of Silence, or dakhma, is where Parsis leave their dead to be returned to nature – neither buried nor cremated. “The replica shows exactly what happens to the body once it’s placed there,” says Fatakia, noting that entry to actual towers is restricted to a select few.

The life-size replica of the fire temple is equally fascinating, offering a rare glimpse into a sacred space typically off-limits to non-Parsis. Modelled on a prominent Mumbai temple, it features sacred motifs inspired by ancient Persian architecture in Iran.

The Alpaiwala Museum, originally founded in 1952 in what was then Bombay, is one of the city’s older institutions. Recently renovated, it now features modern displays with well-captioned exhibits in glass cases. Every visitor is offered a guided tour.

“It’s a small museum but it is packed with history,” Fatakia says.

“And it’s a great place for not just the residents of Mumbai or India to learn more about the Parsi community but for people from all over the world.”

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” So supposedly said the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The diplomatic whirlwind that has surrounded US President Donald Trump this week suggests the old Bolshevik might have been onto something.

For the protectionist president, who promises always to put America First, has in recent days instead been busy bestriding the world stage.

He and his team have done business deals in the Gulf; lifted sanctions on Syria; negotiated the release of a US citizen held by Hamas; ended military strikes on Houthi fighters in Yemen; slashed American tariffs on China; ordered Ukraine to hold talks with Russia in Turkey; continued quiet negotiations with Iran over a nuclear deal; and even claimed responsibility for brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan…

The pace has been breathless, leaving allies and opponents alike struggling to catch up as the US diplomatic bandwagon hurtled from issue to issue.

“Just, wow!” remarked one London-based ambassador. “It is almost impossible to stay on top of everything that’s going on.”

So what going on? What have we learned in this frantic week about the US president’s emerging foreign policy? Is there something approaching a Trump doctrine – or is this just a coincidental confluence of global events?

A good place to start, perhaps, is the president’s visit to the Gulf where he set out – in word and deed – his vision for a world of interstate relations based on trade, not war. In a speech in Riyadh, Trump said he wanted “commerce not chaos” in the Middle East, a region that “exports technology not terrorism”.

His was a prospect of a breezy, pragmatic mercantilism where nations did business deals to their mutual benefit, a world where profit can bring peace.

As he enjoyed the flattery of his Saudi hosts and the obeisance of visiting dignitaries, the president signed – with his fat felt tip pen – deals that the White House claimed represented $600bn of investment in the US.

This was Trump in all his pomp; applauded and rewarded with immediate wins he could sell back home as good for American jobs.

Some diplomats privately questioned the value of the various memorandums of understanding. But the show, they said, was more important than the substance.

Absent from Trump’s speech was any mention of possible collective action by the US and other countries; no talk of multilateral cooperation against the threat of climate change, no concerns about challenges to democratic or human rights in the region. This was a discourse almost entirely without reference to ideology or values except to dismiss their significance.

Rather, he used his speech to Saudi leaders to make his clearest argument yet against Western interventionism of the past, attacking what he called “the so-called nation-builders and neo-cons” for “giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs”.

To the applause of his Arab audience, he said these “Western interventionists” had “wrecked more nations than they built”, adding: “Far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins.

“I believe it’s God’s job to sit in judgement. My job is to defend America.”

That reluctance to intervene was on show in recent days when it came to the fighting between India and Pakistan. In the past, the US has often played a key role seeking to end military confrontations in the subcontinent. But the Trump White House was initially cautious about getting involved.

Vice-President JD Vance told Fox News the fighting was “fundamentally none of our business… We can’t control these countries”.

In the end, both he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio did make calls, putting pressure on both nuclear powers to de-escalate. So too did other countries.

When the ceasefire was agreed, Trump claimed US diplomacy had brokered the deal. But that was flatly dismissed by Indian diplomats who insisted it was a bilateral truce.

The centrality of Trump to US foreign policy has also become apparent this week. This is more than just a simple truism. On show was the lack of involvement of other parts of the US government that traditionally help shape US decision-making overseas.

Take the president’s extraordinary decision to meet Syria’s new president and former jihadist, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and lift sanctions on Syria. This showed the potential advantage of having foreign policy in one man’s hands: it was a decisive and bold step. And it was clearly the president’s personal decision, after heavy lobbying by both Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

It was seen by some diplomats as the quid pro quo for the diplomatic fawning and investment deals Trump received in Riyadh. Not only did the decision surprise many in the region but it also surprised many in the American government.

Diplomats said the State Department was reluctant to lift sanctions, wanting to keep some leverage over the new Syrian government, fearful it was not doing enough to protect minorities and tackle foreign fighters.

Diplomats say this pattern of impulsive decision-making without wider internal government discussion is common in the White House. The result, they say, is not always positive.

This is due, in part, to Trump’s lack of consistency (or put simply, changing his mind).

Take the decision this week to do a deal with China to cut tariffs on trade with the US. A few weeks ago Trump imposed 145% tariffs on Beijing, with blood thirsty warnings against retaliation. The Chinese retaliated, the markets plunged, American businesses warned of dire consequences.

So in Geneva, US officials climbed down and most tariffs against China were cut to 30%, supposedly in return for some increased US access to Chinese markets. This followed a now-familiar pattern: issue maximalist demands, threaten worse, negotiate, climb down and declare victory.

The problem is that this “art of a deal” strategy might work on easily reversible decisions such as tariffs. It is harder to apply to longer term diplomatic conundrums such as war.

Take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On this, Trump’s policy has been fluid, to put it mildly. And this week was a case in point.

Last Saturday the leaders of the UK, France, Poland and Germany visited Kyiv to put on a show of support for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. And in a group call with Trump on French President Emmanuel Macron’s phone, they spelled out their strategy of demanding Russia agree an immediate 30-day ceasefire or face tougher sanctions.

This was Trump’s policy too. The day before he wrote on social media: “If the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions.” But then on Sunday, President Vladimir Putin suggested instead there should be direct talks between Ukraine and Russia in Turkey on Thursday. Trump immediately went along with this, backtracking on the strategy he had agreed with European leaders a day earlier.

“Ukraine should agree to (these talks) immediately,” he wrote on social media. “I am starting to doubt that Ukraine will make a deal with Putin.”

Then on Thursday, Trump changed his position again, saying a deal could be done only if he and Putin were to meet in person.

This puzzles some diplomats. “Does he genuinely not know what he wants to do about the war in Ukraine?” one remarked to me. “Or does he just grasp at what might offer the quickest resolution possible?”

Into this puzzling mix fell two other decisions this week. First, Trump agreed a ceasefire after a campaign bombing Houthi fighters in Yemen for almost two months. There have been questions about the effectiveness of the hugely expensive air strikes, and the president’s appetite for a long military operation. He repeatedly told his Arab hosts how much he disliked war.

Second, Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, held his fourth round of talks with Iran over efforts to curb their nuclear ambitions. Both sides are hinting that a deal is possible, although sceptics fear it could be quite modest. Talk of joint US-Israeli military action against Iran seems to have dissipated.

What unites both issues is that the United States was acting directly against the wishes of Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu may have been the first world leader invited to the Oval Office after Trump’s inauguration, but in recent days, he seems to have been snubbed. Trump toured the Middle East without visiting Israel; he lifted sanctions on Syria without Israel’s support. His Houthi ceasefire came only days after the group attacked Tel Aviv airport.

Diplomats fear Netanyahu’s reaction. Could the spurned prime minister respond with a more aggressive military operation in Gaza?

So after this week of diplomatic hurly burly, how much has changed? Perhaps less than might appear.

For all the glitz of Trump’s tour through the Middle East, the fighting and humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues unresolved. A fresh Israeli offensive seems imminent. One of Trump’s chief aims – the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia – remains distant.

For all the talks about ending the war in Ukraine, there is no greater likelihood of the guns falling silent. Putin’s ambitions seem unchanged. And for all the deals to cut US tariffs, either with the UK or China, there is still huge global market instability.

We do have a clearer idea of Trump’s global ideology, one that is not isolationist but mercantilist, hoping optimistically that capitalism can overcome conflict. We also have a clearer idea of his haste, his desire to clear his diplomatic decks – in the Middle East, Ukraine and the subcontinent – so he can focus on his primary concern, namely China.

But that may prove an elusive ambition. If there are weeks when decades happen, there are also weeks when nothing happens.

As crowds gathered at a food distribution point in northern Gaza, six-year-old Ismail Abu Odeh fought his way to the front.

“Give me some,” he called out.

His bowl was filled with lentils, but as he made his way back, it was knocked out of his hands. He returned to his family’s tent crying.

An uncle who had managed to get some food later shared some with Ismail.

The following day, no deliveries of water or food arrived at the displacement camp where he lives, located in a school in Gaza City, and the people gathered there were left with empty bottles and bowls. Ismail cried again.

The BBC has spent the past two days speaking to people across Gaza, as Israel ramps up its military action and continues a more than 10-week total blockade on food, medical supplies and other aid.

There are mounting warnings from the United Nations and others that the enclave is on the brink of famine.

The Israeli government insists there is “no shortage” of food in Gaza and that the “real crisis is Hamas looting and selling aid”.

Government ministers have described the stoppage of aid as a “main pressure lever” to secure victory over Hamas and get all the hostages out. There are still 58 hostages in Gaza, up to 23 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel does not allow international journalists free access to Gaza, so our communication has been over phone calls and WhatsApp messages, and through trusted Palestinian freelancers who live in the territory.

Those who spoke to the BBC described their struggle to find even one meal a day, with food kitchens shutting down because of the shortages and few items in the markets. Items that are still available are at highly inflated prices that they cannot afford, they said.

A man running one of the remaining food kitchens in Gaza said he was operating “day by day” to find food and oil. Another man we spoke to said the kitchen he volunteered at had closed 10 days ago when supplies ran out, describing it as a “disastrous feeling”.

One 23-year-old woman living in north Gaza said “dizziness has become a constant feeling” as well as “general weakness and fatigue from the lack of food and medicine”.

Adham al-Batrawi, 31, who used to live in the affluent city of al-Zahra but is now displaced in central Gaza, said hunger was “one of the most difficult parts of daily life”.

He said people had to get “creative just to survive”, describing through WhatsApp messages how he would over-cook pasta and knead it into a dough before cooking it over a fire to create an imitation of bread – a staple in the Palestinian diet.

“We’ve invented ways to cook and eat that we never imagined we’d need,” he said.

He added that the one meal a day he had been eating recently was “just enough to get us through the day, but it’s far from enough to meet our energy needs”.

Elsewhere in central Gaza, in the city of Deir al-Balah, nurse Rewaa Mohsen said it was a struggle to provide for her two young daughters, aged three and 19 months.

She said she had stockpiled nappies during the ceasefire earlier this year but that these would run out in a month.

Speaking over WhatsApp on Thursday, she said her daughters had grown used to the sounds of bombing that would ring through the apartment. “Sometimes I feel more afraid than them,” she wrote, adding that she would distract her children with colouring books and toys.

The next day, over voice note she said evacuation orders had been issued for her area before an Israeli strike hit a nearby building.

When she returned to her home to “clean the mess”, she found that the doors and windows had been blown off.

“Thank God that I am still alive with my girls,” she said.

When asked if she would stay in the apartment, she responded: “Where else will I go?”

Across Gaza, medics described the impact of the blockade on medical supplies and said they no longer felt safe at work following Israeli strikes targeting hospitals.

Nurse Randa Saied said she was working at the European Hospital in Khan Younis when it was hit in an Israeli strike this week, describing it as a moment of “pure terror and helplessness”.

Israel has long accused Hamas of using hospitals as covert bases and for weapons storage, which the group denies.

The European Hospital is no longer operating, but Randa said staff and patients had moved to the nearby Nasser Hospital.

“Our patients are mothers, sons, daughters and siblings – just like us. We know deep in our hearts that our duty must not end, especially now when they need us the most,” she said.

Staff at Nasser and other hospitals in Gaza told the BBC the blockade meant they were running short on basic supplies like painkillers and gauze, and had to shut down some services.

The US has confirmed that a new system for providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza through private companies is being prepared, with Israeli forces set to secure the centres’ perimeters. The United Nations has criticised the plan, saying it appears to “weaponise” aid.

Back in Gaza City, Ismail’s father said he struggled with no longer being able to provide for his six children.

“My children go to sleep hungry,” he said. “Sometimes I sit and cry like a little kid if I don’t manage to provide food for them.”

An extraordinary thing happened to me on a recent flight to Madrid: I unwittingly travelled under the wrong identity, becoming a potential security issue, and no-one realised.

I was packing for a short business trip to make a film for the BBC when I attempted to check-in online. It didn’t work, so I headed to London Heathrow Airport to do it in-person.

Upon arrival there, I tried once again to check myself in, this time at a self-service booth. Again I was denied, the machine flashing up an error code: “Assistance required.”

I ended up at a check-in desk and after checking in my bag, a British Airways staff member handed me a boarding pass. Admittedly I didn’t read the pass in any detail, but headed off to get processed in the security area as normal.

At the gate, I was among the first passengers to board flight BA7055 departing at 10:50 on 23 April, operated by BA’s Spanish partner carrier Iberia, as I was in row six.

Dutifully, I handed my passport and boarding pass to a member of BA ground crew, who glanced at them both and waved me through.

Once on board I realised my seat was in business class. I assumed this must have been a free upgrade, because I would of course usually have been in economy; we had chosen this flight because it was the most cost-effective option with all our filming equipment.

No sooner were we off the tarmac and at cruising altitude than the delicious baked cod and chickpea stew lunch was served. Tiramisu for dessert, too. No complimentary alcohol for me though; it was a work trip.

It was on arrival in the Spanish capital when things started to go wrong.

As soon as I gained mobile signal on the ground, an email popped up: my return flight had been cancelled.

I asked the BBC’s travel provider what had happened and what the plan was for getting me home?

In response, the travel company said it had been cancelled because I was a no-show on the outbound flight.

I explained that I was in fact very much in Madrid and waiting – endlessly, it seemed – to collect my checked luggage from the baggage belt.

After some no doubt confusing conversations between our travel team and BA, I received a further message to say the airline was adamant I had not travelled and that the boarding pass in my possession did not display the correct details.

This was when I realised that the name on my boarding pass was not mine, it was a man called Huw H. The BBC is not using Huw H’s full name, which was printed on the pass.

His name was also printed on my luggage tags.

BA claimed there was no way I could have travelled using that document as security checks wouldn’t allow it – but I did. My colleague, who was seated a few rows behind me, can vouch for me being on that plane.

The airline was so sure that I was not in Madrid that the BBC had to book me another seat on the flight home I was originally booked onto, at great expense. BA has since offered a £500 goodwill voucher as well as refunding the cost of the extra ticket.

The security protocol for passengers boarding flights is relatively simple: ground crew must check the name on the boarding pass matches that on the passport presented.

This process appears to have broken down in my case – with no-one at check-in or the boarding gate identifying the discrepancy between the name on the boarding pass and my passport.

So what went wrong, and who is Huw H? I tried to find out.

Some internet sleuthing brought limited proof of Huw H’s existence. I made a few attempts to contact accounts using his full name via various social media channels, to no avail. It’s made me fear that he might not even exist.

I did manage to get in touch with someone with a similar name – Jonathan Huw H – who, it turns out, flew on a BA flight on 24 April, a day after mine, landing at Heathrow, so is it possible his name was somehow floating around in the BA system? “It’s really worrying,” Jonathan told me.

My married name, which was on my booking confirmation and passport, begins with the letter H – though is very different to Huw H’s surname. Could this have factored in?

It’s impossible to know, and BA cannot confirm anything for privacy reasons.

Simon Calder, travel correspondent at the Independent, said it was to be expected that mistakes will sometimes happen “in the high-pressure, deadline-strewn world of aviation”.

But he added: “This case is unusual in that the error wasn’t picked up at the departure gate, where it could have been easily rectified.

“The airline needs urgently to investigate and make amends.”

Aviation security and operations expert Julian Bray added: “There is a security issue here, in that the plane took off with an incorrect passenger manifest.

“It is wrong and shouldn’t have happened. The passenger manifest should be correct as it is an important document that shows who is travelling and where. That said, as the name on the baggage tag matched the one on the boarding pass and the correct number of people were on board when the plane took off, I can see how it happened.”

Others would argue that it was not a security risk, though, because both myself and my luggage went through all the usual security checks.

A spokesperson for BA, which managed my ticket as well as the Heathrow ground crew in my case, said: “We’ve contacted our customer to apologise for this genuine human error. While incidents like this are extremely rare, we’ve taken proactive steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Authority has told me it has launched an investigation into what happened.

Heathrow Airport said in response to a request for comment that it was not responsible for the ground crew or anything else in my case, and security screening went ahead as normal.

Iberia, whose only involvement in my journey was operating the outbound plane and cabin crew, has not responded to a request for comment. As is nothing out of the ordinary, my passport and boarding pass were not manually checked on the plane.

Apologies and investigations aside, the question remains how this was ever possible in this day and age of high security.

On social media there are threads about this type of thing happening around the world in the past, but the mistake was rectified before take-off as there were two people trying to sit in the same seat.

What happened to me appears to be different as my name was seemingly replaced with someone who seemingly wasn’t travelling to Spain that day.

I’m not sure I’ll ever really know what happened, but one thing is for sure – I won’t ever walk away from a check-in desk without reading every detail printed on my boarding pass in future.

In a setback for Donald Trump, his fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives have failed to pass the president’s “big, beautiful” package of tax breaks and spending cuts, starkly exposing the party’s budgetary divisions.

The 1,116-page bill – officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, invoking how Trump’s own description – failed on Friday to advance through the House budget committee, the final hurdle before a full floor vote.

The president took to social media to urge Republicans to “stop talking and get it done!” But several of them argued the cuts did not go far enough and torpedoed the measure.

Let’s take a look at where the disagreements lie.

Among the primary sticking points in the negotiations is just how much to slash from the budget bill, with several conservative congressmen demanding steeper cuts.

As things stand, the measure’s tax breaks total about $4.9tr (£3.7tn), partly paid for by cuts to the public health programme known as Medicaid, as well as to green energy tax breaks approved by former President Joe Biden.

Four right-wing lawmakers withheld their support, arguing that the cuts should be steeper to avoid swelling America’s public debt, which currently stands at $36tr. A fifth lawmaker also voted no, citing procedural reasons.

“This bill falls profoundly short,” said one of the rebels, Texas Republican Chip Roy. “I am a ‘no’ on this bill unless serious reforms are made.”

• Moody’s downgrades US credit rating citing rising debt
• Five House Republicans stall Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill

Perhaps the most contentious item in the bill are cuts – partly through work requirements – to Medicaid, a healthcare programme aimed at lower-income Americans.

Mr Roy and other Republicans – including South Carolina’s Ralph Norman, Oklahoma’s Josh Brecheen and Georgia’s Andrew Clyde – want further cuts to Medicaid and other social security programmes.

The bill would require that states deny Medicaid coverage if able-bodied Americans using the programme are not working at least 80 hours a month or undertaking other community options from 2029.

It would also end coverage for those who cannot show they are meeting work requirements.

Roy and other conservatives want those work requirements to start straight away – rather than after President Trump has left office.

Other lawmakers, such as Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, have argued against any cuts to Medicaid, warning it would affect millions of lower-income constituents.

“This wing of the party wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor,” Hawley wrote in the New York Times on 12 May. “But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

Dozens of other House Republicans have also voiced concerns.

Another point of contention in the bill is a tripling of a local tax deduction – known as Salt – from $10,000 to $30,000 for couples.

Some lawmakers from states with high taxes such as New York, California and New Jersey have objected, saying that the proposed cap is not high enough.

In a joint statement earlier in May, New York Republican Congress members Elise Stefanik, Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler accused Speaker Mike Johnson of proposing “an amount they already knew would fall short of earning our support”.

“It’s not just insulting – it risks derailing President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” the statement added. “We rejected this offer.”

Some so-called Salt Republicans have publicly called for the cap to be raised to $62,000 for individuals and double for couples filing jointly.

House Republican leaders are reportedly seeking a compromise that would see the cap raised to $40,000 for individuals and $80,000 for joint filers.

The “Salt Caucus” formed in 2021 is a bipartisan effort that brings together both Democrats and Republicans who hope to repeal the current $10,000 cap.

As part of the bill, House Republicans have called for substantial reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme, or Snap.

More than 42 million Americans currently benefit from the Snap programme, which allows them to use federal funds to buy groceries every year.

The legislation would require individual states to shoulder 5% of the benefit’s costs each year, as well as 75% of the administrative costs.

At the moment, states are not responsible for Snap costs and pay half of the administrative costs.

Republicans also hope to expand existing work requirements for recipients, which currently apply to people without dependants between the ages of 18 and 54. The current proposal would expand that to 64.

Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin said the proposal “is a slap in the face” to millions of Americans “who rely on food assistance programme to put food on the table and make sure their kids don’t go hungry”.

Republicans argue the proposal would reduce government waste, promote work over welfare, and restore “common sense” to the programme.

The House Agriculture Committee has already approved $300m in cuts to the Snap programme to fund tax cuts.

Government data shows that about 12% of Americans received Snap benefits last year, with the figure higher in some Republican-leaning states such as Alabama and Oklahoma.

The Eurovision Song Contest reaches its grand final on Saturday night in Basel, with 26 countries fighting for the coveted glass microphone trophy.

The competition feels less predictable than recent years, when acts like Loreen (Sweden, 2023) and Kalush Orchestra (Ukraine, 2022) were ordained to win before they’d even sung a note.

Currently, bookmakers have installed Sweden at the top of the table for the 69th edition of the contest, with their delightfully bonkers sauna sonnet, Bara Bada Bastu.

But here’s the thing: A novelty number has never won. Voters typically prefer songs about triumph over adversity, and stonking great pop anthems.

Ideally, they want a stonking great pop anthem triumph over adversity, and there are plenty of those sprinkled through tonight’s running order.

We spoke to the six contestants with the best odds, to find out what makes their Eurovision entries stand out.

• Chance of winning: 39%
• Language: Swedish
• Genre: Epadunk
• Spotify streams: 43.9m

KAJ are the first Finnish act to represent Sweden at the Eurovision, hailing from the coastal town of Vörå, where Swedish is still the main language.

A comedy troupe who met at school, they’ve been performing together for more than 15 years – and were the surprise winners of Sweden’s Melodifestivalen, where the public selects the country’s Eurovision entry, earlier this year.

Their song, Bara Bada Bastu, is an accordian-led tribute to sauna culture (Finland has more than three million saunas, one for every two people).

“It felt like a natural thing to sing about,” says Kevin Holmström. “We really like the sauna. It’s universal.”

The first Swedish-language entry since 2012, the song extols the practice’s stress-busting virtues. Is that why Finland is consistently ranked as the world’s happiest nation, I wonder?

“It’s a chicken and an egg situation,” laughs Jakob Norrgård. “I don’t know which came first, the happiness or the sauna, but the sauna definitely brings your pulse down.”

The trio have brought a mock sauna to the Eurovision stage this year, complete with birch branches, hot coals and dancers in skimpy towels. In the lyrics, they ask, “how long can you last?”.

“Oh, we can make it last all evening,” confirms Jackob. “A sauna party that lasts for hours.”

“I like to do it with a lot of intervals,” says Axel Åhman. “Two to three hours, going in and out, having something to drink, maybe even snack on a sausage outside, and then go back in – just to make it a calm and long session.”

And how does Finland feel about the fact the trio are representing their neighbour and Eurovision rival?

“Finns love a bargain, so this is great,” laughs Jackob.

“Sweden gets to pay for everything, but it’s a Finnish win as well.”

• Chance of winning: 22%
• Language: English
• Genre: Pop-opera
• Spotify streams: 6m

Austria has the best opening couplet of the year: “”

“It’s about my personal experience with unreciprocated love,” says singer Johannes Pietsch, who performs under the name JJ. “It felt like I was walking a one-way street.”

The 24-year-old is moonlighting at Eurovision from his day job at the Vienna State Opera, where he’s had roles in The Magic Flute and Von der Liebe Tod.

“A sold-out show at the opera holds 1,600 people, so that’s nothing compared to the Eurovision audience,” he says (last year’s TV broadcast was seen by 163 million people).

Pietsch’s song, Wasted Love, is a turbulent ballad that makes spectacular use of his counter-tenor, with an EDM twist.

On stage, he performs in a ramshackle sailing boat, clinging to the mast as the ocean threatens to consume him. It’s one of the night’s most arresting performances, and it requires a lot of preparation.

“That’s the opera singer in me, I practice every day.” he says. “I have to do vocal warm-ups to keep the voice active and before I go on stage, I always do ten push-ups and one-minute planks.”

Reaching the Eurovision final has been a dream since he watched Conchita Wurst win for Austria in 2014. Could he replicate that success in Switzerland?

“That would be great for Austria. I would love to do that. I would call Conchita my mother, so I’d love to make her proud.”

• Chance of winning: 8%
• Language: French
• Genre: Torch song
• Spotify streams: 6.9m

“I’m surrounded by a sand storm, a sand tornado, and I’ll be wearing a custom Rabanne dress.”

French singer Louane is describing the simple, but stunning, staging for her ballad, Maman.

The sand is real (how she avoids inhaling it, I’ll never know) but it serves a purpose: The song, which was inspired by her mother’s death from cancer, is all about the passage of time.

“It’s a song that says that, even through sadness and deep pain, you can finally feel fine,” she says.

Maman is technically a sequel to a 2015 song of the same name, written in the depths of Louane’s despair. “,” she sang.

The 2025 version includes several callbacks to the first song. For example, the original opened with the lyric: “”, but the update finds her singing, “.”

Having a child of her own helped Louane lift the veil of grief.

In the song, she talks about how holding her daughter’s hand brought back memories of the times her mum had done the same – only this time, the pain of remembering was gone.

In Maman’s closing bars, we briefly hear her daughter’s voice.

“She won’t be here in Basel,” says Louane. “She’s going to be watching on TV, because she’s only five.”

“But she’s super proud. She keeps on telling me, ‘Maman, you have to bring the trophy home.

“She’s just adorable’.”

• Chance of winning: 6%
• Language: French and English
• Genre: Chanson
• Spotify streams: 17.2m

The Netherlands originally asked last year’s entrant, Joost Klein – who was barred from the final after an alleged altercation with a camera operator — the chance to come back for 2025.

Although he’d already written a song for the contest, he declined, saying his disqualification still “stings”.

Instead, the honour went to 21-year-old Claude Kiambe, who moved to the Netherlands from the Democratic Republic of Congo when he was nine years old.

“It wasn’t always safe in Congo,” he says. “I couldn’t afford to go to school… and I love school.”

His mum eventually managed to smuggle the family out of the country, and it’s to her that his Eurovision song is dedicated.

Titled C’est La Vie, it’s a joyous blend of Afropop and French chanson that repeats the advice she used to give Claude and his siblings in the asylum centre in Alkmaar.

“She used to tell me, ‘C’est la vie. Life is beautiful, even if it is hard sometimes.’

“So when I heard about Eurovision, I was like, ‘Wait, if I go there, I want to bring that message to the world’.

“I have a lot of respect for her. She fought through life, and we’re still here.”

Claude comes into the contest with a little advantage, as he’s known throughout Europe for his massive 2022 hit Ladada. But he’s had to pick up a new skill for Eurovision: Choreography.

“I’d only ever done one dance move before, but when I was writing the song, I was like, ‘It’s time for me to step out of my comfort zone and dance around’.”

Learning the choreography took three days, he reckons. “We started at 11 and ended at nine. I wanted to know it so well that I could do it in my dreams.”

• Chance of winning: 4%
• Language: Finnish, German
• Genre: Eurodance
• Spotify streams: 11.8m

Ask Erika Vikman to describe her song, and she doesn’t pull any punches.

“It’s about orgasm.”

Full of pummelling techno beats and what appears to be a Welsh male voice choir, it’s one of those tracks that’s guaranteed to become part of Eurovision folklore, no matter where it comes in the final.

Vikman was once hailed as the queen of Finland’s tango scene but gave it up for pop, “because I can’t be very wild with that type of music.”

Citing artists like Madonna, Cher and Lady Gaga as inspiration, she’s one of the few artists to take to the stage without dancers.

“Why? Because I’m selfish!” she laughs. “I want attention.”

“No, it’s because when I go the stage, I feel like a rock star, and when I feel like a rock star, I really don’t need dancers, because it’s owning my power and myself.”

She certainly owns the stage – ending her song atop a giant gold microphone that spurts fire as she’s hoisted into the sky.

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice, however, that her costume is a little less revealing than the one she wore for Finland’s selection show, Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu.

“They said that it won’t pass if we don’t tone down something,” she says, “and one of the suggestions was my outfit.”

“So I was like, ‘Okay, if that, that’s price to pay, we cover my butt’.”

That doesn’t mean she’s happy about it.

“The song is about owning your sexuality, and then someone comes and controls me, saying, ‘you will ruin every child who is watching this show’. It’s a double standard.”

Censorship or not, Vikman’s odds of winning shortened dramatically after a barnstorming performance in the semi-finals.

“I have a feeling about it,” she smiles. “I can be the dark horse.”

• Chance of winning: 1%
• Language: English
• Genre: Musical theatre
• Spotify streams: 3.1m

After Thursday’s semi-final, UK act Remember Monday shot up the odds… well, kind of.

Formerly predicted to come 17th, they’re now gunning for 11th place.

But the trio – who are the first girlband to represent the UK since the 1999 – are determined to have fun, no matter what the outcome.

“This is all so surreal, beyond anything we could have imagined,” says singer Lauren Byrne.

“It sounds so cheesy, but it is genuinely everything we’ve ever wanted,” says her bandmate Charlotte Steele. “Who gets to stand up and perform their music, with their two best friends, to millions of people? It’s mental.”

“And listen,” adds Lauren. “If we do really badly, we’re just gonna keep coming back until we win.”

In their favour, Remember Monday’s performance is chirpy and fun, drawing on their background in musical theatre. There’s a dress-ripping nod to former UK winners Bucks Fizz, and their live harmonies are exquisite.

“They have an insane amount of experience,” says Ace Bowerman, a creative director for Dua Lipa and Blackpink, who designed their staging.

“Their performance is constantly moving, and bringing the audience in. Ultimately, the energy we want to create is that people will want to be a part of this band.”

Maybe fans have underestimated Remember Monday’s chances because West End show tunes are an untested quantity at Eurovision – but the UK’s track record doesn’t bode well.

We’ll have to wait and see what the hell (just) happens.

To live along the Line of Control (LoC) – the volatile de facto border that separates India and Pakistan – is to exist perpetually on the razor’s edge between fragile peace and open conflict.

The recent escalation after the Pahalgam attack brought India and Pakistan to the brink once again. Shells rained down on both sides of the LoC, turning homes to rubble and lives into statistics. At least 16 people were reportedly killed on the Indian side, while Pakistan claims 40 civilian deaths, though it remains unclear how many were directly caused by the shelling.

“Families on the LoC are subjected to Indian and Pakistani whims and face the brunt of heated tensions,” Anam Zakaria, a Pakistani writer based in Canada, told the BBC.

“Each time firing resumes many are thrust into bunkers, livestock and livelihood is lost, infrastructure – homes, hospitals, schools – is damaged. The vulnerability and volatility experienced has grave repercussions for their everyday lived reality,” Ms Zakaria, author of a book on Pakistan-administered Kashmir, said.

India and Pakistan share a 3,323km (2,064-mile) border, including the 740km-long LoC; and the International Border (IB), spanning roughly 2,400km. The LoC began as the Ceasefire Line in 1949 after the first India-Pakistan war, and was renamed under the 1972 Simla Agreement.

The LoC cutting through Kashmir – claimed in full and administered in parts by both India and Pakistan – remains one of the most militarised borders in the world. Conflict is never far behind and ceasefires are only as durable as the next provocation.

Ceasefire violations here can range from “low-level firing to major land grabbing to surgical strikes“, says Happymon Jacob, a foreign policy expert at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). (A land grab could involve seizing key positions such as hilltops, outposts, or buffer zones by force.)

The LoC, many experts say, is a classic example of a “border drawn in blood, forged through conflict”. It is also a line, as Ms Zakaria says, “carved by India and Pakistan, and militarised and weaponised, without taking Kashmiris into account”.

Such wartime borders aren’t unique to South Asia. Sumantra Bose, professor of international and comparative politics at Krea University in India and author of Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, says the most well-known is the ‘Green Line’ – the ceasefire line of 1949 – which is the generally recognised boundary between Israel and the West Bank.

Not surprisingly, the tentative calm along the LoC that had endured since the 2021 ceasefire agreement between the two nuclear-armed neighbours crumbled easily after the latest hostilities.

“The current escalation on the LoC and International Border (IB) is significant as it follows a four-year period of relative peace on the border,” Surya Valliappan Krishna of Carnegie India told the BBC.

Violence along the India-Pakistan border is not new – prior to the 2003 ceasefire, India reported 4,134 violations in 2001 and 5,767 in 2002.

The 2003 ceasefire initially held, with negligible violations from 2004 to 2007, but tensions resurfaced in 2008 and escalated sharply by 2013.

Between 2013 and early 2021, the LoC and the IB witnessed sustained high levels of conflict. A renewed ceasefire in February 2021 led to an immediate and sustained drop in violations through to March 2025.

“During periods of intense cross-border firing we’ve seen border populations in the many thousands be displaced for months on end,” says Mr Krishna. Between late September and early December 2016, more than 27,000 people were displaced from border areas due to ceasefire violations and cross-border firing.

It’s looking increasingly hairy and uncertain now.

Tensions flared after the Pahalgam attack, with India suspending the key water-sharing treaty between India and Pakistan, known as the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). Pakistan responded by threatening to exit the 1972 Simla Agreement, which formalised the LoC – though it hasn’t followed through yet.

“This is significant because the Simla Agreement is the basis of the current LoC, which both sides agreed to not alter unilaterally in spite of their political differences,” says Mr Krishna.

Mr Jacob says for some “curious reason”, ceasefire violations along the LoC have been absent from discussions and debates about escalation of conflict between the two countries.

“It is itself puzzling how the regular use of high-calibre weapons such as 105mm mortars, 130 and 155mm artillery guns and anti-tank guided missiles by two nuclear-capable countries, which has led to civilian and military casualties, has escaped scholarly scrutiny and policy attention,” Mr Jacob writes in his book, Line On Fire: Ceasefire Violations and India-Pakistan Escalation Dynamics.

Mr Jacob identifies two main triggers for the violations: Pakistan often uses cover fire to facilitate militant infiltration into Indian-administered Kashmir, which has witnessed an armed insurgency against Indian rule for over three decades. Pakistan, in turn, accuses India of unprovoked firing on civilian areas.

He argues that ceasefire violations along the India-Pakistan border are less the product of high-level political strategy and more the result of local military dynamics.

The hostilities are often initiated by field commanders – sometimes with, but often without, central approval. He also challenges the notion that the Pakistan Army alone drives the violations, pointing instead to a complex mix of local military imperatives and autonomy granted to border forces on both sides.

Some experts believe It’s time to revisit an idea shelved nearly two decades ago: turning the LoC into a formal, internationally recognised border. Others insist that possibility was never realistic – and still isn’t.

“The idea is completely infeasible, a dead end. For decades, Indian maps have shown the entire territory of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir as part of India,” Sumantra Bose told the BBC.

“For Pakistan, making the LoC part of the International Border would mean settling the Kashmir dispute – which is Pakistan’s equivalent of the Holy Grail – on India’s preferred terms. Every Pakistani government and leader, civilian or military, over the past seven decades has rejected this.”

In his 2003 book, Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace, Prof Bose writes: “A Kashmir settlement necessitates that the LoC be transformed – from an iron curtain of barbed wire, bunkers, trenches and hostile militaries to a linen curtain. Realpolitik dictates that the border will be permanent (albeit probably under a different name), but it must be transcended without being abolished.”

“I stressed, though, that such a transformation of the LoC must be embedded in a broader Kashmir settlement, as one pillar of a multi-pillared settlement,” he told the BBC.

Between 2004 and 2007, turning the LoC into a soft border was central to a fledgling India-Pakistan peace process on Kashmir – a process that ultimately fell apart.

Today, the border has reignited, bringing back the cycle of violence and uncertainty for those who live in its shadow.

“You never know what will happen next. No one wants to sleep facing the Line of Control tonight,” an employee of a hotel in Pakistan-administered Kashmir told BBC Urdu during the recent hostilities.

It was a quiet reminder of how fragile peace is when your window opens to a battlefield.

Australia’s most-decorated living soldier Ben Roberts-Smith, has lost an appeal against a landmark defamation judgement which found he committed war crimes.

A judge in 2023 ruled that news articles alleging the Victoria Cross recipient had murdered four unarmed Afghans were true, but Mr Roberts-Smith had argued the judge made legal errors.

The civil trial was the first time in history any court has assessed claims of war crimes by Australian forces.

A panel of three Federal Court judges on Friday unanimously upheld the original judgement, though Mr Roberts-Smith has said he will appeal the decision to the High Court of Australia “immediately”.

“I continue to maintain my innocence and deny these egregious spiteful allegations,” he said in a statement.

Mr Roberts-Smith, who left the defence force in 2013, has not been charged over any of the claims in a criminal court, where there is a higher burden of proof.

The former special forces corporal sued three Australian newspapers over a series of articles alleging serious misconduct while he was deployed in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012 as part of a US-led military coalition.

At the time the articles were published in 2018, Mr Roberts-Smith was considered a national hero, having been awarded Australia’s highest military honour for single-handedly overpowering Taliban fighters attacking his Special Air Service (SAS) platoon.

The 46-year-old argued the alleged killings occurred legally during combat or did not happen at all, claiming the papers ruined his life with their reports.

His defamation case – which some have dubbed “the trial of the century” in Australia – lasted over 120 days and is now rumoured to have cost up to A$35m ($22.5m; £16.9m).

In June 2023 Federal Court Justice Antony Besanko threw out the case against The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Canberra Times, ruling it was “substantially true” that Mr Roberts-Smith had murdered unarmed Afghan prisoners and civilians and bullied fellow soldiers.

He also found that Mr Roberts-Smith lied to cover up his misconduct and threatened witnesses.

Additional allegations that he had punched his lover, threatened a peer, and committed two other murders were not proven to the “balance of probabilities” standard required in civil cases.

The “heart” of the appeal case was that Justice Besanko didn’t given enough weight to Mr Roberts-Smith’s presumption of innocence, his barrister Bret Walker, SC said.

There is a legal principle requiring judges to proceed carefully when dealing with civil cases that involve serious allegations and in making findings which carry grave consequences.

Mr Walker argued that meant the evidence presented by the newspapers fell short of the standard required.

Months after the appeal case had closed, Mr Roberts-Smith’s legal team earlier this year sought to reopen it, alleging misconduct by one of the reporters at the centre of the case.

They argued there was a miscarriage of justice because Nick McKenzie, one of the journalists who wrote the articles at the centre of the case, allegedly unlawfully obtained details about Mr Roberts-Smith’s legal strategy.

The legal team pointed to a leaked phone call between Mr McKenzie and a witness – which The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Canberra Times said may have been recorded illegally.

But on Friday, the trio of judges rejected that argument too.

They said “the evidence was sufficiently cogent to support the findings that the appellant murdered four Afghan men”.

“To the extent that we have discerned error in the reasons of the primary judge, the errors were inconsequential,” they added.

They also ordered Mr Roberts-Smith to pay the newspapers’ legal costs.

In a statement, Mr McKenzie called the ruling an “emphatic win”.

He thanked the SAS soldiers who “fought for the Australian public to learn the truth”, and paid tribute to the Afghan “victims of [Mr] Roberts-Smith”.

“It should not be left to journalists and brave soldiers to stand up to a war criminal,” he said. “Australian authorities must hold Ben Roberts-Smith accountable before our criminal justice system.”

Few names are as synonymous with video games as Doom.

First launched in 1993, the first-person shooter (FPS) remains one of the most influential – and popular – series in the industry.

But even it and its superhuman protagonist, The Doom Slayer, have to contend with the pressures of the games industry in 2025.

Attracting new players, competing with the new titans on the scene and the rising cost of making – and selling – blockbuster titles.

BBC Newsbeat spoke to the project leaders of the latest instalment, Doom: The Dark Ages, about navigating some of these challenges.

While the Doom series is famous for pitting players against colossal enemies, there are other behemoths it has to face.

“There’s so much stuff competing for our attention these days, whether it’s games, movies, or whatever,” says executive producer Marty Stratton.

Free-to-play (F2P) games, such as Fortnite and Roblox, and annually updated series such as Call of Duty and EA FC regularly dominate most-played charts.

There’s evidence to suggest players, particularly younger ones, are spending most of their time on these titles – sometimes referred to as “forever games”.

In the latest Online Nation report by UK regulator Ofcom, five of the top ten games among UK players were F2P.

Fortnite recorded about 2.65m active UK users in May 2024, and Roblox 1.22m, according to the report, and global figures are much higher.

Drawing those players to premium titles can be a challenge but Marty argues games such as Doom, which can be completed in under 20 hours, can “fit into those habits”.

“It doesn’t have to become your obsession for the next two years,” he says.

The Doom series – developed by Dallas-based ID Software – has an advantage over others because it’s so well-known and has a large, loyal fanbase.

But, as industry expert Rhys Elliot, from Alinea Analytics, tells Newsbeat, it’s getting harder to rely solely on your hardcore players.

Overall, he says, the number of people playing premium titles isn’t increasing, but the cost of making them is.

“The people who make games – they still need to make revenues each year because, you know, capitalism,” he says.

One way of doing this is by attracting new players.

Doom’s director Hugo Martin says the response to Doom: The Dark Age’s previews were encouraging – something he puts down in part to its new “Medieval sci-fi” setting and altered gameplay style.

“We see it in the comments – a lot of people are saying ‘I think this is going to be my first Doom’, and that’s exciting for us,” he says.

The games industry has also leaned into customisation in recent years, giving players the power to finely tweak different elements and aspects of difficulty – something that’s been incorporated into The Dark Ages.

“In that regard I think it’s going to be a great first-time experience for a lot of fans,” says Hugo.

But there’s still the small matter of the cost of entry.

The debate over prices has been a feature of gaming discourse for years.

In 2010, a new game cost roughly £40 in the UK – and players had plenty to say about it at the time.

If you take into account inflation (using this Bank of England tool), that would be about £60 in today’s money.

Doom: The Dark Ages itself costs £69.99 for a standard edition or almost £100 for a limited Premium Edition with extras included.

“When you look at the history of game pricing… it really hasn’t skyrocketed,” says Marty.

The issue has been thrown back into the spotlight thanks to worries over Donald Trump’s tariff plans and price announcements from the three major console makers.

That could make competitors such as Fortnite – which don’t require new, specialised hardware to run – even more appealing for cash-strapped players.

But Doom producer Marty argues that “free” games can end up costing players more in the long run, while there are “no unknown expenses” with a one-off purchase such as Doom.

“You’re not going to be asked to pay anything else, two hours in,” he says.

F2P games generate cash with in-game purchases, ranging from “microtransactions” equivalent to a handful of change or, in some cases, hundreds of pounds.

Those costs can mount up, and a recent poll of 2,001 gamers by British bank TSB suggested dedicated players can spend about £22 a month on those transactions.

That’s still less than a tentpole new release, but Doom’s director Hugo also believes people are happy to pay more for a “curated experience” with “replay value”.

“Typically, if you just make a really good game then people will want to play it again,” he says.

Analyst Rhys believes we’re going to see more “fiddling with prices” and surcharges “to see what customers are willing to pay” and a wider range of RRPs for new releases.

“Hopefully there’ll be more competition there. It’s good for consumers,” he says.

Doom is also available on PC and Xbox via Game Pass – Microsoft’s Netflix-style subscription priced at £14.99 a month.

There’s evidence more people are turning to this, as well as Sony’s PlayStation Plus – raising questions over whether they put players off paying full price.

Game Pass players could pay a £34.99/$34.99 upgrade fee to access the game two days early and receive bonus content.

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Rhys says we are likely to see more of these sorts of offers are aimed at “superfans” who want to keep up with the latest releases.

For everyone else, waiting is an option.

“You can pick up the first 2016 Doom game for like £4 right now,” says Rhys.

Doom’s makers, perhaps unsurprisingly, believe their latest is worth jumping into.

“We think about price when we’re developing it – we obviously want the value to be there for players,” says Marty.

“Ultimately, it’s a market. Players will determine what they want to spend.”

“I think it’s there’s obviously still a place for a good, premium, highly polished, fun single-player game,” adds Hugo.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

Ozwald Boateng, celebrating four decades of making his indelible mark on the fashion industry, got his chance to stamp his style on the Met Gala in New York earlier this month.

The esteemed British-Ghanaian designer for the first time dressed celebrities – including three of Africa’s biggest musicians, Tems, Burna Boy and Arya Starr, as well as actors Ncuti Gatwa and Jaden Smith – at what is seen as his industry’s biggest night of the year.

The theme – Superfine: Tailoring Black Style – was “completely in my wheelhouse”, he says, as it looked at the way that style formed black identities.

Given that he already has a robust legacy in the design world, the 58-year-old saw the opportunity to find fresh adherents to the Boateng look.

“I think it’s, in a way, communicating to a new audience,” he tells the BBC a few days after the showcase.

Throughout his 40 years in fashion, the designer has built a reputation for challenging the norms of men’s tailoring. His eponymous brand sells form-fitting, stylish suits, often accented with bold colours and West African-inspired patterns.

The son of Ghanaian immigrants, Boateng reimagined the country’s iconic kente cloth to produce his signature “tribal” pattern.

“It’s all about having a strong concept, having a thorough idea of what you want to achieve from the textiles,” he says.

The Met Gala perfectly matched his outlook. “Being a theme about black culture and black cultural influence, I mean, how can you do that without Africa?” he asks.

Considering the link to Ghana, Boateng explains: “When we were colonised by the Europeans or the Brits, we kept our traditional dress, but tailoring was a big part of how we dressed to look more… effectively more European.

“My father always wore tailored suits. You had to be smart at all times, that was something I was taught.”

As if producing outfits for 16 celebrities for fashion’s premier event was not stressful enough, Boateng switched up Burna Boy’s outfit less than 24 hours before the event.

“We did his fitting quite literally the night before the Met Gala,” Boateng says, adding that everyone in the room got “really excited” when they saw the Grammy-award winning musician in the finished product.

The look – a red suit paired with a buttercup yellow shirt and eel-skin cape – was partly inspired by Burna Boy’s Nigerian roots.

The musician told Vogue: “As a waterside pikin [Pidgin for “child”] from the Niger Delta, the eel and fish in general are the lifeblood of my people – they symbolise survival, spirit and the flow of tradition through generations.”

The Met Gala was “not unusual”, Boateng says, explaining that Africa has been part of his “message” throughout his career.

Back in 1995, Boateng was the first black designer to open a shop on Savile Row, a London street famed for fine tailoring.

“When I first started as a designer, Savile as a street was a dying street,” Boateng recalls.

“The concept, it was dying. I effectively moved there in the early 90s and breathed new life into it.”

Boateng was dubbed the “peacock of Savile Row” – with his flamboyance, 6ft-something frame and modelesque facial features, he stood out among his neighbours.

Colour and flair had long been part of Boateng’s psyche. At five years old his favourite outfit was a purple, mohair suit made by his mother, who was a seamstress.

Young Boateng commandeered his mother’s sewing machine and although he initially chose to study computing at college, he switched to fashion after realising menswear was his future.

As a teenager, Boateng was greatly inspired by tailoring titan Giorgio Armani – and decades later, Armani would praise the London designer for his “elegance” and “cutting edge” designs.

Boateng opened his first studio in his early 20s, dressing the likes of Mick Jagger, Jimmy Paige and Spike Lee.

He then opened his Savile Row store – at the age of 28 he was the youngest to ever do so.

The burgeoning designer captivated London’s fashion scene initially, but in 1998 he went bankrupt when an economic downturn in east Asia scuppered a major order.

Both his professional and personal life descended into disarray – in just 12 months an entire collection was stolen from his studio and his marriage broke down.

But the peacock strutted his way back. Boateng gradually rebuilt his business and in 2002 moved into bigger premises on Savile Row.

Since then, he has served as Givency’s creative director for menswear, been awarded an OBE, designed staff uniforms for British Airways and branched out into womenswear.

While racking up professional and charitable commitments, Boateng was raising two children.

Now adults, Oscar and Emilia Boateng accompanied their father to the Met Gala, dressed in the suits that made their surname one of the most famous in contemporary British tailoring.

They are not, however, keen to follow their father into fashion design.

“I’m trying to slowly but surely seduce them into the fashion business,” Boateng jokes.

“It is ultimately their decision to decide what they want from their life. If they find something they’re passionate about in a way I have, I am happy.”

And what is next for his own passion? Boateng might have a brain brimming with concepts, but he has a clear vision of where he wants his brand to go next.

“The future is expansion,” he says, “raising capital to really, really push the brand globally”.

“I think it’s the moment in time – and it’s the right moment.”

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Ten prisoners, several of them facing murder charges, have escaped from a New Orleans jail and may have had help from staff inside the facility, authorities say.

The inmates are thought to have fled around midnight, and were discovered missing during a headcount at 08:30 local time (13:30 GMT) at the Orleans Parish Jail on Friday morning. One of the 10 has been recaptured.

“There’s no way for anyone to get out of this facility without help,” Sheriff Susan Huston said during a news conference.

The sheriff’s office posted photos showing how the inmates escaped, which included taunting messages apparently left by the escapees. “To Easy LoL,” one message read.

One inmate was apprehended in New Orleans’ French Quarter, police said. The other nine are considered “armed and dangerous”, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office said, adding that a manhunt was continuing.

Louisiana State Police identified one escapee as Kendall Myles in central New Orleans through facial recognition technology after he was filmed on a surveillance camera.

He tried to flee on foot before being apprehended hiding underneath a car in a parking garage, police said.

He was transported back to the Orleans Parish Jail, and “is being rebooked at the facility for a new charge of Simple Escape”, it said in a statement.

The New Orleans Police Department has released the names and photographs of the other escapees in a post on X.

The Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office initially said 11 prisoners had escaped from the facility, but the number was revised to 10 later on Friday.

Sheriff Hutson said the inmates yanked the sliding door from their jail cell off its tracks at 00:23 in the early hours of Friday morning (05:23 GMT).

They exited the jail about half an hour later after ripping a toilet from the wall and breaking metal bars around a hole in the wall that was used for piping.

They then climbed down a wall and ran across a highway, the sheriff said.

The sheriff’s office released images of the hole in the wall, which shows what the piping fixture looked like before the toilet was ripped out. The photos note that “there are clean cuts” on the metal bars, which facilitated their escape.

The photos also show messages on the wall apparently left behind by the inmates.

The photos show messages scrawled in pen, including “To Easy LoL” with an arrow pointing to the hole. It also shows a smiley face with its tongue out and another message, partially smudged, that appears to tell officers to catch the inmates when they can.

New Orleans police chief Anne Kirkpatrick said the prisoner escape was an “urgent and serious situation” and encouraged the public to report any suspicious activity.

Victims of some of the escapees have been notified, she said, adding that several are facing murder and other violent charges.

The inmates probably had help, Supt Kirkpatrick said, and are unlikely to still be wearing prison uniforms, warning that anyone who helped the inmates would be charged.

The FBI and US Marshals have also joined local police in the search, she added.

The Orleans Parish Jail is located near the centre of the city, around 3 km (2 miles) from the city’s famous French Quarter.

Cassie Ventura has tearfully told a court she would give back a $20m (£15m) legal settlement from Sean “Diddy” Combs if it meant she would never have taken part in his “humiliating” drug-fuelled sex parties.

She rejected defence suggestions that her accusations were financially motivated as she wrapped up four days of testimony in the New York criminal trial of her ex-boyfriend.

Ms Ventura, the government’s star witness, faced questioning from both legal teams about her decade-long relationship with Mr Combs, and their “freak-off” sex sessions.

Mr Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He could face life in prison.

Ms Ventura’s testimony revealed graphic details about her sex life with the rapper and the physical violence she allegedly endured from him.

The rap mogul’s lawyers have been trying to depict Ms Ventura, 38, as an eager participant in the sexual lifestyle.

She testified this week that she was coerced into the sessions, which involved male escorts, because Mr Combs had threatened her with violence.

On Friday she addressed a $20m pay-out he gave her after she filed a lawsuit against him in November 2023.

The settlement, which came just one day after the filing of the legal action, was public knowledge, but the number was previously unknown.

Mr Combs’ lawyer, Anna Estevao, seemed to imply that Ms Ventura was strapped for cash before filing her lawsuit. The singer had just moved to her parents’ house with her husband and children.

Ms Ventura rejected this suggestion, later sharing that she would exchange the money for a life free of the “freak offs”, which she said caused her physical injuries, would sometimes go on for days, and stifled her career as a singer.

“I would have agency and autonomy,” she said.

Mr Combs’ legal team also showed the jury dozens of messages between the couple from each stage of their relationship, arguing their dynamic was toxic at times, but not criminal.

Minutes before Ms Ventura was set to leave the stand on Friday, the defence questioned her about another legal settlement she won.

Ms Ventura told the court she was expecting to receive about $10m from InterContinental Hotels, connected to her claims against Mr Combs.

The settlement relates to an incident at the InterContinental in Los Angeles in 2016, in which security footage showed Mr Combs hitting, kicking and dragging her in a hallway.

That clip was played at length in court this week, and is one of the most important pieces of evidence in the trial.

On Friday in court, Ms Ventura went through her texts after that beating. In one message she told Mr Combs: “I’m not a rag doll. I’m somebody’s child.”

She and Mr Combs were expressing love for each other days later in other texts.

The defence cross-examination continued on all day Thursday and Friday.

The prosecution squeezed in two more witnesses before court adjourned for the weekend.

One was Dawn Richard, a singer in the group Danity Kane – formed on Diddy’s MTV show Making the Band. Last year she filed a lawsuit accusing him of physical abuse and withholding her earnings.

Ms Richard testified that she saw Mr Combs assault Ms Ventura at his Los Angeles mansion in 2009.

“She fell down,” Ms Richard told the court. “She was in the foetal position.”

After the incident, she said Mr Combs took her aside and told her what she saw was “passion” and that where he is from, “people go missing” if they talk.

US Homeland Security special agent Yasin Binda took the stand as well, telling the court about the cash, drugs and baby oil that were seized from the rapper’s hotel room when he was arrested in New York.

More testimony is expected from the witnesses called by prosecutors next week.

The Manhattan court has been a media circus since the beginning of the trial, with spectators gathering in droves and camping out overnight to get a glimpse of the music mogul, his family, and the celebrities testifying.

What began as public calls to boycott travel to Turkey has now escalated into a broader rupture, with India severing links with Turkish businesses and universities.

The diplomatic chill stems from Turkey’s recent vocal support for Pakistan during the recent India-Pakistan hostilities.

On Thursday India barred Turkish firm Celebi from operating at its airports, citing national security concerns – an allegation the company denies.

Several Indian universities – including Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Millia Islamia, and Maulana Azad National Urdu University- have also suspended academic ties with Turkish institutions.

Celebi, which handled ground services at major airports like Delhi and Mumbai, has been formally dropped, in line with the federal aviation ministry orders.

India’s minister of state for aviation has said in a post on X that in recent days the government had received requests from across the country to ban the company.

“Recognising the seriousness of the issue and the call to protect national interests, we have taken cognisance of these requests. The Ministry of Civil Aviation has revoked the security clearance of the said company,” the minister stated.

According to a Bloomberg report, Celebi has said it will pursue all “administrative and legal” remedies to “clarify” the allegations and seek a reversal of the order. The company also called the revocation of its security clearance “unjust”.

“Our company and subsidiaries bear no responsibility for any potential disruptions, delays or negative impacts on airport operations and civil aviation traffic in India,” Bloomberg quoted the company as saying.

Deadly fighting broke out between India and Pakistan last week after Delhi launched airstrikes on its neighbour, saying it was in response to the deadly Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any involvement in the incident.

Turkey and Azerbaijan were quick to back Pakistan after India’s military action – Ankara warned of “all-out war”, while Baku condemned Delhi’s strikes.

The fallout sparked a wave of backlash, with boycott calls against Turkey – and Azerbaijan – gaining traction on social media and being echoed by senior political leaders. The boycott gained momentum after reports emerged of Turkish drones being used by Pakistan against India.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a former federal minister and a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said: “Every hardworking Indian who travels abroad as a tourist understands today that their hard-earned rupee should not be spent on those who help the enemies of our country.”

The social media boycott calls had an immediate impact, with Indian travel sites reporting a sharp spike in cancellations this week.

“Indian travellers have expressed strong sentiments over the past week, with bookings for Azerbaijan and Turkey decreasing by 60%, while cancellations have surged by 250%,” said a spokesperson for travel website MakeMyTrip.

Most travel sites still allow bookings, but some are discouraging travel, with promotions and flight discounts to Turkey and Azerbaijan quietly pulled.

Rohit Khattar, who runs a travel agency in Delhi, said he’s already seeing clear hesitation among clients about visiting Turkey.

“Many young travellers may avoid it, fearing backlash on social media or social retribution,” he said, adding that his firm won’t risk investing in trips that might not take off.

According to official data, 330,100 Indians visited Turkey in 2024, up from 274,000 in 2023. Azerbaijan also saw a rise, with nearly 244,000 Indian arrivals last year.

Despite rising numbers, Indians made up for less than 1% of Turkey’s foreign visitors in 2024 – a modest share with limited impact on overall tourism revenue. In contrast, they accounted for nearly 9% of foreign arrivals in Azerbaijan.

After the pandemic, Turkey and Azerbaijan grew popular among Indian travellers for their affordability, proximity, and Europe-like experiences at lower costs. Budget airlines have boosted access with direct flights in recent years.

Some social media users are promoting alternatives like Greece, but travel sites report no major spike in interest.

Travel website Cleartrip told the BBC, “As this is a developing situation, we haven’t seen significant highs or lows in demand for these alternate destinations”.

Two British men accused of robbing a luxury jewellery store in Tokyo can be sent to Japan following a landmark ruling.

For almost a decade, Japanese authorities have pursued the extradition of Kaine Wright, 28, Joe Chappell, 38, and a third man over allegations they posed as customers to steal items worth £679,000 (¥106m) from a Harry Winston store.

On Friday, chief magistrate Judge Goldspring rejected Wright and Chappell’s challenges against extradition. Their case now passes to the home secretary to decide whether they should be sent to Japan.

No extradition treaty exists between the UK and Japan, meaning it would be the first time Japan have successfully received fugitives.

Japan’s initial request was rejected, but the High Court overturned the original decision following an appeal lodged by the Japanese government.

In Friday’s judgement – seen by the BBC – Wright, of Plumstead, and Chappell, of Belvedere, both in London, had raised concerns over prison conditions in Japan which they argued were “arbitrary, excessive and breach international standards”.

The Japanese government said the submissions were “fundamentally flawed both legally and factually”.

District Judge Goldspring, chief magistrate of England and Wales, found there was a “prima facie case” – enough evidence to support a charge at first glance – against Chappell and that extradition would be “compatible” with his and Wright’s human rights.

Friday’s ruling follows a recent High Court judgement that the Japanese government had a case to extradite Wright, Chappell and a third man named in papers as Daniel Kelly – who is Wright’s father.

Japan’s case against Kelly will be heard at the end of this month. He has not appeared in previous extradition hearings due to a conspiracy to murder case against him taking precedence.

Details from January’s High Court judgement state that the Japanese “relied upon a range of evidence” which demonstrated that Kelly, Wright and Chappell travelled to Tokyo around the time of the jewellery raid in November 2015.

CCTV captured all three arriving at Narita International Airport on 18 November 2015 and staying at “the Elm Share House”, Japanese authorities said.

Ch Insp Suzuki set out a record of the investigation to the High Court which indicated the trio “took taxis” to Harry Winston’s branch in Omotesando Hills.

In their efforts to escape, the trio left a number of items behind including an Armani jacket, he said.

Ch Insp Suzuki added: “Goggles were left at the shop and a jacket was left on the route the robbers took to flee from the scene.”

A professor at the Tokyo Dental College compared ePassport images taken at Narita Airport and compared it to CCTV stills of three men taken at the Harry Winston store.

“The possibility that two (or three) persons in the relevant comparison are the same is extremely high,” Ch Insp Suzuki said in his report, citing the professor’s “expert” findings.

As well as other DNA matches, Ch Insp Suzuki’s report referred to “expert evidence that glass shards found at the property where the three stayed that matched the glass in the display case at the jewellery shop”.

Findings in the reports were challenged at the High Court by lawyers representing Wright and Chappell.

The Japanese government said it would ensure that the three men would have the right to consult with a lawyer in private, have any interviews recorded and have the right not to answer any questions.

Wright, once a promising footballer on the books of West Ham United and Brentford, served time in prison after being convicted in 2023 of trying to sell a Ming vase which was stolen from a museum in Switzerland.

Subject to any further appeals, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper now has 28 days to decide whether to extradite Chappell and Wright or reject Japan’s request.

When Poles vote for a new president on Sunday, they are expected to set up a second round run-off between Warsaw’s liberal mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and national-conservative historian Karol Nawrocki.

If opinion polls are correct, that would mean a 1 June contest between candidates backed by the two parties that have dominated Polish politics for the past two decades, a domination some voters say they’re fed up with.

Trzaskowski, the current front-runner, is deputy leader of prime minister Donald Tusk’s centre-right Civic Platform (PO).

Nawrocki, currently polling between 4%-6% behind, is supported by the Law and Justice (PiS) opposition party that lost power 18 months ago.

Poland’s president has the power to veto government bills, so what happens in this election is significant.

Tusk’s coalition does not have a big enough parliamentary majority to overturn that veto, which outgoing President Andrzej Duda, a former PiS member and ally, has used on several occasions.

That barrier may now fall as Duda cannot run again after serving two consecutive five-year terms.

Observers outside Poland portrayed Tusk’s election as prime minister in late 2023 as saving liberal democracy after eight years of right-wing authoritarian populism by the PiS-led government.

Critics widely accused PiS of turning public media into crude propaganda for its conservative Catholic worldview, politicising the civil service and judiciary and punishing judges who dared to oppose the reform.

But Tusk’s coalition government has also used questionable legal methods to wrestle back control of the public media.

Tusk has suspended the right for migrants arriving on the border with Belarus to apply for asylum and failed to deliver many of his campaign promises such as liberalising the country’s strict abortion law.

“This is not the triumph of liberal values. It’s a choice between a stupid and authoritarian right-wing populism and a hypocritical, and in my eyes, morally corrupt liberal populism,” Konstanty Gebert, a columnist for Kultura Liberalna told the BBC.

The presidential election could be won in Sunday’s first round with more than 50% of the vote, but latest opinion polls suggest it will be decided on 1 June.

Miroslaw Kaznowski, a member of the Green party that belongs to Tusk’s broader Civic Coalition, will vote for Trzaskowski, despite some reservations.

He told the BBC: “I am disappointed the coalition government is pandering to the right-wing electorate instead of standing up for its values.”

In one of the presidential debates, the PiS-backed candidate Nawrocki, proudly brandishing a mini Polish flag, tried to embarrass Trzaskowski by handing him a small rainbow flag.

In the past, the Warsaw mayor has been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and attended equality marches in the capital.

Trzaskowski took the flag and put it on the floor, causing left-wing candidate Magdalena Biejat to walk over, saying “I’m not ashamed of it, I’ll gladly take it from you”.

Kaznowski said: “Migration, LGBT+, women’s rights and the environment have fallen off the agenda, but we’re still at the risk of falling back to an authoritarian government that aspires to Eastern values.”

Tusk promised Polish women legal abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy, but he has not delivered on his promise.

He presides over a broad coalition built around his own centre-right grouping that also includes smaller left-wing and conservative parties.

Disagreements within the coalition over abortion and legalising same sex partnerships stalled even before President Duda had the chance to veto them.

Following Russia’s war in neighbouring Ukraine, state security has dominated political discourse.

Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said “outflanking” PiS on security, including a tough migration policy, was key to winning the 2023 election.

Hours before campaigning came to an end on Friday, Tusk accused a group of Russian hackers of attacking websites belonging to parties in the government. Tusk’s Civic Platform site was unavailable along with that of a smaller agrarian conservative partner, the Polish People’s Party.

This year, Poland is planning to spend 4.7% of its GDP on defence, a larger proportion than any other Nato member.

Tusk wants to offer all adult males the chance to do military training. Trzaskowski was photographed going through basic drills during the campaign.

The liberal mayor’s tough messages on security and migration led PiS to accuse him of saying anything to win votes.

It’s a view shared by civil servant Wojciech Karlik, who plans to vote for the PiS-backed candidate, Nawrocki.

“Nawrocki will fight for Poland’s interests in the EU. He’s reliable unlike Trzaskowski who keeps changing his mind on issues like migration,” he said.

Nawrocki has come under fire recently over accusations, which he denies, that he bought a council flat from a senior citizen in poor health at a 90% discount to the market price in return for promises of assistance and care.

By his team’s own admission, Nawrocki was surprised when he lost contact with the pensioner last December. Local media reported the man had been living in a nursing home paid for by taxpayers for six months by that stage.

Following an uproar, Nawrocki said he would donate the flat to charity. Opinion polls suggest the accusations have not damaged Nawrocki’s chances so far.

But the numbers indicate none of the 13 candidates will win sufficient votes to avoid a run-off between the two front-runners.

PiS, led by 75-year-old Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Tusk’s PO are the two parties that have dominated Polish politics for the last 20 years and some voters are fed up with the duopoly.

In March, 38-year-old far-right libertarian candidate and brewing entrepreneur Slawomir Mentzen, who attracted voters, especially young men, with his anti-migrant and tax-cutting talks during his “Beer with Mentzen” meetings in small towns and cities, appeared close to overtaking Nawrocki into second place.

But his support has dropped since he gave an interview calling for the introduction of student tuition fees and a ban on abortion even in cases of rape.

Aleksandra Januszewicz, a psychotherapist, told the BBC: “I’m fed up with the stranglehold of PO and PiS. The politics I’m seeing is mostly a form of populism that plays to voters’ emotions.

“I’m not decided yet [on who to vote for], but I’m going to throw up afterwards.”

Human rights lawyer Malgorzata Szuleka agrees there is fatigue, both with the duopoly and Tusk government’s failure to deliver.

“Polish politics looks a little bit like going to McDonalds,” she told the BBC. “You go in hoping for something else and you leave with a burger and fries.

“My hope is for a president that can freeze the polarisation in the country, and we can start talking to each other again.”

An Australian man who was captured by Russian forces while fighting alongside Ukraine has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security prison, Russian-installed prosecutors have said.

Oscar Jenkins, 33, was convicted in a Russian-controlled court in occupied eastern Ukraine on Friday of fighting in an armed conflict as a mercenary.

Mr Jenkins, a teacher from Melbourne, was captured last December in the Luhansk region.

Prosecutors said he arrived in Ukraine in February 2024, alleging he was paid between 600,000 and 800,000 rubles (£5,504 and £7,339) a month to take part in military operations against Russian troops.

A video surfaced in December last year showing Mr Jenkins with his hands tied, being hit in the face and questioned by Russian forces. They ask him if he is being paid to fight in Ukraine.

In January, Australia summoned the Russian ambassador over false reports that Mr Jenkins had been killed following his capture.

Since then, the Australian government has repeatedly called for his release.

“We’ll continue to make representations to the reprehensible regime of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin on behalf of Mr Jenkins,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told 9News in April.

In March, a British man James Scott Rhys Anderson was jailed for 19 years by a Russian military court after being charged with terrorism and mercenary activity, becoming the first British national convicted by Russia during the war.

The 22-year-old was captured last November in Russia’s Kursk region – where Ukrainian forces began a surprise incursion last August before retreating in recent months.

Just before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised all of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent of Ukraine. Russian proxy forces began an insurgency there in 2014.

Car maker Nissan says it is open to sharing factories around the world with its Chinese state-owned partner Dongfeng as it shakes up its business.

The Japanese firm, which employs thousands of people in the UK, told the BBC it could bring Dongfeng “into the Nissan production eco-system globally.”

This week, the struggling company said it would lay off 11,000 workers and shut seven factories but did not say where the cuts would be made.

Speaking about Nissan’s UK plant on Thursday at a conference organised by the Financial Times, its boss Ivan Espinosa said: “We have announced that we are launching new cars in Sunderland… In the very short term, there’s no intention to go around Sunderland.”

Nissan’s revelation it is willing to strengthen ties with the Chinese firm comes as the UK’s trade relationship with China is in the spotlight.

On Wednesday, the UK government moved to rebutt suggestions the tariff agreement it reached with the US last week could be damaging to China.

It said there was “no such thing as a veto on Chinese investment” in the deal.

The UK-US agreement rowed back on big hikes in tariffs on metals and cars imposed by US President Donald Trump, but it also included conditions requiring the UK to “promptly meet” US demands on the “security of the supply chains” of steel and aluminium products exported to America.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London said China had “made representations to the UK, asking for clarification”.

“China is firmly opposed to any party seeking a deal at the expense of China’s interests. Should that situation arise, China will respond as necessary.”

Nissan’s latest job cuts came on top of 9,000 layoffs announced in November as it faces weak sales in key markets such as the US and China.

The total cuts will hit 15% of its workforce as part of a cost saving effort that it said would reduce its global production by a fifth.

Nissan’s own brands have struggled to make in-roads in China, which is the world’s biggest car market, as stiff competition has led to falling prices.

It has partnered with Beijing-controlled Dongfeng for more than 20 years and they currently work together to build cars in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Nissan employs around 133,500 people globally, with about 6,000 workers in Sunderland.

The firm has also faced a number of leadership changes and failed merger talks with its larger rival Honda.

Negotiations between the two collapsed in February after the firms were unable to agree on a multi-billion-dollar tie-up.

After the failure of the talks, then-chief executive Makoto Uchida was replaced by Mr Espinosa, who was the company’s chief planning officer and head of its motorsports division.

This week, Nissan also reported an annual loss of 670bn yen ($4.6bn; £3.4bn), with US President Donald Trump’s tariffs putting further pressure on the struggling firm.

This month, Nissan’s battery partner AESC secured a £1bn ($1.3bn) funding package from the UK government for a new plant in Sunderland.

It will produce batteries for the Juke and Leaf electric models.

Visiting the site, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said the move would “deliver much-needed high-quality, well-paid jobs to the North East”.

Former US President Joe Biden struggled to recall key milestones from his own life during an interview two years ago with a justice department investigator, according to audio.

A recording obtained by political outlet Axios shows the Democrat appeared to have trouble remembering the year he left office as vice-president, or the date of his son Beau’s death.

White House aides at the time denied the president had such memory lapses. Biden was questioned by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s team about why he had kept classified documents at his home and former office.

The prosecutor ultimately decided not to charge the president despite finding he had retained classified material.

In a February 2024 report that provoked the ire of the White House and Democrats, Hur had described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

The audio is an excerpt from interviews on two days in October 2023. The Biden justice department previously made available the transcripts following the release of the special counsel’s report in February 2024.

It is not clear how Axios obtained the recording, but President Donald Trump’s administration has been planning to release the full interview.

The Biden administration refused to release the tape last year, calling it “constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials” and arguing that Republicans wanted to “manipulate” it for “potential political gain”.

The Hur report’s release was a difficult moment for Biden at the beginning of his re-election campaign, and highlighted one of his biggest political weaknesses – voter concerns about his age and lucidity.

The then-president hit back at the time, insisting: “My memory is fine”.

A new book alleges the White House covered up Biden’s condition, which was said to be so poor last year that aides discussed putting him in a wheelchair.

He was also unable to recognise Hollywood actor George Clooney or recall the names of key aides, according to Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.

The Eurovision Song Contest is back – this time in Basel, Switzerland.

The UK’s entry this year is Remember Monday – a country-pop trio who will perform their song What The Hell Just Happened.

The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual televised competition organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

The theme for the 2025 edition is “Welcome Home”, as the first contest was held in Switzerland in 1956.

Songs must be original and no more than three minutes long. They cannot have been released or publicly performed before 1 September 2024.

Lead vocals must be live, with no lip-syncing or auto-tuning allowed and a maximum of six singers and dancers.

The grand final of the contest will take place in St Jakobshalle, an indoor arena in Basel, on Saturday 17 May.

It will be broadcast live on TV on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 20:00 BST, hosted by Graham Norton.

You can also listen on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Sounds, hosted by Scott Mills and Rylan Clark.

Inside the arena, the international Eurovision coverage will be hosted by presenters Hazel Brugger, Sandra Studer and Michelle Hunziker.

Singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor will present the UK’s jury result live on the night, after actor Ncuti Gatwa pulled out from the role.

A total of 37 countries are taking part in Eurovision 2025 – all but one took part in last year’s contest in Malmö, Sweden.

Montenegro returns to the competition this year for the first time since 2022, replacing Moldova – which withdrew because of financial and logistical challenges.

Most Eurovision countries are European, but Australia takes part every year, after being invited to join Eurovision’s 60th anniversary celebrations in 2015. Australia, however, cannot host if it ever wins.

Other non-European countries including Israel participate because they are members of the EBU.

Russia has been banned since 2022, following its invasion of Ukraine.

• Your guide to all 37 Eurovision songs

Switzerland is playing host to Eurovision 2025 after contestant Nemo won the 2024 contest with the song The Code.

Nemo is due to appear as a guest performer this year too, despite accusing the contest of not supporting artists enough in 2024.

This is the third time that Switzerland has hosted Eurovision. Its contestant this year is Zoë Më, with the song Voyage.

• Eurovision failed to support us amid rows, winner says

The “big five” nations who provide extra financial support to Eurovision get an automatic qualification for the final. These are the UK, Italy, Spain, France and Germany.

Switzerland also gets a golden ticket to honour last year’s victory.

In the first semi-final on 13 May, Céline Dion, who won the contest for Switzerland in 1988, delivered a pre-recorded message celebrating the “beautiful” return of the contest to Basel.

These countries qualified from the first semi-final:

• Albania: Shkodra Elektronike – Zjerm
• Estonia: Tommy Cash – Espresso Macchiato
• Iceland: VÆB – RÓA
• Netherlands: Claude – C’est La Vie
• Norway: Kyle Alessandro – Lighter
• Poland: Justyna Steczkowska – GAJA
• Portugal: NAPA – Deslocado
• San Marino: Gabry Ponte – Tutta L’Italia
• Sweden: KAJ – Bara Bada Bastu
• Ukraine: Ziferblat – Bird of Pray

The following countries qualified from the second semi-final:

• Armenia: PARG – SURVIVOR
• Austria: JJ – Wasted Love
• Denmark: Sissal – Hallucination
• Finland: Erika Vikman – ICH KOMME
• Greece: Klavdia – Asteromáta
• Israel: Yuval Raphael – New Day Will Rise
• Latvia: Tautumeitas – Bur Man Laimi
• Lithuania: Katarsis – Tavo Akys
• Luxembourg: Laura Thorn – La Poupée Monte Le Son (pictured above)
• Malta: Miriana Conte – SERVING

Girl band Remember Monday are made up of Lauren Byrne, Holly-Anne Hull and Charlotte Steele.

They will be performing a song titled What The Hell Just Happened, full of harmonies and pop melodies.

The band formed at school in Farnborough, Hampshire, and appeared on TV talent show The Voice, in 2019. Lauren and Holly-Anne have also appeared in West End shows like Phantom of the Opera and Six: The Musical.

They’ll be hoping to turn around the UK’s fortunes, after the last two contestants Olly Alexander and Mae Muller both finished at the bottom end of the table in 2024 and 2023 respectively.

• Remember Monday: ‘The closer we get, the hungrier we become’
• UK’s Eurovision Song Contest hopefuls revealed

More than 70 former Eurovision contestants, including Britain’s Mae Muller, have signed an open letter demanding that Israel’s public broadcaster KAN be banned from the contest, alleging that it was “complicit in Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza”.

Eurovision, which has always billed itself as non-political, has resisted calls for Israel to be excluded.

Yuval Raphael, Israel’s contestant this year, told BBC News she was “expecting” to be booed during her performance.

The inclusion of Israel sparked controversy last year, when its contestant Eden Golan also faced boos during a rehearsal and thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the venue.

Golan was also forced to change the lyrics of her entry, titled Hurricane, to remove references to the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israel, on 7 October 2023.

The last major music event Raphael attended was the Nova festival, in Israel, when it came under attack by Hamas gunmen during the 7 October attacks and more than 360 people were killed.

Around 1,200 people were killed in Israel by gunmen led by Hamas that day, and 251 were taken hostage. During Israel’s ensuing military campaign in Gaza more than 53,000 people have been killed, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

• ‘I’ve practised being booed’, Israel’s Eurovision entry says
• Ireland asks Eurovision organisers for discussion over Israel
• Chaotic build-up to Eurovision 2024 as thousands protest

In the final, every participating country is awarded two sets of scores – one from a jury of music experts and one from fans around Europe.

Fans get a maximum of 20 votes, cast via phone call, SMS or via the official Eurovision app. They can vote for as many different acts as they like, but votes for your home country are banned.

Once the lines close, each country will have chosen a “Top 10” of their favourite songs. The most popular song gets 12 points, the second choice gets 10, and the rest are scored from eight to one.

Viewers from countries that don’t participate in Eurovision also get a say. Their choices are bundled into a single bloc known as the “rest of the world vote”.

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” So supposedly said the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The diplomatic whirlwind that has surrounded US President Donald Trump this week suggests the old Bolshevik might have been onto something.

For the protectionist president, who promises always to put America First, has in recent days instead been busy bestriding the world stage.

He and his team have done business deals in the Gulf; lifted sanctions on Syria; negotiated the release of a US citizen held by Hamas; ended military strikes on Houthi fighters in Yemen; slashed American tariffs on China; ordered Ukraine to hold talks with Russia in Turkey; continued quiet negotiations with Iran over a nuclear deal; and even claimed responsibility for brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan…

The pace has been breathless, leaving allies and opponents alike struggling to catch up as the US diplomatic bandwagon hurtled from issue to issue.

“Just, wow!” remarked one London-based ambassador. “It is almost impossible to stay on top of everything that’s going on.”

So what going on? What have we learned in this frantic week about the US president’s emerging foreign policy? Is there something approaching a Trump doctrine – or is this just a coincidental confluence of global events?

A good place to start, perhaps, is the president’s visit to the Gulf where he set out – in word and deed – his vision for a world of interstate relations based on trade, not war. In a speech in Riyadh, Trump said he wanted “commerce not chaos” in the Middle East, a region that “exports technology not terrorism”.

His was a prospect of a breezy, pragmatic mercantilism where nations did business deals to their mutual benefit, a world where profit can bring peace.

As he enjoyed the flattery of his Saudi hosts and the obeisance of visiting dignitaries, the president signed – with his fat felt tip pen – deals that the White House claimed represented $600bn of investment in the US.

This was Trump in all his pomp; applauded and rewarded with immediate wins he could sell back home as good for American jobs.

Some diplomats privately questioned the value of the various memorandums of understanding. But the show, they said, was more important than the substance.

Absent from Trump’s speech was any mention of possible collective action by the US and other countries; no talk of multilateral cooperation against the threat of climate change, no concerns about challenges to democratic or human rights in the region. This was a discourse almost entirely without reference to ideology or values except to dismiss their significance.

Rather, he used his speech to Saudi leaders to make his clearest argument yet against Western interventionism of the past, attacking what he called “the so-called nation-builders and neo-cons” for “giving you lectures on how to live or how to govern your own affairs”.

To the applause of his Arab audience, he said these “Western interventionists” had “wrecked more nations than they built”, adding: “Far too many American presidents have been afflicted with the notion that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use US policy to dispense justice for their sins.

“I believe it’s God’s job to sit in judgement. My job is to defend America.”

That reluctance to intervene was on show in recent days when it came to the fighting between India and Pakistan. In the past, the US has often played a key role seeking to end military confrontations in the subcontinent. But the Trump White House was initially cautious about getting involved.

Vice-President JD Vance told Fox News the fighting was “fundamentally none of our business… We can’t control these countries”.

In the end, both he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio did make calls, putting pressure on both nuclear powers to de-escalate. So too did other countries.

When the ceasefire was agreed, Trump claimed US diplomacy had brokered the deal. But that was flatly dismissed by Indian diplomats who insisted it was a bilateral truce.

The centrality of Trump to US foreign policy has also become apparent this week. This is more than just a simple truism. On show was the lack of involvement of other parts of the US government that traditionally help shape US decision-making overseas.

Take the president’s extraordinary decision to meet Syria’s new president and former jihadist, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and lift sanctions on Syria. This showed the potential advantage of having foreign policy in one man’s hands: it was a decisive and bold step. And it was clearly the president’s personal decision, after heavy lobbying by both Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

It was seen by some diplomats as the quid pro quo for the diplomatic fawning and investment deals Trump received in Riyadh. Not only did the decision surprise many in the region but it also surprised many in the American government.

Diplomats said the State Department was reluctant to lift sanctions, wanting to keep some leverage over the new Syrian government, fearful it was not doing enough to protect minorities and tackle foreign fighters.

Diplomats say this pattern of impulsive decision-making without wider internal government discussion is common in the White House. The result, they say, is not always positive.

This is due, in part, to Trump’s lack of consistency (or put simply, changing his mind).

Take the decision this week to do a deal with China to cut tariffs on trade with the US. A few weeks ago Trump imposed 145% tariffs on Beijing, with blood thirsty warnings against retaliation. The Chinese retaliated, the markets plunged, American businesses warned of dire consequences.

So in Geneva, US officials climbed down and most tariffs against China were cut to 30%, supposedly in return for some increased US access to Chinese markets. This followed a now-familiar pattern: issue maximalist demands, threaten worse, negotiate, climb down and declare victory.

The problem is that this “art of a deal” strategy might work on easily reversible decisions such as tariffs. It is harder to apply to longer term diplomatic conundrums such as war.

Take Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On this, Trump’s policy has been fluid, to put it mildly. And this week was a case in point.

Last Saturday the leaders of the UK, France, Poland and Germany visited Kyiv to put on a show of support for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. And in a group call with Trump on French President Emmanuel Macron’s phone, they spelled out their strategy of demanding Russia agree an immediate 30-day ceasefire or face tougher sanctions.

This was Trump’s policy too. The day before he wrote on social media: “If the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions.” But then on Sunday, President Vladimir Putin suggested instead there should be direct talks between Ukraine and Russia in Turkey on Thursday. Trump immediately went along with this, backtracking on the strategy he had agreed with European leaders a day earlier.

“Ukraine should agree to (these talks) immediately,” he wrote on social media. “I am starting to doubt that Ukraine will make a deal with Putin.”

Then on Thursday, Trump changed his position again, saying a deal could be done only if he and Putin were to meet in person.

This puzzles some diplomats. “Does he genuinely not know what he wants to do about the war in Ukraine?” one remarked to me. “Or does he just grasp at what might offer the quickest resolution possible?”

Into this puzzling mix fell two other decisions this week. First, Trump agreed a ceasefire after a campaign bombing Houthi fighters in Yemen for almost two months. There have been questions about the effectiveness of the hugely expensive air strikes, and the president’s appetite for a long military operation. He repeatedly told his Arab hosts how much he disliked war.

Second, Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, held his fourth round of talks with Iran over efforts to curb their nuclear ambitions. Both sides are hinting that a deal is possible, although sceptics fear it could be quite modest. Talk of joint US-Israeli military action against Iran seems to have dissipated.

What unites both issues is that the United States was acting directly against the wishes of Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu may have been the first world leader invited to the Oval Office after Trump’s inauguration, but in recent days, he seems to have been snubbed. Trump toured the Middle East without visiting Israel; he lifted sanctions on Syria without Israel’s support. His Houthi ceasefire came only days after the group attacked Tel Aviv airport.

Diplomats fear Netanyahu’s reaction. Could the spurned prime minister respond with a more aggressive military operation in Gaza?

So after this week of diplomatic hurly burly, how much has changed? Perhaps less than might appear.

For all the glitz of Trump’s tour through the Middle East, the fighting and humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues unresolved. A fresh Israeli offensive seems imminent. One of Trump’s chief aims – the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia – remains distant.

For all the talks about ending the war in Ukraine, there is no greater likelihood of the guns falling silent. Putin’s ambitions seem unchanged. And for all the deals to cut US tariffs, either with the UK or China, there is still huge global market instability.

We do have a clearer idea of Trump’s global ideology, one that is not isolationist but mercantilist, hoping optimistically that capitalism can overcome conflict. We also have a clearer idea of his haste, his desire to clear his diplomatic decks – in the Middle East, Ukraine and the subcontinent – so he can focus on his primary concern, namely China.

But that may prove an elusive ambition. If there are weeks when decades happen, there are also weeks when nothing happens.

Nine people have been killed in a Russian drone attack on a civilian bus in north-eastern Ukraine, local officials say.

The Sumy regional military administration said four other people were injured in the town of Bilopillia on Saturday morning as the bus travelled to the regional capital Sumy, close to Russia’s border.

The reported attack comes just hours after Russia and Ukraine held their first direct peace talks since 2022. No breakthrough was achieved, although a swap of prisoners of war was agreed.

Ukraine’s national police described the bus attack as a “cynical war crime”. Russia has not commented directly but said it had hit a “military staging area” in Sumy.

In a statement, the police service said: “The Russian army has once again struck a civilian object, disregarding all norms or international law and humanity.”

Citing preliminary information, Sumy regional head Oleh Hryhorov said the bus was hit by a Russian Lancet drone at 06:17 local time on Saturday (03:17 GMT).

He described the attack as “inhumane”.

Friday’s talks in Istanbul, Turkey, did not lead to any breakthrough as Ukraine and Russia remain far apart on how to end the war.

However, it was agreed that each side would return 1,000 prisoners of war to the other in the coming days.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukraine used Sumy to launch offensives into Russia’s Kursk region in August. Russia drove the majority of Ukraine’s troops back earlier this year and has intensified cross-border artillery and air attacks in recent months.

Tucked away in a lane in the southern end of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, is a museum dedicated to the followers of one of the world’s oldest religions, Zoroastrianism.

The Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla Museum documents the history and legacy of the ancient Parsi community – a small ethnic group that’s fast dwindling and resides largely in India.

Now estimated at just 50,000 to 60,000, the Parsis are believed to be descendants of Persians who fled religious persecution by Islamic rulers centuries ago.

Despite their significant contributions to India’s economic and cultural fabric, much about the Parsi community remains little known to the mainstream population and the wider world.

“The newly-renovated museum hopes to shake off some of this obscurity by inviting people to explore the history, culture and traditions of the Parsi community through the rare historical artefacts on display,” says Kerman Fatakia, curator of the museum.

Some of these include cuneiform bricks, terracotta pots, coins and other objects sourced from places like Babylon, Mesopotamia, Susa and Iran and are dated to 4000-5000 BCE.

These are places where Zoroastrian Iranian kings once ruled, like the Achaemenian, Parthian and Sasanian dynasties.

There are also artefacts from Yazd, a city in central Iran which was once a barren desert and the place where many Zoroastrians settled after fleeing other regions of Iran after the Arab invasion in 7th Century BCE.

One of the notable artefacts on display is a replica of a clay cylinder of Cyrus the Great, a Persian king who was the founder of the Achaemenid empire.

Fatakia says the clay cylinder – also known as the “Edict of Cyrus” or the “Cyrus Cylinder” – is one of the most important discoveries of the ancient world. Inscribed in cuneiform script, it outlines the rights granted by Cyrus to his subjects in Babylon. Widely seen as the first human rights charter, a replica is also displayed at the United Nations.

Then there are maps that trace the migration routes of thousands of Iranian Zoroastrians who fled their home country fearing persecution and travelled to India in the 8th to10th centuries, and again in the 19th century.

The collection also features furniture, manuscripts, paintings, and portraits of prominent Parsis – among them Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, founder of the iconic Tata Group, which owns brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley tea.

Another striking section showcases artefacts collected by Parsis who grew wealthy in the early 19th century trading tea, silk, cotton – and notably, opium – with China. The exhibits include traditional Parsi sarees influenced by designs from China, France, and other regions shaped by these global trade ties.

Two of the museum’s most compelling exhibits are replicas of a Tower of Silence and a Parsi fire temple.

The Tower of Silence, or dakhma, is where Parsis leave their dead to be returned to nature – neither buried nor cremated. “The replica shows exactly what happens to the body once it’s placed there,” says Fatakia, noting that entry to actual towers is restricted to a select few.

The life-size replica of the fire temple is equally fascinating, offering a rare glimpse into a sacred space typically off-limits to non-Parsis. Modelled on a prominent Mumbai temple, it features sacred motifs inspired by ancient Persian architecture in Iran.

The Alpaiwala Museum, originally founded in 1952 in what was then Bombay, is one of the city’s older institutions. Recently renovated, it now features modern displays with well-captioned exhibits in glass cases. Every visitor is offered a guided tour.

“It’s a small museum but it is packed with history,” Fatakia says.

“And it’s a great place for not just the residents of Mumbai or India to learn more about the Parsi community but for people from all over the world.”

In a trial that is undoing the legacy of one of music’s biggest moguls of the 2000s, the focus of the opening week of proceedings was not Sean “Diddy” Combs himself – but his ex-girlfriend.

R&B singer Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura took the witness stand for four days, describing in emotional details the years of beatings and drug-fuelled sex encounters with prostitutes that she alleges she endured at the hands of the rap superstar, who she dated for more than a decade.

But while her story clearly left an impression on those in the courtroom, which one onlooker described as an “aura of sadness”, it is just one piece in the puzzle that prosecutors must present to prove that Mr Combs was not just an abuser, but a mastermind of a criminal, sexual enterprise.

On Tuesday, gasps erupted in a Manhattan overflow courtroom when prosecutors called Ms Ventura – their star witness – to the stand. All eyes were fixed on the eight-months pregnant singer, as she strolled past her ex-boyfriend, whom she had not seen in six years.

Ms Ventura was there to testify in the federal sex trafficking, racketeering and prostitution case against Mr Combs, whom she accuses of abusing her and coercing her into unwanted sex acts – so-called “freak-offs” – during their 11-and-a-half year relationship.

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Mr Combs is charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution – all of which he has vehemently denied.

Surrounded by his children and dozens of family and friends, Mr Combs has watched Ms Ventura from his chair at the defence table just a few dozen feet away.

All the while, US District Judge Arun Subramanian has pushed attorneys to stay on schedule, as prosecutors have expressed worry their star witness could go into labour with her third child as soon as this weekend.

On her first day on the stand, Ms Ventura began by taking prosecutors through the start of her tumultuous relationship with Mr Combs, whom she met when she was a 19-year-old aspiring musician. Mr Combs, 17 years her senior, signed her onto his record label.

Their romantic relationship began soon after, when Ms Ventura fell in love with the “larger-than-life” musician and entrepreneur, she said. But it was not long before she noticed a “different” side to him, Ms Ventura testified, at times wiping the tears from her eyes.

Mr Combs, she said, wanted to control every aspect of her life. He paid for her rent, her car, and her phone, sometimes taking the items away to “punish” her when he was upset, she said.

Eventually, the relationship turned violent. She testified about the time when he attacked her because she was sleeping, slashing her eyebrow as he threw her onto the corner of her bed as her two friends tried to stop him. The court was shown a photo of the gash that Ms Ventura said Mr Combs hired a plastic surgeon to fix secretly. There was another time at a party where he kicked her head as she cowered behind a toilet in a bathroom stall, she said.

While jurors remained concentrated on her testimony and the evidence, betraying little emotion, some in the courtroom wiped away tears or looked away from the graphic photos and videos – including the viral video of Mr Combs beating and dragging Ms Ventura in the hallway of the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles in 2016.

Published by CNN last year, the video has been viewed by millions – including many of the jurors before they were seated in the trial – and Ms Ventura, who was forced to rewatch the incident of abuse several times this week.

Ms Ventura testified that the hotel incident took place after she tried to leave a “freak-off”, a sexual encounter in which the couple would hire male escorts to have sex with Ms Ventura while Mr Combs watched and recorded from the corner.

Ms Ventura said the rapper introduced her to freak-offs around a year into their relationship, and at first, she did it to make him happy.

But over time, the encounters humiliated her, she said. They would sometimes last as long as four days, and require Ms Ventura to take countless drugs to stay awake, she said. She endured injuries like painful urinary tract infections – and once even blacked out, waking up in the shower, she said.

“It made me feel worthless,” she told the court. “Freak-offs became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again.”

The couple would go on to have “hundreds” of freak-offs, Ms Ventura estimated.

After years of temporary break-ups – some fuelled by Mr Combs’ affairs – Ms Ventura ended her relationship with Mr Combs for good in 2018, the same year she alleges the rapper raped her in her home as she cried.

Ms Ventura went on to date and marry her personal trainer, Alex Fine, with whom she has two children, but the trauma of her relationship has stayed with her.

Through tears, Ms Ventura told the court of a time two years ago when she considered taking her own life, when traumatic flashbacks of her time with Mr Combs became too much to handle. Her husband helped her seek therapy to recover, she said.

Get all the latest trial updates on the BBC Sounds ‘Diddy on Trial’ podcast available wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Throughout Ms Ventura’s harrowing story of domestic violence, prosecutors have tried to thread in elements of their larger sex trafficking and racketeering case against Mr Combs.

Mr Combs’s attorneys have already conceded that the rapper was abusive – and have argued they would not have fought a domestic violence case against him. But, “domestic violence is not sex trafficking”, Mr Combs’ attorney Teny Geragos argued this week.

The federal government has charged Mr Combs with transportation to engage in prostitution and sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion.

He is also charged with leading a racketeering conspiracy, or directing an illegal enterprise under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The statute was created to take on mob bosses, but has since been used in other cases, including sex trafficking, such as the case against disgraced R&B singer R Kelly.

Assistant US Attorney Emily Johnson used parts of Ms Ventura’s story to boost this case, asking her about the guns the rapper had access to and the ways he allegedly blackmailed her.

Ms Ventura told the court of a time when she said Mr Combs pulled up videos he recorded of their freak-offs on his laptop, in view of others on a commercial flight. She said he told her he would release them if she didn’t behave.

“I felt trapped,” Ms Ventura said.

Arick Fudali, a lawyer who represents an unnamed victim in the government’s case against Mr Combs, said “the fear of what would happen if they didn’t comply” is a crucial element of the government’s case.

“Someone can consent to a sexual act of course,” Mr Fudali told the BBC. “But someone can also be coerced into being compliant, and that’s different.”

The government has also used Ms Ventura’s testimony to try to build up their racketeering argument – the allegation that Mr Combs used his loyal network of associates to run a criminal enterprise and cover up his alleged crimes.

Prosecutors have asked Ms Ventura about security guards who she said stood by while Mr Combs abused her. Ms Ventura has testified about Mr Combs’ employees’ involvement in setting up freak-offs with supplies like baby oil, and booking travel for the male escorts they hired.

After a day and a half on the stand, it was Mr Combs’ attorneys turn to question Ms Ventura.

The rapper’s lawyer, Anna Estevao, relied on hundreds of pages of text messages between Mr Combs and Ms Ventura to help push her team’s broader arguments: that Ms Ventura was a willing participant in freak-offs in a toxic relationship fuelled by drugs and jealousy.

Mr Combs’ legal team showed messages from Ms Ventura to Mr Combs in which she said she was “always ready” for a freak-off, and another time when she said she wished they could have had one.

Ms Ventura acknowledged writing the messages while adding that those were “just words at that point”.

Ms Estevao also kept bringing Ms Ventura back to the couple’s moments of infidelity, like when Mr Combs would spend holidays with his family and former girlfriend Kim Porter, or when Ms Ventura began dating rapper Kid Cudi while she and Mr Combs were on a break.

She repeatedly asked Ms Ventura about her drug use and how both she and Mr Combs struggled with opioid addiction at times.

In these moments, the defence was trying to show jurors that it was a toxic, violent and complicated relationship – but not a case of racketeering or sex trafficking, former federal prosecutor Sarah Krissoff told the BBC.

The defence also made efforts to try to chip away at the government’s racketeering case, asking Ms Ventura whether Mr Combs’ employees had actually witnessed the freak-offs, to which Ms Ventura said she did not think so.

Ultimately, Mr Fudali said, the prosecution’s case will hinge on this question of compliance versus consent – whether Mr Combs’ girlfriends were willing participants in his sexual fantasies or acted out of fear.

“Did Ms Ventura consent or was she coerced into complying?” Mr Fudali said. “That seems to be the question for the jury.”

An extraordinary thing happened to me on a recent flight to Madrid: I unwittingly travelled under the wrong identity, becoming a potential security issue, and no-one realised.

I was packing for a short business trip to make a film for the BBC when I attempted to check-in online. It didn’t work, so I headed to London Heathrow Airport to do it in person.

Upon arrival there, I tried once again to check myself in, this time at a self-service booth. Again I was denied, the machine flashing up an error code: “Assistance required.”

I ended up at a check-in desk and after checking in my bag, a British Airways staff member handed me a boarding pass. Admittedly I didn’t read the pass in any detail, but headed off to get processed in the security area as normal.

At the gate, I was among the first passengers to board flight BA7055 departing at 10:50 on 23 April, operated by BA’s Spanish partner carrier Iberia, as I was in row six.

Dutifully, I handed my passport and boarding pass to a member of BA ground crew, who glanced at them both and waved me through.

Once on board I realised my seat was in business class. I assumed this must have been a free upgrade, because I would of course usually have been in economy; we had chosen this flight because it was the most cost-effective option with all our filming equipment.

No sooner were we off the tarmac and at cruising altitude than the delicious baked cod and chickpea stew lunch was served. Tiramisu for dessert, too. No complimentary alcohol for me though; it was a work trip.

It was on arrival in the Spanish capital when things started to go wrong.

As soon as I gained mobile signal on the ground, an email popped up: my return flight had been cancelled.

I asked the BBC’s travel provider what had happened and what the plan was for getting me home?

In response, the travel company said it had been cancelled because I was a no-show on the outbound flight.

I explained that I was in fact very much in Madrid and waiting – endlessly, it seemed – to collect my checked luggage from the baggage belt.

After some no doubt confusing conversations between our travel team and BA, I received a further message to say the airline was adamant I had not travelled and that the boarding pass in my possession did not display the correct details.

This was when I realised that the name on my boarding pass was not mine, it was a man called Huw H. The BBC is not using Huw H’s full name, which was printed on the pass.

His name was also printed on my luggage tags.

BA claimed there was no way I could have travelled using that document as security checks wouldn’t allow it – but I did. My colleague, who was seated a few rows behind me, can vouch for me being on that plane.

The airline was so sure that I was not in Madrid that the BBC had to book me another seat on the flight home I was originally booked onto, at great expense. BA has since offered a £500 goodwill voucher as well as refunding the cost of the extra ticket.

The security protocol for passengers boarding flights is relatively simple: ground crew must check the name on the boarding pass matches that on the passport presented.

This process appears to have broken down in my case – with no-one at check-in or the boarding gate identifying the discrepancy between the name on the boarding pass and my passport.

So what went wrong, and who is Huw H? I tried to find out.

Some internet sleuthing brought limited proof of Huw H’s existence. I made a few attempts to contact accounts using his full name via various social media channels, to no avail. It’s made me fear that he might not even exist.

I did manage to get in touch with someone with a similar name – Jonathan Huw H – who, it turns out, flew on a BA flight on 24 April, a day after mine, landing at Heathrow, so is it possible his name was somehow floating around in the BA system? “It’s really worrying,” Jonathan told me.

My married name, which was on my booking confirmation and passport, begins with the letter H – though is very different to Huw H’s surname. Could this have factored in?

It’s impossible to know, and BA cannot confirm anything for privacy reasons.

Simon Calder, travel correspondent at the Independent, said it was to be expected that mistakes will sometimes happen “in the high-pressure, deadline-strewn world of aviation”.

But he added: “This case is unusual in that the error wasn’t picked up at the departure gate, where it could have been easily rectified.

“The airline needs urgently to investigate and make amends.”

Aviation security and operations expert Julian Bray added: “There is a security issue here, in that the plane took off with an incorrect passenger manifest.

“It is wrong and shouldn’t have happened. The passenger manifest should be correct as it is an important document that shows who is travelling and where. That said, as the name on the baggage tag matched the one on the boarding pass and the correct number of people were on board when the plane took off, I can see how it happened.”

Others would argue that it was not a security risk, though, because both myself and my luggage went through all the usual security checks.

A spokesperson for BA, which managed my ticket as well as the Heathrow ground crew in my case, said: “We’ve contacted our customer to apologise for this genuine human error. While incidents like this are extremely rare, we’ve taken proactive steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Authority has told me it has launched an investigation into what happened.

Heathrow Airport said in response to a request for comment that it was not responsible for the ground crew or anything else in my case, and security screening went ahead as normal.

Iberia, whose only involvement in my journey was operating the outbound plane and cabin crew, has not responded to a request for comment. As is nothing out of the ordinary, my passport and boarding pass were not manually checked on the plane.

Apologies and investigations aside, the question remains how this was ever possible in this day and age of high security.

On social media there are threads about this type of thing happening around the world in the past, but the mistake was rectified before take-off as there were two people trying to sit in the same seat.

What happened to me appears to be different as my name was seemingly replaced with someone who seemingly wasn’t travelling to Spain that day.

I’m not sure I’ll ever really know what happened, but one thing is for sure – I won’t ever walk away from a check-in desk without reading every detail printed on my boarding pass in future.

Former FBI director James Comey has been interviewed by the US Secret Service after he shared then deleted a social media post that Republicans alleged was an incitement to violence against US President Donald Trump.

Comey voluntarily participated in the questioning for about an hour at the law enforcement agency’s Washington DC headquarters and was not held in custody.

It comes a day after he posted on Instagram a photo of seashells that spelled the numbers “8647”.

The number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include “to reject” or “to get rid of”, however, it has more recently been used as a term to mean “kill”. Trump is the 47th US president.

Trump said earlier in the day during an interview with Fox News that Comey, whom he fired as FBI director in 2017, was calling for him to be killed.

• What does ’86’ mean?

“He knew exactly what that meant,” said Trump, who survived two attempts on his life last year. “A child knows what that meant.

“If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”

Trump said any decision on whether charges should be filed against Comey would be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Comey posted the seashell photo on Thursday then deleted it amid conservative uproar.

He wrote in a follow-up message on Instagram that he had seen the shells during a walk on the beach, “which I assumed were a political message”.

“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took down the post.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on X on Friday evening that the Secret Service had “interviewed disgraced former FBI Director Comey regarding a social media post calling for the assassination of President Trump”.

“I will continue to take all measures necessary to ensure the protection of @POTUS Trump,” she added. “This is an ongoing investigation.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, the highest-ranking spymaster in the US, called earlier for Comey to be jailed for “issuing a hit” on Trump while he was travelling in the Middle East.

Two British men accused of robbing a luxury jewellery store in Tokyo can be sent to Japan following a landmark ruling.

For almost a decade, Japanese authorities have pursued the extradition of Kaine Wright, 28, Joe Chappell, 38, and a third man over allegations they posed as customers to steal items worth £679,000 (¥106m) from a Harry Winston store.

On Friday, chief magistrate Judge Goldspring rejected Wright and Chappell’s challenges against extradition. Their case now passes to the home secretary to decide whether they should be sent to Japan.

No extradition treaty exists between the UK and Japan, meaning it would be the first time Japan have successfully received fugitives.

Japan’s initial request was rejected, but the High Court overturned the original decision following an appeal lodged by the Japanese government.

In Friday’s judgement – seen by the BBC – Wright, of Plumstead, and Chappell, of Belvedere, both in London, had raised concerns over prison conditions in Japan which they argued were “arbitrary, excessive and breach international standards”.

The Japanese government said the submissions were “fundamentally flawed both legally and factually”.

District Judge Goldspring, chief magistrate of England and Wales, found there was a “prima facie case” – enough evidence to support a charge at first glance – against Chappell and that extradition would be “compatible” with his and Wright’s human rights.

Friday’s ruling follows a recent High Court judgement that the Japanese government had a case to extradite Wright, Chappell and a third man named in papers as Daniel Kelly – who is Wright’s father.

Japan’s case against Kelly will be heard at the end of this month. He has not appeared in previous extradition hearings due to a conspiracy to murder case against him taking precedence.

Details from January’s High Court judgement state that the Japanese “relied upon a range of evidence” which demonstrated that Kelly, Wright and Chappell travelled to Tokyo around the time of the jewellery raid in November 2015.

CCTV captured all three arriving at Narita International Airport on 18 November 2015 and staying at “the Elm Share House”, Japanese authorities said.

Ch Insp Suzuki set out a record of the investigation to the High Court which indicated the trio “took taxis” to Harry Winston’s branch in Omotesando Hills.

In their efforts to escape, the trio left a number of items behind including an Armani jacket, he said.

Ch Insp Suzuki added: “Goggles were left at the shop and a jacket was left on the route the robbers took to flee from the scene.”

A professor at the Tokyo Dental College compared ePassport images taken at Narita Airport and compared it to CCTV stills of three men taken at the Harry Winston store.

“The possibility that two (or three) persons in the relevant comparison are the same is extremely high,” Ch Insp Suzuki said in his report, citing the professor’s “expert” findings.

As well as other DNA matches, Ch Insp Suzuki’s report referred to “expert evidence that glass shards found at the property where the three stayed that matched the glass in the display case at the jewellery shop”.

Findings in the reports were challenged at the High Court by lawyers representing Wright and Chappell.

The Japanese government said it would ensure that the three men would have the right to consult with a lawyer in private, have any interviews recorded and have the right not to answer any questions.

Wright, once a promising footballer on the books of West Ham United and Brentford, served time in prison after being convicted in 2023 of trying to sell a Ming vase which was stolen from a museum in Switzerland.

Subject to any further appeals, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper now has 28 days to decide whether to extradite Chappell and Wright or reject Japan’s request.

With a pair of bright pink tweezers in hand, Emma Teni is delicately wrestling a large and leggy spider in a small plastic pot.

“He’s posing,” the spider-keeper jests as it rears up on its back legs. It is exactly what she’s trying to achieve – that way she can suck the venom from its fangs using a small pipette.

Emma works from a tiny office known as the spider milking room. On a typical day, she milks – or extracts the venom from – 80 of these Sydney funnel-web spiders.

On three of the four walls there are floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked full of the arachnids, with a black curtain pulled across to keep them calm.

The remaining wall is actually a window. Through it, a small child stares, both fascinated and horrified, as Ms Teni works. Little do they know that the palm-sized spider she’s handling could kill them in a matter of minutes.

“Sydney funnel-webs are arguably the most deadly spider in the world,” Emma says matter-of-factly.

Australia is famously full of such deadly animals – and this room at the Australian Reptile Park plays a critical part in a government antivenom programme, which saves lives on a continent where it’s often joked that everything wants to kill you.

While the quickest recorded death from a Sydney funnel-web spider was a toddler at 13 minutes, the average is closer to 76 minutes – and first aid gives you an even better chance of surviving.

So successful is the antivenom programme here at the Australian Reptile Park that nobody has been killed by one since it started in 1981.

The scheme relies, however, on members of the public either catching the spiders or collecting their egg sacs.

In a van plastered with a giant crocodile sticker, each week Ms Teni’s team drives all over Australia’s most famous city, picking up Sydney funnel-webs that have been handed in at drop-off points such as local veterinary practices.

There are two reasons why these spiders are so dangerous, she explains: not only is their venom extremely potent, but they also live exclusively in a densely populated region where they’re more likely to encounter humans.

Handyman Charlie Simpson is one such person. He moved into his first home with his girlfriend a few months ago, and the keen gardener has already found two Sydney funnel-webs. He took the second spider to the vet, where Ms Teni picked it up shortly after.

“I had gloves on at the time, but realistically I should have had leather gloves on because their fangs are so big and strong,” the 26-year-old says.

“I [just thought] I had better catch it because I kept getting told you’re meant to take them back to be milked, because it’s so critical.”

“This is curing my fear of spiders,” he jokes.

As Ms Teni offloads one arachnid that was delivered to her in a Vegemite jar, she stresses her team isn’t telling Australians to go looking for the spiders and “throw themselves into danger”.

Rather, they’re asking that if someone comes across one, they safely capture it rather than kill it.

“Saying that this is the world’s most deadly spider and then [asking the public to] catch it and bring it to us does sound counter-intuitive,” she says.

“[But] that spider there now, thanks to Charlie, will… effectively save someone’s life.”

All of the spiders her team collects get brought back to the Australian Reptile Park where they are catalogued, sorted by sex and stored.

Any females that get dropped off are considered for a breeding programme, which helps supplement the number of spiders donated by the public.

Meanwhile, the males, which are six to seven times more toxic than the females, are used for the antivenom programme and milked every two weeks, Emma explains.

The pipette she uses to remove the venom from the fangs is attached to a suction hose – crucial for collecting as much venom as possible, since each spider provides only small amounts.

While a few drops is enough to kill, scientists need to milk 200 of these spiders to have enough to fill one vial of antivenom.

A marine biologist by training, Emma never expected to spend her days milking spiders. In fact, she started off working with seals.

But now she wouldn’t have it any other way. Emma loves all things arachnid, and goes under various nicknames – spider girl, spider mama, even “weirdo”, as her daughter calls her.

Friends, family and neighbours rely on her for her knowledge of Australia’s creepy crawlies.

“Some girls arrive home to flowers on their doorstep,” jokes Emma. “For me it’s not unusual to arrive home to a spider in a jar.”

Spiders represent just one small part of what the Australian Reptile Park does. It’s also been providing snake venom to the government since the 1950s.

According to the World Health Organisation, as many as 140,000 people die across the world from snake bites every year, and three times that many are left disabled.

In Australia though, those numbers are far lower: between one and four people each year, thanks to its successful antivenom programme.

Removing a King Brown snake from its storage locker, Billy Collett, the park’s operations manager, brings it to the table in front of him.

With his bare hands, he secures its head and puts its jaws over a shot glass covered in cling film.

“They are very uninclined to bite but once they go, you just see it pouring out of the fangs,” Mr Collett says, as yellow venom drips to the bottom.

“That is enough to kill all of us in the room five times over – maybe more.”

Then he switches to a more reassuring tone: “They’re not looking for people to bite. We’re too big for them to eat; they don’t want to waste their venom on us. They just want to be left alone.”

“To get bitten by a venomous snake, you’ve got to really annoy it, provoke it,” he adds, noting that bites often occur when someone is trying to kill one of the reptiles.

There’s a fridge in the corner of the room where the raw venom Mr Collett is collecting is stored. It’s full of vials labelled “Death Adder”, “Taipan”, “Tiger Snake” and “Eastern Brown”.

The last of these is the second-most venomous snake in the world, and the one that’s most likely to bite you here, in Australia.

This venom gets freeze-dried and sent to CSL Seqirus, a lab in Melbourne, where it’s turned into an antidote in a process that can take up to 18 months.

The first step is to produce what’s known as hyper-immune plasma. In the case of snakes, controlled doses of the venom are injected into horses, because they are larger animals with a strong immune system.

The venom of Sydney funnel-web spiders goes into rabbits, which are immune to the toxins. The animals are injected with increasing doses to build up their antibodies. In some cases, that step alone can take almost a year.

The animal’s supercharged plasma is removed from the blood, and then the antibodies are isolated from the plasma before they’re bottled, ready to be administered.

CSL Seqirus makes 7,000 vials a year – including snake, spider, stonefish and box jellyfish antivenoms – and they are valid for 36 months. The challenge then is to ensure everyone who needs it has supplies.

“It’s an enormous undertaking,” says Dr Jules Bayliss, who leads the antivenom development team at CSL Seqirus.

“First and foremost we want to see them in major rural and remote areas that these creatures are likely to be in.”

Vials are distributed depending on the species in each area. Taipans, for example, are in northern parts of Australia, so there’s no need for their antivenom in Tasmania.

Antivenom is also given to the Royal Flying Doctors, who access some of the nation’s most remote communities, as well as Australian navy and cargo ships for sailors at risk of sea snake bites.

Papua New Guinea also receives about 600 vials a year. The country was once connected to Australia by a land bridge, and shares many of the same snake species, so the Australian government gives the antivenom for free – snake diplomacy, if you like.

“To be honest, we probably have the most impact in Papua New Guinea, more so than Australia, because of the number of snake bites and deaths they have,” says CSL Seqirus executive Chris Larkin. To date, they reckon they’ve saved 2,000 lives.

Back at the park, Mr Collett jokes about the nickname of “danger noodles” that is sometimes given to his serpentine colleagues – a classic Australian trait of making light of something that gives so many visitors nightmares.

Mr Collett, though, is clear: these animals should not put people off from visiting.

“Snakes aren’t just cruising down the streets attacking Brits – it doesn’t work like that,” he jokes.

“If you’re going to get bitten by a snake, Australia’s the best place – we’ve got the best antivenom. It’s free. The treatment is unreal.”

Cassie Ventura has tearfully told a court she would give back a $20m (£15m) legal settlement from Sean “Diddy” Combs if it meant she would never have taken part in his “humiliating” drug-fuelled sex parties.

She rejected defence suggestions that her accusations were financially motivated as she wrapped up four days of testimony in the New York criminal trial of her ex-boyfriend.

Ms Ventura, the government’s star witness, faced questioning from both legal teams about her decade-long relationship with Mr Combs, and their “freak-off” sex sessions.

Mr Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He could face life in prison.

Ms Ventura’s testimony revealed graphic details about her sex life with the rapper and the physical violence she allegedly endured from him.

The rap mogul’s lawyers have been trying to depict Ms Ventura, 38, as an eager participant in the sexual lifestyle.

She testified this week that she was coerced into the sessions, which involved male escorts, because Mr Combs had threatened her with violence.

On Friday she addressed a $20m pay-out he gave her after she filed a lawsuit against him in November 2023.

The settlement, which came just one day after the filing of the legal action, was public knowledge, but the number was previously unknown.

Mr Combs’ lawyer, Anna Estevao, seemed to imply that Ms Ventura was strapped for cash before filing her lawsuit. The singer had just moved to her parents’ house with her husband and children.

Ms Ventura rejected this suggestion, later sharing that she would exchange the money for a life free of the “freak offs”, which she said caused her physical injuries, would sometimes go on for days, and stifled her career as a singer.

“I would have agency and autonomy,” she said.

Mr Combs’ legal team also showed the jury dozens of messages between the couple from each stage of their relationship, arguing their dynamic was toxic at times, but not criminal.

Minutes before Ms Ventura was set to leave the stand on Friday, the defence questioned her about another legal settlement she won.

Ms Ventura told the court she was expecting to receive about $10m from InterContinental Hotels, connected to her claims against Mr Combs.

The settlement relates to an incident at the InterContinental in Los Angeles in 2016, in which security footage showed Mr Combs hitting, kicking and dragging her in a hallway.

That clip was played at length in court this week, and is one of the most important pieces of evidence in the trial.

On Friday in court, Ms Ventura went through her texts after that beating. In one message she told Mr Combs: “I’m not a rag doll. I’m somebody’s child.”

She and Mr Combs were expressing love for each other days later in other texts.

The defence cross-examination continued on all day Thursday and Friday.

The prosecution squeezed in two more witnesses before court adjourned for the weekend.

One was Dawn Richard, a singer in the group Danity Kane – formed on Diddy’s MTV show Making the Band. Last year she filed a lawsuit accusing him of physical abuse and withholding her earnings.

Ms Richard testified that she saw Mr Combs assault Ms Ventura at his Los Angeles mansion in 2009.

“She fell down,” Ms Richard told the court. “She was in the foetal position.”

After the incident, she said Mr Combs took her aside and told her what she saw was “passion” and that where he is from, “people go missing” if they talk.

US Homeland Security special agent Yasin Binda took the stand as well, telling the court about the cash, drugs and baby oil that were seized from the rapper’s hotel room when he was arrested in New York.

More testimony is expected from the witnesses called by prosecutors next week.

The Manhattan court has been a media circus since the beginning of the trial, with spectators gathering in droves and camping out overnight to get a glimpse of the music mogul, his family, and the celebrities testifying.

Former US President Joe Biden struggled to recall key milestones from his own life during an interview two years ago with a justice department investigator, according to audio.

A recording obtained by political outlet Axios shows the Democrat appeared to have trouble remembering the year he left office as vice-president, or the date of his son Beau’s death.

White House aides at the time denied the president had such memory lapses. Biden was questioned by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s team about why he had kept classified documents at his home and former office.

The prosecutor ultimately decided not to charge the president despite finding he had retained classified material.

In a February 2024 report that provoked the ire of the White House and Democrats, Hur had described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

The audio is an excerpt from interviews on two days in October 2023. The Biden justice department previously made available the transcripts following the release of the special counsel’s report in February 2024.

It is not clear how Axios obtained the recording, but President Donald Trump’s administration has been planning to release the full interview.

The Biden administration refused to release the tape last year, calling it “constitutionally-protected law enforcement materials” and arguing that Republicans wanted to “manipulate” it for “potential political gain”.

The Hur report’s release was a difficult moment for Biden at the beginning of his re-election campaign, and highlighted one of his biggest political weaknesses – voter concerns about his age and lucidity.

The then-president hit back at the time, insisting: “My memory is fine”.

A new book alleges the White House covered up Biden’s condition, which was said to be so poor last year that aides discussed putting him in a wheelchair.

He was also unable to recognise Hollywood actor George Clooney or recall the names of key aides, according to Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.