Police in India have arrested a local YouTuber on suspicions of spying for Pakistan.

Jyoti Malhotra, a travel influencer from the northern Indian state of Haryana, allegedly travelled to the neighbouring country several times – her last trip was in March 2025.

Police in Haryana allege that she was in touch with a Pakistan High Commission official, who was expelled from India earlier this month.

The YouTuber’s father has denied allegations that she was a spy, saying she went to Pakistan after acquiring necessary permissions.

Ms Malhotra describes herself on social media as a “modern girl with old ideas”, and has 377,000 subscribers on YouTube and 133,000 followers on Instagram.

But officers have questioned how she financed her travel around the globe, with her videos documenting visits to places like Bangladesh, China, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. She has also visited several Indian destinations and religious places. Police say it defies her known source of income.

Police claim Ms Malhotra was in touch with “Pakistani intelligence operatives” and had continuous contact with a Pakistani citizen.

Ms Malhotra is also being investigated for any links with the Pahalgam attack, Shashank Kumar Sawan, the superintendent of police in Haryana’s Hisar district, told ANI news agency.

They say they have leads on others who may have collaborated with the influencer, who does not have direct access to any military or defence information.

“She was in touch with other YouTube influencers… She used to go to Pakistan on sponsored trips,” Mr Sawan added.

Her arrest comes after the Indian government asked Ahsan-ur-Rahim, the Pakistan High Commission official with whom the YouTuber was alleged to have been in contact, to leave the country on 13 May, alleging he had indulged in activities “not in keeping with his official status in India”.

Pakistan also asked an Indian embassy staff member in Islamabad to leave for indulging in activities “incompatible” with his privileged status.

According to a complaint registered by the police, Ms Malhotra met Ahsan-ur-Rahim for the first time in 2023 when she had visited the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi, seeking a visa to visit the neighbouring country.

Her last video on Pakistan was uploaded in March, in which she was seen in the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi attending a Ramadan dinner.

In other videos from Pakistan, she is seen visiting Hindu and Sikh temples, famous local markets, and interacting with locals.

Arrests in India and Pakistan over allegations of spying are not uncommon.

Ms Malhotra’s arrest comes following days of military tensions between the neighbours earlier this month.

On 7 May, India struck what it calls “terror infrastructure” inside Pakistan, days after a deadly militant attack on tourists in Pahalgam, a picturesque valley in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any involvement in the attacks.

After four tense days of deadly clashes between the nuclear-armed neighbours, both countries agreed to a ceasefire on 10 May, announced by US President Donald Trump.

Gary Lineker has confirmed he will leave the BBC after presenting his final episode of Match of the Day on Sunday.

The 64-year-old had been expected to continue fronting coverage of the men’s FA Cup and World Cup, but was criticised last week after sharing a social media post about Zionism that included an illustration of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.

On Monday, Lineker said he did not see the image, and “would never consciously repost anything antisemitic”.

He added: “However, I recognise the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am. Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”

The presenter has previously attracted criticism for his social media posts, but the latest example was thought to be the last straw for bosses, who considered his position untenable, the BBC’s culture and media editor Katie Razzall said.

The BBC’s director general Tim Davie, said in a statement: “Gary has acknowledged the mistake he made. Accordingly, we have agreed he will step back from further presenting after this season.

“Gary has been a defining voice in football coverage for the BBC for over two decades. His passion and knowledge have shaped our sports journalism and earned him the respect of sports fans across the UK and beyond. We want to thank him for the contribution he has made.”

• A sorry end to Gary Lineker’s BBC career
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Lineker said: “Football has been at the heart of my life for as long as I can remember – both on the pitch and in the studio.

“I care deeply about the game, and about the work I’ve done with the BBC over many years. As I’ve said, I would never consciously repost anything antisemitic – it goes against everything I stand for.

“However, I recognise the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am. Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”

In addition to the written statement, the former footballer also posted a video on Instagram.

He said he would “never, ever have shared” the post if he had seen the emoji, which he said “has awful connotations”.

“I would like once again to say I’m sorry unreservedly for the hurt and upset caused. It was a genuine mistake and oversight,” he continued. “But I should have been more diligent. I know that.”

Lineker said he had “stood up for minorities and humanitarian issues, and against all forms of racism all of my life, including, of course, antisemitism, which I absolutely abhor”.

He told his followers it was “best for all concerned” that he “step down from BBC presenting duties altogether”.

Lineker described his 30 years at the BBC as a “pleasure and a huge privilege”, adding that Match of the Day had become “an integral part of my life”.

The presenter concluded by saying his relationship with the BBC had been “long and wonderful”, but that it was “time for the organisation and myself to go our separate ways”.

Replying to Lineker’s post, Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer said: “Thank you for everything.”

Writing to staff shortly after the announcement, BBC Sport director Alex Kay-Jelski said he “appreciated the last week has been difficult and emotional for many of you”.

He said it was “sad to be saying goodbye to such a brilliant broadcaster” and thanked Lineker “for his years of service”.

He concluded: “Let’s finish the season strongly with Gary’s final show, enjoy an incredible summer of sport and look forward with excitement to what lies ahead.”

Lineker and the BBC had announced last year that he would leave Match of the Day at the end of this season, which concludes on Sunday.

But he had been due to remain at the forefront of the BBC coverage of the men’s FA Cup and the World Cup in 2026.

The former England striker replaced Des Lynam as the corporation’s main presenter of Match of the Day in 1999.

In a recent interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan he said he had a sense during his latest contract negotiations that the BBC wanted him to step down from the Premier League highlights show.

Roger Mosey, former director of BBC Sport and ex-head of BBC television news, told Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday he believed the “difficulty” was that “you can’t both be the highest paid presenter and be a social media activist”.

“I think it’s always been a problem that allowing Gary to do the amount of social media he did and also be the BBC’s highest-paid presenter was never going to be easy,” he said.

Lineker was temporarily suspended from the BBC in 2023 after an impartiality row over comments he made criticising the then-government’s asylum policy.

He was also among 500 other high-profile figures who signed an open letter earlier this year urging the BBC to reinstate a documentary, Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone, to BBC iPlayer.

Lineker is also the co-founder of Goalhanger Podcasts, makers of the popular The Rest Is History series and its spin-offs about politics, football, entertainment and money.

The parting of ways between Lineker and the BBC also includes the licensing deal for the Goalhanger podcast titles on BBC Sounds which ends this year, the PA news agency reported.

Israel says it has allowed five UN lorries carrying humanitarian aid, including baby food, into the Gaza Strip after 11 weeks of blockade.

The UN’s humanitarian chief welcomed the move but stressed it was only “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed” by the 2.1 million Palestinians in the war-torn territory, where global experts are warning of a looming famine.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his decision to temporarily let in a “minimal” amount of food followed pressure from allies in the US Senate.

“We must not reach a situation of famine, both from a practical and a diplomatic standpoint,” he stressed in a video in response to criticism of the move in Israel.

Netanyahu said food deliveries would continue only until the Israeli military and private companies had set up hubs to distribute aid under a US-backed plan rejected by the UN.

He also declared that Israeli forces would “take control of all areas” of Gaza as part of the expanded ground offensive against Hamas that the Israeli military began on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes killed at least 40 people across the territory on Monday, according to first responders and hospitals.

One strike reportedly killed five people at a school being used as a shelter for displaced families in Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza.

The Israeli military said it struck “Hamas terrorists” who were operating inside a command-and-control centre in the area.

It also ordered the evacuation of the southern city of Khan Younis and its eastern suburbs, warning residents that it was about to launch an “unprecedented attack” there.

Israel stopped all deliveries of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to Gaza on 2 March and resumed its military offensive two weeks later, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas.

It said the steps were meant to put pressure on the armed group to release the hostages still held in Gaza.

The resumed Israeli bombardment and ground operation have reportedly killed more than 3,000 people and displaced 400,000 others, while the UN says the blockade has caused severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel.

Last week, the Hamas-run health ministry reported 57 children had died from the effects of malnutrition over the past 11 weeks, and an assessment by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned half a million people faced starvation.

The UN said Israel was obliged under international humanitarian law to ensure food and medical supplies for Gaza’s population. Israeli officials said there was no shortage of aid because thousands of lorry loads had gone into Gaza during the ceasefire. They accused Hamas of stealing supplies, which the group denied.

But after pressure from Israel’s allies increased, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced on Sunday night it would “allow a basic quantity of food to be brought in for the population in order to make certain that no starvation crisis develops in the Gaza Strip”.

Israeli right-wing politicians and activists were quick to assail the abrupt policy change. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called it “a grave mistake” that would “fuel Hamas and give it oxygen while our hostages languish in tunnels”.

In a video posted on social media on Monday in response to the criticism, Netanyahu did not make humanitarian arguments when he explained the decision to let in some food.

“Since the beginning of the war, we said that in order to achieve victory – to defeat Hamas and to free all our hostages, two missions that are intertwined – there is one necessary condition: We must not reach a situation of famine, both from a practical and a diplomatic standpoint,” he said.

He said he had blocked aid deliveries via the UN and other humanitarian organisations because of looting by Hamas, and he was now pursuing a “different method” involving a US-backed non-governmental organisation, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, distributing aid from hubs protected by security contractors and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

However, he warned a “red line” was now approaching and “our best friends in the world, [US] senators whom I know as passionate supporters of Israel”, had voiced concerns.

“They come to me and say this: ‘We’re giving you all the support to achieve victory… But there’s one thing we cannot accept. We cannot handle images of starvation’.”

“And so, in order to achieve victory, we must somehow solve this problem. Until we establish those distribution points, and until we build a sterile area under IDF control for distributing food and medicine, we need to provide a minimal, basic bridge – just enough to prevent hunger,” he added.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, another far-right leader, sought to smooth over the decision by urging the Israeli public to focus on the big picture.

Smotrich – who advocates building new Israeli settlements in Gaza – said the military offensive was meant to force Palestinians to the south of the territory “and from there, with God’s help, to third countries”, permanently displacing them.

On Monday, Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney, the leaders of the UK, France and Canada, said the decision to allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza was “wholly inadequate”.

In a joint statement, they said: “If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.”

On Monday evening, Israeli military body Cogat announced five UN lorries carrying humanitarian aid, including food for babies, had entered Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing “following the recommendation of professional IDF officials and in accordance with the directive of the political echelon”.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, said it was a “welcome development” that Israeli authorities had allowed it to resume delivery of limited aid, and said nine of its trucks had been cleared to enter via the Kerem Shalom crossing.

“But it is a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed, and significantly more aid must be allowed into Gaza, starting tomorrow morning,” he warned.

He also said Israel had reassured the UN its work would be facilitated through existing mechanisms and that he was “determined that our aid reach those in greatest need, and that the risk of theft by Hamas or other armed groups is minimised”.

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said none of the aid had been picked up at the designated zone inside Gaza because it was “already dark” and due to “security concerns, we cannot operate in those conditions”, according to the AFP news agency.

The director general of the Israeli foreign ministry, Eden Bar Tal, earlier told reporters that “in the coming days, Israel will facilitate the entry of dozens of aid trucks”.

A senior Israeli official meanwhile said preparations for the aid plan mentioned by Netanyahu would be completed in about a week – a claim that was questioned by the head of the US-based charity World Central Kitchen.

“This is not true. Will take weeks,” chef José Andrés wrote on X. “This plan will leave Palestinians hungry. The new humanitarian foundation members should be ashamed of themselves… We already have a system in place to feed all Palestinians with the help of Palestinians.”

UN and other aid agencies have said they have about 8,900 lorry loads of humanitarian aid already in position and ready to enter Gaza, as well as what Fletcher described as “clear, principled and practical plan to save lives at scale” and reduce looting.

They have also insisted they will not co-operate with the Israeli-US plan to distribute aid from hubs located mostly in the south of Gaza, saying it contradicts their fundamental humanitarian principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality.

They have warned it will practically exclude those with mobility issues, including those with disabilities and the elderly, force further displacement, expose thousands of people to harm, make aid conditional on political and military aims, and set an unacceptable precedent for aid delivery around the world.

A displaced Palestinian man living in the coastal al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis with his wife and two children, aged nine and two, said they were currently able to eat one meal a day thanks to “significant rationing”.

“Getting access to food, medicine and hygiene products has become extremely difficult – almost impossible – due to the shortage of these items and their high prices if they are available,” Abd al-Fatah Hussein told the BBC in a message.

Mohammed Abu Rijleh meanwhile said his charity, Shabab Gaza (Gaza Youth), had been able to distribute only around 2,500 meals on Monday – far fewer than usual.

He told the BBC by telephone it had been a struggle to find ingredients to cook, forcing him to buy them at high prices from local markets.

Netanyahu also said Israeli forces were engaged in “massive fighting” in Gaza and were making progress.

“We are going to take control of all areas of the Strip, that’s what we’re going to do,” he said.

He said the “main objective” of the expanded offensive was to defeat Hamas and that it would lead to the release of the 58 remaining hostages, up to 23 of whom are believed to be alive.

On Sunday, IDF spokesman Brig Gen Effie Defrin said five divisions were involved in an operation that would include “dividing the territory and distancing the population for its safety”. “The only thing that can stop us is the return of our hostages,” he added.

While negotiators for Israel and Hamas remain in Qatar, both sides say there has been no breakthrough in a new round of indirect talks on a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 53,475 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 3,340 since the Israeli offensive resumed, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Joe Biden expressed his gratitude for the words of support that have poured in from across the world, including a private letter from Britain’s King Charles, after the former US president announced his cancer diagnosis on Sunday.

“Cancer touches us all,” Biden wrote on social media on Monday morning. “Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.”

On Sunday, Biden’s office disclosed that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

The news comes as fresh questions are being raised about the former president’s health while he was in office.

“On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterised by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” Biden’s office said in a statement.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”

A Gleason score of nine means his illness is classified as “high-grade” and the cancer cells could spread quickly, according to Cancer Research UK.

• What we know about Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis
• Analysis: Cancer diagnosis is another formidable challenge

Questions have been raised about how long he might have had this cancer for and if the disease was affecting him while he was still in office.

Biden said his diagnosis was made on Friday after he reported urinary symptoms which led doctors to find a small nodule on his prostate.

In the wake of the cancer diagnosis, many have offered Biden their support including President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

King Charles has written privately to Biden offering his support and best wishes, Buckingham Palace said.

The king, 76, who has met Biden a number of times, is also receiving treatment for an unspecified type of cancer after his diagnosis in 2024.

Biden had then sent his best wishes, saying: “I’m concerned about him. Just heard about his diagnosis. I’ll be talking to him, God willing.”

Vice-President JD Vance offered well wishes, but questioned whether the American people had a clear picture of Biden’s health while the former president was in office.

“We really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,” Vance said on Monday. “And that’s that’s … you can separate the desire for him to have the right health outcome with a recognition that whether it was doctors or whether there were staffers around the former president, I don’t think he was able to do a good job for the American people.”

Vance also said he blamed the people around him more than Biden himself.

“This is not child’s play, and we can pray for good health, but also recognise that if you’re not in good enough health to do the job, you shouldn’t be doing the job,” he added.

The announcement comes as Biden staves off criticism from a forthcoming book that claims he and his advisers hid his deteriorating health while he was in the White House.

Details revealed last week from the book entitled, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, include Biden not recognising actor and frequent Democratic donor George Clooney at a fundraiser last year and aides discussing putting the former president in a wheelchair.

The book will be released on Tuesday.

Nearly a year ago, the former president was forced to drop out of the 2024 US presidential election because of concerns about his health and age.

Imagine having a president called Nicky.

That’s what Romanians just voted for: a softly-spoken, slightly geeky mathematician who everyone refers to by his first name, Nicusor – or Nicky.

On Monday, hours after claiming victory in the elections, the new president picked up his daughter from school as usual. He’s promised his children nothing will change.

But for Romania things looked very different this morning.

Nicusor Dan has been mayor of Bucharest since 2020 but until now he was little known beyond the capital. That’s why his election is widely seen as an act of protest against the old political guard who have governed Romania for over three decades.

But it was also the least extreme option for change.

Dan’s opponent in the second-round vote was George Simion, a hard-right nationalist and Eurosceptic who regularly dishes out public insults.

He’s also banned from two neighbouring countries because he claims part of Ukraine and all of Moldova belong to Romania.

Simion won the first round with 41% of the vote but Dan caught up in the second, and then took over.

“This time, fear managed to defeat fury,” is how political analyst Radu Magdin explains the shift, and points to a significant increase in turnout.

“Clearly a lot of people are angry in Romania and want to see radical change. But at the same time, we saw massive mobilization of the urban middle class who feared that the country could be taken backwards.

“It was a fear of what may happen if Simion and friends came to power.”

I’ve met plenty of Simion supporters in recent days.

When he turned up to vote on Sunday, a colourful crowd were there at the polling station to greet him. Some were in embroidered national dress and others had brought Romanian flags.

They tended to talk about God and the “traditional values” they think Simion represents. Two men told me their priority was to prevent the EU “imposing” same-sex marriage on Romania.

Other voters are drawn to Simion’s “Romania first” rhetoric and promises of a better life.

“Nothing has been done for us, the working people, and I’m fed up,” Liliana told me this week from behind a Bucharest market stall piled with apples.

She and her husband voted for Simion thinking he wouldn’t be “so corrupt”.

So when the results came in she was disappointed.

“I don’t think Dan is capable of running a country. But what can we do if people don’t want change and progress?” Liliana shrugged.

“I think children came back to the villages and persuaded their parents against Simion. They scared them into voting for Dan.”

George Simion himself told me he was a patriot and a “man of my people”. But as the campaign advanced, he made mistakes.

Outside the market, feeding pigeons with her children, Diana said she’d been planning to vote for Simion until she saw a video from Paris just before the elections.

Attempting to speak French, Simion had described President Macron as having “dictatorial tendencies” and said the country was run by “the ayatollahs”.

“It wasn’t okay to do that, to go there and talk so rudely to the French people,” Diana thinks. “It made me change my vote.”

Analyst Radu Magdin spots other errors, including aggressive blog posts and the moment when Simion insulted his rival, Dan, calling him “autistic, poor guy”.

“Other than that, he seemed to flee the public debate and went shaking hands in the pan-European radical right instead,” Mr Magdin mentions, referring to meetings in Poland, France and Italy right before the vote.

“I would say there were many people who did not really appreciate that.”

For many Romanians, choosing Dan was also a strike against Moscow’s meddling.

At the election street celebrations last night, as well as yelling the new president’s name and cheering, people chanted their defiance: “Russia, don’t forget! Romania is not yours!”

They were referring to evidence Russia interfered in their election back in November to boost the chances of far-right conspiracy theorist, Calin Georgescu.

When he came from nowhere to win the first round, the vote was annulled.

This weekend was a re-run, with Georgescu banned and Simion in his place. The two were often seen side-by-side, even on voting day.

But Georgescu’s open sympathy for Russia – he once told me he admired Vladimir Putin – was a turn-off for many voters.

Nicusor Dan didn’t only win because he was not Simion.

His voters liked what he stood for, including a future firmly within Europe.

When thousands surrounded his campaign headquarters last night to wait for him to claim victory, many brought EU flags. There was relief as well as excitement.

Before the election, young voters had told me they planned radical action if Simion won.

“So many friends say that they will leave Romania because our values do not align with him at all,” politics graduate Sergiana told me in central Bucharest. “I feel like in a year or two he would completely mess up our chances to stay in the EU.”

By contrast, Dan put relations with Europe at the heart of his campaign.

“It’s better for the European way, for younger people and for Romania – because we get more EU funds, more development,” another young voter, Petrosanu, approved.

“Also Nicusor is the smartest guy since the revolution. He knows how to do things.”

In the end, Dan’s win was emphatic. But millions of Romanian voters chose a different way, different values. While hopes for the ‘change’ candidate are high, the challenges are huge and patience may be limited.

“In my view, this is the last chance for the mainstream political class to win an election on a ‘Save Europe, Save Democracy’ platform,” Radu Magdin warns.

George Simion is just 38 and going nowhere; his nationalist AUR party are strong in parliament.

“Next time, it’s ‘bye bye’ if these people do not do their job,” the analyst says. “Next time it could be somebody like Simion.”

France will build a new high-security prison in its overseas territory of French Guiana to house drug traffickers and radical Islamists, the country’s justice minister announced during a visit to the territory.

Gérald Darmanin told Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper that the prison would target organised crime “at all levels” of the drug supply chain.

The €400m (£337m) facility, which could open as early as 2028, will be built in an isolated location deep in the Amazon jungle in the northwestern region of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.

The plan was announced after a series of violent incidents linked to criminal gangs which saw prisons and staff targeted across France in recent months.

The prison will hold up to 500 people, with a separate wing designed to house the most dangerous criminals.

In an interview with JDD, the minister said the new prison would be governed by an “extremely strict carceral regime” designed to “incapacitate the most dangerous drug traffickers”.

Darmanin said the facility would be used to detain people “at the beginning of the drug trail”, as well as serving as a “lasting means of removing the heads of the drug trafficking networks” in mainland France.

French Guiana is a region of France on the north-east coast of South America. Its residents are eligible to vote in French elections and have access to the French social security system, as well as other subsidies.

Its distance from the French mainland means drug lords “will no longer be able to have any contact with their criminal networks”, Darmanin told JDD.

French authorities have long struggled to control the infiltration of mobile phones into the prison network. Tens of thousands are known to circulate through French jails.

Earlier this year, the French government announced new legislation designed to crack down on the activity of criminal gangs.

The measures will create a dedicated branch of the prosecutors’ office to deal with organised crime. It will also introduce extra powers for investigators, and a special protected status for informers.

It will also see the creation of new high-security prisons – including the facility in French Guiana – to hold the most powerful drugs barons, with stricter rules governing visits and communication with the outside world.

France has seen a series of attacks on prisons in recent months, which Darmanin has described as “terrorist” incidents that come in response to the government’s new legislation.

The perpetrators of these attacks have set vehicles outside prisons alight, while Toulon’s La Farlede prison was hit by gunfire.

In some incidents the perpetrators of these attacks have styled themselves as defenders of prisoners’ rights.

The proposed new facility in French Guiana is to be built at a “strategic crossroads” for drugs mules, particularly from Brazil and Suriname, according to AFP news agency.

Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is the former port of entry to the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony, where 70,000 convicts from mainland France were sent between 1852 and 1954.

The penal colony was the setting of French writer Henri Charrière’s book Papillon, which was later made into a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

The BBC has contacted the French justice ministry for comment.

The Spanish prime minister has called for Israel to be banned from the Eurovision Song Contest over its military action in Gaza.

Pedro Sánchez noted Russia has been banned from the contest since 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine, and said there should not be “double standards”.

Israel came second in the contest’s grand final in Switzerland on Saturday, but topped the public vote – with Spanish viewers giving Israel the maximum 12 points.

Israeli minister for diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli, ridiculed Sánchez with a social media post that said the vote had been a “slap in the face” for the Spanish PM, “which we have heard here in Jerusalem”.

BBC News has asked Eurovision organisers the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for comment.

Speaking at a news conference in Madrid, Sánchez said: “Nobody was up in arms when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began three years ago and [Russia] had to leave international competitions and could not take part, as we have just seen, in Eurovision.

“Therefore Israel shouldn’t either, because what we cannot allow is double standards in culture.”

He also expressed solidarity with “the people of Palestine who are experiencing the injustice of war and bombardment”.

“Spain’s commitment to international law and human rights must be constant and must be coherent,” he said. “Europe’s should be too.”

Sánchez and his government, which officially acknowledged a Palestinian state last year, have been harsh critics of Israel, and last week in Congress the prime minister referred to the country as “a genocidal state”.

Israel has strenuously denied accusations of genocide, and its foreign ministry summoned the Spanish ambassador for a formal reprimand over Sánchez’s “serious remarks”.

At Eurovision, Spain’s televote saw the country award Israel maximum points for its song New Day Will Rise by Yuval Raphael. Spain’s broadcast network RTVE has since requested an audit of the votes.

Ahead of the Eurovision final on Saturday, RTVE aired a message in support of Palestinians – despite being warned to avoid references to Gaza by the EBU.

Spain’s entry, Esa Diva by Melody, finished in 24th place on Saturday night in Basel.

The US Supreme Court has said it will allow the Trump administration to terminate deportation protections for some 350,000 Venezuelans in the US.

The ruling lifts a hold that was placed by a California judge that kept Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in place for Venezuelans whose status’ would have expired last month.

Temporary Protected Status allows people to live and work in the US legally if their home countries are deemed unsafe due to things like countries experiencing wars, natural disasters or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions.

The ruling marks a win for US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly tried to use the Supreme Court to enact immigration policy decisions.

The Trump administration wanted to end protections and work permits for migrants with TPS in April 2025, more than a year before they were originally supposed to end in October 2026.

Lawyers representing the US government argued the California federal court, the US District Court for the Northern District of California, had undermined “the Executive Branch’s inherent powers as to immigration and foreign affairs,” when it stopped the administration from ending protections and work permits in April.

Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents TPS holders in the case, told the BBC he believes this to be “the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern US history”.

“That the Supreme Court authorized this action in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning is truly shocking,” Mr Arulanantham said. “The humanitarian and economic impact of the Court’s decision will be felt immediately, and will reverberate for generations.”

Because it was an emergency appeal, justices on the Supreme Court did not provide a reasoning for the ruling.

The court’s order only noted one judge’s dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In August, the Trump administration is also expected to revoke TPS protections for tens of thousands of Haitians.

The ruling on Monday by the Supreme Court marks the latest in a series of decisions on immigration policies from the high court that the Trump administration has left them to rule on.

• What is the 1798 law that Trump used to deport migrants?

Last week, the administration asked the Supreme Court to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuela immigrants.

Along with some of their successes, the Trump administration was dealt a blow on Friday when the high court blocked Trump from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants in north Texas.

Trump had wanted to use the centuries-old law to swiftly deport thousands from the US, but Supreme Court judges questioned if the president’s action was legal.

Britain and Iran have summoned each other’s envoys after three Iranians were charged with spying in the UK.

Three Iranian men were arrested on 3 May and appeared in court in London on Saturday on charges of spying for the Islamic republic.

Iran’s IRNA news agency said the British charge d’affaire was asked on Sunday to give an explanation for what it said was “unjustified” and “politically motivated” arrests. The UK Foreign Office then responded on Monday by summoning Tehran’s ambassador to the UK.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the UK would “not tolerate growing state-backed threats on UK soil”.

“I can confirm the Iranian ambassador has been summoned and [Foreign Secretary David Lammy] is raising with Iranian foreign minister in the strongest terms that the UK will not accept any Iranian state threat activity in the UK,” she said in Parliament on Monday.

She added that the government would draft new powers of proscription to cover state threats.

She said they would create a power “stronger than current National Security Act powers in allowing us to restrict the activity and operations of foreign state-backed organisations in the UK.”

• Alleged Iranian spies charged with targeting UK-based journalists

The Foreign Office said the government “is clear that protecting national security remains our top priority and Iran must be held accountable for its actions”.

“The [ambassador] summons follows this weekend’s announcement which stated that three Iranian nationals had been charged with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service,” it added.

The alleged spying took place from August 2024 to February 2025, according to the Metropolitan Police.

Police have identified the suspects as Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, all living in London.

A fourth man had been arrested on 9 May as part of the investigation, but was released without charge, the Met said.

The three men who were charged had arrived in the UK between 2016 and 2022 were granted temporary leave to remain after claiming asylum.

It is alleged they carried out surveillance with a view to locating journalists associated with Iran International, which produces coverage that is critical of the current regime in Iran. It has been proscribed in Iran as a terrorist organisation.

Home Secretary Cooper said the charges against the Iranian nationals came alongside a “series of grave wider issues”, including “rising numbers of Iran-linked operations on UK soil” and a “nearly 50% in a year” increase in MI5 state threats investigations.

“The Iranian regime poses an unacceptable threat to our domestic security which cannot continue,” she said.

Five other Iranian men were also arrested on 5 May in London, Swindon, Stockport, Rochdale and Manchester as part of a separate counter-terrorism investigation.

Four of the men – who had been held on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act – had been released from custody, although the investigation “remains active and is ongoing”, police said.

The fifth man was earlier bailed to an unspecified date in May.

The DNA testing firm 23andMe says it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for $256m (£192m).

It comes two months after the company filed for bankruptcy protection in the US.

23andMe said Regeneron had committed to comply with its privacy policies as part of the deal, and that Regeneron has security controls in place to protect user data.

Last month, the firm agreed to have an ombudsman oversee the protection of user data in response to demands by several state attorneys general in the US.

The officials expressed concern over the potential for unscrupulous buyers to wield the data against consumers.

Regeneron will acquire nearly all of 23andMe’s assets, the company said in a statement.

Its subsidiary Lemonaid Health will be wound down under the agreement.

23andMe will continue to operate as a wholly-owned unit unit of Regeneron, which said it would use the firm’s data for drug development.

“We are pleased to have reached a transaction that maximizes the value of the business and enables the mission of 23andMe to live on, while maintaining critical protections around customer privacy, choice and consent with respect to their genetic data,” said 23andMe’s board chairman Mark Jensen.

The deal was made through auction last week as part of the company’s bankruptcy proceedings.

The company declined to comment further when approached by the BBC.

Regeneron has different aims from the ones 23andMe presented to consumers, according to Dr Jennifer King, privacy and data policy Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.

Dr. King, who has interviewed multiple 23andMe users for her research, said the company “always led with the non-profit ‘we’re helping humanity’ side which helped obscure its for-profit mission”.

But she added a profit-driven mission was likely to be clearer to customers now that it “is in the sole control of a company that is doing genetic research for pharmaceutical development”.

23andMe was co-founded in 2006 by Anne Wojcicki who served as CEO until stepping down in March.

Over the years, the company received high-profile endorsements from celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Eva Longoria and Snoop Dogg.

23andMe went public in 2021, which saw its value top $6bn – but it never turned a profit.

The once-celebrated company has struggled amid weak demand for its testing kits and never managed to redefine its business model.

A subscription service failed to gain traction with customers and efforts to use its massive trove of data to move into drug development also faltered.

Then in 2023 the company experienced a data breach that exposed the genetic data of millions of users.

The firm ultimately settled a lawsuit alleging it failed to protect the privacy of nearly seven million customers whose personal information was exposed.

Hackers gained access to family trees, birth years and geographic locations, by using customers’ old passwords, but the company maintains the data stolen did not include DNA records.

Two months after the settlement, it slashed 200 jobs – about 40% of its workforce.

Ms Wojcicki tried to take the company private but was not open to a third-party takeover.

When 23andMe filed for bankruptcy protection in March, attorneys general from multiple US states advised its customers to purge their information from the firm’s database.

At the time, the company said it would continue to protect customer data as laid out in its privacy policy, and any buyer of the company would have to abide by laws that apply to how customer data is treated.

But its privacy policy also included language which allowed for personal information to be accessed, sold, or transferred if it was “involved in a bankruptcy, merger, acquisition, reorganization, or sale of assets”.

23andMe agreed to a court-appointed overseer of customer genetic data after several states alleged the company was failing to take data security seriously enough.

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Just as India showed flickers of progress toward its long-held dream of becoming the world’s factory, Washington and Beijing announced a trade “reset” that could derail Delhi’s ambitions to replace China as the global manufacturing hub.

Last week, Trump’s tariffs on China dropped overnight – from 145% to 30%, vs 27% for India – as the two sides thrashed out an agreement in Switzerland.

As a result, there’s a chance manufacturing investment that was moving from China to India could either “stall” or “head back”, feels Ajay Srivastava of the Delhi-based think tank, Global Trade Research Institute (GTRI).

“India’s low-cost assembly lines may survive, but value-added growth is in danger.”

The change in sentiment stands in sharp relief to the exuberance in Delhi last month when Apple indicated that it was shifting most of its production of iPhones headed to the US from China to India.

That may well still happen, even though US President Donald Trump revealed that he had told Apple CEO Tim Cook not to build in India because it was “one of the highest tariff nations in the world”.

“India is well positioned to be an alternative to China as a supplier of goods to the US in the immediate term,” Shilan Shah, an economist with Capital Economics, wrote in an investor note before the deal was announced. He pointed out that 40% of India’s exports to the US were “similar to those exported by China”.

There were early signs that Indian exporters were already stepping in to fill the gap left by Chinese producers. New export orders surged to a 14-year high, according to a recent survey of Indian manufacturers.

Nomura, a Japanese broking house, also pointed to growing “anecdotal evidence” of India emerging as a winner from “trade diversion and supply-chain shift in low and mid-tech manufacturing” particularly in sectors like electronics, textiles and toys.

Some analysts do believe that despite the so-called trade “reset” between Beijing and Washington, a larger strategic decoupling between China and the US will continue to benefit India in the long run.

For one, there’s greater willingness by Narendra Modi’s government to open its doors to foreign companies after years of protectionist policies, which could provide tailwind.

India and the US are also negotiating a trade deal that could put Asia’s third-largest economy in a sweet spot to benefit from the so-called “China exodus” – as global firms shift operations to diversify supply chains.

India has just signed a trade pact with the UK, sharply cutting duties in protected sectors like whiskey and automobiles. It offers a glimpse of the concessions Delhi might offer Trump in the ongoing India-US trade talks.

But all of this optimism needs to be tempered for more reasons than one.

Apart from the fact that China is now back in the running, companies are also “not entirely writing off other Asian competitors, with countries like Vietnam still on their radars”, economists Sonal Verma and Aurodeep Nandi from Nomura said in a note earlier this month.

“Hence, for India to capitalise on this opportunity, it needs to complement any tariff arbitrage with serious ease-of-doing-business reforms.”

A tough business climate has long frustrated foreign investors and stalled India’s manufacturing growth, with its share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stuck at around 15% for two decades.

The Modi government’s efforts, such as the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, have delivered only limited success in boosting this figure.

The government’s think tank, Niti Aayog, has acknowledged India’s “limited success” in attracting investment shifting from China. It noted that factors like cheaper labour, simpler tax laws, lower tariffs, and proactive Free Trade Agreements helped countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia expand exports – while India lagged behind.

Another major concern, says Nomura, is India’s ongoing reliance on China for raw materials and components used in electronics like iPhones, limiting Delhi’s ability to fully capitalise on supply chain shifts.

“India’s earnings from making iPhones will only rise if more of the phone is made locally,” Mr Srivastava told the BBC.

According to him, right now Apple earns over $450 per iPhone sold in the US while India keeps less than $25 – even though the full $1,000 is counted as an Indian export.

“Just assembling more iPhones in India won’t help much unless Apple and its suppliers also start making components and doing high-value work here. Without that, India’s share stays small, and the export numbers go up only on paper -possibly triggering more scrutiny from the US without real economic gain for India,” Mr Srivastava said.

The jobs created by such assembly lines aren’t very high quality either, says GTRI.

Quite unlike companies like Nokia which set up a factory in the southern city of Chennai in 2007 where suppliers moved in together, “today’s smartphone makers mostly import parts and push for lower tariffs instead of building supply chains in India”, explained Mr Srivastava. He noted that, in certain instances, the investment made could be lower than the subsidies received under India’s PLI scheme.

Finally there are concerns that Chinese exporters could try to use India to reroute products to the US.

India doesn’t seem averse to this idea despite the pitfalls. The country’s top economic adviser said last year that the country should attract more Chinese businesses to set-up export oriented factories and boost its manufacturing industry – a tacit admission that its own industrial policy hadn’t delivered.

But experts caution, this could further curtail India’s ability to build local know-how and grow its own industrial base.

All of this shows that beyond the headline-grabbing announcements by the likes of Apple, India is still a long way from realising its factory ambitions.

“Slash production costs, fix logistics, and build regulatory certainty,” Mr Srivastava urged policymakers in a social media post.

“Let’s be clear. This US-China reset is damage control, not a long-term solution. India must play the long game, or risk getting side-lined.”

Among the cactuses in the desert of Arizona, just outside Phoenix, an extraordinary collection of buildings is emerging that will shape the future of the global economy and the world.

The hum of further construction is creating not just a factory for the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Eventually, it will mass produce the most advanced chips in the world. This work is being done in the US for the first time, with the Taiwanese company behind it pledging to spend billions more here in a move aimed at heading off the threat of tariffs on imported chips.

It is, in my view, the most important factory in the world, and it’s being built by a company you may not have heard of: TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. It makes 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductors. Until now they were all made on the island of Taiwan, which is 100 miles east of the Chinese mainland. The Apple chip in your iPhone, the Nvidia chips powering your ChatGPT queries, the chips in your laptop or computer network, all are made by TSMC.

Its Arizona facility “Fab 21” is closely guarded. Blank paper or personal devices are not allowed in case designs are leaked. It houses some of the most important intellectual property in the world, and the process to make these chips is one of the most complicated and intensive in global manufacturing.

They’re hugely protective of the secrets that lie within. Important customers, such as Apple and Nvidia, trust this company to safeguard their designs for future products.

But after months of asking, TSMC let the BBC in to look at the partial transfer of what some argue is the most critical, expensive, complex and important manufacturing in the world.

President Trump certainly seems to think so. He often mentions the factory in passing. “TSMC is the biggest there is,” he has said. “We gradually lost the chip business, and now it’s almost exclusively in Taiwan. They stole it from us.” This is one of the US president’s regular refrains.

TSMC’s recent decision to expand its investments in the US by a further $100bn (£75bn) is something Trump attributes to his threats of tariffs on Taiwan and on the global semiconductor business.

The expansion of the Arizona facility, which was announced in March is, he believes, the poster child for his economic policies – in particular the encouragement of foreign companies to relocate factories to the US to avoid hefty tariffs.

China is also watching developments carefully. Taiwan’s chip-making prowess has been part of what its government has called its “Silicon Shield”, against a much-feared invasion. While the original strategy was to make Taiwan indispensable in this area of critical technology, the pandemic supply chain difficulties changed the calculus because relying on a single country seemed like a greater risk.

China claims the self-ruled Taiwan as its territory but Taiwan sees itself as distinct from the Chinese mainland.

So, many currents of the world economy, frontier technology and geopolitics flow through this one site and within it lies the essential contradiction of Trump’s economic and diplomatic policy.

He sees this plant as the exemplar of America First, and the preservation of economic and military superiority over China. Yet the manufacture of these modern miniaturised miracles at the frontier of physics and chemistry inherently relies on a combination of the very best technologies from around the world.

Greg Jackson, one of the facilities managers, takes me around in a golf buggy. The factories are almost a carbon copy of the TSMC spaces in Taiwan, where he trained. “I would say these facilities are probably some of the most advanced and complicated in the world,” he says.

“It’s quite the dichotomy. You’ve got really, really small chips with really small structures, and it takes this massive facility with all the infrastructure to be able to make them… Just the sheer complexity, the amount of systems that it takes, is staggering.”

Inside the “Gowning Building”, workers dress in protective clothing before crossing a bridge that is supposed to create the cleanest environment on Earth, in order to protect the production of these extraordinary microscopic transistors that create the microchips underpinning everything.

Konstantinos Ninios, an engineer, shows me some of the very first productions from TSMC Arizona: a silicon wafer with what is known as “4 nanometre chips”.

“This is the most advanced wafer in the US right now,” he explains. “[It] contains about 10 to 14 trillion transistors… The whole process is 3,000 to 4,000 steps.”

If you could somehow shrink your body to the same scale and get inside the wafer, he says that the many different layers would look like very tall streets and skyscrapers.

TSMC was founded at the behest of the Taiwanese government in 1987, when chip executive Morris Chang was directed to start the business. The model was to become a dedicated foundry for microchips, manufacturing other companies’ designs. It became wildly successful.

Driving the advancement of the technology is the miniaturisation of the smallest feature on chips. Their size is measured these days in billionths of a metre or nanometres. This progress has enabled mobile phones to become smartphones, and is now setting the pace for the mass deployment of artificial intelligence.

It requires incredible complexity and expense through the use of “extreme ultraviolet (UV) light”. This is used to etch the intricate building blocks of our modern existence in a process called “lithography”.

The world’s dependence on TSMC is built on highly specialised bus-sized machines, which are in turn sourced almost entirely from a Dutch company called ASML, including in Arizona.

These machines shoot UV light tens of thousands of times through drops of molten tin, which creates a plasma, and is then refracted through a series of specialised mirrors.

The almost entirely automated process for each wafer of silicon is repeated thousands of times in layers over months, before the $1m LP-sized wafer of 4nm silicon chips is formed.

“Just imagine a particle or a dust particle falling into this,” Mr Ninios says to me incredulously. “The transistors are not going to work. So all of this is cleaner than hospital operating rooms.”

Taiwan does not have special access to the raw materials – but it has the know-how to stay years ahead of other companies in the intricate process of producing these atomic building blocks of modern life.

Some in the Taiwanese government are cautious about spreading the frontier of this technology off the island. Trump wasted little time in claiming the firm’s decision to bring its highest level of technology to the US was due to his economic policies.

He said this would not have happened without the stick of his planned tariffs on Taiwan and semiconductors. Those I speak to at TSMC are diplomatic about that claim.

Much of this was already planned and subsidised under former US President Biden’s Chips Act.

On the walkway into the building are photographs showing Biden’s visit in 2022, with the building site draped in the Stars and Stripes and a banner saying “a future Made in America”.

“The semiconductor supply chain is global,” says TSMC Arizona President Rose Castanares. “There’s really no single country at this moment that can do everything from chemicals to wafer manufacturing to packaging, and so it’s very difficult to unwind that whole thing very quickly.”

As for the semiconductor supply chain, tariffs will not help. The supply chain stretches all over the world. Whether it’s the silicon wafers from Japan, the machines required from the Netherlands, or mirrors from Germany, all sorts of materials from all around the world are required. Now, they could face import charges.

That said, TSMC’s boss was quick off the mark in confirming the expansion of the US site at an event with Trump at the White House. In recent weeks, America’s tech elite – from Apple’s Tim Cook, to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang – have been queueing up to tell the world that TSMC Arizona will now produce many of the chips in their US products.

The global chip industry is very sensitive to the economic cycle, but its cutting-edge technology enjoys very healthy margins, that could cushion some of these planned tariffs.

There are many geopolitical subtexts here. The factory sits at the heart of US strategy to gain technological, AI and economic supremacy over China.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have developed policies to try and limit Chinese access to the frontier semiconductor technology – from a ban on exports to China of ASML’s machines, to new legislation to ban the use of Huawei AI chips in US software or technology anywhere in the world.

Taiwan’s President Lai this week urged democracies such as Japan and the US to develop “non-Red” supply chains to counter China.

Not everyone is convinced that this strategy is working, however. Chinese technologists have been effective at working around the bans to develop competitive indigenous technology. And Bill Gates this week said that these policies “have forced the Chinese in terms of chip manufacturing and everything to go full speed ahead”.

Trump wants TSMC Arizona to become a foundation stone for his American golden age. But the company’s story to date is perhaps the ultimate expression of the success of modern globalisation.

So for now, it’s a battle for global tech and economic supremacy, in which Taiwan’s factory technology, some of which is now being moved to the Arizona desert, is the critical asset.

The most shocking thing for Jonathan, who had endured six gruelling months living and working underground in an abandoned South African gold mine, was the abuse he witnessed being meted out to children.

Some are recruited for cheap labour, but others are brought in specifically for sex, campaigners say.

Jonathan, now in his late 20s, had migrated to South Africa from a nearby country on the promise of making easy money working in one of its dozens of disused mines, closed by multinationals because they were no longer commercially viable.

We are protecting his full identity as he fears reprisals from the vicious criminal gangs that run the illegal mining industry for speaking to the media.

Details of what the young people were going though emerged after the death of dozens of illegal miners near the town of Stilfontein late last year when the mine was blockaded by police.

In a calm and steady voice, Jonathan describes the heat, long hours and limited food and sleeping options which took a toll on his body.

But an enduring memory is what happened to the underage miners in the shaft where he worked.

“I used to see these kids in the mine – teenagers actually, 15, 17-year-olds.

“Others used to take advantage of them sometimes. It was a little bit scary, and I wasn’t comfortable with it.”

He said they were raped by adult miners who promised to give them some of the gold they found in exchange for sex.

“If that kid is desperate for money, he will take the risk.”

Jonathan describes how the children would approach teams of miners for protection but “that team would have conditions”.

Sex was also used as punishment if the teenagers failed to complete a task for their team.

Jonathan says the children in the mine where he worked were all foreign and did not realise what they were getting themselves into.

Mining researcher and activist Makhotla Sefuli backs this up.

He says criminal gangs specifically target children to work in illegal mines across South Africa.

Many of them are abducted from neighbouring countries and trafficked. They are enticed by baseless promises of finding them employment in the formal mining industry.

“Their passports are confiscated when they get to South Africa… It is common knowledge that these young boys are being abused,” Mr Sefuli says.

The BBC has spoken to miners who worked in at least two other illegal mines who told us they saw children being abused in the shafts where they were working.

Tshepo, not his real name, says he saw older men forcing young boys to have sex with them underground.

“In some instances, they did it for the money. Some are recruited solely for that purpose, because of the financial incentives that will come with the practice of maybe trading sex underground.”

He adds that the abuse deeply affected the children.

“They change their behaviour patterns and have trust issues. They don’t want you to get close to them, because they feel that they can no longer trust anyone.”

South Africa’s illegal mining industry made global headlines last year following a standoff between police and miners at the Buffelsfontein gold mine, near the town of Stilfontein in the North West Province.

• Trapped underground with decaying bodies, miners faced a dark reality
• Inside South Africa’s ‘ruthless’ gang-controlled gold mines

The authorities had been trying to curb illegal mining, which the government said cost South Africa’s economy $3.2bn (£2.6bn) in lost revenue last year.

They launched an operation called Vala Umgodi, or seal the hole, in December 2023, promising to take a tough stance on the gangs.

As part of the operation, the police limited the amount of food and water that went down the Stilfontein mine to, as one minister put it, “smoke out” the illegal miners. Officials said the men were refusing to come out for fear of being arrested.

Soon footage began to emerge from within the mine showing dozens of emaciated men begging to be rescued, as well as rows of body bags. Eventually a court ordered the authorities to save the men.

Among those brought up were many who said they were underage, but as a number of them were migrants without documents confirming how old they were, the authorities carried out medical tests to get an estimate.

Through this, the Department of Social Development (DSD) confirmed that 31 of the rescued Stilfontein miners were found to be children. They were all Mozambicans nationals and in November, 27 of them were repatriated.

Save the Children South Africa helped translate some of the interviews between the underage miners and the rescue workers.

“They went through trauma, because some of them also saw others being sexually exploited,” the charity’s CEO Gugu Xaba tells the BBC.

“Just the feeling that they may not come out of there destroyed those children mentally.

“The adult miners would start by grooming them, by acting like they like them.”

She says the children were then made to perform sexual acts on the adults and they were then raped, days after day.

“You find that the adult will have three or four of them that they are doing the same thing to.”

Ms Xaba says mining gangs recruit children because they are easier to manipulate and cheaper.

“Children don’t understand when you say: ‘I’ll pay you 20 rands ($1; £0.80) per day.’ The adults sometimes refuse to work, but children find themselves with no choice. So it’s easier to use a child to do the work. It’s easier to take a child who’s kind of voiceless and to bring them down there.”

Beyond being exploited financially, she says there are gangs that recruit children specifically for sex.

Many illegal miners spend months underground, rarely going up to the surface. Markets spring up underground to provide them with anything they need.

“Most children are trafficked in order to be used as sex slaves. And you’ve got a pimp who is taking the money, and it means every day this child is used as a commercial sex worker.”

The BBC asked the police and the DSD whether anyone would be charged over the sexual abuse allegations. They did not respond to our requests.

A source working on the Stilfontein miners’ cases said many of the children did not want to testify.

Meanwhile, the illegal mining industry continues to thrive.

And with an estimated 6,000 vacant mines potentially available to explore, it is a business that is unlikely to end anytime soon, leaving thousands of vulnerable children at risk.

• Racially charged row between Musk and South Africa over Starlink
• The expelled envoy at the heart of the latest US-South Africa row
• Race policies or Israel – what’s really driving Trump’s fury with South Africa?
• Even in his final seconds of life, first gay imam pushed boundaries

Hidden beneath the slopes of a lush forest in Alberta, Canada, is a mass grave on a monumental scale.

Thousands of dinosaurs were buried here, killed in an instant on a day of utter devastation.

Now, a group of palaeontologists have come to Pipestone Creek – appropriately nicknamed the “River of Death” – to help solve a 72-million-year-old enigma: how did they die?

Trying to work out exactly what happened here starts with the hefty strike of a sledgehammer.

Brute force is needed to crack open the thick layer of rock that covers what Professor Emily Bamforth, who’s leading the dig, describes as “palaeo gold”.

As her team begins the more delicate job of removing the layers of dirt and dust, a jumble of fossilised bones slowly begins to emerge.

“That big blob of bone right there is, we think, part of a hip,” Prof Bamforth says, watched on by her dog Aster – whose job today is to bark if she spots any nearby bears.

“Then here, we have all of these long, skinny bones. These are all ribs. And this is a neat one – it’s part of a toe bone. This one here, we have no idea what it is – it’s a great example of a Pipestone Creek mystery.”

BBC News has come to Pipestone Creek to witness the sheer scale of this prehistoric graveyard and see how researchers are piecing together the clues.

Thousands of fossils have been collected from the site, and are constantly generating new discoveries.

The bones all belong to a dinosaur called Pachyrhinosaurus. The species, and Prof Bamforth’s excavation, feature in a new landmark BBC series – Walking With Dinosaurs – which uses visual effects and science to bring this prehistoric world to life.

These animals, which lived during the Late Cretaceous period, were a relative of the Triceratops. Measuring about five metres long and weighing two tonnes, the four-legged beasts had large heads, adorned with a distinctive bony frill and three horns. Their defining feature was a big bump on the nose called a boss.

The dig season has just started and lasts each year until autumn. The fossils in the small patch of ground that the team are working on are incredibly tightly packed; Prof Bamforth estimates there are up to 300 bones in every square metre.

So far, her team has excavated an area the size of a tennis court, but the bed of bones extends for a kilometre into the hillside.

“It’s jaw dropping in terms of its density,” she tells us.

“It is, we believe, one of the largest bone beds in North America.

“More than half of the known dinosaur species in the world are described from a single specimen. We have thousands of Pachyrhinosaurus here.”

Palaeontologists believe the dinosaurs were migrating together in a colossal herd for hundreds of miles from the south – where they had spent the winter – to the north for the summer.

The area, which had a much warmer climate than it does today, would have been covered in rich vegetation, providing abundant food for this enormous group of plant-eating animals.

“It is a single community of a single species of animal from a snapshot in time, and it’s a huge sample size. That almost never happens in the fossil record,” says Prof Bamforth.

And this patch of north-western Alberta wasn’t just home to Pachyrhinosaurus. Even bigger dinosaurs roamed this land, and studying them is essential to try and understand this ancient ecosystem.

Two hours drive away, we reach the Deadfall Hills. Getting there involves a hike through dense forest, wading – or doggy-paddling in the case of Aster – across a fast-running river, and clambering over slippery rocks.

No digging is required here; super-sized bones lie next to the shoreline, washed out from the rock and cleaned by the flowing water, just waiting to be picked up.

A huge vertebra is quickly spotted, as are bits of ribs and teeth scattered across the mud.

Palaeontologist Jackson Sweder is particularly interested in what looks like a chunk of dinosaur skull. “Most of what we find here is a duck-billed dinosaur called Edmontosaurus. If this is a skull bone, this is a dinosaur that’s large – probably 30ft (10m) long,” he says.

The Edmontosaurus, another herbivore, roamed the forests like the Pachyrhinosaurus – and is helping palaeontologists build up a picture of this ancient land.

Sweder is the collection manager at the Philip J Currie Dinosaur Museum in nearby Grande Prairie, where the bones from both of these giants are taken to be cleaned up and analysed. He is currently working on a huge Pachyrhinosaurus skull that’s about 1.5m long and has been nicknamed “Big Sam”.

He points to where the three horns should be at the top of the frill, but the one in the middle is missing. “All the skulls that are decently complete have a spike in that spot,” he says. “But its nice little unicorn spike doesn’t seem to be there.”

Throughout years working at the extraordinary site, the museum team has collected 8,000 dinosaur bones, and the surfaces of the lab are covered in fossils; there are bones from Pachyrhinosaurus of every size, from young to old.

Having material from so many animals allows researchers to learn about dinosaur biology, answering questions about how the species grows and the make-up of the community. They can also look at individual variations, to see how one Pachyrhinosaurus could stand out from the herd – as may be the case with Big Sam and his missing spike.

All of this detailed research, in the museum and at the two sites, is helping the team to answer the vital question: how did so many animals in Pipestone Creek die at the same time?

“We believe that this was a herd on a seasonal migration that got tangled up in some catastrophic event that effectively wiped out, if not the entire herd, then a good proportion of it,” Prof Bamforth says.

All the evidence suggests that this catastrophic event was a flash flood – perhaps a storm over the mountains that sent an unstoppable torrent of water towards the herd, ripping trees from their roots and shifting boulders.

Prof Bamforth says the Pachyrhinosaurus wouldn’t have stood a chance. “These animals are not able to move very fast because of their sheer numbers, and they’re very top heavy – and really not very good at swimming at all.”

Rocks found at the site show the swirls of sediment from the fast-flowing water churning everything up. It’s as if the destruction is frozen in time as a wave in the stone.

But this nightmare day for the dinosaurs is now a dream for palaeontologists.

“We know, every time we come here, it’s 100% guaranteed we’ll find bones. And every year we discover something new about the species,” says Prof Bamforth.

“That’s why we keep coming back, because we’re still finding new things.”

As the team packs up their tools ready to return another day, they know there’s a lot of work ahead. They’ve only just scratched the surface of what’s here – and there are many more prehistoric secrets just waiting to be revealed.

Former US President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

Biden received the news on Friday after he saw a doctor last week for urinary symptoms.

Here’s what you need to know about prostate cancer and its treatment options.

Prostate cancer affects tissue of the prostate gland, the part of the male reproductive system that helps make semen. It is located between the penis and the bladder.

According to the NHS, it usually develops slowly, meaning some live for decades without symptoms or needing treatment.

In Biden’s case, the cancer is aggressive, and his family are said to be reviewing options for treatment.

Biden was diagnosed following urinary symptoms, one of the most common signs of prostate cancer. That’s because it is often detected only when the prostate is big enough to have impacted the urethra, the tube that connects the bladder to the penis.

• Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive’ prostate cancer
• Analysis: Another formidable challenge for Biden

Those symptoms can include needing to urinate more frequently, as well as a slow or weak urinary stream.

Screening for prostate cancer is part of routine presidential health inspections, according to Dr Jeffrey Kuhlman, former White House doctor under President Barack Obama.

Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in American men, according to the American Cancer Society, behind lung cancer.

There will be more than 300,000 new cases in the US this year, according to projections by the American Cancer Society. About one in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime.

While it is “not uncommon” for men in their 80s to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, the grade and stage of Biden’s cancer are “more advanced than most men would encounter” at diagnosis, Dr Ryan Cleary, urologist at MedStar Health, told the BBC.

The former president’s prostate cancer is “characterised by a Gleason score of 9”, his office said in the statement announcing his diagnosis.

In the US, the Gleason score is a common way of grading the capacity for cells from the primary tumour to spread round the body – also known as metastatic cancer.

Specifically, it refers to how abnormal the cancer cells look in a sample under a microscope. The scale runs from six to 10, with a higher number indicating a more aggressive cancer.

The scale starts at six because it is calculated by combining the two most common patterns of cancer cells found in a patient. The lowest score assigned to cancerous cells is three. That’s why the lowest Gleason score for a cancer diagnosis is six.

A Gleason score of nine, such as Biden’s, means it is a “high-grade cancer”. Cancer cells with a score of nine look very abnormal and are likely to grow quickly.

Biden’s cancer is aggressive in nature and has already spread to his bones.

According to Dr Jamin Vinod Brahmbhatt, a urologist at Orlando Health Medical Group, this level of spread does limit the treatment options.

While there are medical based treatments such as chemotherapy, steroids and hormone therapy available, none of them are “curative”, he said.

“There are more medical options to stabilise the patient and control the cancer, but it never gets rid of the cancer completely.”

Biden’s cancer is also said to be hormone sensitive, which means the cancer uses hormones to grow or develop.

These types of cancers can be managed by drugs that block or lower the amount of hormones in the body.

Dr Brahmbhatt said while this “opens up the toolkit” of treatment options for Biden, it was going to take “weeks or months” to see how he responds.

Dr Kuhlman said Biden could also have the option of entering “clinical trials for advanced disease” if he meets the inclusion criteria.

Biden and his family are said to be reviewing treatment options.

In Sunday’s statement, Biden’s office said since the cancer appeared to be hormone-sensitive, that “allows for effective management”.

The full details of Biden’s case are not known. Dr Cleary said: “Generally, about a third of patients will still be alive after five years of metastatic prostate cancer.”

However, advanced stages of prostate cancer can limit a person’s lifespan and lead to symptoms that make daily life harder.

Dr Kuhlman said it was important to consider treatments that maintain Biden’s quality of life in the next few years.

“If there’s any inspiration in this, it is to go and get yourself checked out whether you have symptoms or not,” Dr Brahmbhatt said.

This is a sorry end to a long BBC career. Gary Lineker was among the corporation’s highest-paid presenters for a reason – he is popular with audiences, knowledgeable and brilliant at his job.

But it’s an understatement to suggest he has also caused problems for his BBC bosses over the years, as their high-profile football host began to morph into a presenter with opinions that he voiced on social media.

In the end, those two things were increasingly in conflict.

This has always been about reputation management for the BBC. Lineker had already, in the eyes of BBC bosses, caused the corporation damage with previous social media posts. Mistakenly sharing a video about Zionism which included a rat emoji was the final straw.

It was difficult to see how he could continue presenting for the corporation, particularly at a time when the BBC is enmeshed in another controversy surrounding a documentary about Gaza, which it pulled after discovering the child narrator was the son of a Hamas official.

I think what’s different is that on this occasion, Lineker regrets his actions. He has appeared bullish about previous posts, saying that while he regretted damaging the BBC, he didn’t believe, for example, that comparing the language of a Conservative asylum policy to that of 1930s Germany was wrong.

Lineker is genuinely upset by what happened. He is mortified that he reposted the video. His relationship with the BBC is coming to an end in circumstances nobody would have wanted, but some might have predicted.

He seemed unable or unwilling to accept that his high profile might prevent him from voicing strongly-held views that many believed had an impact on the BBC’s need for impartiality.

We live increasingly in an age when people want to express their opinions, and often do. Social media has given everyone a platform, and high-profile media figures have huge followings.

He could not keep quiet. In the end, it brought him down.

But he is a successful podcast entrepreneur, owning a third of the shares in Goalhanger, the company behind hit shows including The Rest is History and The Rest is Politics.

I would also not be surprised if he does appear in the future on TV, perhaps even as a presenter of the World Cup for another outlet.

He has shown contrition, but it has been a damaging few days.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has ordered residents of Khan Younis to evacuate as it prepares to launch an “unprecedented attack”.

People were ordered to move towards al-Mawasi in the west of the strip, in one of the largest evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military in recent months.

An Arabic statement shared by IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee said the area “will be considered a dangerous combat zone”, adding: “Terrorist organizations have brought you disaster. For your safety, evacuate immediately.”

The IDF launched a major new Gaza offensive on Friday named Operation Gideon’s Chariots. Hospitals have said more than 100 people have been killed in the last 24 hours.

One woman from Khan Younis told the BBC that the new evacuation order – which also covers the areas of Bani Suhaila and Abasan – was her “worst nightmare”.

Among those who fled was Tasneem Barakeh, 13, who said the order was issued while her father was out searching for food and that they were forced to leave without him.

“Please God, let the war stop. Where is my father?” she said. “We don’t know where he is. Please, just bring us my father.”

Abdallah Abu Shab, who also fled, said: “They told us to go to Al-Mawasi, and here we are. What do we do?”

“There is no tent for us there or anything,” he said, adding “there isn’t any transportation and people do not have money to ride a cart”.

Another woman, who is already living under an evacuation order in central Gaza, said she would not move “because there is no place to go”.

The IDF said the aim of its attack was to “destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations in this area”.

Earlier on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would “take control” of the whole of Gaza.

In a video posted on social media, he said: “We are engaged in massive fighting – intense and substantial – and there is progress.

“We are going to take control of all areas of the Strip, that’s what we’re going to do.”

The IDF said it had struck 160 targets across Gaza in the last 24 hours, including anti-tank positions, underground infrastructure and a weapons storage point.

One of the strikes killed seven at a school housing displaced families in Nuseirat, central Gaza, and three in a house in nearby Deir Al-Balah, the territory’s Hamas-run health authority said.

Overnight, a warehouse containing medical supplies at the Nasser Hospital was hit by an Israeli strike, local Hamas-run health authorities reported.

British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians said the strike happened “as Palestinians who were killed and wounded from other attacks were being brought to the hospital”.

“We are just seeing all our work being burned to ashes,” a spokesman for the charity said.

Separately, Palestinian media reported that Israeli special forces troops dressed in women’s clothing had entered a Khan Younis home undercover and killed one man on Monday morning, before arresting his wife and child.

Israeli media named him as Ahmad Sarhan, and reported he was a senior member of the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees – a Palestinian militant group allied with Hamas.

The IDF has previously said the expanded Gaza operations are aimed at “achieving all the war’s objectives”, including releasing hostages and “the defeat of Hamas”.

But a group representing many of the hostage’s families said the operation posed “grave and escalating dangers” to hostages still held in Gaza.

“Testimonies from released hostages describe significantly worsened treatment following military strikes, including physical abuse, restraint and reduced food,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

On Sunday, Israel announced it would allow a “basic amount of food” to enter Gaza to ensure that “no starvation crisis develops” after blockading the territory for 11 weeks.

Netanyahu said the decision to allow a “minimal” amount of food into Gaza followed pressure from allies in the US Senate.

“We must not reach a situation of famine, both from a practical and a diplomatic standpoint,” he stressed in a video responding to criticism within Israel of the humanitarian situation.

The war was triggered by the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, which saw about 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage.

Some 58 hostages remain in Gaza, up to 23 of whom are believed to be alive.

More than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

A world record-breaking swimmer has told BBC Panorama she was left “broken” by the harsh regime run by one of the UK’s most successful swimming coaches.

Rūta Meilutytė, who won gold at the London 2012 Olympics, said Jon Rudd’s focus on weighing and swimmers’ diets contributed to her struggle with an eating disorder and depression.

In total, 12 ex-swimmers have told us they experienced bullying, a toxic training environment and controlling food culture at one of the UK’s most prestigious clubs for young elite swimmers when he was head coach.

Rudd had faced allegations of bullying and verbal abuse during his 28-year tenure at Plymouth Leander swimming club, but the BBC has learned that no action was taken by the sport’s governing body.

We have found that Swim England, the governing body, did not act on a confidential 2012 investigation which ruled Rudd should be suspended after hearing evidence about his behaviour from 17 witnesses.

Swim England’s new chief executive Andy Salmon said he did not know why Rudd had not been suspended, but he was “deeply, deeply, sorry” to Plymouth’s swimmers and all of those harmed by the governing body’s failings.

Rudd, who is due to become high performance director of Saudi Arabia’s Olympic swimming team, has not responded to the BBC.

Plymouth Leander attracted aspiring swimmers from around the world after Rudd established its reputation as a club that produced Olympic athletes.

While head coach between 1989 and 2017, he was responsible for swimmers’ success, but also had safeguarding responsibilities to ensure their wellbeing.

One of Plymouth Leander’s most successful swimmers was Antony James, who won silver at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and represented Team GB at the 2012 Olympics. He was jailed for 21 years in February for raping two girls he had met at the club.

Three people who trained at Plymouth Leander told Panorama that Rudd, who had coached James since he was eight years old, should have known he was interested in younger girls.

A former girlfriend of James, also an ex-swimmer, said he was well known for mixing with young teenage girls and that his status as the club’s “golden boy” meant no one questioned his behaviour.

“Everyone knew – he wasn’t trying to hide anything that he was doing, it was very out there and open,” she said.

She was 16 and he was 22 when they started a relationship and she says she believes she was a “gateway” to his grooming of younger girls.

Rudd was a coach at Plymouth Leander in 2010 when Lithuanian Rūta Meilutyte moved to the UK to be coached by him.

She made Olympic history two years later when, aged 15, she became the youngest person to win the 100m breaststroke.

Now 28, she recalls Rudd making cutting comments about her weight.

When she confided in him that she had been making herself sick after meals to lose weight, she said he laughed and replied: “Well, at least you get the calories out.”

She said that Rudd did seek help for her once he realised that she was not happy with what he had said.

She also described him saying her “ass was fat”, moments before a major competition, aged 16.

Despite being hailed as the club’s most successful swimmer, Meilutytė said Rudd’s regime “made me for a while and then it broke me”.

She left Plymouth Leander in 2017. Rudd’s career, meanwhile, went from strength to strength, with him becoming Swim Ireland’s director of performance swimming in the same year.

Rudd was employed by Plymouth College, an independent school, until 2017. It ran a partnership with Plymouth Leander between 2001-2024 and many swimmers boarded there.

Among the other 11 swimmers to make allegations to Panorama about Rudd was Olympic bronze medallist Cassie Patten. She said the coach had made her train with an injured shoulder and that it eventually ended her career in 2011.

Commonwealth Youth gold medallist Phoebe Lenderyou told Panorama Rudd’s regime aggravated her eating disorder.

Andy Salmon, who has been CEO of Swim England since February 2024, confirmed to the BBC that no action was taken against Rudd despite evidence swimmers had suffered harm and the 2012 report’s recommendation that he be suspended for four months.

The report would have remained a secret but for the BBC receiving a tip-off in 2023. It said Rudd had been subjected to a lengthy probe, but that none of the complainants had been told the outcome.

His case was reviewed after the BBC asked Swim England about it.

According to the original investigation, Rudd’s assistant coach, Lindsay Trimmings, should also have been suspended from Plymouth Leander. She was later hired by Swim England to be its head of coaching but left in 2023. When Panorama wrote to her, she said she did not want to respond.

“Clearly the organisation failed to act on the independent recommendations made at the time. And I’m really sorry, on behalf of Swim England, for any suffering that that might have led to,” Mr Salmon told us.

The failings of the 2012 investigation into Rudd have led to the governing body announcing it would review 1,500 safeguarding cases carried out across England between 2002 and 2022.

Swim England commissioned a listening report into all aquatic sports after the BBC first shared multiple swimmers’ accounts of mistreatment in 2023. Published in 2024, the governing body’s report found a culture of fear at all levels of the sport that threatened its future.

Plymouth Leander said it was “deeply concerned by the nature and severity” of Panorama’s allegations, stating that the club was “fundamentally different” from when Rudd was in charge. It also said it had conducted a “thorough review” of its safeguarding policies and procedures to provide “the safest possible environment”.

It said Rudd’s employer, Plymouth College, was responsible for his “oversight and jurisdiction”.

Plymouth College, which is now under different ownership, said the club was responsible for safeguarding and that it was “deeply concerned to hear these testimonies from swimmers who trained at Plymouth Leander”.

It said the partnership with Plymouth Leander had been terminated and it now ran its own swimming organisation, Plymouth College Aquatics (PCA).

BBC Panorama has also found evidence of a bullying culture at Royal Wolverhampton School Swimming Club, another leading institution in the sport, as recently as last year.

Complaints about the behaviour of David Painter, the club’s head coach at the time were made by the parents of 11 swimmers, during 2023 and 2024.

One of the swimmers, Abby, now 17, told the BBC she was forced to choose between her education and swimming because Painter would not let her have time off to prepare for her GCSEs.

She attended a different school several miles away but said she was told she would still have to train on the morning of exams.

“Towards the end I was literally having full blown panic attacks,” said Abby, who told Panorama she was failing at school. She eventually decided to leave the sport.

Alison Hickman, the club’s former welfare officer, told the BBC she had given the names of 11 parents who had concerns about Painter to Swim England and said none of them were contacted by the governing body.

Swim England told the BBC it had asked the school to resolve the issues.

The Royal Wolverhampton School said complaints were confidential. It said the school has “clear safeguarding procedures” and “all formal complaints are investigated swiftly and appropriately”.

Painter, who left to coach in Canada last year, said his “commitment to athlete development and wellbeing has always been at the core” of his coaching, and that he had never been subject to “any disciplinary investigations or hearings”. He added that the allegations against him were “untrue… and defamatory”.

British mountaineer Kenton Cool has scaled Mount Everest for the 19th time, breaking his own record for the most climbs up the world’s tallest mountain for a non-sherpa.

The 51-year-old, who was accompanied by Nepali sherpa Dorji Gyaljen, reached the 8,849m (29,000ft) high summit at 11:00 local time (04:15 GMT) on Sunday.

Mr Cool first climbed Everest in 2004 and has summited it almost yearly since.

Mr Gyaljen logged his 23rd climb up Everest. Another Nepali sherpa, Kami Rita, holds the record for making the most number of Everest summits at 30, and is also currently on the mountain attempting to set a new record.

Mr Cool’s record-setting feat comes after at least two climbers – Subrata Ghosh from India and Philipp “PJ” Santiago II from the Philippines – died on Mount Everest this week.

After his 16th Everest ascent in 2022, Mr Cool appeared to play down his record, noting that many Nepali climbers have surpassed it.

“I’m really surprised by the interest… considering that so many of the sherpas have so many more ascents,” he told AFP in an interview then.

Four days before the latest feat, Mr Cool told his Instagram followers that he “finally [had] a positive forecast” that will allow him to go ahead with the attempt.

“Let’s hope that we manage to thread the needle with regard to numbers of climbers and we have a safe and enjoyable time up high,” he wrote.

Fellow climbers hailed the achievement.

Mr Cool is a “great person to share stories from two decades on the mountain”, American adventurer Adrian Ballinger told Reuters news agency.

“His experience, charisma, and strength make him a valuable part of the Everest community,” says Mr Ballinger, who is currently guiding a team up Everest.

“Amazing, Kenton,” wrote Jordanian mountaineer Mostafa Salameh, who is one of only 20 people to climb the highest mountains on all seven continents and conquer the North and South Poles.

Mr Cool is also a mountain guide who has led British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, among others, on several notable climbs including Everest.

The United Nation’s top court has sided with Equatorial Guinea in a row with Gabon over three islands in potentially oil-rich waters.

The two Central African countries have been arguing over the isles – Conga, Mbanié and Cocoteros – since the early 1970s.

The islands are virtually uninhabited but are in a maritime zone thought to contain significant oil deposits.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Equatorial Guinea’s claim – based on a 1900 treaty dividing up French and Spanish colonial assets – should be honoured.

The court dismissed Gabon’s central argument – that a more recent treaty, the 1974 Bata convention, had switched the islands’ sovereignty in its favour.

In a final and binding ruling, the ICJ said Conga, Mbanié and Cocoteros were held by Spain, and then passed to its former colony Equatorial Guinea at independence in 1968.

Gabon will now have to remove its soldiers from Mbanié, the largest of the islands.

In 1972, the Gabonese army drove Equatoguinean troops from Mbanié and established its own military presence there.

Hostilities cooled until the early 2000s, when the prospect of oil in the Gulf of Guinea became apparent.

In 2016, following years of mediation by the United Nations, the two nations agreed to let the ICJ settle the matter.

A spokesperson for the Gabonese presidency said it was now down to the countries to negotiate in the light of the ruling, the AFP news agency reports.

“Gabon and Equatorial Guinea have to live side-by-side, we can’t move away from each other. Therefore we will have to talk it over to solve all these problems,” said Guy Rossatanga-Rignault.

Both countries are significant oil producers. However, they have experienced falling oil production in recent years due to underinvestment, insufficient exploration activity and ageing wells.

• Massive sex tape leak could be a ploy for power in central Africa
• Why Gabon’s coup leader is bucking a trend by embracing democracy
• Gabon’s ousted president and family freed after two years

Among the cactuses in the desert of Arizona, just outside Phoenix, an extraordinary collection of buildings is emerging that will shape the future of the global economy and the world.

The hum of further construction is creating not just a factory for the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Eventually, it will mass produce the most advanced chips in the world. This work is being done in the US for the first time, with the Taiwanese company behind it pledging to spend billions more here in a move aimed at heading off the threat of tariffs on imported chips.

It is, in my view, the most important factory in the world, and it’s being built by a company you may not have heard of: TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. It makes 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductors. Until now they were all made on the island of Taiwan, which is 100 miles east of the Chinese mainland. The Apple chip in your iPhone, the Nvidia chips powering your ChatGPT queries, the chips in your laptop or computer network, all are made by TSMC.

Its Arizona facility “Fab 21” is closely guarded. Blank paper or personal devices are not allowed in case designs are leaked. It houses some of the most important intellectual property in the world, and the process to make these chips is one of the most complicated and intensive in global manufacturing.

They’re hugely protective of the secrets that lie within. Important customers, such as Apple and Nvidia, trust this company to safeguard their designs for future products.

But after months of asking, TSMC let the BBC in to look at the partial transfer of what some argue is the most critical, expensive, complex and important manufacturing in the world.

President Trump certainly seems to think so. He often mentions the factory in passing. “TSMC is the biggest there is,” he has said. “We gradually lost the chip business, and now it’s almost exclusively in Taiwan. They stole it from us.” This is one of the US president’s regular refrains.

TSMC’s recent decision to expand its investments in the US by a further $100bn (£75bn) is something Trump attributes to his threats of tariffs on Taiwan and on the global semiconductor business.

The expansion of the Arizona facility, which was announced in March is, he believes, the poster child for his economic policies – in particular the encouragement of foreign companies to relocate factories to the US to avoid hefty tariffs.

China is also watching developments carefully. Taiwan’s chip-making prowess has been part of what its government has called its “Silicon Shield”, against a much-feared invasion. While the original strategy was to make Taiwan indispensable in this area of critical technology, the pandemic supply chain difficulties changed the calculus because relying on a single country seemed like a greater risk.

China claims the self-ruled Taiwan as its territory but Taiwan sees itself as distinct from the Chinese mainland.

So, many currents of the world economy, frontier technology and geopolitics flow through this one site and within it lies the essential contradiction of Trump’s economic and diplomatic policy.

He sees this plant as the exemplar of America First, and the preservation of economic and military superiority over China. Yet the manufacture of these modern miniaturised miracles at the frontier of physics and chemistry inherently relies on a combination of the very best technologies from around the world.

Greg Jackson, one of the facilities managers, takes me around in a golf buggy. The factories are almost a carbon copy of the TSMC spaces in Taiwan, where he trained. “I would say these facilities are probably some of the most advanced and complicated in the world,” he says.

“It’s quite the dichotomy. You’ve got really, really small chips with really small structures, and it takes this massive facility with all the infrastructure to be able to make them… Just the sheer complexity, the amount of systems that it takes, is staggering.”

Inside the “Gowning Building”, workers dress in protective clothing before crossing a bridge that is supposed to create the cleanest environment on Earth, in order to protect the production of these extraordinary microscopic transistors that create the microchips underpinning everything.

Konstantinos Ninios, an engineer, shows me some of the very first productions from TSMC Arizona: a silicon wafer with what is known as “4 nanometre chips”.

“This is the most advanced wafer in the US right now,” he explains. “[It] contains about 10 to 14 trillion transistors… The whole process is 3,000 to 4,000 steps.”

If you could somehow shrink your body to the same scale and get inside the wafer, he says that the many different layers would look like very tall streets and skyscrapers.

TSMC was founded at the behest of the Taiwanese government in 1987, when chip executive Morris Chang was directed to start the business. The model was to become a dedicated foundry for microchips, manufacturing other companies’ designs. It became wildly successful.

Driving the advancement of the technology is the miniaturisation of the smallest feature on chips. Their size is measured these days in billionths of a metre or nanometres. This progress has enabled mobile phones to become smartphones, and is now setting the pace for the mass deployment of artificial intelligence.

It requires incredible complexity and expense through the use of “extreme ultraviolet (UV) light”. This is used to etch the intricate building blocks of our modern existence in a process called “lithography”.

The world’s dependence on TSMC is built on highly specialised bus-sized machines, which are in turn sourced almost entirely from a Dutch company called ASML, including in Arizona.

These machines shoot UV light tens of thousands of times through drops of molten tin, which creates a plasma, and is then refracted through a series of specialised mirrors.

The almost entirely automated process for each wafer of silicon is repeated thousands of times in layers over months, before the $1m LP-sized wafer of 4nm silicon chips is formed.

“Just imagine a particle or a dust particle falling into this,” Mr Ninios says to me incredulously. “The transistors are not going to work. So all of this is cleaner than hospital operating rooms.”

Taiwan does not have special access to the raw materials – but it has the know-how to stay years ahead of other companies in the intricate process of producing these atomic building blocks of modern life.

Some in the Taiwanese government are cautious about spreading the frontier of this technology off the island. Trump wasted little time in claiming the firm’s decision to bring its highest level of technology to the US was due to his economic policies.

He said this would not have happened without the stick of his planned tariffs on Taiwan and semiconductors. Those I speak to at TSMC are diplomatic about that claim.

Much of this was already planned and subsidised under former US President Biden’s Chips Act.

On the walkway into the building are photographs showing Biden’s visit in 2022, with the building site draped in the Stars and Stripes and a banner saying “a future Made in America”.

“The semiconductor supply chain is global,” says TSMC Arizona President Rose Castanares. “There’s really no single country at this moment that can do everything from chemicals to wafer manufacturing to packaging, and so it’s very difficult to unwind that whole thing very quickly.”

As for the semiconductor supply chain, tariffs will not help. The supply chain stretches all over the world. Whether it’s the silicon wafers from Japan, the machines required from the Netherlands, or mirrors from Germany, all sorts of materials from all around the world are required. Now, they could face import charges.

That said, TSMC’s boss was quick off the mark in confirming the expansion of the US site at an event with Trump at the White House. In recent weeks, America’s tech elite – from Apple’s Tim Cook, to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang – have been queueing up to tell the world that TSMC Arizona will now produce many of the chips in their US products.

The global chip industry is very sensitive to the economic cycle, but its cutting-edge technology enjoys very healthy margins, that could cushion some of these planned tariffs.

There are many geopolitical subtexts here. The factory sits at the heart of US strategy to gain technological, AI and economic supremacy over China.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have developed policies to try and limit Chinese access to the frontier semiconductor technology – from a ban on exports to China of ASML’s machines, to new legislation to ban the use of Huawei AI chips in US software or technology anywhere in the world.

Taiwan’s President Lai this week urged democracies such as Japan and the US to develop “non-Red” supply chains to counter China.

Not everyone is convinced that this strategy is working, however. Chinese technologists have been effective at working around the bans to develop competitive indigenous technology. And Bill Gates this week said that these policies “have forced the Chinese in terms of chip manufacturing and everything to go full speed ahead”.

Trump wants TSMC Arizona to become a foundation stone for his American golden age. But the company’s story to date is perhaps the ultimate expression of the success of modern globalisation.

So for now, it’s a battle for global tech and economic supremacy, in which Taiwan’s factory technology, some of which is now being moved to the Arizona desert, is the critical asset.

Joe Biden expressed his gratitude for the words of support that have poured in from across the world, including a private letter from Britain’s King Charles, after the former US president announced his cancer diagnosis on Sunday.

“Cancer touches us all,” Biden wrote on social media on Monday morning. “Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.”

On Sunday, Biden’s office disclosed that he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

The news comes as fresh questions are being raised about the former president’s health while he was in office.

“On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterised by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” Biden’s office said in a statement.

“While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”

A Gleason score of nine means his illness is classified as “high-grade” and the cancer cells could spread quickly, according to Cancer Research UK.

• What we know about Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis
• Analysis: Cancer diagnosis is another formidable challenge

Questions have been raised about how long he might have had this cancer for and if the disease was affecting him while he was still in office.

Biden said his diagnosis was made on Friday after he reported urinary symptoms which led doctors to find a small nodule on his prostate.

In the wake of the cancer diagnosis, many have offered Biden their support including President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

King Charles has written privately to Biden offering his support and best wishes, Buckingham Palace said.

The king, 76, who has met Biden a number of times, is also receiving treatment for an unspecified type of cancer after his diagnosis in 2024.

Biden had then sent his best wishes, saying: “I’m concerned about him. Just heard about his diagnosis. I’ll be talking to him, God willing.”

Vice-President JD Vance offered well wishes, but questioned whether the American people had a clear picture of Biden’s health while the former president was in office.

“We really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,” Vance said on Monday. “And that’s that’s … you can separate the desire for him to have the right health outcome with a recognition that whether it was doctors or whether there were staffers around the former president, I don’t think he was able to do a good job for the American people.”

Vance also said he blamed the people around him more than Biden himself.

“This is not child’s play, and we can pray for good health, but also recognise that if you’re not in good enough health to do the job, you shouldn’t be doing the job,” he added.

The announcement comes as Biden staves off criticism from a forthcoming book that claims he and his advisers hid his deteriorating health while he was in the White House.

Details revealed last week from the book entitled, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, include Biden not recognising actor and frequent Democratic donor George Clooney at a fundraiser last year and aides discussing putting the former president in a wheelchair.

The book will be released on Tuesday.

Nearly a year ago, the former president was forced to drop out of the 2024 US presidential election because of concerns about his health and age.

Gary Lineker has confirmed he will leave the BBC after presenting his final episode of Match of the Day on Sunday.

The 64-year-old had been expected to continue fronting coverage of the men’s FA Cup and World Cup, but was criticised last week after sharing a social media post about Zionism that included an illustration of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.

On Monday, Lineker said he did not see the image, and “would never consciously repost anything antisemitic”.

He added: “However, I recognise the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am. Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”

The presenter has previously attracted criticism for his social media posts, but the latest example was thought to be the last straw for bosses, who considered his position untenable, the BBC’s culture and media editor Katie Razzall said.

The BBC’s director general Tim Davie, said in a statement: “Gary has acknowledged the mistake he made. Accordingly, we have agreed he will step back from further presenting after this season.

“Gary has been a defining voice in football coverage for the BBC for over two decades. His passion and knowledge have shaped our sports journalism and earned him the respect of sports fans across the UK and beyond. We want to thank him for the contribution he has made.”

• A sorry end to Gary Lineker’s BBC career
• Live updates: Host to leave the BBC after social media ‘error’
• From football sensation to headline-hitting presenter

Lineker said: “Football has been at the heart of my life for as long as I can remember – both on the pitch and in the studio.

“I care deeply about the game, and about the work I’ve done with the BBC over many years. As I’ve said, I would never consciously repost anything antisemitic – it goes against everything I stand for.

“However, I recognise the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am. Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”

In addition to the written statement, the former footballer also posted a video on Instagram.

He said he would “never, ever have shared” the post if he had seen the emoji, which he said “has awful connotations”.

“I would like once again to say I’m sorry unreservedly for the hurt and upset caused. It was a genuine mistake and oversight,” he continued. “But I should have been more diligent. I know that.”

Lineker said he had “stood up for minorities and humanitarian issues, and against all forms of racism all of my life, including, of course, antisemitism, which I absolutely abhor”.

He told his followers it was “best for all concerned” that he “step down from BBC presenting duties altogether”.

Lineker described his 30 years at the BBC as a “pleasure and a huge privilege”, adding that Match of the Day had become “an integral part of my life”.

The presenter concluded by saying his relationship with the BBC had been “long and wonderful”, but that it was “time for the organisation and myself to go our separate ways”.

Replying to Lineker’s post, Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer said: “Thank you for everything.”

Writing to staff shortly after the announcement, BBC Sport director Alex Kay-Jelski said he “appreciated the last week has been difficult and emotional for many of you”.

He said it was “sad to be saying goodbye to such a brilliant broadcaster” and thanked Lineker “for his years of service”.

He concluded: “Let’s finish the season strongly with Gary’s final show, enjoy an incredible summer of sport and look forward with excitement to what lies ahead.”

Lineker and the BBC had announced last year that he would leave Match of the Day at the end of this season, which concludes on Sunday.

But he had been due to remain at the forefront of the BBC coverage of the men’s FA Cup and the World Cup in 2026.

The former England striker replaced Des Lynam as the corporation’s main presenter of Match of the Day in 1999.

In a recent interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan he said he had a sense during his latest contract negotiations that the BBC wanted him to step down from the Premier League highlights show.

Roger Mosey, former director of BBC Sport and ex-head of BBC television news, told Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday he believed the “difficulty” was that “you can’t both be the highest paid presenter and be a social media activist”.

“I think it’s always been a problem that allowing Gary to do the amount of social media he did and also be the BBC’s highest-paid presenter was never going to be easy,” he said.

Lineker was temporarily suspended from the BBC in 2023 after an impartiality row over comments he made criticising the then-government’s asylum policy.

He was also among 500 other high-profile figures who signed an open letter earlier this year urging the BBC to reinstate a documentary, Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone, to BBC iPlayer.

Lineker is also the co-founder of Goalhanger Podcasts, makers of the popular The Rest Is History series and its spin-offs about politics, football, entertainment and money.

The parting of ways between Lineker and the BBC also includes the licensing deal for the Goalhanger podcast titles on BBC Sounds which ends this year, the PA news agency reported.

The US Supreme Court has said it will allow the Trump administration to terminate deportation protections for some 350,000 Venezuelans in the US.

The ruling lifts a hold that was placed by a California judge that kept Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in place for Venezuelans whose status’ would have expired last month.

Temporary Protected Status allows people to live and work in the US legally if their home countries are deemed unsafe due to things like countries experiencing wars, natural disasters or other “extraordinary and temporary” conditions.

The ruling marks a win for US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly tried to use the Supreme Court to enact immigration policy decisions.

The Trump administration wanted to end protections and work permits for migrants with TPS in April 2025, more than a year before they were originally supposed to end in October 2026.

Lawyers representing the US government argued the California federal court, the US District Court for the Northern District of California, had undermined “the Executive Branch’s inherent powers as to immigration and foreign affairs,” when it stopped the administration from ending protections and work permits in April.

Ahilan Arulanantham, who represents TPS holders in the case, told the BBC he believes this to be “the largest single action stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status in modern US history”.

“That the Supreme Court authorized this action in a two-paragraph order with no reasoning is truly shocking,” Mr Arulanantham said. “The humanitarian and economic impact of the Court’s decision will be felt immediately, and will reverberate for generations.”

Because it was an emergency appeal, justices on the Supreme Court did not provide a reasoning for the ruling.

The court’s order only noted one judge’s dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In August, the Trump administration is also expected to revoke TPS protections for tens of thousands of Haitians.

The ruling on Monday by the Supreme Court marks the latest in a series of decisions on immigration policies from the high court that the Trump administration has left them to rule on.

• What is the 1798 law that Trump used to deport migrants?

Last week, the administration asked the Supreme Court to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuela immigrants.

Along with some of their successes, the Trump administration was dealt a blow on Friday when the high court blocked Trump from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants in north Texas.

Trump had wanted to use the centuries-old law to swiftly deport thousands from the US, but Supreme Court judges questioned if the president’s action was legal.

France will build a new high-security prison in its overseas territory of French Guiana to house drug traffickers and radical Islamists, the country’s justice minister announced during a visit to the territory.

Gérald Darmanin told Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper that the prison would target organised crime “at all levels” of the drug supply chain.

The €400m (£337m) facility, which could open as early as 2028, will be built in an isolated location deep in the Amazon jungle in the northwestern region of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.

The plan was announced after a series of violent incidents linked to criminal gangs which saw prisons and staff targeted across France in recent months.

The prison will hold up to 500 people, with a separate wing designed to house the most dangerous criminals.

In an interview with JDD, the minister said the new prison would be governed by an “extremely strict carceral regime” designed to “incapacitate the most dangerous drug traffickers”.

Darmanin said the facility would be used to detain people “at the beginning of the drug trail”, as well as serving as a “lasting means of removing the heads of the drug trafficking networks” in mainland France.

French Guiana is a region of France on the north-east coast of South America. Its residents are eligible to vote in French elections and have access to the French social security system, as well as other subsidies.

Its distance from the French mainland means drug lords “will no longer be able to have any contact with their criminal networks”, Darmanin told JDD.

French authorities have long struggled to control the infiltration of mobile phones into the prison network. Tens of thousands are known to circulate through French jails.

Earlier this year, the French government announced new legislation designed to crack down on the activity of criminal gangs.

The measures will create a dedicated branch of the prosecutors’ office to deal with organised crime. It will also introduce extra powers for investigators, and a special protected status for informers.

It will also see the creation of new high-security prisons – including the facility in French Guiana – to hold the most powerful drugs barons, with stricter rules governing visits and communication with the outside world.

France has seen a series of attacks on prisons in recent months, which Darmanin has described as “terrorist” incidents that come in response to the government’s new legislation.

The perpetrators of these attacks have set vehicles outside prisons alight, while Toulon’s La Farlede prison was hit by gunfire.

In some incidents the perpetrators of these attacks have styled themselves as defenders of prisoners’ rights.

The proposed new facility in French Guiana is to be built at a “strategic crossroads” for drugs mules, particularly from Brazil and Suriname, according to AFP news agency.

Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is the former port of entry to the infamous Devil’s Island penal colony, where 70,000 convicts from mainland France were sent between 1852 and 1954.

The penal colony was the setting of French writer Henri Charrière’s book Papillon, which was later made into a Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.

The BBC has contacted the French justice ministry for comment.

US President Donald Trump has signed a bill into law that makes posting so-called “revenge porn” and deepfake explicit content illegal.

The Take It Down Act criminalises posting “intimate images” – real or AI-generated – online without an individual’s consent and requires technology companies to remove the content within 48 hours.

While the bill has received strong bipartisan support, some digital rights groups say it’s too broad and could lead to censorship.

The bill is the sixth piece of legislation Trump has signed in his second term, with the president often preferring to enact his agenda through Executive Orders.

The president signed the bill on Monday afternoon at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, after it was passed by both houses of Congress.

He was accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, who White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously said was “instrumental” in getting the bill through Congress.

It cleared the lower chamber of Congress in a 409-2 vote at the end of April, and was unanimously passed by the Senate in February.

Melania Trump has championed the bill since her husband began his second term.

In March, she used her first solo public appearance to urge members of Congress to pass the bill.

“It’s heartbreaking to witness young teens, especially girls, grappling with the overwhelming challenges posed by malicious online content, like deepfakes,” the first lady said during a roundtable discussing the bill on 3 March.

“In an era where digital interaction are integral to daily life, it is imperative that we safeguard children from mean-spirited and hurtful online behaviour.”

Revenge porn is sharing an intimate image without consent. Deepfake porn involves creating, often using AI, a fake explicit image or video of a person.

Use of the technology has grown in recent years, allowing users to add the faces of celebrities or public figures – most often women – into pornographic films.

Tech companies including Meta, TikTok and Google supported the legislation. But it’s not without critics.

Advocates for digital rights and free speech say it could lead to the censorship of legitimate content, including legal pornography, LGBTQ+ content, and government criticism.

“While protecting victims of these heinous privacy invasions is a legitimate goal, good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy,” digital rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation said.

“As currently drafted, the Act mandates a notice-and-takedown system that threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process, without addressing the problem it claims to solve.”

The Internet Society, which advocates for digital privacy on the internet, says it poses “unacceptable risks to users’ fundamental privacy rights and cybersecurity by undermining encryption”.

A world record-breaking swimmer has told BBC Panorama she was left “broken” by the harsh regime run by one of the UK’s most successful swimming coaches.

Rūta Meilutytė, who won gold at the London 2012 Olympics, said Jon Rudd’s focus on weighing and swimmers’ diets contributed to her struggle with an eating disorder and depression.

In total, 12 ex-swimmers have told us they experienced bullying, a toxic training environment and controlling food culture at one of the UK’s most prestigious clubs for young elite swimmers when he was head coach.

Rudd had faced allegations of bullying and verbal abuse during his 28-year tenure at Plymouth Leander swimming club, but the BBC has learned that no action was taken by the sport’s governing body.

We have found that Swim England, the governing body, did not act on a confidential 2012 investigation which ruled Rudd should be suspended after hearing evidence about his behaviour from 17 witnesses.

Swim England’s new chief executive Andy Salmon said he did not know why Rudd had not been suspended, but he was “deeply, deeply, sorry” to Plymouth’s swimmers and all of those harmed by the governing body’s failings.

Rudd, who is due to become high performance director of Saudi Arabia’s Olympic swimming team, has not responded to the BBC.

Plymouth Leander attracted aspiring swimmers from around the world after Rudd established its reputation as a club that produced Olympic athletes.

While head coach between 1989 and 2017, he was responsible for swimmers’ success, but also had safeguarding responsibilities to ensure their wellbeing.

One of Plymouth Leander’s most successful swimmers was Antony James, who won silver at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and represented Team GB at the 2012 Olympics. He was jailed for 21 years in February for raping two girls he had met at the club.

Three people who trained at Plymouth Leander told Panorama that Rudd, who had coached James since he was eight years old, should have known he was interested in younger girls.

A former girlfriend of James, also an ex-swimmer, said he was well known for mixing with young teenage girls and that his status as the club’s “golden boy” meant no one questioned his behaviour.

“Everyone knew – he wasn’t trying to hide anything that he was doing, it was very out there and open,” she said.

She was 16 and he was 22 when they started a relationship and she says she believes she was a “gateway” to his grooming of younger girls.

Rudd was a coach at Plymouth Leander in 2010 when Lithuanian Rūta Meilutyte moved to the UK to be coached by him.

She made Olympic history two years later when, aged 15, she became the youngest person to win the 100m breaststroke.

Now 28, she recalls Rudd making cutting comments about her weight.

When she confided in him that she had been making herself sick after meals to lose weight, she said he laughed and replied: “Well, at least you get the calories out.”

She said that Rudd did seek help for her once he realised that she was not happy with what he had said.

She also described him saying her “ass was fat”, moments before a major competition, aged 16.

Despite being hailed as the club’s most successful swimmer, Meilutytė said Rudd’s regime “made me for a while and then it broke me”.

She left Plymouth Leander in 2017. Rudd’s career, meanwhile, went from strength to strength, with him becoming Swim Ireland’s director of performance swimming in the same year.

Rudd was employed by Plymouth College, an independent school, until 2017. It ran a partnership with Plymouth Leander between 2001-2024 and many swimmers boarded there.

Among the other 11 swimmers to make allegations to Panorama about Rudd was Olympic bronze medallist Cassie Patten. She said the coach had made her train with an injured shoulder and that it eventually ended her career in 2011.

Commonwealth Youth gold medallist Phoebe Lenderyou told Panorama Rudd’s regime aggravated her eating disorder.

Andy Salmon, who has been CEO of Swim England since February 2024, confirmed to the BBC that no action was taken against Rudd despite evidence swimmers had suffered harm and the 2012 report’s recommendation that he be suspended for four months.

The report would have remained a secret but for the BBC receiving a tip-off in 2023. It said Rudd had been subjected to a lengthy probe, but that none of the complainants had been told the outcome.

His case was reviewed after the BBC asked Swim England about it.

According to the original investigation, Rudd’s assistant coach, Lindsay Trimmings, should also have been suspended from Plymouth Leander. She was later hired by Swim England to be its head of coaching but left in 2023. When Panorama wrote to her, she said she did not want to respond.

“Clearly the organisation failed to act on the independent recommendations made at the time. And I’m really sorry, on behalf of Swim England, for any suffering that that might have led to,” Mr Salmon told us.

The failings of the 2012 investigation into Rudd have led to the governing body announcing it would review 1,500 safeguarding cases carried out across England between 2002 and 2022.

Swim England commissioned a listening report into all aquatic sports after the BBC first shared multiple swimmers’ accounts of mistreatment in 2023. Published in 2024, the governing body’s report found a culture of fear at all levels of the sport that threatened its future.

Plymouth Leander said it was “deeply concerned by the nature and severity” of Panorama’s allegations, stating that the club was “fundamentally different” from when Rudd was in charge. It also said it had conducted a “thorough review” of its safeguarding policies and procedures to provide “the safest possible environment”.

It said Rudd’s employer, Plymouth College, was responsible for his “oversight and jurisdiction”.

Plymouth College, which is now under different ownership, said the club was responsible for safeguarding and that it was “deeply concerned to hear these testimonies from swimmers who trained at Plymouth Leander”.

It said the partnership with Plymouth Leander had been terminated and it now ran its own swimming organisation, Plymouth College Aquatics (PCA).

BBC Panorama has also found evidence of a bullying culture at Royal Wolverhampton School Swimming Club, another leading institution in the sport, as recently as last year.

Complaints about the behaviour of David Painter, the club’s head coach at the time were made by the parents of 11 swimmers, during 2023 and 2024.

One of the swimmers, Abby, now 17, told the BBC she was forced to choose between her education and swimming because Painter would not let her have time off to prepare for her GCSEs.

She attended a different school several miles away but said she was told she would still have to train on the morning of exams.

“Towards the end I was literally having full blown panic attacks,” said Abby, who told Panorama she was failing at school. She eventually decided to leave the sport.

Alison Hickman, the club’s former welfare officer, told the BBC she had given the names of 11 parents who had concerns about Painter to Swim England and said none of them were contacted by the governing body.

Swim England told the BBC it had asked the school to resolve the issues.

The Royal Wolverhampton School said complaints were confidential. It said the school has “clear safeguarding procedures” and “all formal complaints are investigated swiftly and appropriately”.

Painter, who left to coach in Canada last year, said his “commitment to athlete development and wellbeing has always been at the core” of his coaching, and that he had never been subject to “any disciplinary investigations or hearings”. He added that the allegations against him were “untrue… and defamatory”.

This is a sorry end to a long BBC career. Gary Lineker was among the corporation’s highest-paid presenters for a reason – he is popular with audiences, knowledgeable and brilliant at his job.

But it’s an understatement to suggest he has also caused problems for his BBC bosses over the years, as their high-profile football host began to morph into a presenter with opinions that he voiced on social media.

In the end, those two things were increasingly in conflict.

This has always been about reputation management for the BBC. Lineker had already, in the eyes of BBC bosses, caused the corporation damage with previous social media posts. Mistakenly sharing a video about Zionism which included a rat emoji was the final straw.

It was difficult to see how he could continue presenting for the corporation, particularly at a time when the BBC is enmeshed in another controversy surrounding a documentary about Gaza, which it pulled after discovering the child narrator was the son of a Hamas official.

I think what’s different is that on this occasion, Lineker regrets his actions. He has appeared bullish about previous posts, saying that while he regretted damaging the BBC, he didn’t believe, for example, that comparing the language of a Conservative asylum policy to that of 1930s Germany was wrong.

Lineker is genuinely upset by what happened. He is mortified that he reposted the video. His relationship with the BBC is coming to an end in circumstances nobody would have wanted, but some might have predicted.

He seemed unable or unwilling to accept that his high profile might prevent him from voicing strongly-held views that many believed had an impact on the BBC’s need for impartiality.

We live increasingly in an age when people want to express their opinions, and often do. Social media has given everyone a platform, and high-profile media figures have huge followings.

He could not keep quiet. In the end, it brought him down.

But he is a successful podcast entrepreneur, owning a third of the shares in Goalhanger, the company behind hit shows including The Rest is History and The Rest is Politics.

I would also not be surprised if he does appear in the future on TV, perhaps even as a presenter of the World Cup for another outlet.

He has shown contrition, but it has been a damaging few days.

The Spanish prime minister has called for Israel to be banned from the Eurovision Song Contest over its military action in Gaza.

Pedro Sánchez noted Russia has been banned from the contest since 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine, and said there should not be “double standards”.

Israel came second in the contest’s grand final in Switzerland on Saturday, but topped the public vote – with Spanish viewers giving Israel the maximum 12 points.

Israeli minister for diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli, ridiculed Sánchez with a social media post that said the vote had been a “slap in the face” for the Spanish PM, “which we have heard here in Jerusalem”.

BBC News has asked Eurovision organisers the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for comment.

Speaking at a news conference in Madrid, Sánchez said: “Nobody was up in arms when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began three years ago and [Russia] had to leave international competitions and could not take part, as we have just seen, in Eurovision.

“Therefore Israel shouldn’t either, because what we cannot allow is double standards in culture.”

He also expressed solidarity with “the people of Palestine who are experiencing the injustice of war and bombardment”.

“Spain’s commitment to international law and human rights must be constant and must be coherent,” he said. “Europe’s should be too.”

Sánchez and his government, which officially acknowledged a Palestinian state last year, have been harsh critics of Israel, and last week in Congress the prime minister referred to the country as “a genocidal state”.

Israel has strenuously denied accusations of genocide, and its foreign ministry summoned the Spanish ambassador for a formal reprimand over Sánchez’s “serious remarks”.

At Eurovision, Spain’s televote saw the country award Israel maximum points for its song New Day Will Rise by Yuval Raphael. Spain’s broadcast network RTVE has since requested an audit of the votes.

Ahead of the Eurovision final on Saturday, RTVE aired a message in support of Palestinians – despite being warned to avoid references to Gaza by the EBU.

Spain’s entry, Esa Diva by Melody, finished in 24th place on Saturday night in Basel.

Police in India have arrested a local YouTuber on suspicions of spying for Pakistan.

Jyoti Malhotra, a travel influencer from the northern Indian state of Haryana, allegedly travelled to the neighbouring country several times – her last trip was in March 2025.

Police in Haryana allege that she was in touch with a Pakistan High Commission official, who was expelled from India earlier this month.

The YouTuber’s father has denied allegations that she was a spy, saying she went to Pakistan after acquiring necessary permissions.

Ms Malhotra describes herself on social media as a “modern girl with old ideas”, and has 377,000 subscribers on YouTube and 133,000 followers on Instagram.

But officers have questioned how she financed her travel around the globe, with her videos documenting visits to places like Bangladesh, China, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. She has also visited several Indian destinations and religious places. Police say it defies her known source of income.

Police claim Ms Malhotra was in touch with “Pakistani intelligence operatives” and had continuous contact with a Pakistani citizen.

Ms Malhotra is also being investigated for any links with the Pahalgam attack, Shashank Kumar Sawan, the superintendent of police in Haryana’s Hisar district, told ANI news agency.

They say they have leads on others who may have collaborated with the influencer, who does not have direct access to any military or defence information.

“She was in touch with other YouTube influencers… She used to go to Pakistan on sponsored trips,” Mr Sawan added.

Her arrest comes after the Indian government asked Ahsan-ur-Rahim, the Pakistan High Commission official with whom the YouTuber was alleged to have been in contact, to leave the country on 13 May, alleging he had indulged in activities “not in keeping with his official status in India”.

Pakistan also asked an Indian embassy staff member in Islamabad to leave for indulging in activities “incompatible” with his privileged status.

According to a complaint registered by the police, Ms Malhotra met Ahsan-ur-Rahim for the first time in 2023 when she had visited the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi, seeking a visa to visit the neighbouring country.

Her last video on Pakistan was uploaded in March, in which she was seen in the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi attending a Ramadan dinner.

In other videos from Pakistan, she is seen visiting Hindu and Sikh temples, famous local markets, and interacting with locals.

Arrests in India and Pakistan over allegations of spying are not uncommon.

Ms Malhotra’s arrest comes following days of military tensions between the neighbours earlier this month.

On 7 May, India struck what it calls “terror infrastructure” inside Pakistan, days after a deadly militant attack on tourists in Pahalgam, a picturesque valley in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any involvement in the attacks.

After four tense days of deadly clashes between the nuclear-armed neighbours, both countries agreed to a ceasefire on 10 May, announced by US President Donald Trump.

Gary Lineker has confirmed he will leave the BBC after presenting his final episode of Match of the Day on Sunday.

The 64-year-old had been expected to continue fronting coverage of the men’s FA Cup and World Cup, but was criticised last week after sharing a social media post about Zionism that included an illustration of a rat, historically used as an antisemitic insult.

On Monday, Lineker said he did not see the image, and “would never consciously repost anything antisemitic”.

He added: “However, I recognise the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am. Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”

The presenter has previously attracted criticism for his social media posts, but the latest example was thought to be the last straw for bosses, who considered his position untenable, the BBC’s culture and media editor Katie Razzall said.

The BBC’s director general Tim Davie, said in a statement: “Gary has acknowledged the mistake he made. Accordingly, we have agreed he will step back from further presenting after this season.

“Gary has been a defining voice in football coverage for the BBC for over two decades. His passion and knowledge have shaped our sports journalism and earned him the respect of sports fans across the UK and beyond. We want to thank him for the contribution he has made.”

• A sorry end to Gary Lineker’s BBC career
• Live updates: Host to leave the BBC after social media ‘error’
• From football sensation to headline-hitting presenter

Lineker said: “Football has been at the heart of my life for as long as I can remember – both on the pitch and in the studio.

“I care deeply about the game, and about the work I’ve done with the BBC over many years. As I’ve said, I would never consciously repost anything antisemitic – it goes against everything I stand for.

“However, I recognise the error and upset that I caused, and reiterate how sorry I am. Stepping back now feels like the responsible course of action.”

In addition to the written statement, the former footballer also posted a video on Instagram.

He said he would “never, ever have shared” the post if he had seen the emoji, which he said “has awful connotations”.

“I would like once again to say I’m sorry unreservedly for the hurt and upset caused. It was a genuine mistake and oversight,” he continued. “But I should have been more diligent. I know that.”

Lineker said he had “stood up for minorities and humanitarian issues, and against all forms of racism all of my life, including, of course, antisemitism, which I absolutely abhor”.

He told his followers it was “best for all concerned” that he “step down from BBC presenting duties altogether”.

Lineker described his 30 years at the BBC as a “pleasure and a huge privilege”, adding that Match of the Day had become “an integral part of my life”.

The presenter concluded by saying his relationship with the BBC had been “long and wonderful”, but that it was “time for the organisation and myself to go our separate ways”.

Replying to Lineker’s post, Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer said: “Thank you for everything.”

Writing to staff shortly after the announcement, BBC Sport director Alex Kay-Jelski said he “appreciated the last week has been difficult and emotional for many of you”.

He said it was “sad to be saying goodbye to such a brilliant broadcaster” and thanked Lineker “for his years of service”.

He concluded: “Let’s finish the season strongly with Gary’s final show, enjoy an incredible summer of sport and look forward with excitement to what lies ahead.”

Lineker and the BBC had announced last year that he would leave Match of the Day at the end of this season, which concludes on Sunday.

But he had been due to remain at the forefront of the BBC coverage of the men’s FA Cup and the World Cup in 2026.

The former England striker replaced Des Lynam as the corporation’s main presenter of Match of the Day in 1999.

In a recent interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan he said he had a sense during his latest contract negotiations that the BBC wanted him to step down from the Premier League highlights show.

Roger Mosey, former director of BBC Sport and ex-head of BBC television news, told Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday he believed the “difficulty” was that “you can’t both be the highest paid presenter and be a social media activist”.

“I think it’s always been a problem that allowing Gary to do the amount of social media he did and also be the BBC’s highest-paid presenter was never going to be easy,” he said.

Lineker was temporarily suspended from the BBC in 2023 after an impartiality row over comments he made criticising the then-government’s asylum policy.

He was also among 500 other high-profile figures who signed an open letter earlier this year urging the BBC to reinstate a documentary, Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone, to BBC iPlayer.

Lineker is also the co-founder of Goalhanger Podcasts, makers of the popular The Rest Is History series and its spin-offs about politics, football, entertainment and money.

The parting of ways between Lineker and the BBC also includes the licensing deal for the Goalhanger podcast titles on BBC Sounds which ends this year, the PA news agency reported.