The P39-1 is an anonymous stretch of thinly-tarred highway connecting the small towns of Newcastle and Normandein in South Africa, a four-hour drive from Johannesburg.

This week the single carriageway road, which runs mainly along the edge of farms nestled in the remote hills of the country’s KwaZulu-Natal province, has found itself unexpectedly the subject of global attention.

On Wednesday many South Africans were among those watching live around the world as US President Donald Trump ambushed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa with a video making the case that white people were being persecuted. He had previously said that a “genocide” was taking place.

The most striking scene in the video was an aerial shot of thousands of white crosses by the side of the road – a “burial site” President Trump repeatedly said, of more than a thousand Afrikaners murdered in recent years.

The president did not mention where the road was although the film was quickly linked to Normandein.

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But the people who live nearby know better than anyone that his claim is not true.

The BBC visited the area on Thursday, the day after the Oval Office showdown, to find that the P39-1’s crosses have long since disappeared.

There is no burial site, and the road looks like any other. A new grain mill has been built along one stretch where the crosses once briefly stood.

What we found was a community shocked to find itself under the spotlight, and a truth about the crosses that reveals much about the delicate balance of race relations in South Africa.

Roland Collyer is a man who understands both.

A farmer from South Africa’s Afrikaner community, it was the murder of his aunt and uncle Glen and Vida Rafferty, bludgeoned to death in their home five years ago, which led to the erection of the crosses.

Their deaths at their farm, by attackers who stole valuables from their home, led to a public outcry by the farming community, and the temporary planting of the crosses by fellow Afrikaners keen to highlight their murders among those of other farmers who have been killed across South Africa.

“So the video that you guys have been seeing,” he tells me as we stand together by the roadside, “happened along this section of the road.”

Pointing down the hill, towards a village where many black families live in mud huts, he explains: “There were crosses planted on both sides of the road, representing lives that have been taken on farms, farm murders. All the way from the bridge down below, up to where we’re standing at the moment.

“The crosses were symbolic, to what was happening in the country.”

One of the Raffertys’ neighbours, businessman Rob Hoatson, told the BBC how he organised the crosses to capture public attention, such was the shock over the couple’s deaths.

“It’s not a burial site,” he explained, saying Trump was prone to “exaggeration”, adding though that he did not mind the image of the crosses being used. “It was a memorial. It was not a permanent memorial that was erected. It was a temporary memorial.”

Mr Collyer continues to farm in the area but says the Raffertys’ two sons left after their parents’ murders. The younger, he explains, has moved to Australia while the elder has sold up and left farming to relocate to the city.

Many people remain scared for their future in South Africa, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

In 2022, two local men Doctor Fikane Ngwenya and Sibongiseni Madondo were convicted for the murders of the Raffertys, as well as robbery, and sentenced to life and 21 years imprisonment respectively.

For many in the local community it was a rare act of justice, with thousands of murders remaining unsolved across a country which South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told President Trump has yet to get a grip of its soaring crime rate.

The Raffertys’ murders sparked a period of heightened racial tension in the area.

South Africa’s police minister was forced to visit to try to bring calm, with protests from Afrikaners mirrored by claims from some members of the local black community of mistreatment by white farmers.

Amid it all, Mr Collyer tells me that despite the misleading use of the video of his family’s memorial, he is pleased that President Trump is highlighting attacks on white farmers.

“The whole procession was to raise international media coverage of the whole thing,” he reflects. “And for them to understand what we’re actually going through and the lives that we have to live here at the moment in South Africa.

“A person has to go into a house before dark, you’re living behind electric fences. That’s the life we’re living at the moment and you don’t want to live a life like that.”

His fears would chime with many, of all races, in a country which suffered more than 26,000 murders last year. The vast majority of victims are black, according to security experts.

President Trump has made an offer of asylum for all Afrikaners, with a first group of 49 arriving in Washington earlier this month.

But Mr Collyer tells me he will stay in Normandein and has no intention of leaving South Africa.

“It’s not easy just for me to leave what my father, what my grandfather, what my great-grandfather worked for, and how hard they worked, to be able to gather what I can contribute to towards today,” he says.

“That’s the difficult thing, just packing up after many generations and trying to leave the country.

“Unfortunately white Afrikaners bear the brunt of being a ‘boer’ (farmer) in South Africa… but at this stage I definitely would not think of going, I still love this country too much.”

And as we part ways, Mr Collyer offers a note of optimism about the future.

“I think if we can just join hands, and I think there’s more than enough people in this country – black and white – who are willing to join hands and to try to make this country a success.”

There are many others in the local community for whom farming goes back generations.

Along the road, towards Normandein town, we meet Bethuel Mabaso.

The 63-year-old grew up in the area and tells us he was surprised to learn that his community had made international news – even more so that it was being cited by the US president as “evidence” of the targeting of white farmers.

“Nothing like that is happening here,” he says in his native Zulu. “We were shocked as a community when the murders happened and sad for that family.

“I’ve lived here since I was a little boy and this is a peaceful area. Nothing like that has happened here since.”

In the years since the Raffertys died there have been reports of allegations from some black farm dwellers that local police had failed to attend to cases involving black people with the same urgency as they did the deaths of the couple.

I ask another local farm worker, Mbongiseni Shibe, 40, what relations were like now between farmers and their mostly black staff.

“We manage whatever issues come up through discussions, if that doesn’t work we ask the police to step in,” he says. “It’s usually incidents like our livestock going into their fields and the police help us retrieve it and vice versa.”

South Africa’s violent past of racial segregation is not lost on Mr Shibe and how delicate racial matters can be here.

“We come from a difficult past in this country with white people, I remember those times of abuse even as a young boy especially on the farms here,” he tells me.

“But we’ve let it go, we don’t use that to punish anyone.”

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A top Maoist leader has been killed fighting with Indian security forces in the central state of Chhattisgarh.

Nambala Keshava Rao, who is also known by several alias, including Basavaraju, was among 27 rebels killed on Wednesday, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said. One police officer was also reported to have died in the fighting.

According to Shah, it is the first time in three decades that a Maoist of Rao’s seniority had been killed by government forces.

Parts of Chhattisgarh have seen a long-running insurgency by the rebels, who say they have been neglected by governments for decades. The Indian government has vowed to end their insurgency by the end of March 2026.

Rao, an engineer by training, was the general secretary of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) group. He was on the most wanted list of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) – India’s counter-terrorism law enforcement body.

Vivekanand Sinha, a senior police official in Chhattisgarh, said the gunfight in which Rao and the others died, broke out in the Narayanpur district following an intelligence tip-off that senior Maoist leaders were in the area.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X that he was “proud of our forces for this remarkable success”.

The Communist Party of India, meanwhile, has condemned the killings and called for an independent inquiry.

Last month, the Indian government launched a massive military operation – known as Black Forest – targeting the group.

Shah said on Wednesday that 54 rebels had been arrested so far, and 84 had surrendered in the states of Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Maharashtra, as a result.

The operation was launched after the Maoists said they were ready for talks with the government if it halted its offensive and withdrew its troops. Chhattisgarh officials said any dialogue must be unconditional.

The Maoists are inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. Their insurgency began in West Bengal state in the late 1960s and has since spread to more than a third of India’s 600 districts.

The rebels control large areas of several states in a “red corridor” stretching from north-east to central India.

Major military and police offensives in recent years have pushed the rebels back to their forest strongholds and levels of violence have fallen.

But clashes between security forces and rebels are still common, killing scores of people every year.

A crackdown by security forces killed around 287 rebels last year – the vast majority in Chhattisgarh – according to government data. More than 10,000 people are believed to have died since the 1960s.

The Trump administration has moved to end Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, escalating a standoff with America’s oldest university.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on X that the administration had revoked Harvard’s “Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law.”

“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” she wrote.

Harvard called the move “unlawful” in a statement.

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably,” the university said.

“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

The Trump administration’s decisions could affect thousands of international students who study at the university.

Over 6,700 international students were enrolled at the institution last academic year, university data shows, making up 27% of its student body.

The White House has demanded Harvard make changes to hiring, admissions and teaching practices to help fight antisemitism on campus.

It has threatened to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status and freeze billions of dollars in government grants.

Harvard earlier said it had taken many steps to address antisemitism, and that demands were an effort to regulate the university’s “intellectual conditions”.

In April, Noem threatened to revoke the university’s access to student visa programmes if it did not comply with the administration’s sweeping records request pertaining to its international students.

In Thursday’s letter, Noem said Harvard must comply with a list of demands to have an “opportunity” to regain its ability to enrol international students.

That included all disciplinary records for non-immigrant students enrolled at Harvard over the past five years.

Noem also demanded Harvard turn over electronic records, videos, or audio of “illegal” and “dangerous or violent” activity and by non-immigrant students on campus.

The notice gave Harvard 72 hours to comply with the Department of Homeland Security’s records request.

The Trump administration has attempted to dramatically curtail visas for international students, causing chaos and confusion on university campuses across the US and leading to a wave of lawsuits.

In some cases, those revocations appeared to affect foreign students who participated in political protests or have had previous criminal charges, such as driving infractions.

“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” Noem wrote on X.

House Republicans have passed a sweeping multi-trillion dollar tax breaks package, a narrow victory for President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson after weeks of negotiations with conservative hold-outs.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed with a vote of 215 votes to 214, with two Republicans joining Democrats to oppose it and one voting present.

It now heads to the Senate, which will have the chance to approve or change provisions of the bill.

The US President’s allies on Capitol Hill have celebrated its passage as a victory, with Johnson saying it “gets Americans back to winning again”.

Long a policy priority of Trump’s, the legislation extends soon-to-expire tax cuts passed during his first administration in 2017, as well as provides an influx of money for defence spending and to fund the president’s mass deportations.

It also temporarily eliminates taxes on overtime work and tips – both key promises Trump made during his successful 2024 presidential campaign.

“What we’re going to do here this morning is truly historic, and it will make all the difference in the daily lives of hard working Americans,” Johnson said on the floor before the vote.

Additionally, the bill makes significant spending cuts, including to the Medicaid healthcare programme for lower-income Americans as well as Snap, a food assistance programme used by more than 42 million Americans.

These cuts were the subject of intense friction among Republicans, which was finally overcome after the President travelled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday. He privately told lawmakers to put aside their objections or face consequences.

Democrats also fiercely opposed the bill and warned that the cuts could have dire consequences for millions of lower-income Americans.

“Children will get hurt. Women will get hurt. Older Americans who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care and for home care will get hurt,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said on the House floor.

“People with disabilities who rely on Medicaid to survive will get hurt. Hospitals in your districts will close. Nursing homes will shut down,” he added. “And people will die.”

The next day, a statement from the White House warned that the administration would see a failure to pass the bill as the “ultimate betrayal”.

The legislation, however, comes with a massive price tag. It is estimated to add $5.2tn (£3.9tn) to US debt and increase the budget deficit by about $600bn in the next fiscal year.

Those eye-popping figures – and the prospect of ballooning interest payments on the debt – were among the reasons that financial rating agency Moody’s downgraded the US credit rating last week.

The lengthy document of over 1,000-pages was released just hours before lawmakers were asked to vote on it, meaning there could be other provisions and line items yet to be discovered.

The Senate must also approve the bill and could make some changes in the process. If lawmakers there do, it will return to the House for another high-stakes vote with potential to go wrong.

On Truth Social, Trump urged the Senate to send the bill to his task “as soon as possible”.

One of the first items senators will have to tackle is a report from the Congressional Budget Office that the debt increase in the House bill would trigger a provision of a 2011 law that mandates approximately $500bn in spending cuts to Medicare, the health insurance programme for the elderly.

Trump had pledged not to touch that popular government service – and Republicans would likely face a political price if they don’t tweak the rules to avoid the mandatory reductions.

Democrats are pledging to use today’s vote against Republicans in next year’s midterm congressional elections, highlighting other spending cuts – including to the low-income health insurance programme, government research and environmental spending – and tax reductions for the wealthy.

Even Congressional Republicans celebrate a win, the narrowness of the Republican House majority is vulnerable to even small shifts in public sentiment. The midterms could flip control of that chamber to the Democrats and grind Trump’s legislative agenda to a halt.

Three people have died and another is missing after major flooding in New South Wales (NSW) left more than 50,000 people under evacuation warnings.

The record rainfall, now declared a natural disaster, was caused by a slow-moving area of low pressure and is greater than any in living memory for some residents, according to the Commissioner of the State Emergency Services.

More than 2,000 emergency service workers are attending rescues, including of people who were stranded on rooftops overnight.

“We’re far from out of the woods,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said, urging residents to pay close attention to emergency broadcasts as more heavy rain is expected in the coming days.

Separate searches are underway for missing people on the Mid North Coast. One woman went missing after her car was trapped in floodwaters. Another man was reported missing after walking near a flooded road, and failing to return home.

More than 100 schools have been closed because of the floods, which have left thousands of homes and businesses without power. Evacuation centres have been opened for those fleeing the flooding.

NSW police say 22 people have been rescued by helicopter, including 18 winched from flooded homes and roads, and four rescued from a bridge. Four dogs and one cat were also rescued with their owners.

Taree, a city on the Mid North Coast, has been among the worst affected. On Wednesday, flooding at a major river in the area surpassed 6.3m (20.6ft), beating an almost century old record for its highest level.

Authorities confirmed the body of a 63-year-old man was recovered on Wednesday afternoon at a property in Moto, near Taree. The fatality was later identified in an ABC News report as David Knowles. Local police have started an investigation into the incident.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sent his condolences to the man’s family in a post in X, calling his death “devastating”.

On Thursday morning, the body of a man in his 30s was found in floodwaters near Rosewood on the Mid North Coast. It followed earlier reports of a man stuck in floodwaters while driving in the area.

Later, NSW police said its officers had recovered the body of a 60-year-old woman who got into trouble at Brooklana, about 30km (18 miles) from the city of Coffs Harbour.

Further north, a fourth person – a 49-year-old man – is still missing at Nymboida, about 40km south of the city of Grafton.

By Friday, some areas are predicted to receive another 300mm (12 inches) of rain.

Nearly 10,000 homes are at risk of flooding in the state’s Mid North Coast.

“We are bracing for more bad news,” Minns told reporters at a press conference.

“It’s very difficult to get supplies into some of these isolated communities,” Minns said, adding that the prime minister has pledged his support for any help needed from the federal government.

Minns also urged those who are in “prepare to evacuate” areas to leave if they can, while acknowledging some won’t be able to.

“They may be elderly, they might be infirm, they might have young children. But if we can get the majority of people out of harm’s way, it makes everybody’s job a lot easier.”

The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) said it has responded to more than 300 flood rescues in the 24 hours to 05:00 local time (20:00 BST) – and more than 500 rescues since the flooding began.

“We’ve seen continual rainfall and very fast flowing rivers, which when combined with flooded roads have made it very difficult to access some isolated people,” NSW SES Assistant Commissioner Colin Malone said.

He added: “While dozens of rescues have been completed overnight, they continue to be received, and the New South Wales SES and our partner agencies have helicopter resources, boats and high clearance vehicles responding when it is safe to do so.”

Jihad Dib, NSW Minister for Emergency Services said that the state government continues to “throw every single thing we’ve got” toward rescue operations.

“These aren’t the records that you want to break, but we’ve seen more rain and more flooding in the mid and the north coast than we’ve ever seen before,” he said.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has condemned a “serious accident” during the launch of a new warship on Thursday, calling it a “criminal act” that could not be tolerated.

Parts of the 5,000-ton destroyer’s bottom were crushed, tipping the vessel off balance, state media reported.

Kim, who was present at the launch, has ordered the ship be restored before a key party meeting in June, and for those involved in designing the ship to be held responsible for the incident which he said “severely damaged the dignity and pride of our nation in an instant.”

State media reports did not mention any casualties or injuries as a result of the incident.

Kim attributed Thursday’s accident, which took place at a shipyard in the eastern port city of Chongjin, to “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism”.

He added that the “irresponsible errors” of those involved will be dealt with at a plenary meeting next month.

It’s not clear what punishment they might face but the authoritarian state has a woeful human rights record.

People can be jailed for almost anything, activists have said, from watching a South Korean DVD to trying to defect.

It is uncommon for North Korea to publicly disclose local accidents – though it has done this a handful of times in the past.

Last November, it described the mid-air explosion of a military satellite six months earlier as a “gravest failure” and criticised officials who “irresponsibly conducted preparations” for it.

In August 2023, the state blamed another botched satellite launch on an error in the emergency basting system, but said it was “not a big issue”.

Thursday’s incident comes weeks after North Korea unveiled a new 5,000-ton destroyer on the country’s west coast which it said is equipped to carry over 70 missiles.

Kim had called the warship a “breakthrough” in modernising the country’s naval forces and said it would be deployed early next year.

More than 90 lorry loads of humanitarian aid have been collected by UN teams inside the Gaza Strip, three days after Israel eased an 11-week-long blockade.

The aid, which included flour, baby food and medical equipment, was picked up from the Kerem Shalom crossing on Wednesday night and taken to warehouses for distribution. Several bakeries began producing bread with the flour on Thursday.

The UN said the delays were due to a lack of security along the single access route which the Israeli military had approved.

Israeli authorities said they allowed an additional 100 lorry loads through Kerem Shalom on Wednesday. However, the UN said it was “nowhere near enough to meet the vast needs in Gaza”.

Humanitarian organisations have warned of acute levels of hunger among the 2.1 million population, amid significant shortages of basic foods and skyrocketing prices.

Palestinian Authority Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan, who is based in the occupied West Bank, told reporters in Geneva on Thursday that 29 children and elderly people had died from “starvation-related” causes in the last couple of days, according to Reuters news agency.

An assessment by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has also said that half a million people face starvation in the coming months.

On Wednesday night, a UN spokesperson said its teams had “collected around 90 truckloads of goods from the Kerem Shalom crossing and dispatched them into Gaza”.

A video shared with the BBC showed the lorries with aid collected from Kerem Shalom driving in a convoy along a road in southern Gaza.

Other footage showed bags of flour being unloaded at a bakery and hundreds of pita breads rolling out of its ovens on conveyor belts.

On Thursday, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said “a handful of bakeries” it supported in central and southern Gaza had resumed bread production after receiving deliveries of flour.

They were distributing the bread via hot meals kitchens.

Other aid brought in and distributed included baby formula and nutrition supplements for malnourished children, according to the WFP.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had brought in one lorry load of medical supplies for the Red Cross field hospital in the southern city of Rafah, but that more was needed.

“A trickle of trucks is woefully inadequate. Only the rapid, unimpeded, and sustained flow of aid can begin to address the full scope of needs on the ground,” it said.

Mandy Blackman, the nurse in charge of running the charity UK-Med’s field hospital in the southern al-Mawasi area, described the situation in Gaza as “heart-breaking”, with food in perilously short supply.

She told the BBC that patients arriving at the hospital were “visibly thinner” than during her previous two stints there, and that staff were only able to offer them one meal a day, consisting of rice with some pulses.

“People are having to relocate constantly and are not able to feed their children. No-one knows what’s going to happen the next day. There’s constant suffering and constant anxiety,” she said.

Before the aid entered Gaza, senior WFP official Antoine Renard told the BBC that the problems with collecting it arose because the Israeli military wanted lorries to move along a route which aid agencies considered to be dangerous. The route, he said, could leave them at risk of attack by desperately hungry civilians and armed criminal gangs.

“At market prices in Gaza right now, each truck full of flour is worth around $400,000 (£298,000),” Mr Renard explained.

He added that the solution would be “hundreds of trucks daily” travelling along a safe route to warehouses, noting “the less we provide, the greater the risk and more anxiety created” among the population.

Mr Renard said aid agencies on the Gaza side did not employ armed guards to accompany their cargoes because it was considered too dangerous, so a lengthy ceasefire and an extension of the current five-day window for the transfer of food was urgently needed.

According to Mr Renard, bringing in at least 100 aid lorries daily would only meet the “very minimum” of the population’s food needs.

He said the UN and its partners had over 140,000 tonnes of food – about 6,000 lorry loads and enough to feed the entire population for two months – in position at aid corridors and ready to be brought into Gaza at scale.

The UN has said 500 lorries entered the territory on average every day before the war, most of which were carrying commercial imports.

Israel stopped all deliveries of 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 58 hostages still held in Gaza, up to 23 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel also insisted there was no shortage of aid and accused Hamas of stealing supplies to give to its fighters or sell to raise money – an allegation the group denied.

The UN also denied that aid had been diverted and said Israel was obliged under international humanitarian law to ensure food and medicine reached Gaza’s population.

On Wednesday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was allowing a limited amount of food into Gaza so that the Israeli military could continue its newly expanded ground offensive and take full control of the Palestinian territory.

“At the end of this manoeuvre, all of the Gaza Strip will be under Israeli security control and Hamas will be completely defeated,” he told a news conference.

“In order for us to keep our operational freedom of action, and to allow our best friends to continue to support us, we need to prevent a humanitarian crisis.”

Netanyahu also said the controversial US-Israeli plan for aid in Gaza – which would bypass existing UN facilities and use a private company to distribute food from hubs in southern and central Gaza protected by security contractors and Israeli troops – would give Israel “another tool to win the war”.

UN and other agencies have said they will not co-operate with the plan, saying it contradicts fundamental humanitarian principles and appears to “weaponise aid”.

The WFP has also warned it will force 2.1 million people to travel long distances for food.

“This plan is not a solution, it’s a political decision,” Mr Renard said. “The food should go to the people, not the people to the food.”

Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment and ground operations are continuing across Gaza, with the Hamas-run health ministry reporting on Thursday that 107 people were killed over the previous 24 hours.

At least 52 people have been killed since dawn on Thursday, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency. Palestinian media reported that they included 16 people, most of them members of one extended family, who died when a home was hit in Jabalia, in northern Gaza.

The Israeli military issued evacuation orders for Jabalia and 13 other northern neighbourhoods on Thursday, warning residents that it was “operating with intense force in your areas, as terrorist organisations continue their activities and operations”.

According to the UN, about 81% of the territory is now either subject to Israeli evacuation orders or located in militarized “no-go” zones.

Almost 600,000 people are estimated to have been displaced again since March, including 161,000 who have been forced to flee in the past week.

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 53,762 people, including 16,500 children, have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Four people have reportedly died, with more than a dozen injured in the capital Delhi and nearby areas according to local media, after a severe hailstorm hit the city on Wednesday.

The powerful storm uprooted trees, triggered power outages and led to massive traffic snarls due to waterlogging on the streets.

Similar scenes were reported from India’s financial capital Mumbai where pre-monsoon showers led to flooding in parts of the city.

India’s weather agency has warned that “heavy to very heavy rainfall” is likely over India’s western coast during next 6-7 days with rains and thunderstorms expected in almost a dozen states over the coming days, particularly in the southern part of the country.

On Wednesday, nearly 50 flights at Delhi airport – one of the busiest in the country – were delayed and almost a dozen flights were diverted due to heavy showers, the Hindustan Times newspaper said quoting an airport official.

Passengers onboard a flight operated by India’s largest carrier Indigo to Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir, had a particularly harrowing journey after the aircraft got stuck in the hailstorm.

A video being circulated online shows many passengers screaming for help as the plane trembled violently due to strong turbulence.

In a statement, the airline said the flight landed safely in Srinagar, but a picture of the aircraft’s nose appearing to be damaged has been circulating online. The airline has not commented on the photo.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Metro issued an advisory on X, warning commuters of potential delays due to trees and other debris falling on the tracks.

In Mumbai, viral videos from the city’s Andheri area, an affluent neighbourhood, showed plastic bags and other waste floating on the streets after the rains clogged up the sewers.

Many social media users criticised authorities for poor waste management and the city’s failing drainage system.

Earlier this week, incessant rains brought Bengaluru, also known as India’s Silicon Valley, to a halt. At least four people were killed in rain-related incidents.

Videos from the city showed commuters wading through knee-deep water, with several cars stranded on waterlogged streets. In some parts of the city, water had also entered the homes of people.

India receives 80% of its annual rainfall during the monsoon season, which usually starts from June and continues until September. The monsoon is crucial for the livelihoods of many Indians, especially the country’s farmers who rely on seasonal showers in the absence of irrigation in many parts of the country.

But experts say climate change has made erratic weather, including unseasonal rains, flash floods and droughts linked to extreme heat a more regular phenomenon, upending the lives of millions.

At least two people have died after a small plane crashed into a residential street in San Diego on Thursday morning.

One home was destroyed and 10 buildings were damaged after the small plane crashed in the Murphy Canyon neighbourhood outside San Diego, officials said.

Eight people who were on the ground suffered minor injuries – one was taken to hospital while others were treated on-site, they said. Around 100 people evacuated from nearby areas.

The small plane was a Cessna 550 aircraft, said the Federal Aviation Administration, which can carry eight to 10 people including the pilot.

Authorities have not revealed the identities of deceased, or of the passengers on board.

“There’s plane everywhere,” said Assistant Fire Department Chief Dan Eddy, describing the scene authorities were faced with.

“As you would expect, something that large at that amount of speed, were going to have a lot of throw that goes every which direction,” he explained.

Earlier on Thursday, he confirmed that there was a “direct hit to multiple homes”, and that no one in those homes were believed to be seriously injured.

Footage from the scene shows the charred cars littered across the street.

Local resident Christopher Moore told the Associated Press that he and his wife were woken by a loud bang in the early hours of the morning.

Mr Moore said they looked out the window and saw smoke, and the couple grabbed their two young children and fled.

Once on the street, they saw a car engulfed in flames.

“It was definitely horrifying for sure, but sometimes you’ve just got to drop your head and get to safety,” Mr Moore said.

A marine who lives near the crash site told Fox News he heard a “strange whistling wheezing noise” followed by a “boom and a shake in the house”.

The aircraft appeared to be heading to Montgomery Field, an airport located 10km (six miles) north of downtown San Diego.

A young couple who worked for the Israeli Embassy have been shot dead outside a Jewish museum in Washington DC.

Police say the victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, were killed by a man who shouted “free, free Palestine”. The suspect is in custody.

Here’s what you need to know about the shooting.

At 21:08 local time on Wednesday, police received calls about a shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in downtown Washington DC.

A man and a woman were found unconscious and not breathing at the scene, and later died.

The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) said the couple had been leaving an event at the museum which is in an area with tourist sites, museums and government buildings.

Police allege the shooting was committed by Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, who is being questioned in custody.

He had been seen pacing up and down outside the museum before using a handgun to open fire on a group of four people, the MPD said.

The suspect then went inside the museum, where he was detained. He repeatedly shouted “free Palestine” while being arrested, police said.

Some in the museum had initially thought he was a distressed bystander when he burst in.

One witness, Yoni Kalin, said people inside had been “calming him down, giving him water, taking care of him”.

“Little did we know he was somebody that executed people in cold blood,” he said.

The MPD are leading the investigation while the FBI has said it is looking into whether the attack was linked to terrorism or a hate crime.

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim had both worked at the embassy. Mr Lischinsky had been about to propose to Miss Milgrim, Israel’s ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter said on Thursday.

“The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem,” he told reporters.

Yaron Lischinsky, a joint German-Israeli national, had worked as a research assistant at the embassy, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Born in Germany, he had moved to Israel as a teenager before relocating to Washington, his friend Ronen Shoval said.

He was a “devout Christian” with “good character”, Mr Shoval told the BBC.

He had also previously served in the Israeli military, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, said.

Sarah Lynn Milgrim, an American from Kansas, worked for the Israeli embassy’s public diplomacy department, according to her LinkedIn page.

Her father, Robert, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that his daughter “loved Israel” and “loved everybody that lived in the Middle East”.

“She had a lot of close Palestinian friends, as well as many Israeli friends,” he said.

KU Hillel, a Jewish student organisation at the University of Kansas, said Miss Milgrim was a “beloved alum” with a “bright spirit”.

The Israeli embassy said its staff were “heartbroken and devastated” by the deaths.

• Follow live: Two Israeli embassy staff shot dead near Jewish museum in Washington DC
• Israeli museum victim ‘was planning to propose’

Elias Rodriguez is being held by authorities and is due to appear in court on Thursday. He is believed to have acted alone, said US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The FBI was seen searching a Chicago property believed to be linked to him.

He had been working at the American Osteopathic Information Association since 2024, according to online records examined by BBC Verify.

Social media accounts that appear to belong to Elias Rodriguez also indicate that he was heavily involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement.

An online story indicated that he was associated with a fringe communist group, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, in 2017.

In a post on X, the party said they “have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it” and have had no contact with Elias Rodriguez for seven years.

Police said there had been no prior interactions with the suspect and had not seen anything in his background “that would have placed him on our radar”.

The event at the Capital Jewish Museum had been billed as a networking opportunity to bring Jewish young professionals and the diplomatic community together.

The organiser, American Jewish Committee, said it was open to those in the DC diplomatic community. The event’s theme was advertised as “turning pain into purpose”.

The event description said it invited humanitarian aid organisers responding to crises in the Middle East, including Gaza.

The location was only shared with those who signed up to attend.

President Donald Trump has condemned the attack and called it antisemitic.

Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, he said: “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, now!

“Hatred and radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims.

“So sad that such things as this can happen! God bless you all!”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “outraged by the horrifying antisemitic murder” of the victims.

His office said he had spoken to both victims’ parents.

“My heart grieves for the families of the young beloveds, whose lives were cut short in a moment by an abhorrent antisemitic murderer,” he said, adding he had directed Israeli embassies around the world to increase security.

He and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also said the deaths were caused by “anti-Israeli incitement” which they said was being carried out by European leaders.

Earlier this week, the leaders of the UK, France and Canada signed a strongly worded joint letter condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza.

In a video address, Netanyahu linked Wednesday’s killings in Washington to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

“As he was taken away, he chanted, ‘Free Palestine!’ This is exactly the same chant we heard on October 7th,” Netanyahu said.

He accused Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of “emboldening Hamas to continue fighting forever” by calling for Israel to end its war in Gaza.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to 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.

Yaron Lischinsky was preparing to propose to his girlfriend Sarah Milgrim. He had just bought an engagement ring, and planned to ask on a trip to Jerusalem next week.

But on Wednesday night in Washington, they were shot dead by a man who shouted “free Palestine” outside the Capital Jewish Museum as they left an event billed by organisers as a discussion of the Gaza crisis that aimed to “turn pain into purpose”.

Their deaths have shocked colleagues at the Israeli embassy, sparked international outrage and prompted Israeli leaders to blame “rising hostility” and antisemitism after Hamas attacked the country on 7 October, 2023.

The ambassador in Washington Yechiel Leiter, paid tribute to the pair as a “beautiful couple”.

They were “to be engaged”, he said. “The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem.”

Sarah Milgrim’s father Robert said his family loved Mr Lischinsky, and that the couple were due to go to Israel on Sunday to meet his family, he told the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

Mr Lischinsky, 28, worked in the embassy’s political department while Ms Milgrim, 26, had been a part of the public diplomacy department for a year and a half.

He was a German-born Israeli citizen, served three years in the Israel Defence Forces and held a master’s degree in government diplomacy and strategy from Reichman University.

He described himself on LinkedIn as “proud to call both Jerusalem and Nuremberg home” and as a wanting to “expand the circle of peace with our Arab neighbour”.

Friends told the BBC that Mr Lischinsky was a Christian with great belief in Israel.

Jenny Havemann, from Ra’anana, Israel, and said he was a “nice, modest calm and friendly” man, “a part of a Christian Zionist group, and he was very into bringing Germans and Israelis together”.

Ronen Shoval, another friend described him as “a very devout Christian” who had moved to Israel from Germany. Many people wanted to understand his background. He was a serious Christian believer.”

Sarah Milgrim “loves Israel and she loved everybody that lived in the Middle East”, her father Robert said.

She spent several summers in Israel working “with Palestinian and Israeli groups to bring them together”, including with Tech2Peace, an advocacy group training young Palestinians and Israelis and promoting dialogue between them.

“She had a lot of close Palestinian friends, as well as many Israeli friends,” he said.

Tech2Peace said Ms Milgrim was an active volunteer who “brought people together with empathy and purpose”.

“Her dedication to building a better future was evident in everything she did,” it said. “Her voice and spirit will be profoundly missed.”

According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms Milgrim had master’s degrees in international studies from the American University and another in natural resources and sustainable development from the UN University for Peace, as well as a bachelor’s in environmental studies from the University of Kansas.

The Israeli embassy said that its “entire staff is heartbroken and devastated” by the couple’s deaths. “No words can express the depth of our grief and horror at this terrible loss.”

The shooting has led to heightened security at Israeli diplomatic missions around the world.

The deaths come as the war in Gaza enters is nineteenth month, following the Hamas-led assault of 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Since then, Israel’s military response has killed more than 53,000 people in Gaza, many of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Aid agencies and foreign governments, including Britain, have warned of an escalating humanitarian catastrophe, with famine looming.

Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, is in custody and being questioned over Mr Lischinsky and Ms Milgrim’s deaths.

The suspect accused of shooting and killing two Israeli embassy staff members at a Wednesday night event in Washington DC was mistaken for a witness by security, eyewitnesses told the BBC.

Jojo Kalin, who organised the American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum, said she saw the attacker inside the building, looking “very distraught” after the shooting.

“The security let this person in thinking they were a bystander or witness,” she said, adding that she did not see a weapon on him. After she gave him water, she said the suspect pulled out a keffiyeh and yelled “free Palestine”.

Police have named the suspect as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, who is now in custody.

Mr Rodriguez is accused of fatally shooting Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, who both worked at Israel’s embassy in Washington DC.

The two were a couple, according to Israel’s ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter. The ambassador said the young man had bought a ring this week and planned to propose next week in Jerusalem.

The shooting unfolded at around 21:05 local time (02:05 BST), when a gunman opened fire at the couple as they were leaving Wednesday night’s event.

The chief of police in Washington DC, Pamela Smith, said Mr Rodriguez was allegedly seen pacing back and forth outside the museum before he approached a group of four and shot two of them with a handgun.

• Follow live updates
• What we know about museum shooting

Moments later, eye witnesses said they spotted a man entering the museum “looking very distressed.”

“We thought he just needed help and just needed safe shelter,” Katie Kalisher, an eyewitness, told the BBC.

Another witness, Yoni Kalin, said “people were calming him down, bringing him water, taking care of him”.

It later became apparent that the man they were helping was the alleged shooter, Mr Kalin said. After police arrived, Mr Kalin said the suspect confessed to the shooting and “pulled out a red keffiyeh”.

“He said ‘I did this for Gaza. Free Palestine,'” Mr Kalin told the BBC.

• Israeli couple ‘were planning to marry’

Ms Kalin, the organiser, said the event was about building coalitions in the Middle East. She told the BBC it is “deeply ironic that what we were discussing was bridge building, and then we were all hit over the head with such hatred”.

Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, said police are interviewing the suspect and that “early indicators are that this is is an act of targeted violence”.

When Japan’s farm minister declared that he never had to buy rice because his supporters give him “plenty” of it as gifts, he hoped to draw laughs.

Instead Taku Eto drew outrage – and enough of it to force him to resign.

Japan is facing its first cost-of-living crisis in decades, which is hitting a beloved staple: rice. The price has more than doubled in the last year, and imported varieties are few and far between.

Eto apologised, saying he had gone “too far” with his comments on Sunday at a local fundraiser. He resigned after opposition parties threatened a no-confidence motion against him.

His ousting deals a fresh blow to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s minority government, which was already struggling with falling public support.

Rice can be a powerful trigger in Japan, where shortages have caused political upsets before. Riots over the soaring cost of rice even toppled a government in 1918.

So it’s not that surprising that rice prices have a role in Ishiba’s plummeting approval ratings.

“Politicians don’t go to supermarkets to do their grocery shopping so they don’t understand,” 31-year-old Memori Higuchi tells the BBC from her home in Yokohama.

Ms Higuchi is a first-time mother of a seven-month-old. Good food for her postnatal recovery has been crucial, and her daughter will soon start eating solid food.

“I want her to eat well so if prices keep going up, we may have to reduce the amount of rice my husband and I eat.”

It’s a simple issue of supply and demand, agricultural economist Kunio Nishikawa of Ibaraki University says.

But he believes it was caused by a government miscalculation.

Until 1995, the government controlled the amount of rice farmers produced by working closely with agricultural cooperatives. The law was abolished that year but the agriculture ministry continues to publish demand estimates so farmers can avoid producing a glut of rice.

But, Prof Nishikawa says, they got it wrong in 2023 and 2024. They estimated the demand to be 6.8m tonnes, while the actual demand, he adds, was 7.05m tonnes.

Demand for rice went up because of more tourists visiting Japan and a rise in people eating out after the pandemic.

But actual production was even lower than the estimate: 6.61m tonnes, Prof Nishikawa says.

“It is true that the demand for rice jumped, due to several factors – including the fact that rice was relatively affordable compared to other food items and a rise in the number of overseas visitors,” a spokesperson for the agriculture ministry told the BBC.

“The quality of rice wasn’t great due to unusually high temperatures which also resulted in lower rice production.”

Rice farmers have been unable to make enough money for many years, says 59-year-old Kosuke Kasahara, whose family have been in farming for generations.

He explains that it costs approximately 18,500 yen ($125.70; £94.60) to produce 60kg of rice but the cooperative in his area of Niigata on the west coast of Japan offered to buy it last year at 19,000 yen.

“Until three or four years ago, the government would even offer financial incentives to municipalities that agreed to reduce rice production,” he adds.

The ministry spokesperson confirms that the government has offered subsidies to those choosing to produce wheat or soybeans instead of rice.

Meanwhile, younger farmers have been choosing to produce different types of rice that are used for sake, rice crackers or fed to livestock because demand for rice in Japan had been falling until last year.

“I got tired of fighting retailers or restaurants that wanted me to sell rice cheaply for many years,” says Shinya Tabuchi.

But that’s been flipped on its head, with the going rate for 60kg of rice today at 40,000 to 50,000 yen.

While higher prices are bad news for shoppers, it means many struggling farmers will finally be able to make money.

But as the public grew angry with the surge, the government auctioned some of its emergency reserves of rice in March to try to bring prices down.

Many countries have strategic reserves – stockpiles of vital goods – of crude oil or natural gas to prepare for exceptional circumstances. In Asia, many governments also have stockpiles of rice.

In recent years, Japan’s rice stockpile had only been tapped in the wake of natural disasters.

“The government has always told us that they would not release its emergency rice stocks to control the price so we felt betrayed,” Mr Tabuchi says.

Despite the government’s rare decision to release rice, prices have continued to rise.

The cost of rice is also soaring in South East Asia, which accounts for almost 30% of global rice production – economic, political and climate pressures have resulted in shortages in recent years.

In Japan though the issue has become so serious that the country has begun importing rice from South Korea for the first time in a quarter of a century, even though consumers prefer homegrown varieties.

PM Ishiba has also hinted at expanding imports of US rice as his government continues to negotiate a trade deal with Washington.

But shoppers like Ms Higuchi say they are unlikely to buy non-Japanese rice.

“We’ve been saying local production for local consumption for a long time,” she says. “There has to be a way for Japanese farmers to be profitable and consumers to feel safe by being able to afford home-grown produce.”

This divides opinion among farmers.

“You may hear that the industry is ageing and shrinking but that is not necessarily true,” says Mr Tabuchi, who believes the sector has been too protected by the government.

“Many elderly farmers can afford to sell rice cheaply because they have pensions and assets but the younger generation has to be able to make money. Instead of guaranteeing the income of all the farmers and distorting the market, the government should let unprofitable farmers fail.”

Mr Kasahara disagrees: “Farming in rural areas like ours is about being part of a community. If we let those farmers fail, our areas will be in ruins.”

He argues the government should set a guaranteed buying price of 32,000 to 36,000 yen per 60kg of rice which is lower than today’s price but still allows farmers to be profitable.

And given what happened to Eto, it is also a sensitive topic for politicians.

The country is due to hold a key national election this summer so pleasing both consumers and farmers – especially the elderly in both camps who tend to vote more – is crucial.

Hiding her true identity behind more than 40 aliases, con artist Annie Gordon Baillie made a living swindling shopkeepers across Victorian Britain.

But in the 1880s, the Scottish fraudster took her criminal activities to a new level.

She arrived on Skye during the Crofters’ War, a violent clash between tenant farmers and landowners over land rights.

Posing as an aristocratic novelist, she saw an opportunity to make a fortune – by convincing 1,000 islanders to relocate to a patch of Australian swamp.

Annie’s story is told in a new series of BBC Radio 4’s Lady Swindlers with Lucy Worsley.

The episode draws on newspaper articles, court reports and a book called The Adventures of a Victorian Con Woman: The Life and Crimes of Mrs Gordon Baillie by Mick Davis and David Lassman.

Annie was born into poverty in Peterhead, a fishing port in Aberdeenshire, in February 1848.

By her 20s, she was defrauding shopkeepers and running up credit for goods she had no intention of paying for.

In the 1870s, Annie became more ambitious and set up a fake charity to establish a Protestant school for girls in Rome – a heartland of the Catholic faith.

Donations poured in but the school was never built.

“The law catches up with her briefly in 1872 and she spends nine months in prison for fraud,” said historian Worsley.

Following her release from prison, Annie had a whirlwind few years.

She married an opera singer and the couple had three children. The family spent some time in New York.

But in November 1884, she turned up on the Isle of Skye “wearing fancy clothes and jewels,” according to Worsley.

“She passes herself off as a wealthy literary lady, who is writing a novel about the plight of the crofters of Skye,” she added.

Skye, along with other west coast island communities, was in the grip of the Crofters’ War.

Waged throughout much of the 1800s, it was a dispute between landowners and communities of tenant farmers distressed by high rents, their lack of rights to land, and eviction threats to make way for large-scale farming operations.

The process of moving families out of inland areas where they had raised cattle for generations to coastal fringes of large estates, or abroad to territories in Canada, had started with the Highland Clearances in the 18th and early 19th Centuries.

Both the clearances and the Crofters’ War were marked by violent clashes between people facing eviction and landowners and the authorities.

One of the bloodiest incidents was the Battle of the Braes on Skye in 1882.

After being attacked with stones by a crowd of men and women, about 50 police officers from Glasgow baton-charged the mob.

The unrest spread to Glendale in Skye and in 1883 the frustrated authorities called for military intervention to help round up the ring-leaders.

In early 1883, the iron-hulled Royal Navy gunboat Jackal appeared in Loch Pooltiel, off Glendale.

Marines disembarked from the Jackal and landed at Glendale’s Meanish Pier to help police in making arrests.

Newspapers sent reporters to cover the dispute’s twists and turns, so Annie was well versed on the “war”, and any opportunity to benefit for it.

Philanthropy was all the rage among wealthy Victorians, and Annie tapped into that.

Posing as a “lady novelist”, she told Skye’s crofters she would fundraise for their cause.

Annie did an interview on her “charity work” with the Aberdeen Evening News, turning up at a hotel in Portree in a striking crimson dressing gown and fingers adorned with jewelled rings.

Scottish historical and crime writer Denise Mina said the disguise distracted people from what Annie was really up to.

“She had a great eye for an emotive cause,” Mina said.

“Physically, how would I describe her? She’s very pretty, very petite and always well turned out.”

But Mina added: “She is taking money from crofters who are just about to go to war because they have been run off their land and burned out of their homes.

“She is going to raise money and leg it with the dosh.

“It is quite spiteful what she is doing, but it is all wrapped up in this lady façade.”

Annie’s scam took a bizarre turn when she suggested the islanders quit Skye and emigrate to Australia.

She even travelled out to Australia to negotiate a deal for land as a new home.

In Melbourne, she was shown an unwanted area of marshy ground.

Annie said 1,000 crofters could relocate there, and give up farming and become fishermen instead.

But Mina said: “The whole point is the crofters don’t want to leave – that’s the whole dispute.”

The deal collapsed and Annie returned to London where more trouble awaited her.

Publicity around her scheme had caught the attention of a Scotland Yard detective – Det Insp Henry Marshall – who had long been on the trail of Annie and her shopkeeper frauds across London.

She was arrested in 1888, leaving crofters on Skye still waiting for their “golden ticket” to a new life in Australia.

Annie was later jailed for five years for swindling the shopkeepers.

The money involved in the frauds was believed to be far less than the true amount of Annie’s ill-gotten gains over the years.

After her release, she was soon back in jail – this time for stealing paintings.

Once released from prison, she emigrated to New York where in 1902 there is a record of her being placed in a workhouse as punishment for vagrancy.

And then she vanishes without a trace.

Lady Swindlers’ in-house historian, Prof Rosalind Crone, said Annie’s story exposed the “dark side” of charitable giving in Victorian times.

“It wasn’t always about helping the unfortunate or supporting worthwhile causes,” she added.

For crofters, the war led to a public inquiry and eventually legislation that protected their land rights – and hopefully any chance of ever being scammed by phoney lady novelists again.

Donald Trump confronted President Cyril Ramaphosa during a tense exchange in the White House on Wednesday, with a series of contested claims about the killings of white farmers in South Africa.

The meeting – at first warm and light-hearted – quickly changed tone as Trump asked his staff to play a video mostly showing South African opposition politician Julius Malema chanting a song calling for violence against white farmers.

The video also included footage showing rows of crosses, which he claimed was a burial site for murdered white farmers, and presented Ramaphosa with copies of articles which he said documented widespread brutality against South Africa’s white minority.

Supporters of the Trump administration have long amplified claims of violence against the white minority, notably Elon Musk and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who ran segments on the supposed genocide during the president’s first term. Some of these claims are demonstrably false.

The footage played by Trump in the Oval Office showed rows of white crosses stretching off into the distance along a rural road. Trump claimed: “These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers.”

However, the crosses do not mark graves. The video is from a protest against the murder of white farming couple Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were ambushed and shot dead on their premises in 2020. The clip was shared on YouTube on 6 September, the day after the protests.

“It’s not a burial site, but it was a memorial,” Rob Hoatson, one of the organisers of the event, told the BBC. He said the crosses were erected as a “temporary memorial” to the couple.

Mr Hoatson said the crosses have since been taken down.

BBC Verify has geolocated the footage to an area in KwaZulu-Natal province, near the town of Newcastle. Google Street View imagery captured in May 2023 – almost three years after the footage first appeared online – shows that the crosses were no longer standing.

In the meeting, Trump said: “A lot of people are very concerned with regard to South Africa… we have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they are coming to the US, so we take from many locations if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on.”

He has previously made claims about “white genocide” several times before and appeared to be referring to that.

At a press briefing earlier this month he said: “It’s a genocide that’s taking place” referring to killing of white farmers in South Africa.

The country has one of the highest murder rates in the world. There were 26,232 murders last year, according to South African Police Service (SAPS) figures.

Of these, 44 were killings of people within the farming community and of those, eight were of farmers.

These figures are not broken down by race in any public stats release that we’ve been able to locate – but they clearly don’t provide evidence for the claims of “white genocide” made repeatedly by Trump.

In February, a South African judge dismissed the idea of a genocide as “clearly imagined” and “not real”.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU), which represents farmers, compiles figures which offer an insight into the racial identity of the victims. The TAU relies on media reports, social media posts and reports from their members.

Their figures for last year show there were 23 white people killed in farm attacks, and nine black people. So far this year TAU has recorded three white people and four black people killed on South African farms.

During the tense meeting, Trump played footage from political rallies in which participants sang “Kill the Boer” – a controversial anti-apartheid song that critics say calls for violence against white farmers.

South African courts had categorised the song as hate speech, but recent judgements have ruled that it can be legally sung at rallies as judges say it makes a political point and does not directly invoke violence.

Trump said that those leading the singing were “officials” and “people that were in office”.

One of the men leading the rally was Julius Malema, who previously led the ruling ANC’s youth wing. In 2012 he left the party and has never held an official government position. He now leads a party called the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) which won 9.5% in last year’s election, entering opposition against the new multi-party coalition.

Responding to Trump’s accusations, Ramaphosa emphasised that the EFF is “a small minority party” and said that “our government policy is completely against what he was saying”.

Another man in the video who can be heard singing the lyric “shoot the Boer” at a different rally is former President Jacob Zuma, who left office in 2018. The video is from 2012 when he was president. The ANC promised to stop singing the song shortly afterwards.

Zuma subsequently left the ANC and now leads the opposition uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, which won more than 14% in last year’s election.

During the meeting, Trump held up a series of articles which he claimed showed evidence of white farmer killings in South Africa.

There was an image clearly visible as Trump spoke and said: “Look, here’s burial sites all over the place. These are all white farmers that are being buried.”

But the image isn’t from South Africa – it’s actually from a report about women being killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The French news agency (AFP) initially pointed out the image, and BBC Verify ran a search and confirmed it as being from a Reuters news agency clip filmed in the DR Congo city of Goma in February.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

As Israel’s war in Gaza enters a new, violent phase, a growing number of voices within the country are speaking out against it – and how it’s being fought.

Yair Golan, a left-wing politician and former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sparked outrage on Monday when he said: “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country.

“A sane state does not wage war against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set itself the goal of depopulating the population,” he told Israeli public radio’s popular morning news programme.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back, describing the comments as “blood libel”.

But on Wednesday, a former Israeli minister of defence and IDF chief of staff – Moshe “Bogi” Ya’alon – went further.

“This is not a ‘hobby’,” he wrote in a post on X, “but a government policy, whose ultimate goal is to hold on to power. And it is leading us to destruction.”

Just 19 months ago, when Hamas gunmen crossed the fence into Israel and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages – statements like these seemed almost unthinkable.

But now Gaza is in ruins, Israel has launched a new military offensive, and, though it has also agreed to lift its 11-week blockade on the territory, just a trickle of aid has so far entered.

Recent polling by Israel’s Channel 12 found that 61% of Israelis want to end the war and see the hostages returned. Just 25% support expanding the fighting and occupying Gaza.

The Israeli government insists it will destroy Hamas and rescue the remaining hostages. Netanyahu says he can achieve “total victory” – and he maintains a strong core of supporters.

But the mood among others in Israeli society “is one of despair, trauma, and a lack of a sense of ability to change anything”, says former Israeli hostage negotiator Gershon Baskin.

“The overwhelming majority of all the hostage families think that the war has to end, and there has to be an agreement,” he adds.

“A small minority think that the primary goal of finishing off Hamas is what has to be done, and then the hostages will be freed”.

On Sunday, around 500 protesters, many wearing T-shirts with the inscription “Stop the horrors in Gaza” and carrying pictures of babies killed by Israeli air strikes, attempted to march from the town of Sderot to the Gaza border, in protest at Israel’s new offensive.

They were led by Standing Together – a small but growing anti-war group of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. After attempting to block a road, the leader of the group Alon-Lee Green was arrested, along with eight others.

From house arrest, Mr Green told the BBC: “I think it’s obvious that you can see an awakening within the Israeli public. You can see that more and more people are taking a position.”

Another Standing Together activist, Uri Weltmann, said he thinks there’s a growing belief that continuing the war is “not only harmful to the Palestinian civilian population, but also risks the lives of hostages, risks the lives of soldiers, risks the lives of all of us”.

In April, thousands of Israeli reservists – from all branches of the military – signed letters demanding that Netanyahu’s government stop the fighting and concentrate instead on reaching a deal to bring back the remaining hostages.

Yet, many in Israel hold differing views.

At the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza on Wednesday, the BBC spoke to Gideon Hashavit, who was part of a group protesting against aid being allowed in.

“They’re not innocent people,” he said of those in Gaza, “they make their choice, they chose a terrorist organisation.”

It is against some of the most extreme parts of Israeli society – settler groups – that the UK on Tuesday announced fresh sanctions.

In its strongest move yet, the UK also suspended talks on a trade deal with Israel and summoned the country’s ambassador – with UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy calling the military escalation in Gaza “morally unjustifiable”.

The EU said it is reviewing its association agreement with Israel, which governs its political and economic relationship – with foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas saying a “strong majority” of members favoured looking again at the 25-year-old agreement.

On Monday night, the UK joined France and Canada in signing a strongly worded joint statement, condemning Israel’s military action and warning of “further concrete actions” if the humanitarian situation in Gaza did not improve.

“The mood is changing,” says Weltmann, “the wind is starting to blow in the other direction.”

Sir Jony Ive, the hugely influential British designer responsible for the look of Apple’s most iconic and successful products, is joining OpenAI.

Boss Sam Altman said he was “thrilled” to be partnering with the man he called the “greatest designer in the world”.

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is buying Sir Jony’s startup, io, in a $6.5bn (£4.7bn) deal.

Mr Altman said he was excited to “try to create a new generation of AI-powered computers” together.

Sir Jony – who designed the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad – will “assume deep design and creative responsibilities” across the company, the two firms said in an announcement.

AI software has made rapid advances in recent years, spearheaded by ChatGPT.

But developing new hardware based around it has proved more of a challenge – with several recent attempts failing to interest consumers and attracting derision from reviewers.

Mr Altman though has spoken of his confidence that this partnership can succeed where others have failed.

“I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely re-imagine what it means to use a computer,” he said in a video that accompanied the announcement.

Sir Jony said he believed the world was on the “brink of a new generation of technology”.

It may not be long until this new “family of devices” from the pair make an impact.

“The first one we’ve been working on I think has just completely captured our imagination,” said Sir Jony.

Mr Altman said he has already tried out a prototype of a new device designed by Sir Jony and his team, and he thinks it is “the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen”.

Sir Jony worked for Apple for 27 years, helping to revive the company with groundbreaking products including the iPhone and iPod.

He also designed the iMac in 1998 and the iPad in 2010.

When Sir Jony left the company in 2019, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook described him as “a singular figure in the design world and his role in Apple’s revival cannot be overstated”.

Shares in Apple fell more than 2% following the news of his partnership with OpenAI.

He left to found his own company, LoveFrom, which has worked with companies such as Airbnb and Moncler.

In the announcement about the merger, it said LoveFrom had been “quietly collaborating” with OpenAI for two years.

The idea for io, which Sir Jony founded last year with others, followed this partnership.

“It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company,” said Sir Jony and Mr Altman.

OpenAI had a 23% stake in the start-up prior to Wednesday’s announcement, according to US media.

Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, told BBC News that it would be “foolish to bet against Jony Ive, given his remarkable track record of delivering products that disrupt a market”.

“There is no question that OpenAI would love to have a direct relationship with its customers rather than delivering services via devices made by or powered by Apple, Google, or others,” he added.

Justin McGuirk, from the UK’s Design Museum, said Sir Jony “brings serious design credibility”.

He said: “If OpenAI want to take AI-based hardware to market, especially at a time when many are sceptical about the need for such things, it’s going to have to be incredibly good.

“Ive’s name will boost confidence and keep the hype machine rolling.”

A few companies such as Humane AI and Rabbit have tried to build bespoke devices for the AI era.

However, Humane AI, founded by a former Apple executives, struggled with its AI Pin device, which faced criticism for battery life, heat issues, limited functionality and high costs.

OpenAI set off a wave of investment in AI in 2022 when it unveiled ChatGPT.

It has continued to push into new areas, such as shopping and search, in a challenge to established tech giants.

The foray into hardware comes as tech rivals such as Meta, Google and Apple have also been investing in products such as headsets and glasses, with new opportunities due to advances in AI.

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A top Maoist leader has been killed fighting with Indian security forces in the central state of Chhattisgarh.

Nambala Keshava Rao, who is also known by several alias, including Basavaraju, was among 27 rebels killed on Wednesday, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said. One police officer was also reported to have died in the fighting.

According to Shah, it is the first time in three decades that a Maoist of Rao’s seniority had been killed by government forces.

Parts of Chhattisgarh have seen a long-running insurgency by the rebels, who say they have been neglected by governments for decades. The Indian government has vowed to end their insurgency by the end of March 2026.

Rao, an engineer by training, was the general secretary of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) group. He was on the most wanted list of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) – India’s counter-terrorism law enforcement body.

Vivekanand Sinha, a senior police official in Chhattisgarh, said the gunfight in which Rao and the others died, broke out in the Narayanpur district following an intelligence tip-off that senior Maoist leaders were in the area.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X that he was “proud of our forces for this remarkable success”.

The Communist Party of India, meanwhile, has condemned the killings and called for an independent inquiry.

Last month, the Indian government launched a massive military operation – known as Black Forest – targeting the group.

Shah said on Wednesday that 54 rebels had been arrested so far, and 84 had surrendered in the states of Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Maharashtra, as a result.

The operation was launched after the Maoists said they were ready for talks with the government if it halted its offensive and withdrew its troops. Chhattisgarh officials said any dialogue must be unconditional.

The Maoists are inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. Their insurgency began in West Bengal state in the late 1960s and has since spread to more than a third of India’s 600 districts.

The rebels control large areas of several states in a “red corridor” stretching from north-east to central India.

Major military and police offensives in recent years have pushed the rebels back to their forest strongholds and levels of violence have fallen.

But clashes between security forces and rebels are still common, killing scores of people every year.

A crackdown by security forces killed around 287 rebels last year – the vast majority in Chhattisgarh – according to government data. More than 10,000 people are believed to have died since the 1960s.

Three people have died and another is missing after major flooding in New South Wales (NSW) left more than 50,000 people under evacuation warnings.

The record rainfall, now declared a natural disaster, was caused by a slow-moving area of low pressure and is greater than any in living memory for some residents, according to the Commissioner of the State Emergency Services.

More than 2,000 emergency service workers are attending rescues, including of people who were stranded on rooftops overnight.

“We’re far from out of the woods,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said, urging residents to pay close attention to emergency broadcasts as more heavy rain is expected in the coming days.

Separate searches are underway for missing people on the Mid North Coast. One woman went missing after her car was trapped in floodwaters. Another man was reported missing after walking near a flooded road, and failing to return home.

More than 100 schools have been closed because of the floods, which have left thousands of homes and businesses without power. Evacuation centres have been opened for those fleeing the flooding.

NSW police say 22 people have been rescued by helicopter, including 18 winched from flooded homes and roads, and four rescued from a bridge. Four dogs and one cat were also rescued with their owners.

Taree, a city on the Mid North Coast, has been among the worst affected. On Wednesday, flooding at a major river in the area surpassed 6.3m (20.6ft), beating an almost century old record for its highest level.

Authorities confirmed the body of a 63-year-old man was recovered on Wednesday afternoon at a property in Moto, near Taree. The fatality was later identified in an ABC News report as David Knowles. Local police have started an investigation into the incident.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sent his condolences to the man’s family in a post in X, calling his death “devastating”.

On Thursday morning, the body of a man in his 30s was found in floodwaters near Rosewood on the Mid North Coast. It followed earlier reports of a man stuck in floodwaters while driving in the area.

Later, NSW police said its officers had recovered the body of a 60-year-old woman who got into trouble at Brooklana, about 30km (18 miles) from the city of Coffs Harbour.

Further north, a fourth person – a 49-year-old man – is still missing at Nymboida, about 40km south of the city of Grafton.

By Friday, some areas are predicted to receive another 300mm (12 inches) of rain.

Nearly 10,000 homes are at risk of flooding in the state’s Mid North Coast.

“We are bracing for more bad news,” Minns told reporters at a press conference.

“It’s very difficult to get supplies into some of these isolated communities,” Minns said, adding that the prime minister has pledged his support for any help needed from the federal government.

Minns also urged those who are in “prepare to evacuate” areas to leave if they can, while acknowledging some won’t be able to.

“They may be elderly, they might be infirm, they might have young children. But if we can get the majority of people out of harm’s way, it makes everybody’s job a lot easier.”

The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) said it has responded to more than 300 flood rescues in the 24 hours to 05:00 local time (20:00 BST) – and more than 500 rescues since the flooding began.

“We’ve seen continual rainfall and very fast flowing rivers, which when combined with flooded roads have made it very difficult to access some isolated people,” NSW SES Assistant Commissioner Colin Malone said.

He added: “While dozens of rescues have been completed overnight, they continue to be received, and the New South Wales SES and our partner agencies have helicopter resources, boats and high clearance vehicles responding when it is safe to do so.”

Jihad Dib, NSW Minister for Emergency Services said that the state government continues to “throw every single thing we’ve got” toward rescue operations.

“These aren’t the records that you want to break, but we’ve seen more rain and more flooding in the mid and the north coast than we’ve ever seen before,” he said.

Four people have reportedly died, with more than a dozen injured in the capital Delhi and nearby areas according to local media, after a severe hailstorm hit the city on Wednesday.

The powerful storm uprooted trees, triggered power outages and led to massive traffic snarls due to waterlogging on the streets.

Similar scenes were reported from India’s financial capital Mumbai where pre-monsoon showers led to flooding in parts of the city.

India’s weather agency has warned that “heavy to very heavy rainfall” is likely over India’s western coast during next 6-7 days with rains and thunderstorms expected in almost a dozen states over the coming days, particularly in the southern part of the country.

On Wednesday, nearly 50 flights at Delhi airport – one of the busiest in the country – were delayed and almost a dozen flights were diverted due to heavy showers, the Hindustan Times newspaper said quoting an airport official.

Passengers onboard a flight operated by India’s largest carrier Indigo to Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir, had a particularly harrowing journey after the aircraft got stuck in the hailstorm.

A video being circulated online shows many passengers screaming for help as the plane trembled violently due to strong turbulence.

In a statement, the airline said the flight landed safely in Srinagar, but a picture of the aircraft’s nose appearing to be damaged has been circulating online. The airline has not commented on the photo.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Metro issued an advisory on X, warning commuters of potential delays due to trees and other debris falling on the tracks.

In Mumbai, viral videos from the city’s Andheri area, an affluent neighbourhood, showed plastic bags and other waste floating on the streets after the rains clogged up the sewers.

Many social media users criticised authorities for poor waste management and the city’s failing drainage system.

Earlier this week, incessant rains brought Bengaluru, also known as India’s Silicon Valley, to a halt. At least four people were killed in rain-related incidents.

Videos from the city showed commuters wading through knee-deep water, with several cars stranded on waterlogged streets. In some parts of the city, water had also entered the homes of people.

India receives 80% of its annual rainfall during the monsoon season, which usually starts from June and continues until September. The monsoon is crucial for the livelihoods of many Indians, especially the country’s farmers who rely on seasonal showers in the absence of irrigation in many parts of the country.

But experts say climate change has made erratic weather, including unseasonal rains, flash floods and droughts linked to extreme heat a more regular phenomenon, upending the lives of millions.

An 11-year-old Colombian boy has been reunited with his family 18 days after he was kidnapped by members of a dissident rebel group.

Five armed men wearing balaclavas stormed the boy’s home in a rural area of Valle del Cauca province on 3 May and seized him and a domestic employee.

They released the employee soon after but held the boy in a shack at a remote location for almost three weeks until they agreed his freedom in negotiations with Colombia’s ombudsman’s office, the Red Cross and the Catholic Church.

Rebel groups in Colombia are notorious for forcibly recruiting children but the boy’s abduction from his home at gunpoint nevertheless shocked locals.

Police said that the kidnappers were part of the Frente Jaime Martínez, an off-shoot of the Farc rebel group that continued fighting after Farc agreed a 2016 peace deal.

The boy’s mother described his release as “a miracle”, adding that the weeks he had been in captivity had been “horrible, a nightmare”.

Many dissident rebel groups such as the Frente Jaime Martínez finance themselves through extortion and kidnappings for ransom, as well as drug trafficking.

The commander of the regional police force, Brigadier General Carlos Oviedo, said the boy’s stepfather had been the real target of the kidnappers, but that they had seized the boy when they found that the stepfather was not at home.

The stepfather, a local merchant, told local media that he was not involved in any illicit business and said he did not know why he had been targeted.

It is not clear if a ransom was paid for the boy’s release.

His stepfather said the boy had told the family that he had been shackled for the first four days of his captivity but was in good health.

His mother said that her son appeared anxious and that he had bitten his fingernails down. He was taken to the local hospital for examination.

The mayor of Jamundí, the town where the family lives, thanked the local community “for not giving up” and for holding rallies demanding the boy’s release.

Colombia’s vice-president, Francia Márquez, had also demanded that the boy be freed. “Ife is sacred and the freedom of any human being is non-negotiable, less so when it’s that of a child,” she wrote in a statement.

An activist detained in Tanzania for three days has been released shortly after Kenya’s foreign ministry demanded his release.

A top official in the ministry, Korir Sing’oei, said on X that Boniface Mwangi was “now back in the country”.

Lawyer and fellow activist, Khalid Hussein, told the BBC they were together in Kenya’s coast region.

The Kenyan activist was arrested in Dar es Salaam on Monday alongside Ugandan Agather Atuhaire by suspected military officers and their whereabouts remained unknown.

They had been in the country to attend the court case of opposition leader Tundu Lissu, who is accused of treason.

The Tanzanian authorities have not commented on Mwangi’s detention and deportation.

But on Monday, President Samia Suluhu Hassan warned that she would not allow activists from neighbouring countries to “meddle” in her country’s affairs and cause “chaos”.

Earlier on Thursday, Kenya’s foreign affairs ministry issued a statement saying it had not been able to access the activist.

It said that despite repeated requests, it had been “denied consular access” or information about him, and expressed concern about his health.

It urged Tanzania to “expeditiously and without delay” allow access, or release him, “in accordance with international legal obligations and diplomatic norms”.

Later, Kenya’s state-funded rights commission said it had received the activist in Kwale county, following his release from Tanzania.

KNCHR posted a picture of him alongside other people including his wife, Njeri, and fellow activist Hussein and said he was “in high spirits”. The commission said it was planning to transfer him to the capital Nairobi for medical attention.

The activist was reportedly left at the Kenyan border on Thursday morning following his release by the Tanzanian authorities.

On Wednesday, his wife told the BBC that she had last heard from him on Monday and had not been able to establish where he was.

“I’m actually concerned for his life. I know my husband, he would have communicated, he’d find a way to call or text me and because he hasn’t, makes me very worried about what state he is in,” she told the BBC Newsday radio programme.

Kenya’s foreign ministry on Thursday expressed similar concerns about the activist’s “health, overall well-being and the absence of information regarding his detention”.

It said diplomats should have access to their nationals detained by a host nation in accordance with the Vienna Convention on consular relations.

“In light of the above, the [ministry] respectfully urges the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania to expeditiously and without delay facilitate consular access to or release Mr Mwangi,” it said.

Its statement came amid growing outrage, especially after Tanzania’s deportation of former Kenyan justice minister Martha Karua and other activists, who had also gone to attend Lissu’s hearing, over the weekend.

In recent months, rights groups have been expressing concern at the apparent crackdown on Tanzania’s opposition ahead of elections in October.

• X restricted in Tanzania after police targeted by hackers
• Why Samia’s hesitant reforms are fuelling Tanzanian political anger
• ‘Manhandled and choked’ – Tanzanian activist recounts abduction
• The Tanzanians searching for their grandfathers’ skulls in Germany

The Trump administration has moved to end Harvard’s ability to enrol international students, escalating a standoff with America’s oldest university.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote on X that the administration had revoked Harvard’s “Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law.”

“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” she wrote.

Harvard called the move “unlawful” in a statement.

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the University – and this nation – immeasurably,” the university said.

“We are working quickly to provide guidance and support to members of our community. This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission.”

The Trump administration’s decisions could affect thousands of international students who study at the university.

Over 6,700 international students were enrolled at the institution last academic year, university data shows, making up 27% of its student body.

The White House has demanded Harvard make changes to hiring, admissions and teaching practices to help fight antisemitism on campus.

It has threatened to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status and freeze billions of dollars in government grants.

Harvard earlier said it had taken many steps to address antisemitism, and that demands were an effort to regulate the university’s “intellectual conditions”.

In April, Noem threatened to revoke the university’s access to student visa programmes if it did not comply with the administration’s sweeping records request pertaining to its international students.

In Thursday’s letter, Noem said Harvard must comply with a list of demands to have an “opportunity” to regain its ability to enrol international students.

That included all disciplinary records for non-immigrant students enrolled at Harvard over the past five years.

Noem also demanded Harvard turn over electronic records, videos, or audio of “illegal” and “dangerous or violent” activity and by non-immigrant students on campus.

The notice gave Harvard 72 hours to comply with the Department of Homeland Security’s records request.

The Trump administration has attempted to dramatically curtail visas for international students, causing chaos and confusion on university campuses across the US and leading to a wave of lawsuits.

In some cases, those revocations appeared to affect foreign students who participated in political protests or have had previous criminal charges, such as driving infractions.

“Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country,” Noem wrote on X.

The P39-1 is an anonymous stretch of thinly-tarred highway connecting the small towns of Newcastle and Normandein in South Africa, a four-hour drive from Johannesburg.

This week the single carriageway road, which runs mainly along the edge of farms nestled in the remote hills of the country’s KwaZulu-Natal province, has found itself unexpectedly the subject of global attention.

On Wednesday many South Africans were among those watching live around the world as US President Donald Trump ambushed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa with a video making the case that white people were being persecuted. He had previously said that a “genocide” was taking place.

The most striking scene in the video was an aerial shot of thousands of white crosses by the side of the road – a “burial site” President Trump repeatedly said, of more than a thousand Afrikaners murdered in recent years.

The president did not mention where the road was although the film was quickly linked to Normandein.

• WATCH: ‘Turn the lights down’ – Trump confronts Ramaphosa with video
• FACT-CHECK: Trump’s Oval Office confrontation with Ramaphosa
• US ANALYSIS: Ramaphosa keeps cool in Trump’s choreographed onslaught
• SOUTH AFRICAN VIEW: How Trump-Ramaphosa confrontation went down

But the people who live nearby know better than anyone that his claim is not true.

The BBC visited the area on Thursday, the day after the Oval Office showdown, to find that the P39-1’s crosses have long since disappeared.

There is no burial site, and the road looks like any other. A new grain mill has been built along one stretch where the crosses once briefly stood.

What we found was a community shocked to find itself under the spotlight, and a truth about the crosses that reveals much about the delicate balance of race relations in South Africa.

Roland Collyer is a man who understands both.

A farmer from South Africa’s Afrikaner community, it was the murder of his aunt and uncle Glen and Vida Rafferty, bludgeoned to death in their home five years ago, which led to the erection of the crosses.

Their deaths at their farm, by attackers who stole valuables from their home, led to a public outcry by the farming community, and the temporary planting of the crosses by fellow Afrikaners keen to highlight their murders among those of other farmers who have been killed across South Africa.

“So the video that you guys have been seeing,” he tells me as we stand together by the roadside, “happened along this section of the road.”

Pointing down the hill, towards a village where many black families live in mud huts, he explains: “There were crosses planted on both sides of the road, representing lives that have been taken on farms, farm murders. All the way from the bridge down below, up to where we’re standing at the moment.

“The crosses were symbolic, to what was happening in the country.”

One of the Raffertys’ neighbours, businessman Rob Hoatson, told the BBC how he organised the crosses to capture public attention, such was the shock over the couple’s deaths.

“It’s not a burial site,” he explained, saying Trump was prone to “exaggeration”, adding though that he did not mind the image of the crosses being used. “It was a memorial. It was not a permanent memorial that was erected. It was a temporary memorial.”

Mr Collyer continues to farm in the area but says the Raffertys’ two sons left after their parents’ murders. The younger, he explains, has moved to Australia while the elder has sold up and left farming to relocate to the city.

Many people remain scared for their future in South Africa, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

In 2022, two local men Doctor Fikane Ngwenya and Sibongiseni Madondo were convicted for the murders of the Raffertys, as well as robbery, and sentenced to life and 21 years imprisonment respectively.

For many in the local community it was a rare act of justice, with thousands of murders remaining unsolved across a country which South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told President Trump has yet to get a grip of its soaring crime rate.

The Raffertys’ murders sparked a period of heightened racial tension in the area.

South Africa’s police minister was forced to visit to try to bring calm, with protests from Afrikaners mirrored by claims from some members of the local black community of mistreatment by white farmers.

Amid it all, Mr Collyer tells me that despite the misleading use of the video of his family’s memorial, he is pleased that President Trump is highlighting attacks on white farmers.

“The whole procession was to raise international media coverage of the whole thing,” he reflects. “And for them to understand what we’re actually going through and the lives that we have to live here at the moment in South Africa.

“A person has to go into a house before dark, you’re living behind electric fences. That’s the life we’re living at the moment and you don’t want to live a life like that.”

His fears would chime with many, of all races, in a country which suffered more than 26,000 murders last year. The vast majority of victims are black, according to security experts.

President Trump has made an offer of asylum for all Afrikaners, with a first group of 49 arriving in Washington earlier this month.

But Mr Collyer tells me he will stay in Normandein and has no intention of leaving South Africa.

“It’s not easy just for me to leave what my father, what my grandfather, what my great-grandfather worked for, and how hard they worked, to be able to gather what I can contribute to towards today,” he says.

“That’s the difficult thing, just packing up after many generations and trying to leave the country.

“Unfortunately white Afrikaners bear the brunt of being a ‘boer’ (farmer) in South Africa… but at this stage I definitely would not think of going, I still love this country too much.”

And as we part ways, Mr Collyer offers a note of optimism about the future.

“I think if we can just join hands, and I think there’s more than enough people in this country – black and white – who are willing to join hands and to try to make this country a success.”

There are many others in the local community for whom farming goes back generations.

Along the road, towards Normandein town, we meet Bethuel Mabaso.

The 63-year-old grew up in the area and tells us he was surprised to learn that his community had made international news – even more so that it was being cited by the US president as “evidence” of the targeting of white farmers.

“Nothing like that is happening here,” he says in his native Zulu. “We were shocked as a community when the murders happened and sad for that family.

“I’ve lived here since I was a little boy and this is a peaceful area. Nothing like that has happened here since.”

In the years since the Raffertys died there have been reports of allegations from some black farm dwellers that local police had failed to attend to cases involving black people with the same urgency as they did the deaths of the couple.

I ask another local farm worker, Mbongiseni Shibe, 40, what relations were like now between farmers and their mostly black staff.

“We manage whatever issues come up through discussions, if that doesn’t work we ask the police to step in,” he says. “It’s usually incidents like our livestock going into their fields and the police help us retrieve it and vice versa.”

South Africa’s violent past of racial segregation is not lost on Mr Shibe and how delicate racial matters can be here.

“We come from a difficult past in this country with white people, I remember those times of abuse even as a young boy especially on the farms here,” he tells me.

“But we’ve let it go, we don’t use that to punish anyone.”

• Is there a genocide of white South Africans as Trump claims?
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North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has condemned a “serious accident” during the launch of a new warship on Thursday, calling it a “criminal act” that could not be tolerated.

Parts of the 5,000-ton destroyer’s bottom were crushed, tipping the vessel off balance, state media reported.

Kim, who was present at the launch, has ordered the ship be restored before a key party meeting in June, and for those involved in designing the ship to be held responsible for the incident which he said “severely damaged the dignity and pride of our nation in an instant.”

State media reports did not mention any casualties or injuries as a result of the incident.

Kim attributed Thursday’s accident, which took place at a shipyard in the eastern port city of Chongjin, to “absolute carelessness, irresponsibility and unscientific empiricism”.

He added that the “irresponsible errors” of those involved will be dealt with at a plenary meeting next month.

It’s not clear what punishment they might face but the authoritarian state has a woeful human rights record.

People can be jailed for almost anything, activists have said, from watching a South Korean DVD to trying to defect.

It is uncommon for North Korea to publicly disclose local accidents – though it has done this a handful of times in the past.

Last November, it described the mid-air explosion of a military satellite six months earlier as a “gravest failure” and criticised officials who “irresponsibly conducted preparations” for it.

In August 2023, the state blamed another botched satellite launch on an error in the emergency basting system, but said it was “not a big issue”.

Thursday’s incident comes weeks after North Korea unveiled a new 5,000-ton destroyer on the country’s west coast which it said is equipped to carry over 70 missiles.

Kim had called the warship a “breakthrough” in modernising the country’s naval forces and said it would be deployed early next year.

House Republicans have passed a sweeping multi-trillion dollar tax breaks package, a narrow victory for President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson after weeks of negotiations with conservative hold-outs.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed with a vote of 215 votes to 214, with two Republicans joining Democrats to oppose it and one voting present.

It now heads to the Senate, which will have the chance to approve or change provisions of the bill.

The US President’s allies on Capitol Hill have celebrated its passage as a victory, with Johnson saying it “gets Americans back to winning again”.

Long a policy priority of Trump’s, the legislation extends soon-to-expire tax cuts passed during his first administration in 2017, as well as provides an influx of money for defence spending and to fund the president’s mass deportations.

It also temporarily eliminates taxes on overtime work and tips – both key promises Trump made during his successful 2024 presidential campaign.

“What we’re going to do here this morning is truly historic, and it will make all the difference in the daily lives of hard working Americans,” Johnson said on the floor before the vote.

Additionally, the bill makes significant spending cuts, including to the Medicaid healthcare programme for lower-income Americans as well as Snap, a food assistance programme used by more than 42 million Americans.

These cuts were the subject of intense friction among Republicans, which was finally overcome after the President travelled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday. He privately told lawmakers to put aside their objections or face consequences.

Democrats also fiercely opposed the bill and warned that the cuts could have dire consequences for millions of lower-income Americans.

“Children will get hurt. Women will get hurt. Older Americans who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care and for home care will get hurt,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said on the House floor.

“People with disabilities who rely on Medicaid to survive will get hurt. Hospitals in your districts will close. Nursing homes will shut down,” he added. “And people will die.”

The next day, a statement from the White House warned that the administration would see a failure to pass the bill as the “ultimate betrayal”.

The legislation, however, comes with a massive price tag. It is estimated to add $5.2tn (£3.9tn) to US debt and increase the budget deficit by about $600bn in the next fiscal year.

Those eye-popping figures – and the prospect of ballooning interest payments on the debt – were among the reasons that financial rating agency Moody’s downgraded the US credit rating last week.

The lengthy document of over 1,000-pages was released just hours before lawmakers were asked to vote on it, meaning there could be other provisions and line items yet to be discovered.

The Senate must also approve the bill and could make some changes in the process. If lawmakers there do, it will return to the House for another high-stakes vote with potential to go wrong.

On Truth Social, Trump urged the Senate to send the bill to his task “as soon as possible”.

One of the first items senators will have to tackle is a report from the Congressional Budget Office that the debt increase in the House bill would trigger a provision of a 2011 law that mandates approximately $500bn in spending cuts to Medicare, the health insurance programme for the elderly.

Trump had pledged not to touch that popular government service – and Republicans would likely face a political price if they don’t tweak the rules to avoid the mandatory reductions.

Democrats are pledging to use today’s vote against Republicans in next year’s midterm congressional elections, highlighting other spending cuts – including to the low-income health insurance programme, government research and environmental spending – and tax reductions for the wealthy.

Even Congressional Republicans celebrate a win, the narrowness of the Republican House majority is vulnerable to even small shifts in public sentiment. The midterms could flip control of that chamber to the Democrats and grind Trump’s legislative agenda to a halt.

Denmark is set to have the highest retirement age in Europe after its parliament adopted a law raising it to 70 by 2040.

Since 2006, Denmark has tied the official retirement age to life expectancy and has revised it every five years. It is currently 67 but will rise to 68 in 2030 and to 69 in 2035.

The retirement age at 70 will apply to all people born after 31 December 1970.

The new law passed on Thursday with 81 votes for and 21 votes against.

However, last year Social Democrat Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the sliding scale principle would eventually be renegotiated.

“We no longer believe that the retirement age should be increased automatically,” she said, adding that in her party’s eyes “you can’t just keep saying that people have to work a year longer”.

Tommas Jensen, a 47-year-old roofer, told Danish media that the change was “unreasonable”.

“We’re working and working and working, but we can’t keep going,” he said.

He added that the situation may be different for those with desk jobs but that blue-collar workers with physically demanding professions would find the changes difficult.

“I’ve paid my taxes all my life. There should also be time to be with children and grandchildren,” Mr Jensen told outlet DK.

• Retiring in your 60s is becoming an impossible goal. Is 75 the new 65?

Protests backed by trade unions against the retirement age increase took place in Copenhagen over the last few weeks.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Jesper Ettrup Rasmussen, the chairman of a Danish trade union confederation, said the proposal to increase the retirement age was “completely unfair”.

“Denmark has a healthy economy and yet the EU’s highest retirement age,” he said.

“A higher retirement age means that [people will] lose the right to a dignified senior life.”

Retirement ages around Europe vary. Many governments have raised the retirement age in recent years to reflect longer life expectancy and to tackle budget deficits.

In Sweden, the earliest age individuals can start to claim pension benefits is 63.

The standard pension age in Italy is 67, although as in the case of Denmark, this is also subject to adjustments based on life expectancy estimates and may increase in 2026.

In the UK, people born between 6 October, 1954 and 5 April, 1960 start receiving their pension at the age of 66. But for people born after this date, the state pension age will increase gradually.

And in France, a law was passed in 2023 that raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. The highly unpopular change sparked protests and riots and had to be pushed through parliament by President Emmanuel Macron without a vote.

Three people have died and another is missing after major flooding in New South Wales (NSW) left more than 50,000 people under evacuation warnings.

The record rainfall, now declared a natural disaster, was caused by a slow-moving area of low pressure and is greater than any in living memory for some residents, according to the Commissioner of the State Emergency Services.

More than 2,000 emergency service workers are attending rescues, including of people who were stranded on rooftops overnight.

“We’re far from out of the woods,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said, urging residents to pay close attention to emergency broadcasts as more heavy rain is expected in the coming days.

Separate searches are underway for missing people on the Mid North Coast. One woman went missing after her car was trapped in floodwaters. Another man was reported missing after walking near a flooded road, and failing to return home.

More than 100 schools have been closed because of the floods, which have left thousands of homes and businesses without power. Evacuation centres have been opened for those fleeing the flooding.

NSW police say 22 people have been rescued by helicopter, including 18 winched from flooded homes and roads, and four rescued from a bridge. Four dogs and one cat were also rescued with their owners.

Taree, a city on the Mid North Coast, has been among the worst affected. On Wednesday, flooding at a major river in the area surpassed 6.3m (20.6ft), beating an almost century old record for its highest level.

Authorities confirmed the body of a 63-year-old man was recovered on Wednesday afternoon at a property in Moto, near Taree. The fatality was later identified in an ABC News report as David Knowles. Local police have started an investigation into the incident.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese sent his condolences to the man’s family in a post in X, calling his death “devastating”.

On Thursday morning, the body of a man in his 30s was found in floodwaters near Rosewood on the Mid North Coast. It followed earlier reports of a man stuck in floodwaters while driving in the area.

Later, NSW police said its officers had recovered the body of a 60-year-old woman who got into trouble at Brooklana, about 30km (18 miles) from the city of Coffs Harbour.

Further north, a fourth person – a 49-year-old man – is still missing at Nymboida, about 40km south of the city of Grafton.

By Friday, some areas are predicted to receive another 300mm (12 inches) of rain.

Nearly 10,000 homes are at risk of flooding in the state’s Mid North Coast.

“We are bracing for more bad news,” Minns told reporters at a press conference.

“It’s very difficult to get supplies into some of these isolated communities,” Minns said, adding that the prime minister has pledged his support for any help needed from the federal government.

Minns also urged those who are in “prepare to evacuate” areas to leave if they can, while acknowledging some won’t be able to.

“They may be elderly, they might be infirm, they might have young children. But if we can get the majority of people out of harm’s way, it makes everybody’s job a lot easier.”

The NSW State Emergency Service (SES) said it has responded to more than 300 flood rescues in the 24 hours to 05:00 local time (20:00 BST) – and more than 500 rescues since the flooding began.

“We’ve seen continual rainfall and very fast flowing rivers, which when combined with flooded roads have made it very difficult to access some isolated people,” NSW SES Assistant Commissioner Colin Malone said.

He added: “While dozens of rescues have been completed overnight, they continue to be received, and the New South Wales SES and our partner agencies have helicopter resources, boats and high clearance vehicles responding when it is safe to do so.”

Jihad Dib, NSW Minister for Emergency Services said that the state government continues to “throw every single thing we’ve got” toward rescue operations.

“These aren’t the records that you want to break, but we’ve seen more rain and more flooding in the mid and the north coast than we’ve ever seen before,” he said.

A young couple who worked for the Israeli Embassy have been shot dead outside a Jewish museum in Washington DC.

Police say the victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, were killed by a man who shouted “free, free Palestine”. The suspect is in custody.

Here’s what you need to know about the shooting.

At 21:08 local time on Wednesday, police received calls about a shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in downtown Washington DC.

A man and a woman were found unconscious and not breathing at the scene, and later died.

The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) said the couple had been leaving an event at the museum which is in an area with tourist sites, museums and government buildings.

Police allege the shooting was committed by Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, who is being questioned in custody.

He had been seen pacing up and down outside the museum before using a handgun to open fire on a group of four people, the MPD said.

The suspect then went inside the museum, where he was detained. He repeatedly shouted “free Palestine” while being arrested, police said.

Some in the museum had initially thought he was a distressed bystander when he burst in.

One witness, Yoni Kalin, said people inside had been “calming him down, giving him water, taking care of him”.

“Little did we know he was somebody that executed people in cold blood,” he said.

The MPD are leading the investigation while the FBI has said it is looking into whether the attack was linked to terrorism or a hate crime.

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim had both worked at the embassy. Mr Lischinsky had been about to propose to Miss Milgrim, Israel’s ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter said on Thursday.

“The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem,” he told reporters.

Yaron Lischinsky, a joint German-Israeli national, had worked as a research assistant at the embassy, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Born in Germany, he had moved to Israel as a teenager before relocating to Washington, his friend Ronen Shoval said.

He was a “devout Christian” with “good character”, Mr Shoval told the BBC.

He had also previously served in the Israeli military, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, said.

Sarah Lynn Milgrim, an American from Kansas, worked for the Israeli embassy’s public diplomacy department, according to her LinkedIn page.

Her father, Robert, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that his daughter “loved Israel” and “loved everybody that lived in the Middle East”.

“She had a lot of close Palestinian friends, as well as many Israeli friends,” he said.

KU Hillel, a Jewish student organisation at the University of Kansas, said Miss Milgrim was a “beloved alum” with a “bright spirit”.

The Israeli embassy said its staff were “heartbroken and devastated” by the deaths.

• Follow live: Two Israeli embassy staff shot dead near Jewish museum in Washington DC
• Israeli museum victim ‘was planning to propose’

Elias Rodriguez is being held by authorities and is due to appear in court on Thursday. He is believed to have acted alone, said US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The FBI was seen searching a Chicago property believed to be linked to him.

He had been working at the American Osteopathic Information Association since 2024, according to online records examined by BBC Verify.

Social media accounts that appear to belong to Elias Rodriguez also indicate that he was heavily involved in the pro-Palestinian protest movement.

An online story indicated that he was associated with a fringe communist group, The Party for Socialism and Liberation, in 2017.

In a post on X, the party said they “have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it” and have had no contact with Elias Rodriguez for seven years.

Police said there had been no prior interactions with the suspect and had not seen anything in his background “that would have placed him on our radar”.

The event at the Capital Jewish Museum had been billed as a networking opportunity to bring Jewish young professionals and the diplomatic community together.

The organiser, American Jewish Committee, said it was open to those in the DC diplomatic community. The event’s theme was advertised as “turning pain into purpose”.

The event description said it invited humanitarian aid organisers responding to crises in the Middle East, including Gaza.

The location was only shared with those who signed up to attend.

President Donald Trump has condemned the attack and called it antisemitic.

Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, he said: “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, now!

“Hatred and radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims.

“So sad that such things as this can happen! God bless you all!”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “outraged by the horrifying antisemitic murder” of the victims.

His office said he had spoken to both victims’ parents.

“My heart grieves for the families of the young beloveds, whose lives were cut short in a moment by an abhorrent antisemitic murderer,” he said, adding he had directed Israeli embassies around the world to increase security.

He and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also said the deaths were caused by “anti-Israeli incitement” which they said was being carried out by European leaders.

Earlier this week, the leaders of the UK, France and Canada signed a strongly worded joint letter condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza.

In a video address, Netanyahu linked Wednesday’s killings in Washington to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel.

“As he was taken away, he chanted, ‘Free Palestine!’ This is exactly the same chant we heard on October 7th,” Netanyahu said.

He accused Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of “emboldening Hamas to continue fighting forever” by calling for Israel to end its war in Gaza.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to 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.

Donald Trump confronted President Cyril Ramaphosa during a tense exchange in the White House on Wednesday, with a series of contested claims about the killings of white farmers in South Africa.

The meeting – at first warm and light-hearted – quickly changed tone as Trump asked his staff to play a video mostly showing South African opposition politician Julius Malema chanting a song calling for violence against white farmers.

The video also included footage showing rows of crosses, which he claimed was a burial site for murdered white farmers, and presented Ramaphosa with copies of articles which he said documented widespread brutality against South Africa’s white minority.

Supporters of the Trump administration have long amplified claims of violence against the white minority, notably Elon Musk and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who ran segments on the supposed genocide during the president’s first term. Some of these claims are demonstrably false.

The footage played by Trump in the Oval Office showed rows of white crosses stretching off into the distance along a rural road. Trump claimed: “These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers.”

However, the crosses do not mark graves. The video is from a protest against the murder of white farming couple Glen and Vida Rafferty, who were ambushed and shot dead on their premises in 2020. The clip was shared on YouTube on 6 September, the day after the protests.

“It’s not a burial site, but it was a memorial,” Rob Hoatson, one of the organisers of the event, told the BBC. He said the crosses were erected as a “temporary memorial” to the couple.

Mr Hoatson said the crosses have since been taken down.

BBC Verify has geolocated the footage to an area in KwaZulu-Natal province, near the town of Newcastle. Google Street View imagery captured in May 2023 – almost three years after the footage first appeared online – shows that the crosses were no longer standing.

In the meeting, Trump said: “A lot of people are very concerned with regard to South Africa… we have many people that feel they’re being persecuted, and they are coming to the US, so we take from many locations if we feel there’s persecution or genocide going on.”

He has previously made claims about “white genocide” several times before and appeared to be referring to that.

At a press briefing earlier this month he said: “It’s a genocide that’s taking place” referring to killing of white farmers in South Africa.

The country has one of the highest murder rates in the world. There were 26,232 murders last year, according to South African Police Service (SAPS) figures.

Of these, 44 were killings of people within the farming community and of those, eight were of farmers.

These figures are not broken down by race in any public stats release that we’ve been able to locate – but they clearly don’t provide evidence for the claims of “white genocide” made repeatedly by Trump.

In February, a South African judge dismissed the idea of a genocide as “clearly imagined” and “not real”.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU), which represents farmers, compiles figures which offer an insight into the racial identity of the victims. The TAU relies on media reports, social media posts and reports from their members.

Their figures for last year show there were 23 white people killed in farm attacks, and nine black people. So far this year TAU has recorded three white people and four black people killed on South African farms.

During the tense meeting, Trump played footage from political rallies in which participants sang “Kill the Boer” – a controversial anti-apartheid song that critics say calls for violence against white farmers.

South African courts had categorised the song as hate speech, but recent judgements have ruled that it can be legally sung at rallies as judges say it makes a political point and does not directly invoke violence.

Trump said that those leading the singing were “officials” and “people that were in office”.

One of the men leading the rally was Julius Malema, who previously led the ruling ANC’s youth wing. In 2012 he left the party and has never held an official government position. He now leads a party called the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) which won 9.5% in last year’s election, entering opposition against the new multi-party coalition.

Responding to Trump’s accusations, Ramaphosa emphasised that the EFF is “a small minority party” and said that “our government policy is completely against what he was saying”.

Another man in the video who can be heard singing the lyric “shoot the Boer” at a different rally is former President Jacob Zuma, who left office in 2018. The video is from 2012 when he was president. The ANC promised to stop singing the song shortly afterwards.

Zuma subsequently left the ANC and now leads the opposition uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, which won more than 14% in last year’s election.

During the meeting, Trump held up a series of articles which he claimed showed evidence of white farmer killings in South Africa.

There was an image clearly visible as Trump spoke and said: “Look, here’s burial sites all over the place. These are all white farmers that are being buried.”

But the image isn’t from South Africa – it’s actually from a report about women being killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The French news agency (AFP) initially pointed out the image, and BBC Verify ran a search and confirmed it as being from a Reuters news agency clip filmed in the DR Congo city of Goma in February.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

At least two people have died after a small plane crashed into a residential street in San Diego on Thursday morning.

One home was destroyed and 10 buildings were damaged after the small plane crashed in the Murphy Canyon neighbourhood outside San Diego, officials said.

Eight people who were on the ground suffered minor injuries – one was taken to hospital while others were treated on-site, they said. Around 100 people evacuated from nearby areas.

The small plane was a Cessna 550 aircraft, said the Federal Aviation Administration, which can carry eight to 10 people including the pilot.

Authorities have not revealed the identities of deceased, or of the passengers on board.

“There’s plane everywhere,” said Assistant Fire Department Chief Dan Eddy, describing the scene authorities were faced with.

“As you would expect, something that large at that amount of speed, were going to have a lot of throw that goes every which direction,” he explained.

Earlier on Thursday, he confirmed that there was a “direct hit to multiple homes”, and that no one in those homes were believed to be seriously injured.

Footage from the scene shows the charred cars littered across the street.

Local resident Christopher Moore told the Associated Press that he and his wife were woken by a loud bang in the early hours of the morning.

Mr Moore said they looked out the window and saw smoke, and the couple grabbed their two young children and fled.

Once on the street, they saw a car engulfed in flames.

“It was definitely horrifying for sure, but sometimes you’ve just got to drop your head and get to safety,” Mr Moore said.

A marine who lives near the crash site told Fox News he heard a “strange whistling wheezing noise” followed by a “boom and a shake in the house”.

The aircraft appeared to be heading to Montgomery Field, an airport located 10km (six miles) north of downtown San Diego.

A top Maoist leader has been killed fighting with Indian security forces in the central state of Chhattisgarh.

Nambala Keshava Rao, who is also known by several alias, including Basavaraju, was among 27 rebels killed on Wednesday, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said. One police officer was also reported to have died in the fighting.

According to Shah, it is the first time in three decades that a Maoist of Rao’s seniority had been killed by government forces.

Parts of Chhattisgarh have seen a long-running insurgency by the rebels, who say they have been neglected by governments for decades. The Indian government has vowed to end their insurgency by the end of March 2026.

Rao, an engineer by training, was the general secretary of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) group. He was on the most wanted list of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) – India’s counter-terrorism law enforcement body.

Vivekanand Sinha, a senior police official in Chhattisgarh, said the gunfight in which Rao and the others died, broke out in the Narayanpur district following an intelligence tip-off that senior Maoist leaders were in the area.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on X that he was “proud of our forces for this remarkable success”.

The Communist Party of India, meanwhile, has condemned the killings and called for an independent inquiry.

Last month, the Indian government launched a massive military operation – known as Black Forest – targeting the group.

Shah said on Wednesday that 54 rebels had been arrested so far, and 84 had surrendered in the states of Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Maharashtra, as a result.

The operation was launched after the Maoists said they were ready for talks with the government if it halted its offensive and withdrew its troops. Chhattisgarh officials said any dialogue must be unconditional.

The Maoists are inspired by the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. Their insurgency began in West Bengal state in the late 1960s and has since spread to more than a third of India’s 600 districts.

The rebels control large areas of several states in a “red corridor” stretching from north-east to central India.

Major military and police offensives in recent years have pushed the rebels back to their forest strongholds and levels of violence have fallen.

But clashes between security forces and rebels are still common, killing scores of people every year.

A crackdown by security forces killed around 287 rebels last year – the vast majority in Chhattisgarh – according to government data. More than 10,000 people are believed to have died since the 1960s.