A senior Hamas official has told the BBC that mediators have intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.

The comments came as US President Donald Trump said “great progress” was being made since Israel and Iran ended their 12-day war on Tuesday, and that his envoy Steve Witkoff thought an agreement between Israel and Hamas was “very close”.

Israeli attacks across Gaza on Wednesday killed at least 45 Palestinians, including some who were seeking aid, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military announced that seven soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on Tuesday claimed by Hamas.

“I think great progress is being made on Gaza, I think because of this attack that we made,” President Trump told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday, referring to the US air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities carried out at the weekend amid the conflict between Israel and Iran.

“I think we’re going to have some very good news. I was talking to Steve Witkoff… [and] he did tell me that Gaza’s very close,” he added.

Shortly after Trump spoke, the senior Hamas official told the BBC that mediators were “engaged in intensive contacts aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement”.

However, he added that the group had “not received any new proposal so far”.

An Israeli official also told the Haaretz newspaper that there has been no progress in the negotiations, and that major disagreements remained unresolved.

Efforts by the US, Qatar and Egypt to broker a deal stalled at the end of May, when Witkoff said Hamas had sought “totally unacceptable” amendments to a US proposal backed by Israel for a 60-day truce, during which half the living Israeli hostages and half of those who have died would be released.

Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on 18 March, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release its hostages. Fifty are still in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel also imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings from global experts that half a million people were facing starvation.

At the same time, Israel and the US backed the establishment of a new aid distribution mechanism run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is intended to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Palestinians. They said the GHF’s system would prevent aid being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies doing.

The GHF, which uses US private security contractors, says it has distributed food packages containing more than 44 million meals since it began operating on 26 May, with more than 2.4 million handed out at three sites on Wednesday.

However, the UN and other aid groups have refused to co-operate with the GHF, accusing it of co-operating with Israel’s goals in a way that violates fundamental humanitarian principles.

They have also expressed alarm at the near-daily reports of Palestinians being killed near the group’s sites, which are inside Israeli military zones.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 549 people have been killed and 4,000 injured while trying to collect aid since the GHF began distributing aid on 26 May.

On Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said six people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire at crowds waiting near one of the GHF’s food distribution centre in central Gaza.

Three others were killed near a GHF site in the southern city of Rafah, he added.

However, the Israeli military said it was “not aware of any incidents with casualties in those areas”, while the GHF said the reports of any such incidents near its sites were false.

In Gaza City, funerals were held for some of the 33 people who the health ministry said had been killed over the previous day while waiting for aid.

“I say and repeat a million times,” Abu Mohammed told Reuters news agency. “These aid points are not aid points, these are death points.”

Unicef spokesman James Elder, who has just visited Gaza, said: “So long as a population is denied food, people are being offered this lethal choice and, unfortunately, because it’s in a combat zone, it cannot improve.”

The Civil Defence spokesman also said another six people, including a child, were killed in an air strike on a house early on Wednesday in Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza.

Five others were killed when homes in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, he said.

More than 860 Palestinians were reported killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during the Israel-Iran conflict, which began when Israel launched an air campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Iran launched barrages of missiles towards Israel in response.

People in Gaza were divided in their assessments of what the ceasefire meant for the territory.

Some viewed the weakening of Iran, Hamas’s key regional backer, as a potentially positive step towards achieving a truce in Gaza because it might force the group to ease its demands.

Others, however, feared the end of the conflict would allow Israel to redirect its military focus back on Gaza and intensify its air and ground operations.

One man in Khan Younis, Nader Ramadan, told the BBC that it felt like “everything got worse” in Gaza during the conflict.

“The [Israeli] bombing intensified, the damage increased, and the incursion expanded in certain areas… We only felt the destruction,” he said.

Adel Abu Reda said the most difficult thing was the lack of access to aid. He said items were being looted and sold for inflated prices, and civilians were coming under Israeli fire when trying to get food.

“What are we supposed to do?” he asked. “We feel the shooting and the killing all the time.”

In Israel, the military announced that seven of its soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Gaza on Tuesday – the deadliest such incident since the ceasefire collapsed.

Spokesman Brig-Gen Effie Defrin said an explosive device was attached to an armoured vehicle in the Khan Younis area, and that the blast caused the vehicle to catch fire. Helicopters and rescue forces made several unsuccessful attempts to rescue them, he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was “a difficult day for the people of Israel”.

The deaths renewed pressure on Netanyahu to agree a ceasefire, with the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party in his governing coalition saying Israel should end the war and bring home all the hostages.

“I don’t understand what we’re fighting for and for what purpose… when soldiers are being killed all the time?” Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism told the Israeli parliament.

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

At least 56,157 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

After spending nearly two weeks in a secret bunker somewhere in Iran during his country’s war with Israel, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, might want to use the opportunity of the ceasefire to venture out.

He is believed to be holed up, incommunicado, for the fear of being assassinated by Israel. Even top government officials apparently have had no contact with him.

He would be well advised to be cautious, despite the fragile ceasefire that the US President Donald Trump and the Emir of Qatar brokered. Though President Trump reportedly told Israel not to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not rule it out.

When – or indeed if – he does emerge from hiding, he will see a landscape of death and destruction. He will no doubt still appear on state TV claiming victory in the conflict. He will plot to restore his image. But he will face new realities – even a new era.

The war has left the country significantly weakened and him a diminished man.

During the war, Israel quickly took control of much of Iran’s airspace, and attacked its military infrastructure. Top commanders of the Revolutionary Guard and the army were swiftly killed.

The extent of the damage to the military is still unclear and disputed, but the repeated bombings of the army and revolutionary guard bases and installations suggests substantial degradation of Iran’s military power. Militarisation had long consumed a vast amount of the nation’s resources.

Iran’s known nuclear facilities that earned the country nearly two decades of US and international sanctions, with an estimated cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, are now damaged from the air strikes, although the full extent of this has been hard to assess. What was it all for, many are asking.

A vast number of Iranians will singularly hold Ayatollah Khamenei, who first became leader in 1989, responsible for setting Iran on a collision course with Israel and the US that ultimately brought considerable ruin to his country and people.

They will blame him for pursuing the ideological aim of destruction of Israel – something many Iranians don’t support. They will blame him for what they perceive as a folly – his belief that achieving nuclear status would render his regime invincible. Sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, reducing a top oil exporter to a poor and struggling shadow of its former self.

“It is difficult to estimate how much longer the Iranian regime can survive under such significant strain, but this looks like the beginning of the end,” says Professor Lina Khatib, a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

“Ali Khamenei is likely to become the Islamic Republic’s last ‘Supreme Leader’ in the full sense of the word.”

There have been murmurs of dissent at the top. At the height of the war, one semi-official Iranian news agency reported that some top former regime figures have been urging the country’s more quiet religious scholars based in the holy city of Qom, who are separate to the ayatollah, to intervene and bring about a change in leadership.

“There will be a reckoning,” according to Professor Ali Ansari, the founding director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.

“It’s quite clear that there are huge disagreements within the leadership, and there’s also huge unhappiness among ordinary people.”

During the last two weeks, many Iranians wrestled with conflicted feelings of the need to defend their country versus their deep hatred of the regime. They rallied for the country, not by coming out to defend the regime, but to look after each other. There have been reports of vast solidarity and closeness.

People in towns and villages outside urban areas opened their doors to those who had fled the bombardments in their cities, shopkeepers undercharged basic goods, neighbours knocked on each other’s doors to ask if they needed anything.

But many people were also aware that Israel was probably looking for a regime change in Iran. A regime change is what many Iranians wish for. They may draw the line on a regime change engineered and imposed by foreign powers, however.

In his nearly 40 years of his rule, Ayatollah Khamenei, one of the world’s longest reigning autocrats, has decimated any opposition in the country. Opposition political leaders are either in jail or have fled the country. Abroad, the opposition figures have been unable to formulate a stance that unites the opposition to the regime.

They have been ineffectual in the establishment of any semblance of an organisation able to take over inside the country if the opportunity arises.

And during the two weeks of war, when the collapse of the regime could have been a possibility, if the war went on relentlessly, many believed the likely scenario for the day after was not the takeover by the opposition, but the descent of the country into chaos and lawlessness.

“It is unlikely that the Iranian regime will be toppled through domestic opposition. The regime remains strong at home and will ramp up domestic oppression to crush dissent,” says Prof Khatib.

Iranians are now fearing further clampdown by the regime. At least six people have been executed in the past two weeks since the start of the war with Israel on charges of spying for Israel. Authorities say they have arrested some 700 people on this charge.

One Iranian woman told BBC Persian what she fears more than the death and destruction of the war is a regime that is wounded and humiliated turning its anger against its own people.

“If the regime is unable to supply basic goods and services, then there will be growing anger and frustration,” says Prof Ansari.

“I see it as a staged process. I don’t see it as something that, necessarily, in a popular sense, will take root until long after the bombing is over.”

Few people in Iran think that the ceasefire brokered on Monday will last – and many believe Israel is not yet finished now that it has total superiority in the sky over Iran.

One thing that seems to have escaped the destruction are Iran’s ballistic missile silos that Israel found hard to locate as they are placed in tunnels under mountains throughout the country.

The Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, said Israel launched its opening attack on Iran knowing that “Iran possessed around 2,500 surface-to-surface missiles”. The missiles that Iran fired caused considerable death and destruction in Israel.

Israel will be concerned about the remaining possible 1,500 still in the hands of the Iranian side.

There is also a serious concern in Tel Aviv, Washington and other Western and regional capitals that Iran may still rush to build a nuclear bomb, something it has continued to deny trying to do.

Although Iran’s nuclear facilities have almost certainly been set back, and possibly rendered useless during the bombings by Israel and the US, Iran said it had moved its stockpile of highly enriched Uranium to a safe secret place.

That stockpile of 60% Uranium, if enriched to 90%, which is a relatively easy step, is enough for about nine bombs, according to experts. Just before the war started, Iran announced that it had built another new secret facility for enrichment that was due to come on stream soon.

The Iranian parliament has voted to sharply reduce its cooperation with the UN’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This still requires approval, but if it passes Iran would be one step away from exiting the nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT – as hardliners supporting the supreme leader push for Iran’s breakout to build a bomb.

Ayatollah Khamenei may now be confident that his regime has survived, just. But at the age of 86 and ailing, he also knows that his own days may be numbered, and he may want to ensure continuity of the regime with an orderly transition of power – to another senior cleric or even a council of leadership.

In any case, the remaining top commanders of the Revolutionary Guard who have been loyal to the supreme leader may be seeking to wield power from behind the scenes.

The new members of US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s panel of vaccine advisers will review long-approved immunisation schedules for children and teens.

The seven members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (Acip) met for the first time on Wednesday, weeks after Kennedy ousted all 17 of their predecessors.

The Acip recommends who should be vaccinated and when to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Ahead of the meeting, public health experts and politicians raised concerns about the qualifications of the new members – several of whom are vaccine critics.

The health secretary sparked uproar when he removed all 17 members of the Acip on 9 June, and then hand-picked eight new members to serve on the panel – including one who dropped out hours before the first meeting.

Wednesday’s meeting began with the new chair Dr Martin Kulldorff telling the panel that he was fired from his job as a professor at Harvard University because he refused to get a Covid-19 vaccine.

Dr Kulldorff also announced the panel would launch new working groups to examine child vaccination schedules and vaccines that were approved seven or more years ago.

He said it would be reviewed whether it was “wise” to give the hepatitis B vaccines to newborns, a shot proven safe and effective at preventing the infection that causes liver cancer.

Vaccine schedules for measles would also be reviewed, he said.

Examining vaccines licensed seven or more years ago raises concerns, because it suggests the process to approve them was flawed, said Bill Hanage, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

“I cannot think of any rational reason you would look at that and think it to be the case,” he said.

The panel was initially meant to vote on recommendations for shots against RSV, a respiratory virus that can be dangerous for infants, but that has been postponed.

On Thursday, the group is scheduled to hear a presentation on the use of thimerosal in vaccines given by Lyn Redwood, a former leader of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group Kennedy used to run.

Ms Redwood has been hired by the CDC to work in its vaccine safety office, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

The decision for the panel to discuss thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that has not been used in most vaccines for decades, is perplexing, Dr Hanage said.

In the past, he said, Acip’s members had a wide range of vaccine expertise and would scrutinise vaccine recommendations for months.

This time, Kennedy chose for the panel “people that are like him – people in the past who have shown an anti-vaccine bias”, said Dr Paul Offit, a former Acip member and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

One of the new Acip members was Dr Michael Ross, however he withdrew this week ahead of a review of members’ financial holdings, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

Kennedy’s panel choices have also sparked criticism from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician who was sceptical of voting to confirm Kennedy as health secretary because of his stances on vaccines.

In a post on X, Cassidy said the panel should not proceed with their meeting because of the group’s small size and the lack of a CDC director in place to approve their recommendations.

“Although the appointees to ACIP have scientific credentials, many do not have significant experience studying microbiology, epidemiology or immunology,” he wrote.

“In particular, some lack experience studying new technologies such as mRNA vaccines, and may even have a preconceived bias against them.”

At least eight people have been killed and 400 injured as thousands took to the streets in a day of protests across Kenya against President William Ruto’s government.

Police clashed with protesters in the capital Nairobi and other cities exactly a year on from the wave of deadly anti-government demonstrations that hit the nation in 2024.

Many of those demonstrating chanted “Ruto must go” and waved branches as a symbol of peaceful opposition to his rule.

The government banned live TV and radio coverage of the protests, but its decree was overturned by the High Court in the capital, Nairobi.

Ruto urged protesters not to threaten peace and stability, as crowds tried to reach his official residence but were pushed back by police.

“Protests should not be to destroy peace in Kenya. We do not have another country to go to when things go wrong. It is our responsibility to keep our country safe,” he said.

The president was speaking at a burial ceremony in the coastal county of Kilifi.

His absence from State House, his official residence, was notable as young protesters threatened to storm it.

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Police used barricades and razor wire to seal off major roads – especially those leading to State House and parliament.

The authorities have not yet given any casualty figures from Wednesday’s protests, but the Kenya Medical Association, Law Society of Kenya and the Police Reforms Working Group said in a joint statement that at least eight protesters were killed.

Of the 400 injured, 83 required “specialised treatment” and eight had suffered gunshot wounds. The injured included three police officers, the statement added.

A human rights group – Amnesty Kenya – put the death toll as high as 16.

One demonstrator, Amina Mude, told the BBC she joined the protests “to fight for the future of my kids”.

“I feel like as a country we’re not going in the right direction, especially in education and everything happening.

“I feel like it’s high time that the country and the leadership listens to us.”

In Nairobi, video footage showed plumes of white tear gas drifting between buildings, sending protesters scrambling for cover, coughing, and shielding their eyes.

In the heart of the city, protesters marched pass shuttered shops and empty streets.

The fence around parliament was lined with wreaths and handwritten notes from grieving families and defiant youths – a reminder of last year’s unrest at the site.

A young woman draped in a Kenyan flag clutched a poster bearing the names of those killed a year ago by the security forces as they tried to end the protests.

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The head of the CIA has said US strikes “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear facilities and set them back years, diverging from a leaked intelligence report that angered President Donald Trump by downplaying the raid’s impact.

John Ratcliffe, the US spy agency’s director, said key sites had been destroyed, though he stopped short of declaring that Iran’s nuclear programme had been eliminated outright.

It comes a day after a leaked preliminary assessment from a Pentagon intelligence agency suggested core components of Iran’s nuclear programme remained intact after the US bombings.

President Trump again maintained the raid had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Republican president took to social media on Wednesday to post that the “fake news” media had “lied and totally misrepresented the facts, none of which they had”.

He said Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and other military officials would hold an “interesting and irrefutable” news conference on Thursday at the Pentagon “in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots”.

It came as Israel and Iran seemed to honour a fragile ceasefire that Trump helped negotiate this week on the 12th day of the war.

Speaking at The Hague where he attended a Nato summit on Wednesday, Trump said of the strikes: “It was very severe. It was obliteration.”

He also said he would probably seek a commitment from Iran to end its nuclear ambitions at talks next week. Iran has not acknowledged any such negotiations.

But US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told US network NBC there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries.

Ratcliffe’s statement said the CIA’s information included “new intelligence from an historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years”.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also come out in support of Trump’s assessment on the damage to Iranian nuclear facilities.

“If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordo, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she wrote on X.

The US operation involved 125 military aircraft, targeting the three main Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday.

New satellite images show six craters clustered around two entry points at Fordo, with similar craters spotted at Isfahan. But it is unclear if the nuclear facilities located deep underground were wiped out.

A report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency was leaked to US media on Tuesday, estimating that the US bombing had set back Iran’s nuclear programme “only a few months”.

The US defence secretary said that assessment was made with “low confidence”.

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Officials familiar with the evaluation cautioned it was an early assessment that could change as more information emerges. The US has 18 intelligence agencies, which sometimes produce conflicting reports based on their mission and area of expertise.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday that there is a chance Tehran moved much of its highly enriched uranium elsewhere as it came under attack.

But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Al Jazeera on Wednesday: “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.” He did not elaborate.

A report by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission said the strike on Fordo “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure”.

The damage across all the sites, the report said, has pushed Iran’s timeline for nuclear weapons back by “many years”.

Yet Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to the chairman of the Iranian parliament, said shortly after the US strikes that “no irreversible damage was sustained” at Fordo.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is peaceful. US intelligence agencies have previously said Tehran was not actively building atomic weapons.

Nato leaders have agreed to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their countries’ economic output by 2035, following months of pressure from Donald Trump.

The US president described the decision, taken at a summit in The Hague, as a “big win for Europe and… Western civilisation”.

In a joint statement, members said they were united against “profound” security challenges, singling out the “long-term threat posed by Russia” and terrorism.

Nato leaders reaffirmed their “ironclad commitment” to the principle that an attack on one Nato member would lead to a response from the full alliance.

However, the statement did not include a condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as it had a year ago.

“No-one should doubt our capacity or determination should our security be challenged,” said Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte. “This is a stronger, fairer and more lethal alliance that our leaders have begun to build”.

The US president had earlier appeared to raise questions about the security guarantee, referring to “various definitions of Article Five”. But Trump said after the summit: “I stand with [Article Five], that’s why I’m here.”

The Hague summit has been described by several leaders as historic, and Rutte said decisions made on Wednesday would include continued support for Ukraine while pushing for peace.

The commitment to raise defence spending over 10 years involves at least 3.5% of each member state’s GDP on core defence expenditure by 2035, plus up to 1.5% on a broadly defined series of investments loosely connected to security infrastructure.

The US president hailed the summit – the first he has attended since 2019 – as a “big success”.

He had said earlier that the hike in spending would be a “great victory for everybody, I think. We will be equalised shortly, and that’s the way it has to be”.

Spain in particular had objected to the 5% target ahead of the meeting. Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said Madrid was making an “enormous effort” to reach a target of 2.1% and “the discussion about the percentage is misguided”.

As the leaders gathered for the traditional “family photo”, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez appeared to stand by himself at the far end of the group.

Nevertheless, Sánchez later went ahead and signed Nato’s statement, maintaining that it was “sufficient, realistic and compatible” for Madrid to meet its commitments while paying less.

The Belgian government had also expressed reservations, but Prime Minister Bart de Wever told reporters that while it wouldn’t be easy “3.5% within 10 years is a realistic goal”.

Slovakia had also raised concerns about the big hike in defence spending, but President Peter Pellegrini indicated that Bratislava would not stand in the way.

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French President Emmanuel Macron took issue with President Trump’s trade tariff confrontation with the European Union and called for a deal.

“We can’t say to each other, among allies, we need to spend more… and wage trade war against one another, it makes no sense.”

The Hague summit, which began with a dinner on Tuesday night hosted by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, has been scaled back so Wednesday’s set-piece gathering of leaders was due to last only two and a half hours.

Rutte told Nato leaders that they were meeting at a “dangerous moment”, and that the defence alliance’s guarantee of mutual defence – “an attack on one is an attack on all, sends a powerful message”.

Rutte also praised Trump for his handling of the Iran-Israel conflict, and referenced the president’s use of an expletive when describing his frustration at signs a ceasefire announced hours earlier could be in jeopardy on Tuesday.

Speaking at the summit, Trump said the two countries had fought like “two kids in a schoolyard”, and Rutte interjected: “And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language”.

The US president also held talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the summit. During a press conference afterwards, Trump said achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine was proving “more difficult” than he had expected, and raised the prospect of supplying Ukraine with further air defences.

“He’s got a little difficulty, Zelensky, a nice guy,” said Trump. “I’ve spoken to Putin a lot… he volunteered help on Iran. I said do me a favour, help us on Russia, not Iran.”

In their final communique, Nato member states stressed their commitments to providing support for Ukraine, “whose security contributes to ours”, adding that direct contributions to Kyiv’s defence and its defence industry would be included in assessment of allies’ defence spending.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Nato was as relevant and important now as it had ever been: “We live in a very volatile world and today is about the unity of Nato, showing that strength. We’re bigger than we were before, we’re stronger than we were before.”

Ticket touts are employing teams of workers to bulk-buy tickets for the UK’s biggest concerts like Oasis and Taylor Swift so they can be resold for profit, a BBC investigation has found.

We uncovered some touts are making “millions” hiring people overseas, known as “ticket pullers”, with one telling an undercover journalist his team bought hundreds of tickets for Swift’s Eras tour last year.

Our reporter, posing as a would-be tout, secretly recorded the boss of a ticket pulling company in Pakistan who said they could set up a team for us and potentially buy hundreds of tickets.

The UK government plans new legislation to crack down on touts but critics argue it does not go far enough.

More than 900,000 tickets were sold for Oasis’s long-awaited reunion tour, which starts in Cardiff next Friday.

But thousands of frustrated fans failed to get tickets for the sell-out gigs after spending hours in online queues.

Shortly after pre-sale, where a limited number of fans could buy Oasis tickets when they went on sale in August, tickets for their UK gigs were being listed on resale websites like StubHub and Viagogo for more than £6,000 – about 40 times the face value of a standing ticket.

We found genuine fans missed out or, in desperation, ended up paying way over the odds as touts have an army of people working for them to buy tickets for the most in-demand events as soon as they go on sale.

Ali, the boss of the ticket pulling company, boasted to our undercover reporter that he’d been successful at securing tickets for popular gigs.

“I think we had 300 Coldplay tickets and then we had Oasis in the same week – we did great,” he told us.

Ali claimed he knew of a UK tout who made more than £500,000 last year doing this and reckons others are “making millions”.

Our research found pullers buy tickets using illegal automated software and multiple identities which could amount to fraud.

Another ticket pulling boss, based in India, told BBC Wales Investigates’ undercover reporter: “If I’m sitting in your country and running my operations in your country, then it is completely illegal.

“We do not participate in illegal things because actually we are outside of the UK.”

A man who worked in the ticketing industry for almost 40 years showed us how he infiltrated a secret online group that claims to have secured thousands of tickets using underhand methods.

Reg Walker said members of the group could generate 100,000 “queue passes” – effectively allowing them to bypass the software that creates an online queue for gigs.

He told the BBC’s The Great Ticket Rip Off programme this was the equivalent of “100,000 people all of a sudden turning up and pushing in front of you in the queue”.

He added: “If you are a ticketing company and an authorised resale company, and someone decides to list hundreds of tickets for a high-demand event… my question would be, where did you get the tickets? There’s no due diligence.”

Fans are usually limited to a handful of tickets when buying from primary platforms such as Ticketmaster.

Touts often list their tickets on resale websites and one former Viagogo employee alleged he had seen some profiles with thousands of tickets for sale.

“They [touts] buy in bulk most of the time in the hope of reselling and making a profit,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t know how they get their hands on them but I know that at some point they would have bought tickets in bulk in serious numbers.

“You’re not allowing a lot of people to get access because you’re hoarding the tickets.”

Viagogo said it refutes this man’s claims, insisting 73% of sellers on its site sold fewer than five tickets each – and other sellers included sports clubs and promoters.

It is not just music concerts targeted by touts as the BBC found evidence of thousands of Premier League football tickets being advertised illegally.

Since 1994 it has been a criminal offence to resell tickets for football matches in the UK unless authorised, with the maximum penalty being a £1,000 fine.

But we found 8,000 tickets being advertised illegally online for more than face value for Arsenal’s Premier League game with Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium on 16 March.

One of those sellers was a semi-professional footballer based in the UK.

Bogdan Stolboushkin has openly advertised tickets for football games totalling more than £60,000 on social media in the past year alone.

He sold our reporter a single ticket at double the face value.

Mr Stolboushkin did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him about these allegations.

Another potentially illegal practice in the UK is “speculative selling”, where touts list tickets for resale without owning them.

There is no guarantee these touts will actually secure a ticket and “speculative selling” was one of the reasons two touts were jailed for fraud in 2020.

Our investigation found at least 104 seats being “speculatively” listed on Viagogo for Catfish and the Bottlemen’s August concert at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

The exact seats appeared to be for sale at the same time on both Ticketmaster, the original point of sale, and Viagogo.

After we presented our evidence to Viagogo, it said: “Listings suspected to be in contravention of our policy have been removed from the site.”

The UK government is looking at measures to try and tackle the issue, but evidence of the challenges faced can be seen in the Republic of Ireland.

In 2021, laws were introduced there to stop the resale of tickets above face value, but the BBC found this being flouted.

This included tickets to see the band Kneecap selling for four times their face value of €59 (£50), while tickets for the Six Nations Ireland v France rugby clash in Dublin were selling for £3,000.

One of Ireland’s biggest promoters, Peter Aiken, said he had never heard of the company selling the tickets and questioned if the tickets existed at all.

Many ticket companies selling in Ireland are based overseas, which the BBC has been told helps them avoid punishment under Irish law.

Capping resale prices of tickets and regulating resale platforms was one of Sir Keir Starmer’s manifesto pledges ahead of last year’s general election.

Now he is prime minister, the UK government has held a consultation with proposals including a price cap that ranges from the original price to 30% above face value, introducing larger fines and a new licensing regime.

But Dame Caroline Dinenage, chairwoman of the UK government’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee said: “It’s a minefield for people who just want to buy tickets for an event they want to enjoy.

“This evidence proves that there is not enough activity going on either from the government, in some cases from the police and certainly from some of these really big online organisations to be able to clamp down on this sort of activity.”

The Conservative MP said this investigation highlighted “what a lot of consumers are already seeing that there is a whole world of, in some cases illegal, but it all cases immoral activity going on in the ticketing sphere”.

“People are having to pay over the odds because others quite often are operating outside of the UK to make an absolute killing on buying up tickets, selling them at a huge premium and in some cases selling tickets that don’t exist at all,” she added.

The UK government’s aim is to “strengthen consumer protections and stop fans getting ripped off”, according to the UK culture secretary.

Lisa Nandy added she wanted to “ensure money spent on tickets goes back into our incredible live events sector, instead of into the pockets of greedy touts”.

Work has begun on a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life from scratch, in what is believed to be a world first.

The research has been taboo until now because of concerns it could lead to designer babies or unforeseen changes for future generations.

But now the World’s largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has given an initial £10m to start the project and says it has the potential to do more good than harm by accelerating treatments for many incurable diseases.

Dr Julian Sale, of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who is part of the project, told BBC News the research was the next giant leap in biology.

“The sky is the limit. We are looking at therapies that will improve people’s lives as they age, that will lead to healthier aging with less disease as they get older.

“We are looking to use this approach to generate disease-resistant cells we can use to repopulate damaged organs, for example in the liver and the heart, even the immune system,” he said.

But critics fear the research opens the way for unscrupulous researchers seeking to create enhanced or modified humans.

Dr Pat Thomas, director of the campaign group Beyond GM, said: “We like to think that all scientists are there to do good, but the science can be repurposed to do harm and for warfare”.

Details of the project were given to BBC News on the 25th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the molecules in human DNA and was also largely funded by Wellcome.

Every cell in our body contains a molecule called DNA which carries the genetic information it needs. DNA is built from just four much smaller blocks referred to as A, G, C and T, which are repeated over and over again in various combinations. Amazingly it contains all the genetic information that physically makes us who we are.

The Human Genome Project enabled scientists to read all human genes like a bar code. The new work that is getting under way, called the Synthetic Human Genome Project, potentially takes this a giant leap forward – it will allow researchers not just to read a molecule of DNA, but to create parts of it – maybe one day all of it – molecule by molecule from scratch.

The scientists’ first aim is to develop ways of building ever larger blocks of human DNA, up to the point when they have synthetically constructed a human chromosome. These contain the genes that govern our development, repair and maintenance.

These can then be studied and experimented on to learn more about how genes and DNA regulate our bodies.

Many diseases occur when these genes go wrong so the studies could lead to better treatments, according to Prof Matthew Hurles, director of the Wellcome Sanger Insititute which sequenced the largest proportion of the Human Genome.

“Building DNA from scratch allows us to test out how DNA really works and test out new theories, because currently we can only really do that by tweaking DNA in DNA that already exists in living systems”.

The project’s work will be confined to test tubes and dishes and there will be no attempt to create synthetic life. But the technology will give researchers unprecedented control over human living systems.

And although the project is hunting for medical benefits, there is nothing to stop unscrupulous scientists misusing the technology.

They could, for example, attempt to create biological weapons, enhanced humans or even creatures that have human DNA, according to Prof Bill Earnshaw, a highly respected genetic scientist at Edinburgh University who designed a method for creating artificial human chromosomes.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” he told BBC News. “We could have a set of restrictions now, but if an organisation who has access to appropriate machinery decided to start synthesising anything, I don’t think we could stop them”

Ms Thomas is concerned about how the technology will be commercialised by healthcare companies developing treatments emerging from the research.

“If we manage to create synthetic body parts or even synthetic people, then who owns them. And who owns the data from these creations? “

Given the potential misuse of the technology, the question for Wellcome is why they chose to fund it. The decision was not made lightly, according to Dr Tom Collins, who gave the funding go-ahead.

“We asked ourselves what was the cost of inaction,” he told BBC News.

“This technology is going to be developed one day, so by doing it now we are at least trying to do it in as responsible a way as possible and to confront the ethical and moral questions in an upfront way as possible”.

A dedicated social science programmewill run in tandem with the project’s scientific development and will be led by Prof Joy Zhang, a sociologist, at the University of Kent.

“We want to get the views of experts, social scientists and especially the public about how they relate to the technology and how it can be beneficial to them and importanlty what questions and concerns they have,” she said.

The world’s oldest boomerang is older than previously thought, casting new light on the ingenuity of humans living at the time.

The tool, which was found in a cave in Poland in 1985, is now thought to be 40,000 years old.

Archaeologists say it was fashioned from a mammoth’s tusk with an astonishing level of skill.

Researchers worked out from its shape that it would have flown when thrown, but would not have come back to the thrower.

It was probably used in hunting, though it might have had cultural or artistic value, perhaps being used in some kind of ritual.

The mammoth ivory boomerang was unearthed in Oblazowa Cave in southern Poland.

It was originally thought to be about 30,000 years old. But new, more reliable radiocarbon dating of human and animal bones found at the site puts the age at between 39,000 and 42,000 years old.

“It’s the oldest boomerang in the world, and the only one in the world made of this shape and this long to be found in Poland,” said Dr Sahra Talamo of the University of Bologna, Italy.

It gives a “remarkable insight” into human behaviour, she said, particularly how Homo sapiens living as long as 42,000 years ago could shape “such a perfect object” with the knowledge it could be used to hunt animals.

The boomerang is exceptionally well preserved, with score marks suggesting it had been polished and carved for use by a right-handed individual.

Boomerangs are generally associated with Aboriginal culture in Australia.

However, rare finds in the historical record outside Australia suggest they were used across different continents.

The oldest known boomerang from Australia dates to about 10,500 years ago, made from wood. But the oldest images of boomerangs in Australia are rock art paintings 20,000 years old, according to National Museum Australia.

A wooden boomerang dating back 7,000 years has been found in Jutland, a peninsula between Denmark and Germany, while fragments of a 2,000-year-old oak boomerang – which does come back – has been found in The Netherlands.

The research by a team of scientists from Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK is published in the journal PLOS One.

The site of Fordo is probably the most spied-on place on the planet.

Western intelligence first went public in 2009 that it was home to a secret nuclear facility. Now understanding the damage done by US strikes will be vital in determining where the conflict goes next.

A leaked Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment has suggested the core components of Iran’s nuclear programme have not been destroyed and the strikes only set back Iran’s efforts by months rather than years.

But that is only an initial assessment and labelled as “low confidence” – the tag comes because it is early days in trying to understand what happened at a place that is deliberately hidden from prying eyes.

The DIA is the Pentagon’s own agency which specialises on military intelligence to support operations. It collects large amounts of technical intelligence but is distinct from other agencies like the CIA.

“Final battle damage will take some time,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine said in the immediate aftermath. But what does it mean to destroy or damage the programme and how do you find out?

Satellite images of holes and dust reveal little about what really happened underground. And they do not suggest massive subsidence or a cave-in of the mountain.

That likely indicates that even though the US used multiple bombs, the Iranians used enough reinforced concrete to keep them from reaching the main hall and destroying the machinery inside. It was the first time these bombs had been used operationally, which adds to the uncertainty.

Even so, the centrifuge machines, which spin at high speeds to enrich uranium, are highly sensitive which means the explosion will likely have crashed many of them by sending them spinning off their axis.

Developing a clearer picture of the damage will require other forms of intelligence – ranging from seismic detectors which can analyse the depth and magnitude of underground explosions (also used to understand earthquakes), sniffers to look for radiation (which international inspectors say they have not seen), and sensors like LIDAR (light detection and ranging) which can provide 3D maps using laser pulses from aircraft or drones to try to look inside the mountain.

Informers and intercepted communications will also be vital as they may reveal Iranians discussing the damage and its implications. All of that will be constantly updated to provide the final assessment with a higher degree of confidence.

And even if the sites like Fordo were dealt serious damage and made unusable for the moment, as US officials have claimed, that is different from saying it is the end of Iran’s overall programme. That is because it could be reconstituted at new sites.

A fleet of lorries was seen at Fordo just before the attack and the crucial question is what they were moving and where it has gone.

All the indications are that Tehran moved its stock of highly enriched uranium to another location. Another mountain known as “pickaxe” has drawn international attention and Iran may also have moved some of the centrifuges, although almost certainly not enough to make progress at the speed it could have done before the attack.

And even when you have enough highly enriched uranium there are more stages required in making a bomb through weaponisation and developing a delivery system. Those require a level of extremely high specialist scientific knowledge. And one of Israel’s most notable actions at the start of the conflict was to kill scientists involved in the programme in the hope of lengthening the timeline.

The attack will have certainly put back Iran’s programme. But by how much? Any answer depends on working out what remains after the attacks and is inevitably going to be an estimate rather than a hard figure.

All of this means that the work of intelligence agencies in trying to understand Iran’s nuclear programme is going to become even more intense in the coming months. And if the signs are Tehran is secretly reconstituting the programme or racing for a bomb then the conflict is likely to begin again.

Daniel Anjorin waved goodbye to his mum as he walked out of the front door of his family home in Hainault at about 07:00, rucksack on his back and headphones on as he headed to school.

Moments later the 14-year-old was murdered by Marcus Monzo, who struck him with a 60cm sword causing devastating injuries to his face and neck.

The 37-year-old has been found guilty of his murder at the Old Bailey.

The Brazilian-Spanish national was also found guilty of attempting to murder local residents Donato Iwule and Sindy Arias, as well as PC Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield in a 20-minute rampage on 30 April 2024.

He was convicted of wounding with intent against Inspector Moloy Campbell and Ms Arias’s husband Henry De Los Rios Polania.

Body-worn camera footage from the police officers showed the extraordinary bravery they displayed as they tried to disarm Monzo, suffering serious injuries as a result.

Monzo had started his rampage by driving his van straight into Donato Iwule, who was walking to work, his trial heard. This was captured on a doorbell camera. Mr Iwule was “catapulted” into the air, his piercing screams shattering the quiet morning.

Mr Iwule shouted that he did not know his attacker as Monzo, armed with the sword, chased him down the street telling him: “I don’t care, I will kill you.”

Monzo “moved quickly, like a predator”, the court heard, moving behind Daniel before lifting the sword above his head and swinging it downwards towards his head and neck area.

As his body lay in the middle of the road, Monzo was seen to drag him. A woman exclaimed in shock “he’s just killed that boy”.

An ambulance arrived to try to treat the schoolboy but Monzo attacked the vehicle with his sword, causing the paramedics – who described it as “extremely frightening” – to retreat.

Police officers rushed in screaming “drop the sword, drop the sword” as they stood toe-to-toe with him. Pepper spray proved ineffective and, as Monzo shouted “does anybody here believe in God?”, they chased him down an alleyway.

Armed with a Taser, PC Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield led the pursuit, which was captured on police-worn body cameras.

When she got to the end of the alleyway, Monzo jumped out and slashed her three times with the sword. She fell to the ground bleeding as her colleague, PC Cameron King, screamed “police officer stabbed, police officer stabbed, Yas has been stabbed”.

PC King said he was “petrified”, while PC Mechem-Whitfield told her colleague “don’t let me die here”.

Henry De Los Rios Polania was asleep with his wife and four-year-old daughter when Monzo burst into their bedroom.

In a terrifying conversation, he repeatedly asked them if they believed in God and then slashed Mr De Los Rios Polania with the sword as he raised his arm to protect his wife.

When their daughter started crying, Monzo said he would spare their lives and walked out of the house leaving Mr De Los Rios Polania with serious injuries to his hand.

Despite the injury to their colleague the police officers ran towards Monzo as he appeared to be cornered by a set of garages.

In remarkable police video, which resembles hand-to-hand combat, Inspector Moloy Campbell raised his baton as Monzo brought down his sword trying to slash him. The police baton and Monzo’s sword clashed twice as Inspector Campbell tried to defend himself and disarm Monzo.

“Monzo was slashing at me with a large sword,” Inspector Campbell said. “I saw my hand was open – I could see the inside of my hand.”

Eventually officers fired a number of Tasers at Monzo and managed to arrest him, removing the sword that had caused so much bloodshed.

During a police interview, Monzo claimed his personality had switched and he compared the events to the movie The Hunger Games. He also told police that he had “many personalities” and that one of them was a “professional assassin”.

Monzo, who grew up in Brazil and moved to England in 2013, gave evidence in court.

He spoke in a calm manner – occasionally weeping – and while he admitted attacking people with the sword in Hainault he insisted he could not remember doing so, claiming everything about the day was confused in his mind.

Monzo was a martial arts enthusiast who believed in conspiracy theories – including that the earth was flat. He denied the 9/11 attacks on New York and posted on X claims that were antisemitic and promoted conspiracy theories.

His brother said he had changed after attending retreats in India and the Amazon where he drank ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic tea.

After a visit to India in 2018, Monzo said he began to engage in some “very extreme” practices, including drinking and washing himself with his own urine. He said he became distant from his family and followed various practices, including sleeping and eating as little as possible.

Both the prosecution and defence agreed Monzo’s had a psychotic disorder. However, prosecutors said his behaviour was triggered “by self-induced intoxication in the form of drugs” through his use of cannabis, which led to the psychosis. The defence claimed he was “most likely suffering from a pre-existing condition”.

He had bought the sword two months before the attack, videoing himself with his cat, unboxing it and calling it “freaking sexy” and simulating “ninja stuff”.

On the day of the attack he strangled his cat and tried to eat it.

That morning, Monzo said he had felt the onset of “something like Armageddon” and he believed “the world was collapsing”.

Daniel Anjorin’s father sat in court throughout the trial, listening to disturbing evidence about how his son was killed and watching the police videos of Monzo with his sword attacking others that day.

He was sat just feet away from Monzo as he told the court he did not remember attacking Mr Anjorin’s son.

Mr Anjorin was occasionally in tears as he listened to the evidence, as were some of the jurors. One juror asked to be excused due to the graphic nature of the evidence.

When Daniel was killed, the Anjorin family said in a statement that it was difficult for them to fathom that “Daniel had left the house for school and then he was gone.”

“Our children have lost their loving and precious brother and we have lost the most loved and amazing son,” they said.

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, is set to be the Democratic candidate for New York City Mayor, making history as the first Muslim nominee.

With 95% of ballots counted, Mamdani leads former governor Andrew Cuomo – who resigned that post after sexual harassment allegations in 2021 – 43% to 36% in the Democratic primary, propelled by a wave of grassroots support and a bold left-wing platform.

“Tonight, we made history,” Mamdani told supporters. “I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City.”

New York’s ranked-choice voting system means the final result could still evolve, but Mamdani’s lead and momentum appear decisive.

His victory over Cuomo – once a dominant figure in state politics – marks a watershed moment for progressives and signals a shift in the city’s political centre of gravity.

Born in Kampala, Uganda, Mamdani moved to New York with his family age seven. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and later earned a degree in Africana Studies from Bowdoin College, where he co-founded the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

The millennial progressive, who would be the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor, has leaned into his roots in a diverse city. He’s posted one campaign video entirely in Urdu and mixed in Bollywood film clips. In another, he speaks Spanish.

Mamdani and his wife, 27-year-old Brooklyn-based Syrian artist Rama Duwaji, met on the dating app Hinge.

His mother, Mira Nair, is a celebrated film director and his father Professor Mahmood Mamdani, teaches at Columbia. Both parents are Harvard alumni.

Mamdani presents himself as a candidate of the people and an organiser.

“As life took its inevitable turns, with detours in film, rap, and writing,” reads his state assembly profile, “it was always organising that ensured that the events of our world would not lead him to despair, but to action.”

Before entering politics, he worked as a housing counsellor, helping low-income homeowners in Queens fight eviction.

He has also made his Muslim faith a visible part of his campaign. He visited mosques regularly and released a campaign video in Urdu about the city’s cost-of-living crisis.

“We know that to stand in public as a Muslim is also to sacrifice the safety that we can sometimes find in the shadows,” he said at a rally this spring.

“There’s nobody who represents the totality of the issues that I truly care about that’s running for mayor currently other than Zohran,”Jagpreet Singh, political director for social justice organization DRUM, told the BBC.

Mamdani said that voters in the most expensive US city want Democrats to focus on affordability.

“This is a city where one in four of its people are living in poverty, a city where 500,000 kids go to sleep hungry every night,” he told the BBC at a recent event. “And ultimately, it’s a city that is in danger of losing that which it makes it so special.”

He has proposed:

• Free bus service citywide
• Rent freezes and stricter accountability for negligent landlords
• A chain of city-owned grocery stores focused on affordability
• Universal childcare for children aged six weeks to five years
• Tripling the production of rent-stabilized, union-built housing

His plan also includes “overhauling” the Mayor’s Office to hold property owners responsible and massively expanding permanently affordable housing.

In his campaign, he linked these policies to highly visual, and viral, gestures. He plunged into the Atlantic to dramatize rent freezes and broke a Ramadan fast on a subway train with a burrito to underscore food insecurity. Days before the primary, he walked the entire length of Manhattan, pausing for selfies with voters.

While he insists he can make the city more affordable, critics question such ambitious promises.

The New York Times did not endorse anyone in the city’s mayoral primary and criticised the candidates generally. Its editorial board said Mamdani’s agenda is “uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges” and “often ignores the unavoidable trade offs of governance.”

His rent freezes would restrict housing supply, said the board.

Cuomo and others frame Mamdani as untested and too radical for a city with a $115 billion budget and over 300,000 municipal workers.

Cuomo, backed by big donors and centrist endorsements including Bill Clinton, insisted experience matters, saying: “Experience, competence, knowing how to do the job, knowing how to deal with Trump, knowing how to deal with Washington, knowing how to deal with the state legislature, these are basics. I believe in on-the-job training, but not as the mayor of New York.”

But Trip Yang, a political strategist, said “experience” isn’t necessarily a game changer in this political era. And whether or not Mamdani wins, Mr Yang believes his campaign has done “the unthinkable.”

“Zohran is powered by tens of thousands of volunteers, hundreds of thousands of unique donors. It’s very rare to see a local Democratic primary New York campaign with this much amount of volunteer and grassroots excitement,” he said.

“He understand us. He belong to us. He’s from our community, you know, the immigrant community,” added supporter Lokmani Rai.

At a recent Mamdani campaign event at a park in Jackson Heights, one of the most diverse communities in the country, children ran and played on swings, as Latino food vendors sold ice cream and snacks.

In many ways, the scene perfectly captured the city’s diversity – what many Democrats consider New York’s greatest asset. But the city is not without its racial and political tensions. Mamdani said he’s received Islamophobic threats daily, some targeting his family. According to police, a hate-crimes investigation into the threats is underway.

He told the BBC that racism is indicative of what’s broken in US politics and criticised a Democratic Party “that allowed for Donald Trump to be re-elected” and fails to stand up for working people “no matter who they were or where they came from”.

The candidates’ stances on the Israel-Gaza war was also likely on voters’ minds.

Mamdani’s strong support of Palestinians and staunch criticism of Israel goes further than most of the Democratic establishment. The assemblyman introduced a bill to end the tax-exempt status of New York charities with ties to Israeli settlements that violate international human rights law.

He has also said he believes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, is an apartheid state, and that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be arrested. Israel vehemently rejects accusations of genocide and apartheid.

Mamdani has been pressed numerous times by press in interviews to state whether he supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. In a response this month, he said: “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else, I think that in the way that we have in this country, equality should be enshrined in every country in the world. That’s my belief.” Israel says all religions have equal rights under the law.

Mamdani has also said he accepts Israel’s right to exist as a state, telling the Late Show on Monday that “like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist and a responsibility also to uphold international law”.

Mamdani has also said that there is no room for antisemitism in New York City, adding that if he were elected, he would increase funding to combat hate crimes.

Cuomo, on the other hand, has described himself as a “hyper supporter of Israel and proud of it”.

In many ways the issues facing New York Democrats are the same ones the party faces in future elections, and afterwards, the primary may be dissected nationally for what it says about the party – and how it should take on Trump.

One afternoon, as Isabella left school for the day, someone thrust a leaflet into her hand. “Do you want to make money with your beauty?” it asked.

She says a studio looking for models seemed to be targeting teenage pupils in her area in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital.

At 17, with a two-year-old son to support, she desperately needed money, so went along to find out more.

She says when she got there, it was a sexcam studio, run by a couple in a house in a run-down neighbourhood – it had eight rooms decorated like bedrooms.

Studios range from small, low-budget operations to large businesses with individual rooms set up with lights, computers, webcams and an internet connection. Models perform sexual acts which are streamed to viewers around the world, who message them and make requests via intermediaries, also known as monitors.

The next day Isabella, whose real name we are not using, says she started work – even though it is illegal in Colombia for studios to employ webcam models under 18.

She told the BBC World Service there was no written contract detailing how much she would be paid or what her rights were. “They had me streaming without teaching me anything. They said, ’Here’s the camera, let’s go.'”

Isabella says the studio soon suggested she do a livestream from school, so as classmates around her were learning English, she quietly took out her phone and started to film herself at her desk.

She describes how viewers began to ask her to perform specific sexual acts, so she asked her teacher for permission to go to the toilet and, locked in a cubicle, did what the customers had requested.

Her teacher had no idea what was happening, “so I started doing it from other classes”, says Isabella. “I  kept thinking, ‘It’s for my child. I’m doing it for him.’ That gave me the strength.”

The global sexcam industry is booming.

The number of monthly views of webcam platforms globally has more than tripled since 2017, reaching nearly 1.3 billion, in April 2025, according to analytics firm Semrush.

Colombia is now estimated to have more models than any other country – 400,000 – and 12,000 sexcam studios, according to Fenalweb, an organisation representing the country’s adult webcam sector.

These studios film performers and feed the content to global webcam platforms, which broadcast to millions of paying viewers around the world who make requests of models, give tips and buy them gifts.

Many of the models who work in studios do so because they lack privacy, equipment or a stable internet connection at home – often if they’re poor or young and still living with parents.

Performers told the BBC that studios often try to attract people with the promise of making easy money in a country where a third of the population lives in poverty.

• Listen to Colombia’s webcam women on BBC Sounds and watch the documentary on YouTube

Models explained that while some studios are well run and offer performers technical and other support, abuse is rife at unscrupulous operators.

And Colombia’s President, Gustavo Petro, has described studio owners as “slave masters” who trick women and girls, like Isabella, into believing they can earn good money.

The four biggest webcam platforms that stream material from the studios, BongaCams, Chaturbate, LiveJasmin and StripChat, which are based in Europe and the United States, have checks that are supposed to ensure performers are 18 or older. EU and US laws prohibit the distribution of sexually explicit material involving anyone under 18.

But models told the BBC these checks are too easily sidestepped if a studio wants to employ under-age girls.

They say one way of doing this is to “recycle” old accounts of models who are of legal age but no longer perform, and give them to under-age girls.

Isabella says this is how she was able to appear on both Chaturbate and StripChat when she was 17.

“The studio owner said it was no problem that I was under-age,” Isabella, now 18, says.  “She used the account of another woman, and then I started working under that identity.”

Other models the BBC spoke to say they were given fake IDs by studios. One, Keiny, says this enabled her to appear on BongaCams when she was 17.

Milley Achinte, a BongaCams representative in Colombia, told the BBC they do not allow under-18s to perform and they shut accounts that break this rule. She added that the platform checks IDs on a Colombian government website and if a “model contacts us and we are aware that the model left the studio, we give them their password so they can close their account”.

In a statement, Chaturbate said it has “categorically” stopped the use of fake IDs, and models must regularly submit live images of themselves standing next to government-issued photo IDs, which are checked digitally and manually. It said it has “an average of one reviewer to fewer than 10 broadcasters” and any attempt to recycle accounts “would be unsuccessful” because “the age verification process continues as each and every broadcast is constantly reviewed and checked”.

StripChat also sent a statement saying it has a “zero-tolerance policy regarding under-age models” and that performers “must undergo a thorough age verification process”, adding that its in-house moderation team works with third-party verification services to “validate models’ identities”.

It said that recycled accounts cannot be used on its platform, and recent changes to its rules mean that the account holder must be present on every stream. “So, if a model moves to a new account to work independently, the original account tied to them becomes inactive and unusable by the studio.”

LiveJasmin did not respond to the BBC’s requests for comment.

Keiny is now 20 and works from her bedroom at home in Medellín – streaming through another studio which provides a route to big international platforms.

And if it wasn’t for the high-tech equipment – several ring lights, a camera, and a large screen – this could pass for a child’s room. There are about a dozen stuffed animals, pink unicorns and teddy bears.

Viewers “really like it when you look young”, she says.

“Sometimes I think that’s problematic. Some clients ask that you act like an actual child, and that’s not OK.”

She says she got into the business to help her family financially after her parents decided to divorce.

Her father knows what she’s doing and she says he’s supportive.

Looking back, Keiny thinks she was too young when she started at the age of 17, but even so, she isn’t critical of her former employers.

Instead, she believes they helped her into a job which she says now earns her about $2,000 (£1,500) a month – far more than the minimum wage in Colombia, which is about $300 (£225) a month.

“Thanks to this job, I’m helping my mum, my dad, and my sister – my whole family,” she says.

That point of view is echoed by the studios – some of which are keen to demonstrate they look after their performers.

We visited one of the biggest, AJ Studios, where we were introduced to an in-house psychologist, employed to support models’ mental health. We were also shown a spa which offers pedicures, massages, botox and lip fillers at a “discount” or as prizes for “employees of the month” who may be high earners or people who are collaborative and support fellow models.

But as the country’s president has pointed out, not every performer is treated well or makes good money. And the industry is waiting to see if his new labour law will pave the way for tighter regulations.

Models and studios told the BBC that streaming platforms typically take 50% of the fees paid by viewers, studios take 20-30%, and the models get what’s left. This means that if a show makes $100 (£75), the model would usually get between $20 (£15) and $30 (£22). They explained that unscrupulous studios often take much more.

Models say there have been times when they logged on for sessions of up to eight hours and made as little as $5 (£4) – which can happen if a performance doesn’t have many viewers.

Others say they have been pressured into streaming for up to 18 hours without breaks and fined for stopping to eat or go to the toilet.

These accounts are supported by a report from the campaign group Human Rights Watch, published in December 2024. The author, Erin Kilbride, who did additional research on this story for the BBC, found some people were being filmed in cramped, dirty cubicles infested with bedbugs and cockroaches and were being coerced into performing sexual acts they found painful and degrading.

Sofi, a mother-of-two from Medellín, had been a waitress in a nightclub but, fed up with being insulted by customers, moved into webcam modelling.

But the 26-year-old says a studio she worked for pressured her into carrying out painful and degrading sexual acts, including performing with three other girls.

She explains that these requests were made by customers and agreed to by studio monitors – the staff employed to act as intermediaries between models and viewers.

Sofi says she told the studio she didn’t want to perform these acts, “but they said I had no choice”.

“In the end, I had to do it because it was either that, or they would ban my account,” she adds, explaining that means her account would effectively be closed down.

Sofi continues working in webcam studios because she says a typical salary in Colombia would not be enough to support her and her two children. She is now saving to start a law degree.

It’s not just Colombia that is facing these issues, says Erin Kilbride.

She found that between them, the big four streaming platforms also broadcast material from studios in 10 more countries – Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine, and the US.

And she says she identified “gaps in platform policies and protocols that facilitate or exacerbate human rights abuses”.

When we asked platforms about conditions at the studios they stream, Milley Achinte from BongaCams said she is part of a team of eight women who visit some studios in Colombia “making sure that the models are getting paid, that the rooms are clean, that models are not getting violated”.

StripChat and Chaturbate do not visit studios and said they are not direct employers of performers and therefore do not intervene in the terms set between studios and models. But they both told us they are committed to a safe working environment. StripChat also said it expects studios to ensure “respectful and comfortable working conditions”.

BongaCams, StripChat and Chaturbate all said they have teams to intervene if they believe a model is being forced or coerced to do something.

After two months of waking up at 05:00 to juggle webcamming, secondary school, and caring for her son, Isabella says she was eager to receive her first payment.

But after the platform and the studio took their cut, Isabella explains she was paid just 174,000 Colombian pesos ($42; £31) – far less than she expected. She believes that the studio paid her a much lower percentage than agreed and also stole most of her earnings.

The money was a pittance, she says, adding that she used some of it to buy milk and nappies.  “They deceived me.”

Isabella, who is still at school, only worked as a webcam model for a few months before quitting.

The way she says she was treated at such a young age left her deeply traumatised. She couldn’t stop crying, so her mother arranged for her to see a psychologist.

She and six other former employees of the studio have got together to file an official complaint with the state prosecutor’s office. Collectively, they have accused the studio of exploitation of minors, labour exploitation and economic abuse.

“There are video recordings of me still online, under-age,” she says, explaining she feels powerless when it comes to trying to get them removed. “It’s affected me a lot and I don’t want to think about it any more.”

Hear more on Assignment on BBC Sounds

A woman in a “Make America Great Again” hat leads a chant for “regime change” in Iran.

The crowds dance and wave Iranian, Israeli and American flags as Persian music blasts. Car horns beep in support but also some annoyance in LA’s gridlocked traffic.

Protests outside the West LA Federal Building are a common site, but even by LA standards this one is unusual, happening under the watchful eyes of armed US Marines, controversially ordered there by President Trump during protests against immigration raids.

But these immigrants are proudly demonstrating in MAGA hats in support of President Trump and his decision to intervene in the Israel-Iran conflict by launching air strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.

• Follow latest on Iran-Israel conflict
• Talk of regime change resonates with fleeing Iranians

“We want regime change in Iran,” says Bita Ashrafi, who left Iran 50 years ago and attended the protest wearing a “Trump Was Right About Everything” hat.

“I fully support President Trump’s decisions because this has been going on for 46 plus years – the tyranny, the dictatorship.”

West LA, often called Tehrangeles, is home to the largest population of Iranians outside of Iran, formerly known as Persia. There are Persian restaurants and bookstores and shops selling the saffron and rose ice cream popular in Iran.

Many of Southern California’s Iranian Americans are in full support of President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

But others say the involvement of the US, called the “Great Satan” by hardliner religious leaders in Iran, will only bolster Iran’s leaders.

Ms Ashrafi took to the streets with several hundred others to show her support for Trump and regime change in Iran a day after a “No War” protest broke out in the same spot in response to the US “bunker busting” bombing of nuclear sites in Iran.

The US president said the action was necessary because Iran was close to developing a nuclear bomb. Tehran has always said its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.

• Trump takes victory lap but big questions remain
• What leaked intel report tells us about damage to Iran sites

Persian Americans are worried about friends and family in their homeland who they’ve struggled to reach with Iran’s phones and internet shut off. They also have strong feelings about how their adopted country should respond to Iran.

“Do not negotiate with them. They will go back to terrorising the world,” said Farzan Seyed, who was dressed in a MIGA (Make Iran Great Again) hat – the acronym popularised by Trump on social media – and a tie showing the lion and sun emblem from Iran’s pre-1979 flag. He says Trump should show support for regime change but not get too involved.

“The people have to choose,” he says, though he hopes they choose exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi who also lives in the United States.

Iranian-American families in Southern California lost so much when they fled Iran, he says, adding that when they get together – whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Baháʼí or Zoroastrian – they “speak with one voice from West LA” against the Islamic Republic.

Many Iranian Americans dispute that there is one voice. The cafes and restaurants in West LA are full of debates about what should and could happen next in Iran. And not everyone in the community wears MAGA hats and supports the US bombing.

• ‘We’re exhausted’ – how Iranians feel after fragile ceasefire
• ‘We thought it was the end’ – Israeli town reels

Roozbeh Farahanipour – once imprisoned in Iran for his activism – says he fears the US involvement will push Iran into a broken, uncertain future.

“The job needs to be done by Iranian people,” he says in one of the three restaurants he now owns in the heart of Tehrangeles. “If we look at the history, I don’t think that’s the result of the Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, even Syria.”

While he voted for Trump, Mr Farahanipour says he’s disappointed in the president. He said he supports targeted sanctions, not missiles, and that he doesn’t want his taxpayer money going to fund attacks against Iran.

He knows that’s not a popular opinion in this community and it’s caused a rift with one of his oldest and closest friends, Elham Yaghoubian.

While the majority of this region’s Persian community fled to LA in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution, Mr Farahanipour and Ms Yaghoubian came later in 2000 after they were both targeted as enemies of the state for creating an underground opposition movement.

Mr Farahanipour was arrested along with his mother and several friends for his activism during a meeting at his home. Ms Yaghoubian escaped arrest – she was meant to be at Mr Farahanipour’s house that night but decided not to go.

For decades, they have worked together as activists in Iran and in LA, where they both became successful entrepreneurs. Together they were instrumental in getting a corner of LA named “Persian Square.”

Later, they successfully lobbied the city to rename part of Westwood Boulevard “Women Life Freedom Square” in honour of Masha Amini, who was killed by Iran’s morality police in 2022 for not wearing her hijab head covering the way they wanted.

“We were shoulder-to-shoulder, until now,” says Mr Farahanipour.

Ms Yaghoubian says her position is nuanced.

“I’ve never been a supporter of military action against Iran,” she says. “Now that it has happened and many of the regime’s tools of suppression have been weakened it may present an opportunity for people in Iran to push for change.”

She says she hopes the Israeli and the US attacks on Iran will help Iranians rise up and overthrow the regime.

The majority of people in Iran are “living in poverty,” she says. Her friends there tell her they have nothing to lose.

“This is the only opportunity for the Iranian people to rise and make a change,” she says.

Like others in Southern California’s Persian community they both fret over loved ones back in Iran, even if they don’t see eye to eye on how the US should respond to Iran.

When President Trump warned “everyone to evacuate” Tehran earlier this month, the world saw footage of thousands of terrified Iranians stuck in traffic trying to escape an escalation in the war.

Writer and actor Mary Apick, who was a child star in Iran and now lives in Los Angeles, says she is heartened watching how many Iranians she saw helping each other amid the traffic, sharing water and gasoline and offering strangers rides.

“There’s a camaraderie which is unbelievable,” she says, adding that she has family she is worried about in Iran. “This regime has to go. People are sick and tired.”

Satellite images have revealed new signs of damage to access routes and tunnels at Iran’s underground Fordo enrichment facility which was targeted by Israel on 23 June, a day after the US dropped bunker-buster bombs on the site.

Previously unseen damage is also visible near tunnel entrances at Iran’s Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre after it was hit by the US. Meanwhile, there are signs work is already underway to fill in craters at the Natanz enrichment complex in the wake of US strikes.

A leaked US intelligence document has cast doubt on the overall impact of the strikes. Media coverage of its conclusions prompted an angry response from President Donald Trump.

Other new satellite images reveal previously unseen damage at a university in north-east Tehran and an area adjacent to a major airport west of the capital.

Israel, and subsequently the US, said strikes were aimed at preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Iran has consistently denied those allegations, insisting its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.

The Fordo enrichment facility, buried underground in a mountainside near the city of Qom, was struck with US bunker-buster munitions on 22 June, resulting in six large craters visible in satellite images, as well as grey dust and debris scattered around across the area.

A day later, Israel said that it had struck Fordo again, this time targeting access routes to the facility. The attack was later confirmed by Iranian authorities.

High-resolution satellite images captured on 24 June and published by Maxar Technologies show new craters and damaged buildings that were not visible in the aftermath of US strikes.

One new crater can be seen on an access road that leads to a tunnel entrance north-west of the facility. At least two craters are also visible near a tunnel opening at the southern edge of the complex.

Maxar images also show a destroyed installation north of the facility, alongside air strike craters and grey dust in the same area.

One new additional crater and scorch marks can be seen in the middle of an access road at the western edge of the facility.

It’s believed the strikes were intended to make these sites difficult to reach and repair.

The volume of grey dust visible in some of the satellite images may be sign of the level of destruction beneath the surface, analysts believe.

“Deep below ground detonations of sufficient magnitude to expel the concrete as described would cause significant blast damage to underground structures,” said Trevor Lawrence, head of the Centre for Energetics Technology, Cranfield University and an expert on effect of explosions.

“Given the complexity of building these structures, significant damage is very unlikely to be repaired in the short term, if at all.”

The Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre, located south-east of the city of Isfahan, is Iran’s largest nuclear research complex. It also houses a uranium conversion facility where natural uranium is converted into material that could be enriched in the country’s two uranium enrichment facilities in Natanz and Fordo.

The complex was struck twice by Israel. It was then targeted by the US on 22 June, resulting in more extensive damage across the complex.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the efficacy of the US strikes on Iran, apparently referencing the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan.

“You can’t do a nuclear weapon without a conversion facility, yet we can’t even find where it is, where it used to be on the map – because the whole thing is just blackened out… it’s gone… wiped out.”

The overall complex has been captured in the latest Maxar images, and there is extensive destruction to a large number of buildings. One structure, previously identified by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) as the main uranium conversion building has been mostly destroyed.

New images of the aftermath of US strikes also reveal damage to tunnel entrances located north of the complex. Damage can be clearly seen to one tunnel entrance at the northern tip of the facility near a complex by the mountainside.

Additional damage is also visible at two more tunnel entrances in another image.

Experts from intelligence analysis firm Maiar assessed that the entrances probably sustained “moderate” structural damage. They noted scorching around the entrances but also the relative lack of damage to the adjacent concrete and the fact that there wasn’t visible caving in of the earth above the entrances.

Iran’s prior efforts to reinforce the entrances by piling up earth may have reduced the effectiveness of the US attacks.

“One Isfahan tunnel entrance looks like there was an internal explosion and fire, given the darkened debris spilling out of the entrance. If so, that would take years to repair,” said Mark Cancian, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

“On the other hand, the discoloration could be caused by the weapon itself and not any penetration. The other tunnel entrance looks like it was covered with sand and dirt. If that’s all that happened, it could be opened in a few weeks.”

Natanz, Iran’s primary uranium enrichment facility, was targeted by both Israel and the US during the conflict.

Satellite images captured on 22 June in the immediate aftermath of US strikes revealed two visible craters in a large area at the centre of the complex. The craters are believed to be above underground buildings housing centrifuge halls, where uranium enrichment takes place.

A new image, taken on 24 June, shows the craters have since been covered with dirt, which may suggest work is underway to address damage inflicted on the facility.

“Think of what you do if you have a hole in your roof,” says David Albright, from the ISIS, “and also they likely want to at least offer some resistance to another earth penetrator hitting the same spot.”

A key target of Israeli strikes during the conflict was Mehrabad airport, located west of Tehran. Videos and images authenticated by BBC Verify show it was bombed multiple times by Israel.

Once the capital’s main international airport, it now mostly serves domestic flights.

Israel shared footage of it targeting two F-14 Tomcat fighter jets, purchased by the Shah before the 1979 Islamic revolution, at the airport.

One image, captured in an industrial area immediately south of the runway, shows damage to multiple structures.

Another image shows an area west of the runway, where at least one warehouse appears to have been completely destroyed.

The area is home to several aerospace companies which have been linked to Iran’s defence industry.

Satellite images also show multiple buildings targeted at Shahid Rajaee University, located in Tehran’s northeastern district of Lavizan.

Videos verified by the BBC confirm Lavizan was the target of multiple air strikes by Israel during the conflict.

Satellite images reveal extensive damage to multiple large buildings near the university campus, with debris scattered around the area.

The latest images do not address one central question in the aftermath of the US and Israeli strikes: does Iran still retain its stocks of enriched uranium?

“Overall, Israel’s and US attacks have effectively destroyed Iran’s centrifuge enrichment program, said Mr Albright. “It will be a long time before Iran comes anywhere near the capability it had before the attack.

“That being said, there are residuals such as stocks of 60 percent, 20 percent, and 3-5 percent enriched uranium and the centrifuges manufactured but not yet installed at Natanz or Fordow. These non-destroyed parts pose a threat as they can be used in the future to produce weapon-grade uranium.”

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

Thailand is trying to rein in its free-wheeling marijuana market.

The government has approved new measures, which will soon restrict consumption of the drug to those with a doctor’s prescription – in the hope that this will help regulate an industry some describe as out of control.

The public health minister has also said that consumption of marijuana will be criminalised again, although it’s unclear when that could happen.

Ever since the drug was decriminalised in 2022, there has been a frenzy of investment.

There are now around 11,000 registered cannabis dispensaries in Thailand. In parts of the capital Bangkok it is impossible to escape the lurid green glare of their neon signs and the constant smell of people smoking their products.

In the famous backpacker district of Khao San Road, in the historic royal quarter, there is an entire shopping mall dedicated to selling hallucinogenic flower heads or marijuana accessories.

Derivative products like brownies and gummies are offered openly online – although this is technically illegal – and can be delivered to your door within an hour.

There has been talk of restricting the industry before. The largest party in the government coalition wanted to put cannabis back on the list of proscribed narcotics after it took office in 2023, but its former coalition partner, which had made decriminalisation a signature election policy, blocked this plan.

But the final straw appears to have been pressure from the UK, which has seen a flood of Thai marijuana being smuggled into the country.

It is often young travellers who are lured by drug syndicates in Britain into carrying suitcases filled with it on flights from Thailand.

Last month two young British women were arrested in Georgia and Sri Lanka, with large amounts of marijuana from Thailand. Both now face long prison sentences.

“It’s massively increased over the last couple of years,” says Beki Wright, spokesperson at the National Crime Agency in London (NCA). The NCA says 142 couriers carrying five tonnes were intercepted in 2023. This number shot up to 800 couriers in 2024 carrying 26 tonnes, and that number has continued to rise this year.

“We really want to stop people doing this. Because if you are stopped, in this country or many others, you face life-changing consequences, for something many of them think is low-risk. If you bring illicit drugs into the UK you might get through the first time, but you will eventually be found, and you will most likely go to jail.”

So far this year, 173 people accused of smuggling cannabis – nearly all from Thailand – have gone through the court system in the UK and received sentences totalling 230 years.

The NCA is working together with Thai authorities to try to deter young people from being tempted to smuggle cannabis to Britain. But this has proved difficult, because of the very few regulations that exist in Thailand to control the drug.

“This is a loophole,” says Panthong Loykulnanta, spokesman for the Thai Customs Department.

“The profit is very high, but the penalties here are not high. Most of the time when we catch people at the airport they abandon their luggage. But then there is no punishment. If they insist on checking in the luggage, we can arrest them, but they just pay the fine and try again.”

The legalisation of cannabis in 2022 was supposed to be followed by the passing of a new regulatory framework by the Thai parliament.

But this never happened, partly, says one MP involved in the drafting process, because of obstruction by vested interests with links to the marijuana industry. A new cannabis law was drawn up last year, but it could be two years away from being passed.

The result has been a weed wild west, where almost anything that can make money out of marijuana is tolerated.

There has also been an influx of foreign drug syndicates hiding behind Thai nominees, growing huge quantities of potent marijuana strains in brightly-lit, air-conditioned containers.

This has flooded the market and driven the price down, which is what has attracted the smugglers.

Even if more than half the people carrying marijuana get stopped, they can still make money from what gets through to the UK because of much higher prices there.

“You cannot have a free-for-all, right? This became a bar fight rather than a boxing match,” says Tom Kruesopon, a businessman who was instrumental in legalising marijuana, but now thinks things have now gone too far.

“When there is a weed shop on every corner, when people are smoking as they’re walking down the street, when tourists are getting high on our beaches, other countries being affected by our laws, with people shipping it illegally – these are negatives.”

He argues that the proposed new public health ministry regulations will restrict supply and demand, and restore the industry to what it was always intended to be, focused solely on the medical use of marijuana.

There is plenty of opposition to this notion from cannabis enthusiasts who believe the new rules will do nothing to curb smuggling or unlicensed growers.

They say the measures will wipe out small-scale businesses who are already struggling because of the glut caused by over-production.

Earlier this month, many of these smaller growers descended on the prime minister’s office in Bangkok to deliver a formal complaint to the government, calling for a more sensitively regulated industry, and not just what they believe is a knee-jerk reaction to foreign criticism.

“I totally understand that the government is probably getting yelled at during international meetings,” says Kitty Chopaka, the most vocal advocate for smaller producers.

“Countries saying ‘All your weed is getting smuggled into our country,’ that is quite embarrassing. But right now they are not even enforcing the rules that already exist. If they did, that would probably mitigate a lot of the issues like smuggling, or sale without a licence.”

The collapse in prices forced her earlier this year to close down her cannabis dispensary, one of the first to open three years ago.

Parinya Sangprasert, one of the growers at the protest, argues that the illegal growers are already operating outside the law in Thailand – and will ignore the new regulations as well.

He is emphatic that people cannot come to his farm and just buy 46kg (101 lbs) of marijuana – the quantity typically carried in two suitcases by the “mules” trying to reach the UK.

On his phone he brought up a copy of the official form he has to fill in every time he makes a sale.

“If you want to buy or sell a large amount of cannabis, you need a licence, issued by our government. Every weed shop must obtain this to buy marijuana, and there are records kept of which farm it’s from and who it was sold to.”

In the meantime, Thai customs officers are continuing their efforts to stem the flood of cannabis though their airports.

They are using intelligence gathered on travel patterns to target potential smugglers, and dissuade them from checking in their tainted luggage, and risking harsh jail sentences in their destination countries.

They are increasingly using the requirement for a licence to buy, sell or export quantities of marijuana to prosecute those they intercept, but the punishment is rarely more than a fine.

And the confiscated suitcases, filled with vacuum-sealed packages of dried marijuana heads, with names like “Runtz” and “Zkittlez”, still pile up in backrooms at the airports. There were around 200 in one room the BBC was allowed into, containing between two to three tonnes, taken in just the past month.

Elizabeth Butler goes from one supermarket to the next in her hometown of Martinsburg, West Virginia, to ensure she gets the best price on each item on her grocery list.

Along with 42 million Americans, she pays for those groceries with federal food subsides. That cash doesn’t cover the whole bill for her family of three.

“Our food doesn’t even last the month,” she says. “I’m going to all these different places just to make sure that we have enough food to last us the whole month.”

But that money may soon run out, as Congress gears up to vote on what US President Donald Trump has coined his “big beautiful bill”.

The food subsidy programme that Ms Butler uses – called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP – is one of many items on the chopping block, as Congress tries to reconcile the president’s seemingly conflicting demands to both lower taxes and balance the budget.

The Senate is due to vote on their version of the bill by the end of the week. If it passes, it will then be voted on by the House, at which point it will be sent to Trump to sign. He has pressured both chambers of Congress, which the Republican Party controls, to pass the bill by 4 July.

• Four sticking points in Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ tax bill

SNAP offers low-income households, including older Americans, families with children and people who are disabled, money each month to buy groceries. In West Virginia, one of the states with the highest rates of poverty, 16% of the population depends on the benefit.

The state is also a reliable Republican stronghold and voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November, when he ran on the promise of reducing the cost of living for Americans, including the price of groceries.

“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” he said at an August press conference surrounded by packaged foods, milk, meats and eggs.

Months after the president made that pledge, the prices of commonly purchased groceries like orange juice, eggs and bacon are higher than they were the same time last year.

It’s a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Ms Butler: “The president hasn’t changed the food prices yet and he promised the people that he would do that.”

Trump has argued, without providing an explanation how, that spending cuts in the 1,000-page budget bill will help bring food prices down: “The cut is going to give everyone much more food, because prices are coming way down, groceries are down,” Trump said when asked specifically about cuts to SNAP.

“The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will ultimately strengthen SNAP through cost-sharing measures and common-sense work requirements,” a White House official told the BBC.

Republicans have long been divided on how to fund social welfare programmes like SNAP and Medicaid. While many think the government should prioritise balancing the budget, others, especially in impoverished regions, support programmes that directly help their constituents.

As the bill stands, Senate Republicans are proposing $211bn (£154bn) in cuts with states being partly responsible for making up the difference.

In theory, passing the bill should be an easy political lift, since Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

But since the bill includes cuts to programmes like SNAP and Medicaid, which are popular with everyday Americans, selling the bill to all factions within the Republican Party has not been an easy feat.

Reports of private frustration and dissent about potential cuts to Medicaid and SNAP have leaked in recent weeks, showing the internal wrestling happening within the party.

West Virginia Senator Jim Justice told Politico in June that he has warned fellow Republicans that cutting SNAP could cost the party their majority in Congress when voters head to the polls again in 2026.

“If we don’t watch out, people are going to get hurt, people are going to be upset. It’s going to be the No.1 thing on the nightly news all over the place,” Justice said. “And then, we could very well awaken to a situation in this country where the majority quickly becomes the minority.”

A recent poll by the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 45% of Americans think food assistance programmes like SNAP are underfunded, while only 30% think the funding levels are adequate. About a quarter of respondents found programmes were overfunded.

This is not the first time the party has wrestled with cuts to SNAP, said Tracy Roof, a University of Richmond professor who is currently writing a book on the political history of SNAP.

Under the Biden administration, Congress allowed expanded benefits implemented during Covid to be phased out, despite both Republicans and Democrats warning Americans could go hungry.

“One thing about [SNAP] is that it has bi-partisan support, more than any other anti-poverty programme,” Prof Roof told the BBC.

But this time feels different, she said.

“One thing that kind of distinguishes this period from the previous efforts to cut social welfare programmes has been the willingness of congressional Republicans to vote for things many of them apparently off the record have many concerns about,” she said. “Before, there were always moderate Republicans, particularly in the Senate, but in both Houses that held out for concessions.”

She attributes that submission to two things: Fear of getting on the wrong side of Trump and a lack of fear of public backlash for representatives who hold congressional seats they can easily get re-elected to.

The BBC contacted Congressman Riley Moore, who represents Martinsburg, West Virginia, about the impacts of the cuts to his constituents, but he did not respond.

Moore voted for the initial House bill, which included the cuts to SNAP.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who had been one of the more vocal critics of the cuts, has since softened: Hawley told the news outlet NOTUS he has “always supported” most of the Medicaid cuts and he would “be fine” with most of what’s in the bill.

Father of two Jordan, who asked that his last name not be used, has spent the past three years surviving on SNAP benefits.

He and his wife get about $700 a month to feed their family of four, but they still struggle.

The 26-year-old says his wife has struggled to get work and take care of their two children simultaneously, so if changes to SNAP impact his family, he is prepared to act and get a second job.

“I’m going to make sure that I can do whatever I can to feed my family,” he says.

He and other West Virginians are following what happens to the bill in Congress.

Cameron Whetzel, 25, grew up in a family dependent on SNAP. But when he and his wife tried to apply for SNAP, he learned that making $15 a hour was too much to qualify, he said.

“It’s not great the fact that I need to double my salary in order to be able to afford groceries,” Mr Whetzel said, adding “we have not bought any eggs in four months just cause they’re too expensive”.

He is frustrated that officials in Washington do not understand the impacts of the cuts they are backing in Congress, he said.

“To make a federal cut that then would be put onto the state that’s already struggling it just kind of feels like kicking a horse while its down,” Mr Whetzel says. “Whether you believe in small government or big government, government has to provide for somebody, somehow.”

A quarter of a century after their land was seized during a chaotic land reform programme that made global headlines, a small group of white Zimbabwean farmers have accepted a controversial compensation deal from the government.

Once the backbone of the country’s agricultural sector, many of them are now elderly, visibly frail, battling illness and financially desperate.

“I believe this is the only opportunity. We can’t wait 10 years for another deal, ” 71-year-old Arthur Baisley told the BBC.

Still recuperating from back surgery, Mr Baisley was among those who arrived earlier this year at a conference room in the capital, Harare – some aided by walking sticks and walking frames – to discuss the deal.

The catch is that these farmers have now been paid only 1% of their total compensation in cash – the rest is being issued as US dollar-denominated treasury bonds that mature in 10 years – with 2% interest paid twice a year.

The land reform programme, sparked by the invasion of white-owned farms around the country by supporters of the late Robert Mugabe, was launched in 2000 by the then president, who was desperate to shore up political support at the time when Zimbabwe had about 2,500 white farmers owning 4,000 farms – half of the country’s best farmland.

The seizures became Africa’s biggest modern-day land revolution, and was meant to redress colonial-era land grabs, when black people were forced to leave their land. But it set the country on a collision path with Western nations – economic sanctions followed, companies exited and the economy collapsed.

This compensation deal has been pushed by Mugabe’s successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is keen to mend fences. The money being given to the farmers, as stipulated by the constitution, is for infrastructure and improvements to the land – like buildings and dams, not the value of the land itself, which Zimbabwe’s government insists was illegally seized from the country’s original inhabitants.

Overall this is estimated to total $3.5bn (£2.6bn). However, the recent cash pay-out totalled just $3.1m for 378 farms.

Mr Baisley said it was not the best deal but was reasonably fair – and his decision to accept it has come with the realisation that the takeovers cannot be undone.

“It was difficult for my family in the beginning but life goes on, you have to move on,” he said, adding that he would start selling some of the bonds immediately to offset medical bills and to care for his sickly parents.

It is a significant shift, a softening of hard lines previously drawn by both sides.

Mugabe used to pound the lectern at party rallies saying the white farmers should go to the UK, the former colonial power, for their compensation – although quietly he was paying out select farmers.

The white farmers meanwhile had insisted on a $10bn full cash settlement. Both sides have settled on the $3.5bn figure.

However, unlike Mr Baisley, the majority of white farmers are holding out for a deal which would see all the cash paid upfront.

Deon Theron, who in 2008 was forced off the farm he had bought after independence, leads more than 1,000 farmers who have rejected the offer.

Boxes of his possessions, hastily packed during his departure, still fill the veranda of his Harare home where he told me the deal was not fair as there was no guarantee that the bonds would be honoured in 10 years’ time.

The 71-year-old said it was clear that the government did not have the money – and he wanted to see the international community, including the UK, help with negotiations as the government was refusing to budge, or even meet the dissenting group.

“The British can’t go and sit in the pavilion and watch what’s happening because they are part of it. They are linked with our history. They can’t walk away from it,” he told the BBC.

In an agreement brokered in the run-up to independence, the UK was to support land reform financially – but it floundered towards the end of the 1990s when the Labour government came to power and relations soured.

The need to re-engage Britain on the compensation was the battle cry of many of the war veterans who led the farm invasions. They had fought in the 1970s war against white-minority rule – and felt let down by the slow pace of land reform following independence.

But like the white farmers, the war veterans are also split over the government’s handling of the compensation.

One faction is suing the government for “clandestinely” agreeing to pay $3.5bn in compensation, saying the offer should have been agreed in parliament.

One of its leaders, Godfrey Gurira, said that given the myriad economic challenges cash-strapped Zimbabwe faced, it should not have prioritised white farmers.

“It’s such a colossal amount… for a nation of our size. People are suffering they can hardly make ends meet, the hospitals have nothing, then we have the luxury to pay $3.5bn. In our opinion it’s an unnecessary act of appeasement,” he told the BBC.

A second lawsuit challenges an aspect of a new land policy that demands that new farmers pay for the land in order to obtain title deeds to own the land outright.

In the wake of the redistribution, the 250,000 people who replaced the 2,500 white farmers were only entitled to 99-year leases. However this meant it was near-impossible for them to get bank loans as their security of tenure was not guaranteed.

Last year, the government said farmers could apply to own their land outright – with title deeds – but they needed to pay between $100 and $500 per hectare (2.47 acres).

That money will go towards the compensation deal to white farmers, according to the government.

Those challenging this say forcing black farmers to effectively buy back the land contradicts the law.

And the black farmers themselves are divided over the issue.

The land reform programme has had mixed results. Many new farmers did not have the skills, the finances and labour to farm successfully. But the country’s agricultural sector is now rebounding with pockets of successful farmers.

In 2002, Solomon Ganye arrived on a bicycle to receive a 20-hectare bare piece of land in Harare South.

It was part of the sprawling 2,700-hectare farm that had been divided among 77 people.

He found the initial years a struggle – suffering from a lack of finances and climate shocks. But slowly through Chinese money ploughed into the tobacco sector, and after handing the business over to his sons – both agriculture graduates in their 20s – things have improved.

They have built an enviable enterprise with 200 permanent workers, and have expanded into dairy and livestock farming. They are applying for the title deeds of their land and have even acquired more in recent years from the government.

Aaron Ganye, his oldest son, told the BBC that without the land reform programme, his family would probably not have been able to buy a farm because in the past the structure of ownership saw vast tracts of land being held by a single family.

“I’m very happy because to be honest we’ve taken farming to another level because now we’re living a good life through farming. We’re doing more than what the white guys were doing in terms of quality of tobacco and the leaf is good,” the 25-year-old said proudly.

“We’ve invested in technology. It’s not easy. I’m now motivating more farmers to do good work here,” he said.

He does believe that new farmers should contribute to compensation payments but based on the value of infrastructure they inherited.

On the political front, tensions are also easing – and the UK government no longer has any Zimbabwean on its sanction list having recently delisted four military and government officials it had accused of human rights abuses.

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office told the BBC this was because they were no longer in the positions they held at the time they were added to the list in 2021.

Nonetheless, it is a significant development, marking the end of more than 20 years of sanctions against Zimbabwe.

The country now hopes that the farmers’ compensation issue can be properly sorted out to get Western support for ongoing talks on restructuring its massive foreign debt.

There is no question that 25 years on, calm has returned to almost all farming fronts.

Agriculture is rebounding, this year farmers have sold over 300,000 tonnes of tobacco at auction – the highest tobacco production ever.

But compromise is needed on all sides for the country to fully jump over the hurdle of land reform and its fallout.

• How a self-styled knight giving away cars and wads of cash got people talking
• I cannot forgive Mugabe’s soldiers – massacre survivor
• Is Zimbabwe extending an olive branch to its white farmers?

Demand for so-called “fast tech” – cheap electronic items often quickly binned or abandoned in drawers – is growing, a not-for-profit that works to reduce electronic waste has warned.

Material Focus singled out heatwave-fuelled demand for battery powered mini-fans as an example of the problem, suggesting over seven million were purchased last year.

Nearly £8m was spent on light-up toilet seats, mini karaoke machines and LED balloons, the group’s calculations also suggested.

Overall, consumer spending on fast tech has quadrupled to £11.6bn since 2023, surveys carried out for Material Focus suggested.

The boom could be as rapid as the growth in fast fashion with a “similar negative impact”, Professor Cathrine Jansson-Boyd wrote in the announcement of the findings.

Although fast tech can cost less than a pound, valuable materials can still be locked up in the cut-price gadgets.

A previous report by Material Focus looking at tech lurking in so-called “drawers of doom” suggested in total the junk could contain over 38,000 tonnes of copper.

The mining of materials used by tech gadgets can be environmentally damaging, and yet, experts say, such elements will be crucial as nations seek to transition to low carbon technologies.

Material Focus, whose board includes trade bodies representing manufacturers of domestic appliances, and lighting manufactures, argued that consumers needed to be more thoughtful,

“We had fast food, then fast fashion, now fast tech”, Scott Butler, the group’s executive director wrote.

He urged consumers to “think before you buy your latest fast tech item, and if you do really need it”.

Unwanted tech should always be recycled, Mr Butler argued. However, surveys carried out for the group suggest that over half of fast tech ends up in the bin or unused.

Joe Iles of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation which promotes the idea of a “circular economy” based on reuse and recycling said the charity believed the problem of fast tech could be fixed.

“It’s easy to think of these patterns of rapid use, disposal as inevitable, but they’re a recent symptom that has accelerated in the past 50 years or so”, he told the BBC.

There was already a booming market for some durable, reused, and refurbished electronics, he added.

And policy tools such as Right to Repair and Extended Producer Responsibility could encourage better design, as well as new practices in collection, repair, and resale, he said.

Others highlight how goods need to be manufactured in a way that helps consumers make sustainable choices.

Laura Burley, plastics campaign lead at Greenpeace UK told the BBC that the combination of plastic and electrical components made fast tech “a toxic cocktail that is very hard to recycle”.

The fact that so much cheap tech is not built to be repaired or to last exacerbated the problem she said.

When plastic and electronic waste is thrown away it often ends up being dumped on poorer countries.

The solution was “a circular economy where producers are responsible for the full life cycle of their products, and incentivised to make them easier to repair”.

Consumers could help by not buying fast tech – “manual fans or an open window work just as well” she noted.

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A convoy of trucks carrying tents, construction materials and portable toilets flows into a virtually abandoned airport in Florida’s picturesque Everglades, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But they’re not helping build the region’s next big tourist attraction.

Instead they’re laying the foundations for a new migrant detention facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”.

The facility, in the middle of a Miami swamp, was proposed by state lawmakers to support US President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.

“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” explains the state’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, in a video set to rock music and posted on social media.

The new detention centre is being built on the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, about 43 miles (70km) from central Miami, in the middle of the Everglades, an ecologically important subtropical wetland.

The airfield where the detention centre will be based is mainly a pilot training runway surrounded by vast swamps.

In the stifling summer heat rife with mosquitoes, we managed to advance only a few metres into the compound when, as expected, a guard in a lorry blocked our way.

We hear sounds coming from a small canal next to the compound. We wonder whether it’s fish, snakes, or the hundreds of alligators that roam the wetland.

Although the airstrip belongs to Miami-Dade County, the decision to turn it into a detention centre was made following a 2023 executive order by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, invoking emergency powers to stem the flow of undocumented migrants.

The new centre, which according to authorities will have the capacity to accommodate around 1,000 detainees and will begin operations in July or August, is quickly becoming a controversial symbol of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

As Trump orders immigration authorities to carry out “the single largest mass deportation programme in history”, human rights organisations say detention centres are becoming overcrowded.

According to data obtained by CBS News, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a record 59,000 detainees nationwide, 140% above its capacity.

Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee Native American community, lives near the site and recently took part in a protest against the facility.

She suspects that rather than being a temporary site as authorities have stated, it will operate for months or even years.

“I have serious concerns about the environmental damage,” Ms Osceola tells us while we were talking next to a canal where an alligator was swimming.

She is also concerned about the living conditions that detainees may face in the new facility.

Those concerns are echoed by environmental organisations, such as Friends of the Everglades, and by human rights organisations in the U.S.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida told the BBC the proposed facility “is not just cruel and absurd. It underscores how our immigration system is increasingly being used to punish people rather than process them.”

Even ICE detention centres in populated areas, the ACLU said, “have well-documented histories of medical neglect, denial of legal access, and systemic mistreatment”.

BBC Mundo contacted the Florida attorney general’s office, but did not receive a response.

In the social media video, Uthmeier says the project is an “efficient” and “low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility”.

With the “Alligator Alcatraz”, he says, there will be “nowhere to go, nowhere to hide”.

Expanding, adapting, or building new detention centres has been one of the Trump administration’s main challenges in accelerating deportations.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement sent to the BBC that Florida will receive federal funds to establish the new detention centre.

“We are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” she added.

“We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”

Noem says that the facility will be funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which is responsible for disaster co-ordination.

Daniella Levine Cava, the Democratic mayor of Miami-Dade County, which owns the airstrip land, says that she has requested information from state authorities.

The mayor “clearly laid out several concerns” regarding the proposed use of the airport, namely around funding and environmental impacts, her office said in a statement to the BBC.

While immigration raids have increased in cities like Los Angeles, the operations to detain migrants seem to be so far less widespread in Miami Dade County and South Florida.

Many undocumented Latinos prefer to stay at home because they are afraid of being arrested and sent to detention centres, according to testimonies gathered by BBC Mundo.

Inside an anonymous building in Oxford, Riley Jackson is frying a steak. The perfectly red fillet cut sizzles in the pan, its juices releasing a meaty aroma. But this is no ordinary steak. It was grown in the lab next door.

What’s strangest of all is just how real it looks. The texture, when cut, is indistinguishable from the real thing.

“That’s our goal,” says Ms Jackson of Ivy Farm Technologies, the food tech start-up that created it. “We want it to be as close to a normal steak as possible.”

Lab-grown meat is already sold in many parts of the world and in a couple of years, pending being granted regulatory approval, it could also be sold in the UK too – in burgers, pies and sausages.

Unlike so-called vegetarian meat, which is already available in UK supermarkets – from fake bacon rashers made from pea protein to steaks made of soy, and dyed bright red to resemble the real thing – lab-grown meat is biologically real meat, grown from cow cells.

To some, this could be a smart technological fix for a growing environmental problem: the rise in planet-heating gases caused, in part, by the rapid and growing demand for meat.

But others argue that the environmental benefits of lab-grown meat, officially known as cultivated meat, have been oversold. Some critics say that more effort should instead be expended on reducing meat consumption, instead of looking to a technology fix.

Then there are questions around the ultra-processed nature of this meat, which some also worry will be produced by a handful of multinational companies.

So now, with dog food made from meat that was grown in factory vats having already gone on sale in the UK earlier this year and with the possibility of lab-grown food for humans becoming available sooner than expected – the debate has never been more prescient.

Nor has the question: to grow or not to grow?

Global demand for meat is growing. According the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, meat production has increased fivefold since the 1960s and reached around 364 million tonnes in 2023.

Producing 1kg of beef can generate planet-heating greenhouse gases, equivalent to roughly 40kg of carbon dioxide, though estimates can vary depending on the type of production.

A study published in Nature Food in 2021 concluded that food production was responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cattle also burp planet-heating methane gas, plus they require water and land.

Tim Lang, a professor of food policy at City St George’s, University of London argues that the issue is a ticking environmental time bomb. “The situation is absolutely dire,” he says.

“Politicians are fearful of engaging with the issue. They don’t want to take on the meat and farming industry, nor do they wish to risk unpopularity by enacting policies that would reduce meat consumption.”

Lab-grown meat has been marketed as part of a solution. Its advocates claim that it can meet the growing demand for meat with much less carbon emissions and land use, plus it can help governments hit certain targets.

In the UK, for example, a 2021 independent review for the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has called for a 30% reduction in meat consumption by 2032 to meet the country’s net zero target.

The science behind lab-grown meat is also relatively straightforward. Researchers take cells from a farm animal and grow more of them in a dish. When they have enough, they are put into ever larger vats until they have enough to produce a meat product.

Turning this into something that people want to eat is trickier. Each company has its own closely guarded secret sauce. But in the main, the cells are developed in a cocktail of nutrients, which encourage them to grow in the right way, after which other ingredients are sometimes added to boost the nutritional values.

The result is a paste, which is then processed and mixed with other foods such as soy to make it look, feel and taste more like meat. There are also plans to produce fish-like products this way, including eel and even caviar.

Ivy Farm Technologies business that has applied for approval to sell its cultivated meat in the UK. If granted, its first products won’t be steaks but burgers and sausages.

It plans to combine cultivated mince, (which is cheaper and easier to produce than trying to replicate the taste of a real steak) with regular mince to create a blended cow-cultivated beef burger.

“If you want to make a sustainable difference, you have to go for mass production and burgers are where the masses are,” says the firm’s CEO Dr Harsh Amin. “If you blend our cultivated meat with animal derived meat, you are [still] reducing the carbon footprint.”

Ivy Farm claims this type of meat can lead to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental benefits. Other companies make similar claims, but these are based more on hope than hard evidence, according to Dr John Lynch, of Oxford University, who has carried out a comprehensive, independent assessment of the climate impact of lab-grown meat.

“There have not been any accurate climate assessment studies because production is not happening at large scale at the moment,” he adds.

The problem with comparing the climate impact of lab-grown meat with agricultural production is that there is little data and many variables.

Growing cells in vats requires energy, as does producing the chemicals that are added. Businesses keep the details of their processes secret, for perfectly legitimate reasons, so it is hard to produce a single figure for the climate cost of cultivated meat.

Dr Lynch has assessed the data available in scientific papers and found that the best-case cultivated meat carbon footprints were as low as 1.65 kg of CO2 per kg, which is better for the climate than traditional beef production.

However, if a lab-grown meat process needs a lot of energy, some estimates put the figure as high as 22kg of CO2 per kg, making its climate advantage less certain.

Then there is the fact that the cows’ methane gas burps disappear from the atmosphere after 12 years or so, whereas the CO2 produced to grow the lab meat continues to do its damage for much longer. Dr John Lynch has taken the more damaging impact of methane into account in his calculations and they indicate that the persistance of CO2 in the atmosphere can do more damage in the long term.

So, in the long run, it may be a bad idea to replace cows with high energy lab-grown production, according to Dr Lynch’s assessment. Yet that may be counter-balanced by the fact that cultivated meat production would require far less land.

The bottom line is that the environmental advantages of lab-grown beef over cattle farming is a closer run thing than its advocates argue – but it is likely to have the edge as production methods scale up and become more efficient, according to Dr Lynch.

“For beef, it is quite viable for cultured meat to come out on top,” he argues. “But I don’t think it is the same story for chicken and pork, which convert their feed into meat more efficiently than cattle.”

Singapore became the first country to allow the sale of cell-cultivated meat for human consumption in 2020. This was followed by the United States three years later and Israel in 2024.

UK firms have complained that the regulatory approvals process is too slow for them to keep up with overseas competitors. But sales in those countries have in the main been peripatetic, with many firms only offering tastings or serving it in upmarket restaurants for short periods.

This is largely because manufacturers are not able to mass-produce their products in sufficient quantities or as cheaply as traditional meat.

In the US, four companies have received some form of regulatory approval for their lab-grown chicken, pork fat and salmon. Salmon from Wildtype, for example, is now served at Kann, a fine-dining restaurant in Oregon, while Good Meat’s chicken was introduced at a restaurant in Washington, DC.

The response from consumers so far has been “optimistic and curious”, according to Suzi Gerber who is the executive director of the US Association for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation.

Some parts of the US cattle industry have, however, expressed opposition to the technology and lobbied for it to be banned, though other livestock firms have remained neutral or been supportive.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and several state-level organisations publicly oppose bans, perhaps in case it sets a precedent for banning other scientific advances, such as bio-engineered food stock for cattle.

The cultivated meat industry says that their products should have no effect on the livestock industry – people will always prefer real meat over artificial. The role of the new technology is, they say, to meet the demand that livestock production is unable to.

The seafood industry has also shown openness: for example, the US National Fisheries Institute recognises cultivated seafood as part of a broader domestic production of on-land fish, like aquaculture.

Ellen Dinsmoor is chief operating officer of Vow, a Sydney-based firm that sells cultivated Japanese quail products in Singapore. It recently received approval to sell in Australia too.

Unlike some cultivated meat firms, Vow is not trying to copy normal meats. Instead, the firm has chosen quail because fewer people know what it is supposed to taste like.

“What we have to do is produce a really delicious product that people want,” she explains. “A little later we can sell it on nutrition, for example we can add healthy omega-3 oils found only in salmon into chicken. And then if we can do all that at a fraction of the price, this is where it becomes interesting to consumers.”

This is all part of a strategy to create a stable high-end market, which could in time enable investment in producing food that is less posh and in larger quantities.

But for some critics, the potential benefits of this technology for the environment, or indeed for the poorest communities in the world, are being lost.

Some of the start-up companies involved are driven by delivering swift returns to their investors, argues Dr Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People, which can be more easily done by producing high-priced products in high-income countries.

A simpler, cheaper and easier option, he argues, would be to persuade people in both developed and emerging countries to eat less meat.

“It is all very well to propose to people that they should eat a high-protein slurry to keep themselves well,” he argues, “but… I don’t think it is something we should impose on already marginalised groups of people.”

He also worries that the emergence of cultivated food is an acceleration of a long-term trend away from environmentally sustainable, locally sourced, whole foods and toward factory mass-produced fare. “And at the moment the process is pretty energy intensive.”

But like it or not, lab-grown meat is here. To some, it’s a healthier option with less cholesterol, no animal suffering – and a clever solution to a pressing environmental problem. To others, those benefits may have been overblown.

For all the promises and potential about helping the world, however, most people choose food for more personal reasons, namely how it tastes and how affordable it is. That, more than anything, may well decide its future.

Fifty years after it first exploded on Indian screens, Sholay (Embers) – arguably the most iconic Hindi film ever made – is making a spectacular return.

In a landmark event for film lovers, the fully restored, uncut version of Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 magnum opus will have its world premiere at Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy, on Friday. This version includes the film’s original ending – changed due to objection from the censors – and deleted scenes.

The screening will take place on the festival’s legendary open-air screen in Piazza Maggiore – one of the largest in Europe – offering a majestic setting for this long-awaited cinematic resurrection.

Crafted by writer duo Salim-Javed and featuring an all-star cast led by Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri, Sanjeev Kumar and the unforgettable Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh, Sholay draws cinematic inspiration from Western and samurai classics. Yet, it remains uniquely Indian.

The 204-minute film is a classic good-versus-evil tale set in the fictional village of Ramgarh, where two petty criminals, Jai and Veeru (Bachchan and Dharmendra), are hired by a former jailer, Thakur Baldev Singh, to take down the ruthless bandit Gabbar Singh – one of Indian cinema’s most iconic villains.

When it first released, Sholay ran for five uninterrupted years at Mumbai’s 1,500-seater Minerva theatre. It was later voted “Film of the Millennium” in a BBC India online poll and named the greatest Indian film in a British Film Institute poll. Half a million records and cassettes of RD Burman’s score and the film’s instantly recognisable dialogues were sold.

The film is also a cultural phenomenon: dialogues are quoted at weddings, referenced in political speeches and spoofed in adverts.

“Sholay is the eighth wonder of the world,” Dharmendra, who plays a small-town crook and is paired up with Bachchan in the film, said in a recent statement.

Shooting the film was an “unforgettable experience,” Bachchan said, “though I had no idea at the time that it would become a watershed moment in Indian cinema.”

This new restoration is the most faithful version of Sholay, complete with the original ending and never-before-seen deleted scenes, according to Shivendra Singh Dungarpur of the Film Heritage Foundation.

In the original version, Gabbar Singh dies – killed by Thakur, who crushes him with spiked shoes.

But the censors objected. They balked at the idea of a former police officer taking the law into his own hands. They also found the film’s stylised violence too excessive. The film faced unusually tough censors because it hit the theatres during the Emergency, when the ruling Congress government suspended civil liberties.

After failed attempts to reason with them, Sippy was forced to reshoot the ending. The cast and crew were rushed back to the rugged hills of Ramanagaram in southern India – transformed into the fictional village of Ramgarh. With the new, softened finale – where Gabbar Singh is captured, not killed – in place, the film finally cleared the censors.

The road to the three-year-long restoration of the epic was far from easy. The original 70mm prints had not survived, and the camera negatives were in a severely deteriorated condition.

But in 2022, Shehzad Sippy, son of Ramesh Sippy, approached the Mumbai-based Film Heritage Foundation with a proposal to restore the film.

He revealed that several film elements were being stored in a warehouse in Mumbai. What seemed like a gamble turned out to be a miracle: inside the unlabelled cans were the original 35mm camera and sound negatives.

The excitement didn’t end there.

Sippy Films also informed the Foundation about additional reels stored in the UK. With the support of the British Film Institute, the team gained access to archival materials. These were carefully shipped to L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, one of the world’s premier film restoration facilities.

Despite the loss of the original 70mm prints and severely damaged negatives, archivists sourced elements from Mumbai and the UK, collaborating with the British Film Institute and Italy’s L’Immagine Ritrovata to painstakingly piece the film back together. The effort even uncovered the original camera used for shooting the film.

Interestingly, Sholay had a rocky start when it first hit the screens. Early reviews were harsh, the box office was shaky, and the 70mm print was delayed at customs.

India Today magazine called the film a “dead ember”. Filmfare’s Bikram Singh wrote that the major problem with the film was the “unsuccessful transplantation it attempts, grafting a western on the Indian milieu”.

“The film remains imitation western – neither here nor there”.

In initial screenings, audiences sat in silence – no laughter, no tears, no applause. “Just silence,” writes film writer Anupama Chopra in her book, Sholay: The Making of a Classic. By the weekend, theatres were full but the response remained uncertain – and panic had set in.

Over the next few weeks, audiences warmed up to the film, and word of mouth spread: “The visuals were epic, and the sound was a miracle…By the third week, the audience was repeating dialogues. It meant that at least some were coming in to see the film for the second time,” writes Chopra.

A month after Sholay hit screens, Polydor released a 48-minute dialogue record – and the tide had turned. The film’s characters became iconic, and Gabbar Singh – the “genuinely frightening, but widely popular” villain – emerged as a cultural phenomenon. Foreign critics called it India’s first “curry western”.

Sholay ran for over five years – three in regular shows and two as matinees at Mumbai’s Minerva. Even in its 240th week, shows were full. Sholay hit Pakistani screens on April 2015, and despite being 40 years old, it outperformed most Indian films over a decade old – including the 2002 hit Devdas starring Shah Rukh Khan.

As film distributor Shyam Shroff told Chopra: “As they used to say about the British Empire, the sun never sets on Sholay.”

Why does Sholay still resonate with audiences, half a century later? Amitabh Bachchan offers a simple yet profound answer: “The victory of good over evil and… most importantly, poetic justice in three hours! You and I shall not get it in a lifetime,” he told an interviewer.

For the Netherlands this was the biggest security operation in its history; for Nato’s 32 member states the Hague summit was historic too.

There were unexpected moments of levity in among the momentous decisions over the looming threat from Russia and raising defence spending to levels not seen since the Cold War.

Here is what we learned from a whirlwind two days in The Hague.

The main takeaway is the allies’ commitment to a 5% defence spending target, to be reached within a decade. It’s a remarkable jump from the current 2% guideline, which currently isn’t even met by eight Nato members out of 32.

Only 3.5% of that figure is meant to be achieved entirely through core defence spending on troops and weapons – while the remaining 1.5% can be put towards “defence-related expenditure”.

And that’s a suitably broad concept that can apply to spending even only loosely linked to defence: as long as it is used to “protect our critical infrastructure, defend our networks, ensure our civil preparedness and resilience, unleash innovation, and strengthen our defence industrial base”.

Reaching that 3.5% core defence spending target will still be a significant ask for many Nato countries, many of which currently hover around the 2% line.

Plans to reach the 5% figure will have to be submitted annually and will have to follow a “credible, incremental path”. A review will take place in 2029.

For as long as Nato has existed, its Article Five on collective defence has been a core principle that means an attack against one ally is considered an attack on all.

So when Trump suggested on the way to the summit there were “numerous definitions” of the mutual security guarantee, it was a reminder of comments he made on the campaign trail last year, when he suggested if a country did not pay its way “I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage [Moscow] to do whatever they want”.

This summit agreement appears to put to bed any lingering concerns about Trump’s intentions because it reaffirms “our ironclad commitment to collective defence”. “I stand with [Article Five], that’s why I’m here,” he told reporters afterwards.

That reassurance will be well received by Nato member states seen as under most threat, but then they paid their way anyway. And Trump has gone back to Washington with a deal that means all other member states have agreed to do up their spending too.

The Russia question was always going to be tricky. Most Nato countries – particularly those in close proximity to the Russian border – are in agreement that Moscow could pose a direct threat to them in the near future; Rutte himself has said Russia could use military force against the alliance within five years.

Last year’s end-of-summit declaration referenced – in no uncertain terms – Moscow’s “brutal war of aggression” several times.

But Trump has had a much softer approach to Moscow, and has resisted treating it as an adversary. As such it was always unlikely he was going to approve a declaration that labelled Russia as the clear culprit for the bloody Ukraine war, now more than three years old.

So while the statement mentions the “long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security” and reaffirms the need to provide enduring support to Ukraine, there is no specific condemnation of Russia in the communique.

• The nine Nato countries that missed their defence spending targets
• Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia
• Who’s in Nato and how much do they spend on defence?

Ever since Volodymyr Zelensky’s difficult experience in the White House last February, European leaders have sought to avoid getting off on the wrong foot with Donald Trump.

Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez went to The Hague already mired in domestic political scandals and he was expecting a tough time.

Spain props up the bottom of the Nato spending league with 1.24% of economic output on defence. He came to The Hague insisting that 2.1% was plenty, and told reporters after signing the summit declaration that Spain considered the amount “sufficient, realistic and compatible with our social model and welfare state”.

The Spanish PM was noticeably aloof during the “family photo”, preferring to stand on the end away from his Nato colleagues. There were suggestions that he had gone out of his way to avoid Trump too.

But Sánchez had already caught Trump’s eye and the US president was having none of it.

“It’s terrible, what they’ve done,” said Trump, who accused Madrid of seeking “a little bit of a free ride”. “We’re negotiating with Spain on a trade deal but we’re going to make them pay twice.”

Because Spain is a member of the European Union, Trump will find that difficult to do – but Sánchez will go back to Madrid isolated in Nato as well as struggling at home.

No-one would have been more keenly aware of the potential pitfalls of this summit than Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte, who was involved in a surprising exchange with the US president in which he referred to him as “daddy”.

Rutte had already flattered Trump in a private message for “decisive action in Iran” that “NO American president in decades could have done”. Trump had then posted his words on his social media network and Rutte denied being embarrassed.

But then in a joint appearance with Trump on Wednesday, Rutte reacted to Trump describing the war between Israel and Iran as “like two kids in a schoolyard” who had had a big fight.

“And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get them to stop.”

Asked if he had gone too far with his flattery, Rutte said he didn’t think so: “I think he deserves all the praise.”

Trump, flanked by a smirking Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, seemed amused by the whole thing: “I think he likes me, if he doesn’t… I’ll come back and hit him hard. He did it very affectionately: ‘Daddy you’re my daddy,'” he laughed.

The British paedophile charged in connection with organising a “mock wedding” to a child in Disneyland Paris is Jacky Jhaj, who was found guilty of sexual activity with two 15-year-olds in 2016, the BBC understands.

Jhaj, 39, has been charged in connection with organising the fake ceremony on Saturday, in which a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl was due to feature as his bride.

He was arrested when police were called on Saturday morning by an actor who said he had been hired by Jhaj to play the father of the bride.

The BBC has previously investigated how Jhaj was able to hire hundreds of children to act as his fawning fans at a fake film premiere in London’s Leicester Square in 2023.

Some of the children, who had been hired from casting agencies, were as young as six.

Teenage girls told the BBC that they had been asked to scream for him and try to touch him, without being told his real identity by the agencies.

Then in June last year, Jhaj was seen giving gifts to children outside dance auditions for another production – he was recognised by a parent who had seen the BBC article.

Two months later, and following the BBC’s further investigation, Jhaj was filmed posing naked in front of a mocked-up BBC News lorry in London which had been set on fire.

For the mock wedding at Disneyland Paris, which was to be filmed by Jhaj’s team, around 100 French extras had been recruited to take part.

The BBC understands that he appeared in front of a judge in Meaux, north-east of Paris, on Monday and was charged with fraud, breach of trust, money laundering, and identity theft and placed in pretrial detention.

Preliminary findings also stated that he had allegedly been “made-up professionally so that his face appeared totally different from his own”, according to the French prosecutor.

Jhaj has been on the sex offenders register since 2016 and has spent time in prison. He is subject to restrictions on his freedoms under the terms of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order.

Since he was released from prison, he has repeatedly staged productions involving children or young people.

BBC News can reveal that some videos of these productions were uploaded to a YouTube account styled as an official performer’s channel.

The account received more than six million views and had over 12 million subscribers.

A video on a different channel included secretly filmed footage of one of the 15-year-old victims he was convicted of sexually exploiting.

Her family has told the BBC that Jhaj “destroyed” her life and said it’s unacceptable that YouTube allowed the video to be watched for entertainment for four years.

Videos of the productions remained on YouTube for years until last September, when the BBC alerted Google, which owns the platform.

It told the BBC at the time that it takes users’ safety seriously, but offered no explanation as to how an account featuring a man with almost no profile or success had 12 million subscribers, or why the videos were not removed.

Over the past two years, the BBC has spoken to videographers, production assistants and technicians who worked on some of the events before they discovered Jhaj’s real identity.

Their records show that the cost of hiring casts and venues has run into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The cost of hiring the area in front of the Odeon cinema in London’s Leicester Square, which hosts red carpet events for major Hollywood premieres, would have run into tens of thousands of pounds.

French outlet BFMTV reported that the fake wedding at Disneyland may have cost organisers more than €130,000 (£110,000).

It remains unclear how these elaborate productions have been funded.

The French prosecutor said the Ukrainian girl arrived in France two days before the Disneyland event – but had not been a victim of either physical or sexual violence and had not been “forced to play the role” of a bride.

The prosecutor’s statement also said that Disneyland Paris had been “deceived” and that the organiser had used a fake Latvian ID to hire the venue. Disneyland Paris can be rented by members of the public outside opening hours.

In a statement, the UK’s Metropolitan Police said:

“A 39-year-old man is wanted by the Met Police for breaching a Sexual Harm Prevention Order and a breach of a Sex Offenders’ Register notification requirement.

“We are aware the man has been arrested in France for other matters and officers are in contact with the French authorities.”

France has ordered the recall of 2.5 million cars equipped with defective airbags that can explode on impact and have caused a series of deaths.

It follows a fatal accident earlier this month in Reims, east of Paris, in which a 37 year-old mother driving a Citroen C3 was struck in the head by pieces of flying metal after a minor collision.

It is the latest drama in the 20-year scandal over now-defunct Japanese manufacturer Takata, whose airbags were installed by nearly all the world’s leading car-makers.

The airbags use ammonium nitrate gas for instant inflation. But the gas can deteriorate in hot and humid conditions, leading to powerful explosions which throw shrapnel into the driver’s face.

The transport ministry in Paris on Tuesday issued a “do not drive” order on cars of all brands bearing Takata airbags in Corsica and in France’s overseas territories, as well as on pre-2011 cars in mainland France.

The difference is because hotter climates – such as in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean – make the airbags more unstable. Of the 18 French deaths attributed to the airbags, 16 have been in the overseas territories.

The number of affected vehicles is put at 1.7 million. The ministry said owners of a further 800,000 post-2011 cars on the mainland should report to their dealers and have their airbags changed.

The measure is a major step-up from the initial reaction to the Reims tragedy, which was to immobilise only certain Citroën vehicles – the CS3 and DS3.

“This decision should send a clear and firm message to the manufacturers, and at the same time encourage owners to have their vehicles checked as soon as possible,” the ministry said.

The move risks causing serious disruption to families, a few weeks ahead of summer holidays. The ministry said all drivers affected by order should be able to access free replacement vehicles until their airbags are changed.

In a statement last week, car-maker Stellantis – which produces the C3 and DS3 – said it was “committed to acting quickly and with the utmost transparency” to provide its customers with a solution.

It is thought that 35 people have been killed by Takata airbags around the world, and some 100 million vehicles have been recalled in various countries.

The scandal was mainly focused in the US and has belatedly hit Europe over the last two years. The UK arm of Stellantis also issued a stop drive notice for its Citroen C3 and DS3 cars this week.

Lawyers and victims’ families met in Paris to discuss possibilities of legal redress on Tuesday.

“The rhythm of accidents is accelerating. Since January 2025 there has been a death every two months,” lawyer Charles-Henri Coppet said.

“It is urgent to force manufacturers to issue recalls and make sure they are properly carried out, otherwise there will be more deaths.”

“If my father had not had a Takata airbag, he would be alive today,” Vicky – a woman from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe – told Le Figaro newspaper. Her father was killed in July 2024 when his airbag exploded.

“There was no recall order out on his car. He had no idea he was driving a time-bomb.”

France’s main consumers’ association UFC-Que Choisir accused the government and manufacturers of complacency.

“No measure has been taken by the manufacturers which reflects the urgency and gravity of the situation,” said the association’s president Marie-Amandine Stévenin.

“Their risk analyses were obviously not reliable, because we are continuing to have accidents.”

Thousands of people have poured into Worthy Farm after the gates officially opened for the 2025 Glastonbury Festival.

Co-founder Sir Michael Eavis and his daughter Emily Eavis, who now runs the festival, led the countdown shortly before 08:00 BST in front of many who slept outside the gate on Tuesday night.

More than 200,000 people are set to descend on the site in the coming days ahead of the main festival programme launching on Friday.

Speaking shortly before the gates opened, Ms Eavis told the BBC: “It’s been such a build-up this year, it’s been an amazing amount of excitement.”

Ms Eavis said: “We’re all so looking forward to opening the gates and to be able to do it with my dad has been amazing.

“It’s the best moment to let them all in and it’s just such a joyful city, the most joyful city in the UK for the next five days.”

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Hundreds of people arrived on Tuesday night, sleeping under the stars in queues in a bid to be the first on site.

Among them were James Trusson, 31, from Ash, Somerset, Grace Ball, 29, from Bournemouth and Dan Mortimore, from Compton Dundon, Somerset, who made it to the front of the line for the second year in a row.

Having put themselves in prime position for a top camping spot, Ms Ball said their plans for the rest of the day were to go “back to the car for snacks, and then sleep”.

“I’ll crack a beer I think,” added Mr Trusson.

Hundreds of people have got in touch with the BBC with photos and stories of travelling to the festival – whether that’s a train into Castle Cary, a long coach journey or by bike.

A coach full of Glastonbury-goers was sat on the hard shoulder of the M6 with a blown tyre, and Bobby told us he had broken down next to the A303 on his way to the festival.

Many heading to the festival for the first time shared their excitement, while others said returning for the 13th time was “pretty awesome”.

We also spoke to Laurence, who said he quit his job to attend Glastonbury Festival because his leave request was denied.

Apart from the expected traffic on the A361 between Glastonbury and Worthy Farm, the main travel routes to the festival have remained relatively clear throughout the day.

While the main acts might not start performing until Friday, there is plenty for revellers to enjoy away from the music.

There are performances at the circus and theatre fields, seaside entertainment on offer at “Glastonbury-on-Sea” and plenty of food and drink stalls.

After spending nearly two weeks in a secret bunker somewhere in Iran during his country’s war with Israel, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, might want to use the opportunity of the ceasefire to venture out.

He is believed to be holed up, incommunicado, for the fear of being assassinated by Israel. Even top government officials apparently have had no contact with him.

He would be well advised to be cautious, despite the fragile ceasefire that the US President Donald Trump and the Emir of Qatar brokered. Though President Trump reportedly told Israel not to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not rule it out.

When – or indeed if – he does emerge from hiding, he will see a landscape of death and destruction. He will no doubt still appear on state TV claiming victory in the conflict. He will plot to restore his image. But he will face new realities – even a new era.

The war has left the country significantly weakened and him a diminished man.

During the war, Israel quickly took control of much of Iran’s airspace, and attacked its military infrastructure. Top commanders of the Revolutionary Guard and the army were swiftly killed.

The extent of the damage to the military is still unclear and disputed, but the repeated bombings of the army and revolutionary guard bases and installations suggests substantial degradation of Iran’s military power. Militarisation had long consumed a vast amount of the nation’s resources.

Iran’s known nuclear facilities that earned the country nearly two decades of US and international sanctions, with an estimated cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, are now damaged from the air strikes, although the full extent of this has been hard to assess. What was it all for, many are asking.

A vast number of Iranians will singularly hold Ayatollah Khamenei, who first became leader in 1989, responsible for setting Iran on a collision course with Israel and the US that ultimately brought considerable ruin to his country and people.

They will blame him for pursuing the ideological aim of destruction of Israel – something many Iranians don’t support. They will blame him for what they perceive as a folly – his belief that achieving nuclear status would render his regime invincible. Sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, reducing a top oil exporter to a poor and struggling shadow of its former self.

“It is difficult to estimate how much longer the Iranian regime can survive under such significant strain, but this looks like the beginning of the end,” says Professor Lina Khatib, a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

“Ali Khamenei is likely to become the Islamic Republic’s last ‘Supreme Leader’ in the full sense of the word.”

There have been murmurs of dissent at the top. At the height of the war, one semi-official Iranian news agency reported that some top former regime figures have been urging the country’s more quiet religious scholars based in the holy city of Qom, who are separate to the ayatollah, to intervene and bring about a change in leadership.

“There will be a reckoning,” according to Professor Ali Ansari, the founding director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.

“It’s quite clear that there are huge disagreements within the leadership, and there’s also huge unhappiness among ordinary people.”

During the last two weeks, many Iranians wrestled with conflicted feelings of the need to defend their country versus their deep hatred of the regime. They rallied for the country, not by coming out to defend the regime, but to look after each other. There have been reports of vast solidarity and closeness.

People in towns and villages outside urban areas opened their doors to those who had fled the bombardments in their cities, shopkeepers undercharged basic goods, neighbours knocked on each other’s doors to ask if they needed anything.

But many people were also aware that Israel was probably looking for a regime change in Iran. A regime change is what many Iranians wish for. They may draw the line on a regime change engineered and imposed by foreign powers, however.

In his nearly 40 years of his rule, Ayatollah Khamenei, one of the world’s longest reigning autocrats, has decimated any opposition in the country. Opposition political leaders are either in jail or have fled the country. Abroad, the opposition figures have been unable to formulate a stance that unites the opposition to the regime.

They have been ineffectual in the establishment of any semblance of an organisation able to take over inside the country if the opportunity arises.

And during the two weeks of war, when the collapse of the regime could have been a possibility, if the war went on relentlessly, many believed the likely scenario for the day after was not the takeover by the opposition, but the descent of the country into chaos and lawlessness.

“It is unlikely that the Iranian regime will be toppled through domestic opposition. The regime remains strong at home and will ramp up domestic oppression to crush dissent,” says Prof Khatib.

Iranians are now fearing further clampdown by the regime. At least six people have been executed in the past two weeks since the start of the war with Israel on charges of spying for Israel. Authorities say they have arrested some 700 people on this charge.

One Iranian woman told BBC Persian what she fears more than the death and destruction of the war is a regime that is wounded and humiliated turning its anger against its own people.

“If the regime is unable to supply basic goods and services, then there will be growing anger and frustration,” says Prof Ansari.

“I see it as a staged process. I don’t see it as something that, necessarily, in a popular sense, will take root until long after the bombing is over.”

Few people in Iran think that the ceasefire brokered on Monday will last – and many believe Israel is not yet finished now that it has total superiority in the sky over Iran.

One thing that seems to have escaped the destruction are Iran’s ballistic missile silos that Israel found hard to locate as they are placed in tunnels under mountains throughout the country.

The Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, said Israel launched its opening attack on Iran knowing that “Iran possessed around 2,500 surface-to-surface missiles”. The missiles that Iran fired caused considerable death and destruction in Israel.

Israel will be concerned about the remaining possible 1,500 still in the hands of the Iranian side.

There is also a serious concern in Tel Aviv, Washington and other Western and regional capitals that Iran may still rush to build a nuclear bomb, something it has continued to deny trying to do.

Although Iran’s nuclear facilities have almost certainly been set back, and possibly rendered useless during the bombings by Israel and the US, Iran said it had moved its stockpile of highly enriched Uranium to a safe secret place.

That stockpile of 60% Uranium, if enriched to 90%, which is a relatively easy step, is enough for about nine bombs, according to experts. Just before the war started, Iran announced that it had built another new secret facility for enrichment that was due to come on stream soon.

The Iranian parliament has voted to sharply reduce its cooperation with the UN’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This still requires approval, but if it passes Iran would be one step away from exiting the nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT – as hardliners supporting the supreme leader push for Iran’s breakout to build a bomb.

Ayatollah Khamenei may now be confident that his regime has survived, just. But at the age of 86 and ailing, he also knows that his own days may be numbered, and he may want to ensure continuity of the regime with an orderly transition of power – to another senior cleric or even a council of leadership.

In any case, the remaining top commanders of the Revolutionary Guard who have been loyal to the supreme leader may be seeking to wield power from behind the scenes.

The head of the CIA has said US strikes “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear facilities and set them back years, diverging from a leaked intelligence report that angered President Donald Trump by downplaying the raid’s impact.

John Ratcliffe, the US spy agency’s director, said key sites had been destroyed, though he stopped short of declaring that Iran’s nuclear programme had been eliminated outright.

It comes a day after a leaked preliminary assessment from a Pentagon intelligence agency suggested core components of Iran’s nuclear programme remained intact after the US bombings.

President Trump again maintained the raid had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Republican president took to social media on Wednesday to post that the “fake news” media had “lied and totally misrepresented the facts, none of which they had”.

He said Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and other military officials would hold an “interesting and irrefutable” news conference on Thursday at the Pentagon “in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots”.

It came as Israel and Iran seemed to honour a fragile ceasefire that Trump helped negotiate this week on the 12th day of the war.

Speaking at The Hague where he attended a Nato summit on Wednesday, Trump said of the strikes: “It was very severe. It was obliteration.”

He also said he would probably seek a commitment from Iran to end its nuclear ambitions at talks next week. Iran has not acknowledged any such negotiations.

But US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told US network NBC there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries.

Ratcliffe’s statement said the CIA’s information included “new intelligence from an historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years”.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also come out in support of Trump’s assessment on the damage to Iranian nuclear facilities.

“If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordo, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she wrote on X.

The US operation involved 125 military aircraft, targeting the three main Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday.

New satellite images show six craters clustered around two entry points at Fordo, with similar craters spotted at Isfahan. But it is unclear if the nuclear facilities located deep underground were wiped out.

A report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency was leaked to US media on Tuesday, estimating that the US bombing had set back Iran’s nuclear programme “only a few months”.

The US defence secretary said that assessment was made with “low confidence”.

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Officials familiar with the evaluation cautioned it was an early assessment that could change as more information emerges. The US has 18 intelligence agencies, which sometimes produce conflicting reports based on their mission and area of expertise.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday that there is a chance Tehran moved much of its highly enriched uranium elsewhere as it came under attack.

But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Al Jazeera on Wednesday: “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.” He did not elaborate.

A report by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission said the strike on Fordo “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure”.

The damage across all the sites, the report said, has pushed Iran’s timeline for nuclear weapons back by “many years”.

Yet Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to the chairman of the Iranian parliament, said shortly after the US strikes that “no irreversible damage was sustained” at Fordo.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is peaceful. US intelligence agencies have previously said Tehran was not actively building atomic weapons.

Nato leaders have agreed to ramp up defence spending to 5% of their countries’ economic output by 2035, following months of pressure from Donald Trump.

The US president described the decision, taken at a summit in The Hague, as a “big win for Europe and… Western civilisation”.

In a joint statement, members said they were united against “profound” security challenges, singling out the “long-term threat posed by Russia” and terrorism.

Nato leaders reaffirmed their “ironclad commitment” to the principle that an attack on one Nato member would lead to a response from the full alliance.

However, the statement did not include a condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as it had a year ago.

“No-one should doubt our capacity or determination should our security be challenged,” said Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte. “This is a stronger, fairer and more lethal alliance that our leaders have begun to build”.

The US president had earlier appeared to raise questions about the security guarantee, referring to “various definitions of Article Five”. But Trump said after the summit: “I stand with [Article Five], that’s why I’m here.”

The Hague summit has been described by several leaders as historic, and Rutte said decisions made on Wednesday would include continued support for Ukraine while pushing for peace.

The commitment to raise defence spending over 10 years involves at least 3.5% of each member state’s GDP on core defence expenditure by 2035, plus up to 1.5% on a broadly defined series of investments loosely connected to security infrastructure.

The US president hailed the summit – the first he has attended since 2019 – as a “big success”.

He had said earlier that the hike in spending would be a “great victory for everybody, I think. We will be equalised shortly, and that’s the way it has to be”.

Spain in particular had objected to the 5% target ahead of the meeting. Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said Madrid was making an “enormous effort” to reach a target of 2.1% and “the discussion about the percentage is misguided”.

As the leaders gathered for the traditional “family photo”, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez appeared to stand by himself at the far end of the group.

Nevertheless, Sánchez later went ahead and signed Nato’s statement, maintaining that it was “sufficient, realistic and compatible” for Madrid to meet its commitments while paying less.

The Belgian government had also expressed reservations, but Prime Minister Bart de Wever told reporters that while it wouldn’t be easy “3.5% within 10 years is a realistic goal”.

Slovakia had also raised concerns about the big hike in defence spending, but President Peter Pellegrini indicated that Bratislava would not stand in the way.

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French President Emmanuel Macron took issue with President Trump’s trade tariff confrontation with the European Union and called for a deal.

“We can’t say to each other, among allies, we need to spend more… and wage trade war against one another, it makes no sense.”

The Hague summit, which began with a dinner on Tuesday night hosted by King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima, has been scaled back so Wednesday’s set-piece gathering of leaders was due to last only two and a half hours.

Rutte told Nato leaders that they were meeting at a “dangerous moment”, and that the defence alliance’s guarantee of mutual defence – “an attack on one is an attack on all, sends a powerful message”.

Rutte also praised Trump for his handling of the Iran-Israel conflict, and referenced the president’s use of an expletive when describing his frustration at signs a ceasefire announced hours earlier could be in jeopardy on Tuesday.

Speaking at the summit, Trump said the two countries had fought like “two kids in a schoolyard”, and Rutte interjected: “And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language”.

The US president also held talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the summit. During a press conference afterwards, Trump said achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine was proving “more difficult” than he had expected, and raised the prospect of supplying Ukraine with further air defences.

“He’s got a little difficulty, Zelensky, a nice guy,” said Trump. “I’ve spoken to Putin a lot… he volunteered help on Iran. I said do me a favour, help us on Russia, not Iran.”

In their final communique, Nato member states stressed their commitments to providing support for Ukraine, “whose security contributes to ours”, adding that direct contributions to Kyiv’s defence and its defence industry would be included in assessment of allies’ defence spending.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Nato was as relevant and important now as it had ever been: “We live in a very volatile world and today is about the unity of Nato, showing that strength. We’re bigger than we were before, we’re stronger than we were before.”

Ticket touts are employing teams of workers to bulk-buy tickets for the UK’s biggest concerts like Oasis and Taylor Swift so they can be resold for profit, a BBC investigation has found.

We uncovered some touts are making “millions” hiring people overseas, known as “ticket pullers”, with one telling an undercover journalist his team bought hundreds of tickets for Swift’s Eras tour last year.

Our reporter, posing as a would-be tout, secretly recorded the boss of a ticket pulling company in Pakistan who said they could set up a team for us and potentially buy hundreds of tickets.

The UK government plans new legislation to crack down on touts but critics argue it does not go far enough.

More than 900,000 tickets were sold for Oasis’s long-awaited reunion tour, which starts in Cardiff next Friday.

But thousands of frustrated fans failed to get tickets for the sell-out gigs after spending hours in online queues.

Shortly after pre-sale, where a limited number of fans could buy Oasis tickets when they went on sale in August, tickets for their UK gigs were being listed on resale websites like StubHub and Viagogo for more than £6,000 – about 40 times the face value of a standing ticket.

We found genuine fans missed out or, in desperation, ended up paying way over the odds as touts have an army of people working for them to buy tickets for the most in-demand events as soon as they go on sale.

Ali, the boss of the ticket pulling company, boasted to our undercover reporter that he’d been successful at securing tickets for popular gigs.

“I think we had 300 Coldplay tickets and then we had Oasis in the same week – we did great,” he told us.

Ali claimed he knew of a UK tout who made more than £500,000 last year doing this and reckons others are “making millions”.

Our research found pullers buy tickets using illegal automated software and multiple identities which could amount to fraud.

Another ticket pulling boss, based in India, told BBC Wales Investigates’ undercover reporter: “If I’m sitting in your country and running my operations in your country, then it is completely illegal.

“We do not participate in illegal things because actually we are outside of the UK.”

A man who worked in the ticketing industry for almost 40 years showed us how he infiltrated a secret online group that claims to have secured thousands of tickets using underhand methods.

Reg Walker said members of the group could generate 100,000 “queue passes” – effectively allowing them to bypass the software that creates an online queue for gigs.

He told the BBC’s The Great Ticket Rip Off programme this was the equivalent of “100,000 people all of a sudden turning up and pushing in front of you in the queue”.

He added: “If you are a ticketing company and an authorised resale company, and someone decides to list hundreds of tickets for a high-demand event… my question would be, where did you get the tickets? There’s no due diligence.”

Fans are usually limited to a handful of tickets when buying from primary platforms such as Ticketmaster.

Touts often list their tickets on resale websites and one former Viagogo employee alleged he had seen some profiles with thousands of tickets for sale.

“They [touts] buy in bulk most of the time in the hope of reselling and making a profit,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t know how they get their hands on them but I know that at some point they would have bought tickets in bulk in serious numbers.

“You’re not allowing a lot of people to get access because you’re hoarding the tickets.”

Viagogo said it refutes this man’s claims, insisting 73% of sellers on its site sold fewer than five tickets each – and other sellers included sports clubs and promoters.

It is not just music concerts targeted by touts as the BBC found evidence of thousands of Premier League football tickets being advertised illegally.

Since 1994 it has been a criminal offence to resell tickets for football matches in the UK unless authorised, with the maximum penalty being a £1,000 fine.

But we found 8,000 tickets being advertised illegally online for more than face value for Arsenal’s Premier League game with Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium on 16 March.

One of those sellers was a semi-professional footballer based in the UK.

Bogdan Stolboushkin has openly advertised tickets for football games totalling more than £60,000 on social media in the past year alone.

He sold our reporter a single ticket at double the face value.

Mr Stolboushkin did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him about these allegations.

Another potentially illegal practice in the UK is “speculative selling”, where touts list tickets for resale without owning them.

There is no guarantee these touts will actually secure a ticket and “speculative selling” was one of the reasons two touts were jailed for fraud in 2020.

Our investigation found at least 104 seats being “speculatively” listed on Viagogo for Catfish and the Bottlemen’s August concert at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

The exact seats appeared to be for sale at the same time on both Ticketmaster, the original point of sale, and Viagogo.

After we presented our evidence to Viagogo, it said: “Listings suspected to be in contravention of our policy have been removed from the site.”

The UK government is looking at measures to try and tackle the issue, but evidence of the challenges faced can be seen in the Republic of Ireland.

In 2021, laws were introduced there to stop the resale of tickets above face value, but the BBC found this being flouted.

This included tickets to see the band Kneecap selling for four times their face value of €59 (£50), while tickets for the Six Nations Ireland v France rugby clash in Dublin were selling for £3,000.

One of Ireland’s biggest promoters, Peter Aiken, said he had never heard of the company selling the tickets and questioned if the tickets existed at all.

Many ticket companies selling in Ireland are based overseas, which the BBC has been told helps them avoid punishment under Irish law.

Capping resale prices of tickets and regulating resale platforms was one of Sir Keir Starmer’s manifesto pledges ahead of last year’s general election.

Now he is prime minister, the UK government has held a consultation with proposals including a price cap that ranges from the original price to 30% above face value, introducing larger fines and a new licensing regime.

But Dame Caroline Dinenage, chairwoman of the UK government’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee said: “It’s a minefield for people who just want to buy tickets for an event they want to enjoy.

“This evidence proves that there is not enough activity going on either from the government, in some cases from the police and certainly from some of these really big online organisations to be able to clamp down on this sort of activity.”

The Conservative MP said this investigation highlighted “what a lot of consumers are already seeing that there is a whole world of, in some cases illegal, but it all cases immoral activity going on in the ticketing sphere”.

“People are having to pay over the odds because others quite often are operating outside of the UK to make an absolute killing on buying up tickets, selling them at a huge premium and in some cases selling tickets that don’t exist at all,” she added.

The UK government’s aim is to “strengthen consumer protections and stop fans getting ripped off”, according to the UK culture secretary.

Lisa Nandy added she wanted to “ensure money spent on tickets goes back into our incredible live events sector, instead of into the pockets of greedy touts”.

Thailand is trying to rein in its free-wheeling marijuana market.

The government has approved new measures, which will soon restrict consumption of the drug to those with a doctor’s prescription – in the hope that this will help regulate an industry some describe as out of control.

The public health minister has also said that consumption of marijuana will be criminalised again, although it’s unclear when that could happen.

Ever since the drug was decriminalised in 2022, there has been a frenzy of investment.

There are now around 11,000 registered cannabis dispensaries in Thailand. In parts of the capital Bangkok it is impossible to escape the lurid green glare of their neon signs and the constant smell of people smoking their products.

In the famous backpacker district of Khao San Road, in the historic royal quarter, there is an entire shopping mall dedicated to selling hallucinogenic flower heads or marijuana accessories.

Derivative products like brownies and gummies are offered openly online – although this is technically illegal – and can be delivered to your door within an hour.

There has been talk of restricting the industry before. The largest party in the government coalition wanted to put cannabis back on the list of proscribed narcotics after it took office in 2023, but its former coalition partner, which had made decriminalisation a signature election policy, blocked this plan.

But the final straw appears to have been pressure from the UK, which has seen a flood of Thai marijuana being smuggled into the country.

It is often young travellers who are lured by drug syndicates in Britain into carrying suitcases filled with it on flights from Thailand.

Last month two young British women were arrested in Georgia and Sri Lanka, with large amounts of marijuana from Thailand. Both now face long prison sentences.

“It’s massively increased over the last couple of years,” says Beki Wright, spokesperson at the National Crime Agency in London (NCA). The NCA says 142 couriers carrying five tonnes were intercepted in 2023. This number shot up to 800 couriers in 2024 carrying 26 tonnes, and that number has continued to rise this year.

“We really want to stop people doing this. Because if you are stopped, in this country or many others, you face life-changing consequences, for something many of them think is low-risk. If you bring illicit drugs into the UK you might get through the first time, but you will eventually be found, and you will most likely go to jail.”

So far this year, 173 people accused of smuggling cannabis – nearly all from Thailand – have gone through the court system in the UK and received sentences totalling 230 years.

The NCA is working together with Thai authorities to try to deter young people from being tempted to smuggle cannabis to Britain. But this has proved difficult, because of the very few regulations that exist in Thailand to control the drug.

“This is a loophole,” says Panthong Loykulnanta, spokesman for the Thai Customs Department.

“The profit is very high, but the penalties here are not high. Most of the time when we catch people at the airport they abandon their luggage. But then there is no punishment. If they insist on checking in the luggage, we can arrest them, but they just pay the fine and try again.”

The legalisation of cannabis in 2022 was supposed to be followed by the passing of a new regulatory framework by the Thai parliament.

But this never happened, partly, says one MP involved in the drafting process, because of obstruction by vested interests with links to the marijuana industry. A new cannabis law was drawn up last year, but it could be two years away from being passed.

The result has been a weed wild west, where almost anything that can make money out of marijuana is tolerated.

There has also been an influx of foreign drug syndicates hiding behind Thai nominees, growing huge quantities of potent marijuana strains in brightly-lit, air-conditioned containers.

This has flooded the market and driven the price down, which is what has attracted the smugglers.

Even if more than half the people carrying marijuana get stopped, they can still make money from what gets through to the UK because of much higher prices there.

“You cannot have a free-for-all, right? This became a bar fight rather than a boxing match,” says Tom Kruesopon, a businessman who was instrumental in legalising marijuana, but now thinks things have now gone too far.

“When there is a weed shop on every corner, when people are smoking as they’re walking down the street, when tourists are getting high on our beaches, other countries being affected by our laws, with people shipping it illegally – these are negatives.”

He argues that the proposed new public health ministry regulations will restrict supply and demand, and restore the industry to what it was always intended to be, focused solely on the medical use of marijuana.

There is plenty of opposition to this notion from cannabis enthusiasts who believe the new rules will do nothing to curb smuggling or unlicensed growers.

They say the measures will wipe out small-scale businesses who are already struggling because of the glut caused by over-production.

Earlier this month, many of these smaller growers descended on the prime minister’s office in Bangkok to deliver a formal complaint to the government, calling for a more sensitively regulated industry, and not just what they believe is a knee-jerk reaction to foreign criticism.

“I totally understand that the government is probably getting yelled at during international meetings,” says Kitty Chopaka, the most vocal advocate for smaller producers.

“Countries saying ‘All your weed is getting smuggled into our country,’ that is quite embarrassing. But right now they are not even enforcing the rules that already exist. If they did, that would probably mitigate a lot of the issues like smuggling, or sale without a licence.”

The collapse in prices forced her earlier this year to close down her cannabis dispensary, one of the first to open three years ago.

Parinya Sangprasert, one of the growers at the protest, argues that the illegal growers are already operating outside the law in Thailand – and will ignore the new regulations as well.

He is emphatic that people cannot come to his farm and just buy 46kg (101 lbs) of marijuana – the quantity typically carried in two suitcases by the “mules” trying to reach the UK.

On his phone he brought up a copy of the official form he has to fill in every time he makes a sale.

“If you want to buy or sell a large amount of cannabis, you need a licence, issued by our government. Every weed shop must obtain this to buy marijuana, and there are records kept of which farm it’s from and who it was sold to.”

In the meantime, Thai customs officers are continuing their efforts to stem the flood of cannabis though their airports.

They are using intelligence gathered on travel patterns to target potential smugglers, and dissuade them from checking in their tainted luggage, and risking harsh jail sentences in their destination countries.

They are increasingly using the requirement for a licence to buy, sell or export quantities of marijuana to prosecute those they intercept, but the punishment is rarely more than a fine.

And the confiscated suitcases, filled with vacuum-sealed packages of dried marijuana heads, with names like “Runtz” and “Zkittlez”, still pile up in backrooms at the airports. There were around 200 in one room the BBC was allowed into, containing between two to three tonnes, taken in just the past month.

A convoy of trucks carrying tents, construction materials and portable toilets flows into a virtually abandoned airport in Florida’s picturesque Everglades, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But they’re not helping build the region’s next big tourist attraction.

Instead they’re laying the foundations for a new migrant detention facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”.

The facility, in the middle of a Miami swamp, was proposed by state lawmakers to support US President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.

“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” explains the state’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, in a video set to rock music and posted on social media.

The new detention centre is being built on the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, about 43 miles (70km) from central Miami, in the middle of the Everglades, an ecologically important subtropical wetland.

The airfield where the detention centre will be based is mainly a pilot training runway surrounded by vast swamps.

In the stifling summer heat rife with mosquitoes, we managed to advance only a few metres into the compound when, as expected, a guard in a lorry blocked our way.

We hear sounds coming from a small canal next to the compound. We wonder whether it’s fish, snakes, or the hundreds of alligators that roam the wetland.

Although the airstrip belongs to Miami-Dade County, the decision to turn it into a detention centre was made following a 2023 executive order by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, invoking emergency powers to stem the flow of undocumented migrants.

The new centre, which according to authorities will have the capacity to accommodate around 1,000 detainees and will begin operations in July or August, is quickly becoming a controversial symbol of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

As Trump orders immigration authorities to carry out “the single largest mass deportation programme in history”, human rights organisations say detention centres are becoming overcrowded.

According to data obtained by CBS News, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a record 59,000 detainees nationwide, 140% above its capacity.

Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee Native American community, lives near the site and recently took part in a protest against the facility.

She suspects that rather than being a temporary site as authorities have stated, it will operate for months or even years.

“I have serious concerns about the environmental damage,” Ms Osceola tells us while we were talking next to a canal where an alligator was swimming.

She is also concerned about the living conditions that detainees may face in the new facility.

Those concerns are echoed by environmental organisations, such as Friends of the Everglades, and by human rights organisations in the U.S.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida told the BBC the proposed facility “is not just cruel and absurd. It underscores how our immigration system is increasingly being used to punish people rather than process them.”

Even ICE detention centres in populated areas, the ACLU said, “have well-documented histories of medical neglect, denial of legal access, and systemic mistreatment”.

BBC Mundo contacted the Florida attorney general’s office, but did not receive a response.

In the social media video, Uthmeier says the project is an “efficient” and “low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility”.

With the “Alligator Alcatraz”, he says, there will be “nowhere to go, nowhere to hide”.

Expanding, adapting, or building new detention centres has been one of the Trump administration’s main challenges in accelerating deportations.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement sent to the BBC that Florida will receive federal funds to establish the new detention centre.

“We are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” she added.

“We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”

Noem says that the facility will be funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which is responsible for disaster co-ordination.

Daniella Levine Cava, the Democratic mayor of Miami-Dade County, which owns the airstrip land, says that she has requested information from state authorities.

The mayor “clearly laid out several concerns” regarding the proposed use of the airport, namely around funding and environmental impacts, her office said in a statement to the BBC.

While immigration raids have increased in cities like Los Angeles, the operations to detain migrants seem to be so far less widespread in Miami Dade County and South Florida.

Many undocumented Latinos prefer to stay at home because they are afraid of being arrested and sent to detention centres, according to testimonies gathered by BBC Mundo.

Work has begun on a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life from scratch, in what is believed to be a world first.

The research has been taboo until now because of concerns it could lead to designer babies or unforeseen changes for future generations.

But now the World’s largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has given an initial £10m to start the project and says it has the potential to do more good than harm by accelerating treatments for many incurable diseases.

Dr Julian Sale, of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who is part of the project, told BBC News the research was the next giant leap in biology.

“The sky is the limit. We are looking at therapies that will improve people’s lives as they age, that will lead to healthier aging with less disease as they get older.

“We are looking to use this approach to generate disease-resistant cells we can use to repopulate damaged organs, for example in the liver and the heart, even the immune system,” he said.

But critics fear the research opens the way for unscrupulous researchers seeking to create enhanced or modified humans.

Dr Pat Thomas, director of the campaign group Beyond GM, said: “We like to think that all scientists are there to do good, but the science can be repurposed to do harm and for warfare”.

Details of the project were given to BBC News on the 25th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the molecules in human DNA and was also largely funded by Wellcome.

Every cell in our body contains a molecule called DNA which carries the genetic information it needs. DNA is built from just four much smaller blocks referred to as A, G, C and T, which are repeated over and over again in various combinations. Amazingly it contains all the genetic information that physically makes us who we are.

The Human Genome Project enabled scientists to read all human genes like a bar code. The new work that is getting under way, called the Synthetic Human Genome Project, potentially takes this a giant leap forward – it will allow researchers not just to read a molecule of DNA, but to create parts of it – maybe one day all of it – molecule by molecule from scratch.

The scientists’ first aim is to develop ways of building ever larger blocks of human DNA, up to the point when they have synthetically constructed a human chromosome. These contain the genes that govern our development, repair and maintenance.

These can then be studied and experimented on to learn more about how genes and DNA regulate our bodies.

Many diseases occur when these genes go wrong so the studies could lead to better treatments, according to Prof Matthew Hurles, director of the Wellcome Sanger Insititute which sequenced the largest proportion of the Human Genome.

“Building DNA from scratch allows us to test out how DNA really works and test out new theories, because currently we can only really do that by tweaking DNA in DNA that already exists in living systems”.

The project’s work will be confined to test tubes and dishes and there will be no attempt to create synthetic life. But the technology will give researchers unprecedented control over human living systems.

And although the project is hunting for medical benefits, there is nothing to stop unscrupulous scientists misusing the technology.

They could, for example, attempt to create biological weapons, enhanced humans or even creatures that have human DNA, according to Prof Bill Earnshaw, a highly respected genetic scientist at Edinburgh University who designed a method for creating artificial human chromosomes.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” he told BBC News. “We could have a set of restrictions now, but if an organisation who has access to appropriate machinery decided to start synthesising anything, I don’t think we could stop them”

Ms Thomas is concerned about how the technology will be commercialised by healthcare companies developing treatments emerging from the research.

“If we manage to create synthetic body parts or even synthetic people, then who owns them. And who owns the data from these creations? “

Given the potential misuse of the technology, the question for Wellcome is why they chose to fund it. The decision was not made lightly, according to Dr Tom Collins, who gave the funding go-ahead.

“We asked ourselves what was the cost of inaction,” he told BBC News.

“This technology is going to be developed one day, so by doing it now we are at least trying to do it in as responsible a way as possible and to confront the ethical and moral questions in an upfront way as possible”.

A dedicated social science programmewill run in tandem with the project’s scientific development and will be led by Prof Joy Zhang, a sociologist, at the University of Kent.

“We want to get the views of experts, social scientists and especially the public about how they relate to the technology and how it can be beneficial to them and importanlty what questions and concerns they have,” she said.

Zohran Mamdani decided, in his quest to become New York City’s mayor, he would walk the entire length of Manhattan – starting at 7 one Friday evening in early June.

By the time he was done, it was 2:30 a.m.

Video of the feat on social media captures New Yorkers frame by frame giving him thumbs up and embracing him. Several clap for the “next Mayor”. He’s doing it, he tells followers, because New Yorkers deserve a mayor they can see, hear and even yell at.

It takes only a quick scroll through 33-year-old Mamdani’s social media accounts to understand just how different his style is from that of a traditional politician, rejecting typical soundbites for a more unrehearsed feel. After he won the New York Democratic primary on Tuesday, that playbook is getting accolades for its ability to attract a large coalition.

• Who is Zohran Mamdani?
• Left-wing Democrat stuns former governor in NY mayor primary

This is a wakeup call for the Democratic Party, said pollster Frank Luntz. The big loser of the night wasn’t his main opponent, former governor Andrew Cuomo, he said, but the US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents the Democratic Party establishment.

Grassroots Democrats are demanding “a more ideological, confrontational approach to policy and politics” in the time of President Donald Trump, Mr Luntz said.

Before Tuesday night’s win, Cuomo and several Democrats mocked Mamdani’s platform – including free public buses and city-run grocery stores – as unrealistic. Millions were spent attacking him. But the millennial, left-wing state assemblyman who represents the diverse neighbourhood of Astoria, Queens, clearly connected with social media-age voters who crave his brand of authenticity and accessibility.

Harris Krizmanich, 30, watched the Manhattan journey video three times. He started following the state lawmaker and democratic socialist in January, when Mamdani was polling at 1%. Krizmanich began canvassing for his campaign.

“I was blown away by his personable skills with the way he talks to people and the way he can relate to just the average person and the way he humanises the voters that felt very frustrated with the way things were going,” Mr Krizmanich told the BBC. “It was really inspiring.”

Without Cuomo’s name recognition or wealthy donors, Mamdani relied on introducing himself to voters by flooding social media consistently with positive, even humorous, content that showcased his personality and positions.

Polling indicated he piqued the interest and admiration of Gen Z and disaffected voters, who ultimately contributed to his impressive grassroots ground game.

Nearly 50,000 volunteers helped door-knock, and small donors helped him break fundraising records in the race. He also used traditional settings to his advantage: Mamdani’s viral clip attacking Cuomo’s record and scandals at one of the Democratic debates was viewed over 10 million times on X and over a million more on TikTok.

His identity as an immigrant, unapologetic about his beliefs and faith as a Muslim, was refreshing to those who saw in him their own experiences. The current New York mayor, Eric Adams – far from Mamdani’s biggest fan – said earlier in June: “I don’t agree with his stance on many things, but I respect the fact he’s true to who he is.”

After Mamdani’s win, however, perhaps sensing a greater threat, Adams – who is running for mayor as an independent in November – called him a “snake oil salesman”.

Mamdani is laser focused on cost-of-living issues. He said his conversations with voters often came down to common-sense discussions about leading a dignified life and how city government can help ensure that.

But the results also show Mamdani’s appeal across the wealth divide – he polled worst among lower-income residents, at 38% to Cuomo’s 49%.

At a recent event, Mamdani told the BBC that “there’s a lot of understandable despair and disappointment with so-called leaders within our own party who have shown themselves unable or unwilling to fight Donald Trump”. He included Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams on that list.

“We need a mayor who can look authoritarianism in the eye and not see a reflection of themselves.”

In the wake of Trump’s victory, many left-wing Democrats have argued that the lesson of November’s defeat is not that Americans have moved further right, but that they want a new approach to politics.

Stephanie Taylor, of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told the BBC that she hopes this is finally a wake-up call that the Democratic base is absolutely fed up.

“We’ve seen a Democratic Party establishment that has actively worked to undermine and defeat some of our best and brightest and most charismatic for ideological reasons. Because they didn’t like their anti-corporate stances or anti-war stances or their anti-corruptions stances,” she said.

“Voters want to believe that you’re going to fight for them.”

Mamdani still has to win in the general election in November, and if he prevails, the pressure will be on to prove he can actually deliver on his big promises despite limited experience in government.

A senior Hamas official has told the BBC that mediators have intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.

The comments came as US President Donald Trump said “great progress” was being made since Israel and Iran ended their 12-day war on Tuesday, and that his envoy Steve Witkoff thought an agreement between Israel and Hamas was “very close”.

Israeli attacks across Gaza on Wednesday killed at least 45 Palestinians, including some who were seeking aid, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military announced that seven soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on Tuesday claimed by Hamas.

“I think great progress is being made on Gaza, I think because of this attack that we made,” President Trump told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday, referring to the US air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities carried out at the weekend amid the conflict between Israel and Iran.

“I think we’re going to have some very good news. I was talking to Steve Witkoff… [and] he did tell me that Gaza’s very close,” he added.

Shortly after Trump spoke, the senior Hamas official told the BBC that mediators were “engaged in intensive contacts aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement”.

However, he added that the group had “not received any new proposal so far”.

An Israeli official also told the Haaretz newspaper that there has been no progress in the negotiations, and that major disagreements remained unresolved.

Efforts by the US, Qatar and Egypt to broker a deal stalled at the end of May, when Witkoff said Hamas had sought “totally unacceptable” amendments to a US proposal backed by Israel for a 60-day truce, during which half the living Israeli hostages and half of those who have died would be released.

Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on 18 March, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release its hostages. Fifty are still in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel also imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings from global experts that half a million people were facing starvation.

At the same time, Israel and the US backed the establishment of a new aid distribution mechanism run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is intended to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Palestinians. They said the GHF’s system would prevent aid being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies doing.

The GHF, which uses US private security contractors, says it has distributed food packages containing more than 44 million meals since it began operating on 26 May, with more than 2.4 million handed out at three sites on Wednesday.

However, the UN and other aid groups have refused to co-operate with the GHF, accusing it of co-operating with Israel’s goals in a way that violates fundamental humanitarian principles.

They have also expressed alarm at the near-daily reports of Palestinians being killed near the group’s sites, which are inside Israeli military zones.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 549 people have been killed and 4,000 injured while trying to collect aid since the GHF began distributing aid on 26 May.

On Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said six people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire at crowds waiting near one of the GHF’s food distribution centre in central Gaza.

Three others were killed near a GHF site in the southern city of Rafah, he added.

However, the Israeli military said it was “not aware of any incidents with casualties in those areas”, while the GHF said the reports of any such incidents near its sites were false.

In Gaza City, funerals were held for some of the 33 people who the health ministry said had been killed over the previous day while waiting for aid.

“I say and repeat a million times,” Abu Mohammed told Reuters news agency. “These aid points are not aid points, these are death points.”

Unicef spokesman James Elder, who has just visited Gaza, said: “So long as a population is denied food, people are being offered this lethal choice and, unfortunately, because it’s in a combat zone, it cannot improve.”

The Civil Defence spokesman also said another six people, including a child, were killed in an air strike on a house early on Wednesday in Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza.

Five others were killed when homes in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, he said.

More than 860 Palestinians were reported killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during the Israel-Iran conflict, which began when Israel launched an air campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Iran launched barrages of missiles towards Israel in response.

People in Gaza were divided in their assessments of what the ceasefire meant for the territory.

Some viewed the weakening of Iran, Hamas’s key regional backer, as a potentially positive step towards achieving a truce in Gaza because it might force the group to ease its demands.

Others, however, feared the end of the conflict would allow Israel to redirect its military focus back on Gaza and intensify its air and ground operations.

One man in Khan Younis, Nader Ramadan, told the BBC that it felt like “everything got worse” in Gaza during the conflict.

“The [Israeli] bombing intensified, the damage increased, and the incursion expanded in certain areas… We only felt the destruction,” he said.

Adel Abu Reda said the most difficult thing was the lack of access to aid. He said items were being looted and sold for inflated prices, and civilians were coming under Israeli fire when trying to get food.

“What are we supposed to do?” he asked. “We feel the shooting and the killing all the time.”

In Israel, the military announced that seven of its soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Gaza on Tuesday – the deadliest such incident since the ceasefire collapsed.

Spokesman Brig-Gen Effie Defrin said an explosive device was attached to an armoured vehicle in the Khan Younis area, and that the blast caused the vehicle to catch fire. Helicopters and rescue forces made several unsuccessful attempts to rescue them, he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was “a difficult day for the people of Israel”.

The deaths renewed pressure on Netanyahu to agree a ceasefire, with the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party in his governing coalition saying Israel should end the war and bring home all the hostages.

“I don’t understand what we’re fighting for and for what purpose… when soldiers are being killed all the time?” Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism told the Israeli parliament.

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

At least 56,157 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Daniel Anjorin waved goodbye to his mum as he walked out of the front door of his family home in Hainault at about 07:00, rucksack on his back and headphones on as he headed to school.

Moments later the 14-year-old was murdered by Marcus Monzo, who struck him with a 60cm sword causing devastating injuries to his face and neck.

The 37-year-old has been found guilty of his murder at the Old Bailey.

The Brazilian-Spanish national was also found guilty of attempting to murder local residents Donato Iwule and Sindy Arias, as well as PC Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield in a 20-minute rampage on 30 April 2024.

He was convicted of wounding with intent against Inspector Moloy Campbell and Ms Arias’s husband Henry De Los Rios Polania.

Body-worn camera footage from the police officers showed the extraordinary bravery they displayed as they tried to disarm Monzo, suffering serious injuries as a result.

Monzo had started his rampage by driving his van straight into Donato Iwule, who was walking to work, his trial heard. This was captured on a doorbell camera. Mr Iwule was “catapulted” into the air, his piercing screams shattering the quiet morning.

Mr Iwule shouted that he did not know his attacker as Monzo, armed with the sword, chased him down the street telling him: “I don’t care, I will kill you.”

Monzo “moved quickly, like a predator”, the court heard, moving behind Daniel before lifting the sword above his head and swinging it downwards towards his head and neck area.

As his body lay in the middle of the road, Monzo was seen to drag him. A woman exclaimed in shock “he’s just killed that boy”.

An ambulance arrived to try to treat the schoolboy but Monzo attacked the vehicle with his sword, causing the paramedics – who described it as “extremely frightening” – to retreat.

Police officers rushed in screaming “drop the sword, drop the sword” as they stood toe-to-toe with him. Pepper spray proved ineffective and, as Monzo shouted “does anybody here believe in God?”, they chased him down an alleyway.

Armed with a Taser, PC Yasmin Mechem-Whitfield led the pursuit, which was captured on police-worn body cameras.

When she got to the end of the alleyway, Monzo jumped out and slashed her three times with the sword. She fell to the ground bleeding as her colleague, PC Cameron King, screamed “police officer stabbed, police officer stabbed, Yas has been stabbed”.

PC King said he was “petrified”, while PC Mechem-Whitfield told her colleague “don’t let me die here”.

Henry De Los Rios Polania was asleep with his wife and four-year-old daughter when Monzo burst into their bedroom.

In a terrifying conversation, he repeatedly asked them if they believed in God and then slashed Mr De Los Rios Polania with the sword as he raised his arm to protect his wife.

When their daughter started crying, Monzo said he would spare their lives and walked out of the house leaving Mr De Los Rios Polania with serious injuries to his hand.

Despite the injury to their colleague the police officers ran towards Monzo as he appeared to be cornered by a set of garages.

In remarkable police video, which resembles hand-to-hand combat, Inspector Moloy Campbell raised his baton as Monzo brought down his sword trying to slash him. The police baton and Monzo’s sword clashed twice as Inspector Campbell tried to defend himself and disarm Monzo.

“Monzo was slashing at me with a large sword,” Inspector Campbell said. “I saw my hand was open – I could see the inside of my hand.”

Eventually officers fired a number of Tasers at Monzo and managed to arrest him, removing the sword that had caused so much bloodshed.

During a police interview, Monzo claimed his personality had switched and he compared the events to the movie The Hunger Games. He also told police that he had “many personalities” and that one of them was a “professional assassin”.

Monzo, who grew up in Brazil and moved to England in 2013, gave evidence in court.

He spoke in a calm manner – occasionally weeping – and while he admitted attacking people with the sword in Hainault he insisted he could not remember doing so, claiming everything about the day was confused in his mind.

Monzo was a martial arts enthusiast who believed in conspiracy theories – including that the earth was flat. He denied the 9/11 attacks on New York and posted on X claims that were antisemitic and promoted conspiracy theories.

His brother said he had changed after attending retreats in India and the Amazon where he drank ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic tea.

After a visit to India in 2018, Monzo said he began to engage in some “very extreme” practices, including drinking and washing himself with his own urine. He said he became distant from his family and followed various practices, including sleeping and eating as little as possible.

Both the prosecution and defence agreed Monzo’s had a psychotic disorder. However, prosecutors said his behaviour was triggered “by self-induced intoxication in the form of drugs” through his use of cannabis, which led to the psychosis. The defence claimed he was “most likely suffering from a pre-existing condition”.

He had bought the sword two months before the attack, videoing himself with his cat, unboxing it and calling it “freaking sexy” and simulating “ninja stuff”.

On the day of the attack he strangled his cat and tried to eat it.

That morning, Monzo said he had felt the onset of “something like Armageddon” and he believed “the world was collapsing”.

Daniel Anjorin’s father sat in court throughout the trial, listening to disturbing evidence about how his son was killed and watching the police videos of Monzo with his sword attacking others that day.

He was sat just feet away from Monzo as he told the court he did not remember attacking Mr Anjorin’s son.

Mr Anjorin was occasionally in tears as he listened to the evidence, as were some of the jurors. One juror asked to be excused due to the graphic nature of the evidence.

When Daniel was killed, the Anjorin family said in a statement that it was difficult for them to fathom that “Daniel had left the house for school and then he was gone.”

“Our children have lost their loving and precious brother and we have lost the most loved and amazing son,” they said.