A record number of heat alerts are in place across France as the country, and other parts of southern and eastern Europe, remain in the grip of soaring temperatures.

Some 84 of 96 of France’s mainland regions – known as departments – are currently under an orange alert – the country’s second highest. France’s Climate Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has called it an “unprecedented” situation.

Heat warnings are also in place for parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the UK and Balkan countries including Croatia.

Both Spain and Portugal had their hottest June days on record at the weekend.

El Granado in Andalucía saw a temperature of 46C on Saturday, while 46.6C was recorded in the town of Mora in central Portugal on Sunday.

Many countries have emergency medical services on standby and are warning people to stay inside as much as possible.

Nearly 200 schools across France have been closed or partially closed as a result of the heatwave, which has gripped parts of Europe for more than a week now but is expected to peak mid-week.

Education Minister Elisabeth Borne said she was working with regional authorities over the best ways to look after schoolchildren or to allow parents who can to keep their children at home.

Several forest fires broke out in the southern Corbières mountain range on Sunday, leading to evacuations and the closure of a motorway. They have since been contained, fire authorities told French media on Monday.

• Follow our live updates
• Top tips on how to sleep in the heat

Meanwhile, 21 Italian cities are also on the highest alert – including Rome, Milan and Venice, as is Sardinia.

Mario Guarino, vice president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine, told AFP news agency that hospital emergency departments across the country had reported a 10% increase in heatstroke cases.

Parts of the UK could see one of the hottest June days ever on Monday, with temperatures of 34C or higher possible in some parts of England.

Much of Spain, which is on course to record its hottest June on record, also continues to be under heat alerts.

“I can’t sleep well and have insomnia. I also get heat strokes, I stop eating and I just can’t focus,” Anabel Sanchez, 21, told Reuters news agency in Seville.

It is a similar situation in Portugal, where seven districts, including the capital, Lisbon, are on t he highest alert level.

Meanwhile, the German Meteorological Service has warned that temperatures could reach almost 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday – further potentially record-breaking temperatures.

Countries in and around the Balkans have also been struggling with the intense heat, although temperatures have begun to cool slightly.

In Turkey, firefighters continue their efforts to put out hundreds of wildfires that have broken out in recent days.

A fire in the Seferihisar district, 50km (30 miles) south-west of the resort city of Izmir, is being fuelled by winds and has already destroyed around 20 homes and some residential areas have had to be evacuated.

Wildfires have also broken out in Croatia, where severe heat warnings are in place for coastal areas.

Temperatures in Greece have been approaching 40C for several days and coastal towns near the capital Athens last week erupted in flames that destroyed homes – forcing people to evacuate.

On Wednesday, Serbia reported its hottest day since records began, while a record 38.8C was recorded in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Thursday. In Slovenia, the hottest-ever June temperature was recorded on Saturday.

The temperature in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, reached 42C on Friday – and are expected to continue in that range.

While the heatwave is a potential health issue, it is also impacting the climate. Higher temperatures in the Adriatic Sea are encouraging invasive species such as the poisonous lionfish, while also causing further stress on alpine glaciers that are already shrinking at record rates.

While it is hard to link individual extreme weather events to climate change, heatwaves are becoming more common and more intense due to climate change.

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Israel has carried out a wave of air strikes across the Gaza Strip, triggering the mass displacement of hundreds of Palestinian families, witnesses say.

Rescue teams recovered the bodies of five people, while dozens of injured civilians were evacuated to Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, according to local reports.

The bombardment follows one of the largest evacuation orders issued since the war resumed in March.

It comes amid increasing pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refocus efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement.

Residents in Gaza City said dozens of Israeli air raids targeted densely populated eastern neighbourhoods, including Shujaiya, Tuffah, and Zeitoun.

Videos posted by activists on social media captured scenes of chaos and explosions illuminating the night sky, followed by flames and thick plumes of smoke rising above the skyline.

One of the strikes reportedly hit a school in Zeitoun that had been sheltering displaced families.

The five fatalities reportedly occurred in a strike at the Al Shati camp, to the west of Gaza City.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had earlier ordered residents to leave large parts of northern Gaza, in anticipation of the attacks. Most of those displaced overnight moved westwards within Gaza City rather than to the southern region as instructed by the IDF.

“We had no choice but to leave everything behind,” said Abeer Talba, a mother of seven who fled Zeitoun with her family.

“We got phone calls recordings in Arabic telling us we were in a combat zone and must evacuate immediately.

“This is the seventh time we’ve been forced to flee,” she added. “We’re in the streets again, no food, no water. My children are starving. Death feels kinder than this.”

Amid the growing humanitarian crisis, fears are mounting that the evacuation orders and sustained air strikes are part of a broader Israeli plan to expand its ground offensive deeper into Gaza.

But there is also speculation in Israeli media that some generals are close to concluding that military operations in Gaza are near to being achieved.

That is also the view of many former army leaders who fear that the descent of the Gaza campaign into more attritional, guerilla-style warfare would lead to more deaths – of hostages, civilians and soldiers.

The Israeli prime minister’s next moves are being closely watched. While Benjamin Netanyahu’s instincts have always been to continue the war and defeat Hamas, he is coming under increasing pressure at home and abroad to pursue a new ceasefire agreement.

Is it really over? After five days of surprise performances, setlist clashes, crazy outfits and blistering heat, Glastonbury is closing its gates until 2027.

We watched epic shows from Pulp and Olivia Rodrigo, did viral dances with CMAT and Charli XCX and, for no apparent reason, saw two incarnations of Doctor Who on stage with Franz Ferdinand and Jade.

• Olivia Rodrigo leaves Glastonbury on a high
• Rod Stewart at Glastonbury: Old school charm from another era

There’s always too much to process in the moment. We missed Gary Numan making his Glastonbury debut, and were locked out of Scissor Sisters’ epic set on the Woodsies stage after turning up too late.

But here are some of the highlights and memorable moments from a weekend of mayhem.

In 2023, Lewis Capaldi had to abandon his Glastonbury set, after Tourette’s syndrome caused his vocal cords to seize up.

He took two years off to deal with his health issues, but that incomplete set was always at the back of his mind. On Friday, he arrived unannounced on the Pyramid Stage to finish what he couldn’t last time.

“Second time’s a charm on this one, everybody,” he said, as tears welled up in his (and our) eyes.

The set was short on time, but big on emotion. From the opening lines of Before You Go to the set-closing Someone You Loved, the crowd sang every line, giving the star their full attention and affection.

Lewis, displaying none of the physical tics that plagued him two years ago, was in fine form. That sandpapery voice was undiminished, even as the lump grew in his throat.

As he laid his Glastonbury ghosts to rest, he observed that Friday’s set would also be difficult to finish for “different reasons. Good reasons.”

A weekend at Worthy Farm isn’t complete without a celebrity sighting or two and this year has certainly delivered.

One Direction fans were delighted to see Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson in attendance, presumably to see The 1975’s headline set on Friday. Harry was also spotted in the field for Doechii’s set, dancing with a manbag slung over his shoulder.

The backstage areas were filled to the brim with acting royalty, including Eddie Redmayne, Taron Egerton (who watched Lewis Capaldi’s set with his top off), Lily James and Paul Mescal.

Andrew Garfield was also spotted at a fan Q&A, talking about his new film We Live in Time – as well as reading some spicy social media posts fans had written about him.

It was also great to see some of the weekend’s performers letting their hair down after hours.

Lorde was spotted in the South East Corner dancing at NYC Downlow on Saturday morning, whilst Charli XCX celebrated headlining the Other Stage by dancing alongside fiancé and The 1975 drummer George Daniel at a 1am DJ slot on Sunday morning.

Glastonbury veterans such as Pixie Geldof, Lily Allen, Alexa Chung and Daisy Lowe were also on site over the weekend too, proving you can be effortlessly glamorous in a sweaty field (as long as you have money to burn and access to electricity and running water).

Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill is the biggest-selling debut album of all time, with sales of 33 million.

With the record celebrating its 30th birthday this month, the singer made her Glastonbury debut with a spectacular sunset performance on the Pyramid Stage, that showed songs like You Oughta Know and One Hand In My Pocket have lost none of their edge, or their allure.

The singer, now 51 years old, had the strongest vocals of the weekend, belting out the hits so hard that she had to hold her microphone a solid three feet from her mouth, as she spun around the stage in a guileless blur of sparkles and hair.

But when she broke into Ironic, fans had a surprise in store: Spoons. Hundreds of spoons.

They held them aloft during the lyric “it’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife” – a line that comedian Ed Byrne once pointed out “isn’t ironic, it’s just frickin’ stupid.”

“We haven’t got 10,000 spoons between us. How big is your sink, Alanis?”

Over in the Kidz field, there were huge queues for the extreme sports phenomenon known as Sock Wrestling.

The concept is simple: Two kids face each other on a mat, each wearing a single sock. Then they circle, provoke and grapple each other until one triumphantly rips off the other’s footwear and claims victory.

On Saturday, it devolved into chaos when one kid challenged their dad to a face-off.

But the dad wasn’t prepared to lose face. Years of familial tension boiled over as the stand-off became unnecessarily, dramatically tense.

Then, in the words of 6 Music’s Steve Lamaq, “the kid flattened his dad” and the crowd went nuts.

Someone commission this for prime time BBC One right now.

If Fatboy Slim isn’t here, does Glastonbury even happen?

The DJ/producer played his 100th (and 101st and 102nd and 103rd) set at the farm this weekend, drawing huge crowds everywhere he went.

He celebrated his centenary with a mash-up of his signature hit Praise You, and The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

As you might expect, it went off. He’s come a long way, baby.

Irish singer CMAT ended her performance on the Pyramid Stage by saying it was “the biggest moment” of her career.

Asked how she was processing that incredible reception, she told us she had “no idea”.

“I think I’m going to process it in about three to five business months,” laughed.

The 29 year old, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, said she didn’t speak for around an hour after her set ended.

“I was pretty, pretty shocked. Yeah, no idea,” she said.

“I’m scared still. As if it’s about to happen, but it’s over.”

She said it had taken “constant grafting” to get to the Pyramid Stage – but all the practice paid off, as she lit up the stage with her powerful vocals and kooky stage presence.

It felt very much like we were watching a star being born. She’ll be back here very, very soon.

Spotted by the incredible team behind the @GlastoLive account on Bluesky, this installation is made entirely of keys that people lost or left behind after last year’s festival.

If you’re still on site this morning, check your pockets before you go!

Rave pioneers The Prodigy made a triumphant return to Glastonbury, headlining The Other Stage on Sunday, 30 years after their debut.

It was an incendiary set – you could even call it a Firestarter – but there was also a touch of poignancy, as it was the band’s first Glastonbury without frontman Keith Flint, who died in 2019.

The band’s vocalist, Maxim, stepped up in his place – with hits like Omen and Breathe causing pandemonium in the packed-out field.

“I think Mr Flint would have have been proud of you,” he declared to the thousands watching.

The star’s memory was also honoured at Glastonbury’s infamous Carhenge installation, with a new mural that captured his fierce punk energy.

“Each of the cars have been dedicated to characters whose life’s work has contributed to the underground culture, which is now our culture,” said artist Joe Rush, who curates Carhenge, in a BBC interview last year.

Glastonbury’s flags are a handy way for friends to find each other in a crowded field, but they’re also an outlet for creativity.

Our favourites this year included a tribute to TV personality Kim Woodburn and a Charli XCX-themed banner bearing the legend “bratwurst”.

But not everyone is a fan.

Poet and BBC radio presenter Robin Ince posted the following poem to his Bluesky account as the festival kicked off.

The Avengers and Sherlock star was reminiscing with Simon Pegg on Saturday about his first trip to Glastonbury – and let’s just say it wasn’t 100% legit.

“I went under the fence, I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this, but I did,” he told the BBC.

He added that he broke in by going “under the tunnel” and made his way there to see Pulp perform.

Here’s hoping that he managed to catch up with the band after their surprise set on Saturday to recount the tale to them, too.

“And I had my tent on a very, very steep slope,” Cumberbatch added cheekily.

At home, you’re probably not aware of this – but there’s an entire team at Glastonbury dedicated to creating “broadcast safe” versions of the music for daytime radio, to avoid the wrath of Ofcom.

They sit in a cramped office, carefully editing out curse words. And, as the taboos around explicit language have weakened, their job’s only become harder.

“Did you see the swear sheet for Self Esteem?” I heard one sigh on Friday night.

“After the second mother****** I was like, ‘This is going to be a long night’.”

Glastonbury loves a surprise set, and this year they outdid themselves. The “secret” acts (whose secrets weren’t particularly well kept) were so big that they often overshadowed the headliners.

Lorde was first up, sauntering onto the Woodsies’ stage on Friday morning, playing her just-released album Virgin to an eager crowd of fans.

Lewis Capaldi got a hero’s welcome as he played the Pyramid Stage in a “TBA” slot; and the mysterious band billed as Patchwork were, to no-one’s surprise, Pulp.

The Britpop heroes were marking the anniversary of their 1995 headline set: One of the truly legendary Glastonbury performances, where the band – who’d just released Common People – first established their status as national treasures.

They finished the set with that song, naturally, assisted by Red Arrows flypast; and Sunday night headliner Olivia Rodrigo hollering the lyrics from her boyfriend’s shoulders.

Elsewhere, there were unannounced sets by CMAT and Kae Tempest on the BBC Introducing Stage, an impromptu performance by Olivia Dean in the Strummerville tent.

And Haim drew what one colleague described as The Park Stage’s biggest-ever audience when they appeared shortly after 7pm on Saturday night.

The Californian sisters’ sun-kissed garage rock was the perfect soundtrack as the sun set over Worthy Farm – with highlights including a muscular take on The Steps, the loping groove of Taylor Swift collab Gasoline, and the totally fed-up pop hit Relationships.

The quality of this year’s surprise sets is indicative of one thing: With no Glastonbury in 2026, and the acts who have headlined next year’s instalment didn’t want to miss out.

“He is perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England, he is a Glastonbury legend and a personal hero of mine,” Olivia Rodrigo tells the audience during her headline slot.

She is talking about Robert Smith, The Cure’s frontman for the past 49 years and a four-time Glastonbury headliner.

There are audible gasps from a few mums and dads in the crowd when one audience member asks, “Who is he?” but you’d hope they were won over after an absolutely superb duet on the Pyramid Stage.

The pair sang Friday I’m in Love and Just Like Heaven, with their vastly different sounding vocals somehow contrasting perfectly.

Rodrigo confessed her love of British culture throughout, including Marks and Spencer’s Colin the Caterpillar and also admitted she’d got through “three sticky toffee puddings” since arriving on Worthy Farm.

Perhaps she‘ll give apple crumble a go next.

You can do anything at Glastonbury. Even get married.

Charles and Charlie Shires turned up at a recording of the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast, fresh from a ceremony at the festival’s Healing Fields.

They’d literally tied the knot, in an ancient Celtic ceremony known as handfasting, where a couple’s hands are bound together.

“We made our own hand-tying cord out of ribbons,” explained Charlie. “I was crying the whole way through. It was very gorgeous.”

“Are your family pissed off with you?” asked Annie Mac.

“Probably,” laughed Charles. “But we just thought this is the best place, right? Everyone has the most fun in this place every summer.”

To celebrate, Charlie – who is a professional baker – brought a wedding cake from their home in Yorkshire, and distributed slices to the audience.

“I can’t believe it survived,” she laughed.

Glastonbury is taking next year off, but that doesn’t mean Emily Eavis will be putting her feet up.

“We bought some land on the outside of the site and we’re just going to do a big planting project,” she told the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast.

The project, which will see 30,000 new saplings added to the site, is intended to “restore the wild side of the farm and the surrounding land,” she added.

The festival won’t be far from her mind, though. All weekend, Eavis has been wandering around the site making notes on her phone about improvements she wants to make.

“I’ve got a huge list of little things,” she told the on-site newspaper, The Glastonbury Free Press.

“We’re always looking to make it better. The detail is critical. Even just a small touch – like putting a new hedge in – can make a real difference.

“And that’s what fallow years are for: you lay the ground to rest and you come back stronger.”

See you in 2027, then. *sniff*

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Sergei Tikhanovsky has barely spoken for more than five years.

All that time he was held in solitary confinement in a high security Belarusian prison for daring to stand up to a dictator.

Now the former opposition blogger is free, and words stream out of him so quickly that his thoughts sometimes struggle to keep up.

“The restriction on speaking was the hardest thing,” Sergei confided when we met in Vilnius very soon after his surprise release.

“When you can’t say or write anything, you can’t talk to anyone and you’re just trapped in a cell – that’s the toughest thing – not the restriction on movement.”

Sergei is now in enforced exile, freed along with 13 other political prisoners after a senior US delegation paid a rare visit to the authoritarian ruler of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.

When I ask about the reunion with his family, Sergei lifts a hand to his face and weeps.

His daughter was only four when he was arrested.

“She didn’t recognise me,” he manages eventually, after a long pause. “Then she threw herself into my arms and we hugged for a long time.”

Sergei’s transformation since his arrest is shocking.

Back in 2020 he was stocky and bearded. Now the face beneath his close-shaven head is gaunt. He says he’s lost almost 60kg (132 pounds) in jail, where he spent endless weeks in punishment cells.

“Physically I’m half the size and half the weight,” Sergei says. “But my spirit is not broken. Maybe it’s even stronger.”

“Before I’d only heard of the crimes of this regime, but now I’ve seen them first-hand and we have to fight that.”

Until last week, Sergei Tikhanovsky was one of the most prominent political prisoners in Belarus.

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election he developed a big YouTube following by filming candid interviews about people’s complaints and problems.

Then he tried to register to run himself, waving a giant slipper and calling on Belarusians to “Stop the Cockroach!”.

“I was using the chance to show that it’s impossible to win democratically in Belarus,” Sergei explains. “I wanted to show that the elections are fake, and they arrested me.”

When his wife, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, went on to run in his place she attracted huge crowds. After Lukashenko claimed another implausible victory, those crowds became a mass protest which soon became mass arrests.

In prison, Sergei was constantly singled out for ill treatment like the other high-profile figures – “the ones they think are most dangerous, or who they want to destroy”, as he puts it.

“For the last two-and-a-half years I was in total isolation. I didn’t get a single letter in almost three years. For almost three years they didn’t let me have any phone calls,” he says.

He wasn’t even allowed to see a priest.

“They’d say: you will die in prison. We are going to keep extending your time and you won’t get out.”

To make matters worse, Sergei was frequently sent to a punishment cell – for a mark on the wall or a stray cobweb.

“Those cells could be three-by-two metres, including a hole in the floor for a toilet,” he recalls. “No mattress, no sheet and no pillows.”

He would get up every hour through the night to keep warm with sets of squats and sit-ups, then lie on the wooden bunk until his arms and legs seized up, and he had to start the exercises all over again.

To cope, he had to empty his brain of all thoughts of family and friends.

“You have to put that to one side,” he says. “Because if you think about how they are and what’s happening to them, you won’t survive.”

It was last August when Sergei started to think he might be getting out.

That’s when the deputy prosecutor began touring prisons and “seriously recommending” that political detainees “write to the dictator and request his pardon” as Sergei puts it.

Lukashenko was suddenly keen on looking merciful and several dozen were released.

Sergei and the other big names, like Viktor Babaryka and Maria Kolesnikova, were never on any lists.

But he never entertained the idea of confessing, even to get back to his children.

“I am no criminal,” he explains. “So that would be a betrayal of all who support me.”

Then last week the United States stepped in.

When special envoy Keith Kellogg travelled to Minsk to intercede for American citizens in prison, he emerged with Sergei, too.

For Lukashenko, the meeting with Kellogg was a big win diplomatically.

He has been ostracised by Western countries since he suppressed the peaceful protests in 2020.

His active support for Russia in invading Ukraine has isolated him still further.

“Now Lukashenko could show some co-operation was starting, a dialogue with the US,” Sergei says, explaining what Lukashenko got for freeing some prisoners.

“That was the price: the start of contact with him. Because no-one had been engaging.”

Sergei wants nothing more than for all the other political prisoners to be released, too. There are more than 1,000 in total.

In tears, he describes meeting an “old man” recently who turned out to be a young friend, aged beyond recognition by prison.

“I’d give anything to get them all out,” Sergei says. “I think we should pay any price. But I don’t want them to drop all sanctions.”

Sergei’s wife, now the leader of the opposition, is overjoyed to have him back with her and their children. But Svetlana tells me she is wary of the next US move.

“We cannot soften the sanctions until repressions fully stop,” she argues. “For 14 people released, 28 more were detained immediately in Belarus. For Lukashenko, there is no change in policy.”

Sergei’s first week of freedom has passed in a whirl of activity. He has met politicians, made speeches and written to Donald Trump with his thanks. He has also been catching up on lost time with his children – as well as all the news he has missed in isolation.

But what about his ambitions? The last time he and Svetlana were together she was a housewife and he was the political one. So could there be tensions?

“I don’t have any claims to her role,” Sergei insists. “I don’t need that. I just need a democratic Belarus.”

The US must rule out any further strikes on Iran if it wants to resume diplomatic talks, Tehran’s deputy foreign minister has told the BBC.

Majid Takht-Ravanchi said the Trump administration told Iran through mediators that it wanted to return to negotiations this week, but had not made its position clear on the “very important question” of further attacks while talks are taking place.

The US and Iran were involved in talks over Iran’s nuclear programme when Israel struck Iranian nuclear sites and military infrastructure earlier this month and Iran responded with missiles.

The US became directly involved in the conflict on 21 June when it bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites.

Takht-Ravanchi also said Iran would “insist” on being able to enrich uranium for what it says are peaceful purposes, rejecting accusations that it is secretly moving towards developing a nuclear bomb.

He said Iran had been “denied access to nuclear material” for its research programme so they needed “to rely on ourselves”.

“The level of that can be discussed, the capacity can be discussed, but to say that you should not have enrichment, you should have zero enrichment, and if do you not agree, we will bomb you – that is the law of the jungle,” the deputy foreign minister said.

Israel began its attacks, targeting nuclear and military sites as well as assassinating commanders and scientists, in Iran on 13 June, saying Tehran was close to building a nuclear weapon.

On Monday, Iran said that, based on the latest forensics data, 935 people had been killed by the Israeli strikes.

According to the latest data reported by Israel’s health ministry, 28 people have been killed in Israel since 13 June when Iran responded by attacking Israel.

On 21 June, the US became involved in the conflict, dropping bombs on three of Iran’s nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

The extent of the damage caused to Iran’s nuclear programme has been unclear, and Takht-Ravanchi said he could not give an exact assessment.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the strikes caused severe but “not total” damage, while US President Donald Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear facilities were “totally obliterated”.

Grossi also said Iran had the capacity to start enriching uranium again in “a matter of months”. In response, Takht-Ravanchi said he did not know if that would be the case.

Iran’s relationship with the IAEA has become increasingly strained. On Wednesday, its parliament moved to suspend cooperation with the atomic watchdog, accusing the IAEA of siding with Israel and the US.

Trump has said he would “absolutely” consider bombing Iran again if intelligence found that it could enrich uranium to concerning levels.

Takht-Ravanchi said no date had been agreed upon for a possible return to talks and he did not know what would be on the agenda, after Trump suggested discussions could take place this week.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister said: “Right now we are seeking an answer to this question – are we going to see a repetition of an act of aggression while we are engaging in dialogue?”

He said the US had to be “quite clear on this very important question” and “what they are going to offer us in order to make the necessary confidence required for such a dialogue”.

Asked if Iran could consider rethinking its nuclear programme as part of any deal, possibly in return for sanctions relief and investment in the country, Takht-Ravanchi said: “Why should we agree to such a proposal?”

He reiterated that Iran’s programme, including enriching uranium to 60%, was “for peaceful purposes”.

Under a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran was not permitted to enrich uranium above 3.67% purity – the level required for fuel for commercial nuclear power plants – and was not allowed to carry out any enrichment at its Fordo plant for 15 years.

However, Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018 during his first term as president, saying it did too little to stop a pathway to a bomb, and reinstated US sanctions.

Iran retaliated by increasingly breaching the restrictions. The IAEA said it resumed enrichment at Fordo in 2021 and had reached about 60% enrichment – a short, technical step away from weapons grade, or 90% – to potentially make nine nuclear bombs.

Pressed on European and Western leaders having a lack of trust towards Iran, Takht-Ravanchi accused some European leaders of a “ridiculous” endorsement of US and Israeli strikes.

He said those who are criticising Iran over its nuclear programme “should criticise the way that we have been treated” and criticise the US and Israel.

He added: “And if they do not have the guts to criticise America, they should keep silent, not try to justify the aggression.”

Takht-Ravanchi also said Iran had received messages through mediators that the US did “not want to engage in regime change in Iran” by targeting the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on Iranians to “rise for their freedom” to bring down the clerical rule of Khamenei, but, after last week’s ceasefire was reached, Trump said he did not want the same.

Takht-Ravanchi insisted it would not happen and the idea was “tantamount to a futile exercise”.

He said that although some Iranians “might have criticism of some actions by the government, when it comes to foreign aggression they would be united to confront it”.

The deputy foreign minister said it was “not quite clear” if the ceasefire with Israel would last, but Iran would continue to observe it “as long as there is no military attack against us”.

He said Iran’s Arab allies in the Persian Gulf were “doing their best to try to prepare the necessary atmosphere for a dialogue”. Qatar is known to have played a key role in brokering the current ceasefire.

He added: “We do not want war. We want to engage in dialogue and diplomacy, but we have to be prepared, we have to be cautious, not to be surprised again.”

Two US firefighters have been killed and a third wounded after a man intentionally started a fire and began shooting at first responders in a “total ambush” which lasted several hours, authorities said.

The gunman, who investigators said acted alone, began shooting after crews responded to a fire at Canfield Mountain, just north of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Sunday afternoon.

Law enforcement officers and firefighters came under sniper fire during the incident and a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team later “located a deceased male” close to where the attack took place.

The fire grew to 20 acres after it was first reported and continued to burn into Sunday night, Sheriff Bob Norris said.

“We do believe that the suspect started the fire,” Norris told a late night news conference.

“This was a total ambush. These firefighters did not have a chance.

“We did lose a Coeur d’Alene firefighter, and we did lose a firefighter from the Kootenai County Fire and Rescue.”

A third was “fighting for his life, but is in stable condition”, he said.

Firefighters received the first report of a fire in the mountainside community at around 13:21 PST (20:21 GMT) and reports that they were being shot at emerged about 40 minutes later, Norris said.

More than 300 law enforcement officers from the city, county, state and federal levels responded to the scene of the shooting, including two helicopters with snipers on board.

Video showed smoke billowing from heavily wooded hillsides.

Norris said the shooter used a high-powered sporting rifle to fire rapidly at first responders, with officers initially unsure of the number of perpetrators involved.

After an hours-long barrage of gunfire, the suspect was found using mobile phone location information. It was unclear whether the suspect had killed himself or been hit by an officer, Norris said.

Authorities would not provide more details on weapons recovered, but said that officers would likely find more guns at the scene on Monday, once the fire was extinguished.

The motive for the shooting was not known and Norris did not provide any details on the suspect.

The two firefighters killed and the third wounded have not been identified.

A shelter-in-place notice – which alerts people to stay inside their properties or in their current locations during an emergency, rather than evacuating to a different area – was lifted some seven hours later.

Canfield Mountain is an area popular with hikers about 260 miles (420 km) east of Seattle.

Norris said that a preliminary investigation had determined that there was only one gunman, after it was earlier thought that there could have been as many as four.

He said the gunman appeared to have run while shooting and may have stashed weapons in different places.

Helicopters with heat-seeking technology flew over the area in an attempt to pinpoint the suspect, but teams experienced difficulty because of smoke from the wildfire which was still burning, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

Norris added that investigators had to search the scene quickly, due to the encroaching fire, and that the information they had was still “very, very preliminary”.

“A fire was rapidly approaching that body. And we had to scoop up that body and transport that body to another location,” he said.

Officials have appealed to the public to stay away and not to fly drones over the site.

A firefighters’ union boss confirmed two of its members had been killed in the attack.

Edward Kelly, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) union, posted on X: “While responding to a fire earlier today in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, IAFF members were ambushed in a heinous act of violence.

Local fire chief Pat Riley told TV station KHQ he was “heartbroken” by the attack.

The case was a big shock to those living in Coeur d’Alene, a city of around 56,000 people that is near the border with Washington state.

Coeur d’Alene resident Linda Tiger, 80, told the BBC she was shocked by the shooting.

“This has never happened here,” said Mrs Tiger, who has lived in the city for nearly 30 years.

“But it goes to show that that no-one is safe from this kind of mental sadness.”

“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.

“I’ll never forget it – being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”

The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least eight in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.

At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.

They had published their work on Haitang Literature City, a Taiwan-hosted platform known for its “danmei”, the genre of so-called boys’ love and erotic fiction.

Think of it as a gay version of Fifty Shades of Grey: a BDSM relationship that leads to a happily-ever-after. That’s a frequent trope, across historical, fantasy or sci-fi settings. Over the years it has cultivated a fiercely devoted following, especially among young Chinese women.

These authors are being accused of breaking China’s pornography law for “producing and distributing obscene material”. Writers who earn a profit could be jailed for more than 10 years.

The law targets “explicit descriptions of gay sex or other sexual perversions”. Heterosexual depictions often have more leeway – works by acclaimed Chinese authors, including Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, have graphic sexual scenes, but are widely available.

Although authors of heterosexual erotica have been jailed in China, observers say the genre is subjected to far less censorship. Gay erotica, which is more subversive, seems to bother authorities more. Volunteers in a support group for the Haitang writers told the BBC police even questioned some readers.

Those who reported being arrested declined to be interviewed, fearing repercussions. Police in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, who are accused of driving this crackdown, have not responded to the BBC.

Online, the crackdown has unleashed a debate – and a rarer pushback against the law.

“Is sex really something to be ashamed of?” a Weibo user asked, arguing that China’s anti-obscenity laws are out of touch. Another wrote that women never get to decide what is obscene because they don’t control the narrative. Even legal scholars have expressed concern that just 5,000 views for anything deemed “obscene” qualifies as criminal “distribution”, lowering the bar to arrest creators.

It made Beijing uneasy enough that discussions have been vanishing: #HaitangAuthorsArrested drew more than 30 million views on Weibo before it was censored. Posts offering legal advice are gone. A prominent Chinese news site’s story has been taken down. Writers’ accounts, and some of the handles, are also disappearing.

After Pingping Anan Yongfu’s post went viral, she deleted it and wrote another, thanking supporters and admitting her writing had violated the law. She then deleted her handle.

Before that last post, she had written: “I was always the good girl in my parents’ eyes. But that day, I brought them nothing but shame. They’ll never hold their heads up again.”

These women have long worked in the shadows in China, where homosexuality and eroticism are stigmatised. Now outed by police investigations, they face social consequences that are as brutal as the legal ones.

“In that moment, all I felt was shame,” posted a writer whose Weibo handle translates to “the world is a huge psychiatric hospital”. She said the police pulled her out of class in college – and her classmates watched as they followed her to search her dorm.

“I earned my money word by word at a keyboard. But once it went south, it was as if none of that mattered. People treated me like I’d made money without ever working for it.”

Another wrote the police had been kind, advising her to speak to a lawyer and return her “illegal earnings” to reduce her sentence. “I’m only 20. So young, and I’ve already ruined my life so early.”

A third said: “I never imagined a day would come when every word I once wrote would come back to haunt me.”

One author who has been writing danmei novels for 20 years was not questioned but she says the crackdown won’t stop her. “This is how I find happiness. And I can’t let go of the connections I have made with the community.”

Inspired by Japanese boys’ love manga, danmei emerged as a sub-genre online in the 1990s. It has become hugely successful, with some of the novels appearing on international bestseller lists.

In 2021, 60 of them were optioned for film and TV adaptations. The most expensive IP reportedly sold for 40 million yuan ($5.6 million; £4.1 million). Some of China’s biggest stars, such as Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, began their careers on streaming shows based on danmei novels.

In short, it’s the rebellious royal of pop culture – too popular to ignore, too controversial to honour.

And it is a signature offering on Haitang, which, in Mandarin, is a flower that blooms in every shade of pink.

Fittingly, Haitang and danmei have flourished as uniquely female spaces, although they centre male protagonists. In a culture where female sexual desire is routinely policed, danmei beceme a coded, creative outlet – a space where women can write about female desire for other women.

That is exactly what makes danmei so “subversive”, says Dr Liang Ge, who teaches digital sociology at University College London. It allows women to “detach from gendered realities”, which they often associate with marriage and motherhood.

For instance, in danmei stories, men can get pregnant and are at ease with being vulnerable – a stark contrast from the often unequal relationships many Chinese women struggle with in real life.

“Danmei frees me from thinking about all those potential dangers in relationships in traditional heterosexual romance,” explains one writer who has been active in the danmei world for a decade.

Danmei novels are not without their critics, because some do contain extreme and violent scenes. “As a parent, how many of us can accept our children reading novels like this, let alone writing them?” asked one Weibo user.

The age of authors has also been a concern: a handful of those the BBC spoke to said they all started reading and writing gay erotica before they turned 18, some as young as 11.

It’s a problem the community should acknowledge and address, said Ma, a danmei writer who only shared her surname, adding that this is a problem for all adult content because China does not restrict content by age.

But danmei in particular has increasingly come under attack in the last decade as Beijing launched a series of campaigns to “clean up” the internet. In 2018 a danmei author was jailed for 10 years for selling 7,000 copies of her book titled Occupy.

As marriage and birth rates plummet, and China’s leader Xi Jinping encourages a national rejuvenation, so state scrutiny of danmei has ratcheted up, Dr Ge says.

“The Chinese government wants to promote traditional family values and liking danmei novels is seen as a factor in making women less willing to have children,” Dr Ge explains.

This is the second wave of mass arrests in less than a year – late last year, some 50 Haitang writers were prosecuted. A famous author who earned about 1.85 million yuan was jailed for nearly five years.

The two crackdowns are similar, according to a lawyer who had represented some of the defendants last year, “but this time, even those with minor involvement weren’t spared”.

A lawyer offering free legal advice said more than 150 people requested consultations in just two days. Many of those contacting her had not been charged yet – they were terrified about the possibility though.

“This is classic offshore fishing,” says a lawyer who authored a “practical guide” to assist Haitang writers. The term refers to overreach by local police – those in Lanzhou summoned writers in various places, arguably beyond their jurisdiction.

Several reported paying out of pocket to fly to Lanzhou. One posted that the 2,000 yuan earned from two books on Haitang paid for the flight.

Last year too all the arrests were by police in Jixi County in eastern China.

Indebted local governments have done this before to earn revenue through fines, sometimes forcing a warning from the central government. Cyber crimes are particularly prone to this “as long as they claim a local reader was corrupted”, the lawyer says.

Danmei writers know tolerance can be fickle. It’s why they skirt censorship with metaphors. “Making dinner” means sex; “kitchen tool” is code for male genitals.

Still, the recent crackdown stunned them. “A phone call shattered my dreams,” is how one writer described the call from police.

They accused police of searching their phone without a warrant. They said their crime was assessed by adding up the views for each chapter – a method they argued was misleading, as it likely exaggerated the readership.

Another danmei author posted: “I wrote on Haitang for years, with only a handful of readers. Then, those overlooked stories accumulated over 300,000 clicks, and the 4,000 yuan in royalties sitting in my account became evidence of my crime.”

It’s hard to know if this spells the end of their careers on Haitang.

“If I could go back, I’d still choose to write. And I will keep writing,” wrote the handle Sijin de Sijin.

“Right now, I can only hope the law will see beyond the words on the page – and see the girl who skipped meals to save money, the girl who sold her hair to buy a pen, the girl who believed her mind could carve a way through fate. I hope it gives all of us a fair chance.”

The Air India tragedy, in which at least 270 people died, involved one of Boeing’s most innovative and popular planes. Until now, it was considered one of its safest too.

We still do not know why flight 171 crashed just 30 seconds after take-off. Investigators have now recovered flight recorder data and are working hard to find out. But the incident has drawn attention to the aircraft involved: the 787 Dreamliner, the first of a modern generation of radical, fuel-efficient planes.

Prior to the accident, the 787 had operated for nearly a decade and a half without any major accidents and without a single fatality. During that period, according to Boeing, it carried more than a billion passengers. There are currently more than 1,100 in service worldwide.

However, it has also suffered from a series of quality control problems.

Whistleblowers who worked on the aircraft have raised numerous concerns about production standards. Some have claimed that potentially dangerously flawed aircraft have been allowed into service – allegations the company has consistently denied.

It was on a chilly December morning in 2009 that a brand-new aircraft edged out onto the runway at Paine Field airport near Seattle and, as a cheering crowd looked on, accelerated into a cloudy sky.

The flight was the culmination of years of development and billions of dollars worth of investment.

The 787 was conceived in the early 2000s, at a time of rising oil prices, when the increasing cost of fuel had become a major preoccupation for airlines. Boeing decided to build a long-haul plane for them that would set new standards in efficiency.

“In the late 1990s, Boeing was working on a design called the Sonic Cruiser,” explains aviation historian Shea Oakley.

This was firstly conceived as a plane that would use advanced materials and the latest technology to carry up to 250 passengers at just under the speed of sound. The initial emphasis was on speed and cutting journey times, rather than fuel economy.

“But then the effects of 9/11 hit the world airline industry quite hard,” says Mr Oakley.

“The airlines told Boeing what they really needed was the most fuel-efficient, economical long-range jetliner ever produced. They now wanted an aeroplane with a similar capacity to the Sonic Cruiser, minus the high speed.”

Boeing abandoned its initial concept, and began work on what became the 787. In doing so, it helped create a new business model for airlines.

Instead of using giant planes to transport huge numbers of people between “hub” airports, before placing them on connecting flights to other destinations, they could now fly smaller aircraft on less crowded direct routes between smaller cities which would previously have been unviable.

At the time Boeing’s great rival, the European giant Airbus, was taking precisely the opposite approach. It was developing the gargantuan A380 superjumbo – a machine tailor-made for carrying as many passengers as possible on busy routes between the world’s biggest and busiest airports.

In hindsight, Boeing’s approach was wiser. The fuel-thirsty A380 went out of production in 2021, after only 251 had been built.

“Airbus thought the future was giant hubs where people would always want to change planes in Frankfurt or Heathrow or Narita,” explains aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, who is a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.

“Boeing said ‘no, people want to fly point to point’. And Boeing was extremely right.”

The 787 was a truly radical aircraft. It was the first commercial plane to be built primarily of composites such as carbon fibre, rather than aluminium, in order to reduce weight. It had advanced aerodynamics to reduce drag.

It also used highly efficient modern engines from General Electric and Rolls Royce, and it replaced many mechanical and pneumatic systems with lighter electrical ones.

All of this, Boeing said, would make it 20% more efficient than its predecessor, the Boeing 767. It was also significantly quieter, with a noise footprint (the area on the ground affected by significant noise from the aircraft) that the manufacturer said was up to 60% smaller.

Not long after the aircraft entered service, however, there were serious problems. In January 2013, lithium-ion batteries caught fire aboard a 787 as it waited at a gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

A week later, overheating batteries forced another 787 to make an emergency landing during an internal flight in Japan.

The design was grounded worldwide for several months, while Boeing came up with a solution.

Since then, day to day operations have been smoother, but production has been deeply problematic. Analysts say this may, in part, have been due to Boeing’s decision to set up a new assembly line for the 787 in North Charleston, South Carolina – more than 2000 miles from its Seattle heartlands.

This was done to take advantage of the region’s low rates of union membership, as well as generous support from the state.

“There were serious development issues,” says Mr Aboulafia. “Some notable production issues, related especially to the decision to create Boeing’s first ever production line outside of the Puget Sound area.”

In 2019, Boeing discovered the first of a series of manufacturing defects that affected the way in which different parts of the aircraft fitted together. As more problems were found, the company widened its investigations – and uncovered further issues.

Deliveries were heavily disrupted, and halted altogether between May 2021 and July 2022, before being paused again the following year.

However, potentially the most damaging allegations about the 787 programme have come from the company’s own current and former employees.

Among the most prominent was the late John Barnett, a former quality control manager at the 787 factory in South Carolina. He claimed that pressure to produce planes as quickly as possible had seriously undermined safety.

In 2019, he told the BBC that workers at the plant had failed to follow strict procedures intended to track components through the factory, potentially allowing defective parts to go missing. In some cases, he said, workers had even deliberately fitted substandard parts from scrap bins to aircraft in order to avoid delays on the production line.

He also maintained that defective fixings were used to secure aircraft decks. Screwing them into place produced razor-sharp slivers of metal, which in some cases accumulated beneath the deck in areas containing large amounts of aircraft wiring.

His claims had previously been passed to the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, which partially upheld them. After investigating, it concluded that at least 53 “non-conforming” parts had gone missing in the factory.

An audit by the FAA also confirmed that metal shavings were present beneath the floors of a number of aircraft.

Boeing said its board analysed the problem and decided it did not “present a safety of flight issue”, though the fixings were subsequently redesigned. The company later said it had “fully resolved the FAA’s findings regarding part traceability and implemented corrective actions to prevent recurrence”.

Mr Barnett remained concerned that aircraft that had already gone into service could be carrying hidden defects serious enough to cause a major accident. “I believe it’s just a matter of time before something big happens with a 787,” he told me in 2019. “I pray that I am wrong.”

In early 2024, Mr Barnett took his own life. At the time he had been giving evidence in a long-running whistleblower lawsuit against the company – which he maintained had victimised him as a result of his allegations. Boeing denied this.

Much of what he had alleged echoed previous claims by another former quality manager at the plant, Cynthia Kitchens.

In 2011, she had complained to regulators about substandard parts being deliberately removed from quarantine bins and fitted to aircraft, in an attempt to keep the production line moving.

Ms Kitchens, who left Boeing in 2016, also claimed employees had been told to overlook substandard work, and said defective wiring bundles, containing metallic shavings within their coatings, had been deliberately installed on planes – creating a risk of dangerous short-circuits.

Boeing has not responded to these specific allegations but says Ms Kitchens resigned in 2016 “after being informed that she was being placed on a performance improvement plan”. It says that she subsequently filed a lawsuit against Boeing, “alleging claims of discrimination and retaliation unrelated to any quality issues”, which was dismissed.

More recently, a third whistleblower made headlines when testifying before a senate committee last year.

Sam Salehpour, a current Boeing employee, told US lawmakers he had come forward because “the safety problems I have observed at Boeing, if not addressed could result in a catastrophic failure of a commercial aeroplane that would lead to the loss of hundreds of lives”.

The quality engineer said that while working on the 787 in late 2020, he had seen the company introduce shortcuts in assembly processes, in order to speed up production and delivery of the aircraft. These, he said, “had allowed potentially defective parts and defective installations in 787 fleets”.

He also noted that on the majority of aircraft he looked at, tiny gaps in the joints between sections of fuselage had not been properly rectified. This, he said, meant those joints would be prone to “premature fatigue failure over time” and created “extremely unsafe conditions for the aircraft” with “potentially catastrophic” consequences.

He suggested that more than 1,000 aircraft – the bulk of the 787 fleet – could be affected.

Boeing insists that “claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate”. It says: “The issues raised have been subject to rigorous examination under US Federal Aviation Administration oversight. This analysis has validated that the aircraft will maintain its durability and service life over several decades, and these issues do not present any safety concerns.”

There is no question that Boeing has come under huge pressure in recent years over its corporate culture and production standards. In the wake of two fatal accidents involving its bestselling 737 Max, and a further serious incident last year, it has been repeatedly accused of putting the pursuit of profit over passenger safety.

It is a perception that chief executive Kelly Ortberg, who joined the company last year, has been working hard to overturn – overhauling its internal processes and working with regulators on a comprehensive safety and quality control plan.

But has the 787 already been compromised by past failures, that may have created ongoing safety risks?

Richard Aboulafia believes not. “You know. It’s been 16 years of operations, 1,200 jets and over a billion passengers flown, but no crashes until now,” he says. “It’s a stellar safety record.”

He thinks that any major issues would already have become apparent.

“I really think production problems are more of a short-term concern,” he says. “For the past few years, there’s been far greater oversight of 787 production.

“For older planes, I think any serious problems would have shown up by now.”

The Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad was more than 11 years old, having first flown in 2013.

But the Foundation for Aviation Safety, a US organisation established by the former Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson that has previously been highly critical of the company, says it did have concerns about 787s prior to the recent crash.

“Yes, it was a possible safety risk,” claims Mr Pierson. “We monitor incident reports, we monitor regulatory documents. Airworthiness directives come out that describe various issues, and it does make you wonder.”

One such issue, he argues, is water potentially leaking from washroom taps into electrical equipment bays. Last year, the FAA instructed airlines to carry out regular inspections, following reports that leaks were going undetected on certain 787 models.

However, he stresses that the cause of the recent tragedy is still unknown – and that it is vital the investigation moves forward quickly, so that any problems, whether they lie with the aircraft, the airline or elsewhere, can be resolved.

For the moment, however, the 787’s safety record remains strong.

“We don’t know at this point what caused the Air India crash,” says Scott Hamilton, managing director of aviation consulting firm Leeham Company.

“But based on what we do know about the plane, I would not hesitate to get on board a 787.”

Canada has scrapped a tax on big US technology firms, just hours before it was due to come into force, to allow trade talks between the two countries to restart.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump called off negotiations over a trade deal, describing the tax as a “blatant attack”, and threatened higher tariffs on imports from Canada.

In response, Canada has said it is removing the tax, which should have come into effect on Monday.

The digital services tax (DST) would have meant US tech giants including Amazon, Meta, Google and Apple, facing a 3% charge on Canadian revenue above $20m.

Canada’s finance minister François-Philippe Champagne issued a statement saying the tax would be rescinded.

“The DST was announced in 2020 to address the fact that many large technology companies operating in Canada may not otherwise pay tax on revenues generated from Canadians,” it said.

“Canada’s preference has always been a multilateral agreement related to digital services taxation,” the statement added.

Many countries, including the UK, are changing how they tax large multinational technology firms, which have millions of customers and advertisers around the world, but high corporation tax bills due to the way their businesses are structured.

It was estimated that Canada’s tax would cost the tech giants more than $2bn a year in total.

Trump, who has forged a close relationship with tech company owners in his second term in office, has pushed back against such taxes.

He described Canada’s policy as “egregious” adding “economically we have such power over Canada”.

Three quarters of Canada’s goods exports go to the US, worth more than $400bn a year, while Canada takes just 17% of US production.

Canada’s climbdown comes after a rollercoaster few months for US-Canada relations.

Shortly after taking office Trump threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs and even to annex the US’s northern neighbour.

The antagonism helped propel Canada’s Liberal Party, led by former central banker, Mark Carney, back into power.

Since then there appeared to be a rapprochement, with Canada and the US saying they aimed to agree new trade terms by 21 July.

The BBC has said it should have cut away from a live broadcast of Bob Vylan’s performance at Glastonbury, during which the band’s singer led the crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”.

In a statement issued on Monday, the BBC said: “The team were dealing with a live situation but with hindsight we should have pulled the stream during the performance. We regret this did not happen.”

It comes after the broadcast regulator Ofcom said the BBC “clearly has questions to answer” over its coverage, and the government questioned why the comments were aired live.

The organisers of Glastonbury have previously said they were “appalled” by the comments, which “crossed a line”.

On Monday, a BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC respects freedom of expression but stands firmly against incitement to violence.

“The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves.”

A statement continued: “In light of this weekend, we will look at our guidance around live events so we can be sure teams are clear on when it is acceptable to keep output on air.”

The BBC has previously said the performance had carried a warning on screen and would not be made available to watch on iPlayer.

The controversy surrounds comments made by Bob Vylan’s singer – who goes by the stage name Bobby Vylan – during their performance at the festival on Saturday.

During part of the band’s set, the singer also chanted “free, free Palestine” and used the expression “from the river to sea, Palestine will be free”. Some use the chant as a call for Palestinian control of all land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel.

Critics say the slogan is a call for the destruction of the state of Israel.

That interpretation is disputed by pro-Palestinian activists who say that most people chanting it are calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza, not the destruction of Israel itself.

On Monday, Ofcom said it was in contact with the BBC and had asked for clarification over why the comments were broadcast.

A spokesperson for the regulator said: “We are very concerned about the live stream of this performance, and the BBC clearly has questions to answer.

“We have been speaking to the BBC over the weekend and we are obtaining further information as a matter of urgency, including what procedures were in place to ensure compliance with its own editorial guidelines.”

Bob Vylan are a London-based English punk-rap duo, who formed in Ipswich in 2017. They have previously performed at Reading and Leeds festivals and toured with the likes of the Offspring, the Hives and Biffy Clyro.

On Sunday, its singer released a statement on Instagram with “I said what I said” as an accompanying message.

In it, he defended political activism in general without referencing Saturday’s performance directly, writing that is important for young people to see campaigners “shouting… on any and every stage that we are offered”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer branded the on-stage remarks “hate speech” and there has been cross-party condemnation of both the chants and the BBC’s coverage of them.

Shortly after the performance, the government said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had pressed BBC director general Tim Davie for an urgent explanation.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said police should investigate both Bob Vylan and the BBC “for offences under the Public Order act”, adding that “prosecutions in my view should follow”.

Glastonbury’s organisers have also distanced themselves from Bob Vylan’s performance.

They said: “Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.”

A street vendor shot in the head by police during protests about two weeks ago has been declared brain dead in hospital, his family has said.

Boniface Kariuki’s family said medics had informed them that his brain had ceased to function, although his heart was beating with life-machine support.

“We know what it means. We are just waiting for the doctor to tell us he is no more,” family spokesperson Emily Wanjira told journalists.

Mr Kariuki, 22, was caught in the crossfire when police cracked down on a protest in the capital Nairobi against the death in detention of blogger and teacher Albert Ojwang, 31.

Mr Kariuki, a mask vendor, was shot at close range on 17 June, and was admitted to the main public referral hospital in Nairobi for treatment.

Doctors have carried out several operations since his admission but some bullet fragments are reportedly still lodged in his brain.

News that he was brain dead has sparked further public anger over alleged police brutality, with increasing demands for justice.

Many Kenyans have also urged the government to settle the rising hospital bill after Mr Kariuki’s family appealed for public donations.

Two police officers have appeared in court over his shooting, but have not yet been asked to pleas. They remain in custody pending the outcome of investigations.

• Are East African governments uniting to silence dissent?
• Why the death of a blogger has put Kenya’s police on trial

At least 19 people were killed during nationwide anti-government demonstrations last Wednesday, according to the state-funded rights body.

Kenya’s interior minister Kipchumba Murkomen, however, defended the police, describing the protests as “terrorism disguised as dissent”.

He urged officers to “shoot on sight” civilians who attacked police stations, sparking further criticism from lawyers and rights groups.

On Sunday, Mr Kariuki’s family urged authorities to speed up investigations and ensure that justice takes place.

Six people – including three police officers – have been charged with murder over Mr Ojwang’s death in police custody.

His death forced Kenya’s deputy police chief Eliud Lagat to step aside, but many Kenyans are demanding his resignation.

Mr Ojwang was detained after Mr Lagat filed a complaint, accusing him of defaming him on social media.

An autopsy found that Mr Ojwang died of assault wounds. Mr Lagat has denied any wrongdoing.

• BBC identifies security forces who shot Kenya anti-tax protesters
• Why Kenya’s president has so many nicknames
• Four Kenyan police officers charged over baby’s killing as others freed
• New faces of protest – Kenya’s Gen Z anti-tax revolutionaries

This week, Jurassic World Rebirth hits the big screen, more than three decades after the first film in the dinosaur franchise came out.

But that’s not all the next seven days have in store.

The much-anticipated Oasis reunion tour kicks off, with a BBC livestream covering all the build-up and reaction, Evita officially opens starring Rachel Zegler, and The Sandman returns for season two.

Read on for what’s coming up this week…

In 1993, a cultural phenomenon swept the world with the release of the first Jurassic Park film.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film sparked a global fascination with dinosaurs, while its use of computer-generated imagery was considered groundbreaking at the time.

Six films have since been released, with a seventh – Jurassic World Rebirth – out on Wednesday.

It is directed by Gareth Edwards, and stars US actress Scarlett Johansson and Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey, who were seen locking lips at the film’s London premiere.

Bailey later told Entertainment Tonight: “I believe in being able to show the love in all different ways and if you can’t kiss your friends… life is too short not to.”

Set five years after the events of 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion, it explores a world where the surviving dinosaurs live in isolated tropical regions. Early reviews so far have been mixed.

Writing on X, Variety’s Jazz Tangcay called the film a “roaring triumph” and “a beautiful homage to the original”.

But The Flick Pick’s host John Flickinger was more critical, saying it “just feels blah”, adding: “It’s a string of forgettable scenes that go nowhere.”

Last summer, there was nothing short of a frenzy when Oasis announced they would be reuniting for a series of live shows.

A blizzard of headlines and a social media storm followed as tickets went on sale, with many fans criticising the sales process and prices.

For those lucky enough to get tickets, it all gets started this week, with the first gig taking place at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff.

But if you missed out, you can still join in on some of the action.

The BBC is putting on a special livestream, Oasis: Countdown to the Comeback, building up to the highly anticipated gig. Hosted by Jason Mohammad and Tina Daheley, the show begins at 1pm on Friday and will be broadcast from a site overlooking the stadium.

You won’t be able to watch the actual gig, but what you will get is a mix of live coverage, special guests, and on-the-ground reports from our team speaking to fans across the city.

After the gig, there will also be instant reactions and live reviews as the excitement continues into the night.

People strolling through central London over the last couple of weeks may have caught a free performance from Snow White star Rachel Zegler.

The actress is playing the lead role in Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Evita, which formally opens on Tuesday after running previews since mid-June.

This production has Zegler belt out Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, the show’s most well-known song, to passersby from a balcony above the entrance of London Palladium, while those who bought tickets watch from inside via a video feed.

The balcony serenade is the latest twist from director Jamie Lloyd, who’s known for blending theatre and film. Last year, Tom Holland performed part of Romeo & Juliet on a rooftop.

Theatre blogger Carl Woodward appreciates some paying audiences members have been left feeling “a bit aggrieved”.

However, Lord Lloyd-Webber told BBC Radio 2 that Zegler was a “bit of a phenomenon”. He added: “She does Rainbow High in Evita, which is the really difficult song, I think the best I’ve ever heard it.”

On Thursday, season two of The Sandman lands on Netflix.

The first instalment, based on British author Neil Gaiman’s comic book series, came out in 2022 and was well received by critics and fans.

We’re told the new and final season, once again starring Tom Sturridge as Dream, will see him facing a string of impossible decisions as he tries to save himself, his kingdom, and the waking world from the fallout of his misdeeds.

Showrunner Allan Heinberg said he hoped the adaptation would “surprise and delight the comics’ loyal readers as well as fans of our show”.

Earlier this year, Gaiman was accused of sexual misconduct by eight women, including four who had previously spoken out.

He denied the allegations, saying he had “never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever”.

Following the claims, several of his film and TV projects were affected, but The Sandman is still going out as planned.

Netflix declined to comment when approached by BBC News.

• Wimbledon begins on Monday, with coverage of all the action on BBC iPlayer
• Scrublands: Silver is back for series two on BBC iPlayer on Monday
• To Catch A Stalker is released on BBC Three and iPlayer on Tuesday
• Catherine Paiz, of YouTube fame, puts out the audiobook for her memoir on Tuesday
• The Nine Lives Of Ozzy Osbourne premieres on Friday in Birmingham
• Black Sabbath play their final gig in Birmingham on Saturday
• Sabrina Carpenter is headlining two nights at BST Hyde Park, starting on Saturday

The final day of Glastonbury Festival 2025 has wrapped up with an actioned-packed performance from Olivia Rodrigo as tens of thousands flocked to the Pyramid Stage for pop star’s headline set.

The Prodigy also entertained a wild crowd at the Other Stage.

Sir Rod Stewart drew a huge crowd to the Pyramid Stage for his legends slot show, more than 20 years after he last performed at the festival as headliner.

Meanwhile, some people packed up their things early as they prepared to head home.

The festival is advising people to leave before 06:00 BST on Monday as temperatures of 31C are forecast.

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• ‘I stopped for tea and helped to build the Pyramid Stage’

Are you still with me Glasto? Rodrigo unveiled a pair of sequinned Union Jack hot pants, brought The Cure’s Robert Smith on stage and declared her love for British sweets during her headline slot which closed the festival.

This is his night! The Prodigy dedicated their fiery performance to their late vocalist Keith Flint, who died in 2019 when the band was scheduled to play at the festival. They delighted the crowd with classics such as Firestarter and Breathe.

Old friends: The Rolling Stones’ guitarist and Sir Rod Stewart’s former bandmate in the Faces, Ronnie Wood, joined him on stage. Sir Rod also did a duet with Lulu who told him, “we’d make a great couple”

Happy birthday: Sir Michael Eavis took to the stage as a guest of Rod Stewart, who wished him a happy 90th birthday.

A splash of colour: Joy Crookes brightened up the set during her buttery-smooth performance on the Other Stage.

Stewart doubles: Two people were spotted in the crowd dressed to look like Rod Stewart ahead of his set.

Chasing Cars: Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody on The Other Stage.

The Selecter: Pauline Black from The Selecter, who opened the Pyramid Stage on the final day of this year’s Glastonbury Festival.

Hear My Voice: British singer Celeste performed on the Pyramid Stage earlier.

Time to say goodbye: Some people packed up early ready to leave the festival.

You’re My Waterloo: The Libertines took to the Pyramid Stage earlier.

A Bar Song: Shaboozey performed on the Other Stage earlier.

Hot weather: After a mostly cloudy start to the morning, temperatures rose for a sun-filled afternoon.

Travel warning: The Glastonbury app advised people to leave Worthy Farm overnight as temperatures on Monday are forecasted to reach 31C.

Sunset slot: American singer-songwriter Noah Kahan joked he was there to “depress” the crowd with his emotional songs during the sunset slot on the Pyramid Stage.

As a guide dog handler of 26 years, my heart falls every time I hear the fatigued pants of dogs in heatwave weather.

Animal welfare charity the RSPCA says that dogs are 10 times more likely to suffer heat-related illnesses from exercising in hot weather than from overheating in cars. Both are tremendously bad for your dog.

This is because canines have a very limited ability to regulate their temperature.

They do not sweat like humans – only perspiring a small amount through the pads on their paws, with their often thick fur coats meaning their core temperature can rise quickly in high temperatures.

Heavy panting, difficulty breathing, excessive drooling, lethargy and drowsiness are all key signs that your dog is too hot.

In extreme cases, dogs vomit and finally lose consciousness. If your dog is in trouble, the RSPCA says you should move the dog to a shaded and cool area and immediately pour cool, but not very cold, water over the dog, avoiding their head.

The charity says wet towels should not be placed over the animal because it could cause heat to become trapped. If possible , allow the dog to drink small amounts of cool water and continue to pour cool water over them, but not so much that they begin to shiver. When breathing settles, head straight to the vets.

My plea to dog owners is not to walk or exercise your dog in hot weather. Please understand that this is not fear-mongering. Your dog can overheat in moments and it is totally avoidable in most cases.

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It struck me as unbelievable frankly this weekend that while I, as a blind person was being sighted guided by my girlfriend in 30C (86F) weather because it was too hot for my working dog to be out, we passed nearly a dozen dog walkers obliviously walking their best friends into danger at around 1pm.

I know not everyone is an experienced dog handler – but I can’t begin to imagine how anyone could fail to notice the obvious discomfort, the heavy panting, the foot-dragging and laboured breathing in direct sunlight that had us reaching for our iced-water bottles.

So what can we do to protect our animals in hot weather?

For starters, when the mercury hits 20C, I place the back of my hand on the pavement to check I can comfortably keep it there. It’s a great indicator that your dog’s pads will be ok too.

I always pack a folding water travel bowl and carry chilled or iced water. In addition, when the temperature hits 24C or above, I start asking whether it’s safe to be out at all and usually decide at 25C and above that it’s too hot to walk my dog more than a few feet from my front door to an air-conditioned cab.

But what about exercise?

Your dog needs life more than it needs a walk. On super-hot days, keep your dog indoors and ideally air-conditioned or in a cool room with a fan.

Your dog will be fine without a walk for a few days but you could provide playtime at home by throwing a toy.

If you are planning to walk your dog, do it in the very early morning or very late evenings. If you walk your dog in extreme heat you are literally putting their lives at risk. They’re too important – keep them safe, cool and inside.

“What they’re showing on Russian TV are fairy tales for fools. Most of Mariupol still lies in ruins,” says John, a Ukrainian living in Russian-occupied Mariupol. We’ve changed his name as he fears reprisal from Russian authorities.

“They are repairing the facades of the buildings on the main streets, where they bring cameras to shoot. But around the corner, there is rubble and emptiness. Many people still live in half-destroyed apartments with their walls barely standing,” he says.

It’s been just over three years since Mariupol was taken by Russian forces after a brutal siege and indiscriminate bombardment – a key moment in the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Thousands were killed, and the UN estimated 90% of residential buildings were damaged or destroyed.

In recent months, videos and reels from several pro-Russia influencers have been painting a picture of a glossy city where damaged structures have been repaired and where life has gone back to normal.

But the BBC has spoken to more than half a dozen people – some still living in Mariupol, others who escaped after spending time under occupation – to piece together a real picture of what life is like in the city.

“There are a lot of lies floating around,” says 66-year-old Olha Onyshko who escaped from Mariupol late last year and now lives in Ukraine’s Ternopil.

“We had a beautiful city but now it’s diseased. I wouldn’t say they [Russian authorities] have repaired a lot of things. There’s a central square – only the buildings there have been reconstructed. And there are also empty spaces where buildings stood. They cleared the debris, but they didn’t even separate out the dead bodies, they were just loaded on to trucks with the rubble and carried out of the city,” she adds.

Mariupol is also facing severe water shortages.

“Water flows for a day or two, then it doesn’t come for three days. We keep buckets and cans of water at home. The colour of the water is so yellow that even after boiling it, it’s scary to drink it,” says James, another Mariupol resident whose name has been changed.

Some have even said the water looks like “coca cola”.

Serhii Orlov, who calls himself Mariupol’s deputy mayor in exile, says the Siverskyi Donets–Donbas Canal which supplied water to the city was damaged during the fighting.

“Only one reservoir was left supplying water to Mariupol. For the current population, that would’ve lasted for about a year and a half. Since occupation has lasted longer than that, it means there is no drinking water at all. The water people are using doesn’t even meet the minimum drinking water standard,” says Serhii.

There are frequent power cuts, food is expensive, and medicines are scarce, residents tell us.

“Basic medicines are not available. Diabetics struggle to get insulin on time, and it is crazy expensive,” says James.

The BBC has reached out to Mariupol’s Russian administration for a response to the allegations about shortages and whether they had found an alternative source for water. We have not got a response so far.

Despite the hardships the most difficult part of living in the city, residents say, is watching what Ukrainian children are being taught at school.

Andrii Kozhushyna studied at a university in Mariupol for a year after it was occupied. Now he’s escaped to Dnipro.

“They are teaching children false information and propaganda. For example, school textbooks state that Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Odesa, Crimea and even Dnipropetrovsk regions are all already part of Russia,” says Andrii.

He also described special lessons called “Conversations about Important Things” in which students are taught about how Russia liberated the Russian-speaking population of these regions from Nazis in 2022.

“Teachers who refuse to take these lessons are intimidated or fired. It’s like they are reprogramming the minds of our children,” says John, a Mariupol resident.

During World War Two Victory Day celebrations in May, images from Mariupol’s central square showed children and adults dressed up in military costumes participating in parades and performances – Soviet-era traditions that Ukraine had increasingly shunned are now being imposed in occupied territories. Mariupol was bathed in the colours of the Russian flag – red, blue and white.

But some Ukrainians are waging a secret resistance against Russia, and in the dead of the night, they spray paint Ukrainian blue and yellow colours on walls, and also paste leaflets with messages like “Liberate Mariupol” and “Mariupol is Ukraine”.

James and John are both members of resistance groups, as was Andrii when he lived in the city.

“The messages are meant as moral support for our people, to let them know that the resistance is alive,” says James.

Their main objective is collecting intelligence for the Ukrainian military.

“I document information about Russian military movements. I analyse where they are transporting weapons, how many soldiers are entering and leaving the city, and what equipment is being repaired in our industrial areas. I take photos secretly, and keep them hidden until I can transmit them to Ukrainian intelligence through secure channels,” says James.

Occasionally, the resistance groups also try to sabotage civil or military operations. On at least two occasions, the railway line into Mariupol was disrupted because the signalling box was set on fire by activists.

It’s risky work. Andrii said he was forced to leave when he realised that he had been exposed.

“Perhaps a neighbour snitched on me. But once when I was at a store buying bread, I saw a soldier showing my photo to the cashier asking if they knew who the person was,” he said.

He left immediately, slipping past Mariupol’s checkposts and then travelling through numerous cities in Russia, and through Belarus, before entering Ukraine from the north.

For those still in the city, each day is a challenge.

“Every day you delete your messages because your phone can be checked at checkpoints. You’re afraid to call your friends in Ukraine in case your phone is being tapped,” says James.

“A person from a neighbouring house was arrested right off the street because someone reported that he was allegedly passing information to the Ukrainian military. Your life is like a movie – a constant tension, fear, distrust,” he adds.

As talks continue between Ukraine and Russia, there have been suggestions from within and outside Ukraine that it would need to concede land in exchange for a peace deal.

“Giving away territory for a ‘deal with Russia’ will be a betrayal. Dozens risk their lives every day to pass information to Ukraine, not so that some diplomat in a suit will sign a paper that will ‘hand us over’,” says John.

“We don’t want ‘peace at any cost’. We want liberation.”

The jury in the high-profile murder trial of an Australian woman accused of cooking a deadly mushroom lunch for relatives has retired to decide her fate.

Erin Patterson, 50, has pleaded not guilty to four charges – three of murder and one of attempted murder – over the beef Wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July 2023.

The prosecution have claimed Ms Patterson knowingly put toxic death cap mushrooms into the home-cooked meal, before lying to police and disposing of evidence.

But the defence argue Ms Patterson accidentally included the poisonous fungi in the dish and only lied because she panicked after hurting people she loved.

Ms Patterson’s in-laws, Don and Gail Patterson, both 70, along with Gail’s sister Heather Wilkinson, 66, all fell ill and died days after the lunch in Leongatha.

Heather’s husband, local pastor Ian Wilkinson, recovered after weeks in an induced coma. Simon Patterson, the accused’s estranged husband, had been invited to the lunch too, but pulled out the day before.

On Monday, Justice Christopher Beale gave his final instructions to the 14-member jury, summing up evidence from the prosecution and the sole defence witness, Ms Patterson.

After almost two months and more than 50 witnesses, the final 12 jurors were decided by a ballot before the group retired for deliberations.

In her closing arguments, prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC said Ms Patterson has “told so many lies it’s hard to keep track of them”.

The prosecution alleged Ms Patterson lied to her relatives about a cancer diagnosis to convince them to attend the fatal lunch, poisoned them and then faked an illness to cover her tracks.

Ms Patterson’s further lies to police and medical staff about foraging for wild mushrooms, as well as her decision to dump a food dehydrator used to prepare the meal, were evidence of her guilt, they argued.

“She has told lies upon lies because she knew the truth would implicate her,” Nanette Rogers said.

“When she knew her lies had been uncovered, she came up with a carefully constructed narrative to fit with the evidence – almost.”

There was no “particular motive” for the alleged crime, Dr Rogers told the court, but the jury should still have “no difficulty” in rejecting the argument “this was all a horrible foraging accident”.

However, the defence argued the lack of motive was key. Ms Patterson had no reason to kill her guests, they said.

During Ms Patterson’s evidence, she told the jury she was very close to her in-laws and never intended to harm them.

As she was preparing the lunch, Ms Patterson claimed she added mushrooms from a container in her pantry that she now realised may have included both store-bought and foraged mushrooms.

She also told the court she had suffered from bulimia for years, and had made herself throw up after the beef Wellington meal – something her defence team says explains why she did not become as sick as the others who ate it.

The lie about having cancer was because she was embarrassed about plans to get weight-loss surgery, Ms Patterson said, and she didn’t tell authorities the truth about her mushroom foraging hobby because she feared they might blame her for making her relatives sick.

“She’s not on trial for lying,” defence lawyer Colin Mandy SC, “this is not a court of moral judgment”.

He accused the prosecution of trying to force “puzzle pieces” of evidence together, “stretching interpretations, ignoring alternative explanations because they don’t align perfectly with the narrative”.

In his final instructions, Justice Beale told the jury members they alone are the “judges of the facts in this case”.

He said they should not convict Ms Patterson simply for lying, as there are “all sorts of reasons why a person might behave in a way that makes the person look guilty”.

He added that while “any reasonable person would feel great sympathy” for the Patterson and Wilkinson families, jurors also must not allow themselves to be swayed by emotions.

The jury has now been sequestered, which means that while they deliberate, they will stay in supervised accommodation where they will have little to no contact with the outside world until they have reached a decision.

Italian luxury fashion label Prada has said it acknowledges the Indian roots of its new footwear line, days after the design sparked a controversy in India.

The sandals, showcased at the Milan Fashion Week last week, had an open-toe braided pattern that closely resembled the traditional Kolhapuri sandals made in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Prada described the sandals as “leather footwear” but did not mention its Indian origins, prompting backlash and allegations of cultural appropriation in India.

Responding to the controversy, Prada told the BBC in a statement that it recognises that the sandals are inspired by traditional Indian footwear.

A Prada spokesperson said that the company has “always celebrated craftsmanship, heritage and design traditions”, adding that it was “in contact with the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture on this topic”. This is a prominent industry trade body in the state.

Last week, its chief had written to the brand, saying the design was commercialised without crediting the artisans who have preserved its heritage for generations.

Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s head of Corporate Social Responsibility, responded to his letter saying that the sandals were “at an early stage of design”, according to Reuters.

He also said that Prada was open to a “dialogue for meaningful exchange with local Indian artisans” and the company would organise follow-up meetings to discuss this further.

Named after a city in Maharashtra where they are made, Kolhapuri sandals trace their roots back to the 12th Century.

Made from leather and sometimes dyed in natural colours, the traditional handcrafted sandals are sturdy and well-suited to India’s hot climate.

They were awarded the Geographical Indication (GI) status by the Indian government in 2019.

According to the World Trade Organisation, a geographical indication tag credits a good or product as having originated from a certain region or place, and is considered a mark of authenticity.

Following the controversy, many artisans in Kolhapur said they were saddened by Prada’s use of the design without giving due credit.

“These sandals are made with the hard work of leather workers in Kolhapur. They should be named after Kolhapur. Don’t take advantage of others’ labour,” Prabha Satpute, a Kolhapuri artisan, told BBC Marathi.

The sandals cost a few hundreds rupees in India but Prada’s reported premium pricing angered some, though the brand’s website does not mention the price tag. Most other sandals sold by the fashion house, retail at between £600 to £1,000 in the UK.

Industrialist Harsh Goenka highlighted this, saying the local artisans barely make any money for the same hand-made products. “They lose, while global brands cash in on our culture,” he said.

This is not the first time that global brands have been accused to appropriating Indian traditional products without crediting their roots.

At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Gucci described a sari worn by Bollywood star Alia Bhatt as a gown, sparking backlash.

Earlier in May, a popular TikTok trend was criticised for calling dupatta, a traditional South Asian scarf, a Scandinavian scarf.

In Kolhapur, however, some said the move had instilled a sense of pride in them.

“Artisans are happy that someone is recognising their work,” Kolhapur-based businessman Dileep More told Reuters.

The internationally renowned Welsh opera singer Stuart Burrows has died aged 92 following a short illness.

Born in Cilfynydd in Rhondda Cynon Taf, he performed for the first time with the Welsh National Opera in 1963 and went on to sing at world famous La Scala in Milan.

His career took in the Met Opera in New York for 12 seasons and he also appeared at the Carnegie Hall in New York, and the Royal Opera House in London.

At the height of his career – in the 1970s and 80s – Burrows starred in his own BBC Two series, Stuart Burrows Sings.

Burrows was born on the same street as fellow opera star Geraint Evans.

In his youth, Burrows could have been a professional rugby player, but turned down a contract with the Leeds Rugby League club to concentrate on singing.

His big break came in 1965 when the composer Stravinsky asked him to sing his opera Oedipus Rex in Athens.

Burrows received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wales in 1981, a Fellowship of Trinity College, Carmarthen in 1989, and he also received an Honorary Fellowship from Aberystwyth University.

In 2007 he received an OBE for his services to music.

In a tribute, the former UK government culture minister, Kim Howells, said: “Stuart Burrows had an amazing voice, he was an internationally renowned singer and very remarkable individual who came from this south Wales valleys village which has produced so many extraordinary people from rugby players to politicians.

“We’ve lost a great here and I send my condolences to his family.”

Burrows’ family said he died on Sunday morning following a short illness.

In a post on Facebook, his son Mark said: “Words cannot express how much I will miss this true Welshman who (as he liked to say) loved to sing a bit!”

Welsh operatic and concert soprano Beverley Humphreys said Burrows had an “astounding career”.

“He was one of the greatest Mozart tenors in the world. From La Scala to the Met and Covent Garden. The beauty of his voice, his sensitivity, lyricism and refined musicianship was unsurpassed.”

The BBC Radio Wales broadcaster said Burrows had the rare ability to sing not only in opera, but in many different genres.

“His voice and warm personality touched hearts all over the world.”

Burrows was part of the Ryan Davies Memorial Trust and gave advice to young people after listening to them sing.

One of those young people was Welsh opera and classical tenor singer Rhys Meirion who said: “I remember speaking to him in awe, in a way, because I used to listen to him all the time.”

A video of a woman being sexually assaulted has caused nationwide uproar in Bangladesh, after the clip was shared widely online.

The woman, who has been interviewed by local media, says she was raped at her father’s house last Thursday. The clip shows several people at the scene.

Police have arrested five people, including the alleged rapist, and authorities have said they will investigate the case “with utmost seriousness”.

Protests broke out across the country over the weekend after the clip was circulated, and several human rights groups have demanded severe punishment for those involved.

The survivor was visiting her father’s home in central Bangladesh’s Cumilla district when a neighbour broke in and assaulted her, according to police.

The woman, who is from a Hindu minority community, gave interviews to several local outlets saying the accused “entered the house with bad intentions and tortured her”.

Police have named the main suspect as 36-year-old Fazor Ali, adding that he was hospitalised after being beaten up by members of the public on the night of the incident.

The man sustained injuries on his arms and legs which prevented him from showing up in court on Sunday, police said.

The other four people were arrested for filming and circulating videos of the assault, police said.

Local human rights groups are calling for a swift investigation, with some saying the incident is the latest in a series of cases of violence against women where justice was delayed or perpetrators were granted impunity.

“If a woman is not safe in her own home and identity, it represents a serious failure of the state and a breakdown in security,” Ain O Salish Kendra, a national legal aid and human rights organisation, said in a statement on Sunday.

The organisation further urged that “the state must send a clear and firm message that such barbarity has no place in this country”.

Another Dhaka-based group, Manusher Jonno Foundation, condemned those who filmed and distributed the clip, saying they inflicted a “second assault” on the victim.

Bangladeshi authorities have said the case will be dealt with swiftly.

“Like ordinary citizens, we are also deeply shocked by the rape. Our home ministry has taken immediate action,” the country’s law adviser Asif Nazrul said in a media briefing on Sunday.

“The prime accused, along with those involved in spreading photos of the incident, a highly irresponsible and criminal act, have all been arrested.”

Earlier this year, an eight-year-old child who was raped in Bangladesh died of her injuries, setting off fierce protests around the country.

Many protesters at the time demanded that the government expedite justice for rape victims and reform laws related to women and children’s safety.

Protesters also called for greater clarity around the legal definitions of what constitutes rape in Bangladesh, which they said were currently ambiguous.

Somebody’s getting fired…

Beyoncé was forced to stop her show in Houston on Saturday night when the car she was sitting in started to tilt mid-air.

The elaborate stage prop – a red Cadillac – is suspended on cables and carries the superstar high over her fans near the end of her Cowboy Carter stadium show.

But during Saturday’s performance, the car started to slowly tilt to one side, leaving the 43-year-old performer clinging to a flag pole for support.

“Stop! Stop, stop, stop stop,” Beyoncé said, bringing an abrupt end to her country ballad, 16 Carriages.

Gasps could be heard from the audience when fans realised what was happening, but then applause as the star was slowly lowered to the ground, smiling and waving to the crowd.

“If ever I fall, I know y’all will catch me,” she said later.

Fans took to social media to post their videos of the frightening moment, commenting with Beyoncé’s now-infamous catchphrase “somebody’s getting fired”, which she quipped on stage during a lighting problem in 2010.

Beyoncé’s company, Parkwood Entertainment, said a “technical mishap” had caused the car to tilt.

“She was quickly lowered and no one was injured. The show continued without incident,” the statement added.

This was not the first prop malfunction Beyoncé has experienced over her years of touring.

Earlier in this tour, a robot supposed to pour her a drink missed its mark, no doubt leaving a puddle of Sir Davis whisky for the crew to clean up. And during her On The Run II tour with husband Jay-Z in 2018, a moving platform broke, forcing Beyoncé to climb down a ladder – in heels and a sequined leotard, no less.

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The performance in her hometown of Houston, Texas, was the 23rd of her 32-show Cowboy Carter tour, which wraps up in Las Vegas next month.

The three-hour extravaganza of chaps and cowboy boots has been lauded for its high-energy and artistry, and has delighted fans with appearances by Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughters, Blue, 13, and Rumi, aged eight.

The show has broken ticket records at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London (the previous record holder was… Beyoncé) and Stade De France in Paris.

A record number of heat alerts are in place across France as the country, and other parts of southern and eastern Europe, remain in the grip of soaring temperatures.

Some 84 of 96 of France’s mainland regions – known as departments – are currently under an orange alert – the country’s second highest. France’s Climate Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher has called it an “unprecedented” situation.

Heat warnings are also in place for parts of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the UK and Balkan countries including Croatia.

Both Spain and Portugal had their hottest June days on record at the weekend.

El Granado in Andalucía saw a temperature of 46C on Saturday, while 46.6C was recorded in the town of Mora in central Portugal on Sunday.

Many countries have emergency medical services on standby and are warning people to stay inside as much as possible.

Nearly 200 schools across France have been closed or partially closed as a result of the heatwave, which has gripped parts of Europe for more than a week now but is expected to peak mid-week.

Education Minister Elisabeth Borne said she was working with regional authorities over the best ways to look after schoolchildren or to allow parents who can to keep their children at home.

Several forest fires broke out in the southern Corbières mountain range on Sunday, leading to evacuations and the closure of a motorway. They have since been contained, fire authorities told French media on Monday.

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Meanwhile, 21 Italian cities are also on the highest alert – including Rome, Milan and Venice, as is Sardinia.

Mario Guarino, vice president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine, told AFP news agency that hospital emergency departments across the country had reported a 10% increase in heatstroke cases.

Parts of the UK could see one of the hottest June days ever on Monday, with temperatures of 34C or higher possible in some parts of England.

Much of Spain, which is on course to record its hottest June on record, also continues to be under heat alerts.

“I can’t sleep well and have insomnia. I also get heat strokes, I stop eating and I just can’t focus,” Anabel Sanchez, 21, told Reuters news agency in Seville.

It is a similar situation in Portugal, where seven districts, including the capital, Lisbon, are on t he highest alert level.

Meanwhile, the German Meteorological Service has warned that temperatures could reach almost 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday – further potentially record-breaking temperatures.

Countries in and around the Balkans have also been struggling with the intense heat, although temperatures have begun to cool slightly.

In Turkey, firefighters continue their efforts to put out hundreds of wildfires that have broken out in recent days.

A fire in the Seferihisar district, 50km (30 miles) south-west of the resort city of Izmir, is being fuelled by winds and has already destroyed around 20 homes and some residential areas have had to be evacuated.

Wildfires have also broken out in Croatia, where severe heat warnings are in place for coastal areas.

Temperatures in Greece have been approaching 40C for several days and coastal towns near the capital Athens last week erupted in flames that destroyed homes – forcing people to evacuate.

On Wednesday, Serbia reported its hottest day since records began, while a record 38.8C was recorded in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Thursday. In Slovenia, the hottest-ever June temperature was recorded on Saturday.

The temperature in North Macedonia’s capital, Skopje, reached 42C on Friday – and are expected to continue in that range.

While the heatwave is a potential health issue, it is also impacting the climate. Higher temperatures in the Adriatic Sea are encouraging invasive species such as the poisonous lionfish, while also causing further stress on alpine glaciers that are already shrinking at record rates.

While it is hard to link individual extreme weather events to climate change, heatwaves are becoming more common and more intense due to climate change.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

The Air India tragedy, in which at least 270 people died, involved one of Boeing’s most innovative and popular planes. Until now, it was considered one of its safest too.

We still do not know why flight 171 crashed just 30 seconds after take-off. Investigators have now recovered flight recorder data and are working hard to find out. But the incident has drawn attention to the aircraft involved: the 787 Dreamliner, the first of a modern generation of radical, fuel-efficient planes.

Prior to the accident, the 787 had operated for nearly a decade and a half without any major accidents and without a single fatality. During that period, according to Boeing, it carried more than a billion passengers. There are currently more than 1,100 in service worldwide.

However, it has also suffered from a series of quality control problems.

Whistleblowers who worked on the aircraft have raised numerous concerns about production standards. Some have claimed that potentially dangerously flawed aircraft have been allowed into service – allegations the company has consistently denied.

It was on a chilly December morning in 2009 that a brand-new aircraft edged out onto the runway at Paine Field airport near Seattle and, as a cheering crowd looked on, accelerated into a cloudy sky.

The flight was the culmination of years of development and billions of dollars worth of investment.

The 787 was conceived in the early 2000s, at a time of rising oil prices, when the increasing cost of fuel had become a major preoccupation for airlines. Boeing decided to build a long-haul plane for them that would set new standards in efficiency.

“In the late 1990s, Boeing was working on a design called the Sonic Cruiser,” explains aviation historian Shea Oakley.

This was firstly conceived as a plane that would use advanced materials and the latest technology to carry up to 250 passengers at just under the speed of sound. The initial emphasis was on speed and cutting journey times, rather than fuel economy.

“But then the effects of 9/11 hit the world airline industry quite hard,” says Mr Oakley.

“The airlines told Boeing what they really needed was the most fuel-efficient, economical long-range jetliner ever produced. They now wanted an aeroplane with a similar capacity to the Sonic Cruiser, minus the high speed.”

Boeing abandoned its initial concept, and began work on what became the 787. In doing so, it helped create a new business model for airlines.

Instead of using giant planes to transport huge numbers of people between “hub” airports, before placing them on connecting flights to other destinations, they could now fly smaller aircraft on less crowded direct routes between smaller cities which would previously have been unviable.

At the time Boeing’s great rival, the European giant Airbus, was taking precisely the opposite approach. It was developing the gargantuan A380 superjumbo – a machine tailor-made for carrying as many passengers as possible on busy routes between the world’s biggest and busiest airports.

In hindsight, Boeing’s approach was wiser. The fuel-thirsty A380 went out of production in 2021, after only 251 had been built.

“Airbus thought the future was giant hubs where people would always want to change planes in Frankfurt or Heathrow or Narita,” explains aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, who is a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.

“Boeing said ‘no, people want to fly point to point’. And Boeing was extremely right.”

The 787 was a truly radical aircraft. It was the first commercial plane to be built primarily of composites such as carbon fibre, rather than aluminium, in order to reduce weight. It had advanced aerodynamics to reduce drag.

It also used highly efficient modern engines from General Electric and Rolls Royce, and it replaced many mechanical and pneumatic systems with lighter electrical ones.

All of this, Boeing said, would make it 20% more efficient than its predecessor, the Boeing 767. It was also significantly quieter, with a noise footprint (the area on the ground affected by significant noise from the aircraft) that the manufacturer said was up to 60% smaller.

Not long after the aircraft entered service, however, there were serious problems. In January 2013, lithium-ion batteries caught fire aboard a 787 as it waited at a gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

A week later, overheating batteries forced another 787 to make an emergency landing during an internal flight in Japan.

The design was grounded worldwide for several months, while Boeing came up with a solution.

Since then, day to day operations have been smoother, but production has been deeply problematic. Analysts say this may, in part, have been due to Boeing’s decision to set up a new assembly line for the 787 in North Charleston, South Carolina – more than 2000 miles from its Seattle heartlands.

This was done to take advantage of the region’s low rates of union membership, as well as generous support from the state.

“There were serious development issues,” says Mr Aboulafia. “Some notable production issues, related especially to the decision to create Boeing’s first ever production line outside of the Puget Sound area.”

In 2019, Boeing discovered the first of a series of manufacturing defects that affected the way in which different parts of the aircraft fitted together. As more problems were found, the company widened its investigations – and uncovered further issues.

Deliveries were heavily disrupted, and halted altogether between May 2021 and July 2022, before being paused again the following year.

However, potentially the most damaging allegations about the 787 programme have come from the company’s own current and former employees.

Among the most prominent was the late John Barnett, a former quality control manager at the 787 factory in South Carolina. He claimed that pressure to produce planes as quickly as possible had seriously undermined safety.

In 2019, he told the BBC that workers at the plant had failed to follow strict procedures intended to track components through the factory, potentially allowing defective parts to go missing. In some cases, he said, workers had even deliberately fitted substandard parts from scrap bins to aircraft in order to avoid delays on the production line.

He also maintained that defective fixings were used to secure aircraft decks. Screwing them into place produced razor-sharp slivers of metal, which in some cases accumulated beneath the deck in areas containing large amounts of aircraft wiring.

His claims had previously been passed to the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration, which partially upheld them. After investigating, it concluded that at least 53 “non-conforming” parts had gone missing in the factory.

An audit by the FAA also confirmed that metal shavings were present beneath the floors of a number of aircraft.

Boeing said its board analysed the problem and decided it did not “present a safety of flight issue”, though the fixings were subsequently redesigned. The company later said it had “fully resolved the FAA’s findings regarding part traceability and implemented corrective actions to prevent recurrence”.

Mr Barnett remained concerned that aircraft that had already gone into service could be carrying hidden defects serious enough to cause a major accident. “I believe it’s just a matter of time before something big happens with a 787,” he told me in 2019. “I pray that I am wrong.”

In early 2024, Mr Barnett took his own life. At the time he had been giving evidence in a long-running whistleblower lawsuit against the company – which he maintained had victimised him as a result of his allegations. Boeing denied this.

Much of what he had alleged echoed previous claims by another former quality manager at the plant, Cynthia Kitchens.

In 2011, she had complained to regulators about substandard parts being deliberately removed from quarantine bins and fitted to aircraft, in an attempt to keep the production line moving.

Ms Kitchens, who left Boeing in 2016, also claimed employees had been told to overlook substandard work, and said defective wiring bundles, containing metallic shavings within their coatings, had been deliberately installed on planes – creating a risk of dangerous short-circuits.

Boeing has not responded to these specific allegations but says Ms Kitchens resigned in 2016 “after being informed that she was being placed on a performance improvement plan”. It says that she subsequently filed a lawsuit against Boeing, “alleging claims of discrimination and retaliation unrelated to any quality issues”, which was dismissed.

More recently, a third whistleblower made headlines when testifying before a senate committee last year.

Sam Salehpour, a current Boeing employee, told US lawmakers he had come forward because “the safety problems I have observed at Boeing, if not addressed could result in a catastrophic failure of a commercial aeroplane that would lead to the loss of hundreds of lives”.

The quality engineer said that while working on the 787 in late 2020, he had seen the company introduce shortcuts in assembly processes, in order to speed up production and delivery of the aircraft. These, he said, “had allowed potentially defective parts and defective installations in 787 fleets”.

He also noted that on the majority of aircraft he looked at, tiny gaps in the joints between sections of fuselage had not been properly rectified. This, he said, meant those joints would be prone to “premature fatigue failure over time” and created “extremely unsafe conditions for the aircraft” with “potentially catastrophic” consequences.

He suggested that more than 1,000 aircraft – the bulk of the 787 fleet – could be affected.

Boeing insists that “claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate”. It says: “The issues raised have been subject to rigorous examination under US Federal Aviation Administration oversight. This analysis has validated that the aircraft will maintain its durability and service life over several decades, and these issues do not present any safety concerns.”

There is no question that Boeing has come under huge pressure in recent years over its corporate culture and production standards. In the wake of two fatal accidents involving its bestselling 737 Max, and a further serious incident last year, it has been repeatedly accused of putting the pursuit of profit over passenger safety.

It is a perception that chief executive Kelly Ortberg, who joined the company last year, has been working hard to overturn – overhauling its internal processes and working with regulators on a comprehensive safety and quality control plan.

But has the 787 already been compromised by past failures, that may have created ongoing safety risks?

Richard Aboulafia believes not. “You know. It’s been 16 years of operations, 1,200 jets and over a billion passengers flown, but no crashes until now,” he says. “It’s a stellar safety record.”

He thinks that any major issues would already have become apparent.

“I really think production problems are more of a short-term concern,” he says. “For the past few years, there’s been far greater oversight of 787 production.

“For older planes, I think any serious problems would have shown up by now.”

The Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad was more than 11 years old, having first flown in 2013.

But the Foundation for Aviation Safety, a US organisation established by the former Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson that has previously been highly critical of the company, says it did have concerns about 787s prior to the recent crash.

“Yes, it was a possible safety risk,” claims Mr Pierson. “We monitor incident reports, we monitor regulatory documents. Airworthiness directives come out that describe various issues, and it does make you wonder.”

One such issue, he argues, is water potentially leaking from washroom taps into electrical equipment bays. Last year, the FAA instructed airlines to carry out regular inspections, following reports that leaks were going undetected on certain 787 models.

However, he stresses that the cause of the recent tragedy is still unknown – and that it is vital the investigation moves forward quickly, so that any problems, whether they lie with the aircraft, the airline or elsewhere, can be resolved.

For the moment, however, the 787’s safety record remains strong.

“We don’t know at this point what caused the Air India crash,” says Scott Hamilton, managing director of aviation consulting firm Leeham Company.

“But based on what we do know about the plane, I would not hesitate to get on board a 787.”

Two US firefighters have been killed and a third wounded after a man intentionally started a fire and began shooting at first responders in a “total ambush” which lasted several hours, authorities said.

The gunman, who investigators said acted alone, began shooting after crews responded to a fire at Canfield Mountain, just north of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on Sunday afternoon.

Law enforcement officers and firefighters came under sniper fire during the incident and a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team later “located a deceased male” close to where the attack took place.

The fire grew to 20 acres after it was first reported and continued to burn into Sunday night, Sheriff Bob Norris said.

“We do believe that the suspect started the fire,” Norris told a late night news conference.

“This was a total ambush. These firefighters did not have a chance.

“We did lose a Coeur d’Alene firefighter, and we did lose a firefighter from the Kootenai County Fire and Rescue.”

A third was “fighting for his life, but is in stable condition”, he said.

Firefighters received the first report of a fire in the mountainside community at around 13:21 PST (20:21 GMT) and reports that they were being shot at emerged about 40 minutes later, Norris said.

More than 300 law enforcement officers from the city, county, state and federal levels responded to the scene of the shooting, including two helicopters with snipers on board.

Video showed smoke billowing from heavily wooded hillsides.

Norris said the shooter used a high-powered sporting rifle to fire rapidly at first responders, with officers initially unsure of the number of perpetrators involved.

After an hours-long barrage of gunfire, the suspect was found using mobile phone location information. It was unclear whether the suspect had killed himself or been hit by an officer, Norris said.

Authorities would not provide more details on weapons recovered, but said that officers would likely find more guns at the scene on Monday, once the fire was extinguished.

The motive for the shooting was not known and Norris did not provide any details on the suspect.

The two firefighters killed and the third wounded have not been identified.

A shelter-in-place notice – which alerts people to stay inside their properties or in their current locations during an emergency, rather than evacuating to a different area – was lifted some seven hours later.

Canfield Mountain is an area popular with hikers about 260 miles (420 km) east of Seattle.

Norris said that a preliminary investigation had determined that there was only one gunman, after it was earlier thought that there could have been as many as four.

He said the gunman appeared to have run while shooting and may have stashed weapons in different places.

Helicopters with heat-seeking technology flew over the area in an attempt to pinpoint the suspect, but teams experienced difficulty because of smoke from the wildfire which was still burning, according to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

Norris added that investigators had to search the scene quickly, due to the encroaching fire, and that the information they had was still “very, very preliminary”.

“A fire was rapidly approaching that body. And we had to scoop up that body and transport that body to another location,” he said.

Officials have appealed to the public to stay away and not to fly drones over the site.

A firefighters’ union boss confirmed two of its members had been killed in the attack.

Edward Kelly, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) union, posted on X: “While responding to a fire earlier today in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, IAFF members were ambushed in a heinous act of violence.

Local fire chief Pat Riley told TV station KHQ he was “heartbroken” by the attack.

The case was a big shock to those living in Coeur d’Alene, a city of around 56,000 people that is near the border with Washington state.

Coeur d’Alene resident Linda Tiger, 80, told the BBC she was shocked by the shooting.

“This has never happened here,” said Mrs Tiger, who has lived in the city for nearly 30 years.

“But it goes to show that that no-one is safe from this kind of mental sadness.”

Is it really over? After five days of surprise performances, setlist clashes, crazy outfits and blistering heat, Glastonbury is closing its gates until 2027.

We watched epic shows from Pulp and Olivia Rodrigo, did viral dances with CMAT and Charli XCX and, for no apparent reason, saw two incarnations of Doctor Who on stage with Franz Ferdinand and Jade.

• Olivia Rodrigo leaves Glastonbury on a high
• Rod Stewart at Glastonbury: Old school charm from another era

There’s always too much to process in the moment. We missed Gary Numan making his Glastonbury debut, and were locked out of Scissor Sisters’ epic set on the Woodsies stage after turning up too late.

But here are some of the highlights and memorable moments from a weekend of mayhem.

In 2023, Lewis Capaldi had to abandon his Glastonbury set, after Tourette’s syndrome caused his vocal cords to seize up.

He took two years off to deal with his health issues, but that incomplete set was always at the back of his mind. On Friday, he arrived unannounced on the Pyramid Stage to finish what he couldn’t last time.

“Second time’s a charm on this one, everybody,” he said, as tears welled up in his (and our) eyes.

The set was short on time, but big on emotion. From the opening lines of Before You Go to the set-closing Someone You Loved, the crowd sang every line, giving the star their full attention and affection.

Lewis, displaying none of the physical tics that plagued him two years ago, was in fine form. That sandpapery voice was undiminished, even as the lump grew in his throat.

As he laid his Glastonbury ghosts to rest, he observed that Friday’s set would also be difficult to finish for “different reasons. Good reasons.”

A weekend at Worthy Farm isn’t complete without a celebrity sighting or two and this year has certainly delivered.

One Direction fans were delighted to see Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson in attendance, presumably to see The 1975’s headline set on Friday. Harry was also spotted in the field for Doechii’s set, dancing with a manbag slung over his shoulder.

The backstage areas were filled to the brim with acting royalty, including Eddie Redmayne, Taron Egerton (who watched Lewis Capaldi’s set with his top off), Lily James and Paul Mescal.

Andrew Garfield was also spotted at a fan Q&A, talking about his new film We Live in Time – as well as reading some spicy social media posts fans had written about him.

It was also great to see some of the weekend’s performers letting their hair down after hours.

Lorde was spotted in the South East Corner dancing at NYC Downlow on Saturday morning, whilst Charli XCX celebrated headlining the Other Stage by dancing alongside fiancé and The 1975 drummer George Daniel at a 1am DJ slot on Sunday morning.

Glastonbury veterans such as Pixie Geldof, Lily Allen, Alexa Chung and Daisy Lowe were also on site over the weekend too, proving you can be effortlessly glamorous in a sweaty field (as long as you have money to burn and access to electricity and running water).

Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill is the biggest-selling debut album of all time, with sales of 33 million.

With the record celebrating its 30th birthday this month, the singer made her Glastonbury debut with a spectacular sunset performance on the Pyramid Stage, that showed songs like You Oughta Know and One Hand In My Pocket have lost none of their edge, or their allure.

The singer, now 51 years old, had the strongest vocals of the weekend, belting out the hits so hard that she had to hold her microphone a solid three feet from her mouth, as she spun around the stage in a guileless blur of sparkles and hair.

But when she broke into Ironic, fans had a surprise in store: Spoons. Hundreds of spoons.

They held them aloft during the lyric “it’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife” – a line that comedian Ed Byrne once pointed out “isn’t ironic, it’s just frickin’ stupid.”

“We haven’t got 10,000 spoons between us. How big is your sink, Alanis?”

Over in the Kidz field, there were huge queues for the extreme sports phenomenon known as Sock Wrestling.

The concept is simple: Two kids face each other on a mat, each wearing a single sock. Then they circle, provoke and grapple each other until one triumphantly rips off the other’s footwear and claims victory.

On Saturday, it devolved into chaos when one kid challenged their dad to a face-off.

But the dad wasn’t prepared to lose face. Years of familial tension boiled over as the stand-off became unnecessarily, dramatically tense.

Then, in the words of 6 Music’s Steve Lamaq, “the kid flattened his dad” and the crowd went nuts.

Someone commission this for prime time BBC One right now.

If Fatboy Slim isn’t here, does Glastonbury even happen?

The DJ/producer played his 100th (and 101st and 102nd and 103rd) set at the farm this weekend, drawing huge crowds everywhere he went.

He celebrated his centenary with a mash-up of his signature hit Praise You, and The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

As you might expect, it went off. He’s come a long way, baby.

Irish singer CMAT ended her performance on the Pyramid Stage by saying it was “the biggest moment” of her career.

Asked how she was processing that incredible reception, she told us she had “no idea”.

“I think I’m going to process it in about three to five business months,” laughed.

The 29 year old, whose real name is Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, said she didn’t speak for around an hour after her set ended.

“I was pretty, pretty shocked. Yeah, no idea,” she said.

“I’m scared still. As if it’s about to happen, but it’s over.”

She said it had taken “constant grafting” to get to the Pyramid Stage – but all the practice paid off, as she lit up the stage with her powerful vocals and kooky stage presence.

It felt very much like we were watching a star being born. She’ll be back here very, very soon.

Spotted by the incredible team behind the @GlastoLive account on Bluesky, this installation is made entirely of keys that people lost or left behind after last year’s festival.

If you’re still on site this morning, check your pockets before you go!

Rave pioneers The Prodigy made a triumphant return to Glastonbury, headlining The Other Stage on Sunday, 30 years after their debut.

It was an incendiary set – you could even call it a Firestarter – but there was also a touch of poignancy, as it was the band’s first Glastonbury without frontman Keith Flint, who died in 2019.

The band’s vocalist, Maxim, stepped up in his place – with hits like Omen and Breathe causing pandemonium in the packed-out field.

“I think Mr Flint would have have been proud of you,” he declared to the thousands watching.

The star’s memory was also honoured at Glastonbury’s infamous Carhenge installation, with a new mural that captured his fierce punk energy.

“Each of the cars have been dedicated to characters whose life’s work has contributed to the underground culture, which is now our culture,” said artist Joe Rush, who curates Carhenge, in a BBC interview last year.

Glastonbury’s flags are a handy way for friends to find each other in a crowded field, but they’re also an outlet for creativity.

Our favourites this year included a tribute to TV personality Kim Woodburn and a Charli XCX-themed banner bearing the legend “bratwurst”.

But not everyone is a fan.

Poet and BBC radio presenter Robin Ince posted the following poem to his Bluesky account as the festival kicked off.

The Avengers and Sherlock star was reminiscing with Simon Pegg on Saturday about his first trip to Glastonbury – and let’s just say it wasn’t 100% legit.

“I went under the fence, I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this, but I did,” he told the BBC.

He added that he broke in by going “under the tunnel” and made his way there to see Pulp perform.

Here’s hoping that he managed to catch up with the band after their surprise set on Saturday to recount the tale to them, too.

“And I had my tent on a very, very steep slope,” Cumberbatch added cheekily.

At home, you’re probably not aware of this – but there’s an entire team at Glastonbury dedicated to creating “broadcast safe” versions of the music for daytime radio, to avoid the wrath of Ofcom.

They sit in a cramped office, carefully editing out curse words. And, as the taboos around explicit language have weakened, their job’s only become harder.

“Did you see the swear sheet for Self Esteem?” I heard one sigh on Friday night.

“After the second mother****** I was like, ‘This is going to be a long night’.”

Glastonbury loves a surprise set, and this year they outdid themselves. The “secret” acts (whose secrets weren’t particularly well kept) were so big that they often overshadowed the headliners.

Lorde was first up, sauntering onto the Woodsies’ stage on Friday morning, playing her just-released album Virgin to an eager crowd of fans.

Lewis Capaldi got a hero’s welcome as he played the Pyramid Stage in a “TBA” slot; and the mysterious band billed as Patchwork were, to no-one’s surprise, Pulp.

The Britpop heroes were marking the anniversary of their 1995 headline set: One of the truly legendary Glastonbury performances, where the band – who’d just released Common People – first established their status as national treasures.

They finished the set with that song, naturally, assisted by Red Arrows flypast; and Sunday night headliner Olivia Rodrigo hollering the lyrics from her boyfriend’s shoulders.

Elsewhere, there were unannounced sets by CMAT and Kae Tempest on the BBC Introducing Stage, an impromptu performance by Olivia Dean in the Strummerville tent.

And Haim drew what one colleague described as The Park Stage’s biggest-ever audience when they appeared shortly after 7pm on Saturday night.

The Californian sisters’ sun-kissed garage rock was the perfect soundtrack as the sun set over Worthy Farm – with highlights including a muscular take on The Steps, the loping groove of Taylor Swift collab Gasoline, and the totally fed-up pop hit Relationships.

The quality of this year’s surprise sets is indicative of one thing: With no Glastonbury in 2026, and the acts who have headlined next year’s instalment didn’t want to miss out.

“He is perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England, he is a Glastonbury legend and a personal hero of mine,” Olivia Rodrigo tells the audience during her headline slot.

She is talking about Robert Smith, The Cure’s frontman for the past 49 years and a four-time Glastonbury headliner.

There are audible gasps from a few mums and dads in the crowd when one audience member asks, “Who is he?” but you’d hope they were won over after an absolutely superb duet on the Pyramid Stage.

The pair sang Friday I’m in Love and Just Like Heaven, with their vastly different sounding vocals somehow contrasting perfectly.

Rodrigo confessed her love of British culture throughout, including Marks and Spencer’s Colin the Caterpillar and also admitted she’d got through “three sticky toffee puddings” since arriving on Worthy Farm.

Perhaps she‘ll give apple crumble a go next.

You can do anything at Glastonbury. Even get married.

Charles and Charlie Shires turned up at a recording of the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast, fresh from a ceremony at the festival’s Healing Fields.

They’d literally tied the knot, in an ancient Celtic ceremony known as handfasting, where a couple’s hands are bound together.

“We made our own hand-tying cord out of ribbons,” explained Charlie. “I was crying the whole way through. It was very gorgeous.”

“Are your family pissed off with you?” asked Annie Mac.

“Probably,” laughed Charles. “But we just thought this is the best place, right? Everyone has the most fun in this place every summer.”

To celebrate, Charlie – who is a professional baker – brought a wedding cake from their home in Yorkshire, and distributed slices to the audience.

“I can’t believe it survived,” she laughed.

Glastonbury is taking next year off, but that doesn’t mean Emily Eavis will be putting her feet up.

“We bought some land on the outside of the site and we’re just going to do a big planting project,” she told the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast.

The project, which will see 30,000 new saplings added to the site, is intended to “restore the wild side of the farm and the surrounding land,” she added.

The festival won’t be far from her mind, though. All weekend, Eavis has been wandering around the site making notes on her phone about improvements she wants to make.

“I’ve got a huge list of little things,” she told the on-site newspaper, The Glastonbury Free Press.

“We’re always looking to make it better. The detail is critical. Even just a small touch – like putting a new hedge in – can make a real difference.

“And that’s what fallow years are for: you lay the ground to rest and you come back stronger.”

See you in 2027, then. *sniff*

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A heatwave continues to grip large parts of Europe, with authorities in many countries issuing health warnings amid searing temperatures.

Southern Spain is the worst-affected region, with temperatures in the mid-40s Celsius recorded in Seville and neighbouring areas.

A new heat record for June of 46C was set on Saturday in the town of El Granado, according to Spain’s national weather service, which also said this month is on track to be the hottest June on record.

Red heat warnings are in force in parts of Portugal, Italy and Croatia, with numerous amber warnings covering areas of Spain, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

In Barcelona, a woman died after completing a shift as a road sweeper on Saturday, when temperatures were very high. Local authorities are investigating her death.

In Italy, emergency departments across the country have reported an uptick in heatstroke cases, mainly affecting “elderly people, cancer patients, or homeless people”, Mario Guarino, vice president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine told the AFP news agency.

Hospitals such as the Ospedale dei Colli in Naples have set up dedicated heatstroke pathways to speed up access to vital treatments such as cold water immersion.

The city of Bologna further to the north has set up seven climate shelters with air conditioning and drinking water, while Rome has offered free access to city swimming pools for those over 70.

A pharmacist in Portugal’s capital Lisbon told Reuters news agency that, despite telling people “not to go out” during the hottest hours of the day, “we have already had some cases of heat strokes and burns”.

The severe heat has also affected countries across the western Balkans where temperatures have reached in excess of 40C.

Serbia registered its highest-ever temperature since it began recording them in the 19th century. In Slovenia, the hottest-ever June temperature was recorded on Saturday.

North Macedonia is also sweltering as temperatures reached 42C on Friday.

Some areas will continue to get hotter until the middle of the week, with temperatures rising across France, Germany, Italy and the UK over the next few days.

Yellow and amber alerts are in place for parts of England this weekend, and temperatures in London may reach 35C on Monday.

The heat has been building under a big area of high pressure, with dry air descending and warming.

As that process has continued over a number of days, temperatures have climbed. The area of high pressure will move eastwards over the next few days – taking the high temperatures northwards and eastwards with it.

While it is hard to link individual extreme weather events to climate change, heatwaves are becoming more common and more intense due to climate change.

Scientists at World Weather Attribution, who analyse the influence of climate change on extreme weather events, say June heatwaves with three consecutive days above 28C are about 10 times more likely to occur now compared to pre-industrial times.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.

“I’ll never forget it – being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”

The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least eight in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.

At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.

They had published their work on Haitang Literature City, a Taiwan-hosted platform known for its “danmei”, the genre of so-called boys’ love and erotic fiction.

Think of it as a gay version of Fifty Shades of Grey: a BDSM relationship that leads to a happily-ever-after. That’s a frequent trope, across historical, fantasy or sci-fi settings. Over the years it has cultivated a fiercely devoted following, especially among young Chinese women.

These authors are being accused of breaking China’s pornography law for “producing and distributing obscene material”. Writers who earn a profit could be jailed for more than 10 years.

The law targets “explicit descriptions of gay sex or other sexual perversions”. Heterosexual depictions often have more leeway – works by acclaimed Chinese authors, including Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, have graphic sexual scenes, but are widely available.

Although authors of heterosexual erotica have been jailed in China, observers say the genre is subjected to far less censorship. Gay erotica, which is more subversive, seems to bother authorities more. Volunteers in a support group for the Haitang writers told the BBC police even questioned some readers.

Those who reported being arrested declined to be interviewed, fearing repercussions. Police in the northwestern city of Lanzhou, who are accused of driving this crackdown, have not responded to the BBC.

Online, the crackdown has unleashed a debate – and a rarer pushback against the law.

“Is sex really something to be ashamed of?” a Weibo user asked, arguing that China’s anti-obscenity laws are out of touch. Another wrote that women never get to decide what is obscene because they don’t control the narrative. Even legal scholars have expressed concern that just 5,000 views for anything deemed “obscene” qualifies as criminal “distribution”, lowering the bar to arrest creators.

It made Beijing uneasy enough that discussions have been vanishing: #HaitangAuthorsArrested drew more than 30 million views on Weibo before it was censored. Posts offering legal advice are gone. A prominent Chinese news site’s story has been taken down. Writers’ accounts, and some of the handles, are also disappearing.

After Pingping Anan Yongfu’s post went viral, she deleted it and wrote another, thanking supporters and admitting her writing had violated the law. She then deleted her handle.

Before that last post, she had written: “I was always the good girl in my parents’ eyes. But that day, I brought them nothing but shame. They’ll never hold their heads up again.”

These women have long worked in the shadows in China, where homosexuality and eroticism are stigmatised. Now outed by police investigations, they face social consequences that are as brutal as the legal ones.

“In that moment, all I felt was shame,” posted a writer whose Weibo handle translates to “the world is a huge psychiatric hospital”. She said the police pulled her out of class in college – and her classmates watched as they followed her to search her dorm.

“I earned my money word by word at a keyboard. But once it went south, it was as if none of that mattered. People treated me like I’d made money without ever working for it.”

Another wrote the police had been kind, advising her to speak to a lawyer and return her “illegal earnings” to reduce her sentence. “I’m only 20. So young, and I’ve already ruined my life so early.”

A third said: “I never imagined a day would come when every word I once wrote would come back to haunt me.”

One author who has been writing danmei novels for 20 years was not questioned but she says the crackdown won’t stop her. “This is how I find happiness. And I can’t let go of the connections I have made with the community.”

Inspired by Japanese boys’ love manga, danmei emerged as a sub-genre online in the 1990s. It has become hugely successful, with some of the novels appearing on international bestseller lists.

In 2021, 60 of them were optioned for film and TV adaptations. The most expensive IP reportedly sold for 40 million yuan ($5.6 million; £4.1 million). Some of China’s biggest stars, such as Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, began their careers on streaming shows based on danmei novels.

In short, it’s the rebellious royal of pop culture – too popular to ignore, too controversial to honour.

And it is a signature offering on Haitang, which, in Mandarin, is a flower that blooms in every shade of pink.

Fittingly, Haitang and danmei have flourished as uniquely female spaces, although they centre male protagonists. In a culture where female sexual desire is routinely policed, danmei beceme a coded, creative outlet – a space where women can write about female desire for other women.

That is exactly what makes danmei so “subversive”, says Dr Liang Ge, who teaches digital sociology at University College London. It allows women to “detach from gendered realities”, which they often associate with marriage and motherhood.

For instance, in danmei stories, men can get pregnant and are at ease with being vulnerable – a stark contrast from the often unequal relationships many Chinese women struggle with in real life.

“Danmei frees me from thinking about all those potential dangers in relationships in traditional heterosexual romance,” explains one writer who has been active in the danmei world for a decade.

Danmei novels are not without their critics, because some do contain extreme and violent scenes. “As a parent, how many of us can accept our children reading novels like this, let alone writing them?” asked one Weibo user.

The age of authors has also been a concern: a handful of those the BBC spoke to said they all started reading and writing gay erotica before they turned 18, some as young as 11.

It’s a problem the community should acknowledge and address, said Ma, a danmei writer who only shared her surname, adding that this is a problem for all adult content because China does not restrict content by age.

But danmei in particular has increasingly come under attack in the last decade as Beijing launched a series of campaigns to “clean up” the internet. In 2018 a danmei author was jailed for 10 years for selling 7,000 copies of her book titled Occupy.

As marriage and birth rates plummet, and China’s leader Xi Jinping encourages a national rejuvenation, so state scrutiny of danmei has ratcheted up, Dr Ge says.

“The Chinese government wants to promote traditional family values and liking danmei novels is seen as a factor in making women less willing to have children,” Dr Ge explains.

This is the second wave of mass arrests in less than a year – late last year, some 50 Haitang writers were prosecuted. A famous author who earned about 1.85 million yuan was jailed for nearly five years.

The two crackdowns are similar, according to a lawyer who had represented some of the defendants last year, “but this time, even those with minor involvement weren’t spared”.

A lawyer offering free legal advice said more than 150 people requested consultations in just two days. Many of those contacting her had not been charged yet – they were terrified about the possibility though.

“This is classic offshore fishing,” says a lawyer who authored a “practical guide” to assist Haitang writers. The term refers to overreach by local police – those in Lanzhou summoned writers in various places, arguably beyond their jurisdiction.

Several reported paying out of pocket to fly to Lanzhou. One posted that the 2,000 yuan earned from two books on Haitang paid for the flight.

Last year too all the arrests were by police in Jixi County in eastern China.

Indebted local governments have done this before to earn revenue through fines, sometimes forcing a warning from the central government. Cyber crimes are particularly prone to this “as long as they claim a local reader was corrupted”, the lawyer says.

Danmei writers know tolerance can be fickle. It’s why they skirt censorship with metaphors. “Making dinner” means sex; “kitchen tool” is code for male genitals.

Still, the recent crackdown stunned them. “A phone call shattered my dreams,” is how one writer described the call from police.

They accused police of searching their phone without a warrant. They said their crime was assessed by adding up the views for each chapter – a method they argued was misleading, as it likely exaggerated the readership.

Another danmei author posted: “I wrote on Haitang for years, with only a handful of readers. Then, those overlooked stories accumulated over 300,000 clicks, and the 4,000 yuan in royalties sitting in my account became evidence of my crime.”

It’s hard to know if this spells the end of their careers on Haitang.

“If I could go back, I’d still choose to write. And I will keep writing,” wrote the handle Sijin de Sijin.

“Right now, I can only hope the law will see beyond the words on the page – and see the girl who skipped meals to save money, the girl who sold her hair to buy a pen, the girl who believed her mind could carve a way through fate. I hope it gives all of us a fair chance.”

Italian luxury fashion label Prada has said it acknowledges the Indian roots of its new footwear line, days after the design sparked a controversy in India.

The sandals, showcased at the Milan Fashion Week last week, had an open-toe braided pattern that closely resembled the traditional Kolhapuri sandals made in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Prada described the sandals as “leather footwear” but did not mention its Indian origins, prompting backlash and allegations of cultural appropriation in India.

Responding to the controversy, Prada told the BBC in a statement that it recognises that the sandals are inspired by traditional Indian footwear.

A Prada spokesperson said that the company has “always celebrated craftsmanship, heritage and design traditions”, adding that it was “in contact with the Maharashtra Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture on this topic”. This is a prominent industry trade body in the state.

Last week, its chief had written to the brand, saying the design was commercialised without crediting the artisans who have preserved its heritage for generations.

Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s head of Corporate Social Responsibility, responded to his letter saying that the sandals were “at an early stage of design”, according to Reuters.

He also said that Prada was open to a “dialogue for meaningful exchange with local Indian artisans” and the company would organise follow-up meetings to discuss this further.

Named after a city in Maharashtra where they are made, Kolhapuri sandals trace their roots back to the 12th Century.

Made from leather and sometimes dyed in natural colours, the traditional handcrafted sandals are sturdy and well-suited to India’s hot climate.

They were awarded the Geographical Indication (GI) status by the Indian government in 2019.

According to the World Trade Organisation, a geographical indication tag credits a good or product as having originated from a certain region or place, and is considered a mark of authenticity.

Following the controversy, many artisans in Kolhapur said they were saddened by Prada’s use of the design without giving due credit.

“These sandals are made with the hard work of leather workers in Kolhapur. They should be named after Kolhapur. Don’t take advantage of others’ labour,” Prabha Satpute, a Kolhapuri artisan, told BBC Marathi.

The sandals cost a few hundreds rupees in India but Prada’s reported premium pricing angered some, though the brand’s website does not mention the price tag. Most other sandals sold by the fashion house, retail at between £600 to £1,000 in the UK.

Industrialist Harsh Goenka highlighted this, saying the local artisans barely make any money for the same hand-made products. “They lose, while global brands cash in on our culture,” he said.

This is not the first time that global brands have been accused to appropriating Indian traditional products without crediting their roots.

At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Gucci described a sari worn by Bollywood star Alia Bhatt as a gown, sparking backlash.

Earlier in May, a popular TikTok trend was criticised for calling dupatta, a traditional South Asian scarf, a Scandinavian scarf.

In Kolhapur, however, some said the move had instilled a sense of pride in them.

“Artisans are happy that someone is recognising their work,” Kolhapur-based businessman Dileep More told Reuters.

The BBC has said it should have cut away from a live broadcast of Bob Vylan’s performance at Glastonbury, during which the band’s singer led the crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]”.

In a statement issued on Monday, the BBC said: “The team were dealing with a live situation but with hindsight we should have pulled the stream during the performance. We regret this did not happen.”

It comes after the broadcast regulator Ofcom said the BBC “clearly has questions to answer” over its coverage, and the government questioned why the comments were aired live.

The organisers of Glastonbury have previously said they were “appalled” by the comments, which “crossed a line”.

On Monday, a BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC respects freedom of expression but stands firmly against incitement to violence.

“The antisemitic sentiments expressed by Bob Vylan were utterly unacceptable and have no place on our airwaves.”

A statement continued: “In light of this weekend, we will look at our guidance around live events so we can be sure teams are clear on when it is acceptable to keep output on air.”

The BBC has previously said the performance had carried a warning on screen and would not be made available to watch on iPlayer.

The controversy surrounds comments made by Bob Vylan’s singer – who goes by the stage name Bobby Vylan – during their performance at the festival on Saturday.

During part of the band’s set, the singer also chanted “free, free Palestine” and used the expression “from the river to sea, Palestine will be free”. Some use the chant as a call for Palestinian control of all land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, including Israel.

Critics say the slogan is a call for the destruction of the state of Israel.

That interpretation is disputed by pro-Palestinian activists who say that most people chanting it are calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza, not the destruction of Israel itself.

On Monday, Ofcom said it was in contact with the BBC and had asked for clarification over why the comments were broadcast.

A spokesperson for the regulator said: “We are very concerned about the live stream of this performance, and the BBC clearly has questions to answer.

“We have been speaking to the BBC over the weekend and we are obtaining further information as a matter of urgency, including what procedures were in place to ensure compliance with its own editorial guidelines.”

Bob Vylan are a London-based English punk-rap duo, who formed in Ipswich in 2017. They have previously performed at Reading and Leeds festivals and toured with the likes of the Offspring, the Hives and Biffy Clyro.

On Sunday, its singer released a statement on Instagram with “I said what I said” as an accompanying message.

In it, he defended political activism in general without referencing Saturday’s performance directly, writing that is important for young people to see campaigners “shouting… on any and every stage that we are offered”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer branded the on-stage remarks “hate speech” and there has been cross-party condemnation of both the chants and the BBC’s coverage of them.

Shortly after the performance, the government said Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had pressed BBC director general Tim Davie for an urgent explanation.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said police should investigate both Bob Vylan and the BBC “for offences under the Public Order act”, adding that “prosecutions in my view should follow”.

Glastonbury’s organisers have also distanced themselves from Bob Vylan’s performance.

They said: “Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence.”

Former England captain Paul Ince has been charged with drink-driving after crashing into a central reservation, police said.

The ex-Manchester United and Liverpool midfielder was arrested after a black Range Rover crashed at 17:00 BST on Saturday on Chester High Road in Neston, Wirral.

Cheshire Police said the 57-year-old has been bailed to appear at Chester Magistrates’ Court on 18 July.

The former Blackburn Rovers and Blackpool manager, who also played for West Ham United and Inter Milan, won 53 caps for his country and played at Euro 96 and the World Cup in 1998.

The former Wolverhampton Wanderers player became the first black footballer to captain England in 1993.

After retiring, he moved into management, most recently working for Reading between 2022 and 2023.

A spokesperson for Cheshire Police said officers “were called following reports of a collision on Chester High Road, Neston”.

“The incident involved a black Range Rover which had collided with the central reservation barrier,” the spokesperson said.

“Officers attended the scene and arrested a 57-year-old man.”

A video of a woman being sexually assaulted has caused nationwide uproar in Bangladesh, after the clip was shared widely online.

The woman, who has been interviewed by local media, says she was raped at her father’s house last Thursday. The clip shows several people at the scene.

Police have arrested five people, including the alleged rapist, and authorities have said they will investigate the case “with utmost seriousness”.

Protests broke out across the country over the weekend after the clip was circulated, and several human rights groups have demanded severe punishment for those involved.

The survivor was visiting her father’s home in central Bangladesh’s Cumilla district when a neighbour broke in and assaulted her, according to police.

The woman, who is from a Hindu minority community, gave interviews to several local outlets saying the accused “entered the house with bad intentions and tortured her”.

Police have named the main suspect as 36-year-old Fazor Ali, adding that he was hospitalised after being beaten up by members of the public on the night of the incident.

The man sustained injuries on his arms and legs which prevented him from showing up in court on Sunday, police said.

The other four people were arrested for filming and circulating videos of the assault, police said.

Local human rights groups are calling for a swift investigation, with some saying the incident is the latest in a series of cases of violence against women where justice was delayed or perpetrators were granted impunity.

“If a woman is not safe in her own home and identity, it represents a serious failure of the state and a breakdown in security,” Ain O Salish Kendra, a national legal aid and human rights organisation, said in a statement on Sunday.

The organisation further urged that “the state must send a clear and firm message that such barbarity has no place in this country”.

Another Dhaka-based group, Manusher Jonno Foundation, condemned those who filmed and distributed the clip, saying they inflicted a “second assault” on the victim.

Bangladeshi authorities have said the case will be dealt with swiftly.

“Like ordinary citizens, we are also deeply shocked by the rape. Our home ministry has taken immediate action,” the country’s law adviser Asif Nazrul said in a media briefing on Sunday.

“The prime accused, along with those involved in spreading photos of the incident, a highly irresponsible and criminal act, have all been arrested.”

Earlier this year, an eight-year-old child who was raped in Bangladesh died of her injuries, setting off fierce protests around the country.

Many protesters at the time demanded that the government expedite justice for rape victims and reform laws related to women and children’s safety.

Protesters also called for greater clarity around the legal definitions of what constitutes rape in Bangladesh, which they said were currently ambiguous.