After hours of stalemate, Republicans in the US Senate have narrowly passed Donald Trump’s mega-bill on tax and spending, meaning the proposed legislation has cleared one of its key hurdles.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed with Vice-President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote after more than 24 hours of debate.

It now heads back to the House, or lower chamber, where it still faces more opposition. An earlier version was cleared by House Republicans by a single-vote margin.

Trump had given the Republican-controlled Congress a deadline of 4 July to send him a final version of the bill to sign into law.

“The bill as amendment is passed,” Vance said on Tuesday afternoon, a moment that was met by applause among Senate Republicans, while Democrats sank into their seats and shook their heads in disapproval.

Disputes over the deficit, social programmes and spending levels had created challenges for Republicans, stalling progress and prompting Trump to concede it would be “very hard” to meet his deadline for passing the bill.

Despite efforts to galvanise the party, Senate Majority Leader John Thune lost three Republicans – Maine’s Susan Collins, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Kentucky’s Rand Paul – in the narrow vote. Collins, Tillis and Paul joined all Democrats in voting against the bill.

After days of negotiations, Republican leaders were finally able to secure the support of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who had been withholding her support over concerns of the impact of cuts to Medicaid in her state.

Murkowski still appeared discontent with the bill, even after voting to support it, describing the process as “rushed” and under an “artificial timeline”.

“I struggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country”, Murkowski said, adding the process was “probably the most difficult and agonising legislative 24-hour period” of her career.

“My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognise that we’re not there yet,” she told reporters just outside the Senate floor, moments after the vote.

Murkowski’s support made the final Senate vote tally 50-50, and prompted Vance to step in to cast his tie-breaking vote.

On a visit to a migrant detention facility in Florida, Trump celebrated the passage of the bill. “It’s a great bill,” he said. “There is something for everyone.”

The legislation, considered a cornerstone of Trump’s second-term agenda, would make permanent large tax cuts that were temporarily put in place when he was first in office.

To make up for the expected loss of revenue, Republicans have looked to cut spending in a wide range of programmes, including food subsidies and healthcare for lower-income Americans.

The vote came on Tuesday afternoon, concluding a whirlwind voting session on Capitol Hill.

Democrats had attempted to flex their muscles by putting up procedural hurdles against the bill to delay its passage.

That included requiring Senate clerks to read all of the bill’s 940 pages aloud, and launching a lengthy debate process over proposed amendments in what is called a “vote-a-rama”.

• A look at the key items in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
• ‘Our food doesn’t even last the month’ – Americans brace for Trump’s welfare cuts

It is now up to House Republicans to approve the changes made by the Senate before the president can sign the bill into law.

But its fate remains uncertain, as it has been opposed from different angles and Republicans can only afford to lose three votes.

A group of fiscal conservative hawks have signalled their unhappiness with how much the Senate proposal could add to the US national deficit – which refers to the difference between what the government spends and what it raises in revenue each year.

According to the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, the Senate proposal could add $650bn (£472bn) to the deficit each year. “That’s not fiscal responsibility,” caucus members said in a social media post on Monday. “It’s not what we agreed to.”

Meanwhile, other House Republicans are concerned that the Senate legislation would make steeper cuts to the Medicaid health insurance programme for lower-income Americans than they had approved.

Democrats in both chambers of Congress, too, have criticised the proposed welfare cuts.

Republicans in the House of Representatives will be working against a previously-imposed 4 July deadline from the president.

“I’d love to do July 4th but I think it’s very hard to do July 4th…. I would say maybe July 4th or somewhere around there,” Trump told reporters as he was departing the White House for Florida.

Among the other critics of the plans are tech billionaire Elon Musk, who helped Trump to win the White House last year and served as Trump’s cost-cutting tsar.

Musk is now actively working to spoil the chances of survival for Trump’s signature legislation, and has threatened to set up a new political party if the bill clears Congress.

On Monday, he threatened to back challengers to Republicans who vote for it.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote on X.

The bill’s severe reductions to government support for renewable energy and electric vehicles could hurt the bottom line for a company where Musk made some of his fortune, Tesla, as well.

US President Donald Trump has suggested that Doge, the cost-cutting agency Elon Musk helped set up, could be used to hurt the billionaire’s companies – as the former allies continue their public dispute over Trump’s budget plans.

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far,” he wrote on social media. “Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

The tech billionaire wrote in reply: “I am literally saying CUT IT ALL. Now.”

Musk has repeatedly criticised Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”, suggesting that it undermines the work he undertook to cut government spending.

A row between Trump and Musk first blew up last month, with the pair trading barbs publicly before Musk backtracked on some of his attacks.

Congress is currently voting on Trump’s bill. The president’s Republican Party holds majorities in both chambers, though some lawmakers in the party have voted against it – siding with opposition Democrats.

The proposed legislation includes increased spending for border security, defence and energy production that would be partially offset by controversial cuts to healthcare and food-support programmes.

• A look at the key items in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
• Senate Republicans struggle to push Trump’s budget bill over finish line
• Trump and Musk: The 10 days that unravelled their relationship

Musk was in charge of Doge (the Department of Government Efficiency), which has been tasked with finding ways of cutting government spending, until his acrimonious White House departure over the “big, beautiful bill”.

Trump has suggested that the dissent from the Tesla and SpaceX owner relates to a part of his bill that would remove incentives to buy electric vehicles, such as those Musk produces.

The president has also threatened to remove government subsidies from which Musk’s companies benefit.

“He’s upset that he’s losing his EV mandate, he’s very upset, he could lose a lot more than that, I can tell you that,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning.

“Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. He gets a lot of subsidies,” he added.

Musk, however, has argued he is ideologically committed to cutting government spending. If passed, Trump’s bill would add an estimated $3.3tn (£2.4tn) to the national debt.

Among a string of posts on his social media platform X while voting took place, Musk shared a graph showing US debt over time with the caption: “When are they going to flatten this curve?”

In another, he wrote: “Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!”

Musk said he would make sure these lawmakers lost their primary races next year. The billionaire businessman – who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help Trump’s re-election bid last year – has even touted the idea establishing a new party to run against both Republicans and Democrats.

In an apparent response to Trump’s claim about EV incentives, Musk reposted a clip from an interview in which he said removing them would see Tesla’s “competitive position would improve significantly”.

Jihadist fighters have launched a series of simultaneous attacks on military posts across numerous towns in Mali – the third major assault on the army over the last month.

Mali’s army said it repelled Tuesday morning’s attacks, allegedly “neutralising” more than 80 militants, without saying if there were any other casualties.

However, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda-linked group who said it was behind the attacks, said it had taken control of three army barracks.

For more than a decade Mali has been wracked by a deadly Islamist insurgency, as well as attacks from separatist movements.

In a statement broadcast on national TV, army spokesperson Souleymane Dembele said: “The enemy suffered significant losses in every location where they engaged with the security and defence forces.”

Col Dembele added that the army recovered weapons, vehicles and motorcycles from the assailants.

Earlier, the armed forces said that the attacks had occurred across seven towns and cities, including Binoli, Kayes and Sandere, near the border with Senegal. There were also attacks further north, near Mali’s frontier with Mauritania.

One resident in Kayes told the AFP news agency: “We woke up in shock this morning. There’s gunfire, and from my house I can see smoke billowing towards the governor’s residence.”

JNIM called its attack “co-ordinated and high quality” in a statement posted on social media. They did not detail any casualties.

The group has also said it carried out two other significant recent attacks.

On 2 June, militants targeted both an army camp and airport in the ancient, northern city of Timbuktu.

Just a day before, a raid killed at least 30 soldiers in the centre of the country.

The attacks, the latest sign of rising insecurity in Mali and the wider Sahel region, came after the United States Africa Command warned about growing efforts by various different Islamist militant groups which operate in the Sahel to gain access to West Africa’s coastline.

During a press conference in May, the commander of United States Africa Command (Africom), Gen Michael Langley, described recent attacks in Nigeria, the wider Sahel, and the Lake Chad Basin as deeply troubling.

He warned that the groups’ access to the coast would significantly boost their capacity for smuggling and arms trafficking.

• Life in a Timbuktu under siege by Islamist fighters
• The region with more ‘terror deaths’ than rest of world combined
• Three military-run states leave West African bloc – what will change?

Hundreds of followers of the Dalai Lama have gathered in northern India for the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader’s 90th birthday, amid growing anticipation that he could give a clue about his eventual successor.

The Dalai Lama is due to release a video message and a statement on Wednesday, his office has told the BBC, although there’s no clarity on what he will say.

The Dalai Lama fled across the border to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet.

He set up a government-in-exile in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala and has been seen as an alternative source of power for those who resent Beijing’s tight control of Tibet.

The milestone birthday on Sunday will be preceded by the three-day 15th Tibetan Religious Conference, starting on Wednesday morning. Celebrations began on Monday – the Dalai Lama’s birthday according to the Tibetan lunar calendar.

Celebrations will be attended by more than 7,000 guests, including a number of Indian ministers. On Monday, photos showed the Dalai Lama blessing Hollywood actor Richard Gere, a long-time follower.

The Dalai Lama, who had earlier said he would release details about his succession around his 90th birthday, told a gathering on Monday that “there will be some kind of a framework within which we can talk about the continuation of the institution of the Dalai Lamas”. He did not elaborate.

In the past, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism has been torn between whether to continue with the 600-year-old institution or not. A few years ago, he said his successor might be a girl, or that there might be no successor at all.

But in recent years, he has also said that if there’s widespread support among Tibetans-in-exile for the post – which there is – then it would continue and his office would choose a successor.

He has always insisted that his successor would be born outside China, something that has angered Beijing.

Even though the Dalai Lama has always advocated a “middle way” to resolve the status of Tibet – genuine self-rule within China – Beijing regards him as a separatist. It says the standard of living of people in Tibet has greatly improved under its rule.

Youdon Aukatsang, an MP in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, said he did not expect “a clear-cut procedure would be laid down” this week.

“I think everyone is kind of anticipating some kind of revelation from His Holiness about his reincarnation. But I do not expect a very specific kind of revelation,” he told the BBC.

The present Dalai Lama, he said, “is a binding and unifying force for the Tibetan movement” and some Tibetans feel somebody should be recognised soon as his successor because they worry that there may be an impact on the community and the movement going forward.

“The Dalai Lama institution is very important for the Tibetan struggle. It’s also a symbol of Tibetan identity and a beacon of our spiritual refuge. That will continue. I think there will be a vacuum, but we have to continue, we don’t have a choice,” he said.

“We have very, very big shoes to fill but we have to fill them, right? I think many people will have to get into that role, one person will not be enough.”

Experts, however, say if he does announce a successor, then China is also expected to name its own Dalai Lama.

“China will argue that only the Communist Party of China based in Beijing has the authority to find the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama,” Dibyesh Anand, professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, told the BBC.

“After a period of a few months or a few years, they will have their own proteges identify a small boy as the next Dalai Lama and impose that. Of course, a majority of Tibetans are going to reject it and the majority of people in the world are going to make fun of it. But remember China has immense authority in terms of resources so they will try to impose that.”

Mr Aukatsang says that “despite all these years of trying to control the hearts and minds of Tibetan people inside Tibet”, Beijing has “completely failed”.

A Dalai Lama chosen by China, he says, “will not be recognised, not only by the Tibetans but the world will not recognise it because China doesn’t have the legitimacy to find the future Dalai Lama”.

“We are concerned but we know that irrespective of our concern, China will come up with their own Dalai Lama, we will call it the Chinese-recognised Dalai Lama. I am not worried that Dalai Lama will have any credibility in the Tibetan world or the Buddhist world.”

Tibetan Buddhists believe that their senior monks are reincarnated and a Dalai Lama is chosen by Buddhist officials if they are convinced that the one they are choosing harbours the soul of his predecessor.

The present – 14th – Dalai Lama was born on 6 July 1935 in a small Tibetan village in a farmer family and was named Lhamo Dhondub. When he was two years old, a search party of Buddhist officials recognised him as the reincarnation of the 13 previous Dalai Lamas.

According to his official biography, the clinching evidence came when the officials showed him a number of possessions that had belonged to his predecessor. The toddler correctly identified items belonging to the 13th Dalai Lama saying, “It’s mine. It’s mine”.

Enthroned before he turned four, he was educated at a Tibetan monastery and has a doctorate of Buddhist philosophy.

But in 1950, when he was 15, the troops of Mao Zedong’s newly-installed Communist government marched into Tibet. A year later, China drew up a 17-point agreement legitimising Tibet’s incorporation into China.

A Tibetan revolt in 1959, seeking an end to Chinese rule, was crushed and thousands of protesters were killed.

The Dalai Lama fled to India on foot along with 10,000 followers and settled in Dharamsala, running a government-in-exile from there. In 2011, he gave up his political role but remains Tibetan Buddhism’s top spiritual leader.

Some of those who fled alongside him still dream of going home to Tibet.

“My faith is that I will return to Tibet. If not me, my younger generations will definitely return,” said Lobsang Choedon, 84, who attended Monday’s celebrations.

Choedon’s daughter and grandchildren were all born – and have spent their entire lives – in India. Nevertheless, her 15-year-old grandson Ngawang Lhundup feels deeply connected to his ancestral homeland.

He’s been listening to stories about Tibet since he was a child and says he would consider visiting Tibet even though it’s under Chinese rule.

“But if it was free from the Chinese invasion, I would be more than delighted to go back to Tibet.”

Spain and England have recorded their hottest June ever, as scorching temperatures continue to grip Europe.

Spain’s weather service Aemet said the “extremely hot” June – with an average temperature of 23.6C (74.5F) – “has pulverised records”, surpassing the normal average for July and August.

In England, the Met Office said June’s mean temperature of 16.9C set a new record for that month, while the UK as a whole saw its second warmest June since records began in 1884.

Mainland Portugal experienced a record daily temperature for June of 46.6C. The monthly average data is yet to be released.

Wildfires in Turkey forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, while two people died in Italy following separate heat-related deaths.

Overnight, on the first day of July, Aemet said several places across the Iberian peninsula had topped 43C, but added a respite in temperatures was on its way from Thursday.

Night-time temperatures recorded overnight into Tuesday hit 28C in Seville and 27C in Barcelona.

Later on Tuesday, the UK recorded 34.7C in St James’s Park in London, making it the hottest day of the year so far.

On Monday, the highest daily UK temperature was recorded at Heathrow Airport in London at 33.1C. Meanwhile, Wimbledon recorded a temperature of 32.9C, the tennis tournament’s hottest opening day on record.

According to provisional data, the Met Office said the UK’s mean temperature of 15.2C for June was the second highest on record for that month.

It was “only surpassed by June 2023, which recorded 15.8C”, the agency said.

UK sees hottest day of the year: Live updates

In Turkey, rescuers earlier evacuated more than 50,000 people – mostly from the western province of Izmir – as firefighters continued to put out hundreds of wildfires that had broken out in recent days.

Fires have also swept through parts of Bilecik, Hatay, Sakarya, and Manisa provinces.

Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said over the past three days, emergency teams had responded to 263 wildfires nationwide.

In France, the heatwave continued across much of the country on Tuesday – a day after many cities experienced their hottest night and day on record for June.

At Paris Orly airport, a reading of 37.6C was recorded a short time ago.

The top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris has been closed because of the intense European heatwave; while Climate Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher called it an “unprecedented” situation.

For first time in five years the Paris region has activated a red alert – the highest extreme heat warning – along with 15 other French regions.

As many as 1,896 schools and colleges in France were closed as of lunchtime on Tuesday because of the heat.

The establishments were all in departments in the country covered by the red alert.

A reading of 46.6 C (115.9F) was registered in Mora, Portugal, about 60 miles east of Lisbon on Sunday, the country’s meteorological agency IPMA reported.

It was a record reading for mainland Portugal.

In Italy, the Tuscany region has seen hospital admissions rise by 20%, according to local reports.

Italians in 21 out of the 27 cities have been subjected to the highest heat alert and 13 regions, including Lombardy and Emilia, have been advised not to venture outside during the hottest periods of the day.

In Lombardy, working outdoors has been banned from 12:30 to 16:00 on hot days on building sites, roads and farms until September.

In Florence, central Italy, meteorologists registered a temperature of 38.9C on Tuesday, while the southern city of Cagliari was baking in 38.6C.

The temperatures are expected to get even higher later on Tuesday.

Temperatures in Greece have been approaching 40C for several days and wildfires hit several coastal towns near the capital Athens destroying homes and forcing people to evacuate.

In Germany, the country’s meteorological service warned that temperatures could reach almost 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday – further potentially record-breaking temperatures.

The heatwave lowered levels in the Rhine River – a major shipping route – limiting the amount cargo ships can transport and raising freighting costs.

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

Heatwaves are seen as a serious health hazard, and they are also impacting the environment.

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.

The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, warned on Monday that the heatwave highlighted the need for climate adaptation – moving away from practices and energy sources, such as fossil fuels, which are the main cause of climate change.

“Rising temperatures, rising seas, floods, droughts, and wildfires threaten our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and much more,” he told the UN’s Human Rights Council.

Heatwaves are becoming more common due to human-caused climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Extreme hot weather will happen more often – and become even more intense – as the planet continues to warm, it has said.

Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading in the UK, explained that rising greenhouse gas levels are making it harder for the planet to lose excess heat.

“The warmer, thirstier atmosphere is more effective at drying soils, meaning heatwaves are intensifying, with moderate heat events now becoming extreme.”

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.

Three people have been killed and 45 injured following an attack by Ukraine on a factory in the city of Izhevsk – more than 1,000km (620 miles) from the border – Russian authorities say.

Of those injured six had suffered serious injuries, the governor of Udmurtia Aleksandr Brechalov said, adding he had briefed President Vladimir Putin on the attack. A state of emergency was later declared in the region.

Drones reportedly targeted the Kupol Electromechanical Plant – a military factory which is said to produce Tor surface-to-air missile systems and radar stations.

The plant also specialises in the production of Osa air defence systems and has developed drones, according to Ukrainian media.

An Ukrainian official confirmed to BBC Ukraine that two long-range drones operated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) struck the Kupol plant from a distance of around 1,300 km (807 miles).

“Each such special operation reduces the enemy’s offensive potential, disrupts military production chains and demonstrates that even deep in Russia’s rear, there are no safe zones for its military infrastructure,” the source said in comments reported by Ukrainian media.

A video posted on social media and verified by the BBC showed an explosion on the roof of a building, followed by a large plume of black smoke rising over a factory-type chimney.

Russia’s civil aviation regulator Rosaviatsia imposed restrictions on operations at Izhevsk airport, before lifting them a few hours later.

This is second Ukrainian drone attack on the Kupol factory since November – although that strike had not resulted in any casualties.

For its part, Moscow continues to carry out attacks in Ukraine. At the weekend Russia launched a record 537 drones and missiles on various locations across the country, including Kyiv and the western city of Lviv.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky granted the Hero of Ukraine award posthumously to an F-16 pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustymenko, who was killed while trying to repel the aerial attack.

In a separate development on Tuesday, President Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron held their first phone talks in more than two years.

Macron “emphasised France’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”, said a statement from his office.

The French leader also called for a ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia “for a solid and lasting settlement of the conflict”, the French statement said.

Meanwhile, a Kremlin statement said that Putin “reminded that the Ukrainian conflict is a direct consequence of the policy of Western states, who for many years ignored Russia’s security interests”.

Any peace settlement must be “comprehensive and long-term” and should eliminate “the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis and be based on new territorial realities”, the Russian statement said.

Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed in 2014.

On the battlefield, while Russia’s advance on the Sumy region seems to have stalled, Moscow appears to be targeting the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region. Unconfirmed reports in Russian media suggested Moscow’s forces took control of the first village in the region.

Two rounds of talks aimed at agreeing a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow have taken place at the behest of Donald Trump since May, but have failed to produce tangible results.

Last week, Putin said Russia was ready to hold a new round of peace negotiations although he said that the Russian and Ukrainian peace proposals were “absolutely contradictory”.

On Monday, Zelensky again expressed scepticism of Putin’s intentions. “Putin has already stolen practically half a year from diplomacy… on top of the entire duration of this war,” the Ukrainian leader said.

“Russia is not changing its plans and is not looking for a way out of this war. On the contrary, they are preparing for new operations, including on the territory of European countries.”

US senior envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg echoed this on Monday, when he wrote on X that Russia could not “continue to stall for time while it bombs civilian targets in Ukraine”.

Moscow swiftly pushed back, saying it was not “interested in stalling anything” and thanking the US for its support.

French journalists’ unions on Tuesday called on Algeria to release a French football writer who has been jailed for seven years for supporting terrorism.

Christophe Gleizes, who is 36, was sentenced on Sunday, after being found guilty of holding exchanges with a proponent of self-determination for Algeria’s Kabyle minority.

The journalist, who specialises in African football for the Paris-based So Foot magazine, travelled to Algeria in May 2024 for an article on the well-known club JSK (Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie) based in Tizi Ouzou, some 100km (62 miles) from the capital Algiers.

He was detained a few days later in Tizi Ouzou and for the last 13 months has been under a form of limited freedom, unable to leave the country and obliged to report regularly to police.

Under advice from French diplomats, his family and fellow journalists kept his plight under wraps pending the result of the trial.

“The imprisonment of a journalist for carrying out his profession is a red line that must never be crossed. Christophe Gleizes must be given back his freedom, his family and his writing,” journalists’ representatives from around 40 different French media said in a statement.

“Nothing can justify the ordeal that Christophe is going through now,” his family said.

“In all his writing he showed a passionate interest in the lives of African footballers. Is this his reward?”

Gleizes’s case recalls that of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, who has been in jail since being arrested at Algiers airport in November last year.

On Tuesday an appeals court in Algiers confirmed the five-year prison sentence handed down in March, after Sansal’s conviction for breaking state security laws.

The writer, who is 80 and suffers from cancer, was found to have “threatened national unity” in an interview he gave to a rightwing French website in which he questioned the official Algerian account of its pre-independence history.

Following the appeals court sentence, French prime minister Francois Bayrou expressed the hope that President Abdelmadjid Tebboune would use the occasion of Algeria’s 63rd independence anniversary on Saturday to grant a pardon to Sansal.

On the Gleizes case, the foreign ministry in Paris said Tuesday it “regretted the heavy sentence” imposed on the journalist, but fell short of calling for his release.

Relations between the two countries have been on a knife-edge for the last year, since President Emmanuel Macron appeared to shift France’s position on north Africa towards greater support for Algeria’s historic rival Morocco.

Since then there has been a series of diplomatic rows, with tit-for-tat expulsions and a breakdown of cooperation over extradition and visas.

Supporters of Sansal say he is in effect a hostage, and is being used by the Algerian government to put pressure on Paris.

Algeria says he was convicted following due process of the law.

Gleizes’s employer Franck Annese, founder of So Press media group, described him as a “super guy, enthusiastic, willing, and full of humour.”

“He has absolutely no political axe to grind. His interviews and articles prove it.”

According to Mr Annese, Gleizes “fell in love” with African football when he investigated the death in 2014 of Albert Ebossé, a Cameroonian forward who died after being struck on the head by a projectile while playing for JSK.

This led to his co-authoring a book – Magic System: Modern Slavery of African footballers – which strongly criticised the agents who “exploit the confidence and dreams of these young players.”

According to the campaigning group Reporters without Borders (RSF), in researching his article on JSK Gleizes had contacted an exiled Kabyle opposition figure who was once an influential figure at the football club.

This person is now leader of the Movement for Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK), RSF said.

In 2021 MAK was proscribed as terrorist by the Algerian government.

Gleizes’s supporters contend that two of the journalist’s three exchanges with the opposition figure took place before the MAK was banned; and that all the exchanges concerned football, not politics.

The deaths of two brothers in Russian custody have laid bare a diplomatic rift with Azerbaijan, as it challenges Moscow’s dominant role in the South Caucasus and establishes itself as a regional power.

Both Azerbaijani men showed signs of trauma, officials in Baku revealed on Tuesday and pro-government media have blamed Russia’s Vladimir Putin for police violence.

Azerbaijan authorities have already arrested two Russian state media employees, accusing them of being FSB agents.

Tensions were already high between the two neighbours. Last December, 38 people died when an Azerbaijani Airlines plane was shot down apparently by a Russian anti-aircraft missile fired by mistake.

This latest spat began last Friday when Russian police operation in the city of Yekaterinburg targeted suspects as part of cold case murder inquiries dating back to 2001.

Two of the suspects, Azerbaijan-born brothers Ziyaddin and Guseyn Safarov, died in custody, and several others were taken to hospital.

Azerbaijan’s Prosecutor General has now launched a criminal case accusing Russian police of torturing and deliberately killing the brothers. A post-mortem conducted in Azerbaijan found they died from “post-traumatic” shock after being severely beaten in custody.

Russia’s law enforcement says one of the men died of a heart attack and the cause of the second death has not been confirmed.

In response, Baku cancelled an upcoming visit by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk, as well as all shows involving Russian artists.

Azerbaijani media outlets with ties to government have criticised Putin, saying his rule is even more brutal than that of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who sent millions of people to death camps.

When the Azerbaijan Airlines plane went down last December, Putin offered an apology, but that failed to satisfy Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.

Aliyev demanded a full admission of responsibility and a comprehensive investigation. That triggered a propaganda war, with Baku accusing Russian cultural organisations of espionage and demanding the closure of the Baku office of Russian state media outlet Sputnik.

Sputnik remained operational until this week, when Azerbaijani police raided its Baku bureau and detained two employees, named as Igor Kartavykh and Yevgeny Belousov. Authorities allege both are affiliated with the Russian security service, the FSB. Russia denies this, saying the arrests are “unjust”.

Since the fall of Soviet Union in 1991, a newly independent Azerbaijan has largely kept its distance from Russia, partnering with the West to develop its vast oil and gas resources. A particular sticking point was Moscow’s support for Armenia in the First Nagorno-Karabakh war of 1992-1994, which saw Azerbaijan defeated.

But when Ilham Aliyev took over as president from his father in 2003, the young, Moscow-educated ruler managed to find a common language with Putin.

In 2020, Russia stood aside as Azerbaijan emerged victorious from a new war with Armenia. That victory has changed the power balance in the South Caucasus, where Aliyev now sees himself as a dominant player – not only economically, but also militarily.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 further eroded Moscow’s influence in the region.

Although Aliyev and Putin signed a declaration proclaiming two countries allies, Azerbaijan maintained an independent stance — calling Russian-held parts of Ukraine “occupied” and sending humanitarian aid to Kyiv.

Despite their differences, Moscow continued to have close ties with Baku, in part due to Azerbaijan’s role in major energy and transport routes, including a North–South corridor linking Russia to Asian markets.

Azerbaijan is not directly competing with Russia, but it has been challenging Russia’s dominant role in the South Caucasus, according to Zaur Shiriyev, a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

He believes Baku is wary of a potential resurgence of Russian influence in Georgia, a key transit country for Azerbaijani exports.

Officials in Azerbaijan are equally resistant to the return of pro-Russian factions in Armenia, particularly those opposed to reconciliation efforts over Nagorno-Karabakh.

By engaging now in a public war of words, “Azerbaijan appears to be sending a message that it is no longer willing to accept Russia’s actions passively, especially when its own interests are at stake,” Shiriyev told the BBC.

Nearly 20,000 people arrived in the UK in the first half of this year by crossing the English Channel in small boats – up 48% on the first six months of 2024.

Just under 1,500 people have crossed since Sunday, taking the total until the end of June to 19,982, according to latest Home Office figures.

The figure for the first six months of this year is also 75% higher than the equivalent figure for 2023, which was 11,433.

The Conservatives said the government “had broken a new national record – for failure”.

Ministers have previously pointed to clear weather and the willingness of people smugglers to put more people onto boats as factors driving the spike in migration crossings.

Since coming to power in July last year, Labour has announced a series of measures to tackle people smuggling, including a new criminal offence of endangering the lives of others at sea.

Legislation going through Parliament sets out plans to use counter-terror powers against people smugglers – with suspects facing travel bans, social-media blackouts and phone restrictions.

But the latest figures show 2025 has already set a new record for small boat arrivals in the first six months of the year, since the data was first collected in 2018.

In 2024, Home Office figures recorded 13,489 people arriving in the UK via small boats in the first half of the year. In 2023, the figure was 11,433 – which was slightly lower than the 12,747 recorded the year before.

Tackling small boat crossings will be a key point of discussion when French President Emmanuel Macron visits the UK later this week, after Downing Street said last month the situation in the English Channel was “deteriorating.”

The French authorities are considering allowing the police or coastguard to intervene in shallow waters to try to stop so-called taxi boats which pick migrants up from the beaches.

In addition, London and Paris have reportedly been negotiating a deal under which the UK could return some Channel migrants to France, in exchange for accepting asylum seekers from France seeking family reunion in Britain.

On Monday the European Commission, the executive arm of EU, announced it had been in contact with the UK government to “seek clarity” on the deal, after five member states criticised the proposals.

Italy, Spain, Greece, Malta and Cyprus warned in a letter seen by the Financial Times that the deal could see people deported from the UK to their countries.

A Commission spokesperson said the rising number of Channel migrants was “alarming” – but it would only accept “solutions that are compatible with the spirit and letter of EU law”.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp blamed the increase on Labour “tearing up” the previous Conservative government’s plan to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda shortly after it took office.

Philp said: “This is the worst year on record, and it’s become a free-for-all.

“We need a removals deterrent so every single illegal immigrant who arrives is removed to a location outside Europe. The crossings will then rapidly stop.”

A Home Office spokesperson said the “government has put together a serious plan to take down these networks at every stage”.

This morning near Dunkirk, the BBC witnessed a boat carrying around 20 migrants making its way to the beach to pick more people. But it developed engine trouble and started drifting.

The police got the people off the boat, but they were allowed to head back into town without being questioned about what had happened.

Officers did however slash the dinghy to make sure it could not be used in another crossing attempt.

Several boats have launched from other beaches and waterways along the coast of northern France.

The number of crossings can vary according to factors like the weather and the supply of boat parts.

Last month, the Home Office released figures showing that the number of “red days” – when conditions are considered favourable for small boat crossings – peaked in 2024-25.

But Dr Madeleine Sumption, head of Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, said there was “no evidence to suggest that the weather is a major factor explaining long-term increases in small boat arrivals.

“The data published today suggest that over long periods of a year, the number of crossings seems to be broadly unrelated to the number of ‘red’ days.

“Other factors, such as the number of people wanting to reach the UK and the number and professionalisation of smuggling gangs are likely to be more important,” she added.

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Thailand’s Constitutional Court has suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who has come under mounting pressure to resign over her leaked phone conversation with former Cambodian leader Hun Sen.

The clip, in which Paetongtarn called him “uncle” and criticised a Thai military commander, sparked public anger and a petition for her dismissal, which the court is now considering.

That could make Paetongtarn the third politician in the powerful Shinawatra clan – which has dominated Thai politics for the past two decades – to lose power before completing their term.

Her ruling coalition is already teetering with a slim majority after a key conservative ally abandoned it two weeks ago.

The Constitutional Court voted 7-2 to suspend her while they consider the case for her dismissal and she has 15 days to present her defence.

In the meantime the deputy PM will serve as the country’s acting leader. Paetongtarn, however, will remain in the cabinet as culture minister, a new appointment following a cabinet reshuffle that was endorsed hours before she was suspended.

On Tuesday, Paetongtarn apologised again, adding that the purpose of her phone call with Hun Sen was “more than 100%… for the country”.

The call was about the border dispute between the two countries – although it’s decades old, tensions have risen again since late May when a Cambodian soldier was killed.

The leaked audio especially angered conservative lawmakers who accused her of appeasing Hun Sen and undermining Thailand’s military.

But she defended herself on Tuesday, saying, “I had no intent to do it for my own interest. I only thought about how to avoid chaos, avoid fighting and to avoid loss of lives.

“If you listened to it carefully, you’d understand that I didn’t have ill intentions. This is what I’ll focus and spend time on explaining thoroughly.”

If she is eventually dismissed, Paetongtarn will be the second prime minister from the Pheu Thai party to be removed from premiership since August last year.

At that time, her predecessor Srettha Thavisin was dismissed, also by the constitutional court, for appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who was once jailed.

Days later, Paetongtarn – whose father is Thailand’s deposed leader Thaksin Shinawatra – was sworn in as prime minister.

Tuesday’s decision once again underscores the constitutional court’s power to unmake governments, which critics say can be weaponised to target political opponents.

This court has dissolved 34 parties since 2006, including the reformist Move Forward, which won the most seats and votes in the 2023 election but was blocked from forming the government.

“This has become a pattern in Thai politics… a part of the Thai political culture, which is not what a true political process is supposed to be,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political science lecturer at Ubon Ratchathani University.

“The suspension by court order shouldn’t have happened but most people could see its legitimacy because the leaked conversation really made people question if the PM was genuinely defending the interest of the country.”

Paetongtarn, 38, remains the country’s youngest leader and only the second woman to be PM after her aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra.

Already struggling to revive a weak economy, Paetongtarn saw her approval rating fall to 9.2% last weekend, down from 30.9% in March.

The court’s decision comes on the same day as Paetongtarn’s father, who was seen as the driving force behind her government, battles his own political troubles.

Thaksin is fighting charges of insulting the monarchy over an interview he gave to a South Korean newspaper nine years ago. His trial started on Tuesday.

The controversial political leader, who returned to Thailand in 2023 after 15 years in exile, is the most high-profile figure to face charges under the country’s notorious lese majeste law.

Thaksin’s return was part of a grand compromise between Pheu Thai and its former conservative foes.

They include the military, which deposed two Shinawatra governments in coups, and groups close to the monarchy.

Millions of websites – including Sky News, The Associated Press and Buzzfeed – will now be able to block artificial intelligence (AI) bots from accessing their content without permission.

The new system is being rolled out by internet infrastructure firm, Cloudflare, which hosts around a fifth of the internet.

Eventually, sites will be able to ask for payment from AI firms in return for having their content scraped.

Many prominent writers, artists, musicians and actors have accused AI firms of training systems on their work without permission or payment.

In the UK, it led to a furious row between the government and artists including Sir Elton John over how to protect copyright.

Cloudflare’s tech targets AI firm bots – also known as crawlers – programmes that explore the web, indexing and collecting data as they go. They are important to the way AI firms build, train and operate their systems.

So far, Cloudflare says its tech is active on a million websites.

Roger Lynch, chief executive of Condé Nast, whose print titles include GQ, Vogue, and The New Yorker, said the move was “a game-changer” for publishers.

“This is a critical step toward creating a fair value exchange on the Internet that protects creators, supports quality journalism and holds AI companies accountable”, he wrote in a statement.

However, other experts say stronger legal protections will still be needed.

Initially the system will apply by default to new users of Cloudflare services, plus sites that participated in an earlier effort to block crawlers.

Many publishers accuse AI firms of using their content without permission.

Recently the BBC threatened to take legal action against US based AI firm Perplexity, demanding it immediately stopped using BBC content, and paid compensation for material already used.

However publishers are generally happy to allow crawlers from search engines, like Google, to access their sites, so that the search companies can in return can direct people to their content.

Perplexity accused the BBC of seeking to preserve “Google’s monopoly”.

But Cloudflare argues AI breaks the unwritten agreement between publishers and crawlers. AI crawlers, it argues, collect content like text, articles, and images to generate answers, without sending visitors to the original source—depriving content creators of revenue.

“If the Internet is going to survive the age of AI, we need to give publishers the control they deserve and build a new economic model that works for everyone,” wrote the firm’s chief executive Matthew Prince.

To that end the company is developing a “Pay Per Crawl” system, which would give content creators the option to request payment from AI companies for utilising their original content.

According to Cloudflare there has been an explosion of AI bot activity.

“AI Crawlers generate more than 50 billion requests to the Cloudflare network every day”, the company wrote in March.

And there is growing concern that some AI crawlers are disregarding existing protocols for excluding bots.

In an effort to counter the worst offenders Cloudflare previously developed a system where the worst miscreants would be sent to a “Labyrinth” of web pages filled with AI generated junk.

The new system attempts to use technology to protect the content of websites and to give sites the option to charge AI firms a fee to access it.

In the UK there is an intense legislative battle between government, creators and the AI firms over the extent to which the creative industries should be protected from AI firms using their works to train systems without permission or payment.

And, on both sides of the Atlantic, content creators, licensors and owners have gone to court in an effort to prevent what they see as AI firms encroachment on creative rights.

Ed Newton-Rex, the founder of Fairly Trained which certifies that AI companies have trained their systems on properly licensed data, said it was a welcome development – but there was “only so much” one company could do

“This is really only a sticking plaster when what’s required is major surgery,” he told the BBC.

“It will only offer protection for people on websites they control – it’s like having body armour that stops working when you leave your house,” he added.

“The only real way to protect people’s content from theft by AI companies is through the law.”

Filmmaker Baroness Beeban Kidron, who is campaigning for more protection for the creative industries, welcomed the news saying the company had shown leadership.

“Cloudflare sits at the heart of the digital world and it is exciting to see them take decisive action,” she told the BBC.

“If we want a vibrant public sphere we need AI companies to contribute to the communities in which they operate, that means paying their fair share of tax, settling with those whose work they have stolen to build their products, and, as Cloudflare has just shown, using tech creatively to ensure equity between digital and human creators on an ongoing basis.”

After nearly 24 hours of debate – starting yesterday morning and stretching overnight – the US Senate approved Donald Trump’s massive tax-cut and spending bill

Passing by the narrowest of margins, the bill, as it stood on Tuesday, contained key parts of the agenda he campaigned on last year.

Trump celebrated its passage during a visit to a migrant detention facility in Florida. “It’s a great bill,” he said. “There is something for everyone.”

But in fact, while lawmakers may have gotten “something” they wanted, they likely faced concessions to achieve that – and ultimately to push the bill through the House on Tuesday.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said she worked hard to ensure the bill provided for her state and ultimately voted for it, but was still unhappy. She called the process “rushed”.

“My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognise that we’re not there yet,” she told reporters just outside the Senate floor, moments after the vote.

• A look at the key items in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
• Watch: Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ triggers Senate face-off
• The woman who could bust Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’

In a game of political ping-pong, the bill now returns to the House, which passed its version of the bill weeks ago. If the narrow Republican majority in that chamber gives final approval, perhaps as early as Wednesday, the legislation can be presented to the president for his signature.

But it may be a tough pill for some House Republicans to swallow.

It includes massive new funding -$70bn – for Trump’s immigration priorities. It boosts defence spending and makes the tax cuts Republicans passed in Trump’s first term permanent. To offset this loss, it cuts funding for Biden-era environmental programmes and Medicaid, the health insurance programme for low-income Americans.

The financial ledger isn’t nearly balanced, however, as the package adds more than $3tn to the federal debt and raises the US borrowing authority by $5tn.

Fiscal hard-liners have complained that the Senate watered down some of their original budget cuts.

The right-wing House Freedom Caucus said the Senate proposal could add $650bn (£472bn) to the deficit each year. “It’s not what we agreed to,” caucus members said in a social media post on Monday.

And centrists still are concerned about cuts in the bill, including reductions in federal payments covering health insurance for low-income Americans.

The original House version was a balancing act that kept the various factions within the Republican Party just satisfied enough to vote yes. The Senate version now landing back in their laps may disrupt that balance.

But the pressure on House Republicans to sign off on what Trump has called his “big, beautiful bill” will be enormous.

The president has said he views the legislation as an integral part of his political legacy – a lasting change in government policy that, unlike executive orders, a future president cannot easily undo.

Millions of fans are bidding farewell to Squid Game, the Emmy award-winning TV series that has topped Netflix’s charts and become a symbol of South Korea’s ascendance in Hollywood.

The fictional show follows cash-strapped players as they battle it out in a series of traditional Korean children’s games – with a gory twist, as losers are killed in every round.

Squid Game has sucked in viewers since 2021 with its candy-coloured sets and bleak messages about capitalism and humanity. And with its third and final season released last Friday, fans across the world are returning to reality.

Some South Koreans, however, have found themselves reflecting on the society that inspired the dystopian series.

“I feel like Squid Game 3 revealed the true feelings and raw inner thoughts of Korean people,” reads one YouTube comment under a clip from season three.

“It reflected reality so well like how in real life, at work, it’s just full of ruthless people ready to crush you. This show nailed it.”

Squid Game was born against the backdrop of cut-throat competition and widening inequality in South Korean society – where people are too stressed to have children and a university placement exam is seen as the defining moment of a person’s life.

The diverse characters of the show – which include a salaryman, a migrant factory worker and a cryptocurrency scammer – are drawn from figures many South Koreans would find familiar.

The backstory of protagonist Seong Gi-hun, a car factory worker who was laid off and later went on strike, was also inspired by a real-life event: a 2009 strike at the SsangYong Motor factory, where workers clashed with riot police over widespread layoffs. It’s remembered today as one of the country’s largest labour confrontations.

“The drama may be fictional, but it feels more realistic than reality itself,” Jeong Cheol Sang, a film enthusiast, wrote in his review of Squid Game’s final season.

“Precarious labour, youth unemployment, broken families – these aren’t just plot devices, but the very struggles we face every day.”

Those darker messages seemed to be brushed to the side on Saturday night, as a massive parade celebrated the release of the blockbuster’s final season. A giant killer doll and dozens of faceless guards in tracksuits – among other motifs of the deadly games – marched down central Seoul to much fanfare.

For South Korea’s leaders, Squid Game has become a symbol of K-drama’s success on the global stage. It is also part of a string of successes – along with K-pop act BTS and Oscar-winning film Parasite – on which newly elected president Lee Jae Myung wants to capitalise as he sets his sights on exporting K-culture far and wide.

There are signs the Squid Game hype may even go further: the show’s final scene, where Cate Blanchett plays a Korean game with a man in a Los Angeles alley, has fuelled rumours of an American spinoff.

The series ended on an “open-ended” note, Lee Jung-jae, the star of the series, told the BBC. “So it poses a lot of questions to the audience. I hope people will talk about those questions, ponder upon themselves about the questions and try to find an answer.”

In the show’s later seasons, viewers follow Gi-hun’s quest to bring down the eponymous games, which are packaged as entertainment for a group of wealthy VIPs.

But his rebellion fails, and by the end Gi-hun is forced to sacrifice himself to save another player’s baby – an ending that has polarised viewers.

Some argued that Gi-hun’s actions did not square with the dark portrait of reality that showrunners had developed – one that had so well captured the ruthless elements of human nature.

“The characters’ excessive altruism was disturbing – almost to the point of seeming unhinged,” reads a comment on popular South Korean discussion site Nate Pann. “It felt like a fake, performative kind of kindness, prioritising strangers over their own families for no real reason.”

But others said Gi-hun’s death was in line with the show’s commitment to uncomfortable truths.

“This perfectly describes humanity and the message of the show,” another commented on YouTube.

“As much as we wanted to see Gi-Hun win, kill the frontman and the VIPs, and stop the games once and for all before riding off into the sunset, that’s just not the world we live in and it’s certainly not the one that Gi-Hun lived in.”

Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show’s creator, told reporters on Monday that he understood the “mixed reaction” to the final season.

“In season one there were no expectations, so the shock and freshness worked. But by seasons two and three, expectations were sky high, and that makes all the difference,” Hwang said on Monday.

“Game fans wanted more games, others wanted deeper messages, and some were more invested in the characters. Everyone expected something different.”

For some, at least, Gi-hun’s final choice offered a hopeful reflection of reality: that even in times of adversity, kindness can prevail.

“That paradox – of cruelty and warmth coexisting – is what made the finale so moving,” said Mr Jeong, the film blogger. “Watching the Squid Game made me reflect on myself. As someone who has worked in education and counselling, I’ve questioned whether kindness can really change anything.”

“That’s why I stayed with this story. That’s why I call this ending beautiful.”

Listen to Jim read this article

There’s a saying that Robert F Kennedy Jr is very fond of. He used it on the day he was confirmed as US health secretary. “A healthy person has a thousand dreams, a sick person only has one,” he said as he stood in the Oval Office. “60% of our population has only one dream – that they get better.”

The most powerful public health official in the US has made it his mission to tackle what he describes as an epidemic of chronic illness in America, a catch-all term that covers everything from obesity and diabetes to heart disease.

His diagnosis that the US is experiencing an epidemic of ill health is a view shared by many healthcare experts in the country.

But Kennedy also has a history of promoting unfounded health conspiracies, from the suggestion that Covid-19 targeted and spared certain ethnic groups to the idea that chemicals in tap water could be making children transgender.

And after taking office, he slashed thousands of jobs at the Department of Health and Human Services and eliminated whole programmes at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

“On the one hand, it’s extraordinarily exciting to have a federal official take on chronic disease,” says Marion Nestle, a retired professor of public health at New York University. “On the other, the dismantling of the federal public health apparatus cannot possibly help with the agenda.”

Kennedy is reviled by parts of the medical and scientific communities. He was described to me as an “evil nihilist” by Dr Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease doctor and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University.

But even some of Kennedy’s critics accept that he is bringing drive and ambition to areas of healthcare that have been neglected. Is it possible that the man who attracts so much criticism – and in some quarters, hate – might actually start making America healthy again?

There’s one industry that Kennedy had set his sights on long before joining the Trump administration: multinational food companies have, he has said, poisoned American children with artificial additives already banned in other countries.

“We have a generation of kids who are swimming around in a toxic soup right now,” he claimed on Fox News last year.

His first target was food colourings, with a promise to phase out the use of petroleum-based dyes by the end of 2026.

Chemicals, with names like ‘Green No. 3’ and ‘Red No. 40’, have been linked to hyperactivity and behavioural issues in children, and cancer in some animal studies.

“What’s happening in this administration is really interesting,” says Vani Hari, a food blogger and former Democrat who is now an influential voice in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. “MAHA is all about how do we get people off processed food, and one way to do that is to regulate the chemicals companies use.”

There are some signs this pressure may be paying off.

The food giant PepsiCo, for example, said in a recent trading update that Lays crisps and Tostitos snacks “will be out of artificial colours by the end of this year”.

Kennedy struck a voluntary agreement with the food industry but it only came after individual states from California to West Virginia had already started introducing their own laws.

“In the case of food dyes, companies will have to act because states are banning them [anyway] and they won’t want to have to formulate separate products for separate states,” says Prof Nestle, an author and longtime critic of the industry.

More recently Kennedy has signalled he backs a radical food bill in Texas that could target additives in some products ranging from sweets, to cereals and fizzy drinks

Packets may soon have to carry a high-contrast label stating, “WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom.”

The Consumer Brands Association, which represents some of the largest food manufacturers, opposes this, saying the ingredients used in the US food supply are safe and have been rigorously studied.

It’s difficult to imagine that kind of regulation could ever be signed off in a state like Texas without the political backing of Kennedy and President Trump.

“He can’t change everything in a short amount of time, but I think the issue of food dyes will soon be history,” says Ms Hari, who testified before the Senate on this subject last year.

But others worry that the flurry of announcements on additives is tinkering around the edges of what is a much wider problem.

“While some of these individual actions are important, they are a drop in the ocean in the larger context of chronic disease,” argues Nicola Hawley, professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health. “There is a focus on personal choice and access to natural food, but that completely ignores the big, systematic and structural barriers [to healthy eating] like poverty and really aggressive marketing of junk food to children.”

The US government, for example, still heavily subsidises crops including corn and soya beans, key ingredients in processed foods.

Kennedy is now updating the US national dietary guidelines, an important document used to shape everything from school meals to assistance programmes for the elderly. A reduction in added sugars and a switch to more locally sourced whole foods is expected. Plus he has called on states to ban millions of Americans from using food stamps, a welfare benefit, to buy junk food or sugar-sweetened drinks.

He has also backed local officials who want to stop adding fluoride to drinking water, describing it as a “dangerous neurotoxin”. It is used in some countries, including in parts of the US, to prevent tooth decay, and whilst there is still debate about the possible health effects, the NHS says a review of the risks has found “no convincing evidence” to support any concerns. Other fluoride research has found the mineral only has detrimental health effects at extremely high levels.

Prof Hawley also argues there is a tension between Kennedy’s “important message” on food and chronic disease, and what she feels is a lack of policies backed by solid scientific evidence.

“You’ve got this challenge of him drifting into misinformation about the links between additives and chronic disease, or environmental risk factors,” she argues. “And that really just undermines the science.”

That tension is even clearer when it comes to another of Kennedy’s big concerns.

Vaccines are still listed on the CDC website as one of the great public health achievements of the last century, alongside family planning and tobacco control. They prevent countless cases of disease and disability each year, and save millions of lives, according to the American Medical Association.

Kennedy, though, is the best-known vaccine sceptic in the country. The activist group he ran for eight years, Children’s Health Defense, repeatedly questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccination.

In 2019 he described the disgraced British doctor Andrew Wakefield as the “most unfairly maligned person in modern history” and told a crowd in Washington that “any just society” would be building statues of him.

Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register in 2010 after his research falsely linked the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine to autism, leading to a spike in measles cases in England and some other countries.

Over the last year, Kennedy has repeatedly insisted he is not “anti-vax” and will not be “taking away anybody’s vaccines”. Faced with a deadly measles outbreak in unvaccinated children in west Texas, he posted that the MMR was “the most effective way to prevent the spread of the disease”.

In other comments though, he described vaccination as a “personal choice” and emphasised alternative treatments such as vitamin A supplements.

A huge deal with the drugmaker Moderna to develop a vaccine to combat bird flu in humans was scrapped, and new rules were brought in which could mean some vaccines need extra testing before they can be updated each winter.

In May, Kennedy posted a video on social media saying the government would no longer endorse Covid vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women.

However, some doctors point out that reducing eligibility would simply bring the US into line with other countries, including the UK, where free Covid boosters are restricted to those over 75 or with weakened immune systems.

“They are really just aligning themselves with everyone else, which is not in any way outrageous,” says Prof Adam Finn, a paediatric doctor and one of the UK’s leading experts on vaccines.

Then in June, Kennedy suddenly sacked all 17 members of the influential expert committee, which advises the CDC on vaccine eligibility. He accused the panel of being “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and rubber-stamping new vaccines without proper scrutiny.

A new, much smaller, committee handpicked by the administration now has the power to change, or even drop, critical recommendations to immunise Americans for certain diseases, as well as shape the childhood vaccination programme.

“It underscores just how much we are backsliding now,” says Dr Amesh Adalja, the infectious disease doctor and senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University. “I think increasingly the panel will become irrelevant if RFK Jr is able to shape it the way he wants to.”

The new panel made its first decision last week, voting to stop recommending a small number of flu vaccines that still contain the preservative thimerosal, something Kennedy wrote a book about in 2015.

His critics say that a new era of vaccine policy has arrived in the US. Whilst his supporters say no subject, including vaccine safety, should be considered off-limits.

“Everything has to be open to discussion and Bobby Kennedy is not anti-vaccine, he’s anti-corruption,” argues Tony Lyons, who co-founded the political action committee that supported his independent presidential campaign.

“It’s about being pro-science, pro-capitalism, and believing you have an obligation to the public to do a thorough job of researching any product that is put in the arms of 40 million children.”

Weeks after Kennedy took office news emerged that the CDC would open a research project into the link between vaccines and autism.

Since Wakefield’s now-discredited Lancet paper in 1998, which linked autism to the MMR vaccine given to children, there have been numerous international studies that have looked at this in detail and found no reputable link.

“There is nothing to debate any more, it has been settled by science,” says Eric Fombonne, an autism researcher and professor emeritus at Oregon Health & Science University.

Kennedy, though, has hired David Geier, a noted vaccine sceptic, to look again at the data.

Today autism is widely understood to be a lifelong spectrum condition. It can include those with high support needs who are non-speaking, and those with above-average intelligence who might struggle with social interaction or communication.

Most researchers believe a rise in cases over decades is down to a broadening in the way children with autism are defined, as well as improved awareness, understanding and screening.

But in April, Kennedy dismissed that idea, describing autism as “preventable”. He blamed a mysterious environmental trigger for the increase in eight-year-olds being diagnosed.

“This is coming from an environmental toxin… [in] our air, our water, our medicines, our food,” he said.

He pledged a massive research effort to find that cause by September and “eliminate those exposures”.

Dr Fombonne strongly disputes this. “It is nonsensical and shows a complete absence of understanding,” he says. “We have known for many years that autism has a strong genetic component.”

In the same speech, Kennedy said that many autistic children will never “pay taxes, never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

Many in the autism community are angry. “What we’re seeing here is a fear-based rhetoric and [a] misleading narrative that is causing harm and perpetuating stigma,” says Kristyn Roth from the Autism Society of America.

But some parents of autistic children are more supportive.

Emily May, a writer who is the mother of a child with autism, wrote in The New York Times that she found herself “nodding along as Mr Kennedy spoke about the grim realities of profound autism”.

“His remarks echo the reality and pain of a subset of parents of children with autism who feel left out of much of the conversation,” she wrote.

The administration has since watered down that promise to find the reasons for autism by September but it is still promising detailed findings of its research by March 2026.

Ultimately, Robert Kennedy has only been in the job a matter of months. Already though he’s asking some big questions – particularly about chronic disease – which have never been asked in the same way by a health secretary before.

For the first time that issue has both political attention and bipartisan support in the US.

He is clearly not afraid to take on what he perceives to be vested interests in the food and drug industries, and he is still firmly supported by President Trump.

Tony Lyons, who has published books by Kennedy, calls him “uniquely qualified” for the most powerful job in US public health. “He’s a corruption fighter. He has seen what all these kinds of companies do, not just pharmaceutical companies but food companies, and he wants them to do a better job,” he says.

Robert Kennedy’s background as an environmental lawyer taking on big business and the establishment has clearly shaped the views he holds today.

But Jerold Mande, a former federal food policy advisor in three administrations, worries that Kennedy’s own views and biases will mean some of the solutions he’s reaching for are predetermined and unsupported by the evidence.

Now a professor of nutrition at Harvard, Prof Mande describes Kennedy as an imperfect messenger and says he has “great concerns” about the administration’s approach to aspects of public health, from tobacco control to vaccination, where there is “no question that what he’s doing is going to result in enormous harm.”

“At a high level, I’m optimistic… but you still need to come up with the right answers, and those answers can only be found through science,” says Prof Mande.

“We now have a shot and he’s provided that by making it a priority. But it’s how you use that shot that’s going to determine whether it’s a success or not. And that is where the jury is still out.”

Danish women now face being called up for 11 months of military service when they turn 18, after a change in the law came into effect.

Under new rules passed by Denmark’s parliament, women are to join teenage males in a lottery system that could require them to undertake a period of conscription.

The change was brought in as Nato countries boost defence spending amid heightened security concerns in Europe.

Up to now, women were allowed to participate in military service when they turned 18, but on a voluntary basis.

From Tuesday, both men and women turning 18 will be required to register to be assessed for potential military service. Volunteers will be recruited first, with the remaining numbers made up through the lottery system.

The change will also see the period of conscription for teenagers rise from four months to 11 months.

About 4,700 Danish men and women undertook a short period of military service in 2024 – about 24% of them being female volunteers. The new rules on conscription are expected to see the overall number doing military service annually rise to 6,500 by 2033.

Denmark is following the example of neighbouring Sweden and Norway, which both brought in conscription for women in recent years.

The government in March also announced a 40.5bn Danish crowns (£4.3bn, $5.9bn) increase in defence spending over the next five years to meet Nato targets.

There are about 9,000 professional personnel currently serving in Denmark’s military.

Colonel Kenneth Strom, head of the Danish military’s conscription programme, said the change was “based on a political decision and a political agreement made by the parties”.

He added: “And obviously, it’s based on the current security situation in order to get more combat power and have those skills that are needed for either the Army, Navy, Air Force or even the Special Operations Forces.”

Speaking to the Reuters news agency, Katrine, a current volunteer in Denmark’s military, said: “In the world situation we’re in right now, it’s necessary to have more conscripts, and I think that women should contribute to that equally, as men do.

“I think it’s a positive change.”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday visited the new Florida detention centre dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, where around 1,000 migrants are expected to be held as soon as next month, surveying the next step in his crackdown on illegal immigration.

While touring the facility in the Florida Everglades, Trump said it will soon house the most “menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet”.

Alligators, crocodiles and pythons in the surrounding wetlands are expected to keep detainees from escaping the centre, which is being built on an old airfield.

Some state lawmakers, the local mayor and neighbours oppose its construction, saying that it could hurt an important ecosystem.

“We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland and the only way out is, really, deportation,” Trump said on the tour.

His administration plans to build similar facilities, and the president said the new detention centre was the most impactful step that the US could take to “fully reverse the Biden migration invasion”.

It will cost about $450m (£332m) a year to run and funding will mostly come from a temporary shelter and services programme that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had used for undocumented immigrants, according to Homeland Security Secretary Krisit Noem, who joined the presidential visit.

Two other Trump allies, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Representative Byron Donalds of Kentucky, were also on the tour.

The move to build a new centre comes as human rights organisations warn detentions centres are becoming overcrowded.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) currently has a record 59,000 detainees in custody nationwide, 140% above its capacity, according to data obtained by CBS, the BBC’s news partner.

Like the former prison Alcatraz in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, which Trump has said he wants to reopen, the facility will be hard to reach.

It will be situated on the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, a public airport around 58km (36 miles) from Miami, and an area deemed an ecologically important subtropical wetland.

Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier has described the site as a “virtually abandoned facility”.

But local residents who live near the site, like Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee Native American community, have told the BBC they are worried that the temporary facility will become permanent.

“I have serious concerns about the environmental damage,” she said, as she stood next to a canal where an alligator was swimming.

Experts warn the damage to area wetlands and endangered species could undo the state’s massive effort to restore the Everglades, which has cost Florida billions of dollars. It is home to endangered species such as the Florida panther and the West Indian manatee.

Elise Pautler Bennett, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, described the Everglades as “the most sensitive place in Florida”, making development of a detention centre there “risky”.

“Any other project that would have been proposed in the Everglades would have gone through an intense environmental approval process, I’m convinced this one didn’t get that because it’s a political stunt,” Ms Bennett told the BBC.

It has been estimated that the detention centre could be up and running in 30 to 60 days and could hold an estimated 1,000 people.

“This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said ahead of Trump’s visit. .

A father jumped into the ocean to save his daughter after she fell from the fourth deck of a Disney cruise ship travelling from the Bahamas to the US on Sunday afternoon, witnesses say.

Videos showed passengers cheering as the two were pulled onto a rescue boat after apparently treading water for 10 minutes.

The girl appeared to fall when her father took her picture against a railing, witnesses said. A man overboard alert was broadcast on the ship, and crew rushed to recover them.

“The ship was moving quickly, so quickly, it’s crazy how quickly the people became tiny dots in the sea, and then you lost sight of them,” passenger Laura Amador said.

“The captain slowed the ship and turned it around, and then they deployed a tender ship with people on it to go get them, and we saw them rescue the dad and daughter,” she told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.

The identities of the father and daughter have not been publicly released. Several US media outlets are describing the girl as a child.

The 4,000-person capacity Disney Dream, was returning to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after sailing for four days around the Bahamas.

Disney confirmed in a statement that two passengers were rescued, but offered few details about what occurred.

“The Crew aboard the Disney Dream swiftly rescued two guests from the water,” a Disney Cruise Line spokesperson said. “We commend our Crew Members for their exceptional skills and prompt actions, which ensured the safe return of both guests to the ship within minutes.

“We watched it, you could see two little things…it was crazy, it was horrific,” passenger Gar Frantz told NBC News, describing how he witnessed the two enter the ocean and nearly disappear into the horizon.

The incident took place on the last day of the cruise, and the ship returned to port in Florida as normal.

While it is rare for passengers to fall from cruise ships, rescues are not often successful when they do.

According to a Cruise Lines International Association report from 2019, 25 people fell overboard that year from cruise ships and only nine were saved from the water.

More than 170 charities and other NGOs are calling for the controversial aid distribution scheme in Gaza run by the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to be shut down.

More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid since the GHF started operating in late May, when Israel partially eased an 11-week total blockade, a joint statement says.

The organisations, including Oxfam and Save the Children, say Israeli forces and armed groups “routinely” open fire on Palestinians seeking aid.

Israel denies its soldiers deliberately shoot at aid recipients and says the GHF’s system provides direct assistance to people who need it, bypassing Hamas interference.

The GHF said it had delivered more than 52 million meals in five weeks and that other organisations “stand by helplessly as their aid is looted”.

Tuesday’s joint statement from some of the world’s biggest charities and NGOs says the GHF is violating all norms of humanitarian work, including by forcing two million people into overcrowded and militarised zones where they face daily gunfire.

Since the GHF started operating in Gaza, there have been almost daily reports of Israeli forces killing people seeking aid at these sites, from medics, eyewitnesses and the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

On Tuesday, the ministry reported that a total of 583 people had been killed while seeking aid since 26 May, including 408 near the GHF’s distribution centres.

The GHF’s system replaced 400 aid distribution points that were operating during the last temporary Israel-Hamas ceasefire with just four distribution sites located in Israeli militarised zones and run by US private security contractors – three in the far south-west of Gaza and one in central Gaza.

“Today, Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” the NGOs warn in their joint statement.

“Orphaned children and caregivers are among the dead, with children harmed in over half of the attacks on civilians at these sites.”

In response to the criticism, a GHF spokesperson said: “We’ve delivered more than 52 million meals in just five weeks. Not talking points, not headlines, but food reaching Palestinian families every single day.”

“Meanwhile, other organisations stand by helplessly as their aid is looted. We’ve offered to help them deliver it safely. They’ve refused.”

They added: “The humanitarian community must return to its core mission – feeding people – not protecting outdated systems or avoiding the discomfort of change.”

On Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the GHF’s aid distribution system “inherently unsafe”, adding: “It is killing people.”

From the start the UN has opposed the plan, saying it would “militarise” aid, bypass the existing UN-led distribution network and force Gazans to make long journeys through dangerous territory to get food.

The Israeli military has said it is examining reports of civilians being “harmed” while approaching GHF aid distribution centres.

According to a report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday, unnamed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians near aid distribution sites to drive them away or disperse them.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly rejected the report, calling the allegations “malicious falsehoods”.

The Israeli military also denied allegations of deliberately firing at Palestinians waiting to collect humanitarian aid.

In a statement on Monday, the IDF said it was reorganising access to the sites and this would include new “fencing” and signposting, including directional and warning signs in order to improve the operational response.

The GHF said in response to the Haaretz story that “there have been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites”.

The 170-plus NGOs said the GHF’s system was “not a humanitarian response” for the Gazans.

“Amidst severe hunger and famine-like conditions, many families tell us they are now too weak to compete for food rations,” the groups said.

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

At least 56,647 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

The wait is over, K-pop fans – BTS are back. The South Korean band confirmed their highly-anticipated comeback on Tuesday, scheduling a new album and tour for next year.

Announcing the news during their first live stream since all band members completed their mandatory military service, the seven-strong group said they would head to the US later this month to begin working on new music.

“Hey guys, we are back,” Jimin said, with the group adding that their album would be released in spring 2026.

“We’re also planning a world tour alongside the album. We’ll be visiting fans all around the world, so we hope you’re as excited as we are,” the band said.

It will be BTS’s first world tour since the group’s Permission to Dance on Stage tour back in 2022.

And the new album will be the band’s first full-length release since 2020.

All South Korean men must do 18 months in the military, which forced the world’s most successful boy band in recent years to pause their careers at the height of their global fame in 2022.

According to a statement, the band told fans on fan platform Weverse on Tuesday: “Starting in July, all seven of us will begin working closely together on new music.

“Since it will be a group album, it will reflect each member’s thoughts and ideas. We’re approaching the album with the same mindset we had when we first started.”

Fans – collectively known as the ARMY – have been desperate to see the boys back together again following their enforced hiatus.

Suga was the final member of the band to complete military service last month.

BTS are believed to have staggered their military service so that all seven members were unavailable for no more than six months. J-Hope, who was discharged last October, has since wrapped up a solo world tour and will headline Lollapalooza Berlin on 13 July.

The band made their debut in 2013, having formed three years earlier, and have gone on to become the most successful K-pop band globally.

They were the biggest-selling music artists in the world in 2020 and 2021, with six number one albums and the same number of chart-topping singles in the US.

The Congolese government says it targeted an aircraft which rebels claim was delivering food aid before it was blown up in the district of Minembwe, close to the country’s borders with Rwanda and Burundi.

It is the latest violent incident in the region since a ceasefire deal was signed in Washington last Friday.

The army claims it tracked the plane using radar, found it had entered Congolese airspace without legal permission and bore no identification number – giving the force no choice but to take “appropriate measures”.

But rebels allied to the M23 group, which has seized large parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo this year, dispute this.

A statement released on behalf of the Twerwaneho group, which controls Minembwe, said the plane was bombed in an act of “barbarity” that destroyed “food rations” and “essential supplies including medicines” intended for village residents.

The statement published by the wider rebel umbrella Congo River Alliance, which includes both the Twerwaneho and M23, threatened that the militia would hit back at the army in so-called “necessary measures” to keep locals safe.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify what cargo was on board the plane, nor where it had come from.

Yet daytime images circulating online, whose topography and details match other footage from the scene, appear to show that most of the wreckage was consumed by the fire.

Burundi defence forces and the Congolese army have blocked road access to rebel-held Minembwe, leaving it reliant on air access for all kinds of supplies.

Neither side has said that the plane originated in Rwanda. But all Rwandan civilian and military aircraft have been banned in DR Congo since February over accusations that Rwanda is backing the M23. Despite widespread evidence, Rwanda denies giving financial or military support to the M23 or its allies.

• DR Congo-Rwanda ceasefire deal still faces many challenges
• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?

Decades of conflict escalated earlier this year when M23 rebels seized control of large parts of eastern DR Congo including the regional capital, Goma, the city of Bukavu and two airports.

Thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians forced from their homes following the recent rebel offensive.

The plane’s destruction is one of many violent incidents that have happened since last week’s much-trumpeted peace agreement.

The M23 is one of the biggest parties in this conflict but was not directly involved in the US-brokered ceasefire deal. Instead it favours continuing talks mediated by Qatar, which it says will address “the root causes” of the conflict.

Both Rwanda and DR Congo last week committed to disarming and disengaging their alleged proxies.

However, dozens of armed groups are active in the region – several of whom have already shown they are not adhering to the ceasefire.

Even though US President Donald Trump told those signing the deal that “you’re going to do what is in the agreement”, what is happening in North and South Kivu provinces makes the prospect of lasting peace remote.

Crucially, no verification mechanism was enshrined in the Washington deal. But both DR Congo and Rwanda were given 30 days to set up a monitoring mechanism.

Analysts say last week’s deal does not immediately change the reality on the ground – despite Trump’s wishes – and matters remain tense and uncertain.

Monday’s incident is likely to spark fresh doubts about the prospect of lasting peace taking hold anytime soon.

• DR Congo-Rwanda peace deal met with scepticism in rebel-held city
• Congolese rebels want peaceful solution to crisis, UN says
• Ex-DR Congo president returns from self-imposed exile, party says
• DR Congo conflict tests China’s diplomatic balancing act
• How DR Congo’s Tutsis become foreigners in their own country

Three former senior staff at the hospital where nurse Lucy Letby murdered seven babies and attempted to kill seven others have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

They worked on the senior leadership team at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016 and were bailed after being questioned on Monday.

The arrests came after an investigation into potential corporate manslaughter at the hospital was opened in 2023, and then widened in March this year to include gross negligence manslaughter.

Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole life prison sentences after targeting babies at the hospital’s neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016.

She was convicted of making two attempts to kill one of the babies.

Cheshire Police said the arrests “did not impact on the convictions of Lucy Letby for multiple offences of murder and attempted murder”.

Det Supt Paul Hughes said the corporate manslaughter element of the investigation focused on the senior leadership of the hospital and its decision-making, “to determine whether any criminality has taken place concerning the response to the increased levels of fatalities”.

He said gross negligence manslaughter was a separate offence and “focuses on the grossly negligent action or inaction of individuals”.

Corporate manslaughter can carry an unlimited fine for an organisation but no jail sentence for any individual, whereas gross negligence manslaughter can result in a life sentence for a person convicted of it.

The three people arrested have not been named by police, in line with normal police procedure.

Cheshire Police said it was also carrying out a separate investigation into deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies in Chester and in the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where Letby trained for periods, going back to 2012.

Det Supt Hughes said there were “no set timescales” for the manslaughter investigations.

Letby has maintained her innocence and her barrister, Mark McDonald, submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) earlier this year.

The application included the findings of 14 medical experts who agreed to re-examine the evidence heard at trial and concluded Letby had not harmed any babies.

The CCRC, which has the power to refer cases back to the Court of Appeal, said it was reviewing the application and could give no timescale on when a decision would be reached.

Mr McDonald said the news of the arrests had come at a “very sensitive” time in his client’s case.

“Despite this the concerns many have raised will not go away, and we will continue to publicly discuss them,” he said.

He added that “internationally renowned experts” had concluded that no babies were murdered and called for a new public inquiry into “failings” in neonatal and paediatric care at the Countess of Chester.

Last month former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt called for an “urgent re-examination” of Letby’s case due to what he called “serious and credible” questions raised by the expert panel.

His Conservative Party colleague, Sir David Davis, has also been supportive of attempts to have Letby’s case looked at again.

But lawyers for the families of Letby’s victims described the expert panel’s conclusions as “full of analytical holes” and “a rehash” of the defence case.

A public inquiry into the circumstances around Letby’s offending is also due to publish its findings in early 2026.

The Thirwall Inquiry heard evidence from the senior leadership team at the hospital about when concerns were raised about a rise in the deaths of babies on the neonatal unit.

After hours of stalemate, Republicans in the US Senate have narrowly passed Donald Trump’s mega-bill on tax and spending, meaning the proposed legislation has cleared one of its key hurdles.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed with Vice-President JD Vance casting a tie-breaking vote after more than 24 hours of debate.

It now heads back to the House, or lower chamber, where it still faces more opposition. An earlier version was cleared by House Republicans by a single-vote margin.

Trump had given the Republican-controlled Congress a deadline of 4 July to send him a final version of the bill to sign into law.

“The bill as amendment is passed,” Vance said on Tuesday afternoon, a moment that was met by applause among Senate Republicans, while Democrats sank into their seats and shook their heads in disapproval.

Disputes over the deficit, social programmes and spending levels had created challenges for Republicans, stalling progress and prompting Trump to concede it would be “very hard” to meet his deadline for passing the bill.

Despite efforts to galvanise the party, Senate Majority Leader John Thune lost three Republicans – Maine’s Susan Collins, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Kentucky’s Rand Paul – in the narrow vote. Collins, Tillis and Paul joined all Democrats in voting against the bill.

After days of negotiations, Republican leaders were finally able to secure the support of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who had been withholding her support over concerns of the impact of cuts to Medicaid in her state.

Murkowski still appeared discontent with the bill, even after voting to support it, describing the process as “rushed” and under an “artificial timeline”.

“I struggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country”, Murkowski said, adding the process was “probably the most difficult and agonising legislative 24-hour period” of her career.

“My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognise that we’re not there yet,” she told reporters just outside the Senate floor, moments after the vote.

Murkowski’s support made the final Senate vote tally 50-50, and prompted Vance to step in to cast his tie-breaking vote.

On a visit to a migrant detention facility in Florida, Trump celebrated the passage of the bill. “It’s a great bill,” he said. “There is something for everyone.”

The legislation, considered a cornerstone of Trump’s second-term agenda, would make permanent large tax cuts that were temporarily put in place when he was first in office.

To make up for the expected loss of revenue, Republicans have looked to cut spending in a wide range of programmes, including food subsidies and healthcare for lower-income Americans.

The vote came on Tuesday afternoon, concluding a whirlwind voting session on Capitol Hill.

Democrats had attempted to flex their muscles by putting up procedural hurdles against the bill to delay its passage.

That included requiring Senate clerks to read all of the bill’s 940 pages aloud, and launching a lengthy debate process over proposed amendments in what is called a “vote-a-rama”.

• A look at the key items in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
• ‘Our food doesn’t even last the month’ – Americans brace for Trump’s welfare cuts

It is now up to House Republicans to approve the changes made by the Senate before the president can sign the bill into law.

But its fate remains uncertain, as it has been opposed from different angles and Republicans can only afford to lose three votes.

A group of fiscal conservative hawks have signalled their unhappiness with how much the Senate proposal could add to the US national deficit – which refers to the difference between what the government spends and what it raises in revenue each year.

According to the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, the Senate proposal could add $650bn (£472bn) to the deficit each year. “That’s not fiscal responsibility,” caucus members said in a social media post on Monday. “It’s not what we agreed to.”

Meanwhile, other House Republicans are concerned that the Senate legislation would make steeper cuts to the Medicaid health insurance programme for lower-income Americans than they had approved.

Democrats in both chambers of Congress, too, have criticised the proposed welfare cuts.

Republicans in the House of Representatives will be working against a previously-imposed 4 July deadline from the president.

“I’d love to do July 4th but I think it’s very hard to do July 4th…. I would say maybe July 4th or somewhere around there,” Trump told reporters as he was departing the White House for Florida.

Among the other critics of the plans are tech billionaire Elon Musk, who helped Trump to win the White House last year and served as Trump’s cost-cutting tsar.

Musk is now actively working to spoil the chances of survival for Trump’s signature legislation, and has threatened to set up a new political party if the bill clears Congress.

On Monday, he threatened to back challengers to Republicans who vote for it.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote on X.

The bill’s severe reductions to government support for renewable energy and electric vehicles could hurt the bottom line for a company where Musk made some of his fortune, Tesla, as well.

Spain and England have recorded their hottest June ever, as scorching temperatures continue to grip Europe.

Spain’s weather service Aemet said the “extremely hot” June – with an average temperature of 23.6C (74.5F) – “has pulverised records”, surpassing the normal average for July and August.

In England, the Met Office said June’s mean temperature of 16.9C set a new record for that month, while the UK as a whole saw its second warmest June since records began in 1884.

Mainland Portugal experienced a record daily temperature for June of 46.6C. The monthly average data is yet to be released.

Wildfires in Turkey forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, while two people died in Italy following separate heat-related deaths.

Overnight, on the first day of July, Aemet said several places across the Iberian peninsula had topped 43C, but added a respite in temperatures was on its way from Thursday.

Night-time temperatures recorded overnight into Tuesday hit 28C in Seville and 27C in Barcelona.

Later on Tuesday, the UK recorded 34.7C in St James’s Park in London, making it the hottest day of the year so far.

On Monday, the highest daily UK temperature was recorded at Heathrow Airport in London at 33.1C. Meanwhile, Wimbledon recorded a temperature of 32.9C, the tennis tournament’s hottest opening day on record.

According to provisional data, the Met Office said the UK’s mean temperature of 15.2C for June was the second highest on record for that month.

It was “only surpassed by June 2023, which recorded 15.8C”, the agency said.

UK sees hottest day of the year: Live updates

In Turkey, rescuers earlier evacuated more than 50,000 people – mostly from the western province of Izmir – as firefighters continued to put out hundreds of wildfires that had broken out in recent days.

Fires have also swept through parts of Bilecik, Hatay, Sakarya, and Manisa provinces.

Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said over the past three days, emergency teams had responded to 263 wildfires nationwide.

In France, the heatwave continued across much of the country on Tuesday – a day after many cities experienced their hottest night and day on record for June.

At Paris Orly airport, a reading of 37.6C was recorded a short time ago.

The top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris has been closed because of the intense European heatwave; while Climate Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher called it an “unprecedented” situation.

For first time in five years the Paris region has activated a red alert – the highest extreme heat warning – along with 15 other French regions.

As many as 1,896 schools and colleges in France were closed as of lunchtime on Tuesday because of the heat.

The establishments were all in departments in the country covered by the red alert.

A reading of 46.6 C (115.9F) was registered in Mora, Portugal, about 60 miles east of Lisbon on Sunday, the country’s meteorological agency IPMA reported.

It was a record reading for mainland Portugal.

In Italy, the Tuscany region has seen hospital admissions rise by 20%, according to local reports.

Italians in 21 out of the 27 cities have been subjected to the highest heat alert and 13 regions, including Lombardy and Emilia, have been advised not to venture outside during the hottest periods of the day.

In Lombardy, working outdoors has been banned from 12:30 to 16:00 on hot days on building sites, roads and farms until September.

In Florence, central Italy, meteorologists registered a temperature of 38.9C on Tuesday, while the southern city of Cagliari was baking in 38.6C.

The temperatures are expected to get even higher later on Tuesday.

Temperatures in Greece have been approaching 40C for several days and wildfires hit several coastal towns near the capital Athens destroying homes and forcing people to evacuate.

In Germany, the country’s meteorological service warned that temperatures could reach almost 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday – further potentially record-breaking temperatures.

The heatwave lowered levels in the Rhine River – a major shipping route – limiting the amount cargo ships can transport and raising freighting costs.

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

Heatwaves are seen as a serious health hazard, and they are also impacting the environment.

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.

The UN’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, warned on Monday that the heatwave highlighted the need for climate adaptation – moving away from practices and energy sources, such as fossil fuels, which are the main cause of climate change.

“Rising temperatures, rising seas, floods, droughts, and wildfires threaten our rights to life, to health, to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, and much more,” he told the UN’s Human Rights Council.

Heatwaves are becoming more common due to human-caused climate change, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Extreme hot weather will happen more often – and become even more intense – as the planet continues to warm, it has said.

Richard Allan, Professor of Climate Science at the University of Reading in the UK, explained that rising greenhouse gas levels are making it harder for the planet to lose excess heat.

“The warmer, thirstier atmosphere is more effective at drying soils, meaning heatwaves are intensifying, with moderate heat events now becoming extreme.”

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.

US President Donald Trump has suggested that Doge, the cost-cutting agency Elon Musk helped set up, could be used to hurt the billionaire’s companies – as the former allies continue their public dispute over Trump’s budget plans.

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far,” he wrote on social media. “Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

The tech billionaire wrote in reply: “I am literally saying CUT IT ALL. Now.”

Musk has repeatedly criticised Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill”, suggesting that it undermines the work he undertook to cut government spending.

A row between Trump and Musk first blew up last month, with the pair trading barbs publicly before Musk backtracked on some of his attacks.

Congress is currently voting on Trump’s bill. The president’s Republican Party holds majorities in both chambers, though some lawmakers in the party have voted against it – siding with opposition Democrats.

The proposed legislation includes increased spending for border security, defence and energy production that would be partially offset by controversial cuts to healthcare and food-support programmes.

• A look at the key items in Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
• Senate Republicans struggle to push Trump’s budget bill over finish line
• Trump and Musk: The 10 days that unravelled their relationship

Musk was in charge of Doge (the Department of Government Efficiency), which has been tasked with finding ways of cutting government spending, until his acrimonious White House departure over the “big, beautiful bill”.

Trump has suggested that the dissent from the Tesla and SpaceX owner relates to a part of his bill that would remove incentives to buy electric vehicles, such as those Musk produces.

The president has also threatened to remove government subsidies from which Musk’s companies benefit.

“He’s upset that he’s losing his EV mandate, he’s very upset, he could lose a lot more than that, I can tell you that,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning.

“Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. He gets a lot of subsidies,” he added.

Musk, however, has argued he is ideologically committed to cutting government spending. If passed, Trump’s bill would add an estimated $3.3tn (£2.4tn) to the national debt.

Among a string of posts on his social media platform X while voting took place, Musk shared a graph showing US debt over time with the caption: “When are they going to flatten this curve?”

In another, he wrote: “Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!”

Musk said he would make sure these lawmakers lost their primary races next year. The billionaire businessman – who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help Trump’s re-election bid last year – has even touted the idea establishing a new party to run against both Republicans and Democrats.

In an apparent response to Trump’s claim about EV incentives, Musk reposted a clip from an interview in which he said removing them would see Tesla’s “competitive position would improve significantly”.

Hundreds of followers of the Dalai Lama have gathered in northern India for the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader’s 90th birthday, amid growing anticipation that he could give a clue about his eventual successor.

The Dalai Lama is due to release a video message and a statement on Wednesday, his office has told the BBC, although there’s no clarity on what he will say.

The Dalai Lama fled across the border to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet.

He set up a government-in-exile in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala and has been seen as an alternative source of power for those who resent Beijing’s tight control of Tibet.

The milestone birthday on Sunday will be preceded by the three-day 15th Tibetan Religious Conference, starting on Wednesday morning. Celebrations began on Monday – the Dalai Lama’s birthday according to the Tibetan lunar calendar.

Celebrations will be attended by more than 7,000 guests, including a number of Indian ministers. On Monday, photos showed the Dalai Lama blessing Hollywood actor Richard Gere, a long-time follower.

The Dalai Lama, who had earlier said he would release details about his succession around his 90th birthday, told a gathering on Monday that “there will be some kind of a framework within which we can talk about the continuation of the institution of the Dalai Lamas”. He did not elaborate.

In the past, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism has been torn between whether to continue with the 600-year-old institution or not. A few years ago, he said his successor might be a girl, or that there might be no successor at all.

But in recent years, he has also said that if there’s widespread support among Tibetans-in-exile for the post – which there is – then it would continue and his office would choose a successor.

He has always insisted that his successor would be born outside China, something that has angered Beijing.

Even though the Dalai Lama has always advocated a “middle way” to resolve the status of Tibet – genuine self-rule within China – Beijing regards him as a separatist. It says the standard of living of people in Tibet has greatly improved under its rule.

Youdon Aukatsang, an MP in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, said he did not expect “a clear-cut procedure would be laid down” this week.

“I think everyone is kind of anticipating some kind of revelation from His Holiness about his reincarnation. But I do not expect a very specific kind of revelation,” he told the BBC.

The present Dalai Lama, he said, “is a binding and unifying force for the Tibetan movement” and some Tibetans feel somebody should be recognised soon as his successor because they worry that there may be an impact on the community and the movement going forward.

“The Dalai Lama institution is very important for the Tibetan struggle. It’s also a symbol of Tibetan identity and a beacon of our spiritual refuge. That will continue. I think there will be a vacuum, but we have to continue, we don’t have a choice,” he said.

“We have very, very big shoes to fill but we have to fill them, right? I think many people will have to get into that role, one person will not be enough.”

Experts, however, say if he does announce a successor, then China is also expected to name its own Dalai Lama.

“China will argue that only the Communist Party of China based in Beijing has the authority to find the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama,” Dibyesh Anand, professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, told the BBC.

“After a period of a few months or a few years, they will have their own proteges identify a small boy as the next Dalai Lama and impose that. Of course, a majority of Tibetans are going to reject it and the majority of people in the world are going to make fun of it. But remember China has immense authority in terms of resources so they will try to impose that.”

Mr Aukatsang says that “despite all these years of trying to control the hearts and minds of Tibetan people inside Tibet”, Beijing has “completely failed”.

A Dalai Lama chosen by China, he says, “will not be recognised, not only by the Tibetans but the world will not recognise it because China doesn’t have the legitimacy to find the future Dalai Lama”.

“We are concerned but we know that irrespective of our concern, China will come up with their own Dalai Lama, we will call it the Chinese-recognised Dalai Lama. I am not worried that Dalai Lama will have any credibility in the Tibetan world or the Buddhist world.”

Tibetan Buddhists believe that their senior monks are reincarnated and a Dalai Lama is chosen by Buddhist officials if they are convinced that the one they are choosing harbours the soul of his predecessor.

The present – 14th – Dalai Lama was born on 6 July 1935 in a small Tibetan village in a farmer family and was named Lhamo Dhondub. When he was two years old, a search party of Buddhist officials recognised him as the reincarnation of the 13 previous Dalai Lamas.

According to his official biography, the clinching evidence came when the officials showed him a number of possessions that had belonged to his predecessor. The toddler correctly identified items belonging to the 13th Dalai Lama saying, “It’s mine. It’s mine”.

Enthroned before he turned four, he was educated at a Tibetan monastery and has a doctorate of Buddhist philosophy.

But in 1950, when he was 15, the troops of Mao Zedong’s newly-installed Communist government marched into Tibet. A year later, China drew up a 17-point agreement legitimising Tibet’s incorporation into China.

A Tibetan revolt in 1959, seeking an end to Chinese rule, was crushed and thousands of protesters were killed.

The Dalai Lama fled to India on foot along with 10,000 followers and settled in Dharamsala, running a government-in-exile from there. In 2011, he gave up his political role but remains Tibetan Buddhism’s top spiritual leader.

Some of those who fled alongside him still dream of going home to Tibet.

“My faith is that I will return to Tibet. If not me, my younger generations will definitely return,” said Lobsang Choedon, 84, who attended Monday’s celebrations.

Choedon’s daughter and grandchildren were all born – and have spent their entire lives – in India. Nevertheless, her 15-year-old grandson Ngawang Lhundup feels deeply connected to his ancestral homeland.

He’s been listening to stories about Tibet since he was a child and says he would consider visiting Tibet even though it’s under Chinese rule.

“But if it was free from the Chinese invasion, I would be more than delighted to go back to Tibet.”

Three people have been killed and 45 injured following an attack by Ukraine on a factory in the city of Izhevsk – more than 1,000km (620 miles) from the border – Russian authorities say.

Of those injured six had suffered serious injuries, the governor of Udmurtia Aleksandr Brechalov said, adding he had briefed President Vladimir Putin on the attack. A state of emergency was later declared in the region.

Drones reportedly targeted the Kupol Electromechanical Plant – a military factory which is said to produce Tor surface-to-air missile systems and radar stations.

The plant also specialises in the production of Osa air defence systems and has developed drones, according to Ukrainian media.

An Ukrainian official confirmed to BBC Ukraine that two long-range drones operated by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) struck the Kupol plant from a distance of around 1,300 km (807 miles).

“Each such special operation reduces the enemy’s offensive potential, disrupts military production chains and demonstrates that even deep in Russia’s rear, there are no safe zones for its military infrastructure,” the source said in comments reported by Ukrainian media.

A video posted on social media and verified by the BBC showed an explosion on the roof of a building, followed by a large plume of black smoke rising over a factory-type chimney.

Russia’s civil aviation regulator Rosaviatsia imposed restrictions on operations at Izhevsk airport, before lifting them a few hours later.

This is second Ukrainian drone attack on the Kupol factory since November – although that strike had not resulted in any casualties.

For its part, Moscow continues to carry out attacks in Ukraine. At the weekend Russia launched a record 537 drones and missiles on various locations across the country, including Kyiv and the western city of Lviv.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky granted the Hero of Ukraine award posthumously to an F-16 pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Maksym Ustymenko, who was killed while trying to repel the aerial attack.

In a separate development on Tuesday, President Putin and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron held their first phone talks in more than two years.

Macron “emphasised France’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”, said a statement from his office.

The French leader also called for a ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia “for a solid and lasting settlement of the conflict”, the French statement said.

Meanwhile, a Kremlin statement said that Putin “reminded that the Ukrainian conflict is a direct consequence of the policy of Western states, who for many years ignored Russia’s security interests”.

Any peace settlement must be “comprehensive and long-term” and should eliminate “the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis and be based on new territorial realities”, the Russian statement said.

Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed in 2014.

On the battlefield, while Russia’s advance on the Sumy region seems to have stalled, Moscow appears to be targeting the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region. Unconfirmed reports in Russian media suggested Moscow’s forces took control of the first village in the region.

Two rounds of talks aimed at agreeing a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow have taken place at the behest of Donald Trump since May, but have failed to produce tangible results.

Last week, Putin said Russia was ready to hold a new round of peace negotiations although he said that the Russian and Ukrainian peace proposals were “absolutely contradictory”.

On Monday, Zelensky again expressed scepticism of Putin’s intentions. “Putin has already stolen practically half a year from diplomacy… on top of the entire duration of this war,” the Ukrainian leader said.

“Russia is not changing its plans and is not looking for a way out of this war. On the contrary, they are preparing for new operations, including on the territory of European countries.”

US senior envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg echoed this on Monday, when he wrote on X that Russia could not “continue to stall for time while it bombs civilian targets in Ukraine”.

Moscow swiftly pushed back, saying it was not “interested in stalling anything” and thanking the US for its support.

After nearly 24 hours of debate – starting yesterday morning and stretching overnight – the US Senate approved Donald Trump’s massive tax-cut and spending bill

Passing by the narrowest of margins, the bill, as it stood on Tuesday, contained key parts of the agenda he campaigned on last year.

Trump celebrated its passage during a visit to a migrant detention facility in Florida. “It’s a great bill,” he said. “There is something for everyone.”

But in fact, while lawmakers may have gotten “something” they wanted, they likely faced concessions to achieve that – and ultimately to push the bill through the House on Tuesday.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said she worked hard to ensure the bill provided for her state and ultimately voted for it, but was still unhappy. She called the process “rushed”.

“My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognise that we’re not there yet,” she told reporters just outside the Senate floor, moments after the vote.

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In a game of political ping-pong, the bill now returns to the House, which passed its version of the bill weeks ago. If the narrow Republican majority in that chamber gives final approval, perhaps as early as Wednesday, the legislation can be presented to the president for his signature.

But it may be a tough pill for some House Republicans to swallow.

It includes massive new funding -$70bn – for Trump’s immigration priorities. It boosts defence spending and makes the tax cuts Republicans passed in Trump’s first term permanent. To offset this loss, it cuts funding for Biden-era environmental programmes and Medicaid, the health insurance programme for low-income Americans.

The financial ledger isn’t nearly balanced, however, as the package adds more than $3tn to the federal debt and raises the US borrowing authority by $5tn.

Fiscal hard-liners have complained that the Senate watered down some of their original budget cuts.

The right-wing House Freedom Caucus said the Senate proposal could add $650bn (£472bn) to the deficit each year. “It’s not what we agreed to,” caucus members said in a social media post on Monday.

And centrists still are concerned about cuts in the bill, including reductions in federal payments covering health insurance for low-income Americans.

The original House version was a balancing act that kept the various factions within the Republican Party just satisfied enough to vote yes. The Senate version now landing back in their laps may disrupt that balance.

But the pressure on House Republicans to sign off on what Trump has called his “big, beautiful bill” will be enormous.

The president has said he views the legislation as an integral part of his political legacy – a lasting change in government policy that, unlike executive orders, a future president cannot easily undo.

Three former senior staff at the hospital where nurse Lucy Letby murdered seven babies and attempted to kill seven others have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

They worked on the senior leadership team at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016 and were bailed after being questioned on Monday.

The arrests came after an investigation into potential corporate manslaughter at the hospital was opened in 2023, and then widened in March this year to include gross negligence manslaughter.

Letby, 35, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole life prison sentences after targeting babies at the hospital’s neonatal unit between June 2015 and June 2016.

She was convicted of making two attempts to kill one of the babies.

Cheshire Police said the arrests “did not impact on the convictions of Lucy Letby for multiple offences of murder and attempted murder”.

Det Supt Paul Hughes said the corporate manslaughter element of the investigation focused on the senior leadership of the hospital and its decision-making, “to determine whether any criminality has taken place concerning the response to the increased levels of fatalities”.

He said gross negligence manslaughter was a separate offence and “focuses on the grossly negligent action or inaction of individuals”.

Corporate manslaughter can carry an unlimited fine for an organisation but no jail sentence for any individual, whereas gross negligence manslaughter can result in a life sentence for a person convicted of it.

The three people arrested have not been named by police, in line with normal police procedure.

Cheshire Police said it was also carrying out a separate investigation into deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies in Chester and in the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where Letby trained for periods, going back to 2012.

Det Supt Hughes said there were “no set timescales” for the manslaughter investigations.

Letby has maintained her innocence and her barrister, Mark McDonald, submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) earlier this year.

The application included the findings of 14 medical experts who agreed to re-examine the evidence heard at trial and concluded Letby had not harmed any babies.

The CCRC, which has the power to refer cases back to the Court of Appeal, said it was reviewing the application and could give no timescale on when a decision would be reached.

Mr McDonald said the news of the arrests had come at a “very sensitive” time in his client’s case.

“Despite this the concerns many have raised will not go away, and we will continue to publicly discuss them,” he said.

He added that “internationally renowned experts” had concluded that no babies were murdered and called for a new public inquiry into “failings” in neonatal and paediatric care at the Countess of Chester.

Last month former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt called for an “urgent re-examination” of Letby’s case due to what he called “serious and credible” questions raised by the expert panel.

His Conservative Party colleague, Sir David Davis, has also been supportive of attempts to have Letby’s case looked at again.

But lawyers for the families of Letby’s victims described the expert panel’s conclusions as “full of analytical holes” and “a rehash” of the defence case.

A public inquiry into the circumstances around Letby’s offending is also due to publish its findings in early 2026.

The Thirwall Inquiry heard evidence from the senior leadership team at the hospital about when concerns were raised about a rise in the deaths of babies on the neonatal unit.

The UK experienced its hottest day of the year on Tuesday as a heatwave which has gripped much of England this week reached its peak.

St James’s Park in London saw England’s top temperature of 34.7C (94.4F), while parts of Essex and Kent also topped 33C.

Temperatures are expected to cool down across the UK on Wednesday.

It comes as the Met Office said last month was the warmest June on record in England, and second warmest in the UK since records began in 1884, according to provisional figures.

In Wales, Tuesday’s top temperature was 25.8 in Usk.

But conditions for most people living north of the Midlands were cool and cloudy on Tuesday, with Scotland’s high 19.7 in Drumnadrochit and Northern Ireland’s 20.5 in Killowen.

Forecasters say temperatures in the south-east will fall to the mid-20s on Wednesday, with some heavy showers across the far south-east of England, north-east England and eastern Scotland.

Flooding alerts have been issued for parts of northern and central Scotland.

However, those in the south-east will still face a warm Tuesday night.

Several amber heat health alerts issued by the UK Health Security Agency remain in place until Wednesday morning for Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, London and both south England regions.

It came as Europe remained gripped by an intense heatwave, with France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and the Balkans all experiencing scorching heat in recent days.

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The average temperature across England was 16.9C throughout June and 15.2C for the UK, according to the Met Office.

That tops June 2023, when the mean temperature was 16.7C – and it comes after the Met Office previously confirmed this spring was the warmest ever.

Little significant heat-related disruption was reported on Tuesday – but in the Scottish Highlands and neighbouring Moray, firefighters tackled moorland wildfires for a fourth day in a row.

This week marked the second UK heatwave of 2025. It lasted six days for parts of Yorkshire and the Humber, and five for people in central and eastern England.

An official heatwave is declared when locations reach a certain temperature for three consecutive days.

The thresholds vary from 25C to 28C in different parts of the country.

• Heatwaves in June more likely due to climate change

While this heatwave is a result of a large area of high pressure getting “stuck” over Europe – dubbed a “heat dome” by some – high temperatures are becoming increasingly common in the UK.

Scientists have emphasised the role of climate change in these sizzling summers, saying that heatwaves will likely become more frequent and hotter in the future.

A British teenager held in prison in Georgia was “tortured” into smuggling drugs, she told a pre-trial hearing as she was refused bail.

Bella Culley, 19, from Billingham, Teesside, appeared at Tbilisi City Court and pleaded not guilty to charges of possession and trafficking a large amount of illegal drugs.

Mr Malkhaz Salakaia, representing Miss Culley, said she had been threatened with a hot iron to coerce her into travelling with the suitcase filled with drugs.

Miss Culley stood in front of the judge in the courtroom and showed her right wrist which had a scar on it.

Speaking in court, the 19-year-old said: “I did not want to do this. I was forced to do this through torture.

“I just wanted to travel. I am a good person. I am a student at university. I am a clean person. I don’t do drugs.”

Miss Culley initially went missing in Thailand before being arrested in Tbilisi International Airport on 10 May.

Mr Salakaia, who does not speak English and specialises in juvenile law, said the teenager was not aware of what was in her suitcase.

Addressing the court, Mr Salakaia said the teenager tried to inform customs officers in Thailand “but nobody paid attention”.

“She was instructed to fly to Georgia – she did not even know where Georgia was located geographically.”

He also told the court that Miss Culley was 18 weeks pregnant.

Her family were ready to pay 50,000 georgian lari for bail money to get her out of prison, he said.

Miss Culley had been detained for 52 days before trial while the prosecution investigated where the 12kg (26lbs) of marijuana and 2kg (4.4lbs) of hashish found in a travel bag came from, and whether she was planning on handing it over to someone else.

Judge Lela Kalichenko remanded her into custody until the next court hearing scheduled for 10 July.

Miss Culley’s father, aunt and grandfather were all in attendance at the small courtroom in Tbilisi.

Georgian Police said officers had seized marijuana and the narcotic drug hashish in a travel bag at Tbilisi International Airport.

The BBC understands Miss Culley arrived in Tbilisi on a flight from Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, on 10 May.

The BBC has been told the British Embassy has advised the teenager’s family not to speak to the press.

A Georgian police spokesperson said the arrest was the result of a joint operation between multiple departments and, if she was found guilty, Miss Culley could face up to 20 years in jail or life imprisonment.