Kyiv has warned that an interruption of US weapons shipments will encourage Russia to prolong the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

On Tuesday the White House said that it had cut off some weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

The decision was taken “to put America’s interests first” following a Department of Defense review of US “military support and assistance to other countries”, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement that “any delay or procrastination in supporting Ukraine’s defense capabilities would only encourage the aggressor to continue war and terror, rather than seek peace.”

It particularly emphasised the need for Kyiv to strengthen its air defences – as Russia continues to pummel the country with missiles and drones on a near-nightly basis.

A Kyiv-based US diplomat was invited to the foreign ministry for talks on Wednesday.

However, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said it had not received any official notification from the US about the “suspension or revision” of the weapons deliveries, and urged people not to speculate on the basis of partial information.

But in a statement the defence ministry also said that the path to ending the war was “through consistent and joint pressure on the aggressor”.

At the weekend Ukraine endured its biggest aerial attack since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with more than 500 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles launched at its cities.

US officials did not immediately say which shipments were being halted.

According to US broadcaster NBC the weapons being delayed could include Patriot interceptors, Howitzer munitions, missiles and grenade launchers.

The US has sent tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, leading some in the Trump administration to voice concerns that US stockpiles are too low.

The Kremlin, for its part, welcomed news of the reduction in weapons shipments, saying reducing the flow of weapons to Kyiv will help end the conflict faster.

“The fewer the number of weapons that are delivered to Ukraine, the closer the end of the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Fedir Venislavskyi, an MP for Ukraine’s ruling party, said the decision was “painful, and against the background of the terrorist attacks which Russia commits against Ukraine… it’s a very unpleasant situation.”

A Ukrainian military source quoted by AFP news agency said that Kyiv was “seriously dependent on American arms supplies, although Europe is doing its best, but it will be difficult for us without American ammunition.”

Ukraine’s European allies have spent billions in military aid over the last three and a half years.

However, military support for Kyiv is not endorsed by everyone on the political spectrum.

The Czech President and former Chair of NATO’s Military Committee, Petr Pavel, has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine but told BBC Russian that he could “not guarantee” continued ammunition support for Kyiv, as that was dependent on the result of the upcoming Czech elections.

“I don’t know what will be the priorities of a new government,” he said.

The Pentagon’s move is based on concerns that US military stockpiles are falling too low, a source told CBS News, although Anna Kelly stressed that “the strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran”.

Separately, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby said in a statement that the defense department “continues to provide the President with robust options to continue military aid to Ukraine”.

However, he added “the Department is rigorously examining and adapting its approach to achieving this objective while also preserving US forces’ readiness for Administration defense priorities.”

The pause comes less than a week after President Donald Trump discussed air defences with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at the Nato summit in the Netherlands.

Trump said US officials “are going to see if we can make some of them available” when asked by the BBC about providing extra Patriot anti-missile systems to Ukraine.

Referring to his conversation with Zelensky, Trump said: “We had a little rough times sometimes, but he couldn’t have been nicer.”

The two had a heated confrontation in the Oval Office in March this year. Afterwards, Trump said he was pausing military aid to Ukraine that had been earmarked by the previous Biden administration. Intelligence sharing with Ukraine was also suspended.

But both pauses were subsequently lifted.

In late April, the US and Ukraine signed a deal that would give the US access to Ukraine’s mineral reserves in exchange for military assistance.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday – the first time in over two-and-a-half years.

They spoke on the phone for more than two hours, Macron’s office said, adding that the French president had urged a ceasefire in Ukraine and for talks to start on a “solid and lasting settlement of the conflict”.

The Kremlin said Putin had “reminded Macron” that the West’s policy was to blame for the war, because it had “for many years ignored Russia’s security interests”.

Last month Russia’s long-time leader told a forum in St Petersburg that he saw Russians and Ukrainians as one people and “in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours”.

Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea peninsula annexed in 2014.

Russia has made slow, grinding advances in Ukraine in recent months and claimed full control of the eastern Luhansk region this week. It has also claimed to have seized territory in the south eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday a Ukrainian attack killed three people at a Russian arms production factory for making drones and radars in Izhevsk, more than 1,000km (620 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

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From Somalia to mainland Europe, the past two years have seen some of the most ravaging droughts in recorded history, made worse by climate change, according to a UN-backed report.

Describing drought as a “silent killer” which “creeps in, drains resources, and devastates lives in slow motion” the report said it had exacerbated issues like poverty and ecosystem collapse.

The report highlighted impacts in Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America and Southeast Asia, including an estimated 4.4 million people in Somalia facing crisis-level food insecurity at the beginning of this year.

It recommends governments prepare for a “new normal” with measures including stronger early warning systems.

“This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I’ve ever seen,” said co-author Dr Mark Svoboda, founding director of the US National Drought Mitigation Center.

“This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on.”

The Drought Hotspots Around the World report identifies the most severely impacted regions from 2023 to 2025.

During this time, the warming effects of climate change were made worse by an El Niño, a natural climate phenomenon that affects global weather patterns.

An El Niño happens when surface waters in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean become unusually warm.

It often leads to drier conditions in regions such as southern Africa, parts of south-east Asia, northern South America, and south-east Australia.

Pressure from humans, for example the use of irrigation in agriculture, has also put a strain on water resources.

By January 2023, the worst drought in 70 years had hit the Horn of Africa, coming from years of failed rainy seasons in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

This followed the deaths of an estimated 43,000 people in Somalia in 2022 from drought-linked hunger.

African wildlife was also affected, with hippos in Botswana stranded in dry riverbeds, and elephants culled in Zimbabwe and Namibia to feed hungry communities and prevent overgrazing.

The report highlights how drought hits the world’s most vulnerable people including women hardest, with often far-reaching impacts on society.

Forced child marriages more than doubled in four regions of Eastern Africa hit hardest by drought, as families scrambled to secure dowries to survive, it noted.

“The coping mechanisms we saw during this drought grew increasingly desperate,” said lead author Paula Guastello. “Girls pulled from school and forced into marriage, hospitals going dark, and families digging holes in dry riverbeds just to find contaminated water – these are signs of severe crisis.”

While low- to middle-income countries bore the brunt of the devastation, none could afford to be complacent, the report says, noting how two years of drought and record heat cut Spain’s olive crop in half.

In the Amazon basin, record low water levels killed fish and put endangered dolphins more at risk as well as hitting drinking water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people.

And drought even had an effect on world trade – between October 2023 and January 2024, water levels fell so much in the Panama Canal that daily ship transits dropped from 38 to 24.

“Drought is not just a weather event – it can be a social, economic, and environmental emergency,” said report co-author Dr Kelly Helm Smith.

“The question is not whether this will happen again, but whether we will be better prepared next time.”

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The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has officially closed its doors after President Donald Trump gradually dismantled the agency over its allegedly wasteful spending.

More than 80% of all the agency’s programmes were cancelled as of March, and on Tuesday the remainder were formally absorbed by the state department.

The shuttering of USAID – which administered aid for the US government, the world’s largest such provider – has been newly criticised by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush.

These aid cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to a warning published by researchers in the Lancet medical journal.

The authors of the Lancet report called the numbers “staggering”, and projected that a third of those at risk of premature deaths were children.

A state department official said the study used “incorrect assumptions” and insisted that the US would continue to administer aid in a “more efficient” way, the AFP news agency reported.

Founded in 1961, USAID previously employed some 10,000 people, two-thirds of whom worked overseas, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The controversial cuts began early in Trump’s second term, when billionaire and former presidential adviser Elon Musk was tasked with shrinking the federal workforce.

The move was widely condemned by humanitarian organisations around the world.

Among the programmes that were curbed were efforts to provide prosthetic limbs to soldiers injured in Ukraine, to clear landmines in various countries, and to contain the spread of Ebola in Africa.

On Wednesday morning, the agency’s website continued to display a message saying that all USAID direct-hire personnel globally had been placed on administrative leave from 23 February.

• What is USAID and why is Trump closing it down?
• How a US freeze upended global aid in a matter of days
• ‘People will starve’ because of US aid cut to Sudan
• Inside an Islamic State camp shaken by US aid cuts

Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously said that the remaining 1,000 programmes after the cuts would be administered under his department.

“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end,” he added on Tuesday.

“Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests,” he wrote in a post on Substack.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants overseas spending to be closely aligned with his “America First” approach.

Bush and Obama delivered their messages of condemnation in a video conference they hosted with U2 singer Bono for thousands of members the USAID community.

Bush, a fellow member of Trump’s Republican Party, focused on the impact of cuts to an AIDS and HIV programme that was started by his administration and subsequently credited with saving 25 million lives.

“You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work – and that is your good heart,” Bush told USAID workers in a recorded statement, according to US media. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”

Meanwhile Obama, a member of the opposition Democratic Party, affirmed the work that USAID employees had already done.

“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy. Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world,” Obama was quoted as saying.

Long-time humanitarian advocate Bono spoke about the millions of people who he said could die because of the cuts.

“They called you crooks, when you were the best of us,” he told attendees of the video conference.

USAID was seen as integral to the global aid system. After Trump’s cuts were announced, other countries followed suit with their own reductions – including the UK, France and Germany.

Last month, the United Nations said it was dealing with “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector”.

Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has confirmed he will have a successor, putting to rest speculation over whether the 600-year-old institution will end when he dies.

In a video message keenly-awaited by his followers, he said only the trust that he founded could appoint his successor and “no-one else has any authority to interfere in this matter”.

According to Tibetan tradition, Dalai Lamas are “reincarnated” after they die. China annexed Tibet in 1950 and the current Dalai Lama lives in exile in India, making succession a highly contentious issue.

Beijing rejected the statement, saying his successor would be from inside China and must be approved by the government.

Hundreds of followers gathered on Wednesday to hear the long-awaited announcement in the Indian town of Dharamshala where the Dalai Lama lives.

The Dalai Lama Library and Archive centre, where the video message was broadcast, resembled a sea of maroon with monks from all over the world in attendance.

“I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,” the Dalai Lama’s statement said.

He reiterated that “the Gaden Phodrang Trust, the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama… should accordingly carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition”.

Dharamshala is holding the Dalai Lama’s milestone 90th birthday celebrations which began on Monday – his birthday according to the Tibetan lunar calendar – and will conclude on 6 July, his official birthday.

Celebrations will be attended by more than 7,000 guests, including a number of Indian ministers. Hollywood actor Richard Gere, a long-time follower, is also taking part.

In the past, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism had been torn between whether to continue with the post of Dalai Lama 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 had also said that if there was 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 must be born outside China and his reiteration of the same on Wednesday did not go down well with Beijing.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation must comply with Chinese laws and regulations as well as “religious rituals and historical conventions” and would need to be approved by 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 and denies suppressing their human rights and freedom of expression.

The Dalai Lama’s message “affirming that the continuation of the institution” has been welcomed by his followers.

Tsayang Gyatso, a 40-year-old businessman, said that for most Tibetans, the announcement is “a great relief and a moment of happiness”.

“I always had a belief that the reincarnation will come. But having heard it from His Holiness, I feel elated,” he told the BBC in Dharamshala.

Mr Gyatso, who had travelled from Delhi, said he felt “blessed to be here in person to witness His Holiness’s birthday”.

He said there was “a lot of propaganda from China on the appointment of the next Dalai Lama” which made him fear that the appointment process could be corrupted “but all that has been put to rest by His Holiness’s announcement”.

Robert Barnett, a Tibet scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, told the BBC that the Dalai Lama’s “message is indirect signalling” to China.

“He’s signalling two things here. One is he’s going to decide on his reincarnation, not China. And the other is he’s showing China that he’s made this decision through a kind of popular – almost democratic – process of asking the community whether they want his institution to continue.”

That’s a signal to China that his legitimacy is based on consent and not on force, Prof Barnett said.

Experts, however, say China is also expected to name its own Dalai Lama.

Dibyesh Anand, professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, said, “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.”

Youdon Aukatsang, an MP in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, told the BBC 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, she 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.”

Israel has agreed to the “necessary conditions” to finalise a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, US President Donald Trump has said.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that during the proposed ceasefire the US would “work with all parties to end the War”. He did not provide details on what the ceasefire would entail.

“The Qataris and Egyptians, who have worked very hard to help bring Peace, will deliver this final proposal. I hope… that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE,” Trump wrote.

Israel has not confirmed it agreed to the conditions of a deal. A Hamas official told the BBC the group is “ready and serious” to reach an agreement if it ends the war.

Hamas is “prepared to agree to any proposal if the requirements for ending the war are clearly met or if they lead to its complete end,” said Taher al-Nunu.

In a statement the group said it was aiming to reach an agreement that “guarantees an end to the aggression, the withdrawal [of Israeli forces], and urgent relief for our people in the Gaza Strip”.

Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar posted on X that there is majority support in the government “for a framework to release hostages,” and this opportunity “must not be missed.”

For Israel, the key component of any deal will have to be the release of most, if not all, hostages still being held in Gaza.

Of the 50 or so hostages remaining in captivity, more than 20 are still thought to be alive and their plight has been at the forefront of regular demonstrations in Israel calling for an end to the war.

A recent Israeli newspaper poll suggested that a significant majority of Israelis wanted the war to end – but polling on Wednesday, from the Israel Democracy Institute, also suggested that most Israelis still did not trust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or his intentions.

Netanyahu has for months insisted on “complete victory” over Hamas before ending the war. It’s unclear if his position will now change under renewed pressure from Washington – and the answer could be pivotal to reaching a deal.

But on the Hamas side, optimism remains low.

A Palestinian official in Qatar’s capital Doha, who is familiar with the talks, told the BBC the situation was like “grinding without flour,” pointing to the lack of substance in the talks currently taking place with Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

According to a source, Hamas’s representative in Cairo Ghazi Hamad is leading discussions on behalf of the group in Egypt.

However, the Palestinian official said that no new proposals had been put forward by the mediators. Instead, efforts appear focused on recycling, reworking the existing proposals by US special envoy Steve Witkoff – a framework that falls short of key Palestinian demands.

The current draft does not include guarantees that the war will come to a permanent end after the ceasefire expires, nor does it ensure an Israeli military withdrawal to positions held before 19 January.

Trump’s announcement about a possible ceasefire comes before a meeting with Netanyahu scheduled for next week, in which the US president has said he would be “very firm”.

He earlier said he believed Netanyahu wanted to end hostilities in Gaza. “He wants to. I can tell you he wants to. I think we’ll have a deal next week,” Trump said.

But without a guarantee to end the war, Hamas may question the value of releasing all the hostages if the Israeli military is likely to resume bombing Gaza.

Another consideration before an agreement could theoretically be signed is Hamas’s demand for a partial Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza, at least for the duration of the ceasefire.

The international community is also likely to lobby hard for the resumption of full-scale UN-backed aid deliveries into Gaza.

Prior to Trump’s announcement, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told the BBC Israel was “absolutely” ready for a ceasefire.

Danon said Hamas was “playing hardball”.

“We are putting pressure on Hamas, and if they will not come to the table, the only option we will have to bring back the hostages, is to apply more military pressure.

“The war will end when the hostages are back home,” the Israeli envoy added.

Trump’s comments come shortly after Israel ordered evacuations in northern Gaza ahead of increased military action. At least 20 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a seafront cafe in Gaza City on Monday, according to medics and eyewitnesses.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed. At least 56,647 have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israeli military this week also said it was examining reports of civilians being “harmed” while approaching aid distribution centres in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday that as of 28 June, 408 people had been killed trying to reach aid at GHF aid sites.

More than 170 charities and other NGOs have called for the controversial group to be shut down. Organisations like Oxfam and Save the Children say Israeli forces “routinely” open fire on Palestinians seeking aid.

Israel denies this accusation and says the organisation is necessary to bypass Hamas interference in aid distribution.

In March, a previous ceasefire deal collapsed when Israel launched fresh strikes on Gaza. The Israeli military described the action as “pre-emptive strikes… based on Hamas’s readiness to execute terror attacks, build up force and re-arm”.

The previous ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas – which started on 19 January – was set up to have three stages, but did not make it past the first stage.

Stage two included establishing a permanent ceasefire, the return of remaining living hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

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Two people were found dead by firefighters tackling a blaze in Spain’s Catalonia region on Tuesday, as Europe endures scorching temperatures during the ongoing heatwave.

In a statement, Catalan authorities said the bodies were found after firefighters extinguished a fire in the Torrefeta area, near the town of Coscó.

A 10-year-old American tourist visiting the Palace of Versailles died after falling ill, French media reported.

Earlier, the country’s ecological transition minister said two heat-related fatalities were recorded in France, adding more than 300 people were treated by firefighters on Tuesday.

The European continent is experiencing extremely high temperatures, a phenomenon that the UN’s climate agency said is becoming more frequent due to “human-induced climate change”.

As reported by French broadcaster TF1, a child aged 10 collapsed at the courtyard of the royal estate, in front of her parents, at around 18:00 local time on Tuesday. Despite efforts by the castle’s security team and emergency services, she was pronounced dead an hour later.

For Spain and England, the month of June marked their hottest June since records began. Spain’s weather service, Aemet, said last month’s average temperature of 23.6C (74.5F) “pulverised records”, surpassing the normal average for July and August.

Firefighters worked throughout Tuesday night in Catalonia to define the perimeter of both the Torrefeta and Florejacs fires, according to the region’s fire service.

In a statement on Wednesday, the fire service said their efforts were focused on establishing the perimeter, extinguishing fires in buildings, and ruling out any more victims.

As of 22:37 local time on Tuesday (21:37 BST), Catalonia’s emergency services established they were working in a perimeter of about 6,500 hectares, which is about 40km (25 miles) long.

According to reports by Spanish media, the two people killed in the fire in Coscó were the owner of a farm and a worker. The pair were aged 32 and 45.

Firefighters said they found the two bodies “lifeless” when tackling the blaze. Catalonia’s regional president, Salvador Illa, said he would be visiting the area.

Spanish forecaster Aemet predicts that Wednesday will see highs of 41C in Córdoba, a city in southern Spain.

France’s ecological transition minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, said the two deaths in her country were a result of “heat-related illness”.

It comes as France registered its second-hottest June since records began in 1900. June 2025 only trails behind June 2023, when the country also experienced intense heat.

Four departments in France remain on the red alert level for heat, the highest level. These include Aube, Cher, Loiret and Yonne, according to the country’s weather service, Meteo France.

The forecaster predicts some storms in parts of eastern France, with highs of 37C in Metz in the north-east.

In Italy, a 75-year-old man in the Budoni, Sardinia, died after falling sick because of the extreme heat. Another man, 60, became sick while on the beach of Lu Impostu in San Teodoro. Emergency services tried to save both men without success.

Temperatures in the region have exceeded 40C in recent days.

Also in the Mediterranean country, two construction workers in Tezze sul Brenta, in the province of Vicenza, were rushed to hospital at 15:30 local time on Tuesday because they fell ill as a result of the heat while working in a hole.

One of the workers is in a coma, according to reports by Italian news agency Ansa, who report that he was resuscitated, intubated and taken to San Bassiano hospital by helicopter.

Dimple Rana, heat and microclimate specialist at sustainable development consultancy Arup, told the BBC there is “a big link between heat-related impact and age”.

In the UK, for example, most heat-related deaths were among older adults, Ms Rana said. Younger children, particularly those under five, were also at risk.

Another factor to consider is that often people on lower incomes undertake more manual work, Ms Rana said, meaning they are more exposed to higher temperatures.

Intense heat on Tuesday led to power outages in Florence city centre, due to a peak in consumption from air conditioners and some underground electrical cables overheating, Italian media reported.

The blackout on Tuesday afternoon meant homes, hotels and shops were without power. ATMs were also out of action and alarm systems in shops and other business premises were deactivated.

In Bergamo, the overheating of underground cables also caused a power outage in half of the city. On one side towards Piazza della Liberta, the lights were on and people could congregate outside, while on the other, towards Sentierone, no electricity meant dark shop fronts and little to no nightlife.

The blackout in Bergamo on Tuesday spanned several hours, with no power between 16:00 and 22:46 local time.

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.

Heat and microclimate expert Ms Rana said we need efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, through using more clean energy for example, but we also need to adapt.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which is the UN’s weather and climate agency, said on Tuesday that human-induced climate change means “extreme heat is becoming more frequent and intense”.

In a statement, the WMO added: “The effect of heat on human health is more pronounced in cities as a result of the urban heat island effect.

“This is where urban environments are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas, especially during hot periods, due to an abundance of paved surfaces, buildings, vehicles, and heat sources.”

“This additional heat in cities exacerbates heat stress and can increase mortality during hot periods,” the agency said.

British colonists committed genocide against Australia’s Indigenous population in Victoria, a landmark Aboriginal-led inquiry has found.

The Yoorrook Justice Commission found violence and disease reduced the local Indigenous population by three quarters in the 20 years after the state was colonised, in the early 1830s.

Its report included 100 recommendations to “redress” harm caused by “invasion and occupation” – though several of the authors disagreed with unspecified “key findings”.

The Commission was set up in 2021 as Australia’s first formal “truth-telling” inquiry, and tasked with examining past and ongoing “systemic injustices” suffered by the Indigenous people in the state.

It is part of a wider national push for Australia to engage in a reconciliation process with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, which community leaders say should include inquiries into the nation’s history, treaty-making, and granting First Nations people greater political say.

Held over four years, The Yoorrook Justice Commission gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the opportunity to formally share their stories and experiences.

The commission’s brief covered a wide gamut of issues including land and water rights, cultural violations, killing and genocide, health, education and housing.

The report found that from 1834, “mass killings, disease, sexual violence, exclusion, linguicide, cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal” as well as assimilation contributed to the “near-complete physical destruction” of Victoria’s Indigenous community.

The population dropped from 60,000 to 15,000 by 1851.

“This was genocide,” the report said.

The report, which drew from more than two months of public hearings and over 1,300 submissions, called for “redress” to acknowledge a range of human rights violations, which could include reparations.

Among its other recommendations were a significant overhaul of the education system to include greater input from Indigenous people, and a government apology for Aboriginal soldiers who served during the world wars and were excluded from a scheme gifting diggers land when they returned from the battlefields.

On the state’s health system, the report found that racism was “endemic” and called for more funding for Indigenous health services and policies to get more Aboriginal staff in the system.

Three of the five commissioners – Sue-Anne Hunter, Maggie Walter and Anthony North – “did not approve of the inclusion of the key findings in the final report”, however no further detail was provided.

In response to the report, Victoria’s Labor government said it would “carefully consider” the findings, with Premier Jacinta Allan saying they “shine a light on hard truths”.

Jill Gallagher, head of Victoria’s peak body for Aboriginal health and wellbeing, said the genocide finding was “indisputable”.

“We don’t blame anyone alive today for these atrocities,” she told the ABC, “but it is the responsibility of those of us alive today to accept that truth – and all Victorians today must accept, recognise and reconcile with these factual findings.”

The commission’s report is the first of its kind in Australia, though similar inquiries are happening in other states and territories with varying degrees of progress, depending on which party is in government.

For example, in Queensland, a truth-telling inquiry was cancelled after the Labor government was replaced by a new Liberal-National government.

In recent years, the national dialogue on how to recognise the traditional owners of Australia at all levels of governments has prompted heated debate.

Australians voted against a historic referendum in October 2023, rejecting a change to the constitution that would have created an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, a national body for Indigenous people to give advice on laws.

A DNA bone test on a man who lived 4,500 years ago in the Nile Valley has shed new light on the rise of the Ancient Egyptian civilisation.

An analysis of his skeleton shows he was 60 years old and possibly worked as a potter, but also that a fifth of his DNA came from ancestors living 1,500km away in the other great civilisation of the time, in Mesopotamia or modern day Iraq.

It is the first biological evidence of links between the two and could help explain how Egypt was transformed from a disparate collection of farming communities to one of the mightiest civilisations on Earth.

The findings lend new weight to the view that writing and agriculture arose through the exchange of people and ideas between these two ancient worlds.

The lead researcher, Prof Pontus Skoglund at the Francis Crick Institute in London, told BBC News that being able to extract and read DNA from ancient bones could shed new light on events and individuals from the past, allowing black and white historical facts to burst into life with technicolour details.

“If we get more DNA information and put it side by side with what we know from archaeological, cultural, and written information we have from the time, it will be very exciting,” he said.

Our understanding of our past is drawn in part from written records, which is often an account by the rich and powerful, mostly about the rich and powerful.

Biological methods are giving historians and scientists a new tool to view history through the eyes of ordinary people.

The DNA was taken from a bone in the inner ear of remains of a man buried in Nuwayrat, a village 265km south of Cairo.

He died between 4,500 and 4,800 years ago, a transformational moment in the emergence of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Archaeological evidence indicated that the two regions may have been in contact at least 10,000 years ago when people in Mesopotamia began to farm and domesticate animals, leading to the emergence of an agricultural society.

Many scholars believe this social and technological revolution may have influenced similar developments in ancient Egypt – but there has been no direct evidence of contact, until now.

Adeline Morez Jacobs, who analysed the remains as part of her PhD at Liverpool John Moores University, says this is the first clear-cut evidence of significant migration of people and therefore information between the two centres of civilisation at the time.

“You have two regions developing the first writing systems, so archaeologists believe that they were in contact and exchanging ideas. Now we have the evidence that they were.

“We hope that future DNA samples from ancient Egypt can expand on when precisely this movement from West Asia started and its extent.”

The man was buried in a ceramic pot in a tomb cut into the hillside. His burial took place before artificial mummification was standard practice, which may have helped to preserve his DNA.

By investigating chemicals in his teeth, the research team were able to discern what he ate, and from that, determined that he had probably grown up in Egypt.

But the scientific detective story doesn’t stop there.

Prof Joel Irish at Liverpool John Moores University conducted a detailed analysis of the skeleton to build up a picture of the man as an individual.

“What I wanted to do was to find out who this guy was, let’s learn as much about him as possible, what his age was, his stature was, what he did for a living and to try and personalise the whole thing rather than treat him as a cold specimen,” he said.

The bone structure indicated that the man was between 45 and 65 years old, though evidence of arthritis pointed to the upper end of the scale. He was just over 5ft 2in tall, which even then was short.

Prof Irish was also able to establish he was probably a potter. The hook-shaped bone at the back of his skull was enlarged, indicating he looked down a lot. His seat bones are expanded in size, suggesting that he sat on hard surfaces for prolonged periods. His arms showed evidence of extensive movement back and forth, and there were markings on his arms where his muscles had grown, indicating that he was used to lifting heavy objects.

“This shows he worked his tail off. He’s worked his entire life,” the American-born academic told BBC News.

Dr Linus Girdland Flink explained that it was only because of a tremendous stroke of luck that this skeleton was available to study and reveal its historic secrets.

“It was excavated in 1902 and donated to World Museum Liverpool, where it then survived bombings during the Blitz that destroyed most of the human remains in their collection. We’ve now been able to tell part of the individual’s story, finding that some of his ancestry came from the Fertile Crescent, highlighting mixture between groups at this time,” he said.

The new research has been published in the journal Nature.

The bodies of eight Colombian religious and social leaders who had been reported missing in April have been found in a shallow grave in Guaviare province, in south-central Colombia.

The prosecutor’s office blamed members of a rebel group called Frente Armando Ríos for their killing.

Officials said the eight – two women and six men – had been summoned by the rebels to be interrogated about the alleged formation of a rival armed group in the area.

There has been no response from Frente Armando Ríos to the accusations.

Colombia is the deadliest country in the world for rights defenders and social leaders, according to a report by international rights organisation Front Line Defenders.

The bodies were found in a rural area known as Calamar, where members of the Frente Armando Ríos are active.

The group is an off-shoot of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

The Farc signed a peace deal with the Colombian government in 2016 and many of its members laid down their arms, but parts of the group refused to disarm and set up dissident rebel groups such as the Frente Armando Ríos.

These offshoots engage in the production and trafficking of cocaine as well as extortion and illegal mining.

They also engage in armed confrontations with the security forces and with members of the National Liberation Army (ELN) – a rival guerrilla group.

According to the statement released by the prosecutor’s office, leaders of the Frente Armando Ríos feared that the ELN was setting up a local cell in the area.

They reportedly summoned two of the victims for an “interrogation” on 4 April, and the remaining six people three days later.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a human rights organisation specialising in freedom of religion, said all but one were active leaders and members from two Protestant denominations: the Evangelical Alliance of Colombia Denomination (DEAC) and the Foursquare Gospel Church (ICCG). The eighth was the uncle of two of the other victims.

Among them is a married couple – Isaíd Gómez and Maribel Silva – who often preached in their Protestant church.

Also among those whose bodies have been found is Maryuri Hernández, who helped the evangelical pastor in the area. She is survived by her five-year-old daughter.

According to CSW, all eight had settled in the area after fleeing violence and violations of freedom of religion in Arauca, a province bordering Venezuela where several armed groups are active.

Religious leaders and social leaders are often targeted by armed groups in Colombia which do not tolerate any other authority than their own.

Relatives of the victims said the eight had received a message by the Frente Armando Ríos, which demanded that they present themselves for questioning.

According to the investigation by the prosecutor’s office, days later they were taken to an abandoned property, where they were killed.

Officials suspect the order to kill them was given by the inner circle of Iván Mordisco, one of the most powerful commanders of the dissident rebel factions.

The murder of the eight has been condemned by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who called it “heinous” and denounced it as “a grave attack on the right to life, religious freedom and spiritual and community work”.

Punk duo Bob Vylan have been dropped from the line-up of a music festival in Manchester following their controversial appearance at Glastonbury.

The group had been due to headline the Radar Festival at Victoria Warehouse on Saturday, but organisers confirmed in a statement they would no longer appear.

In response, Bob Vylan posted a statement on Instagram, telling fans: “Manchester, we will be back.”

Bob Vylan had also been due to perform at French festival Kave Fest on Sunday, but organisers told the BBC their appearance there had been pulled too.

At Glastonbury, Bob Vylan’s lead singer led the crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]”, prompting criticism from across the political spectrum, including the prime minister who called it “appalling hate speech”.

Bob Vylan responded to the outcry in a post on Instagram on Tuesday, saying they had been “targeted for speaking up”.

“We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine,” they said.

They added that “we, like those in the spotlight before us, are not the story. We are a distraction from the story, and whatever sanctions we receive will be a distraction”.

On Wednesday, following the music festival cancellations, they reiterated their position, telling followers: “Silence is not an option. We will be fine, the people of Palestine are hurting.” The group added they would return to Manchester in the future.

Organisers of Kave Fest, which is held in the town of Gisors, said they would release a statement later explaining their decision to drop the band.

A German music venue has also confirmed that Bob Vylan will no longer open for US band Gogol Bordello at a concert in Cologne in September.

The BBC has been criticised for broadcasting the Glastonbury set via a live stream which was available on iPlayer.

The UK’s chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis strongly criticised “the airing of vile Jew-hate at Glastonbury” earlier this week.

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

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

Broadcast regulator Ofcom also issued a statement, saying it was “very concerned” about the live stream, adding that “the BBC clearly has questions to answer”.

Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending budget bill is returning to the US House of Representatives – as the clock ticks down to the president’s 4 July deadline for lawmakers to present him with a final version that can be signed into law.

The bill narrowly cleared the Senate, or upper chamber of Congress, on Tuesday. Vice-President JD Vance cast a tie-breaking vote after more than 24 hours of debate and resistance from some Republican senators.

It could prove equally tricky for Trump’s allies to pass the bill through the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson hopes to hold a vote as early as Wednesday.

The lower chamber approved an earlier version of the bill in May with a margin of just one vote, and this bill must now be reconciled with the Senate version.

Both chambers are controlled by Trump’s Republicans, but within the party several factions are fighting over key policies in the lengthy legislation.

Sticking points include the question of how much the bill will add to the US national deficit, and how deeply it will cut healthcare and other social programmes.

During previous signs of rebellion against Trump at Congress, Republican lawmakers have ultimately fallen in line.

What is at stake this time is the defining piece of legislation for Trump’s second term. Here are the factions standing in its way.

• Facing intense pressure, House must decide if Trump’s bill is good enough
• What’s in Trump’s budget bill?
• Trump and Musk feud again over budget plans

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the version of the bill that was passed on Tuesday by the Senate could add $3.3tn (£2.4tn) to the US national deficit over the next 10 years. That compares with $2.8tn that could be added by the earlier version that was narrowly passed by the House.

The deficit means the difference between what the US government spends and the revenue it receives.

This outraged the fiscal hawks in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who have threatened to tank the bill.

Many of them are echoing claims made by Elon Musk, Trump’s former adviser and campaign donor, who has repeatedly lashed out at lawmakers for considering a bill that will ultimately add to US national debt.

Shortly after the Senate passed the bill, Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a Freedom Caucus member, called the move “unconscionable”.

“What the Senate did, I’ll vote against it here and I’ll vote against it on the floor,” he added.

Norman’s colleague from Texas, Chip Roy, was also quick to signal his frustration, saying the odds of meeting Trump’s 4 July deadline had lengthened.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Tennessee told Fox News that Musk was right to say the US cannot sustain these deficits. “He understands finances, he understands debts and deficits, and we have to make further progress.”

On Tuesday, Conservative Congressman Andy Ogles went as far as to file an amendment that would completely replace the Senate version of the bill, which he called a “dud”, with the original House-approved one.

Meanwhile, Ohio Republican Warren Davison posted on X: “Promising someone else will cut spending in the future does not cut spending.” He added: “We will eventually arrive at the crash site, because it appears nothing will stop this runaway spending train. A fatal overdose of government.”

Representatives from poorer districts are worried about the Senate version of the bill harming their constituents, which could also hurt them at the polls in 2026. According to the Hill, six Republicans planning to vote down the bill due to concerns about cuts to key provisions, including cuts to medical coverage.

Some of the critical Republicans have attacked the Senate’s more aggressive cuts to Medicaid, the healthcare programme relied upon by millions of low-income Americans.

“I’ve been clear from the start that I will not support a final reconciliation bill that makes harmful cuts to Medicaid, puts critical funding at risk, or threatens the stability of healthcare providers,” said Congressman David Valadao, who represents a swing district in California. This echoes the criticism of opposition Democrats.

Other Republicans have signalled a willingness to compromise. Randy Fine, from Florida, told the BBC he had frustrations with the Senate version of the bill, but that he would vote it through the House because “we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.

House Republicans had wrestled over how much to cut Medicaid and food subsidies in the initial version their chamber passed. They needed the bill to reduce spending, in order to offset lost revenue from the tax cuts contained in the legislation.

The Senate made steeper cuts to both areas in the version passed on Tuesday.

Changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) in the Senate’s bill would see roughly 12 million Americans lose health insurance by 2034, according to a CBO report published on Saturday.

Under the version originally passed by the House, a smaller number of 11 million Americans would have had their coverage stripped, according to the CBO.

The bill also deals with the question of how much taxpayers can deduct from the amount they pay in federal taxes, based on how much they pay in state and local taxes (Salt). This, too, has become a controversial issue.

There is currently a $10,000 cap, which expires this year. Both the Senate and House have approved increasing this to $40,000.

But in the Senate-approved version, the cap would return to $10,000 after five years. This change could pose a problem for some House Republicans.

The trial of American music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was accused of running a sprawling sex trafficking operation, has ended with two guilty verdicts and an acquittal on three others.

The rapper was convicted on two counts of transportation for prostitution of his ex-girlfriend, singer Cassie Ventura, and another woman known as “Jane” who had testified in the trial.

He was found not guilty of the most serious charge of racketeering conspiracy, as well as two charges of sex trafficking in relation to Ms Ventura and “Jane”.

Mr Combs, 55, had pleaded not guilty and denied all allegations against him.

Here is a breakdown of the charges faced by the rapper and how the jury came to its decision.

• Verdict reached in court – follow live

Racketeering conspiracy, or directing an illegal enterprise under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (Rico), is the formal name for the charge.

The law was created to take on mob bosses, but it has since been used in other trials, including for sex trafficking – such as in the case against disgraced R&B singer R Kelly.

It is also sometimes used against a group of defendants. US President Donald Trump and his allies were accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia – charges that Trump denied.

To convict Mr Combs on this charge, prosecutors had to prove that he used his loyal network of associates to run a criminal enterprise to commit crimes including sex trafficking, kidnapping, drugging and obstruction of justice.

In this case, that network would include his employees, who prosecutors argued played a part in setting up the “freak-offs” at the centre of the case.

These were prolonged sexual encounters at which the prosecution’s key witnesses said they were coerced to have sex with male escorts while Mr Combs watched.

In a raid on his Los Angeles mansion, police found supplies that they said were intended for use in freak-offs, including drugs and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil.

Mr Combs’ acquittal on the most serious charge of racketeering will likely be seen as a big win by his legal team.

His lawyers had sought to undermine the allegation by asking witnesses whether Mr Combs’ employees ever witnessed the freak-offs.

Cassie Ventura, the star witness for the prosecution, said she did not think they were present.

Defence lawyers argued that the case cannot be considered to be racketeering if members of Mr Combs’ staff were not knowingly complicit.

“Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?” said defence attorney Marc Agnifilo. “Did any witness get on that witness stand and say ‘yes, I was part of a racketeering enterprise, I engaged in racketeering’?”

Robert Mintz, a criminal defence lawyer and former federal prosecutor, told the BBC that the racketeering charge was always going to be the most challenging one for prosecutors to prove to a jury.

To gain a conviction, lawyers needed to prove that Combs established a co-ordinated plan between Combs and at least one other person to commit at least two crimes over a span of several years, Mr Mintz said.

“It’s a very complicated charge, used typically in the past in organized crime prosecution,” Mr Mintz said, adding it is unsurprising that this charge gave the jury the most difficulty.

Transportation for purposes of prostitution – the charge that Mr Combs was convicted of – carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Prosecutor Maurene Comey has said she will push for the full 20 years – a decade for each conviction. “It is clear that the defendant does pose a danger,” she said.

Mr Combs has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, since his arrest on 16 September 2024.

Critics describe the prison as overcrowded and understaffed, with a culture of violence.

His lawyers argued for his release, citing the jail’s “horrific” conditions, but a New York federal judge denied the bail request, describing Mr Combs as a “serious flight risk”.

After the verdict was read, Mr Combs’ lawyer Marc Agnifilo asked once again for his client to be released from federal detention until his sentencing hearing, and suggested a $1m bail.

Mr Combs will be sentenced at a later hearing – the date has not yet been set by Judge Arun Subramanian.

While the rapper faces a maximum sentence of 10 years, it will be up to the judge to decide the length of time he will ultimately serve.

Separately, Mr Combs faces a number of lawsuits accusing him of rape and assault.

Tony Buzbee, a Texas lawyer handling some of these cases, said that more than 100 women and men from across the US had either filed lawsuits against the rap mogul or intended to do so.

In December 2023, a woman known in court papers as Jane Doe alleged that she was “gang raped” by Mr Combs and others in 2003, when she was 17. She said she was given “copious amounts of drugs and alcohol” before the attack.

Mr Combs’s legal team dismissed the flurry of lawsuits as “clear attempts to garner publicity.”

Mr Combs’ current legal issues began in late 2023 when he was sued by Ms Ventura, also known as Cassie, for violent abuse and rape.

That lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount a day after it was filed, with Mr Combs maintaining his innocence.

Since then, dozens of other people have filed lawsuits accusing Mr Combs of sexual assault, with accusations dating back to 1991. He denies all the claims.

His controversial history with Ms Ventura resurfaced in 2024, when CNN published leaked CCTV footage from 2016 showing Mr Combs kicking his ex-girlfriend as she lay on a hotel hallway floor.

He apologised for his behaviour, saying: “I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I was disgusted then when I did it. I’m disgusted now.”

• ‘He thought of himself as a king’: The parties that led to Diddy’s downfall
• ‘Studio sex’ and ‘hitman threats’: Insiders speak out about Diddy’s 90s music
• Diddy’s violence left me broken, says Cassie

Dozens of potential jurors were vetted by the court.

The process included potential jurors looking through a long list of places and people that could be mentioned during trial, with names like Kanye West and Kid Cudi.

Potential jurors also had to fill out questionnaires that asked whether they had “views about hip hop artists” or “feelings concerning violence, sexual assault”.

The judge reminded the court several times of the importance of choosing a fair and impartial jury.

Mr Combs – who has also gone by the names Puffy, Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Love, and Brother Love – emerged in the hip-hop scene in the 1990s.

His early music career success included helping launch the careers of Mary J Blige and Christopher Wallace – aka Biggie Smalls, or The Notorious B.I.G.

His music label Bad Boy Records became one of the most important labels in rap and expanded to include Faith Evans, Ma$e, 112, Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez.

Mr Combs also had a prolific business career outside of music, including a deal with British drinks company Diageo to promote the French vodka brand Cîroc.

In 2023, he released his fifth record The Love Album: Off The Grid and earned his first solo nomination at the Grammy awards. He also was named a Global Icon at the MTV Awards.

• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs: Who is the US rapper accused of sex trafficking?

From his pocket, Serhiy Melnyk pulls out a small rusty shard, wrapped neatly in paper.

He holds it up. “It grazed my kidney, pierced my lung, and my heart,” says the Ukrainian serviceman quietly.

Traces of dried blood are still visible on the shrapnel from a Russian drone that became lodged in his heart while he was fighting in eastern Ukraine.

“I didn’t even realise what it was at first — I thought I was just short of breath under my body armour,” he says. “They had to extract shrapnel out of my heart.”

With the rise of drone warfare in Ukraine, these injuries are becoming more common. Drones often carry weapons and materials which fragment and cause more complex shrapnel wounds.

According to Ukrainian military medics, shrapnel wounds now make up to 80% of battlefield trauma.

Untreated, Serhiy’s injury would have been fatal.

“The fragment was as sharp as a blade. Doctors said it was a large piece, and that I was lucky to survive,” he says reflectively.

But it wasn’t just luck that saved him, it was a new piece of medical technology. A magnetic extractor.

Cardiovascular surgeon Serhiy Maksymenko shows footage of the metal fragment trapped in Serhiy’s beating heart before it is delicately removed by a thin magnet-tipped device.

“You don’t have to make large cuts in the heart,” explains Dr Maksymenko. “I just make a small incision, insert the magnet, and it pulls the shrapnel out.”

In just one year, Doctor Maksymenko’s team has performed over 70 successful heart operations with the device, which has changed the face of front-line medicine in Ukraine.

The development of these extractors came after front-line medics highlighted the urgent need for a safe, fast, minimally invasive way to remove shrapnel.

Oleh Bykov – who used to work as a lawyer – drove this development. Since 2014 he has been supporting the army as a volunteer. He met medics on the front line and from his conversations the magnetic extractors were created.

The concept isn’t new. Magnets were used for removing metal from wounds as far back as the Crimean War in the 1850s. But Oleh’s team modernised the approach, creating flexible models for abdominal surgery, micro-extractors for delicate work, and high-strength tools for bones.

Operations have become more precise and less invasive. The magnet can be run along the surface of a wound to draw fragments out. Surgeons then make a small incision and the piece is removed.

Holding a slim pen-shaped tool, Oleh demonstrates its power by lifting a sledgehammer with the magnetic tip.

His work has been commended by other war medics including David Nott, a veteran of war zones around the world.

“In war, things get developed which would never have been thought of in civilian life,” he says.

Fragmentation wounds have increased due to the changing face of war, and because they take a long time to find he believes this device could be a game changer.

He says looking for shrapnel in patients is like “looking for a needle in a haystack”- it is not always successful and delays treatment of other casualties.

Searching for fragments manually can be dangerous and requires bigger incisions that can cause more bleeding – “so to be able just to simply find them using a magnet is ingenious.”

What began as a field tool has now been rolled out across Ukraine, with 3,000 units distributed to hospitals and front-line medics, like Andriy Alban who says he has come to rely on the device.

He often works while under fire, in trenches or makeshift outdoor clinics, and sometimes without local anaesthetic.

“My job is to save lives – bandage wounds and get soldiers evacuated,” he says.

There has been no official certification of the magnetic extractor.

The Ukrainian Health Ministry says medical devices must comply fully with technical regulations. However, in exceptional cases, such as martial law or a state of emergency, the use of uncertified devices is allowed to meet the needs of the military and security forces.

At the height of war, there’s no time for red tape, mastermind Oleh explains. “These devices save lives. If someone thinks my actions are a crime, I’ll take responsibility. I’m even prepared to go to jail if it comes to that. But then all the doctors who use these devices should be incarcerated too,” he adds half jokingly.

David Nott agrees that certification is not a top priority for now and believes the device could prove helpful in other war zones such as Gaza.

“In war, it’s not really necessary. You only do the things which are important to save lives.”

Back in Lviv, Serhiy’s wife Yulia is just grateful her husband survived his injury.

“I just want to praise those people who invented this extractor,” she says tearfully. “Thanks to them, my husband is alive.”

It has been a good year for gold. A host of turbulent events in the global economy has driven up prices for the glittery commodity to record highs in 2025.

In a world of tariffs and international conflict, gold appeals to investors as one of the few remaining stable assets. Everyone wants a piece of the action, from central banks to large institutions like hedge funds, and retail investors. But few know where their gold comes from, or much about the conflicts it may be fuelling in the countries where it is mined.

For the governments of West Africa’s Sahel region, the stakes are even higher. Gold is a lifeline for the military juntas of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, who are beleaguered by jihadist insurgencies, regional isolation, and the ravages of climate change.

“Because gold prices have been at a historic high… the military governments are hoping that they will be able to benefit directly,” Beverly Ochieng, a senior researcher at global consultancy firm Control Risks, told the BBC.

Together, the three Sahel states produce around 230 tonnes of gold per year, according to the World Gold Council’s estimates, or about $15bn (£11bn) at the current market rate.

A lack of records for artisanal and small-scale gold mining means that this figure is probably an underestimate.

The combined gold production in these three states surpasses any other country in Africa, making the Sahel region a major global contributor to the gold market.

The governments say that the proceeds from the lucrative sector are benefitting citizens through increased “sovereignty” – though Russian firms are increasing their stake in the industry at the expense of Western-owned firms.

For example, Mali’s junta leader Gen Assimi Goïta laid the foundation stone last month for a gold refinery, in which a Russian conglomerate, the Yadran Group, will have a minority stake. The refinery will reportedly create 500 direct jobs and 2,000 indirect jobs.

Burkina Faso is also building its first-ever gold refinery, and has set up a state-owned mining company, requiring foreign firms to give it a 15% stake in their local operations and to transfer skills to Burkinabé people.

Fake AI media campaigns have even been launched to celebrate the country’s charismatic 37-year-old military ruler Capt Ibrahim Traoré for commanding such an important revenue stream for the nation.

“Mining gold from deepest dirt. But souls are rich and true,” croons an AI-generated Rihanna in one recent song, pouring her silky, auto-tuned praise on Capt Traoré.

The reality is very different, according to Ms Ochieng, who explained that Burkina Faso and its neighbours need quick cash to fund counterinsurgency campaigns.

In the case of Mali, much of this has been outsourced to Russian mercenaries, including the Wagner Group and its successor, Africa Corps, which falls under the command of Russia’s defence ministry.

Africa Corps has been involved in military training in Burkina Faso, but the junta officially denies its presence.

Although public spending transparency in the countries is poor, the governments are thought to devote large portions of their budgets to national security.

Military spending in Mali trebled since 2010, amounting to 22% of the national budget by 2020.

The governments are fighting jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS).

But campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the Malian government and the Wagner Group of committing atrocities against civilians, including unlawful killings, summary executions, and torture.

It has documented similar atrocities by Burkina Faso’s military and its allied militias.

For their services, the Wagner Group and now Africa Corps are often paid directly in gold or in mining concessions, according to Alex Vines of the London-based Chatham House think-tank.

“Very little [of the gold revenues] will trickle down to Malians and Burkinabés,” he told the BBC, adding that in fact the armed insurgents themselves may be benefiting from gold.

Since the coup in Mali in 2021, brutal government tactics against communities suspected of harbouring or sympathising with jihadists have increased, pushing more civilians to join the very groups they are fighting.

Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate which is the most active jihadist group in the region, staged an unprecedented number of attacks targeting Burkina Faso military during the first half of 2025, a sign of the group’s growing strength.

The armed groups are also literally cashing in on the increased global appetite for gold.

A large proportion of gold mining in the Sahel is from the artisanal and small-scale sector, which is often informal, meaning it takes place on unlicensed and undeclared sites away from government oversight, according to a 2023 report on gold mining in the Sahel by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Armed groups, including jihadist groups, and Sahel governments are in competition for control over many of these small-scale gold mines.

Gold provides an important revenue stream for militant groups, which appear to be expanding their territorial influence in both Mali and Burkina Faso.

The UNODC believes that most gold from this type of mining ends up in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a global centre for gold refining and trading.

“You do see overlap of violent extremist groups moving onto artisanal production areas for control,” said Dr Vines.

The global spike in gold prices may be prolonging and exacerbating conflict in the Sahel – but, unfortunately for the diggers in artisanal gold mines, it has not led to owners increasing their wages.

One gold miner in Mali’s northern Kidal region agreed to respond to written questions from the BBC on condition of anonymity, for fear of his safety.

He estimated that, on a “good day”, he earns 10,000 to 20,000 CFA francs, or approximately $18 to $36 (£13 to £26).

The amount he is paid has not increased alongside global gold prices, he said.

“Prices went up, but the extra profit goes to mine owners… It’s risky and uncertain, but for many of us, it’s the only option,” he added.

Dr Vines, who formerly worked as a blood diamond investigator for the UN, is concerned that gold has become Africa’s new main conflict commodity.

He noted that gold has not received the same international attention as diamonds, which fuelled bloodshed in several African states throughout the 20th Century, especially during the 1990s.

Intervention by human rights groups and the UN led to the establishment of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme in 2003, which did much to end the sale of so-called “blood diamonds” on the open market.

But attempts to crack down on “blood gold” have been less successful.

This is partly due to a lack of unified ethical standards. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), a major authority in the gold market, requires refiners to comply with standards based on guidelines set by a global body, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OED).

The UAE’s enforcement of these regulations has historically been patchy.

In 2021, the country announced its own standards for ethical gold mining – however, the framework remains voluntary. The issue of enforcement has caused tensions in the past between the Gulf state and the LBMA.

Tracing technology represents another hurdle.

“There is no ‘DNA testing’ for gold. With a lot of effort, you can trace diamonds before they get polished and cut… But I haven’t seen ways of tracing the origins of a gold nugget,” Dr Vines said.

Gold is smelted early on in the value chain, making it nearly impossible to trace and connect to potential conflict zones, he explained.

Dr Vines believes that it is likely that some blood gold from the Sahel ends up in UK markets.

“[Gold] gets smelted in [the] UAE, then goes onto the jewellery manufacturing industry, or into dentistry, or bullion. Some of it clearly comes into the UK. And once it is here, there is no way of testing what it is.”

A UAE official told the BBC that the country had “a robust regulatory framework to maximize the security, integrity and transparency of every gold transaction, supported by rigorous enforcement actions”.

The UAE’s processes were in line with, and in some areas exceeded, OECD guidelines, the official said, adding: “They are supported by mandatory anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer procedures, annual audits and full enforcement at all points of entry.”

Dr Vines said that another reason that it will be difficult to repeat the successes of the Kimberley process is because the certification system was not designed to deal with state governments.

“Kimberley was designed to deal with armed non-state actors in places like Sierra Leone and Liberia,” he said.

For now, gold’s importance for Sahel governments and the patchy enforcement of ethical gold standards mean that the commodity is likely to continue changing hands, regardless of its origin.

Unfortunately for some communities in the Sahel, that may mean paying for the trade in blood.

• ‘I thought I would die’ – freed captive tells BBC of life in jihadist base
• Why Burkina Faso’s junta leader has captured hearts and minds
• ‘We are poisoning ourselves’: Ghana gold rush sparks environmental disaster
• The region with more ‘terror deaths’ than rest of world combined

In March 1959, as Chinese troops crushed an attempted uprising in Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled into India.

Then a young man in his mid-20s, the future must have seemed bleak.

With few countries prepared to respond to China’s actions, he faced a difficult task to protect Tibetans and their traditions.

Yet despite decades in exile, his reach has extended far beyond his community. He is not just the Tibetans’ spiritual leader and a living symbol of their hopes of reclaiming their homeland, but also a global peace icon and one of the world’s leading religious figures.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his consistent opposition to the use of violence in his quest for Tibetan self-rule.

Beijing continues to view him as a dangerous separatist, though he has said his goal is for Tibetan autonomy rather than independence.

Now, after a lifetime spent at the centre of China’s fraught relationship with Tibet, the Dalai Lama is focusing on the future.

As he turned 90 in June 2025, he confirmed that there would be a successor after he dies, putting to rest doubts about the continuation of his 600-year-old Buddhist institution.

The 14th Dalai Lama was born on 6 July 1935, in a small village just outside the current boundaries of Tibet.

His parents, who named him Lhamo Dhondub, were farmers with several other children.

When he was two years old, a search party of Buddhist officials recognised him as the reincarnation of the 13 previous Dalai Lamas and he was enthroned before he turned four. He was given the monastic name Tenzin Gyatso.

He was educated at a monastery and went on to achieve the Geshe Lharampa Degree, a doctorate of Buddhist philosophy.

But in 1950, when he was 15, troops of China’s newly-installed Communist government marched into Tibet.

As soldiers poured in, the Dalai Lama assumed full power as head of state.

In May 1951, China drew up a 17-point agreement legitimising Tibet’s incorporation into China.

Then, on 10 March 1959, a Chinese general invited the Dalai Lama to attend a performance by a Chinese dance troupe. But Tibetans feared it was a trap aimed at abducting the Dalai Lama, and many began gathering by his palace to protect him.

This evolved into protests against the Chinese troops’ presence in Tibetan territory. The People’s Liberation Army launched a brutal crackdown, and thousands are said to have died.

Days later, the Dalai Lama fled the palace, a decision he said was based on divine orders from his personal oracle. He disguised himself as a soldier and slipped into the crowd one night.

Together with an entourage, he arrived at the Indian border after a gruelling 15-day trek across the Himalayas.

The Indian government granted asylum, and he eventually settled in Dharamshala in the north of India, which became home to the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The Dalai Lama was followed into exile by about 80,000 Tibetans, most of whom settled in the same area.

In exile, the Dalai Lama began the task of trying to preserve the culture of the Tibetan people and publicise their plight on the world stage.

He appealed to the United Nations and persuaded the General Assembly to adopt resolutions in 1959, 1961 and 1965 calling for the protection of the Tibetan people.

The Dalai Lama has advocated a “middle way” to resolve the status of Tibet – genuine self-rule for Tibet within China.

In 1987, amid protests in Lhasa against the large-scale relocation of Han Chinese into Tibet, the Dalai Lama proposed a five-point plan, in which he called for the establishment of Tibet as a zone of peace.

But he did not move from his stance of peaceful resistance and in 1989 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The committee praised his policy of non-violence, which it called “all the more remarkable when it is considered in relation to the sufferings inflicted on the Tibetan people”.

Over the decades he has met many political and religious leaders around the world. He visited the late Pope John Paul II on several occasions and co-authored a book with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Along the way he has attracted support from Hollywood celebrities such as Richard Gere, Martin Scorsese and Lady Gaga.

But the non-violent philosophy that won the Dalai Lama recognition from the international community has been a source of frustration for some Tibetans who believe he has been too soft on Beijing.

In 2008 dozens were killed, rights groups estimated, as riots broke out in Lhasa over the Chinese government’s treatment of Tibetans.

The Dalai Lama has also at times been the subject of international controversy, most notably in 2023 when a video showed him telling a child to suck his tongue. His office said the spiritual leader often teased people in a “playful way”, and the Dalai Lama apologised for the incident.

His office also apologised in 2019 after he told the BBC that any future female Dalai Lama should be “attractive”.

Historically, the Dalai Lama acts as both the political and spiritual leader of Tibetans. But in March 2011, the current Dalai Lama relinquished his political authority to a democratically-elected government-in-exile.

In recent years, as he’s got older and faced minor health issues, there have been growing concerns about the issue of succession – and, by extension, the cause of exiled Tibetans of reclaiming their homeland.

These worries grew when the Dalai Lama suggested there might not be a reincarnated successor, and that it was up to the Tibetan people to decide.

But when he turned 90, he settled the question once and for all.

In a statement he said that after receiving many requests and feedback, “the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue”.

Some experts have interpreted his words as a signal to Beijing that his legitimacy is based on consent, in contrast to China’s annexation of Tibetan territory.

He also said that only his office had the authority to recognise the future reincarnation and that “no-one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter”, a clear rebuke to China that has insisted that it alone has a say on the matter of succession.

Beijing responded by reiterating that the Dalai Lama’s successor will have to be approved by them.

The Dalai Lama has said previously that his successor would be born in the “free world” outside China.

Who that person will be, however, remains unknown.

A Ugandan military helicopter crashed and caught fire at the main international airport in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, killing five people on board.

The pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer survived with “serious injuries and severe burns”, Ugandan military spokesman Maj Gen Felix Kulaigye said, adding that an investigation into the cause of the crash was under way.

“We heard the blast and saw smoke and flames over a helicopter. The smoke entirely covered the helicopter,” Farah Abdulle, one of the staff at the airport, told Reuters news agency.

Somalia’s state-run news agency reported that the fire was quickly contained by the emergency services at the Aden Adde International Airport.

Ugandan troops are part of an 11,000-strong African Union (AU) force helping the government fight the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group, which has been waging a brutal insurgency in Somalia for more than two decades.

The helicopter that crashed had been conducting a “routine combat escort mission”, Maj Gen Kulaigye said, without giving further details.

The head of the Somali Civil Aviation Authority, Ahmed Maalim, told the BBC that the helicopter had come down in the airport’s military section after flying in from the Balidogle airbase in the Lower Shabelle region, about 90km (56 miles) north-west of Mogadishu.

The crash delayed the departure of a Turkish Airlines passenger plane, but domestic flights continued to operate normally.

• The women at the centre of Somalia’s construction boom
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• The city where shopkeepers fear their CCTV cameras could get them killed

Elon Musk’s Tesla has reported a 14% decline in vehicle deliveries in the second quarter of the year, as the electric car-maker’s problems show no sign of abating.

The just over 384,000 vehicles it delivered between April and June represents the second quarterly drop in a row.

Tesla faces increasing competition from rivals, including China’s BYD. Musk’s controversial role as a government efficiency czar in the Trump administration has also been blamed for the plummeting numbers.

Musk has since left the role – but has publicly sparred with US President Donald Trump over a massive spending bill pushed by the White House.

In response, Trump floated cutting the subsidies received by Musk’s firms or even deporting him.

Trump suggested that the ad-hoc Department of Government Efficiency – known as Doge – could be used to harm the billionaire’s companies.

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

“I am literally saying CUT IT ALL. Now,” Musk replied.

Trump has said that Musk’s opposition to the spending bill stems from a provision that removes incentives to buy electric vehicles.

“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.

Though the quarterly deliveries metric is tracked closely by investors, some analysts have shrugged off the figures.

“The good news: that ~14% should mark the bottom,” wrote Deepwater Asset Management’s Gene Munster on Musk’s social media site X. “I have September down 10% and December flat.”

Munster said he expected uncertainty about the US EV tax credit to boost near-term sales as buyers scramble to purchase before it expires.

Tesla’s push into robotaxis which kicked off in Austin, Texas last month in uncertain fashion could prove critical, he said.

“Over the next two years, I think investors will be fine with flat deliveries as long as autonomy shows measurable progress,” Munster added.

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Prosecutors are considering bringing further charges against Lucy Letby following the deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at hospitals where she worked.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) confirmed it had received evidence from Cheshire Police regarding alleged incidents at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital.

Former neonatal nurse Letby, 35, is serving 15 life sentences for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others – one of whom on two occasions – at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.

Cheshire Police has been investigating other incidents going back to 2012, covering Letby’s career and training in Liverpool.

The force said it had “submitted a full file of evidence to the CPS for charging advice”.

Cheshire Police said the file regarded its “ongoing investigation into deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the neonatal units of both the Countess of Chester Hospital and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital as part of Operation Hummingbird”.

Operation Hummingbird was set up after hospital bosses contacted the force in May 2017 to investigate an unexplained rise in incidents in the Countess of Chester’s neonatal unit.

The number and exact nature of the potential new offences has not been revealed and it is not known how long it could take the CPS to decide whether to bring new charges.

A CPS spokesperson said: “We will now carefully consider the evidence to determine whether any further criminal charges should be brought.

“As always, we will make that decision independently, based on the evidence and in line with our legal test.”

Before charging a suspect, prosecutors have to be satisfied they have sufficient evidence for a “realistic prospect of conviction”.

The Daily Mail reports that the government’s most senior lawyers, including Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson and Attorney General Lord Hermer KC, will be involved in the decision-making process.

Letby, originally from Hereford, has always maintained her innocence.

She has lost two separate bids to challenge her convictions at the Court of Appeal.

Earlier this year her legal team, led by barrister Mark McDonald, submitted an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which has the power to refer cases back to the Court of Appeal for a full hearing.

The application contained a report from a panel of 14 international experts in neonatology and paediatric care.

After reviewing evidence heard at Letby’s trial, panel members concluded that they believed no babies had been deliberately harmed.

The CCRC said it was reviewing the application and could not give a timescale on when a decision would be reached.

Last month former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Letby’s case should be “urgently re-examined” due to what he called “serious and credible” questions raised by the expert panel.

In response to the news that the CPS was considering more charges, Mr McDonald said the evidence of his client’s innocence was “overwhelming”.

“We will cross every bridge when we get to it but if Lucy is charged I know we have a whole army of internationally renowned medical experts who will totally undermine the prosecution’s unfounded allegations,” he added.

In an unrelated development, Cheshire Police on Tuesday announced that three former senior managers at the Countess of Chester Hospital had been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.

They were questioned on Monday and released on bail, pending further investigation.

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

The Thirlwall Inquiry examined events at the Countess of Chester Hospital as well as procedures and cultures within the NHS.

A painting of Venice by the Italian artist Canaletto which was once owned by the UK’s first prime minister has been sold for a record fee.

Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day – painted around 1732 – was sold to an anonymous bidder for £27.5m (£31.9m with fees) at Christie’s in London on Tuesday, setting a new auction record for the artist.

The painting was hung on the walls of Number 10 Downing Street during Sir Robert Walpole’s tenure from 1721 to 1742.

Christie’s global head of the Old Masters Department, Andrew Fletcher, said the artwork was “unquestionably the greatest work by the artist to have come to the market in a generation”.

“Seldom does a true masterpiece such as this – particularly by a painter as important as Canaletto – appear on the art market,” he said.

“This extraordinary painting of the grandest and most familiar view of Venice, by the city’s most recognisable painter, dates to Canaletto’s finest period and is as notable for its illustrious provenance as much as for its impeccable condition.”

The oil on canvas artwork was last sold at an auction in Paris in 1993, fetching what was then a record-breaking 66 million French francs (£7.5m).

It formerly came with a partnering pendant, entitled Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi to the Rialto, which was later sold at Sotheby’s in London in 2005 for £18.6m – which was the previous record auction price for a Canaletto.

The painting had been expected to sell for around £20m this time around, but exceeded expectations.

Canaletto, real name Giovanni Antonio Canal, was born in Venice in 1697 and went on to become a favourite of British art collectors.

It is not known how Sir Robert acquired his work but it is though that his son Edward helped to arrange the art deal after having spent time in Venice.

The Feast of the Ascension of Christ was a key date in the Venetian calendar until the fall of the Venice Republic in 1797.

It would see the Doge of Venice – the elected head of state – use his official galley, Bucintoro, to sail out and cast a ring into the water as a symbol of Venice’s marriage to the sea.

US media company Paramount Global has agreed to pay $16 million (£13.5m) to settle a legal dispute with US President Donald Trump regarding an interview it broadcast on CBS with former Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Trump filed a lawsuit last October, alleging the network had deceptively edited an interview that aired on its 60 Minutes news programme with his presidential election rival Kamala Harris, to “tip the scales in favour of the Democratic party”.

Paramount said it would pay to settle the suit, but with the money allocated to Trump’s future presidential library, not paid to him “directly or indirectly”.

The company noted the settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team swiftly hailed the settlement as a “win for the American people” over the “fake news media”.

“CBS and Paramount Global realised the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,” the spokesperson added. “President Trump will always ensure that no one gets away with lying to the American people.”

CBS, which is owned by Paramount, previously said the case was “completely without merit” and had asked a judge to dismiss it.

The settlement marks the latest concession by a US media company to a president who has targeted outlets over what he describes as false or misleading coverage.

According to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Texas, CBS aired two versions of the Harris interview in which she appeared to give different answers to the same question about the Israel-Gaza war.

Interviewer Bill Whitaker asked the Democratic nominee about the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel. The network later aired two different versions of her response, according to the claim.

One clip aired on Face the Nation and the other on 60 Minutes. Trump claimed Harris’s “word salad” answer had been deceptively edited in one version to shield her from backlash.

CBS said it edited Harris’s answer for time, in accordance with television news standards.

Trump sued, originally claiming for $10bn (£8.5bn) but that figure was later increased to $20bn ($17bn) for damages.

In May this year, the company offered $15m (12.7m) to settle the suit but Trump wanted more than $25m (£21m).

In a statement released on Tuesday, Paramount confirmed the settlement fee included the president’s legal fees, and that it had agreed that 60 Minutes will release transcripts of interviews with future presidential candidates.

According to both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, the settlement was agreed – with the help of mediator – so as to not affect Paramount’s planned merger with Skydance Media, which the Federal Communications Commission has been reviewing and therefore Trump technically has the power to halt.

During the month-long settlement talks, some CBS News executives including chief executive Wendy McMahon have left their roles, due to their unwillingness to issue an apology to Trump.

There were also reportedly concerns over whether paying to settle the lawsuit could be viewed as bribing a public official.

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said the settlement was “another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.”

He added that CBS and Paramount “realised the strength of this historic case.”

CBS has said the broadcast was “not doctored or deceitful”.

The Paramount settlement follows a decision by Walt Disney-owned ABC News to settle a defamation case brought by Trump.

Heathrow Airport is considering legal action against National Grid after a report found the fire which caused the airport to shut down was a result of a known fault at an electrical substation.

An investigation found that National Grid, which owns the substation which supplies Heathrow, had been aware of a problem since 2018 but failed to fix it.

There were numerous opportunities to rectify moisture affecting electrical parts at the North Hyde substation, but maintenance was repeatedly deferred, the report said.

Heathrow told the BBC National Grid “could and should” have prevented the fire and that it expected it to “take accountability for those failings”.

“Those failings that resulted in significant damage and loss for Heathrow and our airlines,” a spokesperson added.

National Grid said it had taken action since the fire on 20 March, but said such events were “rare” and that Britain had “one of the most reliable networks in the world”. It has not yet responded to Heathrow’s potential legal case.

Following the report being released on Wednesday, energy watchdog Ofgem has launched its own investigation into National Grid.

Heathrow, the UK’s biggest airport, shut down as a result of the power cut, which led to thousands of cancelled flights and stranded passengers.

The National Energy System Operator (Neso) said moisture entering electrical components at the substation caused the blaze.

It said “elevated” moisture had been detected in July 2018 and that under National Grid’s guidance, such readings indicate “an imminent fault and that the bushing should be replaced”.

Bushing is insulating material used around electrical parts.

But it said the issue went “unaddressed” and “basic maintenance” to fix the problem in 2022 was deferred.

More than 270,000 journeys were affected by Heathrow’s shut down and the impact was also felt beyond the airport, with “essential services” including road, rail and Hillingdon Hospital affected, Neso said.

Airlines based at Heathrow have said the closure on 21 March cost carriers between £80m to £100m.

The power failure and subsequent closure of the UK’s busiest airport has raised wider questions about the UK’s major infrastructure resilience.

Fintan Slye, Neso’s chief executive, told the BBC’s Today programme that while the report “did not set out to apportion blame”, National Grid was responsible for the maintenance of the equipment and making sure it is fit for operation.

The report found that National Grid did not know how crucial the North Hyde substation was to Heathrow, even though the airport did know.

“So when they identified those moisture levels back in 2018, what should have happened is that the transformer should have been taken out of service for a short period of time and that fault effectively repaired,” he said.

“That was missed. The moisture got worse over time and ultimately that’s what caused the fire to happen. The story of our report really is probably one of missed opportunities.”

After announcing its investigation into National Grid, Akshay Kaul, director general for infrastructure at Ofgem, said it expected energy companies to “properly maintain their equipment and networks to prevent events like this happening”.

“Where there is evidence that they have not, we will take action and hold companies fully to account,” he added.

National Grid said it had a “comprehensive asset inspection and maintenance programme in place”.

It said this included “re-testing the resilience of substations that serve strategic infrastructure” and added it would cooperate with Ofgem’s investigation.

Mr Slye said as well as the substation fault, there was also a “potential missed opportunity” at Heathrow to maximise its energy resilience.

The report also said that “it was not known to the energy companies” that the loss of one of the electrical supply points – of which Heathrow has three – would result in a power outage to some of the airport’s critical systems.

“The review also found that energy network operators are not generally aware whether customers connected to their networks are Critical National Infrastructure,” it said.

American rapper Kanye West has been blocked from entering Australia over a song glorifying Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Australia’s home affairs minister Tony Burke revealed that his department had cancelled West’s valid visa after the song Heil Hitler was released in early May.

West’s song has been widely condemned and has been banned on most platforms.

The highly controversial rapper, also known as Ye, identifies as a Nazi and is known for his anti-Semitic comments. He is married to Australian designer Bianca Censori.

Mr Burke revealed the visa cancellation in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, during a discussion about the visa cancellation of another person over their Islamophobic comments.

“If someone argued that anti-Semitism was rational, I would not let them come here,” Mr Burke said, while bringing up West’s case.

“[West] has been coming to Australia for a long time… and he’s made a lot of offensive comments.

“But my officials looked at it again once he released the Heil Hitler song, and he no longer has a valid visa in Australia.”

It is not clear if West has been permanently banned from Australia. Mr Burke said that visa applications would be reassessed each time they are made, in accordance with Australian law.

But when asked if any visa ban on West would be sustainable, Mr Burke said: “I think that what’s not sustainable is to import hatred… We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry.”

It is not the first time Australia considered blocking West. In 2023, Australia’s education minister Jason Clare had also condemned West’s “awful” comments on Hitler and the Holocaust, and suggested he could be denied entry.

Amid the current backlash, Heil Hitler raked up millions of views within a day of its release in May.

The song is part of the Grammy-winning artist’s new album WW3, which also contains other tracks with controversial lyrics.

The music video for Heil Hitler, released on 8 May, shows a group of men wearing animal skins and chanting the song’s title. It has been banned on streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.

But shortly after its release, West said he was “done with anti-Semitism” and released a new version of Heil Hitler – titled Hallelujah. The new song replaced earlier references to Nazism with lyrics relating to Christianity.

West has in recent years sparked controversy for his anti-Semitic remarks. Earlier this year, he declared himself a Nazi and retracted an apology for earlier comments.

In 2022, sportswear giant Adidas announced it was ending its partnership with West over his anti-Semitism.

Late last year, the company said it had reached a settlement with him to end all legal proceedings between them.

The Princess of Wales has spoken candidly about the life-changing long-term challenges of recovering after chemotherapy, as she visited a hospital in Essex.

Catherine said during treatment “you put on a sort of brave face” but afterwards it can still feel “really difficult”.

She told patients at the hospital about life after cancer treatment: “You’re not able to function normally at home as you perhaps once used to.”

It was Catherine’s first public engagement since pulling out of an appearance at Royal Ascot, when it was said she needed to find the right balance in her return to work.

In January, Catherine announced she was in remission from cancer, which had been diagnosed last year. But her latest comments are a reminder how this is a gradual path to recovery.

She said: “You put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment, treatment’s done – then it’s like ‘I can crack on, get back to normal’.

“But actually the phase afterwards is really difficult, you’re not necessarily under the clinical team any longer, but you’re not able to function normally at home as you perhaps once used to,” said the princess.

“But it’s life-changing for anyone, through first diagnosis or post treatment and things like that, it is a life-changing experience both for the patient but also for the families as well.

“And actually it sometimes goes unrecognised, you don’t necessarily, particularly when it’s the first time, appreciate how much impact it is going to have.

“You have to find your new normal and that takes time… and it’s a rollercoaster it’s not one smooth plane, which you expect it to be. But the reality is it’s not, you go through hard times,” said Catherine.

The princess was in a conversation with a group of patients – and one told her: “It can be very discombobulating, in that time when you’ve finished active treatment.”

“Your reality has completely changed,” the patient told the princess.

Catherine talked of the need for recovery time: “There is this whole phase when you finish your treatment that you, yourself, everybody, expects you, right you’ve finished your time, go, you’re better, and that’s not the case at all.”

There had been much attention paid when the princess did not take part in an engagement at the Ascot racecourse.

But royal sources say that her comments on Tuesday will send an important message of support for other former cancer patients who are facing challenges in their own journey of recovery.

She made the comments as she visited a “well-being garden” at Colchester, which helps to use nature to support patients in their recovery from illness.

Catherine has spoken of the healing power of the natural world and how it has been a source of strength for her during her return from illness. She has described nature as her “sanctuary”.

In May, the Royal Horticultural Society launched a “Catherine’s rose”, which was sold to raise funds for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, at a hospital where the princess had been treated.

There are 50 of this variety of rose that have been donated to Colchester Hospital, with the princess helping to plant the roses during her visit.

The well-being garden at the hospital is intended to provide a place to relax and recuperate for patients, recognising how nature can help people to feel better, both in their physical and mental health.

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Two people were found dead by firefighters tackling a blaze in Spain’s Catalonia region on Tuesday, as Europe endures scorching temperatures during the ongoing heatwave.

In a statement, Catalan authorities said the bodies were found after firefighters extinguished a fire in the Torrefeta area, near the town of Coscó.

A 10-year-old American tourist visiting the Palace of Versailles died after falling ill, French media reported.

Earlier, the country’s ecological transition minister said two heat-related fatalities were recorded in France, adding more than 300 people were treated by firefighters on Tuesday.

The European continent is experiencing extremely high temperatures, a phenomenon that the UN’s climate agency said is becoming more frequent due to “human-induced climate change”.

As reported by French broadcaster TF1, a child aged 10 collapsed at the courtyard of the royal estate, in front of her parents, at around 18:00 local time on Tuesday. Despite efforts by the castle’s security team and emergency services, she was pronounced dead an hour later.

For Spain and England, the month of June marked their hottest June since records began. Spain’s weather service, Aemet, said last month’s average temperature of 23.6C (74.5F) “pulverised records”, surpassing the normal average for July and August.

Firefighters worked throughout Tuesday night in Catalonia to define the perimeter of both the Torrefeta and Florejacs fires, according to the region’s fire service.

In a statement on Wednesday, the fire service said their efforts were focused on establishing the perimeter, extinguishing fires in buildings, and ruling out any more victims.

As of 22:37 local time on Tuesday (21:37 BST), Catalonia’s emergency services established they were working in a perimeter of about 6,500 hectares, which is about 40km (25 miles) long.

According to reports by Spanish media, the two people killed in the fire in Coscó were the owner of a farm and a worker. The pair were aged 32 and 45.

Firefighters said they found the two bodies “lifeless” when tackling the blaze. Catalonia’s regional president, Salvador Illa, said he would be visiting the area.

Spanish forecaster Aemet predicts that Wednesday will see highs of 41C in Córdoba, a city in southern Spain.

France’s ecological transition minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, said the two deaths in her country were a result of “heat-related illness”.

It comes as France registered its second-hottest June since records began in 1900. June 2025 only trails behind June 2023, when the country also experienced intense heat.

Four departments in France remain on the red alert level for heat, the highest level. These include Aube, Cher, Loiret and Yonne, according to the country’s weather service, Meteo France.

The forecaster predicts some storms in parts of eastern France, with highs of 37C in Metz in the north-east.

In Italy, a 75-year-old man in the Budoni, Sardinia, died after falling sick because of the extreme heat. Another man, 60, became sick while on the beach of Lu Impostu in San Teodoro. Emergency services tried to save both men without success.

Temperatures in the region have exceeded 40C in recent days.

Also in the Mediterranean country, two construction workers in Tezze sul Brenta, in the province of Vicenza, were rushed to hospital at 15:30 local time on Tuesday because they fell ill as a result of the heat while working in a hole.

One of the workers is in a coma, according to reports by Italian news agency Ansa, who report that he was resuscitated, intubated and taken to San Bassiano hospital by helicopter.

Dimple Rana, heat and microclimate specialist at sustainable development consultancy Arup, told the BBC there is “a big link between heat-related impact and age”.

In the UK, for example, most heat-related deaths were among older adults, Ms Rana said. Younger children, particularly those under five, were also at risk.

Another factor to consider is that often people on lower incomes undertake more manual work, Ms Rana said, meaning they are more exposed to higher temperatures.

Intense heat on Tuesday led to power outages in Florence city centre, due to a peak in consumption from air conditioners and some underground electrical cables overheating, Italian media reported.

The blackout on Tuesday afternoon meant homes, hotels and shops were without power. ATMs were also out of action and alarm systems in shops and other business premises were deactivated.

In Bergamo, the overheating of underground cables also caused a power outage in half of the city. On one side towards Piazza della Liberta, the lights were on and people could congregate outside, while on the other, towards Sentierone, no electricity meant dark shop fronts and little to no nightlife.

The blackout in Bergamo on Tuesday spanned several hours, with no power between 16:00 and 22:46 local time.

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.

Heat and microclimate expert Ms Rana said we need efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, through using more clean energy for example, but we also need to adapt.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which is the UN’s weather and climate agency, said on Tuesday that human-induced climate change means “extreme heat is becoming more frequent and intense”.

In a statement, the WMO added: “The effect of heat on human health is more pronounced in cities as a result of the urban heat island effect.

“This is where urban environments are significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas, especially during hot periods, due to an abundance of paved surfaces, buildings, vehicles, and heat sources.”

“This additional heat in cities exacerbates heat stress and can increase mortality during hot periods,” the agency said.

Kyiv has warned that an interruption of US weapons shipments will encourage Russia to prolong the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

On Tuesday the White House said that it had cut off some weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

The decision was taken “to put America’s interests first” following a Department of Defense review of US “military support and assistance to other countries”, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement that “any delay or procrastination in supporting Ukraine’s defense capabilities would only encourage the aggressor to continue war and terror, rather than seek peace.”

It particularly emphasised the need for Kyiv to strengthen its air defences – as Russia continues to pummel the country with missiles and drones on a near-nightly basis.

A Kyiv-based US diplomat was invited to the foreign ministry for talks on Wednesday.

However, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said it had not received any official notification from the US about the “suspension or revision” of the weapons deliveries, and urged people not to speculate on the basis of partial information.

But in a statement the defence ministry also said that the path to ending the war was “through consistent and joint pressure on the aggressor”.

At the weekend Ukraine endured its biggest aerial attack since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, with more than 500 drones and ballistic and cruise missiles launched at its cities.

US officials did not immediately say which shipments were being halted.

According to US broadcaster NBC the weapons being delayed could include Patriot interceptors, Howitzer munitions, missiles and grenade launchers.

The US has sent tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, leading some in the Trump administration to voice concerns that US stockpiles are too low.

The Kremlin, for its part, welcomed news of the reduction in weapons shipments, saying reducing the flow of weapons to Kyiv will help end the conflict faster.

“The fewer the number of weapons that are delivered to Ukraine, the closer the end of the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Fedir Venislavskyi, an MP for Ukraine’s ruling party, said the decision was “painful, and against the background of the terrorist attacks which Russia commits against Ukraine… it’s a very unpleasant situation.”

A Ukrainian military source quoted by AFP news agency said that Kyiv was “seriously dependent on American arms supplies, although Europe is doing its best, but it will be difficult for us without American ammunition.”

Ukraine’s European allies have spent billions in military aid over the last three and a half years.

However, military support for Kyiv is not endorsed by everyone on the political spectrum.

The Czech President and former Chair of NATO’s Military Committee, Petr Pavel, has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine but told BBC Russian that he could “not guarantee” continued ammunition support for Kyiv, as that was dependent on the result of the upcoming Czech elections.

“I don’t know what will be the priorities of a new government,” he said.

The Pentagon’s move is based on concerns that US military stockpiles are falling too low, a source told CBS News, although Anna Kelly stressed that “the strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran”.

Separately, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby said in a statement that the defense department “continues to provide the President with robust options to continue military aid to Ukraine”.

However, he added “the Department is rigorously examining and adapting its approach to achieving this objective while also preserving US forces’ readiness for Administration defense priorities.”

The pause comes less than a week after President Donald Trump discussed air defences with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky at the Nato summit in the Netherlands.

Trump said US officials “are going to see if we can make some of them available” when asked by the BBC about providing extra Patriot anti-missile systems to Ukraine.

Referring to his conversation with Zelensky, Trump said: “We had a little rough times sometimes, but he couldn’t have been nicer.”

The two had a heated confrontation in the Oval Office in March this year. Afterwards, Trump said he was pausing military aid to Ukraine that had been earmarked by the previous Biden administration. Intelligence sharing with Ukraine was also suspended.

But both pauses were subsequently lifted.

In late April, the US and Ukraine signed a deal that would give the US access to Ukraine’s mineral reserves in exchange for military assistance.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday – the first time in over two-and-a-half years.

They spoke on the phone for more than two hours, Macron’s office said, adding that the French president had urged a ceasefire in Ukraine and for talks to start on a “solid and lasting settlement of the conflict”.

The Kremlin said Putin had “reminded Macron” that the West’s policy was to blame for the war, because it had “for many years ignored Russia’s security interests”.

Last month Russia’s long-time leader told a forum in St Petersburg that he saw Russians and Ukrainians as one people and “in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours”.

Moscow currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea peninsula annexed in 2014.

Russia has made slow, grinding advances in Ukraine in recent months and claimed full control of the eastern Luhansk region this week. It has also claimed to have seized territory in the south eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday a Ukrainian attack killed three people at a Russian arms production factory for making drones and radars in Izhevsk, more than 1,000km (620 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has officially closed its doors after President Donald Trump gradually dismantled the agency over its allegedly wasteful spending.

More than 80% of all the agency’s programmes were cancelled as of March, and on Tuesday the remainder were formally absorbed by the state department.

The shuttering of USAID – which administered aid for the US government, the world’s largest such provider – has been newly criticised by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush.

These aid cuts could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to a warning published by researchers in the Lancet medical journal.

The authors of the Lancet report called the numbers “staggering”, and projected that a third of those at risk of premature deaths were children.

A state department official said the study used “incorrect assumptions” and insisted that the US would continue to administer aid in a “more efficient” way, the AFP news agency reported.

Founded in 1961, USAID previously employed some 10,000 people, two-thirds of whom worked overseas, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The controversial cuts began early in Trump’s second term, when billionaire and former presidential adviser Elon Musk was tasked with shrinking the federal workforce.

The move was widely condemned by humanitarian organisations around the world.

Among the programmes that were curbed were efforts to provide prosthetic limbs to soldiers injured in Ukraine, to clear landmines in various countries, and to contain the spread of Ebola in Africa.

On Wednesday morning, the agency’s website continued to display a message saying that all USAID direct-hire personnel globally had been placed on administrative leave from 23 February.

• What is USAID and why is Trump closing it down?
• How a US freeze upended global aid in a matter of days
• ‘People will starve’ because of US aid cut to Sudan
• Inside an Islamic State camp shaken by US aid cuts

Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously said that the remaining 1,000 programmes after the cuts would be administered under his department.

“This era of government-sanctioned inefficiency has officially come to an end,” he added on Tuesday.

“Under the Trump Administration, we will finally have a foreign funding mission in America that prioritizes our national interests,” he wrote in a post on Substack.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants overseas spending to be closely aligned with his “America First” approach.

Bush and Obama delivered their messages of condemnation in a video conference they hosted with U2 singer Bono for thousands of members the USAID community.

Bush, a fellow member of Trump’s Republican Party, focused on the impact of cuts to an AIDS and HIV programme that was started by his administration and subsequently credited with saving 25 million lives.

“You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work – and that is your good heart,” Bush told USAID workers in a recorded statement, according to US media. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”

Meanwhile Obama, a member of the opposition Democratic Party, affirmed the work that USAID employees had already done.

“Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy. Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world,” Obama was quoted as saying.

Long-time humanitarian advocate Bono spoke about the millions of people who he said could die because of the cuts.

“They called you crooks, when you were the best of us,” he told attendees of the video conference.

USAID was seen as integral to the global aid system. After Trump’s cuts were announced, other countries followed suit with their own reductions – including the UK, France and Germany.

Last month, the United Nations said it was dealing with “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector”.

Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending budget bill is returning to the US House of Representatives – as the clock ticks down to the president’s 4 July deadline for lawmakers to present him with a final version that can be signed into law.

The bill narrowly cleared the Senate, or upper chamber of Congress, on Tuesday. Vice-President JD Vance cast a tie-breaking vote after more than 24 hours of debate and resistance from some Republican senators.

It could prove equally tricky for Trump’s allies to pass the bill through the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson hopes to hold a vote as early as Wednesday.

The lower chamber approved an earlier version of the bill in May with a margin of just one vote, and this bill must now be reconciled with the Senate version.

Both chambers are controlled by Trump’s Republicans, but within the party several factions are fighting over key policies in the lengthy legislation.

Sticking points include the question of how much the bill will add to the US national deficit, and how deeply it will cut healthcare and other social programmes.

During previous signs of rebellion against Trump at Congress, Republican lawmakers have ultimately fallen in line.

What is at stake this time is the defining piece of legislation for Trump’s second term. Here are the factions standing in its way.

• Facing intense pressure, House must decide if Trump’s bill is good enough
• What’s in Trump’s budget bill?
• Trump and Musk feud again over budget plans

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the version of the bill that was passed on Tuesday by the Senate could add $3.3tn (£2.4tn) to the US national deficit over the next 10 years. That compares with $2.8tn that could be added by the earlier version that was narrowly passed by the House.

The deficit means the difference between what the US government spends and the revenue it receives.

This outraged the fiscal hawks in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who have threatened to tank the bill.

Many of them are echoing claims made by Elon Musk, Trump’s former adviser and campaign donor, who has repeatedly lashed out at lawmakers for considering a bill that will ultimately add to US national debt.

Shortly after the Senate passed the bill, Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a Freedom Caucus member, called the move “unconscionable”.

“What the Senate did, I’ll vote against it here and I’ll vote against it on the floor,” he added.

Norman’s colleague from Texas, Chip Roy, was also quick to signal his frustration, saying the odds of meeting Trump’s 4 July deadline had lengthened.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Tennessee told Fox News that Musk was right to say the US cannot sustain these deficits. “He understands finances, he understands debts and deficits, and we have to make further progress.”

On Tuesday, Conservative Congressman Andy Ogles went as far as to file an amendment that would completely replace the Senate version of the bill, which he called a “dud”, with the original House-approved one.

Meanwhile, Ohio Republican Warren Davison posted on X: “Promising someone else will cut spending in the future does not cut spending.” He added: “We will eventually arrive at the crash site, because it appears nothing will stop this runaway spending train. A fatal overdose of government.”

Representatives from poorer districts are worried about the Senate version of the bill harming their constituents, which could also hurt them at the polls in 2026. According to the Hill, six Republicans planning to vote down the bill due to concerns about cuts to key provisions, including cuts to medical coverage.

Some of the critical Republicans have attacked the Senate’s more aggressive cuts to Medicaid, the healthcare programme relied upon by millions of low-income Americans.

“I’ve been clear from the start that I will not support a final reconciliation bill that makes harmful cuts to Medicaid, puts critical funding at risk, or threatens the stability of healthcare providers,” said Congressman David Valadao, who represents a swing district in California. This echoes the criticism of opposition Democrats.

Other Republicans have signalled a willingness to compromise. Randy Fine, from Florida, told the BBC he had frustrations with the Senate version of the bill, but that he would vote it through the House because “we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”.

House Republicans had wrestled over how much to cut Medicaid and food subsidies in the initial version their chamber passed. They needed the bill to reduce spending, in order to offset lost revenue from the tax cuts contained in the legislation.

The Senate made steeper cuts to both areas in the version passed on Tuesday.

Changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) in the Senate’s bill would see roughly 12 million Americans lose health insurance by 2034, according to a CBO report published on Saturday.

Under the version originally passed by the House, a smaller number of 11 million Americans would have had their coverage stripped, according to the CBO.

The bill also deals with the question of how much taxpayers can deduct from the amount they pay in federal taxes, based on how much they pay in state and local taxes (Salt). This, too, has become a controversial issue.

There is currently a $10,000 cap, which expires this year. Both the Senate and House have approved increasing this to $40,000.

But in the Senate-approved version, the cap would return to $10,000 after five years. This change could pose a problem for some House Republicans.

Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has confirmed he will have a successor, putting to rest speculation over whether the 600-year-old institution will end when he dies.

In a video message keenly-awaited by his followers, he said only the trust that he founded could appoint his successor and “no-one else has any authority to interfere in this matter”.

According to Tibetan tradition, Dalai Lamas are “reincarnated” after they die. China annexed Tibet in 1950 and the current Dalai Lama lives in exile in India, making succession a highly contentious issue.

Beijing rejected the statement, saying his successor would be from inside China and must be approved by the government.

Hundreds of followers gathered on Wednesday to hear the long-awaited announcement in the Indian town of Dharamshala where the Dalai Lama lives.

The Dalai Lama Library and Archive centre, where the video message was broadcast, resembled a sea of maroon with monks from all over the world in attendance.

“I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,” the Dalai Lama’s statement said.

He reiterated that “the Gaden Phodrang Trust, the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama… should accordingly carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition”.

Dharamshala is holding the Dalai Lama’s milestone 90th birthday celebrations which began on Monday – his birthday according to the Tibetan lunar calendar – and will conclude on 6 July, his official birthday.

Celebrations will be attended by more than 7,000 guests, including a number of Indian ministers. Hollywood actor Richard Gere, a long-time follower, is also taking part.

In the past, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism had been torn between whether to continue with the post of Dalai Lama 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 had also said that if there was 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 must be born outside China and his reiteration of the same on Wednesday did not go down well with Beijing.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation must comply with Chinese laws and regulations as well as “religious rituals and historical conventions” and would need to be approved by 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 and denies suppressing their human rights and freedom of expression.

The Dalai Lama’s message “affirming that the continuation of the institution” has been welcomed by his followers.

Tsayang Gyatso, a 40-year-old businessman, said that for most Tibetans, the announcement is “a great relief and a moment of happiness”.

“I always had a belief that the reincarnation will come. But having heard it from His Holiness, I feel elated,” he told the BBC in Dharamshala.

Mr Gyatso, who had travelled from Delhi, said he felt “blessed to be here in person to witness His Holiness’s birthday”.

He said there was “a lot of propaganda from China on the appointment of the next Dalai Lama” which made him fear that the appointment process could be corrupted “but all that has been put to rest by His Holiness’s announcement”.

Robert Barnett, a Tibet scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, told the BBC that the Dalai Lama’s “message is indirect signalling” to China.

“He’s signalling two things here. One is he’s going to decide on his reincarnation, not China. And the other is he’s showing China that he’s made this decision through a kind of popular – almost democratic – process of asking the community whether they want his institution to continue.”

That’s a signal to China that his legitimacy is based on consent and not on force, Prof Barnett said.

Experts, however, say China is also expected to name its own Dalai Lama.

Dibyesh Anand, professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, said, “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.”

Youdon Aukatsang, an MP in the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, told the BBC 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, she 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.”

Punk duo Bob Vylan have been dropped from the line-up of a music festival in Manchester following their controversial appearance at Glastonbury.

The group had been due to headline the Radar Festival at Victoria Warehouse on Saturday, but organisers confirmed in a statement they would no longer appear.

In response, Bob Vylan posted a statement on Instagram, telling fans: “Manchester, we will be back.”

Bob Vylan had also been due to perform at French festival Kave Fest on Sunday, but organisers told the BBC their appearance there had been pulled too.

At Glastonbury, Bob Vylan’s lead singer led the crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]”, prompting criticism from across the political spectrum, including the prime minister who called it “appalling hate speech”.

Bob Vylan responded to the outcry in a post on Instagram on Tuesday, saying they had been “targeted for speaking up”.

“We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine,” they said.

They added that “we, like those in the spotlight before us, are not the story. We are a distraction from the story, and whatever sanctions we receive will be a distraction”.

On Wednesday, following the music festival cancellations, they reiterated their position, telling followers: “Silence is not an option. We will be fine, the people of Palestine are hurting.” The group added they would return to Manchester in the future.

Organisers of Kave Fest, which is held in the town of Gisors, said they would release a statement later explaining their decision to drop the band.

A German music venue has also confirmed that Bob Vylan will no longer open for US band Gogol Bordello at a concert in Cologne in September.

The BBC has been criticised for broadcasting the Glastonbury set via a live stream which was available on iPlayer.

The UK’s chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis strongly criticised “the airing of vile Jew-hate at Glastonbury” earlier this week.

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

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

Broadcast regulator Ofcom also issued a statement, saying it was “very concerned” about the live stream, adding that “the BBC clearly has questions to answer”.

British colonists committed genocide against Australia’s Indigenous population in Victoria, a landmark Aboriginal-led inquiry has found.

The Yoorrook Justice Commission found violence and disease reduced the local Indigenous population by three quarters in the 20 years after the state was colonised, in the early 1830s.

Its report included 100 recommendations to “redress” harm caused by “invasion and occupation” – though several of the authors disagreed with unspecified “key findings”.

The Commission was set up in 2021 as Australia’s first formal “truth-telling” inquiry, and tasked with examining past and ongoing “systemic injustices” suffered by the Indigenous people in the state.

It is part of a wider national push for Australia to engage in a reconciliation process with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, which community leaders say should include inquiries into the nation’s history, treaty-making, and granting First Nations people greater political say.

Held over four years, The Yoorrook Justice Commission gave Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the opportunity to formally share their stories and experiences.

The commission’s brief covered a wide gamut of issues including land and water rights, cultural violations, killing and genocide, health, education and housing.

The report found that from 1834, “mass killings, disease, sexual violence, exclusion, linguicide, cultural erasure, environmental degradation, child removal” as well as assimilation contributed to the “near-complete physical destruction” of Victoria’s Indigenous community.

The population dropped from 60,000 to 15,000 by 1851.

“This was genocide,” the report said.

The report, which drew from more than two months of public hearings and over 1,300 submissions, called for “redress” to acknowledge a range of human rights violations, which could include reparations.

Among its other recommendations were a significant overhaul of the education system to include greater input from Indigenous people, and a government apology for Aboriginal soldiers who served during the world wars and were excluded from a scheme gifting diggers land when they returned from the battlefields.

On the state’s health system, the report found that racism was “endemic” and called for more funding for Indigenous health services and policies to get more Aboriginal staff in the system.

Three of the five commissioners – Sue-Anne Hunter, Maggie Walter and Anthony North – “did not approve of the inclusion of the key findings in the final report”, however no further detail was provided.

In response to the report, Victoria’s Labor government said it would “carefully consider” the findings, with Premier Jacinta Allan saying they “shine a light on hard truths”.

Jill Gallagher, head of Victoria’s peak body for Aboriginal health and wellbeing, said the genocide finding was “indisputable”.

“We don’t blame anyone alive today for these atrocities,” she told the ABC, “but it is the responsibility of those of us alive today to accept that truth – and all Victorians today must accept, recognise and reconcile with these factual findings.”

The commission’s report is the first of its kind in Australia, though similar inquiries are happening in other states and territories with varying degrees of progress, depending on which party is in government.

For example, in Queensland, a truth-telling inquiry was cancelled after the Labor government was replaced by a new Liberal-National government.

In recent years, the national dialogue on how to recognise the traditional owners of Australia at all levels of governments has prompted heated debate.

Australians voted against a historic referendum in October 2023, rejecting a change to the constitution that would have created an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, a national body for Indigenous people to give advice on laws.

American rapper Kanye West has been blocked from entering Australia over a song glorifying Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Australia’s home affairs minister Tony Burke revealed that his department had cancelled West’s valid visa after the song Heil Hitler was released in early May.

West’s song has been widely condemned and has been banned on most platforms.

The highly controversial rapper, also known as Ye, identifies as a Nazi and is known for his anti-Semitic comments. He is married to Australian designer Bianca Censori.

Mr Burke revealed the visa cancellation in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, during a discussion about the visa cancellation of another person over their Islamophobic comments.

“If someone argued that anti-Semitism was rational, I would not let them come here,” Mr Burke said, while bringing up West’s case.

“[West] has been coming to Australia for a long time… and he’s made a lot of offensive comments.

“But my officials looked at it again once he released the Heil Hitler song, and he no longer has a valid visa in Australia.”

It is not clear if West has been permanently banned from Australia. Mr Burke said that visa applications would be reassessed each time they are made, in accordance with Australian law.

But when asked if any visa ban on West would be sustainable, Mr Burke said: “I think that what’s not sustainable is to import hatred… We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry.”

It is not the first time Australia considered blocking West. In 2023, Australia’s education minister Jason Clare had also condemned West’s “awful” comments on Hitler and the Holocaust, and suggested he could be denied entry.

Amid the current backlash, Heil Hitler raked up millions of views within a day of its release in May.

The song is part of the Grammy-winning artist’s new album WW3, which also contains other tracks with controversial lyrics.

The music video for Heil Hitler, released on 8 May, shows a group of men wearing animal skins and chanting the song’s title. It has been banned on streaming platforms including Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.

But shortly after its release, West said he was “done with anti-Semitism” and released a new version of Heil Hitler – titled Hallelujah. The new song replaced earlier references to Nazism with lyrics relating to Christianity.

West has in recent years sparked controversy for his anti-Semitic remarks. Earlier this year, he declared himself a Nazi and retracted an apology for earlier comments.

In 2022, sportswear giant Adidas announced it was ending its partnership with West over his anti-Semitism.

Late last year, the company said it had reached a settlement with him to end all legal proceedings between them.

Israel has agreed to the “necessary conditions” to finalise a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, US President Donald Trump has said.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the US would “work with all parties to end the War”. He did not give details on the proposed truce.

“I hope… that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better – IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE,” Trump wrote.

Israel has not confirmed it agreed to the conditions. A Hamas official told the BBC the group was “ready and serious” to reach a deal if it ended the war.

A Palestinian official familiar with Hamas’s negotiations with mediators told the BBC the proposal offered no substantive changes to an earlier offer the group rejected in June.

“The core issues remain unresolved,” the Palestinian official said, referring to the talks currently taking place with Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

Earlier, Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told the BBC that the group was “prepared to agree to any proposal if the requirements for ending the war are clearly met or if they lead to its complete end”.

In a statement the group said it was aiming to reach an agreement that “guarantees an end to the aggression, the withdrawal [of Israeli forces], and urgent relief for our people in the Gaza Strip”.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar posted on X that there is majority support in the government “for a framework to release hostages,” and this opportunity “must not be missed”.

For Israel, the key component of any deal will have to be the release of most, if not all, hostages still being held in Gaza.

Of the 50 or so hostages remaining in captivity, more than 20 are still thought to be alive and their plight has been at the forefront of regular demonstrations in Israel calling for an end to the war.

A recent Israeli newspaper poll suggested that a significant majority of Israelis wanted the war to end – but polling on Wednesday, from the Israel Democracy Institute, also suggested that most Israelis still did not trust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or his intentions.

Netanyahu has for months insisted on “complete victory” over Hamas before ending the war. It’s unclear if his position will now change under renewed pressure from Washington – and the answer could be pivotal to reaching a deal.

But on the Hamas side, optimism remains low.

According to a source, Hamas’s representative in Cairo Ghazi Hamad is leading discussions on behalf of the group in Egypt.

However, the Palestinian official told the BBC that no new proposals had been put forward by the mediators. Instead, efforts appear focused on recycling, reworking the existing proposals by US special envoy Steve Witkoff – a framework that falls short of key Palestinian demands.

The current draft does not include guarantees that the war will come to a permanent end after the ceasefire expires, nor does it ensure an Israeli military withdrawal to positions held before 19 January.

Trump’s announcement about a possible ceasefire comes before a meeting with Netanyahu scheduled for next week, in which the US president has said he would be “very firm”.

He earlier said he believed Netanyahu wanted to end hostilities in Gaza. “He wants to. I can tell you he wants to. I think we’ll have a deal next week,” Trump said.

But without a guarantee to end the war, Hamas may question the value of releasing all the hostages if the Israeli military is likely to resume bombing Gaza.

Another consideration before an agreement could theoretically be signed is Hamas’s demand for a partial Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza, at least for the duration of the ceasefire.

The international community is also likely to lobby hard for the resumption of full-scale UN-backed aid deliveries into Gaza.

Prior to Trump’s announcement, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told the BBC Israel was “absolutely” ready for a ceasefire.

Danon said Hamas was “playing hardball”.

“We are putting pressure on Hamas, and if they will not come to the table, the only option we will have to bring back the hostages, is to apply more military pressure.

“The war will end when the hostages are back home,” the Israeli envoy added.

Trump’s comments come shortly after Israel ordered evacuations in northern Gaza ahead of increased military action. At least 20 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a seafront cafe in Gaza City on Monday, according to medics and eyewitnesses.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed. At least 56,647 have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israeli military this week also said it was examining reports of civilians being “harmed” while approaching aid distribution centres in Gaza run by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday that as of 28 June, 408 people had been killed trying to reach aid at GHF aid sites.

More than 170 charities and other NGOs have called for the controversial group to be shut down. Organisations like Oxfam and Save the Children say Israeli forces “routinely” open fire on Palestinians seeking aid.

Israel denies this accusation and says the organisation is necessary to bypass Hamas interference in aid distribution.

In March, a previous ceasefire deal collapsed when Israel launched fresh strikes on Gaza. The Israeli military described the action as “pre-emptive strikes… based on Hamas’s readiness to execute terror attacks, build up force and re-arm”.

The previous ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas – which started on 19 January – was set up to have three stages, but did not make it past the first stage.

Stage two included establishing a permanent ceasefire, the return of remaining living hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

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