A judge has denied bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs after a jury convicted the hip-hop mogul of transportation to engage in prostitution, but acquitted him of the most serious charges: racketeering and sex-trafficking.

Lawyers for the recording artist had argued he posed no flight risk, pointing out his jet is being chartered in Hawaii.

But Judge Arun Subramanian cited Combs’ history of violence as he ruled the rapper must remain behind bars until sentencing later this year when he faces up to 20 years in prison.

In the nearly two-month federal trial in New York City, prosecutors accused Combs of using his celebrity status and business empire to run a criminal enterprise to sex traffic women.

A panel of 12 jurors deliberated for 13 hours before acquitting Combs of three of the most serious five charges.

He will continue to be held at the same federal jail in Brooklyn where he has been detained since last September.

The sentencing was tentatively scheduled for 3 October.

• Diddy’s secret world revealed in videos and his voice notes
• Dramatic moment Combs fell to his knees after learning his fate

Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, made an impassioned argument for the judge to release his client.

The defence lawyer said Combs had attended a programme for perpetrators of domestic violence to try to reform his conduct, even before he was arrested, and that he had not been violent since 2018.

“I just think we should trust him,” Agnifilo said.

But Combs’ ex-girlfriend, musician Casandra Ventura, had warned the court in a letter that the hip-hop mogul would posed a danger if released.

The rapper had acknowledged domestic violence, but denied any non-consensual sexual encounters or a larger racketeering scheme.

Judge Subramanian said bail was being denied because “the defence conceded violence in his personal relationship”.

The mood in court was emotional after jurors announced they had acquitted Combs of the most serious charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.

Sex trafficking and racketeering both carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

As Combs learned the verdict, he got on his knees, put his face into his chair and appeared to be praying. He was shaking.

The verdict comes a day after jurors told the court they had reached a decision on the sex-trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution charges against Combs, but were unable to decide on the racketeering count.

The jurors said they had had “unpersuadable” opinions on both sides about the charge, which was the most complicated of any of the counts Combs faced.

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

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

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

Prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses over the course of the seven-week trial, including Ms Ventura, rapper Kid Cudi, several ex-employees and hotel security workers.

They alleged Combs had relied on employees to coerce his partners into so-called “freak-offs”, in which his girlfriends would have sex with a male escort while he watched and filmed.

The government relied on testimony from Ms Ventura, who took the witness stand while eight-months pregnant, telling the court that Combs had pressured her into sex acts and threatened to release tapes of the freak-offs if she disobeyed.

Ms Ventura warned on Wednesday that Combs would pose a danger if granted bail.

In a letter filed to the court, her attorney Douglas Wigdor wrote: “Ms Ventura believes that Mr Combs is likely to pose a danger to the victims who testified in this case, including herself, as well as to the community.”

At the centre of their case was a video of the rapper beating and dragging Ms Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016 – surveillance footage that security employees testified Combs tried to pay them to delete.

Combs’ attorneys conceded their client was violent towards women, but argued that his behaviour was motivated by drugs and jealousy, not evidence of a larger sex trafficking and racketeering scheme.

Combs is also facing dozens of civil lawsuits alleging sexual assault and violence.

The Harlem-born rapper founded Bad Boy Records in 1993, a label that represented some of the biggest names in hip hop – including Notorious B.I.G. and Usher.

He went on to establish a clothing line called Sean John and a variety of other businesses including fragrances, alcohol and even a media company.

“Can y’all come straighten it up over here? It’s not looking luxurious,” Sean ”Diddy” Combs says in a voice note to his personal assistants as R&B music mellows in the background.

Hours before, a so-called ”freak-off” - a drug-fuelled orgy also known as a “Wild King Night” – had been in full swing. Now, staff were being called in to clean up.

“PD said he’s going to need emergency clean up at hotel,” his chief of staff texts after another of these events. ”Bring him stain remover (for a chair and couch) and black trash bags. And baking soda too, he said.”

The BBC has seen messages and recordings from former staff in Combs’ household. The staff members have also given detailed accounts of what it was like to work on the multi-millionaire music mogul’s glamorous yacht rentals and inside his sprawling estates across the US – in the Hamptons, Beverly Hills and on Star Island in Miami.

Their experiences span the past five to 10 years, a period that was under scrutiny during Combs’ criminal trial in New York.

At the trial’s conclusion on Wednesday, the 55-year-old was cleared of the most serious charges – racketeering, and two counts of sex trafficking related to ex-partner Casandra Ventura and another woman referred to as “Jane”.

But jurors found he was guilty of two other counts related to the transportation to engage in prostitution of both women. He will be sentenced at a later date.

We have been shown material which paints a picture of a “scary” and unpredictable boss, who would administer shocking “loyalty tests”, and whose demands grew more and more extreme.

Staff have described how his sometimes-days-long “freak-offs” were held at locations around the world, with the rapper expecting staff to prepare a bag containing “baby oil, lubricant and red lights” – to create the red-tinted ambience Combs preferred – alongside class-A drugs wherever he travelled.

Inside his waterfront Miami mansion, a $48m (£36m) compound located on an exclusive man-made island, we have been told that Combs kept tight control of his inner circle.  

“I’m not about to be transparent with y’all,” a groggy Combs warns staff one day in a rambling voice note posted in an employee WhatsApp group in 2020. ”There’s some dark places y’all [EXPLETIVE] don’t want to go. Stay where you’re at.”

Staff say he was intense, demanding and volatile, with some attributing his unpredictability to a lifestyle of drug-fuelled parties. The turnover of staff was high and Combs had more than 20 different house managers join and leave in just two years across his properties, one former estates manager told us.

Phil Pines, 40, who worked for Combs as a senior executive assistant from 2019-2021, has told the BBC the mogul didn’t say a word to him when he first started his job.

“It was like an initiation,” he explains. “We didn’t speak to each other for 30 days.”

Another recent assistant, Ethan (not his real name), recalls: “He was a very ill man with different behaviours, sometimes very aggressive, sometimes very sweet.”

We have changed Ethan’s name because, like many former staff members, he still works in the high-net-worth hospitality industry and fears speaking out about Combs will hurt his career.

Ethan shows us a small scar on his forehead. He says this was the result of Combs smashing a glass against a wall in a fit of rage, and the shards cutting Ethan’s face.

Phil Pines and Ethan were part of Combs’ small group of trusted assistants and say he often played mind games with staff.

Ethan recalls one of Combs’ loyalty tests – when the star took off one of his rings and threw it into the Atlantic Ocean. He then turned to Ethan and told him he had to go into the water to get it.

They were at a formal event and Ethan, like his boss, was wearing a smart suit. He says this didn’t stop him jumping in right away to rescue it.

In another incident, Pines says Combs called him to his residence after midnight, just so he could fetch the TV remote from under the bed he was in with a female guest.

“See? He is loyal and now he can go back home,” he recalls Combs telling her. Pines says he felt like an animal.

But the Wild King Nights – as the rapper’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, referred to them – revealed an even darker side to working for Combs.

“I was asked to set up a laundry list of items for him,” says Pines. “And I thought to myself, why didn’t anybody explain this to me before?”

In one exchange seen by the BBC, Khorram texted him to warn a bag needs to be prepared for a Wild King Night in two hours. In another, she asked for a ”drop off” of seven bottles of baby oil and seven bottles of Astroglide lubricant alongside iced vanilla lattes.

“Rounding up a shelf of baby oil and Astroglide at a store is very, very humiliating. I would always pretend like I was on the phone,” Pines tells us.

In Combs’ trial the prosecution presented evidence of supplies they said were procured for “freak-offs”. A police raid on Combs’ Los Angeles mansion found drugs and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil.

From three months into his role, Pines began having concerns about the frequency of these requests. “It became daily, sometimes twice a day, every day, and every week.”

Pines says there was a constant stream of young women who frequented Combs’ homes – apparently for sex. Young men were also called to the parties, says Ethan.

Some of these young people would appear to be friends of the star’s sons, Pines tells us, with some of the women later seen “hanging” with Combs.

Pines says he also had concerns that some of these guests – who looked like they were in their early 20s – were ”too young” and “impressionable” for his then 50-year-old boss.

“I would see some women feel uncomfortable or at least look like they’d had a wild night,” says Pines.

A woman with an IV drip would usually visit the next day, he says, to help guests recover after sometimes ”partying” for 24 hours non-stop without food.

Pines recalls one young guest uttering to him in distress: “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

He was instructed to drive her home from Combs’ Miami residence: ”She was kind of shaking and shivering, like she was coming down off the drugs.”

The drug-fuelled nature of these nights has repeatedly been brought up during Combs’ trial. Casandra Ventura, his ex-partner of more than a decade, testified that she endured years of coerced sex with male escorts under the threat of beatings and blackmail, while Combs filmed the encounters. She said these events would sometimes go on for days and require her to take countless drugs to stay awake.

Another woman, who dated Combs on-and-off from 2021 until his arrest last September, gave evidence that she felt pressured to fulfil his desires partly because he was paying her rent, and said the encounters left her feeling “disgusted” and in physical pain.

In his defence at trial, Combs’ lawyer said he admitted to domestic violence, but argued that all the sexual encounters were consensual, and that Combs had a “swingers lifestyle”.

The BBC understands at least one staff member was asked to search online for escorts to participate in the Wild King nights. Screenshots of the escorts were then sent to Combs for approval.

Pines says he doesn’t know what happened at these events, but he was asked to deal with the aftermath.

It was “just complete wreckage”, he says. “Oil all over the floor. Marijuana joints everywhere… I would wear gloves. I would wear a mask.”

“He [Combs] would get up, put his hoodie on and walk out the door,” Pines says, leaving staff to clean the room.

On one occasion, Pines says he witnessed Combs push and kick a female guest during an argument at his house, which continued outside.

Combs swore at her and said “give me my hoodie”, Pines remembers. “She takes off the hoodie, she’s topless, no bra, nothing, no t-shirt on. So, I take off my jacket and I wrap it around her to kind of shield her.”

The guest left in an Uber crying, says Pines, but within a week she was back at the house again with Combs.

“She came back shortly after that. Dinner, gifts… she was brought back into the fold.”

When Pines told his supervisor Khorram about the incident, he says she knew exactly what to say to him: “I kind of give her a play-by-play of what happened. Her words to me: ‘Never speak about this again.'”

Kristina Khorram has not responded to the BBC’s request for comment but has previously denied any wrongdoing.

In a statement to CNN last March, she described allegations against her as “false” and “causing irreparable and incalculable damage to my reputation and the emotional well-being of myself and my family”.

“I have never condoned or aided and abetted the sexual assault of anyone. Nor have I ever drugged anyone,” she said.

Staff would be required to erase any evidence of “freak-offs” – removing bodily stains from sheets, disposing of drugs and, Pines tells us, scrubbing any ”compromising” recorded footage of the sexual encounters off his boss’s personal phones and laptops.

Other staff also describe feeling disturbed by Combs’ sexual encounters.

“[There are] things I saw with my own eyes, memories that will stay forever,” says Ethan. He says Combs would sometimes ask him to enter the room and “bring him water or male enhancement pills” while sex was taking place.

Pines has filed his own civil lawsuit against Combs. The BBC approached Combs’ lawyers for comment in respect of Pines’ allegations, and they made this statement in response: “No matter how many lawsuits are filed, it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone – man or woman, adult or minor. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason.”

Pines recalls a particularly horrifying incident around November 2020, when he says he was asked to stay behind after work and set up an after-party at the Miami mansion.

He says that Combs and his guests had been “in the sun partying, taking mushrooms, smoking, drinking all day – so they were completely gone by this time”.

During the party, Pines says Combs invited him to take a shot, before asking him to ”prove his loyalty”.

He handed Pines a condom and pushed him towards a female guest who was lying on a nearby couch.

“At that moment, I’m like, what is going on?” Pines says. ”I froze. I was just shocked by what was happening. I felt cold… but I also felt so much pressure.”

Pines says the woman consented and they had sex until Combs began ”drifting off into another part of the suite”.

“I didn’t want any of that,” he says. ”Once I kind of saw him out of my peripheral, that he was gone, I pulled up my pants and just got out of there quickly.

“It was a power move. I felt like I was coerced. It was manipulation.”

When they travelled internationally, staff say Combs’ drugs came with him, concealed in a safe onboard his $60m (£45m) private jet.

“Even if it was for a day trip, if he was going on the yacht for four hours, take all that stuff with you because he may use it,” Pines recalls being instructed.

He claims mushrooms, ketamine and ecstasy were kept in a small black Gucci bag alongside baby oil, lubricant and red lights.

Combs’ lawyers admitted during trial that he had procured drugs, but said they were for personal use only.

In one nerve-wracking incident in Venice in summer 2021, Pines says Italian authorities questioned Combs’ staff for an hour. He feared that if they had found the drugs hidden in the luggage, he would have “taken the fall” for his boss.

A former personal assistant, Brendan Paul, was arrested on charges of drug possession while with Combs at a Miami airport in March 2024, on the same day police raided the rapper’s homes. The charges were later dropped after Paul completed a pre-trial diversion programme.

During Combs’ trial, Paul, 26, testified that he had found cocaine after “sweeping” his boss’s room and had forgotten it was in his bag while they prepared for a vacation in the Bahamas. He told the court that he did not tell law enforcement that they were Combs’ drugs out of “loyalty”.

By December 2021, Pines says he had had enough. 

“The money wasn’t worth it… because of the experiences I was having with him. It was just too much to bear.”

When asked why staff had not spoken out sooner, Pines does not hesitate. They were, he says, afraid of Combs.

“He is a very scary person. Whether you’re his employee, you’re a contractor, you’re a girlfriend, guest, you know what he’s capable of,” he says.

Ethan says he used to believe that Combs had ”people a couple of steps in front” who ”caught everything”. But after his former boss’s arrest, his view shifted. Staff simply were not able to stop what was coming, he says. “Obviously being a celebrity, he could cut many corners,” he reflects, but ”he couldn’t avoid the law”.

Pines says he was approached by federal agents in the Department of Homeland Security as part of its criminal investigation last summer and was later legally summoned to give evidence ahead of Combs’ trial. Other ex-assistants, who worked for Combs back in 2014 and as recently as 2024, testified in court during the trial.

“I have to nod to Cassie Ventura for being so courageous to stand up to him,” Pines says.

Ventura’s civil lawsuit, filed in November 2023, alleged Combs had trapped her in a cycle of violence and sexual abuse. The lawsuit was settled in a $20m (£15m) pay-out, one day after the filing. But dozens more followed in quick succession – there are now more than 60 civil cases against Combs, which remain to be resolved.

“She opened the door for people like me to come forward, and for other people who are going through similar things who feel silenced, who feel powerless going up against a giant.”

A 30-year-old man has admitted to murdering four roommates in a small Idaho college town in 2022, as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.

Bryan Kohberger, a former PhD criminology student, was set to stand trial in August over the attacks that shocked America.

During a hearing on Wednesday, Judge Steven Hippler read the details of the agreement, including that Kohberger waived his right to appeal or seek leniency.

Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen were killed in their off-campus home in the city of Moscow, in November 2022. The two others in the house, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, survived.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” Judge Hippler asked the defendant.

“Yes,” Kohberger replied.

Kohberger had previously pleaded not guilty.

Before beginning proceedings, the judge stated that his office had received numerous messages and voicemails from members of the public that sought to “influence my decision making”.

He said he had not read or listened to any of the messages, and urged people to stop sending them.

The judge then read out the charges against Kohberger – one count of burglary, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and four counts of first-degree murder, which each carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Kohberger pleaded guilty to all the charges.

Judge Hippler said he will formally be sentenced on 23 July. It’s expected he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The plea deal means lingering questions that may have been explored during a trial, such as Kohberger’s motives, remain unanswered.

During the hearing, prosecuting attorney Bill Thompson told the court Kohberger had planned the attack, buying the knife online around eight months before the murders.

The blade’s sheath was recovered, but the weapon itself was never found.

The prosecutor said there was no evidence of a “sexual component” to the killings.

Some in court appeared to become emotional as the names of the victims were read out. Kohberger remained impassive, including when he admitted to killing the four victims.

The brutal nature of the murders, the age of the victims and the suspect’s background in criminology sparked intense public interest in the case.

The plea deal has divided the families of the victims.

Outside court, the father of Kaylee Goncalves, Steve, said he felt “pretty let down”.

He said the state “made a deal with the devil”.

The family wanted a full confession, including details about the location of the murder weapon and confirmation the defendant acted alone.

However, Madison Mogen’s mother and stepfather said outside court they supported the plea agreement.

In a statement read out by their lawyer they expressed gratitude to everyone who had supported them and for the “successful outcome”.

“We support the plea agreement 100%,” the attorney read. “We turn from tragedy and mourning… to the light of the future. We have closure.”

Kohberger, who was a student at nearby Washington State University, was charged in January 2023.

It’s not believed he knew the victims personally.

The defendant was arrested at his Pennsylvania family home weeks following the stabbings, after investigators said they found DNA evidence on a “leather knife sheath” at the crime scene. He was indicted by a grand jury in May 2023.

Court documents revealed police recovered a knife, a Glock pistol, black gloves, a black hat and a black face mask during a search of Kohberger’s family home.

His defence team questioned the accuracy of the DNA evidence and succeeded in its bid to move the trial location, after arguing their client would not receive a fair hearing from local jurors.

But they had failed to remove the death penalty as a sentencing option, after citing an autism diagnosis for Kohberger.

Idaho is one of 27 US states that allows for capital punishment, but there have been no executions since 2012, according to a database by the Death Penalty Information Center.

A major wildfire in Greece continues to burn out of control in eastern Crete, after breaking out on Wednesday afternoon in rugged forested terrain near the municipality of Ierapetra.

Fanned by gale-force winds reaching up to eight on the Beaufort scale, the flames have spread rapidly southward, threatening homes, tourist accommodation, and critical infrastructure, including a fuel station.

The fire front now extends over at least 6km, according to emergency services, making containment increasingly difficult.

Thick smoke engulfed the wider area, reducing visibility to near zero in places.

The smoke stretched as far as Makry Gialos beach, 10km from Achlia in Lasithi where firefighters were battling the blaze.

The main road near the settlement of Agia Fotia has been closed by police, who have urged residents and visitors to avoid all non-essential travel due to hazardous air quality, extreme heat, and falling ash.

In the settlement of Agia Fotia, homes and rental properties have been destroyed, and the area is experiencing a power outage, according to local reports. At least four elderly people have been taken to hospital with respiratory problems caused by smoke inhalation.

As a precaution, all hospitals in Crete have been placed on alert by health authorities.

Authorities have also ordered the mass evacuation of hotels, rental rooms and homes in the Ferma municipality, as the flames approach the area. The operation is underway with the support of the fire service, police and local volunteers.

So far, approximately 1,500 people have been evacuated from surrounding settlements and tourist areas and moved to Ierapetra. Around 200 evacuees are being sheltered in the town’s indoor sports arena.

The firefighting response has been significantly reinforced. As of Wednesday night, 155 firefighters, eight specialised foot teams, and 38 fire engines are operating on the ground. Four helicopters carried out water drops until nightfall. Local municipalities have also deployed water tankers and heavy machinery.

Additional forces are en route. Seventeen firefighters and one foot team from the 1st EMODE (Special Forest Firefighting Unit) are travelling by ferry from Piraeus, along with five fire engines, while 33 firefighters and four additional EMODE teams are due to arrive by air from Elefsina.

According to public broadcaster ERT, the fire service has ordered a tactical withdrawal from the fire front to protect personnel and prioritise the creation of firebreaks around at-risk settlements. Crews are expected to remain on the ground throughout the night.

Emergency alerts via the 112 public warning system were issued throughout the day, calling for evacuations from Achlia, Ferma, Agia Fotia, Galini, and later Koutsounari, instructing residents and tourists to move towards Ierapetra.

Some individuals who were cut off by road were reportedly evacuated by boat from local beaches.

The fire, believed to have started between Agia Fotia and the village of Skinokapsala, continues to burn through dense, highly flammable forest, with steep terrain, dry conditions and strong winds making containment extremely difficult.

Earlier this week in Turkey more than 50,000 people were evacuated due to wildfires in the western province of Izmir.

At least six heat-related deaths have been reported in Europe as the continent reels under an early summer heatwave. The latest recorded fatalities were in Spain and Italy. There were also casualties in France.

Shrouded in crimson robes, prayer beads moving rhythmically past his fingers, the monk walks towards us.

It is a risky decision.

We are being followed by eight unidentified men. Even saying a few words to us in public could get him in trouble.

But he appears willing to take the chance. “Things here are not good for us,” he says quietly.

This monastery in China’s south-western Sichuan province has been at the centre of Tibetan resistance for decades – the world learned the name in the late 2000s as Tibetans set themselves on fire there in defiance of Chinese rule. Nearly two decades later, the Kirti monastery still worries Beijing.

A police station has been built inside the main entrance. It sits alongside a small dark room full of prayer wheels which squeak as they spin. Nests of surveillance cameras on thick steel poles surround the compound, scanning every corner.

“They do not have a good heart; everyone can see it,” the monk adds. Then comes a warning. “Be careful, people are watching you.”

As the men tailing us come running, the monk walks away.

“They” are the Communist Party of China, which has now governed more than six million Tibetans for almost 75 years, ever since it annexed the region in 1950.

China has invested heavily in the region, building new roads and railways to boost tourism and integrate it with the rest of the country. Tibetans who have fled say economic development also brought more troops and officials, chipping away at their faith and freedoms.

Beijing views Tibet as an integral part of China. It has labelled Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, as a separatist, and those who display his image or offer him public support could end up behind bars.

Still, some in Aba, or Ngaba in Tibetan, which is home to the Kirti monastery, have gone to extreme measures to challenge these restrictions.

The town sits outside what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), created in 1965, comprising about half of the Tibetan plateau. But millions of Tibetans live outside of TAR – and consider the rest as part of their homeland.

Aba has long played a crucial role. Protests erupted here during the Tibet-wide uprising of 2008 after, by some accounts, a monk held up a photo of the Dalai Lama inside the Kirti monastery. It eventually escalated into a riot and Chinese troops opened fire. At least 18 Tibetans were killed in this tiny town.

As Tibet rose up in protest, it often turned into violent clashes with Chinese paramilitary. Beijing claims 22 people died, while Tibetan groups in exile put the number at around 200.

In the years that followed there were more than 150 self-immolations calling for the return of the Dalai Lama – most of them happened in or around Aba. It earned the main street a grim moniker: Martyr’s row.

China has cracked down harder since, making it nearly impossible to determine what is happening in Tibet or Tibetan areas. The information that does emerge comes from those who have fled abroad, or the government-in-exile in India.

To find out a little more, we returned to the monastery the next day before dawn. We snuck past our minders and hiked our way back to Aba for the morning prayers.

The monks gathered in their yellow hats, a symbol of the Gelug school of Buddhism. Low sonorous chanting resonated through the hall as ritual smoke lingered in the still, humid air. Around 30 local men and women, most in traditional Tibetan long-sleeved jackets, sat cross-legged until a small bell chimed to end the prayer.

“The Chinese government has poisoned the air in Tibet. It is not a good government,” one monk told us.

“We Tibetans are denied basic human rights. The Chinese government continues to oppress and persecute us. It is not a government that serves the people.”

He gave no details, and our conversations were brief to avoid detection. Still, it is rare to hear these voices.

The question of Tibet’s future has taken on urgency with the Dalai Lama turning 90 this week. Hundreds of followers have been gathering in the Indian town of Dharamshala to honour him. He announced the much-anticipated succession plan on Wednesday, reaffirming what he has said before: the next Dalai Lama would be chosen after his death.

Tibetans everywhere have reacted – with relief, doubt or anxiety – but not those in the Dalai Lama’s homeland, where even the whisper of his name is forbidden.

Beijing has spoken loud and clear: the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama will be in China, and approved by the Chinese Communist Party. Tibet, however, has been silent.

“That’s just the way it is,” the monk told us. “That’s the reality.”

The road to Aba winds slowly for nearly 500km (300 miles) from the Sichuan capital of Chengdu.

It passes through the snow-packed peaks of Siguniang Mountain before it reaches the rolling grassland at the edge of the Himalayan plateau.

The gold, sloping rooftops of Buddhist temples shimmer every few miles as they catch especially sharp sunlight. This is the roof of the world where traffic gives way to yak herders on horseback whistling to reluctant, grunting cattle, as eagles circle above.

There are two worlds underneath this Himalayan sky, where heritage and faith have collided with the Party’s demand for unity and control.

China has long maintained that Tibetans are free to practise their faith. But that faith is also the source of a centuries-old identity, which human rights groups say Beijing is slowly eroding.

They claim that countless Tibetans have been detained for staging peaceful protests, promoting the Tibetan language, or even possessing a portrait of the Dalai Lama.

Many Tibetans, inlcuding some we spoke to within the Kirti monastery, are concerned about new laws governing the education of Tibetan children.

All under-18s must now attend Chinese state-run schools and learn Mandarin. They cannot study Buddhist scriptures in a monastery class until they are 18 years old – and they must “love the country and the religion and follow national laws and regulations”.

This is a huge change for a community where monks were often recruited as children, and monasteries doubled up as schools for most boys.

“One of the nearby Buddhist institutions was torn down by the government a few months ago,” a monk in his 60s told us in Aba, from under an umbrella as he walked to prayers in the rain.

“It was a preaching school,” he added, becoming emotional.

The new rules follow a 2021 order for all schools in Tibetan areas, including kindergartens, to teach in the Chinese language. Beijing says this gives Tibetan children a better shot at jobs in a country where the main language is Mandarin.

But such regulations could have a “profound effect” on the future of Tibetan Buddhism, according to renowned scholar Robert Barnett.

“We are moving to a scenario of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping having total control – towards an era of little information getting into Tibet, little Tibetan language being shared,” Mr Barnett says.

“Schooling will almost entirely be about Chinese festivals, Chinese virtues, advanced Chinese traditional culture. We are looking at the complete management of intellectual input.”

The road to Aba shows off the money Beijing has pumped into this remote corner of the world. A new high-speed railway line hugs the hills linking Sichuan to other provinces on the plateau.

In Aba, the usual high-street shop fronts selling monks’ robes and bundles of incense are joined by new hotels, cafes and restaurants to entice tourists.

Chinese tourists arrive in their branded hiking gear and stand amazed as the local faithful prostate themselves on wooden blocks at the entrance to Buddhist temples.

“How do they get anything done all day?” one tourist wonders aloud. Others turn the prayer wheels excitedly and ask about the rich, colourful murals depicting scenes from the Buddha’s life.

A party slogan written on the roadside boasts that “people of all ethnic groups are united as closely as seeds in a pomegranate”.

But it’s hard to miss the pervasive surveillance.

A hotel check-in requires facial recognition. Even buying petrol requires several forms of identification which are shown to high-definition cameras. China has long controlled what information its citizens have access to – but in Tibetan areas, the grip is even tighter.

Tibetans, Mr Barnett says, are “locked off from the outside world”.

It’s hard to say how many of them know about the Dalai Lama’s announcement on Wednesday – broadcast to the world, it was censored in China.

Living in exile in India since 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama has advocated for more autonomy, rather than full independence, for his homeland. Beijing believes he “has no right to represent the Tibetan people”.

He handed over political authority in 2011 to a government-in-exile chosen democratically by 130,000 Tibetans globally – and that government has had back-channel talks this year with China about the succession plan, but it’s unclear if they have progressed.

The Dalai Lama has previously suggested that his successor would be from “the free world”, that is, outside China. On Wednesday, he said “no-one else has any authority to interfere”.

This sets the stage for a confrontation with Beijing, which has said the process should “follow religious rituals and historical customs, and be handled in accordance with national laws and regulations”.

Beijing is already doing the groundwork to convince the Tibetans, Mr Barnett says.

“There is already a huge propaganda apparatus in place. The Party has been sending teams to offices, schools and villages to teach people about the ‘new regulations’ for choosing a Dalai Lama.”

When the Panchen Lama, the second highest authority in Tibetan Buddhism, died in 1989, the Dalai Lama identified a successor to that post in Tibet. But the child disappeared. Beijing was accused of kidnapping him, although it insists that boy, now an adult, is safe. It then approved a different Panchen Lama, who Tibetans outside China do not recognise.

If there are two Dalai Lamas, it could become a test of China’s powers of persuasion. Which one will the world recognise? More important, would most Tibetans in China even know of the other Dalai Lama?

China wants a credible successor – but perhaps no-one too credible.

Because, Mr Barnett says, Beijing “wants to turn the lion of Tibetan culture into a poodle”.

“It wants to remove things it perceives as risky and replace them with things it believes Tibetans ought to be thinking about; patriotism, loyalty, fealty. They like the singing and dancing – the Disney version of Tibetan culture.”

“We don’t know how much will survive,” Mr Barnett concludes.

As we leave the monastery, a line of women carrying heavy baskets filled with tools for construction or farming walk through the room of prayer wheels, spinning them clockwise.

They sing in Tibetan and smile as they pass, their greying, pleated hair only just visible under their sun hats.

Tibetans have clung on to their identity for 75 years now, fighting for it and dying for it.

The challenge now will be to protect it, even when the man who embodies their beliefs – and their resistance – is gone.

US President Donald Trump has called for the chair of the Federal Reserve to quit “immediately”, in an escalation of his attacks on Jerome Powell.

“‘Too Late’ should resign immediately!!!”, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

He also included a link to a news article about a US federal housing regulator calling for Mr Powell to be investigated over his testimony about renovations to the central bank’s Washington headquarters.

Trump nominated Mr Powell to be the Fed chair during his his first term. Since then, he has repeatedly criticised him for not cutting interest rates but it’s unclear whether the president has the authority to remove him from the post.

Despite the president’s continued criticism of Mr Powell, he said earlier this year that had “no intention of firing him”.

Trump wants the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates to help boost economic growth.

Mr Powell said on Tuesday that the Fed would have cut rates already had it not been for the impact of the Trump’s tariff policies.

When asked during a meeting of central bankers in Portugal whether US rates would have been cut again this year if the administration had not announced its plan to sharply increase tariffs on countries around the world Mr Powell responded, “I think that’s right.”

The US Federal Reserve declined to comment about Trump’s remarks when contacted by the BBC.

Ahead of Trump’s return to the White House at the start of this year, Mr Powell said he would not step down if the president asked him to and that it is “not permitted under law” for the White House to force him out.

Board members of independent federal agencies like the Federal Reserve can only be forced out before their terms expire “for cause,” according to a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in 1935.

However, Trump has often challenged political norms, including firing some independent regulators, actions that have been contested in court.

On Wednesday, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who has previously strongly criticised Mr Powell, called for him to be investigated.

“I am asking Congress to investigate Chairman Jerome Powell, his political bias, and his deceptive Senate testimony, which is enough to be removed ‘for cause,'” he posted on X.

Last week, Mr Powell told the Senate that reports about soaring costs and expensive features at the Fed’s headquarters were “misleading and inaccurate in many, many respects.”

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 it had cut off some weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

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

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the two countries were now “clarifying all the details on supplies”, while the foreign ministry warned any delays “would only encourage the aggressor to continue war and terror, rather than seek peace”.

The ministry 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 defence ministry 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 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 American 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 the AFP news agency said 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.

Czech President and former top Nato official, Petr Pavel, has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine – but he told BBC Russian he could “not guarantee” continued ammunition support for Kyiv, as that was dependent on the result of forthcoming 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 “the strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran”.

Separately, the US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby, said in a statement the Pentagon “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 defence priorities”.

The pause comes less than a week after President Donald Trump discussed air defences with 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 February. 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 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.

Despite heavy losses, Russia has made slow, grinding advances in Ukraine in recent months and announced full control of the eastern Luhansk region this week – this has not been independently verified.

Moscow also says it has seized territory in the south-eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk – a claim denied by the Ukrainian military.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday a Ukrainian attack killed three people at a Russian arms production factory 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.

Dozens of people are missing after a ferry sank off Indonesia’s tourist island of Bali, rescuers said.

The boat was carrying 53 passengers and 12 crew members when it sank at 23:20 local time (15:35 GMT) on Wednesday while on its way to Bali from Banyuwangi on the eastern coast of Java island, the Surabaya office of the National Search and Rescue Agency said.

Four passengers were found on a lifeboat in the early hours of Thursday while the search for more survivors continues.

Photos published by Antara news agency showed ambulances on standby and residents waiting for updates by the roadside.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the sinking.

The ferry operator told local media that the vessel had reported engine trouble shortly before it sank.

Marine accidents are frequent in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of around 17,000 islands, where uneven enforcement of safety regulations is a longstanding concern.

The director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital has been killed in an Israeli air strike on his home in Gaza City along with several family members, the Hamas-run health ministry has said.

The ministry said Dr Marwan Sultan had a long career in medicine, and condemned “this heinous crime against our medical cadres”.

The Israeli military said it had struck a “key terrorist” from Hamas in the Gaza City area and that claims “uninvolved civilians” were harmed as a result of the strike were being reviewed.

Meanwhile, at least five people were killed and others injured, including children, in a strike on the al-Mawasi “safe zone”, one of several other attacks reported by news agencies.

The health ministry said Dr Sultan’s career was one of compassion “during which he was a symbol of dedication, steadfastness and sincerity, during the most difficult circumstances and most trying moments experienced by our people under continuous aggression”.

Dr Sultan was the director at the Indonesian Hospital, declared out of service by the health ministry after what the UN later described as “repeated Israeli attacks and sustained structural damage”. The Israeli military had said it was fighting “terrorist infrastructure sites” in the area.

There are now no functioning hospitals in the north Gaza governate, according to the UN.

The health ministry accused the Israeli military of targeting medical and humanitarian teams.

In its statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals” and “operates to mitigate harm to them as much as possible”.

The IDF said Hamas “systematically violates international law while using civilian infrastructure for terrorist activity and the civilian population as human shields”.

But Dr Sultan’s doctor’s daughter, Lubna al-Sultan, said “an F-16 missile targeted his room exactly, right where he was, directly on him”.

“All the rooms in the house were intact except for his room, which was hit by the missile. My father was martyred in it,” she told the Associated Press.

She said he was “not affiliated with a movement or anything, he just fears for the patients [he] treats, throughout the war”.

Across Gaza, at least 139 people were killed by Israeli military operations in the 24 hours before midday on Wednesday, the health ministry said.

In the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, at least five people were killed and others, including children, wounded in an Israeli strike that hit a tent housing displaced people, news agencies reported.

Family members of those killed said it hit at 00:40 local time (22:40 BST) while they were sleeping.

Tamam Abu Rizq told AFP the strike “shook the place like an earthquake”, and she “went outside and found the tent on fire”.

The al-Mawasi area was declared a “safe zone” by the Israeli military, as the UN says 80% of Gaza is either an Israeli military zone or under an evacuation order.

“They came here thinking it was a safe area and they were killed… What did they do?” Maha Abu Rizq said.

At the scene, surrounded by destruction and a jumble of personal items, one man held up a pack of nappies and asked: “Is this a weapon?”

Footage recorded by AFP shows men alighting from a car in front of nearby Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and rushing inside carrying blood-covered children in their arms. Inside the hospital, young children cry as doctors treat their wounds.

Women weep over the bodies of their relatives in funerals at the hospital in other AFP footage.

“Anyone of any religion must take action and say: Enough! Stop this war!” Ekram al-Akhras, who lost several cousins in one of the strikes, said.

In Gaza City, another four people from the same family were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house, news agencies reported.

The four people killed were Ahmed Ayyad Zeno, his wife Ayat Zeno, and their daughters, Zahra Zeno and Obaida Zeno, according to Palestinian news outlet WAFA.

The BBC has contacted the IDF for comment about the two incidents.

Rachel Cummings, who is working in Gaza with Save the Children, told reporters that during “wishing circles” at the charity’s child-friendly spaces, children have recently been “wishing to die” in order to be with their mother or father who has been killed, or to have food and water.

As a heatwave spread across the UK and Europe this week, temperatures also topped 30C in Gaza.

Displaced people living in tents said they were struggling to stay cool without electricity and fans, and with little access to water.

Reda Abu Hadayed told the Associated Press the heat is “indescribable” and her children cannot sleep.

“They cry all day until sunset, when the temperature drops a little, then they go to sleep,” she said. “When morning comes, they start crying again due to the heat.”

Israel has continued to bomb Gaza and control the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid as mediators meet to negotiate a potential ceasefire proposal.

Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages.

Since then, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 57,000 people, including more than 15,000 children, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Sir Keir Starmer has backed Rachel Reeves to remain chancellor “into the next election and for many years after” after she was seen crying during Prime Minister’s Questions.

The prime minister had refused to say whether Reeves would remain in her job until the next election in front of MPs in the Commons, during a session in which the chancellor wiped away tears as she sat behind him.

But later Sir Keir told BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking he worked “in lockstep” with Reeves and she was “doing an excellent job as chancellor”.

After PMQs, Reeves’ spokesperson said she had been dealing with a “personal matter” and Sir Keir insisted her tears had “nothing to do with politics”.

Asked if Reeves would remain in government Sir Keir said: “She’s done an excellent job as chancellor and we have delivered inward investment to this country in record numbers.

“She and I work together, we think together.

“In the past there have been examples – I won’t give any specifics – of chancellors and prime ministers who weren’t in lockstep. We’re in lockstep.”

He said Reeves’ tears had “nothing to do with politics” or this week’s welfare U-turns – which potentially blows a hole in her Budget plans.

“That’s absolutely wrong,” said Sir Keir. “Nothing to do with what’s happened this week. It was a personal matter for her, I’m not going to intrude on her privacy by talking to you.”

At a highly charged PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch laid into the government over its welfare U-turns.

She said the chancellor would now be forced to put up taxes “to pay for his incompetence” and asked if she would still be chancellor at the next election.

She said the chancellor “looks absolutely miserable”.

And she told the PM: “Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the chancellor is toast, and the reality is that she is a human shield for his incompetence.”

Sir Keir said: “No prime minister or chancellor ever stands at the dispatch box and writes budgets in the future.”

He ignored Badenoch’s questions and instead insisted the welfare reform bill would get more people back into work and blamed Tory “stagnation” for creating the problems it was trying to fix.

Reeves was seen to wipe away tears during the PMQs exchanges.

The extraordinary Commons scenes appeared to unsettle the financial markets, with the pound falling against major currencies and the cost of government borrowing rising.

Many colleagues and allies of Reeves in Parliament are blaming an altercation with the Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle for upsetting her.

Several have accused him of having been abrupt with the chancellor in a meeting before PMQs.

It is thought to have been about an interaction they had during Treasury questions on Tuesday in which Sir Lindsay asked her to give shorter answers.

However, no one who the BBC has spoken to is claiming to have witnessed the interaction personally.

The chancellor’s team have declined to comment, as has the Speaker’s office.

Speaking to ITV, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said, “it is easy to forget we are all humans as politicians, and we have lives like everyone else”.

As Reeves left PMQs her sister Ellie Reeves, who is also a Labour MP, took her hand in an apparent show of support.

Following PMQs, Badenoch’s spokesperson said a “personal matter doesn’t really clear it up” as “you normally tell people what the personal matter is”.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick went further than the Tory leader in a social media video, saying the chancellor’s career was now dead after an “embarrassing” U-turn and it was time for her to go.

But he later added: “I obviously hope that Rachel Reeves’s personal matter is resolved. It’s never nice to see someone upset. The PM had a chance to support her at PMQs but threw her under the bus.”

He said borrowing costs were soaring and the pound plummeting because “the market has lost confidence in the government’s ability to control spending”.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, said: “Like almost all MPs I don’t know why the chancellor was upset in the chamber today, but I do hope she is okay and back to her duties this afternoon.

“Seeing another person in distress is always very difficult, and we are wishing her well.”

When you think about the food that astronauts eat in space, lobster, haddock and foie gras probably don’t spring to mind – but that’s exactly what France’s next visitor to the International Space Station (ISS) will be dining on.

Astronaut Sophie Adenot has teamed up with award-winning French chef Anne-Sophie Pic to create a menu of gastronomic delights that will travel with Adenot to the ISS next year.

Instead of the usual freeze-dried nutrients that astronauts eat, Adenot, 42, will be choosing from the likes of “Foie gras cream on toasted brioche” and “Lobster bisque with crab and caraway”.

The menu – which the European Space Agency (ESA) has dubbed “a pinch of France in space” – includes four starters, two main courses and two desserts.

Adenot said the dishes, which also include braised beef, and chocolate cream, will not only “delight our palates” but also help her feel connected to Earth, and her home country.

“Her (Pic’s) cuisine signature is deeply influenced by the terroir. This is important to me because I grew up in the countryside, and it will remind me of my roots,” she was quoted as saying in an ESA statement.

There are strict rules for food on the ISS – it must be crumb-free, lightweight and keep for at least 24 months, the ESA says.

Therefore, most meals are canned, vacuum packed or freeze-dried, with fresh fruit and vegetables a rare luxury that can only be enjoyed when a spacecraft arrives with new supplies.

But to keep things interesting, boost morale, and help with crew bonding, every tenth or so meal is one prepared especially for each astronaut, with these “bonus meals” often made in partnership with a chef.

Famous for her haute cuisine, Pic, 55, has the most Michelin stars of any female chef in the world – 10.

She says this project is “pushing the boundaries” of gastronomy, as she worked with her team to create special food, while keeping within the technical constraints.

“Cooking for space is an exhilarating challenge,” she was quoted as saying by the ESA.

Adenot says she will share the haute cuisine with her colleagues on board – it is after all an important moment – French gastronomic culture becoming for the first time… extra-terrestrial.

Adenot, a former helicopter test and rescue pilot, has won a string of awards, including a medal honouring her actions in gender equality in the sciences.

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the US will charge 20% tariffs on imports from Vietnam under a new trade deal reached during last-minute negotiations.

Products sent from Vietnam to the US had faced a 46% levy, which was set to go into effect next week as part of Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs announced in April.

Dozens of other economies, including the European Union and Japan, are still scrambling to make their own deals with the US before the planned increases.

Under the agreement, Vietnam will charge no tariffs on US products, Trump said in a social media post.

Tariffs, which are a tax on imports, are almost always paid by the company that is buying the goods rather than the business which makes the product.

While importers can decide to absorb the extra charge, they often choose to pass it on to the consumer. Many of the US trading partners are worried that will drive down demand for things made in their countries.

In the “Great Deal of Cooperation”, as Trump called it, the US will also impose a steeper tariff of 40% on goods that pass through Vietnam in a process known as “trans-shipping”.

Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior counsellor on trade and manufacturing, has said that a third of all Vietnamese exports to the US were actually Chinese products shipped through Vietnam.

The president said on social media: “Vietnam will do something that they have never done before, give the United States of America TOTAL ACCESS to their Markets for Trade.

“In other words, they will ‘OPEN THEIR MARKET TO THE UNITED STATES,’ meaning that we will be able to sell our product into Vietnam at ZERO Tariff.”

Vietnam has become a major manufacturing hub for a number of major brands such as Nike, Apple, the Gap and Lululemon. It was a beneficiary of firms moving factories out of China to avoid the tariffs Trump announced during his first term in office.

Share prices of companies making goods in Vietnam initially rose on news of the deal, although those gains were trimmed after it emerged products will still face a 20% tax.

Adam Sitkoff, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi, told the BBC World Business Report he was optimistic that the trade deal leaves Vietnam “in a good position”, adding that “companies that ship from [Vietnam] to the US are going to keep doing it”.

But on the proposed tariff for so-called trans-shipping, Mr Sitkoff questioned the definition of the term, suggesting it can be “a vague and often politicised term in trade enforcement”.

“It’s unclear how much illegal re-routing Vietnamese officials will even be able to catch, or how much exists,” he said.

Vietnam’s General Secretary To Lam held a phone call with Trump on Wednesday, during which he reiterated an invitation for the US president to visit the country.

Separately, the Trump family has recently announced development projects in Vietnam.

The country’s government approved a plan by the Trump Organization and local business Kinh Bac City Development to invest $1.5bn in hotels, golf courses and luxury real estate.

The Trump Organization is also scouting for locations to build a Trump Tower in Ho Chi Minh City.

Trump initially imposed steep levies on trading partners around the world in April , citing a lack of “reciprocity”, but then announced a pause where they were all lowered to 10%.

Many countries then approached the US to negotiate trade deals, according to the White House.

Since April, Washington had so far only announced a pact with Britain and a deal to temporarily lower retaliatory duties with China.

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.

Twelve New York jurors gathered around 10:00 (14:00 GMT) on Wednesday in a wood-panelled courtroom to tell Sean “Diddy” Combs that they found him not guilty of running a criminal enterprise with employees, and sex trafficking his ex-girlfriends.

The disgraced hip-hop mogul fell to his knees and buried his head in a chair at the defence table where he had just spent two months on trial for sex trafficking and racketeering.

Before the verdict came down, Combs sat quietly in his chair, looking forward, wearing the same off-white sweater and pants he wore for much of his trial.

The court grew quiet as the jury foreperson handed the verdict sheet to the court deputy. Then it was handed back to the foreperson.

And they began to read.

As the sound of the “not guilty” rung out in court for the first time, acquitting Combs of the most severe crime of racketeering, the rapper kept his head low.

By the time the foreperson announced Combs was not guilty of sex trafficking, Combs had his head in his hands.

The jury did find him guilty on the least severe charges of transporting people to engage in prostitution. As they confirmed their decision, Combs buried his face in his hands.

A flurry of small celebrations followed for Combs, who has been in a federal jail in Brooklyn since September. He made a prayer sign with his hands to the jury, then turned around and made the same gesture to his family – twin daughters, sons and 85-year-old mother.

He appeared to mouth: “I’m coming home.”

The moment seemed equally emotional for Combs’ many lawyers, including Teny Geragos, seated next to him and wiping away tears with a tissue after the verdict was read.

Combs’ attorneys wasted no time in telling the judge that the verdict, reached after roughly two days of deliberations, meant Combs should be able to walk out of the Manhattan courthouse a free man that very day.

His acquittal on the most serious charges meant he no longer needed to be jailed, his attorney Marc Agnifilo told the court, noting that his client’s plane was inaccessible – chartered and in Maui.

“Mr Combs has been given his life by this jury,” he said. “He will not run afoul of anything this court imposes on him.”

Then, in the perhaps the most emotional gesture of the day for Combs, he appeared to express his gratitude by pressing his head into his chair at the defence table.

He rose, clapping his hands loudly, to hug several of his lawyers. Many family members and supporters in the main courtroom and a packed overflow room joined him, cheering.

Then, with one final hug to his lawyer and a wave to his family – blocked by a mass of people and court benches – he was escorted out of the court.

The hip-hop mogul’s homecoming hopes were later dashed as Judge Arun Subramanian denied him bail at another hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

Outside the Manhattan court, there were repeated calls of “free Diddy” in a large crowd behind barriers.

But he will remain behind bars until his sentencing later this year.

“Can y’all come straighten it up over here? It’s not looking luxurious,” Sean ”Diddy” Combs says in a voice note to his personal assistants as R&B music mellows in the background.

Hours before, a so-called ”freak-off” - a drug-fuelled orgy also known as a “Wild King Night” – had been in full swing. Now, staff were being called in to clean up.

“PD said he’s going to need emergency clean up at hotel,” his chief of staff texts after another of these events. ”Bring him stain remover (for a chair and couch) and black trash bags. And baking soda too, he said.”

The BBC has seen messages and recordings from former staff in Combs’ household. The staff members have also given detailed accounts of what it was like to work on the multi-millionaire music mogul’s glamorous yacht rentals and inside his sprawling estates across the US – in the Hamptons, Beverly Hills and on Star Island in Miami.

Their experiences span the past five to 10 years, a period that was under scrutiny during Combs’ criminal trial in New York.

At the trial’s conclusion on Wednesday, the 55-year-old was cleared of the most serious charges – racketeering, and two counts of sex trafficking related to ex-partner Casandra Ventura and another woman referred to as “Jane”.

But jurors found he was guilty of two other counts related to the transportation to engage in prostitution of both women. He will be sentenced at a later date.

We have been shown material which paints a picture of a “scary” and unpredictable boss, who would administer shocking “loyalty tests”, and whose demands grew more and more extreme.

Staff have described how his sometimes-days-long “freak-offs” were held at locations around the world, with the rapper expecting staff to prepare a bag containing “baby oil, lubricant and red lights” – to create the red-tinted ambience Combs preferred – alongside class-A drugs wherever he travelled.

Inside his waterfront Miami mansion, a $48m (£36m) compound located on an exclusive man-made island, we have been told that Combs kept tight control of his inner circle.  

“I’m not about to be transparent with y’all,” a groggy Combs warns staff one day in a rambling voice note posted in an employee WhatsApp group in 2020. ”There’s some dark places y’all [EXPLETIVE] don’t want to go. Stay where you’re at.”

Staff say he was intense, demanding and volatile, with some attributing his unpredictability to a lifestyle of drug-fuelled parties. The turnover of staff was high and Combs had more than 20 different house managers join and leave in just two years across his properties, one former estates manager told us.

Phil Pines, 40, who worked for Combs as a senior executive assistant from 2019-2021, has told the BBC the mogul didn’t say a word to him when he first started his job.

“It was like an initiation,” he explains. “We didn’t speak to each other for 30 days.”

Another recent assistant, Ethan (not his real name), recalls: “He was a very ill man with different behaviours, sometimes very aggressive, sometimes very sweet.”

We have changed Ethan’s name because, like many former staff members, he still works in the high-net-worth hospitality industry and fears speaking out about Combs will hurt his career.

Ethan shows us a small scar on his forehead. He says this was the result of Combs smashing a glass against a wall in a fit of rage, and the shards cutting Ethan’s face.

Phil Pines and Ethan were part of Combs’ small group of trusted assistants and say he often played mind games with staff.

Ethan recalls one of Combs’ loyalty tests – when the star took off one of his rings and threw it into the Atlantic Ocean. He then turned to Ethan and told him he had to go into the water to get it.

They were at a formal event and Ethan, like his boss, was wearing a smart suit. He says this didn’t stop him jumping in right away to rescue it.

In another incident, Pines says Combs called him to his residence after midnight, just so he could fetch the TV remote from under the bed he was in with a female guest.

“See? He is loyal and now he can go back home,” he recalls Combs telling her. Pines says he felt like an animal.

But the Wild King Nights – as the rapper’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, referred to them – revealed an even darker side to working for Combs.

“I was asked to set up a laundry list of items for him,” says Pines. “And I thought to myself, why didn’t anybody explain this to me before?”

In one exchange seen by the BBC, Khorram texted him to warn a bag needs to be prepared for a Wild King Night in two hours. In another, she asked for a ”drop off” of seven bottles of baby oil and seven bottles of Astroglide lubricant alongside iced vanilla lattes.

“Rounding up a shelf of baby oil and Astroglide at a store is very, very humiliating. I would always pretend like I was on the phone,” Pines tells us.

In Combs’ trial the prosecution presented evidence of supplies they said were procured for “freak-offs”. A police raid on Combs’ Los Angeles mansion found drugs and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil.

From three months into his role, Pines began having concerns about the frequency of these requests. “It became daily, sometimes twice a day, every day, and every week.”

Pines says there was a constant stream of young women who frequented Combs’ homes – apparently for sex. Young men were also called to the parties, says Ethan.

Some of these young people would appear to be friends of the star’s sons, Pines tells us, with some of the women later seen “hanging” with Combs.

Pines says he also had concerns that some of these guests – who looked like they were in their early 20s – were ”too young” and “impressionable” for his then 50-year-old boss.

“I would see some women feel uncomfortable or at least look like they’d had a wild night,” says Pines.

A woman with an IV drip would usually visit the next day, he says, to help guests recover after sometimes ”partying” for 24 hours non-stop without food.

Pines recalls one young guest uttering to him in distress: “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

He was instructed to drive her home from Combs’ Miami residence: ”She was kind of shaking and shivering, like she was coming down off the drugs.”

The drug-fuelled nature of these nights has repeatedly been brought up during Combs’ trial. Casandra Ventura, his ex-partner of more than a decade, testified that she endured years of coerced sex with male escorts under the threat of beatings and blackmail, while Combs filmed the encounters. She said these events would sometimes go on for days and require her to take countless drugs to stay awake.

Another woman, who dated Combs on-and-off from 2021 until his arrest last September, gave evidence that she felt pressured to fulfil his desires partly because he was paying her rent, and said the encounters left her feeling “disgusted” and in physical pain.

In his defence at trial, Combs’ lawyer said he admitted to domestic violence, but argued that all the sexual encounters were consensual, and that Combs had a “swingers lifestyle”.

The BBC understands at least one staff member was asked to search online for escorts to participate in the Wild King nights. Screenshots of the escorts were then sent to Combs for approval.

Pines says he doesn’t know what happened at these events, but he was asked to deal with the aftermath.

It was “just complete wreckage”, he says. “Oil all over the floor. Marijuana joints everywhere… I would wear gloves. I would wear a mask.”

“He [Combs] would get up, put his hoodie on and walk out the door,” Pines says, leaving staff to clean the room.

On one occasion, Pines says he witnessed Combs push and kick a female guest during an argument at his house, which continued outside.

Combs swore at her and said “give me my hoodie”, Pines remembers. “She takes off the hoodie, she’s topless, no bra, nothing, no t-shirt on. So, I take off my jacket and I wrap it around her to kind of shield her.”

The guest left in an Uber crying, says Pines, but within a week she was back at the house again with Combs.

“She came back shortly after that. Dinner, gifts… she was brought back into the fold.”

When Pines told his supervisor Khorram about the incident, he says she knew exactly what to say to him: “I kind of give her a play-by-play of what happened. Her words to me: ‘Never speak about this again.'”

Kristina Khorram has not responded to the BBC’s request for comment but has previously denied any wrongdoing.

In a statement to CNN last March, she described allegations against her as “false” and “causing irreparable and incalculable damage to my reputation and the emotional well-being of myself and my family”.

“I have never condoned or aided and abetted the sexual assault of anyone. Nor have I ever drugged anyone,” she said.

Staff would be required to erase any evidence of “freak-offs” – removing bodily stains from sheets, disposing of drugs and, Pines tells us, scrubbing any ”compromising” recorded footage of the sexual encounters off his boss’s personal phones and laptops.

Other staff also describe feeling disturbed by Combs’ sexual encounters.

“[There are] things I saw with my own eyes, memories that will stay forever,” says Ethan. He says Combs would sometimes ask him to enter the room and “bring him water or male enhancement pills” while sex was taking place.

Pines has filed his own civil lawsuit against Combs. The BBC approached Combs’ lawyers for comment in respect of Pines’ allegations, and they made this statement in response: “No matter how many lawsuits are filed, it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone – man or woman, adult or minor. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason.”

Pines recalls a particularly horrifying incident around November 2020, when he says he was asked to stay behind after work and set up an after-party at the Miami mansion.

He says that Combs and his guests had been “in the sun partying, taking mushrooms, smoking, drinking all day – so they were completely gone by this time”.

During the party, Pines says Combs invited him to take a shot, before asking him to ”prove his loyalty”.

He handed Pines a condom and pushed him towards a female guest who was lying on a nearby couch.

“At that moment, I’m like, what is going on?” Pines says. ”I froze. I was just shocked by what was happening. I felt cold… but I also felt so much pressure.”

Pines says the woman consented and they had sex until Combs began ”drifting off into another part of the suite”.

“I didn’t want any of that,” he says. ”Once I kind of saw him out of my peripheral, that he was gone, I pulled up my pants and just got out of there quickly.

“It was a power move. I felt like I was coerced. It was manipulation.”

When they travelled internationally, staff say Combs’ drugs came with him, concealed in a safe onboard his $60m (£45m) private jet.

“Even if it was for a day trip, if he was going on the yacht for four hours, take all that stuff with you because he may use it,” Pines recalls being instructed.

He claims mushrooms, ketamine and ecstasy were kept in a small black Gucci bag alongside baby oil, lubricant and red lights.

Combs’ lawyers admitted during trial that he had procured drugs, but said they were for personal use only.

In one nerve-wracking incident in Venice in summer 2021, Pines says Italian authorities questioned Combs’ staff for an hour. He feared that if they had found the drugs hidden in the luggage, he would have “taken the fall” for his boss.

A former personal assistant, Brendan Paul, was arrested on charges of drug possession while with Combs at a Miami airport in March 2024, on the same day police raided the rapper’s homes. The charges were later dropped after Paul completed a pre-trial diversion programme.

During Combs’ trial, Paul, 26, testified that he had found cocaine after “sweeping” his boss’s room and had forgotten it was in his bag while they prepared for a vacation in the Bahamas. He told the court that he did not tell law enforcement that they were Combs’ drugs out of “loyalty”.

By December 2021, Pines says he had had enough. 

“The money wasn’t worth it… because of the experiences I was having with him. It was just too much to bear.”

When asked why staff had not spoken out sooner, Pines does not hesitate. They were, he says, afraid of Combs.

“He is a very scary person. Whether you’re his employee, you’re a contractor, you’re a girlfriend, guest, you know what he’s capable of,” he says.

Ethan says he used to believe that Combs had ”people a couple of steps in front” who ”caught everything”. But after his former boss’s arrest, his view shifted. Staff simply were not able to stop what was coming, he says. “Obviously being a celebrity, he could cut many corners,” he reflects, but ”he couldn’t avoid the law”.

Pines says he was approached by federal agents in the Department of Homeland Security as part of its criminal investigation last summer and was later legally summoned to give evidence ahead of Combs’ trial. Other ex-assistants, who worked for Combs back in 2014 and as recently as 2024, testified in court during the trial.

“I have to nod to Cassie Ventura for being so courageous to stand up to him,” Pines says.

Ventura’s civil lawsuit, filed in November 2023, alleged Combs had trapped her in a cycle of violence and sexual abuse. The lawsuit was settled in a $20m (£15m) pay-out, one day after the filing. But dozens more followed in quick succession – there are now more than 60 civil cases against Combs, which remain to be resolved.

“She opened the door for people like me to come forward, and for other people who are going through similar things who feel silenced, who feel powerless going up against a giant.”

Ozzy Osbourne has somehow made it through decades of drink, drugs and debauchery – not to mention jail, life-threatening accidents and Parkinson’s disease – but is now preparing to perform for devoted fans one last time.

Black Sabbath made an indelible mark on music by forging the sound that became known as heavy metal – and on top of that, Ozzy practically invented the image of the wild rock star.

Swigging, snorting and shagging his way around the globe in a semi-conscious daze in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, he ensured his place in the rock ‘n’ roll hall of infamy by biting the heads off some poor unsuspecting creatures along the way.

Then in the 2000s, he and his family were catapulted to a new form of fame when they unwittingly pioneered reality TV as cameras captured the foul-mouthed (but affectionate) dysfunction of their home life.

Ozzy has threatened to retire several times before – but with health problems taking an increasing toll, Saturday’s farewell gig really does look like his swansong.

The 76-year-old will reunite with his original Sabbath bandmates to headline an all-day stadium show featuring groups they have influenced over the years – including Metallica, Slayer and members of Guns N’ Roses and Rage Against the Machine. It has, not unjustly, been described as the greatest heavy metal show ever.

Titled Back to the Beginning, the show at Villa Park in Birmingham will really take the band back to their roots.

The football ground is a stone’s throw from Ozzy’s childhood terraced home in the suburb of Aston. On match days, the young Ozzy and his friends would charge match-goers half a shilling to “mind” their cars.

He has joked that his first job in the music industry was as a car horn tuner in a factory in the area, before getting a job in a slaughterhouse, which allowed him to play practical jokes in pubs by putting cows’ eyeballs in peoples’ pints.

But he wanted to escape the drudgery of a day job so put an advert for a band in a record shop. That eventually led him to form Black Sabbath with schoolfriend and guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward.

Other groups had summoned up a sound similar to heavy metal, but Sabbath really set the template with their combination of pounding rhythms, deep rock riffs and imagery of fantasy and horror.

“They started from absolutely nothing to be global superstars,” says fan Joe Porter, 47, from Birmingham, while admiring murals of the band that have been painted in the city in advance of the gig.

“If you watch their early concerts, they’ve got basic [equipment] – one PA, one small drum set, a bass and a guitar and that’s it. The sound they could make from those four instruments was like there’s 20 people on stage.

“And Ozzy’s like a madman on stage, but really he’s just a normal bloke.”

Their appeal crosses generations, judging by the crowd at Ozzy Osbourne: Working Class Hero, a new exhibition in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

“They started the year my mum was born, in ’68,” says 21-year-old Byron Howard-Maarij. “I’m a massive metal fan, so the fact that the originators are coming back to where it all started, it’s really exciting.”

Another fan, Riley Beresford, 25, from Nottingham, has inherited a copy of Sabbath’s 1970 single Paranoid as a family heirloom from his grandmother. “She got Paranoid on seven inch and it got passed down to my mum, and now it’s passed down to me. It’s going through the family.”

He adds: “They made heavy metal, didn’t they? Obviously the music’s great, but him being wild, it just adds to it even more. There’s no-one else like him, really, is there?”

“I think the reason people love Ozzy is he’s still very genuine,” says Toby Watley, director of collections at Birmingham Museums.

“He sees himself as a working class lad from Aston. He hasn’t really changed. What you see is what you get. It’s not going through a Hollywood lens and being glamorised in any way. People really love that and respect it. And it’s something that Birmingham can be really proud of.”

The exhibition features artefacts loaned by Ozzy and wife Sharon, including gold discs and awards such as his three Grammys and two Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame trophies (one for being inducted with Sabbath, the other as a solo artist).

They reflect his musical success, while pictures and videos of him on stage give a small glimpse of that wilder side.

“You never quite know what’s going to happen next, and I think people like that,” Mr Watley adds. “He’s not someone who attempts to stick to the rules. He will do it his own way, in his own style. I think that’s a big part of the appeal.”

Some of his antics have become legendary.

The most notorious was biting the head off a live bat while on stage in Iowa in 1982. He had been catapulting raw meat into the audience on tour, which prompted fans to throw things on stage in return. He claims he thought the bat was fake before he took a bite.

He has not attempted to use the same excuse about the two doves whose heads he bit off during a record label meeting the previous year.

His other exploits included being arrested for urinating on Texas war monument the Alamo while wearing one of Sharon’s dresses; getting thrown out of the Dachau concentration camp for being drunk and disorderly while on a visit during a German tour; pulling a gun on Black Sabbath’s drummer while on a bad acid trip; blacking out and waking up in the central reservation of a 12-lane freeway; and massacring the inhabitants of his chicken coop with a gun, sword and petrol while wearing a dressing gown and pair of wellies.

That all added to Ozzy’s legend, but in reality most of his behaviour was not very appealing or glamorous. He was a wreck, and the drink and drugs gave him a Jekyll and Hyde personality.

In 1989, he woke up in jail to be told he had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder for strangling Sharon. He could not remember anything about it. She dropped the charges.

In 2003, by now supposedly off drink, he broke his neck after falling off a quad bike, and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s the same year. In 2019, he suffered a spinal injury in a fall.

Fans are waiting to see what state he is in on stage on Saturday.

When he was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist last year, he had to sit on a large black throne – suitably adorned with skulls and a giant bat. The same throne has appeared in photos of rehearsals for this weekend’s gig in Birmingham.

His body has survived more abuse than virtually anybody else’s on the planet – but age and medical realities are catching up with him.

Sharon has said the concert will definitely be his final show.

He and his fans are likely to be forced to accept that is the case, although in the past he has found it impossible to stay out of the spotlight for long.

“You know the time I will retire?” he said in a 2020 documentary. “When I can hear them nail a lid on my box. And then I’ll do an encore.”

Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending budget bill has returned 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 has so far proven equally tricky for Trump’s allies to pass the bill through the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson’s hopes of holding a vote on Wednesday appear to be thinning out.

Members of Congress had emptied from the House floor by the afternoon, after it became clear there weren’t even enough votes for the bill to pass the rule that allows the legislation to be brought to the floor, typically an easy procedural task.

The House, or lower chamber, approved an earlier version of the bill in May with a margin of just one vote, and this bill, with new amendments that have frustrated some Republicans, 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.

The president has been very involved in attempting to persuade the holdouts and held several meetings at the White House on Wednesday in hopes of winning them over.

Ralph Norman, a House Republican from South Carolina, attended one of the meetings but wasn’t persuaded.

“There won’t be any vote until we can satisfy everybody,” he said, adding he believes there are about 25 other Republicans who are currently opposed to it. The chamber can only lose about three Republicans to pass the measure.

“I got problems with this bill,” he said. “I got trouble with all of it.”

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, Texas congressman Chip Roy, of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, was quick to signal his frustration.

He said 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.

Ohio Republican Warren Davison posted on X: “Promising someone else will cut spending in the future does not cut spending.”

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 were 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 House Democrats, whose leader, Hakeem Jeffries, posted a picture of himself on Wednesday to Instagram, holding a baseball bat and vowing to “keep the pressure on Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill”.

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.

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.

In 2006, the world was gifted one of the most quotable and magnificent films of the 21st Century.

No, no. That wasn’t a question.

The Devil Wears Prada, based on a novel by Lauren Weisberger, starred Meryl Streep as a demon fashion magazine editor who made ridiculous demands on her long-suffering assistants, played by Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway.

The movie managed to both celebrate and send up the fashion industry at the same time. It has developed a cult following over the years and was recently adapted as a stage musical.

The film studios may have been moving at a glacial pace for the last two decades (you know how that thrills us), but now, we’re finally getting a sequel. Here’s everything we know so far.

Miranda Priestly, along with her anti-bacterial wipes and excellent taste in cerulean sweaters, will once again be portrayed by Hollywood royalty Meryl Streep. It will be the actress’s first film since 2021’s Don’t Look Up.

Anne Hathaway will reprise her role as Andrea “Andy” Sachs, provided there isn’t some kind of hideous skirt convention she has to go to.

Her fellow assistant Emily, played by Emily Blunt, will also return, having hopefully given up her diet where she doesn’t eat anything, unless she feels like she’s going to faint, and then she eats a cube of cheese.

Miranda’s right-hand man Nigel, played by Stanley Tucci, who must surely be due a promotion after his whole life went up in smoke, will be back as well.

New cast members include British actor Kenneth Branagh, who will reportedly play Miranda’s husband. We hope he knows how to spell Gabbana.

But one person who won’t be back is Andrea’s boyfriend Nate, played by Entourage star Adrian Grenier.

He and the couple’s group of friends were perceived as the villains of the first film as the movie was gradually reappraised over the years, and viewers have increasingly criticised Andy’s support network for not, well, supporting her and her career.

Weisberger did write a sequel to her original novel, 2013’s Revenge Wears Prada, but it’s not clear how closely the second film will resemble it.

In the second book, Andy had recently turned 30, was about to get married and was now a successful magazine editor in her own right, working closely with her former Runway survivor Emily – before Miranda re-enters her life.

The book is rumoured to be the basis of the film sequel, but according to Hollywood trade publication Variety, there will some new story elements too.

Viewers will reportedly join Miranda as she navigates the decline of traditional magazine publishing. It’s understood she will be forced to court her one-time assistant Emily, who is now a high-powered executive for a luxury brand, for advertising revenue.

In real life, Weisberger briefly worked at Vogue as an assistant to Dame Anna Wintour, who coincidentally announced last week she was stepping down as the magazine’s editor-in-chief after 37 years.

It’s not just the stars who are returning for The Devil Wears Prada 2 – the core creative team are back too.

David Frankel will return to direct, having helmed Marley & Me, Hope Springs and Collateral Beauty in the interim. The original film’s producer, Wendy Finerman, is also coming back.

And Aline Brosh McKenna will once again write the screenplay. Since 2006, she has also written Cruella, Morning Glory, 27 Dresses and I Don’t Know How She Does It.

It’s clear the stars and creative team have fond memories of the film, and Streep, Hathaway and Blunt reunited at the SAG Awards last year for a short sketch as their beloved characters.

The actors have often been asked what their characters might be up to today. In 2022, Hathaway mused: “I think [Andrea] is writing for a wonderful French women’s magazine. I think she’s a staff writer and she speaks French fluently. I don’t think she’s married, but she might have a child or two. I think she’s pretty fab.”

Gird your loins, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is due to be released in cinemas on Friday 1 May 2026.

With impeccable timing, that is the weekend before fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala, which always takes place on the first Monday in May.

The teaser for the film gives nothing away – the famous red stiletto heel from the first film’s promotional poster is appropriately joined by a second, identical shoe.

The stylish visual is accompanied only by the words: “Now in production.” A full trailer should follow in due course.

A sequel? For Spring? Goundbreaking.

Business is booming in the luxury world of superyachts, with the super-rich wanting ever bigger floating palaces.

Paulo Trifirò knows a thing or two about superyachts – she and her husband have owned more than a dozen over the years.

The Italian couple, who have made their fortune in law, and continue to run a global legal firm, like to sail around the world in the height of luxury.

Ms Trifirò describes their boats, which can be more than 50m (164ft) long, as being like floating five-star hotels. And she likes to get involved in the design process.

One criteria she insists upon is that the crew have ample kitchen space, so they can cook gourmet meals for up to 15 people.

Ms Trifirò explains her reasoning: “If you are used to eating well, not everywhere [in the world] are there restaurants good enough.”

She also says that the large size of the vessels is reassuring. “Whether it’s sailing alongside humpback whales, or receiving greetings by fishermen on the Fiji islands, my boats allow me to sail… with strength and safety.”

But what exactly is a superyacht? While there is no official global classification, industry website and magazine Boat International describes one as “a luxury, privately-owned yacht that measures 24 metres or more in length, and is professionally crewed”.

The magazine says that global sales boomed after Covid. With the super rich suddenly unable to go to luxury hotels, as they were all closed during the pandemic, many switched to superyachts instead.

As a result, 1,024 new superyachts were built or on order around the world in 2022, a 25% jump from 2021, and a then all-time high, according to Boat International’s figures. This then increased to 1,203 in 2023, another new record.

“After the pandemic people considered their super yachts as safe islands both for themselves and their relatives,” says Barbara Armerio who co-owns Italian family-run superyacht builder Amer.

She adds that billionaires cherished their personal space and independence even more. “They asked for bigger windows, more space outside, and to be able to touch the seawater more easily”.

While the overall number of superyachts being built or ordered is expected to fall slightly this year to 1,138, they are getting bigger on average, Boat International’s data also shows. So far this year, 61 boats of 76m or more in length are being made, up from 55 in 2024.

And in the 46m to 60m grouping, numbers have increased to 175 from 159. Meanwhile, sales of the smallest superyachts, between 24m and 27m are down to 286 from 321.

“It’s clear that some of those new clients the industry found in the Covid-19 years are trading up,” says Ms Armerio.

Boat International’s editor in chief Stewart Campbell says that whatever size superyacht people buy “designers and naval architects are getting very clever at packing ever more volume into hulls, giving owners lots more space on board”.

As a result, today’s superyacht’s increasingly have everything from helipads to cinemas, gyms, beauty salons, and saunas.

As you’d imagine, prices are extremely high. You can pay €36m ($41m; £30m) for a new smaller boat, up to €295m for a 105m-long vessel with all the optional extras.

Half of all superyachts continue to be built in Italy, with its yards currently working on a combined length of 22,195m, or approximately 22km (13 miles), of boats. Turkey is in second place, followed by the Netherlands, the UK, Taiwan, Germany, the US and China.

Back in 2023, Italian shipbuilders earned €8.3bn from making superyachts, a record high.

Ms Armerio says her shipyard “produces only a few high-grade” superyachts per year, “masterpieces with unique details”.

She adds that Italian yacht-makers like hers are supported by a solid network of local artisans. “In Italy we find everything we need.”

Ms Armerio points to being able to drive to Tuscany’s stone quarries from her company’s base on the coast of Liguria if she needs to order marble.

Regarding the billionaires and multimillionaires who buy superyachts, Boat International says that most are from the US. Yet it points to more coming from Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico as those countries’ economies grow.

Meanwhile, sales to Russian buyers have fallen to due to the sanctions against the country and its elites as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

If the appeal of a superyacht wasn’t immediately obvious, Ms Trifirò says they enable her to see the world and fulfil her wanderlust. And she likes to be at the controls of the boat.

“My curiosity to explore new places pushes me to cruise the oceans while in the driver’s seat,” she says.

Ms Trifirò adds that her crew is paid double what they’d likely earn on land “as it is very important to keep them happy. Our captain has worked for us for 22 years.”

A wildfire in Spain and high temperatures elsewhere in Europe have claimed another six lives as the continent swelters in temperatures topping 40C.

Two farmers died when they became trapped by flames near the town of Coscó in Spain’s Catalonia region. Authorities said a farm worker had appealed to his boss for help, but they were unable to escape as fire spread over a large area.

In Italy, two men died after becoming unwell on beaches on the island of Sardinia, and a man in his 80s died of heart failure, after walking into a hospital in Genoa.

A 10-year-old American girl collapsed and died while visiting the Palace of Versailles south-west of Paris , reports said.

According to French broadcaster TF1, she 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.

France’s ecological transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said earlier that two heat-related fatalities had been recorded in France and that more than 300 people had been given emergency care.

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”.

Both Spain and England had 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.

The two men who died in the fire in Catalonia were identified later as the farmer owner and a worker aged 32 and 45.

Emergency services said the fire had spread to an area of up to 6,500 hectares.

Aemet forecast temperatures of 41C in the southern city of Córdoba on Wednesday, and said overnight temperatures were as high as 28C in the nearby town of Osuna the night before.

France has registered its second-hottest June since records began in 1900. June 2023 was hotter.

Four departments in France remained on the red alert level for heat on Wednesday, the highest level. These include Aube, Cher, Loiret and Yonne, according to Météo-France.

In Sardinia, where temperatures have exceeded 40C in recent days, a 75-year-old man died after falling ill on a beach in Budoni. Another man, 60, became sick while on the beach of Lu Impostu in San Teodoro.

Two construction workers in the Italian 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 the Ansa news agency.

Meanwhile two wildfires have prompted emergency evacuations in Greece, as authorities warn of a very high fire risk across many regions, including Attica, Crete, and parts of the Peloponnese and Aegean islands.

In the northern Halkidiki region, a fast-moving blaze near the coastal village of Vourvourou burned through highly flammable pine forest, forcing residents and campers to flee. Power cuts have been reported in the area, while 65 firefighters, ground teams, and aerial units are battling the flames in steep terrain.

On the island of Crete, a large fire was burning out of control near the seaside village of Achlia, threatening homes, tourist accommodation and critical infrastructure. Local residents and tourists have been ordered to leave. More than 100 firefighters have been deployed to tackle the blaze.

Dimple Rana, heat and microclimate specialist at sustainable development consultancy Arup, told the BBC there was “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.

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.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which is the UN’s weather and climate agency, said on Tuesday that human-induced climate change meant “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.

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.

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

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”.

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
• How Somalis see the ‘Black Hawk Down’ battle three decades on
• The city where shopkeepers fear their CCTV cameras could get them killed

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”.

A criminal investigation into Saturday’s performance has already been launched by Avon and Somerset Police.

On Wednesday, a Met Police spokesperson confirmed the band is also under investigation for comments it had made during a concert at Alexandra Palace a month earlier.

“The decision to investigate follows the emergence of footage which appears to have been filmed at the venue on 28 May 2025,” the force told the BBC.

However it is not clear when the investigation was officially launched.

In response to the music festival cancellations, the band 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.

In an email sent to the BBC’s Jewish staff network on Tuesday, the corporation’s director general Tim Davie said: “I was, and remain, appalled by Bob Vylan’s deeply offensive and totally unacceptable behaviour during his Glastonbury set.”

He added the performance had “no place on the BBC” and that “there is absolutely no place for antisemitism at the BBC”.

On Tuesday, the UK’s chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis strongly criticised “the airing of vile Jew-hate at Glastonbury”.

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

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”.

Four people have been charged over a break-in at RAF Brize Norton last month, when military planes were damaged, Counter Terrorism Policing South East say.

Amy Gardiner-Gibson, 29, and Jony Cink, 24, both of no fixed abode, and Daniel Jeronymides-Norie, 35, and Lewie Chiaramello, 22, both from London, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later on Thursday.

They have been charged with conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK and conspiracy to commit criminal damage.

Damage worth £7m was caused to two Voyager aircraft, when planes were sprayed with paint during the break-in on 20 June.

A woman, 41, arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender was released on bail until 19 September and a man, 23, was freed without charge.

The Crown Prosecution Service will be submitting to the court that the offences with which the other four are charged have a “terrorist connection”, Counter Terrorism Policing South East said in a statement.

A group called Palestine Action said it was behind the incident at the airbase.

On Wednesday, MPs voted in favour of the government’s move to ban it as a terrorist organisation.

The High Court has ordered a “robust and independent” new investigation into how MI5 gave false evidence to multiple courts, after rejecting two official inquiries provided by the Security Service as seriously “deficient”.

The two reviews took place after the BBC revealed MI5 had lied to three courts in a case concerning a neo-Nazi state agent who abused women.

A panel of three senior judges said it would be “premature” to decide whether to begin contempt of court proceedings against any individuals before the new investigation was complete.

They also “commended” the BBC for “bringing these matters to light”.

The two official inquiries, one of which was commissioned by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, absolved MI5 and its officers of deliberate wrongdoing.

But the judgement concludes that the “investigations carried out by MI5 to date suffer from serious procedural deficiencies” and that “we cannot rely on their conclusions”.

The three judges – England and Wales’ most senior judge, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Sue Carr, President of the King’s Bench Division Dame Victoria Sharp and Mr Justice Chamberlain, said: “It is to be hoped that events such as these will never be repeated.”

Their judgement says the new investigation should be carried out under the auspices of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner Sir Brian Leveson, who has oversight of MI5’s surveillance activities. His office, IPCO, was also provided with false evidence by MI5 in the case.

Sir Brian said: “It is clear that MI5’s compliance with its statutory duties fell short in this case.”

He noted the recommendation that IPCO should carry out the new investigation said he would await “direction from the prime minister”.

MI5 director general Sir Ken McCallum repeated his “full and unreserved apology for the errors made in these proceedings”.

He said resolving this matter was “of the highest priority for MI5” and that they would co-operate fully with IPCO.

“MI5’s job is to keep the country safe. Maintaining the trust of the courts is essential to that mission,” he said.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We are pleased this decision has been reached and that the key role of our journalist Daniel De Simone in bringing this to light has been acknowledged by the judges.

“We believe our journalism on this story has always been in the highest public interest.”

The case began in 2022 with an attempt to block the BBC from publishing a story about a neo-Nazi agent known as X. It has become a major test of how the courts view MI5 and the credibility of its evidence.

MI5 gave evidence to three courts, saying that it had never breached its core secrecy policy of neither confirming nor denying (NCND) that X was a state agent.

But in February, the BBC was able to prove with notes and recordings of phone calls with MI5 that this was false.

An MI5 officer had confirmed the agent’s status as he tried to persuade me to drop an investigation into X, a violent misogynist who used his Security Service role to coerce and terrify his former girlfriend, known publicly as “Beth”.

Beth’s lawyer, Kate Ellis from the Centre for Women’s Justice, said the judgement was a “clear rejection” of MI5’s explanations so far and a “serious warning” to the Security Service to cooperate.

She said the judges expressed concerns about “the ease” with which MI5 was able to “hide behind” the NCND policy – and warned that none of the safeguards to hold it accountable can work properly without “high standards of candour”.

The two official inquiries criticised by the High Court were an internal MI5 inquiry and an “external” investigation by the government’s former chief lawyer, Sir Jonathan Jones KC. The latter was commissioned by the home sectary and Sir Ken.

But the judgement said that “there was in our view a fundamental incoherence in Sir Jonathan’s terms of reference”.

The ruling said he was asked to establish the facts of what happened but not to “make findings about why specific individuals did or did not do certain things”.

However, the judges said Sir Jonathan nevertheless “did make findings” that there was no deliberate attempt by anyone to mislead the court – without ever speaking to an MI5 officer at the centre of the case and without considering key additional BBC evidence about what took place.

The judgement also found that MI5’s director general of strategy, who is the organisation’s third-in-command, gave misleading assurances to the court in a witness statement.

He said its original explanations were “a fair and accurate account” of secret material which, at that point, had not been disclosed.

The court forced the government and MI5 to hand over the material, and the judges concluded that MI5’s explanations were not “fair and accurate” and “omitted several critical matters” – including that IPCO had been misled and what was known by several MI5 officers at relevant times.

Their judgement said that it was “regrettable that MI5’s explanations to this court were given in a piecemeal and unsatisfactory way – and only following the repeated intervention of the court”.

“The impression has been created that the true circumstances in which false evidence came to be given have had to be extracted from, not volunteered by, MI5,” they said.

Today’s highly critical judgement also found:

• In this one case MI5 has misled two separate branches of the High Court, as well as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, and security cleared barristers representing the BBC known as special advocates
• MI5’s core NCND secrecy policy about the status of agents was maintained in the legal proceedings long after “any justification for its maintenance had disappeared”
• The BBC and I, as well as our lawyers and special advocates, should be “commended” for the “central role” we have played in bringing these matters to light

The judgement said that a “major” failing by the official reviews is that they did not contact me, despite the fact I was the other person involved in the key events.

The judges said that, having “considered carefully” further evidence I submitted in response to the reviews – such as records and notes that showed both reviews included false statements – it “paints a significantly different picture” to the one presented by MI5.

They added that they accepted the internal investigators and Sir Jonathan in the external review later considered my evidence “in good faith”.

But they said that because they had already reached a conclusion that there had been no deliberate attempt to mislead the court, they would “inevitably find it difficult” to revise those conclusions in the light of evidence which “fundamentally affects” the basis of their conclusions.

US President Donald Trump has called for the chair of the Federal Reserve to quit “immediately”, in an escalation of his attacks on Jerome Powell.

“‘Too Late’ should resign immediately!!!”, Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

He also included a link to a news article about a US federal housing regulator calling for Mr Powell to be investigated over his testimony about renovations to the central bank’s Washington headquarters.

Trump nominated Mr Powell to be the Fed chair during his his first term. Since then, he has repeatedly criticised him for not cutting interest rates but it’s unclear whether the president has the authority to remove him from the post.

Despite the president’s continued criticism of Mr Powell, he said earlier this year that had “no intention of firing him”.

Trump wants the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates to help boost economic growth.

Mr Powell said on Tuesday that the Fed would have cut rates already had it not been for the impact of the Trump’s tariff policies.

When asked during a meeting of central bankers in Portugal whether US rates would have been cut again this year if the administration had not announced its plan to sharply increase tariffs on countries around the world Mr Powell responded, “I think that’s right.”

The US Federal Reserve declined to comment about Trump’s remarks when contacted by the BBC.

Ahead of Trump’s return to the White House at the start of this year, Mr Powell said he would not step down if the president asked him to and that it is “not permitted under law” for the White House to force him out.

Board members of independent federal agencies like the Federal Reserve can only be forced out before their terms expire “for cause,” according to a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in 1935.

However, Trump has often challenged political norms, including firing some independent regulators, actions that have been contested in court.

On Wednesday, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who has previously strongly criticised Mr Powell, called for him to be investigated.

“I am asking Congress to investigate Chairman Jerome Powell, his political bias, and his deceptive Senate testimony, which is enough to be removed ‘for cause,'” he posted on X.

Last week, Mr Powell told the Senate that reports about soaring costs and expensive features at the Fed’s headquarters were “misleading and inaccurate in many, many respects.”

A judge has denied bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs after a jury convicted the hip-hop mogul of transportation to engage in prostitution, but acquitted him of the most serious charges: racketeering and sex-trafficking.

Lawyers for the recording artist had argued he posed no flight risk, pointing out his jet is being chartered in Hawaii.

But Judge Arun Subramanian cited Combs’ history of violence as he ruled the rapper must remain behind bars until sentencing later this year when he faces up to 20 years in prison.

In the nearly two-month federal trial in New York City, prosecutors accused Combs of using his celebrity status and business empire to run a criminal enterprise to sex traffic women.

A panel of 12 jurors deliberated for 13 hours before acquitting Combs of three of the most serious five charges.

He will continue to be held at the same federal jail in Brooklyn where he has been detained since last September.

The sentencing was tentatively scheduled for 3 October.

• Diddy’s secret world revealed in videos and his voice notes
• Dramatic moment Combs fell to his knees after learning his fate

Combs’ attorney, Marc Agnifilo, made an impassioned argument for the judge to release his client.

The defence lawyer said Combs had attended a programme for perpetrators of domestic violence to try to reform his conduct, even before he was arrested, and that he had not been violent since 2018.

“I just think we should trust him,” Agnifilo said.

But Combs’ ex-girlfriend, musician Casandra Ventura, had warned the court in a letter that the hip-hop mogul would posed a danger if released.

The rapper had acknowledged domestic violence, but denied any non-consensual sexual encounters or a larger racketeering scheme.

Judge Subramanian said bail was being denied because “the defence conceded violence in his personal relationship”.

The mood in court was emotional after jurors announced they had acquitted Combs of the most serious charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.

Sex trafficking and racketeering both carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

As Combs learned the verdict, he got on his knees, put his face into his chair and appeared to be praying. He was shaking.

The verdict comes a day after jurors told the court they had reached a decision on the sex-trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution charges against Combs, but were unable to decide on the racketeering count.

The jurors said they had had “unpersuadable” opinions on both sides about the charge, which was the most complicated of any of the counts Combs faced.

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

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

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

Prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses over the course of the seven-week trial, including Ms Ventura, rapper Kid Cudi, several ex-employees and hotel security workers.

They alleged Combs had relied on employees to coerce his partners into so-called “freak-offs”, in which his girlfriends would have sex with a male escort while he watched and filmed.

The government relied on testimony from Ms Ventura, who took the witness stand while eight-months pregnant, telling the court that Combs had pressured her into sex acts and threatened to release tapes of the freak-offs if she disobeyed.

Ms Ventura warned on Wednesday that Combs would pose a danger if granted bail.

In a letter filed to the court, her attorney Douglas Wigdor wrote: “Ms Ventura believes that Mr Combs is likely to pose a danger to the victims who testified in this case, including herself, as well as to the community.”

At the centre of their case was a video of the rapper beating and dragging Ms Ventura in a Los Angeles hotel hallway in 2016 – surveillance footage that security employees testified Combs tried to pay them to delete.

Combs’ attorneys conceded their client was violent towards women, but argued that his behaviour was motivated by drugs and jealousy, not evidence of a larger sex trafficking and racketeering scheme.

Combs is also facing dozens of civil lawsuits alleging sexual assault and violence.

The Harlem-born rapper founded Bad Boy Records in 1993, a label that represented some of the biggest names in hip hop – including Notorious B.I.G. and Usher.

He went on to establish a clothing line called Sean John and a variety of other businesses including fragrances, alcohol and even a media company.

Twelve New York jurors gathered around 10:00 (14:00 GMT) on Wednesday in a wood-panelled courtroom to tell Sean “Diddy” Combs that they found him not guilty of running a criminal enterprise with employees, and sex trafficking his ex-girlfriends.

The disgraced hip-hop mogul fell to his knees and buried his head in a chair at the defence table where he had just spent two months on trial for sex trafficking and racketeering.

Before the verdict came down, Combs sat quietly in his chair, looking forward, wearing the same off-white sweater and pants he wore for much of his trial.

The court grew quiet as the jury foreperson handed the verdict sheet to the court deputy. Then it was handed back to the foreperson.

And they began to read.

As the sound of the “not guilty” rung out in court for the first time, acquitting Combs of the most severe crime of racketeering, the rapper kept his head low.

By the time the foreperson announced Combs was not guilty of sex trafficking, Combs had his head in his hands.

The jury did find him guilty on the least severe charges of transporting people to engage in prostitution. As they confirmed their decision, Combs buried his face in his hands.

A flurry of small celebrations followed for Combs, who has been in a federal jail in Brooklyn since September. He made a prayer sign with his hands to the jury, then turned around and made the same gesture to his family – twin daughters, sons and 85-year-old mother.

He appeared to mouth: “I’m coming home.”

The moment seemed equally emotional for Combs’ many lawyers, including Teny Geragos, seated next to him and wiping away tears with a tissue after the verdict was read.

Combs’ attorneys wasted no time in telling the judge that the verdict, reached after roughly two days of deliberations, meant Combs should be able to walk out of the Manhattan courthouse a free man that very day.

His acquittal on the most serious charges meant he no longer needed to be jailed, his attorney Marc Agnifilo told the court, noting that his client’s plane was inaccessible – chartered and in Maui.

“Mr Combs has been given his life by this jury,” he said. “He will not run afoul of anything this court imposes on him.”

Then, in the perhaps the most emotional gesture of the day for Combs, he appeared to express his gratitude by pressing his head into his chair at the defence table.

He rose, clapping his hands loudly, to hug several of his lawyers. Many family members and supporters in the main courtroom and a packed overflow room joined him, cheering.

Then, with one final hug to his lawyer and a wave to his family – blocked by a mass of people and court benches – he was escorted out of the court.

The hip-hop mogul’s homecoming hopes were later dashed as Judge Arun Subramanian denied him bail at another hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

Outside the Manhattan court, there were repeated calls of “free Diddy” in a large crowd behind barriers.

But he will remain behind bars until his sentencing later this year.

“Can y’all come straighten it up over here? It’s not looking luxurious,” Sean ”Diddy” Combs says in a voice note to his personal assistants as R&B music mellows in the background.

Hours before, a so-called ”freak-off” - a drug-fuelled orgy also known as a “Wild King Night” – had been in full swing. Now, staff were being called in to clean up.

“PD said he’s going to need emergency clean up at hotel,” his chief of staff texts after another of these events. ”Bring him stain remover (for a chair and couch) and black trash bags. And baking soda too, he said.”

The BBC has seen messages and recordings from former staff in Combs’ household. The staff members have also given detailed accounts of what it was like to work on the multi-millionaire music mogul’s glamorous yacht rentals and inside his sprawling estates across the US – in the Hamptons, Beverly Hills and on Star Island in Miami.

Their experiences span the past five to 10 years, a period that was under scrutiny during Combs’ criminal trial in New York.

At the trial’s conclusion on Wednesday, the 55-year-old was cleared of the most serious charges – racketeering, and two counts of sex trafficking related to ex-partner Casandra Ventura and another woman referred to as “Jane”.

But jurors found he was guilty of two other counts related to the transportation to engage in prostitution of both women. He will be sentenced at a later date.

We have been shown material which paints a picture of a “scary” and unpredictable boss, who would administer shocking “loyalty tests”, and whose demands grew more and more extreme.

Staff have described how his sometimes-days-long “freak-offs” were held at locations around the world, with the rapper expecting staff to prepare a bag containing “baby oil, lubricant and red lights” – to create the red-tinted ambience Combs preferred – alongside class-A drugs wherever he travelled.

Inside his waterfront Miami mansion, a $48m (£36m) compound located on an exclusive man-made island, we have been told that Combs kept tight control of his inner circle.  

“I’m not about to be transparent with y’all,” a groggy Combs warns staff one day in a rambling voice note posted in an employee WhatsApp group in 2020. ”There’s some dark places y’all [EXPLETIVE] don’t want to go. Stay where you’re at.”

Staff say he was intense, demanding and volatile, with some attributing his unpredictability to a lifestyle of drug-fuelled parties. The turnover of staff was high and Combs had more than 20 different house managers join and leave in just two years across his properties, one former estates manager told us.

Phil Pines, 40, who worked for Combs as a senior executive assistant from 2019-2021, has told the BBC the mogul didn’t say a word to him when he first started his job.

“It was like an initiation,” he explains. “We didn’t speak to each other for 30 days.”

Another recent assistant, Ethan (not his real name), recalls: “He was a very ill man with different behaviours, sometimes very aggressive, sometimes very sweet.”

We have changed Ethan’s name because, like many former staff members, he still works in the high-net-worth hospitality industry and fears speaking out about Combs will hurt his career.

Ethan shows us a small scar on his forehead. He says this was the result of Combs smashing a glass against a wall in a fit of rage, and the shards cutting Ethan’s face.

Phil Pines and Ethan were part of Combs’ small group of trusted assistants and say he often played mind games with staff.

Ethan recalls one of Combs’ loyalty tests – when the star took off one of his rings and threw it into the Atlantic Ocean. He then turned to Ethan and told him he had to go into the water to get it.

They were at a formal event and Ethan, like his boss, was wearing a smart suit. He says this didn’t stop him jumping in right away to rescue it.

In another incident, Pines says Combs called him to his residence after midnight, just so he could fetch the TV remote from under the bed he was in with a female guest.

“See? He is loyal and now he can go back home,” he recalls Combs telling her. Pines says he felt like an animal.

But the Wild King Nights – as the rapper’s chief of staff, Kristina Khorram, referred to them – revealed an even darker side to working for Combs.

“I was asked to set up a laundry list of items for him,” says Pines. “And I thought to myself, why didn’t anybody explain this to me before?”

In one exchange seen by the BBC, Khorram texted him to warn a bag needs to be prepared for a Wild King Night in two hours. In another, she asked for a ”drop off” of seven bottles of baby oil and seven bottles of Astroglide lubricant alongside iced vanilla lattes.

“Rounding up a shelf of baby oil and Astroglide at a store is very, very humiliating. I would always pretend like I was on the phone,” Pines tells us.

In Combs’ trial the prosecution presented evidence of supplies they said were procured for “freak-offs”. A police raid on Combs’ Los Angeles mansion found drugs and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil.

From three months into his role, Pines began having concerns about the frequency of these requests. “It became daily, sometimes twice a day, every day, and every week.”

Pines says there was a constant stream of young women who frequented Combs’ homes – apparently for sex. Young men were also called to the parties, says Ethan.

Some of these young people would appear to be friends of the star’s sons, Pines tells us, with some of the women later seen “hanging” with Combs.

Pines says he also had concerns that some of these guests – who looked like they were in their early 20s – were ”too young” and “impressionable” for his then 50-year-old boss.

“I would see some women feel uncomfortable or at least look like they’d had a wild night,” says Pines.

A woman with an IV drip would usually visit the next day, he says, to help guests recover after sometimes ”partying” for 24 hours non-stop without food.

Pines recalls one young guest uttering to him in distress: “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

He was instructed to drive her home from Combs’ Miami residence: ”She was kind of shaking and shivering, like she was coming down off the drugs.”

The drug-fuelled nature of these nights has repeatedly been brought up during Combs’ trial. Casandra Ventura, his ex-partner of more than a decade, testified that she endured years of coerced sex with male escorts under the threat of beatings and blackmail, while Combs filmed the encounters. She said these events would sometimes go on for days and require her to take countless drugs to stay awake.

Another woman, who dated Combs on-and-off from 2021 until his arrest last September, gave evidence that she felt pressured to fulfil his desires partly because he was paying her rent, and said the encounters left her feeling “disgusted” and in physical pain.

In his defence at trial, Combs’ lawyer said he admitted to domestic violence, but argued that all the sexual encounters were consensual, and that Combs had a “swingers lifestyle”.

The BBC understands at least one staff member was asked to search online for escorts to participate in the Wild King nights. Screenshots of the escorts were then sent to Combs for approval.

Pines says he doesn’t know what happened at these events, but he was asked to deal with the aftermath.

It was “just complete wreckage”, he says. “Oil all over the floor. Marijuana joints everywhere… I would wear gloves. I would wear a mask.”

“He [Combs] would get up, put his hoodie on and walk out the door,” Pines says, leaving staff to clean the room.

On one occasion, Pines says he witnessed Combs push and kick a female guest during an argument at his house, which continued outside.

Combs swore at her and said “give me my hoodie”, Pines remembers. “She takes off the hoodie, she’s topless, no bra, nothing, no t-shirt on. So, I take off my jacket and I wrap it around her to kind of shield her.”

The guest left in an Uber crying, says Pines, but within a week she was back at the house again with Combs.

“She came back shortly after that. Dinner, gifts… she was brought back into the fold.”

When Pines told his supervisor Khorram about the incident, he says she knew exactly what to say to him: “I kind of give her a play-by-play of what happened. Her words to me: ‘Never speak about this again.'”

Kristina Khorram has not responded to the BBC’s request for comment but has previously denied any wrongdoing.

In a statement to CNN last March, she described allegations against her as “false” and “causing irreparable and incalculable damage to my reputation and the emotional well-being of myself and my family”.

“I have never condoned or aided and abetted the sexual assault of anyone. Nor have I ever drugged anyone,” she said.

Staff would be required to erase any evidence of “freak-offs” – removing bodily stains from sheets, disposing of drugs and, Pines tells us, scrubbing any ”compromising” recorded footage of the sexual encounters off his boss’s personal phones and laptops.

Other staff also describe feeling disturbed by Combs’ sexual encounters.

“[There are] things I saw with my own eyes, memories that will stay forever,” says Ethan. He says Combs would sometimes ask him to enter the room and “bring him water or male enhancement pills” while sex was taking place.

Pines has filed his own civil lawsuit against Combs. The BBC approached Combs’ lawyers for comment in respect of Pines’ allegations, and they made this statement in response: “No matter how many lawsuits are filed, it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone – man or woman, adult or minor. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason.”

Pines recalls a particularly horrifying incident around November 2020, when he says he was asked to stay behind after work and set up an after-party at the Miami mansion.

He says that Combs and his guests had been “in the sun partying, taking mushrooms, smoking, drinking all day – so they were completely gone by this time”.

During the party, Pines says Combs invited him to take a shot, before asking him to ”prove his loyalty”.

He handed Pines a condom and pushed him towards a female guest who was lying on a nearby couch.

“At that moment, I’m like, what is going on?” Pines says. ”I froze. I was just shocked by what was happening. I felt cold… but I also felt so much pressure.”

Pines says the woman consented and they had sex until Combs began ”drifting off into another part of the suite”.

“I didn’t want any of that,” he says. ”Once I kind of saw him out of my peripheral, that he was gone, I pulled up my pants and just got out of there quickly.

“It was a power move. I felt like I was coerced. It was manipulation.”

When they travelled internationally, staff say Combs’ drugs came with him, concealed in a safe onboard his $60m (£45m) private jet.

“Even if it was for a day trip, if he was going on the yacht for four hours, take all that stuff with you because he may use it,” Pines recalls being instructed.

He claims mushrooms, ketamine and ecstasy were kept in a small black Gucci bag alongside baby oil, lubricant and red lights.

Combs’ lawyers admitted during trial that he had procured drugs, but said they were for personal use only.

In one nerve-wracking incident in Venice in summer 2021, Pines says Italian authorities questioned Combs’ staff for an hour. He feared that if they had found the drugs hidden in the luggage, he would have “taken the fall” for his boss.

A former personal assistant, Brendan Paul, was arrested on charges of drug possession while with Combs at a Miami airport in March 2024, on the same day police raided the rapper’s homes. The charges were later dropped after Paul completed a pre-trial diversion programme.

During Combs’ trial, Paul, 26, testified that he had found cocaine after “sweeping” his boss’s room and had forgotten it was in his bag while they prepared for a vacation in the Bahamas. He told the court that he did not tell law enforcement that they were Combs’ drugs out of “loyalty”.

By December 2021, Pines says he had had enough. 

“The money wasn’t worth it… because of the experiences I was having with him. It was just too much to bear.”

When asked why staff had not spoken out sooner, Pines does not hesitate. They were, he says, afraid of Combs.

“He is a very scary person. Whether you’re his employee, you’re a contractor, you’re a girlfriend, guest, you know what he’s capable of,” he says.

Ethan says he used to believe that Combs had ”people a couple of steps in front” who ”caught everything”. But after his former boss’s arrest, his view shifted. Staff simply were not able to stop what was coming, he says. “Obviously being a celebrity, he could cut many corners,” he reflects, but ”he couldn’t avoid the law”.

Pines says he was approached by federal agents in the Department of Homeland Security as part of its criminal investigation last summer and was later legally summoned to give evidence ahead of Combs’ trial. Other ex-assistants, who worked for Combs back in 2014 and as recently as 2024, testified in court during the trial.

“I have to nod to Cassie Ventura for being so courageous to stand up to him,” Pines says.

Ventura’s civil lawsuit, filed in November 2023, alleged Combs had trapped her in a cycle of violence and sexual abuse. The lawsuit was settled in a $20m (£15m) pay-out, one day after the filing. But dozens more followed in quick succession – there are now more than 60 civil cases against Combs, which remain to be resolved.

“She opened the door for people like me to come forward, and for other people who are going through similar things who feel silenced, who feel powerless going up against a giant.”

Shrouded in crimson robes, prayer beads moving rhythmically past his fingers, the monk walks towards us.

It is a risky decision.

We are being followed by eight unidentified men. Even saying a few words to us in public could get him in trouble.

But he appears willing to take the chance. “Things here are not good for us,” he says quietly.

This monastery in China’s south-western Sichuan province has been at the centre of Tibetan resistance for decades – the world learned the name in the late 2000s as Tibetans set themselves on fire there in defiance of Chinese rule. Nearly two decades later, the Kirti monastery still worries Beijing.

A police station has been built inside the main entrance. It sits alongside a small dark room full of prayer wheels which squeak as they spin. Nests of surveillance cameras on thick steel poles surround the compound, scanning every corner.

“They do not have a good heart; everyone can see it,” the monk adds. Then comes a warning. “Be careful, people are watching you.”

As the men tailing us come running, the monk walks away.

“They” are the Communist Party of China, which has now governed more than six million Tibetans for almost 75 years, ever since it annexed the region in 1950.

China has invested heavily in the region, building new roads and railways to boost tourism and integrate it with the rest of the country. Tibetans who have fled say economic development also brought more troops and officials, chipping away at their faith and freedoms.

Beijing views Tibet as an integral part of China. It has labelled Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, as a separatist, and those who display his image or offer him public support could end up behind bars.

Still, some in Aba, or Ngaba in Tibetan, which is home to the Kirti monastery, have gone to extreme measures to challenge these restrictions.

The town sits outside what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), created in 1965, comprising about half of the Tibetan plateau. But millions of Tibetans live outside of TAR – and consider the rest as part of their homeland.

Aba has long played a crucial role. Protests erupted here during the Tibet-wide uprising of 2008 after, by some accounts, a monk held up a photo of the Dalai Lama inside the Kirti monastery. It eventually escalated into a riot and Chinese troops opened fire. At least 18 Tibetans were killed in this tiny town.

As Tibet rose up in protest, it often turned into violent clashes with Chinese paramilitary. Beijing claims 22 people died, while Tibetan groups in exile put the number at around 200.

In the years that followed there were more than 150 self-immolations calling for the return of the Dalai Lama – most of them happened in or around Aba. It earned the main street a grim moniker: Martyr’s row.

China has cracked down harder since, making it nearly impossible to determine what is happening in Tibet or Tibetan areas. The information that does emerge comes from those who have fled abroad, or the government-in-exile in India.

To find out a little more, we returned to the monastery the next day before dawn. We snuck past our minders and hiked our way back to Aba for the morning prayers.

The monks gathered in their yellow hats, a symbol of the Gelug school of Buddhism. Low sonorous chanting resonated through the hall as ritual smoke lingered in the still, humid air. Around 30 local men and women, most in traditional Tibetan long-sleeved jackets, sat cross-legged until a small bell chimed to end the prayer.

“The Chinese government has poisoned the air in Tibet. It is not a good government,” one monk told us.

“We Tibetans are denied basic human rights. The Chinese government continues to oppress and persecute us. It is not a government that serves the people.”

He gave no details, and our conversations were brief to avoid detection. Still, it is rare to hear these voices.

The question of Tibet’s future has taken on urgency with the Dalai Lama turning 90 this week. Hundreds of followers have been gathering in the Indian town of Dharamshala to honour him. He announced the much-anticipated succession plan on Wednesday, reaffirming what he has said before: the next Dalai Lama would be chosen after his death.

Tibetans everywhere have reacted – with relief, doubt or anxiety – but not those in the Dalai Lama’s homeland, where even the whisper of his name is forbidden.

Beijing has spoken loud and clear: the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama will be in China, and approved by the Chinese Communist Party. Tibet, however, has been silent.

“That’s just the way it is,” the monk told us. “That’s the reality.”

The road to Aba winds slowly for nearly 500km (300 miles) from the Sichuan capital of Chengdu.

It passes through the snow-packed peaks of Siguniang Mountain before it reaches the rolling grassland at the edge of the Himalayan plateau.

The gold, sloping rooftops of Buddhist temples shimmer every few miles as they catch especially sharp sunlight. This is the roof of the world where traffic gives way to yak herders on horseback whistling to reluctant, grunting cattle, as eagles circle above.

There are two worlds underneath this Himalayan sky, where heritage and faith have collided with the Party’s demand for unity and control.

China has long maintained that Tibetans are free to practise their faith. But that faith is also the source of a centuries-old identity, which human rights groups say Beijing is slowly eroding.

They claim that countless Tibetans have been detained for staging peaceful protests, promoting the Tibetan language, or even possessing a portrait of the Dalai Lama.

Many Tibetans, inlcuding some we spoke to within the Kirti monastery, are concerned about new laws governing the education of Tibetan children.

All under-18s must now attend Chinese state-run schools and learn Mandarin. They cannot study Buddhist scriptures in a monastery class until they are 18 years old – and they must “love the country and the religion and follow national laws and regulations”.

This is a huge change for a community where monks were often recruited as children, and monasteries doubled up as schools for most boys.

“One of the nearby Buddhist institutions was torn down by the government a few months ago,” a monk in his 60s told us in Aba, from under an umbrella as he walked to prayers in the rain.

“It was a preaching school,” he added, becoming emotional.

The new rules follow a 2021 order for all schools in Tibetan areas, including kindergartens, to teach in the Chinese language. Beijing says this gives Tibetan children a better shot at jobs in a country where the main language is Mandarin.

But such regulations could have a “profound effect” on the future of Tibetan Buddhism, according to renowned scholar Robert Barnett.

“We are moving to a scenario of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping having total control – towards an era of little information getting into Tibet, little Tibetan language being shared,” Mr Barnett says.

“Schooling will almost entirely be about Chinese festivals, Chinese virtues, advanced Chinese traditional culture. We are looking at the complete management of intellectual input.”

The road to Aba shows off the money Beijing has pumped into this remote corner of the world. A new high-speed railway line hugs the hills linking Sichuan to other provinces on the plateau.

In Aba, the usual high-street shop fronts selling monks’ robes and bundles of incense are joined by new hotels, cafes and restaurants to entice tourists.

Chinese tourists arrive in their branded hiking gear and stand amazed as the local faithful prostate themselves on wooden blocks at the entrance to Buddhist temples.

“How do they get anything done all day?” one tourist wonders aloud. Others turn the prayer wheels excitedly and ask about the rich, colourful murals depicting scenes from the Buddha’s life.

A party slogan written on the roadside boasts that “people of all ethnic groups are united as closely as seeds in a pomegranate”.

But it’s hard to miss the pervasive surveillance.

A hotel check-in requires facial recognition. Even buying petrol requires several forms of identification which are shown to high-definition cameras. China has long controlled what information its citizens have access to – but in Tibetan areas, the grip is even tighter.

Tibetans, Mr Barnett says, are “locked off from the outside world”.

It’s hard to say how many of them know about the Dalai Lama’s announcement on Wednesday – broadcast to the world, it was censored in China.

Living in exile in India since 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama has advocated for more autonomy, rather than full independence, for his homeland. Beijing believes he “has no right to represent the Tibetan people”.

He handed over political authority in 2011 to a government-in-exile chosen democratically by 130,000 Tibetans globally – and that government has had back-channel talks this year with China about the succession plan, but it’s unclear if they have progressed.

The Dalai Lama has previously suggested that his successor would be from “the free world”, that is, outside China. On Wednesday, he said “no-one else has any authority to interfere”.

This sets the stage for a confrontation with Beijing, which has said the process should “follow religious rituals and historical customs, and be handled in accordance with national laws and regulations”.

Beijing is already doing the groundwork to convince the Tibetans, Mr Barnett says.

“There is already a huge propaganda apparatus in place. The Party has been sending teams to offices, schools and villages to teach people about the ‘new regulations’ for choosing a Dalai Lama.”

When the Panchen Lama, the second highest authority in Tibetan Buddhism, died in 1989, the Dalai Lama identified a successor to that post in Tibet. But the child disappeared. Beijing was accused of kidnapping him, although it insists that boy, now an adult, is safe. It then approved a different Panchen Lama, who Tibetans outside China do not recognise.

If there are two Dalai Lamas, it could become a test of China’s powers of persuasion. Which one will the world recognise? More important, would most Tibetans in China even know of the other Dalai Lama?

China wants a credible successor – but perhaps no-one too credible.

Because, Mr Barnett says, Beijing “wants to turn the lion of Tibetan culture into a poodle”.

“It wants to remove things it perceives as risky and replace them with things it believes Tibetans ought to be thinking about; patriotism, loyalty, fealty. They like the singing and dancing – the Disney version of Tibetan culture.”

“We don’t know how much will survive,” Mr Barnett concludes.

As we leave the monastery, a line of women carrying heavy baskets filled with tools for construction or farming walk through the room of prayer wheels, spinning them clockwise.

They sing in Tibetan and smile as they pass, their greying, pleated hair only just visible under their sun hats.

Tibetans have clung on to their identity for 75 years now, fighting for it and dying for it.

The challenge now will be to protect it, even when the man who embodies their beliefs – and their resistance – is gone.

A 30-year-old man has admitted to murdering four roommates in a small Idaho college town in 2022, as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.

Bryan Kohberger, a former PhD criminology student, was set to stand trial in August over the attacks that shocked America.

During a hearing on Wednesday, Judge Steven Hippler read the details of the agreement, including that Kohberger waived his right to appeal or seek leniency.

Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen were killed in their off-campus home in the city of Moscow, in November 2022. The two others in the house, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, survived.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” Judge Hippler asked the defendant.

“Yes,” Kohberger replied.

Kohberger had previously pleaded not guilty.

Before beginning proceedings, the judge stated that his office had received numerous messages and voicemails from members of the public that sought to “influence my decision making”.

He said he had not read or listened to any of the messages, and urged people to stop sending them.

The judge then read out the charges against Kohberger – one count of burglary, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and four counts of first-degree murder, which each carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Kohberger pleaded guilty to all the charges.

Judge Hippler said he will formally be sentenced on 23 July. It’s expected he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The plea deal means lingering questions that may have been explored during a trial, such as Kohberger’s motives, remain unanswered.

During the hearing, prosecuting attorney Bill Thompson told the court Kohberger had planned the attack, buying the knife online around eight months before the murders.

The blade’s sheath was recovered, but the weapon itself was never found.

The prosecutor said there was no evidence of a “sexual component” to the killings.

Some in court appeared to become emotional as the names of the victims were read out. Kohberger remained impassive, including when he admitted to killing the four victims.

The brutal nature of the murders, the age of the victims and the suspect’s background in criminology sparked intense public interest in the case.

The plea deal has divided the families of the victims.

Outside court, the father of Kaylee Goncalves, Steve, said he felt “pretty let down”.

He said the state “made a deal with the devil”.

The family wanted a full confession, including details about the location of the murder weapon and confirmation the defendant acted alone.

However, Madison Mogen’s mother and stepfather said outside court they supported the plea agreement.

In a statement read out by their lawyer they expressed gratitude to everyone who had supported them and for the “successful outcome”.

“We support the plea agreement 100%,” the attorney read. “We turn from tragedy and mourning… to the light of the future. We have closure.”

Kohberger, who was a student at nearby Washington State University, was charged in January 2023.

It’s not believed he knew the victims personally.

The defendant was arrested at his Pennsylvania family home weeks following the stabbings, after investigators said they found DNA evidence on a “leather knife sheath” at the crime scene. He was indicted by a grand jury in May 2023.

Court documents revealed police recovered a knife, a Glock pistol, black gloves, a black hat and a black face mask during a search of Kohberger’s family home.

His defence team questioned the accuracy of the DNA evidence and succeeded in its bid to move the trial location, after arguing their client would not receive a fair hearing from local jurors.

But they had failed to remove the death penalty as a sentencing option, after citing an autism diagnosis for Kohberger.

Idaho is one of 27 US states that allows for capital punishment, but there have been no executions since 2012, according to a database by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Business is booming in the luxury world of superyachts, with the super-rich wanting ever bigger floating palaces.

Paulo Trifirò knows a thing or two about superyachts – she and her husband have owned more than a dozen over the years.

The Italian couple, who have made their fortune in law, and continue to run a global legal firm, like to sail around the world in the height of luxury.

Ms Trifirò describes their boats, which can be more than 50m (164ft) long, as being like floating five-star hotels. And she likes to get involved in the design process.

One criteria she insists upon is that the crew have ample kitchen space, so they can cook gourmet meals for up to 15 people.

Ms Trifirò explains her reasoning: “If you are used to eating well, not everywhere [in the world] are there restaurants good enough.”

She also says that the large size of the vessels is reassuring. “Whether it’s sailing alongside humpback whales, or receiving greetings by fishermen on the Fiji islands, my boats allow me to sail… with strength and safety.”

But what exactly is a superyacht? While there is no official global classification, industry website and magazine Boat International describes one as “a luxury, privately-owned yacht that measures 24 metres or more in length, and is professionally crewed”.

The magazine says that global sales boomed after Covid. With the super rich suddenly unable to go to luxury hotels, as they were all closed during the pandemic, many switched to superyachts instead.

As a result, 1,024 new superyachts were built or on order around the world in 2022, a 25% jump from 2021, and a then all-time high, according to Boat International’s figures. This then increased to 1,203 in 2023, another new record.

“After the pandemic people considered their super yachts as safe islands both for themselves and their relatives,” says Barbara Armerio who co-owns Italian family-run superyacht builder Amer.

She adds that billionaires cherished their personal space and independence even more. “They asked for bigger windows, more space outside, and to be able to touch the seawater more easily”.

While the overall number of superyachts being built or ordered is expected to fall slightly this year to 1,138, they are getting bigger on average, Boat International’s data also shows. So far this year, 61 boats of 76m or more in length are being made, up from 55 in 2024.

And in the 46m to 60m grouping, numbers have increased to 175 from 159. Meanwhile, sales of the smallest superyachts, between 24m and 27m are down to 286 from 321.

“It’s clear that some of those new clients the industry found in the Covid-19 years are trading up,” says Ms Armerio.

Boat International’s editor in chief Stewart Campbell says that whatever size superyacht people buy “designers and naval architects are getting very clever at packing ever more volume into hulls, giving owners lots more space on board”.

As a result, today’s superyacht’s increasingly have everything from helipads to cinemas, gyms, beauty salons, and saunas.

As you’d imagine, prices are extremely high. You can pay €36m ($41m; £30m) for a new smaller boat, up to €295m for a 105m-long vessel with all the optional extras.

Half of all superyachts continue to be built in Italy, with its yards currently working on a combined length of 22,195m, or approximately 22km (13 miles), of boats. Turkey is in second place, followed by the Netherlands, the UK, Taiwan, Germany, the US and China.

Back in 2023, Italian shipbuilders earned €8.3bn from making superyachts, a record high.

Ms Armerio says her shipyard “produces only a few high-grade” superyachts per year, “masterpieces with unique details”.

She adds that Italian yacht-makers like hers are supported by a solid network of local artisans. “In Italy we find everything we need.”

Ms Armerio points to being able to drive to Tuscany’s stone quarries from her company’s base on the coast of Liguria if she needs to order marble.

Regarding the billionaires and multimillionaires who buy superyachts, Boat International says that most are from the US. Yet it points to more coming from Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico as those countries’ economies grow.

Meanwhile, sales to Russian buyers have fallen to due to the sanctions against the country and its elites as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

If the appeal of a superyacht wasn’t immediately obvious, Ms Trifirò says they enable her to see the world and fulfil her wanderlust. And she likes to be at the controls of the boat.

“My curiosity to explore new places pushes me to cruise the oceans while in the driver’s seat,” she says.

Ms Trifirò adds that her crew is paid double what they’d likely earn on land “as it is very important to keep them happy. Our captain has worked for us for 22 years.”

Sir Keir Starmer has backed Rachel Reeves to remain chancellor “into the next election and for many years after” after she was seen crying during Prime Minister’s Questions.

The prime minister had refused to say whether Reeves would remain in her job until the next election in front of MPs in the Commons, during a session in which the chancellor wiped away tears as she sat behind him.

But later Sir Keir told BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking he worked “in lockstep” with Reeves and she was “doing an excellent job as chancellor”.

After PMQs, Reeves’ spokesperson said she had been dealing with a “personal matter” and Sir Keir insisted her tears had “nothing to do with politics”.

Asked if Reeves would remain in government Sir Keir said: “She’s done an excellent job as chancellor and we have delivered inward investment to this country in record numbers.

“She and I work together, we think together.

“In the past there have been examples – I won’t give any specifics – of chancellors and prime ministers who weren’t in lockstep. We’re in lockstep.”

He said Reeves’ tears had “nothing to do with politics” or this week’s welfare U-turns – which potentially blows a hole in her Budget plans.

“That’s absolutely wrong,” said Sir Keir. “Nothing to do with what’s happened this week. It was a personal matter for her, I’m not going to intrude on her privacy by talking to you.”

At a highly charged PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch laid into the government over its welfare U-turns.

She said the chancellor would now be forced to put up taxes “to pay for his incompetence” and asked if she would still be chancellor at the next election.

She said the chancellor “looks absolutely miserable”.

And she told the PM: “Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the chancellor is toast, and the reality is that she is a human shield for his incompetence.”

Sir Keir said: “No prime minister or chancellor ever stands at the dispatch box and writes budgets in the future.”

He ignored Badenoch’s questions and instead insisted the welfare reform bill would get more people back into work and blamed Tory “stagnation” for creating the problems it was trying to fix.

Reeves was seen to wipe away tears during the PMQs exchanges.

The extraordinary Commons scenes appeared to unsettle the financial markets, with the pound falling against major currencies and the cost of government borrowing rising.

Many colleagues and allies of Reeves in Parliament are blaming an altercation with the Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle for upsetting her.

Several have accused him of having been abrupt with the chancellor in a meeting before PMQs.

It is thought to have been about an interaction they had during Treasury questions on Tuesday in which Sir Lindsay asked her to give shorter answers.

However, no one who the BBC has spoken to is claiming to have witnessed the interaction personally.

The chancellor’s team have declined to comment, as has the Speaker’s office.

Speaking to ITV, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said, “it is easy to forget we are all humans as politicians, and we have lives like everyone else”.

As Reeves left PMQs her sister Ellie Reeves, who is also a Labour MP, took her hand in an apparent show of support.

Following PMQs, Badenoch’s spokesperson said a “personal matter doesn’t really clear it up” as “you normally tell people what the personal matter is”.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick went further than the Tory leader in a social media video, saying the chancellor’s career was now dead after an “embarrassing” U-turn and it was time for her to go.

But he later added: “I obviously hope that Rachel Reeves’s personal matter is resolved. It’s never nice to see someone upset. The PM had a chance to support her at PMQs but threw her under the bus.”

He said borrowing costs were soaring and the pound plummeting because “the market has lost confidence in the government’s ability to control spending”.

Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, said: “Like almost all MPs I don’t know why the chancellor was upset in the chamber today, but I do hope she is okay and back to her duties this afternoon.

“Seeing another person in distress is always very difficult, and we are wishing her well.”

A major wildfire in Greece continues to burn out of control in eastern Crete, after breaking out on Wednesday afternoon in rugged forested terrain near the municipality of Ierapetra.

Fanned by gale-force winds reaching up to eight on the Beaufort scale, the flames have spread rapidly southward, threatening homes, tourist accommodation, and critical infrastructure, including a fuel station.

The fire front now extends over at least 6km, according to emergency services, making containment increasingly difficult.

Thick smoke engulfed the wider area, reducing visibility to near zero in places.

The smoke stretched as far as Makry Gialos beach, 10km from Achlia in Lasithi where firefighters were battling the blaze.

The main road near the settlement of Agia Fotia has been closed by police, who have urged residents and visitors to avoid all non-essential travel due to hazardous air quality, extreme heat, and falling ash.

In the settlement of Agia Fotia, homes and rental properties have been destroyed, and the area is experiencing a power outage, according to local reports. At least four elderly people have been taken to hospital with respiratory problems caused by smoke inhalation.

As a precaution, all hospitals in Crete have been placed on alert by health authorities.

Authorities have also ordered the mass evacuation of hotels, rental rooms and homes in the Ferma municipality, as the flames approach the area. The operation is underway with the support of the fire service, police and local volunteers.

So far, approximately 1,500 people have been evacuated from surrounding settlements and tourist areas and moved to Ierapetra. Around 200 evacuees are being sheltered in the town’s indoor sports arena.

The firefighting response has been significantly reinforced. As of Wednesday night, 155 firefighters, eight specialised foot teams, and 38 fire engines are operating on the ground. Four helicopters carried out water drops until nightfall. Local municipalities have also deployed water tankers and heavy machinery.

Additional forces are en route. Seventeen firefighters and one foot team from the 1st EMODE (Special Forest Firefighting Unit) are travelling by ferry from Piraeus, along with five fire engines, while 33 firefighters and four additional EMODE teams are due to arrive by air from Elefsina.

According to public broadcaster ERT, the fire service has ordered a tactical withdrawal from the fire front to protect personnel and prioritise the creation of firebreaks around at-risk settlements. Crews are expected to remain on the ground throughout the night.

Emergency alerts via the 112 public warning system were issued throughout the day, calling for evacuations from Achlia, Ferma, Agia Fotia, Galini, and later Koutsounari, instructing residents and tourists to move towards Ierapetra.

Some individuals who were cut off by road were reportedly evacuated by boat from local beaches.

The fire, believed to have started between Agia Fotia and the village of Skinokapsala, continues to burn through dense, highly flammable forest, with steep terrain, dry conditions and strong winds making containment extremely difficult.

Earlier this week in Turkey more than 50,000 people were evacuated due to wildfires in the western province of Izmir.

At least six heat-related deaths have been reported in Europe as the continent reels under an early summer heatwave. The latest recorded fatalities were in Spain and Italy. There were also casualties in France.

Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending budget bill has returned 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 has so far proven equally tricky for Trump’s allies to pass the bill through the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson’s hopes of holding a vote on Wednesday appear to be thinning out.

Members of Congress had emptied from the House floor by the afternoon, after it became clear there weren’t even enough votes for the bill to pass the rule that allows the legislation to be brought to the floor, typically an easy procedural task.

The House, or lower chamber, approved an earlier version of the bill in May with a margin of just one vote, and this bill, with new amendments that have frustrated some Republicans, 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.

The president has been very involved in attempting to persuade the holdouts and held several meetings at the White House on Wednesday in hopes of winning them over.

Ralph Norman, a House Republican from South Carolina, attended one of the meetings but wasn’t persuaded.

“There won’t be any vote until we can satisfy everybody,” he said, adding he believes there are about 25 other Republicans who are currently opposed to it. The chamber can only lose about three Republicans to pass the measure.

“I got problems with this bill,” he said. “I got trouble with all of it.”

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, Texas congressman Chip Roy, of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, was quick to signal his frustration.

He said 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.

Ohio Republican Warren Davison posted on X: “Promising someone else will cut spending in the future does not cut spending.”

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 were 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 House Democrats, whose leader, Hakeem Jeffries, posted a picture of himself on Wednesday to Instagram, holding a baseball bat and vowing to “keep the pressure on Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill”.

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.