A former security contractor for Gaza’s controversial new Israel- and US-backed aid distribution sites has told the BBC that he witnessed colleagues opening fire several times on hungry Palestinians who had posed no threat, including with machine guns.

On one occasion, he said, a guard had opened fire from a watchtower with a machine gun because a group of women, children and elderly people was moving too slowly away from the site.

When asked to respond the GHF said the allegations were categorically false.

They referred us to a statement saying that no civilians ever came under fire at the GHF distribution sites.

The GHF began its operations in Gaza at the end of May, distributing limited aid from several sites in southern and central Gaza. That followed an 11-week total blockade of Gaza by Israel during which no food entered the territory.

The system has been widely criticised for forcing vast numbers of people to walk through active combat zones to a handful of sites. Since the GHF started up, Israeli forces have killed more than 400 Palestinians trying to retrieve food aid from its sites, the UN and local doctors say. Israel says the new distribution system stops aid going to Hamas.

Continuing his description of the incident at one of the GHF sites – in which he said guards fired on a group of Palestinians – the former contractor said: “As that happened, another contractor on location, standing on the berm overlooking the exit, opened up with 15 to 20 shots of repetitive weapons fire at the crowd.

“A Palestinian man dropped to the ground motionless. And then the other contractor who was standing there was like, ‘damn, I think you got one’. And then they laughed about it.”

The contractor, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, said GHF managers had brushed off his report as a coincidence, suggesting that the Palestinian man could have “tripped” or been “tired and passed out”.

The GHF claimed the former contractor who made these allegations is a “disgruntled former contractor” who they had terminated for misconduct, which he denies. He showed us payslips suggesting that he continued to be paid for two weeks after leaving the post.

The man we spoke to, who said he had worked at all four of the GHF distribution sites, described a culture of impunity with few rules or controls.

He said contractors were given no clear rules of engagement or standard operating procedures, and were told by one team leader: “if you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later”.

The culture in the company, he said, felt like “we’re going into Gaza so it’s no rules. Do what you want.”

“If a Palestinian is walking away from the site and not demonstrating any hostile intent, and we’re shooting warning shots at them regardless, we are wrong, we are criminally negligent,” he told me.

He told us that each site had site CCTV monitoring activity there, and GHF insistence that no one there had been hurt or shot at was “an absolute bare-faced lie”.

GHF said that gunfire heard in footage shared with the BBC was coming from Israeli forces.

Team leaders referred to Gazans as “zombie hordes”, the contractor told me, “insinuating that these people have no value.”

The former contractor also said Palestinians were coming to harm in other ways at GHF sites, for example by being hit by debris from stun grenades, being sprayed with mace or being pushed by the crowds into razor wire.

He said he himself had witnessed several occasions in which Palestinians appeared to have been seriously hurt, including one man who had a full can of pepper spray in his face, and a woman who he says was hit with the metal part of a stun grenade, improperly fired into a crowd.

“This metal piece hit her directly in the head and she dropped to the ground, not moving,” he said. “I don’t know if she was dead. I know for a fact she was unconscious and completely limp.”

Earlier this week more than 170 charities and other NGOs called for the GHF to be shut down. The organisations, including Oxfam and Save the Children, say Israeli forces and armed groups “routinely” open fire on Palestinians seeking aid.

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

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

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

At least 57,130 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana has announced she is starting a new party with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Sultana, stripped of the Labour whip last year for backing a move to scrap the two-child benefit cap, said she was resigning from the party after 14 years of membership.

The MP for Coventry South said the new party would be formed with other independent MPs, campaigners and activists, aiming to challenge a “broken” Westminster system.

Corbyn has been contacted but has not confirmed his involvement to the BBC.

However last night, he had hinted he may form a new party, telling ITV’s Peston “there is a thirst for an alternative” and that a “grouping will come together”.

In a social media post, Sultana said the government is “an active participant in genocide” in Gaza – and highlighted growing poverty, the government’s position on welfare, and the cost of living as reasons for establishing her new party.

“Labour has completely failed to improve people’s lives. And across the political establishment, from Farage to Starmer, they smear people of conscience trying to stop a genocide in Gaza as terrorists.

“But the truth is clear: this government is an active participant in genocide. And the British people oppose it.”

Israel has strenuously denied accusations it is committing genocide or genocidal acts in Gaza.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has described the situation in Gaza as “appalling and intolerable” and repeatedly called for a ceasefire, as well as the release of hostages.

But some MPs want him to go further and describe the situation in Gaza as a genocide, claims currently being examined by the International Court of Justice.

Sultana also referenced the government’s welfare bill that passed this week, adding: “The government wants to make disabled people suffer; they just can’t decide how much.”

“We’re not an island of strangers,” she says, referencing a speech given by the prime minister in May about immigration, which he has since said he regrets. And she says at the next election, “the choice will be stark: socialism or barbarism”.

Asked for a response to her resignation and comments, a Labour Party spokesperson said: “In just 12 months, this Labour government has boosted wages, delivered an extra four million NHS appointments, opened 750 free breakfast clubs, secured three trade deals and four interest rate cuts lowering mortgage payments for millions.

“Only Labour can deliver the change needed to renew Britain.”

Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to keep up with the inner workings of Westminster and beyond.

The BBC has told a small number of senior staff to step back from their day-to-day duties on music and live events, following the broadcast of Bob Vylan’s controversial Glastonbury set.

The punk duo led a chant of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]” and made other derogatory comments during their performance, which was available to watch via a live stream on iPlayer.

In a statement, the BBC said there was “no place for antisemitism” in its output, and that it was taking action to “ensure proper accountability for those found to be responsible” for the broadcast.

The BBC also said Bob Vylan were one of seven Glastonbury acts it had deemed “high risk” in advance of the festival.

The broadcaster said it would make “immediate changes to livestreaming music events”, so that “any music performances deemed high risk by the BBC will now not be broadcast live or streamed live” in the future.

The corporation’s chair, Samir Shah, said the decision not to pull the live feed was “unquestionably an error of judgement”.

Earlier on Thursday, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told the House of Commons she was unsatisfied with the BBC’s response after she had asked questions about due diligence, senior oversight, and the delay in pulling the live feed.

“Given the seriousness of what happened, and particularly we heard in the House the absolute shocking stories of the impact this has had on the Jewish community in this country – given the seriousness of this, I would expect there to be accountability at the highest levels [of the BBC],” she said.

Shadow culture secretary Stuart Andrew said the BBC’s “belated response suggests a lack of vigilance and proper oversight”, adding the BBC has “clear responsibilities when broadcasting live events”.

The BBC has also been criticised by the UK’s chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, while media regulator Ofcom said the corporation had “questions to answer”.

During their Glastonbury set, Bob Vylan’s singer Pascal Robinson-Foster, who performs under the stage name Bobby Vylan, also spoke about a record label boss he used to work for.

That boss would “speak very strongly about his support for Israel”, and had put his name to a letter urging Glastonbury to cancel Irish-language rap trio Kneecap’s performance, the musician said.

“Who do I see on that list of names but that bald-headed [expletive] I used to work for. We’ve done it all, all right? From working in bars to working for [expletive] Zionists.”

In a message to staff on Thursday, director general Tim Davie said: “I deeply regret that such offensive and deplorable behaviour appeared on the BBC and want to say sorry – to our audience and to all of you, but in particular to Jewish colleagues and the Jewish community.”

The BBC said Bob Vylan had been deemed high risk following a risk assessment process applied to all acts appearing at Glastonbury.

The duo, along with six other acts, were included in this category, but the BBC said they “were all deemed suitable for live streaming with appropriate mitigations”.

The statement continued: “Prior to Glastonbury, a decision was taken that compliance risks could be mitigated in real time on the live stream – through the use of language or content warnings – without the need for a delay. This was clearly not the case.”

The BBC noted that the live stream was monitored “in line with the agreed compliance protocols and a number of issues were escalated”.

Warnings appeared on the stream on two occasions, but, the BBC added: “The editorial team took the decision not to cut the feed. This was an error.”

Davie, who was attending Glastonbury himself on the day, was “subsequently made aware of what had happened and instructed the team that none of the performance should feature in further coverage”.

The BBC said the team on duty prioritised stopping the performance from becoming available on demand, meaning that the set would not appear separately on iPlayer or BBC Sounds.

However, the live feed remained available for more than four hours, which meant viewers were able to rewind and view the content.

“Given the failings that have been acknowledged, we are taking actions to ensure proper accountability for those found to be responsible for those failings in the live broadcast,” the BBC said. “We will not comment further on those processes at this time.”

In a statement, Shah apologised “to all our viewers and listeners and particularly the Jewish community for allowing the ‘artist’ Bob Vylan to express unconscionable antisemitic views live on the BBC”.

“This was unquestionably an error of judgement,” he added. “I was very pleased to note that as soon as this came to the notice of Tim Davie – who was on the Glastonbury site at the time visiting BBC staff – he took immediate action and instructed the team to withdraw the performance from on demand coverage.”

Since Glastonbury, Bob Vylan have had several bookings cancelled, including festival appearances in Manchester and France and a slot in Germany.

In response to the cancellations, the band reiterated their position, telling followers: “Silence is not an option. We will be fine, the people of Palestine are hurting.”

Avon and Somerset Police have launched a criminal investigation into their Glastonbury comments.

On Wednesday, London’s Metropolitan Police said the band are also under investigation for comments they allegedly made during a concert at Alexandra Palace in May.

After the media coverage of their comments, Bob Vylan said in a statement on Tuesday: “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 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”.

Hollywood actor Michael Madsen died in his California home on Thursday morning, US media reported. He was 67.

He was found unresponsive by authorities responding to a 911 call at his Malibu home and pronounced dead at 08:25 local time (15:25 GMT), according to The Hollywood Reporter.

He is believed to have died of cardiac arrest, according to a representative.

Madsen was a prolific actor, best known for his roles in the Quentin Tarantino movies Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

In Reservoir Dogs, one of the seminal movies of the 1990s, he played psychotic thief Mr Blonde, who shocked audiences in a scene where he cut off a policeman’s ear.

During a career spanning four decades, Madsen also took on a number of tv roles.

In both tv and film, he often portrayed the law enforcers like sheriffs and detectives, as well as the law breakers, such as a washed-out hitman in the Kill Bill franchise.

In recent years, he lent his voices to video games, including Grand Theft Auto III and the Dishonored series.

Michael Madsen was born in Chicago in September 1957. His father was a Navy veteran of World War Two who later became a firefighter, and his mother was a filmmaker.

He was the brother of Virginia Madsen, who is known for several movies including Sideways, for which she was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe.

He was married three times, and is survived by four children, including actor Christian Madsen.

Madsen divorced his wife of 28 years, DeAnna, in 2024, over the death of their son Hudson, according to People magazine.

“My brother Michael has left the stage,” his sister Virginia wrote in a statement to Variety.

“He was thunder and velvet. Mischief wrapped in tenderness. A poet disguised as an outlaw. A father, a son, a brother – etched in contradiction, tempered by love that left its mark.”

At least 69 people have been killed by Israeli fire across Gaza on Thursday, rescuers say, as Israel intensified its bombardment of the Palestinian territory.

One air strike killed 15 people at a school-turned-shelter for displaced families in Gaza City, according to the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency. The Israeli military said it targeted a “key” Hamas operative based there.

The Civil Defence also reported that 38 people were killed while queueing for aid, or on their way to pick it up. The military said such reports of extensive casualties were “lies”.

It comes as pressure mounts on both Israel and Hamas to agree to a new ceasefire and hostage release deal being pushed by US President Donald Trump.

Trump announced on Tuesday that Israel had agreed to the “necessary conditions” to finalize a 60-day ceasefire. However, there are still obstacles that could prevent a quick agreement.

Hamas has said it is studying the proposals – the details of which have still not been made public – but that it still wants an end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will travel to Washington on Monday, has meanwhile insisted that the Palestinian armed group must be eliminated.

On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its aircraft had struck around 150 “terror targets” across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including fighters, tunnels and weapons.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 118 people had been killed during the same period.

Fifteen people, most of them women and children, were killed when a school housing displaced families in the al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City was struck before dawn on Thursday, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency and medics said.

Witness Wafaa al-Arqan told Reuters news agency: “Suddenly, we found the tent collapsing over us and a fire burning… What can we do? Is it fair that all these children burned?”

The IDF said it struck a “key Hamas terrorist” who was operating in a “command-and-control centre” in Gaza City, without mentioning the school.

The IDF added that it took numerous steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians and accused Hamas of using human shields – an allegation the group has repeatedly denied.

At least another five displaced people were reportedly killed when a tent was struck overnight in the southern al-Mawasi area, where the IDF has told residents of areas affected by its evacuation orders to head for their own safety.

Ashraf Abu Shaba, who lived in a neighbouring tent, said he saw the bodies of children and women wrapped in blankets afterwards.

“The occupation [Israel] claims there are safe zones, but there are no safe zones. Every place is a target… The situation is unbearable,” he added.

Later, Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP news agency that another 38 people were killed by Israeli forces while seeking aid.

He said 25 were killed near the Israeli military’s Netzarim corridor in central Gaza. Six died at another location nearby, while seven were killed in the southern Rafah area, he added.

Medics at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis separately told Reuters that at least 20 people were killed while making their way to an aid distribution centre.

There was no direct response to the reports from the IDF.

Last week, the IDF said it was examining reports of civilians being harmed while approaching sites in southern and central Gaza run by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

On Thursday, IDF spokesman Brig-Gen Effie Defrin acknowledged at a briefing that Israeli forces were facing a “complex challenge” and drawing “lessons from every incident to prevent similar cases in the future”.

But he declared: “The reports of allegations of extensive casualties in the aid distribution centres are lies.”

There have been reports of deadly incidents near the distribution sites almost every day since the GHF began operating on 26 May.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 408 people have been killed near GHF centres over the past five weeks. Another 175 people have been killed seeking aid elsewhere, including along routes used by UN aid convoys, it says.

The GHF, which uses US private security contractors, said “distribution at all sites ran smoothly” on Thursday and that it had now handed out more than one million boxes of food.

The GHF also rejected as “categorically false” allegations from a former security contractor, who told the BBC that he witnessed colleagues opening fire on civilians waiting for aid.

The UN and other aid groups refuse to co-operate with the GHF, saying its new system contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles.

The US and Israel say the GHF’s system will prevent aid being stolen by Hamas.

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

At least 57,130 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Musical icon Angélique Kidjo has become the first black African performer to be selected for a star on the prestigious Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Kidjo, who comes from the West African country of Benin and has won five Grammy awards, was among the 35 names announced as part of the Walk of Fame’s class of 2026 list.

The 64-year-old was hailed as Africa’s “premier diva” during a press conference announcing the list on Wednesday.

Singer Miley Cyrus, actor Timothée Chalamet, actress Demi Moore and former basketball player Shaquille O’Neal are also among those set to be honoured with a star on Los Angeles’ famous walk.

• Angélique Kidjo on being hangry and Africa’s ‘tsunami’ of talent
• Red-hot Afrobeats star Rema doesn’t intend to calm down

Kidjo receives the honour after making music for more than four decades and releasing 16 albums.

The songstress has won fans across the world with her commanding voice and ability to fuse West African styles with the likes of funk, jazz and R&B.

Her long list of collaborators includes forces such as Burna Boy, Philip Glass, Sting and Alicia Keys.

Kidjo joins Charlize Theron, a white South African actress, in representing Africa on the Walk of Fame, which comprises more than 2,700 stars.

Theron received her star in 2005.

The date on which Kidjo will see her star unveiled on the Walk of Fame has not yet been announced.

After recipients have been selected for a star, they have two years to schedule induction ceremonies.

Kidjo grew up in Benin, but left for Paris in 1983, citing oppression from the country’s then communist government.

“From the moment the communist regime arrived in Benin, I became aware that the freedom we enjoy can be snatched away in a second,” she told the BBC in 2023.

She said she has been driven by curiosity since childhood, adding: “my nickname was ‘when, why, how?’. I want to understand things, to understand my place in this world.”

Kidjo worked as a backing singer in France before striking out as a solo artist in 1990, with the album Parakou.

She is a Unicef and Oxfam goodwill ambassador, and has her own charity, Batonga, which is dedicated to supporting the education of young girls in Africa.

• Ghana’s love affair with reggae and Jamaican Patois
• Singer Libianca on ‘horrific threats’ over Cameroon war
• Who should count as African at the Grammy Awards?
• How old English sea shanties inspired Cape Verdean singer
• Brave, inspiring, crazy – the joy of managing Fela Kuti

The deputy head of the Russian Navy has been killed near the Ukrainian border, the Russian military has confirmed.

Major General Mikhail Gudkov, appointed by President Vladimir Putin to the senior naval post in March, was killed during what Russia’s defence ministry described as “combat work” in the western Kursk region, which borders Ukraine’s Sumy region. The ministry gave no further details about the operation.

Last summer Ukraine launched a surprise offensive in Kursk. While its troops have mostly been driven out, in June Kyiv said it was still holding onto small areas of the region.

Gudkov’s death is one of the most high-profile losses for Moscow since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

According to Oleg Kozhemyako, governor of the Primorsky region in Russia’s Far East, ten others were also killed in the incident.

Kozhemyako made the announcement on Telegram, where he described Gudkov as a loyal officer who died “carrying out his duty”.

Unconfirmed reports from Russian and Ukrainian military-linked Telegram channels suggest the deaths were the result of a Ukrainian missile strike on a Russian command post near the town of Korenevo, around 30km (19 miles) from the border.

Ukraine has not officially commented on the attack – consistent with its usual policy of not confirming targeted strikes on Russian territory.

Gudkov had previously commanded the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade of the Pacific Fleet, a unit involved in heavy fighting across eastern Ukraine and later in the Kursk region itself.

Footage from the far eastern city of Vladivostok, home to Russia’s Pacific Fleet, showed mourners laying flowers at a makeshift memorial to Gudkov, who received the Gold Star medal of Hero of Russia in late 2023. He was seen receiving the honour from President Putin at a Kremlin ceremony in February.

Ukraine has not acknowledged involvement in Gudkov’s death.

However sources within Ukrainian security services have previously told the media, including the BBC, that they were behind similar targeted strikes, such as the killing of Gen Igor Kirillov in December 2024.

Earlier this year, General Yaroslav Moskalik was killed in a car bomb attack in Moscow – an incident the Kremlin also blamed on Kyiv. At the time Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Ukraine of “continuing its involvement in terrorist activities inside our country”.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there have been several high-level assassination plots on both sides.

Last year the Ukrainian security service (SBU) said it foiled a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky and other high-ranking Ukrainian officials.

At the start of the war, the Ukrainian leader said he was Russia’s “number one target”.

Meanwhile, officials in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa said two people were killed and six injured in a missile strike on the port on Thursday.

Earlier, strikes on the central city of Poltava targeting an army recruitment centre killed two people and wounded nearly 50 others, authorities said.

Two streets in Adolf Hitler’s hometown in Austria are to be renamed following longstanding complaints that they commemorate Nazis, officials say.

The council of Braunau am Inn made the decision on Wednesday after a “secret vote”, according to local media. It followed a report, commissioned by the local government, which concluded that keeping the names was unconstitutional.

The streets are named after composer Josef Reiter and entertainer Franz Resl, both of whom were members of the Nazi party.

About 200 households will get a new address after the names are changed.

The Austrian government has long been criticised by historians for the way it has acknowledged its part in World War Two, and in particular for positioning itself as a victim rather than a participant.

The move to rename the streets has been welcomed as a “decision with symbolic significance” by the Mauthausen Committee. At least 90,000 prisoners were killed by the Nazis at Mauthausen concentration camp in northern Austria between 1938–1945.

Committee chairman Willi Mernyi told local media that they had “worked hard for this”, and thanked all who supported them.

Robert Eiter, a committee member, added that they had suggested the names be changed to honour Austrians who actively opposed the Nazis – former deputy mayor Lea Olczak, whose father died in Mauthausen, and Maria Stromberger, who joined the resistance while working as the head nurse at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

Many streets in Austria have already been renamed due to their Nazi associations, including one honouring Ferdinand Porsche, founder of the luxury car company, in the city of Linz – but 80 years on since the end of the war, others still remain.

Around 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed in the Holocaust during World War Two, when the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, worked to eradicate Europe’s Jewish population, as well as the Slavic and Roma population.

During the war, the Nazi regime systematically murdered more than six million Jewish people.

At least four people were killed and 14 others injured in a drive-by shooting outside a Chicago nightclub, police said.

Chicago Police said a dark-coloured car drove past the club around 23:00 local time (04:00 GMT) on Wednesday, when gunmen inside the vehicle opened fire into a crowd of people outside.

The crowd was said to be leaving the nightclub following an album release party for rapper Mello Buckzz, the BBC’s US partner, CBS News reported.

Police said the vehicle fled the scene immediately and no one has been taken into custody.

The victims of the shooting were rushed to several different area hospitals. Two men, ages 24 and 25, and two women, aged 26 and 27 years old, were pronounced dead, police said.

At least four people taken to hospital are reported to be in critical to serious condition. The identities of the victims have not yet been released.

Eyewitness Pastor Donovan Price said there were scenes of “absolute chaos” unlike he had ever seen before.

“From people screaming to blood on the streets to people laying on the streets… horrific,” he told Reuters.

“It’s something that you wouldn’t expect to find in the city. We have a lot of shootings, but nothing like this.”

Following the incident, rapper Mello Buckzz said all she can do is “talk to god and pray”.

In a statement on social media, she said: “Prayers up for all my sisters god please wrap yo arms around every last one of them.”

“Feel like everything just weighing down on me,” she added.

A Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and detained in one of that country’s most notorious prisons was subjected to “severe beatings” and “torture”, new court documents allege.

Lawyers for Kilmar Ábrego García, 29, alleged that assaults from guards within a day of his arrival at the CECOT prison left him with visible injuries.

The Trump administration had previously alleged Mr Ábrego García was a member of the Salvadorian gang, MS-13, which his lawyers and family have strongly denied.

While officials initially said Mr Ábrego García could never return to the US, in June he was extradited to Tennessee to face human trafficking charges – to which he has pleaded not guilty.

According to new court documents filed on Wednesday as part of a lawsuit his wife brought against the Trump administration, Mr Ábrego García and 20 other detainees were repeatedly beaten when they arrived at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Centre, or Cecot.

• US brings back El Salvador deportee to face charges
• Kilmar Ábrego García pleads not guilty in human trafficking case

Once there, according to the documents, Mr Ábrego García and 20 other deported inmates “were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation”.

Mr Ábrego García has also alleged that he and the other prisoners were “forced to kneel” from 9 PM to 6 AM, “with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion”.

At one point, guards allegedly threatened to confine him with gang members who would “tear” him apart.

His mistreatment led to him losing 30lbs (14kg) within the first two weeks of his incarceration in El Salvador, according to the complaint.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele has previously said his country’s prisons are “clean, orderly, free from abuses, unsanitary conditions, beatings, or murders”.

During a visit to the White House earlier this year, he expressed support for the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.

The Trump administration has asked the federal judge in Maryland overseeing the case to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it was overtaken by events after Mr Ábrego García was returned to the US. The lawsuit was filed by Mr Ábrego García’s wife after his deportation.

Mr Ábrego García first entered the US illegally in 2011 and was granted protection from deportation by an immigration judge in 2019 because it was determined he might face danger from gangs if returned to his native El Salvador.

But in March 2025 the Maryland resident was deported and initially held in El Salvador’s Cecot mega-prison, in what Trump administration officials later admitted was a mistake. A judge ordered the government to “facilitate” his return, but White House officials initially refused to bring him back.

Following his return to face charges in June, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that “this is what American justice looks like”.

He has denied any wrongdoing, and his attorneys have called the trafficking charges “preposterous”.

In late June, a federal judge in Tennessee ruled that Mr Ábrego García is eligible for release, but he has remained in jail over fears from his own legal team that he could be swiftly deported again if he leaves the facility.

An $88m (£65m) satellite designed to detect releases of the planet-warming gas methane from oil and gas production, has been lost in space in a major setback for climate efforts.

The MethaneSat satellite which had backing from Google and billionaire Jeff Bezos, was launched only last year aboard an Elon Musk SpaceX rocket.

It was meant to collect data for five years on sources of the powerful greenhouse gas, which is responsible for nearly a third of human-induced warming, to help curtail the worst offenders.

The Environment Defense Fund, the NGO which oversees the satellite, said that communication was lost ten days ago and is currently undertaking an investigation into what happened.

Methane is the most potent of the greenhouse gases, and although it does not hang around in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, it is 28 times stronger over a 100-year period.

Despite an international commitment to reduce methane levels by 30% by 2030, year-on-year it continues to rise with the target unlikely to be met, according to the European Space Agency.

The main sources of methane are from oil and gas production, farming and food decomposition in landfill.

But many of the current satellites that monitor it are operated privately, reducing transparency of who the worst offenders for methane release are.

MethaneSat came after years of development by the NGO Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and once launched made much of its data publicly available, allowing scrutiny by governments and scientists.

It was backed by a consortium of tech giants including Google and billionaire Jeff Bezos, which together contributed $88m to the project.

The instruments used by the satellite are some of the most sensitive in the world, able to pick up much smaller sources of methane as well as “super-emitters”.

Improving the sensitivity is important for detecting releases from agriculture which are often much more diffuse than from oil and gas production.

Google said when it was launched it hoped its project would “fill gaps between existing tools”.

The company was using its artificial intelligence tools to process the data and generate a global methane map.

But after just a year in orbit, in what was meant to be a five-year programme, communication was lost with MethaneSat.

The team at EDF suspect that the satellite has lost power and said in a statement “that it is likely not recoverable.”

It went on to say that some of the software could be re-used but said it was too early to comment on whether a new satellite would be launched.

“To solve the climate challenge requires bold action and risk-taking and this satellite was at the leading edge of science, technology and advocacy,” it added.

One of the other major publicly-available sources of methane data is hosted by CarbonMapper. One of its sources of data is the TROPOMI instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite. Although it continues to send back data its seven-year programme was meant to finish in October.

It is unclear how much longer it can continue to collect information, further limiting global efforts to track the greenhouse gas.

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

Thousands of football fans have made their way to Anfield stadium to pay their respects to the Liverpool forward Diogo Jota after his death in a car crash in Spain.

Jota, 28, was killed when a Lamborghini he was travelling in with his younger brother, Andre Silva, suffered a tyre blow-out, crashed and caught fire in Cernadilla in the Zamora province.

Both men died in the crash, which happened at about 00:30 local time, Spanish police told the BBC.

A sea of flowers, football shirts, scarves, balloons and flags have been laid outside Liverpool’s ground by fans since news of his death broke.

Lifelong fan John Barlow from Leyland in Lancashire, a survivor of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, said he was “absolutely devastated” when the news broke.

Mr Barlow said: “I had to stop what I’m doing at work and drive in.

“I come to every match and he was like one of us. He had a bit of something about him, like a proper old Liverpool player, like the players we were brought up with.

“He had a fight in him and he came back from things and he was tough.”

He said he was “just heartbroken, absolutely heartbroken”.

• ‘We will miss you so much’: Klopp leads tributes to Diogo Jota after he dies in car crash

Andrea Molyneux, who went to the stadium with her daughters Isabella and Lily Costello, described their “utter devastation”.

“I can’t even comprehend the grief that the family are going through,” Ms Molyneux said.

“He was just such a young man and life can be taken away from you in such a short time.

“He had everything. Everything.”

The Portugal international had recently married his partner, Rute Cardoso, with whom he had three young children.

Another fan told the BBC he would remember Jota with “a smile on his face, scoring goals for Liverpool”.

“But in a time like this, football pales into insignificance,” he added.

“He’s left a wife and three children behind, his brother has passed away with him and his poor parents have lost two children.

“I mean, he’ll forever be remembered as a great Red for us. But when something like this happens, football doesn’t matter anymore.”

Writing on social media, former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, who was in charge at Anfield when Jota was signed from Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2020, said he was heartbroken.

“This is a moment where I struggle!” he wrote.

“There must be a bigger purpose, but I can’t see it.”

Earlier Liverpool FC said it was “devastated” by the loss of the player and his brother.

The club described the player’s death as “an unimaginable loss”.

“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.”

President Donald Trump’s flagship piece of legislation – which he’s labelled the “big beautiful bill” – has faced major objections from Democrats as well as from some Republicans.

It has been subject to tense negotiations amid questions about how much it could cost and its proposed cuts to some US welfare schemes.

Elon Musk has also weighed in, repeating threats to form a new political party if the “insane spending bill passes”.

BBC Verify has looked at claims made about the bill’s possible impact in three key areas – the US national finances, medical cover, and taxes.

The White House has said the bill “reduces deficits by over $2 trillion” – but senior Democrats have insisted it would actually add trillions.

BBC Verify has examined various independent studies about the bill’s impact and interviewed six tax experts who all agreed that it would increase the national deficit.

The deficit is what happens when the US government spends more than it collects through taxes and other forms of revenue.

Musk criticised lawmakers who “voted for the biggest debt increase in history” when it was being passed in the US Senate.

The debt is the overall sum of money owed by the government – essentially the accumulation of past budget deficits – which means it has to borrow money and pay interest on this.

• Live updates as Trump’s mega-bill heads for final vote
• A look at the key items in Trump’s sprawling budget bill
• ‘Our food doesn’t even last the month’ – Americans brace for Trump’s welfare cuts

The US national debt is currently about $36tn (£26tn) – of which about $29tn is money owed by the government to investors around the world.

Larger deficits and a bigger debt can theoretically result in higher interest rates – the idea being that investors worry more about a country’s capacity to pay its debts as those rise and they therefore demand higher interest payments.

That can feed into higher interest rates for consumers which make things like housing and cars less affordable, and restrict business investment and therefore productivity and jobs.

The current version of the bill is estimated to add about $3.3tn (£2.4tn) to the US deficit over the next 10 years, despite an initial economic boost, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) – the government agency which provides independent analysis of spending.

The CBO said the spending cuts proposed in the bill would be outweighed by the tax cuts.

An analysis from the Tax Foundation think tank concluded that the bill “would increase economic output but worsen deficits”. It projects that the bill would increase the level of US GDP by around 1% after 10 years relative to where it would otherwise be, but that it would also add $3.6tn (£2.6tn) to the deficit over the same period.

Some banks have said they are in favour of the bill – with the American Bankers Association writing an open letter to lawmakers saying it provides “much needed tax relief” which would boost the economy.

The experts BBC Verify spoke to said although the bill may provide some economic growth, its cost would be significantly more than this boost.

“Most analysis finds that the bill will produce a small, temporary, short-lived boost – but that over time the bill will actually be a drag on the economy,” says Bobby Kogan, a federal budget expert at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning policy institute.

And Mark Zandi, an economist at the financial consultancy Moody’s Analytics, says: “It will result in continued massive budget deficits, and a high and rising debt load.”

“We’re cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill and you’re not going to feel any of it. Your Medicaid is left alone. It’s left the same,” Trump claimed at an event about the bill last week.

However, various studies show there will be significant reductions to Medicaid under the bill.

Medicaid is the government-run scheme which provides healthcare insurance for about 71 million low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults and people with disabilities.

Analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) – an independent health policy research group – found that the bill would cut $1tn (£729bn) from future Medicaid spending over the next 10 years.

The White House has said the bill “removes illegal aliens, enforces work requirements, and protects Medicaid for the truly vulnerable”.

The CBO estimates that nearly 12 million Americans would lose health insurance by 2034 under the terms of the Senate bill – with just 1.4 million of these being people “without verified citizenship, nationality, or satisfactory immigration status”.

Trump has repeatedly said that not passing the bill would lead to massive tax rises on Americans – in part because the tax cuts passed during his first-term in office are due to expire at the end of this year.

“If it’s not approved, your taxes will go up by 68%,” the president said last week.

We asked the White House for the calculations behind Trump’s claim – they responded saying the bill “prevents the largest tax hike in history” but didn’t answer our question on where the specific figure comes from.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that not extending tax cuts introduced under Trump in 2017 would lead to a hike of 7.5% on average.

The body also says roughly 60% of tax payers would have to contribute more if they expire.

“The 68% figure is incorrect… It could be roughly drawn from a count of taxpayers that would see an increase in taxes, as opposed to an estimate of the actual tax increase,” says Elena Patel, a tax policy expert and assistant professor at the University of Utah’s business school.

Overall, the tax changes in the bill would benefit wealthier Americans more than those on lower incomes, according to the Tax Policy Center analysis. About 60% of the benefits would go to those making above $217,000 (£158,000), it found.

“There is no question that this bill will result in a massive redistribution from the poorest to the richest,” says Ms Patel.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

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, including 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 prostrate 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.

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

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

Paola 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 criterion 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.”

Rachel Reeves has said she had had “a tough day” and had been “clearly upset”, as she gave her first interview since crying in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

She did not go into details behind the incident saying she had been dealing with “a personal issue” adding: “Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

The chancellor was speaking after making a surprise appearance alongside Sir Keir Starmer to unveil the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS.

Government borrowing costs rose following Reeves’ tearful appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, when Sir Keir initially failed to guarantee that the chancellor would keep her job.

The fall was partially reversed after Sir Keir insisted he was “in lockstep” with his chancellor, who he said would be in her job “for a very long time to come”.

One analyst told the BBC the initial rise reflected concern in the financial markets that if Reeves left her job then control over the government’s finances would weaken.

Will Walker Arnott, head of private clients at the bank Charles Stanley, told the BBC’s Today programme: “It looks to me like this is a rare example of financial markets actually enhancing the career prospects of a politician.”

In a bid to put on a united front, the chancellor unexpectedly joined Sir Keir and Health Secretary Wes Streeting at a hospital in East London to set out details of new neighbourhood health centres.

As she addressed staff, Reeves was smiling broadly and later shared a hug with the prime minister.

Speaking to broadcasters after the event, Reeves was asked about her tears in Parliament. She said: “My job as chancellor at 12 o’clock on a Wednesday is to be at PMQs next to the prime minister, supporting the government and that’s what I tried to do.”

“I think all your viewers have had tough days, for personal reasons, for whatever reasons. I happened to be on the camera when I had a tough day.”

She said she was “totally” up for the job of chancellor and asked if she was surprised the prime minister had not unequivocally backed her in Parliament replied: “People can see that Keir and me are a team.”

“We fought the election together, we changed the Labour Party together so that we could be in the position to return to power and over the past year we’ve worked in lockstep together.”

During the event, Sir Keir praised his chancellor telling the audience: “I think it’s just fantastic that she is here.”

He said decisions made by Reeves had allowed the government to “invest record amounts in the NHS”.

Asked if he had been aware that his chancellor had been crying next to him in the House of Commons, Sir Keir said he “hadn’t appreciated what was happening” as he was “literally up and down” answering questions.

“No prime minister ever has had side conversations in PMQs. It does happen in other debates when there is a bit more time, but in PMQs it is bang, bang, bang, bang.

“I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber.”

He said the incident was due to “a personal issue and I am certainly not going to say anything more about that”.

Speculation about Reeves’ future had been growing after Labour rebels forced the government to give up some of its benefits changes and in so doing put a £5bn hole in the chancellor’s spending plans.

In order to meet her self-imposed borrowing rules, she is now likely to have to consider cutting public spending or raising taxes at the Budget in autumn.

Asked if taxes would be going up, Reeves said she would not “speculate” but added: “Of course there is a cost to the welfare changes that Parliament voted through this week and that will be reflected in the Budget.”

In a sign that she would not be changing her own restrictions on borrowing, the chancellor said “the stability that we’ve been able to return to the economy… is only possible because of the fiscal discipline which is underpinned by the fiscal rules”.

Reeves’s two main rules are not to borrow to fund day-to-day public spending; and to get debt falling as a share of the UK economic output by 2029/30.

In her speech, she also said the boost to NHS spending would not “have been possible” without the measures she took in last year’s Budget.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Thursday, shadow chancellor Mel Stride said he “felt for” Reeves, and the incident showed politicians “are all human beings”.

But he accused the government of making “serious mistakes” and “bungling and chaos”, which he predicted would lead to tax rises in the autumn.

Rachael Maskell, one of the Labour MPs who led efforts to block the government’s benefits bill, told the BBC on Wednesday that when trying to find money, the government should “look at those with the broadest shoulders”.

“We do need to look at things like a wealth tax or equalisation of capital gains tax,” she said.

On Thursday, the government announced that its Universal Credit and Personal Independence Bill would be renamed the Universal Credit Bill, after the legislation was gutted of significant measures relating to the personal independence payment.

Ethiopia says it has completed building a mega-dam on the Blue Nile that has long been a source of tension with Egypt and Sudan.

Launched in 2011 with a $4bn (£2.9bn) budget, the dam is Africa’s biggest hydro-electric plant, and a major source of pride for Ethiopians.

Ethiopia sees the dam as vital to meeting its energy needs but Egypt and Sudan see it as threatening their water supply from the Nile.

In a statement announcing the completion of the project, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sought to reassure his neighbours. “To our neighbours downstream – Egypt and Sudan – our message is clear: the Renaissance Dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity,” he said.

US President Donald Trump said in 2020 that Egypt had threatened to “blow up” the dam – officially known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd).

In a conciliatory move, Abiy said that both Egypt and Sudan would be invited to its official inauguration in September.

“We believe in shared progress, shared energy, and shared water,” he said.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Sudan’s military chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan met earlier this week and “stressed their rejection of any unilateral measures in the Blue Nile Basin”, AFP news agency reports.

More than a mile long and 145m high, the dam is on the Blue Nile tributary in the northern Ethiopia highlands, from where 85% of the Nile’s waters flow.

Ethiopia wants the dam to produce desperately needed electricity, as the majority of its population – about 60% – have no supply.

Egypt relies on the River Nile for nearly all of its fresh water, and fears that the flow of water could be disrupted.

It has argued that just a 2% reduction in the amount of water it gets from the Nile could result in the loss of 200,000 acres of irrigated land.

Sudan is also heavily reliant on water from the Nile, and shares Egypt’s concerns.

Abiy said Ethiopia was “willing to engage constructively” with the two countries.

However, previous talks have failed to resolve differences.

• Why is Egypt worried about Ethiopia’s dam on the Nile?
• Nile Dam row: Egypt and Ethiopia generate heat but no power
• River Nile dam: Why Ethiopia can’t stop it being filled

A major wildfire in eastern Crete has forced the evacuation of thousands of people and caused widespread damage to homes and businesses, as strong winds continue to hamper firefighting efforts.

The blaze, which broke out on Wednesday afternoon near the village of Achlia, has spread rapidly across forested and mountainous terrain due to gale-force winds and high temperatures.

According to Greece’s fire service, the fire has now split into three active fronts – in Achlia, Ferma and Skinokapsala.

Crews say the conditions are creating new flare-ups, making containment efforts extremely difficult.

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

Around 5,000 people have been evacuated, the majority of whom are foreign tourists staying in local hotels, Manolis Tzarakis, president of the Ierapetra and Southeast Crete Hoteliers’ Association, told a local radio station on Thursday.

At least 200 evacuees are being sheltered in a sports hall in Ierapetra.

As of Thursday morning, a total of 230 firefighters, supported by 13 specialised foot teams, 46 engines, and a drone surveillance unit, had been deployed. Ten helicopters have been made available.

Authorities say the damage is extensive, with homes, greenhouses, villas, hotels and businesses reportedly destroyed in both coastal and inland areas.

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.

The main road near 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.

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

Emergency alerts via the 112 public warning system were issued throughout Wednesday, 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.

Meanwhile in Turkey, an elderly man and a forestry worker have died in western Turkey as a result of wildfires in the west of the country.

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.

You can also get in touch by following this link

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

The US Supreme Court has agreed to review whether state laws can ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s and girls’ sports.

The case concerns laws in Idaho and West Virginia, where two transgender students won injunctions from lower courts allowing them to continue competing.

How the top court rules could have significant implications across the country.

It comes two weeks after the conservative majority court upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender transition care for young people – a ruling that some advocates say delivered a major blow to transgender rights in the US.

The Supreme Court will review the cases of Becky Pepper-Jackson, 15, and Lindsay Hecox, 24, who successfully challenged state bans in West Virginia and Idaho by arguing they were discriminatory.

Idaho was the first state to pass a law prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in women and girls’ sports. Two dozen other states have since followed.

Ms Hecox, a long distance runner, lodged a legal challenge against the Idaho law in 2020 shortly after it was enacted. She was later granted an injunction by both a district court and an appeals court.

State lawmaker Barbara Ehardt, who introduced the law, said at the time of its passing that it would ensure “boys and men will not be able to take the place of girls and women in sports because it’s not fair”.

But in the appeals ruling, a panel of three judges found that the Idaho law violated constitutional rights, and that the state had “failed” to provide evidence that the law protects “sex equality and opportunity for women athletes.”

West Virginia Attorney General John McCuskey backed the top court’s intervention.

“The people of West Virginia know that it’s unfair to let male athletes compete against women; that’s why we passed this common sense law preserving women’s sports for women,” he said.

Joshua Block of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing the athletes, insisted lower courts were correct to block the “discriminatory laws”.

“Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth,” he said.

How the Supreme Court decides to rule on the issue will likely impact other states that have similar bans in place.

At the federal level, President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this year that aimed to ban transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams.

The Supreme Court will hear the challenges during its next term, which begins in October. A hearing date has not yet been set.

A man has died after he was attacked by a bear in one of Romania’s most scenic mountain regions.

The victim, who had been riding a motorcycle, stopped at a popular tourist area on the Transfagarasan road on Tuesday morning, authorities said.

The bear dragged him down a steep ravine with an elevation drop of around 80 metres (262ft), they added.

“Unfortunately, he was already dead when we arrived,” Ion Sanduloiu, head of the Arges County Mountain Rescue Service, told the BBC.

“The injuries were extremely severe. Even though he was wearing a helmet and full protective gear, it wasn’t enough.”

Sanduloiu said the victim had parked his bike next to a sign that warned not to feed the bears.

“My advice is simple: do not stop, do not feed them, and keep your distance,” he added.

The animal has not yet been euthanised, officials said. An investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Romania is home to the largest brown bear population in the European Union.

Human-bear encounters have increased in recent years, with several fatal incidents prompting calls for clearer regulations and investment into prevention strategies.

Recent genetic population studies conducted by Romania’s environment ministry estimated the country’s brown bear population to be between 10,400 and 12,800 – significantly higher than previous counts.

Former environment minister Mircea Fechet considered the optimal sustainable population to be around 4,000 bears – roughly one-third of the current estimate.

Fechet has proposed simplifying laws to allow local authorities to take more immediate action, including the ability to euthanise bears that enter residential areas.

The ministry also plans to introduce risk zone maps to better manage bear populations, balancing conservation efforts with public safety.

Conservationists say the death reflects deeper structural problems in Romania’s wildlife management.

Gabriel Paun, founder of the environmental NGO Agent Green, which campaigns for wildlife protection and against illegal logging, said the issue was mismanagement, not overpopulation.

“The recurring tragedies on the Transfagarasan road are the result of multiple failures: tourists stopping to interact with wild animals, local authorities not doing enough to drive bears back into the forest, and the national government – particularly the environmental ministry – failing to properly implement the national plan for coexistence between wildlife and humans,” he said.

Paun said the bear population was threatened by “climate change, habitat destruction and human persecution”, adding that Romania has become a “key destination” for international trophy hunters.

Sanduloiu believes stronger deterrents are needed to prevent further loss of life.

“The solution is simple, in my opinion: higher fines and even prison sentences for those who stop to feed the bears,” he said.

A United Nations expert has called on dozens of multinational companies to stop doing business with Israel, warning them they risk being complicit in war crimes in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Francesca Albanese, presenting her report to the UN human rights council, described what she called “an economy of genocide” in which the conflict with Hamas provided a testing ground – with no accountability or oversight – for new weapons and technology.

Israel has rejected her report as “groundless”, saying it would “join the dustbin of history”.

UN experts, or special rapporteurs, are independent of the UN, but appointed by it to advise on human rights matters.

Ms Albanese is an international lawyer from Italy, and she is known for her bluntness; in previous reports she has suggested that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

On Thursday she repeated that claim, accusing Israel of “committing one of the cruellest genocides in modern history”.

In this report Ms Albanese names companies she says are profiting from, and therefore complicit in, war crimes in Gaza.

Her list includes arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin for selling weapons, and tech firms Alphabet, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon for providing technology which allows Israel to track and target Palestinians.

She also lists Caterpillar, Hyundai, and Volvo, which her report claims have supplied vehicles used for demolishing homes and flattening bombed communities.

Financial institutions are included too – Ms Albanese claims banks BNP Paribas and Barclays have been underwriting Israeli treasury bonds throughout the conflict.

The BBC has approached the companies named above for comment.

Lockheed Martin said foreign military sales were government-to-government transactions, and discussions were best addressed by the US government.

Volvo said it did not share Ms Albanese’s criticism which it believes was based on “insufficient and partly incorrect information”. It added that it is committed to respecting human rights and constantly works to strengthen its due diligence. But it said that since its products have a long life and change hands often “there is unfortunately a limit to how much control or influence we can have on how and where our products are used during their lifetime”.

For the companies named, the business is lucrative, the report says, and helps Israel to continue the war. Ms Albanese says all the companies should stop dealing with Israel immediately.

But how likely is that? UN reports like this one have no legal power, but they do attract attention.

Ms Albanese is, in targeting economic ties, trying to remind multinationals, and governments, of what happened with apartheid South Africa.

For a while many businesses made good money trading with South Africa, but the injustice of apartheid attracted global condemnation and UN sanctions which forced disinvestment and, eventually, helped to end the apartheid regime.

By listing companies which are household names, Ms Albanese is probably also hoping to provide millions of consumers worldwide with information they can use when choosing whether or not to buy something, as they did with South Africa.

But the suggestion they are complicit in possible genocide is the one the multinationals themselves may take most seriously. The law on genocide is strict, it needs to be determined by a court of law, and in fact the International Court of Justice is currently considering a case against Israel on this very question, brought by South Africa.

Complicity is defined as a person or entity having engaged in actions whose foreseeable results may have contributed to genocide, but without having personally intended to commit genocide.

This is an accusation that Ms Albanese suggests could be levelled against businesses selling anything that might contribute to Israel’s war effort. It is known that international lawyers have privately advised European governments that continued arms sales to Israel may lead to charges of complicity.

Israel, which has long accused Ms Albanese of being extremely hostile to it, and even antisemitic, has rejected her latest report as “groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of office”.

Israel denies genocide, claiming the right of self-defence against Hamas.

But when Ms Albanese presented her report to UN member states, she received primarily praise and support.

African, Asian, and Arab states backed her call for disinvestment, many agreed that genocide was taking place, and some also warned Israel against vilifying international lawyers like Ms Albanese for doing their job.

European states, traditionally more supportive of Israel, also condemned the denial of aid to Gaza, and said Israel had a legal responsibility, as the occupying power, to ensure Palestinians had the means to survive.

But Israel’s biggest ally, the United States, left the UN Human Rights Council when President Donald Trump took office in January. Washington’s response to the report has simply accused Ms Albanese, whose team contacted US companies for information about their dealings with Israel, of an “unacceptable campaign of political and economic warfare against the American and worldwide economy”.

It’s unlikely the US administration will pay much more attention to the words of one international lawyer. But the big US companies named in her report, listening to the condemnation from so many countries where they have financial interests, may start to question their ties with Israel.

Budget airline Ryanair is planning to increase its “personal bag” size by 20% as the EU brings in a new standard.

Passengers will be allowed to take an item such as a handbag or laptop bag measuring up to 40cm x 30cm x 20cm in the cabin without paying an extra fee. It should weigh less than 10kg, and fit “under the seat in front you.”

The new size represents a 20% increase in volume from the current maximum dimensions.

This will mean that Ryanair accepts free bags one third bigger than the new EU minimum size limit.

Ryanair said the new free bag size would come into effect in the coming weeks as its bag size measuring devices were adjusted to the new standard.

Its current maximum bag size is 40cm x 25cm x 20cm, which already has a greater volume than the new European standard of 40cm x 30cm x 15cm.

Ryanair declined to say why it was giving passengers a larger carry-on bag allowance.

The size is still less generous than rival budget airline Easyjet, which allows a free underseat bag of 45cm x 36cm x 20cm (including wheels and handles) weighing up to 10kg.

Wizz Air allows one cabin bag as big as Ryanair’s new limits – 40cm x 30cm x 20cm, with the same weight limit of 10kg.

BA has a slightly smaller limit for an under-seat laptop bag or handbag of 40cm x 30cm x 15cm, but passengers are allowed to take a larger cabin bag as well free of charge, subject to a maximum weight of 23kg.

The EU has been working with airlines to agree a minimum free bag size, so that frequent travellers can purchase one piece of luggage and be confident it would be accepted by multiple airlines.

The rule applies to airlines based in the EU – which includes Easyjet, Ryanair and Wizz Air – but airlines are of course free to accept larger bags if they choose.

Confusion about the different minimum sizes has caused problems for passengers, who have sometimes been faced with unexpected extra fees when airlines said their bags didn’t match the specified dimensions.

Last month the transport committee of the European parliament voted to give passengers the right to an extra piece of free hand luggage weighing up to 7kg. The proposed rule would still have to be passed by the wider European parliament.

Passengers should confirm baggage rules with their airlines directly.

Hollywood actor Michael Madsen died in his California home on Thursday morning, US media reported. He was 67.

He was found unresponsive by authorities responding to a 911 call at his Malibu home and pronounced dead at 08:25 local time (15:25 GMT), according to The Hollywood Reporter.

He is believed to have died of cardiac arrest, according to a representative.

Madsen was a prolific actor, best known for his roles in the Quentin Tarantino movies Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, The Hateful Eight and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

In Reservoir Dogs, one of the seminal movies of the 1990s, he played psychotic thief Mr Blonde, who shocked audiences in a scene where he cut off a policeman’s ear.

During a career spanning four decades, Madsen also took on a number of tv roles.

In both tv and film, he often portrayed the law enforcers like sheriffs and detectives, as well as the law breakers, such as a washed-out hitman in the Kill Bill franchise.

In recent years, he lent his voices to video games, including Grand Theft Auto III and the Dishonored series.

Michael Madsen was born in Chicago in September 1957. His father was a Navy veteran of World War Two who later became a firefighter, and his mother was a filmmaker.

He was the brother of Virginia Madsen, who is known for several movies including Sideways, for which she was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe.

He was married three times, and is survived by four children, including actor Christian Madsen.

Madsen divorced his wife of 28 years, DeAnna, in 2024, over the death of their son Hudson, according to People magazine.

“My brother Michael has left the stage,” his sister Virginia wrote in a statement to Variety.

“He was thunder and velvet. Mischief wrapped in tenderness. A poet disguised as an outlaw. A father, a son, a brother – etched in contradiction, tempered by love that left its mark.”

Budget airline Ryanair is planning to increase its “personal bag” size by 20% as the EU brings in a new standard.

Passengers will be allowed to take an item such as a handbag or laptop bag measuring up to 40cm x 30cm x 20cm in the cabin without paying an extra fee. It should weigh less than 10kg, and fit “under the seat in front you.”

The new size represents a 20% increase in volume from the current maximum dimensions.

This will mean that Ryanair accepts free bags one third bigger than the new EU minimum size limit.

Ryanair said the new free bag size would come into effect in the coming weeks as its bag size measuring devices were adjusted to the new standard.

Its current maximum bag size is 40cm x 25cm x 20cm, which already has a greater volume than the new European standard of 40cm x 30cm x 15cm.

Ryanair declined to say why it was giving passengers a larger carry-on bag allowance.

The size is still less generous than rival budget airline Easyjet, which allows a free underseat bag of 45cm x 36cm x 20cm (including wheels and handles) weighing up to 10kg.

Wizz Air allows one cabin bag as big as Ryanair’s new limits – 40cm x 30cm x 20cm, with the same weight limit of 10kg.

BA has a slightly smaller limit for an under-seat laptop bag or handbag of 40cm x 30cm x 15cm, but passengers are allowed to take a larger cabin bag as well free of charge, subject to a maximum weight of 23kg.

The EU has been working with airlines to agree a minimum free bag size, so that frequent travellers can purchase one piece of luggage and be confident it would be accepted by multiple airlines.

The rule applies to airlines based in the EU – which includes Easyjet, Ryanair and Wizz Air – but airlines are of course free to accept larger bags if they choose.

Confusion about the different minimum sizes has caused problems for passengers, who have sometimes been faced with unexpected extra fees when airlines said their bags didn’t match the specified dimensions.

Last month the transport committee of the European parliament voted to give passengers the right to an extra piece of free hand luggage weighing up to 7kg. The proposed rule would still have to be passed by the wider European parliament.

Passengers should confirm baggage rules with their airlines directly.

Suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana has announced she is starting a new party with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Sultana, stripped of the Labour whip last year for backing a move to scrap the two-child benefit cap, said she was resigning from the party after 14 years of membership.

The MP for Coventry South said the new party would be formed with other independent MPs, campaigners and activists, aiming to challenge a “broken” Westminster system.

Corbyn has been contacted but has not confirmed his involvement to the BBC.

However last night, he had hinted he may form a new party, telling ITV’s Peston “there is a thirst for an alternative” and that a “grouping will come together”.

In a social media post, Sultana said the government is “an active participant in genocide” in Gaza – and highlighted growing poverty, the government’s position on welfare, and the cost of living as reasons for establishing her new party.

“Labour has completely failed to improve people’s lives. And across the political establishment, from Farage to Starmer, they smear people of conscience trying to stop a genocide in Gaza as terrorists.

“But the truth is clear: this government is an active participant in genocide. And the British people oppose it.”

Israel has strenuously denied accusations it is committing genocide or genocidal acts in Gaza.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has described the situation in Gaza as “appalling and intolerable” and repeatedly called for a ceasefire, as well as the release of hostages.

But some MPs want him to go further and describe the situation in Gaza as a genocide, claims currently being examined by the International Court of Justice.

Sultana also referenced the government’s welfare bill that passed this week, adding: “The government wants to make disabled people suffer; they just can’t decide how much.”

“We’re not an island of strangers,” she says, referencing a speech given by the prime minister in May about immigration, which he has since said he regrets. And she says at the next election, “the choice will be stark: socialism or barbarism”.

Asked for a response to her resignation and comments, a Labour Party spokesperson said: “In just 12 months, this Labour government has boosted wages, delivered an extra four million NHS appointments, opened 750 free breakfast clubs, secured three trade deals and four interest rate cuts lowering mortgage payments for millions.

“Only Labour can deliver the change needed to renew Britain.”

Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to keep up with the inner workings of Westminster and beyond.

A former security contractor for Gaza’s controversial new Israel- and US-backed aid distribution sites has told the BBC that he witnessed colleagues opening fire several times on hungry Palestinians who had posed no threat, including with machine guns.

On one occasion, he said, a guard had opened fire from a watchtower with a machine gun because a group of women, children and elderly people was moving too slowly away from the site.

When asked to respond the GHF said the allegations were categorically false.

They referred us to a statement saying that no civilians ever came under fire at the GHF distribution sites.

The GHF began its operations in Gaza at the end of May, distributing limited aid from several sites in southern and central Gaza. That followed an 11-week total blockade of Gaza by Israel during which no food entered the territory.

The system has been widely criticised for forcing vast numbers of people to walk through active combat zones to a handful of sites. Since the GHF started up, Israeli forces have killed more than 400 Palestinians trying to retrieve food aid from its sites, the UN and local doctors say. Israel says the new distribution system stops aid going to Hamas.

Continuing his description of the incident at one of the GHF sites – in which he said guards fired on a group of Palestinians – the former contractor said: “As that happened, another contractor on location, standing on the berm overlooking the exit, opened up with 15 to 20 shots of repetitive weapons fire at the crowd.

“A Palestinian man dropped to the ground motionless. And then the other contractor who was standing there was like, ‘damn, I think you got one’. And then they laughed about it.”

The contractor, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, said GHF managers had brushed off his report as a coincidence, suggesting that the Palestinian man could have “tripped” or been “tired and passed out”.

The GHF claimed the former contractor who made these allegations is a “disgruntled former contractor” who they had terminated for misconduct, which he denies. He showed us payslips suggesting that he continued to be paid for two weeks after leaving the post.

The man we spoke to, who said he had worked at all four of the GHF distribution sites, described a culture of impunity with few rules or controls.

He said contractors were given no clear rules of engagement or standard operating procedures, and were told by one team leader: “if you feel threatened, shoot – shoot to kill and ask questions later”.

The culture in the company, he said, felt like “we’re going into Gaza so it’s no rules. Do what you want.”

“If a Palestinian is walking away from the site and not demonstrating any hostile intent, and we’re shooting warning shots at them regardless, we are wrong, we are criminally negligent,” he told me.

He told us that each site had site CCTV monitoring activity there, and GHF insistence that no one there had been hurt or shot at was “an absolute bare-faced lie”.

GHF said that gunfire heard in footage shared with the BBC was coming from Israeli forces.

Team leaders referred to Gazans as “zombie hordes”, the contractor told me, “insinuating that these people have no value.”

The former contractor also said Palestinians were coming to harm in other ways at GHF sites, for example by being hit by debris from stun grenades, being sprayed with mace or being pushed by the crowds into razor wire.

He said he himself had witnessed several occasions in which Palestinians appeared to have been seriously hurt, including one man who had a full can of pepper spray in his face, and a woman who he says was hit with the metal part of a stun grenade, improperly fired into a crowd.

“This metal piece hit her directly in the head and she dropped to the ground, not moving,” he said. “I don’t know if she was dead. I know for a fact she was unconscious and completely limp.”

Earlier this week more than 170 charities and other NGOs called for the GHF to be shut down. The organisations, including Oxfam and Save the Children, say Israeli forces and armed groups “routinely” open fire on Palestinians seeking aid.

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

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

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

At least 57,130 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Rachel Reeves has said she had had “a tough day” and had been “clearly upset”, as she gave her first interview since crying in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

She did not go into details behind the incident saying she had been dealing with “a personal issue” adding: “Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

The chancellor was speaking after making a surprise appearance alongside Sir Keir Starmer to unveil the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS.

Government borrowing costs rose following Reeves’ tearful appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions, when Sir Keir initially failed to guarantee that the chancellor would keep her job.

The fall was partially reversed after Sir Keir insisted he was “in lockstep” with his chancellor, who he said would be in her job “for a very long time to come”.

One analyst told the BBC the initial rise reflected concern in the financial markets that if Reeves left her job then control over the government’s finances would weaken.

Will Walker Arnott, head of private clients at the bank Charles Stanley, told the BBC’s Today programme: “It looks to me like this is a rare example of financial markets actually enhancing the career prospects of a politician.”

In a bid to put on a united front, the chancellor unexpectedly joined Sir Keir and Health Secretary Wes Streeting at a hospital in East London to set out details of new neighbourhood health centres.

As she addressed staff, Reeves was smiling broadly and later shared a hug with the prime minister.

Speaking to broadcasters after the event, Reeves was asked about her tears in Parliament. She said: “My job as chancellor at 12 o’clock on a Wednesday is to be at PMQs next to the prime minister, supporting the government and that’s what I tried to do.”

“I think all your viewers have had tough days, for personal reasons, for whatever reasons. I happened to be on the camera when I had a tough day.”

She said she was “totally” up for the job of chancellor and asked if she was surprised the prime minister had not unequivocally backed her in Parliament replied: “People can see that Keir and me are a team.”

“We fought the election together, we changed the Labour Party together so that we could be in the position to return to power and over the past year we’ve worked in lockstep together.”

During the event, Sir Keir praised his chancellor telling the audience: “I think it’s just fantastic that she is here.”

He said decisions made by Reeves had allowed the government to “invest record amounts in the NHS”.

Asked if he had been aware that his chancellor had been crying next to him in the House of Commons, Sir Keir said he “hadn’t appreciated what was happening” as he was “literally up and down” answering questions.

“No prime minister ever has had side conversations in PMQs. It does happen in other debates when there is a bit more time, but in PMQs it is bang, bang, bang, bang.

“I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber.”

He said the incident was due to “a personal issue and I am certainly not going to say anything more about that”.

Speculation about Reeves’ future had been growing after Labour rebels forced the government to give up some of its benefits changes and in so doing put a £5bn hole in the chancellor’s spending plans.

In order to meet her self-imposed borrowing rules, she is now likely to have to consider cutting public spending or raising taxes at the Budget in autumn.

Asked if taxes would be going up, Reeves said she would not “speculate” but added: “Of course there is a cost to the welfare changes that Parliament voted through this week and that will be reflected in the Budget.”

In a sign that she would not be changing her own restrictions on borrowing, the chancellor said “the stability that we’ve been able to return to the economy… is only possible because of the fiscal discipline which is underpinned by the fiscal rules”.

Reeves’s two main rules are not to borrow to fund day-to-day public spending; and to get debt falling as a share of the UK economic output by 2029/30.

In her speech, she also said the boost to NHS spending would not “have been possible” without the measures she took in last year’s Budget.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Thursday, shadow chancellor Mel Stride said he “felt for” Reeves, and the incident showed politicians “are all human beings”.

But he accused the government of making “serious mistakes” and “bungling and chaos”, which he predicted would lead to tax rises in the autumn.

Rachael Maskell, one of the Labour MPs who led efforts to block the government’s benefits bill, told the BBC on Wednesday that when trying to find money, the government should “look at those with the broadest shoulders”.

“We do need to look at things like a wealth tax or equalisation of capital gains tax,” she said.

On Thursday, the government announced that its Universal Credit and Personal Independence Bill would be renamed the Universal Credit Bill, after the legislation was gutted of significant measures relating to the personal independence payment.

Donald Trump has his first major legislative victory of his second presidential term.

The “big, beautiful bill”, as he calls it, is a sprawling package that includes many key pieces of his agenda – delivering on promises he made on the campaign trail.

It also, however, contains the seeds of political peril for the president and his party.

That Trump and his team were able to shepherd the legislation through Congress despite narrow majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate is no small achievement.

His success required him and his allies to win over budget hawks within his Republican Party who were intent on slashing government spending, as well as centrists who were wary of cuts to social programmes.

When this congressional session started in January, there were doubts about whether House Republicans could even agree to return Congressman Mike Johnson to the speaker’s chair, let alone agree on major pieces of legislation.

Agree they did, however – as did Republicans in the Senate, a notoriously unwieldy chamber.

• Live updates on Trump’s mega-bill
• A look at the key items in the legislation
• BBC Verify: Fact-checking three claims about the bill

The spending package approved by lawmakers directs about $150bn (£110bn) in new spending for border security, detention centres and immigration enforcement officers. Another $150bn is allocated for military expenditures, including the president’s “gold dome” missile defence programme.

The really big numbers, however, are in the tax cuts in this legislation. They amount to more than $4.5tn over 10 years.

Some of these are cuts that were first enacted in Trump’s first term, and were set to expire before the bill makes them permanent. Others, like ending taxes on tips and overtime, where 2024 campaign promises that are implemented by will end in 2028.

All this adds up to massive new debt for the US. The White House contends that the tax cuts will spur economic growth that will generate sufficient new revenue, when taken alongside tariff collections.

But outside projections suggest that this legislation will add more than $3tn in new US debt.

As critics like Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky have pointed out, the legislation raises the amount of new debt the federal government can issue by $5tn – a step that would not be necessary if the White House truly believed their budget projections.

Paul and others like tech multibillionaire Elon Musk have warned that this massive amount of debt will be growing burden on the federal government, as interest payments crowd out other spending and drive up interest rates. A fiscal reckoning is coming, they warn.

Another senator who voted against the legislation, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, had a different warning for Trump and his party. In a fiery speech on the floor of the chamber, he accused the president of breaking a promise to those who supported him – citing the bill’s cuts worth approximately $1tn to Medicaid, a government-run health insurance programme for low-income Americans.

“Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare and betray a promise,” he said, declaring that more than 660,000 people in North Carolina would be “pushed off” Medicaid.

A year after Trump made inroads with working-class Americans, including minority voters who traditionally have supported opposing Democrats, his legislation will cause nearly 12 million Americans to lose Medicaid coverage in the next 10 years, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats are already preparing an onslaught of attacks against Republicans for what they say is legislation that cuts social service in order to provide tax cuts to wealthier Americans.

Although those cuts won’t come into effect until after next year’s congressional midterm elections, Democrats will try to remind American voters of the consequences the decisions Republicans made over the past few weeks.

Trump is preparing what should be a celebratory bill signing ceremony on 4 July – American Independence Day – and will tout his ability to govern not just through executive order, but also through enacting new law.

But the fight to define the benefits – and consequences – of this bill is just beginning.

“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.”

Tens of thousands of passengers have been hit by a French air traffic control strike that has cancelled flights in France on Thursday and Friday and had a knock-on effect elsewhere in Europe.

Budget airline Ryanair said it had been forced to cancel more than 170 flights and the holiday plans of more than 30,000 passengers had been disrupted.

Two French unions were staging the two-day strike over working conditions, leading to a quarter of flights being cancelled at the main airports in Paris and half of flights at Nice airport.

French Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot condemned as unacceptable both the unions’ demands and their decision to go on strike at such an important time for people going on holiday.

Ryanair said the strike had affected not only its flights to and from France, but also aircraft flying over French airspace to destinations including the UK, Ireland, Spain and Greece.

Its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, accused the air traffic controllers of “holding European families to ransom”.

“It makes no sense and is abundantly unfair on EU passengers going on holidays,” he complained, calling on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to take “urgent action” to ensure minimum service levels during strikes and to protect flights going through French airspace from domestic industrial action.

France’s civil aviation authority, DGAC, asked airlines to reduce flight schedules at several airports across the country.

Disruption is expected to worsen at French airports on Friday, with 40% fewer flights from the Paris airports at Charles de Gaulle, Orla and Beauvais.

The strike was called by the UNSA-ICNA union, which cited staffing shortages, management issues and the planned introduction of a controversial clock-in system for controllers among its concerns. Talks with the DGAC earlier this week failed to resolve the dispute.

Airlines for Europe (A4E), the continent’s leading aviation body, described the strike as “intolerable”, warning that it would severely disrupt travel plans at the height of the holiday season.

EasyJet, another low-cost carrier affected by the disruption, expressed “deep disappointment” and urged a resolution.

Ryanair said on Wednesday it also had been hit by the recent conflict in the Middle East and had cancelled more than 800 flights last month.

Despite the cancellations, the airline said it still operated more than 109,000 flights in June, indicating that fewer than 1% of flights were affected.

Flights between Dublin Airport and several European cities have been cancelled due to a French air traffic control strike.

A total of 16 flights have been grounded between Dublin and the French cities of Paris, Biarritz and Nice, as well as Murcia in Spain on Thursday.

No flights departing or arriving to Belfast City Airport have been affected so far, the airport has confirmed.

Dublin airport has advised passengers flying to or over mainland Europe to check with their airline for updates on the status of their flight.

Two French unions are staging the two-day strike over working conditions.

Ryanair has said it has cancelled 170 flights due to the strike action across Thursday and Friday, disrupting more than 30,000 passengers.

The Irish airline has said the disruption will mostly affect flights over French airspace en route to their destination, including those from Spain to Ireland and the UK to Greece, alongside flights to and from France.

Daa spokesperson Graeme McQueen said the flights included eight departures and eight arrivals.

“As it stands, no cancellations have been confirmed for flights in and out of Cork Airport today,” he said.

EasyJet has confirmed no flights to or from Northern Ireland have been impacted by the strikes. The airline does not operate in the Republic of Ireland.

The disruption comes at the start of the European summer holiday season – one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

France’s civil aviation authority, DGAC, has asked airlines to reduce flight schedules at several airports across the country.

Ryanair has criticised France for not protecting aircrafts flying over French airspace when national air traffic control strikes are taking place.

The airline has called on the head of European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to take “urgent action”, requesting air traffic control services to be “fully staffed” for the first wave of daily departures and for flights going through French airspace to be protected during national strikes.

Chief executive of the airline Michael O’Leary said the disruption is “abundantly unfair” on passengers and families booked to go on holiday.

“Once again European families are held to ransom by French Air Traffic Controllers going on strike. It is not acceptable that overflights over French airspace en route to their destination are being cancelled/delayed as a result of yet another French ATC strike”, he added.

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.