All posts by

How Zohran Mamdani stunned New Yorkers with mayoral primary win


Nada Tawfik

New York correspondent

Watch moments from Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor

Zohran Mamdani decided, in his quest to become New York City’s mayor, he would walk the entire length of Manhattan – starting at 7 one Friday evening in early June.

By the time he was done, it was 2:30 a.m.

Video of the feat on social media captures New Yorkers frame by frame giving him thumbs up and embracing him. Several clap for the “next Mayor”. He’s doing it, he tells followers, because New Yorkers deserve a mayor they can see, hear and even yell at.

It takes only a quick scroll through 33-year-old Mamdani’s social media accounts to understand just how different his style is from that of a traditional politician, rejecting typical soundbites for a more unrehearsed feel. After he won the New York Democratic primary on Tuesday, that playbook is getting accolades for its ability to attract a large coalition.

This is a wakeup call for the Democratic Party, said pollster Frank Luntz. The big loser of the night wasn’t his main opponent, former governor Andrew Cuomo, he said, but the US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents the Democratic Party establishment.

Grassroots Democrats are demanding “a more ideological, confrontational approach to policy and politics” in the time of President Donald Trump, Mr Luntz said.

Before Tuesday night’s win, Cuomo and several Democrats mocked Mamdani’s platform – including free public buses and city-run grocery stores – as unrealistic. Millions were spent attacking him. But the millennial, left-wing state assemblyman who represents the diverse neighbourhood of Astoria, Queens, clearly connected with social media-age voters who crave his brand of authenticity and accessibility.

Harris Krizmanich, 30, watched the Manhattan journey video three times. He started following the state lawmaker and democratic socialist in January, when Mamdani was polling at 1%. Krizmanich began canvassing for his campaign.

“I was blown away by his personable skills with the way he talks to people and the way he can relate to just the average person and the way he humanises the voters that felt very frustrated with the way things were going,” Mr Krizmanich told the BBC. “It was really inspiring.”

Reuters

Finding voters where they are

Without Cuomo’s name recognition or wealthy donors, Mamdani relied on introducing himself to voters by flooding social media consistently with positive, even humorous, content that showcased his personality and positions.

Polling indicated he piqued the interest and admiration of Gen Z and disaffected voters, who ultimately contributed to his impressive grassroots ground game.

Nearly 50,000 volunteers helped door-knock, and small donors helped him break fundraising records in the race. He also used traditional settings to his advantage: Mamdani’s viral clip attacking Cuomo’s record and scandals at one of the Democratic debates was viewed over 10 million times on X and over a million more on TikTok.

His identity as an immigrant, unapologetic about his beliefs and faith as a Muslim, was refreshing to those who saw in him their own experiences. The current New York mayor, Eric Adams – far from Mamdani’s biggest fan – said earlier in June: “I don’t agree with his stance on many things, but I respect the fact he’s true to who he is.”

After Mamdani’s win, however, perhaps sensing a greater threat, Adams – who is running for mayor as an independent in November – called him a “snake oil salesman”.

Mamdani is laser focused on cost-of-living issues. He said his conversations with voters often came down to common-sense discussions about leading a dignified life and how city government can help ensure that.

But the results also show Mamdani’s appeal across the wealth divide – he polled worst among lower-income residents, at 38% to Cuomo’s 49%.

At a recent event, Mamdani told the BBC that “there’s a lot of understandable despair and disappointment with so-called leaders within our own party who have shown themselves unable or unwilling to fight Donald Trump”. He included Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams on that list.

“We need a mayor who can look authoritarianism in the eye and not see a reflection of themselves.”

A lesson for struggling Democrats?

In the wake of Trump’s victory, many left-wing Democrats have argued that the lesson of November’s defeat is not that Americans have moved further right, but that they want a new approach to politics.

Stephanie Taylor, of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told the BBC that she hopes this is finally a wake-up call that the Democratic base is absolutely fed up.

“We’ve seen a Democratic Party establishment that has actively worked to undermine and defeat some of our best and brightest and most charismatic for ideological reasons. Because they didn’t like their anti-corporate stances or anti-war stances or their anti-corruptions stances,” she said.

“Voters want to believe that you’re going to fight for them.”

Mamdani still has to win in the general election in November, and if he prevails, the pressure will be on to prove he can actually deliver on his big promises despite limited experience in government.



Source link

England Under-21s: Liverpool’s Harvey Elliott proves he will be one of Europe’s hottest properties this summer


Elliott made 18 league appearances under Arne Slot last season, but his only two starts came against Chelsea and Brighton, when Liverpool had already won the league.

That was in stark contrast to the previous season, with 11 starts in 34 league games for the Reds in Jurgen Klopp’s final campaign.

Elliott has made 147 appearances, scoring 15 goals, in his six years at Liverpool since joining from Fulham as a teenager, with a season on loan at Blackburn in 2020-21.

England Under-21 boss Carsley has only seen Elliott’s desire to succeed this summer.

“I’ve not seen a lot of the frustration,” Carsley said. “What I have seen is someone who’s determined to play and to get the minutes.

“He wants to play every game and all of the minutes.

“He’s definitely built into the tournament. Not getting as much game time towards the end of the season, we’ve had to manage his minutes in terms of the amount he’s played and the intensity he plays at because he’s so explosive with the way he moves and his end product.

“We’re very lucky to have him.”

Brighton have been linked with a move for Elliott, as have his former club Fulham, and while Wolves have been mentioned they have already signed Spaniard Fer Lopez and any fee is likely to be too high for the Molineux outfit.

Former Liverpool defender Stephen Warnock, part of BBC 5 Live’s commentary team in Slovakia, believes Elliott has done well to ignore talk about his future and impress at the Euros.

“There’s a lot of speculation about ‘will he be at Liverpool next year?’,” said Warnock, who made 67 appearances after coming through the youth ranks at Anfield.

“That’s not easy. There will be phone calls with his agent about who’s talking, where are we looking at going and what are the potential avenues, am I going to stay at Liverpool? It’s very much a rollercoaster as the tournament goes on.

“Because of the amount of games he has played for Liverpool, and the impact he had coming in, I think we all thought he would catapult and play for a long time in the first team.

“But he has a World Cup winner in Alexis Mac Allister in front of him, [Ryan] Gravenberch had an unbelievable season and [Dominik] Szoboszlai was brought in for big money.

“He has responded well in this tournament. Mo Salah talks about moments in games and Harvey Elliott is one of those players for the moment. When the moment presents itself he is calm and composed.”



Source link

Sir Andy Murray: British Wimbledon tennis legend says social media is damaging as he backs Katie Boulter


“Athletes across all sports have been discussing this for a long time, but it hasn’t really changed. Hopefully something can get done soon.”

Asked for his view – as both an ex-player and father-of-four – about what could be done to eradicate toxic abuse, Murray said: “If I’m being honest I don’t know. Me and my wife are trying to keep our children off social media until they are much older, because I think it can be pretty damaging.”

Murray’s eldest child is nine, while his youngest is four. Many social media apps have a minimum age of 13 for users.

Technology firms will have to do more to protect young people from harmful content under the Government’s Online Safety Act. It is being introduced in phases and social media platforms are now obliged to protect users from illegal or harmful content, while more child safety measures are being introduced next month.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told the BBC the government will also explore whether further protective measures can be put in place on social media platforms.

Figures provided by data science firm Signify, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) show that in 2024, about 8,000 abusive, violent or threatening messages were sent publicly to 458 tennis players through their social media accounts.

Following Boulter’s comments, fellow tennis players demanded more action, including calls for the introduction of identity verification.

Several of the England women’s football team also plan to give up social media for their forthcoming European Championship defence in Switzerland.

Murray said: “I don’t know whose responsibility it is, I don’t know if the government needs to do more to tackle it, or [X owner] Elon Musk and people like that can do more to stop these messages getting through to individuals.

“I don’t mean just athletes, but then you get into the whole debate around free speech and it’s a difficult one.”

Murray also said athletes could help themselves “by trying to avoid looking at the comments and going on our phones immediately after matches”, but the onus was not on them to solve the problem.

Former British tennis player Naomi Broady, 35, told BBC Radio 5 Live about her experiences of abuse on social media, saying: “I’ve seen the worst of trolling and after I had children, I don’t show their faces any more.”



Source link

UK firms to be protected from cheap imports


The government is to unveil a new plan for trade aimed at boosting exports and protecting UK firms at a time of growing uncertainty for businesses following the introduction of US tariffs.

It aims to remove obstacles for UK businesses selling abroad while also bolstering the country’s trade defences to avoid the threat of cheap imports undercutting domestic companies.

Some sectors are concerned that cars and steel originally destined for US markets will be diverted onto UK shores, as President Donald Trump’s tariffs make it significantly more expensive to sell in America.

But Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the UK’s plan would “ensure British businesses are protected from harm”.

The plan will be announced during the annual British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) conference in London on Thursday.

A unilateral trade strategy could be difficult to achieve – it is a game of international give and take and the plan is more about sharpening offence and defence.

One offence strategy outlined is that there will be more government financial backing for exporters, and help understanding complex trade rules.

But the key part for many is defence, in particular for industries such as steel and cars.

Unlike the EU, the UK has not imposed high tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles and current safeguards against cheap steel imports are due to expire in 2026.

An influx of Chinese made cars would make it difficult for UK sellers to compete.

At the conference, the government is expected to announce increased focus on boosting the UK’s export of services, and point to recent successes in signing a free trade agreement with India after years of wrangling.

It will also point to closer trading ties with the EU and being the first country to secure better terms with the Trump White House on tariffs. At the start of his second time as president, Trump announced a series of import taxes on goods from other countries, arguing they will boost American manufacturing and protect jobs. He argues that America has been taken advantage of by “cheaters” and “pillaged” by foreigners.

However, Andrew Opie of the British Retail Consortium, which represents retailers, said that though the UK’s trade deals were good, the bigger win for consumers would be “swift action” by the chancellor on abuse of the “de minimis” rule, which allow low-value packages to enter the UK tax-free.

Use of such rules has surged in the past decade. Intended for consumers buying goods for personal use from abroad, some businesses have used it to avoid paying tax on their goods.

There has been criticism they have given overseas firms such as Shein and Temu an unfair advantage over British businesses.

Mr Opie said “the limited checks and balances on such goods entering the country put consumers at risk from products that do not meet the UK’s high standards, and retailers at risk from competition by those who would sell such goods”.

The trade plan comes after the government unveiled its 10-year industrial strategy, which included a blueprint of lowering energy costs for thousands of businesses by exempting them from some green energy taxes.

Ministers hope that after dropping a tax bombshell on business last autumn- leading to higher costs including employer National Insurance contributions- firms see this summer of strategies as proof that the government is on their side.



Source link

Thailand’s ‘weed wild west’ faces new rules as smuggling to UK rises


Jonathan Head

South East Asia correspondent

Reuters

Since Thailand decriminalised cannabis in 2022, shops selling the drug have popped up across the country

Thailand is trying to rein in its free-wheeling marijuana market.

The government has approved new measures, which will soon restrict consumption of the drug to those with a doctor’s prescription – in the hope that this will help regulate an industry some describe as out of control.

The public health minister has also said that consumption of marijuana will be criminalised again, although it’s unclear when that could happen.

Ever since the drug was decriminalised in 2022, there has been a frenzy of investment.

There are now around 11,000 registered cannabis dispensaries in Thailand. In parts of the capital Bangkok it is impossible to escape the lurid green glare of their neon signs and the constant smell of people smoking their products.

In the famous backpacker district of Khao San Road, in the historic royal quarter, there is an entire shopping mall dedicated to selling hallucinogenic flower heads or marijuana accessories.

Derivative products like brownies and gummies are offered openly online – although this is technically illegal – and can be delivered to your door within an hour.

There has been talk of restricting the industry before. The largest party in the government coalition wanted to put cannabis back on the list of proscribed narcotics after it took office in 2023, but its former coalition partner, which had made decriminalisation a signature election policy, blocked this plan.

But the final straw appears to have been pressure from the UK, which has seen a flood of Thai marijuana being smuggled into the country.

It is often young travellers who are lured by drug syndicates in Britain into carrying suitcases filled with it on flights from Thailand.

Last month two young British women were arrested in Georgia and Sri Lanka, with large amounts of marijuana from Thailand. Both now face long prison sentences.

Thai Customs Department

A growing number of young people have been caught trying to smuggle cannabis to the UK

“It’s massively increased over the last couple of years,” says Beki Wright, spokesperson at the National Crime Agency in London (NCA). The NCA says 142 couriers carrying five tonnes were intercepted in 2023. This number shot up to 800 couriers in 2024 carrying 26 tonnes, and that number has continued to rise this year.

“We really want to stop people doing this. Because if you are stopped, in this country or many others, you face life-changing consequences, for something many of them think is low-risk. If you bring illicit drugs into the UK you might get through the first time, but you will eventually be found, and you will most likely go to jail.”

So far this year, 173 people accused of smuggling cannabis – nearly all from Thailand – have gone through the court system in the UK and received sentences totalling 230 years.

Jonathan Head/BBC

Thai airport authorities have had to intensify their inspections to combat drug smuggling

The NCA is working together with Thai authorities to try to deter young people from being tempted to smuggle cannabis to Britain. But this has proved difficult, because of the very few regulations that exist in Thailand to control the drug.

“This is a loophole,” says Panthong Loykulnanta, spokesman for the Thai Customs Department.

“The profit is very high, but the penalties here are not high. Most of the time when we catch people at the airport they abandon their luggage. But then there is no punishment. If they insist on checking in the luggage, we can arrest them, but they just pay the fine and try again.”

The legalisation of cannabis in 2022 was supposed to be followed by the passing of a new regulatory framework by the Thai parliament.

But this never happened, partly, says one MP involved in the drafting process, because of obstruction by vested interests with links to the marijuana industry. A new cannabis law was drawn up last year, but it could be two years away from being passed.

The result has been a weed wild west, where almost anything that can make money out of marijuana is tolerated.

There has also been an influx of foreign drug syndicates hiding behind Thai nominees, growing huge quantities of potent marijuana strains in brightly-lit, air-conditioned containers.

This has flooded the market and driven the price down, which is what has attracted the smugglers.

Even if more than half the people carrying marijuana get stopped, they can still make money from what gets through to the UK because of much higher prices there.

Jonathan Head/BBC

Small cannabis growers have been calling on the government to better regulate the industry

“You cannot have a free-for-all, right? This became a bar fight rather than a boxing match,” says Tom Kruesopon, a businessman who was instrumental in legalising marijuana, but now thinks things have now gone too far.

“When there is a weed shop on every corner, when people are smoking as they’re walking down the street, when tourists are getting high on our beaches, other countries being affected by our laws, with people shipping it illegally – these are negatives.”

He argues that the proposed new public health ministry regulations will restrict supply and demand, and restore the industry to what it was always intended to be, focused solely on the medical use of marijuana.

There is plenty of opposition to this notion from cannabis enthusiasts who believe the new rules will do nothing to curb smuggling or unlicensed growers.

They say the measures will wipe out small-scale businesses who are already struggling because of the glut caused by over-production.

Thanyarat Doksone/BBC

Kitty Chopaka, who runs a small weed farm, is an advocate for the community

Earlier this month, many of these smaller growers descended on the prime minister’s office in Bangkok to deliver a formal complaint to the government, calling for a more sensitively regulated industry, and not just what they believe is a knee-jerk reaction to foreign criticism.

“I totally understand that the government is probably getting yelled at during international meetings,” says Kitty Chopaka, the most vocal advocate for smaller producers.

“Countries saying ‘All your weed is getting smuggled into our country,’ that is quite embarrassing. But right now they are not even enforcing the rules that already exist. If they did, that would probably mitigate a lot of the issues like smuggling, or sale without a licence.”

The collapse in prices forced her earlier this year to close down her cannabis dispensary, one of the first to open three years ago.

Thanyarat Doksone/BBC

Confiscated luggage, which contains marijuana, in a room at the Bangkok airport

Parinya Sangprasert, one of the growers at the protest, argues that the illegal growers are already operating outside the law in Thailand – and will ignore the new regulations as well.

He is emphatic that people cannot come to his farm and just buy 46kg (101 lbs) of marijuana – the quantity typically carried in two suitcases by the “mules” trying to reach the UK.

On his phone he brought up a copy of the official form he has to fill in every time he makes a sale.

“If you want to buy or sell a large amount of cannabis, you need a licence, issued by our government. Every weed shop must obtain this to buy marijuana, and there are records kept of which farm it’s from and who it was sold to.”

In the meantime, Thai customs officers are continuing their efforts to stem the flood of cannabis though their airports.

They are using intelligence gathered on travel patterns to target potential smugglers, and dissuade them from checking in their tainted luggage, and risking harsh jail sentences in their destination countries.

They are increasingly using the requirement for a licence to buy, sell or export quantities of marijuana to prosecute those they intercept, but the punishment is rarely more than a fine.

And the confiscated suitcases, filled with vacuum-sealed packages of dried marijuana heads, with names like “Runtz” and “Zkittlez”, still pile up in backrooms at the airports. There were around 200 in one room the BBC was allowed into, containing between two to three tonnes, taken in just the past month.



Source link

West Indies v Australia: Tourists out for 180 but hit back late on chaotic opening day


Teenage opener Sam Konstas and Josh Inglis were recalled in their place, but they scored just three and five respectably as the tourists slipped to 22-3.

Head put on 89 runs for the fourth wicket with Khawaja, who was dropped twice before he became Joseph’s third victim of the day.

Joseph, the hero for West Indies in their famous win in Brisbane 18 months ago, then produced a beauty of a delivery that clean bowled Webster as he ended with figures of 4-46.

Head’s resistance ended when he was caught behind off the bowling of Justin Greaves, before Seales wrapped up the tail to finish with 5-60.

West Indies, seeking a first home Test win over Australia for 22 years, made a poor start to their reply when Starc removed openers Kraigg Brathwaite and John Campbell in successive overs.

Cummins then had Keacy Carty caught behind, before Hazlewood bowled nightwatchman Jomel Warrican in the space of six balls shortly before stumps.



Source link

No phone signal on your train? There may be a fix


Karen Hoggan

Business reporter, BBC News

Getty Images

Mobile phone blackspots will be eliminated on several major railway lines and train tunnels by 2028, the body which runs Britain’s railway infrastructure has pledged.

Network Rail, which is owned by the government, has signed a deal with two private telecoms firms in a move it claims will see 4G and 5G connectivity boosted on trains and in stations.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said work was set to begin next year and claimed it would “transform” journeys for passengers who have experienced calls cutting out and weak internet connections.

The project is expected to take three years because works can only occur when trains are not running on tracks.

In the first instance, the deal called Project Reach will involve the installation of 1,000km of ultra-fast fibre optic cable along parts of the East Coast Main Line from London King’s Cross to Newcastle, and the West Coast Main Line, which stretches from the capital to Manchester.

Telecoms firm Neos Networks will also install cables along the Great Western Main Line running from London to Cardiff, and the Chiltern Main Line.

The plan is to expand that to more than 5,000km “in the near future”, the Dft said, but an exact year when this would occur has not been revealed.

Another telecoms company Freshwave has been handed the job eliminating blackspots in 57 tunnels covering a total of nearly 50km, including the 4km-long Chipping Sodbury tunnel near Bristol.

It will work with mobile network operators (MNOs) BT, O2 and VodafoneThree on upgrading mobile connectivity in tunnels of 250m and longer on the East Coast, West Coast, and Great Western lines.

Freshwave will also collaborate with the MNOs on new 4G and 5G infrastructure at 12 of the biggest Network Rail stations including Birmingham New Street, Bristol Temple Meads and Edinburgh Waverley.

‘Game-changer for passengers’

Network Rail claimed private investment in the project would save taxpayers about £300m as the two telecoms companies are funding it, rather than Network Rail having to renew its existing infrastructure.

Chief financial officer Jeremy Westlake the investment model would “deliver the necessary upgrades to our telecoms infrastructure faster whilst offering significant value-for-money for the taxpayer and stimulating wider economic benefits across the country”.

Bruce Williamson, spokesman for campaign group Rail Future, told the BBC better connectivity for passengers on the railways was “undoubtedly a good thing”.

“There is demand for connectivity. People live on their smart phones and people work on trains,” he added.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the roll-out would support the government’s “broader goals of economic growth and digital innovation”.

She said the deal was a “game-changer for passengers up and down the country”.

“By boosting connectivity and tackling signal blackspots, we are also ensuring a more reliable and efficient service,” she added.



Source link

World’s oldest boomerang older than thought, but not Australian


Helen Briggs
BBC environment correspondent@hbriggs
Maciej Biernacki

The boomerang was found near stones, animal and human bones

The world’s oldest boomerang is older than previously thought, casting new light on the ingenuity of humans living at the time.

The tool, which was found in a cave in Poland in 1985, is now thought to be 40,000 years old.

Archaeologists say it was fashioned from a mammoth’s tusk with an astonishing level of skill.

Researchers worked out from its shape that it would have flown when thrown, but would not have come back to the thrower.

It was probably used in hunting, though it might have had cultural or artistic value, perhaps being used in some kind of ritual.

Talamo et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0

The ivory boomerang is curved and about the size of a baseball bat

The mammoth ivory boomerang was unearthed in Oblazowa Cave in southern Poland.

It was originally thought to be about 30,000 years old. But new, more reliable radiocarbon dating of human and animal bones found at the site puts the age at between 39,000 and 42,000 years old.

“It’s the oldest boomerang in the world, and the only one in the world made of this shape and this long to be found in Poland,” said Dr Sahra Talamo of the University of Bologna, Italy.

It gives a “remarkable insight” into human behaviour, she said, particularly how Homo sapiens living as long as 42,000 years ago could shape “such a perfect object” with the knowledge it could be used to hunt animals.

The boomerang is exceptionally well preserved, with score marks suggesting it had been polished and carved for use by a right-handed individual.

Talamo et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0

The entrance to Oblazowa Cave on the southern border of Poland

Boomerangs are generally associated with Aboriginal culture in Australia.

However, rare finds in the historical record outside Australia suggest they were used across different continents.

The oldest known boomerang from Australia dates to about 10,500 years ago, made from wood. But the oldest images of boomerangs in Australia are rock art paintings 20,000 years old, according to National Museum Australia.

A wooden boomerang dating back 7,000 years has been found in Jutland, a peninsula between Denmark and Germany, while fragments of a 2,000-year-old oak boomerang – which does come back – has been found in The Netherlands.

The research by a team of scientists from Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland and the UK is published in the journal PLOS One.





Source link

When the Supreme Leader emerges, he’ll be leading a changed Iran


Kasra Naji

Special Correspondent, BBC Persian

BBC

After spending nearly two weeks in a secret bunker somewhere in Iran during his country’s war with Israel, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, might want to use the opportunity of the ceasefire to venture out.

He is believed to be holed up, incommunicado, for the fear of being assassinated by Israel. Even top government officials apparently have had no contact with him.

He would be well advised to be cautious, despite the fragile ceasefire that the US President Donald Trump and the Emir of Qatar brokered. Though President Trump reportedly told Israel not to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not rule it out.

When – or indeed if – he does emerge from hiding, he will see a landscape of death and destruction. He will no doubt still appear on state TV claiming victory in the conflict. He will plot to restore his image. But he will face new realities – even a new era.

The war has left the country significantly weakened and him a diminished man.

Murmurs of dissent at the top

During the war, Israel quickly took control of much of Iran’s airspace, and attacked its military infrastructure. Top commanders of the Revolutionary Guard and the army were swiftly killed.

The extent of the damage to the military is still unclear and disputed, but the repeated bombings of the army and revolutionary guard bases and installations suggests substantial degradation of Iran’s military power. Militarisation had long consumed a vast amount of the nation’s resources.

Iran’s known nuclear facilities that earned the country nearly two decades of US and international sanctions, with an estimated cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, are now damaged from the air strikes, although the full extent of this has been hard to assess. What was it all for, many are asking.

Getty Images

The war has left Iran significantly weakened

A vast number of Iranians will singularly hold Ayatollah Khamenei, who first became leader in 1989, responsible for setting Iran on a collision course with Israel and the US that ultimately brought considerable ruin to his country and people.

They will blame him for pursuing the ideological aim of destruction of Israel – something many Iranians don’t support. They will blame him for what they perceive as a folly – his belief that achieving nuclear status would render his regime invincible. Sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, reducing a top oil exporter to a poor and struggling shadow of its former self.

“It is difficult to estimate how much longer the Iranian regime can survive under such significant strain, but this looks like the beginning of the end,” says Professor Lina Khatib, a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

“Ali Khamenei is likely to become the Islamic Republic’s last ‘Supreme Leader’ in the full sense of the word.”

Getty Images

Ayatollah Khamenei, who became leader in 1989, has been accused of setting Iran on a collision course with Israel

There have been murmurs of dissent at the top. At the height of the war, one semi-official Iranian news agency reported that some top former regime figures have been urging the country’s more quiet religious scholars based in the holy city of Qom, who are separate to the ayatollah, to intervene and bring about a change in leadership.

“There will be a reckoning,” according to Professor Ali Ansari, the founding director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.

“It’s quite clear that there are huge disagreements within the leadership, and there’s also huge unhappiness among ordinary people.”

‘Anger and frustration will take root’

During the last two weeks, many Iranians wrestled with conflicted feelings of the need to defend their country versus their deep hatred of the regime. They rallied for the country, not by coming out to defend the regime, but to look after each other. There have been reports of vast solidarity and closeness.

People in towns and villages outside urban areas opened their doors to those who had fled the bombardments in their cities, shopkeepers undercharged basic goods, neighbours knocked on each other’s doors to ask if they needed anything.

But many people were also aware that Israel was probably looking for a regime change in Iran. A regime change is what many Iranians wish for. They may draw the line on a regime change engineered and imposed by foreign powers, however.

Getty Images

Many Iranians may draw the line on a regime change engineered by foreign powers

In his nearly 40 years of his rule, Ayatollah Khamenei, one of the world’s longest reigning autocrats, has decimated any opposition in the country. Opposition political leaders are either in jail or have fled the country. Abroad, the opposition figures have been unable to formulate a stance that unites the opposition to the regime.

They have been ineffectual in the establishment of any semblance of an organisation able to take over inside the country if the opportunity arises.

And during the two weeks of war, when the collapse of the regime could have been a possibility, if the war went on relentlessly, many believed the likely scenario for the day after was not the takeover by the opposition, but the descent of the country into chaos and lawlessness.

“It is unlikely that the Iranian regime will be toppled through domestic opposition. The regime remains strong at home and will ramp up domestic oppression to crush dissent,” says Prof Khatib.

Getty Images

Few people in Iran think that the ceasefire brokered on Monday will last

Iranians are now fearing further clampdown by the regime. At least six people have been executed in the past two weeks since the start of the war with Israel on charges of spying for Israel. Authorities say they have arrested some 700 people on this charge.

One Iranian woman told BBC Persian what she fears more than the death and destruction of the war is a regime that is wounded and humiliated turning its anger against its own people.

“If the regime is unable to supply basic goods and services, then there will be growing anger and frustration,” says Prof Ansari.

“I see it as a staged process. I don’t see it as something that, necessarily, in a popular sense, will take root until long after the bombing is over.”

Few people in Iran think that the ceasefire brokered on Monday will last – and many believe Israel is not yet finished now that it has total superiority in the sky over Iran.

Iran’s ballistic missile silos

One thing that seems to have escaped the destruction are Iran’s ballistic missile silos that Israel found hard to locate as they are placed in tunnels under mountains throughout the country.

The Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, said Israel launched its opening attack on Iran knowing that “Iran possessed around 2,500 surface-to-surface missiles”. The missiles that Iran fired caused considerable death and destruction in Israel.

Israel will be concerned about the remaining possible 1,500 still in the hands of the Iranian side.

There is also a serious concern in Tel Aviv, Washington and other Western and regional capitals that Iran may still rush to build a nuclear bomb, something it has continued to deny trying to do.

Getty Images

President Trump reportedly told Israel not to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Although Iran’s nuclear facilities have almost certainly been set back, and possibly rendered useless during the bombings by Israel and the US, Iran said it had moved its stockpile of highly enriched Uranium to a safe secret place.

That stockpile of 60% Uranium, if enriched to 90%, which is a relatively easy step, is enough for about nine bombs, according to experts. Just before the war started, Iran announced that it had built another new secret facility for enrichment that was due to come on stream soon.

The Iranian parliament has voted to sharply reduce its cooperation with the UN’s atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This still requires approval, but if it passes Iran would be one step away from exiting the nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT – as hardliners supporting the supreme leader push for Iran’s breakout to build a bomb.

Ayatollah Khamenei may now be confident that his regime has survived, just. But at the age of 86 and ailing, he also knows that his own days may be numbered, and he may want to ensure continuity of the regime with an orderly transition of power – to another senior cleric or even a council of leadership.

In any case, the remaining top commanders of the Revolutionary Guard who have been loyal to the supreme leader may be seeking to wield power from behind the scenes.

Top image credit: Pacific Press via Getty

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.



Source link

Ticket touts employing workers to bulk-buy for concerts


Steffan Powell, Sian Vivian & Ben Summer

BBC Wales Investigates

Getty Images

Taylor Swift played to almost 1.2 million people in the UK in 2024 on her two-year, 152-show Eras tour

Ticket touts are employing teams of workers to bulk-buy tickets for the UK’s biggest concerts like Oasis and Taylor Swift so they can be resold for profit, a BBC investigation has found.

We uncovered some touts are making “millions” hiring people overseas, known as “ticket pullers”, with one telling an undercover journalist his team bought hundreds of tickets for Swift’s Eras tour last year.

Our reporter, posing as a would-be tout, secretly recorded the boss of a ticket pulling company in Pakistan who said they could set up a team for us and potentially buy hundreds of tickets.

The UK government plans new legislation to crack down on touts but critics argue it does not go far enough.

Shortly after pre-sale, where a limited number of fans could buy Oasis tickets when they went on sale in August, tickets for their UK gigs were being listed on resale websites like StubHub and Viagogo for more than £6,000 – about 40 times the face value of a standing ticket.

We found genuine fans missed out or, in desperation, ended up paying way over the odds as touts have an army of people working for them to buy tickets for the most in-demand events as soon as they go on sale.

Ali, the boss of the ticket pulling company, boasted to our undercover reporter that he’d been successful at securing tickets for popular gigs.

“I think we had 300 Coldplay tickets and then we had Oasis in the same week – we did great,” he told us.

Ali claimed he knew of a UK tout who made more than £500,000 last year doing this and reckons others are “making millions”.

Getty Images

Tickets for Oasis’s reunion tour were being listed on resale websites for more than £6,000 – about 40 times the face value – when they went on sale in August

Our research found pullers buy tickets using illegal automated software and multiple identities which could amount to fraud.

Another ticket pulling boss, based in India, told BBC Wales Investigates’ undercover reporter: “If I’m sitting in your country and running my operations in your country, then it is completely illegal.

“We do not participate in illegal things because actually we are outside of the UK.”

A man who worked in the ticketing industry for almost 40 years showed us how he infiltrated a secret online group that claims to have secured thousands of tickets using underhand methods.

Reg Walker said members of the group could generate 100,000 “queue passes” – effectively allowing them to bypass the software that creates an online queue for gigs.

He told the BBC’s The Great Ticket Rip Off programme this was the equivalent of “100,000 people all of a sudden turning up and pushing in front of you in the queue”.

He added: “If you are a ticketing company and an authorised resale company, and someone decides to list hundreds of tickets for a high-demand event… my question would be, where did you get the tickets? There’s no due diligence.”

Fans are usually limited to a handful of tickets when buying from primary platforms such as Ticketmaster.

PA Media

More than 900,000 tickets were sold for Oasis’s long-awaited reunion tour in 2025, their first gigs since they split in 2009

Touts often list their tickets on resale websites and one former Viagogo employee alleged he had seen some profiles with thousands of tickets for sale.

“They [touts] buy in bulk most of the time in the hope of reselling and making a profit,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t know how they get their hands on them but I know that at some point they would have bought tickets in bulk in serious numbers.

“You’re not allowing a lot of people to get access because you’re hoarding the tickets.”

A former Viagogo employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, claims he had seen a vendor with a profile selling thousands of tickets, something Viagogo denies

Viagogo said it refutes this man’s claims, insisting 73% of sellers on its site sold fewer than five tickets each – and other sellers included sports clubs and promoters.

It is not just music concerts targeted by touts as the BBC found evidence of thousands of Premier League football tickets being advertised illegally.

Since 1994 it has been a criminal offence to resell tickets for football matches in the UK unless authorised, with the maximum penalty being a £1,000 fine.

But we found 8,000 tickets being advertised illegally online for more than face value for Arsenal’s Premier League game with Chelsea at the Emirates Stadium on 16 March.

One of those sellers was a semi-professional footballer based in the UK.

Bogdan Stolboushkin has openly advertised tickets for football games totalling more than £60,000 on social media in the past year alone.

He sold our reporter a single ticket at double the face value.

Getty Images

The BBC’s investigation found thousands of tickets being advertised illegally online for more than face value for the Arsenal v Chelsea Premier League match in March

Mr Stolboushkin did not respond to multiple attempts to contact him about these allegations.

Another potentially illegal practice in the UK is “speculative selling”, where touts list tickets for resale without owning them.

There is no guarantee these touts will actually secure a ticket and “speculative selling” was one of the reasons two touts were jailed for fraud in 2020.

Our investigation found at least 104 seats being “speculatively” listed on Viagogo for Catfish and the Bottlemen’s August concert at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium.

The exact seats appeared to be for sale at the same time on both Ticketmaster, the original point of sale, and Viagogo.

Getty Images

Our investigation found touts selling tickets for the 2025 Six Nations title-decider between Ireland and France in Dublin in March for way above face value

After we presented our evidence to Viagogo, it said: “Listings suspected to be in contravention of our policy have been removed from the site.”

The UK government is looking at measures to try and tackle the issue, but evidence of the challenges faced can be seen in the Republic of Ireland.

In 2021, laws were introduced there to stop the resale of tickets above face value, but the BBC found this being flouted.

This included tickets to see the band Kneecap selling for four times their face value of €59 (£50), while tickets for the Six Nations Ireland v France rugby clash in Dublin were selling for £3,000.

One of Ireland’s biggest promoters, Peter Aiken, said he had never heard of the company selling the tickets and questioned if the tickets existed at all.

Many ticket companies selling in Ireland are based overseas, which the BBC has been told helps them avoid punishment under Irish law.

Capping resale prices of tickets and regulating resale platforms was one of Sir Keir Starmer’s manifesto pledges ahead of last year’s general election.

Now he is prime minister, the UK government has held a consultation with proposals including a price cap that ranges from the original price to 30% above face value, introducing larger fines and a new licensing regime.

The BBC investigation has found touts have an army of people working for them to secure tickets for the most in-demand concerts

But Dame Caroline Dinenage, chairwoman of the UK government’s cross-party Culture, Media and Sport committee said: “It’s a minefield for people who just want to buy tickets for an event they want to enjoy.

“This evidence proves that there is not enough activity going on either from the government, in some cases from the police and certainly from some of these really big online organisations to be able to clamp down on this sort of activity.”

The Conservative MP said this investigation highlighted “what a lot of consumers are already seeing that there is a whole world of, in some cases illegal, but it all cases immoral activity going on in the ticketing sphere”.

“People are having to pay over the odds because others quite often are operating outside of the UK to make an absolute killing on buying up tickets, selling them at a huge premium and in some cases selling tickets that don’t exist at all,” she added.

The UK government’s aim is to “strengthen consumer protections and stop fans getting ripped off”, according to the UK culture secretary.

Lisa Nandy added she wanted to “ensure money spent on tickets goes back into our incredible live events sector, instead of into the pockets of greedy touts”.



Source link

Americans brace for welfare cuts in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’


Elizabeth Butler goes from one supermarket to the next in her hometown of Martinsburg, West Virginia, to ensure she gets the best price on each item on her grocery list.

Along with 42 million Americans, she pays for those groceries with federal food subsides. That cash doesn’t cover the whole bill for her family of three.

“Our food doesn’t even last the month,” she says. “I’m going to all these different places just to make sure that we have enough food to last us the whole month.”

But that money may soon run out, as Congress gears up to vote on what US President Donald Trump has coined his “big beautiful bill”.

The food subsidy programme that Ms Butler uses – called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP – is one of many items on the chopping block, as Congress tries to reconcile the president’s seemingly conflicting demands to both lower taxes and balance the budget.

The Senate is due to vote on their version of the bill by the end of the week. If it passes, it will then be voted on by the House, at which point it will be sent to Trump to sign. He has pressured both chambers of Congress, which the Republican Party controls, to pass the bill by 4 July.

SNAP offers low-income households, including older Americans, families with children and people who are disabled, money each month to buy groceries. In West Virginia, one of the states with the highest rates of poverty, 16% of the population depends on the benefit.

The state is also a reliable Republican stronghold and voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November, when he ran on the promise of reducing the cost of living for Americans, including the price of groceries.

“When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One,” he said at an August press conference surrounded by packaged foods, milk, meats and eggs.

Months after the president made that pledge, the prices of commonly purchased groceries like orange juice, eggs and bacon are higher than they were the same time last year.

It’s a fact that has not gone unnoticed by Ms Butler: “The president hasn’t changed the food prices yet and he promised the people that he would do that.”

Trump has argued, without providing an explanation how, that spending cuts in the 1,000-page budget bill will help bring food prices down: “The cut is going to give everyone much more food, because prices are coming way down, groceries are down,” Trump said when asked specifically about cuts to SNAP.

“The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will ultimately strengthen SNAP through cost-sharing measures and common-sense work requirements,” a White House official told the BBC.

Republicans have long been divided on how to fund social welfare programmes like SNAP and Medicaid. While many think the government should prioritise balancing the budget, others, especially in impoverished regions, support programmes that directly help their constituents.

As the bill stands, Senate Republicans are proposing $211bn (£154bn) in cuts with states being partly responsible for making up the difference.

In theory, passing the bill should be an easy political lift, since Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House.

But since the bill includes cuts to programmes like SNAP and Medicaid, which are popular with everyday Americans, selling the bill to all factions within the Republican Party has not been an easy feat.

Reports of private frustration and dissent about potential cuts to Medicaid and SNAP have leaked in recent weeks, showing the internal wrestling happening within the party.

West Virginia Senator Jim Justice told Politico in June that he has warned fellow Republicans that cutting SNAP could cost the party their majority in Congress when voters head to the polls again in 2026.

“If we don’t watch out, people are going to get hurt, people are going to be upset. It’s going to be the No.1 thing on the nightly news all over the place,” Justice said. “And then, we could very well awaken to a situation in this country where the majority quickly becomes the minority.”

A recent poll by the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 45% of Americans think food assistance programmes like SNAP are underfunded, while only 30% think the funding levels are adequate. About a quarter of respondents found programmes were overfunded.

This is not the first time the party has wrestled with cuts to SNAP, said Tracy Roof, a University of Richmond professor who is currently writing a book on the political history of SNAP.

Under the Biden administration, Congress allowed expanded benefits implemented during Covid to be phased out, despite both Republicans and Democrats warning Americans could go hungry.

“One thing about [SNAP] is that it has bi-partisan support, more than any other anti-poverty programme,” Prof Roof told the BBC.

But this time feels different, she said.

“One thing that kind of distinguishes this period from the previous efforts to cut social welfare programmes has been the willingness of congressional Republicans to vote for things many of them apparently off the record have many concerns about,” she said. “Before, there were always moderate Republicans, particularly in the Senate, but in both Houses that held out for concessions.”

She attributes that submission to two things: Fear of getting on the wrong side of Trump and a lack of fear of public backlash for representatives who hold congressional seats they can easily get re-elected to.

The BBC contacted Congressman Riley Moore, who represents Martinsburg, West Virginia, about the impacts of the cuts to his constituents, but he did not respond.

Moore voted for the initial House bill, which included the cuts to SNAP.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who had been one of the more vocal critics of the cuts, has since softened: Hawley told the news outlet NOTUS he has “always supported” most of the Medicaid cuts and he would “be fine” with most of what’s in the bill.

Father of two Jordan, who asked that his last name not be used, has spent the past three years surviving on SNAP benefits.

He and his wife get about $700 a month to feed their family of four, but they still struggle.

The 26-year-old says his wife has struggled to get work and take care of their two children simultaneously, so if changes to SNAP impact his family, he is prepared to act and get a second job.

“I’m going to make sure that I can do whatever I can to feed my family,” he says.

He and other West Virginians are following what happens to the bill in Congress.

Cameron Whetzel, 25, grew up in a family dependent on SNAP. But when he and his wife tried to apply for SNAP, he learned that making $15 a hour was too much to qualify, he said.

“It’s not great the fact that I need to double my salary in order to be able to afford groceries,” Mr Whetzel said, adding “we have not bought any eggs in four months just cause they’re too expensive”.

He is frustrated that officials in Washington do not understand the impacts of the cuts they are backing in Congress, he said.

“To make a federal cut that then would be put onto the state that’s already struggling it just kind of feels like kicking a horse while its down,” Mr Whetzel says. “Whether you believe in small government or big government, government has to provide for somebody, somehow.”

With additional reporting from Bernd Debusmann Jr



Source link

CIA director says Iran’s nuclear sites ‘severely damaged’


Brandon Drenon

BBC News, Washington DC

Watch: Trump says the US will talk with Iran “next week”

The head of the CIA has said US strikes “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear facilities and set them back years, diverging from a leaked intelligence report that angered President Donald Trump by downplaying the raid’s impact.

John Ratcliffe, the US spy agency’s director, said key sites had been destroyed, though he stopped short of declaring that Iran’s nuclear programme had been eliminated outright.

It comes a day after a leaked preliminary assessment from a Pentagon intelligence agency suggested core components of Iran’s nuclear programme remained intact after the US bombings.

President Trump again maintained the raid had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Republican president took to social media on Wednesday to post that the “fake news” media had “lied and totally misrepresented the facts, none of which they had”.

He said Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth and other military officials would hold an “interesting and irrefutable” news conference on Thursday at the Pentagon “in order to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots”.

Watch: BBC’s Lyse Doucet reports from Iran during ceasefire with Israel

It came as Israel and Iran seemed for a second day to be honouring a fragile ceasefire that Trump helped negotiate this week on the 12th day of the war.

Speaking at The Hague where he attended a Nato summit on Wednesday, Trump said of the strikes: “It was very severe. It was obliteration.”

He also said he would probably seek a commitment from Iran to end its nuclear ambitions at talks next week. Iran has not acknowledged any such negotiations.

But US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told US network NBC there has been direct and indirect communication between the countries.

The statement from Ratcliffe, who was appointed by Trump, said the CIA’s information included “new intelligence from an historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years”.

Watch: Lawmakers split on US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has also come out in support of Trump’s assessment on the damage to Iranian nuclear facilities.

“If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordo, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do,” she wrote on X.

The US operation involved 125 military aircraft, targeting the three main Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday.

New satellite images show six craters clustered around two entry points at Fordo, with similar craters spotted at Isfahan. But it is unclear if the nuclear facilities located deep underground were wiped out.

A report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency was leaked to US media on Tuesday, estimating that the US bombing had set back Iran’s nuclear programme “only a few months”.

The US defence secretary said that assessment was made with “low confidence”.

Officials familiar with the evaluation cautioned it was an early assessment that could change as more information emerges. The US has 18 intelligence agencies, which sometimes produce conflicting reports based on their mission and area of expertise.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday that there is a chance Tehran moved much of its highly enriched uranium elsewhere as it came under attack.

But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Al Jazeera on Wednesday: “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.” He did not elaborate.

Nato boss commends ‘daddy’ Trump’s handling of Israel-Iran conflict

A report by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission said the strike on Fordo “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure”.

The damage across all the sites, the report said, has pushed Iran’s timeline for nuclear weapons back by “many years”.

Yet Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to the chairman of the Iranian parliament, said shortly after the US strikes that “no irreversible damage was sustained” at Fordo.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is peaceful. US intelligence agencies have previously said Tehran was not actively building atomic weapons.



Source link

Womb lining test offers miscarriage hope to women


Philippa Roxby

Health Reporter

Charlie Beattie

Charlie Beattie holds her nine-week-old baby in her arms after many years of miscarriages

UK scientists say they have developed a test which can help identify women with an abnormal womb lining that increases their risk of miscarriage.

They say their work could pave the way for new treatments for those going through repeated pregnancy loss.

In some women with a history of miscarriage, the womb lining doesn’t react the way it should – transforming into a supportive place for the embryo to implant, the Warwick University team discovered.

Charities say the findings could help provide an explanation, in some cases, for the trauma and devastation of recurrent miscarriage.

Around one in six of all pregnancies are lost, most before twelve weeks, and each miscarriage increases the risk of another one happening.

To date, most research in this area has focused on the quality of the embryo, with much less known about the role of the womb lining.

Dr Jo Muter, study author and researcher at Warwick Medical School, said: “Many women are told they’ve just had ‘bad luck’, but our findings show that the womb itself may be setting the stage for pregnancy loss, even before conception takes place.”

The job of the womb lining is to receive the embryo and help it develop during pregnancy, thanks to a reaction which converts cells into a different, supportive state.

But when that reaction is messed up and doesn’t fully happen, the risk of bleeding and early pregnancy rises.

Once a woman has had one faulty reaction, she is more likely to have another, the researchers say.

They’ve developed a new test which can measure signs of a healthy or defective reaction in the womb lining, which is being piloted to help more than 1,000 patients at Tommy’s National Centre for Miscarriage Research at University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire (UHCW).

‘A tiny miracle’

Charlie Beattie, 37, had countless early miscarriages over the course of four years, to the point where “a positive pregnancy test wasn’t exciting any more”, she says.

She and her husband Sam, from Leamington Spa, felt devastated and resigned to considering other options for having a family.

Then they found out about at a trial taking place at the miscarriage research centre.

Charlie had a sample of her womb taken, and the new test showed it was not “hospitable for babies”, she says.

After taking the drug sitagliptin for three months, she had a pregnancy which finally stuck – and nine-week-old June is the joyful result.

“She’s a tiny miracle. It doesn’t feel real,” says Charlie.

She admits being anxious all the way through her pregnancy until June was safely in her arms.

Even the pregnancy scans were a new experience.

“We’d never seen anything on a scan before that moved,” she says. “When they said ‘I can see it, it’s in the right place’, we both burst into tears.”

Anyone can refer themselves to the clinic, but it has a long waiting list and funding issues mean patients must contribute to the cost of the test.

Dr Jyotsna Vohra, director of research at Tommy’s, said care and treatment for those who experience pregnancy or baby loss varied unacceptably across the UK.

“There should be no barriers to accessing any test or treatment that has been proven to make a difference.

“We hope NHS decision-makers will look carefully at the results of the Coventry pilot project and consider rolling this test out nationwide, so that everyone who might benefit has that opportunity.”

Dr Muter says the next step is to use the test to assess potential drug treatments. Sitagliptin, usually used to treat diabetes, is the go-to option for womb lining issues but there may be other existing drugs which can be repurposed, she added.

With 80% of drugs not tested on pregnant women, it’s unclear which ones might be effective.



Source link

Synthetic Human Genome Project gets go ahead


Gwyndaf Hughes

Science Videographer

How the researchers hope to create human DNA

Work has begun on a controversial project to create the building blocks of human life from scratch, in what is believed to be a world first.

The research has been taboo until now because of concerns it could lead to designer babies or unforeseen changes for future generations.

But now the World’s largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has given an initial £10m to start the project and says it has the potential to do more good than harm by accelerating treatments for many incurable diseases.

Dr Julian Sale, of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who is part of the project, told BBC News the research was the next giant leap in biology.

“The sky is the limit. We are looking at therapies that will improve people’s lives as they age, that will lead to healthier aging with less disease as they get older.

“We are looking to use this approach to generate disease-resistant cells we can use to repopulate damaged organs, for example in the liver and the heart, even the immune system,” he said.

But critics fear the research opens the way for unscrupulous researchers seeking to create enhanced or modified humans.

Dr Pat Thomas, director of the campaign group Beyond GM, said: “We like to think that all scientists are there to do good, but the science can be repurposed to do harm and for warfare”.

Details of the project were given to BBC News on the 25th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, which mapped the molecules in human DNA and was also largely funded by Wellcome.

Getty Images

Artwork: The aim is to build sections of human DNA from scratch

Every cell in our body contains a molecule called DNA which carries the genetic information it needs. DNA is built from just four much smaller blocks referred to as A, G, C and T, which are repeated over and over again in various combinations. Amazingly it contains all the genetic information that physically makes us who we are.

The Human Genome Project enabled scientists to read all human genes like a bar code. The new work that is getting under way, called the Synthetic Human Genome Project, potentially takes this a giant leap forward – it will allow researchers not just to read a molecule of DNA, but to create parts of it – maybe one day all of it – molecule by molecule from scratch.

BBC News

Scientists will begin developing tools to create ever larger sections of human DNA

The scientists’ first aim is to develop ways of building ever larger blocks of human DNA, up to the point when they have synthetically constructed a human chromosome. These contain the genes that govern our development, repair and maintenance.

These can then be studied and experimented on to learn more about how genes and DNA regulate our bodies.

Many diseases occur when these genes go wrong so the studies could lead to better treatments, according to Prof Matthew Hurles, director of the Wellcome Sanger Insititute which sequenced the largest proportion of the Human Genome.

“Building DNA from scratch allows us to test out how DNA really works and test out new theories, because currently we can only really do that by tweaking DNA in DNA that already exists in living systems”.

BBC News

These machines used to read human DNA may soon be used to write sections of it

The project’s work will be confined to test tubes and dishes and there will be no attempt to create synthetic life. But the technology will give researchers unprecedented control over human living systems.

And although the project is hunting for medical benefits, there is nothing to stop unscrupulous scientists misusing the technology.

They could, for example, attempt to create biological weapons, enhanced humans or even creatures that have human DNA, according to Prof Bill Earnshaw, a highly respected genetic scientist at Edinburgh University who designed a method for creating artificial human chromosomes.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” he told BBC News. “We could have a set of restrictions now, but if an organisation who has access to appropriate machinery decided to start synthesising anything, I don’t think we could stop them”

Ms Thomas is concerned about how the technology will be commercialised by healthcare companies developing treatments emerging from the research.

“If we manage to create synthetic body parts or even synthetic people, then who owns them. And who owns the data from these creations? “

Given the potential misuse of the technology, the question for Wellcome is why they chose to fund it. The decision was not made lightly, according to Dr Tom Collins, who gave the funding go-ahead.

“We asked ourselves what was the cost of inaction,” he told BBC News.

“This technology is going to be developed one day, so by doing it now we are at least trying to do it in as responsible a way as possible and to confront the ethical and moral questions in an upfront way as possible”.

A dedicated social science programmewill run in tandem with the project’s scientific development and will be led by Prof Joy Zhang, a sociologist, at the University of Kent.

“We want to get the views of experts, social scientists and especially the public about how they relate to the technology and how it can be beneficial to them and importanlty what questions and concerns they have,” she said.



Source link

Emily Eavis on Glastonbury’s magical ‘Thursday Feeling’


Ros Atkins

Analysis Editor, BBC News

PA Media

Michael and Emily Eavis opened the gates to Glastonbury on Wednesday morning

Last year, in an unlikely development, I was booked to DJ at Glastonbury Festival. When I arrived on Thursday afternoon, one thing struck me straight away.

There was a very particular atmosphere. I’d best describe is as a sense of release – of a wait being over. I’d never seen or felt anything like it.

That Thursday feeling stayed with me. I kept thinking about it in the months afterwards

Though the main stages open on Friday and run all weekend, Glastonbury is a five-day festival.

To its organiser, Emily Eavis, the first two days are special. The festival was started by her parents, Michael and Jean, and her memories are intertwined with family life.

“Traditionally, it would be me and my dad who go down to open the gates on Wednesday,” she says.

“It’s like letting people into Christmas in a way, you know? It’s sort of like musical Christmas, because they’re in the best state of mind.”

Over the next two days, the site fills up. And, at some point, almost everyone is in.

“Normally Thursday afternoon is when we reach capacity,” Emily tells me. “I get a message when we know that the site is full.

“I love the Thursday. I love energy of the Thursday.”

She then describes the same phenomenon I noticed last year.

“There’s a palpable feeling of excitement, anticipation. People want to see everything and touch everything and be there together. It’s a feeling of community, and big gangs of friends all reuniting.’

“A palpable feeling of excitement,” is the perfect way of putting it.

Getty Images

BBC presenter Ros Atkins has a side hustle as a drum and bass DJ

The opening of the festival is something Emily has been witnessing her whole life – although it predates her by 10 years.

In 1970, her farmer parents organised the Pilton Pop, Folk and Blues Festival, with glam rocker Marc Bolan, ’60s pop star Wayne Fontana and singer-songwriter Al Stewart playing in his back garden.

“I think this is the quickest way of clearing my overdraft,” said Michael, when asked why he was staging a concert in the field where his dairy cows typically grazed.

With a few fits and starts, that event went on to become the UK’s most recognisable music festival.

And while it has changed over the years, some things have stayed the same.

‘When I was little, it was very different to how it is now because it was so much smaller, it was a very few people,” says Emily.

“But they still had the same look in their eyes which they have now, which is cheer, determination and commitment and joy and excitement and kind of magic.

“The look of, like, they’re going to make this five days the best five days of their life and it’s an amazing thing to witness.”

WATCH: ‘It’s absolutely ideal. It’s a kind of a euphoria down here, away from the awful realities of life’.

It was an amazing thing to witness first-hand last year. And as Emily once more sees the valley fill up, to my delight, I’m one of those who’s pitching their tent.

I’ll be DJing at Stonebridge on Thursday night and doing my best to capture the sense of expectation and possibility.

To do that, I’ve been getting some help from Radio 1’s Greg James and his listeners – and from Drum & Bass DJ and producer Crissy Criss.

Last week, I took the lift from the BBC newsroom all the way to the top of London’s Broadcasting House and joined Greg on his show.

We talked about Glastonbury – and Greg asked his listeners to send us voice notes describing the way they feel as the festival kicks off. A good number of them did.

We then sampled some of those messages – alongside my interview with Emily Eavis.

Crissy Criss has scattered those samples across a track that’s a celebration of what Thursday at Glastonbury is all about.

Greg will introduce the track at the Stonebridge venue where I’m DJing.

As you can probably tell, that Thursday last year had quite an impact on me.

As one of Greg’s listeners put it: “You set yourself up, you’ve got your drink. Life is good. You are where you’re meant to be.”

Or in the words of Emily Eavis: “They’re going to make this five days the best five days of their life.”

The BBC has extensive coverage of the festival over the next few days on TV, iPlayer, radio and BBC Sounds.



Source link

Hamas official says Gaza mediators intensifying ceasefire efforts


Rushdi Abualouf

Gaza correspondent

Reuters

Funerals were held at Gaza City for Palestinians reportedly killed in a Israeli air strikes

A senior Hamas official has told the BBC that mediators have intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.

The comments came as US President Donald Trump said “great progress” was being made since Israel and Iran ended their 12-day war on Tuesday, and that his envoy Steve Witkoff thought an agreement between Israel and Hamas was “very close”.

Israeli attacks across Gaza on Wednesday killed at least 45 Palestinians, including some who were seeking aid, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military announced that seven soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on Tuesday claimed by Hamas.

“I think great progress is being made on Gaza, I think because of this attack that we made,” President Trump told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday, referring to the US air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities carried out at the weekend amid the conflict between Israel and Iran.

“I think we’re going to have some very good news. I was talking to Steve Witkoff… [and] he did tell me that Gaza’s very close,” he added.

Shortly after Trump spoke, the senior Hamas official told the BBC that mediators were “engaged in intensive contacts aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement”.

However, he added that the group had “not received any new proposal so far”.

An Israeli official also told the Haaretz newspaper that there has been no progress in the negotiations, and that major disagreements remained unresolved.

Efforts by the US, Qatar and Egypt to broker a deal stalled at the end of May, when Witkoff said Hamas had sought “totally unacceptable” amendments to a US proposal backed by Israel for a 60-day truce, during which half the living Israeli hostages and half of those who have died would be released.

Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on 18 March, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release its hostages. Fifty are still in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel also imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings from global experts that half a million people were facing starvation.

At the same time, Israel and the US backed the establishment of a new aid distribution mechanism run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is intended to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Palestinians. They said the GHF’s system would prevent aid being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies doing.

Reuters

In the town of Beit Lahia, crowds gathered around aid lorries guarded by armed members of local clans

The GHF, which uses US private security contractors, says it has distributed food packages containing more than 44 million meals since it began operating on 26 May, with more than 2.4 million handed out at three sites on Wednesday.

However, the UN and other aid groups have refused to co-operate with the GHF, accusing it of co-operating with Israel’s goals in a way that violates fundamental humanitarian principles.

They have also expressed alarm at the near-daily reports of Palestinians being killed near the group’s sites, which are inside Israeli military zones.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 549 people have been killed and 4,000 injured while trying to collect aid since the GHF began distributing aid on 26 May.

On Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said six people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire at crowds waiting near one of the GHF’s food distribution centre in central Gaza.

Three others were killed near a GHF site in the southern city of Rafah, he added.

However, the Israeli military said it was “not aware of any incidents with casualties in those areas”, while the GHF said the reports of any such incidents near its sites were false.

In Gaza City, funerals were held for some of the 33 people who the health ministry said had been killed over the previous day while waiting for aid.

“I say and repeat a million times,” Abu Mohammed told Reuters news agency. “These aid points are not aid points, these are death points.”

Unicef spokesman James Elder, who has just visited Gaza, said: “So long as a population is denied food, people are being offered this lethal choice and, unfortunately, because it’s in a combat zone, it cannot improve.”

The Civil Defence spokesman also said another six people, including a child, were killed in an air strike on a house early on Wednesday in Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza.

Five others were killed when homes in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, he said.

More than 860 Palestinians were reported killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during the Israel-Iran conflict, which began when Israel launched an air campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Iran launched barrages of missiles towards Israel in response.

People in Gaza were divided in their assessments of what the ceasefire meant for the territory.

Some viewed the weakening of Iran, Hamas’s key regional backer, as a potentially positive step towards achieving a truce in Gaza because it might force the group to ease its demands.

Others, however, feared the end of the conflict would allow Israel to redirect its military focus back on Gaza and intensify its air and ground operations.

One man in Khan Younis, Nader Ramadan, told the BBC that it felt like “everything got worse” in Gaza during the conflict.

“The [Israeli] bombing intensified, the damage increased, and the incursion expanded in certain areas… We only felt the destruction,” he said.

Adel Abu Reda said the most difficult thing was the lack of access to aid. He said items were being looted and sold for inflated prices, and civilians were coming under Israeli fire when trying to get food.

“What are we supposed to do?” he asked. “We feel the shooting and the killing all the time.”

Reuters

One of the Israeli soldiers killed in the Khan Younis attack, Sgt Shahar Manoav, was buried in Ashkelon

In Israel, the military announced that seven of its soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Gaza on Tuesday – the deadliest such incident since the ceasefire collapsed.

Spokesman Brig-Gen Effie Defrin said an explosive device was attached to an armoured vehicle in the Khan Younis area, and that the blast caused the vehicle to catch fire. Helicopters and rescue forces made several unsuccessful attempts to rescue them, he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was “a difficult day for the people of Israel”.

The deaths renewed pressure on Netanyahu to agree a ceasefire, with the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party in his governing coalition saying Israel should end the war and bring home all the hostages.

“I don’t understand what we’re fighting for and for what purpose… when soldiers are being killed all the time?” Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism told the Israeli parliament.

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

At least 56,157 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Additional reporting by Alice Cuddy in Jerusalem



Source link

Starmer ‘in denial’ and ‘from Russia with shove’


Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is “in denial” about the scale of Labour MPs’ welfare rebellion writes the Guardian. Some cabinet ministers “are now said to believe the welfare reform bill has no chance of passing in its current form”, it adds. Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte grins at US President Donald Trump in a photo captioned “who is the daddy?” with the paper describing the pair’s “budding bromance” – Rutte called the president a “daddy” after the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Trump and Starmer look stony-faced as other world leaders grin around them in a group photo from the Nato summit splashed across the FT’s front page. Each country in the group has pledged to “meet Donald Trump’s demand” to spend 5% of its GDP on defence. In other front page news for the FT one “leftwinger’s bid to be New York mayor” has spurred a “Wall St hunt for a moderate rival”. Democratic candidate Zohan Mamdani has “unexpectedly clinched the party’s nomination” and financiers were “discussing who to back as a centrist candidate” within hours.

Starmer is “set to back down on benefits”, reports the Daily Telegraph, “as Labour rebellion grows”. More than 120 Labour MPs have now signed an amendment to block the cuts to disability and sickness-related payments. The Labour government also “wants to call time on adverts for alcohol” ahead of the watershed. Further from home, “Trump vents his fury at ‘scum’ who leaked Iran bombing intelligence”. A report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency “suggested Iran’s nuclear programme had not been destroyed, but set back by only a few months”.

The PM is “ready to retreat on benefit cuts to end rebellion” writes the i Paper, echoing the Telegraph. In an exclusive for the paper, it also carries an interview with Leon Panetta, the former head of the CIA. “I ran the CIA – Trump is making scary mistakes,” he is quoted as saying.

The Times runs with “rebel MPs want ‘regime change'”. An MP the paper describes as a “ringleader” tells the Times they “hoped the revolt would lead to a clear-out of staff in Downing Street”. The unnamed source added they think the PM “needs fewer over-excitable boys on his team”. Also on its front page, “US officials to visit Iran for talks on nuclear programme”. Trump announced the talks at the Nato summit.

The Sun’s lead story headlines on “from Russia with shove”, reporting the claim Vladimir Putin “is pushing migrants to the UK to overwhelm border defences and sow division”. The claim comes from an unnamed security source. Security Minister Dan Jarvis is quoted saying “national security is the first duty of any government and that means securing our borders”.

In a showbiz exclusive, the Daily Star says “it’s call over” for Call the Midwife as the programme ends “after 15 years with blockbuster film”.

The Daily Mirror reports “ten people have died after they reported a severe side effect of weight loss injections”. A new study will be led by Prof Matt Brown, who tells the Mirror “like all medicines, there can be a risk”.

The Daily Mail’s front page is taken up with the launch of a new campaign to keep the Legacy Act in place, legislation brought in by the last Conservative government. The law relates to the Troubles in Northern Ireland and offers conditional amnesties for some participants in the conflict. It has been criticised by unionist and nationalist parties in Northern Ireland, and Labour has committed to repealing it.

The Express leads on a story about a group of nurses in Darlington challenging their health trust’s policy over allowing a trans colleague to use the female changing rooms at work.



Source link

The abandoned Florida airport being turned into ‘Alligator Alcatraz’


Cecilia Barría and Walter Fojo

BBC Mundo

Reporting fromEverglades, Florida

Watch: ‘I have grave concerns’ – Advocate weighs environmental impact of “Alligator Alcatraz”

A convoy of trucks carrying tents, construction materials and portable toilets flows into a virtually abandoned airport in Florida’s picturesque Everglades, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But they’re not helping build the region’s next big tourist attraction.

Instead they’re laying the foundations for a new migrant detention facility, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”.

The facility, in the middle of a Miami swamp, was proposed by state lawmakers to support US President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda.

“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter. If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons,” explains the state’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, in a video set to rock music and posted on social media.

The new detention centre is being built on the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, about 43 miles (70km) from central Miami, in the middle of the Everglades, an ecologically important subtropical wetland.

The airfield where the detention centre will be based is mainly a pilot training runway surrounded by vast swamps.

In the stifling summer heat rife with mosquitoes, we managed to advance only a few metres into the compound when, as expected, a guard in a lorry blocked our way.

We hear sounds coming from a small canal next to the compound. We wonder whether it’s fish, snakes, or the hundreds of alligators that roam the wetland.

Florida answers Trump’s call

Although the airstrip belongs to Miami-Dade County, the decision to turn it into a detention centre was made following a 2023 executive order by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, invoking emergency powers to stem the flow of undocumented migrants.

The new centre, which according to authorities will have the capacity to accommodate around 1,000 detainees and will begin operations in July or August, is quickly becoming a controversial symbol of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, DeSantis hinted that the Alligator Alcatraz being built in the middle of a swamp might not be the last.

“We’ll probably also do something similar up at Camp Blanding,” DeSantis said, referring to the former US Army training facility over 300 miles north.

He said a state official was “working on that” and would have a formal announcement “very, very quickly”.

As Trump orders immigration authorities to carry out “the single largest mass deportation programme in history”, human rights organisations say detention centres are becoming overcrowded.

According to data obtained by CBS News, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a record 59,000 detainees nationwide, 140% above its capacity.

Environmental and human rights concerns

Betty Osceola, a member of the Miccosukee Native American community, lives near the site and recently took part in a protest against the facility.

She suspects that rather than being a temporary site as authorities have stated, it will operate for months or even years.

“I have serious concerns about the environmental damage,” Ms Osceola tells us while we were talking next to a canal where an alligator was swimming.

She is also concerned about the living conditions that detainees may face in the new facility.

Those concerns are echoed by environmental organisations, such as Friends of the Everglades, and by human rights organisations in the U.S.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida told the BBC the proposed facility “is not just cruel and absurd. It underscores how our immigration system is increasingly being used to punish people rather than process them.”

Even ICE detention centres in populated areas, the ACLU said, “have well-documented histories of medical neglect, denial of legal access, and systemic mistreatment”.

BBC Mundo contacted the Florida attorney general’s office, but did not receive a response.

In the social media video, Uthmeier says the project is an “efficient” and “low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility”.

With the “Alligator Alcatraz”, he says, there will be “nowhere to go, nowhere to hide”.

Eve Samples

Betty Osceola is concerned about the environmental and human damage the new centre in the Everglades could cause

Facility is ‘cost-effective’, secretary says

Expanding, adapting, or building new detention centres has been one of the Trump administration’s main challenges in accelerating deportations.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement sent to the BBC that Florida will receive federal funds to establish the new detention centre.

“We are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” she added.

“We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida.”

Noem says that the facility will be funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which is responsible for disaster co-ordination.

Getty Images/Miami Herald

A truck carrying generators was seen driving into the site on Tuesday

Daniella Levine Cava, the Democratic mayor of Miami-Dade County, which owns the airstrip land, says that she has requested information from state authorities.

The mayor “clearly laid out several concerns” regarding the proposed use of the airport, namely around funding and environmental impacts, her office said in a statement to the BBC.

While immigration raids have increased in cities like Los Angeles, the operations to detain migrants seem to be so far less widespread in Miami Dade County and South Florida.

Many undocumented Latinos prefer to stay at home because they are afraid of being arrested and sent to detention centres, according to testimonies gathered by BBC Mundo.



Source link