In the latest India-Pakistan stand-off, there were no ultimatums, no red buttons.

Yet the cycle of military retaliation, veiled signals and swift international mediation quietly evoked the region’s most dangerous shadow. The crisis didn’t spiral towards nuclear war, but it was a reminder of how quickly tensions here can summon that spectre.

Even scientists have modelled how easily things could unravel. A 2019 study by a global team of scientists opened with a nightmare scenario where a terrorist attack on India’s parliament in 2025 triggers a nuclear exchange with Pakistan.

Six years later, a real-world stand-off – though contained by a US-brokered ceasefire on Saturday – stoked fears of a full-blown conflict. It also revived uneasy memories of how fragile stability in the region can be.

As the crisis escalated, Pakistan sent “dual signals” – retaliating militarily while announcing a National Command Authority (NCA) meeting, a calculated reminder of its nuclear capability. The NCA oversees control and potential use of the country’s nuclear arsenal. Whether this move was symbolic, strategic or a genuine alert, we may never know. It also came just as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly stepped in to defuse the spiral.

President Trump said the US didn’t just broker a ceasefire – it averted a “nuclear conflict”. On Monday, in an address to the nation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “[There] is no tolerance for nuclear blackmail; India will not be intimidated by nuclear threats.

“Any terrorist safe haven operating under this pretext will face precise and decisive strikes,” Modi added.

India and Pakistan each possess about 170 nuclear weapons, according to the think-tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). As of January 2024, Sipri estimated there were 12,121 nuclear warheads worldwide. Of these, about 9,585 were held in military stockpiles, with 3,904 actively deployed – 60 more than the previous year. The US and Russia together account for more than 8,000 nuclear weapons.

The bulk of both India’s and Pakistan’s deployed arsenals lies in their land-based missile forces, though both are developing nuclear triads capable of delivering warheads by land, air and sea, according to Christopher Clary, a security affairs expert at the University at Albany in the US.

“India likely has a larger air leg (aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons) than Pakistan. While we know the least of Pakistan’s naval leg, it is reasonable to assess that India’s naval leg is more advanced and more capable than Pakistan’s sea-based nuclear force,” he told the BBC.

One reason, Mr Clary said, is that Pakistan has invested nowhere near the “time or money” that India has in building a nuclear-powered submarine, giving India a “clear qualitative” edge in naval nuclear capability.

Since testing nuclear weapons in 1998, Pakistan has never formally declared an official nuclear doctrine.

India, by contrast, adopted a no-first-use policy following its own 1998 tests. But this stance has shown signs of softening. In 2003, India reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in response to chemical or biological attacks – effectively allowing for first use under certain conditions.

Further ambiguity emerged in 2016, when then–defence minister Manohar Parrikar suggested India shouldn’t feel “bound” by the policy, raising questions about its long-term credibility. (Parrikar clarified that this was his own opinion.)

The absence of a formal doctrine doesn’t mean Pakistan lacks one – official statements, interviews and nuclear developments offer clear clues to its operational posture, according to Sadia Tasleem of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Pakistan’s nuclear threshold remains vague, but in 2001, Khalid Kidwai – then head of the Strategic Plans Division of the NCA – outlined four red lines: major territorial loss, destruction of key military assets, economic strangulation or political destabilisation.

In 2002, then-president Pervez Musharraf clarified that “nuclear weapons are aimed solely at India”, and would only be used if “the very existence of Pakistan as a state” was at stake.

In his memoir, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote that he was jolted awake at night to speak with an unnamed “Indian counterpart” who feared Pakistan was preparing to use nuclear weapons during the 2019 stand-off with India.

Around the same time, Pakistani media quoted a senior official issuing a stark warning to India: “I hope you know what the [National Command Authority] means and what it constitutes. I said that we will surprise you. Wait for that surprise… You have chosen a path of war without knowing the consequences for the peace and security of the region.”

During the 1999 Kargil War, Pakistan’s then-foreign secretary Shamshad Ahmed warned that the country would not “hesitate to use any weapon” to defend its territory. Years later, US official Bruce Riedel revealed that intelligence indicated Pakistan was preparing its nuclear arsenal for possible deployment.

But there is scepticism on both sides over such claims.

Former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria wrote in his memoir that Pompeo overstated both the risk of nuclear escalation and the US role in calming the conflict in 2019. And during Kargil, Pakistan “knew the Indian Air Force wouldn’t cross into its territory” – so there was no real trigger for even an implicit nuclear threat, insist Pakistani analysts.

“Strategic signalling reminds the world that any conflict can spiral – and with India and Pakistan, the stakes are higher due to the nuclear overhang. But that doesn’t mean either side is actively threatening nuclear use,” Ejaz Haider, a Lahore-based defence analyst, told the BBC.

But nuclear escalation can happen by accident too. “This could happen by human error, hackers, terrorists, computer failures, bad data from satellites and unstable leaders,” Prof Alan Robock of Rutgers University, lead author of the landmark 2019 paper by a global team of scientists, told the BBC.

In March 2022, India accidentally fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile which travelled 124km (77 miles) into Pakistani territory before crashing, reportedly damaging civilian property. Pakistan said India failed to use the military hotline or issue a public statement for two days. Had this occurred during heightened tensions, the incident could have spiralled into serious conflict, experts say. (Months later, India’s government sacked three air force officers for the “accidental firing of a missile”.)

Yet, the danger of nuclear war remains “relatively small” between India and Pakistan, according to Mr Clary.

“So long as there is not major ground combat along the border, the dangers of nuclear use remain relatively small and manageable,” he said.

“In ground combat, the ‘use it or lose it’ problem is propelled by the possibility that your ground positions will be overrun by the enemy.” (‘Use it or lose it‘ refers to the pressure a nuclear-armed country may feel to launch its weapons before they are destroyed in a first strike by an adversary.)

Sumit Ganguly, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, believes that “neither India nor Pakistan wants to be labelled as the first violator of the post-Hiroshima nuclear taboo”.

“Furthermore, any side that resorts to the use of nuclear weapons would face substantial retaliation and suffer unacceptable casualties,” Mr Ganguly told the BBC.

At the same time, both India and Pakistan appear to be beefing up their nuclear arsenal.

With new delivery systems in development, four plutonium reactors and expanding uranium enrichment, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could reach around 200 warheads by the late 2020s, according to The Nuclear Notebook, researched by the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project.

And as of early 2023, India was estimated to have about 680kg of weapons-grade plutonium – enough for roughly 130-210 nuclear warheads, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials.

Despite repeated crises and close calls, both sides have so far managed to avoid a catastrophic slide into nuclear conflict. “The deterrent is still holding. All Pakistanis did was to respond to conventional strikes with counter-conventional strikes of their own,” writes Umer Farooq, an Islamabad-based analyst.

Yet, the presence of nuclear weapons injects a constant undercurrent of risk – one that can never be entirely ruled out, no matter how experienced the leadership or how restrained the intentions.

“When nuclear weapons can be involved, there is always an unacceptable level of danger,”John Erath, senior policy director at the non-profit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told the BBC.

“The Indian and Pakistani governments have navigated these situations in the past, so the risk is small. But with nuclear weapons, even a small risk is too large.”

Family doctors in England are deeply divided on the issue of assisted dying, BBC research on plans to legalise the practice suggests.

The findings give a unique insight into how strongly many GPs feel about the proposed new law – and highlight how personal beliefs and experiences are shaping doctors’ views on the issue.

BBC News sent more than 5,000 GPs a questionnaire asking whether they agreed with changing the law to allow assisted dying for certain terminally ill people in England and Wales.

More than 1,000 GPs replied, with about 500 telling us they were against an assisted dying law and about 400 saying they were in favour.

Some of the 500 GPs who told us they were against the law change called the bill “appalling”, “highly dangerous”, and “cruel”. “We are doctors, not murderers,” one said.

Of the 400 who said they supported assisted dying, some described the bill as “long overdue” and “a basic human right”.

“We are keeping human bodies alive in the most inhumane manner,” one said. They asked: “How do we ethically justify forcing these bodies to continue to exist in decrepitude?”

We cannot know whether the GPs who responded to the BBC are representative of all family doctors.

It comes as MPs will this week again debate proposed changes to the controversial bill, with a vote in parliament expected on whether to pass or block it next month.

If assisted dying does become legal in England and Wales, it would be a historic change for society.

Current laws prevent medics from helping any patient to carry out their wish to die. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill would allow any doctor to be involved in assisted dying, but GPs are often a large part of the practice in other countries. On Tuesday, a separate bill to legalise assisted dying in Scotland passed an initial vote.

The BBC’s research, carried out over a few weeks in March and April, is the first in-depth look at how GPs in England feel about the proposed new law.

Nine out of 10 GPs who said they were against legalising assisted dying worried terminally ill patients would consider it because they felt guilty about being a burden on their loved ones or the health service.

“The right to die becomes a duty to die for those who feel a burden on family,” said one GP.

Another common concern was patients might be coerced. Some told us they had treated elderly people with family members they suspected of being more focussed on their inheritance than their relatives.

More than half of the group who opposed a law change said it would be against their religious beliefs.

They spoke about life being “sacred” and called assisted dying “sinful”. Some referred to the commandment “thou shalt not kill”.

Another argument from those who said they were against assisted dying was the health system should instead focus on improving end-of-life care.

One GP said creating an assisted dying law was “scandalous” when hospices were largely funded by charities rather than by the state.

Separately, on Tuesday the Royal College of Psychiatrists said that while the group “remains neutral” on the principle of assisted dying, it “just cannot support this bill”.

In an interview with BBC’s Newsnight, the college’s president Dr Lade Smith cited a lack of requirements concerning the “unmet needs” of patients, and a shortage of psychiatrists to process requests.

“We’re concerned that there isn’t a requirement to think about any unmet needs a person might have. A person with a terminal illness… they may be in pain, they have difficulty with their housing, their finances because they haven’t been able to work, they might feel lonely, isolated,” Dr Smith said.

Dr Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing said there was a “black hole” in the hospice budget and “we need better care not killing”.

More than 400 GPs told us they supported a law change, with some describing feeling “traumatised” and “haunted” by watching people die in “severe pain or distress”.

Of those who said they were in favour, more than nine in 10 respondents believed it could allow patients to have a dignified death.

Some shared personal experiences: telling us about watching their parents losing dignity or begging to die. One said their sick wife prayed every evening to not wake up in the morning.

Those who backed assisted dying often spoke about patient choice, arguing it was patronising not to let people decide how they wanted to die.

Wanting the option of an assisted death for themselves or their loved ones was another common reason for supporting the law.

“Personally, I would find this a comfort and I resent those who take this choice away from me,” one told us.

If assisted dying does become law in England and Wales, it would apply to certain terminally ill patients who were reasonably expected to die within six months.

But more than a quarter of all the GPs who responded told us they would rarely, or never be confident assessing if a patient was expected to die in that time frame.

“It’s unpredictable even in the severely frail,” one said.

No doctor would be obliged to work in assisted dying. Of the 1,000 GP respondents, more than 500 told us they would be willing to discuss assisted dying with a patient.

Nearly 300 would assess if a patient was eligible and 161 said they would prepare a substance for a patient to take to end their own life.

Prof Kamila Hawthorne, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the BBC’s research showed GPs had “real concerns about the practical and legal implications of a change in the law on assisted dying”.

“These must be acknowledged and addressed, so that any legislation is watertight,” she said.

Sarah Wootton, chief executive of Dignity in Dying, said GPs and other medics will “rightly be considering how they will navigate” the proposed law.

She said evidence from assisted dying laws in Australia and the US showed it could be carried out “safely and effectively, with far reaching benefits for end-of-life care and robust protections for both patients and doctors”.

Additional reporting by Vicki Loader, Elena Bailey, Natalie Wright and Hannah Karpel

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Just before Christmas, in a private dining room in the upmarket Charlotte Street Hotel in the heart of London’s Soho, the BBC’s director general gathered some of the UK’s leading TV creatives and executives for lunch. As they ate, surrounded by kaleidoscopic-patterned wallpaper and giant artworks, they were also chewing over the future survival of their own industry.

As solutions were thrown around to what many see as an acute funding crisis in the age of global streaming, one of the invitees suggested, in passing, that BBC Studios (the corporation’s commercial content-producing arm) could merge with Channel 4 to create a bigger, more powerful force to compete with the likes of Disney Plus, Netflix and Amazon.

As another diner knocked down the idea, I’m told that Tim Davie, the BBC’s DG, asked why it was so ridiculous.

I relate that not because it has come to fruition. It hasn’t. Nor even to suggest that the Director General supports the idea.

Instead the story illustrates the belief, among some within the broadcasting industry, that nothing should be off the table when it comes to contemplating how to ensure the survival of British-originated and British-focused TV as we know it.

Many of the people I spoke to for this piece didn’t want to be quoted. But Sir Peter Bazalgette, the former Chairman of ITV, told me that what he termed the current “generous spread” of British broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5) will need some consolidation or, at the very least, more cooperation in future.

“We’re in danger of having no public service broadcasting within a decade, certainly within 20 years,” he says. “We don’t have a strategy for their survival. It’s that serious. The regulators need to start thinking about it.

“Mergers may well be part of the answer. There should be fewer companies in the future.”

Lord Vaizey, who was Culture Minister under David Cameron, put it baldly. “ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 should merge.

“The UK only has room for two domestic broadcasters.”

Others, however, argue that distinctiveness is good for viewers. Channel 5 President Sarah Rose told me she “couldn’t disagree with Ed Vaizey more” – calling it a “Doomsday prophecy”.

Channel 5 is profitable, she tells me; it invests in smaller production companies and offers plurality for British audiences. By having just one commercial channel, “You’re taking the funnel from three to one types of content for British audiences.”

Channel 4 also rejects the suggestion of any merger. Its outgoing CEO Alex Mahon argues that, “The unique structure of competition between our publicly funded and commercially funded broadcasters” is what makes UK public service TV “so excellent”.

And yet the days of turning on your TV and finding an electronic programme guide listing channels – with BBC1 and BBC2 at the top, then ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – are disappearing. The proposed date for the dawn of a new era is 2035; the end of traditional terrestrial TV as we know it.

When the increasingly expensive contracts to provide broadcast channels and digital terrestrial services like Freeview come to an end, the UK’s broadcasters are likely to pivot to offering digital-only video on demand. (However this won’t happen without a campaign to ensure older people are protected, as well as rural and low-income households who may not have high quality internet access.)

But if the aerials are turned off in 2035, is this the moment TV as we know it changes forever? If it becomes a battle between online-only British streamers and their better-funded US rivals, can the Brits survive? And, crucially, what will audiences be watching?

Flash forward to switching on the television in 2035 and there will of course have been certain technological transformations – perhaps more immersive viewing experiences or some shows viewed through augmented reality glasses. What’s highly likely, though, is that the communal big screen will still be a staple, (albeit probably voice-activated by then).

It’s a shift that has already begun with YouTube viewers changing their viewing habits and moving to the bigger screen. In 2024, for the first time, TV sets were the most-used device for watching content on the video sharing site at home, according to recent data from Barb Audiences. In all, 41% of YouTube viewing was done on TV sets, ahead of 31% on smartphones.

With YouTube an apparently unstoppable force, in ten years’ time it could well become the go-to viewing for the majority.

“We are likely to continue to see a shift in the share of viewing time and advertising revenue towards globally-scaled players and user-generated content platforms like YouTube and TikTok,” all within the next five years, according to Kate Scott-Dawkins, Global President for Business Intelligence at media investment company Group M.

There’ll also likely be Netflix, Disney, Apple, Amazon. In other words, the global players, based in the US, many of which also have other revenue streams (whether parks, computer hardware or a vast shopping platform).

Kate Scott-Dawkins tells me the UK broadcasters are facing what could be an “existential” battle against US-based media companies with “wildly different business models”.

The shift to streaming TV has, she says, “enabled large globally-scaled players to get even bigger and pour money into content that they can put in front of worldwide audiences”.

The “big players with big pockets” already pay for a bespoke button on certain remote controls, or their own content tile front and centre on the homepage on smart TVs.

Ms Scott-Dawkins believes that in the future it will be “a position of strength” to own the operating systems themselves, as well as the media that people are watching on them. Examples include Apple showing its films and television series on Apple TVs and iPhones, or Amazon showing its own productions via its Fire devices, or Google through its own computers and phones.

Part of the problem is that the UK terrestrial channels can’t compete financially with the streamers. Netflix, for example, is valued at $472bn (£356bn).

The BBC has lost 30% of its income – or £1bn a year – in real terms since 2010, as the licence fee has become worth less. ITV’s share price hasn’t yet recovered since the advertising downturn in 2022, despite its vast production arm, ITV Studios, boosting its earnings before tax to £299m.

Meanwhile, Channel 4’s recorded a deficit of £52m for 2023. Alex Mahon told Parliament last month, “We will pretty much break even in the year”.

Some TV insiders think the solution will be one gateway or app for all public service content: one place to find all shows from BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5.

Alex Mahon recently told a newspaper that there needs to be “more collaboration” between the UK broadcasters – a way of “making sure we’re not duplicating the same technology”.

ITV has spent hundreds of millions to create ITVX, its streaming platform for the Netflix-age. Channel 4 took a pioneering approach to its own digital transformation, launching 4oD back in 2006; the first broadcaster in the world to offer television content on-demand.

But while its current £1bn a year revenue enables it to compete as a significant content creator, this may not be enough to sustain a modern distribution platform with all the associated investment costs into the long term, according to some insiders.

Lord Hall, the former BBC Director General, is among those arguing that it’s not sustainable for individual broadcasters to continue going it alone. “The notion that everyone has their own portals when you are competing against the huge streamers is not going to survive into the future,” he says.

Could the solution be for BBC iPlayer, which has been built with public money, to become the portal for the other British public service media content, too? It would be a single place where viewers could find ITV’s The Chase, Channel 4’s The Great British Bake Off and Channel 5 News, alongside BBC’s The Traitors. This was one idea suggested to me by multiple TV insiders. “One big streamer under iPlayer”, as one TV executive described it to me, “a modern public service streaming service”.

Part of their argument is that it’s the fastest growing streaming service in the UK – and the only existing platform of plausible scale to compete.

With political support and the right deal, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 could potentially get behind sharing tech (after all, the streaming service Freely, which launched last year, already hosts their content with the BBC’s and others).

But the idea of branding this all under the BBC iPlayer is – unsurprisingly – not something that commercial broadcasters would likely entertain, according to conversations I’ve had.

Lord Hall believes, “It could be branded differently… It would be a very good step.”

He says: “The public would have to get used to the fact that BBC material would be free of advertising, and other parts of the platform would have adverts.”

If the idea of a shared streaming service sounds familiar, that’s because it was proposed years ago. Project Kangaroo was a plan by BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 for a UK video-on-demand joint venture. Think an early rival to Netflix.

But the UK’s Competition Commission blocked the project in 2009 because of concerns it could harm competition in the emerging VoD market.

Other regulators across Europe have also blocked mergers: In France, the TFI and M6 channels were prevented from merging. Two of the largest TV and radio broadcasters in the Netherlands, which would have combined eight national TV channels and four national radio stations, were also stopped for competition reasons.

Any form of merger between different public service broadcasters would be subject to the same scrutiny. It’s perhaps why Sir Peter Bazalgette is calling on UK politicians and regulators to focus on creating a strategy – or risk the end of British TV as we know it.

The BBC remains the most watched of the traditional broadcasters. Today, people in the UK spend more time watching traditional broadcasters than they do streaming services. Figures show 87% of people age four and above watch the traditional broadcasters each month and they spend an average of 137 minutes a day doing so. By comparison, 78% of people watch a streaming service and they spend only 40 minutes a day doing so.

If this does shift and the pattern reverses, TV producers and executives may be worried. But does it really matter to audiences?

Netflix is already making the types of shows that may have previously been made by the likes of the BBC (Adolescence, Toxic Town and Baby Reindeer are all very British stories made by the streamer). So what is the problem? (Aside from the obvious point that you need a subscription to watch Netflix.)

Ms Rose argues that the picture is “much more complex”. Creatives involved in those shows often cut their teeth in public service TV, she says – one of benefits of the traditional broadcasters is, she believes, that it is a pipeline of talent.

Sir Peter Bazalgette argues that they’re needed more than ever in our AI age to serve as “a gold standard of trusted news for our democracy, amid the online Tower of Babel.”

He also argues for programmes that reflect “our shared values and national conversation”. Would a US-based streamer have chosen to make Mr Bates v the Post Office (ITV), for example, or ‘Wolf Hall’ (BBC) or ‘It’s A Sin’ (Channel 4) – stories that are uniquely British and reflect who we are?

Backing producers to take risks is, says Lord Hall, “exactly what the BBC should be doing – but of course [it] has been doing less because the licence fee has been consistently cut”.

Ultimately, the American streamers are here to stay; they’re spending billions and their UK operations are often led by British executives who are supportive of Britain’s public service broadcasting scene.

I have also picked up a sense from those inside Netflix that the company is often used as a battering ram to persuade the government that the UK’s traditional broadcasters need more protections.

Some have also been critical of the BBC for, as they see it, wanting everything on its own terms: “‘We want you to give us your money for co-productions, but the BBC will make all the creative decisions’,” is how one insider put it to me, unfairly or not.

In 2018, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos was invited to the BBC’s New Broadcasting House in London. Invitees recall that he talked warmly about how influential the BBC’s iPlayer had been to the success of Netflix, describing how impressed he had been by a piece of kit that had got British viewers used to getting their video on demand.

With more than 17 million Brits now subscribed to Netflix, there is a certain irony to that.

Today, as the BBC’s Director General Tim Davie starts to position the BBC ahead of the renewal of the corporation’s charter after 2027, the TV landscape is changing fast. And the challenges are clear.

Lord Hall tells me: “Our lives will be enriched by having not only what the streamers can offer, but also what the public service broadcasters can bring. It’s unthinkable not to build on what the BBC and others can deliver”.

Sir Peter Bazalgette predicts that, “Small doesn’t cut it,” adding that, “The winners will have to be big enough to [both] afford high end dramas for winning subscribers and maintain large back catalogues to keep subscribers happy.”

He says we now live in “the ‘martini’ streaming age – any time, any place, anywhere”.

The question is whether the leaders of the public service broadcasters can forge the right plan to safeguard their industry in that age.

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If you ask these three doctors about being GPs, their answers are remarkably similar.

“It can be the best job in the world,” one tells me. It’s “a privilege” another says. They all talk about how they love getting to know their patients and their families.

But all three have different views on assisted dying.

Right now, the law here is clear: medics cannot help patients to take their own lives. But that could change.

The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is being debated in Parliament. And if it goes through, it will give some terminally ill patients in England and Wales the option of an assisted death.

Here, three doctors – Abdul Farooq, Susi Caesar and Gurpreet Khaira, who all have a different view on assisted dying – tell us how they feel about the proposals. The three were among more than 1,000 GPs to respond to a BBC questionnaire on assisted dying.

Dr Abdul Farooq is 28 and relatively new to his career as a GP.

We meet at his home in east London. He gives his baby daughter a bottle of milk before heading around the corner to pray in his local mosque.

His religion is absolutely key to his views on assisted dying.

“I believe in the sanctity of life. As a Muslim, I believe that life is a gift from God, and that no one has the right to take that away,” he says.

Dr Farooq feels taking your own life is wrong, and so, he says, it would be “sinful” for him to be involved in that process – even indirectly.

If this law passed – and a patient came to him asking for help to die – he would refer them to another doctor.

He says anything beyond that would be “a red line I would never cross”.

Dr Farooq’s objections are also informed by his professional experience, particularly his time working in a hospital.

He describes seeing “undignified deaths” – people passing away on busy wards – and says the health system is not getting the basics right in end-of-life care.

“There is so much we can do to make patients comfortable, if we have the right resources available,” he tells me.

“We have a whole field of medicine called palliative medicine that is there to help people towards the end of their life. So why are we not throwing all our resources and money into that and actually making the process of death less scary?”

He’s also concerned about specific parts of the proposed law. Doctors would have to assess if terminally ill patients are expected to die within six months before they are approved for an assisted death.

Dr Farooq sees this as problematic. The final day or so is easy to predict, he says, but adds that some patients he’s expected to die within six months can still be alive a year later.

Is there anything that could change his mind on assisted dying?

“No,” Dr Farooq says without hesitation. “I’m strongly against it. Personally and professionally, I think it’s the wrong thing to do for patients.”

Dr Susi Caesar has been a GP for 30 years and thinks she probably wouldn’t have previously been so vocal in her support of assisted dying.

Now, she says she is ready to “stick her head above the parapet”.

Recently she lost her beloved dad, Henning. We meet at a lake near Cirencester because being near water reminds her of him.

“My father was the most amazing person and this is so evocative of everything he loved,” she says. “The outdoors, walks, sailing, boats, kayaking, swimming.”

She thinks Henning would be proud of her for talking to us about her views because he was a long-term believer in assisted dying.

When he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, Dr Caesar says he became “terribly scared about the manner of his dying”.

“My father was a very proud man, and the thing that was unbearable to him was the idea that he would lose control at the end of his life – of his bodily functions, of his mind, of his ability to be the person that he was.”

By the end, Dr Caesar says her father’s “medication never quite kept up with his symptoms.” For her, the argument over assisted dying comes down to patient choice.

“Everybody is going to die. Every individual deserves the comfort of choice about how they die. I would want it for myself,” she tells me.

She acknowledges that many of her colleagues have “very, very reasonable concerns” about assisted dying. But she says “we have the wisdom to set up systems that will work and get over some of these hurdles.”

I ask if Dr Caesar’s support for assisted dying would translate into her working in this area.

“I will be at the front of the queue to help people to have the death that they wanted,” she says. “I think that’s the core joy of my job – being with people to the very end of their health journey.”

Dr Gurpreet Khaira doesn’t have any of the certainty of Dr Farooq and Dr Caesar.

She describes herself as “pretty conflicted about the whole subject” of assisted dying.

Dr Khaira is a GP in Birmingham but also has first-hand experience as a patient.

In 2017, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She found chemotherapy gruelling and says if the cancer ever came back, she wouldn’t want to go through it again.

“I remember feeling very passionate that I should have the choice of whether I go through this kind of treatment, or to say ‘that’s enough now’,” she says.

She says it felt very important for her to have a choice about the end of her life.

Now, she’s a picture of health, striding along a hillside with ease.

As a GP with decades of experience, she worries that vulnerable patients might opt for assisted dying rather than be a burden to their loved ones. Or that some families might coerce vulnerable patients into it.

“That is one of my biggest areas of personal conflict. I know that there are lots of plans to put safeguards in.

“You can be the best doctor or advocate in the world, but you may not pick up where someone is being controlled or manipulated.”

For her, there’s a fundamental conflict between her personal and professional experiences.

But, she adds: “As a doctor, I’d be very reluctant to be handing over a syringe for a patient to make that choice.”

Balancing up these two sides leaves her “in a very guilty place”, she says, but adds that it’s not a weakness to be open minded. For her, making this decision is an “evolving process”.

It’s striking when talking to Dr Farooq, Dr Caesar and Dr Khaira, how much their views on assisted dying reflect their core belief systems.

In that respect, GPs are possibly much like the rest of us.

If this bill does pass into law, doctors will have to consider whether they are willing to work in the area of assisted dying, or not. They could be asked to be involved in the process – whether that’s holding preliminary discussions with patients who want to die, to prescribing a substance for someone to end their own life.

If they don’t want to, no-one will force them.

They will have time to think about it. If MPs do vote in favour of this next month, it could still take years to come into effect.

Chimpanzees in Uganda have been observed using medicinal plants – in multiple ways – to treat open wounds and other injuries.

University of Oxford scientists, working with a local team in the Budongo Forest, filmed and recorded incidents of the animals using plants for first aid, both on themselves and occasionally on each other.

Their research builds on the discovery last year that chimps seek out and eat certain plants to self-medicate.

The scientists also compiled decades of scientific observations to create a catalogue of the different ways in which chimpanzees use “forest first aid”.

Researchers say the study, which is published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, adds to a growing body of evidence that primates, including chimps, orangutans and gorillas, use natural medicines in a number of ways to stay healthy in the wild.

Lead researcher Elodie Freymann explained there was “a whole behavioural repertoire that chimpanzees use when they’re sick or injured in the wild – to treat themselves and to maintain hygiene”.

“Some of these include the use of plants that can be found here,” she explained. “The chimpanzees dab them on their wounds or chew the plants up, and then apply the chewed material to the open injury.”

The researchers studied footage of a very young, female chimpanzee chewing plant material and applying it to an injury on its mother’s body.

They also found records of chimpanzees tending to the wounds of other animals they weren’t related to. This is particularly exciting, explained Dr Freymann, “because it adds to the evidence that wild chimpanzees have the capacity for empathy”.

Some of the hundreds of written observations that Dr Freymann and her colleagues studied came from a log book at the field station in the forest site, which is northwest of the capital, Kampala.

This record of anecdotal evidence dates back to the 1990s – local field staff, researchers and visitors have written in, describing any interesting behaviour they have observed.

There are stories in that book of leaf-dabbing on injuries and chimps helping other chimps to remove snares from their limbs.

There are some surprisingly human-like hygiene habits: One note describes a chimpanzee using leaves to wipe itself after defecating.

This team of researchers has previously identified some of the plants that chimpanzees sought out and ate when they were injured. The scientists took samples of those plants, tested them and discovered most had antibacterial properties.

Chimpanzees are not the only non-human apes with apparent knowledge of plant-based medicine. A recent study showed a wild oranguatan using chewed leaf material to heal a facial wound.

Scientists think studying this wild ape behaviour – and understanding more about the plants the chimps use when they are sick or injured – could help in the search for new medicines.

“The more we learn about chimpanzee behaviour and intelligence, the more I think we come to understand how little we as humans actually know about the natural world,” Dr Freymann told BBC News.

“If I were plopped down here in this forest with no food and no medicine, I doubt that I’d be able to survive very long, especially if I were injured or sick.”

“But chimpanzees thrive here because they know how to access the secrets of this place, and how to find all they need to survive from their surroundings.”

Svitlana says her daughter loved her school in Poland.

“Even when we moved to another area, she didn’t want to change schools,” says the 31-year-old Ukrainian mother. “She liked it so much. There was no bullying.”

Now she says the atmosphere at the school – and in Poland overall – has changed.

“Two weeks ago, she came home and said “One boy said to me today, ‘Go back to Ukraine’.” Svitlana was astonished.

She is one of dozens of Ukrainians living in Poland who have told the BBC that anti-Ukrainian sentiment has risen considerably in recent months.

Many described experiencing abuse on public transport, bullying in schools and xenophobic material online.

A polarising presidential election campaign has added to the tension, with the first round of voting taking place on Sunday.

The day after Svitlana’s daughter was told to go back to Ukraine, the abuse became even worse.

“Girls from the class above started complaining about her speaking Ukrainian. Then they pretended to fall to the ground shouting ‘Missile! Get down!’ and laughing,” Svitlana says. “She came home crying.”

A Russian missile had slammed into Svitlana’s hometown in Ukraine days before, killing scores of civilians, including children. Her daughter was traumatised.

Svitlana – not her real name did not want to be identified as she fears reprisals. She showed us screenshots of messages with school staff where she complains about her daughter’s treatment.

She said she had noticed attitudes changing towards Ukrainians in other places, too: “At work, many people have been saying Ukrainians come here and behave badly. And my Ukrainian friends say they want to go home because Polish people don’t accept us. It’s frightening to live here now.”

According to government statistics, at least 2.5 million Ukrainians live in Poland, comprising almost 7% of the total population of Poland.

When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, there was an outpouring of compassion from Poles. “It was amazing. Every day people were calling, asking, ‘How can we help?'” says activist Natalia Panchenko, head of the Warsaw-based ‘Stand with Ukraine’ Foundation.

“Some of them organised humanitarian convoys or brought refugees here. They gave their houses, food, everything they have – and their hearts, too.”

Three years later, Natalia says she believes the majority of Poles still support Ukraine. But some don’t – and her organisation has noticed an upsurge of anti-Ukrainian online abuse that began several months ago.

“Then it started to come to real life,” she says. “Recently, we have more and more of these kinds of situations… xenophobic [abuse] of people working in shops or hotels just because they speak with a Ukrainian accent.”

Natalia says that many Ukrainian refugees are traumatised. “These groups of women and children are in Poland because of the war, very often their relatives are on the front line, in captivity or dead… and this is the group of people being targeted.”

Research suggests that Poland’s public opinion of Ukrainians is indeed worsening. According to a March 2025 poll by the respected CBOS Centre, just 50% of Poles are in favour of accepting Ukrainian refugees, a fall of seven percentage points in four months. Two years ago, the figure was 81%.

Around a million Ukrainians are officially registered as having arrived after the start of the full-scale invasion. Poland spends 4.2% of its GDP on Ukrainian refugees.

Ukraine has become a hot-button political issue in Poland’s crucial presidential election campaign.

Far-right populist Slawomir Mentzen, currently polling third, is virulently anti-Ukrainian and supports an “agreement” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

In second place is conservative Karol Nawrocki, who opposes EU and Nato membership for Ukraine and financial assistance for refugees, but supports the war effort.

The most pro-Ukraine candidate is front-runner Rafal Trzaskowski from Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition, although even he has promised a reduction in social welfare for Ukrainians.

Trzaskowski has refrained from espousing his pro-Ukrainian credentials in order to attract the centrist vote in the elections, says political analyst Marcin Zaborowski.

“He’s responding to the change in public attitudes. The initial enthusiasm for supporting war victims is disappearing, negative sentiments are taking over and it’s not an entirely comfortable issue for him.”

Another far-right candidate, Grzegorz Braun, is under investigation by police for tearing down a Ukrainian flag from a city hall building during an election rally in April. Braun, who is polling at just 3%, regularly fulminates against what he calls the “Ukrainisation of Poland”.

Last week, the Polish government warned of an “unprecedented attempt” by Russia to interfere in the Polish elections by spreading “false information among Polish citizens online”. Moscow denies all allegations of election interference.

Michal Marek, who runs an NGO that monitors disinformation and propaganda in Poland, offers some examples of the anti-Ukraine material being circulated on social media.

“The main narratives are that Ukrainians are stealing money from the Polish budget, that Ukrainians do not respect us, that they want to rob and kill us and are responsible for the war,” he says.

“This information starts in Russian-speaking Telegram channels, and, after that, we see the same photos and the same text just translated by Google Translate. And they are pushing [the material] into the Polish infosphere.”

Mr Marek links such disinformation directly with the increase in anti-Ukraine sentiment in Poland, and says an increasing number of Poles are becoming influenced by propaganda.

“But we will only see the effect after the election – what percentage of Poles want to vote for openly pro-Russian candidates.”

Rosemary Coogan is surrounded by a team of people pushing, pulling, squishing and squeezing her into a spacesuit.

It takes about 45 minutes to get all her gear on before a helmet is carefully lowered over her head.

The British astronaut is about to undergo her toughest challenge yet – assessing whether she is ready for a spacewalk. The test will take place in one of the largest pools in the world: Nasa’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

The pool – which is 12m deep (40ft) – contains a life-sized replica of the International Space Station (ISS), and a “spacewalk” here is as close as it gets to mimicking weightlessness on Earth.

“It’s a big day,” Rosemary says before the dive, which is going to last more than six hours. “It’s very physically intense – and it’s very psychologically intense.”

But Rosemary doesn’t seem too fazed. She smiles and waves as the platform she’s standing on is slowly lowered into the water.

Being an astronaut was Dr Rosemary Coogan’s dream from a young age, she says. But it was a dream that seemed out of reach.

“At the careers day at school, you don’t tend to meet astronauts,” Rosemary says. “You don’t get to meet people who’ve done it, you don’t really get to hear their stories.”

So she decided to study the stars instead, opting for a career in astrophysics. But when the European Space Agency (ESA) announced it was looking for new recruits to go to space, Rosemary applied and was chosen from more than 22,000 people.

ESA aims to get Rosemary to the International Space Station (ISS) by 2030. She’ll be following in the footsteps of Britons Helen Sharman, who visited the Soviet’s Mir Space Station in 1991, and Tim Peake who launched to the ISS in 2015.

Rosemary has spent the last six months training at the Johnson Space Center. As well as exploring the outside of the submerged ISS, she can head inside the orbiting lab in another life-sized mock-up located in a huge hangar.

She takes us on a tour of the lab’s interconnected modules. It feels very cramped, especially considering astronauts usually spend many months on board. But Rosemary reminds us about the spectacular views.

“It is an isolated environment, but I think this helps to give that kind of connection to being outside – to alleviate that sense of claustrophobia.”

Rosemary’s training here covers every aspect of going to space – including learning how to use the onboard toilet.

“The lower part is where you put your solid waste,” she says, pointing to a loo in a small cubicle that looks like something you might find at a very old campsite. “And this funnel here is actually attached to an air suction system, and that is where you put your liquid waste.”

Female astronauts have the option of suppressing their periods using drugs, Rosemary says, but can also opt not to.

“There’s essentially a filter that you put on top of the cone in which you urinate and it’s to stop any particles, any blood, from going into the urine system.”

Urine needs to be kept separate because it’s purified and treated to be re-used as drinking water, she explains.

Back in the pool, divers are constantly adjusting Rosemary’s buoyancy in the water to make the experience as close as possible to microgravity.

She moves around painstakingly, making sure she’s always attached to the submerged structure using two hooks.

Every hand-hold is carefully chosen along the bars on the outside of each module. They’re in exactly the same positions as the ones on the real thing, vital muscle memory if she gets to carry out a spacewalk 200 miles (322km) above the Earth.

It’s slow and difficult work, requiring plenty of upper body strength and physical effort in the hot, bulky spacesuit.

“You do a lot of mental preparation – you really think through every single movement,” Rosemary explains. “You have to be really efficient with your energy. You don’t want to do something and realise it wasn’t quite right and have to do it again.”

Rosemary is working alongside another astronaut to complete a list of space station repairs and maintenance for the test. Her every move is monitored by a team in a control room overlooking the pool. They’re in constant communication with her as she works through her tasks.

Former space station commander Aki Hoshide, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, is on hand for advice. He has completed four spacewalks and says it’s a steep learning curve for new astronauts.

“When we first start out, there’s so much information thrown at you, so many skills that you have to learn and show and demonstrate,” he says. “It is baby steps, but they are moving forward – and I can see their excitement every time they come here and jump in the pool.”

Rosemary takes us to see a Saturn V – the rocket that took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon in 1969. More than 50 years on, Nasa is planning an imminent return to the lunar surface with its Artemis programme. European astronauts will join later missions. With an expected 35-year space career ahead, Rosemary may one day get the chance to become the first Briton to walk on the Moon.

“It’s incredibly exciting that we, as humanity, are going back to the Moon, and of course, any way that I could be a part of that, I would be absolutely delighted. I think it’s absolutely thrilling,” she says.

After six gruelling hours underwater, Rosemary is nearing the end of her spacewalk test – but then she’s thrown a curve ball.

In the control room, we hear her call out for a comms check with her astronaut partner who’s working on another part of the space station. But she’s met with silence.

On a video screen, we can see he’s motionless. Rosemary doesn’t know it, but he’s been asked to pretend to lose consciousness. Rosemary’s job is to reach him, check his condition – and tow him back to the airlock.

After so long under water, we can see how exhausted she is – but working slowly and steadily, she gets him safely to the airlock.

“Rosemary has the endurance of a champion. She crushed it today,” says Jenna Hanson, one of Nasa’s spacewalk instructors who’s been assessing Rosemary. “We’re really happy with where she’s at – she’s doing awesome.”

The spacewalk is finally over. Rosemary’s platform is hoisted out of the pool and the support team help her out of her suit. As her helmet is removed, we can see she’s clearly very tired, but still smiling.

“It was a challenging one, it really was, and a challenging rescue,” she tells us, “But yeah, it was a really enjoyable day.”

Rosemary’s hard work is bringing her ever closer to her dream of getting to space.

“It’s amazing,” Rosemary says, “If I could do that for the real space station – where you can look out and see the stars and see the Earth at the same time – that would just be the cherry on top.”