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Senior IS leader killed by US and Nigerian forces

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:45:09 GMT

AFP via Getty Images

The Nigerian military has increased cooperation with the US in efforts to combat extremist violence (file photo)

Makuochi OkaforWest Africa reporterLagos and Yang Tian

16 May 2026, 07:26 BST

Updated 23 minutes ago

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu has confirmed the killing of a senior Islamic State (IS) leader in a joint-operation with the US.

"Our determined Nigerian Armed Forces, working closely with the Armed Forces of the United States, conducted a daring joint operation that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State," Tinubu said in a statement.

The operation was first announced by US President Donald Trump, who described Abu-Bilal al-Minuki as the "second in command of ISIS globally".

Al‑Minuki was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by Washington in 2023.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump said the joint mission in Africa was "flawlessly executed... to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world".

The killing marks another significant setback for Islamic State group (IS) following the killing of its leader Abu Bakr al‑Baghdadi in 2019.

Tinubu said in a statement that Al-Manuki was killed "along with several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin".

The Nigerian Military said the "precision operation" was made possible through the "recently formed US-Nigeria partnership and intelligence sharing efforts."

It said Al-Minuki had been promoted to "Head of General Directorate of States", making him one of the most senior figures within the global IS hierarchy.

Before that, officials said he oversaw IS-linked operations across the Sahel and West Africa, including attacks targeting civilians and minority communities.

The military also linked Al-Minuki to the 2018 Dapchi schoolgirls kidnapping when more than 100 girls from a boarding school in north-eastern Nigeria were taken by militant group Boko Haram.

Nigeria military's spokesperson Samali Uba said he previously helped move fighters to Libya in support of IS operations in North Africa. Before pledging allegiance to IS in 2015, he was described as a senior Boko Haram commander.

Trump described his death as a major blow to IS's African and global networks, disrupting funding channels and command structures.

The US president thanked the Nigerian government for their "partnership", adding that Minuki "will no longer terrorize the people of Africa or help plan operations to target Americans".

Nigeria and the US have increased military cooperation as the country ramps up efforts to fight extremist violence.

In April, IS claimed responsibility after gunmen killed at least 29 people at a football pitch in Nigeria's north-eastern Adamawa state.

Last Christmas, US and Nigeria carried out a joint airstrike in Nigeria's Sokoto state targeting IS-linked groups.

Man killed by 13ft great white shark in Western Australia

Sat, 16 May 2026 07:04:36 GMT

Getty Images

Rottnest Island is popular for its white sand beaches and surf breaks

Olivia Ireland

1 hour ago

A 38-year-old man has been killed by a 13ft (4m) great white shark in Western Australia.

On Saturday, the man was bitten just before 10:00 (03:00 BST) at Horseshoe Reef - north-west of the popular Rottnest Island near the city of Perth, local police said.

Aerial footage showed the man being rushed to shore by boat where paramedics and police performed CPR at the Geordie Bay jetty, local media ABC reported.

"Sadly the man was unable to be revived," a police spokesperson said.

The state's Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development told AFP news agency it received a report the man was bitten by the great white.

The department urged the public to take "additional caution" in waters around the area.

The attack is the first fatal incident in Western Australia since March last year, when a surfer was mauled off a remote beach.

Since records began in 1791, there have been almost 1,300 recorded shark attacks in Australia, with more than 260 of them resulting in death.

Earlier this year in January, four shark attacks were reported along the New South Wales coast over two days.

One of the victims included 12-year-old Nico Antic who jumped from a rock into the Sydney Harbour and was attacked by a suspected bull shark.

He died a week later, with his parents saying in a joint statement they were "heartbroken".

Trump warns Taiwan against declaring independence, hours after summit with China's Xi

Sat, 16 May 2026 05:53:41 GMT

Reuters

China's President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump discussed Taiwan during bilateral talks in Beijing

Ian Aikman

15 May 2026

Updated 2 hours ago

US President Donald Trump has cautioned Taiwan against formally declaring independence from China.

"I'm not looking to have somebody go independent," the US president told Fox News on Friday, at the end of his two-day summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has previously stated that Taiwan does not need to declare formal independence because it already sees itself as a sovereign nation.

The US has long supported Taiwan, including being bound by law to provide it with a means of self-defence, but has frequently had to square this alliance with maintaining a diplomatic relationship with China.

Trump earlier said he had "made no commitment either way" about the self-governing island - which China claims as part of its territory and has not ruled out taking by force.

Washington's established position is that it does not support Taiwanese independence, with continued ties with Beijing being contingent on its acceptance that there is only one Chinese government.

Beijing has been vocal in its dislike of Taiwan's president, who it has previously described as a "troublemaker" and a "destroyer of cross-strait peace".

Many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation - though most are in favour of maintaining the status quo in which Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.

In his interview with Fox News, Trump reiterated that US policy on the matter had not changed.

"You know, we're supposed to travel 9,500 miles (15,289km) to fight a war. I'm not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down."

On the flight back to Washington, the US president had told reporters that he and Xi had spoken "a lot" about the island, but said he had declined to discuss whether the US would defend it.

Xi "feels very strongly" about the island and "doesn't want to see a movement for independence", Trump said.

"The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations," Xi warned during the talks, according to Chinese state media, adding: "If mishandled, the two nations could collide or even come into conflict."

Asked if he foresaw a conflict with China over Taiwan, Trump had said: "No, I don't think so. I think we'll be fine. [Xi] doesn't want to see a war."

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BBC asks Trump if China will help open the Strait of Hormuz

China has ramped up military drills around the island in recent years, raising tensions in the region and testing the balance that Washington has struck.

Late last year, the Trump administration announced an $11bn ($8bn) package of weapons to be sold to Taiwan, including advanced rocket launchers and a variety of missiles, which Beijing condemned.

Trump said he would soon decide whether that sale could go ahead, adding that he and Xi had discussed it "in great detail".

He added: "I'm going to say I have to speak to the person that right now is, you know, you know who he is, that's running Taiwan."

The US does not have formal relations with Taiwan, though it maintains substantial unofficial relations. US presidents do not traditionally speak directly to Taiwan's leader, and to do so would be likely to cause significant tensions with Beijing, which considers Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te a separatist.

Taiwan Deputy Foreign Minister Chen Ming-chi said on Saturday that Taiwan would need to clarify the exact meaning of Trump's remarks.

Chen also said that US arms sales to Taiwan are something confirmed under US law.

"Taiwan-US arms sales have always been a cornerstone of regional peace and stability," he added.

A spokesperson for President Lai quoted by Reuters news agency said that American arms sales are part of the "US security commitment" to Taiwan and "serve as a shared deterrent against regional threats".

Trump also told Fox News: "We're not looking to have wars, and if you kept it the way it is, I think China's going to be OK with that. But we're not looking to have somebody say, 'Let's go independent because the United States is backing us.'"

The US has previously provoked anger from China for seeming to soften its stance on independence.

Its State Department dropped a statement from its website reiterating Washington's opposition to Taiwanese independence in February 2025 - something Beijing said "sends a wrong... signal to separatist forces".

US officials in Taiwan said at the time: "We have long stated that we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side."

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Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

Taiwan's Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung said his team had been monitoring the US-China summit, and had maintained good communication with the US and other countries "to ensure the stable deepening of Taiwan-US relations and safeguard Taiwan's interests".

He said Taiwan had always been a "guardian of peace and stability" in the region and accused China of escalating risk with its "aggressive military actions and authoritarian oppression".

New outbreak of Ebola kills 80 in eastern DR Congo

Sat, 16 May 2026 04:11:26 GMT

AFP via Getty Images

Nearly 2,300 people died in DR Congo's deadliest Ebola outbreak between 2018 and 2020

Hafsa Khalil and Emery MakumenoBBC AfricaKinshasa

15 May 2026

Updated 4 hours ago

Africa's top health agency has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern Ituri province.

Around 246 cases and 80 deaths have been reported, mainly in the gold-mining towns of Mongwalu and Rwampara, said the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

Ugandan officials confirmed one case of imported Ebola from DR Congo on Friday, with the country's health ministry stating that a 59-year-old male who died on Thursday had tested positive.

Ebola was first discovered in 1976 in what is now DR Congo, and is thought to have spread from bats. This is the 17th outbreak of the deadly viral disease in the country.

It is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids and through broken skin, causing severe bleeding and organ failure.

Early symptoms include fever, muscle pain, fatigue, headache and sore throat, and are followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, a rash and bleeding.

There is no proven cure for Ebola. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the average fatality rate is around 50%.

Ebola basics: What you need to know

Preliminary tests conducted at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB) in the capital, Kinshasa, have detected the virus in 13 of 20 samples analysed, following consultations with DR Congo's Ministry of Health and National Public Institute.

Tests are also being carried out to identify the strain of the virus.

Of the 80 deaths, four were reported among lab-confirmed cases, Africa CDC said.

Additional suspected cases have also been reported in Ituri's provincial capital, Bunia, with laboratory confirmation pending.

Africa CDC said it was concerned by the high risk of further spread due to the urban settings of Rwampara and Bunia, and mining activities in Mongwalu.

The health agency's executive director Dr Jean Kaseya added that "significant population movement" between the affected areas and neighbouring countries also meant regional co-ordination was essential.

All affected communities and at-risk areas have been advised to follow guidelines from the national health authorities.

The Congolese government has not yet officially declared an outbreak. A staffer told the BBC a press conference was expected later on Friday.

Its statement on Friday added that it was convening a meeting with DR Congo, neighbouring Uganda and South Sudan, and other international partners to discuss priorities, including response efforts and cross-border surveillance.

Ituri has been under military rule since 2021, with the civilian authority replaced by a military general in an attempt to neutralise dozens of armed groups which have operated in the area for many years. These include the Allied Democratic Forced (ADF), affiliated to the Islamic State group.

On Friday, the Ugandan health department confirmed that an imported case of Ebola had been found, according to a letter shared by Ugandan news outlet NBS Television.

The letter said that a 59-year-old Congolese man had been admitted to a hospital in Kampala on Monday and died on Thursday in an intensive care unit.

Officials said Uganda was yet to identify a local case.

Around 15,000 people have died from the virus in different African countries over the past 50 years.

DR Congo's deadliest outbreak was between 2018 and 2020, during which nearly 2,300 people died.

Last year, 45 people died after an outbreak in the remote region of Bulape in the central Kasai province.

Getty Images/BBC

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US planning to criminally indict ex-Cuban leader Raúl Castro

Sat, 16 May 2026 01:37:27 GMT

AP via Getty Images

Will Grant

BBC's Mexico, Central America and Cuba correspondent

6 hours ago

The US justice department is reportedly preparing to indict aging Cuban leader Raúl Castro in the coming days over the shooting down of two aircraft three decades ago.

The reported charges, which would need to be approved by a US grand jury, emerged as the director of the CIA travelled to Cuba to meet officials in Havana.

Castro, 94, stepped down as Cuban Communist Party leader in 2021, ending his family's more than half a century in power. He led the country for 15 years, stepping in after his brother, Fidel, resigned.

The potential indictment is the latest move in a US pressure campaign that has included an oil blockade and widespread sanctions.

The charges are said to centre on the 1996 downing of two planes operated by the US activist-humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue.

Unnamed US Department of Justice (DoJ) officials told US media the indictment could come as soon as next Wednesday.

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Watch: Expectant mothers in Cuba struggle under fuel blockade

Asked on Friday about the reported indictment plan, President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One: "I'll let DoJ comment on it."

He added: "But [Cubans] need help, as you know. And you talk about a declining country. They are really a nation, a country in decline."

Trump has issued an oil blockade against Cuba, which has exacerbated fuel shortages. This week the island's energy minister acknowledged that Cuba has, in essence, run out of fuel oil.

Potential charges against Raúl Castro were unclear, but officials said the investigation centred on an attack on two small planes, which happened on 24 February 1996 while Fidel was president and Raúl was armed forces minister.

Four people aboard were killed in the incident.

Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban exile group that searched for rafts carrying migrants from Cuba to the US, had previously dropped anti-Castro leaflets near the Cuban coast.

The Cuban government - including Fidel Castro, who died in 2016 - said Brothers to the Rescue had repeatedly violated Cuban airspace, although the International Civil Aviation Organization found the attack took place over international waters.

AFP via Getty Images

Raúl Castro took over leading Cuba after his brother, Fidel Castro (left).

In March, the attorney general in Florida announced in a news conference that the state was reopening an investigation into Raúl Castro's alleged role in the incident.

Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis praised the possible criminal charges on Friday, calling them "long overdue".

Cuba has not officially commented on the reports of an indictment, but Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez struck a defiant tone on Friday.

"Despite the [US] embargo, sanctions and threats of the use of force, Cuba continues on a path of sovereignty towards its socialist development," he said, according to Reuters news agency.

In order for charges to be filed, prosecutors would have to convince a grand jury, made up of members of the public, that probable cause exists to believe a crime has been committed.

Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche, who leads the US justice department, has declined to confirm reports of an impending indictment.

"If and when there's a time to talk about about that, we will, obviously," Blanche told Fox News.

Trump has said the US wants to change Cuba's communist leadership. He told crowds at a recent rally that the US would be "taking over" the Caribbean island nation, which lies 145km (90 miles) from the US state of Florida.

CIA

CIA Director John Ratcliffe in Havana

On Thursday, CIA director John Ratcliffe met his Cuban counterpart at the interior ministry in Havana. Raúl Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Raúl Castro, was at the meeting.

A CIA official told the BBC's US partner CBS that Washington was prepared to engage on economic and security issues, "but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes".

A Cuban statement said the meeting was an attempt to improve dialogue and that Havana was not a threat to US national security.

It came after American officials renewed an offer of $100m (£74m) of aid to ease the effects of its oil blockade.

Washington has focused more on Cuba in recent months after the US indicted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January then removed him from power in an overnight operation.

Analysts say any similar attempt by US special forces to arrest Castro could meet stiff opposition in Cuba, particularly among government loyalists.

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How destabilising Cuba could backfire disastrously on US

William LeoGrande, professor of Latin American politics at the American University in Washington, told the BBC the potential indictment was "one more element of the pressure campaign" that Trump has kept up since returning to office last year.

But further destabilising the island could backfire on the US, said LeoGrande, who wrote the book Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.

"If the Cuban economy and social order collapses, it would actually be a disaster for the United States, because it's likely to touch off a mass migration crisis," the professor said.

He said it looks like the US "is sending a warning to Raúl Castro that he should use his influence to get the government to make concessions".

"Or else the US military may be coming for him, just like it came for President Maduro in Venezuela."

Judge declares another mistrial in Harvey Weinstein New York rape case

Sat, 16 May 2026 01:32:47 GMT

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Watch: Jurors react to deadlock after Harvey Weinstein mistrial

Sareen Habeshian and Max Matza

15 May 2026

Updated 7 hours ago

A judge has declared a mistrial in the rape case against Harvey Weinstein, after the jury in New York said it was deadlocked and unable to reach a verdict.

It marks the third time a New York jury has considered the case against the 74-year-old disgraced film mogul, who remains jailed on other charges.

The month-long trial was centred around whether Weinstein raped aspiring actress Jessica Mann more than a decade ago. He was initially convicted, but the verdict was overturned. A judge declared a mistrial after a second trial last year.

Dozens of women have accused Weinstein of sexual misconduct, including rape, since October 2017. He has consistently denied wrongdoing.

Getty Images

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement that prosecutors are currently determining whether to try again in court.

"While we are disappointed that the proceedings ended with a mistrial, we deeply respect the jury system and sincerely thank all of the jurors for their time and dedication," he said.

He thanked Mann for bringing her allegation against Weinstein, adding: "We will consider our next steps in consultation with Ms Mann, and in consideration of Harvey Weinstein's pending sentencing" in a separate sexual assault case.

"As always, we will continue to prosecute crimes of sexual violence – no matter who the defendant is – in a survivor-centered manner that uplifts their voices in the pursuit of justice."

Lawyers for Weinstein said the outcome shows "how deeply public perception and prejudice surrounding Harvey Weinstein have become embedded in society".

"For some people, regardless of the evidence presented, saying 'not guilty' has become emotionally or socially impossible," they argued.

"The Manhattan District Attorney's Office should stop retrying the same case and focus its time and resources on the actual violent crime, chaos, and public safety issues impacting New Yorkers every day," the statement from his lawyers continued.

The decision on Friday by the majority male jury in Manhattan came on the third day of deliberations.

On Friday morning, the jury passed the judge a note saying they "have concluded that they cannot reach" a unanimous verdict. The judge then ordered them to continue deliberating before later declaring a mistrial, saying it was "quite clear", that they were "hopelessly deadlocked".

"I see no reason to go any further," said Judge Curtis Farber as he thanked and dismissed the jury.

Weinstein, who was seated in a wheelchair during the trial, showed no reaction as court officers wheeled him out of the room after the mistrial was declared.

Speaking to reporters outside the court, one juror said that nine people on the jury wanted to acquit Weinstein, while three wanted to convict him, according to the Associated Press.

Jessica Mann, who has testified about her experience with Weinstein in three separate trials, said in a statement that the mistrial "doesn't in any way detract from the truth I told".

"I chose to testify in three trials because I am telling the truth," she continued, adding: "I deserve justice, which is why I stand up and face unbearable public scrutiny in the name of a greater good."

This marks the third rape prosecution against Weinstein in New York.

An appeals court in 2024 overturned Weinstein's conviction for sex crimes in New York, finding he did not receive a fair trial in 2020 because a judge allowed testimony from women who made allegations against him beyond the charges at hand.

Weinstein was then indicted on new sexual assault charges in the state.

A second trial took place last year, but the judge ordered a new trial after the jury was deadlocked on the rape count.

The first trial was based on the testimony of three women - Mann, former television production assistant Miriam Haley, and model Kaja Sokola. All three accused Weinstein of using his power in the entertainment industry to sexually abuse them.

The second retrial in New York centred on Haley and Mann.

During the third trial, Mann testified that she willingly had some sexual encounters with Weinstein but that he forced her to have unwanted sex in a hotel room in March 2013, despite her repeatedly saying no.

The mogul's defence team maintained that the encounter was consensual.

In total, Weinstein has been accused of sexual misconduct, assault and rape by more than 100 women. While not all reports resulted in criminal charges, his conviction in California means he is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.

The decision by his accusers to come forward, and his subsequent conviction in New York, galvanised the #MeToo movement against sex abuse by powerful men.

Before the allegations against him emerged, Weinstein and his brother Bob were among Hollywood's ultimate power players.

Weinstein co-founded Miramax film studio, whose hits included Shakespeare in Love, which won best picture at the Academy Awards, and Pulp Fiction.

Weinstein has also faced a number of civil lawsuits, including from a group of women who accused him of sexual harassment and rape. The case resulted in a $19m (£14.2m) settlement in 2020.

He has faced declining health in recent years, and in 2024 was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.

Lebanon says six killed in Israeli strike as US announces ceasefire extension

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:59:07 GMT

EPA

Lebanese army soldiers man a checkpoint in Beirut

Brandon Drenon and Yang Tian

15 May 2026

Updated 8 hours ago

An Israeli air strike on a town in southern Lebanon has killed six people, including three paramedics, according to Lebanon's health ministry. It comes as the US said the two countries had agreed to a 45-day ceasefire.

The health ministry said a fourth paramedic had sustained "critical injuries" after a civil defence centre was attacked in the town of Harouf. The BBC has contacted the Israeli military for comment.

On Friday, the US state department announced Israel and Lebanon had agreed to extend their shaky ceasefire after two days of negotiations in Washington DC.

US President Donald Trump announced the truce on 16 April, but Israel and Hezbollah have continued to exchange fire since then.

On Wednesday, Lebanon's health ministry said Israeli air strikes had killed 22 people, including eight children, across the south.

"We hope these discussions will advance lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border," said state department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

The state department said it would "reconvene the political track of negotiations" in June.

"In addition, a security track will be launched at the Pentagon on May 29 with military delegations from both countries," Pigott added.

Israel's Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, said the talks were "frank and constructive".

Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said that he hoped to "mobilise all Arab and international support to bolster our position in the negotiations" with Israel.

There have been almost daily reports of Hezbollah and Israel trading fire across the southern border of Lebanon since the ceasefire began.

Israel has intensified its air and artillery strikes in recent days, particularly in southern Lebanon, saying it was targeting Hezbollah fighters and infrastructure.

Lebanon's health ministry has accused Israel of targeting civilians and paramedics, which Israel denies.

The Israeli military says it is aiming to create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon to thwart future Hezbollah attacks.

In those areas, entire villages have been destroyed in similar tactics deployed by the Israeli military in Gaza. Human rights groups say some cases could amount to war crimes, which Israel denies.

Hezbollah has carried out its own attacks on Israeli troops in Lebanon and northern Israel with rockets and drones.

Southern Lebanon is the heartland of the country's Shia community, from which Hezbollah gets most of its support, and has been under constant Israeli bombardment.

More than one million people, amounting to one in five of the population, have been forced from their homes across Lebanon, most of them from the south, the eastern Bekaa Valley, and the southern suburbs of Beirut known as Dahieh, areas where Hezbollah holds sway.

The conflict started on 2 March, two days after the US and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran.

Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, and Israel responded with widespread air strikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

At least 2,896 people have been killed in Lebanon since then, according to the health ministry.

Israeli authorities say 18 soldiers and four civilians have been killed over the same period.

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BBC asks Trump if China will help open the Strait of Hormuz

From misfit to rap sensation: A 'Reble' storms into Indian hip-hop

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:31:52 GMT

Reble/Homegrown Music

In a short time, Reble has become one of the most recognisable voices in Indian hip-hop

Zoya Mateen & Anahita Sachdev

Delhi

9 hours ago

As a child, Reble often felt she was watching life from the sidelines. Now, at 24, the rapper has become one of the most compelling new voices in Indian hip-hop.

Hailing from the rain-soaked hills of Meghalaya in India's northeast, Reble raps in English as well as Khasi and Jaintia - indigenous languages spoken by tribal communities in the region - and writes about distance, reinvention and survival with an emotional restraint that feels unusually deliberate.

Until recently, she was known mostly within Shillong's close-knit music circles, in a city better known for rock bands, church choirs and old guitar legends than hip-hop.

Her breakout moment came with Dhurandhar, the Bollywood action film whose soundtrack introduced millions to her cool, clipped delivery. On tracks like Run Down the City: Monica, Naal Nachna and Move - Yeh Ishq Ishq, Reble's restrained verses cut through the film's louder, more chaotic energy, quickly making her a fan favourite.

Her latest single, Praying Mantis, which released this week, has once again made her a talking point, with fans dissecting the dark, hypnotic track online.

Reble's rise reflects a wider shift, as artists from India's northeast begin finding audiences far beyond the region. Wedged between Bangladesh, China and Myanmar, the northeast has long felt culturally distant from the mainland, with many from the region speaking of being treated as outsiders in their own country.

What makes Reble compelling is her refusal to soften herself for wider consumption - she resists explaining, translating or flattening her world into something more familiar.

"I don't like anybody telling me what to do," she tells the BBC.

That stubbornness - the sense of not quite fitting in - was shaped early in life.

Before the stage name, she was Daiaphi Lamare, a girl moving through boarding schools with what she now describes as a constant feeling of being out of place.

"Young Reble," she says, laughing softly, "was always by herself. No friends. Sitting in one corner. Everybody was like, who's that weird girl?"

Reble/Homegrown Music

The rapper is known for her cool clipped delivery and style

The loneliness hardened into her personality. Teachers found her difficult; she disliked routine and authority. "I was a bit of a troublemaker," she says.

Science became one of the few things that could hold her attention. An engineering degree in Bengaluru followed, though she speaks of it now like a temporary detour. "I knew I won't be able do a nine-to-five."

That resistance eventually became the defining act of Reble itself.

The stage name, she explains, is less persona than alter ego - "a very personal rebellion". Rap gave shape to emotions she did not know how to organise earlier. "It became the perfect medium to express this feeling of being a misfit," she says.

That tension still runs through her music. While many Indian rappers showcase big personalities and emphatic bravado, Reble's style feels tighter and more restrained - less explosive anger and more something quieter and personal.

Her rhymes move instinctively between languages. Years spent away at boarding schools meant English gradually became dominant, though Jaintia - the language spoken at home - remains, as she puts it, "my emotional anchor".

"When I write in Jaintia, it's a very personal emotion," she says. "But I'm also not very fluent in the language unfortunately."

The contradiction feels central to her work: local and global at once, deeply rooted yet emotionally detached.

There are other ironies too. For someone now praised for her lyrics, Reble insists she dislikes writing. "I can't write," she says bluntly. "I get bored and I make mistakes." Even now, most of her lyrics exist as scattered notes and unfinished scribbles.

The Indian rapper who overtook Kendrick Lamar on music charts

Her growing popularity has also brought backlash. Some listeners accused her of "selling out" after her Bollywood breakthrough, while others online claimed her music was anti-Christian or even satanic because of its references to demons - a particularly loaded criticism in Meghalaya, where church culture shapes much of public life.

Reble seems amused by the outrage. "When you get commercial success, people think you sold your soul," she says.

For her, working on film music feels more like experimentation than compromise. "If I'm singing for a film, I enjoy that," she says. "But I'm picky about the projects I take."

Part of Reble's mystique comes from Shillong itself.

In Meghalaya's capital, music spills constantly through public life: church choirs rehearsing late into the evening, teenage metal bands in garages, blues musicians drifting through dimly-lit bars.

Reble emerged from that ecosystem, but also from a newer internet-shaped version of the city where local influences collided with global hip-hop and trap.

She says she connected with Eminem's work early on - especially the feeling of being out of step with the world around you and turning that alienation into music. Her favourite song is Beautiful, external, and its mix of vulnerability and defiance quietly echoes through her own work.

Getty Images

Reble hails from Shillong, a city in India's northeast known for its rich music culture

Yet for all its global influences, Reble's work remains deeply tied to Meghalaya. In Opening Act, she raps: "I'm a Jaintia making moves/ I'm a tribal."

She traces that pride back to the village her family comes from and specifically the women she grew up around.

Like many northeastern Indians living elsewhere in the country, she also encountered racism outside the region. "I do believe that we haven't had the same opportunities as the rest of the country," she says.

Still, pride seems to outweigh resentment. "Coming out from a region like that, I feel very proud."

Back home, she says, people have responded emotionally to her rise even if they do not always fully understand the music itself.

"They're happy that someone is doing something," she says, laughing. "Like - that's our girl."

Which is partly why her Bollywood breakthrough felt larger than a routine success story.

Bollywood has long mined regional music scenes for reinvention - Punjabi pop, Mumbai hip-hop, Tamil indie - but Reble arrived with a sound still unfamiliar to much of mainstream India.

If her rise appears sudden from the outside, Reble sees it simply as the result of persistence.

"The biggest lesson so far is that consistency is key," she says. More than talent, she believes in the discipline of getting better over time.

"If you're not good at something, you need to get better," she says matter-of-factly. "Be realistic enough to know how bad you are."

Perhaps that is why her rise feels so special. Beneath the coolness and detachment in her music, there's a refusal to romanticise struggle, even while turning it into art.

Indian pop culture is increasingly becoming decentralised, with some of its most interesting energies now emerging from places once treated as fringe. The big cities no longer decide what feels culturally relevant so much as they absorb it.

And somewhere above the foggy hills of Shillong, a young rapper seemed to have understood that long before everyone else did.

Palestinian leaders hold rare party meeting as polls show rising discontent

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:05:19 GMT

It is the first meeting of its kind in nearly 10 years

Yolande Knell

Middle East correspondentRamallah

9 hours ago

Top leaders of the main Palestinian political faction, Fatah, are electing its highest decision-making body, at its first major conference in a decade.

The 90-year-old Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas – who rules by decree – was re-elected as head of Fatah on Wednesday.

Leading figures are promising unity and a political refresh. But ordinary Palestinians complain that this meeting, coming at a critical time for their nationalist cause, is showcasing the opposite.

Palestinian opinion polls indicate profound dissatisfaction with Abbas, with most wanting him to resign.

There is also disquiet that his eldest son – a businessman – is on the ballot for a senior party position for the first time.

Addressing the conference on its opening day on Thursday, Abbas promised the first presidential and parliamentary elections in 20 years – without giving a timeline.

"We renew our full commitment to continuing work on implementing all the reform measures we pledged," he said. He declared that holding the gathering "on our homeland's soil confirms our determination to continue on the democratic path".

The president and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are under increasing pressure from the US, European Union and Arab countries to carry out reforms and hold elections. They face claims of corruption and political stagnation – as well as declining legitimacy.

The Palestinian reality has drastically changed since the last general conference at the end of 2016.

In 2023, the deadly Hamas-led assault on Israel triggered the brutal Gaza war. Palestinians have been "slaughtered, displaced and devastated", Abbas said in his opening address to the conference, leaving an "unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

At the same time, a key Israeli minister has pledged "to bury the idea of a Palestinian state". Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem increasingly face being pushed from their homes and land as Jewish settlements grow faster than ever.

Settlements are illegal under international law.

This is further weakening the PA – dominated by Fatah – which governs parts of the West Bank.

On top of that, Israel is withholding tax transfers that it collects for the PA – deepening its economic woes – because of an ongoing dispute about Palestinian school texts which Israel claims incite violence, and stipends to the families of those jailed or killed by Israel, including attackers.

The PA says it is now owed some $5bn (£3.7bn; 4.3bn euros), meaning it pays most civil servants only part of their salaries and restricts some public services.

Reuters

Mahmoud Abbas (right) has ruled by decree for nearly 20 years

President Abbas, an architect of the breakthrough 1993 Oslo peace agreement with Israel, originally came to power promising to use non-violent means to work towards creating a Palestinian state – in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

However, Palestinian opinion polls indicate profound dissatisfaction with their leader. In a survey late last year, 80% wanted him to resign. At a party level, Hamas was more popular than Fatah. Many Palestinians believe Fatah has lost its way.

There is anger over cronyism and corruption and the PA's continued security co-ordination with Israel - which involves sharing information about Palestinian armed groups and is seen as benefiting the occupying power.

"When we talk about Fatah, we're talking about the backbone of the Palestinian national movement, at least since the 1960s," says political analyst, Xavier Abu Eid, in Ramallah. "And it's a movement that's going through a deep crisis."

"The identity of Fatah is a revolutionary identity. It was about changing the status quo for the sake of liberating Palestine and turning the Palestinian cause from a humanitarian issue into a political issue."

"But today this identity is being questioned. Is Fatah a national liberation movement or is it a group of bureaucrats that are going to work for the PA? Is it about the survival of the PA, or is it about the liberation of Palestine, or can you combine both?"

Reuters

Palestinian opinion polls suggest Hamas is more popular than Fatah

The conference is being attended by more than 2,500 Fatah members – most of them in Ramallah, the administrative capital of the PA – but with a few hundred also spread between Beirut, Cairo and Gaza.

They are due to elect 18 representatives to the central committee and 80 to the movement's parliament, known as the revolutionary council.

Speaking among the ruins of Gaza, a Fatah activist, Samah al-Rawagh – who is joining the conference via video link – told the BBC that change was possible.

"The symbolism of having a conference hall in Gaza is profoundly significant," she said.

"We are carrying a message that Fatah is united across the entire geographic spectrum. Our message is that Fatah is like the phoenix that never dies. From the heart of the ashes, it comes back to life anew. Fatah is united, united, united."

But inevitably with political succession being discussed behind the scenes – and the Fatah central committee expected to play a pivotal role in the post-Abbas era – many Fatah insiders admit there is internal division.

Important figures vying to replace Abbas include the current secretary general of the committee, Jibril Rjoub, and the PA Vice-President Hussein al-Sheikh.

Meanwhile, the president's eldest son, Yasser Abbas – a businessman – is on the ballot for the first time to join the central committee.

For many that move – raising questions of nepotism - underlines the disconnect between the party and Palestinian public sentiment and deepens doubts about whether the PA really can make the significant reforms that it has pledged.

"Everyone knows it's a fix," said one despondent man in Manara Square in Ramallah, who declined to give his name.

"They serve their own interests, not the people. What's the point of this conference? It's just publicity and it's costing a fortune."

What is a 'safe death'? Mentally ill woman asks for assisted dying in Canada

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:04:41 GMT

Toronto Star via Getty Images

Nadine Yousif

Senior Canada reporter

9 hours ago

Claire Brosseau has travelled the world doing stand-up comedy and acting in television shows, films and plays. She has also been struggling with debilitating mental illness from a young age, and has been treated by psychiatrists in four major North American cities over three decades.

Brosseau has tried nearly every treatment available to people like herself with bipolar disorder and PTSD, she said, from behavioural therapy and medication to electric shocks to the brain.

Nothing has worked for the 49-year-old Toronto woman, who described herself as "functionally terminal", no longer able to work, leave the house or speak with her loved ones. She is now enrolled in a psychiatric care programme at a local hospital that, she said, is designed to support people with severe and persistent mental illness who have exhausted all treatment options.

"There's nothing left to try, and I'm at the end of my life," she told the BBC.

Brosseau wants to die by medically assisted dying, also known as euthanasia and in Canada, under the acronym MAID. While it is legal in Canada, it is not currently available to those whose sole condition is mental illness.

"I open my eyes every morning and I feel immediate dread and anxiety," Brosseau said, adding: "I want a safe death. I don't want to have to do something horrific."

Canada has been planning to expand the law to people with severe, treatment-resistant mental illness, but has delayed doing so twice - most recently to next year - over concerns the healthcare system is not prepared. Now, Ottawa is weighing whether to move forward at all.

In the meantime, Brosseau said her illness is worsening and she cannot afford to wait any longer. She has asked an Ontario court to exempt her from the current law and grant her access to medically assisted dying.

Polls suggest the majority of Canadians, external support access to medically assisted death. But the issue has been more fraught when discussing patients with mental illness.

Over the past two months, a parliamentary committee tasked with reviewing whether Canada should expand the programme heard from advocates and medical experts who warned against doing so.

Some argue that assisted dying has, in some cases, become a tool to alleviate suffering of disabled Canadians who would be better served by improved access to affordable housing, healthcare and disability supports.

Others argued that mental illnesses are not yet well understood by medicine, making it difficult to determine if a patient is expressing suicidal ideation or is indeed incurable.

Dr Sonu Gaind, a former chief of psychiatry at a major Toronto hospital, told the committee that "none of those issues have been resolved" since Canada decided to pause its expansion to assisted dying.

"Instead, we have even more evidence showing we are not ready to provide MAID for mental illness," he said.

What the committee recommends could ultimately shape the programme's future. Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters last week that he is waiting for their report before deciding on next steps. "I like to take informed positions," he said.

Getty Images

Mark Carney has not weighed in on the assisted dying debate in Canada, saying he will wait for a joint Senate and House committee report to decide

For Brosseau, the refusal to grant assisted death to psychiatric patients is rooted in stigma, with physical illnesses viewed as more legitimate.

"If I get cancer tomorrow, I can refuse treatment and be eligible for MAID," she said. But patients with severe mental illnesses, she argued, aren't granted the same access to what has become a standardised part of Canadian healthcare.

That position is at the core of the legal case brought by Brosseau, which argues that current laws are exclusionary to those with mental illness and therefore unconstitutional.

Canada is one of a handful of countries where assisted dying is legal for both terminally ill patients and those whose death is not "reasonably foreseeable" but who have an irreversible serious illness, disease or disability.

A few, namely the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, allow access to people who are suffering solely from a mental illness.

The Netherlands is in the midst of its own heated public debate on assisted dying, which has spilled into the Canadian committee hearings.

Those seeking assisted death for a mental illness in the Netherlands have to be assessed by a psychiatrist. Data shows that approvals for psychiatric suffering are relatively rare, accounting for about 2% of all deaths by assisted dying in the country. But the overall number of approved cases has risen, from two in 2010 to 219 in 2024.

One Dutch psychiatrist, Dr Jim van Os, told Canadian lawmakers that the increase in cases reflects what he described as a "suicide contagion effect".

"The Dutch experience in my opinion offers a warning for Canada," Os cautioned.

Another Dutch psychiatrist, Dr Sisco Van Veen, countered that assisted dying for psychiatric patients remains rare and that MAID offers "mercy" for those "whose suffering can be immense or unbearable".

In Canada, about 96% of assisted-dying requests in 2024 were granted to people whose death was forseeable - mostly terminal cancer patients. The remaining 4% are patients whose death was not imminent but had a "grievous and irremediable medical condition".

PA Media

Public discourse on assisted dying has been fraught in many countries, including the UK, where lawmakers failed to pass a bill legalising it in April

Canada extended assisted dying to patients who were not terminally ill five years ago, after two people with disabilities mounted a legal battle for access to the programme.

That move has been controversial, and is one of the reasons driving opposition to further expansion.

Advocacy groups have reported cases where assisted dying has been offered to people with disabilities by healthcare or support workers without the patient requesting it themselves.

"We are investing in ending people's lives" rather than in offering them a better quality of life, said Krista Orr, president of disability advocacy group Inclusion Canada,

She, too, testified before the committee, urging lawmakers not only to not expand MAID to people with mental illness but to limit it once again solely to people with a terminal illness.

There has also been criticism of the committee itself. Brosseau, for one, said she is troubled by how the hearings unfolded and who was called to testify. She said she requested to appear multiple times but was refused.

She noted that the co-chairs of the committee - Liberal MP Marcus Powlowski and Conservative Senator Yonah Martin - have both publicly voiced opposition to expanding MAID.

One member, Alberta Senator Kristopher Wells, has publicly accused the review of being "one-sided", telling the Toronto Star newspaper that he does not have confidence in the final report.

In a statement to the BBC, the committee co-chairs acknowledged that Brosseau had asked to testify, but said evidence from professionals and associations was proritised due to "limited time".

Powlowski also defended the committee against accusations of bias, telling the Star that members have "dutifully listened to both sides".

Their report could be presented to parliament as late as October.

Brosseau said she does not have faith in the committee, its report or the federal government, which has yet to respond to her legal challenge.

She rarely leaves her home. Even a trip to the store can trigger extreme stress and panic attacks, she said. But she said she viewed her legal fight as an important one for equal rights.

"I'm not campaigning for death. I'm campaigning to be seen as not a subsection of human," she said.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, information and support can be found at the BBC's Action Line.
In Canada, support can be found at the Suicide Crisis Helpline by dialling 988

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One mentally ill man's fight for assisted dying in Canada

Switzerland to open secret files on Auschwitz 'Angel of Death' Mengele

Fri, 15 May 2026 23:04:33 GMT

Ullstein Bild / Getty

Nazi SS doctor Josef Mengele sent as many as 400,000 people, most of them Jews, to their deaths

Imogen Foulkes

Bern

9 hours ago

The Swiss Federal Intelligence Service has said it will finally open long-sealed files on the notorious Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, but without saying when.

Mengele fled Europe after World War Two, but for years there have been rumours that he spent time in Switzerland, even though an international warrant was out for his arrest.

Historians have repeatedly requested access to the files, but until now the Swiss authorities have refused.

Mengele was a doctor who served in Germany's Waffen SS. He was posted to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where he selected those to be sent to the gas chambers – an estimated 1.1 million people died, including about a million Jews.

Known as the Angel of Death, he also selected prisoners, primarily children and twins, for sadistic medical experiments, before sending them to their deaths as well.

After the war Mengele, like many high-ranking Nazis, quickly changed both his uniform, and his name.

With the help of his false identity, he was issued Red Cross travel documents at the Swiss consulate in Genoa in northern Italy, and used them to flee to South America.

The Red Cross intended the documents for thousands of people across Europe who had been displaced or made stateless by the war, but Nazis seeking to escape prosecution also managed to acquire them, something for which the Red Cross has subsequently apologised.

AFP via Getty Images

The International Committee of the Red Cross office in Genoa issued these passports in false names for Nazi war criminals (from L to R) Josef Mengele, Klaus Barbie and Adolf Eichmann

So what is Mengele's connection with Switzerland?

Although he fled Europe in 1949, Mengele had a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps with his son Rolf in 1956. That information has been known since the 1980s.

Officially, after that, he spent the rest of his life in South America.

But Swiss historian Regula Bochsler always wondered whether Mengele returned again, crucially, after an international warrant for his arrest had been issued in 1959.

Bochsler, while researching Switzerland's possible role as a transit country for fleeing Nazis, discovered that in June 1961 the Austrian intelligence service warned the Swiss that Mengele was travelling under an assumed name, and might be on Swiss territory.

Regula Bochsler

There seems to be evidence Mengele was planning a trip to Europe in 1959. Why did Mrs Mengele rent an apartment in Zurich?"
Regula Bochsler
Swiss historian

Meanwhile, Mengele's wife had rented an apartment in Zurich, and applied for permanent residency.

"There seems to be evidence Mengele was planning a trip to Europe in 1959," the historian told the BBC. "Why did Mrs Mengele rent an apartment in Zurich?"

The apartment was in a modest suburb, and the Mengele family had the wealth for something much fancier. But it was close to the international airport.

Bochsler was able to see Zurich police files which proved that in 1961 the flat was put under surveillance; police even noted Mrs Mengele driving her Volkswagen, accompanied by an unidentified man.

But was it her husband?

Universal History Archive

Mengele (C) is seen here in 1944, with Auschwitz commandant Richard Baer (L) and ex-commandant Rudolf Höss

Arresting a wanted war criminal, as Mengele was in 1961, would have involved Swiss federal police. In 2019 Bochsler applied to the Swiss Federal Archive to see their files too.

She was refused. The files were sealed until 2071 on national security grounds, and for the protection of the extended family.

Bochsler was neither the first nor the last to be turned down. In 2025, fellow historian Gérard Wettstein tried again. He too was refused.

"It seemed ridiculous," he told the BBC. "As long as they are closed until 2071, it fuels conspiracy, everyone says 'they must have something to hide'."

Wettstein challenged the decision by taking the Swiss authorities to court, an expensive process for which he sought crowdfunding. "We raised 18,000 Swiss francs (£17,000; $23,000) in just a few days."

Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images

Mengele is seen here with an unidentified woman in the 1970s in Brazil, where he lived for decades of his life

And that was when the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service finally changed their minds. In a statement this month which suggests full transparency might yet take some time, it said: "The appellant will be granted access to the file, subject to conditions and requirements yet to be defined."

Not everyone is sure the files will reveal much about Mengele himself.

Sacha Zala, president of the Swiss Society for History, is "absolutely sure there is nothing relevant about Mengele", but thinks there may be references to a foreign intelligence service or foreign informants.

The twins of Auschwitz
How Auschwitz became centre of Nazi Holocaust

By the late 1950s, Israel's Mossad was actively tracking fugitive Nazi war criminals, and Zala suspects they may have been in touch with the Swiss. That would give the Swiss authorities grounds to keep the files sealed, since sensitive information related to foreign intelligence agencies is often redacted.

But is a simple mention of Mossad relating to their well-known hunt for Nazis 70 years ago really so sensitive?

"It shows the stupidity of the declassification process without historical knowledge," Zala believes. "In this way, the administration fueled conspiracy theories."

Other historians, like Jakob Tanner, say the secrecy over the files reveals more about Switzerland than they may ever do about Mengele. "It's a conflict between national security and historical transparency, and the former often prevails in Switzerland."

Historian Gérard Wettstein has successfully challenged a decision to keep the Mengele files under wraps in the Swiss Federal Archive (behind him)

Tanner served on the 1990s Bergier Commission examining neutral Switzerland's relations with Nazi Germany, in particular the role of Swiss banks.

He is very familiar with Swiss sensitivity, and shame, over its role in World War Two, when Jewish refugees were turned away at the border, while Swiss banks kept the money of Jewish families who later died in Nazi concentration camps. "It is a problem for a democratic state that these files are still closed," Tanner argues.

Still, he thinks it is plausible Mengele was in Switzerland in 1961.

Wanted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann had been arrested by Mossad in Argentina in 1960, and there is evidence that other Nazis who fled to South America thought they too were at risk there, and that Europe, where friends and relatives remained, might be safer.

Tanner points out that Walter Rauff, another wanted Nazi war criminal who fled to Chile, spent time in Germany in 1960.

One historian on the Bergier Commission was permitted, briefly, to look at some of the Mengele files in 1999, and concluded that it was impossible to prove or disprove his presence on Swiss territory. But that was just a few lines in a 24-volume report about the entire war. The files were sealed again; the historian died seven years ago.

List of 12,000 Nazis probed for loot in Swiss bank
Crates full of Nazi documents found in Argentine court's basement

Meanwhile, no date for the files' release has been set, and the statement from the Federal Intelligence Service about "conditions and requirements" sounds ominous to Wettstein. "I fear we will get a file that is more black than transparent," he says.

Bochsler also worries the files will be heavily redacted. "I don't trust [the authorities] at all. I fear it will look like the Epstein files. Why have these Mengele files been closed for so long?"

Mengele has been the subject of mystery, rumour and conspiracy for decades.

He was never arrested, let alone convicted for his terrible crimes. When he died in Brazil in 1979, he was buried under a false name.

But rumours continued to swirl. In 1985 his body was exhumed, and finally in 1992 DNA testing confirmed the body was his.

Auschwitz's terrible doctor was dead.

But was he ever in Switzerland? Did the Swiss just not notice him?

Did they turn a blind eye to a potentially embarrassing presence to avoid the unwelcome attention an arrest would have caused? Or, like so much about Mengele, is it all just a rumour?

"Maybe we will never get to the real truth," says Wettstein. "We will never know if he was here or not… but maybe we can have at least a clearer idea."

Trump and Xi conclude 'very successful' talks but few deals confirmed

Fri, 15 May 2026 21:50:14 GMT

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Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

Suranjana Tewari

Asia business correspondent

14 May 2026

Updated 15 May 2026

US President Donald Trump left Beijing after a two-day summit saying he had struck "fantastic trade deals, great for both countries", but few details have emerged on what the two superpowers agreed.

Trump arrived for a high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday, accompanied by several CEOs: a high-profile business delegation spanning agriculture, aviation, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

Trade was near the top of the agenda despite recent tensions over the Iran war, and businesses hoped for key deals as well as an extension of the tariff truce that is due to expire in November.

The visit was defined by warm rhetoric and symbolism. Trump was wooed with a packed itinerary that included an honour guard, a state banquet, and an invitation to the exclusive compound where China's Communist Party leaders live and work.

The US president seemed impressed and invited Xi to the White House in September. He said talks had been "very successful", while Xi called it a "historic and landmark" visit.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi confirmed on Friday that Xi would visit the White House in the autumn.

But neither side has announced trade breakthroughs or significant business deals.

President Trump, however, spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One and said China had agreed to buy 200 Boeing jets, with a potential commitment to buy an additional 750 planes. The aerospace giant confirmed the deal.

Trump also said American farmers will be happy with his trade deals because China would be buying "billions of dollars" of soybeans.

There has been no confirmation of any deals or purchases from the Chinese.

If the Boeing orders are finalised, this would be the plane-maker's first major Chinese deal in nearly a decade. It was largely shut out of the world's second-largest aviation market because of trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.

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Trump touts potential Boeing deal with China

Asked about Trump's earlier comments to Fox News in which he said deals had been made, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun only said that the "essence of China-US economic and trade relations is mutual benefit and win-win co-operation".

He added that both sides should work to implement the "important consensus" reached by the two leaders and bring greater stability to bilateral trade ties and the global economy.

There are still questions over the trade truce agreed in October, when Washington suspended steep tariff increases on Chinese goods while Beijing eased back from restricting rare earth exports critical for manufacturing.

Suprisingly Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he and Xi did not discuss tariffs at all.

The White House however said both leaders agreed to establish a "Board of Trade" to manage the relationship without having to reopen tariff negotiations.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who had been leading trade talks for Washington, said in a pre-recorded interview with CNBC that he expected progress on a mechanism to support future investment.

US officials have cautioned, however, that there is a lot of work to be done before these announcements can go into effect.

Tech and trade

Getty Images

The visit was defined more by warm rhetoric and symbolism than concrete announcements

One of the most closely watched moments came as Air Force One touched down in Beijing on Wednesday night.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk stepped off the plane ahead of senior officials including Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and Greer - a sign of the crucial economic agenda that lay ahead.

And Musk and US chipmaker Nvidia's boss Jensen Huang stayed close to Trump during the welcome ceremony, and were prominent during the banquet.

Huang's appearance was notable because he was not meant to be part of the delegation originally - but when he joined the trip, it fuelled speculation that AI and access to chips was a bigger part of the talks than previously thought.

With electric vehicles, AI and semiconductors becoming key battlegrounds in the US-China rivalry, both Tesla and Nvidia are very exposed to China.

Tesla relies heavily on its Shanghai gigafactory and Chinese consumers, while Nvidia wants to be able to start selling advanced chips to China again, which is currently prohibited by US export controls.

US export controls are aimed at limiting China's access to frontier AI capabilities, but Greer said they were not a major talking point at the summit.

Beijing, however, continues to push for greater access to advanced tech, while criticising what it sees as efforts to constrain its industrial development.

AI was expected to be a big part of conversations. "We talked about possibly working together for guardrails", Trump told reporters. When asked about what kind of guardrails, he added: "Standard guardrails that we talk about all the time."

Selling to China

Getty Images

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang at the Great Hall of the People

Last year's tit-for-tat tariff war also hit American farmers, who want to export more soybeans, beef and poultry to China.

According to US trade representative Jamieson Greer, deals on Chinese purchases of US agricultural products have been firmed up. But China's foreign ministry did not confirm any such new deals, saying only that both sides had agreed to maintain stable trade ties and expand co-operation based on "equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit".

The White House said the talks also touched on expanding Chinese market access for US companies and increasing Chinese investment in US industries.

While China is a major market for US companies, it is also a difficult operating environment because of regulation, red tape and geopolitical uncertainty.

But Beijing seemed to strike a positive note on this issue. Xi told US business leaders that China's "doors will open wider" and that American firms would have "broader prospects" in the Chinese market, according to news site Xinhua.

He also called for expanded co-operation in trade, agriculture, healthcare, tourism and law enforcement, describing bilateral ties as "mutually beneficial" and delivering "win-win results".

The red line: Taiwan

Taiwan, the US ally and self-governed island that Beijing claims, has largely been treated as one of several friction points between the US and China during trade talks over the past year.

But this time Beijing linked Taiwan to the broader economic relationship with the United States.

According to Beijing's readout, Xi said the two sides had agreed to a "new positioning" for relations based on "constructive strategic stability", but issued the now-familiar warning that Taiwan remained the most sensitive issue.

"The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations," Xi warned during the talks, according to Chinese state media.

"If mishandled, the two nations could collide or even come into conflict," he said.

Taipei would be watching closely but it's hard to say yet if and how this will affect US collaboration with semiconductor companies in Taiwan, or its long-standing close relationship with the island.

Unresolved fault lines

The war against Iran and the resulting blockade of the Hormuz Strait was a key part of the agenda, and Trump entered the talks hoping for Chinese co-operation on the Iran conflict and the oil market.

Trump has said that China could use its influence to encourage Iran to stabilise flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a key global energy artery.

"[Xi would] like to see the Hormuz Strait open, and said 'if I can be of any help whatsoever, I would like to help,'" Trump told Fox News.

The Chinese foreign ministry was more vague, and released a statement on Friday calling for "a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire".

"Shipping lanes should be reopened as soon as possible in response to the calls of the international community," it added.

Chinese readouts indicated that while the Middle East was discussed, details were limited.

Getty Images

Some 30 CEOs were part of the US delegation that visited Beijing

The conflict is a challenge for the Chinese economy too. Oil price volatility and repeated disruptions to supply routes have increased China's import costs and pushed up prices across the world.

Trump has already invited Xi to the White House in September for a second summit.

Discussions between the two sides are expected to continue ahead of that summit, with the hope that the world's two biggest economies can deliver a major breakthrough on trade that proved elusive this time around.

Five Italians die during cave scuba dive in Maldives

Fri, 15 May 2026 21:33:38 GMT

Instagram/University of Genoa/Albatros Top Boat

Among the five who died were Giorgia Sommacal (L), her mother Monica Montefalcone (C) and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti

Jaroslav Lukiv and Rorey Bosotti

14 May 2026

Updated 15 May 2026

Five Italians have died in a scuba diving accident in the Maldives, the foreign ministry in Rome has said.

"The divers are believed to have died while attempting to explore caves at a depth of 50 metres (164ft)," the ministry said, adding that this happened in Vaavu Atoll.

Four of the divers were part of a University of Genoa team, including professor of ecology Monica Montefalcone, her daughter and two researchers.

The Maldives' military said one body had been found in a cave about 60m underwater, and the other four divers were believed to be also there.

It said divers with special equipment had been sent to the area, describing a search operation as a very high risk.

Italy's foreign ministry said on Friday that officials were working with the Maldivian authorities to search for the bodies.

It said in an earlier statement that another 20 Italian nationals aboard the Duke of York yacht, from which the five divers took off, are unharmed and receiving assistance from the Embassy of Italy in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The ministry added that the yacht is waiting for weather conditions to improve before returning to the Maldives' capital, Male.

The incident is believed to be the worst single diving accident in the tiny Indian Ocean nation, a popular tourist destination because of its string of coral islands.

The five Italians entered the water on Thursday morning, local media reported.

The crew of the diving vessel they were travelling on reported them missing when they failed to resurface later on.

Police said the weather was rough in the area, about 100km (62 miles) south of Male. A yellow warning was issued for passenger boats and fishermen.

Facebook

Muriel Oddenino (L) and Federico Gualtieri were also part of the University of Genoa group

The University of Genoa later named the victims as Montefalcone, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, who was also a student, research fellow Muriel Oddenino and marine biology graduate Federico Gualtieri.

The fifth victim has been named as boat operations manager and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti.

In a statement on X, the University of Genoa expressed its "deepest condolences" to the victims.

Italy's ambassador to Sri Lanka, Damiano Francovigh, confirmed to broadcaster Sky TG24 that one body has been recovered while the other four had yet to be located.

According to initial reconstructions, the cave the five divers entered is divided into three large rooms connected by narrow passages, the Italian foreign ministry said.

A second dive by Coast Guard divers took place on Friday morning, exploring two of the three rooms.

A further dive is set to take place on Saturday, with the aim of exploring the third room.

Monica Montefalcone's husband, Carlo Sommacal, told Italian daily La Repubblica that his wife was "among the best divers in the world".

Sommacal described Montefalcone as "prepared and meticulous", adding that she "would never have put our daughter's [Giorgia's] life or that of others at risk".

"Maybe one of them had issues, maybe with the oxygen tanks, I have no idea," he added.

Getty Images

The causes of the accident remain to be confirmed but dive master Maurizio Uras has suggested "oxygen toxicity" might have been a contributing factor.

"It's a phenomenon that can happen when you dive very deep," he told Italian news agency Agi: "If the oxygen mix is inadequate, oxygen can become toxic at certain depths."

He added: "Weather conditions are also an important factor and we have to consider that the Indian Ocean is not the Mediterranean, which is relatively calm.

"There [in the Indian Ocean], there are strong currents which I imagine can pull from one side to the other. A real danger."

Diving and snorkelling accidents are relatively rare in the Maldives, although several fatalities have been reported in recent years.

Last December, an experienced British female diver drowned in a scuba incident off the island resort of Ellaidhoo. Her husband died five days later after falling ill.

In 2024, a Japanese lawmaker died while snorkelling in Lhaviyani Atoll.

Trump says 20-year nuclear programme suspension by Iran would be enough

Fri, 15 May 2026 21:17:05 GMT

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BBC asks Trump if China will help open the Strait of Hormuz

Robert Greenall

15 May 2026

US President Donald Trump has said he would accept a 20-year suspension by Iran of its nuclear programme, in what appears to be confirmation of a shift in position away from a demand for a total end to it.

Trump said it had to be a "real 20 years". Previously he has called on Iran to permanently cease enriching uranium - a stage in making a weapon - and to be prevented from ever acquiring nuclear weapons.

But he also said his patience with Iran was running out, with no sign of a breakthrough in talks.

Israeli and US forces began massive air strikes on Iran on 28 February. A ceasefire in place since last month meant to facilitate talks has been largely observed, despite some exchanges of fire.

Trump calls Iran response to US proposal to end war 'totally unacceptable'
Trump says Iran ceasefire is on 'massive life support'

Pakistan has been playing the role of mediator.

However, both sides appear to be far apart, having rejected each other's most recent proposals to end the war.

Iranian media said Tehran's proposal had included an immediate end to the war on all fronts - an apparent reference to Israeli attacks against its Shia ally Hezbollah in Lebanon - a halt to the US naval blockade of Iranian ports and guarantees of no further attacks on Iran.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One after talks in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said the two sides had agreed Tehran could not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and must reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which it is currently blocking, prompting a rise in world oil prices.

When a reporter suggested that a 20-year suspension of Iran's nuclear programme was not enough, he replied: "Twenty years is enough, but the level of guarantee from them, in other words it's got to be a real 20 years." He did no elaborate.

Reuters

Trump was asked about Iran on his return flight from Beijing after meeting the Chinese president

US media reported in April that during a session of talks in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, Vice-President JD Vance had responded to an Iranian proposal to cease enrichment for five years by insisting on a minimum of 20 years.

However, this is thought to be the first time Trump himself has mentioned a 20-year timeframe.

In his first term as president, he withdrew from a 2015 nuclear agreement reached with Iran by the Obama administration. One of the reasons given was opposition to so-called "sunset clauses" that would have allowed some restrictions on Iran to expire over time.

Israel has so far not reacted to Trump's remarks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium must be "taken out" before the war against Iran can be considered over.

Netanyahu vehemently opposed the 2015 nuclear deal, partly on the grounds that the sunset clauses would leave open the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and continuing to present a grave threat to Israel.

Alleged murder of Aboriginal girl highlights Australia's deep inequalities

Fri, 15 May 2026 20:37:39 GMT

Katy Watson

Australia CorrespondentAlice Springs

15 May 2026

Warning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers: this article contains references to and images of someone who has died. This note has been added to respect cultural beliefs of these readers during mourning.

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Who is Kumanjayi Little Baby and why has her death caused outrage in the outback?

In the past few weeks, flowers, messages and cuddly toys have grown like a creeper on the chain link fence at the entrance of Old Timers town camp in Australia's Northern Territory.

A little girl gets out of a car with her brother and mother to add to the pile, laying a bright pink cuddly toy on the ground - a tribute to Kumanjayi Little Baby, the five-year-old who went missing in April from this Aboriginal community, and whose body was found five days later.

An Aboriginal man was subsequently charged with murdering her.

"The whole community is numb," another mourner says. This is a sentiment felt by much of this small town of fewer than 30,000 people, many of whom joined the search for Kumanjayi Little Baby, as she's now known for cultural reasons, in the days after she disappeared.

"In some ways you could say we've actually seen some of the best of the community in the absolute worst of times," says Asta Hill, the mayor of Alice Springs.

As well as bringing the town together, Kumanjayi Little Baby's death united Australians across the country in grief and outrage.

Condolence motions were passed in parliament, and even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese weighed in, saying "it breaks your heart".

"For the very first time this story brought to the surface how deeply Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people love and care for their children," says Catherine Liddle, CEO of SNAICC, a peak body that represents Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families.

But the circumstances of Kumanjayi Little Baby's alleged murder also laid bare the deep inequalities that still exist in one of the world's wealthiest countries with many asking how this could happen, and prompting authorities to promise a review into the territory's child protection system.

Faced with a painful, often traumatic history of policies that have targeted generations of Aboriginal communities and their children, navigating the aftermath of this tragedy is fraught with sensitivities.

Vigils were held in Alice Springs and across Australia

A beloved little girl

Kumanjayi Little Baby was a Warlpiri girl whose traditional lands are in the northwest of Alice Springs, in the Tanami Desert.

Her mother described her as a "princess" in a statement read out at a vigil held for her at Alice Springs.

She painted a picture of a beloved little girl that felt relatable to parents everywhere. A five-year-old who loved cartoons and computer games. A little sister who liked hanging out with her brother. A young student excited about starting school.

"My heart is broken into a million pieces," her mother wrote to those attending. "I want you to know that I am having trouble knowing how I can repair it and how I can live without my little baby."

This part of Australia is remote - the nearest city is Darwin, a 15-hour drive north. All around it is arid desert.

Aboriginal people make up about 3% of Australia's population. In Alice Springs, that number is closer to 20%. But since colonisation, communities have been kept apart.

The Old Timers town camp, also known as Ilyperenye, where Kumanjayi Little Baby was put to bed by her mother the night she went missing, is a few kilometres south of Alice Springs, one of 16 around the town.

Alice Springs is the third largest town in Australia's Northern Territory

They first sprang up in the 1880s when Aboriginal people were displaced from their traditional lands by European settlers, but were only formalised in the 1970s after their residents asked for proper homes and basic services like electricity and piped water.

For decades prior to 1960 Aboriginal people had also been barred from entering Alice Springs which was predominantly white. There are camps in the north, south, east and west of the town – each with people speaking distinct languages and connected to different remote communities.

The camps are classified as social housing, but are effectively tiny hamlets comprising several homes. They suffer from overcrowding and residents complain of underfunding, leading to poor facilities and bad infrastructure. There are no shops, residents are sometimes left with no electricity on hot days, there is little public transport, limited internet, and roads are often bad with poor street lighting.

Experts say the poverty of the camps is a key contributor to the cases of alcoholism and domestic violence that have been reported there, adding to the pressure on their residents.

"Heavy things happen in this town and as a non-Indigenous Australian I think the colonisation story is still really present," said Nina Lansbury, who attended last week's vigil at the ANZAC Oval in Alice Springs.

Lansbury is an associate professor at the University of Queensland who's been working in Tennant Creek, 500km from Alice, on public health research and housing. She says it's clear that Kumanjayi Little Baby was not living in a house that supported her family, health and safety.

"I have a report from 1978 that I use in my research that's from the Northern Territory that was citing all these same things – coming up to 50 years. It's a big issue, it's 2026 and this is still happening. Let's hope this is a turning point."

Sorry business

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Watch: Why Indigenous Australians don’t use a person’s name once they die

Since Kumanjayi Little Baby was found dead, many in the community here have been in what's known as "sorry business". This is a period of grieving among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples that involves cultural practices and ceremonies and can last days, weeks or even months.

Her family has asked that her death is respected during sorry business – and that none of what has happened be politicised.

But already, politicians across the board have been reflecting on how this happened and why a vulnerable little girl and her family weren't sufficiently protected.

Liberal Party Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said Kumanjayi Little Baby was a relative of hers, and broke down in Parliament, pleading for an "honest conversation" about the failures of child protection.

But other leaders point to repeated policy failures - both at a federal level and in the Northern Territory - when it comes to addressing systemic issues facing their communities.

Indigenous Australians are three times as likely to be unemployed compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts; have significantly lower life expectancies; make up 37% of the prison population and are more likely to suffer or perpetrate family violence than non-Indigenous Australians.

"The simple truth is that all governments of all persuasions over generations have not done enough to deal with what are generational challenges," Albanese told parliament this week.

Traumatic past

The Stolen Generation is perhaps the most infamous example of failure – a shameful, decades-long national chapter that lasted until the 1970s, in which tens of thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families as part of policies aimed at assimilation.

In 1997, a landmark report called Bringing Them Home estimated that as many as one in three Indigenous children were taken and placed in institutions and foster care where many suffered abuse and neglect.

A decade later, a federal government initiative known as the Northern Territory Intervention was brought in, to address sexual abuse of Aboriginal children in communities. But after 15 years it was scrapped and the policy was widely seen as a failure.

The most damaging thing to come out of this Intervention was the trauma put upon Aboriginal men, says Liddle.

"Men stopped bathing babies, they stopped helping out because what they heard was if you do those things, you're a paedophile and you're going to get locked up and your children are going to get taken away," she says.

"[There was] fear of even going to authorities for innocent reasons because you're scared that you're going to be told that you've done something wrong," she says.

Last week the Northern Territory Child Protection Minister Robyn Cahill announced that there would be a review into the territory's child protection system, as well as reforms.

"I will not be a minister who abandons yet another generation of Territory kids," Cahill said when the details of the review were announced. "The reality is we have kids in really difficult situations and for a long time people have been paralysed by the fear that they will be accused of [creating another Stolen Generation]. Children deserve to be safe - every single child in our community has a right to expect that."

But Aboriginal organisations have criticised this. In a joint statement from Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory (APONT) and SNAICC, they said that it would "deepen an already devastating crisis, with consequences for generations of Aboriginal Territorians".

They are particularly concerned about weakening what is known as the Aboriginal Child Placement Principle - a framework designed to keep Indigenous children connected to family. If that happens, they said, it would be tantamount to "a race-based attempt to blame Aboriginal families for conditions created by government failure".

Getty Images

Australia's government forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families for decades, as part of an assimilation policy

Aboriginal leaders say there needs to be a holistic approach that will help solve the deep social inequalities in the territory.

"When you look at the prison system in the Northern Territory, it is nearly always 100% Aboriginal children and nearly every single one of those children came out of the child protection system," says Liddle.

Children as young as 10 can be jailed in the Northern Territory after the government there lowered the age of criminal responsibility in 2024. Its justification is that it will ultimately protect children - despite doctors, human rights organisations and Indigenous groups disputing that.

"It's like paving a road - it's like putting down pavers and saying here you are this is going to be your journey and by the way we're going to lock you up at the age of 10 when something goes wrong."

She admits that difficult conversations need to be had - but these should also encompass failures in social policy, housing, the prison system and the justice system.

"Those conversations needed to be led from community because the answers to this sit with community, they don't sit in parliament," argues Liddle. "You have to find out what's actually going on and that will change depending on which community you're sitting in, what state you're sitting in. You also need to ensure that you're investing in the services that we need and investing in the services that were designed by us for us."

There's no denying there are complex social issues that need tackling.

Generations of disenfranchisement - Aboriginal people were, for example, not granted full voting rights until 1984 - have significantly contributed to the vicious cycle of poverty, crime and worse social outcomes for some. In Alice, many sports fields and homes are fenced off to prevent youth-related crime including burglary, assault and alcohol-fuelled anti-social behaviour.

Liddle says while delinquency happens, and is not okay, it means funding is not always targeted in the best way. "There have been a lot of fences go up instead of what we really, really need, and that is the investment into ensuring that people are safe."

For some Alice residents, there needs to be a reframing of how Aboriginal communities are seen - and supported.

"People fall through the cracks and this little girl was beloved by her family and community but obviously lived in poverty and was vulnerable," says vigil attendee Jonathan Hermawan.

But he thinks in talking about what happened to Kumanjayi Little Baby, there's a danger of victimising Aboriginal communities.

"Every system has its failures when you homogenise a group that's very diverse," he says.

"The notion of Aboriginality is like comparing a white person and saying every white person is affected. We are far more diverse than that, we are far more complex than that."

What China critics in Maga movement make of Trump's Beijing trip

Fri, 15 May 2026 19:52:54 GMT

Getty Images

Trump's tone towards President Xi has softened considerably.

Brandon Drenon & Bernd Debusmann Jr

BBC News

15 May 2026

When Donald Trump strode on to a stage at a campaign rally in Indiana in 2016, he made one thing clear: China was America's chief economic antagonist.

"We can't continue to allow China to rape our country," he told a crowd in Fort Wayne. "We have the cards. Don't forget it."

The anti-China rhetoric didn't let up - through a decade of rallies, his 2024 campaign and into his second term.

Trump arrived back at the White House alongside key allies who made China-bashing a calling card: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice-President JD Vance and senior economic counsellor Peter Navarro - all united in accusing Beijing of "ripping off" America, stealing technology at an industrial scale and flooding US streets with fentanyl.

Tariffs soon followed, climbing from 10% in February 2025 to 145% by mid-April's "Liberation Day", as Trump called his launch of import taxes on China and scores of other US trade partners. China struck back, slapping the US with 125% tariffs and blocking rare earth exports. A trade war was under way.

Then came this week's visit to Beijing.

Trump stepped on to a red carpet at the Great Hall of the People to hundreds of flag-waving children and a military band belting out the Star-Spangled Banner.

"It's an honour to be with you," Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping. "It's an honour to be your friend, and the relationship between China and the US is going to be better than ever before."

Trump soon hailed "fantastic trade deals", although no major breakthrough was confirmed. Chipmaker Nvidia was reportedly given a go-ahead to sell semiconductors to 10 Chinese companies and Boeing secured an order for 200 aircraft. Citi was granted an approval to operate a securities business in China.

But amid the pleasantries and softened positions, hardline positions against China reflect the traditionally more hawkish stance of Trump's Republican Party.

Less than a week before the summit, the US state department sanctioned three Chinese firms for providing satellite imagery to Iran to help strike US forces in the Middle East.

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Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

And outstanding issues remain - chiefly Taiwan, the self-ruled island viewed by Beijing as a renegade province. Trump delivered few details on the fate of a delayed $14bn arms sale viewed as essential by Democrats and Republican China "hawks" alike.

Ahead of the visit, a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter urging Trump to move ahead with the sale and "formally" notify his Chinese counterpart.

"On Taiwan, he [Xi] feels very strongly. I made no commitment either way," Trump told reporters on Air Force One, adding that he would make a "determination over the next fairly short period" about the arms sale.

Notably, the Chinese read-out of the meeting made Taiwan its central point, arguing that a failure to address the issue could lead to "clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy". The White House read-out made no mention of Taiwan.

The Chinese statement was seen as a threat by some within the broader Make America Great Again movement.

"I am shocked, given how much people wanted to make this into a positive spirit, he [Xi] started with a threat," former Trump strategist Steve Bannon told Politico. "It was so brazen and so blatant, that they made this at the very top."

However, even the most ardent China hawks on Capitol Hill and among Trump's allies stayed largely silent after the trip, offering little reaction to Trump's friendly tone and non-committal statements on Taiwan.

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BBC asks Trump if China will help open the Strait of Hormuz

For China experts in the US, the lack of reaction came as no surprise.

"If you had 50 presidential summits in one month or one year, it still wouldn't change the fact that there are some issues on which the US and China are simply never going to agree," David Firestein, president and CEO of the George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations, told the BBC.

"That doesn't mean it's not going to be a successful summit," he added.

Trump's softening rhetoric and tone, Firestein added, could reflect an acknowledgement that the tactics used in the years after his last visit in 2017 have not worked.

"We still have the same problems today with market access, intellectual property rights, subsidies…the list goes on," he said. "None of those problems have been solved after eight years of having these tariffs on the books."

David Sacks, a fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the softening of Trump's tone will likely trickle down to other officials, Republican lawmakers and Trump's wider base.

"Unlike the first Trump administration, and frankly, any other US administration in recent memory, this is much more top down," he said. "I think those in the administration are, mostly, in the role of implementation."

Sacks' comments were echoed by Stephen Orlins, president at the National Committee on US-China Relations.

"When Trump opines, people follow," he said. "And the base follows."

Trump, however, still faces a dilemma with Taiwan.

Pressure will remain - from both sides of the political spectrum - for Trump to formalise the pending $14bn weapons sale ahead of President Xi's planned visit to the White House in September.

"I think that Congress will continue to write letters urging the administration to approve the sales to Taiwan," Sacks said.

Until then, he continued, each time "senior administration officials go before Congress they will continue to be asked about the status of those arms sales to Taiwan".

A decision from the Oval Office, however, is by no means guaranteed.

"A large US arms sale to Taiwan between now and September would potentially imperil that visit," Sacks added. "The $14bn package is actually now a big question."

Israel says it has killed Hamas commander in Gaza air strike

Fri, 15 May 2026 19:38:38 GMT

Getty Images

Rushdi AbualoufGaza correspondent, and Aleks Phillips

15 May 2026

Israel says it has killed Hamas commander Izz ad-Din al-Haddad, who it described as "one of the architects of the October 7 massacre", in an air strike on Gaza City.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yisrael Katz said in a joint statement that Haddad had been "responsible for the murder, kidnapping and injury of thousands of Israeli civilians and IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers".

Three eyewitnesses told the BBC that a residential building known as Al-Mu'taz was struck by three missiles launched simultaneously from two separate directions, before a fleeing car was hit.

The strike is the latest launched by Israel on Gaza despite a ceasefire with Hamas.

Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied claims Haddad, the commander of the group's armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, had been killed.

The air strike, targeting the apartment block in the centre of Gaza City, sparked a large fire.

Rescue teams rushed to the scene but faced significant difficulties evacuating the wounded, witnesses said.

One eyewitness told the BBC that a body and several injured people had been removed from the building.

A second air strike, targeting a car seen leaving the scene, killed three people, according to eyewitnesses and a local source.

Sources said the vehicle may have been carrying Haddad after he had been seriously injured in the initial strike.

Eyewitnesses and a local source said armed members of Hamas dressed in civilian clothing evacuated a severely wounded person through a side entrance and placed him in a vehicle.

Witnesses said the car was hit around 1.5km (0.9 miles) from the apartment block.

A senior Israeli security official said preliminary information indicated that Haddad had been successfully targeted.

Reuters

The air strike on the apartment block in the centre of Gaza City sparked a large fire

A ceasefire in Gaza came into effect on 10 October, but Israel has conducted regular strikes across the Palestinian territory since then.

Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of breaching the terms of the ceasefire and attacking civilians. The Israeli government maintains it has license to target Hamas members.

It, in turn, accuses Hamas of refusing to disarm in breach of the ceasefire agreement.

Meanwhile, US-led peace efforts have stalled since the start of the Iran war, with latter phases of the plan yet to come into effect

The US announced the start of the second phase of the plan in January, with governance of Gaza assumed by a transitional, technocratic administration alongside the demilitarisation and reconstruction of the territory.

However, talks on disarmament remain deadlocked, while Hamas has since reactivated its police force and appears to be reasserting its authority.

Netanyahu and Katz said Haddad had "refused to implement the agreement led by US President Trump to disarm Hamas and demilitarise the Gaza Strip".

They added: "We will continue to act forcefully and decisively against anyone who took part in the October 7 massacre."

The two-year-long Gaza war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, during which more than 72,744 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Of these, 857 have been killed since the ceasefire began, it says.

CIA chief visits Cuba as energy crisis worsens

Fri, 15 May 2026 17:47:19 GMT

AFP via Getty Images

A man cooks with firewood during a blackout in Havana

Paul Gribben and Tom McArthur

14 May 2026

Updated 15 May 2026

CIA director John Ratcliffe has met his Cuban counterpart at the interior ministry in Havana, after the US renewed an offer of $100m (£74m) of aid to ease the effects of its oil blockade.

A Cuban statement said the meeting was an attempt to improve dialogue and American officials were told Havana was not a threat to US national security.

The development comes as the United States government is preparing to bring charges against Raúl Castro for the downing of two small planes 30 years ago, according to CBS, the BBC's US partner.

Fuel shortages exacerbated by the US oil blockade on the country have left hospitals unable to function normally and forced schools and government offices to close.

Cuba condemns new US sanctions as 'illegal' and 'abusive'
Cuba's mothers-to-be prepare to give birth in a country plunged into darkness

A CIA official told CBS News that the US is "prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes".

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has said that instead of offering aid, conditions could be eased faster if the US lifted its blockade.

Attending the meeting was Raúl Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former President Raúl Castro, Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas, and the head of Cuba's intelligence services, the CIA official told CBS News.

The delegation met "to personally deliver President Trump's message", the CIA official said.

"During the meeting, Director Ratcliffe and Cuban officials discussed intelligence cooperation, economic stability, and security issues, all against the backdrop that Cuba can no longer be a safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere," the official added.

The Cuban statement said: "Both sides also underscored their interest in developing bilateral cooperation between law enforcement agencies in the interest of the security of both countries, as well as regional and international security."

Cuba and the US acknowledged earlier this year they were in talks, but negotiations appeared to stall as the oil blockade wore on.

After Ratcliffe's visit, US officials familiar with the matter told CBS that an indictment against the 94-year-old former Cuban president, Raúl Castro is pending approval by a grand jury.

A unnamed Justice Department source told Reuters that decision could be imminent.

The charge is related to an incident in February 1996, when a Cuban MiG-29 jet shot down two small aircraft belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based organization, looking for rafters trying to reach the United States. Four people died.

The potential indictment of the brother of the late leader Fidel Castro would represent a significant escalation in Washington's pressure on Cuba, already stricken by the economic and energy crisis produced by the blockade.

CIA

CIA director John Ratcliffe (left) at a meeting in Havana, Cuba

Cuba has in the past relied on Venezuela and Mexico to supply oil to its refinery system. However, the two countries have largely cut off supplies since US President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on countries that send fuel to Cuba.

Earlier on Thursday, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said Cuba was "ready to hear the details of the US aid proposal and how it would be implemented".

On Wednesday, the US state department said it was renewing an offer to "provide generous assistance to the Cuban people".

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said that Havana had rejected a previous US offer of humanitarian aid worth $100m (£74m), a claim Cuba denied.

In its statement, the US state department repeated its offer but made it clear that the aid would have to be distributed "in coordination with the Catholic Church and other reliable independent humanitarian organisations", bypassing the Cuban government.

EPA/Shutterstock

People in Havana walk past a large rubbish bin burned the night before in protest against prolonged blackouts

It added that the decision now rested with the Cuban regime "to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical life-saving aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance".

In his response, Cuban Foreign Minister Rodríguez said it was unclear whether the US aid offer would be in cash or in-kind assistance.

He added that "the Cuban government does not, as a matter of practice, reject foreign aid offered in good faith and with genuine aims of cooperation, whether bilateral or multilateral".

He added that the best way the US could help Cuba would be to "de-escalate energy, economic, commercial, and financial blockade measures, which have intensified as never before in recent months".

Reuters

Protesters carrying pots and pans running through the streets of Havana

Meanwhile, Thursday's comments by Rodríguez follow a warning from the country's Energy Minister Vicente de la O Levy that Cuba had completely run out of diesel and fuel oil.

In an interview with state-run media, de la O Levy said there were limited amounts of gas available, but that Cuba's energy system was in a "critical" state due to the US-led blockade of oil.

Cubans have been suffering from extensive blackouts, some of them nationwide, for months.

On Wednesday, after the latest power cut affecting large swathes of eastern Cuba as well as parts of the capital, hundreds took to the streets in Havana, blocking roads with burning rubbish and shouting anti-government slogans.

It marked the biggest single night of demonstrations in the city since Cuba's energy crisis began in January, Reuters reported.

Residents of the San Miguel del Padrón neighbourhood could be heard shouting "turn on the lights!", AFP news agency reported.

Díaz-Canel acknowledged the "particularly tense" situation across the island, which he blamed on the US.

"This dramatic worsening has a single cause: the genocidal energy blockade to which the United States subjects our country, threatening irrational tariffs against any nation that supplies us with fuel," he wrote on social media.

Reuters

The Trump administration has essentially shut down all deliveries of crude oil to Cuba

Washington's blockade on the country ramped up in early May when the US imposed fresh sanctions on senior Cuban officials it accused of committing human rights abuses.

Rodríguez called the sanctions "illegal and abusive".

Additional reporting by Harry Sekulich

New York Times defends journalist after Israel threatens to sue

Fri, 15 May 2026 16:30:31 GMT

Reuters

Israel's prime minister and foreign minister accused the New York Times of "hideous and distorted lies"

Raffi Berg

15 May 2026

The New York Times has said libel action threatened against it by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over an article alleging sexual assaults against Palestinian detainees by Israeli security services is "without merit".

It responded after Netanyahu and his foreign minister issued a statement saying they had ordered the "initiation of a defamation lawsuit".

It follows the publication on Monday of the article which claimed there was "a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children" carried out by soldiers, settlers, interrogators and prison guards.

It is not clear how, or if, such a claim by the Israeli state against the US newspaper could be pursued.

Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual violence

The statement issued by Netanyahu and Gideon Saar on Thursday accused the New York Times of "one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press".

Israel's foreign ministry alleged that the writer, Nicholas Kristof, had based his piece "on unverified sources tied to Hamas-linked networks".

In response, the New York Times issued a statement saying: "The Israeli Prime Minister has threatened to file a libel lawsuit against The New York Times regarding Nicholas Kristof's deeply reported opinion column on sexual abuse by Israel's prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators.

"This threat, similar to one made last year, is part of a well-worn political playbook that aims to undermine independent reporting and stifle journalism that does not fit a specific narrative. Any such legal claim would be without merit."

There has been a furious reaction to the New York Times article among Israeli politicians and media.

Israel's ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, posted a video statement in which he said "the only clear crime on display here is the violation of journalistic standards by Mr Kristof and his paper".

On Thursday, scores of Jewish protesters demonstrated outside the office of the New York Times in Manhattan, calling for Kristof to be fired.

In his 3,700-word article, headlined The Silence that Meets the Rape of Palestinians, Kristof wrote that "there is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes. But in recent years they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel's 'standard operating procedures' and 'a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians'."

Kristof said his reporting was "based on conversations with 14 men and women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces". The article carried first-person descriptions by alleged victims of sexual abuse, including rape and assault with objects.

It also included a claim by an unnamed person who Kristof said was a Gaza journalist that he was raped by a dog on the command of the dog's handler.

There have been extensive reports in recent years, including by Israeli and Palestinian NGOs, which have compiled evidence of sexual violence used against Palestinian detainees.

Last year, two Palestinian men separately told the BBC they were sexually abused while in detention. One of the men said a dog was used to sexually humiliate him.

The Israeli Prison Service said at the time that, in relation to one of the men, it was "not aware of the claims described", adding that "We operate in full accordance with the law." It did not comment on the second man's claims.

Also last year, five soldiers were charged with assaulting a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military prison, including one who was accused of "stabbing the detainee's buttock with a sharp object". The case polarised opinion in Israel, with right-wing supporters accusing the left-wing of using the incident to smear the security forces.

It later emerged that CCTV video of the incident had been leaked by the then-Israeli Military Advocate General, Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, leading to her resignation and arrest.

The charges against the five soldiers were dropped in March this year.

Lawyers in Israel specialising in defamation told the BBC that while there were ways the state could bring the case to court there, it would be challenging.

"In the State of Israel, filing a civil claim in this context has a low likelihood of success, given that the Defamation Law prevents the bringing of a civil action by a collective, and the legal system does not encourage defamation suits by governmental bodies as a matter of public policy, due to considerations of protection for freedom of speech," said Liat Bergman Ravid.

"However, the law does allow the Attorney General to file an indictment against the person who made the statement, but this is a rare event, bordering on non-existent."

Lawyer Idan Seger said that if the claim came to court in Israel, the newspaper would have to defend itself.

"Crucially, the New York Times would face a far more stringent burden of proof in Israel than under the US standard, as a mere lack of malice is insufficient to avoid liability," he said.

"To prevail, the newspaper must prove the absolute truth of its reporting or demonstrate strict adherence to standards of responsible journalism."

AI vigilante trap snares alleged paedophile ex-teacher in France

Fri, 15 May 2026 14:26:27 GMT

Twitch

The influencer superimposed an AI-generated face of a girl and a girl's voice to entrap the former teacher

Hugh Schofield

in Paris

15 May 2026

A retired French sports teacher is in custody after being caught making sexual propositions online to a 14 year-old girl.

Except that the 14 year-old girl was not a 14 year-old girl.

She was an AI-generated face and voice being operated by a popular, male influencer, who specialises in the entrapment of paedophiles.

The 66-year-old ex-teacher – named as Dominique B – turned himself in to police in eastern France on Tuesday, a day after his conversation with the "girl" was broadcast on several platforms.

In the video, Dominique B can be seen on one side of the screen, lounging in a chair. On the other side is the influencer, known as FINNYZYY, with a girl's face and voice superimposed.

The visual alteration was not brilliant – the influencer has to cover the bottom of his chin to hide his beard – but it was clearly enough to fool the retired teacher.

In the 40 minute chat – seen live by more than 40,000 viewers and around a million times since – Dominique B suggests meeting the "girl" at the Parc des Princes football stadium in Paris.

He asks if she would like to kiss him, if she has ever shared nude photos of herself with friends, and if she would like to see him naked.

When he is reminded that "she" is only 14, he dismisses the objection on the grounds that many girls "younger than that have already made love".

The man was recognised by some viewers who alerted Pharos, France's state-run platform for whistleblowers reporting content online.

Before they could act, Dominique B took himself to a local police station.

The state prosecutor in Vesoul said he faced charges of making sexual advances to a person of under 15 years of age, and of soliciting an image of a minor for pornographic purposes.

A former official for the National Union of School Sports (UNSS), his case has raised questions about the ethics of this kind of entrapment.

According to FINNYZYY, his aim is "to raise the alert… so that people understand how serious is the problem (of child sex abuse)".

But lawyer and commentator Mourad Battikh said he found the influencer's methods "very worrying".

"We need to ask: is he really aiming to work with police, or does he just want to create a buzz? Because if he really wanted to be a good citizen, he could simply have taken the video to the police without putting it on the Internet," he told news channel BFMTV.

Aurélien Martini of the USM magistrates' union said that citizen vigilantes "risked disrupting genuine police investigations that might already be under way into a suspect".

But FINNMYZYY received support from the far-right National Rally party with deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy saying he was glad "civil society is mobilised against this unspeakable phenomenon… The reaction of the political class has been so feeble".

It is not clear what difference the fact that Dominique B was not in reality seeking sexual favours from an adolescent girl – but from a man pretending to be an adolescent girl – would make in any criminal trial.

Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

Fri, 15 May 2026 13:25:23 GMT

Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

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President Trump has concluded a two-day visit to Beijing at a high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The US leader hailed the trip as a success, saying he had struck "fantastic trade deals", but little detail is known about the discussions.

Neither side has announced any major trade breakthroughs or business deals.

The BBC's China correspondent Laura Bicker has this analysis.

Video editor: Serene Khalifeh

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World

19 hours ago

Prisoner swap goes ahead as Kyiv mourns 24 killed in Russian strike on flats

Fri, 15 May 2026 12:53:57 GMT

AFP via Getty Images

The prisoner exchange is described as the first stage of a swap of 1,000 people on each side

Mariana Matveichukin Kyiv and Paul KirbyEurope digital editor

15 May 2026

Russia and Ukraine exchanged 205 prisoners of war on Friday, hours after rescue workers ended their search of a destroyed block of flats in Kyiv in which 24 people were killed, including three girls.

Most of the Ukrainian prisoners had been held since 2022, said President Zelensky.

The swap was part of a short-lived ceasefire ending this week with the launch of massive Russian strikes across Ukraine, including a missile attack that reduced 18 flats to rubble. Among the victims was 12-year-old Lyubava Yakovleva, whose father was killed during the war.

Meanwhile, Russian officials said four people, including a child, were killed when Ukrainian drones hit the city of Ryazan, south-east of Moscow.

Images on social media showed damage to two blocks of flats, which Ryazan Governor Pavel Malkov said had been damaged by debris.

Twenty-eight people were hurt in the attack. Ukrainian's drone commander said his forces had hit Ryazan's oil refinery - one of the biggest in Russia.

Facebook/Kyiv Lyceum 323

Lyubava Yakovleva, 12, was the youngest of the victims of the missile strike on Kyiv

Rescue services in the Darnytskyi district of south-east Kyiv completed their search of the rubble of a devastated nine-storey apartment block on Friday. Throughout the 28-hour operation residents and soldiers looked on, waiting for news of missing relatives.

Kyiv was marking a day of mourning on Friday for the 24 victims of the strike.

The Nova Poshta postal service said two of its staff, both named Dmytro, had been killed in the attack, one of them alongside his wife. Former hockey player Yuriy Orlov and his 24-year-old girlfriend Maryna Homeniuk, an English teacher, were among the victims. A kindergarten teacher, Svitlana Moskalishyna, was also killed.

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The BBC's Abdujalil Abdurasulov reports from the site of apartment blocks in Kyiv hit by Russian strikes

The three girls who died were 12, 15 and 15.

Lyubava Yakovleva's elder sister was initially declared missing in the rubble, and it was later reported that she too had been killed. The girls' school said on Facebook that the "scariest face of war is the children's lives it takes".

Among those bringing flowers to the scene was Volodymyr Zelensky, who said pressure had to be brought to bear on a Russia that "deliberately destroys lives and hopes to remain unpunished".

The Ukrainian leader said the building had been practically levelled to the ground by a Russian X-101 cruise missile.

Ukraine rescuers pull dead from rubble of Kyiv flats after massive Russian strikes

Most of the 18 flats destroyed in Thursday's strike were single-room apartments, or the bathrooms and kitchens of two-room apartments. An entrance to the building was reduced to rubble.

Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko praised rescuers for saving the lives of 30 people.

One of the first people to reach the scene of the strike, 18-year-old Ivan, rushed to the block with his father to help rescue the victims.

"A fire was burning, and there was smoke everywhere," the teenager told public broadcaster Suspilne. "I helped a policeman lower a disabled woman [to safety] she couldn't walk and the policeman carried her in his arms."

Zelensky said the Russian missile had been produced in recent weeks. "This means that Russia is still importing the components needed for missile production, as well as the necessary resources and equipment, in circumvention of global sanctions," he posted on social media.

UKRAINIAN PRESIDENCY/HANDOUT

President Zelensky laid flowers at the site of Thursday's attack in Kyiv

He also paid tribute to the 205 Ukrainians released in the first stage of a planned exchange of 1,000 prisoners on each side.

The deal was brokered by the US and United Arab Emirates and Russia's defence ministry said that 205 Russians were taken to Belarus, where they were being given medical and psychological support.

Zelensky said among those freed were Ukrainians who had fought during the siege of Mariupol in the initial months of Russia's full-scale invasion from February 2022, as well as in several border regions and at the nuclear plant at Chornobyl, previously known during the Soviet era as Chernobyl.

The swap was part of a three-day ceasefire that the two sides had agreed to from 9-11 May, which covered Russia's scaled-down Victory Day parade in Moscow.

The truce, which was marred by a series of violations, was quickly forgotten this week when Russian forces launched their biggest drone onslaught since the start of the war.

Ukrainian officials said 1,410 Russian drones and 56 missiles been launched at Ukrainian cities and communities in just one 24-hour period from 13-14 May.

Although Russia's President Putin had spoken last Saturday of the war "heading to an end", there have been no negotiations since February and there has been little sign of any progress in recent days.

Ukrainian commentators have suggested the escalation in Russian attacks was timed to coincide with US President Trump's trip to Beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Zelensky accused Moscow of trying to "disrupt the overall political atmosphere".

The Kremlin says Vladimir Putin will visit Xi Jinping "really soon", in the aftermath of Xi's talks with Donald Trump.

Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Xi would focus on bilateral ties as well as international matters.

Why is Ireland not taking part in this year's Eurovision?

Fri, 15 May 2026 11:41:41 GMT

Actor Stephen Rea speaking at protest outside the headquarters of Irish broadcaster RTÉ in May 2025

Gabija Gataveckaitein Dublin and Ross McKeeBBC News NI

15 May 2026

From Johnny Logan and Dana to years of dominance in the early 1990s, Ireland has a storied history with the Eurovision Song Contest.

Ordinarily the country, which holds the joint record for most wins with Sweden, would join the rest of Europe in eagerly awaiting Saturday's grand final.

But not this year.

Ireland is one of five countries, with Iceland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain, boycotting the contest over the European Broadcasting Union's (EBU's) decision to allow Israel to participate.

The competition features no Irish entrant and national broadcaster RTÉ will not be showing events from Austria, airing a Eurovision-themed episode of sitcom Father Ted instead.

Ireland's participation in the boycott is the latest in a series of moves that has seen the country at odds with Israel over its war in Gaza and led it to be viewed as one of the most pro-Palestine countries in Europe.

Israeli broadcaster Kan has described the absence of Ireland and other countries as a "cultural boycott" which "harms freedom of creation and freedom of expression".

But - for young people on the streets of Dublin and those in Ireland's Jewish community - what does the Eurovision boycott mean and why did it come about?

Why is Ireland part of a Eurovision boycott?

Hannibal Hanschke/EPA

Noam Bettan (left), Israel's Eurovision entrant, celebrates after the first semi-final in Vienna

Israel's presence at Eurovision has been contentious since it began its war in Gaza in 2023.

That war came after armed Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel's offensive has killed 72,628 people in Gaza, the Hamas-run health authority there says.

During the 2024 and 2025 Eurovision Song Contests, anti-Israeli protesters were prominent and the country's participants were given armed guards.

There was also controversy last year when Israel's entrant unexpectedly topped the public vote. Some countries claimed the tally was influenced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government's social media channels, who had repeatedly urged followers to vote for the song.

It's time for the Eurovision grand final - here's what you need to know
Another year, another controversy for Eurovision - but fans are sticking by it
Eurovision boss: 'We're watching the voting very carefully'

Eurovision changed its rules around voting and promotion in the wake of the controversy but five countries including Ireland went ahead with the boycott.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organises the contest, has already issued a formal warning to Israeli broadcaster Kan after its contestant released videos instructing fans to "vote 10 times for Israel" last weekend.

Meanwhile, Israel's contestant, Noam Bettan, said he was surprised by protests that disrupted his semi-final performance.

What has RTÉ said?

Announcing the boycott, Irish public service broadcaster RTÉ said it felt Ireland's participation was "unconscionable given the appalling loss of lives in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there".

"RTÉ remains deeply concerned by the targeted killing of journalists in Gaza during the conflict and the continued denial of access to international journalists to the territory," it added.

Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Micheál Martin described Ireland's withdrawal from the contest as an "act of solidarity with those journalists who were killed in breach of international humanitarian law during the war in Gaza".

Former Irish government minister Alan Shatter, who is a member of the Jewish community, accused RTÉ of "moral bankruptcy" on Eurovision, saying it was responding to pressure.

What's the Father Ted row about?

Graham Linehan has criticised Irish broadcaster RTÉ's decision to show the sitcom Father Ted's Eurovision-themed episode on the night of this year's final

During the period when RTÉ would ordinarily be showing the Eurovision grand final, it will instead air Father Ted's Eurovision-themed episode A Song for Europe.

The episode, which originally aired in 1996 not long after Ireland won three contests in a row, sees the main characters' novelty song My Lovely Horse selected to represent Ireland as organisers attempt to scupper any chance of a win and having to once again pay to host Eurovision.

However the decision drew criticism from one of the show's creators Graham Linehan.

In a petition shared on social media, Linehan, who was born in Dublin and has been outspoken in his support of Israel, said he objected "in the strongest possible terms" to the broadcaster showing the episode.

He called for the resignation of RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst and described the broadcaster's position as "antisemitism".

RTÉ declined to comment in response to Linehan's comments.

What is Ireland's relationship with Israel?

The Irish government has condemned Israel several times over its actions in Gaza, and in 2024 recognised a Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, Dublin has been branded as "the capital of antisemitism" by Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar.

In December, 2024, it was announced that Israel's Embassy in Ireland would close due to "the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government".

This followed Ireland's announcement of support for South Africa's legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing the country of genocide. Israel has rejected the accusation as baseless.

There was further criticism last year around plans to rename Herzog Park in south Dublin.

The park is named after former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, who was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin. Taoiseach Micheál Martin described the proposal as "overtly divisive and wrong".

Beyond Eurovision, further potential controversy is on the horizon with Republic of Ireland due to play Israel in Uefa's Nations League in the autumn.

An open letter from Irish Sport For Palestine, signed by 39 people including former Ireland manager Brian Kerr and music stars Paul Weller and Bobby Gillespie, called on Ireland's football authorities to boycott the games.

The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) has said it will fulfil the fixtures.

What do those on the streets of Dublin think?

Celine Flanagan and Niamh Worthington who were on a short trip from Manchester in Dublin, said the UK should also be boycotting the contest

Young people on the streets of Dublin who spoke to BBC News NI were supportive of the boycott.

Niamh Worthington and Celine Flanagan, who were on a short trip from Manchester in Dublin, said the UK should also be boycotting the contest.

"I don't think anybody should be a part of it, I think you're just showing that you're standing by it," said Celine.

Nidhy Anna Abraham and Neha Anna Joseph are not watching Eurovision as they have exams

Neha Anna Joseph and Nidhy Anna Abraham said they will not be watching Eurovision because they have exams.

Neha said she has "an interest" in it and follows it on social media. She said it is "great" that Ireland are boycotting it.

"Good for them," she said.

Augusto Neto and Aline Capucho agreed with the boycott

"I agree with Ireland boycotting it because there are some countries participating that shouldn't be," said Aline Capucho.

Augusto Neto said he also agrees with the boycott due to Israel's participation.

What about the Jewish community in Ireland?

About 2,500 Jewish people live in Ireland.

One of them is Oliver Sears, who has been in the country about 40 years and is the founder of Holocaust Awareness Ireland.

He said he has always been opposed to cultural boycott.

"[Jewish people in Ireland] have no power and we don't really count in retail politics and don't really count at all. That very much feeds into how we are feeling as a community, we feel dismissed, our concerns disbelieved and it's been horribly isolating," he told BBC News NI.

He questioned why any broadcaster would take "collective punishment".

"You are saying to a whole country, 20% of whom are Arab Muslims, that you are not good enough.

"I don't agree with it, it's not going to save a single Palestinian life."

Asked if he thinks Ireland is antisemitic, Sears said Jewish people have experienced a "whole plethora of antisemitic incidents, language" which represents "a chronic lack of knowledge and ignorance about Jews, about antisemitism itself, about Zionism".

"Those three words, Jews, antisemitism and Zionism have all been weaponised and distorted."

Anti-immigration AI videos traced to overseas fakers, BBC finds

Fri, 15 May 2026 05:01:37 GMT

The AI-generated videos present a vision of the UK in decline and sometimes taken over by Muslims

Marianna Spring

Social media investigations correspondent

15 May 2026

The "Great British People" Facebook page, which purports to be from Yorkshire, has had 1.3 million views for its latest video of an elderly white British man crying about his pension. Other videos show reporters discussing "the overwhelming scale of mass immigration" and asking viewers if they miss "the Britain we used to know".

But it is not clear whether the creator of the videos knows the UK at all: the account is really run by someone based in Sri Lanka.

It is one of dozens of interconnected Facebook and Instagram accounts identified by BBC Panorama and the Top Comment podcast, which create and share anti-immigration AI-generated posts about the UK to large audiences - but the creators are often located hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Several are from Sri Lanka, the US and elsewhere in Europe, while others are in Vietnam and the Maldives, or linked to Iran and the UAE, according to information from Facebook's transparency tools, interviews with the content creators and other tell-tale signs on social media such as spelling and accounts they follow.

One expert told the BBC that research shows people are worse at detecting AI fakes than they think, and the more AI content they see, the more likely they are to distrust authentic material.

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan - who has commissioned research into AI-generated images showing the capital in decline, which he says harm the city's reputation abroad - said while some of the people behind the accounts are motivated merely by money, others are backed by hostile states such as Russia and Iran.

It is difficult to verify claims of direct state involvement, but a handful of the accounts do share posts sympathetic towards the Russian and Iranian governments. The owners of the accounts did not respond to the BBC's attempts to contact them.

Several accounts have repurposed their pages, seemingly to increase engagement, switching from topics such as "Make America Great Again" and "Life in the USA" to using AI to push anti-immigration narratives. Some of them have also occasionally experimented with content more sympathetic to migrants.

States and other groups are attempting to manipulate public opinion with Fake AI accounts such as these, according to Prof Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist at the University of Cambridge, who described them as "new evolution of influence operations".

It is easy for AI fakers living overseas to pose as British nationals online, he said, because it is relatively cheap to buy social media accounts originally set up in the UK.

The "Great British People" page features themes of immigration and decline

The accounts have been racking up hundreds of thousands of views with AI-generated videos of fake scenes - such as the House of Commons filled with men in traditional Arab clothing imposing Sharia law. Others feature fake interviews with women in hijabs discussing how the UK needs to be more Islamic.

The image of the UK these videos create can be contradictory. In some widely shared content, this decline is associated with Muslim immigration, but at the same time several videos from the same creators present Islamic countries as being idyllic in comparison.

We spoke to two people who said they were behind an account with more than 20 million views showing content like this. The account shows AI-generated videos from the point of view of people walking through a series of British cities in 2050.

Liverpool, London, Birmingham and unnamed places in England are depicted as dirty and full of rubbish with people dressed in traditional Islamic clothing and hijabs lining the streets. Stalls have "Halal" written on them and there's bunting featuring what looks like Arabic script. There are also fires and chaos.

Foreign cities such as New York and Washington DC, as well as some European capitals, are also portrayed in a similar light.

Panorama: Scams, Lies and AI

Marianna Spring explores how AI slop is shaping what we see, what we believe and who we can trust. In the age of artificial intelligence, will seeing ever be believing again?

Watch on iPlayer

Watch now on iPlayer or on BBC One at 19:30 BST on Friday 15 May in England and Northern Ireland - or, in Wales, at the same time on BBC Two.

Challenged about how their content could be socially divisive, the creators said: "Our content has a clear purpose: we aim to inform people and voters about what we believe could happen in the coming decades if current social and cultural trends continue."

They claimed to be located miles away from the cities they portray in their videos and described themselves as operating out of a European country where "a sense of insecurity has become more noticeable".

They show countries like Iran in an idealised way to "provoke thought and discussion about political and cultural evolution", they said.

The pair denied they were motivated by the money from social media engagement and said they did not monetise their account. They claimed to be in contact with "various politicians" supportive of their content - but they refused to disclose the names of these figures.

One account shows AI-generated views of London in the future, promoting a narrative of decline

Research by London's City Hall found a sharp increase in social media posts like these over the past two years and identified two main motives.

"You've got state actors," London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan told the BBC. He said they had seen evidence of Russian and Chinese activity, as well as from "extreme right-wing" supporters of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement in the US.

"Secondly, we've seen individuals and companies trying to monetise and make profit from division."

He acknowledged the city faces "challenges", but he said these "AI-generated lies" had a real effect, putting off some visitors, overseas students or investors.

"My anxiety is, decent people start believing these lies, this dystopian image of London being in decline, that we're a dangerous city, that there is no law and order," he said.

Social media companies should do more to combat this kind of misinformation, including "amending their algorithms to make sure they're not rewarding poison and division" and labelling AI content clearly, Sir Sadiq said.

Meta - which owns Facebook and Instagram - said it takes "co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour seriously" and has "specialised global teams constantly working to identify and disrupt this type of activity".

"We will take action on any content or accounts which violate our Community Standards, which apply to all content, regardless of whether it is created by AI or by a person," a spokesperson said.

Getty Images

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan says "AI-generated lies" have a real effect

We also spoke to people behind several accounts cross-promoting or engaging with the 2050 point-of-view videos, which bore out City Hall's conclusion that some were motivated by clicks and profit.

"I mostly post to get a reaction for the sake of engagement which boosts my followers and money," said one, who is paid through Instagram's monetisation scheme based on the ads shown to viewers of their videos.

Another said they co-ordinate with accounts "raising voice against similar issues" but that their online activity is "not politically motivated in any way". Instead, the goal is for other accounts to promote their content "to get as much attention as possible".

Some of the people running accounts with similar content to this, as well as engaging and interacting with the "fake" British patriots, are based in the UK, however.

One person who runs a profile from the West Midlands which posts about "the restoration of Britain's former greatness", told us he co-ordinates with other accounts to push the same political goal. He said they have a group chat on Instagram where they can decide what to post and when.

The accounts they work alongside are based in India, Pakistan and Singapore, as well as Australia and New Zealand, he said.

Prof van der Linden from the University of Cambridge said the "disinformation-for-hire industry" is growing with "paid actors and influencers pretending to be ordinary citizens to manufacture support for an agenda", usually with AI content and bots which attempt to drive traffic.

Research suggests the public are not that good at spotting fakes, with about a 55% accuracy level, said Prof Yvonne McDermott Rees, a law professor at Queen's University Belfast who has studied the impact of deepfakes on trust.

It also suggests that people usually think they are a lot better at spotting fakes than they actually are, she said.

Prof Yvonne McDermott Rees says people are not as good at spotting fakes as they believe

Comments on the AI-generated videos suggest some real people are being taken in. One woman said "keep going" and another said "Never Back Down. Stand Up and Do What You Have to Do", in response to an AI-generated video showing a man at a protest to "Stop the Boats" bringing in migrants.

The video is posted on the "Britain Today" Facebook page, which is based in Sri Lanka according to Meta's transparency tools.

"The more that people see AI content, the less able that they are to discern fact from fiction, then the more likely they're going to be to distrust real content," said McDermott Rees.

"It shouldn't fall on just the ordinary person to have to try and figure out what's real and what isn't."

But Prof van der Linden warned that research also suggests many people do not seem to care if content is AI-generated or not.

"As long as it resonates with their identity and world-view they will often still endorse the content and share it with others because it signals agreement with a larger agenda," he said.

As one commenter on the "Great British People" Facebook page put it: "It's probably AI but the fact is that he is right about everything".

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Hundreds of illegal motorbikes bulldozed in New York City crime crackdown

Thu, 14 May 2026 20:17:03 GMT

Hundreds of illegal motorbikes bulldozed in New York City crime crackdown

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The New York Police Department bulldozed more than 200 scooters, mopeds, and motorbikes in Staten Island on Tuesday as part of the city's crackdown on illegal and unregistered bikes.

The NYPD said at least 5,700 'dangerous illegal vehicles' had been seized so far since the start of 2026, a 10% increase compared to the same period in 2025.

It comes after a 7-month-old was killed by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting in Brooklyn on 1 April, where the suspects fled the scene on an illegal moped.

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US & Canada

1 day ago

Warning of record global temperatures

Thu, 14 May 2026 15:29:02 GMT

Warning of record global temperatures

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The Kabul rehab centre hit by deadly Pakistani strike

Tue, 12 May 2026 07:36:36 GMT

The Kabul rehab centre hit by deadly Pakistani strike

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On 16 March 2026, at least 269 people were killed in a Pakistani airstrike on the Omid Drug Rehabilitation Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Pakistan said in a statement to the BBC that it had targeted "military and terrorist infrastructure".

The BBC has spoken to the families of more than 30 victims - including those of recovering addicts, and employees of the centre - who reject Pakistan's claims.

The UN, which was given access to the site, as well as the BBC's Afghan service teams who were on the ground in the immediate aftermath, also confirm the strike hit civilians undergoing treatment.

More on this story: Pakistan struck a rehab centre and killed 269 Afghans. Their families want to know why

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Asia

4 days ago

'Total lack of respect': Macron interrupts speaker to ask for silence

Mon, 11 May 2026 16:10:18 GMT

'Total lack of respect': Macron interrupts speaker to ask for silence

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French President Emmanuel Macron interrupted a speaker on stage at the Africa Forward summit in Nairobi to ask the audience to remain quiet.

"There is a total lack of respect," Macron told attendees, before urging those holding side discussions to continue them outside or in bilateral meeting rooms.

The French leader is in Kenya for the Africa Forward summit, which has brought together more than 30 African leaders, business executives and young entrepreneurs as France seeks to strengthen economic and political ties across the continent.

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World

4 days ago

Watch: Soldier on parachuting to remote island to bring Hantavirus aid

Mon, 11 May 2026 12:39:59 GMT

Watch: Soldier on parachuting to remote island to bring Hantavirus aid

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Members of the British Army have parachuted onto the remote Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha to help a British national with suspected hantavirus.

Two paratroopers jumped in tandem with an intensive care nurse and a specialist doctor. Medical supplies were also delivered.

The patient left MV Hondius, the cruise ship hit by a deadly outbreak of the virus, in mid-April at Britain's most remote inhabited overseas territory, where he lives.

Captain George Lacey, who jumped with the Pathfinders Platoon, based at Colchester Garrison, said high winds made it the mission "a particularly tricky one".

He said the team would be on the island for a few days awaiting recovery, because "sadly, you can't parachute back off the island".

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4 days ago

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Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

Watch: What did we learn from Trump's visit to China?

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