Care workers will no longer be recruited from overseas as part of a crackdown on visas for lower-skilled workers, the home secretary has told the BBC.

Yvette Cooper said "it is time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad" and rules will change this year - instead requiring firms to hire domestically or extend visas of overseas workers already in the UK.

The government plans to unveil a series of changes to visa and recruitment laws on Monday in a bid to cut net migration, and says measures will cut up to 50,000 lower-skilled workers coming to the UK over the next year.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the plans were "too little" and called for an annual cap on migration.

Successive governments have battled largely in vain to reduce net migration, which is the number of people coming to the UK minus the number leaving.

Net migration climbed to a record 906,000 in June 2023, and last year it stood at 728,000.

The Home Office has not yet officially confirmed what will be in its immigration White Paper, due early next week.

But speaking on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Cooper said changes to skilled and care worker visas "will come in in the course of this year and those changes... we expect to lead to a reduction of up to 50,000 fewer lower-skilled visas over the course of the next year".

She added targets for net migration would not be set, saying "they undermined the credibility of anything that governments do".

Philp told the same programme that the Conservatives would push for a Parliament vote on installing an annual cap on migration. When asked what the cap would be, he said "we're working on the detail to specify that number", but it would be "a further reduction of significantly more than 50,000".

Cooper also said there would be "some changes" to rules around international students and graduates.

"We will let them continue to come and to stay and to work afterwards," she added.

"We are making some changes, particularly around the standards and the compliance for universities, because, again, we've had problems where some universities haven't had proper standards in place.

"They've recruited people to come as international students who then haven't completed their courses, have either overstayed or... other problems with compliance of the system."

The government has already tightened rules around care sector worker after coming to power last July.

Since 9 April, care providers who want to recruit a new worker from overseas have had to first prove they have attempted to recruit a worker from within England.

But the new rules will now require care companies to recruit from domestic workers or a pool of over 10,000 care workers in the UK with cancelled sponsorships before hiring from abroad.

Alongside this Cooper promised "to bring in a new fair pay agreement for care workers" to make care jobs more attractive to UK workers and reduce overseas demand.

We've seen it before: Vladimir Putin doesn't react well to ultimatums. We saw it again, last night, in the Kremlin.

President Putin slammed European powers for talking to Russia "in a boorish manner and with the help of ultimatums".

He didn't go into detail. He didn't need to.

This was clearly his response to the ultimatum set by European leaders in Kyiv.

They had warned Moscow that if Russia didn't agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire from Monday, there will be more sanctions against Russia and more military assistance for Ukraine.

On Saturday, Sir Keir Starmer said that "if he [Putin] is serious about peace, then he has a chance to show it".

The Kremlin's response: we're serious, but we'll show it our way.

Putin's way (his counter proposal) is direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul next Thursday.

But, crucially, no immediate ceasefire.

So, is the Kremlin's offer a serious peace initiative? Or is it simply an attempt by Moscow to play for time and to prolong the war? And, with this proposal, might Russia also be trying to split the Western coalition that is backing Ukraine?

Let's begin with a short, but key question: does Vladimir Putin want peace?

He claims he does. But peace only on Russia's terms.

Moscow suspects it has little to gain from a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, especially since the Russians believe they currently have the initiative on the battlefield in Ukraine.

But neither does Russia want to be seen as an obstacle to peace. It's keen to maintain a good relationship with the Donald Trump administration, with which the Kremlin has been working hard on improving ties.

If a US-Russia rapprochement continues, the Kremlin will be hoping for speedy sanctions relief and an economic boost.

By proposing direct talks in Istanbul, President Putin is sending a signal to the White House: "I am a man of peace."

• Why Zelensky can't and won't give up Crimea
• All smiles in the Kremlin as Putin sits down with Trump's deal-maker
• What's Putin trying to achieve by calling a three-day ceasefire?

But by not committing to an immediate 30-day ceasefire, the likelihood is Russia will continue the war, and push on to seize and occupy more Ukrainian territory.

The Kremlin leader's vague reference to "not excluding" that the Istanbul talks might lead to "new ceasefires" will be greeted with deep scepticism by Kyiv.

And when we're talking about war and peace, keep in mind that it was President Putin who ordered the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

This was his decision, one widely seen as an attempt to force Ukraine back into Moscow's orbit.

He didn't call it a war, though. He portrayed Russia's actions as a "special military operation".

Last night, though, Putin declared: "There is ongoing fighting, war. But we're offering to resume talks that were interrupted, and not by us. What's bad about that?"

The Kremlin may well be calculating that its offer of direct talks in Istanbul will drive a wedge between the US administration and European leaders.

Following Putin's announcement, President Trump hailed a "potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine" in a social media post, and promised to "continue to work with both sides to make sure that it happens".

Emmanuel Macron described Putin's offer as a "first step, but not enough." The French president also said "an unconditional ceasefire is not preceded by negotiations."

Putin announced his proposal in a late-night statement delivered inside the Kremlin.

I was among a small group of foreign journalists invited to join Russian reporters for what we were told would be a press conference.

We waited several hours for the event to begin. In the end, the Russian president took no questions. After delivering his statement he left the hall.

Former British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari has told BBC News she is "so happy" to be in the UK and is thankful to those here who campaigned for her release from Gaza.

The 28-year-old was released from Hamas captivity after being held for more than 15 months after she was kidnapped from her home in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

Ms Damari, who is visiting the UK for the first time since her release in January, said she was happy to be "home finally", as she was surrounded by supporters outside Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

"Thank you to everyone for praying for me, and shouting my name without knowing me. I don't really have the words to say how thankful I am for that," she told the crowd.

"I'm home finally, and with you it's more than a home. It's like a family," she said, adding with a smile that she hopes Spurs will win today.

Some 59 hostages remain in Gaza, with about 21 thought to still be alive.

"They need to bring the hostages back now. It's not something to talk about, they just need to bring them home," Ms Damari told the BBC.

Later she said that at times she never thought she would make it back to the UK and that she was thankful to everyone in Britain who campaigned for her and her mother Mandy, originally from South London, who led efforts to get her released.

Dressed in a Spurs shirt, Ms Damari hugged her mum, who said: "I'm so glad she's back and so glad she's here with people who supported her all the time."

The British-Israeli national was shot in the leg and hand when she was dragged from her home on Kinbutz Kfar Aza on 7 October. Hamas also shot and killed her dog.

She was taken from the safe room of her house with her friends Ziv and Gali Berman.

The 27-year-old twins are still being held by Hamas and Ms Damari said she is doing all she can to get them and the other 59 hostages - not all of them alive - back to their families in Israel.

Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said while they had believed 24 hostages were still alive, there was now uncertainty about the fate of three of them.

Outside the stadium, Ms Damari held a banner showing her two friends and told the crowd: "May the 59 hostages be home soon. Gali and Ziv Berman are very, very close friends of mine, and I hope they bring him home. Today."

Her mother Mandy said: "We need all the 59 hostages back. Gali and Ziv are Emily's friends and it's so important to all the families that the hostages in Gaza have to come back."

About 1,200 people were killed by Hamas-led gunmen that day, while Gali and Ziv were among 251 others who were taken hostage.

More than 52,780 people have been killed in Gaza during the ensuing war, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

During the Hamas attack, Ms Damari lost two of her fingers and did not receive proper medical treatment while being held.

But her injured hand gesture that she flashed on her release has been seen as a symbol of defiance and resilience in Israel, appearing on posters, t-shirts and memes across the country.

Ms Damari has yet to talk about the details of her captivity, but at a visit this weekend to a London synagogue, where an empty seat with a poster of her on it for the 471 days she was held, she said she had prayed every day as a hostage, and that however terrible it was, each day she remembered she was thankful to be alive.

Ms Damari's mother, Mandy, broke down in tears as she thanked the UK and the British Jewish community for supporting and campaigning for her daughter while she was being held.

Ms Damari was able to spend time with her British family this weekend, although the joy at returning to the UK was tinged with some sadness as her British grandfather died while she was still held by Hamas.

When she returns to Israel she faces another operation on her leg and hand as the damage caused by the bullet wounds have still not fully healed.

But she is determined that as she now has her freedom, her friends and fellow hostages should soon follow her.

A "large-scale air and ground search" is continuing for a British hiker who has been missing for a week in New Zealand.

More than 40 staff and volunteers are hunting for Eli Sweeting, who is originally from Bristol. The 25-year-old was reported missing on May 4 after failing to return from a solo hike up Mitre Peak, a steep mountain in Milford Sound area of Fiordland National Park on the country's South Island.

New Zealand Police has said they "remain positive" despite the challenging terrain, which means at times they can only progress 250 metres (0.1miles) an hour.

Helicopters, dogs and locals have been assisting with the hunt, and some of his family have also flown out to help.

In a fundraising post, his sister Serena Sweeting described her brother as one of the "kindest, most compassionate people".

"We just want him home safe," she said.

The search party has been focusing on a route heading down the mountain after spotting a light there, but the dense area makes it hard for infrared cameras to detect any signs of movement.

The operation was briefly halted on Wednesday and Thursday due to weather warnings, but resumed again on Friday and Saturday.

Police confirmed this weekend there was "large-scale air and ground search effort planned for the coming days".

The area where Mr Sweeting has hiking has incredibly steep rough terrain, but police said they remained hopeful as Mr Sweeting is an "experienced hiker".

The police spokesperson added: "While the [man] has not yet been located, police remain positive as the search remains ongoing.

"A Land Search and Rescue team stayed near Mitre Peak overnight to continue the search early this morning."

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Pope Leo XIV will give his first Sunday blessing and address to a crowd in St Peter's Square in the Vatican today.

He will recite the Regina Caeli prayer, in honour of the Virgin Mary, in his first public address since his election was announced with white smoke on Thursday.

After delivering Sunday mass, Pope Leo will bless those gathered on the square outside - and deliver his reflections.

On Saturday, he visited a shrine outside Rome and then prayed before the tomb of his late predecessor Francis inside the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

Pope Leo will be formally inaugurated at a mass in St Peter's Square next week on 18 May.

The Pope was chosen as the new leader of the Catholic Church on Thursday, following a two-day conclave in Vatican City.

It has been a busy week for the pontiff, who held his first Mass as Pope in the Sistine chapel on Friday before speaking to cardinals on Saturday.

During this meeting, he described himself as an unworthy choice for Pope, and vowed to continue the "precious legacy" of his predecessor.

He highlighted the importance of missionary work and discussion – as well as care for those he called the "least and the rejected".

He explained he had chosen the name Leo after a 19th-century Pope known for his teaching on social justice.

The new Pope also suggested the development of artificial intelligence and other advances meant the church was necessary today for the defence of human dignity and justice.

He is due to hold an audience with the media on Monday ahead of his inauguration next Sunday.

As part of that mass he will deliver a homily in the presence of numerous heads of state and dignitaries.

The 69-year-old is the 267th occupant of the throne of St Peter, and the first American to become a pontiff. He will lead members of the Catholic Church's global community of 1.4bn people.

Born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, he worked for many years as a missionary in Peru before being made an archbishop there. He also has Peruvian nationality.

Although Leo was born in the US, the Vatican described him as the second pope from the Americas. Pope Francis, from Argentina, was the first.

Pope Leo is widely seen as a moderate who can offer "continuity" and "unity" following the death of his predecessor last month.

The new pontiff is believed to have shared Francis' views on migrants, the poor and the environment.

In his first speech he told the crowds he wanted "to walk together with you as a united Church searching all together for peace and justice".

Three men have been arrested in Japan for attempting to smuggle hermit crabs out of the country.

The suspects, aged 24, 26 and 27, and widely identified in Japanese media as being Chinese nationals, were detained on Amami, a southerly island where the spiral-shelled crustaceans are a protected species.

Authorities were alerted to the men's live cargo when hotel staff, who had been asked to look after their luggage, noticed the suitcases making a "rustling noise", police told local media.

Officers subsequently discovered "thousands" of hermit crabs, weighing around 95kg. The third man was found to have a further 65kg in another set of three suitcases.

"Our investigation is ongoing to identify whether they had [the crabs] to sell them, or to keep them as pets, or to eat them," a police spokesman told the news agency AFP following the arrests on Wednesday. "We are reviewing all possibilities."

Police said the hermit crabs were "a national treasure", being a part of Amami Island's plant and animal diversity.

Hermit crabs - so named because they scavenge shells to live in - can regularly be seen on the beaches of the popular tourist destination.

The crabs can be worth up to ¥20,000 (£103), according to the Japan Times.

Care workers will no longer be recruited from overseas as part of a crackdown on visas for lower-skilled workers, the home secretary has told the BBC.

Yvette Cooper said "it is time to end that care worker recruitment from abroad" and rules will change this year - instead requiring firms to hire domestically or extend visas of overseas workers already in the UK.

The government plans to unveil a series of changes to visa and recruitment laws on Monday in a bid to cut net migration, and says measures will cut up to 50,000 lower-skilled workers coming to the UK over the next year.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the plans were "too little" and called for an annual cap on migration.

Successive governments have battled largely in vain to reduce net migration, which is the number of people coming to the UK minus the number leaving.

Net migration climbed to a record 906,000 in June 2023, and last year it stood at 728,000.

The Home Office has not yet officially confirmed what will be in its immigration White Paper, due early next week.

But speaking on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Cooper said changes to skilled and care worker visas "will come in in the course of this year and those changes... we expect to lead to a reduction of up to 50,000 fewer lower-skilled visas over the course of the next year".

She added targets for net migration would not be set, saying "they undermined the credibility of anything that governments do".

Philp told the same programme that the Conservatives would push for a Parliament vote on installing an annual cap on migration. When asked what the cap would be, he said "we're working on the detail to specify that number", but it would be "a further reduction of significantly more than 50,000".

Cooper also said there would be "some changes" to rules around international students and graduates.

"We will let them continue to come and to stay and to work afterwards," she added.

"We are making some changes, particularly around the standards and the compliance for universities, because, again, we've had problems where some universities haven't had proper standards in place.

"They've recruited people to come as international students who then haven't completed their courses, have either overstayed or... other problems with compliance of the system."

The government has already tightened rules around care sector worker after coming to power last July.

Since 9 April, care providers who want to recruit a new worker from overseas have had to first prove they have attempted to recruit a worker from within England.

But the new rules will now require care companies to recruit from domestic workers or a pool of over 10,000 care workers in the UK with cancelled sponsorships before hiring from abroad.

Alongside this Cooper promised "to bring in a new fair pay agreement for care workers" to make care jobs more attractive to UK workers and reduce overseas demand.

A second teenager has died after getting into difficulty in the water near Buncrana in County Donegal.

The boy was rescued after a search operation and taken to Letterkenny University Hospital, where he died in the early hours of Sunday, gardaí (Irish police) have confirmed.

On Saturday evening the body of an 18-year-old male was recovered from the water.

A third teenage boy was also rescued from the water and taken to hospital.

Police said the local coroner has been notified and a post-mortem examination will be arranged in due course.

Gardaí investigations are ongoing.

The Irish Coast Guard told BBC News NI that an alert was raised shortly before 16:00 local time by a member of the public after reports there were a number of people in difficulty in the water.

The multi-agency operation was led by Malin Head Coast Guard with assistance from police and the ambulance service.

An Irish Coast Guard helicopter was also involved in the search along with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).

In a statement, the Irish Coast Guard thanked all the search and rescue units and members of the public who had assisted in the search.

The Eurovision Song Contest was watched by around 163 million people last year – meaning there are potentially 163 million different opinions on what makes a perfect entrant.

Do you go for a soulful ballad, guaranteed to leave Europe misty-eyed and full of love and peace?

Or do you opt for a cheesy extravaganza, complete with saucy takes on regional costumes and eye-popping staging that will have the entire continent (and Australia) raving in their living rooms?

The perfect song

Forensic musicologist at Boston's Berklee College of Music Joe Bennett has analysed hundreds of Eurovision finalists, identifying two dominant musical styles.

One is the "Euro-banger" - high-energy, 120+ BPM songs with kick drums and synth-heavy production, like Sweden's winning entries Euphoria (Loreen, 2012) and Heroes (Måns Zelmerlöw, 2015).

The other is the slow-burning ballad - typically around 70 BPM, such as Portugal's Amar Pelos Dois (Salvador Sobral, 2017) and the Netherlands' Arcade (Duncan Laurence, 2019).

There is a cliché that Eurovision songs are only about love and peace – reinforced by a song performed during the 2016 contest's interval about writing a perfect Eurovision song, called Love Love Peace Peace.

According to Bennett, there is some validity to this, with every Eurovision song falling under six broad lyrical themes: "love, unity, self-assertion, partying, history and songs about making music".

He adds that "songs of self-assertion or lyrical self-empowerment do very well" - as seen with Austria's 2014 winner Rise Like a Phoenix (Conchita Wurst).

Keep staging simple and effective

Acts might be tempted to go over the top on staging, but this may not be the way to secure victory, according to our experts.

Songwriter Thomas Stengaard co-wrote Denmark's 2013 winner Only Teardrops (as well as this year's UK entry What the Hell Just Happened by Remember Monday). He puts his success down, in part, to its simple staging, which he says made it easy to remember.

"If you asked a kid to draw that staging, they could. It was a girl with no shoes on, two guys playing the drums and a flute guy. Very simple, but it worked."

Vocal coach Carrie Grant, who led the UK's jury in 2014 and came sixth in the contest as part of Sweet Dreams in 1983, agrees.

"There is nothing worse than having an artist whose stage has lots of money but their performance doesn't warrant it," she says. "It makes that performance seem worse."

The 2014 winner (and Carrie's personal favourite) was Conchita Wurst – the first act to win the contest without backing singers or dancers on stage since 1970.

What made Conchita stand out was that she was a bearded drag queen. Carrie believes Eurovision fans love things that are quirky and that "embrace the LGBT community".

But she adds that Conchita wasn't a gimmick but instead "a brilliant singer who could deliver what we call in vocal coaching 'money moments'".

The key is key

Minor-key songs increasingly dominate Eurovision.

Bennett debunks the idea that "major equals happy, minor equals sad", adding that "minor keys are more a shorthand for emotional depth".

In 2023, 85% of finalists performed in minor keys, according to the Press Association. In the last 20 years, only two major-key songs have won - 2011's Running Scared (for Azerbaijan) and 2017's Amar Pelos Dois.

Professor Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, a researcher in music cognition at Princeton, highlights source sensitivity – our instinct to associate a song's sound with its intended context. A few bars of a techno song, for example, and we have a mental image of a dark nightclub, and of the sort of DJ who might perform there.

This means certain minor keys now immediately signal "Eurovision-ness" to audiences.

Remember Monday's What the Hell Just Happened was written at a songwriting camp, with multiple songwriters working together at a countryside retreat to write the perfect song for this year's UK act.

The song was intentionally written in a major key to stand out in a sea of minor-key songs - similar to the UK's 2022 second-place entry, Spaceman by Sam Ryder (B Major).

Have a surprise up your sleeve

Repetition is important to make a song stick in the mind, says Margulis. But songs should avoid being too repetitive. Margulis says that what particularly makes a song catchy is "not only when they are heard repeatedly, but also when they throw in some kind of surprise twist".

Bucks Fizz's 1981 winner for the UK, Making Your Mind Up, is a classic example. First, the song changes key, quickly followed by a memorable costume change in which the female singers' skirts were ripped off to reveal shorter skirts – a joint visual and musical twist.

Earlier Eurovision winners were often mocked for their nonsense lyrics, like Sweden's 1984 winner Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley, but Bennett argues this highlights Eurovision's strong focus on melody.

"Eurovision really needs big melodic hooks. You want people across Europe to be singing that melody. The need for a very accessible, catchy chorus is essential."

Key changes have long been a way to introduce novelty into Eurovision songs. The 2000s saw multiple winners follow this formula, including Olsen Brothers' Fly on the Wings of Love for Norway (2000), and Serbia's Molitva in 2007.

But as Bennett points out, though they are still present in around a fifth of finalists, no song with a final chorus key change has won since Molitva almost 20 years ago.

Stengaard's song for this year's UK act Remember Monday is certainly full of surprises. BBC music correspondent Mark Savage said the song featured "a dizzying array of key changes and tempo shifts".

The song is the songwriter's answer to the question he asks himself whenever he writes for Eurovision: "How do you stand out in a contest where everyone wants to stand out?"