Indians are bracing for summer, with temperatures expected to cross 45C in some parts of the country. But the war with Iran is already putting India's $6bn bottled water industry under strain as manufacturers struggle to access crucial raw materials.

Last month, market leader Bisleri increased prices by 11%, making a box of 12 one-litre bottles costlier by 24 rupees ($0.26; £0.20). Brands like Bailley and Clear Premium Water have also increased their prices, Reuters news agency reported.

According to a study by Data for India, about 15% of urban households and 6% of rural households depend on bottled water for their drinking needs. Relying on bottled water is expensive, especially for people in rural areas. But access to clean water remains a challenge in many parts of India, especially in summer, due to reasons including water shortages, groundwater contamination and infrastructure gaps.

Brands and bottle manufacturers warn that a prolonged war will risk making a crucial commodity prohibitively expensive for many Indians. About 20% of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas usually passes through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, which is now almost completely blocked by Iran. The disruption in global shipping has sent global fuel prices soaring.

India, which relies heavily on oil and gas imports to meet domestic demand, is feeling the pressure.

Vijaysinh Dubbal, president of the Maharashtra Bottled Water Manufacturers Association, explains that the main reason bottled water - which is largely sold in plastic bottles - has become expensive is because of the surging costs of crude oil. The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil briefly hit $119 (£90) earlier this week, close to its highest since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran.

Crude oil is used to make Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) resin pellets - granules that are heated and passed through moulds to create PET preforms. These preforms, which look like plastic test tubes, are sold to brands and bottle manufacturers to be shaped into plastic bottles of the desired shape and size.

"The cost of preforms has increased from 115 rupees a kg to around 180 rupees per kg. There is also a shortage in the supply of preforms," Dubbal says, adding that about 20% of bottle manufacturing plants in Maharashtra state have temporarily shut operations.

While some companies have increased prices, Dubbal says many brands and vendors have absorbed them so far, shielding consumers.

So, the price of a one-litre bottle of drinking water, which sells for about 20 rupees, or that of a five-litre one, which sells for about 60-70 rupees, has largely remained unchanged.

"But absorbing extra costs is not a sustainable practice for companies. If things get worse, customers are likely to face the heat," he says.

He adds that the strain on supply couldn't have come at a worse time, since there's a surge in demand for bottled water and non-alcoholic beverages during April and May - peak summer months in India.

Vaibhav Saraogi, director of Chemco Plastic Industries Pvt Ltd, one of India's largest suppliers of PET preforms, says that a surge in the prices of preforms will impact the entire packaging industry and not just bottled water.

• Will the Iran war squeeze India's piped gas next?
• India's ceramic hub grinds to a halt as Iran war chokes gas supply

The size of India's PET packaging market was $1.5bn in 2024 and is expected to reach $2.2bn by 2033. Apart from bottled water and beverages, PET packaging is also used extensively in industries like beauty, pharmaceuticals and even in restaurants and food delivery as customers seek out convenience and affordability.

Makers of glass bottles too are bearing the brunt of the war.

Last month, the Brewers Association of India - which represents major global brewers like Heineken and Carlsberg - told Reuters news agency that glass bottle prices have surged around 20%, and that it has asked its member companies to approach states for a 12-15% increase in beer prices (alcohol prices are regulated by different states differently in India).

The Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Companies has also written to states to increase prices, the agency reported.

Vithob Shet, CEO of Vitrum Glass, a leading manufacturer and marketer of amber glass bottles - tinted bottles largely used by pharma companies and breweries - says that the price rise is a result of the fluctuating supply of natural gas.

Natural gas is used by glass manufacturers to run their furnaces, which melt sand, soda ash, limestone and recycled glass into molten glass blobs which are then shaped into bottles.

But India has tightened its natural gas regulations since the war began, prioritising supply for domestic use and some commercial industries.

Shet says that supply of natural gas has been cut by 20%, making it difficult for glass manufacturers to run their furnaces.

Some, like Vitrum Glass, are using oil to make up for the shortage, but the high cost of crude is spiking production costs.

India's government has stressed that the country's energy supplies are stable, but several commercial eateries across the country have shut since the war began due to a shortage of cooking gas. The energy supply crunch has also impacted India's ceramics and fertiliser industries, while the aviation industry is reportedly reeling under sky-rocketing jet fuel prices.

"The situation is serious," Shet says. "Things like water and medicines are essential commodities and even a slight decline in supply can have major consequences," he adds.

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US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has asked Army Chief of Staff Randy George to step down from his post, according to CBS News, the BBC's US partner.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement on social media that George "will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately".

The Army chief normally serves a four-year term. George, a career military officer who graduated from the West Point military academy, was nominated for the role in 2023 by former President Joe Biden.

The latest shakeup comes after Trump said in an address to the nation that the US-Israel war with Iran is expected to conclude "very shortly".

George served as an infantry officer in the first Gulf War and in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was not immediately clear why he was being asked to leave.

"We are grateful for his service, but it was time for a leadership change in the Army," an unnamed senior defence official told CBS.

Pentagon spokesperson Parnell said: "The Department of War is grateful for General George's decades of service to our nation. We wish him well in his retirement."

He will be replaced by Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen Christopher LaNeve who will become the acting army chief of staff, according to US media.

Parnell said LaNeve is "a battle-tested leader with decades of operational experience and is completely trusted by Secretary Hegseth to carry out the vision of this administration without fault".

The US Military Academy at West Point posted photos on Wednesday of George meeting with troops, saying he "shared experience-driven guidance with cadets preparing to lead".

Since entering the Pentagon, Hegseth has fired more than a dozen senior military officers, including the Chief of Naval Operations and the Air Force's Vice Chief of Staff.

Marmalade has long been a quintessential British condiment, with some recipes handed down between multiple generations.

But jars of the fruity spread could look a little different on shop shelves under the UK government's planned EU food deal, it has emerged.

The breakfast favourite will have to be sold as "citrus marmalade" if the agreement goes ahead, when Britain will readopt new EU food regulations in a bid to boost trade and reduce red tape for British exporters.

The name change is required because Brussels is relaxing its labelling rules, widening the legal definition of marmalade across Europe for the first time.

Decades-old European regulations incorporated into UK law before Brexit mean only preserves made from citrus fruits can be sold as "marmalade" in shops, with other kinds of fruit spread named "jam" or equivalent terms in other languages.

It is a product of British lobbying in the 1970s for a special commercial status for marmalade cut from bitter Seville oranges, a concoction that has become strongly associated with Britain around the world thanks to Paddington Bear.

But the naming rule laid a linguistic minefield that has been a source of friction with food regulators around Europe ever since.

In 2004, the EU agreed to relax the rule for producers selling fruity wares at farmers' markets in Austria and Germany.

It has continued to flummox consumers in countries such as Spain and Italy, where "mermelada" and "marmellata" respectively are commonly used for spreads made from other kinds of fruit, such as plums and figs.

A German MEP who had been pushing for a change after Brexit told the BBC in 2017 that the naming rules were "contrary to German linguistic tradition".

Now Brussels has updated its rules after the UK's departure, allowing all EU countries to permit non-citrus spreads to be marketed as "marmalade" from June.

However, in line with international norms, citrus-based conserves will need to be distinguished as a separate type of product, and will have to be sold using the new legal name "citrus marmalade".

The new name was already set to take effect in Northern Ireland this summer, under the 2023 Windsor framework deal that sees the province align with EU food laws automatically.

But the UK government has now revealed the updated marmalade decree is among 76 updated EU food-related laws that will apply in England, Wales and Scotland too if its wider food deal is agreed.

A timescale for the rule change in Britain is also yet to be confirmed, and it is unclear whether the updated rules will need to be in force before or after mid-2027, when Labour ministers hope the wider agreement will come into effect.

However, it is not clear whether regulators will allow products with names like "strawberry marmalade" to be sold in British supermarkets. This is not currently planned in Northern Ireland, under the legislation delivering the changes.

A previous assessment by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), responsible for labelling rules in England, found such a rule change "could be confusing for UK consumers".

The department declined to specify whether it planned to relax labelling rules in this way, but told the BBC it was in touch with businesses affected by the new rules and would consider alignment "where it makes sense to do so".

Not my jam

The extent to which consumers will notice a difference on shop shelves is not exactly clear. The new rules say product descriptions containing the name of a citrus fruit, such as "lemon marmalade", will be allowed as an alternative.

One manufacturer told the BBC they had already changed the name of one product to comply with the new rules, whilst another said all their labels would have to be altered as a result.

But it remains to be seen whether the long arm of jam law will change the perception of marmalade in the British imagination.

Dalemain Mansion in Cumbria, which has hosted the World Marmalade Awards since 2005, said it plans to keep its competition reserved to citrus-based spreads, irrespective of whether the naming rules are relaxed in the UK.

Beatrice McCosh, director of the awards, said the competition aimed to set the bar for "rock solid British standard marmalade, the type which has been eaten for centuries from Elizabeth I to James Bond".

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Police forces are being offered specialist support from a new national democracy protection unit to deal with the rising level of threats and abuse facing MPs.

Police chief Chris Balmer has been tasked with leading the new initiative to help forces investigate and tackle "anti-democratic crimes".

Reports of crimes against MPs have more than doubled since 2019, reaching almost 1,000 last year, with the spike driven by allegations of harassment, criminal damage, and threats to kill.

MPs told the BBC that death threats had become commonplace and many are not reported to police.

Last month, Security Minister Dan Jarvis said: "The volume, breadth and tempo of threats against elected representatives is unprecedented."

He announced Balmer as the national police lead for defending democracy and said he had written to the senior officer to emphasise "the importance of keeping pace with the evolving threat that abuse poses".

In his role, Balmer will co-ordinate intelligence on threats to politicians, advise police forces on the categorisation of anti-democratic crimes, and provide specialist support to officers investigating alleged offenders.

MPs reported 4,064 crimes to the Metropolitan Police's Parliamentary Liaison Team between 2019 and 2025, according to data released to the BBC.

The figures, which were first reported by the Times, show the number of alleged offences against MPs have increased year-on-year, with 976 recorded in 2025, compared to 364 in 2019.

The most numerous recorded offences were related to malicious communications (2,066 in total across the six-year period), followed by harassment, and criminal damage to a building.

There were 50 death threats reported in 2025, up from 31 the previous year.

The number of reported offences related to physical violence fluctuated but was comparatively low.

The number of alleged assaults peaked at 14 in 2024, a general election year, and went down to three in 2025.

The data did not show how many of the alleged offences led to prosecutions and convictions.

Impact on family

Security measures to protect MPs have been expanded since the murders of Jo Cox in 2016 and Sir David Amess in 2021.

Launched in 2016, Operation Bridger is a national police programme that has offered MPs access to extra security in their homes and constituency offices.

In the 2017/18, £4.2m was spent on security for MPs, a 60% increase on the previous year. While security costs have fluctuated in the years since, they have remained high compared to pre-2016 levels.

But MPs have urged the police and the UK government to go further to protect them.

Labour MP Sam Rushworth had to boost security at his home - including installing panic buttons and cameras - after he received repeated death threats from an obsessed constituent.

Starting in 2024, Benjamin Clarke bombarded Rushworth with abuse online before threatening to burn the Bishop Auckland MP's house down with the Labour politician inside.

Clarke was jailed for one and a half years in May last year and died in prison a few months later.

Rushworth said it had a big impact on his family.

"My wife asked me if we could move," Rushworth said. "My kids asked me if I could change job."

He said a combination of politicians "spouting fake news", the mainstream media and social media was "driving a level of hatred towards Labour MPs in particular that I have never in my life seen before".

Another Labour MP, Natalie Fleet, said she was sent death threats on a daily basis.

She said her family did not want her to become an MP because they knew it was likely she would face a torrent of abuse and threats.

One such threat came in a social media post that appeared to call for the Bolsover MP to "be shot".

It was shared by the deputy leader of Lancashire County Council, Simon Evans, who later apologised for re-posting the message and said "did not notice" the offensive text.

The post was raised during Prime Minister's Questions, and following this, Fleet said she "had to get in touch with the police because the death threats increased in volume and they became more graphic".

"I've never had as much contact with the police as I have in this job," Fleet said.

"You've got to spend time giving witness statements and making sure that you're safe, and all you want to do is be out there with your constituents."

'Not idle threats'

The Democracy Protection Portfolio led by Balmer will sit within the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), which brings together leaders from forces across the UK.

The unit was launched in response to an inquiry into the security of MPs, candidates and elections.

The inquiry carried out a survey which found 96% of MPs had personally experienced one or more incidents of threatening behaviour or communication.

Balmer told the BBC there was "clearly a spread of both online and offline targeting".

He said: "We know, unfortunately, that female candidates and candidates from ethnic minorities within the UK are also disproportionately targeted. So that is an area of concern."

He said he was particularly worried about the "volume" of abuse and threats targeted at those groups.

"But it's not lost on me that these are not idle threats," Balmer said.

"Tragically, we have had two cases in recent memory where those threats have been carried out."

Warning: This article contains details some people may find distressing

An "unforgivable scene of entirely human making".

That is how Kevin Curreri, managing director of Kenyon Emergency Services, described the scene that met crisis staff sent to Legacy Independent Funeral Directors in Hull.

Undertaker Robert Bush hoarded dozens of bodies and half a tonne of human ashes.

It emerged he also gave families the wrong ashes while their loved ones' bodies were left at his site for months.

Bush was the only individual charged in relation to events at the funeral home.

Humberside Police removed 35 bodies and the ashes of 167 people from Legacy's parlour in Hessle Road following a "concern for care of the deceased" in March 2024.

The BBC has discovered Bush also kept more than 1,000 items, including love letters, baby clothes and treasured possessions belonging to the dead and their families.

Curreri's team is typically brought in by governments in the wake of natural disasters, plane crashes and terrorism incidents, but this time the six-strong team found itself deployed to Hull, tasked with helping reunite affected families with sentimental items collected by Bush.

Curreri, a former police officer, said Bush's "intentional negligence" was "pretty difficult to comprehend".

He described how possessions had been either "thrown" into corners or bagged with rubbish, rather than being placed in the coffins of loved ones ahead of burials or cremations.

"It was like a hoarder's house with garbage bags everywhere... a mess," added Curreri.

Despite having previously worked on major incidents, including the Grenfell Tower fire and the Manchester Arena bombing, both in 2017, and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Curreri admitted his team was shocked by what they encountered in Hull.

Despite "dealing with death all the time", some staff asked not to work on the Legacy project after the discovery of baby clothes and other items "that reminded them of their own families".

According to Curreri, human remains and personal possessions had been treated "so disrespectfully" that it showed "a pretty significant breach of trust".

He added: "We see a lot and it was something that stood out as pretty horrific."

Curreri's company was appointed by Hull City Council in April 2024 following the removal of the bodies and ashes, when the scene had been released by police.

He said his team transported the items to its headquarters in Reading, Berkshire, where they were cleaned and photographed.

Each item appeared in a catalogue "so that families could go through and identify the items that they wanted to claim", he said.

The team "worked against the clock" to return possessions to victims' families before they held second funerals, said Curreri.

Items included flags that were meant to have been draped on coffins, sports shirts intended to be a loved one's final outfit and wedding photographs.

Families were elated when they were reunited with items, enabling them to finally fulfill deceased relatives' final wishes, said Curreri.

The team helped victims' families "gain control, restore dignity and respect", he said.

Despite exhaustive attempts to return items to families, the BBC understands some objects recovered from the funeral parlour remain unclaimed.

Curreri said: "The volume of the items far exceeds what I would expect to be produced by… 35 bodies that were discovered and the ashes."

The unclaimed items will be held until further instructions are received from Hull City Council.

Emma Hardy, MP for Hull West and Haltemprice, said the scenes described by the crisis team were "unforgivable" and added further weight to calls for regulation of the funeral industry.

At present, there are no laws or regulations governing undertakers.

"If we don't regulate the funeral industry, if we don't look seriously at it, then there is nothing to stop this happening again," said Hardy.

In November 2024, the government confirmed it was reviewing the funeral industry after the family of one Legacy victim visited Westminster to campaign.

On Thursday, a judge at the city's crown court told Bush to expect jail after he admitted 30 charges of denying a lawful burial and one charge of stealing charity collection money.

Last October, he admitted 36 fraud charges, including one of selling fake funeral policies to 172 people.

He was granted conditional bail by the court and will be sentenced for all 67 charges on 27 July.

Warning: this article contains details which some readers may find distressing.

Until that moment the war was something happening in other parts of Tehran.

It had not touched the lives of "Setareh" and her colleagues. Then she heard an ominous noise and vibrations reached into the office.

She called out to her workmates: "I think it's a bomb." They left their desks and climbed the stairs to the roof of the building.

"We saw smoke rising into the sky, but we didn't know what place had been targeted," she recalls.

"After that, everyone working in the company panicked. People were shouting and screaming and running away. For one to two hours the situation stayed like that complete chaos." That same day her boss shut the business and laid off his staff.

Despite strict state censorship, the BBC has been able to use trusted sources on the ground to obtain testimony from a range of Iranians in different parts of the country.

We cannot give Setareh's real name or say what kind of work she does - no detail that might possibly identify her to the regime's secret police. But we can say that she is a young woman from Tehran who loved going to work, where she could meet her friends, share stories of their lives and, of course, there was the guarantee of weekly wages.

Now the nightly bombing has stolen her ability to sleep naturally. She lies awake worrying about the present, and the future.

"I can honestly say I haven't slept for several nights and days in a row. I try to relax by taking very strong painkillers so I can sleep. The anxiety is so intense that it has affected my body. When I think about the future and imagine those conditions, I truly don't know what to do."

By "those conditions" she means economic hardship and her fear of future street fighting between the regime and its enemies. The war has cost Setareh her job and she is running out of money.

Millions of Iranians are in a similar position. Even before the war, the economy was in deep crisis, with food prices rising by 60% in the previous year. Setareh describes mounting desperation as people run out of resources to survive.

"We cannot afford even basic food. What's in our pockets does not match market prices... Iran has also been under sanctions for years, and the problems created by the Islamic Republic means that during this time we couldn't build any savings, at least enough to survive now or depend on something. To put it simply, the people I thought might have money to lend also don't have anything."

Economic hardship spurred the huge nationwide protests of late 2025 and early 2026, and Setareh believes it will happen again.

"I don't know how this massive wave of unemployment will be handled. There is no support system and the government will do nothing for all these unemployed people. I believe the real war will start if this war ends without any outcome." The outcome she wants is the end of the regime.

We received information from sources on the ground in six different cities. These were conversations with individuals from a cross-section of society - shopkeepers, taxi drivers, public sector workers and others.

All described growing economic pressure and most spoke of their hope that the war might bring about the fall of the government.

"Tina" is a nurse in a hospital outside Tehran and is worried about shortages of medicine.

"The shortage is not yet widespread, but it is starting," she says.

"The most important issue is that this war must not reach hospitals. If the conflict continues and infrastructure is targeted and medicines cannot be imported, then we will face very serious problems."

She is haunted by the images of war that she's witnessed in recent weeks. In the aftermath of bombings, bodies arrived at the hospital "that were not recognisable... some had no hands, some had no legs - it was horrifying".

A recurring memory is the pregnant young woman caught in an air strike early in the war.

"Because of bombardment in her area - her home was close to a military centre - their house was damaged. When they brought her to the hospital, neither the mother nor the foetus was alive.

"Both had died. She had been just two months away from giving birth but sadly neither she nor her baby survived. It was a very terrible situation."

It is an image made more poignant by stories from Tina's childhood. Her mother was pregnant with her during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and told her of having to flee to bomb shelters as Iraqi missiles struck their city. Nearly a million people - Iranians and Iraqis, military and civilian - are estimated to have died in the conflict, with Iran suffering the greatest number of casualties.

The war's legacy made Tina want to work as a nurse.

"Hearing those stories always made me stop and think, to imagine myself in those circumstances and place myself in her situation. Now, I find myself in the same kind of situation my mother once faced. I cannot believe how quickly history repeats itself."

Any public show of dissent in Iran is extremely dangerous. The regime has deployed its internal security forces and loyal supporters to patrol the streets. There are arrests, torture and executions. Iranians have no doubt about the danger they face if they speak out.

During January's anti-government demonstrations, the regime killed thousands of its own citizens and "Behnam" - a former political prisoner - believes it would easily do the same again.

He keeps a supply of antibiotics and painkillers in his flat in case there is renewed street violence. He is still in hiding after being shot during the last protests. Holding up an X-ray of his torso, Behnam shows the metal fragments that remain lodged in his body.

"They ambushed us in one of the alleys - the alley leading to the square. They fired bullets and tear gas," he says.

"Once you see how easily your life can be threatened - that a simple incident or a twist of fate can mean death or survival - after that, your life no longer holds the same value for you. And that experience makes you care less about yourself."

As a child, he listened to his parents' accounts of regime violence. Fear was the defining factor in their lives. There were stories of family members having fingernails pulled out by the Revolutionary Guards. He heard about the humiliation and agony of a male relative who had heavy weights tied to his testicles during torture.

"We all grew up knowing someone talented in our family - a cousin, an uncle, an aunt - whose future was destroyed just because another relative had been involved in banned political activity," he says.

"I will not heal until the day we are free and in a free world [can] look back on the suffering we endured in an unfree world, and in the end laugh at it. I am certain that day will come."

One month into the war, with US President Donald Trump threatening to bomb Iran "back to the stone ages" and regime repression tightening, the time of laughter seems very far away.

Additional reporting by Alice Doyard

A federal judge has dismissed most of the claims in a sexual harassment lawsuit actress Blake Lively filed against her co-star Justin Baldoni.

In a 152-page opinion released on Thursday, Judge Lewis Liman threw out 10 of 13 claims in Lively's case, including allegations of harassment and defamation.

The pair, who starred in the 2024 film It Ends with Us, have been locked in a legal battle since Lively sued Baldoni in 2024, accusing him of sexual harassment and waging a smear campaign against her, which Baldoni denies.

The judge left in place three claims against Baldoni, involving retaliation and aiding and abetting in retaliation, leaving those accusations for a trial in New York in May.

A judge last year dismissed Baldoni's $400m (£295m) counter-lawsuit against Lively which alleged civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.

The case stems from interactions between Baldoni and Lively on the set of It Ends With Us, an adaption of a best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, which features Lively as the main character, Lily Bloom, a young woman who grew up witnessing domestic abuse and finds herself in the same position years later.

Lively filed a suit against Baldoni's Wayfarer Studios in December 2024, alleging Baldoni sexually harassed her on set and retaliated against her for bringing those complaints, among other allegations.

Lively's legal team have accused Baldoni and his film studio Wayfarer of leading a "multi-tiered plan" to wreck her reputation, which included social media manipulation and using friendly journalists to further certain narratives. She shared details of the allegations in a New York Times article published before her lawsuit.

Baldoni's legal team have said the allegations against him are "categorically false" and argued they hired a crisis public relations manager because Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.

Baldoni brought defamation suits against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, their publicist, claiming they were aiming to ruin his career and reputation with the allegations, as well as the New York Times.

He alleged that Lively "stole the film" from him and his production company Wayfarer by threatening not to promote it, and that she and others perpetuated a false narrative that Baldoni sexually assaulted her and launched a smear campaign against her.

But in June, Judge Lewis Liman dismissed Baldoni's suit, saying his team had "not adequately alleged that Lively's threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions".

The legal battle between the two has lasted over a year, and the pair are due to go on trial on 18 May over the remaining claims in Lively's suit.

The BBC has contacted lawyers for Baldoni and Lively for comment.

A federal judge has dismissed most of the claims in a sexual harassment lawsuit actress Blake Lively filed against her co-star Justin Baldoni.

In a 152-page opinion released on Thursday, Judge Lewis Liman threw out 10 of 13 claims in Lively's case, including allegations of harassment and defamation.

The pair, who starred in the 2024 film It Ends with Us, have been locked in a legal battle since Lively sued Baldoni in 2024, accusing him of sexual harassment and waging a smear campaign against her, which Baldoni denies.

The judge left in place three claims against Baldoni, involving retaliation and aiding and abetting in retaliation, leaving those accusations for a trial in New York in May.

A judge last year dismissed Baldoni's $400m (£295m) counter-lawsuit against Lively which alleged civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.

The case stems from interactions between Baldoni and Lively on the set of It Ends With Us, an adaption of a best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, which features Lively as the main character, Lily Bloom, a young woman who grew up witnessing domestic abuse and finds herself in the same position years later.

Lively filed a suit against Baldoni's Wayfarer Studios in December 2024, alleging Baldoni sexually harassed her on set and retaliated against her for bringing those complaints, among other allegations.

Lively's legal team have accused Baldoni and his film studio Wayfarer of leading a "multi-tiered plan" to wreck her reputation, which included social media manipulation and using friendly journalists to further certain narratives. She shared details of the allegations in a New York Times article published before her lawsuit.

Baldoni's legal team have said the allegations against him are "categorically false" and argued they hired a crisis public relations manager because Lively had threatened to derail the film unless her demands were met.

Baldoni brought defamation suits against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, their publicist, claiming they were aiming to ruin his career and reputation with the allegations, as well as the New York Times.

He alleged that Lively "stole the film" from him and his production company Wayfarer by threatening not to promote it, and that she and others perpetuated a false narrative that Baldoni sexually assaulted her and launched a smear campaign against her.

But in June, Judge Lewis Liman dismissed Baldoni's suit, saying his team had "not adequately alleged that Lively's threats were wrongful extortion rather than legally permissible hard bargaining or renegotiation of working conditions".

The legal battle between the two has lasted over a year, and the pair are due to go on trial on 18 May over the remaining claims in Lively's suit.

The BBC has contacted lawyers for Baldoni and Lively for comment.