European leaders have warned against Ukrainian borders being redrawn by force – two days before a US-Russia summit on Ukraine is due to take place in Alaska.

In a statement, European leaders said "the people of Ukraine must have the freedom to decide their future."

It added the principles of "territorial integrity" must be respected and "international borders must not be changed by force".

The statement was signed by 26 of 27 leaders. Missing from the signatories was Hungary's leader Viktor Orban, who has maintained friendly relations with Russia and has repeatedly tried to block EU support for Ukraine.

The statement underscored the nervousness felt by Europeans about Moscow's actions in Ukraine, which many countries – particularly those bordering Russia or those in which the memory of Soviet occupation still lingers – believe could pose a direct threat in the near future.

In recent years Sweden and Finland have joined Nato, Baltic countries have reinstated conscription, and Poland has set aside billions to build a barrier alongside its border with Russia.

European countries have a long history of borders being redrawn by bloody wars and are extremely concerned by the prospect of the US allowing that to happen in Ukraine. A legal recognition of Russia's sovereignty over territories it conquered by force is unacceptable to the EU.

However, the notion that some Ukrainian regions currently under Russian control may not return to Kyiv is gaining ground.

US President Donald Trump has insisted that any peace deal would involve "some swapping of territories" and could see Russia taking the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and keeping Crimea. In exchange it would give up the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which it partially occupies.

Last week, while admitting that some Ukrainian territory might end up being de facto controlled by Russia, Nato chief Mark Rutte stressed that this should not be formally recognised.

In their statement, European leaders said "Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has wider implications for European and international security", and stressed the need for a "just and lasting peace".

They also said Ukraine should be capable of "defending itself effectively" and pledged to continue providing military support to Kyiv, which was "exercising its inherent right of self-defence".

"The European Union underlines the inherent right of Ukraine to choose its own destiny and will continue supporting Ukraine on its path towards EU membership," the statement concluded.

Denting the apparent unity of the declaration was a line in smaller print at the bottom of the page pointing out that "Hungary does not associate itself with this statement".

In a post on social media its leader Viktor Orban said he had opted out of supporting the statement as it attempted to set conditions for a meeting to which the EU was not invited and warned leaders not to start "providing instructions from the bench".

He also urged the EU to set up its own summit with Russia – though EU leaders have been shunning direct talks with Moscow since it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

On Monday Trump revealed he had sought Orban's advice over the chances of Ukraine winning against Russia on the battlefield. "He looked at me like, 'What a stupid question'," Trump said, suggesting that Orban felt Russia would continue to wage war until it beat its adversary.

EU leaders are due to hold talks with Trump on Wednesday. They will be hoping to put the security of the European continent and Ukrainian interests at the forefront of his mind – at a time when nervousness is growing that the peace imposed on Ukraine may end up being neither "just" nor "lasting".

Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are then expected to meet in Alaska on Friday.

The parents of a schoolboy who was murdered by a fellow pupil on his lunchbreak have called for an order protecting the identity of his 15-year-old killer to be lifted.

Harvey Willgoose, who was also 15, died when he was stabbed in the heart with a hunting knife at All Saints Catholic High School in Sheffield on 3 February.

Harvey's killer cannot be named because of his age. However, the BBC and other media have applied to have the anonymity order protecting his identity lifted.

Harvey's mum Caroline said her son's name had been "tarnished" throughout the trial, adding: "He hasn't been able to speak up for himself and he's been named. The defendant should be as well."

The trial judge, Mrs Justice Ellenbogen, is expected to make a decision on whether to lift the order when the 15-year-old is sentenced in October.

Harvey's parents, who have set up a youth club in his memory, reiterated their earlier call to install knife arches in schools.

"Get knife arches in, then get educating children about the pure devastation that knife crime brings," said Mrs Willgoose.

"Children know there are knives in schools. Something needs to be done."

Mrs Willgoose, who has campaigned against knife crime since her son's death, added: "If you don't think there's a problem, ask your child if they have ever known of anybody bringing a knife into school.

"I think parents would be very interested in their answer."

Harvey's dad Mark said the family had previously had met with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to discuss the issue.

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.

The number of migrants to cross the English Channel in small boats since Labour came to power last summer is expected to have reached 50,000.

Home Office data shows 49,797 people had arrived as of Sunday, with Monday's total due to be released later.

Government minister Baroness Jacqui Smith told the BBC this was an "unacceptable number of people" but pointed to the "one in, one out" returns deal with France as a deterrent.

But the Conservative Party said the migrant crossing totals showed Labour had "surrendered our borders".

The latest figures come as ministers continue to grapple with how to effectively crack down on people-smuggling gangs - a key pledge of Sir Keir Starmer's when he became prime minister.

Baroness Smith told BBC Breakfast: "We understand how concerning this is to people."

She said the migrant crossing figures showed people-smuggling gangs had taken an "absolute foothold in the tragic trafficking of people" in recent years.

But the minister added the government was "making progress" on tackling people smuggling, and people had already been detained under the UK's "ground-breaking agreement" with France.

The "one in, one out" pilot will see the UK return some migrants to France in exchange for receiving the same number of asylum seekers who are believed to have legitimate claims.

The first returns are due to happen within weeks - but the initial numbers are expected to be small.

The 50,000 figure will cover 5 July 2024, when Labour came to power, to 11 August this year.

Between 5 July 2023 and 11 August 2024, during which time the Conservatives were in power for the most part, there were 36,346 migrant crossings in small boats.

A number of factors affect crossing totals, including where weather conditions are more favourable for attempts.

But the Tories accused Labour of overseeing the "worst illegal immigration crisis in our history".

"This is a taxpayer-funded ferry service for the people-smuggling trade. Every illegal immigrant should be removed immediately upon arrival," said shadow home secretary Chris Philp.

The Home Office said it wants to "end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security".

The government has made a number of announcements on illegal immigration recently amid increasing political pressure over the issue.

Baroness Smith said the Borders Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, would give ministers greater powers to "challenge the gangs".

Other measures announced include prison sentences of up to five years for criminals advertising illegal Channel crossings online, and increased funding for more National Crime Agency officers.

The moves come in the wake of a series of protests and counter demonstrations outside UK hotels which are used to house asylum seekers.

"People do not cross the Channel unless what lies behind them is more terrifying than what lies ahead," said Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council charity.

The charity's frontline workers say the men, women and children travelling in small boats are "often fleeing places like Sudan, where war has left them with nowhere else to turn", he added.

"To stop smugglers for good, the government must expand safe and legal routes, such as allowing family members to travel to be with their loved ones who are already settled in the UK," he said.

"Without these measures, desperate people will continue to take dangerous journeys, and the criminal gangs are likely to simply adapt their approaches."

The UK jobs market has continued to cool as vacancies fell and the number of people on payrolls dropped, the latest official figures suggest.

Job openings fell by 5.8% to 718,000 between May to July across nearly all industries, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It said there was evidence that some firms may not be recruiting new workers or replacing people who have left.

Initial estimates also indicated that the number of payrolled employees slipped between April and June, with the steepest drop in the hospitality and retail sectors.

Liz McKeown, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said the "latest figures point to a continued cooling of the labour market".

However, the slowdown was not as sharp as some economists had anticipated.

Average wage growth remained at 5%, the unemployment rate was unmoved at 4.7% and an estimated drop in people on payrolls - down 8,000 between June and July - signalled a "very gradual cooling", according to former Bank of England policymaker Andrew Sentence.

He pointed out that there are more than 30 million people on employer payrolls in the UK.

Taylor Swift has announced her twelfth studio album The Life of a Showgirl, after an intense 24 hours of speculation from fans.

Rumours began on Monday morning, when the singer's marketing team posted a carousel of 12 photos with the caption "Thinking about when she said 'See you next era…"

In the hours that followed, her boyfriend Travis Kelce confirmed that she would be a guest on his podcast New Heights and Swift's official website began a countdown to 00:12 ET (05:12 BST).

The pop star's eleventh album The Tortured Poets Department, released last year, broke the Spotify record for being the most-streamed album in a day.

The title of the album was announced on social media with a clip from Kelce's podcast, and simultaneously made available for pre-order on Swift's official website.

The release date for the new music is yet to be confirmed.

After years of headlines during her record-breaking Eras tour, Swift appeared to have a relatively quiet start to 2025.

In May this year, it was announced that she had bought back the rights to her first six albums, ending a long-running and highly publicised battle over the ownership of her music.

After her original masters sold, she vowed to re-record all six albums, which became known as "Taylor's Versions". To date, she has re-released four of the original six.

Swift announced her purchase of her original masters with a heartfelt letter to fans, where she wrote that the final two albums would "have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right."

The singer wrapped up the Eras tour in December 2024, after playing 149 shows in 53 cities.

In the UK alone, she played to almost 1.2 million people, including eight nights at Wembley Stadium. The tour generated an estimated £1bn for the country's economy.

Nicola Sturgeon's memoir Frankly is now on sale, slightly earlier than expected after newspaper serialisations and interviews teased some tantalising extracts.

True to its title, the book has Scotland's former first minister writing candidly about the highs and lows of her time in office including challenges she says had a serious impact on her mental health.

So with the full text now available, what are the key things we have learned?

Transgender controversy

After more than eight years in power, and eight election victories, Sturgeon saw final months in office marred by rows about trans issues.

It was, she writes in her memoir, a time of "rancour and division".

Sturgeon now admits to having regrets about the process of trying to legislate to make it easier to legally change gender, saying she has asked herself whether she should have "hit the pause button" to try to reach consensus.

"With hindsight, I wish I had," she writes, although she continues to argue in favour of the general principle of gender self-identification.

Sturgeon also addresses the case of double rapist Adam Graham who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson.

It was, writes Sturgeon, a development "that gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people".

As first minister she sometimes struggled to articulate her position on the case and to decide which, if any, pronoun to use to describe Bryson.

"When confronted with the question 'Is Isla Bryson a woman?' I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights," she writes.

"Because I failed to answer 'yes', plain and simple... I seemed weak and evasive. Worst of all, I sounded like I didn't have the courage to stand behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had just legislated for.

"In football parlance, I lost the dressing room."

Speaking to ITV News on Monday Sturgeon said she now believed a rapist "probably forfeits the right" to identify as a woman.

The former first minister also criticises her highest profile opponent on the gender issue, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, for posting a selfie in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women's rights".

"It resulted in more abuse, of a much more vile nature, than I had ever encountered before. It made me feel less safe and more at risk of possible physical harm," she writes.

Sturgeon adds that "it was deeply ironic that those who subjected me to this level of hatred and misogynistic abuse often claimed to be doing so in the interests of women's safety".

Rowling has been approached for comment.

Her relationship with Alex Salmond

Sturgeon's mentor and predecessor as first minster, Alex Salmond, is mentioned dozens of times in the book, often in unflattering terms which reflect their estrangement after he was accused of sexual offences.

Salmond won a judicial review of the Scottish government's handling of complaints against him and in 2020 was cleared of all 13 charges but his reputation was sullied by revelations in court about inappropriate behaviour with female staff.

Sturgeon lambasts Salmond's claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy, saying there was no obvious motive for women to have concocted false allegations which would then have required "criminal collusion" with politicians, civil servants, police and prosecutors.

"He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy," she writes, adding: "He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all". The claims have been angrily rejected by Salmond's allies.

The former SNP leader died of a heart attack in North Macedonia last year, aged 69.

The independence referendum

Nicola Sturgeon recalls a "totally uncharacteristic sense of optimism" as Scotland prepared to vote on whether to become an independent nation on 18 September 2014.

It was arguably the defining event of her professional life and, in her view, a chance to "create a brighter future for generations to come".

The campaign was tough, she says, partly because of what she calls unbalanced coverage by the British media including the BBC and partly because Salmond left her to do much of the heavy lifting.

"It felt like we were trying to push a boulder up hill," she writes.

A key period in the lead-up to the poll was her preparation, as deputy first minister, of a white paper setting out the case for independence.

At one point, she says, the magnitude of the task left her in "utter despair" and "overcome by a feeling of sheer impossibility".

"I ended up on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe. It was definitely some kind of panic attack," she writes.

Sturgeon says Salmond "showed little interest in the detail" of the document and she was "incandescent" when he flew to China shortly before publication without having read it.

"He promised he would read it on the plane. I knew his good intention would not survive contact with the first glass of in-flight champagne," she writes.

Operation Branchform

Sturgeon describes her "utter disbelief" and despair when police raided her home in Glasgow and arrested her husband, Peter Murrell, on 5 April 2023.

"With police tents all around it, it looked more like a murder scene than the place of safety it had always been for me. I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified."

In the weeks that followed she says she felt like she "had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel".

Sturgeon calls her own arrest two months later as part of the inquiry into SNP finances known as Operation Branchform "the worst day" of her life.

She was exonerated. Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, has been charged with embezzlement.

The couple announced they were separating earlier this year.

Text here

Leading Scotland during the pandemic

ForSturgeon, the coronavirus pandemic which struck the world five years ago still provokes "a torrent of emotion".

Leading Scotland through Covid was "almost indescribably" hard and "took a heavy toll, physically and mentally", writes the former first minister.

She says she will be haunted forever by the thought that going into lockdown earlier could have saved more lives and, in January 2024, after she wept while giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry, she "came perilously close to a breakdown".

"For the first time in my life, I sought professional help. It took several counselling sessions before I was able to pull myself back from the brink," she writes.

Text here

Misogyny and sexism

Scathing comments about the inappropriate behaviour of men are scattered throughout the book.

"Like all women, since the dawn of time, I have faced misogyny and sexism so endemic that I didn't always recognize it as such," Sturgeon writes on the very first page.

One grim story, from the first term of the Scottish Parliament which ran from 1999 to 2003, stands out.

Sturgeon says a male MSP from a rival party taunted her with the nickname "gnasher" as he spread a false rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex.

"On the day I found out about the story, I cried in one of the toilets in the Parliament office complex," she writes.

She said it was only years later, after #MeToo, that she realised this had been "bullying of an overtly sexual nature, designed to humiliate and intimidate, to cut a young woman down to size and put her in her place".

Her personal life

Parts of the memoir are deeply personal.

Nicola Sturgeon says she may have appeared to be a confident and combative leader but underneath she is a "painfully shy" introvert who has "always struggled to believe in herself."

She writes in detail about the "excruciating pain" and heartbreak of suffering a miscarriage after becoming pregnant at the age of 40.

"Later, what I would feel most guilty about were the days I had wished I wasn't pregnant," she says.

Sturgeon touches on the end of her marriage, saying "I love him" but the strain of the past couple of years" was "impossible to bear."

She also writes about her experience of the menopause, explaining that "one of my deepest anxieties was that I would suddenly forget my words midway through an answer" at First Minister's Question Time.

"My heart would race whenever I was on my feet in the Chamber which was debilitating and stressful," she says.

And she addresses "wild stories" about her having a torrid lesbian affair with a French diplomat by saying the rumours were rooted in homophobia.

"The nature of the insult was water off a duck's back," she writes.

"Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters."

What the future holds

Nicola Sturgeon has a few regrets.

These include pushing hard for a second independence referendum immediately after the UK voted — against Scotland's wishes — to leave the EU, and branding the 2024 general election as a "de facto referendum" on independence.

But now, she says, she is "excited about the next phase" of her life which she jokingly refers to as her "delayed adolescence".

"I might live outside of Scotland for a period," Sturgeon writes.

"Suffocating is maybe putting it too strongly, but I feel sometimes I can't breathe freely in Scotland," she tells the BBC's Newscast podcast.

"This may shock many people to hear," she continues, "but I love London."

She is also considering writing a novel.

Nicola Sturgeon concludes her memoir by saying she believes Scotland will be independent within 20 years, insisting she will never stop fighting for that outcome and adding: "That, after all, is what my life has been about."

Nigerian Afropop star Tems has told the BBC "people don't really respect women" in her industry.

The two-time Grammy award-winner told the BBC that at the start of her career, she struggled to be taken seriously.

"I realised that there's always a cost. There's always a price that you pay. And a lot of those prices I wasn't willing to pay and there wasn't a lot of options," Tems said.

Afropop has gained immense global popularity over the past decade, but despite this growth it remains notoriously male-dominated.

The industry's so-called "Big Three" - Burna Boy, Davido and Wizkid - are all male - while their female counterparts, such as Tiwa Savage and Yemi Alade, have spoken out about the barriers they face because of their gender.

Earlier this year, Tems hit out following negative comments about her body, which were made online after a video of her performing was posted onto X.

She wrote on the social media platform: "It's just a body, I will add and lose weight. I never once hid my body, I just didn't feel the need to prove or disprove anyone. The more you don't like my body the better for me actually."

Tems told the BBC she wants "to change the way women see themselves in music", and hopes to achieve this through her new platform, The Leading Vibe Initiative.

The project aims to provide opportunities for young women throughout Africa's music industries.

"I promised myself that if I get to a place where I can do more, I will make this initiative for women like me and maybe make it easier for women to access platforms and access a wider audience and success," Tems said.

The initiative kicked off on Friday in Tems' hometown, Lagos. Vocalists, songwriters and producers were invited to a series of workshops, masterclasses and panel discussions, all with the aim of developing skills and connections.

Asked what advice she would give to young women wanting to crack the industry, she said: "I think it's important to have an idea of what you want for yourself, what your brand is, what's your boundary.

"What are the things that you wouldn't do for fame and the things that you would do?"

Tems, who has scored hits with the likes of Love Me Jeje and Free Mind, said anyone trying to break into the industry must be passionate about their craft.

"It's not everybody that sings that loves music. If I wasn't famous, I would still be doing music. I would be in some kind of jazz club... randomly on a Friday night," she said.

But this is far from Tems' reality. Five years on from her debut EP, she has collaborated with the likes of Beyoncé and Rihanna, racked up more than 17m monthly listeners on Spotify and headlined international festivals.

And next month, she will be supporting British band Coldplay during their sold-out run of gigs at the UK's Wembley Stadium.

Tems puts her success down to being "authentic" and "audacious".

"Even when people tell you to change your sound, change your style, you look at them and you say: 'No'. If it meant me not being signed, I was okay not being signed. I went to a couple of places that didn't sign me and I was okay with that," she said.

Music is not Tems' only passion - she is an avid football fan and recently became part-owner of US football club San Diego FC.

"I never imagined myself owning or being in an ownership of any football team," she said, adding that her brother initially got her into the sport.

Tems joined San Diego's ownership with Pave Investments, a West African private investment firm which also helped raise funds for the NBA-linked African Basketball League.

Tems' involvement with San Diego gives her hope that "people can be bold enough to try things that nobody ever thought was possible".

She said: "I don't see myself as just a singer, just a musician, just an artist. I'm much more than that."

You may also be interested in:

• Rare photos capture Afrobeats' rise to take over the world
• Tiwa Savage: I always wanted to be an actor
• South African singer Tyla sparks culture war

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica

'I learn a lot from the young players'

When Lewandowski came close to winning the Ballon d'Or

The conversation that changed Lewandowski's career

A knee-replacement implant, used in thousands of UK operations, was known to have a concerning failure rate eight years before it was finally withdrawn, the BBC has discovered.

Patients have told File on 4 Investigates how they were left immobile or addicted to painkillers after receiving the NexGen knee implant, because it ended up slipping out of place. Hundreds of people have now had to undergo a second corrective operation.

Knee surgeons say the implant's US manufacturer, Zimmer Biomet, took too long to acknowledge there was a problem with one particular component.

Zimmer Biomet says patient safety is its "top priority" and that its products are approved in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Debbie Booker from Southampton had an operation to replace her left knee in 2016.

Although initially it appeared to have been successful, she started to experience severe pain a year later while on holiday in Majorca.

"I laid a bag of ice on my knee and for four days I had to do that every few hours because I was in agony," she says.

A knee replacement involves removing damaged surfaces of the femur (thigh bone) and the tibia (shin bone) and replacing them with artificial components.

Debbie says the pain resulted from the knee implant slipping from the tibia and wearing away the bone.

Over the next few months she says she became reliant on prescription painkillers: "I was on fentanyl and morphine. It took me a long time to come off of the morphine because I was addicted."

She has since had a second knee replacement, but the problems caused by the initial failed implant have caused long-lasting health problems, she says.

"It's put my whole body out of alignment, I walk with a limp," says Debbie. As a result, she is now awaiting a hip replacement.

Another patient, "Diana" (not her real name), had a knee implant fitted in 2021 which also slipped and started to wear away her shin bone, leaving her virtually immobile.

"The consultant told me every time I stood up, I was standing on a broken leg. It was absolute agony," she says.

Diana asked to be anonymous as she used to work in the NHS.

As part of their knee replacements, both Debbie and Diana had received a specific implant section, known as a "stemmed option tibial component", also known as a "tibial tray".

In broad terms, this section lacked a layer of plastic contained in earlier, well-regarded versions of the NexGen replacement knee.

Zimmer Biomet started marketing this modified version in 2012. It was cheaper than the earlier model, so it made financial sense for the NHS, according to Prof David Barrett, a knee specialist at Southampton University.

"[The NHS] were justified by saying, 'we have every reason to think it'll be fine,'" he says.

In the decade that followed, more than 10,000 patients were fitted with this version of the implant.

However, File on 4 Investigates has discovered that concerns were first flagged in 2014 by the National Joint Registry (NJR) which keeps a record of implant surgery across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

At that point, there was insufficient data to draw any reliable conclusions, the NJR told us. It is not an easy task to isolate a specific component that is not working as it should, it added.

Further concerns about the implant were raised in Ireland two years later, in 2016, by Prof Eric Masterson, a knee surgeon in Limerick.

Prof Masterson's corrective-surgery rate had soared after he started using NexGen implants in 2012 and he found his professional competence being called into question.

"That was a lonely place," he tells File on 4 Investigates. "You spend a lifetime building up a career and a reputation, and it's very easy to have that career shredded."

When he raised questions with Zimmer Biomet representatives, they assured him there wasn't a widespread problem, he says - an account echoed by NHS surgeons who told us they had found themselves in similar situations.

Prof Masterson asked to be put in touch with surgeons in the UK to compare notes. However, confidential internal company documents seen by File on 4 Investigates reveal the company was only willing to contact surgeons on his behalf if they were considered "friends of Zimmer Biomet" and "happy with their NexGen patients".

Zimmer Biomet failed to act quickly enough after the problem was identified, according to Prof Leila Biant, one of the UK's leading knee surgeons. She says concerns were raised by herself and other colleagues as far back as 2017.

"The issue is [the company's] initial reluctance to acknowledge a problem and to not really engage with a process to evaluate these patients until [Zimmer Biomet] got to a situation where they had to," she tells us.

In 2022, the NJR estimated that patients were nearly twice as likely to need corrective surgery after receiving the NexGen implant, when compared with the average knee implant.

In the same year, Zimmer Biomet recalled any unused implants from the UK market.

Estimations of failure rates for the tibial tray component in this NexGen implant vary from 6% (twice as much as should be expected) to 19%, according to peer-reviewed academic studies.

In a statement, the company told the BBC: "Zimmer Biomet is committed to the highest standards of patient safety, quality, and transparency. When new data becomes available, we act appropriately, responsibly, and in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements."

All 10,000 patients fitted with the problematic implants should now have been recalled for a review by the hospitals where they had their initial operations. Hundreds have already had to have a second operation, and others are likely to follow as problems come to light.

The cost of rectifying the problem is not cheap. Each revision costs between £10,000 and £30,000 because the implant is very specialised, says Prof Barrett from Southampton University.

"Patients are in hospital for a lot longer and they require more support. So this is a very significant expense," he says.

As a result, the total bill is estimated to run into millions of pounds.

Zimmer Bionet did not respond when File on 4 Investigates asked if it would be contributing to the cost of these operations. However, we have seen a confidential company email, sent in 2022, telling sales staff to say that "Zimmer Biomet will not cover diagnostic, follow-up or revision costs up front".

NHS England told us it was "currently reviewing the case involving Zimmer Biomet NexGen knee implants".

The UK jobs market has continued to cool as vacancies fell and the number of people on payrolls dropped, the latest official figures suggest.

Job openings fell by 5.8% to 718,000 between May to July across nearly all industries, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It said there was evidence that some firms may not be recruiting new workers or replacing people who have left.

Initial estimates also indicated that the number of payrolled employees slipped between April and June, with the steepest drop in the hospitality and retail sectors.

Liz McKeown, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said the "latest figures point to a continued cooling of the labour market".

However, the slowdown was not as sharp as some economists had anticipated.

Average wage growth remained at 5%, the unemployment rate was unmoved at 4.7% and an estimated drop in people on payrolls - down 8,000 between June and July - signalled a "very gradual cooling", according to former Bank of England policymaker Andrew Sentence.

He pointed out that there are more than 30 million people on employer payrolls in the UK.

The US and China have extended their trade truce for 90 days just hours before a jump in tariffs had been set to kick in.

An executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on Monday keeps in place an agreement from May, when the two sides temporarily suspended some of the tariffs on each others' goods.

The US had warned higher tariffs could kick in on Tuesday unless that truce was extended.

Talks last month ended with both sides calling the discussions "constructive". China's top negotiator said at the time that both sides would push to preserve the truce, while US officials said they were waiting for final sign-off from Trump.

A return of higher duties would have risked further trade turmoil and uncertainty amid worries about the effect of tariffs on prices and the economy.

Trade tensions between the US and China reached fever pitch in April, after Trump unveiled sweeping new tariffs on goods from countries around the world, with China facing some of the highest levies.

Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, sparking a tit-for-tat fight that saw tariffs soar into the triple digits and nearly shut down trade between the two countries.

The two sides had agreed to set aside some of those measures in May.

That agreement left Chinese goods entering the US facing an additional 30% tariff compared with the start of the year, with US goods facing a new 10% tariff in China.

The two sides remain in discussions about issues including access to China's rare earths, its purchases of Russian oil, and US curbs on sales of advanced technology, including chips to China.

Trump recently relaxed some of those export restrictions, allowing firms such as AMD and Nvidia to resume sales of certain chips to firms in China in exchange for sharing 15% of their revenues with the government.

The US is also pushing for the spin-off of TikTok from its Chinese owner ByteDance, a move that has been opposed by Beijing.

Earlier on Monday in remarks to reporters, Trump did not commit to extending the truce but said dealings had been going "nicely". A day earlier he called on Beijing to increase its purchases of US soybeans.

Even with the truce, trade flows between the countries have been hit this year, with US government figures showing US imports of Chinese goods in June cut nearly in half compared with June 2024.

In the first six months of the year, the US imported $165bn (£130bn) worth of goods from China, down roughly 15% from the same time last year. American exports to China n roughly 20% year-on-year for the same period.

A knee-replacement implant, used in thousands of UK operations, was known to have a concerning failure rate eight years before it was finally withdrawn, the BBC has discovered.

Patients have told File on 4 Investigates how they were left immobile or addicted to painkillers after receiving the NexGen knee implant, because it ended up slipping out of place. Hundreds of people have now had to undergo a second corrective operation.

Knee surgeons say the implant's US manufacturer, Zimmer Biomet, took too long to acknowledge there was a problem with one particular component.

Zimmer Biomet says patient safety is its "top priority" and that its products are approved in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Debbie Booker from Southampton had an operation to replace her left knee in 2016.

Although initially it appeared to have been successful, she started to experience severe pain a year later while on holiday in Majorca.

"I laid a bag of ice on my knee and for four days I had to do that every few hours because I was in agony," she says.

A knee replacement involves removing damaged surfaces of the femur (thigh bone) and the tibia (shin bone) and replacing them with artificial components.

Debbie says the pain resulted from the knee implant slipping from the tibia and wearing away the bone.

Over the next few months she says she became reliant on prescription painkillers: "I was on fentanyl and morphine. It took me a long time to come off of the morphine because I was addicted."

She has since had a second knee replacement, but the problems caused by the initial failed implant have caused long-lasting health problems, she says.

"It's put my whole body out of alignment, I walk with a limp," says Debbie. As a result, she is now awaiting a hip replacement.

Another patient, "Diana" (not her real name), had a knee implant fitted in 2021 which also slipped and started to wear away her shin bone, leaving her virtually immobile.

"The consultant told me every time I stood up, I was standing on a broken leg. It was absolute agony," she says.

Diana asked to be anonymous as she used to work in the NHS.

As part of their knee replacements, both Debbie and Diana had received a specific implant section, known as a "stemmed option tibial component", also known as a "tibial tray".

In broad terms, this section lacked a layer of plastic contained in earlier, well-regarded versions of the NexGen replacement knee.

Zimmer Biomet started marketing this modified version in 2012. It was cheaper than the earlier model, so it made financial sense for the NHS, according to Prof David Barrett, a knee specialist at Southampton University.

"[The NHS] were justified by saying, 'we have every reason to think it'll be fine,'" he says.

In the decade that followed, more than 10,000 patients were fitted with this version of the implant.

However, File on 4 Investigates has discovered that concerns were first flagged in 2014 by the National Joint Registry (NJR) which keeps a record of implant surgery across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

At that point, there was insufficient data to draw any reliable conclusions, the NJR told us. It is not an easy task to isolate a specific component that is not working as it should, it added.

Further concerns about the implant were raised in Ireland two years later, in 2016, by Prof Eric Masterson, a knee surgeon in Limerick.

Prof Masterson's corrective-surgery rate had soared after he started using NexGen implants in 2012 and he found his professional competence being called into question.

"That was a lonely place," he tells File on 4 Investigates. "You spend a lifetime building up a career and a reputation, and it's very easy to have that career shredded."

When he raised questions with Zimmer Biomet representatives, they assured him there wasn't a widespread problem, he says - an account echoed by NHS surgeons who told us they had found themselves in similar situations.

Prof Masterson asked to be put in touch with surgeons in the UK to compare notes. However, confidential internal company documents seen by File on 4 Investigates reveal the company was only willing to contact surgeons on his behalf if they were considered "friends of Zimmer Biomet" and "happy with their NexGen patients".

Zimmer Biomet failed to act quickly enough after the problem was identified, according to Prof Leila Biant, one of the UK's leading knee surgeons. She says concerns were raised by herself and other colleagues as far back as 2017.

"The issue is [the company's] initial reluctance to acknowledge a problem and to not really engage with a process to evaluate these patients until [Zimmer Biomet] got to a situation where they had to," she tells us.

In 2022, the NJR estimated that patients were nearly twice as likely to need corrective surgery after receiving the NexGen implant, when compared with the average knee implant.

In the same year, Zimmer Biomet recalled any unused implants from the UK market.

Estimations of failure rates for the tibial tray component in this NexGen implant vary from 6% (twice as much as should be expected) to 19%, according to peer-reviewed academic studies.

In a statement, the company told the BBC: "Zimmer Biomet is committed to the highest standards of patient safety, quality, and transparency. When new data becomes available, we act appropriately, responsibly, and in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements."

All 10,000 patients fitted with the problematic implants should now have been recalled for a review by the hospitals where they had their initial operations. Hundreds have already had to have a second operation, and others are likely to follow as problems come to light.

The cost of rectifying the problem is not cheap. Each revision costs between £10,000 and £30,000 because the implant is very specialised, says Prof Barrett from Southampton University.

"Patients are in hospital for a lot longer and they require more support. So this is a very significant expense," he says.

As a result, the total bill is estimated to run into millions of pounds.

Zimmer Bionet did not respond when File on 4 Investigates asked if it would be contributing to the cost of these operations. However, we have seen a confidential company email, sent in 2022, telling sales staff to say that "Zimmer Biomet will not cover diagnostic, follow-up or revision costs up front".

NHS England told us it was "currently reviewing the case involving Zimmer Biomet NexGen knee implants".

Taylor Swift has announced her twelfth studio album The Life of a Showgirl, after an intense 24 hours of speculation from fans.

Rumours began on Monday morning, when the singer's marketing team posted a carousel of 12 photos with the caption "Thinking about when she said 'See you next era…"

In the hours that followed, her boyfriend Travis Kelce confirmed that she would be a guest on his podcast New Heights and Swift's official website began a countdown to 00:12 ET (05:12 BST).

The pop star's eleventh album The Tortured Poets Department, released last year, broke the Spotify record for being the most-streamed album in a day.

The title of the album was announced on social media with a clip from Kelce's podcast, and simultaneously made available for pre-order on Swift's official website.

The release date for the new music is yet to be confirmed.

After years of headlines during her record-breaking Eras tour, Swift appeared to have a relatively quiet start to 2025.

In May this year, it was announced that she had bought back the rights to her first six albums, ending a long-running and highly publicised battle over the ownership of her music.

After her original masters sold, she vowed to re-record all six albums, which became known as "Taylor's Versions". To date, she has re-released four of the original six.

Swift announced her purchase of her original masters with a heartfelt letter to fans, where she wrote that the final two albums would "have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right."

The singer wrapped up the Eras tour in December 2024, after playing 149 shows in 53 cities.

In the UK alone, she played to almost 1.2 million people, including eight nights at Wembley Stadium. The tour generated an estimated £1bn for the country's economy.

World-famous coral reefs along Western Australia's (WA) coast have suffered the worst bleaching on record after the state's "longest, largest and most intense" marine heatwave, scientists say.

Between last August and this May, warmer water temperatures led to significant heat stress on the reefs, causing many of the coral to expel the algae which gives them life and colour - a process called bleaching, which is often fatal.

The damage - which will take months to assess - spans 1,500km (932 miles) and includes areas previously unscathed by climate change.

Coral reefs worldwide have been suffering from a two-year-long global coral bleaching event, due to record high ocean temperatures.

Eight weeks of heat stress is usually enough to kill coral, and early estimates showed many WA reefs suffered between 15 and 30, said Australia's marine science agency.

"The length and intensity of the heat stress, and its footprint across multiple regions, is something we've never seen before on most of the reefs in Western Australia," James Gilmour, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims), said.

In a new report, the Aims researchers found the 2024-25 season was the "most severe coral bleaching on record" for WA coral reefs across both the northwestern and central reefs.

"Areas which had given us hope because they'd rarely or not bleached before - like the Rowley Shoals, north Kimberley and Ningaloo - have been hit hard this time. Finally, climate heating has caught up with these reefs," he said.

Climate change means bleaching events are becoming more frequent, more intense and more widespread, which Dr Gilmore says gives coral reefs - which need 10 to 15 years to recover - little time to bounce back.

"Climate change caused by carbon emissions remains the greatest threat to our coral reefs, and all reefs globally," he said.

Nepal will make 97 of its Himalayan mountains free to climb for the next two years in a bid to boost tourism in some of its more remote areas.

It comes as permit fees to summit Mount Everest, the world's highest peak, during peak season will go up to $15,000 (£11,170) from September - the first increase in nearly a decade.

Nepal's tourism department said it hopes the initiative will highlight the country's "unexplored tourism products and destinations".

Mountaineering generates a significant source of revenue for Nepal, which is home to the world's 10 tallest mountains. Climbing fees brought in $5.9m last year, with Everest accounting for more than three quarters of that.

The peaks for which fees will be waived are located in Nepal's Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces, standing between 5,970m (19,590 ft) and 7,132m high.

Both provinces, located in the far-western region of Nepal, are among the country's poorest and least developed provinces.

"Despite their breathtaking beauty, the number of tourists and mountaineers here is very low as access is so difficult. We hope the new provision will help," said Himal Gautam, director of Nepal's Tourism Department.

"They can create jobs, generate income, and strengthen the local economy," he said, as reported by The Kathmandu Post.

But it is unclear if authorities have plans to improve infrastructure and connectivity to these remote areas - and how well communities in these areas might cope with an influx of climbers, if the free-to-climb initiative does take off.

Climbers have historically shown little interest in these 97 remote peaks - only 68 of them have ventured there in the last two years. In contrast, some 421 climbing permits were issued for Everest in 2024 alone.

Everest, the world's highest peak at over 8,849m, has in recent years been plagued by overcrowding, environmental concerns and a series of fatal climbing attempts.

In April 2024, Nepal's Supreme Court ordered the government to limit the number of mountaineering permits issued for Everest and several other peaks, saying that the mountains' capacity "must be respected".

In January this year, authorities announced a 36% mark-up in permit fees. For those attempting the summit outside the peak April to May season, it will now cost $7,500 to climb Everest during September to November and $3,750 during December to February.

Nepal's parliament is also debating a new law that will require anyone wanting to scale Everest to have first summited a mountain over 7,000m in the country.

This makes the peaks in Karnali and Sudurpaschim "ideal training grounds", according to The Kathmandu Post.

Thousands of North Koreans are being sent to work in slave-like conditions in Russia to fill a huge labour shortage exacerbated by Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the BBC has learned.

Moscow has repeatedly turned to Pyongyang to help it fight the war, using its missiles, artillery shells and its soldiers.

Now, with many of Russia's men either killed or tied up fighting - or having fled the country - South Korean intelligence officials have told the BBC that Moscow is increasingly relying on North Korean labourers.

We interviewed six North Korean workers who have fled Russia since the start of the war, along with government officials, researchers and those helping to rescue the labourers.

They detailed how the men are subjected to "abysmal" working conditions, and how the North Korean authorities are tightening their control over the workers to stop them escaping.

One of the workers, Jin, told the BBC that when he landed in Russia's Far East, he was chaperoned from the airport to a construction site by a North Korean security agent, who ordered him not to talk to anyone or look at anything.

"The outside world is our enemy," the agent told him. He was put straight to work building high-rise apartment blocks for 18 hours a day, he said.

All six workers we spoke to described the same punishing workdays – waking at 6am and being forced to build high-rise apartments until 2am the next morning, with just two days off a year.

We have changed their names to protect them.

"Waking up was terrifying, realising you had to repeat the same day over again," said another construction worker, Tae, who managed to escape Russia last year. Tae recalled how his hands would seize up in the morning, unable to open, paralysed from the previous day's work.

"Some people would leave their post to sleep in the day, or fall asleep standing up, but the supervisors would find them and beat them. It was truly like we were dying," said another of the workers, Chan.

"The conditions are truly abysmal," said Kang Dong-wan, a professor at South Korea's Dong-A University who has travelled to Russia multiple times to interview North Korean labourers.

"The workers are exposed to very dangerous situations. At night the lights are turned out and they work in the dark, with little safety equipment."

The escapees told us that the workers are confined to their construction sites day and night, where they are watched by agents from North Korea's state security department. They sleep in dirty, overcrowded shipping containers, infested with bugs, or on the floor of unfinished apartment blocks, with tarps pulled over the door frames to try to keep out the cold.

One labourer, Nam, said he once fell four metres off his building site and "smashed up" his face, leaving him unable to work. Even then his supervisors would not let him leave the site to visit a hospital.

In the past, tens of thousands of North Koreans worked in Russia earning millions of pounds a year for the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, and his cash-strapped regime. Then in 2019, the UN banned countries from using these workers in an attempt to cut off Kim's funds and stop him building nuclear weapons, meaning most were sent home.

But last year more than 10,000 labourers were sent to Russia, according to a South Korean intelligence official speaking to the BBC on the condition of anonymity. They told us that even more were expected to arrive this year, with Pyongyang possibly dispatching more than 50,000 workers in total.

The sudden influx means North Korean workers are now "everywhere in Russia," the official added. While most are working on large-scale construction projects, others have been assigned to clothing factories and IT centres, they said, in violation of the UN sanctions banning the use of North Korean labour.

Russian government figures show that more than 13,000 North Koreans entered the country in 2024, a 12-fold increase from the previous year. Nearly 8,000 of them entered on student visas but, according to the intelligence official and experts, this is a tactic used by Russia to bypass the UN ban.

In June, a senior Russian official, Sergei Shoigu, admitted for the first time that 5,000 North Koreans would be sent to rebuild Kursk, a Russian region seized by Ukrainian forces last year but who have since been pushed back.

The South Korean official told us it was also "highly likely" some North Koreans would soon be deployed to work on reconstruction projects in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

"Russia is suffering a severe labour shortage right now and North Koreans offer the perfect solution. They are cheap, hard-working and don't get into trouble," said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a renowned expert in North Korea-Russia relations.

These overseas construction jobs are highly coveted in North Korea as they promise to pay better than the work at home. Most workers go hoping to escape poverty and be able to buy a house for their family or start a business when they return. Only the most trusted men are selected after being rigorously vetted, and they must leave their families behind.

But the bulk of their earnings is sent straight to the North Korean state as "loyalty fees". The remaining fraction – usually between $100-200 (£74-£149) a month - is marked down on a ledger. The workers only receive this money when they return home – a recent tactic, experts say, to stop them running away.

Once the men realise the reality of the harsh work and lack of pay, it can be shattering. Tae said he was "ashamed" when he learnt that other construction workers from central Asia were being paid five times more than him for a third of the work. "I felt like I was in a labour camp; a prison without bars," he said.

The labourer Jin still bristles when he remembers how the other workers would call them slaves. "You are not men, just machines that can speak," they jeered. At one point, Jin's manager told him he might not receive any money when he returned to North Korea because the state needed it instead. It was then he decided to risk his life to escape.

Tae made the decision to defect after watching YouTube videos showing how much workers in South Korea were paid. One night, he packed his belongings into a bin liner, stuffed a blanket under his bed sheets to make it look as if he was still sleeping, and crept out of his construction site. He hailed a taxi and travelled thousands of kilometres across the country to meet a lawyer who helped arrange his journey on to Seoul.

In recent years, a small number of workers have been able to orchestrate their escapes using forbidden second-hand smartphones, bought by saving the small daily allowance they received for cigarettes and alcohol.

In an attempt to prevent these escapes, multiple sources have told us that the North Korean authorities are now cracking down on workers' already limited freedom.

According to Prof Kang from Dong-A University, one way the regime has tried to control the workers over the last year is by subjecting them to more frequent ideological training and self-criticism sessions, in which they are forced to declare their loyalty to Kim Jong Un and log their failings.

Rare opportunities to leave construction sites have also been cut. "The workers used to go out in groups once a month, but recently these trips have reduced to almost zero," Prof Kang added.

Kim Seung-chul, a Seoul-based activist who helps rescue North Korean workers from Russia, said these outings were being more tightly controlled. "They used to be allowed to leave in pairs, but since 2023 they have had to travel in groups of five and are monitored more intensely."

In this climate, fewer workers are managing to escape. The South Korean government told us the number of North Koreans making it out of Russia each year and arriving in Seoul had halved since 2022 - from around 20 a year to just 10.

Mr Lankov, the expert in North Korea-Russia relations, said the crackdowns were likely in preparation for many more workers arriving.

"These workers will be the lasting legacy of Kim and Putin's wartime friendship," he said, arguing the workers would continue arriving long after the war had ended, and the deployment of soldiers and weapons had ceased.

Additional reporting by Jake Kwon and Hosu Lee

Nicola Sturgeon's memoir Frankly is now on sale, slightly earlier than expected after newspaper serialisations and interviews teased some tantalising extracts.

True to its title, the book has Scotland's former first minister writing candidly about the highs and lows of her time in office including challenges she says had a serious impact on her mental health.

So with the full text now available, what are the key things we have learned?

Transgender controversy

After more than eight years in power, and eight election victories, Sturgeon saw final months in office marred by rows about trans issues.

It was, she writes in her memoir, a time of "rancour and division".

Sturgeon now admits to having regrets about the process of trying to legislate to make it easier to legally change gender, saying she has asked herself whether she should have "hit the pause button" to try to reach consensus.

"With hindsight, I wish I had," she writes, although she continues to argue in favour of the general principle of gender self-identification.

Sturgeon also addresses the case of double rapist Adam Graham who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson.

It was, writes Sturgeon, a development "that gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people".

As first minister she sometimes struggled to articulate her position on the case and to decide which, if any, pronoun to use to describe Bryson.

"When confronted with the question 'Is Isla Bryson a woman?' I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights," she writes.

"Because I failed to answer 'yes', plain and simple... I seemed weak and evasive. Worst of all, I sounded like I didn't have the courage to stand behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had just legislated for.

"In football parlance, I lost the dressing room."

Speaking to ITV News on Monday Sturgeon said she now believed a rapist "probably forfeits the right" to identify as a woman.

The former first minister also criticises her highest profile opponent on the gender issue, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, for posting a selfie in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women's rights".

"It resulted in more abuse, of a much more vile nature, than I had ever encountered before. It made me feel less safe and more at risk of possible physical harm," she writes.

Sturgeon adds that "it was deeply ironic that those who subjected me to this level of hatred and misogynistic abuse often claimed to be doing so in the interests of women's safety".

Rowling has been approached for comment.

Her relationship with Alex Salmond

Sturgeon's mentor and predecessor as first minster, Alex Salmond, is mentioned dozens of times in the book, often in unflattering terms which reflect their estrangement after he was accused of sexual offences.

Salmond won a judicial review of the Scottish government's handling of complaints against him and in 2020 was cleared of all 13 charges but his reputation was sullied by revelations in court about inappropriate behaviour with female staff.

Sturgeon lambasts Salmond's claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy, saying there was no obvious motive for women to have concocted false allegations which would then have required "criminal collusion" with politicians, civil servants, police and prosecutors.

"He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy," she writes, adding: "He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all". The claims have been angrily rejected by Salmond's allies.

The former SNP leader died of a heart attack in North Macedonia last year, aged 69.

The independence referendum

Nicola Sturgeon recalls a "totally uncharacteristic sense of optimism" as Scotland prepared to vote on whether to become an independent nation on 18 September 2014.

It was arguably the defining event of her professional life and, in her view, a chance to "create a brighter future for generations to come".

The campaign was tough, she says, partly because of what she calls unbalanced coverage by the British media including the BBC and partly because Salmond left her to do much of the heavy lifting.

"It felt like we were trying to push a boulder up hill," she writes.

A key period in the lead-up to the poll was her preparation, as deputy first minister, of a white paper setting out the case for independence.

At one point, she says, the magnitude of the task left her in "utter despair" and "overcome by a feeling of sheer impossibility".

"I ended up on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe. It was definitely some kind of panic attack," she writes.

Sturgeon says Salmond "showed little interest in the detail" of the document and she was "incandescent" when he flew to China shortly before publication without having read it.

"He promised he would read it on the plane. I knew his good intention would not survive contact with the first glass of in-flight champagne," she writes.

Operation Branchform

Sturgeon describes her "utter disbelief" and despair when police raided her home in Glasgow and arrested her husband, Peter Murrell, on 5 April 2023.

"With police tents all around it, it looked more like a murder scene than the place of safety it had always been for me. I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified."

In the weeks that followed she says she felt like she "had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel".

Sturgeon calls her own arrest two months later as part of the inquiry into SNP finances known as Operation Branchform "the worst day" of her life.

She was exonerated. Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, has been charged with embezzlement.

The couple announced they were separating earlier this year.

Text here

Leading Scotland during the pandemic

ForSturgeon, the coronavirus pandemic which struck the world five years ago still provokes "a torrent of emotion".

Leading Scotland through Covid was "almost indescribably" hard and "took a heavy toll, physically and mentally", writes the former first minister.

She says she will be haunted forever by the thought that going into lockdown earlier could have saved more lives and, in January 2024, after she wept while giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry, she "came perilously close to a breakdown".

"For the first time in my life, I sought professional help. It took several counselling sessions before I was able to pull myself back from the brink," she writes.

Text here

Misogyny and sexism

Scathing comments about the inappropriate behaviour of men are scattered throughout the book.

"Like all women, since the dawn of time, I have faced misogyny and sexism so endemic that I didn't always recognize it as such," Sturgeon writes on the very first page.

One grim story, from the first term of the Scottish Parliament which ran from 1999 to 2003, stands out.

Sturgeon says a male MSP from a rival party taunted her with the nickname "gnasher" as he spread a false rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex.

"On the day I found out about the story, I cried in one of the toilets in the Parliament office complex," she writes.

She said it was only years later, after #MeToo, that she realised this had been "bullying of an overtly sexual nature, designed to humiliate and intimidate, to cut a young woman down to size and put her in her place".

Her personal life

Parts of the memoir are deeply personal.

Nicola Sturgeon says she may have appeared to be a confident and combative leader but underneath she is a "painfully shy" introvert who has "always struggled to believe in herself."

She writes in detail about the "excruciating pain" and heartbreak of suffering a miscarriage after becoming pregnant at the age of 40.

"Later, what I would feel most guilty about were the days I had wished I wasn't pregnant," she says.

Sturgeon touches on the end of her marriage, saying "I love him" but the strain of the past couple of years" was "impossible to bear."

She also writes about her experience of the menopause, explaining that "one of my deepest anxieties was that I would suddenly forget my words midway through an answer" at First Minister's Question Time.

"My heart would race whenever I was on my feet in the Chamber which was debilitating and stressful," she says.

And she addresses "wild stories" about her having a torrid lesbian affair with a French diplomat by saying the rumours were rooted in homophobia.

"The nature of the insult was water off a duck's back," she writes.

"Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters."

What the future holds

Nicola Sturgeon has a few regrets.

These include pushing hard for a second independence referendum immediately after the UK voted — against Scotland's wishes — to leave the EU, and branding the 2024 general election as a "de facto referendum" on independence.

But now, she says, she is "excited about the next phase" of her life which she jokingly refers to as her "delayed adolescence".

"I might live outside of Scotland for a period," Sturgeon writes.

"Suffocating is maybe putting it too strongly, but I feel sometimes I can't breathe freely in Scotland," she tells the BBC's Newscast podcast.

"This may shock many people to hear," she continues, "but I love London."

She is also considering writing a novel.

Nicola Sturgeon concludes her memoir by saying she believes Scotland will be independent within 20 years, insisting she will never stop fighting for that outcome and adding: "That, after all, is what my life has been about."

The US and China have extended their trade truce for 90 days just hours before a jump in tariffs had been set to kick in.

An executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on Monday keeps in place an agreement from May, when the two sides temporarily suspended some of the tariffs on each others' goods.

The US had warned higher tariffs could kick in on Tuesday unless that truce was extended.

Talks last month ended with both sides calling the discussions "constructive". China's top negotiator said at the time that both sides would push to preserve the truce, while US officials said they were waiting for final sign-off from Trump.

A return of higher duties would have risked further trade turmoil and uncertainty amid worries about the effect of tariffs on prices and the economy.

Trade tensions between the US and China reached fever pitch in April, after Trump unveiled sweeping new tariffs on goods from countries around the world, with China facing some of the highest levies.

Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, sparking a tit-for-tat fight that saw tariffs soar into the triple digits and nearly shut down trade between the two countries.

The two sides had agreed to set aside some of those measures in May.

That agreement left Chinese goods entering the US facing an additional 30% tariff compared with the start of the year, with US goods facing a new 10% tariff in China.

The two sides remain in discussions about issues including access to China's rare earths, its purchases of Russian oil, and US curbs on sales of advanced technology, including chips to China.

Trump recently relaxed some of those export restrictions, allowing firms such as AMD and Nvidia to resume sales of certain chips to firms in China in exchange for sharing 15% of their revenues with the government.

The US is also pushing for the spin-off of TikTok from its Chinese owner ByteDance, a move that has been opposed by Beijing.

Earlier on Monday in remarks to reporters, Trump did not commit to extending the truce but said dealings had been going "nicely". A day earlier he called on Beijing to increase its purchases of US soybeans.

Even with the truce, trade flows between the countries have been hit this year, with US government figures showing US imports of Chinese goods in June cut nearly in half compared with June 2024.

In the first six months of the year, the US imported $165bn (£130bn) worth of goods from China, down roughly 15% from the same time last year. American exports to China n roughly 20% year-on-year for the same period.

Staff at the UK's national institute for artificial intelligence (AI) have warned the charity is at risk of collapse, after Technology Secretary Peter Kyle threatened to withdraw its funding.

Workers at the Alan Turing Institute raised a series of "serious and escalating concerns" in a whistleblowing complaint submitted to the Charity Commission.

The complaint, seen by the BBC, accuses the institute's leadership of misusing public funds, overseeing a "toxic internal culture", and failing to deliver on the charity's mission.

A government spokesperson said Kyle "has been clear he wants [the Turing Institute] to deliver real value for money for taxpayers".

The Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) spokesperson said the institute "is an independent organisation and has been consulting on changes to refocus its work under its Turing 2.0 strategy".

"The changes set out in his letter would do exactly that, giving the Institute a key role in safeguarding our national security and positioning it where the British public expects it to be," they said.

It comes after Kyle urged the Turing Institute to focus on defence research and suggested funding would be pulled unless it changed.

Kyle also wants an overhaul of its leadership. Any shift to focusing on defence would be a significant pivot for the publicly funded organisation, which was given a grant of £100m by the previous Conservative government last year.

Founded in 2015 as the UK's leading centre of AI research, the Turing Institute has been rocked by internal discontent and criticism of its research activities.

In the complaint, the staff said Kyle's letter had triggered "a crisis in governance".

The government's £100m grant was "now at risk of being withdrawn, a move that could lead to the institute's collapse", the complaint said.

The Turing Institute told the BBC it was undertaking "substantial organisational change to ensure we deliver on the promise and unique role of the UK's national institute for data science and AI".

"As we move forward, we're focused on delivering real world impact across society's biggest challenges, including responding to the national need to double down on our work in defence, national security and sovereign capabilities," said a spokesperson.

The BBC has been told the Turing Institute has not received notification of a complaint and has not seen the letter sent by staff.

A Charity Commission spokesperson said: "We are currently assessing concerns raised about the Alan Turing Institute to determine any regulatory role for us."

They said it is in the early stages of this assessment and has not decided whether to launch a formal legal investigation.

Internal turmoil

The staff said they had submitted the complaint anonymously "due to a well-founded fear of retaliation".

The BBC was sent a copy of the complaint in an email signed off by "concerned staff members at The Alan Turing Institute".

The complaint sets out a summary of eight issues.

Warning of a risk to funding, the complaint said the Turing Institute's "ongoing delivery failures, governance instability and lack of transparency have triggered serious concerns among its public and private funders".

It accuses the charity of making "a series of spending decisions that lack transparency, measurable outcomes, and evidence of trustee oversight".

And in other allegations, the complaint accuses the board of presiding over "an internal culture that has become defined by fear and defensiveness".

The complaint said the concerns had been raised with the Turing Institute's leadership team - including chairman Doug Gurr - and claimed "no meaningful action has been taken".

The Alan Turing Institute describes itself as the UK's national body for data science and AI. It was set up by former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015.

The institute has been in turmoil for months over moves to cut dozens of jobs and scrap research projects.

At the end of 2024, 93 members of staff signed a letter expressing lack of confidence in its leadership team.

'Need to modernise'

In March, Jean Innes, who was appointed chief executive in July 2023, told the Financial Times the Turing Institute needed to modernise and focus on AI projects.

Until recently, its work has focused on AI and data science research in three main areas - environmental sustainability, health and national security.

Recent research projects listed on its website include the use of artificial technology in weather prediction, and a study suggesting one in four children now use the tech to study and play.

Others who have worked with the Turing Institute told the BBC there are concerns within the wider research community about its direction.

In July, professors Helen Margetts and Cosmina Dorobantu, long-standing co-directors of a successful programme which helped the public sector use AI, quit their positions at the charity.

Former chief technology officer Jonathan Starck left the organisation in May after eight months.

And some of its remaining staff describe a toxic internal culture.

The AI sector is a key part of the government's strategy to grow the UK economy - investing in the development of data centres and supercomputers and is encouraging big tech firms to invest.

Research and development of this rapidly evolving tech is also crucial.

In his letter to the Turing last month, Kyle said boosting the UK's AI capabilities was "critical" to national security and should be at the core of the institute's activities.

The secretary of state for science and technology said there could be a review of the ATI's "longer-term funding arrangement" next year.

Heat health alerts are coming into effect for the whole of England later, with amber warnings for most southern and central areas - meaning there could be travel disruption or increased demand on health services.

Following a warm night, temperatures are set to rise across the UK on Tuesday when the heat will peak for most.

Much of England and Wales will see 25-28C, reaching 34C in some areas, meaning heatwave thresholds are likely to be met in a number of regions this week.

Meanwhile, the national drought group - which includes the Met Office, regulators, the government, and water companies - has warned that England is now suffering from "nationally significant" water shortfalls.

The group said England is experiencing widespread environmental and agricultural effects from the shortage of water, which is hitting crop yields, reducing feed for livestock, damaging river wildlife and wetlands, as well as increasing wildfires.

As high pressure has pushed eastwards, the UK has been drawing in some very warm air on a southerly to south easterly wind from the European continent, where temperatures have been particularly high.

On Monday, Bergerac and Bordeaux in France set all-time records at 41.4C and 41.6C. There are red warnings for the heat in France and in Spain.

• How do heat health alerts work?
• What should you look for when choosing sunscreen?
• What are UV levels and how can you protect yourself?

The amber heat health alert – issued by the UK Health Security Agency – begins across the Midlands, East Anglia, London and South East England at 09:00 and continues until 18:00 on Wednesday.

North East England, North West England, Yorkshire and Humber and south-west England have a yellow alert for the same period.

Yellow alerts warn of possible impacts on health and social services.

Temperatures across Scotland and Northern Ireland could reach 23-26C, maybe 27C in eastern Scotland and the Borders.

Much of England and Wales could see 25-28C, but the low 30s are again likely for central and southern England, and south-east Wales. Anywhere from the south-west Midlands to west London could see 34C.

This would still not make it the warmest day of the year so far, although the year's top temperature in Wales may be threatened.

Highest temperatures of 2025

• England - 35.8C Faversham, 1July
• Wales - 33.1C Cardiff Bute Park, 12 July
• Scotland - 32.2C Aviemore, 12 July
• Northern Ireland - 30C Magilligan, 12 July

Some could see a fourth heatwave of the summer this week, the official criteria for which is when locations reach a particular threshold temperature for at least three consecutive days. That varies from 25C across the north and west of the UK, to 28C in parts of eastern England.

Conditions will stay warm for a third day for most areas on Wednesday, though temperatures could dip a little in the west.

There will be more cloud and it will feel more humid. There will be a slight shift in wind direction to more of a south-westerly meaning the highest temperatures could be across parts of East Anglia, again in the low 30s.

The heat will ease for most on Thursday with some thunderstorms and some cooler, less humid air into Friday.

However, as high pressure builds in once more it is likely temperatures will rise again into the weekend to the mid-to-high 20s, with 30C possible in southern England and south Wales.

This year saw the warmest and sunniest spring on record across the UK.

June and July saw the second and fifth highest average temperatures for those months respectively.

There have been 13 days so far this year that have seen temperatures of 30C or more in the UK this year.

That number will rise further this week, but is still low compared with the 19 days above 30C in 2022 and 34 days in 1995.

Rainfall for August has been very variable. Despite it only being 11 days into the month, some parts of northern Scotland are not far from recording their average August rainfall already, while some parts of southern England, such as Heathrow and Kew Gardens, have yet to record any measurable rain.

US President Donald Trump has picked a conservative think tank economist to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), after firing its previous head following weaker-than-expected jobs data.

The president said he was nominating EJ Antoni, a federal budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, to be commissioner of the key economic institution.

"Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE," he posted on Truth Social.

Earlier in August Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, claiming she had "rigged" jobs figures to make him look bad, an accusation that drew sharp criticism from economists across the political spectrum.

The US Senate, which is controlled by Trump's fellow Republicans, needs to confirm the appointment.

Antoni, who has a PhD in economics, has previously criticised the BLS, questioning its methodology and calling its statistics "phoney baloney".

Last November, he said in a post on X that the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) "needs to take a chainsaw to the BLS".

The BLS is currently led by Acting Commissioner Commissioner William Watrowski, who has worked there for decades.

McEntarfer was fired after BLS figures missed expectations in July, stoking alarm about Trump's tariff policy.

The agency also lowered employment data for the previous two months in the largest such downward revision - apart from the Covid-era - since 1979.

Although the revisions were bigger than usual, it is normal for the initial monthly number to be changed as more data comes to light.

The unprecedented move sparked accusations that Trump was politicising economic data.

Willam Beach, who previously headed the agency during Trump's first term, said the move set a "dangerous precedent".

McEntarfer worked for the government for more than 20 years before being nominated by Biden to lead the BLS in 2023.

Antoni has worked as an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank.

He has taught a variety of courses on labour economics, money and banking, according to the Heritage Foundation.

It was two months into their relationship when Dr Caroline Muirhead's new boyfriend confessed he had killed a man and left him in a shallow grave.

Alexander McKellar offered to take her to the spot where the body was buried – and her quick thinking was crucial in cracking a case which had baffled police for three years.

Caroline secretly dropped a can of Red Bull at the spot, in a remote estate in Argyll, then called police to tell them about the location.

The shallow grave contained the body of Tony Parsons, who had gone missing on a charity cycle ride three years earlier.

Tony's son Mike said that without Caroline's intervention, it was unlikely that his body would ever have been found – and expressed the family's gratitude for what she had done.

The case is the subject of a new two-part documentary which reveals the twists and turns of the police investigation and the Parsons family's long wait for justice.

Mike Parsons told BBC Scotland News that his dad was the kind of man who was always determined to complete any challenge he set himself.

Tony had previously been treated for prostate cancer and wanted to give something back.

So he planned a 104-mile charity cycle from Fort William to his home in Tillicoultry, setting off on Friday 29 September 2017 and cycling through the night.

Mike said his family started to become concerned when Tony had not contacted them by Saturday night.

"I actually texted him myself, with what is my dad and myself's sense of humour, a simple text: 'Are you still alive?'

"Looking back now, it's not nice to know that was the very last thing I texted to him, knowing at this point he would have been passed away."

Tony was subsequently reported missing, sparking a major search operation.

Police knew he passed through Glencoe Village at about 18:00 on Friday before going on to the Bridge of Orchy Hotel in Argyll.

The last known sighting of him was at the hotel at 23:30 that night, before he headed south on the A82 in the direction of Tyndrum.

As the days progressed, former police officer Mike and his family grew increasingly concerned about Tony.

"I knew the timescales that would be involved," he said.

"The longer the days went on, I knew in my head that the chances of him being found alive would be pretty slim.

"But I basically had to convince my mum there was still a chance, and lying to somebody like that is not easy."

Despite numerous public appeals including an appearance by Mike on Crimewatch, it seemed that Tony Parsons had vanished into thin air.

Then, in late 2020, police received a phone call that would change everything.

The female caller was distressed.

She said she had information about a crime that had been committed three years earlier at Bridge of Orchy.

It concerned a hit and run, the concealment of a body, and lying to police.

She said the victim's name was Tony Parsons.

The caller was Dr Caroline Muirhead, the girlfriend of Alexander McKellar. Known as Sandy, he worked on a nearby estate with his twin brother Robert.

Police had spoken to the brothers after an anonymous letter in August 2018 said they were in the Bridge of Orchy Hotel the night Tony Parsons had vanished, but no further action was taken.

In June 2020, they were again questioned about Tony and confirmed being in the hotel with a hunting party that night. However, they said they had not seen the cyclist.

In November 2020, Caroline Muirhead and Alexander McKellar had been together for two months.

She asked her boyfriend if there was anything in his past which may affect their future together.

He told her he had hit Tony as he drove home from the hotel with his brother, but did not seek medical assistance.

It was later revealed that Tony's injuries were so bad that he would only have survived for 20 or 30 minutes without help - but it was unlikely that he had died instantly.

The twins left the area and came back to the site in another car before taking Tony's body to the Auch Estate, where they buried him.

Mike Parsons said: "What they did was inhumane and you wouldn't do that to animals.

"They killed him by not seeking any medical treatment."

After confessing to his girlfriend, Alexander McKellar led her to the shallow grave where Tony's body had been buried.

Caroline secretly dropped a Red Bull can as a marker for the spot, before later calling police.

Mike Parsons said she had shown "remarkable foresight."

"Being brutally honest, I'm not so sure if I was in the same situation I would have done and thought the same way.

"From my perspective, I have nothing but massive amounts of gratitude for that, because had she not done that and put herself into these positions, then we would never have found my dad's body."

Tony's body was recovered from the grave in January 2021 after a two-day operation by specialist officers.

He was found to have suffered "catastrophic" rib, pelvic and spine fractures following the collision.

Tony's funeral was held at Stirling Crematorium in April 2021.

The brothers were arrested and questioned twice by police, but were initially uncooperative, giving "no comment" interviews.

With the evidence against the twins mounting, police eventually charged the pair with murder.

In July 2023, shortly before their trial was due to begin at the High Court in Glasgow, Sandy McKellar admitted the reduced charge of culpable homicide.

His brother had his not guilty plea to murder accepted, but the pair both admitted attempting to defeat the ends of justice by covering up the crime.

Sandy McKellar was sentenced to 12 years in jail, while his brother was jailed for five years and three months.

Mike Parsons said that no sentence would ever be enough.

"They have left my mum without a husband and us without a father."

Mike said he would like his dad was remembered for the good he did in his life, rather than the circumstances of his death.

"For me, he was a grumpy old dad who you had your run-ins with every now and then," he says, smiling.

"But, I'd like people to remember him as just the guy who wanted to help everybody."

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President Donald Trump has said he will deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington DC and is taking control of its police department to fight crime.

At a press conference, he declared "Liberation Day" for the city and pledged to "rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse".

However, Mayor Muriel Bowser has said the city has "seen a huge decrease in crime" and that it was "at a 30-year violent crime low".

BBC Verify looks at what the figures show about violent crime in the capital and how it compares to other cities in the US.

Is violent crime up in Washington DC?

Trump's executive order declaring "a crime emergency in the District of Columbia" mentions "rising violence in the capital". In his press conference he made repeated references to crime being "out of control".

But according to crime figures published by Washington DC's Metropolitan Police (MPDC), violent offences fell after peaking in 2023 and in 2024 hit their lowest level in 30 years.

They are continuing to fall, according to preliminary data for 2025.

Violent crime overall is down 26% this year compared to the same point in 2024, and robbery is down 28%, according to the MPDC.

Trump and the DC Police Union have questioned the veracity of the city police department's crime figures.

Violent crime is reported differently by the MPDC and the FBI - another major source of US crime statistics.

MPDC public data showed a 35% fall for 2024, while the FBI data showed a 9% drop.

So the figures agree that crime is falling in DC, but differ on the level of that decline.

The downward trend is "unmistakable and large", according to Adam Gelb, the CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), a legal think tank.

"The numbers shift depending on what time period and what types of crime you examine," said Mr Gelb.

"But overall there's an unmistakable and large drop in violence since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking."

What about murder rates?

Trump also claimed that "murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever" in Washington DC - adding that numbers "just go back 25 years".

When we asked the White House the source for the figures, they said it was "numbers provided by the FBI".

The homicide rate did spike in 2023 to around 40 per 100,000 residents - the highest rate in 20 years, according to FBI data.

However, that was not the highest ever recorded - it was significantly higher in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.

The homicide rate dropped in 2024 and this year it is down 12% on the same point last year, according to the MPDC.

Studies have suggested that the capital's homicide rate is higher than average, when compared to other major US cities.

As of 11 August, there have been 99 homicides so far this year in Washington DC - including a 21-year-old congressional intern shot dead in crossfire, a case Trump referred to in his press conference.

What about carjackings?

The president also mentioned the case of a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) who was injured in an alleged attempted carjacking in the capital at the start of August.

Trump claimed "the number of carjackings has more than tripled" over the last five years.

So far this year, the MPDC has recorded 189 carjacking offences, down from 300 in the same period last year.

According to the CCJ, carjacking rose markedly from 2020 onward and spiked to a monthly peak of 140 reported incidents in June 2023.

Since July 2025, a citywide curfew has been in force for people under the age of 17 from 23:00 to 06:00.

It was introduced to combat juvenile crime - including carjacking - which often spikes in the summer months.

How does crime compare to other parts of the US?

"The level of violence in the District remains mostly higher than the average of three dozen cities in our sample," Mr Gelb from the CCJ told us.

"Although it is consistent with what we're seeing in other large cities across the country," he added.

The CCJ looks at crime rates across 30 large US cities.

Its analysis suggests that the homicide rate in DC fell 19% in the first half of this year (January-June 2025), compared with the same period last year.

This is a slightly larger fall than the 17% average decline across the cities in the CCJ's study sample.

However, if you take the first six months of 2025 and compare it to the same period in 2019 - before the Covid-19 pandemic - it shows only a 3% fall in homicides.

Across the 30 cities in the study, that decrease was 14% over the same timeframe.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

It's the bilateral summit every European leader wants to be at.

And for good reason. On Friday, Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

Territorial concessions will likely be discussed, and Europe (not least Ukraine) doesn't want its borders to be redrawn through force.

But, as things stand, there are no invites for the country being invaded, nor the continent it sits in.

"Brace ourselves for some pretty outrageous Russian demands," warns Lord Simon McDonald, a former head of the UK Foreign Office.

"It will be theatrical," he adds. "Putin is going to ask for things that nobody else would concede - with the possible exception of Donald Trump."

• Trump says he will try to get back territory for Ukraine in talks with Putin

President Zelensky has said he won't agree to the giving up of any land, or even freezing the conflict along the current front lines.

His argument is that it won't slow a Russian war machine that has waged a full-scale war for more than three and a half years. Concessions, he claims, would only speed it up.

"It's clear Putin wants a photo with the most influential people on Earth, which is President Trump, and he wants sanctions to be postponed, which he'll probably get," the EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, tells me.

"The question is, what is success for the US in the meeting?" she asks. "If President Zelensky is there, it would be a clear success."

But if Ukraine's leader isn't at the Alaskan table, how might the Kremlin's proposals be challenged?

"He could go," said the US president on that possibility. But Kyiv and Europe want it to go from a "maybe" to a "yes".

Adding to their anxiety is the one-on-one format being a Kremlin idea the White House agreed to.

A European scramble

Brussels' European Quarter isn't its usual flurry of political activity during August, but these US-Russia talks have changed that.

On Monday, Kallas hosted a virtual meeting of foreign ministers where they called for an unconditional ceasefire before any deal. New sanctions for Moscow were announced as well.

I asked Kallas what she thought Donald Trump meant by suggesting some land could be swapped.

"We have to ask President Trump," she says. "But it is clear an aggressor can't be awarded for aggression. Otherwise, we will just see more aggression around the world because it pays off."

Europe is trying to do two things: rally around Ukraine, as well as muscle in on this American-led peace process.

Whether or not Zelensky does make the trip, the door for Europe has firmly remained shut since Trump retook office at the start of the year.

At the time his envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said the bloc wouldn't be involved in any peace talks. It's a position the Europeans have been unable to change through diplomacy.

Their relationship with the US has still improved, not least with significant increases in their defence spending. But Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland's foreign minister, believes they need a more central role.

"This is a matter of existential European security interest," he explains.

"We appreciate Trump's efforts but we'll be taking our own decision in Europe too.

"A simple ceasefire would not resolve the problem."

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has secured a remote sit down between European leaders, as well as Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, this Wednesday.

They hope to be consulted on America's plan to end Russia's invasion, but ex-UK Foreign Office head Lord McDonald would be surprised to see a last-minute European invite for Friday.

"The end will be as protracted as the war has been long," he warned.

"The meeting is a milestone, but it doesn't actually mean it will lead anywhere."

President Donald Trump has deployed the National Guard to Washington DC and taken control of the city's police force as he pledges to crack down on crime and homelessness in the nation's capital.

Trump declared a "public safety emergency" on Monday, deploying 800 National Guard troops who will bolster hundreds of federal law enforcement officers who were deployed over the weekend.

"It's becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness," he told reporters at the White House.

The city's Mayor Muriel Bowser has rejected the president's claims about crime and while there was a spike in 2023, statistics show it has fallen since then. Violent crime in the city is also at a 30-year low.

"I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse," Trump said during a news conference in which he was flanked by US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who will lead the city's police force while it is under federal control.

"This is liberation day in DC, and we're going to take our capital back," he said.

Trump said Washington DC had been "taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals" as well as "drugged out maniacs and homeless people".

According to data from the city's Metropolitan Police Department, homicides dropped by 32 percent between 2023 and 2024 and reached their lowest level since 2019.

There has been another substantial drop this year of 12 percent, the data shows.

Mayor Bowser, a Democrat, acknowledged there had been a "terrible" spike in crime in 2023, which mirrored a national trend, but she pushed back against any claims of a crimewave in the city.

"We are not experiencing a crime spike," she told MSNBC on Sunday. "The president is very aware of our efforts."

When asked about White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's comment that Washington is more violent than Baghdad, Bowser said "any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false".

Of the 800 National Guard troops who will be activated, between 100-200 will be deployed and supporting law enforcement at any given time, the army said in a statement.

As well as that deployment, Trump said he would place the city's police department under direct federal control using the District of Columbia Home Rule Act.

That act was instituted by former President Richard Nixon to allow residents of Washington DC - which is the only US city that is not in any of the 50 states - to elect a city council and a mayor.

But it also has a caveat that allows the president to take control of the city's police force if "special conditions of an emergency nature exist".

If the president intends to take control for longer than 48 hours, they need to provide a written notice to Congress. And even if that notice is provided, they cannot keep control of the police for longer than 30 days.

On Sunday, when asked about the possibility of the president taking control of the city's police department, Mayor Bowser said: "There are very specific things in our law that would allow [that]. None of those conditions exist in our city right now."

She said she was "concerned" about the National Guard enforcing local laws.

The mayor's office has not yet responded to a request for comment from the BBC on Trump's Monday announcement.

As well as crime, Trump also spoke at length about homelessness in Washington DC.

"We're getting rid of the slums," he said, without giving further details. He said homeless people would be sent elsewhere but did not say where.

Trump added that "everything should be perfect" when dignitaries and foreign leaders visit the city.

"It's a very strong reflection of our country," he said. "If our capital is dirty, our whole country is dirty and they don't respect us."

Local groups working with homeless people in the capital told the BBC they had actually seen progress in recent years.

Homelessness is down almost 20% for individuals in Washington DC in 2025 compared to five years ago, said Ralph Boyd, the president and chief executive of So Others Might Eat (SOME) - a group that provides people in the city with housing, clothing and other social services.

He also said Trump's proposal to move people out of the city was not a long-term solution.

"All it will do is transfer the problem somewhere else into communities that are perhaps less equipped to deal with it than we are," Boyd said.

Meanwhile, outside the White House, protesters concerned about Trump's actions gathered and chanted "hands off DC" and "protect home rule".

"Trump does not care about DC's safety, he cares about control," a speaker at the event said.

The president's actions follow a series of social media posts in recent days in which he has criticised the running of Washington DC. Trump has long complained about the city's Democratic leadership for their handling of crime and homelessness.

He has also responded angrily to a former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) who was attacked recently in in the city.

During Monday's press conference, Trump said the employee was "savagely beaten by a band of roaming thugs" and was "left dripping in blood".

He also mentioned other federal government employees and elected officials who have been attacked, including a Democratic lawmaker and an intern.

"This is a threat to America," Trump said.

The first time Trump deployed the National Guard was in June, when he ordered 2,000 National Guardsmen to Los Angeles to deal with unrest over raids on undocumented migrants.

The last time the National Guard was deployed to Washington DC was in response to the Capitol riot in 2021.

An explosion was reported at the US Steel Clairton plant outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Monday, causing multiple injuries and trapping several people, officials say.

Allegheny County Emergency Services spokesperson Kasey Reigner confirmed there were "dozens" of injuries but could not confirm fatalities or a cause, CBS News reported.

Another spokesperson confirmed a rescue operation was underway for people trapped.

Governor Josh Shapiro posted on social media that the state's emergency management services and police had been deployed to the plant.

US Senator John Fetterman wrote on X that he was also at the scene and witnessed "an active search and rescue underway."

KDKA News, a local broadcaster, reported at least one person was unaccounted for.

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US President Donald Trump has said he will try to get some territory back for Ukraine during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

"Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They occupied prime territory. We're going to try to get some of that territory back for Ukraine," he told a news conference.

Trump said the talks in Alaska would be a "feel-out meeting" aimed at urging Putin to end the war, and that there would be "some swapping, changes in land".

It is not the first time he has used the phrase "land-swapping", though it is unclear what land Russia could cede to Ukraine. Kyiv has never lay claim to any Russian territories.

Trump said he will update European leaders if Putin proposes a "fair deal" during the talks, adding that he would speak to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky first "out of respect".

"I'll call him first... I'll call him after, and I may say, 'lots of luck, keep fighting,' or I may say, 'we can make a deal'", he said.

Trump also said that while he and Zelensky "get along", he "very severely disagrees with what he has done". Trump has previously blamed Zelensky for the war in Ukraine, which was sparked by Russia's full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

The US president announced the meeting with Putin last Friday - the day of his self-imposed deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire or face more US sanctions.

In response to news of the Alaska summit, Zelensky said any agreements without input from Kyiv would amount to "dead decisions".