At least 15 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli tank shelling and gunfire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah in southern Gaza, according to medics and local residents.

Mohammed Ghareeb, a local journalist in Rafah, told the BBC that thousands of Palestinians had gathered near a US-funded humanitarian aid distribution centre when Israeli tanks approached and opened fire on the crowd.

Local journalists and activists shared harrowing footage of bodies and wounded individuals being transported on donkey carts to a Red Cross field hospital in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah, as rescue teams were reportedly unable to reach the scene.

The BBC has contacted the IDF for a response.

Mr Ghareeb said the crowd of Palestinians had gathered near Al-Alam roundabout around 04:30 local time (02:30 BST), close to the aid centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, shortly before Israeli tanks appeared and opened fire.

"The dead and wounded lay on the ground for a long time," Mr Ghareeb said.

"Rescue crews could not access the area, which is under Israeli control. This forced residents to use donkey carts to transport victims to the field hospital."

A doctor at the Red Cross field hospital told reporters that 15 bodies and 50 injured people had arrived at the facility.

Efforts were under way to transfer the casualties to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for further treatment, the doctor added.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told the AFP news agency the number wounded stood at more than 100, saying: "At least 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 others... were wounded due to gunfire from Israeli vehicles towards thousands of citizens".

The incident underscores the dire humanitarian conditions in Rafah, where recent Israeli military operations have severely limited access to aid and emergency services.

On Saturday, crowds of civilians rushed aid trucks in Gaza, the World Food Programme has said, as hunger and desperation create chaotic scenes.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a new US and Israel-backed organisation that has been distributing food at designated sites across Gaza. Israel set up the plan after accusing Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies.

The GHF said it distributed two million meals this week, which the BBC has not been able to independently verify.

This comes as the US attempts to broker a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas responded to the US ceasefire proposal by saying it is prepared to release 10 living Israeli hostages and 18 dead hostages in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners.

However, the group also repeated its demands for a permanent truce, a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and guarantees for the continuous flow of humanitarian aid. None of these are in the deal on the table.

Hamas said it had submitted its response to the US draft proposed by Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East.

Witkoff said the proposal was "unacceptable and only takes us backward" and insisted the US deal was "the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days."

At least 15 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli tank shelling and gunfire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah in southern Gaza, according to medics and local residents.

Mohammed Ghareeb, a local journalist in Rafah, told the BBC that thousands of Palestinians had gathered near a US-funded humanitarian aid distribution centre when Israeli tanks approached and opened fire on the crowd.

Local journalists and activists shared harrowing footage of bodies and wounded individuals being transported on donkey carts to a Red Cross field hospital in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah, as rescue teams were reportedly unable to reach the scene.

The BBC has contacted the IDF for a response.

Mr Ghareeb said the crowd of Palestinians had gathered near Al-Alam roundabout around 04:30 local time (02:30 BST), close to the aid centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, shortly before Israeli tanks appeared and opened fire.

"The dead and wounded lay on the ground for a long time," Mr Ghareeb said.

"Rescue crews could not access the area, which is under Israeli control. This forced residents to use donkey carts to transport victims to the field hospital."

A doctor at the Red Cross field hospital told reporters that 15 bodies and 50 injured people had arrived at the facility.

Efforts were under way to transfer the casualties to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for further treatment, the doctor added.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told the AFP news agency the number wounded stood at more than 100, saying: "At least 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 others... were wounded due to gunfire from Israeli vehicles towards thousands of citizens".

The incident underscores the dire humanitarian conditions in Rafah, where recent Israeli military operations have severely limited access to aid and emergency services.

On Saturday, crowds of civilians rushed aid trucks in Gaza, the World Food Programme has said, as hunger and desperation create chaotic scenes.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a new US and Israel-backed organisation that has been distributing food at designated sites across Gaza. Israel set up the plan after accusing Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies.

The GHF said it distributed two million meals this week, which the BBC has not been able to independently verify.

This comes as the US attempts to broker a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas responded to the US ceasefire proposal by saying it is prepared to release 10 living Israeli hostages and 18 dead hostages in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners.

However, the group also repeated its demands for a permanent truce, a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and guarantees for the continuous flow of humanitarian aid. None of these are in the deal on the table.

Hamas said it had submitted its response to the US draft proposed by Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East.

Witkoff said the proposal was "unacceptable and only takes us backward" and insisted the US deal was "the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days."

Members of the Western alliance Nato need to prepare for a possible attack from Russia within the next four years, according to Germany's chief of defence.

General Carsten Breuer told the BBC that Russia was producing hundreds of tanks a year, many of which could be used for an attack on Nato Baltic state members by 2029 or even earlier.

He also insisted that Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, remains unified over the war in Ukraine, despite differences of opinion expressed recently by both Hungary and Slovakia.

Gen Breuer was speaking on the sidelines of the Shangri-la Dialogue, a defence summit in Singapore organised by the think tank International Institute of Strategic Studies.

His comments come weeks ahead of a summit of Nato nations at The Hague where they are expected to discuss defence budgets, among other topics.

Gen Breuer said that Nato was facing "a very serious threat" from Russia, one that he has never seen before in his 40 years in service.

At the moment, he said, Russia was building up its forces to an "enormous extent", producing approximately 1,500 main battle tanks every year.

"Not every single tank is going to [the war in] Ukraine, but it's also going in stocks and into new military structures always facing the West," he said.

Russia also produced four million rounds of 152mm artillery munition in 2024, and not all of it was going to Ukraine either, added Gen Breuer.

"There's an intent and there's a build up of the stocks" for a possible future attack on Nato's Baltic state members, he said.

"This is what the analysts are assessing - in 2029. So we have to be ready by 2029... If you ask me now, is this a guarantee that's not earlier than 2029? I would say no, it's not. So we must be able to fight tonight," he said.

Many have long feared an attack on a Nato state as it could trigger a larger war between Russia and the US, which is a key member of Nato. Under Article 5 of the Nato agreement, any attack on a member state would mean other members must come to its defence.

Gen Breuer singled out the so-called Suwalki Gap, an area that borders Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Belarus, as one of the most vulnerable.

"The Baltic States are really exposed to the Russians, right? And once you are there, you really feel this... in the talks we are having over there," he said.

The Estonians, he said, had given the analogy of being close to a wildfire where they "feel the heat, see the flames and smell the smoke", while in Germany "you probably see a little bit of smoke over the horizon and not more".

Gen Breuer said this showed the differing perspectives among European states of the threat of a possible Russian attack.

Russia's view of the Ukraine war was different from the West's, he said, where Moscow sees the war as more of a "continuum" in a larger conflict with Nato and is therefore "trying to find ways into our defence lines and it's testing it".

He cited recent attacks on undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, cyber attacks on European public transport, and unidentified drones spotted over German power stations and other infrastructure.

Nato members should therefore build up their militaries again, Gen Breuer argued. "What we have to do now is really to lean in and to tell everybody, hey, ramp up... get more into it because we need it. We need it to be able to defend ourselves and therefore also to build up deterrence."

Asked by the BBC about Nato cohesion, given Hungary and Slovakia's closer relations with Moscow, Gen Breuer insisted the alliance was still healthy.

He pointed to Finland and Sweden's decisions to join Nato shortly after the Ukraine war began. "I've never seen such a unity like it is now" among nations and military leaders, he said.

"All of them understand the threat that is at the moment approaching Nato, all understand that we have to develop a direction of deterrence, into the direction of collective defence. This is clear to everyone. The urgency is seen."

Gen Breuer's remarks are yet another sign of a significant change in attitudes in Germany towards defence and Russia.

Like many Western nations, including the UK, it has scaled down its investments in its military over many years.

But there has been a growing recognition of the need to reverse this, with even the Green Party coming onboard a recent vote to lift restrictions on Germany's defence spending.

But as Western military and political leaders say they are ready for the fight, questions remain on whether this is a case of ambition outpacing reality.

It will take years for Europe's military industrial base to crank up to speed to match anywhere near the scale of weaponry that Russia is churning out.

The US has also been drawing down, not building up, its defence commitments to Europe to focus on the Indo-Pacific.

Pope addresses peloton

Stage 21 results

Final general classification

Former Race Across the World contestant Sam Gardiner has died after a crash.

The 24-year-old had been driving on the A34 near Manchester on Monday night when his car left the road and rolled before landing on its side, Greater Manchester Police said.

He was the only person in the vehicle and was taken to hospital where he died of his injuries on Thursday, his family said in a recent statement.

The landscape gardener appeared with his mother Jo as they travelled across South America in the second series of the BBC show, which aired in 2020.

They were unable to compete in the final leg after running out of money, but Sam described it as a "life-changing" experience.

While filming for the BBC series, Sam said: "Mum and I are very close - we often think or say the same things.

"She has travelled a lot in her life, so I think it would be fun to do it with her."

In a statement, issued by a family member, Sam's parents Jo and Andrew said they were "devastated".

"Sam left us far too soon, and while words will never fully capture the light, joy and energy he brought into our lives, we hold on to the memories that made him so special," they added.

Sam's parents said he was "adored by his family" and described him as "loyal, funny and fiercely protective".

They added the Race Across the World experience "opened Sam's eyes to the wonder of adventure".

Sam's uncle Jonny Gray told the BBC: "What you saw was what you got. Sam loved gardening, animals and doing physical activity."

Mr Gray said his sister Jo and Sam had a "special relationship" and were an "enormous hit on the show", adding: "The public really loved them."

In a statement, a Race Across the World spokesperson, said: "Everyone who worked with him and indeed everyone who watched Sam could see just how precious and transformative the trip was for both him and his mum, Jo.

"Sam embraced the seven-week trip with an energy, love and a determination that saw the pair enjoy adventures across Mexico to Argentina making audiences fall in love with them and their special bond as a result.

"Since filming, both Sam and Jo have been an integral part of the Race Across the World cast family and on behalf of us all from the BBC, production and the rest of the cast, we would like to extend our deepest condolences to his parents, Andrew and Jo; his brothers, William and Charlie; his step mum Justine; his family and friends, " they added.

The family have asked for privacy to grieve for his death.

Sam had been recently working on the west coast of Scotland and travelled down to Stockport in Greater Manchester to attend a family birthday celebration earlier this week, according to his uncle.

Listen to the best of BBC Radio Manchester on Sounds and follow BBC Manchester on Facebook, X, and Instagram. You can also send story ideas via Whatsapp to 0808 100 2230.

What happened before the safety car?

Prison officers dealing with violent inmates should be armed, the shadow justice secretary has said.

Specialist guards should have Taser stun guns and baton rounds - a less lethal alternative to traditional bullets - to give them "confidence" in handling threats, Robert Jenrick told the BBC.

The Conservatives said secure armouries should be introduced at maximum security jails and used as a last resort.

Prison officers in adult male prisons currently only carry an extendable baton and Pava, a synthetic pepper spray.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said some prison officers will use Tasers this summer on a trial basis, but argued that giving them lethal weapons would put them at greater risk.

The Prison Officers' Association (POA), a union, called for stronger protection for staff after a string of attacks. It said stun guns should be made available to officers working in the UK's most dangerous jails.

Speaking to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, Jenrick said that without intervention it was "only a matter of time" before a prison officer was "held hostage and potentially killed".

He added that under his proposals, officers would not be "walking the wings" with lethal weapons, but would "have access to them if they need them".

The Conservative's call for officers to be armed follows a review conducted for the party by former prison governor Ian Acheson.

Among other policies, the party also wants to see high-collar stab vests immediately rolled out to frontline officers.

'Dire record'

In response to the proposals, Labour said it was "cleaning up the mess" after the Conservatives' "dire record" in office.

"In 14 years they added fewer than 500 prison places in total and closed 1,600 cells in the high-security estate as assaults on prison officers soared and experienced officers quit," a party spokesperson added.

In his BBC interview, Jenrick, who held various ministerial roles in the last government, conceded that his party "should have done more" in office.

"But we're in opposition now, it is my job to bring forward good, sensible solutions," he added.

The MoJ said protective body armour is used in segregation units and specialist areas for situations that are deemed as high risk.

It added that a "snap review" into whether it should be used more routinely will report in the coming days.

This week, it's time for the latest instalment in the John Wick franchise, as Ballerina hits the big screen.

But that's not all the next seven days have in store.

The Nintendo Switch 2 also launches, and TikTok star Addison Rae is releasing her debut studio album.

Read on for what's coming up this week...

The fifth John Wick film is here

It’s been a few years since we last saw John Wick, but fans will be gearing up for Ballerina, the latest film in the franchise, which comes out on Friday.

Set between the events of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum and John Wick: Chapter 4, the film follows Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a ballerina-turned-assassin who uncovers secrets from her family's past.

It’s directed by Len Wiseman, who described it in press notes as "kind of the opposite of John Wick's story. Wick is trying to get out of his life as an assassin; Eve is wanting in - she wants to be a killer”.

Keanu Reeves, who plays the title character in the John Wick franchise, is also starring in Ballerina - but the extent of his involvement is still unknown.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, he recently said he spent only “eight days” on set of the new film.

“But it was fun to play the role again and I'm excited for people to see the film. It's in the spirit of John Wick and has new characters and opens up some stuff, so hopefully people like it,” he added.

Nintendo Switch 2 launches

By Tom Gerken, technology reporter

Thursday may seem like any other day of the week to some - but it's a date gamers have had marked on their diaries for months.

Hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a million, people will unbox their very own Nintendo Switch 2, the sequel to the third-best selling console in history.

I was one of the lucky few to get my hands on it last month, and it makes quite a first impression. It's like a Switch - but with a bigger and brighter screen, and of course much more power under the hood.

It also has a cool hook - you can use the controller like a computer mouse by twisting it on its side, making PC games such as Civilization VII a more enjoyable experience than struggling with joysticks.

It's not all good news for gamers though as that power comes with a cost - not only is the hardware more expensive than Nintendo fans may be used to, some games are too. A physical copy of Mario Kart World costs a whopping £74.99.

But with pre-orders selling out worldwide, at least for now it's looking like Nintendo might well be onto another winner.

Addison Rae's new album

By Annabel Rackham, culture reporter

Addison Rae is a TikTok creator with nearly 90 million followers, a Netflix movie star and also a singer on the brink of releasing her debut studio album.

Called Addison, it’s out on Friday and the 24-year-old says it has been inspired by the music of Charli XCX and Madonna.

Overseen by Swedish super producer Max Martin's publishing company, Rae has co-written every song, with the album produced between Los Angeles, New York and Sweden.

Five songs from the album have already been released – with last year's summer hit Diet Pepsi by far the biggest success story.

It reached the top 10 in the UK singles chart and served as Rae's breakthrough hit.

Fans can expect "hypnotic, trance-like pop songs, pulsating and lush" on the album with lyrics that make you feel "young, fun and free" according to Rolling Stone writer Brittany Spanos.

Other highlights this week

• Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius, episode 2, airs on Monday on BBC Two and iPlayer
• Inaugural SXSW London Music Festival starts on Monday
• The First Gentleman, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, is out on Monday
• Lockerbie: Our Story is available on iPlayer on Monday and on BBC Two and BBC Scotland on Tuesday
• Kurt Cobain Unplugged runs at the Royal College of Music Museum from Tuesday
• Summer Game Fest kicks off three days of big reveals and trailers on Friday
• Pulp are releasing their new album, More, on Friday
• The Gold drops on iPlayer and BBC One on Sunday

An Byunghui was in the middle of a video game on the night of 3 December when she learned that the South Korean president had declared martial law.

She couldn't quite believe it - until the internet blew up with the evidence. The shock announcement from then-president Yoon Suk Yeol, the now-famous shots of soldiers breaking down the windows of the National Assembly and MPs scaling the walls to force their way into the building so they could vote the motion down.

Within hours, thousands had spurred into protest, especially young women. And Byunghui joined them, travelling hundreds of miles from Daegu in the south-east to the capital Seoul.

They turned up not just because Yoon's decision had alarmed and angered them, but to protest against a president who insisted South Korea was free of sexism - despite the deep discrimination and flashes of violence that said otherwise.

They returned week after week as the investigation into Yoon's abuse of power went on - and they rejoiced when he was impeached after four dramatic months.

And yet, with the country set to elect a new president on 3 June, those very women say they feel invisible again.

The two main candidates have been largely silent about equality for women. A polarising subject, it had helped Yoon into power in 2022 as he vowed to defend men who felt sidelined in a world that they saw as too feminist. And a third candidate, who is popular among young men for his anti-feminist stance, has been making headlines.

For many young South Korean women, this new name on the ballot symbolises a new fight.

"So many of us felt like we were trying to make the world a better place by attending the [anti-Yoon] rallies," the 24-year-old college student says.

"But now, I wonder if anything has really improved… I can't shake the feeling that they're trying to erase women's voices."

The women who turned up against Yoon

When Byunghui arrived at the protests, she was struck by the atmosphere.

The bitter December cold didn't stop tens of thousands of women from gathering. Huddling inside hooded jackets or under umbrellas, waving lightsticks and banners, singing hopeful K-pop numbers, they demanded Yoon's ouster.

"Most of those around me were young women, we were singing 'Into the World' by Girls' Generation," Byunghui says.

Into the World, a hit from 2007 by one of K-pop's biggest acts, became an anthem of sorts in the anti-Yoon rallies. Women had marched to the same song nearly a decade ago in anti-corruption protests that ended another president's career.

"The lyrics - about not giving up on this world and dreaming of a new world," Byunghui says, "just overwhelmed me. I felt so close to everyone".

There are no official estimates of how many of the protesters were young women. Approximately one in three were in their 20s or 30s, according to research by local news outlet Chosun Daily.

An analysis by BBC Korean found that women in their 20s were the largest demographic at one rally in December, where there were 200,000 of them - almost 18% of those in attendance. In comparison, there were just over 3% of men in their 20s at that rally.

The protests galvanised women in a country where discrimination, sexual harassment and even violence against them has long been pervasive, and the gender pay gap - at 31% - is the widest among rich nations.

Like in so many other places, plummeting birth rates in South Korea too have upped the pressure on young women to marry and have children, with politicians often encouraging them to play their part in a patriarchal society.

"I felt like all the frustration that has built up inside me just burst forth," says 23-year-old Kim Saeyeon . "I believe that's why so many young women turned up. They wanted to express all that dissatisfaction."

For 26-year-old Lee Jinha, it was the desire to see Yoon go: "I tried to go every week. It wasn't easy. It was incredibly cold, super crowded, my legs hurt and I had a lot of work to do… but it was truly out of a sense of responsibility."

That is not surprising, according to Go Min-hee, associate professor of political science at Ewha Women's University, who says Yoon had the reputation of being "anti-feminist" and had "made it clear he was not going to support policies for young women".

There were protests on the other side too, backing Yoon and his martial law order. Throughout, many young South Korean men have supported Yoon, who positioned himself as a champion of theirs, mirroring their grievances in his presidential campaign in 2022.

These men consider themselves victims of "reverse discrimination", saying they feel marginalised by policies that favour young women. One that is often cited is the mandatory 18 months they must spend in the military, which they believe puts them at a severe disadvantage compared to women.

They label as "man haters" those women who call themselves feminists. And they have been at the heart of a fierce online backlash against calls for greater gender equality.

These groups have long existed, mostly out of the public eye. But over the years they moved closer to the mainstream as their traction online grew, especially under Yoon.

It was them that Yoon appealed to in his campaign pledges, vowing to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, saying it focused too much on women's rights.

And he consistently denied systemic gender inequality existed in South Korea, which ranks near the bottom on the issue among developed countries.

But his message hit home. A survey by a local newspaper the year before he was elected had found that 79% of young men in their 20s felt "seriously discriminated against" because of their gender.

"In the last presidential election, gender conflict was mobilised by Yoon's party," says Kim Eun-ju, director of the Center for Korean Women and Politics. "They actively strengthened the anti-feminist tendencies of some young men in their 20s."

During Yoon's term, she says, government departments or publicly-funded organisations with the word "women" in their title largely disappeared or dropped the reference altogether.

The impact has been polarising. It alienated young women who saw this as a rollback of hard-won rights, even as it fuelled the backlash against feminism.

Byunghui saw this up-close back home in Daegu. She says anti-Yoon protests were overwhelmingly female. The few men who came were usually older.

Young men, she adds, even secondary school students, would often drive past the protests she attended cursing and swearing at them. She says some men even threatened to drive into the crowd.

"I wondered if they would have acted this way had the protest been led by young men?"

The battle to be heard

With Yoon gone, his People Power Party (PPP) is in disarray and still reeling from his fall.

And this is the first time in 18 years that there is no woman among the seven candidates runnning for president. "It's shocking," Jinha says, "that there's no-one". In the last election, there were two women among 14 presidential candidates.

The PPP's Kim Moon-soo is trailing frontrunner Lee Jae-myung, from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP). But young women tell the BBC they have been disappointed by 61-year-old Lee.

"It's only after criticism that that there were no policies targeting women that the DP began adding a few," Saeyeon says. "I wish they could have drawn a blueprint for improving structural discrimination."

When he was asked at the start of his campaign about policies targeting gender inequality, Lee responded: "Why do you keep dividing men and women? They are all Koreans."

After drawing critcism, the DP acknowledged that women still "faced structural discrimination in many areas". And it pledged to tackle inequality for women with more resources at every level.

During his presidential bid in 2022, Lee was more vocal about the prejudice South Korean women encounter, seeking their votes in the wake of high-profile sexual harassment scandals in his party.

He had promised to put women in top positions in the government and appointed a woman as co-chair of the DP's emergency committee.

"It's evident that the DP is focusing significantly less on young women than they did in the [2022] presidential election," Ms Kim says.

Prof Go believes it's because Lee "lost by a very narrow margin" back then. So this time, he is "casting the widest net possible" for votes. "And embracing feminist issues is not a good strategy for that."

That stings for young women like Saeyeon, especially after the role they played in the protests calling for Yoon's impeachment: "Our voices don't seem to be reflected in the [campaign] pledges at all. I feel a bit abandoned."

The ruling party's Kim Moon-soo, who served in Yoon's cabinet as labour minister, has emphasised raising birth rates by offering more financial support to parents.

But many women say rising costs are not the only obstacle. And that most politicians don't address the deeper inequalities - which make it hard to balance a career and family - that are making so many women reconsider the usual choices.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which Yoon had wanted to shut down, has also re-emerged as a sticking point.

Lee has vowed to strengthen the ministry, while Kim says he will replace it with a Ministry of Future Youth and Family.

The ministry already focuses on family services, education and welfare for children. Just under 7% of its total funding, which is about 0.2% of the government's annual budget, goes towards improving equality for women. But Prof Go says the ministry was "politicised by Yoon and has since been weaponised".

"The ministry itself is not huge but it's symbolic… abolishing it would show that gender equality is unimportant."

It's also the target of a third candidate, 40-year-old Lee Jun-seok, a former leader of Yoon's party, who has since launched his own Reform Party.

Although trailing Kim in polls, Lee Jun-seok has been especially popular with many young men for his anti-feminist views.

Earlier this week, he drew swift outrage after a presidential debate in which he said: "If someone says they want to stick chopsticks in women's genitals or some place like that, is that misogyny?"

He said the "someone" was frontunner Lee Jae-myung's son, who he claimed made the comment online, an allegation which the Lee camp has sidestepped, apologising for other controversial posts.

But watching Lee Jun-seok say that on live TV "was genuinely terrifying," Byunghui says. "I had the scary thought that this might boost incel communities."

Saeyeon describes "anger and even despair" sinking the "hopes I had for politics, which weren't that great to begin with".

She believes his popularity "among certain sections of young men is one of the "significant repercussions" of South Korea "long neglecting structural discrimination" against women.

The only candidate to address the issue, 61-year-old Kwon Young-gook, didn't fare well in early polling.

"I'm still deliberating whether to vote for Lee Jae-myung or Kwon Young-gook," Saeyeon says.

While Kwon represents her concerns, she says it's smart to shore up the votes for Lee because she is "much more afraid of the next election, and the one after that".

She is thinking about Lee Jun-seok, who some analysts believe could eat into the votes of a beleagured PPP, while appealing to Yoon's base: "He is in the spotlight and as the youngest candidate, he could have a long career ahead."

That is all the more reason to keep speaking out, Byunghui says. "It's like there is dust on the wall. If you don't know it's there, you can walk by, but once you see it, it sticks with you."

It's the same for Jinha who says things can "never go back to how they were before Yoon declared martial law".

That was a time when poliitics felt inaccessible, but now, Jinha adds, it "feels like something that affects me and is important to my life".

She says she won't give up because she wants to be free of "things like discrimination at work… and live my life in peace".

"People see young women as weak and immature but we will grow up - and then the world will change again."

When Edna Nicole Luckett sings the Blues on the stage at Red's, her voice, deep and soulful, echoes against the walls. The juke joint in Clarksdale, Mississippi is one of the last of its kind in the region, a landmark for a bygone era of American music.

"I was raised in Delta dirt, sunshine and flatland that goes on for miles and miles," she sings, as people nod their heads and stomp their feet to the beat.

Ms Luckett, like many who were raised in the Mississippi Delta, grew up listening to locally-crafted Blues music and singing in her church choir. It's experiences like hers - and places like Red's - that are getting a fresh moment to shine with the box office success of Ryan Coogler's film Sinners.

The genre-defying film has earned more than $300 million (£22 million) globally, against a $90m (£67m) budget, and attracted the world's attention to a historic small town.

For the those who live there - and especially those who still sing the Blues - the spotlight is welcome, in no small part because of Coogler's careful respect for their history.

"I'm protective of how the Mississippi Delta is represented," Ms Luckett said.

Clarksdale in the spotlight

Clarksdale was the place where blues legends like Sam Cooke, Johnny Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters got their start, but its significance was mostly known to music lovers.

Like other small towns in the US south, Clarksdale has faced struggles. The town, home to 14,000 people, lost its only movie theatre in 2003. That meant that residents couldn't even watch Sinners in their hometown - until now. After a local appeal, Mr Coogler agreed to bring the film to town for six free showings this past week.

The charge was led by Tyler Yarbrough, a Clarksdale native, who wrote a public letter to the director after seeing the movie in a nearby town. Set in 1932, Sinners tells the story of twin brothers, both played by Michael B Jordan, who return home to Clarksdale after World War One. Combining elements of musicals, horror and period drama, the movie fuses vampire lore with meticulous historic research about that time and place in America.

"Beneath the horror and fantasy, your film captures the soul of this place: our history, our struggles, our genius, our joy, our community," Mr Yarbrough wrote.

He told the BBC he was moved to see this place represented with careful detail.

"It was time traveling back to 1930's in Clarksdale, in our town, so this is the lives of my great grandma," he said. "The history from the farms to the juke joints was on full display."

Mr Coogler, who also made Black Panther and Creed, said it was his Uncle James, a Mississippi native who loved Delta Blues, who helped inspire the film.

Although the movie was ultimately filmed in Louisiana, he visited Clarksdale to do extensive research.

"I never got to come here until working on this script," Mr Coogler told a crowd of 1,500 on Thursday. "It blew my mind — I got to meet musicians, I got to meet community members. It really changed me just to come here and do the research."

A changing town embraces its roots

While some remnants of the town depicted in the film remain, like many towns in America, its storefronts have been emptied and modernised - though it still enjoys tourist interest for its history.

Odes to some of Clarksdale's blues legends, like Robert Johnson, are colourfully painted onto the sides of buildings, reminding people of the history of the streets where they walk.

One of those streets used to be home to Delta Blues Alley Cafe, a blues joint owned by Jecorry Miller that burned to the ground last month.

Mr Miller wants people to have a better understanding of the history that lives on the streets on Clarksdale and the movie is a way to grasp that.

"The movie itself is going to be great for the town - we get nine times the population of our city that comes to visit the city every year, now it could be ten or 11 times the population that visits Clarksdale," Mr Miller said. "People being here spending their dollars is a great thing for us."

And local residents said the attention is all the more welcome because they see themselves and their culture in the film.

At the Thursday screening, longtime Clarksdale residents relished the details.

Ms Luckett, the Blues singer, was listening to make sure the characters' dialect sounded right. She watched to see if the land in the backdrop of the film was as flat and green as it is in real life.

"It was," she said with a smile.

More than 1,100 migrants arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel on Saturday, the highest number recorded on a single day so far in 2025.

The latest Home Office figures showed 1,194 migrants arrived in 18 boats.

It brings the annual total so far to 14,811, up 42% on this time last year and 95% up from the same point in 2023.

This year could see a new record set, with the number of arrivals so far being the highest recorded in the first five months of a year.

Almost 37,000 people crossed the English Channel in small boats in 2024 but the highest figures were for 2022, when 45,755 people arrived.

The highest daily total of arrivals since data began in 2018 was 1,305, which was recorded on 3 September 2022.

Defence Secretary John Healey has called the scenes of migrants being picked up by smugglers "like a taxi" to be brought to the UK "shocking".

He said an agreement was in place with French authorities, who rescued 184 on Saturday, to change the way they worked.

"Our concentration now is to push them to get that into operation so they can intercept these smugglers and stop these people in the boats, not just on the shore," Mr Healey added.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.

"The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay, and we will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.

"That is why this government has put together a serious plan to take down these networks at every stage."

Additional reporting from PA Media.

Hundreds of people have been arrested in Paris following clashes with police, after Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) fans celebrated their club's victory in the Champions League final.

Officers arrested nearly 300 people after clashes broke out near the city's Champs-Elysees avenue and PSG's Parc des Princes stadium, where nearly 50,000 people had watched the 5-0 win against Inter Milan in Munich on big screens.

Flares and fireworks were set off, bus shelters were smashed and cars were torched amid the wild celebrations.

The chaos came after PSG won the biggest prize in European club football for the first time in their history.

The majority of fans celebrated peacefully, with many singing and dancing in the streets or blaring their car horns.

The Eiffel Tower was illuminated with PSG's blue and red colours, and French President Emmanuel Macron, a keen supporter of Olympique de Marseille, posted on X: "A glorious day for PSG! Bravo, we are all proud. Paris, the capital of Europe this evening."

Approximately 5,400 police were deployed across Paris in anticipation of the raucous celebrations.

Most of the almost 300 people detained were suspected of possessing fireworks and causing disorder, Paris police said.

"Troublemakers on the Champs-Elysees were looking to create incidents and repeatedly came into contact with police by throwing large fireworks and other objects," police said in a statement.

Footage shared on social media, which has not been verified by the BBC, appeared to show crowds attempting to break into several shops on the Champs-Elysées, including Chanel and Foot Locker.

Riot police reportedly used a water cannon to stop a crowd reaching the Arc de Triomphe, and fired tear gas into the crowds.

Other clashes between police and crowds occurred on the Paris ring road. At least two cars were torched near PSG's Parc des Princes stadium.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau took a hard line against the disorder, writing on social media: "True PSG supporters are enjoying their team's magnificent match.

"Meanwhile, barbarians have taken to the streets of Paris to commit crimes and provoke the police."

Meanwhile, outside Paris, police said a car ploughed into PSG fans in Grenoble in south eastern France, leaving four people injured.

All those hurt were from the same family, police said. Two were seriously injured.

The driver handed himself into the police and was placed under arrest. A source close to the investigation told the AFP news agency it was believed the driver had not acted intentionally.

The PSG team will hold a victory parade on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Sunday when tens of thousands of supporters are expected to gather to get a glimpse of their returning team.

Macron's office said he would host the victorious players on Sunday to congratulate them.

Romesh Ranganathan has said he is in "one of the best places I've ever been in my life", after years of struggling with his mental health.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, the comedian described how he had used running, reading and breathing exercises to help centre himself, after previously having suicidal thoughts.

"Recognising it is half the battle," he told host Lauren Laverne. "So sometimes I just go through a dark period and I know that I've got to do something about it."

The broadcaster also said he often felt conflicted about how much of his own mental health journey to share publicly, noting: "You’ve got to be careful because it's triggering [for other people].

"The way that I try and tackle that is to talk about it, I'm trying to normalise feeling like that, not that it is normal, but I'm trying to destigmatise it to make the conversation normal," he said.

• If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.

"You would talk about physical illness openly, ideally you would talk about [mental health] openly, and you'd express all those things, but you do also have to be mindful of the fact that people may have been affected by that.

"And then if I suddenly say I had thoughts about taking my own life and somebody's lost someone through that or they've had those moments themselves, you have to be sensitive to that.

"You don't always get it right," he reflected, "but I think the rewards outweigh the risks."

The 47-year-old also said he had learned it was important to make time for activities which he knew would make him feel better.

"One of the things I've noticed when it comes to mental health, is you do stuff that works, and it's proven to work for you personally, and then for some reason you just stop doing it," he said.

"You go, 'Oh, it's really good if I spend some time reflecting, or if I run, or do a bit of reading, or some breathing exercises, that makes me feel better'.

"'Oh, I've done that every day for a week, I'm really feeling better, shall I just stop? Yeah!'" he laughed. "And then a few weeks later, wonder why I feel much worse than I did."

The presenter, who first got into comedy in the early 2010s, picked tracks from the likes of Kanye West, Eminem and Huey Lewis and the News for Desert Island Discs, which is broadcast on Sunday.

'My mum is one of my heroes'

Ranganathan, who hosts a weekend show on BBC Radio 2, also spoke about how his family had moved to the UK from Sri Lanka in 1970, before he was born eight years later.

"My dad was a bit of a tornado, he came over to England and he'd been so used to the Sri Lankan way of life," he recalled. "He was like a kid in a candy store, people were drinking and going out and he just threw himself into British life, wholly and completely.

"And there's a strong argument he should've implemented more boundaries than he did," Ranganathan laughed. "He was the life and soul of the party."

The comedian said one of his biggest regrets "is not having enough empathy or understanding" of the situation his mother, Shanthi, faced when she moved to the UK aged 19.

"The difference between her experience and my dad's," Ranganathan said, "is my dad was going off to work, where you're immediately thrust into social connections and situations and you're making friends just by dint of that being your lifestyle."

In contrast, he said: "My mum is at home and going to the shops and doing whatever, but thinking about it now, that's a 19-year-old girl who had kids in a foreign country. I don't say this lightly, my mum is one of my heroes."

He recalled that, when he was 12, his father "had fallen into financial trouble, he'd lost his job and he was trying to make money in his sort of Sri Lankan Del Boy way, and it wasn't working out and couldn't keep up the mortgage repayments on their house".

His father was later arrested and imprisoned for two years for fraud, when Romesh was still a teenager.

Ranganathan said he has always struggled with his mental health, but had a particularly challenging time as a teenager, when he was doing his A-levels and his dad was in prison. His father died in 2011.

"I've been through in my life a number of periods of suicide ideation," Ranganathan said, but added: "As I speak now, this is running close to one of the best places I've ever been in my life mentally."

The ban on the sale of single-use disposable vapes will come into force on Sunday across the UK, aimed at protecting children's health and the environment.

It means shops and supermarkets will no longer be able to stock them - but they can still sell rechargeable or refillable devices.

Disposable vapes have been cited as a key driver in the rise in youth vaping, while every year five million vapes are thrown away.

Ministers predict it will have a significant impact but health experts say further regulation is needed to tackle youth vaping.

Retailers in England and Wales breaching the ban face a £200 fine for the first offence with potentially unlimited fines or jail for those who repeatedly re-offend.

The ban was first announced for England and Wales by the previous Conservative government but the law was not enacted before last summer's general election.

Labour then pushed ahead with it.

Scotland and Northern Ireland have introduced their own bans, timed to coincide with the one in England and Wales.

Less harmful

Vape use has risen rapidly over the last decade with 9% of the British public now buying and using e-cigarettes.

Latest figures suggest about one in four vapers use the disposable versions, although that proportion has fallen since the ban was announced.

And while it is illegal to sell vapes to anyone under 18, disposable vapes, often sold in smaller, more colourful packaging than refillable ones, have been cited as an important factor in the rise of youth vaping.

Currently one in seven 18 to 24-year-olds vape but have never smoked.

Vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking but it has not been around for long enough for its long-term risks to be known, according to the NHS.

The environmental impact is considerable. Single-use vapes are difficult to recycle and typically end up in landfill where their batteries can leak harmful chemicals like battery acid, lithium, and mercury into the environment, the government said.

Batteries thrown into household waste also cause hundreds of fires in bin lorries and waste-processing centres every year.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates almost five million single-use vapes were either littered or thrown into general waste each week last year.

Environment minister Mary Creagh said: "For too long, single-use vapes have blighted our streets as litter and hooked our children on nicotine. That ends today.

"The government calls time on these nasty devices."

But Action on Smoking and Health chief executive Hazel Cheeseman questioned what impact the ban would have, pointing out new refillable vape kits were coming on to the market that look and cost similar to the single-use ones.

She said it would not be until the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which includes powers to regulate marketing, branding and advertising, came into power that the issue of youth vaping could be truly tackled.

"Their appeal is driven by bright colours, wide availability and cheap prices," she said.

"The new regulations will hopefully help to address the environmental impact, but government will need further regulations to address the appeal of products to teenagers."

She said this was very much a balancing act as vapes were an important tool to help people quit.

"Vaping is very much less harmful than smoking and is the most popular aid to quitting in the UK," she added.

John Dunne, of the UK Vaping Industry Association, said bans were "not the answer".

He said he was concerned that a black market in single-use vapes could develop and some people may be tempted to return to smoking cigarettes.

"Disposables have played a huge role in reducing smoking levels amongst adults to record low levels. It's why we are seeing stockpiling in the lead up to the ban," he added.

Scott Butler, executive director of Material Focus, an independent not-for-profit organisation, said that he was still concerned that vapes are still difficult to recycle and reuse.

He said customers and businesses should demand sustainable options.

"Given the rampant binning and littering that we already see, will we see any behaviour change? Only if producers, importers and retailers step up and meet their long existing legal obligations to provide and pay for takeback and recycling," he said.

It's a condition that affects more than 10 million people in the UK. It can change futures, end careers, and shrink worlds. So when a hack comes along that says it can "cure", or at the very least fend off a migraine, people will try it.

While there are medical treatments, there is no cure. Prescription medication can be very effective - but it doesn't always work. For many people there is no simple solution.

Some discover their own ways of managing the debilitating pain: sitting in a hot bath while wearing an ice pack and drinking a smoothie, blasting the side of their face with a hairdryer.

But now a new hack has suddenly gone viral - the McMigraine Meal. A simple offering of a full-fat coke and a portion of salty fries seems to be doing the trick for hundreds who've been extolling its virtues on TikTok.

If there is any science behind these hacks - what do they do to the body?

Nick Cook from Oxfordshire carries "a wallet full of drugs" around in case of a migraine attack. He will "try anything" to make the pain go away, he says.

"When you live with the condition, and you're working a five-day week and you need to carry on, you'll give anything a go."

At its worst the pain around Nick's eye socket can feel like his eyeball is getting crushed. He says it's the caffeine and sugar in coke that helps him.

"If I catch it soon it enough it can sometimes work, when my vision goes fuzzy and I can feel one coming on."

He stresses that drinking coke doesn't replace his amitriptyline tablets - the daily pain medication he takes to try to prevent migraines - but it does sometimes help him "last until the end of the day".

For Kayleigh Webster, a 27-year-old who has had chronic migraines all her life, it's the salt on the chips that might slow down a migraine attack.

"It can help," she says cautiously, "but it's certainly not a cure.

"Migraine is a complex neurological condition - and it can't be cured by a bit of caffeine, salt and sugar in a fast food meal."

Kayleigh's tried cocktails of different medications, putting her feet in hot water, a flannel at the back of the head, acupuncture, cupping - but they've had little effect.

One of the few treatments that has given her relief is medical Botox - having dozens of injections in her head, face and neck. It's still not clear how Botox works for migraine, but it's believed to block powerful pain signals being released from the nerves.

A migraine - which can last days - is very different to a headache, which tend to be short-lived and can be treated more easily with painkillers like paracetamol. Migraines can cause head pain, neck pain, numbness, blurred vision, and even affect speech and movement.

Skulls dating back to 3,000 BC show ancient Egyptians even had trouble with migraines - but despite that long history, their exact cause is still unknown.

It's thought pain receptors in the blood vessels and nerve tissue around the brain misfire - sending incorrect signals that something is wrong. But we don't know why some people have an oversensitive nervous system - and why it reacts to some things and not others.

Experts say there's not enough research into why only some people - around one in seven - are affected, or what can actually help.

Dr Kay Kennis, a GP who specialises in migraines, says while there are elements of the McMigraine meal that can help stave off an attack, these aren't innate to "a McDonald's".

"The caffeine in the coke can act as a nerve disruptor, it is a substance that affects nerve activity. For some, that disturbance works in a positive way," Dr Kennis says.

"There are some painkillers that people take for migraines that have caffeine - and some do respond well to that - but we don't fully know why."

But she warns against using caffeinated fizzy drinks like coke as a way of regularly managing migraines.

"Too much caffeine can be a trigger too - and you can end up in a worse situation in the long run," Dr Kennis says.

Other ingredients in a fast food meal, like the salt on the chips, can affect nerve activity, she explains, but adds the effects of sodium on migraines have not been tested.

She also warns that not only is fast food often ultra-processed and not conducive to a healthy diet, it can contain high levels of Tyramine, a natural compound commonly found in many foods, which can actually cause severe migraines.

For Eloise Underwood none of the quick fixes on social media work.

The chronic migraine sufferer has been looking for a "magic cocktail" for seven years - she's seen people recommend putting feet in scorching water (not recommended by experts and potentially dangerous); drinking hot coffee (caffeine can be a trigger); or various vibrating devices which have had little effect.

"There are so many videos online that take advantage of the desperation we all feel," Eloise explains.

She's left several jobs - often due to lighting and noise in an office environment triggering migraines. She recently stopped working as an interior designer and has now launched a business pressing and framing wedding flowers from her home.

She wears loop ear buds to reduce the sharpness of the sounds around her, and limits her social life.

"People think a migraine is just a headache - that's just one symptom of it," Eloise says. "For me, a migraine is a whole body experience…

"Migraines have completely made my life smaller."

Prof Peter Goadsby, a neurologist at the NIHR-King's Clinical Research Facility, says research is beginning to produce positive results after years of underfunding.

His latest study shows medications known as gepants could block a group of pain receptors in the lead-up to a migraine attack, cutting off the pain before it starts.

"Any new treatment is a glimmer of hope," Eloise says. "They do say that nothing will work for everyone - but something will work for someone."

Lifestyle changes can also make a difference, Prof Goadsby explains. It might be boring, he says, but basically - "be careful of your brain".

"You want to have regularity, avoid the highs and lows. If you can feel the warning signs - yawning, sleepiness, mood change, passing more urine and even craving salt and sugar - listen to your body.

"Listen to your body - don't listen to TikTok, that's my advice."

Nick has been doing exactly that. He might reach for the odd coke and salty fries, but he's moulded his whole life in order to manage his migraines.

"I don't drink, I wear sunglasses even if it's cloudy," he says. "I don't go wild. When me and my partner go away, half the stuff we take is to help us manage our migraines.

On a recent stag-do weekend, Nick noticed the difference between his and his friends' lives.

"They were up all night drinking to the early hours," Nick says. "I turned up with my own pillow, apples, bananas, Weetabix, and any snacks I would need to keep me going, because hunger can be a major trigger.

"I'm in bed by midnight - but my mates know me, and that's OK, because this is how I have to live my life."

How much are the leading stars playing?

Is playing through the pain leading to 'rat race'?

Does the rankings structure need changing?

The government will spend £1.5bn on at least six new munitions and explosives factories to "better deter our adversaries", Defence Secretary John Healey has said.

The factories will support up to 7,000 UK-built long-range weapons and create about 1,800 new jobs, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

The announcement is part of the government's Strategic Defence Review, which is due to be published on Monday.

The war in Ukraine has highlighted serious deficiencies in the West's ability to produce weapons and munitions, and senior British military officers have long warned about the UK's depleted stockpiles.

As part of its defence review, the government said it would build new factories to make key munitions and explosives as part of its plans to have an "always on" munitions production capacity that could be scaled up quickly.

It also said the UK would purchase more than 7,000 British-built long-range weapons, including drones and missiles, over several years.

According to the MoD, the new funding will see UK munitions spend hit £6bn during this parliament.

Ministers said the extra investment - which came after Healy said that UK defence spending would rise to 3% of GDP by 2034 at the latest - will strengthen the armed forces and boost British jobs.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: "A strong economy needs a strong national defence, and investing in weaponry and munitions and backing nearly 2,000 jobs across Britain in doing so is proof the two go hand-in-hand.

"We are delivering both security for working people in an uncertain world and good jobs, putting more money in people's pockets."

Healey said the UK's defence industry will become "an engine for economic growth" and will "boost skilled jobs in every nation and region".

"The hard-fought lessons from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them," he added.

"We are strengthening the UK's industrial base to better deter our adversaries and make the UK secure at home and strong abroad."

Senior Western military chiefs have long been warning the UK would quickly run out of ammunition in the event of a war.

In 2021, the former head of the US Army in Europe, Gen Ben Hodges, told MPs in a simulated wargame most of the British Army's inventory was exhausted after just eight days.

The former head of the British Army, Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, has also been calling for the UK to boost weapons production.

He recently said the Army's diminished stocks of artillery rounds and missiles "would put hairs on the back of your neck".

The UK has now significantly increased production of artillery shells.

New contracts have been signed to produce more complex weapons, such as next generation light anti-tank weapons (NLAW) and long-range Storm Shadow (also known as SCALP) cruise missiles.

Both have been supplied to Ukraine but production rates have, in the past, been slow. Exact numbers are not made public.

With the war in Ukraine, global demand for explosives and propellants has also been high.

The UK has often had to source materials from abroad.

'It's been my life'

'A deep sense of reassurance'

It was love at first sight for Adarsh Ramchurn. "I couldn't control it," he says of his flourishing affection for Nav Sangha.

But their relationship is "frowned upon" by some in their communities, they say, as Adarsh is Hindu and Nav is Sikh.

They've been an item for three years and say they receive hateful comments on social media when posting about their life together.

They are also abused because Adarsh, 24, has a darker skin tone than Nav, a form of prejudice known as colourism.

"We push through it," says Nav, 22. "There are also people who are very supportive and that are in similar situations."

Data compiled by YouGov in January suggests 45% of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK believe there is a God, or believe there are Gods. The next highest figure, 36%, is for the over-65s.

BBC News spoke to Nav and Adarsh as well as a Christian from Married At First Sight (MAFS), a Muslim from The Only Way is Essex (Towie), and a former Jehovah's Witness for the Sex After documentary series.

During a discussion between the participants, Nav was asked what the hardest bit about being a Sikh was. "Probably getting the backlash of being with a Hindu," she said.

She and Ardash knew their interfaith relationship could be an issue for their parents, so spoke to them early.

"I know it's different for every family, there can be difficult dynamics," says Adarsh.

"But if you can have the open discussion [about] dating outside of your religion… I'd always say [you should]."

Something Adarsh's parents were quick to ask him about was marriage.

The couple say, if they were to wed, they would probably do a Sikh and a Hindu ceremony.

"If we have kids, I feel like it's important that they learn about both religions and faiths," Nav adds.

Adarsh agrees and says he's "looking forward to it".

Junaid Ahmed's parents were not as accommodating. His fear of being rejected by them took hold at a young age. Junaid knew being gay contravened the Islamic beliefs he and his family shared.

"When I did finally come out [aged 18], I did expect the worst and… [it] did happen," he tells us. "They threw me out; they disowned me."

He says he doesn't blame his parents for ostracising him.

"I genuinely don't - it's made me the person I am today."

Junaid, now aged 26 and a star of Towie, says he often gets abuse online from other Muslims because he is open about his sexual orientation, but "that [has] never changed my relationship with God".

He says he is grateful for his religious upbringing and still prays everyday.

Like Junaid, Martin Riley - who was brought up a Jehovah's Witness - was also ostracised by his family.

However, in his case, it was because a few years ago he was expelled from his religion completely, in a process called disfellowshipping.

For Riley, as he is known to his friends, this meant being shunned by other members of his congregation - including close friends and family.

His first marriage, which lasted 20 years, had broken down a few months before he was expelled.

He was a particularly strong believer and, while dating after he was expelled, he abided by the rule of not having sex before marriage.

It was only when Riley began dating the woman who is now his wife, that he began seriously considering whether he wanted to continue adhering to the religion that he'd been part of for 40 years. His wife is not a Jehovah's Witness.

"I realised that I did not want to have a future that didn't include her, whether that meant returning to the religion or not."

After having sex with her for the first time, which he describes as being, "like in the movies", he recalls: "I was actually surprised by how guiltless I felt about the whole thing."

Riley, 48, now considers himself an atheist.

Looking back at his expulsion from the religion aged 42, he says: "It was devastating for me, at the time. Now I think it is probably one of the best things to ever happen to me."

Unlike Riley, Sacha Jones did not grow up devoutly religious, but was baptised as a Christian last year after finding her faith. She has vowed to remain abstinent until she marries.

"I haven't slept with anyone since my baptism," she says. "So I'm fresh in the eyes of the Lord!"

Sacha, 30, also says the culture around dating today makes it difficult to form a long-term relationship.

Last year she participated in MAFS, but split up with her partner following the show.

"It's the absolute trenches out here in the dating world… it's difficult to trust a man anyway, but then to trust someone that doesn't fear God as well?"

She says she doesn't miss sex as much as she might do because she isn't dating anyone at the moment. She believes the wait will be worth it - once she's married.

"I no longer lack purpose or peace," says Sacha, who isn't the "party animal" she once was. "I'm happier than I've ever been."

Hundreds of people have been arrested in Paris following clashes with police, after Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) fans celebrated their club's victory in the Champions League final.

Officers arrested nearly 300 people after clashes broke out near the city's Champs-Elysees avenue and PSG's Parc des Princes stadium, where nearly 50,000 people had watched the 5-0 win against Inter Milan in Munich on big screens.

Flares and fireworks were set off, bus shelters were smashed and cars were torched amid the wild celebrations.

The chaos came after PSG won the biggest prize in European club football for the first time in their history.

The majority of fans celebrated peacefully, with many singing and dancing in the streets or blaring their car horns.

The Eiffel Tower was illuminated with PSG's blue and red colours, and French President Emmanuel Macron, a keen supporter of Olympique de Marseille, posted on X: "A glorious day for PSG! Bravo, we are all proud. Paris, the capital of Europe this evening."

Approximately 5,400 police were deployed across Paris in anticipation of the raucous celebrations.

Most of the almost 300 people detained were suspected of possessing fireworks and causing disorder, Paris police said.

"Troublemakers on the Champs-Elysees were looking to create incidents and repeatedly came into contact with police by throwing large fireworks and other objects," police said in a statement.

Footage shared on social media, which has not been verified by the BBC, appeared to show crowds attempting to break into several shops on the Champs-Elysées, including Chanel and Foot Locker.

Riot police reportedly used a water cannon to stop a crowd reaching the Arc de Triomphe, and fired tear gas into the crowds.

Other clashes between police and crowds occurred on the Paris ring road. At least two cars were torched near PSG's Parc des Princes stadium.

French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau took a hard line against the disorder, writing on social media: "True PSG supporters are enjoying their team's magnificent match.

"Meanwhile, barbarians have taken to the streets of Paris to commit crimes and provoke the police."

Meanwhile, outside Paris, police said a car ploughed into PSG fans in Grenoble in south eastern France, leaving four people injured.

All those hurt were from the same family, police said. Two were seriously injured.

The driver handed himself into the police and was placed under arrest. A source close to the investigation told the AFP news agency it was believed the driver had not acted intentionally.

The PSG team will hold a victory parade on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Sunday when tens of thousands of supporters are expected to gather to get a glimpse of their returning team.

Macron's office said he would host the victorious players on Sunday to congratulate them.

The body of a British hiker who went missing in the Dolomites has been found, a search team in Italy said.

Aziz Ziriat, 36, was discovered lying in a rocky crevice on Saturday, around 400m (1,300ft) below where the body of his friend, Sam Harris, 35, had previously been found.

The pair, who were both from London, went missing while hiking in January.

Mr Ziriat's body was found in the Passo di Conca area by specialist search teams including a canine unit, Trentino Alpine and Speleological Rescue confirmed.

A spokesman said the rescuers "lowered themselves down the wall below the base of the slope, where the dog finally signalled the missing man's body in a rocky crevice, where it had been covered by snow".

He said Mr Ziriat's family was immediately informed of the discovery.

Mr Harris's body was discovered on 8 January. The friends had not been seen or heard from since 1 January and did not check in for their flight home on 6 January.

Their last known location was near a mountain hut called Casina Dosson, close to the town of Tione Di Trento, near Riva Del Garda on Lake Garda.

Palace for Life, the official charity of Crystal Palace FC where Mr Ziriat worked as head of community engagement, previously released a statement which said colleagues were "profoundly sad" at his disappearance.

Describing his "real passion to make a difference", it added: "Aziz has not only been incredibly impactful in his role, but also a kind, compassionate and generous individual who brought positivity and warmth to everyone he has worked with."

Joe Stone, a university friend of Mr Ziriat, previously said that the pair were "experienced hikers" who liked to go off the grid, but "alarm bells were raised" when they failed to check in for their return flight.

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The government will spend £1.5bn on at least six new munitions and explosives factories to "better deter our adversaries", Defence Secretary John Healey has said.

The factories will support up to 7,000 UK-built long-range weapons and create about 1,800 new jobs, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

The announcement is part of the government's Strategic Defence Review, which is due to be published on Monday.

The war in Ukraine has highlighted serious deficiencies in the West's ability to produce weapons and munitions, and senior British military officers have long warned about the UK's depleted stockpiles.

As part of its defence review, the government said it would build new factories to make key munitions and explosives as part of its plans to have an "always on" munitions production capacity that could be scaled up quickly.

It also said the UK would purchase more than 7,000 British-built long-range weapons, including drones and missiles, over several years.

According to the MoD, the new funding will see UK munitions spend hit £6bn during this parliament.

Ministers said the extra investment - which came after Healy said that UK defence spending would rise to 3% of GDP by 2034 at the latest - will strengthen the armed forces and boost British jobs.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: "A strong economy needs a strong national defence, and investing in weaponry and munitions and backing nearly 2,000 jobs across Britain in doing so is proof the two go hand-in-hand.

"We are delivering both security for working people in an uncertain world and good jobs, putting more money in people's pockets."

Healey said the UK's defence industry will become "an engine for economic growth" and will "boost skilled jobs in every nation and region".

"The hard-fought lessons from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them," he added.

"We are strengthening the UK's industrial base to better deter our adversaries and make the UK secure at home and strong abroad."

Senior Western military chiefs have long been warning the UK would quickly run out of ammunition in the event of a war.

In 2021, the former head of the US Army in Europe, Gen Ben Hodges, told MPs in a simulated wargame most of the British Army's inventory was exhausted after just eight days.

The former head of the British Army, Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, has also been calling for the UK to boost weapons production.

He recently said the Army's diminished stocks of artillery rounds and missiles "would put hairs on the back of your neck".

The UK has now significantly increased production of artillery shells.

New contracts have been signed to produce more complex weapons, such as next generation light anti-tank weapons (NLAW) and long-range Storm Shadow (also known as SCALP) cruise missiles.

Both have been supplied to Ukraine but production rates have, in the past, been slow. Exact numbers are not made public.

With the war in Ukraine, global demand for explosives and propellants has also been high.

The UK has often had to source materials from abroad.

At least 15 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli tank shelling and gunfire near an aid distribution centre in Rafah in southern Gaza, according to medics and local residents.

Mohammed Ghareeb, a local journalist in Rafah, told the BBC that thousands of Palestinians had gathered near a US-funded humanitarian aid distribution centre when Israeli tanks approached and opened fire on the crowd.

Local journalists and activists shared harrowing footage of bodies and wounded individuals being transported on donkey carts to a Red Cross field hospital in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah, as rescue teams were reportedly unable to reach the scene.

The BBC has contacted the IDF for a response.

Mr Ghareeb said the crowd of Palestinians had gathered near Al-Alam roundabout around 04:30 local time (02:30 BST), close to the aid centre run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, shortly before Israeli tanks appeared and opened fire.

"The dead and wounded lay on the ground for a long time," Mr Ghareeb said.

"Rescue crews could not access the area, which is under Israeli control. This forced residents to use donkey carts to transport victims to the field hospital."

A doctor at the Red Cross field hospital told reporters that 15 bodies and 50 injured people had arrived at the facility.

Efforts were under way to transfer the casualties to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis for further treatment, the doctor added.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told the AFP news agency the number wounded stood at more than 100, saying: "At least 10 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 others... were wounded due to gunfire from Israeli vehicles towards thousands of citizens".

The incident underscores the dire humanitarian conditions in Rafah, where recent Israeli military operations have severely limited access to aid and emergency services.

On Saturday, crowds of civilians rushed aid trucks in Gaza, the World Food Programme has said, as hunger and desperation create chaotic scenes.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a new US and Israel-backed organisation that has been distributing food at designated sites across Gaza. Israel set up the plan after accusing Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies.

The GHF said it distributed two million meals this week, which the BBC has not been able to independently verify.

This comes as the US attempts to broker a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas responded to the US ceasefire proposal by saying it is prepared to release 10 living Israeli hostages and 18 dead hostages in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners.

However, the group also repeated its demands for a permanent truce, a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and guarantees for the continuous flow of humanitarian aid. None of these are in the deal on the table.

Hamas said it had submitted its response to the US draft proposed by Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East.

Witkoff said the proposal was "unacceptable and only takes us backward" and insisted the US deal was "the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days."

A British man has been indicted in the US for allegedly trying to smuggle "sensitive American military technology" to China, including missiles, air defence radar and drones.

John Miller, 63, and a Chinese man, Cui Guanghai, are wanted by the FBI on charges relating to conspiracy to commit interstate stalking and conspiracy, smuggling and violations of the Arms Control Act.

Mr Miller, a permanent US resident, and Mr Cui, 43, were both arrested in Serbia. They remain there and could now face extradition to the US.

The Foreign Office has confirmed it is providing consular assistance to a British national following his arrest in April and it is "in touch with the local authorities and his family".

Court documents suggest the two men discussed ways of exporting a device that could be used for encryption and decryption. They are alleged to have paid a $10,000 (£7,430) deposit for the equipment.

Mr Miller and Mr Cui are also accused of trying to "harass" an anti-Chinese government protester, which included installing a tracking device on their car and slashing their tires.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the pair of a "blatant assault" on US national security and its democratic values.

He added: "This Justice Department will not tolerate foreign repression on US soil, nor will we allow hostile nations to infiltrate or exploit our defence systems."

If found guilty, Mr Miller could face up to 20 years in prison for violation of the Arms Export Control Act, and 10 years for smuggling.

Court documents detail how the men allegedly solicited the procurement of US defence articles, including missiles, air defence radar, drones and cryptographic devices for unlawful export to China.

Mr Cui and Mr Miller are said to have discussed with two individuals - identified as "Individual 5" and "Individual 6" in court documents - how to export a cryptographic device from the US to China.

Items the men allegedly discussed using to smuggle the technology include small electronics, a blender and a motor starter.

The indictment also alleges the pair enlisted two individuals in the US to carry out a plot that would have prevented a victim from protesting against Chinese President Xi Jinping's attendance at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit held in Los Angeles in November 2023.

Mr Miller and Mr Cui were unaware that those two individuals - identified in court documents as "Individual 1" and "Individual 2" - were acting at the direction of the FBI.

"The indictment alleges that Chinese foreign actors targeted a victim in our nation because he criticised the Chinese government and its president," said US Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California.

"My office will continue to use all legal methods available to hold accountable foreign nationals engaging in criminal activity on our soil."

A similar scheme allegedly played out in the spring of 2025, when the alleged victim announced in a public video feed that he planned to unveil two new artistic statues that depicted Xi and his wife.

Mr Cui and Mr Miller paid two other individuals - identified in court documents as "Individual 3" and "Individual 4" - to try and dissuade the alleged victim from sharing his online display of statues.

Those individuals were paid $36,000 (£26,745), but the indictment notes that those two people were also affiliated with and acting at the direction of the FBI.

The two men remain in Serbia and the US is co-ordinating with Serbian officials regarding their pending extraditions.

"An indictment is merely an allegation," the US Attorney's Office of the Central District of California said in a statement. "All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law."

An Byunghui was in the middle of a video game on the night of 3 December when she learned that the South Korean president had declared martial law.

She couldn't quite believe it - until the internet blew up with the evidence. The shock announcement from then-president Yoon Suk Yeol, the now-famous shots of soldiers breaking down the windows of the National Assembly and MPs scaling the walls to force their way into the building so they could vote the motion down.

Within hours, thousands had spurred into protest, especially young women. And Byunghui joined them, travelling hundreds of miles from Daegu in the south-east to the capital Seoul.

They turned up not just because Yoon's decision had alarmed and angered them, but to protest against a president who insisted South Korea was free of sexism - despite the deep discrimination and flashes of violence that said otherwise.

They returned week after week as the investigation into Yoon's abuse of power went on - and they rejoiced when he was impeached after four dramatic months.

And yet, with the country set to elect a new president on 3 June, those very women say they feel invisible again.

The two main candidates have been largely silent about equality for women. A polarising subject, it had helped Yoon into power in 2022 as he vowed to defend men who felt sidelined in a world that they saw as too feminist. And a third candidate, who is popular among young men for his anti-feminist stance, has been making headlines.

For many young South Korean women, this new name on the ballot symbolises a new fight.

"So many of us felt like we were trying to make the world a better place by attending the [anti-Yoon] rallies," the 24-year-old college student says.

"But now, I wonder if anything has really improved… I can't shake the feeling that they're trying to erase women's voices."

The women who turned up against Yoon

When Byunghui arrived at the protests, she was struck by the atmosphere.

The bitter December cold didn't stop tens of thousands of women from gathering. Huddling inside hooded jackets or under umbrellas, waving lightsticks and banners, singing hopeful K-pop numbers, they demanded Yoon's ouster.

"Most of those around me were young women, we were singing 'Into the World' by Girls' Generation," Byunghui says.

Into the World, a hit from 2007 by one of K-pop's biggest acts, became an anthem of sorts in the anti-Yoon rallies. Women had marched to the same song nearly a decade ago in anti-corruption protests that ended another president's career.

"The lyrics - about not giving up on this world and dreaming of a new world," Byunghui says, "just overwhelmed me. I felt so close to everyone".

There are no official estimates of how many of the protesters were young women. Approximately one in three were in their 20s or 30s, according to research by local news outlet Chosun Daily.

An analysis by BBC Korean found that women in their 20s were the largest demographic at one rally in December, where there were 200,000 of them - almost 18% of those in attendance. In comparison, there were just over 3% of men in their 20s at that rally.

The protests galvanised women in a country where discrimination, sexual harassment and even violence against them has long been pervasive, and the gender pay gap - at 31% - is the widest among rich nations.

Like in so many other places, plummeting birth rates in South Korea too have upped the pressure on young women to marry and have children, with politicians often encouraging them to play their part in a patriarchal society.

"I felt like all the frustration that has built up inside me just burst forth," says 23-year-old Kim Saeyeon . "I believe that's why so many young women turned up. They wanted to express all that dissatisfaction."

For 26-year-old Lee Jinha, it was the desire to see Yoon go: "I tried to go every week. It wasn't easy. It was incredibly cold, super crowded, my legs hurt and I had a lot of work to do… but it was truly out of a sense of responsibility."

That is not surprising, according to Go Min-hee, associate professor of political science at Ewha Women's University, who says Yoon had the reputation of being "anti-feminist" and had "made it clear he was not going to support policies for young women".

There were protests on the other side too, backing Yoon and his martial law order. Throughout, many young South Korean men have supported Yoon, who positioned himself as a champion of theirs, mirroring their grievances in his presidential campaign in 2022.

These men consider themselves victims of "reverse discrimination", saying they feel marginalised by policies that favour young women. One that is often cited is the mandatory 18 months they must spend in the military, which they believe puts them at a severe disadvantage compared to women.

They label as "man haters" those women who call themselves feminists. And they have been at the heart of a fierce online backlash against calls for greater gender equality.

These groups have long existed, mostly out of the public eye. But over the years they moved closer to the mainstream as their traction online grew, especially under Yoon.

It was them that Yoon appealed to in his campaign pledges, vowing to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, saying it focused too much on women's rights.

And he consistently denied systemic gender inequality existed in South Korea, which ranks near the bottom on the issue among developed countries.

But his message hit home. A survey by a local newspaper the year before he was elected had found that 79% of young men in their 20s felt "seriously discriminated against" because of their gender.

"In the last presidential election, gender conflict was mobilised by Yoon's party," says Kim Eun-ju, director of the Center for Korean Women and Politics. "They actively strengthened the anti-feminist tendencies of some young men in their 20s."

During Yoon's term, she says, government departments or publicly-funded organisations with the word "women" in their title largely disappeared or dropped the reference altogether.

The impact has been polarising. It alienated young women who saw this as a rollback of hard-won rights, even as it fuelled the backlash against feminism.

Byunghui saw this up-close back home in Daegu. She says anti-Yoon protests were overwhelmingly female. The few men who came were usually older.

Young men, she adds, even secondary school students, would often drive past the protests she attended cursing and swearing at them. She says some men even threatened to drive into the crowd.

"I wondered if they would have acted this way had the protest been led by young men?"

The battle to be heard

With Yoon gone, his People Power Party (PPP) is in disarray and still reeling from his fall.

And this is the first time in 18 years that there is no woman among the seven candidates runnning for president. "It's shocking," Jinha says, "that there's no-one". In the last election, there were two women among 14 presidential candidates.

The PPP's Kim Moon-soo is trailing frontrunner Lee Jae-myung, from the main opposition Democratic Party (DP). But young women tell the BBC they have been disappointed by 61-year-old Lee.

"It's only after criticism that that there were no policies targeting women that the DP began adding a few," Saeyeon says. "I wish they could have drawn a blueprint for improving structural discrimination."

When he was asked at the start of his campaign about policies targeting gender inequality, Lee responded: "Why do you keep dividing men and women? They are all Koreans."

After drawing critcism, the DP acknowledged that women still "faced structural discrimination in many areas". And it pledged to tackle inequality for women with more resources at every level.

During his presidential bid in 2022, Lee was more vocal about the prejudice South Korean women encounter, seeking their votes in the wake of high-profile sexual harassment scandals in his party.

He had promised to put women in top positions in the government and appointed a woman as co-chair of the DP's emergency committee.

"It's evident that the DP is focusing significantly less on young women than they did in the [2022] presidential election," Ms Kim says.

Prof Go believes it's because Lee "lost by a very narrow margin" back then. So this time, he is "casting the widest net possible" for votes. "And embracing feminist issues is not a good strategy for that."

That stings for young women like Saeyeon, especially after the role they played in the protests calling for Yoon's impeachment: "Our voices don't seem to be reflected in the [campaign] pledges at all. I feel a bit abandoned."

The ruling party's Kim Moon-soo, who served in Yoon's cabinet as labour minister, has emphasised raising birth rates by offering more financial support to parents.

But many women say rising costs are not the only obstacle. And that most politicians don't address the deeper inequalities - which make it hard to balance a career and family - that are making so many women reconsider the usual choices.

The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which Yoon had wanted to shut down, has also re-emerged as a sticking point.

Lee has vowed to strengthen the ministry, while Kim says he will replace it with a Ministry of Future Youth and Family.

The ministry already focuses on family services, education and welfare for children. Just under 7% of its total funding, which is about 0.2% of the government's annual budget, goes towards improving equality for women. But Prof Go says the ministry was "politicised by Yoon and has since been weaponised".

"The ministry itself is not huge but it's symbolic… abolishing it would show that gender equality is unimportant."

It's also the target of a third candidate, 40-year-old Lee Jun-seok, a former leader of Yoon's party, who has since launched his own Reform Party.

Although trailing Kim in polls, Lee Jun-seok has been especially popular with many young men for his anti-feminist views.

Earlier this week, he drew swift outrage after a presidential debate in which he said: "If someone says they want to stick chopsticks in women's genitals or some place like that, is that misogyny?"

He said the "someone" was frontunner Lee Jae-myung's son, who he claimed made the comment online, an allegation which the Lee camp has sidestepped, apologising for other controversial posts.

But watching Lee Jun-seok say that on live TV "was genuinely terrifying," Byunghui says. "I had the scary thought that this might boost incel communities."

Saeyeon describes "anger and even despair" sinking the "hopes I had for politics, which weren't that great to begin with".

She believes his popularity "among certain sections of young men is one of the "significant repercussions" of South Korea "long neglecting structural discrimination" against women.

The only candidate to address the issue, 61-year-old Kwon Young-gook, didn't fare well in early polling.

"I'm still deliberating whether to vote for Lee Jae-myung or Kwon Young-gook," Saeyeon says.

While Kwon represents her concerns, she says it's smart to shore up the votes for Lee because she is "much more afraid of the next election, and the one after that".

She is thinking about Lee Jun-seok, who some analysts believe could eat into the votes of a beleagured PPP, while appealing to Yoon's base: "He is in the spotlight and as the youngest candidate, he could have a long career ahead."

That is all the more reason to keep speaking out, Byunghui says. "It's like there is dust on the wall. If you don't know it's there, you can walk by, but once you see it, it sticks with you."

It's the same for Jinha who says things can "never go back to how they were before Yoon declared martial law".

That was a time when poliitics felt inaccessible, but now, Jinha adds, it "feels like something that affects me and is important to my life".

She says she won't give up because she wants to be free of "things like discrimination at work… and live my life in peace".

"People see young women as weak and immature but we will grow up - and then the world will change again."

The government will spend £1.5bn on at least six new munitions and explosives factories to "better deter our adversaries", Defence Secretary John Healey has said.

The factories will support up to 7,000 UK-built long-range weapons and create about 1,800 new jobs, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said.

The announcement is part of the government's Strategic Defence Review, which is due to be published on Monday.

The war in Ukraine has highlighted serious deficiencies in the West's ability to produce weapons and munitions, and senior British military officers have long warned about the UK's depleted stockpiles.

As part of its defence review, the government said it would build new factories to make key munitions and explosives as part of its plans to have an "always on" munitions production capacity that could be scaled up quickly.

It also said the UK would purchase more than 7,000 British-built long-range weapons, including drones and missiles, over several years.

According to the MoD, the new funding will see UK munitions spend hit £6bn during this parliament.

Ministers said the extra investment - which came after Healy said that UK defence spending would rise to 3% of GDP by 2034 at the latest - will strengthen the armed forces and boost British jobs.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: "A strong economy needs a strong national defence, and investing in weaponry and munitions and backing nearly 2,000 jobs across Britain in doing so is proof the two go hand-in-hand.

"We are delivering both security for working people in an uncertain world and good jobs, putting more money in people's pockets."

Healey said the UK's defence industry will become "an engine for economic growth" and will "boost skilled jobs in every nation and region".

"The hard-fought lessons from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine show a military is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them," he added.

"We are strengthening the UK's industrial base to better deter our adversaries and make the UK secure at home and strong abroad."

Senior Western military chiefs have long been warning the UK would quickly run out of ammunition in the event of a war.

In 2021, the former head of the US Army in Europe, Gen Ben Hodges, told MPs in a simulated wargame most of the British Army's inventory was exhausted after just eight days.

The former head of the British Army, Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, has also been calling for the UK to boost weapons production.

He recently said the Army's diminished stocks of artillery rounds and missiles "would put hairs on the back of your neck".

The UK has now significantly increased production of artillery shells.

New contracts have been signed to produce more complex weapons, such as next generation light anti-tank weapons (NLAW) and long-range Storm Shadow (also known as SCALP) cruise missiles.

Both have been supplied to Ukraine but production rates have, in the past, been slow. Exact numbers are not made public.

With the war in Ukraine, global demand for explosives and propellants has also been high.

The UK has often had to source materials from abroad.

Romesh Ranganathan has said he is in "one of the best places I've ever been in my life", after years of struggling with his mental health.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, the comedian described how he had used running, reading and breathing exercises to help centre himself, after previously having suicidal thoughts.

"Recognising it is half the battle," he told host Lauren Laverne. "So sometimes I just go through a dark period and I know that I've got to do something about it."

The broadcaster also said he often felt conflicted about how much of his own mental health journey to share publicly, noting: "You’ve got to be careful because it's triggering [for other people].

"The way that I try and tackle that is to talk about it, I'm trying to normalise feeling like that, not that it is normal, but I'm trying to destigmatise it to make the conversation normal," he said.

• If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, help and support is available via the BBC Action Line.

"You would talk about physical illness openly, ideally you would talk about [mental health] openly, and you'd express all those things, but you do also have to be mindful of the fact that people may have been affected by that.

"And then if I suddenly say I had thoughts about taking my own life and somebody's lost someone through that or they've had those moments themselves, you have to be sensitive to that.

"You don't always get it right," he reflected, "but I think the rewards outweigh the risks."

The 47-year-old also said he had learned it was important to make time for activities which he knew would make him feel better.

"One of the things I've noticed when it comes to mental health, is you do stuff that works, and it's proven to work for you personally, and then for some reason you just stop doing it," he said.

"You go, 'Oh, it's really good if I spend some time reflecting, or if I run, or do a bit of reading, or some breathing exercises, that makes me feel better'.

"'Oh, I've done that every day for a week, I'm really feeling better, shall I just stop? Yeah!'" he laughed. "And then a few weeks later, wonder why I feel much worse than I did."

The presenter, who first got into comedy in the early 2010s, picked tracks from the likes of Kanye West, Eminem and Huey Lewis and the News for Desert Island Discs, which is broadcast on Sunday.

'My mum is one of my heroes'

Ranganathan, who hosts a weekend show on BBC Radio 2, also spoke about how his family had moved to the UK from Sri Lanka in 1970, before he was born eight years later.

"My dad was a bit of a tornado, he came over to England and he'd been so used to the Sri Lankan way of life," he recalled. "He was like a kid in a candy store, people were drinking and going out and he just threw himself into British life, wholly and completely.

"And there's a strong argument he should've implemented more boundaries than he did," Ranganathan laughed. "He was the life and soul of the party."

The comedian said one of his biggest regrets "is not having enough empathy or understanding" of the situation his mother, Shanthi, faced when she moved to the UK aged 19.

"The difference between her experience and my dad's," Ranganathan said, "is my dad was going off to work, where you're immediately thrust into social connections and situations and you're making friends just by dint of that being your lifestyle."

In contrast, he said: "My mum is at home and going to the shops and doing whatever, but thinking about it now, that's a 19-year-old girl who had kids in a foreign country. I don't say this lightly, my mum is one of my heroes."

He recalled that, when he was 12, his father "had fallen into financial trouble, he'd lost his job and he was trying to make money in his sort of Sri Lankan Del Boy way, and it wasn't working out and couldn't keep up the mortgage repayments on their house".

His father was later arrested and imprisoned for two years for fraud, when Romesh was still a teenager.

Ranganathan said he has always struggled with his mental health, but had a particularly challenging time as a teenager, when he was doing his A-levels and his dad was in prison. His father died in 2011.

"I've been through in my life a number of periods of suicide ideation," Ranganathan said, but added: "As I speak now, this is running close to one of the best places I've ever been in my life mentally."

At least three people have died after a highway bridge collapsed in a region close to the Ukraine border, according to Russian emergency services.

The bridge in Bryansk brought down several heavy trucks onto a moving passenger train, with 31 people also reportedly injured.

The Russian Emergencies Ministry said fire and rescue units were attempting to find people who had been travelling on the train.

In a statement posted to Telegram, Moscow Railway alleged the bridge had collapsed "as a result of illegal interference in transport operations".

Moscow's interregional transport prosecutor's office said an investigation had been launched.

Additional emergency workers, as well as rescue equipment and light towers for carrying out work at night have been sent to the area, according to Russian news agency TASS.