Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for "direct talks" with Ukraine, saying they should "start without delay, as early as 15 May".

"We seek serious talks... to remove the root causes of the conflict and start moving towards a lasting, strong peace", he said on Saturday, in a rare televised late-night address from the Kremlin.

It comes hours after European leaders - including UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron - visited Ukraine and urged Russia to agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said Moscow would "have to think this through" - but warned that "trying to pressure us is quite useless".

When Charlie Hopkins thinks back to the three years he spent in one of America's most famous prisons, he remembers the "deathly quiet" the most.

In 1955, Hopkins was sent to Alcatraz - a prison on an isolated island off the coast of San Francisco - after causing trouble at other prisons to serve a 17-year sentence for kidnapping and robbery.

Falling asleep at night in his cell on the remote island, he said, the only sound was the whistle of ships passing.

"That's a lonely sound," Hopkins said. "It reminds you of Hank Williams singing that song, 'I'm so lonesome I could cry.'"

Now 93 and living in Florida, Hopkins said the San Francisco National Archives informed him that he is likely the last surviving former Alcatraz inmate. The BBC could not independently verify this.

In an interview with the BBC this week, Hopkins described life at Alcatraz, where he made friends with gangsters and once helped plan an unsuccessful escape. Although it closed decades ago, President Donald Trump claimed recently that he wants to re-open it as a federal prison.

When Hopkins was transferred to the high-security prison in 1955 from an Atlanta facility, he remembers it being clean, but barren. And there were few distractions - no radio at the time, and few books, he said.

"There was nothing to do," he said. "You could walk back and forth in your cell or do push-ups."

Hopkins kept busy part of the time with his job cleaning Alcatraz, sweeping the floors and buffing them "until they shined", he said.

He was sent to prison in 1952 in Jacksonville, Florida, for his role in a series of robberies and kidnappings. He was part of a group that took hostages to get through roadblocks and steal cars, he said.

• 'The cleverest escape in the prison's 30 years': The men who broke out of Alcatraz with a spoon

At Alcatraz, Hopkins had some infamous neighbours. The facility housed many violent criminals over its 30 years - Al Capone; Robert Stroud, a murderer known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz"; and crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger - making it the subject of a host of films and television shows.

A 22-acre island, 1.25 miles (2 kilometres) off San Francisco and surrounded by freezing waters with strong currents, Alcatraz was originally a naval defence force. It was rebuilt in the early 20th century as a military prison. The Justice Department took it over in the 1930s, transforming the facility into a federal prison to address rampant organised crime at the time.

Even in the high-security prison, Hopkins said he still managed to get into trouble and spent many days in the facility's "D Block" - solitary confinement where inmates who misbehaved were held and rarely let out of their cells.

His longest stint there - six months - came after he tried to help several other prisoners, including notorious bank robber Forrest Tucker, escape Alcatraz, Hopkins said. He helped steal hacksaw blades from the prison's electric shop to cut the prison bars in the basement kitchen.

The plan didn't work - prison guards discovered the blades in other inmates' cells, Hopkins said. "A few days after they locked them up, they locked me up," he said.

But that did not stop one of the inmates.

In 1956, when Tucker was taken to a hospital for a kidney operation, he stabbed his ankle with a pencil so prison guards would have to remove his leg irons, Tucker told the New Yorker. Then, as he was taken to get an X-ray, he overpowered hospital orderlies and ran away, he said.

He was captured in a hospital gown in a cornfield hours later.

As more prisoners attempted to escape Alcatraz over the years, officials ramped up security, Hopkins said.

"When I left there in 1958, the security was so tight you couldn't breathe," he said.

All told, there were 14 separate attempts over the years involving 36 inmates, according to the National Park Service. One of the most famous involved Frank Morris, and brothers Clarence and John Anglin, who escaped in June 1962 by placing papier-mâché heads in their beds and breaking out through ventilation ducts. They were never found, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded they drowned in the cold waters surrounding the island.

A year later, the prison shut down after the government determined it would be more cost-effective to build new prisons than to keep the remote island facility in operation.

Now it's a publicly run museum visited by millions each year that generates about $60m year in revenue for park partners.

The building is decrepit, with peeling paint, rusted pipes, and crumbling toilets in each cramped cell. Construction on the main prison facility began in 1907, and more than a century of exposure to the elements has rendered the place all but uninhabitable.

Trump said this week, however, that he wants his government to re-open and expand the island prison for the country's "most ruthless and violent offenders".

Alcatraz "represents something very strong, very powerful" - law and order, Trump said.

But experts and historians said Trump's proposal to re-establish the prison is far-fetched, as it would cost billions to repair and bring up to date with other federal facilities.

Hopkins agrees. "It would be so expensive," he said.

"Back then, the sewage system went into the ocean," he added. "They'd have to come up with another way of handling that."

Hopkins left Alcatraz five years before it closed its doors for good. He had been transferred to a prison in Springfield, Missouri and given psychiatric medication that improved his behaviour and helped him heal psychological issues, he said.

But the avid Trump supporter said he does not believe the president's proposal is serious.

"He don't really want to open that place," Hopkins said, adding that Trump was trying to "get a point across to the public" about punishing criminals and those who enter the US illegally.

Hopkins was released in 1963, working first at a truck stop before taking on other jobs. He went back to his home state of Florida, where now he has a daughter and grandson.

After several decades reflecting on his crimes and life in Alcatraz, he wrote a 1,000-page memoir, with nearly half of the book detailing his troubled behaviour, he said.

"You wouldn't believe the trouble I caused them when I was there," he said. "I can see now, looking back, that I had problems."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for "direct talks" with Ukraine, saying they should "start without delay, as early as 15 May".

"We seek serious talks... to remove the root causes of the conflict and start moving towards a lasting, strong peace", he said on Saturday, in a rare televised late-night address from the Kremlin.

It comes hours after European leaders - including UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron - visited Ukraine and urged Russia to agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said Moscow would "have to think this through" - but warned that "trying to pressure us is quite useless".

Danny Dyer has said receiving a letter from his daughter Dani while at a rehab facility in 2016 was what convinced him to continue his treatment.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, the actor said he'd "had enough" of the treatment he'd received and was "going to go".

"Then they read a letter out from home, from my daughter Dani, and it made me sit back down in that seat," he told presenter Lauren Laverne.

Whilst he did not share what his then 20-year-old daughter had written, he said he "grew up and understood this is my life and fame and all that stuff is toxic".

Dyer said the letter from Dani made him reflect on the pain he'd caused his family and commit to continuing his treatment at the facility in South Africa.

Dani Dyer shot to fame on Love Island, winning the 2018 series. She and her father have since appeared together on Celebrity Gogglebox, an Italian travel series, and on their podcast Sorted With The Dyers.

'A lot of bad decisions'

Danny Dyer, who shot to fame in the 1999 film Human Traffic, has gone on to become one of the most recognisable stars of British TV and film.

In his interview, the 47-year-old spoke about how fame has affected his personal life, leading him to make "a lot of bad decisions".

He said at one stage of his career, he was "doing a lot of drugs".

"I'd go to nightclubs and DJ sometimes but in general just wave off of balconies and I'd get paid quite a lot of money to do it," he added.

Dyer says looking back is "awful" and that his days of "hedonism" and "mad behaviour" are over.

He said one of his turning points came in 2013, when he was offered the role of Queen Vic landlord Mick Carter in EastEnders, which he says he took because he "had no money".

"I had bailiffs [coming round], no-one would hire me and the more I'm doing these club appearances, the more drugs I'm taking, and drink, so I'm in this weird spiral."

Four years later, he made the decision to go to rehab in Cape Town during an awards show after-party at his house.

"I remember I had this moment where I was sitting in my ensuite trying to work out how to put a pair of jeans on - I was that off my head.

"I looked up, I looked at my wife and I could just see how tired she looked and I could hear kids running around downstairs, and I thought 'I need to sort my life out'," he added.

Dyer says it made him realise how addiction "affects so many people around you, not just yourself".

Dyer, who is nominated for best male comedy performance at Sunday's Bafta TV Awards for his role in Mr. Bigstuff, has also experienced success with Disney hit Rivals this year.

He said a lot of the work he took in the early stages of his career was due to the lack of money he had and the added pressure of becoming a first-time parent with his now-wife Joanne at the age of 19.

"I'd made a few films but I just wasn't getting paid any money and I was desperate to get on the property ladder," he said.

"I was still living on a council estate with my daughter and Jo."

Dyer says he then got offered a documentary series in 2006 called The Real Football Factories and "couldn't believe the money that was offered to me".

"I can't watch them back now [the documentaries], I cringe at them, but I needed to earn money, I needed to get a house and I needed to the right thing," he added.

When Charlie Hopkins thinks back to the three years he spent in one of America's most famous prisons, he remembers the "deathly quiet" the most.

In 1955, Hopkins was sent to Alcatraz - a prison on an isolated island off the coast of San Francisco - after causing trouble at other prisons to serve a 17-year sentence for kidnapping and robbery.

Falling asleep at night in his cell on the remote island, he said, the only sound was the whistle of ships passing.

"That's a lonely sound," Hopkins said. "It reminds you of Hank Williams singing that song, 'I'm so lonesome I could cry.'"

Now 93 and living in Florida, Hopkins said the San Francisco National Archives informed him that he is likely the last surviving former Alcatraz inmate. The BBC could not independently verify this.

In an interview with the BBC this week, Hopkins described life at Alcatraz, where he made friends with gangsters and once helped plan an unsuccessful escape. Although it closed decades ago, President Donald Trump claimed recently that he wants to re-open it as a federal prison.

When Hopkins was transferred to the high-security prison in 1955 from an Atlanta facility, he remembers it being clean, but barren. And there were few distractions - no radio at the time, and few books, he said.

"There was nothing to do," he said. "You could walk back and forth in your cell or do push-ups."

Hopkins kept busy part of the time with his job cleaning Alcatraz, sweeping the floors and buffing them "until they shined", he said.

He was sent to prison in 1952 in Jacksonville, Florida, for his role in a series of robberies and kidnappings. He was part of a group that took hostages to get through roadblocks and steal cars, he said.

• 'The cleverest escape in the prison's 30 years': The men who broke out of Alcatraz with a spoon

At Alcatraz, Hopkins had some infamous neighbours. The facility housed many violent criminals over its 30 years - Al Capone; Robert Stroud, a murderer known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz"; and crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger - making it the subject of a host of films and television shows.

A 22-acre island, 1.25 miles (2 kilometres) off San Francisco and surrounded by freezing waters with strong currents, Alcatraz was originally a naval defence force. It was rebuilt in the early 20th century as a military prison. The Justice Department took it over in the 1930s, transforming the facility into a federal prison to address rampant organised crime at the time.

Even in the high-security prison, Hopkins said he still managed to get into trouble and spent many days in the facility's "D Block" - solitary confinement where inmates who misbehaved were held and rarely let out of their cells.

His longest stint there - six months - came after he tried to help several other prisoners, including notorious bank robber Forrest Tucker, escape Alcatraz, Hopkins said. He helped steal hacksaw blades from the prison's electric shop to cut the prison bars in the basement kitchen.

The plan didn't work - prison guards discovered the blades in other inmates' cells, Hopkins said. "A few days after they locked them up, they locked me up," he said.

But that did not stop one of the inmates.

In 1956, when Tucker was taken to a hospital for a kidney operation, he stabbed his ankle with a pencil so prison guards would have to remove his leg irons, Tucker told the New Yorker. Then, as he was taken to get an X-ray, he overpowered hospital orderlies and ran away, he said.

He was captured in a hospital gown in a cornfield hours later.

As more prisoners attempted to escape Alcatraz over the years, officials ramped up security, Hopkins said.

"When I left there in 1958, the security was so tight you couldn't breathe," he said.

All told, there were 14 separate attempts over the years involving 36 inmates, according to the National Park Service. One of the most famous involved Frank Morris, and brothers Clarence and John Anglin, who escaped in June 1962 by placing papier-mâché heads in their beds and breaking out through ventilation ducts. They were never found, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded they drowned in the cold waters surrounding the island.

A year later, the prison shut down after the government determined it would be more cost-effective to build new prisons than to keep the remote island facility in operation.

Now it's a publicly run museum visited by millions each year that generates about $60m year in revenue for park partners.

The building is decrepit, with peeling paint, rusted pipes, and crumbling toilets in each cramped cell. Construction on the main prison facility began in 1907, and more than a century of exposure to the elements has rendered the place all but uninhabitable.

Trump said this week, however, that he wants his government to re-open and expand the island prison for the country's "most ruthless and violent offenders".

Alcatraz "represents something very strong, very powerful" - law and order, Trump said.

But experts and historians said Trump's proposal to re-establish the prison is far-fetched, as it would cost billions to repair and bring up to date with other federal facilities.

Hopkins agrees. "It would be so expensive," he said.

"Back then, the sewage system went into the ocean," he added. "They'd have to come up with another way of handling that."

Hopkins left Alcatraz five years before it closed its doors for good. He had been transferred to a prison in Springfield, Missouri and given psychiatric medication that improved his behaviour and helped him heal psychological issues, he said.

But the avid Trump supporter said he does not believe the president's proposal is serious.

"He don't really want to open that place," Hopkins said, adding that Trump was trying to "get a point across to the public" about punishing criminals and those who enter the US illegally.

Hopkins was released in 1963, working first at a truck stop before taking on other jobs. He went back to his home state of Florida, where now he has a daughter and grandson.

After several decades reflecting on his crimes and life in Alcatraz, he wrote a 1,000-page memoir, with nearly half of the book detailing his troubled behaviour, he said.

"You wouldn't believe the trouble I caused them when I was there," he said. "I can see now, looking back, that I had problems."

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

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

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

The perfect song

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep staging simple and effective

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The key is key

Minor-key songs increasingly dominate Eurovision.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a surprise up your sleeve

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every fortnight, Samii Wood snuggles up with a group of strangers for a "cuddle puddle".

These gatherings see attendees melt into a large nest of cushions and blankets, offering each other platonic touch and comfort.

Samii, who is 41 and based in Bedford, is a professional cuddler, who also offers one-to-one cuddle therapy.

She believes human touch is not just comforting but also has measurable health benefits.

"Your serotonin levels, which is your feel-good hormone, are boosted and so is your oxytocin level, which is your love and bonding hormone," she says.

Touch can also lower your levels of stress hormone cortisol and "can regulate the nervous system", she adds.

Samii's clients are sometimes suffering with nervous system issues, post-traumatic stress disorder or loneliness.

"People think that my service will be just full of creepy guys," she says.

"It's not like that. I have a variety of ages and males and females that come to these events."

Pep Valerio, 36, from Bedford, has been attending Samii's cuddle puddles for a couple of months.

"It's healing without words. You don't need to know people's problems; you just know your touch is providing aid to them," he said.

Samii describes how in group sessions, attendees are told to imagine certain scenarios to give specific emotional context.

"Sometimes I say, 'Imagine the person you're hugging is the person you'd most like to hug just one more time'," she adds.

"That always chokes me up, and and we've had men and women both literally just sobbing on each other."

One-to-one sessions are catered more towards an individual's needs.

They can range from simply sitting close together and talking with an arm around them, to lying down and spooning.

It can also involve other nurturing touch, such as back stroking or cradling.

Some might raise an eyebrow at the thought that people are paying for this, but Sammi stresses it is a "fully clothed, platonic, nurturing service".

To safeguard all involved, she screens clients before taking them on and gets them to sign consent forms that explicitly state boundaries.

"It's very client-led, so they tell me what they want and what they're comfortable with. It's an ongoing dialogue," Samii says.

She acknowledges that intimate touch can lead to arousal, but in those cases she enforces a break or change of position to refocus clients on the nurturing aspect of the session.

There is no regulatory body in the UK for this type of therapy, but professionals like Samii can gain accreditation from Cuddle Professionals International (CPI).

This body insists its members are taught to observe "ethical touch protocols" that rely on informed consent.

While many practices may uphold professional standards, it is potentially an easy environment to misuse and exploit.

Samii says people can report any wrongdoing to the police, local authority or CPI.

The body was founded by wellness expert Claire Mendelsohn, who according to her website, "recognised the need for regulation within the profession".

CPI is now a registered college with the Complementary Medical Association, and approved by the International Institute for Complementary Therapists to deliver training.

Samii discovered cuddle therapy after watching a documentary showing how popular it was overseas.

However, in the UK, she finds that people are more reluctant to touch and be touched.

She blames the Covid pandemic and lockdowns for simultaneously making people "crave it more" but also be "more fearful of having it".

She explains: "It's huge in America and in Europe, not so much over here, but we really need it and people wouldn't come to professional cuddlers like myself if we did not need that.

"We think we're all connected because we're online, but that's why we're so much more disconnected.

"We're all seeking that connection and there's no shame in saying, 'I just want to be held by someone and I want to be hugged. I want to be seen and drop my walls and and have that'."

The science of cuddles

Touch can benefit physical and mental health, according to a paper by Danish neuroscientist Dr Julian Packheiser and his colleagues from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.

They found there was no difference in health benefits in adults between touch from a familiar person or a health care professional.

However, Sophie Scott, professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, argues that while touch has demonstrable benefits, the relationship between people involved is important.

Referring to another study, she says: "They put people in a scanner and physically hurt them; you could see the brain responding to the pain.

"However, when a partner held their hand, they had a reduced response to the pain. So there are chemical changes making you feel better, but that isn't a random person; that is your partner.

"What worries me slightly about somebody doing that professionally is you need to develop that relationship. You wouldn't just let anybody hold your hand.

"People like going to get their haircut or a manicure. Those are quite neutral parts of the body. Hugging might get a bit closer to their danger zones.

"What I'm saying is people would need to feel safe. If they didn't feel safe, it would be highly adversive to do that".

Numerous other studies have highlighted the benefit of touch and its potential to benefit mental and physical health.

Mr Valerio had been exploring alternative methods of healing, such as tapping and tai-chi, when he came across cuddle therapy.

"It relieves stress, promotes relaxation and togetherness," he says.

He says Samii has created a safe environment by playing a soothing soundtrack and getting people to take part in warm-up hug-based exercises at the start.

"Once you've done a few exercises, to break down those walls, it feels like the most natural thing lie on the floor and cuddle a lot of strangers," he says.

"There are people are crying before we have settled into the cuddle puddle, just based on the hug-based exercises we've done and some of the emotions that are brought up."

He has also taken part in one-to-one exercises with Samii, which he says allow for "a deeper bond".

"Spooning feels vulnerable, especially being the guy spooned by a woman. It allows you to experience holding and being held," he says.

"Afterwards I feel held, I feel supported, I feel as if I've shed some of my load and my wall has been lowered."

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At the end of a waitressing shift, Kristina Lampert used to separate her tips in two piles: Canadian cash and American.

But it's been weeks since she has done that.

Freighters, the restaurant where she works, is one of the first places people can grab a bite after crossing the US-Canada border between Sarnia, Ontario, and Port Huron, Michigan.

The Blue Water Bridge, which connects the US and Canada, is in full view from the restaurant's windows.

"A lot of people used to come over and say 'we're here for the view'," she says of Canadian diners. "I haven't heard that at all recently."

Border towns noticed almost instantly when US President Donald Trump began imposing tariffs on countries around the world and saying he wanted to make Canada the 51st US state - because the number of Canadians crossing the border plummeted.

Border crossings between the US and Canada are down some 17% since Trump started bringing in tariffs, according to CBP data.

Canadians car trips to the US are down almost 32% compared to March 2024, according to Statistics Canada.

Like many of the towns that dot along the 5,525 mile (8,891 km) border, the economies of Port Huron and Sarnia are linked and in some ways dependent on one another. Port Huron is a manufacturing town of less than 30,000 people with a quaint downtown and lots of retail, offering visitors an enticing opportunity for a day-trip.

On a day where there is little traffic, a Sarnia resident can cross the border and be in Michigan in a matter of minutes.

Many of these towns faced their first test more than five years ago when the Covid-19 pandemic shut crossings down for 19 months and left local economies reeling.

Now, they are seeing a second economic hit due to Trump's trade war, with many Canadians choosing to "Buy Canadian" - purchase Canadian-made goods - and reducing travel to the US in response to the fraying relationship between the two neighbouring countries.

One place this is being felt is at Sarnia's Duty Free, the last place you can purchase goods before leaving Canada and entering the US. The shelves of perfume and liquor are fuller and the parking lot is emptier since tariffs tensions began.

Barbara Barett, the executive director of Frontier Duty Free Association, says some of the 32 land-border duty frees in Canada have seen as much as an 80% decrease in sales since Trump's return to the White House. Most stores have seeing a 50-60% drop in business.

"We're 100% reliant on the travel across the border," she says of duty frees. "Our stores are often pillars of these communities; communities depend on them."

And while the crossing at Port Huron-Sarnia is faring better than most, on a Friday in May the parking lot of the Sarnia Duty Free is almost empty.

Tania Lee, who runs the store with her family, says that has become the new norm.

On Easter weekend - usually one of their busiest of the year, as Canadians take advantage of the break to stop in at a favourite restaurant and go to a church service in Port Huron - cars were few and far between and sales were not what they should have been, she says.

"We are suffering because of collateral damage at the border," Ms Lee says of her second-generation family business.

Ms Lee notes that people who live in border towns often cross the boundary multiple times a week. She, for example, has a mailbox at a shipping facility in Port Huron that she visits regularly, as do her neighbours.

People across the Blue Water Bridge are feeling the effects too, Mayor Anita Ashford says.

She has heard from both residents of her town and Canadians frustrated about the increased tension between the nations.

Nationally, a 10% drop in Canadian tourism would cost the US up to 14,000 jobs and $2.1bn (£1.56b) in business, according to the US Travel Association.

Michigan is one of the places likely to see the brunt of that impact. In 2023, Canadians visitors spent a collective $238m in the state, according to tourism officials.

That money is essential for border towns like Port Huron, its mayor says.

"I hope people in Washington will start to understand what they're doing to the people," she says. "We are not responsible for this, the [federal] government put us in this position and now we have to deal with it respectfully."

"We need each other," she says.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for "direct talks" with Ukraine, saying they should "start without delay, as early as 15 May".

"We seek serious talks... to remove the root causes of the conflict and start moving towards a lasting, strong peace", he said on Saturday, in a rare televised late-night address from the Kremlin.

It comes hours after European leaders - including UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron - visited Ukraine and urged Russia to agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said Moscow would "have to think this through" - but warned that "trying to pressure us is quite useless".

Baby Reindeer and Mr Bates vs the Post Office will go head to head at the Bafta TV Awards, which take place later at London's Royal Festival Hall.

The event is one of the most prestigious in the TV calendar, and will see shows broadcast in 2024 compete for awards voted for by the British Academy.

First screened by ITV n January 2024, Mr Bates vs the Post Office was one of the most impactful shows of the year and led to widespread public outcry about the wrongful convictions of hundreds of sub-postmasters.

Baby Reindeer, meanwhile, was a breakout viral hit for Netflix about an aspiring comedian and his stalker, but it also prompted a defamation claim from the woman said to have inspired it.

The TV Baftas mark the final stop on the awards circuit for both shows, after wins at other events such as the Emmys, Golden Globes, SAG and National Television Awards.

Which shows have the most Bafta nominations?

• 4 nominations - Baby Reindeer, Mr Bates vs The Post Office
• 3 - Rivals, Slow Horses, Mr Loverman, Say Nothing, The Traitors
• 2 - Sherwood, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, Gavin & Stacey: The Finale

Scroll down for the nominations list in full

The above tallies include nominations for the memorable moment prize, the only award voted by the public.

The numbers do not include the shows' earlier nominations and wins at the Bafta Craft Awards, which took place last month and saw Baby Reindeer's Richard Gadd take home best comedy writing, with Slow Horses and Inside No. 9 among the other winners.

The Post Office scandal is widely considered the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history, and saw hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted and convicted of crimes they didn't commit, based on inaccurate data from the Horizon software system.

The story was reported in the media over several years, but ITV dramatisation Mr Bates vs the Post Office brought it a new league of public attention and prompted the government to announce new legislation to exonerate and compensate victims.

Meanwhile, Baby Reindeer told the story of a struggling stand-up comedian, the woman who stalks him, and the powerful man in the TV industry who mentors and then sexually assaults him. Richard Gadd's partly autobiographical drama became one of the most dissected series of the year.

Other nominees include Rivals, a Disney+ adaptation of a Jilly Cooper novel about two powerful men battling for control of a local TV network, and Slow Horses, about a dysfunctional unit within MI5 made up of disgraced agents.

Say Nothing, which followed the lives of those growing up during the troubles in Belfast, is also nominated, alongside Mr Loverman, a screen adaptation of Bernadine Evaristo's novel about an elderly man whose marriage falls apart after his long-term affair with his male friend is revealed.

Sherwood focused on a Nottinghamshire community still reeling from the 1980s miners' strike, while Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light continued Hilary Mantel's trilogy about Thomas Cromwell's continued rise to power and eventual fall from grace.

Other nominees include reality series The Traitors, a game of deception played in a Scottish castle, and Gavin & Stacey: The Finale, which saw the long-running series about two families from from Billericay in Essex and Barry in Wales reach an emotional conclusion.

Who is hosting the Bafta TV Awards?

Actor and TV presenter Alan Cumming will take over hosting duties this year, and we hope he brings just as much drama as he did to the latest cracking series of The Traitors US.

The Scottish star's film credits include Eyes Wide Shut, GoldenEye and Emma, as well as two absolute masterpieces of 1990s cinema - Spice World: The Movie and Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.

Bafta's executive director of awards and content, Emma Baehr, said Cumming would "definitely bring a playful sense of mischief and fun to the ceremony".

Elsewhere in the ceremony, Jessie J will deliver her first TV performance in six years, singing the appropriately titled The Award Goes To, while Tom Grennan will perform his new single Full Attention.

Awards will be presented by stars including Dame Mary Berry, Billy Porter, Suranne Jones, Ashley Walters, Katie Piper, Sir David Suchet, Big Zuu, Ellie Simmonds, Owen Cooper, Rose Ayling Ellis, Stacey Dooley and Baroness Benjamin.

How to watch the Bafta TV Awards

The ceremony will be broadcast on BBC One at 19:00 BST.

But it actually takes place a couple of hours earlier, so that some sections of the ceremony can be edited down before the show airs.

BBC News will be running spoiler-free coverage, with winners revealed on our live page in line with when they are announced on BBC One.

The Bafta TV nominations in full

Drama series

• Blue Lights - BBC One
• Sherwood - BBC One
• Supacell - Netflix
• Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light - BBC One

Limited drama

• Baby Reindeer - Netflix
• Lost Boys And Fairies - BBC One
• Mr Bates Vs The Post Office - ITV1
• One Day - Netflix

Scripted comedy

• Alma's Not Normal (BBC Two)
• Brassic (Sky Max)
• G'Wed (ITV1)
• Ludwig (BBC One)

Leading actress

• Anna Maxwell Martin - Until I Kill You (ITV1)
• Billie Piper - Scoop (Netflix)
• Lola Petticrew - Say Nothing (Disney+)
• Marisa Abela - Industry (BBC One)
• Monica Dolan - Mr Bates vs The Post Office (ITV1)
• Sharon D Clarke - Mr Loverman (BBC One)

Leading actor

• David Tennant - Rivals (Disney+)
• Gary Oldman - Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
• Lennie James - Mr Loverman (BBC One)
• Martin Freeman - The Responder (BBC One)
• Richard Gadd - Baby Reindeer (Netflix)
• Toby Jones - Mr Bates vs The Post Office (ITV1)

Supporting actress

• Jessica Gunning - Baby Reindeer (Netflix)
• Katherine Parkinson - Rivals (Disney+)
• Maxine Peake - Say Nothing - (Disney+)
• Monica Dolan - Sherwood (BBC One)
• Nava Mau - Baby Reindeer (Netflix)
• Sue Johnston - Truelove (Channel 4)

Supporting actor

• Ariyon Bakare, Mr Loverman (BBC One)
• Christopher Chung, Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
• Damian Lewis, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (BBC One
• Jonathan Pryce, Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
• McKinley Belcher III, Eric (Netflix)
• Sonny Walker, The Gathering (Channel 4)

Female performance in a comedy

• Anjana Vasan - We Are Lady Parts (Channel 4)
• Kate O'Flynn - Everyone Else Burns (Channel 4)
• Lolly Adefope - The Franchise (Sky Comedy)
• Nicola Coughlan - Big Mood (Channel 4)
• Ruth Jones - Gavin & Stacey: The Finale (BBC One)
• Sophie Willan - Alma's Not Normal (BBC Two)

Male performance in a comedy

• Bilal Hasna - Extraordinary (Disney+)
• Danny Dyer - Mr Bigstuff (Sky Comedy)
• Dylan Thomas-Smith - G'Wed (ITV2)
• Nabhaan Rizwan - Kaos – Sister (Netflix)
• Oliver Savell- Changing Ends (ITV1)
• Phil Dunning - Smoggie Queens (BBC Three)

Soap

• Casualty (BBC One)
• Coronation Street (ITV1)
• EastEnders (BBC One)

Entertainment programme

• The 1% Club (ITV1)
• Michael McIntyre's Big Show (BBC One)
• Taskmaster (Channel 4)
• Would I Lie To You? (BBC One)

Entertainment performance

• Anthony McPartlin, Declan Donnelly - Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway - (ITV1)
• Claudia Winkleman - The Traitors (BBC One)
• Graham Norton - The Graham Norton Show (BBC One)
• Joe Lycett Late Night Lycett - (Channel 4)
• Romesh Ranganathan, Rob Beckett Rob & Romesh Vs (Sky Max)
• Stacey Solomon Sort Your Life Out - (BBC One)

Factual entertainment

• In Vogue: The 90s (Disney+)
• Race Across The World (BBC One)
• Rob And Rylan's Grand Tour (BBC Two)
• Sort Your Life Out (BBC One)

Reality

• Dragons' Den (BBC One)
• The Jury: Murder Trial (Channel 4)
• Love Is Blind (Netflix)
• The Traitors (BBC One)

Daytime

• Clive Myrie's Caribbean Adventure (BBC Two)
• Loose Women (ITV1)
• Morning Live (BBC One)
• Richard Osman's House Of Games (BBC Two)

International

• After The Party (Channel 4)
• Colin From Accounts (BBC Two)
• Say Nothing (Disney+)
• Shōgun (Disney+)
• True Detective: Night Country (Sky Atlantic)
• You Are Not Alone: Fighting The Wolfpack (Netflix)

Live event coverage

• D-Day 80: Tribute To The Fallen (BBC One)
• Glastonbury 2024 (BBC Two)
• Last Night Of The Proms (BBC Two)

Current affairs

• Life and Death in Gaza - Storyville (BBC Two)
• Maternity: Broken Trust - Exposure (ITV1)
• State of Rage (Channel 4)
• Ukraine's War: The Other Side (ITV1)

Single documentary

• Hell Jumper (BBC Two)
• Tell Them You Love Me (Sky Documentaries)
• Ukraine: Enemy In The Woods (BBC Two)
• Undercover: Exposing The Far Right (Channel 4)

Factual series

• American Nightmare (Netflix)
• Freddie Flintoff's Field Of Dreams On Tour (BBC One)
• The Push: Murder On The Cliff (Channel 4)
• To Catch A Copper (Channel 4)

Specialist factual

• Atomic People (BBC Two)
• Billy & Molly: An Otter Love (National Geographic)
• Children of the Cult (ITV1)
• Miners' Strike 1984: The Battle For Britain (Channel 4)

News coverage

• BBC Breakfast: Post Office Special (BBC News/BBC One)
• Channel 4 News: Inside Sednaya – The Fall Of Assad (Channel 4 News/Channel 4)
• Channel 4 News: Undercover Inside Reform's Campaign (Channel 4 News/Channel 4)

Sports coverage

• Euro 2024 (BBC Sport/BBC One)
• Paris 2024 Olympics (BBC Sport/BBC One)
• Wimbledon 2024 (BBC Sport/Wimbledon Broadcast Services/BBC One)

Memorable moment

• Bridgerton - "THE" carriage scene where Colin admits his true feelings for Penelope (Netflix)
• Gavin & Stacey: The Finale - Smithy's Wedding: Mick Stands Up (BBC One)
• Mr Bates Vs The Post Office - Jo Hamilton phones the Horizon helpline (ITV1)
• Rivals - Rupert Campbell-Black and Sarah Stratton are caught in a game of naked tennis (Disney+)
• Strictly Come Dancing - Chris McCausland and Dianne Buswell Waltz to You'll Never Walk Alone (BBC One)
• The Traitors - "Paul isn't my son… but Ross is!" (BBC One)

Short form

• Brown Brit (Channel 4)
• Peaked (Channel 4)
• Quiet Life (BBC Three)

Read more about the Bafta nominees:

• Baby Reindeer stars win big at Emmy Awards
• Netflix fails to get Baby Reindeer lawsuit dropped
• The power of Mr Bates vs The Post Office in bringing about justice
• Mr Bates vs Post Office drama lost £1m, ITV boss says
• Rivals: Dame Jilly Cooper on why jogging is ruinous for our sex lives
• Gary Oldman wants to play shabby secret agent 'for the long run'
• Marian Price to sue Disney over Say Nothing murder scene
• Life and Death in Gaza: 'I say bye to my kids, in case we don't wake up'
• Scoop: Why Gillian Anderson found it 'scary' to play Emily Maitlis
• Bankers 'neither villains nor rock stars', says Industry creator
• 'I was told Mr Loverman was too niche for TV'
• Martin Freeman: The Responder star on why TV viewers can 'smell lies'
• UK TV industry in crisis, says Wolf Hall director
• Eric: Benedict Cumberbatch says dressing as monster is 'one of the most ludicrous things I've done'
• Sherwood actress aims to break Down's syndrome barriers
• TV drama Truelove puts seaside town 'on the map'
• We Are Lady Parts: Why Anjana Vasan is done people pleasing
• Nicola Coughlan: Why I hate on-screen vanity, in new show Big Mood
• Gavin and Stacey tops Christmas Day TV ratings
• Gavin & Stacey: An exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the Christmas finale
• Alma's Not Normal: How anger and spa breaks fuelled new series
• Extraordinary: Peat & Diesel music to feature on new Disney show
• Blue Lights series two promises 'absolute chaos'
• Supacell: Superhero series tackling knife crime and sickle cell
• Lost Boys and Fairies writer proud of adoption drama
• One Day: I rarely saw people like me in lead roles, says Ambika Mod
• Derek Thompson: Casualty's Charlie Fairhead exits after 38 years
• Coronation Street's Gail bids farewell after 50 years
• EastEnders gets ratings bump for 'flawless' live episode
• Why is Race Across the World so popular?
• Rylan Clark and Rob Rinder: 'The tour that helped mend our broken hearts'
• Sort Your Life Out: How to plump up your saggy sofa
• Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway: More than 4m tune in for final show
• The Traitors finale was most-watched live episode in show's history
• Late Night Lycett: Joe Lycett behind Banksy mural hoax
• Michael McIntyre's Big Show: LeAnn Rimes in duet with Harrogate mum
• Romesh and Roisin remember the original Taskmaster
• Sara Davies to 'step away' from Dragons' Den
• Matt and Emma Willis on a 'very British' Love is Blind
• Shogun: A guide to the hit Japanese samurai epic as its finale cuts deep
• King and Queen hear first-hand D-Day veteran stories
• Glastonbury 2024: 15 magical and memorable moments
• Thousands wave flags to classics at Last Night of the Proms
• Maternity: Broken Trust: Parents hope documentary will help maternity inquiry bid
• Hell Jumper: Story of Ukraine war victims' rescuer told in film
• Freddie Flintoff: Star returns to BBC with second Field of Dreams series
• To Catch a Copper: Avon and Somerset Police staff 'betrayed' by Channel 4 documentary
• Atomic People: 'Atomic bomb hell must never be repeated' say Japan's last survivors
• BBC Breakfast: Post Office Special: 'I carried the shame - I refuse to carry it any longer'
• Euro 2024 final in numbers
• Paris 2024: How is France preparing for the Olympics and Paralympics?
• Five Wimbledon storylines to look out for
• Bridgerton or Strictly? Bafta opens vote on best TV moments of 2024
• Peaked: Actress returns home for Derbyshire-set comedy

A pedigree livestock farmer plans to take legal action against East Midlands Airport, claiming a leaking pipe polluted the brook that runs through his rented grazing land.

David Thornley claims 25 of his 100 ewes lost their valuable pedigree lambs after drinking from Diseworth Brook in Leicestershire in 2022.

In April, East Midlands International Airport Ltd pleaded guilty to charges of exceeding the limits of its environmental permits when it released water containing chemicals from holding ponds in January and February 2022.

The airport denies any link between the discharge and bacterial pollution in the brook.

Environmental studies show de-icing chemicals, washed from airport runways, can affect water quality because they encourage the growth of "sewage fungus", or "undesirable river biofilms".

With more than 20 years' experience as a prize-winning breeder, Mr Thornley says typically he would expect to lose just 2-3% of pregnancies after embryo transfer.

So in January 2022, when veterinary scans showed 25% of his impregnated ewes were no longer carrying lambs, he began to investigate.

Approaching Diseworth Brook, he says he was hit by a smell that "took your breath away".

He took photos of the brook covered in a brown substance, which he now believes was sewage fungus.

When he and his son walked upstream, they found "black sludge" emerging from an outlet pipe below the airport's holding ponds.

"There was nothing coming from above [that part of] the stream," he says.

"It was clear as clear, and it smelt lovely until it got to that pipe."

'Small leak identified'

Mr Thornley immediately reported his pollution concerns to the Environment Agency (EA), which attended the following day.

When he contacted the airport in January 2022, its reply, seen by the BBC, confirmed: "There was an incident... where a small leak was identified into Diseworth Brook."

The airport said in its email to Mr Thornley it was working with the EA, which was "now happy the issue had been resolved and there were no further impacts to the local watercourse".

In February 2022, Mr Thornley asked a specialist company to take water samples.

The laboratory results showed the water was polluted with bacteria and unfit for livestock to drink.

However, the results did not prove a link between the bacteria and airport de-icing chemicals.

"It's devastating," says Mr Thornley. "[Losing the lambs] has a big impact on the family. You can't replace those bloodlines or that breeding overnight. It's tens of years of breeding and investment to breed the right quality stock."

Mr Thornley is asking for compensation of £50,000.

The EA asked Mr Thornley to give evidence in its case against the airport.

But that evidence was never heard.

The agency told the farmer he was no longer required after the airport's lawyers unexpectedly entered guilty pleas to three of six charges at a pre-trial review.

The EA says those charges relate to the discharge of contaminated wastewater into the River Trent between 14 January 2022 and 4 February 2022, but declined to comment or give more detail until sentencing on 25 July.

Mr Thornley said airport staff had seemed sympathetic in initial meetings.

For two years, the airport paid his rent for extra grazing land to keep his stock away from the brook between November and April.

Those are the months when the airport has EA permits to discharge water containing de-icing chemicals from balancing ponds holding run-off from its runways.

But Mr Thornley says the airport is now refusing to continue the rental arrangement and claims he has not had a reply to letters from his insurance company lawyers.

He says he no longer trusts the airport to keep him informed about water quality and will continue to keep his livestock away from the brook from November to April.

'Victorian legacy'

The EA's case against the airport was supported by members of the Derby Railway Angling Club, who blame de-icing chemicals for causing large plumes of sewage fungus in the River Trent and threatening rare fish.

Before he retired, member Gary Cyster was a senior fisheries inspector for the EA.

He says he is disappointed that the agency did not pursue three further charges against the airport, including one linking airport chemical discharges to plumes of sewage fungus in the River Trent.

"Sewage fungus is like a legacy from the Victorian times," he says.

"We shouldn't be seeing any sewage fungus. If effluent is going into the River Trent, there should be a finite limit for BOD [biological oxygen demand]."

Mr Cyster says the Trent is home to some of the rarest fish in the country, including the spined loach and the bullhead, and these could be threatened by sewage fungus and low oxygen levels caused by de-icing chemicals.

He says he has research indicating that East Midlands Airport is the only airport in the country which does not have a finite BOD limit for discharging into a major river. Instead its "load-based" EA permit says that discharges should not have "adverse effects" on plants or animals in the water and that there should be "no significant adverse visual effect".

"We feel like the River Trent has been sold down the river," he says.

He is also concerned about the airport's continuing expansion and plans for the East Midlands Freeport.

"This is going to affect all the watercourses around the area. So it's about time that we had a modern treatment works there and they stop this pollution."

What the airport says

East Midlands Airport said: "We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously and work closely with the Environment Agency on the operation of our water drainage system.

"We are aware of Mr Thornley's concerns, take them seriously and have always responded to his correspondence.

"However, the issues he raises do not form any part of the evidence in the case that the Environment Agency has brought to court.

"The pollutants identified in the sample testing he undertook are not found in the de-icer products used by the airport but were instead contaminants associated with sewage, which the airport does not discharge to the brook.

"We are unable to comment further until the case reaches its full conclusion."

How do de-icing chemicals affect streams and rivers?

For safety reasons, UK airports routinely use de-icing chemicals during winter months to protect aircraft and runways.

They pose a pollution danger, so airports are required to have treatment systems in place. Discharges should be monitored by the environmental regulator.

Bangor University researcher Dr Ben Exton investigated the impact of de-icing chemicals such as propylene glycol for his PhD.

He likens the effect of these chemicals on water-born bacteria to offering hungry humans a roomful of fattening fast food.

"It's a bit like an unlimited flood of burgers... [the bacteria] grow extremely quickly, and as they grow, they deplete dissolved oxygen and stress other species," he says.

"They blanket the river bed, and that kills off other things in the river."

Numerous studies have shown de-icing chemicals cause habitat loss and poor water quality for invertebrates and fish.

"It's been going on for years," says Dr Exton.

"It's really difficult to treat the de-icer contaminated water because, unlike things like sewage, it comes in fluxes.

"Biological systems that break down these compounds don't ramp up and down well."

A document on East Midlands Airport's website flags de-icing chemicals as a "challenge". The document outlines its permit limits and how it treats the run-off in winter and summer ponds to protect local waterways.

Its guilty pleas last month relate to breaching those permits.

Follow BBC Leicester on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for "direct talks" with Ukraine, saying they should "start without delay, as early as 15 May".

"We seek serious talks... to remove the root causes of the conflict and start moving towards a lasting, strong peace", he said on Saturday, in a rare televised late-night address from the Kremlin.

It comes hours after European leaders - including UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron - visited Ukraine and urged Russia to agree to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said Moscow would "have to think this through" - but warned that "trying to pressure us is quite useless".

Victims of forced adoption have gathered in Cornwall for a public event condemning the treatment of unmarried mothers in post-war Britain.

They unveiled a plaque at Rosemundy House in St Agnes - formerly a home for unmarried mothers - while calling for a formal "adoption apology" from the government.

Dr Phil Frampton, who was born at the Rosemundy Mother and Baby Home in 1953, said: "We want an apology, not only for the mothers but also for their children who suffered."

Lyn Rodden, from Camborne, who was one of those forced to give up her baby, said: "It means everything that we've been recognised at last."

'Struggle for an apology'

It is estimated up to 250,000 women in Britain were forced to give up their babies in the decades after World War Two.

Campaigners also want "restorative actions" from the government, such as providing counselling and search support for mothers and those forcibly adopted.

Dr Frampton, a member of the Rosemundy Commemoration Committee, said he spent years in foster care after he was separated from his mother as a baby.

He said: "It's really pleasing to be here today, it's the start of a new chapter in the struggle for an apology for all those unmarried mothers who suffered in the post-war period."

Mr Frampton said the day was "part of a day of healing, part of a day of recognising the grief of those mothers..."

He added: "This is not something that's just in the past, for a lot of women they lived with this, you hear women today 80, 88 years old, who are still having to live with what happened, and the children live with it, and families live with it."

Mr Frampton said it was "important" to be able to give the mothers, children, and families affected by forced adoptions "a sense of relief and release".

Another plaque is due to be unveiled by the campaigners in Kendal, Cumbria, on 23 May.

'Cried all the way home'

In September 1956, 19-year-old Lyn Rodden from Camborne, Cornwall, gave birth to her son at the Rosemundy home.

She said she was forced to get on a train and take her son to Bath to be adopted.

Ms Rodden said: "For everybody else the parents came here and took them away from here, but I had to get on a train and take my son up to Bath, and leave him in an office.

"A woman just came out and said 'name' and 'I'll take the baby' and she took him into the back office, came out and said 'hurry up' she said, 'catch your train' she said, 'and back to St Agnes, you'll be there for another six weeks'.

"That was it. I cried all the way home..."

Ms Rodden said she was eventually reunited with her son 50 years later when he found her.

"[It was] like the final piece of a jigsaw being fitted," she said.

She added: "To think that although slavery was abolished in the 1800s, a Dickensian way of life was gone, but not at Rosemundy.

"It was still in the past, and that was it really, and it means everything that we've been recognised at last..."

A Government spokesperson said: "This abhorrent practice should never have taken place, and our deepest sympathies are with all those affected.

"We take this issue extremely seriously and continue to engage with those impacted to provide support."

Follow BBC Cornwall on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.

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India and Pakistan have accused each other of "violations" hours after the two nations said they had agreed to a ceasefire following days of cross-border military strikes.

After sounds of explosions were heard in Indian-administered Kashmir, India's Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said there had been "repeated violations of the understanding we arrived at".

A short while later, Pakistan's foreign ministry said it remained "committed to faithful implementation of a ceasefire...notwithstanding the violations being committed by India in some areas".

The fighting between India and Pakistan over the last four days has been the worst military confrontation between the two rivals in decades.

The use of drones, missiles and artillery started when India struck targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in response to a deadly militant attack in Pahalgam last month. Pakistan had denied any involvement.

After four days of cross-border strikes, India and Pakistan said they had agreed on a full and immediate ceasfire.

US President Donald Trump announced the news on his Truth Social Platform on Saturday morning. He said it had been brokered by the US.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister later confirmed the agreement had been reached by the two countries, adding that "three dozen countries" were involved in the diplomacy.

But hours after the announcement, residents - and BBC reporters - in the main Indian-administered Kashmiri cities of Srinagar and Jammu reported hearing the sounds of explosions and seeing flashes in the sky.

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said: "For the last few hours, there have been repeated violations of the understanding we arrived at earlier this evening.

"This is a breach of the understanding arrived at earlier today."

Misri said India's armed forces was "giving an appropriate response" and he concluded his briefing by "calling upon Pakistan to address these violations".

In response, a spokesman for Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: "Pakistan remains committed to faithful implementation of ceasefire between Pakistan and India, announced earlier today.

"Notwithstanding the violations being committed by India in some areas, our forces are handling the situation with responsibility and restraint.

"We believe that any issues in smooth implementation of the ceasefire should be addressed through communication at appropriate levels.

"The troops on ground should also exercise restraint."

Kashmir is claimed in full by India and Pakistan, but administered only in part by each since they were partitioned following independence from Britain in 1947.

It has been a flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed nations and they have have fought two wars over it.

Confirming the ceasefire, India's external affairs minister S Jaishankar said the two nations had "worked out an understanding on stoppage of firing and military action".

"India has consistently maintained a firm and uncompromising stance against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. It will continue to do so," he added.

Later, in an address to the nation, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the ceasefire had been reached "for the benefit of everybody".

Speaking after the ceasefire announcement, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said India and Pakistan had agreed to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.

He said he and US Vice-President JD Vance had spent 48 hours with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, including their respective Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he welcomed "all efforts to de-escalate the conflict".

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Britain has been "engaged" in talks for "some days", with Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaking to both sides.

"I'm pleased to see today that there's a ceasefire," Sir Keir said. "The task now is to make sure that that is enduring and is lasting."

The recent fighting came after two weeks of tension following the killing of 26 tourists in the resort town of Pahalgam.

Survivors of the 22 April attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, which killed 25 Indians and one Nepali national, said the militants were singling out Hindu men.

The Indian defence ministry said its strikes this week were part of a "commitment" to hold "accountable" those responsible for the attack. Pakistan described them as "unprovoked".

Pakistan said Indian air strikes and cross-border fire since Wednesday had killed 36 people in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, while India's army reported at least 21 civilians deaths from Pakistani shelling.

Fighting intensified overnight on Friday, with both countries accusing each other of targeting airbases and other military sites.

India's military said Pakistan had launched mass drone attacks and shelling along its western border, endangering civilians - a claim Pakistan denied.

Pakistan said it had taken retaliatory action for Indian missile strikes on airbases at Rawalpindi - 10km (6.2m) from Pakistan's capital Islamabad - Chakwal and Shorkot.

'What a bunch of losers'

Victims of forced adoption have gathered in Cornwall for a public event condemning the treatment of unmarried mothers in post-war Britain.

They unveiled a plaque at Rosemundy House in St Agnes - formerly a home for unmarried mothers - while calling for a formal "adoption apology" from the government.

Dr Phil Frampton, who was born at the Rosemundy Mother and Baby Home in 1953, said: "We want an apology, not only for the mothers but also for their children who suffered."

Lyn Rodden, from Camborne, who was one of those forced to give up her baby, said: "It means everything that we've been recognised at last."

'Struggle for an apology'

It is estimated up to 250,000 women in Britain were forced to give up their babies in the decades after World War Two.

Campaigners also want "restorative actions" from the government, such as providing counselling and search support for mothers and those forcibly adopted.

Dr Frampton, a member of the Rosemundy Commemoration Committee, said he spent years in foster care after he was separated from his mother as a baby.

He said: "It's really pleasing to be here today, it's the start of a new chapter in the struggle for an apology for all those unmarried mothers who suffered in the post-war period."

Mr Frampton said the day was "part of a day of healing, part of a day of recognising the grief of those mothers..."

He added: "This is not something that's just in the past, for a lot of women they lived with this, you hear women today 80, 88 years old, who are still having to live with what happened, and the children live with it, and families live with it."

Mr Frampton said it was "important" to be able to give the mothers, children, and families affected by forced adoptions "a sense of relief and release".

Another plaque is due to be unveiled by the campaigners in Kendal, Cumbria, on 23 May.

'Cried all the way home'

In September 1956, 19-year-old Lyn Rodden from Camborne, Cornwall, gave birth to her son at the Rosemundy home.

She said she was forced to get on a train and take her son to Bath to be adopted.

Ms Rodden said: "For everybody else the parents came here and took them away from here, but I had to get on a train and take my son up to Bath, and leave him in an office.

"A woman just came out and said 'name' and 'I'll take the baby' and she took him into the back office, came out and said 'hurry up' she said, 'catch your train' she said, 'and back to St Agnes, you'll be there for another six weeks'.

"That was it. I cried all the way home..."

Ms Rodden said she was eventually reunited with her son 50 years later when he found her.

"[It was] like the final piece of a jigsaw being fitted," she said.

She added: "To think that although slavery was abolished in the 1800s, a Dickensian way of life was gone, but not at Rosemundy.

"It was still in the past, and that was it really, and it means everything that we've been recognised at last..."

A Government spokesperson said: "This abhorrent practice should never have taken place, and our deepest sympathies are with all those affected.

"We take this issue extremely seriously and continue to engage with those impacted to provide support."

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Sir Keir Starmer has said that the outcome of talks between Ukraine's allies in Kyiv marks a "significant moment" in the push to secure a ceasefire in its conflict with Russia - but admitted it was not "the end of the process".

Speaking to the BBC in Kyiv following a virtual meeting of the "coalition of the willing", the prime minister said "we haven't seen unity like this pretty well throughout the conflict".

Around 30 global leaders reasserted their call for Russia to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire from Monday, threatening "massive" sanctions if it does not comply.

Noting other conflicts including India-Pakistan hostilities, Sir Keir said "we are living in a more uncertain world" that "requires leadership stepping up".

The UK prime minister joined French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk for the meeting, which was hosted by Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky.

Other members of the "coalition of the willing" participated remotely, including Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Canadian PM Mark Carney, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, and Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of Nato.

In a phone call with Donald Trump following the meeting, the US president reportedly reaffirmed his support for the ceasefire, after Vladimir Putin rejected his initial proposal in March.

Sir Keir said Trump was "absolutely clear that this is a demand that must be met".

The leaders assembled in Kyiv warned that "new and massive" sanctions will be imposed on Russia's energy and banking sectors if Putin does not agree to the unconditional 30-day ceasefire "in the air, at sea and on land".

Sir Keir told the BBC that "material progress" had been made during the meeting.

"We've been able to collectively get to a much better position and a more unified position today that holds out a better prospect of a ceasefire," he said.

"You've got unity in the demand, but also unity in what the response will be if the demand is not met. We haven't seen that sort of unity during this conflict."

"I'm not going to pretend this is the end of the process but this is a significant moment we now need to push on and make sure this happens," he added.

Further coordinating sanctions on Russian oil, fossil fuels and other assets would make a "material difference", the prime minister said.

The Kremlin reacted to the proposal by accusing European leaders of making "contradictory" and "generally confrontational" remarks about Russia.

Press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Ukraine's allies must stop sending weapons to Ukraine before any ceasefire can happen - something European leaders have rejected - before later saying Russia would consider the proposal.

"We have to think about this. This is a new development," state-run Russian news agency Tass reported Peskov as saying.

The Kyiv meeting was a symbolic show of support for Ukraine a day after more than 20 world leaders joined Putin in Moscow for Russia's World War Two Victory Day parade.

The massive military parade was held in Moscow's Red Square to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 with leaders including China's Xi Jinping, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, an EU member, in attendance.

"It was a hugely important, symbolic day here in Kyiv because there was a propaganda exercise in Moscow yesterday," Sir Keir told the BBC.

"80 years on from VE Day it was really important that we were here today... to demonstrate that the values that underpinned what was being fought for 80 years ago are the same values now".

Asked whether he feels "scared about the state of the world" as others in Britain do - given conflicts in the Middle East and India-Pakistan tensions - Sir Keir said "we are living in a more uncertain world and we're in a different era of defence and security".

But he said it did not keep him up at night "because it's really important that I focus on what I can do - bringing people together, making significant steps today, making sure we're preparing with Ukraine for what might happen next".

The so-called "coalition of the willing" was established by the UK and France to reinforce any eventual peace deal with security guarantees, including the presence of peacekeeping troops in Ukraine.

European leaders have called US President Donald Trump to discuss proposals for a 30-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine from Monday while on a visit to Kyiv.

The call came after leaders of the so-called "coalition of the willing" held a meeting to discuss advancing peace talks.

The leaders of France, Germany, the UK and Poland were hosted in person by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, while others joined remotely.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the coalition backed a "full and unconditional" ceasefire - originally mooted by Trump - and that the EU was ready to "impose further biting sanctions" if it was broken.

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The presence of UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Polish PM Donald Tusk and new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Ukrainian capital was a symbolic response to the more than 20 leaders who joined Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday.

In a joint statement ahead of the visit, they said they "will stand in Kyiv in solidarity with Ukraine against Russia's barbaric and illegal full-scale invasion".

The leaders added: "Alongside the US, we call on Russia to agree a full and unconditional 30-day ceasefire to create the space for talks on a just and lasting peace."

A 30-hour ceasefire, unilaterally called by Putin to mark Russia's Victory Day, is due to end on Saturday. It has seen a decrease in fighting but both sides have accused the other of breaches.

The "coalition of the willing" was formed to reinforce any eventual peace agreement with security guarantees, including the possibility of placing troops in Ukraine.

Trump earlier reiterated the call for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire after a phone call with Zelensky.

"If the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions," he wrote on social media.

As the meeting was going on, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was already "used to sanctions" and knew how to minimise their impact, adding: "There is no point in trying to scare us with these sanctions."

Meanwhile, Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and now deputy head of Russia's Security Council, told the European allies to "shove these peace plans".

Other leaders who joined the meeting remotely included Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Canadian PM Mark Carney, von der Leyen, and Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of Nato.

Reports of Russian attacks across Ukraine continue, despite Russia's claims of a temporary ceasefire.

In northern Sumy region, an 85-year-old woman was killed, three others were injured, 19 residential homes and 10 other buildings were destroyed or damaged, Ukrainian police said.

In Kostyantynivka, eastern Donetsk region, one person was injured and two apartment blocks caught fire after Russian attacks, Ukrainian state emergency service DSNS said.

And in the southern city of Kherson, a 58-year-old local resident sought medical help after being attacked by a Russian drone carrying explosives, the regional administration said.

Symone has been using weight loss injections for nearly a year. She says they have done what the diet industry could never do for her - free her from a life controlled by food.

From a very young age, the 34-year-old could not switch off the constant noise in her head. When would her next meal come? What would it be? Would there be enough for her?

"The food noise was just so loud, it could be unbearable," she says. "I have tried every single diet going - I've done Atkins, eating clean, SlimFast, Slimming World, meal-replacement shakes - you name it - I've done it and none have them worked for me."

Several years ago, weighing 16st (102kg), she was one of the many millions who signed up to WeightWatchers, downloading the app and meticulously following its points plan, scanning in everything she ate and staying within her daily points budget.

WeightWatchers attributes points to food and drink, stating that it uses a "groundbreaking algorithm" to assess their nutritional makeup and then uses a point system to inform its members which food is better to eat.

But after a few weeks, Symone says she started to feel like she was being set up to fail.

"How could I lose weight long term if I had to follow this mad points system? Food is not measured in points - it's measured in calories, fat, macro nutrients.

"I felt trapped, and the more research I did, the more I educated myself, the more I thought this is not for me."

The only thing that has ever worked in her quest to lose weight, she says, is weight loss injection Mounjaro, which she started using nearly a year ago.

"I was at my heaviest, just over 21 stone, and the doctor told me I was pre-diabetic. I knew something had to change - I've got two children who depend on me too."

She was advised to start on the weight loss medication but with a two-year wait, she decided to buy it privately online and within just a few days, she was crying with relief.

"I couldn't believe that I had control over food. For the first time, I wasn't panicking about when I would next eat."

Weight loss jabs work by mimicking a hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which suppresses people's appetites and makes them feel full.

Symone has now lost 4st 7lb (26kg) and is losing weight gradually, documenting her experiences on social media.

"I don't want a quick fix," she says, "I'm using weight loss injections to give me the control I never had."

Lost a million members

For many, weight loss jabs can produce rapid results, but some experts are concerned about the meteoric rise in their popularity and how people will be affected by them long term - both physically and mentally.

At its peak, WeightWatchers was seen as being synonymous with safe and controlled weight loss. With 4.5million subscribers globally, its workshops were held in most towns, on most high streets, popping up in local church halls - they were everywhere.

Now, after dominating the diet industry for more than half a century, it has lost more than a million members and filed for bankruptcy, struggling to compete in a market transformed by social media influencers and weight loss injections.

The company has stressed that it is not going out of business and that filing for bankruptcy will help it resolve its debt of $1.25bn (£860m).

In a statement, the brand says its weight loss programme (which also includes its own brand of weight loss jabs) and weight loss workshops will continue.

The company says it has been the brand with the most scientific backing in the diet industry for over 60 years, and that there have been more than 180 published studies showing the effectiveness of its approach.

WeightWatchers says it uses an "holistic model of care" to support "the whole person" with "access to obesity-trained clinicians and registered dietitians".

It is also one of several companies GPs can use for weight loss referrals, with the NHS paying for patients to attend weekly meetings in the community.

"It's no longer about calorie control and diets," Deanne Jade, clinical director of the National Centre for Eating Disorders, told the BBC.

"There's a new movement out there and it's all about wellbeing.

"People like to move in tribes – it used to be the WeightWatchers tribe, counting points and calories, now millions follow different ways to lose weight or be healthy through social media influencers, through weight loss drugs, and they're forming new tribes."

She is not convinced that medication will be the answer that so many are looking for.

"None of these pharmaceutical interventions protect people from regaining the weight when they stop injecting."

She believes they are not a quick fix, and that the best way to effectively lose weight and keep it off is to understand the psychological reasons behind overeating.

More holistic approach

Dr Joanne Silver, lead psychologist at the London-based eating disorder clinic, Orri, agrees. She says the weight loss injections "completely silence what the body is asking for", which is counterintuitive to understanding what the body needs.

"People can binge eat because of psychological reasons – they can use food to manage their emotions, to soothe themselves.

"Eating disorders are not just about food."

Food and nutrition have become just one part of a more holistic approach so many are now adopting when it comes to their overall wellbeing.

Jennifer Pybis, a fitness coach based in Liverpool, works with clients both online and in person. She says achieving a healthy lifestyle is not just about hitting a target weight.

"I encourage the women I work with to consider lots of ways to measure their progress rather than just jumping on the scales.

"Thinking about how they feel, comparing photographs of themselves to see how their bodies have changed shape, how their sleep is, their resting heart rate, their improvements in the gym - all of that is so important."

The diet industry might be transforming but there are many who still prefer the more traditional model of sitting together and sharing their experiences, supporting others in their community to lose weight.

In a small church hall in Winsford, Cheshire, a group of women are waiting patiently to get on the scales.

Muttering and good-natured laughter can be heard as they share their latest weights with each other.

"I've put on a pound! I did have a little bit - well maybe a lot - of wine at the weekend."

"Why didn't you have gin?" another one asks, "it's only 55 calories a shot!"

They're here for their weekly check-in at the BeeWeighed slimming group. Some of the women have lost several pounds, others have a put on a pound or two, but overall, since joining the class, they have all lost weight.

They are learning about how to eat in moderation, how to exercise safely and how to feel good about themselves.

At first glance, it could be a WeightWatchers class – women meeting up to share their stories of weight loss and support each other – but there are crucial differences, says BeeWeighed owner and founder Lynda Leadbetter.

She was a group leader for WeightWatchers for 18 years but left to set up her own group in 2018.

"I think WeightWatchers did provide something different and something hopeful for so many women but I think it has lost its way," she says.

"I teach nutrition, I educate, I don't sell anything extra. I feel WeightWatchers became about selling extra products, it was always about pushing those extra sales, and not about supporting people to lose weight properly."

She's sceptical about the effectiveness of weight loss medications, and some members who have turned to the likes of Ozempic and WeGovy have left her groups, but many have stayed – continuing to attend the meetings for support while using weight loss injections.

Kathryn Brady, 38, has been a member of BeeWeighed since 2023, and in that time, she's lost over three stone. But with her wedding in a matter of weeks, the burlesque dancer has started to take Mounjaro to lose weight more rapidly.

It's not quite worked out as she had hoped.

"I've been on Mounjaro for over a month now, and while I lost 6lb in the first week or so, I've put half of that back on.

"Having absolutely no appetite for two weeks was really weird and I'm paying a lot of money to not lose that much weight."

She's going to keep on using it, but she's not completely sold yet.

"Even if I continue with the skinny jab, I'll still attend BeeWeighed, having others there supporting me keeps me going."

Police have been given more time to question four Iranian men over an alleged terror plot in the UK.

The men were arrested on 3 May on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act, the Metropolitan Police said.

The suspects, detained under the Terrorism Act, can be held until 17 May after the force obtained warrants to further extend their detention.

A fifth Iranian man, who was detained under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, has been released on bail with conditions.

The five men - two aged 29, a 40-year-old, a 24-year-old and another aged 46 - on 3 May - were arrested in Swindon, west London, Stockport, Rochdale and Manchester.

The Met said officers were continuing search a number of addresses in the Greater Manchester, London and Swindon areas.

Cdr Dominic Murphy, head of the Met's counter terrorism command, said it was a "significant and highly complex investigation".

He urged the public not to "speculate or share information" that has not been confirmed by police.

The Met has previously said it believes "a specific premises" was the target of the suspected plot.

The BBC understands the alleged target was the Israeli embassy in London, as first reported by the Times. Police have not yet confirmed the embassy was the suspected target, citing operational reasons.

Three other Iranian men - aged 39, 44 and 55 - were arrested on the same day in London in relation to a separate counter-terrorism investigation.

They were arrested under section 27 of the National Security Act, which covers offences deemed a threat to national security.

On Friday, police said a fourth man, 31, had been arrested in north-west London as part of the same investigation.

Cdr Murphy has said police are not linking the two investigations.

Speaking in the Commons on Tuesday, Home Office minister Dan Jarvis described the two separate investigations as "some of the largest counter-state threats and counter-terrorism actions that we have seen in recent times".

"A failed free market experiment" – that's how the home secretary will describe the approach that's seen vast numbers of people from around the world come to the UK to pour pints in pubs, to cut hair, to care for the most vulnerable, to pick fruit, or to fix our plumbing.

Yvette Cooper's getting ready to unveil the government's overhaul of the rules that determine who can come to the UK with permission, and for how long.

Her White Paper, which will be called "Restoring Control Over the Immigration System" and be 69 pages long, is a big moment for Labour to try to sort a messy system, under which the numbers of people moving here rose way over most people's imagination.

With Reform hard on Labour's heels, capitalising on public concern about immigration, the success or failure of Cooper is vital to the government.

So what has Labour come up with?

It will emerge in full on Monday, but we know a lot about what's on the table.

It's expected that work visas will be strictly time-limited for jobs that don't need graduate-level skills.

Foreign students who have studied for degrees here could lose the right to stay in the UK after they finish at university.

Overseas workers will be expected to have a better understanding of English, but reported suggestions of A-level equivalent are wide of the mark.

And companies who repeatedly can't show efforts to recruit UK-based staff, rather than hunt abroad, might lose their right to sponsor foreign workers to come here at all.

There are also likely to be proposals designed to change how judges apply what's known as Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. It is designed to protect everyone's right to a family life.

But how it's used sometimes by immigration lawyers to stop deportations has long been a concern of politicians – in 2011, I even remember Theresa May claiming an asylum seeker had been allowed to stay in the UK because of their cat.

More than a decade later, recent cases like this one raised at Prime Minister's Questions have led the government to review how the courts have been interpreting everyone's right to a family life. We'll hear more of the details from the home secretary in the studio tomorrow, and likely from the prime minister on Monday.

Some Conservatives and Reform argue the only way of making a material difference is to leave the European Convention on Human Rights altogether, rather than see ministers stick their nose into the courts. Whether the government's proposals here make a difference, we'll have to see.

But the big principle in Cooper's thinking is that the immigration system should be fundamentally linked to the labour market – helping British workers get the skills to fill vacancies, rather than overseas workers being brought in again and again, to plug the gaps.

The Whitehall wiring will be redirected to try to make that happen with a new approach under a 'quad' – where employers, the Department for Work and Pensions, the job centres, skills bodies, and the Migration Advisory Committee, that sets the specific rules, all work together.

The idea, to wean the economy off relying on staff from overseas, by pushing employers to work much harder to find staff from here at home.

That's the theory. Here are the politics: for years, conventional thinking in both main parties was the immigration was broadly good because it helped the economy. Politicians and members of the public who raised concern about the pace and scale of workers coming were sometimes dismissed.

One Cabinet minister says last time Labour was in power, when "people raised concerns, it was too easy to say it's a race question – there's a good understanding now that good, decent people worry about immigration – it's about fairness".

When it emerged that 900,000 people came to the UK in 2023 the prime minister held an emergency press conference accusing the Tories of a failed "open border experiment"'.

A senior government source says now the previous government wasn't "bringing in 100,000 scientists to live in central London, it was bringing in people to fix problems of the economy everywhere, often in poor communities".

Ministers accept there might always be a need for overseas staff with specific expertise to come to the UK. But Sir Keir Starmer's allies say he's been making the case for years, since a speech to the CBI in 2022, warning employers they wouldn't be able to rely on cheap foreign labour on his watch.

Since then, partly down to the Conservatives' tightening up of visa rules before they left office, the numbers of people coming to the UK legally has dropped a lot and is expected to fall further this year. But the political prominence of the issue overall has gone the other way.

By some polling measures in spring this year immigration and small boats passed the NHS as the biggest worry for voters in 2025.

If the numbers of workers coming is falling, why is the public more concerned?

Sources inside government acknowledge that for many of the public, the issues of legal and illegal migration are bundled together.

While legal migration has been falling, the numbers of those coming in ways considered illegal and trying to claim asylum has gone the other way, hitting the highest level since 1979.

And there are two highly visible signs of that – small boat crossings, and asylum seekers being housed in hotels around the country.

One member of the government told me, "it's the boats, and everything is amplified on social media, we know it's having an effect as it's fed back to us on the doorstep – as a party we just seem to be floundering".

The use of hotels isn't just costly – projected recently to be £15bn, triple the amount the Conservatives reckoned when they signed the contracts back in 2019 – they can also create unease and resentment in communities.

A Labour MP with an asylum hotel in their constituency tells me a big part of the problem is that constituents link spending on hotels with the government squeezing cash elsewhere.

"It is impossible to make the case we need to do some form of austerity while we are spending so much money on putting people up here – whether it's winter fuel and PIP (welfare payments) – you haven't got money for this, but you have money for that."

There's even a belief in Downing Street that had there not been an asylum hotel in Runcorn, Labour would likely have held on to its seat in the by election last week.

The other blindingly obvious reason immigration has become so fraught politically is that for decades, successive governments have told the public one thing but done another. Under Tony Blair, people from countries joining the EU were allowed immediately to come and work in the UK.

The government had publicly estimated the numbers likely to move would be around 13,000, but hundreds of thousands of people from Eastern Europe made the UK their home in the following years. Papers released at the end of last year reveal that some of Blair's team worried precisely about that happening.

David Cameron then promised repeatedly that he'd get the number of extra people settling in the UK under 100,000. That vow was repeatedly broken. His government's lack of ability to control migration from Europe was at the core of the Brexit argument.

With deep irony, Boris Johnson won that argument in the referendum, then set up an immigration system that allowed even more people to move to the UK, peaking at 900,000 in 2023. Rishi Sunak then promised to "Stop the Boats" - but they still came.

A No 10 insider says the "public has been gaslit for years – taxpayers have been told it's happening, but nothing has been changing".

It's Cooper and Sir Keir who are now under huge pressure to get the numbers down and keep their vow to "smash the gangs".

The plans for managing legal migration better on Monday will be followed by a meeting in Albania later in the week, where the focus will be on cracking the illegal trade that smuggles people across Europe.

Ministers hope their plans will make a difference, although screeds of extra immigration law have not exactly improved the situation in recent years.

Making a complex system that doesn't work even more complicated will not necessarily be a success. But in government there's no doubt how vital it is– not just to fix a system that's been failing, but to demonstrate to voters that something is being done.

The plans we'll talk about in the next couple of days have been long in the making. But Reform's massive success at the ballot box shows why Labour has to get this right.

As one member of the government reckons, the public "got rid of the Tories by voting for us, there was no love for Labour, and they are prepared to do the same to us".

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Taylor Swift's representatives have told the BBC she is being brought into a legal row between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively to create "tabloid clickbait".

The 35-year-old singer was summoned to a US court after it was alleged she encouraged Baldoni to accept script re-writes by Lively for It Ends With Us, a film that both starred in and is the centre of a sexual harassment case.

Baldoni says he was invited to Lively's New York home in 2023 to discuss script changes, where Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds, and Swift were there to serve as her "dragons".

Representatives for Swift said "she was not involved in any casting or creative decision" and "never saw an edit or made any notes on the film".

Lively, 37, sued Baldoni, 41, in December 2024, accusing him of sexual harassment and a smear campaign. Baldoni is counter-suing Lively and her husband, the actor Ryan Reynolds, on claims of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.

Lively and Baldoni have been locked in a dispute since the film, which is an adaption of a Colleen Hoover novel, was released last summer.

According to Baldoni, there were tensions over the 2023 re-write of the scene, at which he was surprised to find Reynolds and Swift present.

He alleges Lively wrote in a text to him: "If you ever get around to watching Game of Thrones, you'll appreciate that I'm Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons. For better or worse, but usually better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for."

Baldoni says he responded supportively, writing: "I really love what you did. It really does help a lot. Makes it so much more fun and interesting. (And I would have felt that way without Ryan and Taylor).

"You really are a talent across the board. Really excited and grateful to do this together."

It is also alleged that Swift was involved in the casting of Isabela Ferrer in the film, who played a younger version of Lively's character, Lily Bloom.

Speaking at the New York premiere of It Ends With Us, Ferrer said: "She [Taylor Swift] was a helpful part of the audition, which I found out later when I got it, and that rocked my world."

But Swift's representatives said the only involvement she had in the film was permitting the use of her song, My Tears Ricochet, noting that she was among 20 artists featured in the film.

Swift "never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, [and] she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film", they said.

They added that Swift did not see It Ends With Us until "weeks after its release" as she was "travelling around the globe" on tour at the time.

The popstar's spokespeople argued that the subpoena "designed to use Taylor Swift's name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case".

Being sealed off from the world in the conclave to choose the new Pope was "immensely peaceful", England and Wales's most senior Roman Catholic has told the BBC.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, was one of 133 cardinals who were shut into the Vatican's Sistine Chapel and later elected Pope Leo XIV on Thursday.

He told BBC Breakfast on Saturday that nobody in the highly-secretive meeting was saying who to vote for or who to not vote for, adding that there was "no rancour" or "politicking" among the cardinals.

"It was a much calmer process than that and I found it actually a rather wonderful experience," he added.

Conclaves have take place in the Sistine Chapel since the 15th Century and cardinals must have no communication with the outside world until a new Pope is elected. The recent conclave came after the death of Pope Francis on 21 April.

The 79-year-old Cardinal Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, said that his mobile phone was taken off him, adding that he found he had "more time on my hands just to be prayerful, just to reflect, just to be still, rather than being constantly agitated... or prompted by what might be coming in" on his phone.

"For me, one of the experiences of these last few days was to learn a bit of patience, to just take this step by step," he said.

"There was a calmness, a bit of solemnity," he continued, adding that everyone he spoke to when in it was "peaceful and just wanting to do this well".

There is no timescale on how long it takes for a conclave to elect a new Pope, with previous ones in 2005 and 2013 lasting two days. The conclave that elected Pope Leo lasted for one day.

"I think it was a short conclave in part because Pope Francis left us with a good inheritance," the cardinal said.

"He left a college of cardinals who were dedicated, who had this desire for the church to be more missionary, and that led us forward actually very, very easily to the decision that we made."

Pope Leo will be formally inaugurated at a mass in St Peter's Square on 18 May, which delegations from countries around the world will attend.

The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Edward, will attend on behalf of King Charles, Buckingham Palace confirmed on Saturday.

Speaking about the new Pope, Cardinal Nichols said Pope Leo is "very decisive" in a "quiet way", adding that he has seen him "make decisions which disappoint people but don't destroy them".

"A good thing about a pope is if he's able to say, 'No', to you when he thinks something is not right and then give you a hug so you don't go away offended, and I think he's got that ability to do both those things, which is very important."

The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest pops its cork on Sunday, with a "turquoise carpet" parade featuring competitors from all 37 nations.

But the competition really begins on Tuesday, when the first semi-final will see five countries unceremoniously kicked out.

Another six will lose their place at the second semi-final on Thursday, before the Grand Final takes place in Basel, Switzerland, on Saturday, 17 May.

This year's entrants include two returning contestants, one professional opera singer, a thinly veiled allusion to sexual emissions and a dance anthem about a dead space dog.

It's a lot to take in.

To help you prepare, here's a guide to all 37 songs in the contest, which I've sorted into rough musical categories, mainly for my own sanity (it didn't work).

Left-field pop bangers

Win or lose, UK contestants Remember Monday have given headline writers a gift with the title of their entry: What The Hell Just Happened?

A souped-up, full throttle pop anthem, it cherry-picks the best bits of Queen, Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Beatles, presumably to remind voters of Britain's rich musical heritage.

With eight tempo changes, it could prove tricky for voters to grasp, but the band's stellar harmonies and sparkling personalities should carry them through.

Crucially, the song avoids the Eurovision cliches of jackhammer dance anthems and windswept balladry – something Remember Monday have in common with this year's favourites.

Sweating it out at the top are Swedish representatives KAJ, whose song Bara Bada Bastu is an ode to the restorative powers of the sauna, complete with dancers in skimpy towels.

Unreasonably catchy, it's won the approval of Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus, whose been singing the track in his own private sauna. As you do.

Stiff competition comes from Austrian singer JJ, and his operatic ballad Wasted Love.

A timeworn story of unrequited love, it leans on his training as a counter-tenor, before exploding into an unexpected techno breakdown.

A favourite with the bookies, the song's only Achilles heel is its similarity to last year's winner, Nemo.

Distinctive in a different way is Ireland's entry, Laika Party – a 90s rave track about a dog who was sent to space by Russia and left to die there.

Singer Emmy aims for a hopeful spin on a tragic story but, despite a peppy performance, it's a bit of a downer.

More palatable is Luxembourg's Laura Thorn, whose La Poupée Monte Le Son is a callback to France Gall's 1965 winning entry, Poupée De Cire, Poupée De Son.

Where the original was about a "fashion doll" operated by songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, Thorn's response is all about taking control.

"If you think a man like you can manipulate me, go back to your mum," she scolds. Yeouch.

Other countries sucking up to Italy

Rome must be blushing. This year features not one, but two, songs about the vibrant culture of Il Bel Paese.

The first comes, not surprisingly, from San Marino – the independent microstate that nestles inside north-central Italy.

Titled Tutta L'Italia, it celebrates everything from the county's football team and its vineyards, to the Mona Lisa (under her Italian name Gioconda).

Written by Gabry Ponte – one of the brains behind Eiffel 65's Blue (Da Ba Dee) – it's a slight, but fun, mixture of dance beats, traditional accordion playing and the folk dances of Calabria.

The staging could be its downfall, though, with Gabry marooned behind his DJ decks while the singers, who for some reason wish to remain anonymous, obscure their faces with masks.

More memorable, but definitely more unhinged, is Estonia's Espresso Macchiato.

Performed by Tommy Cash (the only Eurovision contestant to have appeared on a Charli XCX record) it's an affectionate-ish caricature of Italian stereotypes, featuring the indelible lyric: "Life is like spaghetti, it's hard until you make it".

Smut!

I'm trying to give up sexual innuendo, but Eurovision is making it har... difficult.

A trio of artists are trying to sneak smut past the censors, led by Malta's Miriana Conte, with a throbbing club track called Serving.

In its original form, the song's chorus revolved around the phrase "serving kant" – the word kant being Maltese for "singing" and a homophone for an English term that definitely doesn't mean singing.

It's a reference to a well-known phrase in the drag / ballroom world; but several countries complained it broke broadcasting guidelines, prompting a hasty re-write.

If the stunt was meant to generate headlines it worked, but now that Miriana has our attention, she's not letting go.

Her performance, featuring a giant disco ball pursed between two red lips, is gloriously OTT, and she has an enviable set of pipes. Too bad the song is riddled with Europop cliche.

Another contestant doubling his entendres is Australia's Go-Jo, who wants us to "take a sip" of milkshake from his "special cup". Interpret that how you want but I'd be wary of hitching a lift in his ice cream van, if I were you.

With a smattering of Electric Six's saucy disco funk, Milkshake Man is tasty enough to get Australia back in the finals after only achieving a semi last year.

Finally, we have Finland's Erika Vikman, whose song Ich Komme is billed as a "joyous message of pleasure, ecstasy and a state of trance".

Structured to mimic the pneumatic realities of lovemaking, it recalls iconic gay anthems such as Kylie's Your Disco Needs You and Donna Summer's Hot Stuff – and ends with Erika shooting into the sky astride a massive gold microphone that's definitely not a stand-in for a phallus.

Three songs inspired by cancer

Little in life is more devastating than the phrase "I'm afraid it's cancer".

The disease will affect one in two of us and, although survival rates have dramatically improved, the impact can be devastating.

This year, three separate Eurovision contestants have been touched by cancer, inspiring songs of unmatched heartbreak and reflection.

French singer Louane captures it best. Her song Maman, is an intimate conversation with her mother, who died when she was just 17 years old.

Over three verses, Louane describes the "emptiness" she was felt; and how she filled the void with bad behaviour and meaningless love affairs. But, as the song progresses, she tells her mum she's settled down and found purpose... by becoming a mother herself.

She sings it beautifully, with a mixture of regret and strength. And when her daughter's voice appears in the final moments of the song, it would take a steely heart not to shed a tear.

Over in Norway, 19-year-old Kyle Alessandro shared a similar story, when his mother was diagnosed with cancer in autumn 2023. Thankfully, she's now in remission, but something she said during her treatment inspired his Eurovision entry: "Never lose your light."

Kyle took that phrase and turned it into a thumping pop song about surviving adversity. "Nothing can burn me now," he sings. "I'm my own Lighter."

Klemen Slakonja, meanwhile, is a comedian best known in Slovenia for his impressions of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin - but his ballad, How Much Time Do We Have Left was written after his wife, actress Mojca Fatur, was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer.

As he sings, Klemen's dancers raise him into the air and hold him upside down, to represent the disorientation the family felt.

"When she read her diagnosis, our world turned upside down and I felt that rush of blood in my head, the same one I feel whenever I am upside down in the performance," he told Eurovision World.

Defying the odds, Mojca survived, and joins him on stage at Eurovision. It's a deeply intimate and moving moment.

The bops

Listening to this year's line-up, it's like the contestants all heard Cascada's Evacuate the Dancefloor and went, "Nah, we're good, thanks".

There are club bangers everywhere, with Belgium's Red Sebastian (named after the crab in The Little Mermaid, bless him) submitting an entire song about the loved-up liberation of an all-night rave.

"Where no words are needed to feel the connection / Where clocks never tick and where love is the ending."

A favourite with fans, the 90s rave elements of Strobe Lights feel a little dated to me, but his meticulously-choreographed performance is a treat.

Denmark's Sissal takes a similar sound, with a throwback Euro-bop called Hallucination that effortlessly evokes two-time Eurovision winner Loreen.

Sissal said her biggest goal was for the audience to feel they couldn't sit down during the song. Mission accomplished.

Germany, meanwhile, have been hoping to reverse their 15-year losing streak with Baller, a super-catchy trance anthem that wouldn't sound out of place at Berlin superclub Berghain.

Performed by Austrian siblings Abor & Tynna, it's languishing in the middle of the field, after Tynna developed laryngitis, robbing the duo of the chance to impress fans at Eurovision's various pre-parties. But now that she's recovered, the song could rise up the rankings.

That's less likely for Væb, aka the Icelandic Jedward. Their energetic dance-rap song, Roá, is all about rowing from Iceland to the Faroe Islands, "because no matter what happens in life you just keep on rowing through the waves".

Sadly, it's not as deep as it sounds.

Spanish star Melody fares better with Esa Diva, a pumping house track with a sprinkling of flamenco guitar, that documents her journey to fame.

And Azerbaijan's Mamagama go all Maroon 5 on Run With U, a smooth pop song elevated by a twinkling riff on the saz – a long-necked plucked instrument similar to the lute.

Post-immigrant pop

OK, so I've stolen that description from Shkodra Elektronike.

They're an Albanian duo living in Italy, who fuse the ethnic music of their hometown, Shkodër, to a progressive electronic sound.

Their song Zjerm (Fire) imagines a time when cross-cultural understanding would lead to peace and harmony – a world without a need for soldiers and ambulances, and where "oil would smell like lilac" (no, me neither).

Greece's entry, Asteromáta, is also rooted in history and memory, as Klavdia describes the unbreakable bond that refugees share with their homeland.

"Even if they cross the seas / They shall never forget the sacred earth they called home," she sings, in a haunting ballad that blends traditional Greek and Pontic elements with soaring strings.

Taking a more upbeat approach is Dutch singer Claude. A refugee from the bloody civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he moved to the Netherlands at the age of nine and fell in love with Eurovision while waiting in the refugee centre.

His song, C'est La Vie, is a tribute to his mum, who taught him to see the positive in their situation.

Fizzing with freedom and joy, it combines elements of chanson and French-Caribbean zouk, and looks set for a top 10 placing.

Witchcraft, sorcery and moody goth boys

The success of "goth gremlin witch" Bambie Thug at last year's Eurovision has conjured a veritable coven of imitators in 2025.

Polish singer Justyna Steczkowska, representing her country for the second time, even includes a Slavic magic spell in her song, Gaja – summoning the spirit of the mother Earth to "cleanse" her of a toxic relationship.

It's a suitably intense performance, with Justyna singing long sustained notes and playing a furious violin solo, before being hoiked into the rafters on a pair ropes.

What a time to be alive.

Marko Bošnjak, meanwhile, is cooking up a Poison Cake to feed to his tormentors - chiefly the people who bombarded him with homophobic hate messages after he was selected to represent Croatia.

The criticism was so intense that he lost his voice and couldn't leave the house for five days.

His song is suitably melodramatic, replete with guttural synths and creepy playground chants. It's a little overbaked, but should still sail through to the finals.

Taking a more ethereal approach are Latvian group Tautumeitas, whose song Bur Man Laimi translates as "a chant for happiness".

Reminiscent of Bjork and Enya, its overlapping folk harmonies are based on traditional Latvian wedding songs, making it one of this year's most captivating entries. I fear it may be too subtle to score well, though.

Further mystery is provided by, Theo Evan, Cyprus's answer to Nick Jonas. The lyrics to his song, Shh, are a riddle, written by former tennis player Elke Tiel, whose "hidden truth will only be revealed on the Eurovision stage in May".

He opens his performance perched between two pieces of scaffolding in a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man sketch – so there's a clue.

Shh is one of a number of gothic pop songs, sung by brooding young men with interesting hair.

Among the best is Kiss Kiss Goodbye, by Czechia's Adonxs, who divebombs from an angelic falsetto to an unsettling baritone as he confronts his absent father.

Lithuanian band Katarsis are an interesting experiment, with a deliberately downbeat rock song that declares "the foundations of everything have begun to rot".

Titled Tavo Akys (your eyes), it builds to a compelling climax, but it's hard to see it being a vote-winner, unless Eurovision suddenly attracts an audience of depressed emo teens.

Rounding out the field are Armenian singer Parg, with the Imagine Dragons-inspired Survivor and Serbia's Princ, whose overwrought ballad is called Mila.

Both performers give it their all, but the songs don't feel strong enough to survive the semi-finals.

70s rock throwbacks

Four years after Måneskin's victory, Eurovision's rock revival continues apace.

Italy are back at it again, thanks to Lucio Corsi – think David Bowie as Pierrot – and his glam rock ballad Volevo Essere Un Duro (I wanted to be tough).

A delicate anthem for people who feel they don't fit in, it recalls how Lucio was bullied as a kid, and how he's grown to embrace his fragility. At one point, he sings: "Instead of a star, [I'm] just a sneeze."

It's a timeless bit of songwriting that pulls off that crucial Eurovision trick of sounding new and familiar all at once.

Portuguese indie band Napa also have a 70s vibe, channelling Paul McCartney's Wings on the soft rock tear-jerker Deslocado (out of place).

It's another song about migration, written after the band were forced to relocate from Madeira to the Portuguese mainland due to the economic crisis.

"Even though we've been here for a few years we always have that desire to go back, and that anguish of saying goodbye to family," said singer Guilherme Gomes.

Last but not least are Ukraine's Ziferblat, who continue the country's astonishing run of high-quality entries in the midst of a war with Russia.

Their song, Bird Of Pray, is an unexpected mix of 70s new wave band Cars, birdsong and the guitar riff from Rachel Stevens' Sweet Dreams My LA Ex – while the lyrics are full of hope for a peaceful reunion with their loved ones.

It's better than that makes it sound.

The ballads

Where would Eurovision be without a raven-haired woman bellowing into a wind machine set to "hurricane"?

Israel has strong form in this category, and sets the bar again with New Day Will Rise, a melancholy piano ballad sung in a mixture of English, French and Hebrew.

The song's performed by Yuval Raphael, a 24-year-old who narrowly escaped with her life at the 2023 Nova music festival, where an attack by Hamas claimed the lives of 378 people and triggered Israel's ongoing offensive in Gaza.

It's hard not to interpret her lyrics as a response to those events – "everyone cries, don't cry alone". As a result, her participation hasn't received the same level of criticism as Eden Golan, who represented Israel last year.

That can't be said for Georgia's contestant, Mariam Shengelia, who has been booed during pre-Eurovision appearances for her alleged support of the country's authoritarian, pro-Russian, anti-LGBT ruling party, Georgian Dream.

Shengelia has denied the accusations, pointing out that her song – a stirring, quasi-militaristic ballad called Freedom – is about "freedom of choice, freedom to love, freedom to live as you want to live".

"No amount of manufactured hate will change that," she told the Eurovision fan site Wiwibloggs.

Montenegro's Nina Žižić tackles domestic abuse in Dobrodošli, a brooding and refined orchestral ballad.

The singer, who previously entered Eurovision in 2015 with the cyborg pop oddity Igranka, delivers her lyrics with passion and sincerity, but somehow the song never quite takes off.

Last but not least, we have defending champions Switzerland, represented by 24-year-old Zoë Më, who describes herself as a "little fairy".

Appropriately enough, her self-penned song, Voyage is delicate as a fairy's wings, fluttering with a soft-spoken plea to treat each other with kindness.

Automatically qualifying for the final, it's a welcome oasis of calm amidst the steamy sauna sessions, moody goth haircuts and thrusting innuendo.

But that's Eurovision for you. All human life is here. See you in Basel!

Earlier this year, Deborah Grushkin, an enthusiastic online shopper from New Jersey, "freaked out".

US President Donald Trump had signed an order to stop allowing packages from China worth less than $800 (£601) to enter the country free of import taxes and customs procedures.

It was a move, backed by traditional retailers, that had been discussed in Washington for years amid an explosion of packages slipping into the US under the limit.

Many countries, including the UK, are considering similar measures, spurred in part by the rapid ascent of Shein and Temu.

But in the US, Trump's decision to end the carve-out while ordering a blitz of new trade tariffs, including import taxes of at least 145% on goods from China, has delivered a one-two punch that has left businesses and shoppers reeling.

US-based e-commerce brands, which were set up around the system, are warning the changes could spark failures of smaller firms, while shoppers like Deborah brace for price hikes and shortages.

With the 2 May deadline bearing down, the 36-year-old last month rushed in some $400 worth of items from Shein - including stickers, T-shirts, sweatshirts, Mother's Days gifts and 20 tubes of liquid eyeliner.

"I felt like maybe it was my last sort of hurrah," she says.

Use of rules known as "de minimis", which allow low-value packages to avoid tariffs, customs inspections and other regulatory requirements, has surged over the last decade.

Take-up accelerated during Trump's first term in office, when he raised tariffs on many Chinese goods.

By 2023, such shipments represented more than 7% of consumer imports, up from less than 0.01% a decade earlier. Last year, nearly 1.4 billion packages entered the country using the exemption - more than 3.7 million a day.

Advocates of the carve-out, which include shipping firms, say the system has streamlined trade, leading to lower prices and more options for customers.

Those in favour of change, a group that includes lawmakers from both parties, say businesses are abusing rules intended to ease gifts between family and friends, and the rise has made it easier to slip products that are illegal, counterfeit or violate safety standards and other rules into the country.

Trump recently called de minimis a "scam", brushing off concerns about higher costs. "Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls," he said.

However, polls suggest concerns about his economic policies are rising as the changes start to hit home.

Krystal DuFrene, a retired 57-year-old from Mississippi who relies on disability payments for her income, says she has nervously been checking prices on Temu for weeks, recently cancelling an order for curtains after seeing the price more than triple.

Though she eventually found the same item for the original price in the platform's US warehouse network, she says the cost of her husband's fishing nets had more than doubled.

"I don't know who pays the tariff except the customer," she says. "Everywhere is selling cheap stuff from China so I actually prefer being able to order directly."

When the rules around de minimis changed last week, Temu said it would stop selling goods imported from China in the US directly to customers from its platform, and that all sales would now be handled by "locally based sellers", with orders fulfilled from within the US.

'End of an era'

Even without the latest tariffs, economists Pablo Fajgelbaum and Amit Khandelwal had estimated that ending de minimis would lead to at least $10.9bn in new costs, which they found would be disproportionately borne by lower income and minority households.

"It does kind of feel like the end of an era," says Gee Davis, a 40-year-old author from Missouri, who used Temu during a recent house move to buy small items such as an electric can opener and kitchen cabinet organisers.

She says it was a relief to be able to easily afford the extras and the new rules felt like a "money grab" by the government to benefit big, entrenched American retailers like Amazon and Walmart that sell similar products - but at a bigger mark-up.

"I don't think it's right or fair that little treats should be [restricted] to people who are richer.

"It just would be a real bummer if everyone who was under a certain household income threshold was just no longer able to afford anything for themselves."

As with other Trump policy changes, questions remain about the significance of the shift.

The president was already forced to suspend the policy once before, as packages began piling up at the border.

Lori Wallach, director at Rethink Trade, which supports ending de minimis for consumer safety reasons, says the end of the exemption is significant "on paper", but she fears the administration is taking steps that will weaken its implementation.

She points to a recent customs notice, which said products affected by many of the new tariffs could enter the country through the informal process, a move that eases some regulatory requirements.

"Practically, because all of this stuff can come though informal entry, it's going to be extremely hard to collect tariffs or to be able to inspect really very much more than before the change happened," she says.

'An insurmountable shift'

Customs and Border Protection deny the move will undermine enforcement, noting that firms are still required to supply more information than before.

Businesses have indicated they are taking the changes seriously.

Both Shein and Temu last month warned customers that prices would rise, while Temu says it is rapidly expanding its network of US-based sellers and warehouses to protect its low prices.

Other business groups say many smaller, less high-profile American brands that manufacture abroad for US customers are struggling - and may not survive.

"If the tariffs weren't in place, it would be like taking a little bit of bitter medicine," says Alex Beller, board member of the Ecommerce Innovation Alliance, a business lobby group and a co-founder of Postscript, which works with thousands of smaller businesses on text messaging marketing.

"But paired with the other tariffs, especially for brands that manufacture in China, it just becomes an insurmountable shift."

In a letter to the government last month, men's clothing company Indochino, known for its custom suits made-to-order in China, warned that ending de minimis posed a "significant threat to the viability" of its business and other mid-size American firms like it.

Steven Borelli is the chief executive of the athleisure clothing firm CUTS, which manufactures outside the US, shipping products to a warehouse in Mexico, from where packages are mailed to customers in the US.

His firm has been pushing to reduce its reliance on China, halting orders in the country months ago. Still, he says he is now considering price increases and job cuts.

He says his business has room to manoeuvre, since it caters to higher income customers, but he expects "thousands" of other brands to die without changes to the situation.

"We want more time," he says. "The speed at which everything is happening is too fast for businesses to adjust."

The founder of the Kwik Fit garage chain, Sir Tom Farmer, has died at the age of 84.

The Edinburgh-born businessman died peacefully at his home in the city on Friday, his family said.

He built the company into the world's biggest independent tyre and automotive chain, selling it to Ford for £1bn in 1999.

Sir Tom owned a majority stake in Hibernian FC for more than 20 years, selling his interest in the club in 2019.

Sir Tom was born in Leith in 1940 and first opened a tyre business in 1964.

He started Kwik Fit in 1971, eventually operating in more than 2,000 locations in 18 countries.

He was knighted in 1997 for his services to the automotive industry, and he was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 2009.

A statement from his family said: "Sir Tom's long and extensive career touched many aspects of Scottish and UK life.

"His business career is well documented, as was his commitment to philanthropy, his many public roles and his unwavering support and appreciation for the communities and people that he lived his life within."

Sir Tom's philanthropic work saw him awarded the Carnegie Medal and he became a Knight Commander with Star of the Order of St. Gregory the Great, an honour bestowed by the Pope, in 1997.

"Sir Tom's Roman Catholic faith was present throughout all areas of his life. He attended mass weekly in Edinburgh and enjoyed the friendship and company of many people with the Catholic community both here in Scotland and further afield," his family said.

"Sir Tom will be remembered by many for his deep commitment to his family, his work and his faith and for being at all times a proud Scotsman," they added.

Being sealed off from the world in the conclave to choose the new Pope was "immensely peaceful", England and Wales's most senior Roman Catholic has told the BBC.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, was one of 133 cardinals who were shut into the Vatican's Sistine Chapel and later elected Pope Leo XIV on Thursday.

He told BBC Breakfast on Saturday that nobody in the highly-secretive meeting was saying who to vote for or who to not vote for, adding that there was "no rancour" or "politicking" among the cardinals.

"It was a much calmer process than that and I found it actually a rather wonderful experience," he added.

Conclaves have take place in the Sistine Chapel since the 15th Century and cardinals must have no communication with the outside world until a new Pope is elected. The recent conclave came after the death of Pope Francis on 21 April.

The 79-year-old Cardinal Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, said that his mobile phone was taken off him, adding that he found he had "more time on my hands just to be prayerful, just to reflect, just to be still, rather than being constantly agitated... or prompted by what might be coming in" on his phone.

"For me, one of the experiences of these last few days was to learn a bit of patience, to just take this step by step," he said.

"There was a calmness, a bit of solemnity," he continued, adding that everyone he spoke to when in it was "peaceful and just wanting to do this well".

There is no timescale on how long it takes for a conclave to elect a new Pope, with previous ones in 2005 and 2013 lasting two days. The conclave that elected Pope Leo lasted for one day.

"I think it was a short conclave in part because Pope Francis left us with a good inheritance," the cardinal said.

"He left a college of cardinals who were dedicated, who had this desire for the church to be more missionary, and that led us forward actually very, very easily to the decision that we made."

Pope Leo will be formally inaugurated at a mass in St Peter's Square on 18 May, which delegations from countries around the world will attend.

The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Edward, will attend on behalf of King Charles, Buckingham Palace confirmed on Saturday.

Speaking about the new Pope, Cardinal Nichols said Pope Leo is "very decisive" in a "quiet way", adding that he has seen him "make decisions which disappoint people but don't destroy them".

"A good thing about a pope is if he's able to say, 'No', to you when he thinks something is not right and then give you a hug so you don't go away offended, and I think he's got that ability to do both those things, which is very important."

Taylor Swift's representatives have told the BBC she is being brought into a legal row between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively to create "tabloid clickbait".

The 35-year-old singer was summoned to a US court after it was alleged she encouraged Baldoni to accept script re-writes by Lively for It Ends With Us, a film that both starred in and is the centre of a sexual harassment case.

Baldoni says he was invited to Lively's New York home in 2023 to discuss script changes, where Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds, and Swift were there to serve as her "dragons".

Representatives for Swift said "she was not involved in any casting or creative decision" and "never saw an edit or made any notes on the film".

Lively, 37, sued Baldoni, 41, in December 2024, accusing him of sexual harassment and a smear campaign. Baldoni is counter-suing Lively and her husband, the actor Ryan Reynolds, on claims of civil extortion, defamation and invasion of privacy.

Lively and Baldoni have been locked in a dispute since the film, which is an adaption of a Colleen Hoover novel, was released last summer.

According to Baldoni, there were tensions over the 2023 re-write of the scene, at which he was surprised to find Reynolds and Swift present.

He alleges Lively wrote in a text to him: "If you ever get around to watching Game of Thrones, you'll appreciate that I'm Khaleesi, and like her, I happen to have a few dragons. For better or worse, but usually better. Because my dragons also protect those I fight for."

Baldoni says he responded supportively, writing: "I really love what you did. It really does help a lot. Makes it so much more fun and interesting. (And I would have felt that way without Ryan and Taylor).

"You really are a talent across the board. Really excited and grateful to do this together."

It is also alleged that Swift was involved in the casting of Isabela Ferrer in the film, who played a younger version of Lively's character, Lily Bloom.

Speaking at the New York premiere of It Ends With Us, Ferrer said: "She [Taylor Swift] was a helpful part of the audition, which I found out later when I got it, and that rocked my world."

But Swift's representatives said the only involvement she had in the film was permitting the use of her song, My Tears Ricochet, noting that she was among 20 artists featured in the film.

Swift "never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, [and] she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film", they said.

They added that Swift did not see It Ends With Us until "weeks after its release" as she was "travelling around the globe" on tour at the time.

The popstar's spokespeople argued that the subpoena "designed to use Taylor Swift's name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case".