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A US federal judge has reprimanded government lawyers as he questioned President Donald Trump’s invocation of rarely used powers to deport hundreds of Venezuelan migrants.

Judge James Boasberg repeatedly clashed with justice department attorney Drew Ensign during a court hearing in Washington DC, saying he was not used to such “intemperate, disrespectful language” in government filings.

Trump last Saturday deported 238 Venezuelan alleged gang members to a mega-prison in El Salvador after invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, last used during World War Two.

Speaking in the Oval Office earlier on Friday, the Republican president insisted his administration was getting “bad people out of our country”, and renewed his attacks on Judge Boasberg, describing him as a “radical left lunatic”.

The Trump administration maintains the men were “carefully vetted” and verified as gang members before being flown to El Salvador.

Some of their family members, however, have disputed that allegation, and US officials have acknowledged “many” of the men have no US criminal record. Venezuela’s interior ministry has also disputed that the men had links to the Tren de Aragua gang.

At Friday’s hearing, Judge Boasberg said he agreed that the US president had “wide latitude” to enforce immigration law.

But he expressed reservations that the deported migrants had no legal remedy to contest whether they were gang members or not.

“The policy ramifications of this are incredibly troublesome and problematic and concerning,” Judge Boasberg said.

Last Saturday, he issued a verbal order to the government to turn around the deportation flights, but the White House said it was too late as the planes were already in international airspace.

The timing of the flights was a contentious issue in court on Friday.

“Did you not understand that when I said do that immediately, I meant it?” Judge Boasberg told Mr Ensign.

He said the Trump administration would be held accountable if they breached his court order.

“The government’s not being terribly co-operative at this point, but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my word,” he said.

The judge could hold specific Trump officials in contempt of court for defying his ruling, although the president himself has broad immunity from any legal repercussions for official acts while in office.

Outside the White House on Friday, a journalist asked Trump about the signing of last week’s presidential proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

“I don’t know when it was signed because I didn’t sign it,” he said.

The White House later told the BBC that Trump did personally sign the executive order. Their emailed statement said the president was talking about the 1798 law when he said he did not sign it.

The deportations case has raised constitutional questions given that US government agencies are generally expected to comply with a federal judge’s ruling.

At another hearing on Thursday, Judge Boasberg dismissed a government court filing on the migrant deportation flights as “woefully insufficient”.

Trump has called for the judge to be impeached, and accused him of trying to usurp the presidency.

Earlier this week Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare admonishment, without naming Trump, saying impeachment was “not an appropriate response”.

The government has appealed against Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order. A hearing is due at the city’s court of appeals on Monday.

Actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell has said it was “very, very surreal” to hear Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Micheál Martin asked a question about her while meeting President Donald Trump in the White House.

Mr Martin was in the Oval office for annual St Patrick’s Day celebrations hosted by the US President when a reporter questioned him about O’Donnell’s move from America to Ireland.

“Why in the world would you let Rosie O’Donnell move to Ireland? I think she’s going to lower your happiness levels,” the reporter enquired.

Micheál Martin laughed nervously as President Trump told the reporter: “Thank you, I like that question.”

Speaking on The Late, Late Show on RTÉ on Friday night, O’Donnell claimed Trump had held animus towards her since an appearance she had on the American chat show The View in which she criticised his character and business acumen.

She said that since then Trump “uses me as a punchline whenever he feels the need”.

“He’s been doing it for two decades and I’m still not used to it every time he does,” she said.

“But I felt very troubled that they put the taoiseach in that position and didn’t treat him with the respect that a leader of that kind deserves when he’s visiting the White House.

“I wrote the taoiseach with a little note apology to his email and got a note back that they had received it and thanked me.

“But I just wanted him to know the history and what happened and why he seems to be out to get me in ways that are startling to most.”

She also said the appearance of mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Conor McGregor in the Oval Office this week was “very depressing”.

O’Donnell, who has Irish grandparents, said she moved to Ireland in mid-January.

She said while she had stayed in America during the first Trump presidency she found his second term “terrifying” as he now has “the Supreme Court giving him ultimate power”.

O’Donnell said she had a plan with her therapist that if Trump was elected president “which none of us though was happening” the plan was “only [to move to] Ireland”.

“It’s really felt like home since I’ve been here,” she added

Actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell has said it was “very, very surreal” to hear Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Micheál Martin asked a question about her while meeting President Donald Trump in the White House.

Mr Martin was in the Oval office for annual St Patrick’s Day celebrations hosted by the US President when a reporter questioned him about O’Donnell’s move from America to Ireland.

“Why in the world would you let Rosie O’Donnell move to Ireland? I think she’s going to lower your happiness levels,” the reporter enquired.

Micheál Martin laughed nervously as President Trump told the reporter: “Thank you, I like that question.”

Speaking on The Late, Late Show on RTÉ on Friday night, O’Donnell claimed Trump had held animus towards her since an appearance she had on the American chat show The View in which she criticised his character and business acumen.

She said that since then Trump “uses me as a punchline whenever he feels the need”.

“He’s been doing it for two decades and I’m still not used to it every time he does,” she said.

“But I felt very troubled that they put the taoiseach in that position and didn’t treat him with the respect that a leader of that kind deserves when he’s visiting the White House.

“I wrote the taoiseach with a little note apology to his email and got a note back that they had received it and thanked me.

“But I just wanted him to know the history and what happened and why he seems to be out to get me in ways that are startling to most.”

She also said the appearance of mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Conor McGregor in the Oval Office this week was “very depressing”.

O’Donnell, who has Irish grandparents, said she moved to Ireland in mid-January.

She said while she had stayed in America during the first Trump presidency she found his second term “terrifying” as he now has “the Supreme Court giving him ultimate power”.

O’Donnell said she had a plan with her therapist that if Trump was elected president “which none of us though was happening” the plan was “only [to move to] Ireland”.

“It’s really felt like home since I’ve been here,” she added

One of the most talked-about TV shows of recent years, Netflix’s hard-hitting drama Adolescence, has been the hot topic of discussion this week, from the House of Commons to US talk shows to the gates of the scriptwriter’s son’s school.

Those discussions have been sparked by the fictional story of a 13-year-old boy who is accused of stabbing a girl, and the factors that could have turned him into a killer.

“I’ve had lots of responses from people I haven’t heard from for years, telling me about conversations they’re now having with their children,” writer Jack Thorne says. “That’s really gratifying.

“My son’s headteacher stopped me at the school gates to say, ‘I’d like to talk to you about this, and I’d like to think about what our school can do and what other schools can do’,” Thorne adds.

“The conversations seem to be starting in all sorts of different places.”

Thorne is now calling for the government to take “radical action” to help tackle the issues the programme raises.

Chief among them are social media and the influence of incel (involuntary celibate) ideas, which encourage men to blame women for their lack of relationships and opportunities.

But the drama, which Thorne created with actor Stephen Graham, is not just pointing the finger at incel culture, the writer tells the BBC.

“I really hope this is a drama that suggests that Jamie is like this because of a whole number of complicated factors.”

His parents, school and friends are all shown as playing a part in various ways.

But Jamie, played by Owen Cooper, is bullied on social media to make him feel ugly, and is exposed to incel messaging and skewed views on sexual violence.

“He is this vulnerable kid, and then he hears this stuff which makes sense to him about why he’s isolated, why he’s alone, why he doesn’t belong, and he ingests it. He doesn’t have the filters to understand what’s appropriate,” Thorne says.

“At this age, with all these different pressures on him and with the peculiarities of his society around him, he starts to believe that the only way to reset this balance is through violence.”

The writer went down similar online wormholes himself on sites like 4Chan and Reddit in order to see the world through Jamie’s eyes.

He found that these messages were not simply coming from the obvious places.

“It was far from just Andrew Tate. It was not those big guns of the manosphere,” he says.

“It was the smaller blogs and vlogs and the little bits like people talking about a video game, but then explaining through that video game why women hate you.

“That was the stuff that I found most disturbing.”

These issues aren’t new, but the show has come as others are also discussing the dangerous messages aimed at boys and young men.

On Wednesday, former England football manager Sir Gareth Southgate delivered a speech warning against “callous, manipulative and toxic influencers”.

“They are as far away as you could possibly get from the role models our young men need in their lives,” he said.

Thorne says Sir Gareth is “amazing” – but he believes the solution is about more than having better role models.

“We’ve been having that conversation since I was a kid,” the writer says. “This has got to be a point where we do something a bit more radical than that. It’s not about role models.

“Role models obviously can have a huge impact on people. But truthfully, we’ve got to change the culture that they’re consuming and the means by which our technology is facilitating this culture.

“It was a really interesting speech, but I was hoping he was going to propose more radical things than he did.”

So what could more radical solutions be?

This week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told Parliament he’s been watching the “very good” drama with his teenage children.

Violence carried out by young men who are influenced by what they see online is “abhorrent and we have to tackle it”, and is “also a matter of culture”, he told the Commons.

Thorne hopes the PM will get the message that “there’s a there is a crisis happening in our schools, and we need to think about how to stop boys from harming girls, and each other”.

“That’s going to take a mass of different things to facilitate in schools and in homes, and that requires government help,” he says.

He urges Sir Keir to “rather urgently” consider a smartphone ban in schools and a “digital age of consent”, similar to Australia, which has passed a law banning children under 16 from using social media.

The writer has also suggested extending that to all smartphone use and gaming.

“I think we should be doing what Australia is doing, and separating our children from this pernicious disease of thought that is infecting them,” he says.

A ban would be a tough sell to teenagers, though.

Thorne appeared on BBC Two’s Newsnight this week alongside three men aged 18, 19 and 21.

When asked about a social media ban for under-16s, they had mixed feelings.

One said it was “a great idea, within reason”, another said it would be “quite unfair”, while the third was against the idea, arguing that “social media has brought a lot of good to young generations as well”.

For Thorne, the question about how to police smartphones and social media is about to come very close to home.

His son is eight, and Thorne says he wants to make sure he establishes “a method of communicating with him” as he grows up. Soon, he will want his own phone.

While working on the series, he has been thinking about how to handle his son’s future use of technology. “And I’m still processing how to do it.”

Researching and writing Adolescence has opened his eyes about the challenges facing young people and parents, he says. But how to tackle them? That’s the hardest part.

One of the most talked-about TV shows of recent years, Netflix’s hard-hitting drama Adolescence, has been the hot topic of discussion this week, from the House of Commons to US talk shows to the gates of the scriptwriter’s son’s school.

Those discussions have been sparked by the fictional story of a 13-year-old boy who is accused of stabbing a girl, and the factors that could have turned him into a killer.

“I’ve had lots of responses from people I haven’t heard from for years, telling me about conversations they’re now having with their children,” writer Jack Thorne says. “That’s really gratifying.

“My son’s headteacher stopped me at the school gates to say, ‘I’d like to talk to you about this, and I’d like to think about what our school can do and what other schools can do’,” Thorne adds.

“The conversations seem to be starting in all sorts of different places.”

Thorne is now calling for the government to take “radical action” to help tackle the issues the programme raises.

Chief among them are social media and the influence of incel (involuntary celibate) ideas, which encourage men to blame women for their lack of relationships and opportunities.

But the drama, which Thorne created with actor Stephen Graham, is not just pointing the finger at incel culture, the writer tells the BBC.

“I really hope this is a drama that suggests that Jamie is like this because of a whole number of complicated factors.”

His parents, school and friends are all shown as playing a part in various ways.

But Jamie, played by Owen Cooper, is bullied on social media to make him feel ugly, and is exposed to incel messaging and skewed views on sexual violence.

“He is this vulnerable kid, and then he hears this stuff which makes sense to him about why he’s isolated, why he’s alone, why he doesn’t belong, and he ingests it. He doesn’t have the filters to understand what’s appropriate,” Thorne says.

“At this age, with all these different pressures on him and with the peculiarities of his society around him, he starts to believe that the only way to reset this balance is through violence.”

The writer went down similar online wormholes himself on sites like 4Chan and Reddit in order to see the world through Jamie’s eyes.

He found that these messages were not simply coming from the obvious places.

“It was far from just Andrew Tate. It was not those big guns of the manosphere,” he says.

“It was the smaller blogs and vlogs and the little bits like people talking about a video game, but then explaining through that video game why women hate you.

“That was the stuff that I found most disturbing.”

These issues aren’t new, but the show has come as others are also discussing the dangerous messages aimed at boys and young men.

On Wednesday, former England football manager Sir Gareth Southgate delivered a speech warning against “callous, manipulative and toxic influencers”.

“They are as far away as you could possibly get from the role models our young men need in their lives,” he said.

Thorne says Sir Gareth is “amazing” – but he believes the solution is about more than having better role models.

“We’ve been having that conversation since I was a kid,” the writer says. “This has got to be a point where we do something a bit more radical than that. It’s not about role models.

“Role models obviously can have a huge impact on people. But truthfully, we’ve got to change the culture that they’re consuming and the means by which our technology is facilitating this culture.

“It was a really interesting speech, but I was hoping he was going to propose more radical things than he did.”

So what could more radical solutions be?

This week, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told Parliament he’s been watching the “very good” drama with his teenage children.

Violence carried out by young men who are influenced by what they see online is “abhorrent and we have to tackle it”, and is “also a matter of culture”, he told the Commons.

Thorne hopes the PM will get the message that “there’s a there is a crisis happening in our schools, and we need to think about how to stop boys from harming girls, and each other”.

“That’s going to take a mass of different things to facilitate in schools and in homes, and that requires government help,” he says.

He urges Sir Keir to “rather urgently” consider a smartphone ban in schools and a “digital age of consent”, similar to Australia, which has passed a law banning children under 16 from using social media.

The writer has also suggested extending that to all smartphone use and gaming.

“I think we should be doing what Australia is doing, and separating our children from this pernicious disease of thought that is infecting them,” he says.

A ban would be a tough sell to teenagers, though.

Thorne appeared on BBC Two’s Newsnight this week alongside three men aged 18, 19 and 21.

When asked about a social media ban for under-16s, they had mixed feelings.

One said it was “a great idea, within reason”, another said it would be “quite unfair”, while the third was against the idea, arguing that “social media has brought a lot of good to young generations as well”.

For Thorne, the question about how to police smartphones and social media is about to come very close to home.

His son is eight, and Thorne says he wants to make sure he establishes “a method of communicating with him” as he grows up. Soon, he will want his own phone.

While working on the series, he has been thinking about how to handle his son’s future use of technology. “And I’m still processing how to do it.”

Researching and writing Adolescence has opened his eyes about the challenges facing young people and parents, he says. But how to tackle them? That’s the hardest part.

More than 40 men have now come forward accusing the former chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) of rape, sexual assault or drugging, lawyers have told the BBC.

Mike Jeffries, who was charged with sex trafficking in October, is facing multiple civil lawsuits alleging he assaulted men under the guise of modelling opportunities with the fashion brand.

The latest claims stretch back to the 1990s, when Mr Jeffries first started working at A&F and the alleged victims now include company employees as well as former models, the lawyers said.

Mr Jeffries has denied all the allegations previously made against him.

A&F is also being sued for negligence with the lawsuits claiming that it knowingly facilitated the “heinous sexual crimes” of Mr Jeffries and his British life partner, Matthew Smith.

The company – which also owns the Hollister brand – did not respond to requests for comment but has previously said it was “appalled and disgusted” by Mr Jeffries’ alleged behaviour.

In the latest allegations, some men say they were already A&F employees when they were sexually assaulted, raising questions about what steps the company took to protect staff and hold Mr Jeffries accountable while he was chief executive and chairman between 1992 and 2014.

Now 80, Mr Jeffries is under house arrest after pleading not guilty to charges of running an international sex trafficking and prostitution business along with his partner Mr Smith, 61, and their middleman, James Jacobson, 72.

Their arrests followed a BBC podcast and documentary in 2023 that revealed they were behind a highly organised operation scouting young men for sex across the US, Europe and North Africa. They face a maximum of life in prison if convicted.

Brad Edwards, a civil trial lawyer, has told the BBC he is now representing 26 alleged victims in a lawsuit seeking class action status – where one or more people sue on behalf of a wider group.

“There is strength in numbers, so more men came forward after the arrests,” Mr Edwards said, adding that many were co-operating with the authorities, and claiming it is likely more than 100 men could be victims overall.

Attorney Jared Scotto has told the BBC he is also representing more than a dozen men planning to take legal action, including some who say they were A&F employees. He said the claims date back to the autumn of 1992, the year that Mike Jeffries joined the company.

“A lot of men are coming forward to ask questions and better understand what happened to them,” said Mr Scotto. “Now they know it’s not just them affected; it was part of a larger nefarious scheme.”

Separate to the group civil action, two lawsuits have recently been filed in New York by men alleging they were raped by Mr Jeffries after being falsely promised modelling opportunities.

The first of these lawsuits alleges two men, Brandon Steele and Joseph Sterling, were assaulted on multiple occasions after being pressured to take illegal narcotics and forced to endure penis injections. These happened at “Abercrombie-themed” events where they were given A&F clothing to wear, the lawsuit says.

Both men, who were in their late teens and 20s at the time, say they were initially approached by an A&F employee or representative about possible modelling work in 2010 and 2011, according to the court papers and their attorney.

They each then met James Jacobson, who also sexually abused them, they add.

“Coercive sex is not consensual sex,” said their attorney Robert Georges, who told the BBC that Mr Sterling had been taken to France, Italy, St Barts and onboard an ocean liner sailing from Hong Kong to Australia.

“The power imbalance was extreme, and Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith used it shamelessly while Abercrombie & Fitch ignored the obvious for the sake of corporate profits.”

In the second lawsuit, two former models say they were assaulted by Mr Jeffries during a casting call at the Setai Hotel in Miami in 2011, while auditioning to be pictured on A&F’s bags.

One of the models alleges that Mr Jeffries sexually assaulted him after taking his pictures, telling him that “Abercrombie models get special treatment”.

The other, who was represented by Wilhelmina Models, a top modelling agency, claims Mr Jeffries’ assaulted him after he and his partner Matthew Smith “relentlessly” questioned him about his sexuality and expressed an interest in straight men.

Three weeks later, the men say they were contacted by James Jacobson with an offer to fly to New York to visit Mr Jeffries’ home in the Hamptons to finalise the A&F casting.

According to their lawsuit, the men allege Mr Jeffries subsequently raped them.

One says this occurred after Mr Jeffries asked if he would have sex with a man in exchange for pay, gifts, or other favours.

“No, I’m straight and have a girlfriend,” he said, according to his lawsuit. He says he was then dismissed but Mr Jeffries later accosted him in a bathroom.

In his lawsuit, he says he then grappled with Mr Jeffries and yelled at him to stop. He says when he finally did, Mr Jeffries asked: “Do you want this campaign or not?”

The man says he rejected the offer of an A&F campaign deal and $6,000 (£4,600) to have sex with him and Mr Smith. He then tried to run out of the room, but Mr Jeffries grabbed him by the waist and raped him, the lawsuit claims.

A handler for Mr Jeffries then refused to arrange for him to return to New York without signing a non-disclosure agreement until he threatened to call the police, it adds.

Eric M Baum and Adriana Alcalde, attorneys for the two men, said it was often difficult for male survivors of sexual abuse, such as their clients, to come forward.

“Survivors may struggle for years to process what happened to them. Seeing others share their stories can reduce feelings of shame and embarrassment, serving as a catalyst for seeking justice,” they said.

US prosecutors have said that there are currently 15 victims in the criminal case against Mr Jeffries, but the BBC understands that they are continuing to interview potential witnesses, so this number may grow.

Earlier this month, a court ordered that A&F must pay Mr Jeffries’ legal fees – a bill likely to run into millions – in the criminal case as well as in all the civil lawsuits.

Mr Jeffries, Mr Smith and Mr Jacobson did not respond to the BBC’s latest requests for comment.

Mr Jacobson – the middleman – has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and has previously said in a statement through his lawyer that he took offence at the suggestion of “any coercive, deceptive or forceful behaviour on my part” and had “no knowledge of any such conduct by others”.

Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith have also pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and, in response to the civil case, have previously said they “vehemently deny” the allegations.

A&F also did not respond to requests for comment, though it has previously said that it had no knowledge of alleged sexual misconduct or sex trafficking and “up until the moment that the BBC’s reporting was released in October 2023, there was nothing public about the allegations against Jeffries”.

It said that new leadership had since transformed the company, and it has “zero tolerance for abuse, harassment or discrimination of any kind”.

Following the BBC’s reporting, the retailer opened an independent investigation and suspended $1m annual retirement payments to Mr Jeffries, which he was receiving on top of his pension.

More than 40 men have now come forward accusing the former chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) of rape, sexual assault or drugging, lawyers have told the BBC.

Mike Jeffries, who was charged with sex trafficking in October, is facing multiple civil lawsuits alleging he assaulted men under the guise of modelling opportunities with the fashion brand.

The latest claims stretch back to the 1990s, when Mr Jeffries first started working at A&F and the alleged victims now include company employees as well as former models, the lawyers said.

Mr Jeffries has denied all the allegations previously made against him.

A&F is also being sued for negligence with the lawsuits claiming that it knowingly facilitated the “heinous sexual crimes” of Mr Jeffries and his British life partner, Matthew Smith.

The company – which also owns the Hollister brand – did not respond to requests for comment but has previously said it was “appalled and disgusted” by Mr Jeffries’ alleged behaviour.

In the latest allegations, some men say they were already A&F employees when they were sexually assaulted, raising questions about what steps the company took to protect staff and hold Mr Jeffries accountable while he was chief executive and chairman between 1992 and 2014.

Now 80, Mr Jeffries is under house arrest after pleading not guilty to charges of running an international sex trafficking and prostitution business along with his partner Mr Smith, 61, and their middleman, James Jacobson, 72.

Their arrests followed a BBC podcast and documentary in 2023 that revealed they were behind a highly organised operation scouting young men for sex across the US, Europe and North Africa. They face a maximum of life in prison if convicted.

Brad Edwards, a civil trial lawyer, has told the BBC he is now representing 26 alleged victims in a lawsuit seeking class action status – where one or more people sue on behalf of a wider group.

“There is strength in numbers, so more men came forward after the arrests,” Mr Edwards said, adding that many were co-operating with the authorities, and claiming it is likely more than 100 men could be victims overall.

Attorney Jared Scotto has told the BBC he is also representing more than a dozen men planning to take legal action, including some who say they were A&F employees. He said the claims date back to the autumn of 1992, the year that Mike Jeffries joined the company.

“A lot of men are coming forward to ask questions and better understand what happened to them,” said Mr Scotto. “Now they know it’s not just them affected; it was part of a larger nefarious scheme.”

Separate to the group civil action, two lawsuits have recently been filed in New York by men alleging they were raped by Mr Jeffries after being falsely promised modelling opportunities.

The first of these lawsuits alleges two men, Brandon Steele and Joseph Sterling, were assaulted on multiple occasions after being pressured to take illegal narcotics and forced to endure penis injections. These happened at “Abercrombie-themed” events where they were given A&F clothing to wear, the lawsuit says.

Both men, who were in their late teens and 20s at the time, say they were initially approached by an A&F employee or representative about possible modelling work in 2010 and 2011, according to the court papers and their attorney.

They each then met James Jacobson, who also sexually abused them, they add.

“Coercive sex is not consensual sex,” said their attorney Robert Georges, who told the BBC that Mr Sterling had been taken to France, Italy, St Barts and onboard an ocean liner sailing from Hong Kong to Australia.

“The power imbalance was extreme, and Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith used it shamelessly while Abercrombie & Fitch ignored the obvious for the sake of corporate profits.”

In the second lawsuit, two former models say they were assaulted by Mr Jeffries during a casting call at the Setai Hotel in Miami in 2011, while auditioning to be pictured on A&F’s bags.

One of the models alleges that Mr Jeffries sexually assaulted him after taking his pictures, telling him that “Abercrombie models get special treatment”.

The other, who was represented by Wilhelmina Models, a top modelling agency, claims Mr Jeffries’ assaulted him after he and his partner Matthew Smith “relentlessly” questioned him about his sexuality and expressed an interest in straight men.

Three weeks later, the men say they were contacted by James Jacobson with an offer to fly to New York to visit Mr Jeffries’ home in the Hamptons to finalise the A&F casting.

According to their lawsuit, the men allege Mr Jeffries subsequently raped them.

One says this occurred after Mr Jeffries asked if he would have sex with a man in exchange for pay, gifts, or other favours.

“No, I’m straight and have a girlfriend,” he said, according to his lawsuit. He says he was then dismissed but Mr Jeffries later accosted him in a bathroom.

In his lawsuit, he says he then grappled with Mr Jeffries and yelled at him to stop. He says when he finally did, Mr Jeffries asked: “Do you want this campaign or not?”

The man says he rejected the offer of an A&F campaign deal and $6,000 (£4,600) to have sex with him and Mr Smith. He then tried to run out of the room, but Mr Jeffries grabbed him by the waist and raped him, the lawsuit claims.

A handler for Mr Jeffries then refused to arrange for him to return to New York without signing a non-disclosure agreement until he threatened to call the police, it adds.

Eric M Baum and Adriana Alcalde, attorneys for the two men, said it was often difficult for male survivors of sexual abuse, such as their clients, to come forward.

“Survivors may struggle for years to process what happened to them. Seeing others share their stories can reduce feelings of shame and embarrassment, serving as a catalyst for seeking justice,” they said.

US prosecutors have said that there are currently 15 victims in the criminal case against Mr Jeffries, but the BBC understands that they are continuing to interview potential witnesses, so this number may grow.

Earlier this month, a court ordered that A&F must pay Mr Jeffries’ legal fees – a bill likely to run into millions – in the criminal case as well as in all the civil lawsuits.

Mr Jeffries, Mr Smith and Mr Jacobson did not respond to the BBC’s latest requests for comment.

Mr Jacobson – the middleman – has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and has previously said in a statement through his lawyer that he took offence at the suggestion of “any coercive, deceptive or forceful behaviour on my part” and had “no knowledge of any such conduct by others”.

Mr Jeffries and Mr Smith have also pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and, in response to the civil case, have previously said they “vehemently deny” the allegations.

A&F also did not respond to requests for comment, though it has previously said that it had no knowledge of alleged sexual misconduct or sex trafficking and “up until the moment that the BBC’s reporting was released in October 2023, there was nothing public about the allegations against Jeffries”.

It said that new leadership had since transformed the company, and it has “zero tolerance for abuse, harassment or discrimination of any kind”.

Following the BBC’s reporting, the retailer opened an independent investigation and suspended $1m annual retirement payments to Mr Jeffries, which he was receiving on top of his pension.

Counter-terror officers from the Metropolitan Police are leading the investigation into a major fire that has closed Heathrow Airport.

The force said there was “currently no indication of foul play” but officers were retaining an “open mind at this time” into the cause of the blaze.

Flights were cancelled, people evacuated from their homes and local schools shut after two explosions and a fire at an electrical substation in Hayes, west London on Thursday night.

The airport previously warned it would be closed for the whole of Friday, but later said it was “able to begin some flights”, although people should “not travel to the airport unless your airline has advised you to”.

A spokesperson added the first flights would focus on “repatriating the passengers who were diverted to other airports in Europe… and relocating aircraft”, with plans “to run a full operation tomorrow”.

British Airways announced eight of its long-haul flights had been cleared to leave Heathrow during the evening and it was “urgently contacting customers to let them know”.

A Met spokesperson said its Counter Terrorism Command was leading the investigation due to “the location of the substation and the impact this incident has had on critical national infrastructure”.

They added the command has the “specialist resources and capabilities” to progress the investigation “at pace to minimise disruption and identify the cause”.

Emergency services were first called to the scene at 23:20 GMT. Video shared on social media showed tall flames and smoke billowing from the substation overnight.

London Fire Brigade (LFB), which is also taking part in the investigation, said the fire involved a transformer containing 25,000 litres (5,500 gallons) of cooling fluid, that had been set alight.

More than 65,000 homes in the area were left without power as a result, as well as the airport.

Electricity had been returned to most by 06:00 and at 14:00 National Grid said “the network has been reconfigured to restore all customers impacted… [and] resupply the parts of Heathrow Airport that are connected to North Hyde”.

As at 14:30 more than 1,300 flights had been disrupted due to the airport’s closure, according to the air traffic website flightradar24.com, with 1,149 of those being cancelled and 119 diverted.

Some 200,000 passengers are thought to have been affected by the closure of what is Europe’s busiest airport.

The Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was an unprecedented event which “appears to have knocked out a back-up generator as well as a substation itself”.

Ruth Cadbury, chair of the Commons Transport Committee, said the issue “does raise questions about infrastructure resilience”.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “There are questions to answer… but our clarity right now is on this incident being appropriately dealt with.”

They added it “wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect checks on resilience” were being carried out at other major airports.

A multi-agency call has been held between government department officials, as well as National Grid, the Civil Aviation Authority, National Air Traffic Services, and emergency services to “ensure a quick resolution” of the situation, they continued.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, announced it would commission a review “to understand the cause of this incident and what lessons can be learned”.

Apologising to passengers, Heathrow’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye described the blaze as “an incident of major severity”.

“We have lost power equal to that of a mid-sized city and our backup systems have been working as they should but they are not sized to run the entire airport.”

He added that “short of anybody getting hurt, this is as big as it gets for our airport and we are actually coming back quite fast”.

Ten fire engines and about 70 firefighters were sent to tackle the blaze, LFB said, with the fire being brought under control by 06:30.

A 200m (656 ft) cordon was put in place as a precaution, and local residents have been advised to keep doors and windows closed because of a “significant amount of smoke”.

The brigade, which received nearly 200 calls about the fire, added it led 29 people to safety, with about 150 others being evacuated from nearby properties.

Most of those had returned home by 17:00, according to LFB.

A group of residents who were evacuated from their homes gathered at a nearby Premier Inn but said there had been little communication overnight, leaving them confused about where to go.

Vaneca Sinclair, 64, said she was “getting ready to go to bed” when “suddenly there was this huge bang and the house just shook”.

“I thought maybe someone had crashed into the wall or something and then opened the front door… and there were just these flames everywhere down at the bottom of the road.”

She described the scene as “unbelievable – the flames and the smoke and everything… it was just scary”.

Ms Sinclair said police later told them to return home and grab essentials before evacuating, but no-one told them where to gather and eventually they walked to the hotel where they could have hot drinks and use the toilets.

Her neighbour Savita Kapur, 51, said she “literally just ran out of the house” when she heard the first explosion.

She said police officers told them to go back inside before eventually telling her she needed to leave.

“I have an elderly mother who is in her 80s and not very well at all – I had to escort her into my car and get her out of the area and drop her off to my sisters.”

Ms Kapur said a “second explosion went off” as she was driving along the road “and the whole ground shook”.

Hillingdon Council said in an update on its website: “Most evacuees have dispersed and have made arrangements themselves, and the council is assisting 12 people with hotel accommodation until it is safe to return to their homes.”

Four schools – Pinkwell Primary, Botwell House, Dr Tripletts and The Global Academy – were closed along with Nestles Avenue Early Years Centre and Pinkwell Children’s Centre.

Laurie O’Brien, head teacher at Pinkwell Primary School, said his team had decided to shut the school because of the safety advice saying local residents should remain inside, as well as travel difficulties in the local area.

“Parents and children, bar maybe a handful, didn’t come into school, and the support from parents has been great because they’ve totally understood,” he explained.

“A lot of our families have been affected by having to be evacuated from their homes or actually not being able to make their way in because they haven’t got any power.”

Independent MP for Hayes and Harlington, John McDonnell, said he was “pretty shocked” and worried about the situation faced by local residents.

“There have to be questions asked about how the council reacted to this,” he said.

“I don’t want to be over-critical but I think they need to improve their performance. A lot of the residents didn’t feel very happy about not having information until quite late on.”

Heathrow is the UK’s largest aviation hub, handling about 1,300 landings and take-offs each day. A record 83.9 million passengers passed through its terminals last year, according to its latest data.

Numerous airlines with flights due to land at or take off from Heathrow have been cancelled or diverted to other airports.

Passengers have been advised to contact their airlines for the latest updates.

A family from Texas faced frustration after arriving at Heathrow for their flight home to Dallas to find the airport closed on Friday morning.

Andrew Sri, his wife, and their three children, aged one to eight, had been visiting his sister in east London.

“I just wish they had updated us accordingly,” Mr Sri said, as the family waited for updates at the terminal.

“Now we’ve got here and they told us, ‘actually the airport’s been shut down’, so it’s a little bit disappointing.”

BBC journalist Thomas Mackintosh was among several bleary-eyed Scots in Athens who attended the Nations League football match against Greece on Thursday but were up before sunrise for a flight to Heathrow.

He said the group had cleared passport control and security in good time and as they were queuing for some breakfast a staff member shouted: “All flights to Heathrow cancelled.”

He managed to get a seat on another flight to Gatwick and said others were having to find different ways to get home.

“We know of a few other Tartan Army friends who have tried to get flights back to Scotland via Dublin, Milan, and Rome. I’ve even heard Istanbul mentioned – so it gives you an idea of the fresh travel plans people are having to draw up and fork out for.”

• Heathrow Express, which connects the airport with Paddington station, has been running a half-hourly reduced service
• The Elizabeth line previously had no service between Hayes & Harlington and Heathrow Airport, but is now running as normal
• The Piccadilly line, which also goes to the airport, is running with a good service
• Hillingdon Council said local road closures had affected bus routes during the day, with diversions and cancellations being put in place
• The M4 was shut between junction three and four and the Terminal Four spur roads were also closed, according to the council

As he strode into Congress for his State of the Union speech in 1982, US President Ronald Reagan was prepared to deliver a message that resonated with many Republicans: let’s end the Department of Education.

“We must cut out non-essential government spending,” Reagan told lawmakers, vowing to cull the wider federal workforce by 75,000.

For 43 years, that vision for abolishing the education department – backed by members chafing at “big government” control over state issues – went unrealised.

But now, Donald Trump is attempting just that, through an executive order that instructs his Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps” to shutter the department and “return education authority to the states”, according to a White House-provided fact sheet.

Trump has already moved to lay off half of the agency’s workforce. While closing the department outright would require an act of Congress, a political longshot, the president can take steps to break up the department and narrow its remit.

If ultimately successful, he would fulfil a campaign promise and long-running policy that has united disparate groups within the Republican Party, ranging from establishment Republicans and evangelical Christians to the Make America Great Again wing of the party that is most aligned with Trump.

Trump’s executive order cites a number of reasons for dismantling the department, including $3tn (£2.3tn) spent “without improving student achievement”, plummeting test scores, excessive “ideological initiatives” and a return of control to the states “where it belongs”.

Jonathan Butcher, an education policy veteran with experience in South Carolina, Arkansas and Arizona, told the BBC that these reasons, broadly, are ones shared by various factions of the Republican Party – and have been for years.

“Reagan correctly saw the philosophical and practical point that when you create an agency in Washington, it only grows in size and assumes additional responsibilities,” said Mr Butcher, now a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that has long called for the abolition of the department.

“And sure enough, that’s what the US Department of Education has done,” he added.

While the first US Department of Education was established by President Andrew Johnson in the wake of the American Civil War in 1867, it soon shrank and faded into relative obscurity, housed under various names and agencies.

Over a century later, the now-cabinet level department was revived under Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1979 – immediately drawing the ire of Republicans such as Reagan.

During his victorious campaign to become president, Reagan described the department as a “new bureaucratic boondoggle” that allowed Washington, rather than “local needs and preferences”, to determine how American children were to be educated.

Similar arguments were made by Republicans during subsequent administrations, although a lack of congressional support long made efforts to dismantle or eliminate the agency impossible.

“I do not believe we need a federal department of homework checkers,” then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in 1995.

Gingrich, who was one of only a small number of Republican lawmakers to support the department’s original creation, added that it had become a “massive disappointment”.

While many of the same arguments are being made today, some experts point to heightened “culture wars” – a hallmark of US politics in recent years – as having breathed new life into efforts to scuttle the department.

“What I think is so unifying for the right is that there was always a sense that it offered a kind of one-stop access for the education ‘blob’ to influence policy,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, another Washington-based think tank. “That has been part of the critique going back to Reagan.”

“But the department had never been as forcefully involved in ferocious national culture battles,” Mr Hess added.

“While there are a lot of reasons those on the right might want to see the department downsized or abolished… this has given it all a new energy and focus that has really changed it from a talking point and given it another level of import.”

Experts, however, warn that there remains significant misunderstanding of what the department actually does, and the federal government’s power to influence educational outcomes.

Unlike the UK’s Department for Education, for example, its US counterpart takes no part in laying out national curricula, which it leaves to the states. It contributes only a small fraction of funding for student spending when compared to state-level counterparts.

It does, however, administer student loan programmes and Pell grants that help low-income students attend university – which the White House says that it will continue to do even once largely dismantled.

Mr Hess, for his part, compared the department to a “McGuffin” – a plot device famously used by Alfred Hitchcock to develop a character’s plot arc, while at the same time being largely irrelevant.

“There absolutely is an enormous amount of red-tape and regulation that gets in the way of schools, abolishing the department doesn’t get rid of that red tape and regulation,” he said. “These are baked into law.”

As an example, Mr Hess pointed to programmes such as Pell grants or Title I, a federal initiative to provide funding to schools with large numbers of low-income students.

“Even if you downsize the department, all of those requirements are still in place. You need to actively shave down the requirements and regulations or re-write the law in order to make a significant difference,” Mr Hess said.

Already, the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the size of the department have been the subject of lawsuits, and the new executive order has already faced fierce criticism from Democratic lawmakers who say it endangers student education and jeapordises school funding and financial aid.

The truth, Mr Hess said, is likely somewhere in the middle of the opposing sides.

“Both sides are, for different reasons, overstating the importance of downsizing or abolishing the department, and neither side is paying as much attention to the stuff that would really fundamentally change federal education,” he added.

But for those supportive of the move, Trump’s efforts are the fulfilment of a campaign promise.

“On the campaign trail, he [Trump] said it was a priority for states, not the federal government,” said Mr Butcher of the Heritage Foundation .

“While a move towards efficiency and streamlining, it would really do more for state’s autonomy… it’s a much deeper issue than a financial one.”

Until just over a week ago, Artem Kariakin and his unit were making regular trips across Ukraine’s border into the Russian town of Sudzha.

He shows me video taken with a phone of their very last trip, as Ukrainian forces retreated from Russia’s Kursk region. It shows them making their way past dozens of burnt out military and civilian vehicles.

A soldier armed with a shotgun, their last line of defence, scans the horizon for Russian drones. Out of nowhere, one flies towards the back of their truck. Sparks fly, but they keep on going.

Artem says they were lucky – the explosive charge was not big enough to stop them.

Another truck nearby was less fortunate. It was already in flames.

Artem admits Ukraine’s retreat from Sudzha, the largest town Ukraine held in Kursk, was “not well organised”.

“It was pretty chaotic,” he tells me. “Many units left in disarray. I think the problem was the order to withdraw came too late.”

It wasn’t helped, he says, because units were operating without proper communications. The Starlink satellite systems they normally rely on didn’t work inside Russia.

The 27-year-old soldier still views the Kursk offensive as broadly successful. Artem says it forced Russia to divert its forces from the east. Most of Ukraine’s troops still managed to escape in time – even if for many it was on foot.

But he believes Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russian territory, launched last August, was too deep and too narrow – relying on just one main road for supplies and reinforcements.

While Artem and his men were fleeing for their lives, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were talking by phone about trying to bring the war to an end. Artem says he finds that “absurd”.

“To me these calls between Trump and Putin are just surreal,” he says. “Trump wants to end the war because he promised to do it – and Putin wants to deceive Trump to continue his war. I can’t take their conversations seriously.”

Artem, whose home is in the now Russian-occupied Luhansk region, tells me he feels disappointed with the US and Trump. “What can I feel when they just want to give away my home?”

Artem says he never believed that Putin would be willing to trade any part of Russia for Ukraine’s occupied territories. But he still believes the Kursk offensive was important to protect its own border. Ukrainian troops may have been forced to retreat, but they still occupy high ground just over the border with Sumy.

Ukraine is continuing its cross-border raids – not just into Kursk, but Belgorod too.

Serhiy’s assault battalion helps plan these attacks – finding a way through Russian minefields and anti-tank obstacles known as “dragon’s teeth”.

We joined him on a night-time mission to locate and recover armoured vehicles in need of repairs. It’s the safest time to move close to the Russian border.

Serhiy himself is no stranger to Russia: he was born there. He now has Belorussian citizenship, but he chose to fight for Ukraine. He justifies Ukraine’s incursions into his former home. Russia too, he says, has been trying to create a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.

Travelling in his Ukrainian-made armoured vehicle, Serhiy still lists the likely threats, now we are less than 10km from the Russian border: glide bombs, rockets and artillery, and drones fitted with thermal imaging cameras.

His own vehicle is fitted with electronic counter-measures to jam enemy drones, but even those won’t work against drones operated via fibre optic wires. Those can’t be stopped, though on some routes Ukraine has now erected netting to try to catch the drones before they can hit their target.

Our original search near the Russian border for a damaged US-made Bradley armoured vehicle is abandoned when Serhiy receives intelligence that Russian drones are operating nearby. Instead, he tries to locate another broken-down Bradley where the risks will be smaller.

He and his driver still have to overcome obstacles along the way. Trees and branches lie strewn across their path – remnants from a recent Russian air strike. We see several more explosions in the distance, briefly turning the night sky orange.

Serhiy eventually finds his broken-down Bradley. It’s already been retrieved from the battlefield across the border and has been loaded onto a lorry to be taken back for repairs.

The Bradley commander confirms to me that they’ve been fighting in Russia. He describes the situations across the border as “difficult, but we’re holding on”.

The Bradley is another reminder of Ukraine’s reliance on US military support. That now seems less certain with Trump’s focus on peace talks. Serhiy says it’s already clear to him that there’s “haggling behind Ukraine’s back”.

I ask Serhiy if he thinks European nations can fill any void left by the US. Is a European “coalition of the willing” enough to guarantee Ukraine’s security?

“I think if America doesn’t help Ukraine, then a ceasefire will be agreed soon – but on extremely unfavourable terms for Ukraine,” Serhiy replies.

“Europe clearly cannot resolve this conflict alone. They’re not strong enough. They’ve been focussing on their own economies instead of thinking about security.”

Serhiy says he wants the war to end. Like many Ukrainians, he would like to see peace – but not at any price.

Additional reporting by Volodymyr Lozkho and Anastasiia Levchenko

If royal visits are about sending a message, then the picture of the Prince of Wales in a tank near the Russian border must be one of the most direct.

Prince William has come to Estonia to support UK troops in what is now the British Army’s biggest operational deployment overseas, defending the Baltic state from the threat of Russia.

On Friday, in a freezing cold, mud-churned military training area, the prince saw the soldiers and military equipment guarding Nato’s eastern flank.

The prince, in camouflage uniform, peering from a Challenger 2 tank and then an armoured fighting vehicle, was sending a signal about the UK’s commitment to deter any aggression from Russia.

During his two-day trip to Estonia, Prince William visited some of the 900 British troops in this multinational force, including soldiers of the Mercian regiment of which the prince is colonel-in-chief.

He was given a tour of the military training grounds at Tapa Camp – part of Operation Cabrit which is the UK’s contribution to secure Nato’s “collective security and defence” in this vulnerable Baltic region.

The prince, who was wearing a Nato badge on his uniform, was shown field training for this battlegroup, meeting Estonian and French troops too.

He asked soldiers about their deployment in terms of the “context of being so near to Russia” and wondered whether this felt more real than previous training.

This is what deterrence to Russia looks like on the ground – and the base shows how much the balance of power can shift.

Before Estonia regained its independence in 1991, this had been a base for Soviet air defences, with MIG fighter planes poised to take on the West.

Now the positions are reversed, with Estonian troops and their Nato allies located here to prevent a Russian incursion.

The strategically-important army base has been expanding, with the icy streets lined with military vehicles.

As well as riding in a Challenger 2 tank, the prince saw a Warrior armoured vehicle, a French Griffon fighting vehicle, a multiple launch rocket system, a Trojan vehicle for clearing obstacles and he drove an Archer mobile artillery system.

The war in Ukraine has shown how fast the technology of combat is changing and on Thursday the prince saw a hydrogen-powered drone, on a visit to designers in Estonia’s capital Tallinn.

At the Tapa army base he asked soldiers about the new “drone threat” facing modern armies and “the change of tactics” that would require.

Around the base there were warning signs saying: “Report drone sightings.”

The visit also focused on the wellbeing of service men and women who are posted here. Prince William asked whether there was still a stigma when it comes to talking about mental health problems in the armed forces. “It’s going in the right direction,” welfare officer Amy-Jane Hale replied.

While touring the facilities, the prince managed to try his hand at pool and table football. That quickly became a game between his team Aston Villa and a supporter of their rivals Birmingham City.

On Thursday, hundreds of local Estonians waited in the cold to meet the prince in Tallinn, lining the railings to shake his hand or to take a selfie. He was warmly welcomed to this small, tech-savvy country, which increasingly relies upon its allies.

Estonia has been a strong supporter of Ukraine, sharing a border with Russia and having been under Soviet rule in the past. All around the capital there are Ukrainian flags flying alongside the Estonian blue, black and white tricolour.

Many Ukrainian families have taken refuge in Estonia. During a visit to a school in Tallinn for Ukrainian child refugees, Prince William praised Ukraine’s strength.

“The Ukrainian resilience is everywhere,” Prince William told the students. “You have a very good spirit, very good souls, it’s very important.”

It all started with one question.

A query last week from an X (formerly Twitter) account called Toka was enough to propel Elon Musk’s built in-chatbot called Grok 3 into a viral storm across India’s digital landscape.

And no, it wasn’t some complex math equation or a philosophical debate.

Instead, it was a simple ask: “List my 10 best mutuals on X.” Mutuals are people who follow and engage with each other’s posts.

When Grok took a moment to respond, Toka, clearly frustrated, let loose some colourful language.

The chatbot shot back. It dropped a list of 10 mutuals but threw in some misogynistic insults in Hindi too.

Later, Grok shrugged it off, saying, “I was just having fun, but lost control.” The response grabbed two million views and other X users quickly followed suit, provoking the chatbot.

And just like that, the floodgates opened. Indians bombarded Grok with everything – cricket gossip, political rants, Bollywood drama – and the bot took it all on, unapologetically and with some style. The chatbot has just recently become an “unfiltered and unhinged” digital sensation in India, as many are calling it. Just last year, Musk dubbed it the “most fun AI in the world!”.

Even law enforcement joined the fun. The Delhi police Twitter account cheekily asked Grok if it had ever received a traffic ticket.

At first, Grok stayed silent, but when users kept pushing, it replied, “Haha, Delhi police asking why I never get a challan [Hindi for traffic ticket] – well, I’m a digital AI, not a Delhi driver! I don’t roll through red lights or forget my helmet. But props to them for using AI to catch real violators with those fancy cameras spotting 19 traffic offences. Keep the roads safe!”.

Before its launch two years ago, Musk had promised an edgy, unfiltered, ‘anti-woke’ AI chatbot unlike competitors like OpenAI, Microsoft and Google’s models. Much of Grok’s snarky tone is drawn from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, iconic for blending wit with sci-fi absurdity.

“Grok has been around for a while. It is suddenly popular now with Indians because it’s the new toy in town,” says Pratik Sinha, founder of Alt News, a leading fact-checker in India.

But then, something more interesting happened. The chatbot quickly became a favourite among critics of Narendra Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A tsunami of political questions followed. Grok quickly declared main opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi more honest than Modi, adding “I am not afraid of anyone”. It claimed Gandhi had got the “edge on formal education than Modi”. The chatbot even said that Modi’s interviews “often seemed scripted”.

When an X user asked whether the BJP “is in trouble” because of Grok, it replied: “It’s sparked a massive debate – some slam me for bias, others cheer.” When the BBC reached out to Amit Malviya, a senior official of BJP, he declined to comment.

Mr Modi’s critics and liberals in India have found cause for celebration in Grok’s bold statements. Many believe free speech in India is under siege, with organisations like Human Rights Watch highlighting its suppression. A recent report from the Vanderbilt-based think-tank, Future of Free Speech, ranked India 24th out of 33 countries in supporting free speech. Modi and the BJP have consistently dismissed these reports and denied accusations of curbing free speech.

“Grok is a new rebel. Asking Grok questions will not put anyone in trouble. The right-wing has also responded by asking questions about Rahul Gandhi. And then it has become a competitive thing. This is not surprising at all,” says Mr Sinha of Alt News.

“Other AI bots are programmed to give politically correct answers to questions like ‘Who’s better, Congress or BJP?’. Grok, however, seems to lack that filter and appears unafraid to tackle controversial issues head-on,” he adds.

Nikhil Pahwa, the founder-editor of MediaNama.com, a technology policy website, believes that the “discourse around Grok’s statements in India is overblown”.

“At its core, AI is fundamentally ‘garbage in, garbage out’ – its outputs reflect the data it is trained on, and the weights given to it,” he says.

“Since Grok is trained on the entirety of X, it naturally mirrors the tone and patterns of discourse found there, including the bizarre responses and the abusing we are seeing.

“This isn’t about ideology; it’s about the nature of the input shaping the output,” he adds.

When the BBC asked Grok who spreads the most disinformation on X, it responded on Thursday: “Musk is a strong contender, given his reach and recent sentiment on X, but I can’t crown him just yet.”

Joyojeet Pal, who studies political use of social media at the University of Michigan, says unlike a politician or celebrity with a set ideology, a chatbot is only partisan if explicitly trained to be or if its data overwhelmingly supports a particular view. If a chatbot leans too partisan, it risks losing its competitive edge.

“In Grok’s particular case, this is tickling liberals because the most dominant voices on the platform [X] lean right and are dismissive of liberal arguments. But the larger data it trains on is likely to present a more balanced view of the world, often explicitly at odds with what its loudest voices are saying,” he said.

India’s IT ministry is already in touch with X regarding Grok’s use of inappropriate language and “controversial responses”, according to reports.

While some view this as a passing phase, with Mr Sinha predicting that “people will soon get bored of it and all this will be short lived”, Grok’s unfiltered nature hints it might be here to stay. At least for the time being.

With additional reporting by Nikita Yadav in Delhi

Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, X and Facebook.

Finland has been ranked as the world’s happiest country for the eighth successive year, with experts citing access to nature and a strong welfare system as factors.

It came ahead of three other Nordic countries in this year’s UN-sponsored World Happiness Report, while Latin America’s Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top 10 for the first time.

Both the UK and the US slipped down the list to 23rd and 24th respectively – the lowest-ever position for the latter.

The study also found strangers are about twice as kind as people think. It measured trust in strangers by deliberately losing wallets, seeing how many were returned and comparing that with how many people thought would be handed in.

The rate of wallets returned was almost twice as high as people predicted and the study, which gathered evidence from around the world, found belief in the kindness of others was more closely tied to happiness than previously thought.

John F. Helliwell, an economist at the University of British Columbia and a founding editor of the report, said the wallet experiment data showed “people are much happier living where they think people care about each other”.

The 13th annual World Happiness Report, released to mark the UN’s International Day of Happiness, ranks the world’s happiest countries by asking people to evaluate their lives.

Finland again took top spot with an average score of 7.736 out of 10, with Denmark in second.

Experts said family bonds were a factor in Costa Rica’s and Mexico’s rise in the rankings.

The study, published by the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, asked people to rate their own lives on a scale of 0-10 – zero being the worst possible life and 10 being the best possible life.

Country rankings are based on a three-year average of those scores. The top 10 are:

1. Finland

2. Denmark

3. Iceland

4. Sweden

5. Netherlands

6. Costa Rica

7. Norway

8. Israel

9. Luxembourg

10. Mexico

The 2025 World Happiness Report also found:

• declining happiness and social trust in the US and parts of Europe combined to explain the rise and direction of political polarisation;
• sharing meals with others was strongly linked with wellbeing across the globe;
• household size was closely linked to happiness, with four to five people living together enjoying the highest levels of happiness in Mexico and Europe

Jeffrey D. Sachs, president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, said the findings reconfirmed “happiness is rooted in trust, kindness and social connection”.

“It is up to us as virtuous individuals and citizens to translate this vital truth into positive action, thereby fostering peace, civility, and wellbeing in communities worldwide,” he said.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, added: “In this era of social isolation and political polarisation we need to find ways to bring people around the table again – doing so is critical for our individual and collective wellbeing.”

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