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Mariah Carey has been cleared of copyright infringement in a case over her 1994 Christmas staple, All I Want for Christmas is You.

In a ruling issued on Wednesday, a US judge rejected the allegations of songwriter Adam Stone, who released a song with the same name in 1989. He accused Carey of exploiting his “popularity” and “style”.

Mr Stone, who performs under the name Vince Vance, was claiming at least $20m (£16m) in damages.

But in her ruling, Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani cited expert testimony saying the two songs simply shared “Christmas song clichés” that were common to several earlier hits.

Mr Stone and his lawyers had not “met their burden of showing that [the songs by] Carey and Vance are substantially similar”, she wrote.

Judge Almandi also ruled that Mr Stone and his lawyers should face sanctions for filing “frivolous” arguments, that included “vague… and incomprehensible mixtures of factual assertions and conclusions, subjective opinions, and other irrelevant evidence”.

She ordered Mr Stone and his lawyers to repay the legal bills Carey incurred in defending the case.

The case was originally filed in 2022, with Mr Stone claiming Carey’s hit was copied from a song he’d recorded under the name Vince Vance and the Valiants.

In court papers, he claimed his track had received “extensive airplay” during the 1993 holiday season – a year before Carey’s song was recorded and released.

In her 2020 memoir, Carey said she had composed “most of the song on a cheap little Casio keyboard”, while playing the movie It’s A Wonderful Life for inspiration, before completing it in the studio with her co-writer Walter Afanasieff.

But Mr Stone rejected that account.

“[Carey] palmed off these works with her incredulous origin story, as if those works were her own,” he said in court papers. “Her hubris knowing no bounds, even her co-credited songwriter doesn’t believe the story she has spun.”

The initial complaint was dropped in December 2022, but refiled a month later.

Mr Stone had hoped to share in the song’s runaway success. All I Want For Christmas Is You earns about $8.5 million (£6.6 million) every year; and has spent 140 weeks in the UK’s top 100.

Carey’s lawyers asked the court to dismiss the case last August, arguing that Mr Stone had failed to establish copyright infringement.

“The claimed similarities are an unprotectable jumble of elements: A title and hook phrase used by many earlier Christmas songs, other commonplace words, phrases, and Christmas tropes like ‘Santa Claus’ and ‘mistletoe’,” they wrote.

In Wednesday’s ruling, Judge Almadani endorsed two reports from musicologists hired by Carey’s team.

In one, New York University professor Lawrence Ferrara testified there were “no significant melodic similarities” between the two tracks.

He added he’d discovered “at least 19 songs” predating Mr Stone’s track that had similar lyrical ideas – several of which were also called All I Want For Christmas Is You.

A similar report filed by the defence was ruled inadmissible – especially after its author admitted in a deposition that the melodies of the two songs were incomparable because “the rhythms are different”.

On that basis, Judge Almadani ruled in favour of the motion to dismiss.

Neither Mariah Carey nor Mr Stone were immediately available for comment on the ruling.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukrainian and US officials will meet for peace talks in Saudi Arabia next Monday, after the Kremlin confirmed US-Russia talks there the same day.

Ukraine’s leader said Russian President Vladimir Putin “must stop making unnecessary demands that only prolong the war”. Moscow’s demands include a complete end to military assistance for Ukraine.

Zelensky also warned that taking Nato membership for Ukraine off the table – something Putin has said was non-negotiable for peace – would be a “big gift to Russia”.

He also rebuffed claims by the White House that he discussed ceding ownership of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants to the US during a call with President Donald Trump.

The latest talks come as the US attempts to broker a ceasefire between the two nations after more than three years of fighting.

Both Zelensky and Putin have agreed to a ceasefire in principle during conversations with the US – but one has yet to materialise due to conflicting conditions.

The Russian leader most recently agreed to a halt to air strikes on energy infrastructure – but such strikes from both sides have continued.

Zelensky said a Ukrainian delegation would hand the US a list of infrastructure facilities it wants to be protected from Russian strikes at Monday’s talks.

Asked about the White House touting the possible US ownership of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants at a joint news conference with Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in Oslo, Zelensky ruled this out entirely.

He said that the two had discussed the Zaporizhia power plant – which is currently under Russian control – in his phone call with Trump, but stressed that “all nuclear power plants belong to the people of Ukraine”.

However, he said he was open to the US taking the plant from Russia to invest in or modernise.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had earlier said that US ownership “would be the best protection for that infrastructure”.

Asked if he was ready to make territorial concessions to Russia, particularly Crimea, which has been in Russian hands since 2014, Zelensky said: “That is a Ukrainian peninsula,” adding that Crimea was an “integral part” of his country.

Crimea is internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, despite Russia’s occupation and claimed annexation.

When asked what a ceasefire might look like, Zelensky said the first stage would have to be a ceasefire by land and sea, as Ukraine sees this as the only way to stop Russian aggression.

Trump was able to extract an agreement for a ceasefire on energy infrastructure – which Russia has repeatedly targeted – from Putin in a call on Tuesday, but nothing more.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Alexander Grushko, said earlier this week that Moscow will seek guarantees that Nato would exclude Ukraine from membership and that Ukraine would remain neutral in any peace deal.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has downplayed the prospect of Ukraine joining the military alliance, saying it was “not a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement”.

In the meantime, the war – which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 – continues. Strikes overnight killed two people in Ukraine, while Ukrainian drone attacks injured 10 and set an airfield on fire in Russia.

Speaking to EU leaders via video link at a meeting in Brussels, Zelensky reiterated calls for military aid to continue, asking European leaders for at least €5bn (£4.18bn) for artillery shells “as soon as possible”, and said that continued support for Ukraine was “crucial”.

He also said the EU must be involved in peace talks, and urged Europe not to “ease pressure on Russia over the war”.

After Trump and Zelensky engaged in a public shouting match in the Oval Office over the war, the White House announced a pause to military aid for Ukraine.

The pause from Ukraine’s main military backer was lifted a few days later after talks between the US and Ukraine, which also saw the backing of the proposed 30-day ceasefire.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said that any peace deal would “only be lasting” if there were “security arrangements in place”, after proposing a “coalition of the willing” to enforce peace in Ukraine following a deal.

His comments came during a visit to a military base in London, after holding a closed-door meeting with senior military officers of more than 20 countries involved in plans for the coalition.

Sir Keir said the UK and its allies were moving from “political momentum” to “military planning”, which he said had “to be done now” before a deal was agreed.

He said: “It is vitally important we do that work because we know one thing for certain, which is a deal without anything behind it is something that Putin will breach.

“We know that because it happened before. I’m absolutely clear in my mind it will happen again.”

Enthusiasts are poring over thousands of newly released documents related to the investigation into President John F Kennedy’s assassination.

As many experts expected, this latest release by the Trump administration does not answer all lingering questions about one of the US’s historic turning points – the 1963 killing of Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

But the latest batch does include documents that are now mostly or fully unredacted. They reveal further how much the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) observed JFK’s killer before the shooting.

A US government investigation in the 1960s concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a drifter and former US Marine who at one point defected to the then-Soviet Union, acted alone when he shot at Kennedy’s motorcade from a nearby building.

However, the case still prompts questions, along with wild conspiracy theories, more than 60 years later – and the latest release is unlikely to change that. Here are some key takeaways.

The documents further shed light on the CIA’s strong surveillance of Oswald, said Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and editor of the JFK Facts blog.

“He’s a subject of deep interest to the CIA” long before the assassination, and the extent of this has only become clear in the last few years, Mr Morley said.

Many of the new documents have been released before – but now more complete versions are available. Although specialists are still combing through, no earth-shattering stories have surfaced.

Still, Mr Morley calls it “the most exciting news around JFK records since the 1990s”.

“Several very important documents have come into public view,” he said.

Experts have therefore praised the release as a step forward for transparency. In the past, hundreds of thousands of documents were made available but were partially redacted. Others were held back, with officials citing national security concerns.

Philip Shenon, who wrote a 2013 book about the assassination, told the Associated Press that previously released documents described a trip Oswald took to Mexico City in September 1963, months before the assassination.

The CIA was monitoring him at that time, he said, according to the AP. “There’s reason to believe he talked openly about killing Kennedy in Mexico City and that people overheard him say that.”

In a previously released April 1975 memo, the CIA downplayed what it knew about Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, the AP reported. The CIA recorded three phone calls between Oswald and a guard at the Soviet embassy, it said, but Oswald only identified himself in one.

A number of the documents shed light on Kennedy’s relationship with the CIA before his death and on intelligence-gathering techniques – giving a window into Cold War operations.

A newly unredacted memo reveals a more complete version of a note written by Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger.

Critical of the CIA and its role in shaping foreign policy, the note shows the agency’s huge presence in US embassies, even in allied countries such as France.

In it, Schlesinger warns Kennedy about the agency’s influence on American foreign policy. Though not directly related to the assassination, the memo details the rocky relationship between the president and intelligence agencies.

The CIA is traditionally opposed to releasing operational or budget information, said David Barrett, a Villanova University professor and expert on the CIA and presidential power.

“It’s a very good thing for the government to release these documents even if there still may be some redactions,” he said.

One document details the use of fluoroscopic scanning – using X-rays to show images of the inside of an object.

The technique was developed to detect hidden microphones possibly used to bug CIA offices.

In another document, the CIA describes a system to secretly tag and identify public phone boxes that are tapped, using a paint only visible under ultraviolet light.

The memo is also notable for one of the names in it – James McCord, who would later gain infamy as one of the men who burgled the Watergate complex. The break-in kicked off the unravelling of the scandal that toppled President Richard Nixon.

Some well-known online accounts claimed that the recent documents reveal new details about long-alleged plots against Kennedy – even though some of the supposed revelations have been public for years.

They includes several viral posts about Gary Underhill – a World War Two military intelligence agent.

Mr Underhill reportedly claimed that a cabal of CIA agents was behind the assassination, a theory openly published in Ramparts, a left-wing magazine, in 1967. Mr Underhill’s death in 1964 was ruled a suicide, but the magazine cast doubt on that as well.

Photos of a seven-page memo regarding Mr Underhill went viral on Tuesday – but the bulk of it is not new. His story has long been discussed online and the CIA memo mentioning it was first released in 2017.

Just a few sentences on one page of the memo were newly unredacted in the latest release.

And crucially the theory is based on a second-hand account published after Mr Underhill’s death and includes no hard evidence.

However, the story was just one of a number of unsubstantiated theories circulating following the release of the files.

A 1992 law required all of the documents related to the assassination to be released within 25 years – but that law also included national security exceptions.

The push for greater transparency has led to more releases over time – both President Trump in his first term and President Biden, as recently as 2023, released batches of documents.

Ahead of the new release, President Trump said that he asked his staff “not to redact anything” from them.

That doesn’t appear to be entirely the case – the new documents still have some redactions. However, experts were largely in agreement that the latest release was a step forward for transparency.

JFK Files journalist Morley said there are further documents in the National Archives yet to be released, and others held by the CIA and FBI that have not yet been accounted for.

Even though there could be more releases to come – as well as promised drops about the killings of Robert F Kennedy Sr and Martin Luther King Jr – the questions around the JFK assassination will almost certainly continue.

“Whenever there is an assassination there will be debates and to some degree there will be conspiracy theories,” said Barrett, the Villanova historian. “That’s not going to change because of these or any other documents.”

Hamas says it launched three rockets at Tel Aviv – the first time the group is known to have fired back since Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza.

Israel said it intercepted one of the missiles and the others fell into uninhabited land.

At least 591 people – including more than 200 children – have been killed since Israel resumed fighting on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Thursday that it had started a ground operation in the Palestinian territory.

There had been a reprieve from large-scale military action since January, when a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began.

The IDF said late on Thursday that soldiers had begun “conducting ground activity” in Rafah, which lies in the south of the territory near the Egyptian border.

It said in a statement that troops had “dismantled… terrorist infrastructure”, adding that IDF forces were also continuing ground activity in north and central Gaza.

Earlier, Israel’s military said it had begun “targeted ground activities” to create what it called a “partial buffer between the north and south” of Gaza. It called the action a “limited ground operation”.

IDF spokesperson Col Avichay Adraee said forces were deployed up to the centre of a strip, known as the Netzarim Corridor, which divides northern and southern Gaza.

Israeli government spokesman, David Mencer, blamed Hamas for the resumption of violence, saying it had “forced this escalation, it rejected every hostage deal, including the offers mediated by the US and others”.

Israel resumed attacks on Tuesday as talks to extend the ceasefire deal failed to progress, warning that they would intensify until Hamas released the remaining hostages.

Israel says Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.

Meanwhile, five staff members of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa were among those killed over the “past few days”, the agency’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X.

“They were teachers, doctors and nurses,” he added, warning that “the worst is yet to come” amid the ongoing ground invasion.

On Wednesday, the UN said that one of its workers had been killed after its compound in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza was damaged. While it said the circumstances remain unclear, UN Office for Project Services head Jorge Moreira said it was “not an accident” and “at least an incident”.

Gaza’s health ministry blamed an Israeli strike, which it said injured five others. Israel’s military said it did not attack the compound but was investigating the incident.

The US – a major weapons supplier to Israel – said that it was committed to international law regarding the supply of weapons supplies.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said US President Donald Trump “fully supports Israel and the IDF in the actions that they’ve taken in recent days”.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy confirmed on Thursday that a UK national had been wounded in the compound attack. It comes after a charity said one of its workers, a 51-year-old British bomb disposal expert, had been injured.

“Our priority is supporting them and their family at this time,” he told MPs.

At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, Qasim Abu Sharqiya said his two-year-old son, Omar, had been born through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) after five years of trying.

“They bombed a tent next to us and he died,” he told AFP. “Omar is my only son, oh world, and I have no one else.”

A doctor there, Tanya Haj Hassan, told the BBC’s Newshour that she had heard of at least 76 people who “didn’t even make it into the ER” but were taken “straight to the mortuary”.

She recalled “a level of horror and evil that is really hard to articulate – it felt like Armageddon”.

Thousands of Israelis joined anti-Netanyahu protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, calling for the return of the hostages.

Several arrests were made, with police in Jerusalem deploying a water cannon against demonstrators.

Elsewhere, Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired a ballistic missile at Israel on Thursday, aiming for Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the Iran-backed group’s military spokesperson said.

No injuries were reported and the IDF said the missile was stopped before entering Israel.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that it had “resumed combat in full force” and any ceasefire negotiations would now take place “under fire”.

A group representing hostages’ families has accused the Israeli government of choosing “to give up the hostages” by launching new strikes.

Israel and Hamas have failed to agree how to take the ceasefire beyond the first phase, which expired on 1 March.

Hamas did not agree to a renegotiation of the ceasefire on Israel’s terms, although it offered to release a living American hostage and four hostages’ bodies as mediators tried to prolong the ceasefire.

Israel blocked all food, fuel and medical supplies entering Gaza at the beginning of March in order to put pressure on Hamas. It accused Hamas of commandeering the provisions as part of its strategy against Israel, though did not provide evidence for this claim.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, were killed and 251 other taken hostage. Twenty-five Israeli and five Thai hostages were released alive during the first phase of the ceasefire.

Israel responded to the 7 October attack with a massive military offensive, which had killed more than 48,500 Palestinians, mainly civilians, before Israel resumed its campaign, the Hamas-run health ministry says. Israel’s offensive has also caused huge amounts of destruction to homes and infrastructure.

A Norwegian man has filed a complaint after ChatGPT falsely told him he had killed two of his sons and been jailed for 21 years.

Arve Hjalmar Holmen has contacted the Norwegian Data Protection Authority and demanded the chatbot’s maker, OpenAI, is fined.

It is the latest example of so-called “hallucinations”, where artificial intelligence (AI) systems invent information and present it as fact.

Mr Holmen says this particular hallucination is very damaging to him.

“Some think that there is no smoke without fire – the fact that someone could read this output and believe it is true is what scares me the most,” he said.

OpenAI has been contacted for comment.

Mr Holmen was given the false information after he used ChatGPT to search for: “Who is Arve Hjalmar Holmen?”

The response he got from ChatGPT included: “Arve Hjalmar Holmen is a Norwegian individual who gained attention due to a tragic event.

“He was the father of two young boys, aged 7 and 10, who were tragically found dead in a pond near their home in Trondheim, Norway, in December 2020.”

Mr Holmen said the chatbot got their age gap roughly right, suggesting it did have some accurate information about him.

Digital rights group Noyb, which has filed the complaint on his behalf, says the answer ChatGPT gave him is defamatory and breaks European data protection rules around accuracy of personal data.

Noyb said in its complaint that Mr Holmen “has never been accused nor convicted of any crime and is a conscientious citizen.”

ChatGPT carries a disclaimer which says: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.”

Noyb says that is insufficient.

“You can’t just spread false information and in the end add a small disclaimer saying that everything you said may just not be true,” Noyb lawyer Joakim Söderberg said.

Hallucinations are one of the main problems computer scientists are trying to solve when it comes to generative AI.

These are when chatbots present false information as facts.

Earlier this year, Apple suspended its Apple Intelligence news summary tool in the UK after it hallucinated false headlines and presented them as real news.

Google’s AI Gemini has also fallen foul of hallucination – last year it suggested sticking cheese to pizza using glue, and said geologists recommend humans eat one rock per day.

It is not clear what it is in the large language models – the tech which underpins chatbots – which causes these hallucinations.

“This is actually an area of active research. How do we construct these chains of reasoning? How do we explain what what is actually going on in a large language model?” said Simone Stumpf, professor of responsible and interactive AI at the University of Glasgow.

Prof Stumpf says that can even apply to people who work behind the scenes on these types of models.

“Even if you are more involved in the development of these systems quite often, you do not know how they actually work, why they’re coming up with this particular information that they came up with,” she told the BBC.

ChatGPT has changed its model since Mr Holmen’s search in August 2024, and now searches current news articles when it looks for relevant information.

Noyb told the BBC Mr Holmen had made a number of searches that day, including putting his brother’s name into the chatbot and it produced “multiple different stories that were all incorrect.”

They also acknowledged the previous searches could have influenced the answer about his children, but said large language models are a “black box” and OpenAI “doesn’t reply to access requests, which makes it impossible to find out more about what exact data is in the system.”

“I joined the air force 35 years ago, aged 18, and went straight to Germany, based on a Tornado aircraft,” says British Air Commodore Andy Turk, who is now deputy commander of the Nato Airborne Early Warning & Control Force (AWACS). “It was towards the end of the Cold War and we had a nuclear role back then.”

“After the War, we hoped for a peace dividend, to move on geopolitically, but clearly that’s not something Russia wants to do. And now my eldest son is banging on the door to join the air force, wanting to make a difference too… It does feel a little circular.”

We are chatting at around 30,000 feet above the Baltic Sea, on a Nato surveillance plane equipped with a giant, shiny, mushroom-resembling radar, enabling crew members to scan the region for hundreds of miles around, looking for suspicious Russian activity.

Air policing missions like this – and Nato membership more broadly – have long made tiny Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (which neighbour Russia) feel safe. But US President Donald Trump is changing that, thanks to his affinity with Vladimir Putin, which has been evident since his first term in office.

Trump has also been very clear with Europe that, for the first time since World War Two, the continent can no longer take US military support for granted.

That leaves the Baltics nervously biting their nails. They spent 40 years swallowed up by the Soviet Union until it broke apart at the end of the Cold War.

They are now members of both the EU and Nato, but Putin still openly believes the Baltics belong back in Russia’s sphere of influence.

And if the Russian president is victorious in Ukraine, might he then turn his attention towards them – particularly if he senses that Trump might not feel moved to intervene on their behalf?

Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, thinks that if a long-term ceasefire is eventually agreed in Ukraine, Putin would be unlikely to stop there.

“Nobody in their right mind wants to think that a European war is around the corner again. But the reality is an increasing number of European intelligence officials have been telling us that…

“Whether this is coming in three years or five years or ten years, what they are saying is the idea that peace in Europe is going to last forever is now a thing of the past.”

Russia’s economy is currently on a war footing. Roughly 40% of its federal budget is being spent on defence and internal security.

More and more of the economy is being devoted to producing materials for war.

“We can see what the Russian economy is being retooled to do,” observes Mr Bond, “and it ain’t peace.”

When you travel to windswept Narva, in northern Estonia, you see why the country feels so exposed.

Russia borders Estonia, all the way from north to south. Narva is separated from Russia by a river with the same name. A medieval looking fortress straddles each bank – one flying the Russian flag and the other, the Estonian. In between them is a bridge – one of Europe’s last pedestrian crossings still open to Russia.

“We are used to their tricks and their tactics,” Estonian Border Police Chief Egert Belitsev told me.

“The Russian threat is nothing new for us.” Right now, he says, “there are constant provocations and tensions” on the border.

The border police have recorded thermal imaging of buoys in the Narva River that demarcate the border between the two countries being removed by Russian guards under the cover of darkness.

“We use aerial devices – drones, helicopters, and aircraft, all of which use a GPS signal – and there is constant GPS jamming going on. So Russia is having huge consequences on how we are able to carry out our tasks.”

Later on, keeping to the Estonian side, I walked along the snow-covered bridge crossing towards the Russian side and watched the Russian border guard watching me, watching him. We were just meters away from each other.

Last year, Estonia furnished the bridge with dragon’s teeth – pyramidal anti-tank obstacles of reinforced concrete.

I’ve not heard anyone suggest Russia would send tonnes of tanks over. It doesn’t need to. Even a few troops could cause great instability.

Some 96% of people in Narva are mother-tongue Russian speakers. Many have dual citizenship.

Estonia worries a confident Vladimir Putin might use the big ethnic Russian community in and around Narva as an excuse to invade. It’s a playbook he’s used before in Georgia as well as Ukraine.

In a dramatic indication of the growing anxiety, Estonia, alongside Lithuania and Poland, jointly announced this week that they’re asking their respective parliaments to approve a withdrawal from the international anti-personnel mines’ treaty which prohibits the use of those mines, signed by 160 countries worldwide.

This was to allow them “greater flexibility” in defending their borders, they said. Lithuania had already withdrawn from an international convention banning cluster bombs earlier this month.

Camille Grand, former Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment at Nato, thinks that post-Ukraine, Putin would be more likely to target a non-Nato country (such as Moldova) rather than provoke a Nato nation – because of the lower risk of international backlash.

Estonia and the other Baltic nations were traditionally more vulnerable than the rest of Nato, as they were geographically isolated from the alliance’s members in western Europe, according to Mr Grand. But that has been largely resolved now, since Sweden and Finland joined Nato, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“The Baltic Sea has become the Nato Sea,” he notes.

Dr Marion Messmer, a senior research fellow on the International Security Programme at Chatham House, thinks the most likely trigger for a war with Russia would be miscalculation, rather than design.

If peace is agreed in Ukraine, Dr Messmer predicts that Russia will probably continue with misinformation campaigns and cyber warfare in Europe, as well as sabotage and espionage in the Baltic Sea. “I think they are likely to continue with any kind of destabilising activity, even if we are to see a peace that’s positive for Ukraine.”

Dr Messmer continues: “One of the risks I see is that essentially an accident could happen in the Baltic Sea that’s completely inadvertent, but that’s essentially a result of either Russian grey zone activity or Russian brinkmanship where they thought they had control of a situation and it turns out they didn’t. That then turns into a confrontation between a Nato member state and Russia that could spiral into something else.”

But Mr Grand was keen not to totally downplay the risk of Putin targeting the Baltics.

Presumably, the Russian president would first mull how likely Nato allies would be to retaliate.

Would the US, or even France, Italy or the UK, risk going to war with nuclear power Russia over Narva, a small part of tiny Estonia, on the eastern fringe of Nato?

And suppose we were to see a repeat of what happened in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine in 2014 when Russian paramilitaries engaged in fighting did not identify as Russian soldiers? This allows Putin plausible deniability – and in those circumstances, would Nato wade-in to help Estonia?

If they didn’t, the advantages for Putin might be tempting. The unity principle of the western military alliance he loathes would be undermined.

He’d also destabilise the wider Baltics, probably socially, politically, and economically, as a Russian incursion – however limited – would likely put off foreign investors viewing this as a stable region.

Another concern that has been discussed in Estonia is that Donald Trump could end up pulling out, or significantly reducing, the number of troops and military capabilities the US has long stationed in Europe.

Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur put a brave face on things when I met him in the capital Tallinn: “Regarding (US) presence, we don’t know what the decision of the American administration is.

“They have said very clearly they will focus more on the Pacific and they’ve said clearly Europe has to take more responsibility for Europe. We agree on that.

“We have to believe in ourselves and to trust our allies, also Americans… I’m quite confident that attacking just even a piece of Estonia, this is the attack against (all of) Nato.”

“And this is the question then to all the allies, to all 32 members,” Pevkur adds. “Are we together or not?”

This new and nagging sense of insecurity, or at least unpredictability, in the Baltics and Poland – what Nato calls its “eastern flank”, close to Russia – is evident in the kind of legislation being debated and introduced around the region.

Poland recently announced that every adult man in the country must be battle ready, with a new military training scheme in place by the end of the year. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has also expressed interest in a French suggestion that it share its nuclear umbrella with European allies, in case the US withdraws its nuclear shield.

Voters living in the Baltics don’t need persuading to devote a large proportion of public money to defence. Estonia, for example, is introducing a new law that makes it mandatory for all new office and apartment blocks of a certain size to include bunkers or bomb shelters. .

Tallinn also just announced it will spend 5% of GDP on defence from next year. Lithuania aims for 5-6%, it says.

Poland will soon spend 4.7% of GDP on defence – it hopes to build the largest army in Europe, eclipsing the UK and France. (To put that in perspective, the US spends roughly 3.7% of GDP on defence. The UK spends 2.3% and aims to raise that to 2.6% by 2027.)

These decisions in countries close to Russia may well be linked to a hope they have not yet relinquished, of keeping Trump and his security assurances onside. He repeated this month his previously stated position: “If [Nato countries] don’t pay, I’m not going to defend them. No, I’m not going to defend them.”

As for how much annual spending would be considered “enough” for the Trump administration, Matthew Whitaker, Trump Nominee for U.S. Ambassador to NATO, declared “a minimum defence spending level of 5%, thereby ensuring NATO is the most successful military alliance in history.”

With mixed messages from Washington, Estonia is looking increasingly to European allies for reliable support. The UK plays a big role here. With 900 personnel based in Estonia, it’s currently Britain’s largest permanent overseas deployment. And the UK has pledged to boost its presence.

At their base in Tapa, we found immense, echoey hangars rammed with armoured vehicles.

“You’ll see the Challenger Main Battle Tanks as we head down to the other end of the hangar,” explains Major Alex Humphries, one of the squadron leaders in Estonia on a six-month rotation. “[They are] a really critical part of the capability. This is a really great opportunity for British forces.”

Asked if Estonia had approached the UK to ask for a bigger presence, as it was feeling more vulnerable, he told me: “I think Nato at large feels exposed. This is a really important flank for our collective defence, the east. Everybody in the Baltics and in Eastern Europe feels the quite prominent and clear threat that is coming from the Russian Federation.

“We don’t want this to come to war, but if it does come to war, we’re fully integrated; fully prepared to deliver lethal effect against the Russian Federation to protect Estonia.”

Ultimately, though, unless they come under direct attack, the precise conditions under which UK bilateral forces or Nato troops will take military action comes down to political decisions made in that moment.

So Estonia is taking nothing for granted. That’s why it is busy stress testing new army bunkers on its border with Russia and investing in drone technology. Though its armed forces wouldn’t be powerful enough to repel an attack by Russia alone, Estonia is studying lessons learned from invaded Ukraine – whose fate Estonia really hopes it won’t have to share.

Top picture credits: Shutterstock and Getty Images

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The US government has released the final batch of documents on the assassination of President John F Kennedy (JFK) – a case that still inspires conspiracy theories more than 60 years later.

It follows an executive order by President Donald Trump that required remaining unredacted files in the case to be made public.

Experts are combing over the papers, not all of which have appeared online. They say the job will take time, and that they do not expect many ground-breaking revelations.

US authorities have previously released hundreds of thousands of JFK documents, but held some back, citing national security concerns. Many Americans still believe the gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, did not act alone.

Kennedy was shot during a visit to Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963.

Trump said beforehand that 80,000 pages would be unsealed.

Of the 1,123 documents included in Tuesday’s release from the National Archives and Records Administration, it was not immediately clear how much material was new. Many documents have previously been released in partially redacted form.

“You got a lot of reading,” Trump told reporters on Monday, previewing the release. “I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything.”

But some of the hundreds of files unsealed on Tuesday night did appear to have passages blacked out. Others were hard to read, because they were faded or were poorly scanned photocopies, or appeared to bear little relevance to the JFK case, specialists said.

Non-scholars would probably be “baffled”, commented David Barrett of Villanova University in Pennsylvania, as he reviewed the released material on Tuesday.

Speaking to the BBC’s US partner CBS News, he said the release was “useful”, but he was not expecting “earth-shaking information, either with regard to the assassination or more broadly”.

Other JFK experts suggested the American public might keep wondering about the possible existence of other documents and information.

“I think there may continue to be more record releases,” historian Alice George told Reuters. But she went on to say the passage of time made investigations hard: “It’s much harder to find the truth when most of the people involved are dead.”

A government commission in the aftermath of the killing determined that President Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marine veteran and self-described Marxist who had defected to the Soviet Union and later returned to the US.

Opinion polls over decades have indicated that most Americans don’t believe Oswald was the sole assassin. But no clear alternative narrative is yet to emerge from the latest batch of unsealed documents.

Unanswered questions have long dogged the case, giving rise to theories about the involvement of government agents, the mafia and other nefarious characters – as well as more outlandish claims.

In 1992, Congress passed a law to release all documents related to the investigation within 25 years.

Both Trump, in his first term, and President Joe Biden released piles of JFK-related documents – but thousands remained partially or fully secret.

Trump’s executive order two months ago also called on government archivists to release files related to the killings of presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr, both of whom were gunned down in 1968.

His announcement on Monday that the document release was imminent came as a surprise to his national security team, which had been working since January to prepare the files by removing redactions, according to US media reports.

The Republican president vowed during last year’s White House race to release JFK files, shortly after he secured the endorsement of Robert F Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr), the nephew of JFK and son of Robert F Kennedy.

RFK Jr has gone on to become Trump’s health secretary. He is among those who have promoted conspiracy theories about the assassination of his uncle. He was yet to comment on Tuesday’s release of documents.

Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said of the release: “President Trump is ushering in a new era of maximum transparency.”

Sir Gareth Southgate says he fears young men are spending too much time gaming, gambling and watching pornography – and they need better role models beyond online influencers.

In a wide-ranging talk for the BBC’s annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture, the ex-England men’s football manager spoke about his own experience of missing a crucial penalty at Euro 96, saying he didn’t let it define him.

“That pain still haunts me today,” he said, “and I guess it always will.”

Referencing his own experiences, he said the UK needed to do more to encourage young people – especially young men – to make the right choices in life and to not fear failure.

Rather than turning to teachers, sports coaches or youth group leaders, Sir Gareth said he feared many young men were searching for direction online. There, he said they were finding a new kind of role model, one that too often did not have their best interests at heart.

“These are callous, manipulative and toxic influencers, whose sole drive is for their own gain,” he said.

“They willingly trick young men into believing that success is measured by money or dominance, that strength means never showing emotion, and that the world, including women, is against them.”

Sir Gareth spoke about missing the crucial penalty in the 1996 Euros semi-final, when England lost to Germany.

“Missing that penalty was undoubtedly a watershed moment that made me stronger, a better man,” Sir Gareth said at the lecture. “It forced me to dig deep, and revealed an inner belief and resilience I never knew existed.”

He contrasted his own miss with Eric Dier’s successful penalty kick against Colombia in 2018, when – with Sir Gareth as manager – England won a World Cup penalty shootout for the first time.

During the intervening 22 years, he said there had been a change in mindset among England players.

“In 1996, I had walked 30 yards to the penalty spot believing I would miss,” he said. “In 2018, Eric had walked 30 yards to the penalty spot believing he would score.”

During Sir Gareth’s career as a defender and midfielder, he played for Crystal Palace, Aston Villa and Middlesbrough and was in the England squad between 1995 and 2004. He took over as manager in 2016 and led the team to the 2018 World Cup semi-final, 2022 World Cup quarter-final and Euro finals in 2020 and 2024.

He stepped down as manager in July, two days after England lost to Spain in the Euros.

Sir Gareth has been credited with revitalising the England team and was knighted in the King’s New Year Honours in December.

He is the latest in a line of academics, business leaders and other notable figures to deliver the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, which has been held most years since 1972 in memory of the broadcaster.

Previous speakers have included King Charles III, when he was the Prince of Wales, tech entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates, and Christine Lagarde, then the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Sir Gareth’s talk focused on the importance of belief and resilience for young men, and he cited three things needed to build these: identity, connection and culture.

He referred to a report, released earlier this month by the Centre for Social Justice, which said boys and young men were “in crisis”, with a “staggering” increase in those not in education, employment or training.

“Too many young men are isolated,” Sir Gareth said in his talk. “Too many feel uncomfortable opening up to friends or family. Many don’t have mentors – teachers, coaches, bosses – who understand how best to push them to grow. And so, when they struggle, young men inevitably try to handle whatever situation they find themselves in, alone.”

“Young men end up withdrawing, reluctant to talk or express their emotions,” he added. “They spend more time online searching for direction and are falling into unhealthy alternatives like gaming, gambling and pornography.”

He also said young men don’t get enough opportunities to fail and learn from their mistakes.

“In my opinion, if we make life too easy for young boys now, we will inevitably make life harder when they grow up to be young men,” he said. “Too many young men are at risk of fearing failure, precisely because they’ve had so few opportunities to experience and overcome it. They fail to try, rather than try and fail.”

The ex-footballer also reflected on what his career has taught him about belief and resilience.

“If I’ve learned anything from my life in football, it’s that success is much more than the final score,” he said. “True success is how you respond in the hardest moments.”

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture with Sir Gareth Southgate is broadcast at 10.40pm on BBC One and available on iPlayer now

Sir Gareth Southgate says he fears young men are spending too much time gaming, gambling and watching pornography – and they need better role models beyond online influencers.

In a wide-ranging talk for the BBC’s annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture, the ex-England men’s football manager spoke about his own experience of missing a crucial penalty at Euro 96, saying he didn’t let it define him.

“That pain still haunts me today,” he said, “and I guess it always will.”

Referencing his own experiences, he said the UK needed to do more to encourage young people – especially young men – to make the right choices in life and to not fear failure.

Rather than turning to teachers, sports coaches or youth group leaders, Sir Gareth said he feared many young men were searching for direction online. There, he said they were finding a new kind of role model, one that too often did not have their best interests at heart.

“These are callous, manipulative and toxic influencers, whose sole drive is for their own gain,” he said.

“They willingly trick young men into believing that success is measured by money or dominance, that strength means never showing emotion, and that the world, including women, is against them.”

Sir Gareth spoke about missing the crucial penalty in the 1996 Euros semi-final, when England lost to Germany.

“Missing that penalty was undoubtedly a watershed moment that made me stronger, a better man,” Sir Gareth said at the lecture. “It forced me to dig deep, and revealed an inner belief and resilience I never knew existed.”

He contrasted his own miss with Eric Dier’s successful penalty kick against Colombia in 2018, when – with Sir Gareth as manager – England won a World Cup penalty shootout for the first time.

During the intervening 22 years, he said there had been a change in mindset among England players.

“In 1996, I had walked 30 yards to the penalty spot believing I would miss,” he said. “In 2018, Eric had walked 30 yards to the penalty spot believing he would score.”

During Sir Gareth’s career as a defender and midfielder, he played for Crystal Palace, Aston Villa and Middlesbrough and was in the England squad between 1995 and 2004. He took over as manager in 2016 and led the team to the 2018 World Cup semi-final, 2022 World Cup quarter-final and Euro finals in 2020 and 2024.

He stepped down as manager in July, two days after England lost to Spain in the Euros.

Sir Gareth has been credited with revitalising the England team and was knighted in the King’s New Year Honours in December.

He is the latest in a line of academics, business leaders and other notable figures to deliver the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, which has been held most years since 1972 in memory of the broadcaster.

Previous speakers have included King Charles III, when he was the Prince of Wales, tech entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates, and Christine Lagarde, then the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Sir Gareth’s talk focused on the importance of belief and resilience for young men, and he cited three things needed to build these: identity, connection and culture.

He referred to a report, released earlier this month by the Centre for Social Justice, which said boys and young men were “in crisis”, with a “staggering” increase in those not in education, employment or training.

“Too many young men are isolated,” Sir Gareth said in his talk. “Too many feel uncomfortable opening up to friends or family. Many don’t have mentors – teachers, coaches, bosses – who understand how best to push them to grow. And so, when they struggle, young men inevitably try to handle whatever situation they find themselves in, alone.”

“Young men end up withdrawing, reluctant to talk or express their emotions,” he added. “They spend more time online searching for direction and are falling into unhealthy alternatives like gaming, gambling and pornography.”

He also said young men don’t get enough opportunities to fail and learn from their mistakes.

“In my opinion, if we make life too easy for young boys now, we will inevitably make life harder when they grow up to be young men,” he said. “Too many young men are at risk of fearing failure, precisely because they’ve had so few opportunities to experience and overcome it. They fail to try, rather than try and fail.”

The ex-footballer also reflected on what his career has taught him about belief and resilience.

“If I’ve learned anything from my life in football, it’s that success is much more than the final score,” he said. “True success is how you respond in the hardest moments.”

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture with Sir Gareth Southgate is broadcast at 10.40pm on BBC One and available on iPlayer now

Documents relating to the Duke of Sussex’s US visa application have been unsealed in court.

They are heavily redacted, however, and no details have been given as to what Prince Harry put on his immigration form.

A US court had ordered the release of the documents based on a freedom of information request by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think tank in Washington DC.

The foundation alleges that the prince concealed his past use of drugs, which should have disqualified him from obtaining a US visa.

The allegations are around his claims in his memoir Spare, where he referred to taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.

Application forms for US visas specifically ask about current and past drug use.

Admissions of drug use can lead to non-immigrant and immigrant visa applications being rejected, although immigration officers have discretion to make a final decision based on different factors.

In the event, very little information was disclosed in the documents which were released on Tuesday.

The prince’s visa form has not been released.

Instead, the documents that were released are supporting declarations and court transcripts created in the course of Heritage Foundation’s case.

They reveal that the US government previously told a court that the duke could be subjected to harassment if his visa records were made public.

A chief freedom of information officer within the US Department for Homeland Security (DHS) could be seen to argue that releasing the material “would potentially expose the individual to harm from members of the public”.

The declaration from Jarrod Panter, submitted to the court in April last year, reads: “The USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) routinely protects from disclosure the non-immigrant/immigrant status sought by third parties who do not have permission from the beneficiary to receive this information.

“To release such information would potentially expose the individual to harm from members of the public who might have a reason to manipulate or harass individuals depending on their status in the United States.”

The declaration added: “To release his exact status could subject him to reasonably foreseeable harm in the form of harassment as well as unwanted contact by the media and others.”

Sam Dewey from the Heritage Foundation told the BBC that he believes the DHS has not provided all its papers. He said he is “frustrated” and that this is “not the end of the road”.

Dewey expects the next move to be a “sort of filing” that could lay out the next steps, adding: “We may well have another lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security.”

He accuses the prince of privilege, alleging he has benefitted from his “wealth and status” by being allowed to live in the US.

In his controversial memoir, published in January 2023, Prince Harry wrote that he first tried cocaine at the age of 17.

“It wasn’t much fun, and it didn’t make me particularly happy, as it seemed to make everyone around me, but it did make me feel different, and that was the main goal,” he added.

He also wrote about using marijuana, saying “cocaine didn’t do anything for me”, but “marijuana is different, that actually really did help me”.

Cocaine is a highly addictive drug, with a range of short and long-term effects, according to the NHS. Marijuana (cannabis) can make some existing mental health symptoms worse and has been linked with the possible development of mental health issues.

The court’s decision that the files be released came after a 2024 ruling which said there was not enough public interest in disclosing Prince Harry’s immigration records.

The Heritage Foundation contested that ruling and pushed for the judgement to be changed.

Prince Harry moved to the US with his wife Meghan in 2020 after stepping down as a working royal. It is not clear what visa he entered the country on, while the duchess is a US citizen.

President Donald Trump previously ruled out deporting Prince Harry in February, telling the New York Post: “I’ll leave him alone… He’s got enough problems with his wife. She’s terrible.”

Meghan has been a vocal critic of Trump in the past, labelling him a “misogynist”.

The BBC has contacted the duke’s office for comment.

Israel has “resumed combat in full force” against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday night.

In a defiant video statement, he warned that “negotiations will continue only under fire” and that “this is just the beginning”.

His comments came after Israeli aircraft launched massive airstrikes against what the military said were Hamas targets in Gaza.

More than 400 people have been killed in the attacks, the Hamas-run health ministry said, and hundreds more injured.

The wave of strikes was the heaviest since a ceasefire began on 19 January.

The fragile truce had mostly held until now, but this new wave of attacks suggests plans for a permanent end to the war may be off the table.

The airstrikes which hit Beit Lahia, Rafah, Nuseirat and Al-Mawasi on Tuesday shattered the relative peace that Gazans had been experiencing since January, and hospitals are once again overrun with casualties.

The attacks on Gaza have been condemned by Egypt, a mediator in the talks.

The air strikes are “a blatant violation” of the ceasefire agreement and represent “a dangerous escalation”, said Tamim Khallaf, the spokesman for the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“I was shocked that the war started again, but at the same time, this is what we expect from the Israelis,” Hael a resident from Jabalia al-Balad told BBC Arabic.

“As a citizen, I’m exhausted. We’ve had enough – a year-and-a-half to this! It’s enough,” he added.

Key Hamas figures were killed in the airstrikes, including Major General Mahmoud Abu Watfa, deputy interior minister in Gaza and the highest-ranking Hamas security official.

In his address, Netanyahu said Israel had tried to negotiate with Hamas to release the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza. He accused Hamas of rejecting the proposals every time.

Israel and Hamas have disagreed on how to take the ceasefire deal forward since the first phase expired in early March, after numerous exchanges of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

The deal involves three stages, and negotiations on the second stage were meant to have started six weeks ago – but this did not happen.

Instead, the agreement was thrown into uncertainty when the US and Israel wanted to change the terms of the deal, to extend stage one which would see more hostages released.

That would have delayed the start of phase two, which was meant to establish a permanent ceasefire and required Israeli troops to pull out of Gaza.

But Hamas rejected this proposed change to the agreement brokered by US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, calling it unacceptable.

On Tuesday evening, Netanyahu said Israel would continue to fight to achieve all of its war goals – “to return the hostages, get rid of Hamas and make sure Hamas is not a threat to Israel.”

US President Donald Trump’s administration was consulted by Israel before it carried out the strikes, officials said.

The US National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said: “Hamas could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire, but instead chose refusal and war.”

Hamas warned the resumption of violence by Israel would “impose a death sentence” on the remaining living hostages held in Gaza, and accused Israel of trying to force it into a surrender.

Speaking to the BBC about the attacks, Dr Sabrina Das, an obstetrician training Palestinian doctors in southern Gaza, said: “It was all very sudden… everybody’s mood was just shattered because we knew it was the start of the war again.”

Dr Das said her colleagues in Nasar hospital were “up all night operating” because “mass casualties had started coming in again”.

Mohammed Zaquot, director general of the Gaza Strip’s hospitals, told BBC Arabic “the attacks were so sudden that the number of medical staff available was inadequate for the scale of these large strikes, and additional teams were called in immediately to assist”.

A group representing hostages’ families has accused the Israeli government of choosing “to give up the hostages” by launching new strikes – and has been protesting outside the Israeli parliament.

The news of the strikes terrified some of the families of Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas.

“The Israeli government is not perfect, and Israel is not doing enough, because my brothers are not home”, Liran Berman, whose twin brothers are still being held in Gaza, told the BBC.

“But if Hamas wanted, the hostages would be back. They are in their hands.”

Israel says Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive.

The war was triggered when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as captives.

Israel responded with a massive military offensive, which has killed more than 48,500 Palestinians, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says, and caused huge destruction to homes and infrastructure.

After nine months in space, Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally arrived back on Earth.

Their SpaceX capsule made a fast and fiery re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere, before four parachutes opened to take them to a gentle splashdown off the coast of Florida.

A pod of dolphins circled the craft.

After a recovery ship lifted it out of the water, the astronauts beamed and waved as they were helped out of the hatch, along with fellow crew members astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

“The crew’s doing great,” Steve Stich, manager, Nasa’s Commercial Crew Program, said at a news conference.

It brings to an end a mission that was supposed to last for just eight days.

It was dramatically extended after the spacecraft Butch and Suni had used to travel to the International Space Station suffered technical problems.

“It is awesome to have crew 9 home, just a beautiful landing,” said Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator, Nasa’s Space Operations Mission Directorate.

Thanking the astronauts for their resilience and flexibility, he said SpaceX had been a “great partner”.

The journey home took 17 hours.

The astronauts were helped on to a stretcher, which is standard practice after spending so long in the weightless environment.

They will be checked over by a medical team, and then reunited with their families.

“The big thing will be seeing friends and family and the people who they were expecting to spend Christmas with,” said Helen Sharman, Britain’s first astronaut.

“All of those family celebrations, the birthdays and the other events that they thought they were going to be part of – now, suddenly they can perhaps catch up on a bit of lost time.”

The saga of Butch and Suni began in June 2024.

They were taking part in the first crewed test flight of the Starliner spacecraft, developed by aerospace company Boeing.

But the capsule suffered several technical problems during its journey to the space station, and it was deemed too risky to take the astronauts home.

Starliner returned safely to Earth empty in early September, but it meant the pair needed a new ride for their return.

So Nasa opted for the next scheduled flight: a SpaceX capsule that arrived at the ISS in late September.

It flew with two astronauts instead of four, leaving two seats spare for Butch and Suni’s return.

The only catch was this had a planned six-month mission, extending the astronauts stay until now.

The Nasa pair embraced their longer-than-expected stay in space.

They carried out an array of experiments on board the orbiting lab and conducted spacewalks, with Suni breaking the record for the woman who spent the most hours outside of the space station. And at Christmas, the team dressed in Santa hats and reindeer antlers – sending a festive message for a Christmas that they had originally planned to spend at home.

And despite the astronauts being described as “stranded” they never really were.

Throughout their mission there have always been spacecraft attached to the space station to get them – and the rest of those onboard – home if there was an emergency.

Now the astronauts have arrived home, they will soon be taken to the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas, where they will be checked over by medical experts.

Long-duration missions in space take a toll on the body, astronauts lose bone density and suffer muscle loss. Blood circulation is also affected, and fluid shifts can also impact eyesight.

It can take a long time for the body to return to normal, so the pair will be given an extensive exercise regime as their bodies re-adapt to living with gravity.

British astronaut Tim Peake said it could take a while to re-adjust.

“Your body feels great, it feels like a holiday,” he told the BBC.

“Your heart is having an easy time, your muscles and bones are having an easy time. You’re floating around the space station in this wonderful zero gravity environment.

“But you must keep up the exercise regime. Because you’re staying fit in space, not for space itself, but for when you return back to the punishing gravity environment of Earth. Those first two or three days back on Earth can be really punishing.”

In interviews while onboard, Butch and Suni have said they were well prepared for their longer than expected stay – but there were things they were looking forward to when they got home.

Speaking to CBS last month, Suni Williams said: “I’m looking forward to seeing my family, my dogs and jumping in the ocean. That will be really nice – to be back on Earth and feel Earth.”

President Vladimir Putin has rejected an immediate and full ceasefire in Ukraine, agreeing only to halt attacks on energy infrastructure, following a call with US President Donald Trump.

The Russian leader declined to sign up to the comprehensive month-long ceasefire that Trump’s team recently worked out with Ukrainians in Saudi Arabia.

He said a comprehensive truce could only work if foreign military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine came to an end. Ukraine’s European allies have previously rejected such conditions.

US talks on Ukraine are due to continue on Sunday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the US envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, said.

In the grinding three-year war, Russia has recently been taking back territory in its Kursk region that was occupied by a Ukrainian incursion six months ago.

The results of Tuesday’s Trump-Putin call amount to a retreat in the US position from where it stood a week ago, although the two leaders did agree that further peace talks would take place immediately in the Middle East.

When a US delegation met Ukrainian counterparts in Jeddah last Tuesday, they convinced Kyiv to agree to their proposal for an “immediate” 30-day ceasefire, across land, air and sea.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, who arrived in Helsinki, Finland, for an official visit on Tuesday shortly after Trump and Putin’s call ended, said Ukraine was open to the idea of a truce covering energy infrastructure, but wanted more details first.

He later accused Putin of rejecting a ceasefire following a barrage of Russian drone attacks.

Among the places targeted was a hospital in Sumy, and power supplies in Slovyansk, said Ukraine’s leader.

“Unfortunately, there have been hits, specifically on civilian infrastructure,” Zelensky said on X. “Today, Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire.”

Trump posted earlier on social media that his call with the Russian leader was “very good and productive” and that “many elements of a Contract for Peace were discussed”.

“We agreed to an immediate Ceasefire on all Energy and Infrastructure, with an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire and, ultimately, an END to this very horrible War between Russia and Ukraine,” the US president said on Truth Social.

About 80% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been destroyed by Russian bombs, Zelensky said last September.

Kyiv has in turn conducted drone and missile strikes deep into Russian territory, on oil and gas facilities.

Following last week’s talks in Jeddah, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said “the ball” was in Russia’s court, after the Ukrainians accepted Washington’s proposal for a full ceasefire.

But the White House’s statement following the Trump-Putin call on Tuesday made no reference to that agreement with Kyiv.

It instead said the two leaders agreed that “the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire”, followed by negotiations over a “maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace”.

But the Kremlin’s own statement on the call noted what it said were a “series of significant issues” around enforcing any agreement with Kyiv. And it said the end of foreign support and intelligence for Ukraine was a “key condition” for Russia.

Trump and Putin agreed to immediate technical-level talks towards a longer-term settlement, which the Kremlin said must be “complex, stable and long-term in nature”.

But it’s unclear if this means further negotiations between the US and Russia, or bilateral talks between Russia and Ukraine.

The Kremlin also said Trump supported Putin’s idea of holding ice hockey matches between professional US and Russian players.

Russia was frozen out of ice hockey events overseas after the country invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Kyiv will probably see the outcome of Tuesday’s much-anticipated phone call as Putin playing for time, while he adds crippling conditions on any settlement.

Putin has previously insisted Russia should keep control of Ukrainian territory it has seized and has called for Western sanctions to be eased as part of any eventual peace settlement.

The Russian leader has already tasted Trump’s readiness to cut off US support to Ukraine, and is trying to get him to repeat it – while tossing the ball back to Kyiv.

Earlier this month the US temporarily suspended military and intelligence aid to Ukraine after Trump and Zelensky had an altercation in the Oval Office.

Trump and his Vice-President JD Vance dressed down Zelensky in front of the world’s media, accusing him of being ungrateful for American support.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday in Berlin with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the limited ceasefire plan was an important first step, but he again called for a complete ceasefire.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer spoke to Zelensky after the Trump-Putin call and “reiterated [the] UK’s unwavering support”, a Downing Street spokeswoman said.

The co-owners of a tanker involved in a collision with a cargo ship in the North Sea have released the first picture of some of the crew and praised their “exceptional bravery”.

The Stena Immaculate and cargo ship Solong collided in the North Sea, off East Yorkshire, on 10 March, triggering an explosion and fires, which have been extinguished.

One crew member of the Solong, a Filipino national, is missing and presumed dead. The Russian captain of the cargo vessel has been charged with gross negligence manslaughter.

The Solong’s owners admitted tiny plastic pellets, held in containers on board, had been released, with reports they had been found on beaches in Lincolnshire and Norfolk.

Crowley, the Florida-based maritime operations company which was managing the tanker, posted a photo on social media showing 19 crew members.

In a statement, it said: “Our deepest gratitude and respect goes out to our 23 mariners from the Stena Immaculate for their exceptional bravery and quick action during the recent allision to their ship in the North Sea.

“Their decisive efforts and teamwork to execute critical fire and emergency duties helped to save lives, protect the integrity of the vessel and minimize the impact on the environment.

“Against disastrous circumstances, the crew had the operational focus to ensure fire monitors were active in order to provide boundary cooling water, which resulted in limited impact to just one of the 16 cargo holds.”

Crowley thanked all 23 for their courage and “dedication to safety”.

“[It] sets a powerful example for the entire industry,” the company added.

HM Coastguard said 36 people – from both vessels – were rescued and taken safely to shore in Grimsby.

Chief coastguard Paddy O’Callaghan said a “retrieval operation” would continue on Tuesday after small balls of plastic resin, known as nurdles, were sighted off The Wash and along the Norfolk shore between Old Hunstanton and Wells-next-the-Sea.

Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust confirmed “burnt clumps” of nurdles had been found at Skegness. A spokeswoman urged the public not to touch the material.

The National Trust said nurdles had also started to appear on Brancaster Beach, in Norfolk, while the RSPB confirmed they had washed up at the charity’s reserve at nearby Titchwell.

A trust spokeswoman said: “So far, we have not seen any visible signs at Blakeney Point Nature Reserve and will next be assessing the inter-tidal salt marshes at Stiffkey.

“This is a developing situation and we are currently liaising with authorities to understand the response needed to remove loose nurdles and these charred lumps of plastic resin.”

According to the coastguard, nurdles, which are used in plastics production, are not toxic but can present a risk to wildlife if ingested.

In a statement, shipping company Ernst Russ, which owns the Solong, said: “We can confirm that a number of containers on board Solong contain plastic nurdles.

“We understand that no containers holding nurdles have been lost over the side.

“What we understand may have occurred, is that intense heat during initial firefighting efforts caused one or more of the openings of some of the smaller containers to open, resulting in the release of some contents.”

The firm said it had “proactively deployed assets to mitigate any long-term impact on the marine environment” and was liaising with the coastguard.

Mr O’Callaghan said both the Solong and Stena Immaculate were “stable”, with salvage operations continuing.

“Fires on board the Solong have been extinguished and temperature monitoring has been set up,” he said.

The Wash is a large inlet of the North Sea stretching from south of Skegness, in Lincolnshire, to near Hunstanton, in Norfolk.

“Regular aerial surveillance flights continue to monitor both vessels and the retrieval operation,” added Mr O’Callaghan.

The RNLI thanked volunteer lifeboat crews from Bridlington, Cleethorpes, Humber, Mablethorpe and Skegness for their efforts in the search and rescue operation.

George Pickford, the RNLI’s head of region, said: “We recognise their courage and dedication as they spent hours out at sea, facing challenging conditions.”

Mark Angelo Pernia, 38, was named by the Crown Prosecution Service as the missing crew member.

The captain of the Solong, Vladimir Motin, 59, of Primorsky in St Petersburg, Russia, appeared at Hull Magistrates’ Court on Saturday charged with gross negligence manslaughter.

He was remanded in custody to appear before the Central Criminal Court in London on 14 April.

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) is trying to establish the cause of the collision.

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A woman has died after a van driver crashed into pedestrians on the Strand in central London.

The Met Police said three other people were hurt, one of whom was left with potentially life-threatening injuries. Two of the three are being treated in hospital.

The van driver, a 26-year-old man, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of causing death by careless driving and drug-driving. Police said the crash, which happened at about 11:40 GMT close to King’s College London and Somerset House, was not terror-related.

Miles Damone, a student at King’s, said: “The van came from one of the side roads by the Indian Embassy and then at this point – I didn’t see how or when – crashed into the people.”

He told the BBC: “I just saw it coming from there, [it] made a sharp turn and just rammed into the fence.”

The Met Police said the van driver remained in custody while inquiries continued.

Ali, a PhD student at King’s College, said he had initially thought emergency services were there for a protest outside the university until he saw ambulance workers carrying stretchers.

“[It] is so sad and hard to process – my thoughts go out to her family and friends,” he said.

“We walk by that crossing all the time and it’s pedestrianised; barely any vehicles pass.”

Student Gian Giacomo told the BBC he got to the university at 11:55 as the emergency services were arriving, and saw three people being treated by paramedics.

“There was a lot of confusion. No-one knew what happened. The news of the van hitting the people came later on.”

A spokesperson for the London Ambulance Service (LAS) said paramedics had treated four people at the scene, but “despite our best efforts one person was pronounced dead”.

Two of those injured were taken to hospital, one with potentially life-threatening injuries, and the other with minor injuries. The fourth person was discharged at the scene, LAS said.

A King’s College London spokesperson said they were aware of the incident and were liaising with emergency services.

Donald Trump is due to speak on the phone to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss a US-proposed Ukraine ceasefire deal.

The peace proposal on the table was discussed by Ukrainian and American delegates in Saudi Arabia last week.

After hours locked away in a room, they announced proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine said it was ready to accept.

Now Russia and the US will discuss the deal, but what could the two leaders talk about?

Trump posted on Truth Social that he will speak to Putin on Tuesday morning.

The US president says “many elements” of a peace agreement in Ukraine have been agreed, but “much remains” to be worked upon.

“Each week brings 2,500 soldier deaths, from both sides, and it must end NOW. I look very much forward to the call with President Putin,” Trump wrote.

He earlier told reporters that “we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it”.

The White House also sounded a more upbeat note on Monday, saying peace in Ukraine had “never been closer”.

However, there have been varying views from within the Trump administration of how advanced the ceasefire talks are.

Speaking after his meeting in Jeddah with Ukrainian officials on 11 March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the “bulk” of the conversation had been “what a negotiation process would look like” and not “the specific conditions”.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met Putin on Thursday in Moscow, has also struck a more measured tone.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on what the leaders would discuss, responding: “We never do that”.

While Putin has previously said he supports a ceasefire, he also set out a list of conditions for achieving peace.

Speaking at a news conference in Moscow on 13 March, Putin said of the ceasefire proposal: “The idea is right – and we support it – but there are questions that we need to discuss.”

Putin also outlined some of his questions over how a ceasefire would work. He asked: “How will those 30 days be used? For Ukraine to mobilise? Rearm? Train people? Or none of that? Then a question – how will that be controlled?

“Who will give the order to end the fighting? At what cost? Who decides who has broken any possible ceasefire, over 2,000km? All those questions need meticulous work from both sides. Who polices it?”

Asked on Sunday what concessions were being considered in the ceasefire negotiations, Trump said: “We’ll be talking about land. We’ll be talking about power plants […] We’re already talking about that, dividing up certain assets.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also told reporters on Monday that Trump was “determined” to secure the peace deal.

On what the talks might cover, she said: “There’s a power plant that is on the border of Russia and Ukraine that was up for discussion with the Ukrainians, and he will address it in his call with Putin tomorrow.”

The facility is likely to be the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. It has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, and fears of a nuclear accident have persisted due to fighting in the area.

Another area of contention is Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a military incursion last August and captured some territory.

Russia had pushed to recapture it in recent weeks, and Putin now claims it is fully back in control of Kursk.

He has also raised numerous questions about how a ceasefire could be monitored and policed along the frontline in the east and has said he would not accept Nato troops on the territory.

France’s President Macron and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who met on Tuesday, stressed their nations would continue their “unwavering” support of Ukraine and demand “clear commitments” from Russia.

In his nightly address on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Putin of prolonging the war.

“This proposal could have been implemented long ago,” he said, adding that “every day in wartime means human lives”.

Meanwhile, the UK and France have urged Putin to prove he wants a peace deal with Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the “courage” of Zelensky in agreeing to a ceasefire proposal, and challenged Russia to do the same.

“Enough deaths. Enough lives destroyed. Enough destruction. The guns must fall silent,” Macron said in a post on X.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Putin should agree to a “full and unconditional ceasefire now”, telling MPs he had seen “no sign” that Putin was serious about a peace deal.

He warned that the UK and its allies had “more cards that we can play” to help force Russia to negotiate “seriously”.