Category: Trending Now

A huge sinkhole in a street in Surrey is continuing to grow and swallow up more road, with the county council declaring a major incident.

The original hole first appeared in Godstone High Street late on Monday night, growing to at least 65ft (20m) long by Tuesday lunchtime.

A second opening has now appeared, with a car teetering on the brink and the owner unable to move it.

Families have been evacuated from their homes over fears of an explosion caused by exposed cables, with one resident saying the street now “sounded like a waterfall”.

The evacuated properties were built about three years ago, on the site of a former sand quarry.

Local residents also believe there are caves underneath the area.

Noosh Miri and her family were among those evacuated from the area by police.

“We got a violent knocking on the door. As I opened the door, it sounded like I was in a waterfall because the sinkhole was right in front of my doorstep,” she said.

“The policewoman told us we needed to get out straight away, and in the space of 10 minutes, we got the kids dressed, we grabbed the nearest things that we could find.”

The family have now been found temporary accommodation by their insurers, but she said she was prepared “for a good couple of months” before being able to move back in.

Speaking to Radio 5 Live, Ms Miri added: “Our house is not secure at all. At the moment we don’t know the extent of the damage but we do know we won’t be going home for some time.”

She later suggested the sink hole could be linked to mining caves as well as heavy-loaded vehicles which sometimes made their home “rattle” when they came past.

Around seven miles of tunnels sit beneath Godstone, according to the charity Surrey Hills Society.

Ms Miri added: “We think it’s a combination of different things that have led to here – it’s not a simple burst pipe or the caves or lorries.”

Pete Burgess, of the Wealden Cave and Mines Society, said a quarry marked “sand pit” can be seen on 19th century maps of land directly under the sinkhole.

He added that sand from the pit was dug out and used for building and gardening purposes.

Other residents said the sinkhole had opened adjacent to “brand new flats” which had been built in the area.

Another added that they had been forced to sleep in their car in a nearby car park after being evacuated in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Businesses in the area, including Godstone Pharmacy, said many shops had closed and that staff had been making deliveries on foot to ensure vulnerable customers received their medication.

Staff member Mrulal Gudadhe said the business had seen nearly no customers walk through the door since Monday.

He added: “The pharmacy is completely dead. There are no people. Streets are empty and everything is closed. But we are open, we are still working.”

As a result of the major incident, the operation is now being managed by Surrey Local Resilience Forum, with Surrey County Council (SCC) as the lead agency.

Investigations were continuing to make the area safe and to repair utilities, SCC said.

Carl Bussey, the council’s assistant director for safer communities, said: “Residents from within the cordon – around 30 properties – are being supported by Tandridge District Council with advice around accommodation.”

In an updated statement, Mr Bussey added that properties in the wider area “have access to water and power as normal” and affected properties had been confined to within the cordon.

More permanent repairs will be carried out “once the site is deemed safe to work in”, he added.

The Environment Agency said there was no evidence of pollution caused by the hole.

Godstone MP Claire Coutinho thanked engineers for their work and said her team would be in “regular contact” with Tandridge Council and Surrey County Council to ensure those evacuated “receive the necessary support in the coming days and weeks”.

On Wednesday morning, SES Water said it had restored supplies to properties, but warned water may appear discoloured.

The company said there was no risk to health and customers would receive compensation in their bills.

Repairs are expected to take several months.

The cause of the sinkhole remains unclear, but experts at the British Geological Survey (BGS) say it could be caused by a burst water main.

Andrew Farrant, BGS regional geologist in south east England, says that weak sandstone lies beneath the village and this would normally be stable, but if there was a sudden influx of water it could “flush out weak sandstone bedrock”.

This would create a void and then the overlying ground would collapse into it.

Mr Farrant suspects the water could come from a burst water main in the local area.

Locals have raised concerns about a local sand quarry and historic mining activities, which had created caves near the village.

The old sand mine has now been filled in so BGS think it’s unlikely to be the reason, but they say they cannot rule out that there are other sand mines not mapped or that the roof of a historic cave has collapsed somewhere else which cause the initial failure of the water pipe.

Additional reporting by Science reporter Esme Stallard.

MPs have warned against “ageist stereotyping” that characterises older people as stockpiling wealth as younger generations struggle.

A report from the Commons’ women and equalities committee said the portrayal was normalising “ageist attitudes”.

They criticise depictions of baby boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 and now in their 60s and 70s – as either frail or enjoying a life of luxury at the expense of their children and grandchildren.

The report also hits out at what the authors say was a failure by previous governments to address digital exclusion of older people as services, particularly around banking and health, increasingly move online.

The UK’s population continues to get older overall, with 11 million people in England and Wales now aged over 65, and more than half a million people aged over 90.

In its report, the committee said the portrayal of older people as “wealth-hoarding ‘boomers’” was “highly prevalent across all media in the UK”.

An example might be the “OK Boomer” meme used to dismiss older people’s opinions by suggesting they are out of touch.

It also said discussion of intergenerational fairness tended to “pit younger and older generations against each other in a perceived fight for limited resources”.

The MPs pointed to a 2020 report from the Centre for Ageing Better, which looked at the portrayal of older people on television, in magazines and in advertising.

They also said witnesses to their inquiry, on the rights of older people, said older people were “frequently stereotyped as wealthy “boomers” living comfortable lives in homes they own while younger generations struggle on low incomes, unable to afford to enter the housing market and struggling with high rents”.

The Commons committee wants to see a crackdown on these sorts of stereotypes by watchdogs including the Advertising Standards Authority and the broadcast media regulator Ofcom.

On average individual wealth increases with age, peaking in the 60-to-64 age group at a level nine times as high as the 30-to-34 age group, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Younger generations are also less likely to own their own home than their predecessors.

However, the report pointed to evidence suggesting this ignores inequalities within generations.

Some older people are also still at high risk of “digital exclusion”, MPs believe, because they do not have the skills to access online banking, council or GP services – despite the government launching a digital inclusion strategy 10 years ago.

Latest figures from Ofcom say nearly one-in-three people (29%) aged over 75 do not have access to the internet at home, compared to roughly one-in-16 (6%) of all adults.

The Commons report concludes that existing laws against age discrimination are too weak and “failing older people” because they are rarely enforced, despite evidence of the harm such attitudes cause.

Committee chairwoman Sarah Owen, a Labour MP for Luton North, said it was time for a review of how to shrink the UK’s “pervasively ageist culture” and bring in enforcement with teeth.

“It is a considerable failure of government that the digital inclusion strategy has not been updated, nor progress tracked, for a decade,” she said.

“Ultimately much more must be done to tackle ageist attitudes and discrimination across society, including in access to healthcare, local services, banking and transport.”

Owen is calling for the UK government to follow the Welsh example of establishing a commissioner for older people alongside community champions to deliver a national strategy.

A government spokesperson said: “The Equality Act contains strong protections for older people in a variety of settings, including work and the provision of services.

“We recognise the importance of older people and the challenges they face. That is why we are putting more money into pensioners’ pockets through our commitment to the triple lock – which is set to increase the state pension by up to £1,900 this Parliament.”

Kevin Spacey has responded to fellow actor Guy Pearce’s allegation that the Oscar-winner “targeted” him during the making of 1997 movie LA Confidential, telling the Australian to “grow up”, adding: “You are not a victim”.

It comes after Pearce – one of the stars of the recent Bafta-winning film The Brutalist – this week expanded on his alleged experiences with the US actor having previously called him “a handsy guy” in 2018.

Spacey – whose career was brought to a halt by a string of allegations – admitted to “being too handsy” and “pushing the boundaries”, in an interview last year with Piers Morgan, while saying he’d not done anything illegal.

In 2023 the actor was found not guilty of all charges of sexual assault against four men between 2001 and 2013 after a trial in London; and in 2022 a US court dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit against him.

Pearce told the Hollywood Reporter that the Oscar-winner “targeted me, no question” during the making of the 1997 crime thriller LA Confidential.

“But I did that thing that you do where you brush it off and go, ‘ah, that’s nothing. Ah, no, that’s nothing’. And I did that for five months,” he said.

“And, really, I was sort of scared of Kevin because he’s quite an aggressive man. He’s extremely charming and brilliant at what he does – really impressive etc.

“He holds a room remarkably. But I was young and susceptible, and he targeted me, no question.”

Pearce revealed he had told his wife at the time that he felt safe on set when his co-star Simon Baker was present, because Spacey allegedly focused his attentions on him instead.

He said the #MeToo movement, which saw allegations made against many men in Hollywood from 2017 onwards, had been “a really incredible wake-up call” for him.

The actor said he “broke down and sobbed” and “couldn’t stop” after he saw the allegations against Spacey in the news headlines. “I think it really dawned on me the impact that had occurred and how I sort of brushed it off and how I had either shelved it or blocked it out or whatever.”

On Tuesday, Spacey responded directly to Pearce in a video posted on X, saying: “If I did something then that upset you, you could have reached out to me.

“We could have had that conversation, but instead, you’ve decided to speak to the press, who are now, of course, coming after me, because they would like to know what my response is to the things that you said.

“You really want to know what my response is? Grow up.”

Spacey claimed Pearce omitted to mention he had flown to Georgia a year after LA Confidential was made “just to spend time with me” while he was filming another movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

“I mean, did you tell the press that too, or does that not fit into the victim narrative you have going?” he added.

“I apologise that I didn’t get the message that you don’t like spending time with me. Maybe there was another reason, I don’t know, but that doesn’t make any sense. That you would have just been leading me on, right? But here you are now on a mission, some 28 years later, after I’ve been through hell and back.”

Spacey concluded his message by saying he was happy to have a “conversation” with Pearce “anytime, anyplace”.

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said. “But Guy – you need to grow up. You are not a victim.”

Pearce earlier told the US publication he had raised Spacey’s alleged behaviour with him years later, and had “had a couple of confrontations with Kevin” that “got ugly”.

His new strategy these days, he noted, was “just try to be more honest about it now and call it for what it is”.

Four women who allege they were sexually abused by the social media influencer Andrew Tate have urged the US not to interfere in his case in Romania.

The women said they were “extremely concerned” by reports that US officials had asked Romania to relax travel restrictions against Tate and his brother, Tristan Tate, who have dual UK-US nationality.

Lawyer Matthew Jury, who is representing the four alleged victims, told the BBC they were “absolutely bewildered why the Trump administration has decided to interfere in this way”, although Romania denies being pressured by the US.

Tate, 38, and his brother were arrested in Romania three years ago and face trial on allegations of rape, trafficking minors and money laundering, all of which they deny.

Separately, the brothers are wanted by police in the UK over allegations of rape and human trafficking, which they also deny. Their extradition to the UK will be dealt with once the Romania case finishes.

Representatives for the Tates said they had no comment on the latest development.

The Financial Times newspaper first reported that US officials had brought up the case with the Romanian government last week, and it was then followed up by Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell at the weekend.

One source told the paper that a request had been made by the US to return the brothers’ passports to them so they could travel while waiting for the criminal case against them to finish.

The Tate brothers are currently banned from leaving Romania, although are no longer under house arrest.

Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu confirmed to Euronews that Grenell had raised Tate’s case with him, and that Grenell had said he was “interested in the fate of the Tate brothers”. The minister denied this amounted to pressure from Americans.

A spokesperson for Mr Hurezeanu told the Financial Times: “Romanian courts are independent and operate based on the law, there is due process.”

Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu also denied the reports on X, writing: [The US] has not made any requests to [Romania] upon the legal situation of well-known foreign influencers investigated by the Romanian authorities.

“There were no demands either during the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs- Richard Grenell discussion or after it. Romania and USA share the same values regarding the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens.”

According to the FT, Grenell said he had no “substantive conversation” with Hurezeanu, but added: “I support the Tate brothers as evident by my publicly available tweets.”

The US State Department has been approached by the BBC for comment.

The Tate brothers have wide support on right-wing social media, and supported Trump during the US election campaign.

Lawyer Mr Jury said: “It’s very clear from members of the Trump administration’s social media posts and public statements that there is a great deal of support for Tate.

“Either they don’t know or they don’t care about the nature of the allegations and how serious they are,” he told BBC Newsnight.

He said the women he represented were “absolutely distraught”.

“To see the most powerful man in the world support their alleged abuser, is incredibly traumatising… it’s gaslighting of a sort.”

And he called the reported US actions a “gross interference in my clients’ right to a fair trial and due process”.

Mr Jury is representing the four women in a civil case against Tate at the High Court in the UK, after the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute their case. The Tate brothers deny the claims.

The civil case is separate to the criminal allegations currently being investigated by British police.

In their statement, the four women added: “We hope that the Romanian and the UK authorities will be left alone to do their jobs.”

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick also warned the US not to interfere, saying the Tate brothers “must face our justice system”.

“No obstacles should be placed in the way of UK authorities. The government must make that clear to US counterparts.”

Tate is a self-described misogynist and has previously been banned from social media platforms for expressing those views.

A former kickboxer, he has gained millions of followers online and has lived in Romania for a number of years, having previously been based in the UK.

Actress Kim Sae-ron‘s death in an apparent suicide has renewed criticism of South Korea’s entertainment industry, which churns out stars but also subjects them to immense pressure and scrutiny.

Kim – who was found dead aged 24 at her home in Seoul on Sunday – had been bombarded with negative press coverage and hate online after a drink-driving conviction in 2022. Police have not provided further details about her death.

Experts found the circumstances leading to it depressingly familiar. Other celebrities also ended up taking their lives after careers upended by cyberbullying.

As Kim was laid to rest on Wednesday, analysts say they are not optimistic her death will lead to meaningful change.

South Korea’s entertainment industry is enjoying massive popularity. Today, there are more than an estimated 220 million fans of Korean entertainment around the world – that’s four times the population of South Korea.

But there is also increasing spotlight on the less glamorous side of the entertainment industry.

South Korea is known for its hyper-competitive culture in most spheres of life – from education to careers. It has one of the highest suicide rates among developed countries. While its overall suicide rate is falling, deaths of those in their 20s are rising.

This pressure is heightened in the case of celebrities. They face immense pressure to be perfect, and are subjected to the demands of obsessive “super fans” who can make or break careers.

That is why even the slightest perceived misstep can be career ending. Kim Sae-ron became so unpopular, scenes featuring her were edited out of shows such as Netflix’s 2023 drama Bloodhounds.

“It is not enough that the celebrities be punished by the law. They become targets of relentless criticism,” Korean culture critic Kim Hern-sik told the BBC.

He referred to K-pop artists Sulli and Goo Hara, who died by suicide in 2019 after long battles with internet trolls, even though they did not have known brushes with the law.

Sulli had offended fans for not conforming to the K-pop mould, while an internet mob had targeted Goo Hara over her relationship with an ex-boyfriend.

Cyberbullying has also become a money-making gig for some, Kim Hern-sik told the BBC.

“YouTubers get the views, forums get the engagement, news outlets get the traffic. I don’t think [Kim’s death] will change the situation.

“There needs to be harsher criminal punishment against leaving nasty comments,” he says.

Kim Sae-ron’s father has blamed a YouTuber for her death, claiming the controversial videos they published caused her deep emotional distress.

Others have pointed fingers at some local media outlets, who reportedly fuelled public animosity against Kim by reporting the unverified claims.

“This cycle of media-driven character assassination must stop,” civic group Citizens’ Coalition for Democratic Media said in a statement on Tuesday.

Na Jong-ho, a psychiatry professor at Yale University, likened the spate of celebrity deaths in South Korea to a real-life version of Squid Game, the South Korean Netflix blockbuster which sees the indebted fighting to the death for a huge cash prize.

“Our society abandons those who stumble and moves on as if nothing happened.. How many more lives must be lost before we stop inflicting this destructive, suffocating shame on people?” he wrote on Facebook.

“Drunk driving is a big mistake. There would be a problem with our legal system if that goes unpunished. However, a society that buries people who make mistakes without giving them a second chance is not a healthy one,” Prof Na added.

Last year, the BBC reported on how “super fans” in the notorious K-pop industry try to dictate their idols’ private lives – from their romantic relationships to their daily activities outside of work – and can be unforgiving when things go off script.

It is no surprise that Kim Sae-ron chose to withdraw from the public eye after her DUI conviction, for which she was fined 20 million won (£11,000) in April 2023.

It is worth noting however, that not all public figures are subject to the same treatment. Politicians, including opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, also have past drink-driving convictions but have been able to bounce back – polls show Lee is now the country’s top presidential contender.

In South Korea, it is “extremely tough” for artistes to recover when they do something that puts a crack in their “idol” image, says K-pop columnist Jeff Benjamin.

He contrasts this to entertainment industries in the West, where controversies and scandals sometimes even “add a rockstar-like edge” to celebrities’ reputations.

“While no one cheers when a Hollywood celebrity is arrested for DUI [driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs] or sent to jail for significant crimes, it’s not necessarily career-ending,” he says.

While the Korean entertainment industry has made moves to address performers’ mental health concerns, it is unclear how effective these have been.

Real change can only happen when there is no more financial or attention incentives to continue with such intrusive reporting, says Mr Benjamin.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this story you can find information and support on the BBC Actionline website here.

Additional reporting by Jake Kwon in Seoul

US President Donald Trump has appeared to accuse Ukraine of being responsible for the war with Russia, in a flurry of claims from his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida.

Speaking to reporters, Trump also made claims about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s popularity and observed that Ukraine had yet to hold scheduled elections due to martial law.

Trump’s comments – some of which appeared to mirror common Russian talking points about the war – came just hours after US officials met with a Russian delegation in Riyadh to open talks to end the conflict, which has raged for almost three years.

Zelensky later accused Trump of “living in a disinformation space” created by Russia.

BBC Verify has fact-checked Trump’s claims.

Ukrainian authorities expressed dissatisfaction over not being part of Tuesday’s talks in Riyadh. But Trump dismissed these concerns, telling reporters that Ukraine had had three years to end the war, before appearing to blame Kyiv for starting the conflict.

“You should have never started it,” he said. The Kremlin has previously accused Ukraine of starting the war against Russia.

“It was they who started the war in 2014. Our goal is to stop this war. And we did not start this war in 2022,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told US talk show host Tucker Carlson in February 2024.

Ukraine didn’t start the war. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, having annexed Crimea in 2014.

The annexation came after Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was ousted by popular demonstrations.

Russia also backed proxy forces who seized areas of eastern Ukraine, and it accused the new government in Kyiv of discrimination and genocide against Russian speakers. The International Court of Justice has rejected Moscow’s claims.

After the failure of agreements which aimed to end the post-2014 conflict – Russia began a massive build-up of troops on its border with Ukraine in late 2021.

Putin launched the invasion on 24 February 2022, stating that the aim of the operation was to “demilitarise and denazify” the pro-Western government of Volodymyr Zelensky and prevent the country from joining Nato.

In Ukraine’s last parliamentary elections, support for far-right candidates was 2%. It should also be noted that Zelensky is Jewish and that his party has been regarded as centrist.

And while Nato officials said in 2021 that Ukraine was a candidate to join the Western alliance in the future, it was not part of any formal process.

President Trump also claimed that Zelensky’s approval rating has fallen to 4%.

It’s unclear what source the president was citing as he didn’t provide evidence. We have asked the White House to clarify this.

A survey conducted this month found that 57% of Ukrainians said they trusted the president, according to the Ukraine-based Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

However, that was down from 77% at the end of 2023, and 90% in May 2022 – suggesting that the president has suffered a drop-off in his popularity.

Some other polls suggest Zelensky trailing his nearest rival, former army chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, in the first round of any future election, indicating the two would face each other in a run-off.

Official polling is limited and it is extremely difficult to carry out accurate surveys during a time of war. Millions of Ukrainians have fled and Russia has occupied around a fifth of the country.

In the wake of Trump’s comments, some major Russian media outlets seized on the claim and cited a poll carried out by Ukrainian MP and Zelensky critic, Oleksandr Dubinsky, on Telegram which they claimed backed up Trump’s assessment.

Dubinsky has been charged with treason in Ukraine, and accused of “operating at the behest of Russian intelligence” – which he denies.

Trump also drew attention to the fact that Ukraine has not held a presidential election since 2019, when Zelensky – previously a comedian with no political base – swept to power.

His first five-year term of office was due to come to an end in May 2024. However, Ukraine has been under martial law since the Russian invasion in February 2022, which means elections are suspended.

Ukraine’s martial laws were drafted in 2015 – shortly after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and years before Zelensky and his Servant of the People party came to power.

In November all parties in Ukraine’s parliament backed postponing elections until the war ends, a position which a survey suggests is popular with Ukrainians.

Some 60% of people were opposed to holding elections to replace Zelensky during the war, according to a survey of Ukrainians conducted in September and October by the International Republican Institute.

Zelensky has vowed to hold a new election once the conflict ends and has yet to confirm that he intends to stand. Some experts have observed that holding elections in Ukraine before the conflict ends would be practically impossible, as Russian attacks on many cities persist and millions of citizens are displaced abroad or living under Russian occupation.

Trump’s intervention on the subject came just hours after the Kremlin questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy as his term in office has ended, a claim Moscow has repeatedly made in the past months. On 28 January, Putin called Zelensky “illegitimate” in an interview with Russian media.

Referring to the electoral situation, Trump appeared aware that it has been a frequent Russian allegation, saying: “That’s not a Russian thing, that’s something coming from me, from other countries.”

For his part, Zelensky has previously said it would be “absolutely irresponsible to throw the topic of elections” in the middle of the conflict.

Additional reporting by BBC Monitoring.

The execution-style killing of an openly gay imam, Muhsin Hendricks, in South Africa has left people in the LGBTQ+ community fearful for their safety – but also determined to forge ahead with the campaign to end their marginalisation in religious circles.

Reverend Toni Kruger-Ayebazibwe, an openly gay Christian cleric, told the BBC that Hendricks was a “gentle spirit” who brought light into any room he occupied.

“The gap Muhsin leaves is massive,” she said, adding that she knew for a fact that there were “a large number of queer Muslims around the world who are grief stricken”.

The 57-year-old was shot dead in what appeared to be a hit on Saturday in the small coastal city of Gqeberha.

Initial reports that Cape Town-based Hendricks had been in Gqeberha to perform the wedding ceremony of a gay couple have been dismissed as untrue by his Al-Gurbaah Foundation.

“He was visiting Gqeberha to officiate the marriages of two interfaith heterosexual couples when he was tragically shot and killed,” it said in a statement.

It is unclear why the couples had asked Hendricks to oversee their ceremonies, but it suggests that he was pushing the boundaries, even in the last seconds of his life.

Traditional imams in South Africa rarely, if ever, perform the marriage of a Muslim to a non-Muslim – something that Hendricks clearly had no issue with.

He had, according to a faith leader that the BBC spoke to, conducted one such marriage ceremony and was on his way to conduct the next one when he was gunned down in his vehicle.

Two leading bodies that represent imams – the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) and the United Ulama Council of South Africa (UUCSA) – condemned Hendricks’ killing.

“As members of a democratic, pluralistic society, the MJC remains steadfast in advocating for peaceful coexistence and mutual respect, even amidst divergent views,” the MJC said, while the UUCSA said it condemned “all forms of extra-judicial killings”.

However, Hendricks – who did his Islamic studies in Pakistan – was a pariah in their circles, as they hold the view that Islam prohibits same-sex relations.

They pointedly referred to him as “Mr Hendricks”, rather than by religious titles like imam or sheikh.

In contrast, Hendricks’ supporters hailed him as the world’s first openly gay imam who made it possible for them to reconcile their sexuality with their Islamic faith.

That he was a trail-blazer is not surprising – South Africa’s constitution, adopted in 1996 after the end of white-minority rule, was the first in the world to protect people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation.

Then in 2006, South Africa became the first country in Africa to legalise same-sex marriage.

Once in a heterosexual marriage with children, Hendricks came out as gay in 1996 – and, according to The Conversation, he later broke another taboo by marrying a Hindu man.

He then spearheaded the formation of The Inner Circle as “an underground social and support group” for queer Muslims.

It started out at his home in Cape Town, and has “proven to be very successful in helping Muslims who are queer to reconcile Islam with their sexuality”, The Inner Circle’s website says.

Despite South Africa having a thriving LGBTQ+ scene, members of the community still face some stigmatisation and violence.

Only a few of the country’s religious groups have adopted policies that are more favourable towards the community, among them the Dutch Reformed Church and the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.

The Dutch Reformed Church was in 2019 forced by the courts to reinstate a policy it had introduced four years earlier, but then scrapped, allowing same-sex marriages and for gay and lesbian pastors to be in romantic relationships.

The following year, the Methodist Church said that while it was “not yet ready to apply for its ministers to officiate at same-sex marriages”, no congregant residing in a member country that recognised civil unions would be “prevented from entering into such a union which can be as same-sex or opposite sex couples”.

Reverend Ecclesia de Lange, the director at Inclusive and Affirming Ministries (IAM), told the BBC that even in instances where faith groups had adopted inclusive policies there were still “pockets of very strong conservatism”.

“The traditional interpretations of sacred texts continue to exclude LGBTQ+ people, so the struggle for acceptance within faith communities remains ongoing,” she said.

Senior lecturer in Islamic Studies at South Africa’s University of the Western Cape, Dr Fatima Essop, reflected on the “distressing” vitriolic content circulating on social media in the wake of Hendricks’ killing.

“I just find that completely shocking and so far removed from our… Islamic tradition, which is all about compassion and mercy and preservation of human life,” she told the BBC.

Dr Essop added that while she understood some of the strong feelings against Hendricks’ work, there was “absolutely no justification, Islamic or otherwise, for this kind of violence”.

And while the motive is unclear, Hendricks’ killing – and the negative comments that followed – was likely to make people fearful to “speak about their sexuality or sexual orientation”, Dr Essop said.

Reverend Kruger-Ayebazibwe said that while Hendricks’ shooting would make LGBTQ+ leaders rethink their security, it would not deter them from campaigning for change “because the work matters too much”.

Hendricks has already been buried at a private ceremony, though his Al-Gurbaah Foundation has pledged to organise a memorial in the near future to “honour his immense contributions”.

For Teboho Klaas, the religion programme officer at The Other Foundation, which champions LGBTQ+ rights in southern Africa, his killers may have cut his life short “but not his legacy because he has multiplied himself”.

A driver murdered a cyclist by deliberately ramming him with his car to teach him a lesson for pulling a wheelie, police said.

Victim Liam Jones, 22, died at the scene after Abdirahman Ibrahim drove into him twice as he rode his electric bike in Sheldon, Birmingham.

Ibrahim, 21, of Bonham Grove, Birmingham, struck Mr Jones before driving off when the cyclist was fatally injured crashing into a bollard, West Midlands Police said.

The defendant was convicted on Monday after a trial at Birmingham Crown Court, and is due to be sentenced on 26 March.

Police said Ibrahim’s brother, Abdullahi, was a passenger in his car when the crash happened.

Abdullahi Ibrahim, 21, of Acacia Close in Lewisham, London, pleaded guilty to assisting an offender at a hearing last April and is also due to be sentenced at the same hearing.

Abdirahman Ibrahim first came across Mr Jones and a friend when they were riding their bikes late at night on Coventry Road on 1 August 2023, police said.

He started to follow them in his Seat Leon and CCTV footage showed the car close behind Mr Jones, who was performing a “stand-up wheelie”, the force said.

The driver kept pursuing the riders and drove into Mr Jones twice on Moat Lane in Sheldon, shortly before midnight. Mr Jones was confirmed dead at the scene.

He then drove away and parked his car in another neighbourhood, while his brother called for a taxi to take them home, police said.

Det Insp Nick Barnes said Abdirahman Ibrahim was “intent on causing harm” to Mr Jones and “menacingly” pursued him.

“We believe he was angered by Liam’s showboating and wanted to teach him a lesson,” he said.

“Tragically, Liam lost his life and Ibrahim will now spend many years of his own young life in prison.”

The Russians and Americans are talking again, as European leaders and diplomats contemplate the hard choices forced on them by US President Donald Trump.

Without question, Trump’s diplomatic ultimatum to Ukraine and America’s Western European allies has cracked the transatlantic alliance, perhaps beyond repair.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky looks rattled by the abrupt change of attitude coming from the White House, though some of his many critics at home say he should have seen it coming. Well before he won re-election, Donald Trump made it clear that he was not going to continue Joe Biden’s policies.

As he arrived in Turkey on his latest trip, Zelensky deplored the fact that negotiations to end the war were happening “behind the back of key parties affected by the consequences of Russian aggression”.

But it feels like a long way from the air-conditioned room in Saudi Arabia where the Russian and American delegations faced each other across a broad and highly polished mahogany table, to the bitter cold of north-eastern Ukraine.

In dug-outs and military bases here in the snow-bound villages and forests on the border with Russia, Ukrainian soldiers are getting on with business as usual – fighting the war.

In an underground bunker at a base in the forest somewhere near Sumy, a Ukrainian officer told me he didn’t have much time to follow the news. As far as he was concerned, Donald Trump’s decision to talk to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin was “just noise”.

The commander, who asked to be referred to only by his call sign “White” has more pressing matters to consider.

Ignoring the diplomatic bombshell that has rattled Western leaders, as well as his own president, is probably the right thing to do for a battlefield officer preparing to lead his men back into the fight. Soon they will cross back into Kursk, to rejoin the fight to keep the land Ukraine has seized from Russia.

As a condition of access to Ukrainian soldiers, we agreed not to disclose precise locations or identities, except to say they are in the borderlands around the town of Sumy, and all part of Ukraine’s continuing fight in Kursk.

In a small room in a workshop tucked away in a village there was a formidable display of killing power on shelves made of planks from the sawmill propped up by wooden ammunition boxes.

On the shelves were hundreds of drones, all made in Ukraine. Each one costs around £300 ($380). The soldiers who were checking them before packing them into cardboard boxes to send them into the Kursk battlefields said that when they are armed – and flown by a skilled pilot – they could even destroy a tank.

One of them, called Andrew, was a drone pilot until his leg was blown off. He said he hadn’t thought too hard about what had been said far from here by the Americans – but none of them trusted President Vladimir Putin.

Their drones a few hours earlier had destroyed a Russian armoured unit advancing in broad daylight across a frozen snow-covered field. They showed us the video. Some of the vehicles they hit were flying the red banner of the Soviet Union instead of the Russian flag.

Sumy is busy enough during the day, with shops open and well-stocked. But once it gets dark the streets are almost deserted. Air raid alerts come frequently.

Anti-aircraft guns fire tracer into the sky for hours, aimed at the waves of Russian drones that cross the border near here to attack targets much deeper inside Ukraine – and sometimes in Sumy itself.

A big block of flats has a hole three storeys high ripped out of it. Eleven people were killed here in a Russian drone attack a fortnight or so ago. Since then, the block has been evacuated as engineers fear it is so badly damaged it might collapse.

It is part of a housing estate of identical monumental blocks built during the Soviet era. Residents still living next to the wrecked and unsafe building were going about their business, walking to the shops or their cars, swaddled against the intense cold.

Mykola, a man of 50, stopped to talk as he was walking home with his young son. He lives in the next block to the one the Russians destroyed.

I asked him what he thought of Donald Trump’s idea of peace in Ukraine.

“We need peace,” he said. “It’s necessary because there is no point in war. War doesn’t lead to anything. If you look at how much territory Russia has occupied so far, for the Russians to eventually get to Kyiv, they’ll have to keep fighting for 14 years. It’s only the people who are suffering. It needs to end.”

But no deal worth having, Mykola believed, would emerge from Putin and Trump sitting together without Zelensky and the Europeans.

Yuliia, 33, another neighbour, was out walking her Jack Russell. She was at home when the Russians attacked the block of flats next door.

“It all happened just past midnight, when we were about to go to bed. We heard a loud explosion, and we saw a massive red flash through our window. We saw this horror. It was very scary.

“Many people were outside. And I remember there was a woman hanging out – she was screaming for help – we couldn’t see her immediately but eventually she was saved from the debris.”

Peace is possible, she believes, “but they need to stop bombing us first. There can only be peace when they stop doing that. It needs to come from their side because they started this horror.

“Of course, you can’t trust Putin.”

As the last rays of the sun disappeared, Borys, a spry and upright retired colonel of 70 who served 30 years in the Soviet army stopped on his way to his car. His son and grandson, he said, are both in uniform fighting for Ukraine.

“Peace is possible,” he said. “But I don’t really believe in it. I think that justice will prevail for Ukraine. You have to be cautious.

“While Putin is there, you cannot trust Russians. Because they believe in him as if he is a religion. You won’t change them. It needs time.”

So what’s the answer – keep fighting or a peace deal?

“Ukraine needs to think about peace. But we shouldn’t surrender. I don’t see any point. We will resist until we are stronger. Europe seems like they are ready to help us. There is just no point in surrendering.”

Donald Trump, a man who seems convinced that the principles of a real-estate deal can be applied to ending a war will discover that making peace is much more complicated than just getting a ceasefire and deciding how much land each side keeps.

President Putin has made very clear that he wants to break Ukraine’s sovereignty and destroy its ability to act as an independent nation.

Whether or not Ukraine’s President Zelensky has a seat at President Trump’s conference table, he won’t agree to that. Making a peace that lasts, if it’s possible, will be a long and slow process.

If Donald Trump wants a quick peace dividend, he should look elsewhere.

Three Americans and two Russians made up the two teams at the talks in Saudi Arabia that have underscored an end to Western isolation of Moscow.

The men described the meeting as preparing the groundwork for broader “high-level” talks and agreed to reset their countries’ diplomatic relations.

Who are they and what significance will they play in the rapprochement between the two powers?

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had already spoken to his veteran Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov over the phone three days before the talks took place. He said after Tuesday’s meeting he was convinced Russia was ready for a “serious process” to end the war and the two countries would resume diplomatic relations.

Rubio has long sought an end to the war in Ukraine and voted against a $6bn US military aid package in 2024. He sees China as America’s biggest adversary and believes Beijing is happy for the US to be “bogged down in Europe”.

He has cautioned that “one meeting is not going to solve [the war]” and made clear that both Ukraine and Europe will have to be involved too: “No-one is being sidelined here.”

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz spoke after the talks of pushing for a permanent, not a temporary end to the war. But he suggested at the weekend that US deserves “some type of payback” for the billions it has paid out to Ukraine since it began.

He does not just believe that Europeans have to “own this conflict” in terms of future security guarantees. He also thinks Ukraine should share its mineral wealth in partnership with the US “in terms of their rare earths, their natural resources, and their oil and gas”.

Steve Witkoff is more of an unknown quantity. Although these were the first official talks between Russia and the US for almost two years, Witkoff was the man Donald Trump chose to send to Moscow only last week for talks with Vladimir Putin.

Ostensibly, he’s Trump’s Middle East envoy, but clearly the president’s former golf partner is far more significant than that and he is being seen as the president’s loyal and favoured dealmaker.

He was part of talks on forging Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas but was then sent to Russia to help with the exchange of US prisoner Marc Fogel for a Russian, Alexander Vinnik, in jail in America.

Russia chose two top diplomats for this initial exchange of views.

Both are veterans and know the US well: Putin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov and Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister since 2004.

They have helped Putin steer his foreign policy during three years of war, and it has been up to Lavrov to convey Moscow’s message.

Lavrov did it again on Tuesday. Explaining that the US delegation had proposed a halt to attacks on energy facilities, Lavrov said Russia had never targeted Ukraine’s civilian supply. A cruel denial of the truth when Russian attacks on the national grid have made power outages a common feature of Ukrainian life.

When he took part in doomed ceasefire talks with Ukraine shortly after the full-scale war began, Lavrov even denied there had been an invasion.

As former ambassador to the US, 77-year-old Yuri Ushakov has a good idea of how to talk to Washington. Within days of Donald Trump’s return to the White House he made clear Russia was ready for talks if the US sent “relevant signals”.

Days before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he accused the Biden administration of peak “hysteria” in suggesting Russian troops were preparing to go to war.

A third Russian was not in the room, but Kirill Dmitriev’s presence in the delegation is a mark of just how important Vladimir Putin sees the economic potential of the Saudi talks.

Dmitriev, 49, is head of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund and told reporters he would focus on future economic relations with the US: “We also need to make joint projects, including, for example, in the Arctic Region, and in other areas.”

Significantly, Dmitriev played a key role in working with Steve Witkoff in the prisoner exchange that preceded Trump’s phone-call with Putin last week, along with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman.

Dmitriev has close connections to Putin’s family – his wife is close to one of Putin’s daughters.

And few Russians know America’s finance and business sector better than Dmitriev, as a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and a graduate of Harvard Business School.

Although he is adamant Russia’s economy is doing well, 43% of the budget is going on the war and internal security, inflation is just under 10% and interest rates have hit 21%.

The two Saudi hosts chaired the start of the meeting but did not stay in the room.

Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has played an active role as top Saudi diplomat this year, visiting Lebanon and Europe and hosting an international meeting aimed at lifting sanctions on Syria.

Saudi national security adviser Musaed al-Aiban has also played a prominent part in promoting Saudi ties with Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Although Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman takes the lead on foreign policy, these two men are regularly by his side.

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, has announced a new identity for her lifestyle brand, which will be called As Ever.

Despite the social media teasers showing celebrities with pots of jam from Meghan, the previous brand name American Riviera Orchard seems to have reached a sticky end.

On a social media post, Meghan said the newly-named product range would be a joint project with Netflix, which is showing her cooking and lifestyle series, With Love, Meghan next month.

“‘As ever’ means ‘as it’s always been’ or some even say ‘in the same way as always,’” said Meghan’s post.

The recorded message, delivered in close-up by Meghan, emphasises the continuity with her former, pre-royal, lifestyle blog, the Tig.

She said that the new venture would be “beautifully weaving together everything I cherish – food, gardening, entertaining, thoughtful living, and finding joy in the everyday”.

Prince Harry, who has been at the Invictus Games in Canada, is heard briefly off-camera in the background of the recording of the Instagram posting. Their three-year-old daughter Lilibet is also seen in the distance, against a sunny Pacific sky, on the accompanying As Ever website.

The previous name American Riviera Orchard had been a reference to the part of California where she lives with Prince Harry – and Meghan said it “limited me to things which were manufactured and grown in this area”.

That name had been promoted since April 2024, when celebrities published pictures on Instagram of jars of strawberry jam, in a launch that tried to preserve a sense of mystery.

But there had also been reports of delays because of trademark problems with the original title.

If this latest announcement means the lid is going to come off a new jam war, the Californian contender will be up against Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle Strawberry Preserve, both at £7 and Highgrove Organic Preserve at £6.95.

The new As Ever brand will be a partnership with Netflix, with reports that the TV company is going to open shopping outlets which will sell merchandising connected to its shows.

“Of course there will be fruit preserves, I think we’re all clear at this point that jam is my jam,” said Meghan.

“But there’s so many more products that I just love that I use in my home and now it’s time to share it with you, so I can’t wait for you to see it.”

The launch of Meghan’s TV show was delayed by the wildfires in California, with the US state the backdrop for the series, which is expected to be a mix of cooking, hosting tips and celebrity friends and is due to run on Netflix from 4 March.

It is five years since Meghan and Prince Harry stepped down as working royals, becoming financially independent in the United States. Meghan says in her social media post, she has “poured my heart into” this forthcoming product range.

Meghan divides public opinion, with strong reactions on social media from supporters and opponents. Her fans have saluted her independence and creativity, while her opponents have already labelled the brand as “whatever”.

Appropriately, she signed off her own post: “As ever, Meghan.”

Passengers have described their amazement after most of them escaped unscathed from a plane that crash landed in Toronto on Monday afternoon.

The Delta flight skidded along the runway in flames before flipping over and coming to a dramatic halt upside down, losing its tail and an entire wing in the process.

Some of the 80 people on board were then left hanging upside down while still strapped to their seats, before they scrambled over luggage to escape onto the snowy runway.

No deaths have been reported after the incident, which is under investigation.

Analysts have suggested the harsh winter weather may be to blame, or that the plane landed badly. They have also credited the plane’s safety features with saving lives.

The incident took place shortly after 14:00 local time on Monday (19:00 GMT).

It involved a model CRJ-900 plane, operating as Delta Air Lines flight DL4819.

The aircraft arrived at Toronto from the US city of Minneapolis and was carrying 76 passengers and four crew members.

As it landed, the plane appears to have struck the runway, slid for some distance and then flipped over, observed Dan Ronan, a journalist and pilot licensed by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) who spoke to BBC News.

Footage obtained by TMZ showed part of the aircraft bursting into flames as the landing happened. Firefighters rushed to put these out.

Passenger Pete Carlson told broadcaster CBC it was “a very forceful event”, recalling the sound of “concrete and metal” at the moment of impact.

He and others on board were suspended upside down in their seats, and had to release themselves onto the cabin ceiling before leaving the inverted aircraft.

All 80 people on board survived. On Tuesday morning, Delta said 21 injured passengers were initially transported to local hospitals – with 19 later released.

Delta has promised to give more updates.

BBC Verify has analysed recordings of communications between the plane and air traffic control.

At no point in discussions was there anything to suggest trouble was anticipated with the landing.

This was confirmed by Marco Chan, a former pilot and a senior lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University in the UK, and plane crash investigator Ismo Aaltonen, who also listened to the audio recording.

Mr Chan also said the plane appeared to have made a hard landing – involving an unusually high rate of descent.

It seems to have touched down with one wheel first, Mr Chan told the BBC, which might have caused the landing gear to collapse on impact. This could have lead to the right wing hitting the runway and in turn causing the plane to roll.

The weather may also have been significant. The airport fire chief stated that the runway was dry at the time of the incident.

Airport authorities had said earlier that although recent heavy snow had stopped, “frigid temperatures and high winds [were] moving in”.

As the plane came in to land, air traffic controllers told the pilots of 38mph (61km/h) gusts and the possibility of a “slight bump in the glide path”, CNN reported.

The pilots appear to have attempted what is known as a crab manoeuvre, Mr Ronan said. This involves turning a plane into the wind, and then directly onto the runway at the last moment.

“The sheer survivability of this is really amazing,” Mr Ronan told the BBC, pointing out that the aeroplane’s fuselage (body) had stayed intact.

Other commentators hailed the craft’s safety features. CNN analyst and former FAA inspector David Soucie said the plane had broken apart as it had meant to, with the detachment of the wings stopping the fuselage ripping apart.

Graham Braithwaite, professor of safety and accident investigation at the UK’s Cranfield University, said planes were also designed so that air passengers involved in an accident did not hit things likely to cause injury.

“Even the design of the seat back or the tray table is all part of how we consider making that survivable space,” he told the BBC. “And the seatbelt that people have is so important – that is the ultimate thing that stops people being thrown around the cabin like this,” he added.

The flight attendants have also been praised for getting everyone off the flipped aeroplane quickly. Emergency crews on the ground were labelled “heroic” by the airport chief after reaching the crash site in a matter of minutes.

Mr Carlson said the passengers themselves had worked together very effectively. “What I saw was everyone on that plane suddenly became very close in terms of how to help one another, how to console one another,” he said.

Mr Ronan highlighted the importance of the plane’s high-impact 16g seats, which he said were “designed to absorb a great deal of punishment”.

The seats can withstand deceleration of 16 times the force of gravity, and must pass rigorous testing using human dummies to model crash dynamics.

The seat legs, attached to a track on the floor, must be able to pitch down 10 degrees on one side and roll 10 degrees on the other side so that they do not break, said Kevin Campbell, founder of Aviation Consulting & Engineering Solutions, who is FAA-authorised to approve seats that are required to comply with the regulations.

In previous accidents, the FAA had seen seats piled up in the fronts of aircrafts, with bodies still attached in many cases, Mr Campbell said.

Mr Ronan said the regulations keep “the seat in place and bolted to the floor, so you have a higher degree of survivability in your seat itself and you have less likelihood that the seat is going to become detached, where you’re now strapped into a moving object that’s being bounced around the cabin.”

The regulations also require a passenger to be able to withstand hitting their head and legs on the seat in front of them, and seats help absorb weight in their spine so that they do not break their back. Seatbelts are also less stretchy than they used to be so the restraint is more secure.

“As a result of that aircrafts are much, much safer,” Mr Campbell said, and those factors were “absolutely” at play in improving safety in this crash.

“It really is remarkable that the seats did exactly what they were supposed to do, they stayed intact… the seatbelts worked just as they were supposed to, and the seats did not become detached from the floor,” Mr Ronan said.

“Think of how many head injuries we would have had, spinal injuries we would have had, if the seat became detached.”

This marks the fourth major air crash in North America in less than a month, and other recent incidents remain under investigation.

• All 67 people on board a passenger aeroplane and military helicopter died after the two aircraft collided in mid-air near Washington DC on 29 January
• Seven people were killed on 1 February when a medical transportation plane carrying six people crashed in Philadelphia. Another person was killed on the ground
• All 10 people were killed when a small plane came down in Alaska on 6 February

Those incidents followed another high-profile crash in South Korea in December, in which 179 people were killed.

Despite these, experts say air travel remains overwhelmingly safe – and increasingly so.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident dashboard says there were 257 fatal accidents globally in 2024, compared with 362 in 2014.

Additional reporting by Mallory Moench, Tom Joyner and Josh Cheetham

French President Emmanuel Macron got straight on the phone to Donald Trump and, separately, to Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday night, after fellow leaders of Europe’s biggest military powers left the glittering Élysée Palace in Paris.

What achievements could the French president boast? Was his emergency security summit a success?

What frustrates Europe’s detractors is there’s rarely a clear answer. Different European nations speak with different voices, though they share many values and goals.

But in the current climate of black-and-white thinking prevalent in Washington and Moscow, where the world is divided into the powerful and the weak, European nuance can count as weakness.

Under that unforgiving spotlight, Monday’s meeting failed.

Leaders had raised expectations. The summit dominated headlines as soon as it was called.

The head of the West’s defence alliance Nato, European Union chiefs and leaders of Europe’s most influential military nations scrambled together at speed.

They wanted to hijack Donald Trump’s attention. To impress him. To elbow themselves a seat at the negotiating table at the peace talks he plans with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to discuss the future of Ukraine.

Europe was – it still is – smarting at being sidelined.

Ukraine is a European nation. Its fate will impact the whole continent.

Depending how bullish President Putin emerges from any peace talks, Europe’s security services fear he could turn his attention to upending the sovereignty of other nations.

The Baltic states that neighbour Russia feel particularly exposed.

But leaders didn’t help their case on Monday.

Yes, they say they’ll spend more on their own defence, as Donald Trump demands. Despite domestic concerns about limited government budgets and a cost of living crisis.

The Paris meeting even discussed the possibility of sending European troops to Ukraine to oversee an eventual ceasefire – unthinkable even a few weeks ago for Europe.

That’s what the US president wants.

But ultimately those leaders in Paris failed to deliver a strong, united, sum-it-up-in-a-line-tweet response, that might have made the impatient businessman-cum-US president sit up and really take notice.

The reasons for this are many, despite the sense of urgency in Europe about Ukraine and European security more broadly.

A number of Europe’s leaders are furious at feeling they have to dance to Donald Trump’s tune.

The frustration that poured out of the mouth of the normally phlegmatic German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was palpable when he left the Paris meeting.

“It is completely premature and a completely wrong time to have this discussion [on sending European troops to Ukraine] now. I’m even a little irritated by these debates.”

He insisted that there must be equal division between the US and Europe on responsibilities in Ukraine.

Scholz is likely to be out of a job soon. There are elections in Germany on Sunday, which he is widely expected to lose.

He’s had a couple of uncharacteristically emotional outbursts at home too of late, presumably under the strain.

Still, it’s important to note that he is far from alone amongst European leaders, who suspect Donald Trump is in a hurry to wash his hands of Ukraine and pivot his attention elsewhere. Perhaps China?

They worry too that the US president not only intends to deplete the defence umbrella his country has offered its European allies since the end of World War Two, but that Europe may now need to defend itself against him and his policies.

The tone the UK prime minister struck after the Paris meeting was in stark contrast to these darker European broodings.

He is openly keen to use the “special relationship” the UK hopes it still has with Washington as a bridge between Europe and the US.

One that Sir Keir Starmer is determined not to burn, telling voters at home that European security was in their national interest.

He appeared determinedly unfazed at Russia’s face-to-face preparation talks with the US in Saudi Arabia.

No date for that big-ticket summit between Trump and Putin has yet been set.

Sir Keir hopes to grab a window of opportunity to press Europe’s case when he heads to Washington for a meeting of his own with the US president next week.

The US must stay by its allies’ side, the prime minister has declared.

If it doesn’t, Europe’s leaders will have to keep meeting untill they can agree a way forward for Ukraine and their common security.

Should they fail again, long shadows over the stability of this continent will grow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said his country won’t accept peacekeeping forces from Nato countries in Ukraine under any peace deal, following high-level talks with the US in Saudi Arabia.

“Any appearance by armed forces under some other flag does not change anything. It is of course completely unacceptable,” he said.

Russia and the US said they had agreed to appoint teams to start negotiating the end of the war.

“Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey, but an important one”, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said following the meeting.

Ukraine was not invited to the talks, which its president Volodymyr Zelensky said was a “surprise”.

The meeting in Riyadh was the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russian and American delegations are known to have met face-to-face.

Also at the meeting in Saudi Arabia were US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, as well as Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov and the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev.

Afterwards, Lavrov said the US and Russia would appoint ambassadors to each other’s countries as soon as possible and create conditions to “restore co-operation in full”.

“It was a very useful conversation. We listened to each other, and we heard each other,” he said.

He reiterated Russia’s previous position that any expansion of the Nato defence alliance – and Ukraine joining it – would be a “direct threat” to Russia.

Rubio meanwhile said he was “convinced” Russia was “willing to begin to engage in a serious process” to end the conflict.

“There has to be concessions made by all sides. We’re not going to predetermine what those are.”

European leaders held a hastily-arranged meeting in Paris on Monday to discuss their response to the apparent rapprochement between Russia and the US under President Trump – but did not agree a unified position.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said any Ukraine deal would require a “US backstop” to deter Russia from attacking its neighbour again and said he would consider deploying UK troops to Ukraine.

But Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a key Nato ally, said for his part, discussing sending troops to Ukraine at present was “completely premature”.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk also said he does not intend to send troops, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni – the only European leader to attend Trump’s inauguration – expressed doubts.

She told the meeting in Paris that deploying European troops would be “the most complex and the least effective” way of securing peace in Ukraine.

In Riyadh, Rubio said the European Union was going to “have to be at the table at some point because they have sanctions as well that have been imposed”.

On the absence of Ukraine at the meeting, he insisted “no one is being side-lined”.

“Everyone involved in that conflict has to be OK with it, it has to be acceptable to them,” he added.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky looked visibly tired and upset when he gave his reaction to the meeting during a news conference in Turkey.

“We want everything to be fair and so that nobody decides anything behind our back,” he said.

“You cannot make decisions without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine.”

He will be alarmed by all the smiles on both American and Russian faces in Riyadh, but he will know that he can do little to change whatever they agree on over his head.

The Ukrainian president will also know that his country’s chances of resisting – let alone defeating – Russian troops without American help are very slim.

“I was crying,” says Alya, when she saw news of last week’s Munich attack that left a toddler and her mother dead.

“Why should someone do something like that? Why? I can’t understand it.”

An Afghan man’s in custody after what was the latest in a series of attacks in German cities where the suspect has been an asylum seeker.

Last Thursday it was a mother and daughter in Munich; last month another child and an adult were killed in Aschaffenburg.

Alya came here a decade ago from Syria with her baby son. Now 10, he and his mother welcome me into their home.

They were among a record 1.2 million people who applied for asylum in Germany from 2015-16, many of them from Syria but also from countries including Afghanistan and Iraq.

The attacks have put security and migration front and centre of an election campaign, days before Germans vote on their next government on 23 February.

Alya despairs of those who commit violence in a country that, she says, has “given us everything”.

The BBC first heard their story a decade earlier when they were filmed at a refugee centre in the city of Oberhausen.

Rami looks at a photo of himself from 2015. He’s tiny, enveloped in a life jacket from when his mother fled war-torn Syria.

“How could I go with him in that boat?” she asks herself, remembering how they crossed the Aegean Sea with 60 others, packed in a small boat.

“I didn’t know I’d gone through that,” says Rami. It scares him to see it now.

Ten years on, Alya has trained in elderly care and re-married. She is looking for work, while Rami goes to a local school and is a passionate football fan.

They both speak German: Rami has grown up with the language and Alya has studied it.

They’re grateful to their adopted country and plan to stay; Rami has dreams of becoming a doctor, policeman or footballer.

Mother and child have, unsurprisingly, changed in the past 10 years.

So has Germany.

Back in 2015, there were scenes of sweets being handed out to refugees arriving at Munich train station, as an unparalleled number of people fled to Europe due to conflict, instability or poverty.

German Willkommenskultur, or Welcoming Culture, was encapsulated when the then chancellor, Angela Merkel, declared: “We can manage this.”

For her supporters, it was a pragmatic and compassionate reaction; for her critics, one of her most unforgivable mistakes.

A decade later and anyone I have spoken to agrees that attitudes have hardened, in society and politically.

Alya says she has “lots of German friends” but has detected the broader change in mood in Germany and mentions hearing the phrase Ausländer raus – foreigners out.

However she is “very sad” about refugees and migrants who don’t learn German or, in her view, have failed to properly integrate.

“The key to this country is the language,” she says, while adding: “There’s also a positive side that a lot of people have learned the language and they’ve started to work.”

Near Oberhausen’s main park, Georg, 66, says he gets on with people from all backgrounds but worries about cases of “radicalisation.”

He has lived in the city most of his life and used to work as a car mechanic and tiler. He mourns what he sees a general decline in Oberhausen, pointing to because of ageing infrastructure and a lack of investment.

Many in Germany also talk of a wish for greater public safety and a disillusionment with the parties that have governed the country since reunification.

Germany’s outgoing government has reimposed border controls as it tries to bring down the number of asylum seekers, and opposition parties want to go further.

Georg says it’s a difficult issue but believes there needs to be security: “No matter who’s in charge. Not like it is right now. It has to change.”

Before Europe’s migration crisis, Oberhausen was already a multicultural city.

Local government figures show that in 2010, 22% of people in Oberhausen were either not born as German citizens or had one immigrant parent.

By 2016, that figure had risen to 28% while the latest figure, from 2023, was up to 37%.

Walking through the centre, the strained nature of Germany’s migration debate becomes quickly evident.

Around one corner, there’s a demonstration against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party which has embraced the concept of “remigration”; a phrase widely understood to mean mass deportations.

On the main street, an AfD party stand has been put up, but it soon attracts shouts of “Nazis.”

Two men of colour end up in a heated argument with party activists which we are openly filming.

We hear one of the AfD campaigners, who we’d been speaking to earlier, say: “Go back to your Heimat (homeland) if you don’t like this here.”

When I challenge this man, Jörg Lange, afterwards, he denies the remark was racist.

A city councillor, he tells me voters will have their say and voices scepticism that one of the men grew up here, despite their fluency in the language.

“Would you have said the same thing to a white person?” I ask.

“No, of course not,” Mr Lange replies – but again denies it’s racist.

“He personally attacked me,” says Mr Lange. “He said ‘you’re a Nazi’. And then of course you have to say that if something doesn’t suit you here in Germany then you can go back. Then leave us alone here.”

Police arrive, during which time I talk with the two men involved in the argument, Kwame and Prathep, who are both in their thirties.

“He told us to go back!” says Kwame while Prathep says going “back” would mean going about, “Three streets away from here.”

“We went to school over here, we grew up over here… we have kids here,” they tell me. “We pay taxes, we pay a lot of taxes!”

I ask the pair about whether their role in the altercation is adding to the rising temperature of political debate.

Kwame, who used the term “Nazis” in the argument, says the “derogatory” language he hears about people of colour “triggers” him. “We feel like, wow, are we still in the same place right now?”

A dance choreographer, he tells me he came to Germany from Ghana aged 13 while Prathep describes how he was born in the city.

“I’m a German,” says Prathep. “I’m proud of this city,” chimes in Kwame. “Wherever I go in the world [I say] I’m from Oberhausen.”

Both think their community has become “drastically” more divided in recent years.

The political climate, which includes consistently strong polling for the AfD, has led to a toughening of language by some of Germany’s main political parties.

The conservative Christian Democrats who lead the polls have called for a “border ban” on anyone entering Germany without the right papers, even if they’re seeking protection.

The Social Democrats have pledged to speed up asylum procedures and boost deportations.

The AfD want to close Germany’s borders and leave the common European asylum policy.

Alya hopes that Germany will keep its doors open to refugees: “There’s still war everywhere. And the people need this… maybe there are very good people running away from war.”

The future of Germany’s migration policy will depend on which parties form a coalition after this election, and what they can agree on.

But a rightward shift is already underway, in reality and rhetoric.