As the number one importer of Iranian oil, China has a major problem with any constriction of exports in the Gulf – including the US blockade of Iran’s ports, which began on Monday.

Beijing has condemned the US blockade, calling it “irresponsible and dangerous”.

It has also reportedly sought to play peacemaker in the conflict, steering its ally Iran towards talks with the US in Pakistan last weekend.

But the blockade creates a serious political, economic, and possibly military risk that both the US and China will want to avoid.

The BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner explains why China’s role in the conflict is too big to be ignored.

Staff at the BBC were told about the redundancies during a company-wide meeting on Wednesday afternoon

The BBC has revealed its largest workforce reduction in almost 15 years, confirming it will axe 2,000 jobs as part of sweeping cost-cutting measures.

The broadcaster is targeting a 10% reduction in running costs over the coming three years in response to what bosses have called “substantial financial pressures”.

Staff were told about the redundancies during a company-wide meeting at 3pm on Wednesday. For the biggest stories in Wales first sign up to our daily newsletter here.

While the magnitude of the cuts is now confirmed insiders suggest that exact information about which departments or roles will bear the brunt of job losses remains under wraps, reports the Manchester Evening News.

It also remains unclear how BBC Wales will be affected by the redundancies.

The announcement arrives at a pivotal moment for the organisation following the departure of outgoing director general Tim Davie on April 2 after a spell marked by considerable internal and external challenges.

Acting director-General Rhodri Talfan Davies is currently overseeing operations before former Google executive Matt Brittin formally takes the role on May 18. The huge reduction in headcount is seen as a significant overhaul in preparation for Mr Brittin’s appointment.

The cost-cutting drive has already started to affect prominent programming.

The BBC recently disclosed that its specialist unit covering significant national events, including royal occasions and state funerals, will be reduced to a single full-time employee with the corporation depending on freelance staff to bridge the shortfall.

This comes after an announcement at the start of last year that 130 roles would be axed from the BBC World Service in order to save £6m during the following financial year.

The broadcaster continues to face a challenging struggle for audiences as streaming giants such as Netflix and Disney+ command the market.

While the annual licence fee – the BBC’s main funding stream – increased to £180 on April 1 the corporation remains under significant political and public scrutiny to prove it offers value for money.

A special episode of the ITV soap has been dedicated to raising awareness of domestic abuse after Todd spoke of his experience

Coronation Street stars have explained the use of the colour purple in a special episode of the long-running show dedicated to raising awareness of domestic abuse.

There were difficult to watch scenes in the ITV soap on Wednesday (April 15) night as a bloodied and bruised Todd Grimshaw headed to the police station to report his husband, Theo Silverton, after he subjected him to a horrific beating after months of both mental and physical abuse.

Corrie fans thought things had come to a head when the pair split last month. But Theo didn’t make things easy for Todd as he launched his latest games, and the pair ended up reconciling, with the break-up just another part of Theo’s manipulation tactics.

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After that, things took another shocking turn when they ended up married days later, after Theo sprung a surprise wedding on Todd. Backed into a corner, Todd felt like he had no choice but to say ‘I Do’ and the news didn’t sit well with his loved ones who have become aware of just a small portion of what Todd has been subject to.

But with Todd terrified, he’s only backed Theo more, and was seen agreeing to leave with him for a new life in Belfast. In Wednesday’s (April 15) episode of Corrie, specially dedicated to the abuse storyline, Todd was seen getting his injuries documented at the police station when he locked eyes with another domestic abuse victim. It stopped him in his tracks as she appeared horrified by what she could see.

Todd was then heard telling Kit and DS Lisa Swain the true extent of what he’s been facing at the hands of Theo. He told them about the secret camera footage he’d collated to prove what was going on. He also mentioned that the late Billy Mayhew was the only one aware of the cameras, and that they’d attempted to leave Debbie Webster’s wedding early so that they could come up with an escape plan.

Theo found them, and joined them for the journey back to Weatherfield. Disaster struck when the minibus was caught up in a horrific crash which claimed the vicar’s life – after Theo intervened and stopped him escaping the vehicle before it went up in flames.

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While Todd was giving his statement, back on the street, Gary Windass cornered Theo and threatened him with a wrench. With Gary making it clear that no one would know if he were to attack him, Theo followed his orders and climbed into the van, and the pair made their way to the police station where Lisa was later seen questioning the abuser, after Kit was seen arresting him for ABH and false imprisonment.

After trying to push the blame onto Todd, Theo was held for the night in custody by Lisa. Meanwhile, Sarah took Todd to the hospital, where he collapsed outside the building and was rushed to be helped by paramedics waiting nearby.

As this was going on, Lisa was heard discussing domestic abuse with her colleague, PC Jess Heywood, with a number of scenes showing its impact on a series of extras that were featured throughout the episode, all of which had a flyer for a domestic violence survivors’ support group, in the colour purple.

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Earlier in the episode, Tyrone Dobbs, wearing a purple hoodie, was seen taking the news about Todd difficult following his own experience of domestic abuse. It was all part of a wider initiative by Corrie to highlight domestic abuse awareness, which accompanies a new video created by ITV Pictures and ITV Digital

The actors featured in the poignant video, which is now available on YouTube, play both well-known Corrie characters and guest artists and are all seen either dressed in an item of purple clothing or featuring a purple accessory, as part of a collaboration with the show’s design team as purple is the colour used globally to represent domestic violence awareness, seen as a symbol of peace, courage, survival, and dedication to ending abuse.

Both the video and episode serve to remind people of the saddening reality of how many people suffer from domestic violence, both men and women, at the hands of their partners, with sadly many cases still going unreported.

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Gareth, who plays Todd, shared how important it has felt to work on the episode. He said: “So many domestic abuse survivors have shared their experiences with us throughout this storyline, and weaving those voices into this episode, through the use of colour, felt like a powerful reminder of how widespread stories like Todd’s are.

“I haven’t seen the finished episode yet, but the moment Todd first locks eyes with another survivor in the police station was particularly raw and cathartic to film. It’s been a tough watch at times, and I think the story team – especially writer Debbie Oates and Director Gary Williams – approached this episode with both care and innovation.”

Harriet Bibby, who plays Summer, also recently said of the episode: “I think it is a really powerful episode. Debbie Oates, who wrote it, did a fantastic job because it really does tune you into the reality of things like this, you think it’s few and far between but sadly it isn’t.

“We notice throughout the episode Todd isn’t alone in this, we use the colour purple throughout the episode to signify other people who may have been in an abusive relationship in the past but are maybe in a stronger position now, having come out the other side of it. If you tune into that during the episode, I think it is really powerful, seeing those people alongside Todd’s journey as well.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — An effort to ramp up U.S. weapons production and build more ships, planes and drones will require a massive upfront investment, President Donald Trump’s budget director told a House committee Wednesday.

The testimony from Russell Vought jump-starts the White House’s push to increase defense spending to nearly $1.5 trillion in the next budget year, up from nearly $1 trillion this year, while cutting health research, heating assistance and scores of other domestic programs by about 10% overall. Such cuts do not cover mandatory spending, which includes such programs as Social Security and Medicare.

The debate over Trump’s proposal underscored the sharp divide that will shape some of the most significant policy debates going into a midterm election that will give voters the ultimate say on the direction of the country.

“For the industrial base to double or triple and build more facilities, not just add shifts, it requires multiyear agreements to purchase into the future,” Vought told lawmakers. “That cost has to be booked in this first year.”

The White House is calling for about $1.1 trillion for defense through the regular appropriations process, which typically requires support from both parties for approval. An additional $350 billion would come through a separate bill that Republicans can accomplish on their own, through party-line majority votes.

Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democratic member of the committee, said he believes in a strong national defense. But he said the idea of increasing defense by more than 40% while cutting programs that people need shows that the Republican administration’s priorities are “out of whack.”

The committee chairman, Rep. Jodey Arrington predicted the hearing would be more “amped up” than usual, and that proved to be true, beginning with his opening statement focused on criticizing Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency. Arrington, R-Texas, said he did not know of any president in his lifetime who “inherited such a complete and utter mess as President Trump did in January of last year.”

Since then, Arrington said, Trump has secured the border, cut taxes and constrained nondefense spending.

It was the beginning of several back-and-forths at the hearing.

“You know how bad this economy is when we hear Joe Biden being invoked, we hear trans people being invoked. I was waiting for Jimmy Carter to be blamed next,” Boyle said in response to Arrington’s opening remarks.

Boyle said consumer confidence is plummeting under Trump and noted a gas station he passed in Philadelphia recently was selling gas at $4.11 a gallon versus less than $3 a gallon some six weeks ago because of Trump’s “war of choice in Iran.”

Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., called the proposed defense spending increase shocking.

“We’ve never in the history of this country seen spending like this, paid for by slashing health care, education and housing,” Balint said. “Mr. Vought, yes or no, is $350 billion for the war in Iran lowering costs for Americans?”

“It is certainly not defunding child care. We fully fund child care in this budget,” Vought said, not directly answering the question.

Balint went on to incorporate Trump’s “America First” mantra in her questioning.

She said $350 billion could pay for an enhanced health insurance tax credit for 10 years and that her constituents are asking how the country can continue to spend money on wars and not find a solution to helping people afford health care.

Vought said the president has made clear he was not going to let Iran have a nuclear weapons, missiles and a navy that affect U.S. national security.

“He is doing what is necessary to keep us safe, while at the same time trying to pursue diplomacy so that we can get out of wars and lower those costs over time,” Vought said.

Vought said it was unclear how much the administration would seek to fund the war during the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30. That money would be part of an emergency supplemental spending bill and would be on top of the funds the White House is seeking to boost defense spending next year.

“Would it be more than $50 billion?” asked Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas.

“We’re still working on it,” Vought said. “I don’t have a ballpark for you.”

Two U.S. families went to Italy’s highest court Tuesday to challenge the scope of a year-old law passed by Giorgia Meloni’s government limiting citizenship claims to Italian descendants removed by more than two generations.

Their lawyer, Marco Mellone, argued before the Cassation Court that the law should apply only to people born after it took effect, potentially opening a pathway to citizenship for millions of people living in the United States and parts of Latin America. Another lawyer represented Italian descendants from Venezuela.

A decision by an expanded panel, which makes the ruling binding in lower courts, is expected in the coming weeks.

A decree by the conservative government in March 2025 put the brakes on previous rules allowing anyone who could prove ancestry after Italy’s formation in 1861 to seek citizenship. Italy’s constitutional court last month ruled the new law is valid, but Mellone said the supreme court has the power to clarify the scope of the law.

“The families involved in this case are simply descendants … from an Italian ancestor who emigrated in the late 19th century to the United States, like millions of other people, of other Italians,’’ Mellone said before the hearing. “Today they are invoking their right to Italian citizenship.”

Mellone’s case would clarify the citizenship rights of the descendants of some 14 million Italians who emigrated between 1877 and 1914, according to Foreign Ministry statistics, and beyond.

While Mellone’s case involves two families, another dozen people whose citizenship claims were stopped by the law were present outside the courthouse in solidarity.

Karen Bonadio said she hopes one day to move to Italy on the strength of her ancestry. She brought photos of her as a young girl alongside her Italian-born great-grandparents, who emigrated from Basilicata in southern Italy to upstate New York, along with their birth certificates.

“The new law says, ‘all these great-grandchildren didn’t know their great-grandparents.’ This is from 1963, I think I was 3 ½,’’ she said, showing the photograph.

At least one of Mellone’s cases had been rejected in lower courts before the new law, hinging partially on rulings that Italian emigrants who took on another citizenship before having children cannot pass on Italian citizenship.

Jennifer Daley’s case has been working its way through the Italian bureaucracy for nearly a decade. Her grandfather, Giuseppe Dalfollo, immigrated to the U.S. in 1912 from the northern province of Trento when it was under Austro-Hungarian control. He later married an Italian woman and brought her over, and at some point became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Daley said she always had a strong Italian identity that transcended her last name anglicized by U.S. immigration officials. She petitioned for citizenship because “it is truly a recognition of who I am, where I am from. It’s so much more than citizenship. It’s everything,” Daley, a historian, said by phone from Salina, Kansas.

Outside the courthouse, Alexis Traino said great-grandparents on both her maternal and paternal sides had come from Italy, where she now lives, mainly in Florence.

“My entire life, I grew up knowing — and my parents always emphasized — that I was Italian. I had a very, very strong connection with Italy,” said Traino, 34, who was waiting for documents from Italy and the U.S. when the law passed, blocking her case.

“I want to be Italian. I want to contribute to Italy and be a citizen,’’ she said.

Murray will be remembered for his razor-sharp volleying skills and the preposterous angles he conjured at the net. His returns were often unorthodox and he was fond of a lobbed service return to unsettle opponents.

Alongside his triumphs, Murray has been a staunch defender of doubles players and frequently demanded they be shown more respect.

“Doubles has its place in the game – it’s not the golden ticket that singles is, but it’s undervalued by the tour,” Murray told BBC Sport.

“As these events go longer and longer they need content, and doubles supports that.”

Murray said he was proud to have represented his hometown of Dunblane and the country of Scotland at the highest level.

“There is no history of tennis and no environment of tennis [in Scotland],” Murray told BBC Sport.

“I’d imagine the odds were against us from the start but we were able to make some good things happen.”

His mother Judy thought Jamie had the better hand-eye co-ordination of her sons when young. Jamie and Andy briefly became rivals as tennis players – and also while wrestling.

Judy once recalled: “Andy’s favourite [wrestler] was The Rock and Jamie’s was Stone Cold Steve Austin, and they used to create these bouts that they saw on the television. They used to wrestle each other on the duvet and thump each other with pillows, and create these belts and make up their own rules and scoring systems.”

Jamie is 15 months older than Andy, and as his early dominance on the tennis court started to fade Andy says he quite literally bore the brunt.

“We were coming back from Solihull in the minibus and I’d beaten Jamie in the final, I think, of the under-12s, so basically I was winding him up about that and my hand was on the hand rest,” he said in 2015.

“We were sitting next to each other and he just basically punched me on the hand – I lost my fingernail and I’ve still got the scars to show for it.”

Despite some defeats against Andy, Jamie was still very much on track for a professional singles career until a negative experience at an LTA training school in Cambridge in his very early teens.

He struggled with living away from home and the elite training environment, and even though he has never sought to blame the LTA, his forehand suffered and he has said he was never quite the same player again.

“The existence and contents of his suspected martyrdom note, along with his possession of two knives, and material downloaded from his mobile phone, demonstrate his intention to use violence against people inside the Israeli embassy and sacrifice his own life in the process – to die, in his words, ‘for the glory of God’.

Cantor Zöe Jacobs, on behalf of the senior clergy of Finchley Reform Synagogue, said: “FRS is a proud, progressive and welcoming space for all. We not only hold Jewish services and celebrations, but within our community we host a nursery, a homeless shelter, and are a safe place for refugees to gather.

A 14-year-old schoolboy shot eight classmates dead and killed a teacher in a ‘personal attack’ at his middle school in Turkey.

It is Turkey’s second school shooting in two days.

The student who carried out the shooting is believed to have used guns that belonged to his father, a former police officer.

The student concealed the weapons in a backpack, entered two classrooms and opened fire ‘randomly’.

Horrifying footage seen by Metro shows the boy firing a pistol at a girl already lying on the ground.

Eight students and one ​teacher died in the shooting in the province of Kahramanmaras, Turkey’s Interior Minister ​Mustafa Ciftci told reporters, adding that six of the wounded were ⁠in critical condition.

‘This was solely a personal attack carried out by one of our ​students, it is not a terror incident,’ Ciftci said.

Earlier, Kahramanmaras Governor Mukerrem Unluer had said ​the shooter had shot and killed himself in the commotion.

‘An eighth-grade student came with 5 weapons and 7 magazines – which we believe belong to his former police officer father – in his bag, entered ​two classrooms with fifth grade students, causing deaths and injuries indiscriminately,’ Unluer said.

Fifth-grade students ​are usually aged 10 and 11 in Turkey.

It came the day after another 18-year-old gunman, who was recently expelled, wounded at least 16 people before killing himself.

Armed with a shotgun, he opened fire on anyone he could see at a vocational high school in Siverek in the province of Sanliurfa.

CCTV captured the moment his victims were shot. Trapped victims flee along a narrow corridor right past the shooter as he reloaded.

MORE: Moment pupil returns to high school to shoot 16 people before killing himself

MORE: Man took his own life after losing all his teeth in failed dental treatment in Turkey

MORE: Gunmen ‘neutralised’ after shots fired outside Israeli consulate

Snooker star Jack Lisowski was demolished in his bid to qualify for the World Snooker Championship as He Guoquiang progressed following an impressive win

Jack Lisowski has crashed out of the World Snooker Championship after being upset in the qualifying rounds of the Crucible tournament. The World number 18 was unable to complete a comeback against He Guoqiang, who prevailed on the final day of qualification with a 10-5 win.

Snooker’s top 16-ranked players receive automatic qualification to the Crucible, celebrating its 50th edition, and a further eight players sealed their entry on Tuesday, including Stan Moody, Liam Pullen and Antoni Kowalski going through. Wednesday sees the final eight players claim their place, with Lisowski’s chances now in tatters, along with Luca Brecel, who was defeated 10-5 by Jak Jones.

Lisowski lost the opening five frames of his clash before getting on the scoreboard as Guoqiang stamped his authority on the match with a break of 138. But Lisowski was able to hit back to take the sixth frame 65-36.

It was a short-lived hope of a comeback for the 34-year-old Lisowski as Guoqiang got back to winning ways to take the seventh frame 79-33. Lisowski found some form in the eighth frame and reeled in his opponent’s scoring with a break of 90 to once again narrow the gap.

The English star was able to retain his momentum to claw another frame back to bring the score to 6-3 after a couple of visits to the table as he made it to the interval.

READ MORE: World Snooker Championship 2026: When is the draw, how to watch on TV and listen on radioREAD MORE: Snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan dubbed ‘amazing talent’ reaches Crucible aged just 19

The pair returned from the break and Lisowski missed an opportunity to continue where he left off, and Guoqiang prevailed in a back-and-forth frame as the final session got underway. Lisowski missed a key blue with the scores level to allow his opponent to take the frame.

But he was not about to give up without a fight as he claimed back-to-back frames to fire himself back into contention at 7-5. He was stopped in his tracks as Guoqiang picked up two frames of his own to put himself within touching distance of competing in the World Championship.

Guoqiang went ahead, but let Lisowski in to claim a 68-36 lead. The English star could not end the frame there, as Guoqiang capitalised on the opportunity left to him to win the frame by a single point.

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The 47th-ranked player held his nerve after a stunning opening salvo to begin the match.

Heading into this year’s tournament, Zhao Xintong will look to overcome the Crucible curse to become the first player to defend his maiden title. Last year, he prevailed over Mark Williams in the final to cap off a stunning tournament.

The draw for this year’s tournament will take place on Thursday, following the culmination of qualifying on Wednesday. The 16 seeded players will be matched up at random against the 16 qualifiers.

Guoqiang will be in the hat on Thursday morning and could be drawn against some of snooker’s biggest names in Ronnie O’Sullivan or Judd Trump.

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