A leading Middle East expert has branded Donald Trump’s decision to go to war in Iran “an absolute strategic failure”.

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international affairs editor, said the US president’s vow to bring down the Tehran regime has not come true.

His comments came after Israel defied Trump by launching retaliatory strikes against Iran in a further blow to his hopes of securing a peace deal.

It is the first time the two sides have attacked each other since a ceasefire was agreed in April.

The US joined forces with Israel in bombing Iran on February 28, with the apparent aim of bringing down the country’s ruling regime and destroying its nuclear capability.

But despite repeated claims by Trump that an end to the conflict is imminent, no agreement on a permanent ceasefire has been reached.

On Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, Bowen said “Trump is coming up against the limits of US power in the Middle East”.

He said: “What’s happening in the last 24 hours or so is another sign of the absolute strategic failure of the war that was launched on February 28.

“If you think back to then, both Trump and Netanyahu said publicly that the regime in Iran would be weakened to the point of collapse and it hasn’t been.”

Israel’s military said it carried out strikes on targets in central and western Iran early on Monday morning.

That came after Tehran launched missiles on northern Israel on Sunday.

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Radio 1 presenter Mollie King has opened up about the sudden accident that led to her taking a two-week break from the airwaves.

On Monday morning, the former Saturdays performer shared that she would be returning to Radio 1 after an accident at her home led to her taking some time off from work.

“Many of you have kindly messaged me over the past two weeks asking why I haven’t been on air – thank you so much for checking in!” she wrote on Instagram.

“After coming home late from work, I suddenly collapsed unconscious on the bathroom floor at 4am, hitting my head and face as I fell. It was a huge shock and I ended up being rushed to A&E.

“I keep thinking how grateful I am that I wasn’t on my own and had Stuart [Broad, her fiancé] to bring me round after I fell.”

Mollie went on to thank the medical staff who helped her after her accident, before sharing that the incident has been a “real wake-up call that I need to make some time to get my strength back, not just for my own health, but so I can be the best version of myself for my family too”.

She continued: “Yesterday was my first day doing anything social. After what has felt like a very long two weeks, it was amazing to get out and spend time with my girls. We even had the surprise of spotting Daddy on a big screen, which made us all smile.

“Thank you so much to everyone who has checked in on me, and for all the lovely birthday messages too. Your kindness has meant so much. I can’t wait to be back on the radio with Matt [Edmondson, her Radio 1 co-star] today.”

After initially rising to fame as a member of the chart-topping British girl group The Saturdays, Mollie joined Radio 1 as a permanent presenter in 2018.

She and her partner Stuart Broad welcomed their first child, a daughter named Annabella, in November 2022.

In January 2025, Mollie gave birth to the couple’s second daughter, Liliana.

Mollie confirmed last summer that she’d had to take time off Radio 1 to undergo surgery to treat an undisclosed medical issue, noting at the time that “everything went well and I’m doing much better now”.

This article contains spoilers for the Netflix film Office Romance.

This is perhaps reflected in some of the more adult humour showcased in Office Romance – and one graphic scene in particular.

Emmy nominee Betty Gilpin plays Sydney Bloom, Jennifer Lopez’s character’s right-hand woman, in the new Netflix comedy.

When we first meet Sydney, she’s already around nine months pregnant, and as the story progresses, she eventually gives birth right there in the office – with viewers getting to see pretty much all of it.

Suffice to say, this was achieved with the use of prosthetics, which she opened up about during a new interview with Variety.

“Honestly, I was pretty freaked out when I first saw the prosthetic vagina,” she recalled.

“I had a nervous breakdown and then I was like, ‘Oh, but I’ll be holding the ultimate working mom’s hand, Jennifer Lopez, so what could go wrong?’.”

Betty explained that there were more prosthetics used for the sequence than you might have realised, claiming: “My real legs were below a table, [I had] fake prosthetic legs, and then a puppeteer was standing at my real legs pushing an animatronic baby out of my prosthetic vagina.”

“It was insane,” she remarked.

Betty went on to share that the scene was originally even more detailed than what made it into the finished film.

She added: “The saddest part was when the scene was over and everybody but the puppeteers stayed in the room because the only way to reset was to go under and pull the fake placenta — I think the placenta is not in the movie anymore – but reach up through the prosthetic vagina that I am still zipped into, pull the placenta back and take the umbilical cord and pull it back and then pull the baby back through, and then it was time to do it again.”

Office Romance stars Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein as the CEO of an airline and the head of its legal department, who fall in love despite the company’s strict rules about workplace relationships.

While critically it hasn’t exactly gone down a storm (it currently holds a 51% score on Rotten Tomatoes while on Letterboxd, users have ranked it 2.6 stars), it has clearly gone down well with Netflix users, as it’s the platform’s number one film at the time of writing.

Many Rivals fans were perturbed after last week’s episode when they realised the show was due to take a mid-season break.

Following the mammoth success of its inaugural outing in 2024, Rivals’ second season was boosted from just eight episodes to 12 – albeit with a break in the middle.

Over the weekend, it was revealed that fans have a bit of a wait on their hands for the next run of episodes, with the latter half of the season due to air weekly on Disney+ starting in November.

The news was accompanied by a new teaser for the next part of season two, which you can check out for yourself below:

An official Disney+ synopsis for the rest of season two teases: “As Tony Baddingham and Declan O’Hara’s contest for the Cotswolds crown hits a fever pitch, Rupert Campbell-Black is forced to confront his own personal demons. Across hedonistic parties, Bonfire Night chaos, the Hampshire Hunt Ball and a turbulent Christmas, affairs unravel, alliances fracture and rivalries intensify.

“Caught in the middle of the frenzied franchise battle, Taggie O’Hara must find the courage to follow her heart while everyone else faces the consequences of ambition, power and secrets that they can no longer hide.”

Rachael Stirling will also be joining the cast as Lady Monica Baddingham’s younger sister Araminta Pemberton, with Rupert Evans and Big Little Lies’ Santiago Cabrera also playing new characters in the new episodes.

Rivals writer Laura Wade previously claimed that the cliffhanger at the end of season six was partly responsible for the mid-season pause in an effort “for those bits of story to just have a moment to sink in with viewers” and “build up some anticipation”.

“Also, we’ve got the Fifa World Cup coming up, so we’re releasing the first half before the football,” she pointed out on a more practical level.

“Get that out of the way, and then release the second half.”

Before the release date confirmed, she teased to TechRadar that the story would pick up in the autumn, noting: “On screen, [season two] runs into Christmas, which allows us to sort of parcel it out for everybody to savour the story.”

Sarah Smith, the corporation’s North America editor, has “once again been defied” by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel’s military said it carried out strikes on targets in central and western Iran early on Monday morning.

That came after Tehran launched missiles on northern Israel on Sunday.

On Radio 4′s Today programme, Smith pointed out that Israel had already angered the White House by bombing Lebanon in recent days, despite Trump’s claims that a peace deal to end the Iran war is close.

“And then, after Iran fires some missiles at Israel, he was very clear with the Israeli prime minister not to retaliate because he was worried that that could derail the peace negotiations that are going on,” she said.

“He made it clear that the Iranian missiles hadn’t done any damage, and therefore there was no need for any retaliation. And yet, very soon after that we saw that Israel did take action.

“We haven’t heard from Donald Trump since then, but he will be furious. He was very, very clear with Benjamin Netanyahu not to do this, and once again he has been defied.

“It was almost exactly a year ago that Donald Trump was answering reporters’ questions in front of TV cameras and dropped the f-bomb, surprisingly, because he was so angry with Netanyahu for firing missiles at Iran in breach of a ceasefire agreement.

“And now he says that we’re very close to a US-Iran agreement, and will be furious that he thinks that is being imperilled by Israel’s actions.”

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We’ve been talking about sex around my house a lot lately.

As my 10-year-old gets ready to enter middle school next year, he’s been getting increasingly curious about bodies, puberty, and of course, s-e-x.

He’s not interested in having sex, he’s quick to inform me – in fact, the first time I explained the physical machinations of intercourse, his initial response was, “I don’t know, I’d rather play video games.”

But he is interested in understanding sex, a circumstance that has led to a series of increasingly difficult-to-answer queries along the lines of “But what does semen look like?”.

We’ve looked at a diagram of the inside of a penis together. We found out that the hole on the tip of the penis is called the “urinary meatus”. I finally convinced him that a man doesn’t pee inside a woman to make a baby. It’s been a wild time.

I try to answer his questions as honestly as is age-appropriate while using the clinical and appropriate terms for body parts and sex acts. Sometimes, I get a little stumped or tongue-tied by questions I didn’t anticipate, like when he asked me how old you have to be to have sex. (I came up with: “There’s no set age, but you want to make sure you’re emotionally mature enough to handle it, that you’ve found someone you trust enough to take that step with, and that you have the necessary information to do it safely. Also, sex should never happen between children and adults.”)

While it’s not always easy or comfortable to have these conversations, I love that my preteen feels comfortable with himself and unashamed to approach me with any and all questions about sex and sexuality. (Although I did have to tell him recently that it’s not necessary to inform me every time he has an erection.)

I have also, throughout his life, been careful not to assume my son’s sexuality; if we talk about the idea of a future partner, I refer to a potential “boyfriend or girlfriend,” “husband or wife.” He has queer people in his life, and he knows other kids with gay parents. He knows about trans and nonbinary people, and he once told me a great joke that went: “What are a chocolate bar’s pronouns? Her/she.” The time he came home from school repeating what some boy had told him – “Boys can’t kiss each other” – I didn’t hesitate to tell him that, my dear, they can and they DO.

I am very much a parent who says gay, because my son’s sexual orientation (and potentially, gender identity) has yet to be revealed to me, and it’s imperative to me that he knows I will love and support him no matter who he turns out to be attracted to.

So, the other night, when he asked me if two men can have sex together, I had no problem telling him enthusiastically: “Of course they can!” It’s when he asked me HOW they do it that things got hairy.

Tripping over my words, I gracelessly gave him the main idea. (Clinically, and not in excessive detail, but he got the gist.)

Then I immediately started to second-guess my decision. I should have said something nebulous like, “People have different ways to kiss and touch each other,” I thought to myself, feeling the itchy discomfort I get when I overshare with another mum at soccer practice.

So later, when he thought to ask me how two women do it, I sort of pawned him off with a nonanswer and sent him to bed. (But not before he asked me if I had ever done it, to which I responded with a swift and only slightly panicked “NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS,” which I stand by.)

The next day, I was still thinking about our conversation and sitting with the vague feeling that I hadn’t handled it correctly.

In light of the “Parental Rights in Education” law passed in Florida, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in the popular lexicon, there’s been a lot of talk about how supporters are assuming that discussion about the existence of sexual orientation or gender identity and related topics is somehow sexual in nature, and thereby inappropriate for children. That is wrong.

Knowing that some families have two mommies or two daddies is not sexual information. Small children don’t sexualise things in that way, and there’s nothing inherently deviant or inappropriate about knowing that LGBTQ+ people exist.

But what about when children are old enough to be taught about sex? (And experts do agree that these conversations are perfectly appropriate for children between 9 and 12, or even younger, especially considering they are on the cusp of puberty.)

If my son is old enough to have gotten a frank explanation of the mechanics of hetero sex, why did I feel so uncomfortable giving him the same information about queer sex? Especially considering that the sex acts engaged in by queer people are also performed by straight folks.

Somehow, when he asked me about two men together, the same information had just felt instinctually more, well, sexual.

I had to look at that discomfort. How had someone as well-intentioned and liberal and frankly not even entirely straight as me fallen into the idea that gay sex is somehow dirtier or less appropriate to talk about than straight sex?

And I don’t think I’m alone. When I started trying to research the topic, I found a lot of information on how to explain the concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity to children, but practically nothing about actually talking to them about queer sex, at any age.

And what if my son does turn out to be gay? Wouldn’t my ability to provide LGBTQ-inclusive sex education then be of dire importance? Don’t I want my son to be sexually prepared, informed, and provided with the information he needs to stay safe, no matter what his sexual orientation? Who would tell him about things like safety in anal play and dental dams?

Not necessarily the teachers at his school. According to the GLSEN 2019 National School Climate Survey, only 8.2% of students (including those who received no sexual education at school) “received LGBTQ-inclusive sex education, which included positive representations of both LGB and transgender and nonbinary identities and topics.”

As a high school junior who identifies as a lesbian told The Atlantic in a 2017 article on LGBTQ-inclusive sex education, “We were informed on the types of protection for heterosexual couples, but never the protection options for gay/lesbian couples.”

Despite my attempts to resist assuming my son’s heterosexuality, when I half-answered his questions about gay sex, wasn’t I assuming it was information he didn’t need? If I was truly considering the possibility that my son might not be straight, wouldn’t I have answered him differently? Pretty sneaky, heteronormativity.

The more I Googled and the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I’d gotten it wrong. Luckily, this is no uncommon experience for a parent. I make mistakes all the time, and when I do, I think there’s great value in modelling my ability to admit it, take responsibility, and apologise.

So last night, around bedtime, when all the most important conversations seem to happen, I went back in.

“Last night, you asked me some questions about how two men and two women have sex together,” I told him, “and I think I felt a little bit uncomfortable, or nervous, and I didn’t really answer what you asked. But I thought about it more and I realised that if you’re old enough to know how straight people have sex, there’s no reason you’re not old enough to know how gay people have sex.

“So we can talk about the different ways that gay people have sex together, which, by the way, are also ways that straight people have sex together, and I will answer any questions you have.”

There was nothing dirty or inappropriate about the conversation we proceeded to have, and at the end, he just wanted to know which acts could result in pregnancy, which, hey – is really important information to have!

He even made me proud when he pivoted from a reaction of “Wow, that’s so weird” to “Actually, it just wasn’t what I was expecting. I shouldn’t call it weird,” in less than three seconds with no prompting.

Maybe as importantly, I told him that I’d felt uncomfortable talking about all this because of a prejudice I had, and that everyone has prejudices, but we have to investigate them and try to move beyond them when they come up.

I hope that’s a lesson we all can take to heart because the core belief contributing to my discomfort around the topic of talking to my son about gay sex feels to me like it’s on the same continuum of the ideas fuelling Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” and copycat bills.

To be clear, I do not think that we should be educating young children about how anybody has sex. But just as gay people are not inherently inappropriate, and education about LGBTQ topics is not inherently sexual, providing education about gay sex to children who are old enough for sex education is not any dirtier than providing them with information about straight sex.

And in the case of LGBTQ kids, it just may be vital.

Emily McCombs is the deputy editor of HuffPost Personal. She writes and edits first-person essays on all topic areas including identity (race, gender, sexuality, etc.), love and relationships, sex, parenting and family, addiction and mental health, and body politics.

This piece was previously published on HuffPost and is being shared again as part of HuffPost Personal’s “Best Of” series.

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