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Chancellor Rachel Reeves has confirmed that more people will get the next winter fuel payment after a widely-expected U-turn over eligibility.

The government was criticised for its decision in 2024 to limit the payment to those receiving pension credit or another means-tested benefit, which meant millions of older people missed out.

Reeves has now partially reversed this policy, which means that 75% of pensioners in England and Wales will receive the allowance this year.

The winter fuel payment was previously paid to all pensioners to help with energy costs during the coldest period of the year.

But in July 2024, the government said future payments in England and Wales would go only to those on low incomes who received specified benefits such as pension credit.

The changes meant that more than 10 million pensioners did not receive a winter fuel payment in 2024.

Several charities, unions, and MPs criticised the decision.

They expressed concern about the number of older people living on a relatively small income who would miss out, as well as those who do not claim pension credit despite qualifying for it.

Some Labour MPs blamed the policy for the party’s losses in the May local elections and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election.

After much speculation, Reeves announced a U-turn in June so winter fuel payments will now go to around nine million pensioners in England and Wales, with only two million missing out.

She added that the government would “continue to means-test this payment so that it is targeted and fair, rather than restoring eligibility to everyone including the wealthiest”.

Pensioners in England and Wales with annual income of £35,000 or below will get the payment.

The winter fuel payment is worth £200 for people of state pension age up to 79-years-old. People aged 80 or older will receive £300.

For households in England and Wales not receiving an income-related benefit such as Pension Credit, a shared payment will be made. For example, a couple each aged under 80 will be paid £100 per person.

It is not yet clear if Northern Ireland will also reverse means-based winter fuel payments. Last year, Northern Ireland followed Westminister and made cuts to the allowance.

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons previously said funding constraints meant the Stormont government also had to change its rules.

He later said affected pensioners would receive of one-off payment of £100 to help with heating costs.

In Scotland, the government has already announced plans for a new winter heating payment “for every single Scottish pensioner” to be introduced ahead of winter 2025.

Pensioners in Scotland in receipt of qualifying benefits, such as Pension Credit, will receive payments of £200 or £300 depending on their age, while other households will receive £100. Again this could now be reconsidered.

You don’t have to do anything.

The government says that eligible pensioners in England and Wales will automatically receive the payment this winter. It is usually paid in November or December.

For those above the state pension age who have a taxable yearly income above £35,000, they will receive the winter fuel payment but it will be clawed back through higher tax bills. This will affect around two million people.

In a household with two eligible residents, if one earns more than £35,000 and the other earns less than that, the higher-income pensioner will not receive anything and the lower-income pensioner will receive half the payment.

In order to work out who you’re in a household with, the Department for Work and Pensions cross-references data held in the benefits system.

This includes the state pension, pension credit and the Attendance Allowance which is then matched with your address.

Although the winter fuel payment is paid automatically, without a direct claim, the vast majority of those eligible in winter 2024 only received the money if they had already registered to receive pension credit.

This is a state pension top-up, which itself is worth thousands of pounds a year, and can be a gateway to other financial support, including a reduction in council tax, a free TV licence for those aged over 75, or help with NHS costs.

However, despite regular campaigns from the government encouraging take-up – and an increase in claims after the July 2024 announcement – more than half a million eligible pensioners still fail to claim it.

You could be eligible for Pension Credit if you are above state pension age and have an income of less that £218.15 a week, or less than £332.95 as a joint weekly income with your partner. Savings are also taken into account.

You can check your eligibility via the government’s online calculator.

Information is also available about how to make a claim.

There is a guide to benefits, who qualifies, and what to do if something goes wrong, provided by the independent MoneyHelper website, backed by government

Benefits calculators are also run by Policy in Practice and charities Entitledto and Turn2us

You can read more Cost of Living stories here.

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Hundreds of take down requests of social media posts are also made following a campaign by regulators.

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Flying home from his Gulf trip last week, President Donald Trump told reporters “that was a great four days, historic four days”.

Visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), he added in this trademark swagger that “the jobs and money coming into our countries, there has never been anything like it”.

Trump claimed that he was able to secure deals totalling more than $2tn (£1.5tn) for the US, but do the numbers add up?

The trip itself was an extravaganza, with the three Gulf states pulling out all the stops.

Escorts of fighter jets, extravagant welcoming ceremonies, a thundering 21-gun salute, a fleet of Tesla Cybertrucks, royal camels, Arabian horses, and sword dancers were all part of the pageantry.

The UAE also awarded Mr Trump the country’s highest civilian honour, the Order of Zayed.

The visit’s optics were striking; the region’s richest petrostates flaunted their opulence, revealing just how much of that fortune they were ready to deploy to strengthen ties with the US while advancing their own economic goals.

Before embarking on the trip, President Trump, who touts himself as a “dealmaker in chief” was clear that the main objective of the trip was to land investments worth billions of dollars. On the face of it, he succeeded.

In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reiterated a pledge to invest $600bn in US-Saudi partnerships. There were a plethora of deals announced as part of this, encompassing arms, artificial intelligence (AI), healthcare, infrastructure projects and science collaborations, and various security ties and initiatives.

The $142bn defence deal grabbed a lot of the attention as it was described by the White House as the largest arms deal ever.

However, there remains some doubt as to whether those investment figures are realistic.

During his first term in office from 2017 to 2021, Trump had announced that Saudi Arabia had agreed to $450bn in deals with the US.

But actual trade and investment flows amounted to less than $300bn between 2017 to 2020, according to data compiled by the Arab Gulf States Institute.

The report was authored by Tim Callen, the former International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission chief to Saudi Arabia, and now a visiting fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute.

“The proof with all of these [new] deals will be in the pudding,” says Mr Callen.

The BBC contacted the White House for comment.

In Qatar, Trump announced an “economic exchange” worth at least $1.2tn. However, in the fact sheet released by the White House deals worth only $243.5bn between the two countries were mentioned.

One of the Qatari agreements that was confirmed was Qatar Airways purchasing up to 210 passenger jets for $96bn from the beleaguered American aircraft manufacturer Boeing.

The White House said the deal would support 154,000 jobs in the US each year of their production, totalling one million jobs over the deal’s lifecycle.

Meanwhile, the UAE inked an agreement to construct the world’s largest AI campus outside the US, reportedly granting it access to 500,000 cutting edge microchips from US giant Nvidia, starting next year.

This project sits within the UAE’s broader pledge to invest $1.4tn in the US over the next decade.

As well as the challenge of delivering what is promised, another potential obstacle to these figures being realised are oil prices.

Oil prices tumbled to a four-year low in April amid growing concerns that Trump’s tariffs could dampen global economic growth. The decline was further fuelled by the group of oil producing nations, Opec+, announcing plans to increase output.

For Saudi Arabia, the fall in global oil prices since the start of the year has further strained its finances, increasing pressure to either raise debt or cut spending to sustain its development goals.

Last month, the IMF cut the forecast for the world’s largest oil exporter’s GDP growth in 2025 to 3% from its previous estimate of 3.3%.

“It’s going to be very hard for Saudi to come up with that sort of money [the $600bn announced] in the current oil price environment,” Mr Callen adds.

Other analysts note that a lot of the agreements signed during the trip were non-binding memorandums of understanding, which are less formal than contracts, and do not always translate into actual transactions. And some of the deals included in the agreement were announced earlier.

Saudi oil firm Aramco, for instance, announced 34 agreements with US companies valued at up to $90bn. However, most were non-binding memorandums of understanding without specified monetary commitments.

And its agreement to purchase 1.2 million tonnes of liquified natural gas annually for 20 years from US firm NextDecade was also included in the list of new deals, despite it first being announced months ago.

Yet the massive investments mark a continuation of the shift in the US-Gulf relationship away from oil-for-security to stronger economic partnerships rooted in bilateral investments.

Bader Al Saif, an assistant professor at Kuwait University and an associate fellow at think tank Chatham House, says that the deals indicate that US and the Gulf states are “planning the future together and that was a significant change for the relationship”.

He adds that the AI deals with the UAE and Saudi Arabia were central to this as “they clearly demonstrate that they are trying to see how to build the new global order and the new way of doing things together”.

This emphasis on AI underscores the growing strategic importance of the technology to US diplomacy. Trump was accompanied on the trip by Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk, who owns Grok AI.

And on the eve of the visit, the White House scrapped tough Biden-era restrictions on exports of the advanced US semiconductors required to best run AI systems. The rules had divided the world into tiers, with some countries enjoying broad access to its high-end chips, and others being denied them altogether.

About 120 countries, including the Gulf nations, were grouped in the middle, facing strict caps on the number of semiconductors they could import. This had frustrated countries such as Saudi Arabia, who have ambitions to become high-tech economies as they transition away from oil.

Both Saudi and the UAE are racing to build large-scale AI data centres, while Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, aims to become a global AI hub.

The UAE has made visible efforts to reassure Washington – deepening partnerships with US tech firms, curbing ties with Chinese companies, and aligning more closely with American national security interests.

Mr Al-Saif says that the UAE is “betting on the Americans when it comes to AI”. “We have seen that the technological turn in the 90s came from the US anyway.”

Both camps are hailing the visit as a triumph. For the Gulf, and especially Saudi Arabia, it resets a partnership that frayed under Biden, and underscores their ambition to act as heavyweight players on the world stage.

For Trump, touting “trillions” in new investment offers a timely boost – his tariff hikes have dented global trade and pushed US output into its first quarterly dip in three years.

These Gulf deals will be sold as proof that his economic playbook is working.

At the end of the trip, Mr Trump worried that whoever succeeds him in the White House would claim credit for the deals once they come to completion.

“I’ll be sitting home, who the hell knows where I’ll be, and I’ll say, ‘I did that,'” he said.

“Somebody’s going to be taking the credit for this. You remember, press,” he said, pointing to himself, “this guy did it.”

The apps use artificial intelligence to create fake nude images of people without their consent.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said the attack, which the BBC could not independently verify, came after days of threats from Hamas.

The move comes as US talks over Iran’s nuclear programme appear to have stalled in recent days.

The strength of the economy affects things like pay rises and how much tax the government can raise to pay for services.

The 131cm-high figurine was sold at the Yongle International Auction in Beijing.

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When Japan’s farm minister declared that he never had to buy rice because his supporters give him “plenty” of it as gifts, he hoped to draw laughs.

Instead Taku Eto drew outrage – and enough of it to force him to resign.

Japan is facing its first cost-of-living crisis in decades, which is hitting a beloved staple: rice. The price has more than doubled in the last year, and imported varieties are few and far between.

Eto apologised, saying he had gone “too far” with his comments on Sunday at a local fundraiser. He resigned after opposition parties threatened a no-confidence motion against him.

His ousting deals a fresh blow to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s minority government, which was already struggling with falling public support.

Rice can be a powerful trigger in Japan, where shortages have caused political upsets before. Riots over the soaring cost of rice even toppled a government in 1918.

So it’s not that surprising that rice prices have a role in Ishiba’s plummeting approval ratings.

“Politicians don’t go to supermarkets to do their grocery shopping so they don’t understand,” 31-year-old Memori Higuchi tells the BBC from her home in Yokohama.

Ms Higuchi is a first-time mother of a seven-month-old. Good food for her postnatal recovery has been crucial, and her daughter will soon start eating solid food.

“I want her to eat well so if prices keep going up, we may have to reduce the amount of rice my husband and I eat.”

It’s a simple issue of supply and demand, agricultural economist Kunio Nishikawa of Ibaraki University says.

But he believes it was caused by a government miscalculation.

Until 1995, the government controlled the amount of rice farmers produced by working closely with agricultural cooperatives. The law was abolished that year but the agriculture ministry continues to publish demand estimates so farmers can avoid producing a glut of rice.

But, Prof Nishikawa says, they got it wrong in 2023 and 2024. They estimated the demand to be 6.8m tonnes, while the actual demand, he adds, was 7.05m tonnes.

Demand for rice went up because of more tourists visiting Japan and a rise in people eating out after the pandemic.

But actual production was even lower than the estimate: 6.61m tonnes, Prof Nishikawa says.

“It is true that the demand for rice jumped, due to several factors – including the fact that rice was relatively affordable compared to other food items and a rise in the number of overseas visitors,” a spokesperson for the agriculture ministry told the BBC.

“The quality of rice wasn’t great due to unusually high temperatures which also resulted in lower rice production.”

Rice farmers have been unable to make enough money for many years, says 59-year-old Kosuke Kasahara, whose family have been in farming for generations.

He explains that it costs approximately 18,500 yen ($125.70; £94.60) to produce 60kg of rice but the cooperative in his area of Niigata on the west coast of Japan offered to buy it last year at 19,000 yen.

“Until three or four years ago, the government would even offer financial incentives to municipalities that agreed to reduce rice production,” he adds.

The ministry spokesperson confirms that the government has offered subsidies to those choosing to produce wheat or soybeans instead of rice.

Meanwhile, younger farmers have been choosing to produce different types of rice that are used for sake, rice crackers or fed to livestock because demand for rice in Japan had been falling until last year.

“I got tired of fighting retailers or restaurants that wanted me to sell rice cheaply for many years,” says Shinya Tabuchi.

But that’s been flipped on its head, with the going rate for 60kg of rice today at 40,000 to 50,000 yen.

While higher prices are bad news for shoppers, it means many struggling farmers will finally be able to make money.

But as the public grew angry with the surge, the government auctioned some of its emergency reserves of rice in March to try to bring prices down.

Many countries have strategic reserves – stockpiles of vital goods – of crude oil or natural gas to prepare for exceptional circumstances. In Asia, many governments also have stockpiles of rice.

In recent years, Japan’s rice stockpile had only been tapped in the wake of natural disasters.

“The government has always told us that they would not release its emergency rice stocks to control the price so we felt betrayed,” Mr Tabuchi says.

Despite the government’s rare decision to release rice, prices have continued to rise.

The cost of rice is also soaring in South East Asia, which accounts for almost 30% of global rice production – economic, political and climate pressures have resulted in shortages in recent years.

In Japan though the issue has become so serious that the country has begun importing rice from South Korea for the first time in a quarter of a century, even though consumers prefer homegrown varieties.

PM Ishiba has also hinted at expanding imports of US rice as his government continues to negotiate a trade deal with Washington.

But shoppers like Ms Higuchi say they are unlikely to buy non-Japanese rice.

“We’ve been saying local production for local consumption for a long time,” she says. “There has to be a way for Japanese farmers to be profitable and consumers to feel safe by being able to afford home-grown produce.”

This divides opinion among farmers.

“You may hear that the industry is ageing and shrinking but that is not necessarily true,” says Mr Tabuchi, who believes the sector has been too protected by the government.

“Many elderly farmers can afford to sell rice cheaply because they have pensions and assets but the younger generation has to be able to make money. Instead of guaranteeing the income of all the farmers and distorting the market, the government should let unprofitable farmers fail.”

Mr Kasahara disagrees: “Farming in rural areas like ours is about being part of a community. If we let those farmers fail, our areas will be in ruins.”

He argues the government should set a guaranteed buying price of 32,000 to 36,000 yen per 60kg of rice which is lower than today’s price but still allows farmers to be profitable.

And given what happened to Eto, it is also a sensitive topic for politicians.

The country is due to hold a key national election this summer so pleasing both consumers and farmers – especially the elderly in both camps who tend to vote more – is crucial.

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Although flames on the ship have reduced, the inner decks and the area near the fuel tank are still on fire.

A woman was seen punching random passcodes outside Jungkook’s home the day he completed military service.

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Paige Williams is desperate to pass her driving test.

Her three-year-old son sometimes has “meltdowns” on public transport, where he might scream, cry or throw himself on the floor, she says. She just wants to be able to visit family and go on day trips more easily.

But the 28-year-old single mum, from Barnsley, is having to drastically cut back on how much she spends on food, gas and electricity to be able to afford her £35-an-hour lessons, which she’s been having since September.

“It’s literally scrimping and scraping to be able to manage to get one lesson a week,” she says.

As the cost of driving lessons continues to rise alongside an already high cost of living, experiences like Paige’s may be becoming increasingly common.

The BBC has spoken to more than a dozen learners and parents of learners who say they’re frustrated by how much they have to pay – and also to instructors who argue that the prices are justified.

Driving instructors can charge what they like, and the DVSA does not release official statistics on average lesson costs.

But a DVSA survey completed by more than 5,000 approved driving instructors (ADIs) in September shows how prices have shot up in recent years.

In the survey, the most common price bracket for an hour lesson was £36 to £40 per hour.

Just 31.5% of driving instructors said they charged £35 or less per hour – that number had halved since the DVSA’s June 2023 survey.

While 20.8% said they charged more than £40 an hour – nearly triple as many as in June 2023.

For many people, driving is essential for taking their kids to school, going to work or carrying out caring responsibilities.

Public transport might be unaffordable, inaccessible or simply not available for some people.

Two-thirds of people in Great Britain who commute to work drive in, and 45% of five-to-10 year olds are taken to school by car, Department for Transport figures from 2023 show.

Faustina Kamara, a 23-year-old in Birmingham, needs a licence for her dream job – being a runner in the media industry.

But the £60 cost of her two-hour driving lessons means she’s only having them once a fortnight, which isn’t as frequently as she’d like, and means it will delay when she can take her test.

She says she’d love to have lessons weekly but it would mean she’d have to cut back on spending money seeing her friends.

Other people also say that the high cost of driving lessons means it’s taking them longer to learn to drive.

Rather than having the two lessons a week she would have liked, Sandra Onuora, a 30-year-old civil servant in Newcastle, had three per month until she passed her test in March.

“That was all I could afford,” she says. And even then, “I had to take a lot of money from my savings” for her £39-an-hour lessons, she adds.

Because she had to space out her lessons more, she had to wait longer until she felt ready to take her test.

She’d spend hours every week travelling between her home, her son’s childminder’s and her office, taking six buses every weekday.

“It was a rough year,” says Sandra. She would return home “so exhausted”.

And just as driving lessons become more expensive, some learners are also finding they’re having to take more of them.

That’s because of a huge practical test backlog, which means learners are having to take lessons for longer to keep up their skills.

Keith Rose hasn’t been able to book a driving test near where he lives in Bridgwater, Somerset, for his 17-year-old son, Brandon.

The best option he could find is an hour’s drive away in Newport, Wales, and isn’t until September.

Keith says that his son is ready to take his test, but will need to keep taking lessons at a cost of £76 for a two-hour session to maintain his skills.

“We’re being forced into spending money that we don’t need to,” Keith says.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has acknowledged that waiting times for tests are too long and pledged to reduce the average waiting time for a driving test to no more than seven weeks by summer 2026.

Instructors say that they have little choice but to charge these kind of rates if they want to make a profit.

“Prices for driving lessons are where they should be, having been probably under-priced for many years,” says Stewart Lochrie, the owner of a driving school in Glasgow and chair of the Approved Driving Instructors National Joint Council (ADINJ).

“I think the price was overdue a reset.”

Stewart notes that the UK’s more than 41,000 approved driving instructors are having to pay more for the expenses associated with their jobs like buying or leasing a car, fuel, insurance and maintenance.

“We have costs to cover as well and if the things that we need to run our business go up, then our prices will have to go up as well,” he says.

The rising price of lessons “isn’t really translating to a pay increase in our pockets,” adds Terry Edwards, a driving instructor in Ashford, Kent.

His expenses include around £280 a month on fuel, £135 on insurance and £440 on car payments.

Other costs include servicing, repairing and cleaning his car.

Terry charges £39 an hour, but offers a discount for buying in bulk. While customers “don’t generally push back” against his prices, some “try and be a bit cheeky” and ask for discounts, he says.

For Amy Burnett, a pharmacy advisor in Glasgow, the prices are so high that she’s avoiding learning for the time being. The only instructors she’d found with availability charge between £50 and £60 an hour, she says.

“I’m living pay cheque to pay cheque as it is,” the 22-year-old says.

But she sees being able to drive as an investment in her future – she’d have more freedom and she’s had to limit her previous job searches to roles accessible by public transport, she says.

Amy hopes to pass her test by the time she’s 24 – if she can find a more affordable instructor with availability in her area, she says.

Paige, the mum in Barnsley, is sure her frugality will be worth it in the end. Being able to drive would make it much easier for her to return to work, she says.

And it would make journeys with her son much less stressful, she says. Most of all, she wants to take her two children to the seaside.

“It’d be so good for my son Ronald, with his sensory needs,” Paige says. “Getting to go on the little arcade rides and seeing his little face would be lovely.”

Experts told the BBC that a flap issue, engine failure or a bird strike are among the possible causes of the crash.

People will opt to drive if buses feel outdated or complicated, say researchers.

Emissions in Scotland have been cut by 51.3% since 1990 – a 1.9% year-on-year reduction

It would see tram-style buses run on two routes linking key destinations in and around Aberdeen.

Guernsey customers can book connecting flights through London City Airport on a single ticket.

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Burgundy is one of the most prestigious wine regions in France, and the US is its biggest export market. But now Donald Trump’s tariffs are threatening to price European wine out of the American marketplace.

Crouched in cold mud under a thin Spring rain, vineyard employee Élodie Bonet snaps off unwanted vine shoots with her fingers and pruning clippers.

“We want the vine to put all its energy into the shoots that have the flowers where the grapes are going to grow,” she explains.

I leave Élodie working her way down the rows of vines, and walk up to the house and winery in the Burgundy village of Morey-Saint-Denis, where I meet owner and winemaker Cécile Tremblay.

She takes me down to her cellar to taste some of her prized red wines, standing among the oak barrels and old bottles with labels weathered by mould and age.

They have names on them that make wine lovers go weak at the knees – Nuits-Saint-Georges, Echezeaux, Vosne-Romanée, Clos-Vougeot, and Chapelle-Chambertin.

Ms Tremblay sells over half of her wine abroad, under the name Domaine Cecile Tremblay.

“For the United States, it’s around 10% of the production; it’s a big production for me!” she says.

After threatening a 200% mark-up on alcohol from Europe, Donald Trump imposed a 20% tariff on practically all European Union products on 5 April.

Four days later, he lowered this to 10%, with the threat that he’d hike it back up again to 20% in July, depending on how trade negotiations pan out. And now Trump is threatening a future tariff of 50% on all goods from the EU.

I ask Ms Tremblay if she’s worried. “Yes, sure,” she says, “As everybody is.”

But that is all she will say on the matter. French winemakers are walking on eggshells at the moment, fearful of saying anything that might aggravate the situation.

Perhaps their representatives will be more forthcoming? I get in my car and drive over to one of her neighbours – François Labet. He is the president of the Burgundy Wine Board, which represents this region’s 3,500 winemakers.

“The US is the largest export market for the whole region. Definitely,” he tells me. “They are the biggest in volume and the biggest in value.”

And, until Donald Trump’s re-election, the US market was booming. While French wines and spirits global exports fell 4% last year overall, sales of Burgundy wines to the US rose sharply.

In volume terms, there were up 16% from 2024, to 20.9 million bottles. This was worth €370m ($415m; £312m) in revenues, 26.2% higher than in 2023.

Mr Labet says the US accounted for about a quarter of Burgundy’s wine exports last year.

Burgundy’s reputation abroad is mainly for its red wines, which are made from the celebrated pinot noir grape. Indeed, in the English-speaking world, burgundy is not so much a wine as a colour.

The French word for the same colour is bordeaux; showing they know more about their wine, because while Bordeaux wines are mostly red, two-thirds of Burgundy is actually white.

These are predominantly made from the chardonnay grape. Chablis, one of the best-known examples, is extremely popular in the US.

Burgundy also produces an increasingly successful sparkling wine, called Crémant de Bourgogne, and a small amount of rosé.

All of which is good for Burgundy because while general red wine consumption just keeps going down, white is holding firm, and sparkling is going up.

Also, the reds that come out of Burgundy are, according to Mr Labet, the kind consumers increasingly want, as they are typically lighter than New World reds.

“What is interesting to see is that there is a strong de-consumption of what we call the big reds, made in the US. Wines with a lot of alcohol, aged in new wood.”

Less sun and lower temperatures in Burgundy, even with climate change, means less sugar in the grapes and lower alcohol content.

Mr Labet remembers when, for 18 months of his first presidency, Donald Trump hit European wine with a 25% import tariff during a dispute over airlines.

“We were hostages of that situation, and it really did affect our sales to the US. We had a drop of about 50% of our exports to the US.”

Regarding the current 10% Trump tariff, he predicts that French wine producers and US merchants will split the cost of the new import duty between them in order to maintain sales.

But what will be the impact if in July Trump does decide to increase the tariff on all European Union exports to 20%, as he has threatened to do? “We will go back to the 2019 situation where the market was almost stopped,” says Mr Labet.

For French wines in general, things could be even worse.

“When President Trump raised import duties by 25% for one-and-a-half years of his first mandate, we lost about $600m [£450m] very quickly,” says Jerome Bauer, president of the French National Wines and Spirits Confederation.

“But back then Champagne wasn’t included, and neither were wines stronger than 14 degrees of alcohol. So you can see the scale of the threat today.”

The solution Mr Bauer is backing is free trade. No tariffs. But you’d expect him to say that, given that France and Europe run a big trade surplus with the US when it comes to wines and spirits.

More surprising, perhaps, is the opinion of his American competitors in California and Oregon who, you might think, would be cracking open something a bit special to celebrate.

“This looks horrible from our perspective. We don’t like it one bit,” says Rex Stults, vice-president of industry relations at Napa Valley Vintners, which represents 540 wineries in the sunny slopes of California’s most famous wine region.

“Wine is an international product. Even here in the Napa Valley, our wineries primarily get their corks from Portugal, and their oak barrels, a key component in winemaking, from France.

Mr Stults adds: “They’re already expensive and the potential is that they will get more expensive.”

Also, trade wars cut both ways. He says the tariffs announced against Canada are having a devastating impact on US wine exports.

“Canada is the most important export market for California wines, and one of the top export markets for Napa Valley wines. Right now, there are zero Napa Valley wines on the shelves of stores in Canada.

“They’ve removed all American alcohol beverage products from their store shelves!”

Mr Stults adds: “We just want to compete on an even playing field with our friends and neighbours all over the world. That’s our ask and that’s our hope.”

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For Mansukh Prajapati, childhood in the western Indian city of Morbi began before sunrise, with a six-mile walk to collect clay for their family business.

“My father was a potter,” he recalls.

Often he would wake up to the rhythmic sound of his father at work at his potter’s wheel.

“My mother and I would get up at four in the morning and walk for miles every day to get clay.”

Used for storing water, clay pots were a common item in Indian households in the 1970s.

But the income from making pots was meagre and the profession also came with social stigma.

“Nobody wanted to their daughter married in a potter’s family,” Mr Prajapati says. “They feared she will be burdened with endless labour.”

Aged 31, a natural disaster marked the turning point for Mr Prajapati.

The devastating earthquake that hit Gujarat in 2001 destroyed his family home and left a pile of smashed clay pots in the courtyard.

“A local reporter wrote that ‘the poor people’s fridge is broken’,” Mr Prajapati says.

“Clay pots keep water cool in the summer, so they are just like a fridge. The thought got stuck in my head. So, I decided to make a fridge out of clay that doesn’t need electricity.”

With no formal training, Mr Prajapati started experimenting with designs and materials.

“I first tried to make it like the modern fridge and even added a water tank, but nothing worked’, he says.

“At one point I had $22,000 (£17,000) in loans and had to sell my house and small workshop. But I knew I had to keep going.”

It took four years of tinkering to come up with a design that worked – a small clay cabinet with a water talk on the top and storage shelves below.

As water trickles through the cabinet’s porous clay walls, it naturally cools the interior.

Mr Prajapati says it can keep fruit and vegetables fresh for at least five days – no electricity needed.

He named it MittiCool or the clay that stays cool.

At $95 its affordable and now sold through 300 stores in India and exported to countries including the UK, Kenya, and UAE.

“Fridges are a dream for many poor families,” Mr Prajapati says. “And such dreams should be within reach.”

Mr Prajapati’s innovation is part of a growing wave of grassroots entrepreneurship in India, driven by necessity.

Prof Anil Gupta who runs the Honeybee Network, a platform for supporting such ventures, call these “frugal innovations”.

“It is a mindset,” says Prof Gupta.

“Frugal innovation is about making solutions affordable, accessible, and available. Many of these innovators don’t have formal education but are solving real world problems.”

It’s difficult to put a number on such businesses, as there has never been an in-depth study.

Prof Gupta says such start-ups are crucial because they provide jobs in rural areas and start a cycle of economic change.

For example, Mr Prajapati now employs 150 people in his workshop and has branched out into cookware, clay water filters and is experimenting with homes made of clay.

Another start-up that’s hoping for similar success, is run by Bijayshanti Tongbram in the northeastern state of Manipur.

She lives in Thanga village which is home to one of India’s largest freshwater lakes, Loktak.

Here lotus flowers bloom in abundance.

“People in my village use the petals of lotus flowers for religious offerings. But their stems often go to waste and that’s what I wanted to change and thought of doing something sustainable,” she says.

A botanist by profession, Ms Tongbram developed a way to extract silk-like fibres from the lotus stems and now leads a team of 30 women in her village who spin the threads into a yarn and weaves them into unique scarves and garments.

“It takes two months, and 9,000 lotus stems to make one scarf,” she says.

Ms Tongbram pays the women $80 a month.

“This isn’t just about fashion. I am giving women in my village a chance to do something other than fishing and earn money,” she says.

Like many small business owners, she wants to scale-up and find new markets, perhaps overseas.

“Funding is the biggest challenge,” she says.

Prof Gupta from the Honeybee network agrees.

“There are government schemes and small grants, but rural entrepreneurs often don’t know how to access them.

“Even venture capitalists who are looking at IT innovations rarely invest in these kinds of start-ups because of high transaction costs,” he says.

Nevertheless, innovators continue to spring up.

In Karanataka’s Vijaynagar, Girish Badragond is working on a device to help blind and partially-sighted farmers.

His device, described as a smart farming stick, uses soil sensors and weather data to guide its users about the crop conditions and harvests through audio messages and vibrations.

“There are so many blind people in India who want to farm but they can’t trust others to guide them. This will help them become independent and empower them,” says Mr Badragond.

He has sourced mechanical parts from different shops and is hoping to gain support for commercialising his project soon. For now, he is doing rounds of government exhibitions.

“It’s a prototype but I am hopeful that people will support me to change lives of others,” he says.

Details are still emerging, but these are the people so far confirmed by the BBC to have died.

Hindu temples in Harrow and Neasden are offering special prayers for the Air India crash victims.

One British man, who was a passenger on the London-bound flight, survived the crash in Ahmedabad, western India.

London-bound flight carrying 242 people crashed shortly after take-off in Ahmedabad, western India.

Experts told the BBC that a flap issue, engine failure or a bird strike are among the possible causes of the crash.

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Farmers have faced a difficult year, with the longest wet winter since records began followed by the driest spring on record.

Meanwhile, the Labour government’s decision to start levying inheritance taxes on farms has sparked protests across the country and further outrage has followed with ministers’ sudden closure of the popular grants for sustainable farming practices.

Three quarters of farmers now rely on non-farming enterprises to supplement their food production. From falconry and helicopter rides to spas and solar farms, farmers say these additional services now form a crucial part of the business.

I spoke to some about what they are doing to keep their family businesses afloat.

Mike Churches, a sixth-generation farmer near Glastonbury, Somerset, said the “atrocious” income from farming had prompted him to diversify.

He now makes substantially more money from weddings and events than from raising sheep and cattle.

He said: “It’s about 30% from farming now, 70% from weddings, falconry, helicopter rides, glamping, you name it.”

Tom Collins, Wiltshire chairman of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), said these extra enterprises were essential.

“It’s no longer just a bolt-on, it’s a crucial part of the business,” he said.

Many farms have started offering weddings, but few can boast their own on-site church.

A few miles down the road from Glastonbury, the small village of Godney had a church, built next to Godney Farm.

As the population of the village fell, it was deconsecrated, so Mr Churches and his wife Jenny decided to buy the building.

“Yes, plenty of people tell us we have the right name,” chuckled Mr Churches.

They spent a lot of money restoring the old building, and applied for a licence to hold civil ceremonies.

Meanwhile, like many farmers, they watched their income from the farm’s sheep, cattle and haymaking steadily fall.

Mr Churches told me his return on investment from farming is “about 2 or 3%, which is nonsensical for the hours that you’re doing”.

He said he could get 10 times as much from weddings, “so it is a far more lucrative business to be in”.

Last year, 34 couples tied the knot at Godney Farm, including Paul and Michelle Chorley, from Street in Somerset.

Mr Chorley explained the appeal: “We’re quite outdoorsy people, so we wanted something that would give us that country feel.

“When we turned up and you see the view out the front, that is exactly what we’d imagined.”

Mrs Chorley added: “It was really relaxed, the children were running about, the dogs were running about, the sheep and the cows were around, it was just what we wanted.”

The Churches are obviously unusual in having their own actual church, but earning more from non-farming business is not that rare.

Research for the UK government found a quarter of farms, 26%, earned more than half their income from diversified enterprises.

In the heart of north Wiltshire, I bump down another farm track, past a pond and a field of a dozen young brown calves.

In the yard there are tractors and hay bales, dogs running around.

An unusual setting, you might think, for an immaculate beauty salon.

But Michelle Stead thinks it sets the “perfect tone for any aesthetic beauty or wellbeing treatment”.

Mrs Stead set up her beauty clinic, called Perfection, more than 10 years ago.

Vigorous social media marketing brings clients from Malmesbury, Cirencester and the villages around.

“You can’t help fall in love with the location,” she smiles.

I asked if being utterly off any beaten tracks has been a problem.

“Why wouldn’t you come here?” she replied.

“There’s no parking issues, no traffic jams, no pollution, it’s beautiful.

“It literally sets the scene – and that’s what makes us different.”

Her landlord is Tom Collins or ‘Farmer Tom’ as she calls him.

He runs a traditional mixed farm, with cattle and pigs, alongside fields growing wheat, barley, peas and beans.

But his old Cotswold farm buildings are now too small for modern farming, and he has let them out to Mrs Stead and several other small firms.

“Without diversification we’d really be struggling. I don’t know a single farm business that isn’t diversified,” he said.

Nearly three quarters of farmers (71%) now rely on some additional business, according to the government research, and this has risen from 61% since 2015.

So what do most farmers turn to?

The report for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) analysed farm incomes.

Letting out buildings was the most common, followed by farm shops and B&Bs, camping and glamping sites.

Spas, wellness clinics, sports and health retreats also feature.

A new, more controversial, source of income is letting out fields to solar power companies.

The report laid bare how much farmers rely on these new income streams.

More than one in four, 28%, reported income from actual farming was negative.

In other words, they lost money growing food.

While Mr Collins salutes the enterprise farmers have shown, he says it is only happening because producing food is such an unreliable business.

He said: “The finances aren’t good, the margins are wafer thin. It’s a lot of sawing for not much sawdust, as my grandfather used to say.”

Ministers insist their support for farmers is “steadfast”.

A spokesperson for DEFRA said: “This government is investing £5bn into farming, the largest budget for sustainable food production in our country’s history.”

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India can’t grow enough apples to meet demand but farmers are struggling to raise production.

Cattle, sheep and goats must be tested before crossing from England to Wales to tackle bluetongue.

Stephen Jones said the crops need “very low farming input” and do not need as much fertiliser or pesticides.

Liam Campbell says he is determined to preserve the pear variety at his family’s farm.

The 140th show will be held on 18 and 19 June.

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Chile is the world’s second-largest exporter of farmed salmon, and the biggest supplier to the US. In the south of the country a dispute continues over the large number of salmon farms that are located in supposedly protected areas.

The port city of Puerto Montt, more than 1,000km (600 miles) south of Chile’s capital Santiago, is at the heart of the country’s farmed Atlantic salmon industry.

At a processing facility on the outskirts of town workers kitted out in white suits, hairnets, facemasks, and blue plastic gloves and boots prepare fresh and smoked salmon for export to the US and Japan.

In a spacious meeting room, Fracisco Lobos, the chief corporate officer for the plant’s owner – salmon-exporter Multi X – explains how farming the fish has transformed the south of Chile.

“Salmon’s been part of this region’s industrial revolution,” he says. “There used to be a lot of poverty in the region, and now many people earn more than in other parts of Chile.

“Because of the industry a lot of support services have sprung up, which benefit the families living here, and people have moved here from other parts of the country for work.”

Atlantic salmon are not native to Chile. Instead, eggs were brought over to Chile from the UK at the end of the 19th Century and released into rivers, lakes and the sea to grow into fish for recreational fishing.

Farming the fish in netted, offshore pens then started in the 1970s, before growing substantially ever since. There were 1,343 active salmon farms across southern Chile at the end of last year.

In 2024 as a whole, Chile exported 782,076 tonnes of salmon and trout, according to the latest annual figures from the Chile’s National Customs Service. The vast majority of this is salmon, but the two fish are counted together in the official data.

This was worth $6.4bn (£4.8bn), making it Chile’s third-biggest export after copper in first place and fresh fruit. It also means that Chile’s salmon exports are only surpassed by Norway’s.

Some 86,000 people now work directly or indirectly for Chile’s farmed salmon industry, according to trade body Salmón Chile. The farms stretch from the Biobío region, which is around 500km south of Santiago, right down to the Magallanes region in the far Patagonian south of the country, and more than 2,000km away from the capital.

With global demand for farmed salmon due to grow by 40% by 2033, according to one report, Chilean producers are keen to increase their production. However, it actually fell slightly last year.

Salmón Chile’s chairman, Arturo Clements, says the government needs to do more to help the industry expand.

“For us it’s been very difficult to grow, because we have too many regulations, and we have too many conflicts regarding the use of the sea,” he says. “What we need is to define a long-term strategy regarding salmon farming.”

Much of the conflict concerns the locations of many of the fish farms, which critics say are highly polluting.

More specifically, there are 408 salmon farming concessions – licenses granted by the government that allow a company to operate a salmon farm in a specific area – within supposedly environmentally protected areas in Chile.

These include 294 in national reserves, where limited commercial use of natural resources is allowed. And 29 in the more strictly controlled national parks, where business operations are officially not supposed to be permitted.

Flavia Liberona is the executive director of Terram, a foundation that promotes sustainable development. In her hot and sticky office in an old building in the centre of Santiago she describes an environmental campaign that she’s part of – Salvemos La Patagonia or Save Patagonia.

It wants to protect the natural habitat of the entire Chilean Patagonia region. This vast geographic area starts north of Puerto Montt and then extends all the way down to the very base of the country. And it is where most of the salmon farms are located, in its many fjords.

“We want the salmon farms to stop operating in the national parks and national reserves,” says Ms Liberona.

“The salmon farming causes various environmental problems. One is that the fish are kept in cages and fed with pellets.

“A lot of the pellets and fish faeces end up on the seabed and that leads to less oxygen which kills the sea life in the ocean underneath the cages, and depending on the current, elsewhere in the sea.”

When these concerns are put to Mr Clement from Salmón Chile, he explains that there are different categories for the salmon farming concessions.

“In terms of concessions in the national parks we have 21 that we aren’t using,” he says. “We have told the government that we don’t want to be there and asked to be relocated but nothing has happened for many years.”

Regarding salmon farming in national reserves, he says that is a different environment which, according to Chilean law and the rules and regulations they follow, they can operate in.

In Chile, the salmon industry is regulated by The Undersecretariat for Fisheries and Aquaculture, a public body that is part of the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism.

It looks at environmental protection and sustainability, and is also working on a new general aquaculture law to further regulate the sector.

Julio Salas Gutiérrez, the Chilean Undersecretary of Fisheries and Aquaculture, tells the BBC that the government is working to remove fish farms from the national parks.

“It’s not right to claim that the government ‘has done nothing for years’ regarding the relocation of concessions outside of national parks,” he says. “Under the current administration, efforts have been made not only to understand the problem, but also to advance it.

“The relocation process itself is usually quite complex, bureaucratic, and takes a considerable number of years, considering the difficulty of relocating these concessions to new areas suitable for aquaculture.”

Matt Craze is the founder of UK and Chile-based Spheric Research, which studies global seafood markets. He says that Chile’s salmon industry would invest more money “if they felt that there was a better regulatory framework, and the government gave some certainty about the areas where they can farm”.

Yet with a general election due in Chile later this year, the uncertainty may continue at least in the short term.

The 6.4 magnitude earthquake interrupted the broadcast, shaking the equipment in the studio.

A judicial review was held in February after Animal Equality UK challenged the plans.

William Eastment appears in court after authorities claim they found the drugs hidden in his luggage.

Thousands were evacuated after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck off Chile’s southern coast on Friday morning.

Millions of people in Chile had their routines disrupted by an almost nationwide power cut.

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“It was going great until it fell apart.” Richard Varvill recalls the emotional shock that hits home when a high-tech venture goes off the rails.

The former chief technology officer speaks ruefully about his long career trying to bring a revolutionary aerospace engine to fruition at UK firm Reaction Engines.

The origins of Reaction Engines go back to the Hotol project in the 1980s. This was a futuristic space plane that caught the public imagination with the prospect of a British aircraft flying beyond the atmosphere.

The secret sauce of Hotol was heat exchanger technology, an attempt to cool the super-heated 1,000C air that enters an engine at hypersonic speeds.

Without cooling this will melt aluminium, and is, Mr Varvill says, “literally too hot to handle”.

Fast forward three decades to October 2024 and Reaction Engines was bringing the heat exchanger to life at sites in the UK and US.

UK Ministry of Defence funding took the company into hypersonic research with Rolls-Royce for an unmanned aircraft. But that was not enough to keep the business afloat.

Rolls-Royce declines to go into details about Reaction’s collapse, but Mr Varvill is more specific.

“Rolls-Royce said it had other priorities and the UK military has very little money.”

Aviation is a business with a very long gestation time for a product. It can take 20 years to develop an aircraft. This unforgiving journey is known as crossing the Valley of Death.

Mr Varvill knew the business had to raise more funds towards the end of 2024 but big investors were reluctant to jump on board.

“The game was being played right to the very end, but to cross the Valley of Death in aerospace is very hard.”

What was the atmosphere like in those last days as the administrators moved in?

“It was pretty grim, we were all called into the lecture theatre and the managing director gave a speech about how the board ‘had tried everything’. Then came the unpleasant experience of handing over passes and getting personal items. It was definitely a bad day at the office.”

This bad day was too much for some. “A few people were in tears. A lot of them were shocked and upset because they’d hoped we could pull it off right up to the end.”

It was galling for Mr Varvill “because we were turning it around with an improved engine. Just as we were getting close to succeeding we failed. That’s a uniquely British characteristic.”

Did they follow the traditional path after a mass lay-off and head to the nearest pub? “We had a very large party at my house. Otherwise it would have been pretty awful to have put all that effort into the company and not mark it in some way.”

His former colleague Kathryn Evans headed up the space effort, the work around hypersonic flight for the Ministry of Defence and opportunities to apply the technology in any other commercial areas.

When did she know the game was up? “It’s tricky to say when I knew it was going wrong, I was very hopeful to the end. While there was a lot of uncertainty there was a strong pipeline of opportunities.”

She remembers the moment the axe fell and she joined 200 colleagues in the HQ’s auditorium.

“It was the 31st of October, a Thursday, I knew it was bad news but when you’re made redundant with immediate effect there’s no time to think about it. We’d all been fighting right to the end so then my adrenalin crashed.”

And those final hours were recorded. One of her colleagues brought in a Polaroid camera. Portrait photos were taken and stuck on a board with message expressing what Reaction Engines meant to individuals.

What did Ms Evans write? “I will very much miss working with brilliant minds in a kind, supportive culture.”

Since then she’s been reflecting “on an unfinished mission and the technology’s potential”.

But her personal pride remains strong. “It was British engineering at its best and it’s important for people to hold their heads up high.”

Her boss Adam Dissel, president of Reaction Engines, ran the US arm of the business. He laments the unsuccessful struggle to wrest more funds from big names in aerospace.

“The technology consistently worked and was fairly mature. But some of our strategic investors weren’t excited enough to put more money in and that put others off.”

The main investors were Boeing, BAE Systems and Roll-Royce. He feels they could have done more to give the wider investment community confidence in Reaction Engines.

It would have avoided a lot of pain.

“My team had put heart and soul into the company and we had a good cry. “

Did they really shed tears? “Absolutely, I had my tears at our final meeting where we joined hands and stood up. I said ‘We still did great, take a bow.”

What lessons can we draw for other high-tech ventures? “You definitely have no choice but to be optimistic,” says Mr Dissel.

The grim procedure of winding down the business took over as passwords and laptops were collected while servers were backed up in case “some future incarnation of the business can be preserved”.

The company had been going in various guises for 35 years. “We didn’t want it to go to rust. I expect the administrator will look for a buyer for the intellectual property assets,” Mr Dissel adds.

Other former employees also hold out for a phoenix rising from the ashes. But the Valley of Death looms large.

“Reaction Engines was playing at the very edge of what was possible. We were working for the fastest engines and highest temperatures. We bit off the hard job,” says Mr Dissel.

Despite all this Mr Varvill’s own epitaph for the business overshadows technological milestones. “We failed because we ran out of money.”

Light shows involving hundreds and even thousands of drones are becoming big attractions.

Food firms are marketing ranges with fewer ingredients, but are they healthier?

Billions of dollars of US federal funding for green energy projects hangs in the balance.

Indian start-ups are using local materials and innovative ideas to make useful and affordable products.

The vigilance needed in the military can be an asset in the cybersecurity industry.

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With Air Canada and Southwest the latest airlines to charge passengers for check-in luggage, the ballooning cost of such ancillary or “junk fees” is provoking anger among politicians and consumer groups. At the same time, sales of suitcases small enough for passengers to take on the plane as hand luggage are booming.

Standing outside Toronto’s downtown airport, Lauren Alexander has flown over from Boston for the weekend. She describes such additional charges as “ridiculous”.

“It feels like a trick,” says the 24-year-old. “You buy the ticket, you think it’s going to be less expensive, then you have to pay $200 (£148) extra [to bring a suitcase].”

To avoid the fee, Ms Alexander instead travelled with a small backpack as hand luggage.

Sage Riley, who is 27, agrees, telling the BBC, “It can be pricey.”

There was a time when checked bags, seat selection and your meals all came as standard on commercial flights. But that all changed with the rise of the budget airlines, says Jay Sorensen of US aviation consultancy IdeaWorks.

It was in 2006 when UK low-cost carrier FlyBe became what is believed to be the world’s first airline to start charging passengers to check in bags. It charged £2 for a pre-booked item of luggage, and £4 if the customer hadn’t paid in advance.

Other budget carriers then quickly followed suit, with the so-called flag carriers or established airlines then also doing so, at least on shorter flights.

In 2008 American Airlines became the first US airline to charge a fee, $15, for the first checked bag on its domestic routes.

Mr Sorenson says such traditional airlines felt they had no choice when they “began to realise that the low-cost carriers were providing very significant competition”. He adds: “They felt they had to do something to meet that.”

Fast forward to today, and US airlines alone made $7.27bn from check-in baggage fees last year, according to federal figures. That is up from $7bn in 2023, and $5.76bn in 2019.

Little wonder then that more of us are trying to just take carry-on. Kirsty Glenn, managing director of UK luggage firm Antler, confirms that there is an ongoing surge in demand for small suitcases that meet airline dimension limits for carry-on luggage.

“We have seen huge spikes in searches online and on our website,” she says. Describing a new small-dimension case her company launched in April, Ms Glenn adds: “Testament to the trend of only travelling with hand luggage, it’s sold like crazy.”

At the same time, social media content about travel packing “hacks” and luggage that meets airlines’ carry-on size measurements, have soared according to travel journalist Chelsea Dickenson. She makes this content for TikTok.

“Social media has really propelled this idea of needing a bag that fits the baggage allowance requirements, says Ms Dickenson. “It’s become a core part of the content that I create and post on social media.”

Ms Dickenson, whose social media following has ballooned to close to a million followers, adds that her luggage videos have become a “core part of the content” she creates.

“It blows my mind,” she says. “I could spend weeks and weeks researching a big trip, and the resulting videos will not come close to doing as well as me going and buying a cheap suitcase, taking it to the airport, testing it in one of those baggage sizes and reporting back.”

The overall global cost of all airline extra fees, from luggage to seat selection, buying wifi access, lounge access, upgrades, and food and drink, is expected to reach $145bn this year, 14% of the sector’s total revenues. That’s according to the International Air Transport Association, which represents the industry. This compares with $137bn last year.

These numbers have caught the attention of some politicians in Washington, and last December airline bosses were grilled before a senate committee. It was a Democrat senator who used the term “junk fees”.

He wants the federal government to review such costs and potentially fine airlines. We asked the US Department of Transportation for a comment, but did not get a response.

But if having to pay for check-in wasn’t enough, a growing number of airlines are now charging for hand luggage. For example, Irish budget airline Ryanair will only allow you to carry a small bag that fits under the seat in front of you for free. If you want to take a bigger bag or suitcase to go in the overhead locker that will cost you from £6.

Other European airlines that now have similar charges for hand luggage are Easyjet, Norwegian Airlines, Transavia, Volotea, Vueling, and Wizzair.

This has annoyed pan-European consumer group BEUC (The European Consumer Organisation), which last month filed a complaint with the European Commission.

BEUC cites a 2014 EU Court of Justice ruling, which said “carriage of hand baggage cannot be made subject to a price supplement, provided that it meets reasonable requirements in terms of its weight and dimensions, and complies with applicable security requirements”.

However, what determines “reasonable requirements” continues to be a grey area in need of an official ruling.

There can, however, be a different way of doing things, as shown by Indian airline IndiGo. Its boss Pieter Eibers says that it does not charge for check-in luggage.

“The entire philosophy here is different,” he says. “We don’t want long lines, and endless debates at gates about the weight of luggage. We don’t have any of that. We turn our planes around in 35 minutes.”

India can’t grow enough apples to meet demand but farmers are struggling to raise production.

Experts told the BBC that a flap issue, engine failure or a bird strike are among the possible causes of the crash.

The airline said it would also continue to take legal action against anyone who disrupts a flight.

Caroline Bridge says a trip to Kazakhstan could be next for her and son Tom.

People will opt to drive if buses feel outdated or complicated, say researchers.

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