British police said on Tuesday they had arrested a 21-year-old man on suspicion of arson after counter-terrorism officers launched an investigation into three fires, including one at Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s private home.

Police were called to reports of a fire in the early hours of Monday morning at the property in Kentish Town in north London, the area that Starmer represents in parliament.

Nobody was injured but damage was caused to the property’s entrance, police said.

The man was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life in connection with the fire and two further incidents, police said. He remains in custody, they added.

Police are investigating whether a fire at the entrance of a property in nearby Islington on Sunday and a vehicle fire in Kentish Town on Thursday are linked to the incident on Monday.

A BBC report said the Islington property was also connected to the prime minister.

Starmer lived in the terraced house on a back street with his wife and two children before he moved into Number 10 Downing Street when he became prime minister last July.

Officers from London’s Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command were leading the investigation due to the property’s connections with a high-profile public figure, police said.

His spokesperson thanked the emergency services for their work on Monday.

Kim Kardashian is set to testify Tuesday in the Paris trial of the burglars accused of tying up and robbing the billionaire reality TV star at gunpoint nearly nine years ago.

She is expected to detail her ordeal during the 2016 Paris Fashion Week burglary, where she was robbed of nearly $10 million in cash and jewellery, including a $4 million engagement ring that was never recovered.

It will be the first time Kardashian will face the alleged robbers in court.

The defendants – who consist of nine men and one woman whose ages range from their 30s to their 70s – are facing charges including armed robbery, kidnapping and conspiracy. Eight of them deny involvement, while two have admitted to lesser offenses.

Several are repeat offenders, with much of the beginning of the trial focused on their past criminal careers.

The trial opened on April 28 at a packed courthouse in the French capital.

The bodyguard, named only as Pascal D., said he found Kardashian “crying hysterically” on his arrival.

Dubbed the “Grandpa Robbers,” of the original 12 suspects, one has since died, and another defendant who has Alzheimer’s disease has been ruled unfit to stand trial. If convicted, some of the remaining defendants could face up to 30 years in prison.

The trial has been delayed for years partly because of major cases like those related to the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks.

The trial is scheduled to run through May 22, with a verdict expected on May 23.

Three years after it seized control of Mariupol following a brutal 86-day siege, Russia is using a more subtle power to keep its grip on the Ukrainian port city: social media influencers.

Though their follower counts and overall reach pale in comparison to celebrity influencers, experts say that the Kremlin needs local voices to effectively promote life under Russia’s rule.

“Just look what Russia is getting up to in Mariupol,” Pavel Karbovsky, a teacher at one of the blogger schools, said in a recent TikTok video highlighting the construction of new apartment buildings. “Wait, they’re building, not demolishing… this is Mariupol, our Russian town!”

But Russian-backed occupation officials have been actively encouraging creators like Karbovksy to post about the restoration of the “liberated” territories, including in official meetings.

In January, Karbovsky was among a group of content creators invited to meet with Denis Pushilin, the Russian-backed head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). Pushilin said in a statement on Telegram that he was “counting” on the group to spread the word that the eastern Donbas region was “being revived.”

“We are all united by an immense desire to restore and revive Donbas. And people should know as much information as possible about the large-scale work that is already underway,” the post continued.

But absent from their videos is any context on the reason for rebuilding.

Russia’s siege of the port city, once known as a hub for trade and manufacturing, was one of the deadliest and most destructive battles since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.

According to United Nations estimates, 90% of residential buildings were damaged or destroyed in Mariupol during Russian attacks, and around 350,000 people out of the pre-war population of about 430,000 were forced to flee. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a recent interview that 20,000 civilians are believed to have been killed, though the death toll is impossible to verify. Ukrainian officials accused Moscow of trying to cover up evidence of civilian casualties, a claim the Kremlin denies.

For Moscow, maintaining control of Mariupol remains a strategic priority and a focus of significant investment. “We are paying a lot of attention to Mariupol,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his annual press conference in December. In March 2023, he staged a highly choreographed trip to the city, discussing “restoration” efforts with local officials. In a video that circulated online of him meeting residents, a voice off-camera could be heard shouting: “It’s all lies, it’s just for show.”

Training new voices

In September, an organization called the Donbass Media Centre (DMC) opened its “blogger school” in Mariupol. It offers free two-week courses designed to give aspiring influencers a technical grounding in skills like filming and editing, as well as an understanding of how to gain popularity and make money online.

Similar courses had already been held in Donetsk and Luhansk, and another followed in Melitopol, in the Russian-occupied part of Zaporizhzhia. Karbovsky was one of the teachers.

The DMC was set up by Donbass Media, a pro-Russian news channel mostly operating on social media. In 2024, the DMC won a Runet Prize, a national award of the Russian Federation and Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives that celebrates excellence on the Russian internet. It also has a partnership with “Top Blog,” a competition for content creators run by a Kremlin program called “Russia – Land of Opportunities.” Last year, the most successful DMC students won a trip to Moscow to visit the headquarters of Vkontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook.

Vkontakte is among several Russian social media networks owned by state-run Gazprom-Media. The Kremlin has clamped down its control of social media in recent years, through ownership, internet slowdowns, and, more recently, legislation requiring influencers with over 10,000 followers to register their personal details with Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor.

Karbovsky said the DMC’s aims are not political. “DMC does not have any such goal to create some sort of propagandists – no way. We don’t need this,” he said. “We want people to be able to share their different views about what is happening in the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) and the LPR (Luhansk People’s Republic) and other regions.”

The same month the DMC opened its “blogger school” in Mariupol, graduates of a Russian government program called “The New Media Workshop” opened a media center in Mariupol to teach schoolchildren 14- to 17-years-old photography, filming and how “to work in the social networks.” The free program is funded in part by a Russian presidential grant worth around $12,000. Participants are encouraged to show the positive side of Mariupol.

“We look forward to welcoming talented kids, so together we can talk about the life of our beloved city,” reads an October Telegram post from the media center. In another, a participant in the course interviews children about how Mariupol has changed. “It’s become much more interesting, more colorful,” says one young girl. “It’s developing quickly,” her friend adds.

In March, Rutube – an alternative to YouTube owned by Russia’s Gazprom-Media – announced it was setting up “studios” in cities and towns across the four annexed regions, including in Mariupol, where content creators could access high-tech equipment and training programs. The initiative is part of a joint project with the Russian Military Historical Society, which Putin created by presidential decree in 2012 to “counter attempts to distort” Russia’s military history.

“The world now really needs the truth about the lives of the new Russian citizens who have gone through a lot… but chose to speak Russian, think and dream in Russian,” one of the organizers said in a press release.

Subtle messaging

One of her most popular recent videos, with over 177,000 views, is a montage of both damaged and rebuilt buildings in the city set to a voice-over that states: “Mariupol – the seaside capital of Southern Russia.”

“Look how beautiful,” another content creator, known as “Masha from Mariupol,” says in a TikTok video showing off newly built apartment blocks at sunset. “These apartments are filled with happy people… a wonderful region for family life.”

In other clips, she poses in front of a war memorial, gives a tour of the reopened railway station and shows off construction at the Drama Theater, where hundreds of civilians were killed in a Russian airstrike.

“They are approachable,” he added.

“You cannot use automatically the voices which are familiar for the Russians who live in central Russia or Siberia or Moscow, you need to find local voices who understand how to talk to people who live in these territories,” he said.

A ‘Potemkin’ village

Shiny rooftops of restored, or in some cases newly built, apartment blocks are visible dotted in and around the city center, having mostly replaced buildings destroyed in the war, satellite images from late 2024 show.

But in other areas the scars of the conflict are still visible.

In a satellite image from December last year, a crane can be seen next to the Drama Theater, where the Russian word for children, ДЕТИ, was scrawled in the spring of 2022 – a failed attempt to deter Russian bombs. Russian state media has reported that the theater will be finished this year.

In December, Putin claimed in a press conference that at least 300,000 people had returned to Mariupol and said, “the population continues to grow at a rapid pace.” In March, he signed a decree ordering all residents of the four regions to get a Russian passport by September 10 or leave.

Boichenko said he believes Russians are being lured there not only through positive news stories and social media posts, but also by Russia’s preferential 2% mortgage rate for its “new territories” – a significant draw in a country where market rates are currently as high as 29%.

Russia has promised to provide “compensatory housing” to everyone affected by the war, but in videos circulating mainly on Telegram, groups of Mariupol residents claim they still have not received their apartments and deliver direct appeals to Putin for homes.

In one video that surfaced in January, some hold up a sign that reads “БОМЖИ,” a Russian acronym meaning “homeless people.” One person says they are being offered apartments belonging to residents who left Mariupol. “We earned our apartments, we don’t want other peoples,” she says, urging the authorities to continue building. The Russian-installed mayor of Mariupol has said some residents will be given “abandoned” properties, effectively stripping those who left the ability to return.

The newly built Nevsky neighborhood that Putin visited in 2023, for example, is not connected to the sewage system, they said.

They added that the posts from content creators do not accurately portray reality in Mariupol. “It is targeted at people who do not live (in Mariupol) and do not know this entire situation,” the woman said.

And pro-Russia content creators can’t rewrite history, Boichenko added. “This propaganda, these made-up clips that they are doing now in Mariupol, will not help. Russia has committed a crime in Mariupol, and the people of Mariupol know it,” he said.

One in five people in the Gaza Strip are facing starvation as the entire territory edges closer to famine, a new United Nations-backed report warns, after nearly three months of Israel’s blockade of critically needed humanitarian aid.

The warning comes as the UN and several NGOs, as well as civilians in Gaza, say the situation has deteriorated since Israel launched its renewed assault on the enclave in March, as residents struggle to access food, medicine and clean water.

The enclave’s entire population is experiencing “high levels of acute food security” and the territory is at “high risk” of famine, the most severe type of hunger crisis, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in its latest report Monday.

“Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks,” the IPC said. Food is running out, and what little is left is being sold at exorbitant prices that few can afford, it said.

Israel imposed a humanitarian blockade on Gaza on March 2, cutting off food, medical supplies, and other aid to the more than 2 million Palestinians who live in the territory. Israel says the blockade, along with the military’s expansion of its bombardment of Gaza, is intended to pressure Hamas to release hostages held in the enclave – but international organizations say it violates international law, with some accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.

There is a “high risk” that famine will occur between now and the end of September, the IPC report warned, leaving most people in Gaza without access to food, water, shelter, and medicine.

“Only an immediate and sustained cessation of hostilities and the resumption of humanitarian aid delivery can prevent a descent into famine,” the report said.

Under the IPC system – a five-phase scale used to measure the severity of food insecurity – a famine can only be declared if data shows certain thresholds are met. Those conditions are: at least 20% of all households must face an extreme food shortage, 30% or more of children must be acutely malnourished, and at least 2 in every 10,000 people die every day because of outright starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

The first threshold has already been met, according to the IPC. Nearly 469,500 people – around 22% of the population – will likely experience “catastrophic” food insecurity, the highest phase on the IPC scale, between May and September, the report said.

David Mencer, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, said Monday that “famine has never happened” in Gaza, despite IPC warnings, and that if there is hunger in Gaza, it is caused by Hamas depriving civilians of humanitarian aid.

Since March, Israel’s renewed assault has displaced more than 430,000 people, the report said, disrupting essential services and the distribution of critical supplies.

All 25 bakeries run by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) were forced to shutter at the beginning of April due to lack of supplies, and food is running out at most of the 177 hot meal kitchens, according to the IPC report. And food prices are soaring.

Prices for flour have increased 3,000% since February and 55-pound sack of wheat flour can run anywhere between $235 and $520, the report said.

Pregnant women and children among the most at risk

Children and pregnant women are at particularly high risk. Nearly 71,000 cases of acute malnutrition among children under five are expected between April 2025 and March 2026, the report said. And nearly 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women will need treatment for acute malnutrition, it said.

“My kids are vomiting after they eat it. It smells horrible,” Rajab said. “But what else can I do? What will I feed my children if not this?”

Dr. Amjad Al-Muzaini, a gynecologist working in Gaza City, said women in Gaza are forced to choose between feeding their children or caring for their own health. Most often, they sacrifice their own well-being to ensure survival, he said.

While doing cesarean surgeries, women were found to have severely deteriorated intestinal and uterine tissues, Al-Muzaini said, likely the effects of eating poor-quality and mainly canned foods.

The WFP has said recently it is ready to surge enough aid into Gaza to feed the entire population for up to two months. UNRWA, the main UN agency supporting Palestinians, said it has nearly 3,000 trucks filled with aid waiting to cross into Gaza that is currently blocked by Israel.

“Families in Gaza are starving while the food they need is sitting at the border,” the WFP’s Executive Director, Cindy McCain said on X. “But WFP hasn’t been able to get new aid in since 2 March.”

“If we wait for famine to be officially confirmed, it will be TOO LATE,” she said.

Israel launched its war in Gaza following Hamas’ October 2023 attack in which militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostage. Since then, Israel’s military campaign has killed almost 53,000 Palestinians. Since Israel resumed its bombardment in March, more than 2,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures provided by the Ministry of Health in Gaza.