Over the past two years, our reporters had encounters with influential Taliban figures, spending time with men who once planned suicide attacks or spent years in underground hideouts, but are now officials and soldiers. In Jawzjan, the team met the province's governor Abdullah Sarhadi and observed his exchanges, including with an 18-year-old seeking a divorce, alleging her husband is abusive. After telling the teenager she should stay in the marriage, Sarhadi later commented that women are "deficient in intellect". Five years of Taliban rule have seen women's rights eroded. When the team met with the Taliban government's spokesman to question him about this, he said: "We are committed to women's rights... we should see everything through the Sharia lens."

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has arrived in Ukraine on his first foreign visit. The trip comes on Ukraine's independence day and will see Burnham hand over blueprints for long-range missiles that Kyiv could use to hit targets deep inside Russia. It’s a significant step in showing the UK's trust in Ukraine, our correspondent notes, and President Volodymyr Zelensky will hope the US follows the lead. 

Last year, the mushroom murder trial gripped the world, with Erin Patterson found guilty of killing three of her relatives and trying to kill another by serving them a beef Wellington containing toxic mushrooms in 2023. Last week, her lawyers were back in court, trying to have her convictions overturned, with their case focusing on a hotel blunder exacerbated by a nearby table tennis tournament which they say "fatally undermined" the fairness of her trial.