Across the world, footballers are hoping to be picked for their national team to play at FIFA World Cup 2026, but in Europe's top leagues, teams are picking younger players.

In the Premier League this season, just over half of players are 25 and under. The average age of footballers starting matches is now 26 years and 217 days, the youngest in Premier League history.

Being a young footballer is nothing new. But the amount of young footballers is rising. For some, like Arsenal’s Max Dowman, they are setting records. He’s the youngest Champions League player ever, debuting this season at 15-years-old.

So why is football getting younger? BBC Sport reporter Jonty Colman gets into the game, the pressures, and why clubs are chasing down young talent.

We also hear from Chifundo Mbofana, a young semi-professional footballer in Malawi, who explains how young players can inspire others.

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You’ve probably had a call from someone pretending to be your bank - or even a family member - all to find out that it’s a scam. It’s part of a global, lucrative industry: the UN estimates that countries in east and southeast Asia lost an estimated $37 billion to cyber fraud in 2023, while the United States reported losses of more than $5.6 billion. But have you ever considered that the people behind these scams are sometimes victims themselves?

Across South East Asia, in countries like Myanmar and Cambodia, thousands of people from all over the world work in ‘scam centres’. Some are forced to be there - and say they faced torture and beatings. The BBC’s South East Asia Correspondent, Jonathan Head, has been to Shwe Kokko in Myanmar, where several centres are located. He tells us what it was like, how the scam industry operates and how the authorities are trying to crack down on it. We also hear from Mwesezi, a 21 year old from Uganda, who was trafficked to Myanmar after arriving in Thailand, for what he thought was a job in the IT industry.

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Kerala claims to be the first state in India to have ended extreme poverty. Over the past four years, various government departments have worked together to provide around 64,000 families living in extreme poverty with food, shelter, medical care and scholarships for their children. But what is extreme poverty and why are some people questioning this claim?

The BBC’s Shruti Menon, who is from Kerala, explains all. She also chats us through how extreme poverty rates across India have plummeted in the past decade.

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Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Thousands of schools have been damaged in the war. According to the UN children agency Unicef, only a third of Ukraine's schoolchildren currently study in-person, due to the threat of missile and drone attacks as well as shelling. Russia has attacked energy infrastructure so there are also frequent power cuts across the country. In this episode we hear what life is like for students in Ukraine right now.

Initially Russian forces captured large parts of Ukraine and nearly made it to the capital, Kyiv, but Ukraine pushed the Russian forces back. Now the fighting is mostly in the south and east of the country, but the whole country is affected.

Ukraine has started to build schools underground to allow children to carry on studying during rocket attacks, both purpose-built and by converting existing underground spaces. We speak to BBC reporter Olga Malchevska who has been to see what one of these schools is like.

Another area where education has changed is in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. The BBC is not able to travel to these areas but we discuss allegations of “re-education” there.

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Sugar taxes are in place in several countries including Mexico and the UK. And they’re evolving. Maybe you’ve noticed that some sweet fizzy drinks are getting more expensive? Buying drinks with added sugar has an extra cost, which is commonly known as sugar tax. It’s a way to discourage people from consuming too much sugar - something which can lead to poor health if consumed in excess. But do these sugar taxes work? Our BBC colleague Maria Clara Montoya has been looking into this with the help of Elisa Pineda, a public health expert from The George Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London.

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Colombian archaeologists have retrieved the first items from what’s thought to be the most valuable shipwreck in the world. A Spanish naval ship, the San José, was sunk by a British fleet off the coast of Colombia more than 300 years ago. It had a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds worth billions of dollars in today’s money. Treasure hunters had tried to locate the shipwreck for many years, before Colombia announced that it had discovered it back in 2015.

But how can we be sure this is the actual San Jose - and if it is, who has the rightful claim to the precious cargo onboard?

Helen Farr, a marine archaeologist from the University of Southampton in the UK, takes us through the legal dispute over who owns the ship, and recounts how it ended up on the ocean floor. And we hear from Mariana Carulla, a conservationist in the Colombian ministry of culture, who has been working with the team that’s retrieving objects from the shipwreck. She tells us what they have found so far - and explains how authorities are searching for clues about the shipwreck’s true identity.

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Elon Musk could be about to become the world’s first trillionaire. That’s after a record-breaking pay package - that could be worth nearly $1tn (£760bn) - was approved by Tesla shareholders. The electric car boss is already the world's richest man, but this would take his wealth to a whole new level. But who is Elon Musk and how did he make all this money? We explain all, as well as breaking down what a trillion dollars actually is. Plus, we hear from two special guests about what they would do with a trillion dollars.

But not everyone thinks trillionaires are a good thing. Billie Eilish has been vocal about this. She recently called for billionaires to give their money away. And then there’s charities, like Oxfam, who point to rising global inequality. BBC reporter Nathalie Jimenez joins us to crunch the numbers, and explain all sides of the arguments for, and against, trillionaires.

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Children learn best when they’re taught in the language they use at home, research suggests. But there's the question about the power of world languages like English, Spanish, French or Arabic and how they could provide more opportunities to those who learn it, be it in education or a career.

You’ve been messaging us about what languages you learned in at school. Say hello to Brian in Kenya and Christian in the Philippines!

We then skip over to Nigeria, where our reporter Makuochi Okafor breaks down for us why the government is reversing its policy of teaching in other languages that aren't English. And our colleague Santiago tells us what went wrong when he was learning in English in his Colombian school.

Plus, we get the research from Justine Sass, from UNESCO - the UN agency for education, science and culture.

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GPS interference or GPS ‘jamming’ is getting more common. It’s when radio signals on the same frequencies as GPS satellites are used to overwhelm and block legitimate navigation signals. It’s led to pilots having to make emergency landings or switch to older non-GPS systems. The issue has become so prevalent that the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) held a conference on it last year. Several European governments also believe it is intentional interference by Russia. BBC journalist Emilia Jansson explains GPS jamming in detail and how it is affecting the aviation industry.

Plus we hear from Ian Petchenik, director of communications at flight-tracking website Flightradar24 about what GPS interference looks like in real-time.

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COP30, the big meeting where countries discuss climate change annually, has finished. This year it was hosted in the city of Belem in Brazil, in the Amazon forest, which is directly affected by it. The role of the two biggest emitters has also made headlines. The United States hasn’t taken part in the talks and China has kept a very low profile.

This summit has ended without a clear commitment to phase out fossil fuels and that has angered protesters and activists, who participated in demonstrations showing their opposition to this plan. We wrap up the highlights of COP30 with our resident climate expert, Georgina Rannard and also hear from Natalia Tsuyama, a Brazilian climate activists who shares with us how her first COP has been.

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