It's the question everyone is asking. Who will start for England against Albania on Friday in Thomas Tuchel's first game as Three Lions boss. We asked BBC Sport readers who they would select when the squad was announced on Thursday and the results are below. Chelsea midfielder Cole Palmer did make the initial line-up but has been replaced after his withdrawal. Real Madrid midfielder Jude Bellingham was the most picked player, being chosen by 92% of people, with Bayern Munich striker Harry Kane the next most selected. Agree or disagree? You can still pick your team below.

No doubt, the political crisis that President Bola Tinubu caused by proclaiming a state of emergency in Rivers State and suspending Governor Siminalaye Fubara, his Deputy, Ngozi Odu, and members of the belligerent pro-Wike Rivers State House of Assembly has come to a head. The state of emergency was preceded by the mind-game between Governor Fubara and the 27 legislators, who were reinstated into the State House of Assembly by a Supreme Court judgement and the Trans-Niger Pipeline that was blown up in Gokana, Rivers State. Maybe Governor Fubara should not have demolished the State House of Assembly complex at a time that he was still finding his feet. If those elder statesmen who were goading him on indeed had any clout, they should have asked President Tinubu to rein in Nyesom Wike, his Minister of Federal Capital Territory. Maybe he could have made haste more slowly and not presented his budget proposal to a four-man House of Assembly that lacked the mandatory one-third quorum. The reinstatement of Speaker Martins Amaewhule-led 27 legislators, whom everyone thought had decamped to All Progressives Congress, upset his applecart. However, signs that things could get worse, as the President sided with his newfound political ally, the garrulous Wike, are in the report of a fire at the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited’s flow station at Cawthorne Channel. This economic sabotage may have been carried out by individuals who may not be too happy with the seeming victory of garrulous Wike in the impasse that has become the lot of the beleaguered people of Rivers State. The Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, did not help matters by speculating that Governor Fubara probably instigated those attacks. That speculation is probably now resting after the governor publicly distanced himself from the violent act. Governor Fubara, who had resolved to work with the reinstated legislators, invited them to a peace meeting. They rejected his overture but required him to present the 2025 budget bill to them within 48 hours. Twice, he wrote them, stating his intention to present the budget bill. Twice, he reportedly received an embarrassing rebuff. Once, he was even locked out and prevented from entering the premises of the Assembly, which thereafter adjourned sine die without warning. Things got to stalemate proportions when the House invoked Section 48 of the Nigerian Constitution to impeach the governor. Unconfirmed sources claim that he reached out to Wike, who was rumoured to have demanded that he hand over the local government structure and forgo a 2027 reelection bid. Maybe the quest to gain Rivers State, the ultimate political pawn, in 2027, possibly informed President Tinubu’s choice of the state of emergency. Of course, the President can argue that his past interventions did not yield the desired outcome and that the state of emergency was a timely device that prevented the impeachment. If President Tinubu had asked Wike to rein in his men in the House of Assembly, maybe there would not be a state of emergency. Astute statesmanship would have gotten a better result, and thus make the arrogant insinuation by Fagbemi that Governor Fubara was probably saved from the impeachment Sword of Damocles absolutely unnecessary. It is not enough to say that the President consulted (some faceless stakeholders) before taking the state of emergency option. It would not have been necessary if he had leaned enough on Wike and his collaborators in the Rivers State House of Assembly. Those who argue that the President cannot proclaim a state of emergency are not aware of Section 305 of the Constitution, which merely requires the affirmation of a two-thirds majority of members of the two chambers of the National Assembly after they have received the gazetted proclamation, as prescribed by the Constitution. But the Constitution is silent on the fate of the governor, his deputy and state legislators during a state of emergency, which Section 305(3) of the Constitution prescribes when the “Federation is at war; in danger of invasion…; there is a breakdown of public order and public safety…; clear and present danger…; any other public danger…; (and if) the President receives a request from… the governor of a state.” Did Fagbemi recommend Section 45 that appropriates citizens’ fundamental human rights “in the interest of national defence, public safety, public order, public morality, or public health”, during a “period of emergency”, enabled by “proclamation of emergency declared by the President… under Section 305 of the Constitution”, to the President? Or, Section 11(1), which says, “The National Assembly may make laws for the Federation or any part thereof, with respect to maintenance and securing of public safety and public order and providing, maintaining and securing of (assets)… as may be designated by the National Assembly as essential supplies (like crude and refined petroleum) and services.” This is reflected in what appears to be the riot act read by the administrator, Vice Marshal Ibok-Ete Ibas, to anyone who may be minded to cause any form of economic, political or violent sabotage in Rivers State. Or, Section 11(4,5), which says, “At any time when any House of Assembly of a State is unable to perform its functions… the National Assembly may make such laws for the peace, order and good government of that State with respect to matters on which a House of Assembly may make laws as may appear to the National Assembly to be necessary or expedient until… the House of Assembly is able to resume its functions;… “Provided that nothing in this section shall be construed as conferring on the National Assembly power to remove the governor or the deputy governor of the state from office. (And)… a House of Assembly shall not be deemed to be unable to perform its functions so long as (it) can hold a meeting and transact business.” Or Emergency Powers in Section 65 of Nigeria’s rested 1960 Constitution, which says, “Parliament may… make such laws for Nigeria or any part thereof with respect to matters not included in the Exclusive Legislative Lists as may appear to Parliament to be necessary or expedient for the purpose of maintaining or securing peace, order and good government during any period of emergency… “(Where) ‘period of emergency’ means any period during which- (a) the Federation is at war; (b) there is… a resolution passed by (the)… Parliament declaring that a state of public emergency exists; or (c) there is… a resolution… supported by… not less than two-thirds of all the members of the House declaring that democratic institutions in Nigeria are threatened by subversion…” Except for a “doctrine of necessity”, to secure Rivers State’s hydrocarbon resources, these do not enable the President to remove elected officials, though a state of emergency without control will be meaningless. But the President should not have returned Nigeria to the military “Egypt” by appointing a military administrator, even if he is retired. That is untidy semiotics for a democracy wrested from the claws of the military. President Tinubu, who swatted a gnat with a sledgehammer, must find a way to quickly return River State to the status quo. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s constitutional lawyers must lead the way to test this strange development in court. As for winning Rivers State in 2027, “The people will decide,” to quote retired Commodore Olabode George, former governor of Ondo State.

We take a closer look at Pope Francis’s final days before his passing on Easter Monday. What's the legacy of Pope Francis? Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at the age of 88. “Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow, I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell announced on Monday. “At 7:35 this morning [05:35 GMT], the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of His Church,” he said. Here is what we know about the death of the Argentinian pontiff, the first in history from Latin America, who led the Catholic Church for more than 12 years. Pope Francis died of a stroke followed by a coma and heart failure on Monday morning, the Vatican’s press office said in a statement. The pope has also suffered a “previous episode of acute respiratory failure”, arterial hypertension and type II diabetes, the statement said. Farrell made the announcement at 9:47am (07:47 GMT), about two hours after Francis died. Farrell spoke from Domus Santa Marta, the apartment on Vatican grounds where Francis lived and where he had returned to recover after a hospitalisation for double pneumonia in February. In the coming weeks, Farrell will play an important role, overseeing the administration of the Holy See until a new pope is chosen. Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra seal the doors of the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace and the door to the apartment of the Casa Santa Marta, where the late Pope Francis lived. The rite of the certification of death and… pic.twitter.com/PP6j4SbqPr — Vatican News (@VaticanNews) April 21, 2025 The pope was hospitalised for five weeks in February-March, initially suffering from a severe respiratory insufficiency from viral and bacterial infections. He had often struggled with bronchitis during winter. He was subsequently diagnosed with a polymicrobial infection, which evolved to pneumonia in both lungs. Francis came close to death during his hospitalisation, according to his medical team. He was also treated for an asthmatic respiratory episode, early-stage kidney failure, and a bronchial spasm that led him to aspirate vomit following a severe coughing fit. He received noninvasive mechanical ventilation at night and high-flow oxygen therapy during the day. His doctors had said the pope was so critically ill that the staff considered stopping his treatment so he could die. “We had to choose whether to stop [treatment] and let him go, or push forward and try [to save him] with all the drugs and therapies possible, running the very high risk of damaging other organs. In the end, we took this path,” Sergio Alfieri, a general surgeon at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital, said in an interview recently. According to Alfieri, it was the pope’s personal nurse, Massimiliano Strappetti, who urged the medical team to persist with treatment, saying, “Try everything – don’t give up.” His condition stabilised, and the pontiff continued his recovery at his residence. He made several public appearances over the past week, but his weak voice served as a reminder of his frailty. Doctors at Gemelli Hospital prescribed him a regimen of complete rest. After 38 days in hospital, the pope was discharged on March 23. He returned to his residence at the Casa Santa Marta. With Easter just three weeks away, the pope’s schedule grew increasingly demanding. On April 9, he met King Charles of the United Kingdom and Queen Camilla at the Casa Santa Marta. This meeting coincided with their 20th wedding anniversary during their state visit to Italy. The audience was arranged at the last minute, following the postponement of a planned formal state visit due to the pope’s health issues. On April 17, Holy Thursday, a significant day in the Catholic calendar commemorating the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, Francis visited Rome’s Regina Coeli, where he met with some 70 inmates. In past years, he had washed the feet of prisoners, echoing Jesus’s gesture with his disciples on the eve of his death. This time, however, the Vatican said he apologised for being unable to perform the ritual. Instead, he offered them rosaries and pocket-sized Gospels as gifts. Four days later, on April 20, Francis received United States Vice President JD Vance at his residence. “I know you have not been feeling great, but it’s good to see you in better health,” Vance said. “Thank you for seeing me.” The meeting came as the pope and Vatican officials have criticised several of President Donald Trump’s policies, particularly his efforts to deport migrants. Francis has denounced the immigration crackdown as a “disgrace”. Meanwhile, Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, has defended the policy by referencing his interpretation of Catholic teachings from the medieval era. It was the pope’s last diplomatic meeting. Later that day, he delivered the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing, Latin for “to the city and the world”, before thousands of Catholic pilgrims gathered in St Peter’s Square for the Vatican’s open-air Easter Sunday Mass. During this time, the pope condemned the “deplorable humanitarian situation” caused by Israel’s 18 months of war on the Palestinian territory. He also called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he made his way down to Saint Peter’s Square, riding through the crowds in the open-top Popemobile – the iconic white Mercedes-Benz used by popes to greet the faithful. Near the end of his final tour of the square, several children were lifted towards him. It would be the last time the world saw him alive. He died the next morning. 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If the global refugee population were just 100 people, 33 would be children, each in need of protection. Sameer - not his real name - fled Afghanistan when he was just 17 years old. The Taliban had overthrown the government of President Ashraf Ghani - which his father worked for - placing his family at risk. “I was doing well in my life, practising and exercising normally," Sameer, an aspiring mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, tells Al Jazeera. "But when the Taliban took power … the situation became very hard, like putting us under pressure.” Sameer became a child refugee and endured a journey not unlike that of many other displaced and fleeing children. Today, of the 41 million refugees around the world, 13.3 million are children. In other words, there are more child refugees than the entire population of Belgium, or Sweden, or Portugal, or Greece. That also means that 33 out of every 100 refugees are children, each in need of international protection. To better understand the lives of refugee children - their challenges, vulnerabilities and resilience -  we visualise what the world would look like if it had just 100 refugees. According to the latest figures from the UNHCR , 6.8 million child refugees (51 percent) are boys and 6.5 million (49 percent) are girls. While that division is fairly equal, refugee children often face distinct challenges based on their gender. For example, girls may be more at risk of gender-based violence and sexual assault, whereas boys may face different hardships - including other forms of physical violence. These forms of abuse and violence are more pronounced among unaccompanied minors. For Sameer, this came in the form of police beatings at country borders. “The worst effect or part of the journey was when we used to cross the borders. And different countries' police used to stop or catch us, and they used to beat us in front of others,”  Sameer says. “They did not spare a child or adult or anybody.” In 2024, 44 percent (5.9 million) of child refugees were aged 5-11 years, followed by 32 percent (4.2 million) aged between 12-17 years and 24 percent (3.2 million) aged between 0-4 years. At each stage of childhood, distinct and compounding risks threaten healthy development. For example, young children are especially reliant on caregivers and at heightened risk of malnutrition, illness and disease. Any child refugee of school age will face disruption to their education due to access. However, in adolescents, the effects of a trauma can be compounded as they go through puberty: It’s in this age bracket that mental illness most kicks in. In addition, a child’s ability to articulate distress or seek help evolves over time, David Trickey, consultant psychologist and co-director at UK Trauma Council (UKTC), a project of the Anna Freud Foundation, tells Al Jazeera. “Younger children find it more difficult to tell the carers and those around them what's going on internally.” If Sameer were one of the 100 child refugees, he would be among 21 from Afghanistan. In 2024, two-thirds of child refugees came from just four countries - 21 percent (2.8 million) were from Afghanistan, followed by 20 percent (2.7 million) from Syria, 14 percent (1.8 million) from Venezuela and 10 percent (1.3 million) from South Sudan. When the UN Refugee Convention was adopted in 1951, there were 2.1 million refugees. Now, there are 20 times that number. In 1951, 1 in every 1,190 people was a refugee and now that number is 1 in every 185, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and civil wars in Syria and South Sudan, among major drivers of the crisis. It took Sameer one and a half years to reach the United Kingdom, making him a part of the 12 percent of child refugees who have travelled more than 2,000km (1,200 miles) to get to safety. According to an analysis of data from the UNHCR, 9 out of 10 refugee children have journeyed more than 500km (300 miles) from home. Half (50 percent) of all refugee children have had to travel between 500 and 1,000km (600 miles) from their homes. That’s a distance that could be covered in a 10-12 hour drive or a two-hour flight. But most refugees fleeing their home country journey on foot, in boats or using other slower means of transport. Sameer tells Al Jazeera his journey was spent in the wet and cold. “We passed through different countries, but we stayed most of the time in forest and mountain areas.” On top of the physical toll of travelling, Sameer faced brutality at the hands of border police he encountered when crossing into Turkiye and Bulgaria. “They beat us in all senses. They used to poke at our clothes and send us back to the previous country.” Sameer’s experience is a microcosm of the violence, unfamiliarity and grief - not just for lost family members, but also for a lost home - that accompany refugee life. “The fact that they're fleeing something - that is dangerous in the first place, that has the potential to be traumatic. You're then taking them away from everything that they know that is familiar, possibly their friends, possibly even their families, going to somewhere that they don't know, a strange place, that all has the potential to get in the way of their recovery,” Trickey tells Al Jazeera. Sameer is one of the very small percentage of child refugees that has ended up in the UK. In 2024, the top host countries for refugees were Iran (1.8 million), Turkiye (1.4 million), and Uganda (965,000). He tells Al Jazeera how he finally ended up in the UK. “First, when I tried to cross the Channel, the boat drowned and we were recovered by French police.” After taking another boat at midnight, Sameer reached British shores in the morning, ending an 18-month journey. Upon arriving in a host country, refugees often face additional risks like being held in detention centres. “For some people, that's [being held in detention centres] the worst bit," Trickey told Al Jazeera. "You know, that was the biggest trauma.” Sameer had a more welcoming experience on arrival. “The UK police was kind and very gentle. And they treated us very gently. They took us to a place where they provided us with the clothes, and also provided the food.” According to the UNHCR, about 153,300 children are unaccompanied or have been separated from their guardians and family. Sameer was separated from his brother in Turkiye. “I was sent a different way and he was sent a different way, and since then I never saw my brother and I don't know about his wellbeing or whereabouts,” Sameer tells Al Jazeera. Some children travel alone because they have been sent by their parents to ensure their survival, while others are orphaned. Peter Ventevogel, senior mental health and psychosocial support officer at UNHCR, told Al Jazeera, “If you're in a good social system, you feel safe, then you feel you're less affected. But for children, that effect is even stronger. “We have these case reports of children who are in terrible situations, but as long as they're with their mother, if it's a young child, and the mother is able to convey that sense of safety, then you can buffer a lot of the consequences, which also means that in displacement settings where family structures are disrupted you see more issues among children.” According to research conducted by scientists at Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University, both in Northern Ireland, high rates of mental illness and symptoms among unaccompanied refugee minors were consistent across national and settlement contexts. But how they are treated once they reach their destination matters, say experts. Trickey tells Al Jazeera about two children from Afghanistan he has worked with. “Both of them were from Afghanistan. Both arrived the same week in the UK. Both were unaccompanied. One was looked after by one particular local authority who found a foster placement that spoke the same language, had children the same age, and he just thrived. “The other one, same age, same experience or similar experience, ended up being placed in this semi-independent hostel where no one spoke his language. The staff were pretty absent, and he really struggled. He really, really struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. So that stability and the connection that you're provided with can make a real difference to your capacity to process things that have partly happened in the past.” Sameer tells Al Jazeera,“Scenes of those things which I witnessed had a very bad effect on me and still when I remember, it [makes] me upset.” Research with refugee children finds the prevalence of emotional disorders to be generally higher than in non-refugee children. According to one study, the overall prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was 23 percent (one in four) in refugee children, that of anxiety disorders was 16 percent (one in six) and that of depression was 14 percent (one in seven). “One of the things about trauma is it keeps you on this very high state of alert,” says Trickey. "And I think those without refugee status, they're living this constant fear of being returned to the place they fled.” But not all children experience trauma the same way, Trickey adds. “A more important risk factor, a predictor of PTSD, is not how big the event was, but it's what you make of it. Were you afraid? Did you think someone was gonna die? “And different children will find different things frightening. There'll be some people that actually experience the most awful things and seem pretty unaffected, and they do OK. There'll be some people that seem to be doing OK, and then they have, we can sometimes call it, latent vulnerability. And later on in life, that's when they develop difficulties.” Ventevogel tells Al Jazeera that often, in younger children, there may be more issues with withdrawal, because they cannot verbalise how they feel, for example where “a child withdraws, stops playing with other children, or a child shows in play, in the way the child enacts issues, that there is something not OK. “It's not diagnostic, but this can be an indication that there is something deeper,” Ventevogel says. Trickey explains that during a trauma-focused therapy session, a boy he was working with described what he was going through by comparing his brain to a wastepaper bin stuffed with "scrunched-up pieces of paper" that represent "all the bad things" he had been through. "And as I walk to school, they fall in front of my eyes. And when I lie down and go to sleep, they fall into my dreams," the boy told him. "But when I come and see you, we take them out of the bin, and we unscrunch them. Then we read them through carefully, then we fold them up neatly, and then we put them back in the bin. But because they're folded up neatly, it means they don't fall out the top, and I've got more room in my head to think about other things.” For Sameer, his ability to cope came down to his mindset. “With the passage of time, I became used to the situation and I feel confident and fine now. And I hope, whatever problems or difficulties I face in the future, I will overcome and hopefully things will get normal.” With thanks to The Children’s Society, the Anna Freud Centre/UK Trauma Council, and the UNHCR for their insights and expertise, which helped inform this reporting on the plight and mental health of child refugees. Follow Al Jazeera English:...