Joe Biden took to the stage at his Thursday night news conference with everything on the line – his presidency, his re-election hopes, his political life.

If those were the stakes, he barely acknowledged them at the hour-long session to mark the end of a Nato summit, having earlier introduced Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “President Putin” at a separate event.

The news conference was his first unscripted appearance after a disastrous debate with his rival Donald Trump, leading to calls from several Democratic politicians and donors for him to drop out of the race for president.

Mr Biden, 81, has faced continuous questions over his age and ability to serve another term, which intensified after the debate.

But at the highly anticipated news conference, he dismissed the concerns about his campaign that were posed again and again by a room full of reporters, and promised that he was fighting not for his legacy, but to finish the job he started when he took office in 2021.

“If I slow down and can’t get the job done, that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “But there’s no indication of that yet.”

Depending on perspective, it was either a sign of dogged determination or of a man in denial about how dire his situation has become.

Minutes after the news conference finished, several more Democratic members of Congress publicly called on Mr Biden to step down, joining at least a dozen other lawmakers in the president’s own party who have done so.

The question for Joe Biden’s campaign is whether the floodgates will now open, or if the tide will hold.

The situation will not be helped by two excruciating gaffes that will be remembered by anyone who watched.

In his very first answer, he called his own Vice-President Kamala Harris “Vice-President Trump” – a painful faceplant in front of a national television audience.

That came just an hour after another headline-grabbing mistake at a Nato event, when Mr Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”, prompting loud gasps in the audience.

He corrected the first verbal misstep involving Ukraine’s leader quickly. The second one he didn’t catch, even as some reporters in the room murmured in surprise and several of his top Cabinet secretaries sat stone-faced in the front row of the audience.

Those moments – the only major stumbles in an otherwise steady if not vigorous, appearance – will surely prompt nervous Democrats to wonder if there are more gaffes to come if the president presses ahead with his campaign.

But for now at least, Mr Biden seemed the happy warrior, insisting he will push on. He laughed and smiled as he was peppered with questions, and said he could keep up with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, even if the hoarseness and cough that had been on display during his debate two weeks ago still appeared to linger.

He again insisted he didn’t need cognitive tests, telling reporters that if he even saw “two doctors or seven”, his critics wouldn’t be satisfied.

The election campaign, he said, had barely started, and he again repeated that he was confident he could beat Donald Trump in November’s election.

The Democratic delegates who will back him officially as the party’s nominee at next month’s convention were free to change their minds as they pleased, he said, before mock whispering: “It’s not going to happen.”

He said he would consider stepping aside if his staff gave him data that he couldn’t win, but that polls still show the race a dead heat.

In that regard, he is on firm ground. An Ipsos survey released earlier on Thursday, for instance, had Mr Biden only one point behind his opponent – well within the margin of error. If there’s one thing that has been clear since the start of the year, support for the two candidates has remained remarkably stable despite unprecedented drama surrounding both men.

Polling alone won’t calm the panic that has set in among many Democratic officials, however, and the storm clouds that linger around Biden’s campaign won’t be so easily dispelled.

More Democratic politicians are waiting in the wings, according to reports, poised to announce their own break with the president, having waited until the conclusion of this Nato summit to voice their concerns.

And that’s just the first round of tests for the embattled president. He has another high-profile sit-down interview, with NBC’s Lester Holt, on Monday. Donors are anxious, and earlier on Thursday several reports suggested that even figures in the president’s own campaign were plotting ways to usher their candidate toward the exit.

Despite all of this, Mr Biden made clear that it will be a challenging task to pry the nomination away from him. The 81-year-old man who at times gripped the lectern with two hands and insisted he was the “best-qualified person” to run the country is not going to exit the stage quietly.

• POLICIES: Where Biden and Trump stand on key issues
• GLOBAL: What Moscow and Beijing think of rematch
• ANALYSIS: Could US economy be doing too well?
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

Four migrants have died after a boat capsized during an attempt to cross the English Channel, according to the French coastguard.

Overnight, a navy patrol boat was alerted that migrants had fallen into the sea off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France.

Four people found “unconscious” could not be saved, police added, while 63 were rescued.

According to early details from the coastguard, a helicopter and fishing vessel also helped in the rescue effort.

Over 13,000 people have crossed the English Channel so far this year.

On 18 June, 882 people crossed the Channel on 15 small boats – a new record for the year so far.

According to Home Office data, those arrivals were the highest in a single day since October 2022.

Home Office figures show 484 migrants crossed the Channel on Monday and Tuesday.

Earlier this week, the new Labour government set out plans to tackle the small boat crisis.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she would appoint a leader of the UK’s new Border Security Command within weeks.

The government hopes the new body will reduce small boat crossings in the English Channel.

A team of imaging experts, scientists and historians will set sail for the Titanic on Friday to gather the most detailed photographic record ever made of the wreck.

The BBC has had exclusive access to expedition members here in the US city of Providence, Rhode Island, as they make preparations to leave port.

They’ll be using state of the art technology to scan every nook and cranny of the famous liner to gain new insights into its sinking.

This will be the first commercial mission to Titanic since last year’s OceanGate tragedy. Five men died while trying to visit the lost ship in a novel submersible.

A joint memorial service will be held at sea in the coming days for them and the 1,500 passengers and crew who went down with Titanic in 1912.

The new expedition is being mounted by the US company that has sole salvage rights and which to date has brought up some 5,500 objects from the wreck.

But this latest visit is purely a reconnaissance mission, says RMS Titanic Inc, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two robotic vehicles will dive to the ocean bottom to capture millions of high-resolution photographs and to make a 3D model of all the debris.

“We want to see the wreck with a clarity and precision that’s never before been achieved,” explained co-expedition lead David Gallo.

The logistics ship Dino Chouest is going to be the base for operations out in the North Atlantic.

Weather permitting, it should spend 20 days above the wreck, which lies in 3,800m (12,500ft) of water.

It will be a poignant few weeks for all involved.

One of the five who died on the OceanGate sub was Frenchman Paul-Henri (“PH”) Nargeolet. He was the director of research at RMS Titanic Inc and was due to lead this expedition.

A plaque will be laid on the seabed in his honour.

“It’s tough but the thing about exploration is that there’s an urge and a drive to keep going. And we’re doing that because of that passion PH had for continuous exploration,” explained friend and historian Rory Golden, who will be “chief morale officer” on Dino Chouest.

There can be few people on Earth who don’t know the story of the supposedly unsinkable Titanic and how it was holed by an iceberg, east of Canada, on the night of 15 April 1912.

There are countless books, movies and documentaries about the event.

But although the wreck site has been the target of repeated study since its discovery in 1985, there still isn’t what could be described as a definitive map.

And while the bow and stern sections of the broken ship are reasonably well understood, there are extensive areas of the surrounding debris field that have received only cursory inspection.

Two six-tonne remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) intend to put that right. One will be fitted with an array of ultra-high-definition optical cameras and a special lighting system; the other will carry a sensor package that includes a lidar (laser) scanner.

Together, they’ll track back and forth across a 1.3km-by-0.97km section of seafloor.

Evan Kovacs, who’s in charge of the imaging programme, says his camera systems should produce millimetre resolution.

“If all of the weather gods, the computer gods, the ROV gods, the camera gods – if all those gods align, we should be able to capture Titanic and the wreck site in as close to digital perfection as you can get. You would be able to quite literally count grains of sand,” he told BBC News.

There’s huge anticipation for what the magnetometer aboard the sensor ROV might produce. This is a first for Titanic.

The instrument will detect all the metals at the wreck site, even material that is buried out of sight in the sediment.

“It would be an absolute dream to determine what has happened with Titanic’s bow below the seafloor,” explained geophysics engineer Alison Proctor.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to deduce whether or not the bow was crushed when it hit the seabed, or if it might actually extend down well into the sediment intact.”

The team wants to review the state of some well known objects in the debris field, such as the big boiler which spilled out as the opulent steamliner broke in half.

There’s the desire, too, to locate items thought to have been sighted on previous visits. These include an electric candelabra, which in its day would have been a fascinating curio, as well as the possibility of a second Steinway grand piano.

The musical instrument’s wooden surround would have long since decayed away, but the cast iron plate, or frame, that held the strings should still be there, perhaps even some of the keys.

“For me, it’s the passengers’ possessions, especially their bags, that are of greatest interest,” said Tomasina Ray, who curates the collection of Titanic artefacts held by the company.

“It’s their belongings – if we are able to retrieve more in the future – that help flesh out their stories. For so many passengers, they are just names on a list, and it’s a way to keep them meaningful.”

This will be RMS Titanic Inc’s ninth visit to the wreck site. The firm has attracted controversy in recent years with its stated desire to try to bring up part of the Marconi radio equipment that transmitted the distress calls on the night of the sinking.

It won’t happen on this expedition but if and when it does occur, it would mean extracting an object from inside the disintegrating ship.

For many, Titanic is the gravesite to the 1,500 who died that night in 1912 and should not be touched, its interior especially.

“We get that and understand it,” said company researcher James Penca.

“We dive to Titanic to learn as much as we can from her; and like you should with any archaeological site, we do it with the utmost respect. But to leave her alone, to just let her passengers and crew be lost to history – that would be the biggest tragedy of all.”

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has hit back at Nato’s “groundless accusations” that Beijing is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

He has also warned the Western alliance against stirring up confrontation.

Mr Wang’s comments, made in a call with his Dutch counterpart, came hours after leaders of Nato member states gathered in Washington DC and issued a declaration that mentioned the war.

They accused China of being a “decisive enabler” of Russia through its “large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base”, in some of their harshest remarks yet about Beijing.

They called on China to stop “all material and political support” to Russia’s war effort such as the supply of dual-use materials, which are items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Western states have previously accused Beijing of transferring drone and missile technology and satellite imagery to Moscow. The US estimates about 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the microelectronics Russia imports now come from China.

Beijing was also accused of conducting “malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation” on Nato states.

On Thursday, while speaking to the Netherlands’ new foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp, Mr Wang said “China absolutely does not accept” all these accusations and insisted that they have “always been a force for peace and force for stability”.

In comments carried by state media, he said that China’s different political system and values “should not be used as a reason for Nato to incite confrontation with China”, and called for Nato to “stay within its bounds”.

His remarks was the latest in a flurry of angry responses from Beijing.

Earlier on Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Nato was smearing China with “fabricated disinformation”, while Beijing’s mission to the EU told the alliance to “stop hyping up the so-called China threat”.

Beijing has long rebutted accusations that it has been aiding Russia in the war and insists that it remains a neutral party. It has called for an end to the conflict and proposed a peace plan, which Ukraine has rejected.

But, besides the growing accusations of military support, observers have also pointed out that Beijing’s purchases of vast amounts of oil and gas have helped prop up Russia’s economy crippled by sanctions and replenish coffers drained by war spending.

Beijing’s official rhetoric on the conflict often mirrors Moscow’s – like them, China still does not call it a war – and Chinese President Xi Jinping has maintained a close relationship with President Vladimir Putin, with both of them famously declaring their partnership has “no limits”.

Beijing has accused the US and other Western states of pouring “fuel on the fire” by supplying lethal weapons and technology to Ukraine for its defence.

In recent weeks, several countries have gone a step further and allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

During Nato’s three-day summit, which ended on Thursday, the alliance continued to underscore its commitment to Ukraine. Member states said they would support Ukraine on its “irreversible path” to future membership, adding that “Ukraine’s future in Nato”.

They also announced further integration with Ukraine’s military and support for its defence. The alliance has committed at least €40bn ($43.3bn, £33.7bn) in aid in the next year, including F-16 fighter jets and air defence support.

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian and former UK PM Tony Blair are among the international guests that have arrived in Mumbai for the wedding ceremony of the son of Asia’s richest man on Friday.

Anant Ambani, son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, will tie the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant.

The four-day wedding extravaganza in Mumbai city is the final stop in a string of lavish parties the family has hosted since March.

Key roads in the city are sealed off for several hours a day until the festivities end on Monday.

The months of lavish celebrations have already featured performances by popstars like Rihanna and Justin Bieber.

But it has also led to backlash – city dwellers have complained of traffic snarls, while others have questioned the ostentatious display of wealth at the seemingly never-ending celebrations.

On Friday, the city witnessed heavy rains with waterlogging reported in some parts.

• The marathon Indian wedding turning heads around the world

Mukesh Ambani, 66, is at present the world’s 10th richest man with a net worth of $115bn, according to Forbes. Reliance Industries, founded by his father in 1966, is a massive conglomerate that operates in sectors ranging from petroleum and retail, to financial services and telecoms.

Anant Ambani is the youngest of his three children, all of whom are on the board of Reliance Industries. The 29-year-old is involved in Reliance’s energy businesses and is on the board of Reliance Foundation.

On Friday, the couple will get married in a traditional Hindu ceremony at the Jio World Convention Centre.

Reports say the family will host a grand reception through the weekend, before a final reception for their household staff on Monday.

Rumours on the internet suggest that Adele could be performing at the wedding, but the family has not confirmed this.

Mumbai police have labelled the wedding a “public event” since it would be attended by several international and Indian VIPs, reports Reuters news agency.

The city police has also imposed traffic restrictions around the venue.

From Friday to Monday, roads around the convention centre will be open only for “event vehicles” between 13:00 India time (07:30 GMT) to midnight, it said.

Rajan Mehra, CEO of air charter company Club One Air, told Reuters that the family had rented three Falcon-2000 jets to ferry wedding guests to the event.

“The guests are coming from all over and each aircraft will make multiple trips across the country,” he said.

The restrictions have sparked anger among the city residents who say they are already struggling with traffic jams and monsoon flooding.

The wedding festivities began in March when the family held a three-day pre-wedding party in their home state of Gujarat.

Among the 1,200 guests to attend the celebration were international celebrities, politicians, and members of the business world – including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

• World’s rich in India for tycoon son’s pre-wedding gala

The party started with a performance by Rihanna on the first night. Diljit Dosanjh, the first Punjabi singer to perform at Coachella, took the stage on the second night, while rapper Akon closed the show on the final day of celebrations.

In June, the Ambanis organised another pre-wedding celebration, this time, a luxury cruise from Italy to France. The Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry and Pitbull performed for the 800 guests, which included Bollywood stars and cricketers.

Then came the final round of celebrations, which began earlier this week when Bieber landed in Mumbai.

Social media has been flooded with photos and videos of him singing in front of an ecstatic audience.

Money was also lavished on constructing 14 temples inside a sprawling complex in Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples too.

On Wednesday, the family hosted a bhandara – a community feast for underprivileged people.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them but wedding planners estimate they’ve already spent anywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m]. It was rumoured Rihanna had been paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Bieber is $10m.

An Australian soldier and her husband have been arrested and each charged with spying for Russia.

Investigators say the couple – both Russian-born Australian citizens – obtained Australian Defence Force (ADF) material to share with Moscow.

However, Australian police say “no significant compromise” of military secrets has been identified.

It is the first time stricter foreign interference laws – introduced by Australia in 2018 – have been used to lay espionage charges.

Kira Korolev, a 40-year-old army private, and her 62-year-old husband Igor Korolev faced court in Brisbane on Friday, each on one count of preparing for an espionage offence – which carries a maximum 15-year jail sentence.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been “briefed extensively” by the nation’s security agencies but would not comment on the case directly as it is now before the courts.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the couple had been in Australia for more than a decade before the alleged offending and had both become citizens several years ago.

Igor worked as a self-employed labourer, and Kira was an information systems technician in the army, a role for which she had obtained a security clearance, police say.

Mr Kershaw alleged she secretly travelled to Russia while on leave from the ADF, then instructed Igor to access her work account and send sensitive material so that she could forward it on to Russian authorities.

An investigation in to whether any of the material was ever delivered to them is still underway, Mr Kershaw said, adding that the charges could be upgraded.

Both Mr Kershaw and Australia’s spy agency boss Mike Burgess – who addressed media together on Friday – declined to answer questions about the nature of the documents or how authorities were tipped off about the alleged crimes.

But Mr Burgess said that the ongoing threat of espionage is “real”.

“Multiple countries are seeking to steal Australia’s secrets. We cannot be naive, and we cannot be complacent.”

“If you are spying in this country, we are looking for you. If you are being spied on in this country, we are looking out for you,” he added.

Mr Kershaw stressed that Australia’s allies could be “confident” that the country would “continue to identify and disrupt espionage and foreign interference activity”.

In a statement, the ADF said it was aware one of its members had been arrested and that it “takes all breaches of security seriously”.

Every day, for the last seven years, Arun Kumar has set up his fruit stall on a busy Mumbai street.

It’s not an easy way to make a living.

“Being a street vendor is a challenge. There’s the fear of being robbed or, as I am not a licensed vendor, the local body can come and dismantle my store anytime,” he says.

But over the past four years at least one aspect of his work has become easier.

“Prior to Covid everything was in cash. But now everyone pays with UPI. Scan the code and the payment is done within seconds.

“No issues of handling cash, giving change to customers. It has made my life and business smooth,” he says.

UPI, or to give it its full name the Unified Payments Interface, was launched in 2016 in a collaboration between India’s central bank and the nation’s banking industry.

It’s an app-based instant payment system, which allows users to send and receive money, pay bills and authorise payments in a single step – no need to enter bank details or any other personal information. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s free.

It has become so popular that India is now the biggest real-time payments market.

In May, UPI recorded 14 billion transactions, up from nine billion the year before.

But the popularity and ease of use has made it a rich feeding ground for scammers.

“While digital payments are convenient, they do come with vulnerabilities,” says Shashank Shekhar, founder of the Delhi-based Future Crime Research Foundation.

Mr Shekhar says that scammers use a variety of ways to trick people, including persuading them to share their UPI pin number, which is needed to authorise payments.

Some scammers have also created fake UPI apps, that are clones of legitimate banking apps, and then steal login details or other valuable information.

“The pace at which digital transformation took place in the country means unfortunately digital literacy and safe internet practice could not catch up,” says Mr Shekhar.

He says that between January 2020 and June 2023 almost half of all financial fraud involved the use of the UPI system.

According to government figures there were more than 95,000 cases of fraud involving UPI in the financial year ending April 2023, up from 77,000 in the previous year.

Shivkali was one such victim. She had always wanted to own a scooter, but they were beyond her budget.

However, earlier in the year the 22-year-old, who lives in Bihar state in northeastern India, spotted one for sale on Facebook that looked like a great deal.

“I grabbed the opportunity without thinking,” she says.

A couple of clicks later and she was talking to the owner, who said that for $23 he would send over the vehicle papers.

That went smoothly, so Shivkali continued to send the owner money, via instant transfers. She eventually ended up paying $200, but the scooter (also commonly called a Scooty in India), was never delivered.

Shivkali realised she had been scammed.

“I did not think I could be cheated, as I have some education background and know what is happing in the world. But scammers are smart. They have an art of speaking to convince the opposite person,” she says.

The government and the central bank are looking at ways to protect UPI users from scammers.

But at the moment, if a victim wants compensation, they have to approach their bank.

“The problem is deep rooted,” says Dr Durgesh Pandey, an expert in financial crime.

“Most of the onus lies with banks and telecom companies. They are lax in making identity checks, that’s why the fraudster can’t be traced.

“But the challenge for banks particularly is that they have to balance between inclusivity, ease of business and enforcement of identity checks. If they are too rigid, the vulnerable section of society will remain without banking facilities.”

But Dr Pandey argues that in most cases of fraud, the bank is not totally to blame.

“It’s a complex question because the problem lies with banks, but it’s the victim who is giving his credentials in most case. I would say both victim and bank should bear the loss.”

Despite those problems, UPI is being promoted in rural areas where access to banking services can be difficult.

Poonam Untwal from Rajasthan runs a guidance centre which helps people use the internet and digital banking.

“Most of us are not that educated, nor know the proper use of smartphones. I teach them that phones are no longer a device just to talk to people but banks at their fingertips,” she says.

She believes that UPI will help develop the local economy.

“Many women like me have a small business that we run from our home. Now we can receive and send money with UPI. People who don’t have smart phones come to my centre to get their transactions done,” she says.

As well as making inroads into rural areas, UPI is spreading overseas.

Retailers in Bhutan, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and UAE will take UPI payments.

And this year, France become the first European country to accept UPI payments, starting with tickets to the Eiffel Tower.

Back in Mumbai, Mr Kumar is happy that he no longer has to use cash, but remains wary.

If he can’t get a good internet connection then customers can, by accident or design, make off without paying.

“For a small vendor like me it [UPI] made receiving money very easy. But I am always scared of fraud. I keep hearing in the news how the UPI frauds are increasing. Hopefully some mechanisms are invented so a small vendor like me doesn’t face losses.”

Donald Trump met Viktor Orbán in Florida on Thursday night, just weeks after the Hungarian prime minister met Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

His visit to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach is the latest in a number of meetings between the two men.

Mr Orbán has publicly endorsed Trump’s re-election bid and recently said there was a “very, very high chance” that President Joe Biden would lose the election.

In a tweet, Mr Orbán called the visit “peace mission 5.0”, adding:

“We discussed ways to make #peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

The Hungarian leader has been frequently criticised in Europe for his pro-Russian views but remains popular among Trump supporters and US conservatives.

He has also recently met China’s Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in a self-described “peace” initiative.

On Wednesday, Russian newspaper Izvestia wrote such initiatives were futile, “but Viktor Orbán may pass information he has collected to Trump’s team”.

Mr Orbán told German media earlier this week that the former US president was a “self-made man” with a “different approach to everything”.

A Trump victory in the US election would be “good for the world politics”, he added.

“He [Trump] is a man of peace. Under his four-year term he did not initiate a single war, and he did a lot in order to create peace in old conflicts in very complicated areas of the world.”

Mr Orbán, whose country currently holds the presidency of the European Union, also criticised the Biden administration for failing to end the conflict in Ukraine.

“I think new leadership will provide new chances,” he said.

Mr Orbán was the first and only EU leader to back Trump’s bid for presidency in 2016, but had to wait until May 2019 for his first visit to the White House.

Trump has found more time for the Hungarian leader out of power. At the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, he told cheering delegates: “The globalists can all go to hell… I have come to Texas.”

His creation of a similar group in his country, CPAC Hungary, has boosted his relationships further.

In March this year, after meeting Trump in Florida, Mr Orbán posted on X/Twitter: “We need leaders in the world who are respected and can bring peace. He is one of them! Come back and bring us peace, Mr President.”

In April this year, Trump sent a short video message to CPAC Hungary, saying he was “honoured to address so many patriots in Hungary… proudly fighting on the front lines of the battle to rescue western civilisation.

“Together we’re engaged in an epic struggle to liberate our nations from all of the sinister forces who want to destroy them.’

He referred to Mr Orbán in the same address as “a great man”.

Mr Orbán has boasted that he has created an “illiberal democracy” in Hungary, and claims “progressives” have unleashed a “virus” of “migration, gender, and the woke movement”.

Narcissistic people get more empathetic, generous and agreeable with age, according to new research into the personality trait.

But although their unreasonably high sense of self-importance may mellow, they do not fully grow out of it, the study involving more than 37,000 people suggests.

Those who were more narcissistic than their peers as children tended to remain that way as adults, investigators found.

And there are at least three types of narcissistic behaviour to look for, they say.

Narcissist has become an insult often hurled at people who are perceived as difficult or diagreeable.

We all may show some narcissistic traits at times.

Doctors use the term to describe a specific, diagnosable type of personality disorder.

Although definitions can vary, common themes shared by those who have it is an unshakeable belief they are better or more deserving than other people, which might be described by others as arrogance and selfishness.

The work, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, comes from data from 51 past studies, involving 37,247 participants who ranged in age from eight to 77.

Researchers looked for three types of narcissist, based on behaviour traits:

• Agentic narcissists – who feel grand or superior to others and crave admiration
• Antagonistic narcissists – who see others as rivals and are exploitative and lack empathy
• Neurotic narcissists – who are shame-prone, insecure and overly sensitive to criticism

They studied what happened to these personality measures over time, based on questionnaires, and found that, generally, narcissism scores declined with age.

However, the changes were slight and gradual.

“Clearly, some individuals may change more strongly, but generally, you wouldn’t expect someone you knew as a very narcissistic person to have completely changed when you meet them again after some years,” lead researcher Dr Ulrich Orth, from the University of Bern in Switzerland, told BBC News.

He says some narcissistic traits can be helpful, at least in the short term.

It might boost your popularity, dating success, and chance of landing a top job, for example. But over longer periods, the consequences are mostly negative, because of the conflict it causes.

“These consequences do not only affect the person themselves, but also the wellbeing of individuals with whom they interact, such as partners, children, friends, co-workers, and employees,” he explained.

Dr Sarah Davies is a chartered counselling psychologist who has written a book on how to leave a narcissist.

She told the BBC that although people may be arrogant or selfish at times, that should not be confused with true clinical narcissism.

“Narcissists tend to be envious and jealous of others and they are highly exploitative and manipulative,” she said.

“They do not experience remorse or feeling bad, or have a sense of responsibility like other non-narcissistic people do.”

She says there has been a boom in interest about narcissism, driven by social media.

“To some extent that’s helpful – it helps inform more people about it and to bring more awareness of this issue. However, like many mental health terms, the clinical meaning can get a little lost.

Dr Davies says we should be more discerning with the term.

“I find it much more useful to be specific with naming behaviours and separate them. For example, a friend of mine recently called her ex a narcissist because he had ghosted her after they broke up.

“Being ghosted [suddenly cutting someone out of your life without explanation] is of course horrible, but he may not have been able to deal with a conversation after their relationship came to an end. It doesn’t necessarily mean he is a raging narcissist.

“They were together a while and there were no other indications of his ‘narcissism’.”

According to Dr Davies, some signs you may be involved with or around a narcissist include:

• Constant drama – a narcissist needs to be needed and seeks chaos and conflict
• No genuine apologies – they never really take full responsibility for their own behaviours
• Blame game – they manipulate and exploit others for their own selfish gains

Dr Tennyson Lee is a consultant psychiatrist with the Deancross Personality Disorder Service, based in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. He said the study was well-conducted and the findings were useful.

“The good news is narcissism typically reduces with age. The bad news is this reduction is not of a high magnitude.

“Do not expect narcissism will dramatically improve at a certain age – it doesn’t.

“This has implications for the long-suffering spouse who thinks ‘an improvement is just around the corner’,” he told BBC News.

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Authorities in Niger have declared a curfew in the volatile Tillaberi region after several prisoners escaped from a heavily fortified jail known to hold jihadists.

The incident occurred on Thursday at Koutoukale prison located about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north-west of the capital, Niamey, the interior ministry said.

Two other attempted jailbreaks at the facility – in 2016 and 2019 – were repelled.

Niger’s armed forces are stretched by jihadist attacks in the west and protecting the junta which took power in last year’s coup.

The ministry did not specify in its statement how many prisoners managed to escape in the latest jailbreak.

However, captured Islamist fighters from groups linked to both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the region are believed to be among them.

Officials have imposed an overnight curfew throughout the Tillaberi region and ordered heightened vigilance. The curfew restricts all movement of pedestrians, bicycles, and motor vehicles.

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Niger and its neighbours – Mali and Burkina Faso, all under military rule, have been battling to contain increasing jihadist attacks.

On Monday, at least 14 soldiers were killed and 11 others wounded in an attack by suspected jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda in the Tillaberi region.

The troops were ambushed between the villages of Ila Fari and Djangore with 24 soldiers still reported missing.

The three military-led countries have all expelled French soldiers who were there helping to fight jihadist groups and turned towards Russia for military assistance.

Thousands have been killed in the insurgencies and more than three million displaced, fuelling a deep humanitarian crisis.

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Israel’s defence minister has called for a state inquiry into what led to the Hamas attacks on 7 October, as the military admitted it failed in its duty to protect a small community were 101 people were killed.

Yoav Gallant made his comments after the first in a series of official Israeli military reports laid bare how the army operated in Kibbutz Be’eri, which is near the Gaza perimeter fence.

More residents died at the kibbutz than any other Israeli community on 7 October, after gunmen crossed from Gaza and rampaged through their homes.

Mr Gallant said an independent national inquiry was needed to examine the actions of all those in power, including Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, in relation to how Hamas had grown in strength and capability over the past decade.

Around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages in the unprecedented assault last autumn.

It led to the major Israeli military operation in Gaza which has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Members of the kibbutz said it was important the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) admitted it had failed to protect them and they too are demanding a national inquiry.

The report, carried out by a senior military officer, commended the bravery of security personal but said the IDF was not prepared for the extensive infiltration by Hamas and “for the first seven hours of combat, the kibbutz residents defended themselves”.

It said: “The inquiry team determined that the IDF failed in its mission to protect the residents of Kibbutz Be’eri.”

Other findings included:

• The IDF “struggled to create a clear and accurate situational assessment” of what was happening in the kibbutz until the afternoon of the attacks, which began at dawn
• There was a “lack of command and control, a lack of co-ordination, and a lack of order among the different forces and units”
• Confusion meant security forces grouped at the entrance to the kibbutz but waited to enter while Hamas were killing people
• That “heroism and supreme courage shown by the fighting forces, commanders, and security personnel” saved many residents

The report also focused on the command given to a tank to shell a house in which 13 hostages were being held.

No personal blame was attributed to Brigadier General Barak Hiram, commander of the 99th Infantry Division who was found to have acted professionally along with other senior officers in “complex and difficult circumstances.”

The report said: “The tank fire towards the area near the house was carried out professionally, with a joint decision made by commanders from all the security organisations after careful consideration and a situational assessment was made, with the intent to apply pressure to the terrorists and save the civilians held hostage inside.”

Brig-Gen Hiram is soon due to take command of the Gaza Division.

The report’s authors concluded that as far as they could assess, no civilians inside the house were harmed by tank-shell fire, except for what they called “an isolated incident outside the building where two civilians were injured by shrapnel”.

It said: “The team determined that most of the hostages were likely murdered by the terrorists, and further inquiries and reviews of additional findings are necessary.”

The IDF’s Chief of the General Staff accepted all the conclusions of the report and ordered they be integrated into future operational plans.

Hamas killed one in 10 of the 1,000 residents of Be’eri on 7 October in a rampage that started after dawn and lasted for hours.

Sharon Sharabi, whose two brothers Yossi and Eli were taken into Gaza as hostages, was briefed earlier on the report and said he had learned nothing new from the official findings.

“There was a command failure here. This is a difficult and bad picture,” he said.

Yossi, 53, has been declared dead [by Israeli authorities] and the fate of Eli, who would now be 52, is unknown.

Mr Sharabi said: “It cannot be beautified in any way. No investigation they may try to do can make it rosy. It’s impossible.”

A statement issued by Kibbutz Be’eri residents said it was of great importance to them that the IDF had asked for their forgiveness for not protecting them from what they called “an unparalleled attack of evil”.

“The failure of the army has been burned into our bodies and in our hearts for nine months,” their statement said.

Residents said they still had not received satisfactory answers to why the army did not enter the kibbutz, nor had any explanation been given yet for the intelligence failure that allowed Hamas to launch their mass assault undetected.

They also called for a national [state] inquiry, which prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been unwilling to initiate.

Thursday’s report is expected to be the first in a series of IDF probes into how the 7 October attacks were dealt with in various parts of southern Israel where Hamas attacked.

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton has gone from rough sleeping as a teenager to visiting the Prince of Wales in Windsor Castle to give him advice on tackling homelessness.

She was able to give her own story to Prince William as proof that homeless people should not be “written off”.

“I sit in front of you now with a job, a home, a family and a PhD,” said Sabrina, who works as a fire service chief.

Prince William marked the first year of his Homewards project with a visit to Lambeth in south London where he pleged: “It is possible to end homelessness.”

The prince delivered the message that there is nothing inevitable about homelessness and that it shouldn’t be normalised.

Meeting Homewards representatives in Brixton he said: “Homelessness is a complex societal issue, and one that touches the lives of far too many people in our society. However, I truly believe that it can be ended.”

He spoke of the importance of “shifting perspectives” about homeless people and the need to “focus on prevention, rather than simply managing the crisis”.

Homewards is a five-year project based around six areas around the UK.

That includes Newport in South Wales – and as a 15- and 16-year-old that was where Sabrina was sleeping rough, after the death of a parent and problems at home.

Her way out was selling the Big Issue – “I credit them with saving my life” – and once she had secure accommodation she was able to get a job in the fire service, which became her career.

She used this “lived experience” to tell Prince William and the Homewards project about what was needed.

“There were lots of closed doors in my face,” she said. Even when support was meant to be available, she said in practice it could be hard for homeless people to have the confidence to access it.

Or there can be practical barriers. She said she relied on her dog, called Menace, but many hostels wouldn’t let people stay with pets.

Sabrina also warned of how homelessness was linked to the “pernicious” long-term impact of poverty.

She went on to become chief fire officer of West Sussex and has spoken widely about her own journey, including this latest role as an advocate for Homewards.

Sabrina said Prince William showed a lot of “empathy” towards the issue of homelessness, which she suggested reflected some of the “trauma” in his early life.

At the event in Brixton, Sabrina spoke alongside Chris Lynam, who recalled the intense “loneliness” that accompanied his own homelessness and drug addiction.

“It’s a very isolating experience… society is quite hostile to homeless people,” said Chris, who is now supporting Homewards’ work in Sheffield.

Prince William described it as an “honour” to hear Chris talk about his experiences.

The homelessness project, operating in Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Lambeth, Newport, Sheffield and Northern Ireland, wants to find successful approaches that can be replicated elsewhere.

There are links with employers about helping people into work. A partnership with Homebase provides starter packs of furniture to help those moving from homelessness into accommodation.

There are efforts to identify sofa-surfing and addressing links between relationship breakdown and homelessness.

Putting housing officers in schools has been tried to identify young people who might be at risk.

Through the Duchy of Cornwall there are 24 homes being built with “wrap-around support” for people leaving homelessness – and Prince William is now involved in developing further plans.

There is a push to change attitudes towards homelessness – and Sabrina talked about the need to get rid of the stigma. She said that for 20 years she hadn’t told anyone about her own experiences, before becoming such a public speaker about homelessness.

Matt Downie, chief executive of Crisis, says the Homewards project can challenge the “cynicism and fatalism” that says homelessness is inevitable.

He says that even though the big picture has seen homelessness getting worse, the evidence exists to prevent it.

Finland is given as an example of a sustained drive to end homelessness, with the claim that there are now only about 150 homeless families. In contrast in the UK, there are more than 100,000 households categorised as homeless.

There have also been questions about whether a wealthy royal should be pronouncing on homelessness.

The anti-monarchy group Republic has previously described it as “crass and hypocritical”.

But George Anderson, a Big Issue seller and medical researcher in London, welcomes that Prince William has used his high public profile to talk about homelessness.

“He encourages people who are distant from homelessness to feel empathy and care,” says George.

“Given the pomp and ceremony around his official role, it is easy for people to question as to what he really knows about homelessness,” says George.

“I am sure that he is aware of that whilst also knowing he is in a position, like his mother, to highlight the plight of homelessness to the media.

“His mother would have experienced similar, being photographed in a tiara at a ball one day, whilst serving soup in a homeless kitchen the next,” says George, who sees the prince’s interest as being linked to Princess Diana bringing her sons to homelessness charities when they were children.

There’s an issue dividing K-pop fans right now – artificial intelligence.

Several of the genre’s biggest stars have now used the technology to create music videos and write lyrics, including boy band Seventeen.

Last year the South Korean group sold around 16 million albums, making them one of the most successful K-pop acts in history. But it’s their most recent album and single, Maestro, that’s got people talking.

The music video features an AI-generated scene, and the record might well include AI-generated lyrics too. At the launch of the album in Seoul, one of the band members, Woozi, told reporters he was “experimenting” with AI when songwriting.

“We practised making songs with AI, as we want to develop along with technology rather than complain about it,” he said.

“This is a technological development that we have to leverage, not just be dissatisfied with. I practised using AI and tried to look for the pros and cons.”

On K-pop discussion pages, fans were torn, with some saying more regulations need to be in place before the technology becomes normalised.

Others were more open to it, including super fan Ashley Peralta. “If AI can help an artist overcome creative blocks, then that’s OK with me,” says the 26-year-old.

Her worry though, is that a whole album of AI generated lyrics means fans will lose touch with their favourite musicians.

“I love it when music is a reflection of an artist and their emotions,” she says. “K-pop artists are much more respected when they’re hands on with choreographing, lyric writing and composing, because you get a piece of their thoughts and feelings.

“AI can take away that crucial component that connects fans to the artists.”

Ashley presents Spill the Soju, a K-pop fan podcast, with her best friend Chelsea Toledo. Chelsea admires Seventeen for being a self-producing group, which means they write their own songs and choreograph them too, but she’s worried about AI having an impact on that reputation.

“If they were to put out an album that’s full of lyrics they hadn’t personally written, I don’t know if it would feel like Seventeen any more and fans want music that is authentically them”.

For those working in K-Pop production, it’s no surprise that artists are embracing new technologies.

Chris Nairn is a producer, composer and songwriter working under the name Azodi. Over the past 12 years he’s written songs for K-pop artists including Kim Woojin and leading agency SM Entertainment.

Working with K-pop stars means Chris, who lives in Brighton, has spent a lot of time in South Korea, whose music industry he describes as progressive.

“What I’ve learned by hanging out in Seoul is that Koreans are big on innovation, and they’re very big on ‘what’s the next thing?’, and asking, ‘how can we be one step ahead?’ It really hit me when I was there,” he says.

“So, to me, it’s no surprise that they’re implementing AI in lyric writing, it’s about keeping up with technology.”

Is AI the future of K-pop? Chris isn’t so sure. As someone who experiments with AI lyric generators, he doesn’t feel the lyrics are strong enough for top artists.

“AI is putting out fairly good quality stuff, but when you’re at the top tier of the songwriting game, generally, people who do best have innovated and created something brand new. AI works by taking what’s already been uploaded and therefore can’t innovate by itself.”

If anything, Chris predicts AI in K-pop will increase the demand for more personal songs.

“There’s going to be pressure from fans to hear lyrics that are from the artist’s heart, and therefore sound different to any songs made using AI”.

Seventeen aren’t the only K-pop band experimenting with AI. Girl group Aespa, who have several AI members as well as human ones, also used the technology in their latest music video. Supernova features generated scenes where the faces of band members remain still as only their mouths move.

Podcaster and super-fan Chelsea says it “triggered” a lot of people.

“K-pop is known for amazing production and editing, so having whole scenes made of AI takes away the charm,” she adds.

Chelsea also worries about artists not getting the right credit. “With AI in videos it’s harder to know if someone’s original artwork has been stolen, it’s a really touchy subject”.

Arpita Adhya is a music journalist and self-titled K-pop superfan. She believes the use of AI in the industry is demonstrative of the pressure artists are under to create new content.

“Most recording artists will put out an album every two years, but K-pop groups are pushing out albums every six to eight months, because there’s so much hype around them.”

She also believes AI has been normalised in the industry, with the introduction of AI covers which have exploded on YouTube. The cover tracks are created by fans and use technology to mimic another artist’s voice.

It’s this kind of trend that Arpita would like to see regulated, something western artists are calling for too.

Just last month megastars including Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj wrote an open letter calling for the “predatory” use of AI in the music industry to be stopped.

They called on tech firms to pledge not to develop AI music-generation tools “that undermine or replace the human artistry of songwriters and artists, or deny us fair compensation for our work”.

For Arpita, a lack of regulations means fans feel an obligation to regulate what is and isn’t OK.

“Whilst there are no clear guidelines on how much artists can and can’t use AI, we have the struggle of making boundaries ourselves, and always asking ‘what is right and wrong?’”

Thankfully she feels K-pop artists are aware of public opinion and hopes there will be change.

“The fans are the biggest part and they have a lot of influence over artists. Groups are always keen to learn and listen, and if Seventeen and Aespa realise they are hurting their fans, they will hopefully address that.”

In 2007, a young Lionel Messi posed for photos with a baby in the dressing room of the Camp Nou in Barcelona for a charity calendar photoshoot.

Messi, who was 20, was already making a name for himself and would go on to become arguably the greatest of all time.

But little did the photographer know that the baby would also make waves in international football less than 17 years later.

Messi was bathing Lamine Yamal – the 16-year-old who is taking the European Championships by storm.

His goal against France in the semi-final on Tuesday is one that will be talked about for decades.

At 16 years and 362 days, the strike also made him the youngest man to score in the tournament’s history.

The long-forgotten photo of Messi and Yamal resurfaced after Yamal’s father posted it on Instagram last week with the text: “The beginning of two legends.”

The photos were taken by Joan Monfort, who works as a freelance photographer for the Associated Press.

The shoot came about after Unicef did a raffle in the town of Mataró where Lamine’s family lived, he said.

“They signed up for the raffle to have their picture taken at the Camp Nou with a Barça player. And they won the raffle,” Mr Monfort told the Associated Press.

The assignment wasn’t a straightforward one, the photographer said.

“Messi is a pretty introverted guy, he’s shy,” he said.

“He was coming out of the locker room and suddenly he finds himself in another locker room with a plastic tub full of water and a baby in it. It was complicated. He didn’t even know how to hold him at first.”

Like Messi, Yamal went on to play for Barcelona, where he became the club’s youngest ever starter and goalscorer, as well as the youngest scorer in the Spanish league.

Mr Monfort said it was only when the photo started going viral online last week that he realised that the baby was Yamal.

“It’s very exciting to be associated with something that has caused such a sensation,” he said.

“To tell you the truth it’s a very nice feeling.”

Facing an alarming rise in bear attacks, Japan wants to make it easier to shoot the animals in residential areas – but hunters say it is too risky.

In the year to April, there were a record 219 bear attacks in the country – six of them fatal, according to official data.

Deadly attacks have continued to occur in recent months, as bears increasingly venture into populated areas. Some are now even thought to see humans as prey.

Bear numbers have revived as Japan’s human population ages and shrinks, especially outside cities. The consequences have been dangerous, although usually resulting in injury not death.

Under the current law, licensed hunters can fire their guns only after the approval of a police officer.

The government plans to revise the law at its next parliamentary session so the weapons can be used more freely. For instance, hunters will be allowed to shoot if there is a risk of human injury, such as when a bear enters a building.

But hunters are wary. “It is scary and quite dangerous to encounter a bear. It is never guaranteed that we can kill a bear by shooting,” said Satoshi Saito, executive director of the Hokkaido Hunters’ Association.

“If we miss the vital point to stop the bear from moving… it will run away and may attack other people,” he added. “If it then attacks a person, who will be responsible for that?”

Hokkaido has come to exemplify Japan’s growing bear problem.

The country’s northernmost major island is sparsely populated – but its bear population has more than doubled since 1990, according to government data. It now has around 12,000 brown bears, which are known to be more aggressive than black bears, of which there are around 10,000 in Japan by experts’ estimates.

Local governments have tried different strategies to keep bears away.

Some have turned to odd guardians – robot wolves, complete with red eyes and spooky howls, while elsewhere in the country they are testing an artificial intelligence warning system.

The town of Naie in Hokkaido has been trying to hire hunters for 10,300 yen ($64; £50) a day to patrol the streets, lay traps and kill the animals if necessary.

But there are few takers – it’s a high-risk job, the pay is not attractive enough and many of the hunters are elderly.

“It is not worth the trouble because confronting a bear will put our lives on the line,” a 72-year-old hunter from the area told The Asahi Shimbun newspaper, likening an encounter with a brown bear to “fighting a US military commando”.

In May, two police officers in northern Akita prefecture were seriously injured by a bear while trying to retrieve a body from the woods after a suspected fatal bear attack.

“The bears know humans are present and attack people for their food, or recognise people themselves as food,” local government official Mami Kondo said.

“There is a high risk that the same bear will cause a series of incidents.”

As bear numbers have grown, more of them have moved from the mountains into flatlands closer to human populations. Over time, they have become used to the sights and sounds of humans, and less afraid of them.

There are also fewer humans around as young people move to big cities, leaving whole towns nearly empty. When bears do encounter humans, it can turn violent.

“Bears that enter urban areas tend to panic, increasing the risk of injury or death to people,” said Junpei Tanaka from the Picchio Wildlife Research Center in Japan.

Bear sightings and incidents usually happen around April when they awake from hibernation in search of food, and then again in September and October when they eat to store fat for the winter months.

But their movements have become more unpredictable as yields of acorn – the biggest food source for bears – fall because of climate change.

“This amendment to the law is unavoidable, but it is only a stopgap measure in an emergency,” Mr Tanaka said.

Capturing and killing the animals is not the way forward, he adds. Rather, the government needs to protect the bears’ habitat so they are not compelled to venture too far.

“In the long-term, it is necessary to implement national policy to change the forest environment, to create forests with high biodiversity.”

He added that the government also needs to clarify who should take responsibility for bears that wander into residential zones – local officials or hunters.

“Ideally, there should be fully trained shooters like government hunters who respond to emergencies, but at present there are no such jobs in Japan.”

Residential areas are a vastly different terrain for hunters, who are used to killing bears in unpopulated regions, Mr Saito said.

“If we don’t shoot, people will criticise us and say ‘Why didn’t you shoot when you have a shotgun?’ And if we shoot, I am sure people will be angry and say it might hit someone.

“I think it is unreasonable to ask hunters who are probably just ordinary salarymen to make such a decision.”

A politician in South Korea is being criticised for making dangerous and unsubstantiated comments after linking a rise in male suicides to the increasingly “dominant” role of women in society.

In a report, Seoul City councillor Kim Ki-duck argued women’s increased participation in the workforce over the years had made it harder for men to get jobs and to find women who wanted to marry them.

He said the country had recently “begun to change into a female-dominant society” and that this might “partly be responsible for an increase in male suicide attempts”.

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates among the world’s rich countries but also has one of the worst records on gender equality.

Councillor Kim’s comments have been criticised as the latest in a series of out-of-touch remarks made by male politicians.

Councillor Kim, from the Democratic Party, arrived at his assessment when analysing data on the number of suicide attempts made at bridges along Seoul’s Han river.

The report, published on the city council’s official website, showed that the number of suicide attempts along the river had risen from 430 in 2018 to 1,035 in 2023, and of those trying to take their lives the proportion who were men had climbed from 67% to 77%.

Suicide prevention experts have expressed concern over Mr Kim’s report.

“It is dangerous and unwise to make claims like this without sufficient evidence,” Song In Han, a mental health professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University, told the BBC.

He pointed out that globally more men took their lives than women. In many countries, including the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50.

Even so, Prof Song said the reasons behind the sharp rise in men attempting suicide in Seoul needed to be scientifically studied, adding it was “very regrettable” that the councillor had made it about gender conflict.

In South Korea there is a substantial gulf between the number of men and women in full-time employment, with women disproportionately working temporary or part-time jobs. The gender pay gap is slowly narrowing, but still women are paid on average 29% less than men.

In recent years an anti-feminist movement has surged, led by disillusioned young men, who argue they have been disadvantaged by attempts to improve women’s lives.

Appearing to echo such views, Councillor Kim’s report concluded that the way to overcome “the female-domination phenomenon” was to improve people’s awareness of gender equality so that “men and women can enjoy equal opportunities”.

Koreans took to the social media platform X to denounce the councillor’s remarks as “unsubstantiated” and “misogynistic”, with one user questioning whether they were living in a parallel universe.

The Justice Party accused the councillor of “easily shifting the blame to women in Korean society who are struggling to escape gender discrimination”. It has called on him to retract his remarks and instead “properly analyse” the causes of the problem.

When approached for comment by the BBC, Councillor Kim said he had “not intended to be critical of the female-dominated society”, and was merely giving his personal view about some of its consequences.

However, his comments follow a number of unscientific and sometimes bizarre political proposals aimed at tackling some of South Korea’s most pressing social issues, including mental illness, gender violence and the lowest birth rate in the world.

Last month, another Seoul councillor in his 60s published a series of articles on the authority’s website encouraging young women to take up gymnastics and practise pelvic floor exercises in order to raise the birth rate.

At the same time, a government think tank recommended that girls start school earlier than boys, so that classmates would be more attracted to each other by the time they were ready to marry.

“Such comments encapsulate just how pervasive misogyny is in South Korea,” said Yuri Kim, director of the Korean Women’s Trade Union. She accused politicians and policymakers of not even trying to understand the challenges women faced, preferring to scapegoat them instead.

“Blaming women for entering the workforce will only prolong the imbalances in our society,” she told the BBC.

Currently women account for 20% of South Korea’s members of parliament, and 29% of all local councillors.

Seoul City Council told the BBC there was no process in place to vet what politicians published on its official website unless the content was illegal. It said individuals were solely responsible for their content and would face any consequences at the next election.

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Nigerian graduate Olotu Olanrewaju is facing a choice between remaining in the country he loves and the possibility of a better life elsewhere.

He adores the culture, food, music and family mentality at home, especially how people look out for each other and share common goals.

But the 24-year-old electrical engineer feels he is being held back professionally.

“I’m looking for greener pastures and better opportunities, rather than getting stuck here in Nigeria,” he tells the BBC’s What in the World podcast, adding that he thinks his degree would be “more appreciated” abroad.

There is also the feeling that the lack of reliable basic infrastructure – causing things like power cuts – as well as security concerns, corruption and poor governance, all create unnecessary barriers to getting on with life.

Mr Olanrewaju is one of tens of thousands of young, disenchanted Nigerians contemplating the move to join many others overseas. It’s a trend known by the Yoruba word “japa” meaning “to escape”.

The BBC contacted several government officials for a response to what he and other young Nigerians told us but has not received a reply.

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The idea of emigrating from Nigeria is not new.

Since the 1980s, many middle-class Nigerians have sought economic opportunities abroad, but the scale and urgency now feels different and japa is becoming increasingly popular with Gen Z and millennials.

An African Polling Institute survey from 2022 found that 69% of Nigerians aged 18-35 would relocate given the opportunity – despite a slight fall from 2021. In 2019 the figure was just 39%.

On social media, young Nigerians have taken to posting about their japa experiences.

While some describe how they miss home, others show off the appeal of relocating, and encourage their peers to do the same.

But leaving is a pricey venture.

The rising cost of living, and the depreciation of the currency, the naira, has made an expensive process even harder – but also pushed more people to try to leave.

It is far easier for professionals and university graduates who have the skills and qualifications needed to secure well-paying jobs and visas in the West, as well as the finances to start a new life in a country where the cost of living is far higher than at home.

As well as those seeking legal routes, many Nigerians try to move abroad without visas, by crossing the Sahara Desert or the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of people die each year on the journey and those who make it often struggle to find work or somewhere decent to live.

For years, Mr Olanrewaju and his parents have been saving up. He hopes to move to Germany or Spain and has signed up to German classes to improve his chances.

He is not the first in his family to tread this path.

Two years ago, his brother Daniel, now 27, managed to swap Nigeria’s sticky heat for the cooler shores of the Scottish city of Aberdeen.

He works there as a photographer and social worker, and although he finds it a bit expensive, he tells his brother about the benefits of Scotland’s infrastructure – including the fact that people can rely on the electricity, water and transport systems working.

Social worker Oluwatobi Abodunrin, 29, moved to London last year and also feels positive about her move. She says Nigeria is filled with “passionate, active youths” who want something more from their careers.

“I decided to leave Nigeria because I wasn’t getting what I want,” she says.

“We are highly talented, we want to be recognised, we want our voice to be heard and we want to be respected.”

She also acknowledges the difficulty of leaving friends and family behind.

“It was a tough decision to leave home. To leave people who are sweet, kind, generous and passionate. But I’m happy I made the decision and it’s going well.”

There are more than 270,000 Nigerians like Ms Abodunrin living in the UK, according to government statistics.

It is one of the most popular destinations for japa, with the number of Nigerians granted UK work visas quadrupling since 2019 as a result of post-Brexit immigration rule changes.

However, the UK has responded to this increase by tightening the rules for those seeking work visas.

The US and Canada are also highly desirable.

Canada has seen a surge in migration, with the number of Nigerians seeking residency there tripling since 2015, a phenomenon known as the “Canada Rush”.

Back in Nigeria, zoology student Elizabeth Ademuyi Anuoluwapo recognises the difficulties in leaving, but feels it is the only way to get the financial stability she needs.

“I’d miss my people, my food, my friends, my family. The vibe here is very cosy,” she says. “Maybe I’d go for a few years and then come back.”

Japa has hit the medical profession especially hard.

The Nigerian Medical Association said, in 2022, at least 50 doctors were leaving the country every single week.

This has left an already overloaded healthcare system struggling.

The government has said it will train more people to fill these gaps and backed a new bill that would require medical graduates to work in Nigeria for a minimum of five years after completing their training. It was fiercely opposed by doctors’ unions.

A similar directive has also been issued for nurses, to get them to work in the country for at least two years before trying to leave.

Some like Dr Vongdip Nankpah, from the University of Abuja teaching hospital, think it is important to stay.

He believes that career goals are about more than an individual’s interest – they should involve the community and the value that a person can contribute to society.

“If I’m going to maximise my medical practice, I’d rather remain in Nigeria to see if we can better the country and the region,” he says.

“These are the things that are still driving my reasons for remaining in the country.”

But despite the emotional attachment, Mr Olanrewaju does not feel he owes anything to Nigeria and would not feel guilty for leaving.

“Most of my personal growth and gains, I worked for them myself,” he says.

Instead, he would see himself as a representative of Nigerians abroad, standing for those who might not have the same opportunities to move overseas.

For those who can afford it, japa is the ultimate choice.

It promises a future of adventure, ambition and wealth, but also risks breaking ties with the past.

Like many Nigerian students, Mr Olanrewaju is now measuring those benefits against the cost of what he is leaving behind.

• Nigeria cost-of-living crisis sparks exodus of doctors
• Nigerian star’s drowning forces Nollywood to look at safety
• Celebrating 50 years of marriage in Nigeria’s ‘divorce capital’

A selection of the week’s best photos from across the African continent:

Kenya’s under-fire President William Ruto has dismissed with “immediate effect” all his ministers and the attorney-general, following the recent deadly protests that led to the withdrawal of an unpopular tax bill.

The president said the move came after “reflection, listening to Kenyans, and after holistic appraisal of my cabinet”.

He has said he will now consult widely in order to set up a broad-based government.

The dissolution of his cabinet does not affect the deputy president, who can’t legally be fired, and the prime cabinet secretary who is also the foreign affairs minister.

Mr Ruto said that government operations would continue uninterrupted under the supervision of senior civil servants.

He said he would consult “across different sectors and political formations and other Kenyans, both in public and private” over a new government, but did not say when it would be announced.

The constitution does not say for how long the president can operate without a cabinet. But analysts say Mr Ruto will have to name a new team soon to avoid running into more problems with the country’s aggrieved youth.

The dramatic dissolution of the cabinet is highly unusual, coming less than two years after he took office.

• Kenyan president’s humbling shows power of African youth
• Historic first as president takes on Kenya’s online army
• Pay rise freeze for Kenyan MPs after public anger

Three of the sacked ministers were MPs before leaving their legislative roles to join the cabinet barely two years ago.

One of them is Aden Duale, who in a prompt post on X (formerly Twitter) thanked the president and said he would “forever be indebted to him and the people of Kenya for this opportunity to serve” as Kenya’s defence minister.

“Anything that paves the way for the best interest of our nation, at this point in time, is preeminent,” posted Soipan Tuya, the dismissed environment minister.

Last Thursday, President Ruto chaired a cabinet meeting which one of the local newspapers described as the “last supper” for the ministers.

Some of the ministers were linked to corruption scandals that led to the suspension of senior government officials within several ministries. But Mr Ruto had defended them, saying that there were no evidence to sack them.

Last October, Mr Ruto announced a mini-cabinet reshuffle that affected at least eight ministers.

The last time an entire cabinet was dissolved was in 2005 when then President Mwai Kibaki did so shortly after losing a referendum over a new constitution.

Mr Ruto has been under pressure from Kenyans who have continued holding anti-government protests and demanding more accountability from government, even though he agreed to withdraw his controversial tax rises.

He has pledged to set up an inexpensive but “broad-based government”, hinting at the possibility of co-opting the opposition.

The law allows the president to nominate a maximum of 22 ministers, with a minimum of 14.

On Tuesday, the president met opposition leader Raila Odinga and announced plans to form a 150-member dialogue panel to help solve the current crisis.

But young Kenyans, who have been organising the protests, rejected Mr Ruto’s plan and insisted that he disband the cabinet and take action against corrupt officials.

The tax rises were intended to help reduce Kenya’s large debts but protesters insisted the government should first cut spending, saying there was too much waste.

Last week, Mr Ruto announced a number of austerity measures.

He also ordered a freeze in proposed pay rises for members of his cabinet and parliament following a public outcry.

But these measures failed to appease the protesters with some calling for the president to step down using the hashtag #RutoMustGo.

While the dismissal of the cabinet is a bold step towards addressing government inefficiency, the success of this move will heavily depend on the efficacy of the new ministers.

His critics have warned Mr Ruto against returning the sacked ministers to the cabinet.

Although large-street protests have subsided, anger against the government has continued, with more demonstrations planned for next Tuesday. It is not clear if the protests will continue after the dissolution of the cabinet.

“I have never in my life felt so proud to be Kenyan than I am now. The power lies with the people, always,” Hanifa Farsafi, one of the protest organisers, posted on X.

More BBC stories on Kenya:

• New faces of protest – Kenya’s Gen Z anti-tax revolutionaries
• Why Kenya’s president wants people to love the taxman
• The ‘tax collector’ president sparking Kenyan anger
• ‘I feel betrayed by William Ruto’
• Africa’s ‘flying presidents’ under fire

France’s former first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, has been charged over an election funding scandal dating back to 2007 involving cash from the then Libyan dictator, Col Muammar Gaddafi.

According to French media, Ms Bruni-Sarkozy, 56, was charged with hiding evidence and associating with wrongdoers to commit fraud.

She was placed under judicial control and barred from being in contact with all those accused except her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Ms Bruni-Sarkozy is also suspected of concealment of witness tampering and involvement in an attempt to bribe Lebanese judicial personnel, among other violations.

Her lawyers told AFP that Ms Bruni-Sarkozy was determined to assert her rights and challenge the “unfounded decision”.

Mr Sarkozy, who was the president of France from 2007 to 2012, is due to go on trial next year over allegations he took money from Gaddafi to finance his successful election bid.

He is accused of corruption, illegal campaign financing, benefiting from embezzled public funds and membership in a criminal conspiracy. He has always denied all the charges.

The investigation into the allegations was opened in 2013, two years after Saif al-Islam, son of the then leader Gaddafi, first accused Mr Sarkozy of taking millions of his father’s money for campaign funding.

The following year, Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, who for a long time acted as a middleman between France and the Middle East, supported the claims.

He told judges he had written proof that Mr Sarkozy’s campaign bid was “abundantly” financed by Tripoli, and that the €50m (£43m) worth of payments continued after he became president.

Years later, Mr Takieddine told French media that in 2006-07 he had personally handed over suitcases stuffed with banknotes to Mr Sarkozy and his chief of staff, Claude Guéant, who later denied this.

But in 2020, Mr Takieddine suddenly retracted his statement about handing over large amounts of money.

This raised suspicions that Mr Sarkozy and his allies – including his wife – might have paid him to change his mind.

In June, Ms Bruni-Sarkozy was found to have deleted messages exchanged with a French businesswoman who was questioned by police over accusations of witness tampering.

Since losing his re-election bid to socialist François Hollande in 2012, Mr Sarkozy has been targeted by several criminal investigations.

In 2023, he was given a suspended prison sentence for trying to bribe a judge, and earlier this year, he was found guilty of illegally funding his 2012 re-election campaign.

He and Ms Bruni-Sarkozy, an Italian-born former supermodel and singer, married in 2008. They had a daughter, Giulia, in 2011.

BBC Weather Watchers in Scotland have been captivated by the sight of rainbows at sunset over the past few days.

For some parts they brought some much-needed colour to dreich summer days.

Joe Biden took to the stage at his Thursday night news conference with everything on the line – his presidency, his re-election hopes, his political life.

If those were the stakes, he barely acknowledged them at the hour-long session to mark the end of a Nato summit, having earlier introduced Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “President Putin” at a separate event.

The news conference was his first unscripted appearance after a disastrous debate with his rival Donald Trump, leading to calls from several Democratic politicians and donors for him to drop out of the race for president.

Mr Biden, 81, has faced continuous questions over his age and ability to serve another term, which intensified after the debate.

But at the highly anticipated news conference, he dismissed the concerns about his campaign that were posed again and again by a room full of reporters, and promised that he was fighting not for his legacy, but to finish the job he started when he took office in 2021.

“If I slow down and can’t get the job done, that’s a sign I shouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “But there’s no indication of that yet.”

Depending on perspective, it was either a sign of dogged determination or of a man in denial about how dire his situation has become.

Minutes after the news conference finished, several more Democratic members of Congress publicly called on Mr Biden to step down, joining at least a dozen other lawmakers in the president’s own party who have done so.

The question for Joe Biden’s campaign is whether the floodgates will now open, or if the tide will hold.

The situation will not be helped by two excruciating gaffes that will be remembered by anyone who watched.

In his very first answer, he called his own Vice-President Kamala Harris “Vice-President Trump” – a painful faceplant in front of a national television audience.

That came just an hour after another headline-grabbing mistake at a Nato event, when Mr Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”, prompting loud gasps in the audience.

He corrected the first verbal misstep involving Ukraine’s leader quickly. The second one he didn’t catch, even as some reporters in the room murmured in surprise and several of his top Cabinet secretaries sat stone-faced in the front row of the audience.

Those moments – the only major stumbles in an otherwise steady if not vigorous, appearance – will surely prompt nervous Democrats to wonder if there are more gaffes to come if the president presses ahead with his campaign.

But for now at least, Mr Biden seemed the happy warrior, insisting he will push on. He laughed and smiled as he was peppered with questions, and said he could keep up with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, even if the hoarseness and cough that had been on display during his debate two weeks ago still appeared to linger.

He again insisted he didn’t need cognitive tests, telling reporters that if he even saw “two doctors or seven”, his critics wouldn’t be satisfied.

The election campaign, he said, had barely started, and he again repeated that he was confident he could beat Donald Trump in November’s election.

The Democratic delegates who will back him officially as the party’s nominee at next month’s convention were free to change their minds as they pleased, he said, before mock whispering: “It’s not going to happen.”

He said he would consider stepping aside if his staff gave him data that he couldn’t win, but that polls still show the race a dead heat.

In that regard, he is on firm ground. An Ipsos survey released earlier on Thursday, for instance, had Mr Biden only one point behind his opponent – well within the margin of error. If there’s one thing that has been clear since the start of the year, support for the two candidates has remained remarkably stable despite unprecedented drama surrounding both men.

Polling alone won’t calm the panic that has set in among many Democratic officials, however, and the storm clouds that linger around Biden’s campaign won’t be so easily dispelled.

More Democratic politicians are waiting in the wings, according to reports, poised to announce their own break with the president, having waited until the conclusion of this Nato summit to voice their concerns.

And that’s just the first round of tests for the embattled president. He has another high-profile sit-down interview, with NBC’s Lester Holt, on Monday. Donors are anxious, and earlier on Thursday several reports suggested that even figures in the president’s own campaign were plotting ways to usher their candidate toward the exit.

Despite all of this, Mr Biden made clear that it will be a challenging task to pry the nomination away from him. The 81-year-old man who at times gripped the lectern with two hands and insisted he was the “best-qualified person” to run the country is not going to exit the stage quietly.

• POLICIES: Where Biden and Trump stand on key issues
• GLOBAL: What Moscow and Beijing think of rematch
• ANALYSIS: Could US economy be doing too well?
• EXPLAINER: RFK Jr and others running for president
• VOTERS: US workers in debt to buy groceries

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi has hit back at Nato’s “groundless accusations” that Beijing is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine.

He has also warned the Western alliance against stirring up confrontation.

Mr Wang’s comments, made in a call with his Dutch counterpart, came hours after leaders of Nato member states gathered in Washington DC and issued a declaration that mentioned the war.

They accused China of being a “decisive enabler” of Russia through its “large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base”, in some of their harshest remarks yet about Beijing.

They called on China to stop “all material and political support” to Russia’s war effort such as the supply of dual-use materials, which are items that can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Western states have previously accused Beijing of transferring drone and missile technology and satellite imagery to Moscow. The US estimates about 70% of the machine tools and 90% of the microelectronics Russia imports now come from China.

Beijing was also accused of conducting “malicious cyber and hybrid activities, including disinformation” on Nato states.

On Thursday, while speaking to the Netherlands’ new foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp, Mr Wang said “China absolutely does not accept” all these accusations and insisted that they have “always been a force for peace and force for stability”.

In comments carried by state media, he said that China’s different political system and values “should not be used as a reason for Nato to incite confrontation with China”, and called for Nato to “stay within its bounds”.

His remarks was the latest in a flurry of angry responses from Beijing.

Earlier on Thursday, a foreign ministry spokesperson said Nato was smearing China with “fabricated disinformation”, while Beijing’s mission to the EU told the alliance to “stop hyping up the so-called China threat”.

Beijing has long rebutted accusations that it has been aiding Russia in the war and insists that it remains a neutral party. It has called for an end to the conflict and proposed a peace plan, which Ukraine has rejected.

But, besides the growing accusations of military support, observers have also pointed out that Beijing’s purchases of vast amounts of oil and gas have helped prop up Russia’s economy crippled by sanctions and replenish coffers drained by war spending.

Beijing’s official rhetoric on the conflict often mirrors Moscow’s – like them, China still does not call it a war – and Chinese President Xi Jinping has maintained a close relationship with President Vladimir Putin, with both of them famously declaring their partnership has “no limits”.

Beijing has accused the US and other Western states of pouring “fuel on the fire” by supplying lethal weapons and technology to Ukraine for its defence.

In recent weeks, several countries have gone a step further and allowed Ukraine to use their weapons to hit targets inside Russia.

During Nato’s three-day summit, which ended on Thursday, the alliance continued to underscore its commitment to Ukraine. Member states said they would support Ukraine on its “irreversible path” to future membership, adding that “Ukraine’s future in Nato”.

They also announced further integration with Ukraine’s military and support for its defence. The alliance has committed at least €40bn ($43.3bn, £33.7bn) in aid in the next year, including F-16 fighter jets and air defence support.

An Australian soldier and her husband have been arrested and each charged with spying for Russia.

Investigators say the couple – both Russian-born Australian citizens – obtained Australian Defence Force (ADF) material to share with Moscow.

However, Australian police say “no significant compromise” of military secrets has been identified.

It is the first time stricter foreign interference laws – introduced by Australia in 2018 – have been used to lay espionage charges.

Kira Korolev, a 40-year-old army private, and her 62-year-old husband Igor Korolev faced court in Brisbane on Friday, each on one count of preparing for an espionage offence – which carries a maximum 15-year jail sentence.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had been “briefed extensively” by the nation’s security agencies but would not comment on the case directly as it is now before the courts.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the couple had been in Australia for more than a decade before the alleged offending and had both become citizens several years ago.

Igor worked as a self-employed labourer, and Kira was an information systems technician in the army, a role for which she had obtained a security clearance, police say.

Mr Kershaw alleged she secretly travelled to Russia while on leave from the ADF, then instructed Igor to access her work account and send sensitive material so that she could forward it on to Russian authorities.

An investigation in to whether any of the material was ever delivered to them is still underway, Mr Kershaw said, adding that the charges could be upgraded.

Both Mr Kershaw and Australia’s spy agency boss Mike Burgess – who addressed media together on Friday – declined to answer questions about the nature of the documents or how authorities were tipped off about the alleged crimes.

But Mr Burgess said that the ongoing threat of espionage is “real”.

“Multiple countries are seeking to steal Australia’s secrets. We cannot be naive, and we cannot be complacent.”

“If you are spying in this country, we are looking for you. If you are being spied on in this country, we are looking out for you,” he added.

Mr Kershaw stressed that Australia’s allies could be “confident” that the country would “continue to identify and disrupt espionage and foreign interference activity”.

In a statement, the ADF said it was aware one of its members had been arrested and that it “takes all breaches of security seriously”.

Reality TV star Kim Kardashian and former UK PM Tony Blair are among the international guests that have arrived in Mumbai for the wedding ceremony of the son of Asia’s richest man on Friday.

Anant Ambani, son of Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, will tie the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant.

The four-day wedding extravaganza in Mumbai city is the final stop in a string of lavish parties the family has hosted since March.

Key roads in the city are sealed off for several hours a day until the festivities end on Monday.

The months of lavish celebrations have already featured performances by popstars like Rihanna and Justin Bieber.

But it has also led to backlash – city dwellers have complained of traffic snarls, while others have questioned the ostentatious display of wealth at the seemingly never-ending celebrations.

On Friday, the city witnessed heavy rains with waterlogging reported in some parts.

• The marathon Indian wedding turning heads around the world

Mukesh Ambani, 66, is at present the world’s 10th richest man with a net worth of $115bn, according to Forbes. Reliance Industries, founded by his father in 1966, is a massive conglomerate that operates in sectors ranging from petroleum and retail, to financial services and telecoms.

Anant Ambani is the youngest of his three children, all of whom are on the board of Reliance Industries. The 29-year-old is involved in Reliance’s energy businesses and is on the board of Reliance Foundation.

On Friday, the couple will get married in a traditional Hindu ceremony at the Jio World Convention Centre.

Reports say the family will host a grand reception through the weekend, before a final reception for their household staff on Monday.

Rumours on the internet suggest that Adele could be performing at the wedding, but the family has not confirmed this.

Mumbai police have labelled the wedding a “public event” since it would be attended by several international and Indian VIPs, reports Reuters news agency.

The city police has also imposed traffic restrictions around the venue.

From Friday to Monday, roads around the convention centre will be open only for “event vehicles” between 13:00 India time (07:30 GMT) to midnight, it said.

Rajan Mehra, CEO of air charter company Club One Air, told Reuters that the family had rented three Falcon-2000 jets to ferry wedding guests to the event.

“The guests are coming from all over and each aircraft will make multiple trips across the country,” he said.

The restrictions have sparked anger among the city residents who say they are already struggling with traffic jams and monsoon flooding.

The wedding festivities began in March when the family held a three-day pre-wedding party in their home state of Gujarat.

Among the 1,200 guests to attend the celebration were international celebrities, politicians, and members of the business world – including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

• World’s rich in India for tycoon son’s pre-wedding gala

The party started with a performance by Rihanna on the first night. Diljit Dosanjh, the first Punjabi singer to perform at Coachella, took the stage on the second night, while rapper Akon closed the show on the final day of celebrations.

In June, the Ambanis organised another pre-wedding celebration, this time, a luxury cruise from Italy to France. The Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry and Pitbull performed for the 800 guests, which included Bollywood stars and cricketers.

Then came the final round of celebrations, which began earlier this week when Bieber landed in Mumbai.

Social media has been flooded with photos and videos of him singing in front of an ecstatic audience.

Money was also lavished on constructing 14 temples inside a sprawling complex in Jamnagar to showcase India’s cultural heritage and provide a backdrop for the wedding. As part of the celebrations, the Ambanis hosted a mass wedding for 50 underprivileged couples too.

On Wednesday, the family hosted a bhandara – a community feast for underprivileged people.

The Ambanis have not revealed how much this wedding is costing them but wedding planners estimate they’ve already spent anywhere between 11bn and 13bn rupees [$132m-$156m]. It was rumoured Rihanna had been paid $7m (£5.5m) for her performance, while the figure suggested for Bieber is $10m.

Four migrants have died after a boat capsized during an attempt to cross the English Channel, according to the French coastguard.

Overnight, a navy patrol boat was alerted that migrants had fallen into the sea off the coast of Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France.

Four people found “unconscious” could not be saved, police added, while 63 were rescued.

According to early details from the coastguard, a helicopter and fishing vessel also helped in the rescue effort.

Over 13,000 people have crossed the English Channel so far this year.

On 18 June, 882 people crossed the Channel on 15 small boats – a new record for the year so far.

According to Home Office data, those arrivals were the highest in a single day since October 2022.

Home Office figures show 484 migrants crossed the Channel on Monday and Tuesday.

Earlier this week, the new Labour government set out plans to tackle the small boat crisis.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she would appoint a leader of the UK’s new Border Security Command within weeks.

The government hopes the new body will reduce small boat crossings in the English Channel.

Every day, for the last seven years, Arun Kumar has set up his fruit stall on a busy Mumbai street.

It’s not an easy way to make a living.

“Being a street vendor is a challenge. There’s the fear of being robbed or, as I am not a licensed vendor, the local body can come and dismantle my store anytime,” he says.

But over the past four years at least one aspect of his work has become easier.

“Prior to Covid everything was in cash. But now everyone pays with UPI. Scan the code and the payment is done within seconds.

“No issues of handling cash, giving change to customers. It has made my life and business smooth,” he says.

UPI, or to give it its full name the Unified Payments Interface, was launched in 2016 in a collaboration between India’s central bank and the nation’s banking industry.

It’s an app-based instant payment system, which allows users to send and receive money, pay bills and authorise payments in a single step – no need to enter bank details or any other personal information. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s free.

It has become so popular that India is now the biggest real-time payments market.

In May, UPI recorded 14 billion transactions, up from nine billion the year before.

But the popularity and ease of use has made it a rich feeding ground for scammers.

“While digital payments are convenient, they do come with vulnerabilities,” says Shashank Shekhar, founder of the Delhi-based Future Crime Research Foundation.

Mr Shekhar says that scammers use a variety of ways to trick people, including persuading them to share their UPI pin number, which is needed to authorise payments.

Some scammers have also created fake UPI apps, that are clones of legitimate banking apps, and then steal login details or other valuable information.

“The pace at which digital transformation took place in the country means unfortunately digital literacy and safe internet practice could not catch up,” says Mr Shekhar.

He says that between January 2020 and June 2023 almost half of all financial fraud involved the use of the UPI system.

According to government figures there were more than 95,000 cases of fraud involving UPI in the financial year ending April 2023, up from 77,000 in the previous year.

Shivkali was one such victim. She had always wanted to own a scooter, but they were beyond her budget.

However, earlier in the year the 22-year-old, who lives in Bihar state in northeastern India, spotted one for sale on Facebook that looked like a great deal.

“I grabbed the opportunity without thinking,” she says.

A couple of clicks later and she was talking to the owner, who said that for $23 he would send over the vehicle papers.

That went smoothly, so Shivkali continued to send the owner money, via instant transfers. She eventually ended up paying $200, but the scooter (also commonly called a Scooty in India), was never delivered.

Shivkali realised she had been scammed.

“I did not think I could be cheated, as I have some education background and know what is happing in the world. But scammers are smart. They have an art of speaking to convince the opposite person,” she says.

The government and the central bank are looking at ways to protect UPI users from scammers.

But at the moment, if a victim wants compensation, they have to approach their bank.

“The problem is deep rooted,” says Dr Durgesh Pandey, an expert in financial crime.

“Most of the onus lies with banks and telecom companies. They are lax in making identity checks, that’s why the fraudster can’t be traced.

“But the challenge for banks particularly is that they have to balance between inclusivity, ease of business and enforcement of identity checks. If they are too rigid, the vulnerable section of society will remain without banking facilities.”

But Dr Pandey argues that in most cases of fraud, the bank is not totally to blame.

“It’s a complex question because the problem lies with banks, but it’s the victim who is giving his credentials in most case. I would say both victim and bank should bear the loss.”

Despite those problems, UPI is being promoted in rural areas where access to banking services can be difficult.

Poonam Untwal from Rajasthan runs a guidance centre which helps people use the internet and digital banking.

“Most of us are not that educated, nor know the proper use of smartphones. I teach them that phones are no longer a device just to talk to people but banks at their fingertips,” she says.

She believes that UPI will help develop the local economy.

“Many women like me have a small business that we run from our home. Now we can receive and send money with UPI. People who don’t have smart phones come to my centre to get their transactions done,” she says.

As well as making inroads into rural areas, UPI is spreading overseas.

Retailers in Bhutan, Mauritius, Nepal, Singapore, Sri Lanka and UAE will take UPI payments.

And this year, France become the first European country to accept UPI payments, starting with tickets to the Eiffel Tower.

Back in Mumbai, Mr Kumar is happy that he no longer has to use cash, but remains wary.

If he can’t get a good internet connection then customers can, by accident or design, make off without paying.

“For a small vendor like me it [UPI] made receiving money very easy. But I am always scared of fraud. I keep hearing in the news how the UPI frauds are increasing. Hopefully some mechanisms are invented so a small vendor like me doesn’t face losses.”

Donald Trump met Viktor Orbán in Florida on Thursday night, just weeks after the Hungarian prime minister met Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

His visit to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach is the latest in a number of meetings between the two men.

Mr Orbán has publicly endorsed Trump’s re-election bid and recently said there was a “very, very high chance” that President Joe Biden would lose the election.

In a tweet, Mr Orbán called the visit “peace mission 5.0”, adding:

“We discussed ways to make #peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

The Hungarian leader has been frequently criticised in Europe for his pro-Russian views but remains popular among Trump supporters and US conservatives.

He has also recently met China’s Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in a self-described “peace” initiative.

On Wednesday, Russian newspaper Izvestia wrote such initiatives were futile, “but Viktor Orbán may pass information he has collected to Trump’s team”.

Mr Orbán told German media earlier this week that the former US president was a “self-made man” with a “different approach to everything”.

A Trump victory in the US election would be “good for the world politics”, he added.

“He [Trump] is a man of peace. Under his four-year term he did not initiate a single war, and he did a lot in order to create peace in old conflicts in very complicated areas of the world.”

Mr Orbán, whose country currently holds the presidency of the European Union, also criticised the Biden administration for failing to end the conflict in Ukraine.

“I think new leadership will provide new chances,” he said.

Mr Orbán was the first and only EU leader to back Trump’s bid for presidency in 2016, but had to wait until May 2019 for his first visit to the White House.

Trump has found more time for the Hungarian leader out of power. At the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, he told cheering delegates: “The globalists can all go to hell… I have come to Texas.”

His creation of a similar group in his country, CPAC Hungary, has boosted his relationships further.

In March this year, after meeting Trump in Florida, Mr Orbán posted on X/Twitter: “We need leaders in the world who are respected and can bring peace. He is one of them! Come back and bring us peace, Mr President.”

In April this year, Trump sent a short video message to CPAC Hungary, saying he was “honoured to address so many patriots in Hungary… proudly fighting on the front lines of the battle to rescue western civilisation.

“Together we’re engaged in an epic struggle to liberate our nations from all of the sinister forces who want to destroy them.’

He referred to Mr Orbán in the same address as “a great man”.

Mr Orbán has boasted that he has created an “illiberal democracy” in Hungary, and claims “progressives” have unleashed a “virus” of “migration, gender, and the woke movement”.

Narcissistic people get more empathetic, generous and agreeable with age, according to new research into the personality trait.

But although their unreasonably high sense of self-importance may mellow, they do not fully grow out of it, the study involving more than 37,000 people suggests.

Those who were more narcissistic than their peers as children tended to remain that way as adults, investigators found.

And there are at least three types of narcissistic behaviour to look for, they say.

Narcissist has become an insult often hurled at people who are perceived as difficult or diagreeable.

We all may show some narcissistic traits at times.

Doctors use the term to describe a specific, diagnosable type of personality disorder.

Although definitions can vary, common themes shared by those who have it is an unshakeable belief they are better or more deserving than other people, which might be described by others as arrogance and selfishness.

The work, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, comes from data from 51 past studies, involving 37,247 participants who ranged in age from eight to 77.

Researchers looked for three types of narcissist, based on behaviour traits:

• Agentic narcissists – who feel grand or superior to others and crave admiration
• Antagonistic narcissists – who see others as rivals and are exploitative and lack empathy
• Neurotic narcissists – who are shame-prone, insecure and overly sensitive to criticism

They studied what happened to these personality measures over time, based on questionnaires, and found that, generally, narcissism scores declined with age.

However, the changes were slight and gradual.

“Clearly, some individuals may change more strongly, but generally, you wouldn’t expect someone you knew as a very narcissistic person to have completely changed when you meet them again after some years,” lead researcher Dr Ulrich Orth, from the University of Bern in Switzerland, told BBC News.

He says some narcissistic traits can be helpful, at least in the short term.

It might boost your popularity, dating success, and chance of landing a top job, for example. But over longer periods, the consequences are mostly negative, because of the conflict it causes.

“These consequences do not only affect the person themselves, but also the wellbeing of individuals with whom they interact, such as partners, children, friends, co-workers, and employees,” he explained.

Dr Sarah Davies is a chartered counselling psychologist who has written a book on how to leave a narcissist.

She told the BBC that although people may be arrogant or selfish at times, that should not be confused with true clinical narcissism.

“Narcissists tend to be envious and jealous of others and they are highly exploitative and manipulative,” she said.

“They do not experience remorse or feeling bad, or have a sense of responsibility like other non-narcissistic people do.”

She says there has been a boom in interest about narcissism, driven by social media.

“To some extent that’s helpful – it helps inform more people about it and to bring more awareness of this issue. However, like many mental health terms, the clinical meaning can get a little lost.

Dr Davies says we should be more discerning with the term.

“I find it much more useful to be specific with naming behaviours and separate them. For example, a friend of mine recently called her ex a narcissist because he had ghosted her after they broke up.

“Being ghosted [suddenly cutting someone out of your life without explanation] is of course horrible, but he may not have been able to deal with a conversation after their relationship came to an end. It doesn’t necessarily mean he is a raging narcissist.

“They were together a while and there were no other indications of his ‘narcissism’.”

According to Dr Davies, some signs you may be involved with or around a narcissist include:

• Constant drama – a narcissist needs to be needed and seeks chaos and conflict
• No genuine apologies – they never really take full responsibility for their own behaviours
• Blame game – they manipulate and exploit others for their own selfish gains

Dr Tennyson Lee is a consultant psychiatrist with the Deancross Personality Disorder Service, based in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. He said the study was well-conducted and the findings were useful.

“The good news is narcissism typically reduces with age. The bad news is this reduction is not of a high magnitude.

“Do not expect narcissism will dramatically improve at a certain age – it doesn’t.

“This has implications for the long-suffering spouse who thinks ‘an improvement is just around the corner’,” he told BBC News.

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