Joe Biden’s press conference in which he insisted he was still fit to run for US president has failed to silence critics from his own party.

Three Democratic politicians joined the growing list calling on Mr Biden to drop out of the US presidential race.

Calls for the 81-year-old to step aside have escalated since he stumbled through a TV debate with Republican Donald Trump last month.

At an hour-long briefing taking reporters’ questions on Thursday night he was more steady and fluent but there were also gaffes.

He mistakenly referred to his deputy, Kamala Harris, as “Vice President Trump” when answering the first question.

Two hours earlier at a Nato event he introduced Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before correcting himself.

It means Mr Biden’s candidacy still remains in peril, with the possibility of more defections over the next few days.

Some donors including actor George Clooney have pulled their financial support, saying he is not competent to carry out another four-year term.

One Democratic fundraiser who wants Mr Biden to step down told the BBC that the chat among like-minded Biden sceptics was that the president had done OK at the news conference but not well enough to change minds.

A problem for Mr Biden going forward is that he will be under constant and intense scrutiny at every event.

Any slip or mistake will be seized on as evidence that he is not fit or capable enough to be running for a second term.

Shortly after he finished his press conference, Connecticut congressman Jim Himes posted on X praising Mr Biden’s record in public service, but calling on him to step away from the campaign.

The strongest candidate to confront the “threat” posed by Trump, he wrote, was not longer Joe Biden.

Illinois congressman Eric Sorensen also posted on social media that Mr Biden ran in 2020 “with the purpose of putting country over party. Today I am asking him to do that again”.

• Biden defiant but gaffes undermine fightback

California congressman Scott Peters was the third to speak out, saying the “stakes are high, and we are losing course”.

They bring the tally of Democratic politicians calling on Mr Biden to go to 19.

During the briefing, Biden insisted to reporters that he’s in the race to “complete the job”.

“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.”

Many of his supporters in Congress came out immediately after the news conference to echo his belief that he is the best candidate.

“We’ve got to stop the nitpicking and then focus on the work ahead. This guy has done it, he’s done it in the past,” said Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison.

US allies have also weighed in on Mr Biden’s side, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying he had been on “very good form” when they met face-to-face at the summit.

French president Emmanuel Macron called the mistakes just a slip of the tongue and that Mr Biden was on top of matters.

But Trump was quick to mock Mr Biden for his Kamala Harris mistake. “Great job, Joe!” he wrote on Truth Social.

A security guard who plotted to abduct, rape and murder television presenter Holly Willoughby has been jailed for a minimum of 15 years.

Gavin Plumb said his “ultimate fantasy” was to use tools he had assembled to perpetrate highly sexualised violence against the former This Morning anchor.

The 37-year-old, from Harlow, Essex, was caught after he unknowingly disclosed his plans to an undercover police officer operating in the online chatroom “Abduct Lovers”.

The jail term was passed as part of a life sentence.

• Live updates: Sentencing of Gavin Plumb at Chelmsford Crown Court

Mr Justice Edward Murray said the offences have had “life-changing consequences” on Ms Willoughby, both “privately and professionally”.

More to follow…

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 boilers that 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.”

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 reported 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.

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the incident as “truly awful”.

The coastguard said several people fell into the sea after part of their boat “deflated”.

The initial alert was raised at 04:30 local time (03:30 BST), with a helicopter arriving about 30 minutes later. It found several people “drifting in the water while others were still clinging to the broken rubber dingy”.

Fourteen people were rescued by a fishing vessel and 49 others by the French navy ship, the coastguard said.

“All the shipwrecked individuals were then brought ashore in Boulogne and taken care of by the emergency services on land.”

Two boats, one from UK sea rescue charity RNLI and one from Border Force, were initially sent from Dover to provide support but were not required to attend the scene, the UK coastguard said.

Jacques Billant, prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region, told reporters nine people were in serious condition.

He said only one person on board was wearing a life jacket, while “a few others had bike tubes”.

“Week after week, we observe overloaded boats like this morning’s, boats of very poor quality: under inflated, without a floor, without life jackets,” he said.

“These are also underpowered boats, which obviously increase the risks of breakdown and sinking.”

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

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.

Over 13,000 people have successfully reached the UK via the Channel so far this year.

According to the UN-affiliated International Organization for Migration (IOM) the most recent deaths mean more than 20 people are known to have died while trying to cross the Channel this year.

This includes a seven-year-old girl who died in March after a small boat attempting to reach the English Channel capsized a few kilometres from the coast of Dunkirk.

A month later five people, including another seven-year-old girl, died while a boat carrying 112 migrants ran aground on a sandbank after leaving Wimereux, near Boulogne, before continuing on.

Reacting to the latest deaths, Mrs Cooper, the UK home secretary, said: “Criminal gangs are making vast profit from putting lives at risk.

“We are accelerating action with international partners to pursue and bring down dangerous smuggler gangs.”

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

Ms 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.

Mr Billant, the Pas-de-Calais prefect, said over 1,000 police officers were currently deployed along the entire French northern coastline, “amid heightened aggression from smugglers and migrants alike”.

He said 344 crossing attempts had been foiled so far this year.

The previous Tory government had a flagship policy of countering illegal migration by sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda. But the controversial scheme was axed in the early days of the new Labour government without a single migrant ever having been deported to the east African country.

But despite recent elections in both countries there has been no change of policy in France since Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron signed a cooperation agreement in March last year.

It was the latest of many such deals under in which the UK supplies money and the French step up their policing of the coast, using more manpower and better equipment.

France will be keen to see how the Labour government might change things.

The scrapping of the Rwanda scheme came as no surprise, because the French never thought it was either right or effective.

The scheme had shown no clear sign of having a deterrent effect. Numbers kept going up.

The French view remains that the UK should address the pull factors that keep drawing so many migrants, such as the ease of entering the jobs market undetected and the lack of identity cards.

Governments of all stripes in Paris know the Calais problem is perennial, and the most to be hoped for is more effective operational cooperation with London.

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.

In a press conference on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that he had discussions with other leaders about spelling out the consequences for China.

“China has to understand that if they are supplying Russia with information and capacity, working with North Korea and others to help Russia and [their] armament, that they’re not going to benefit economically as a consequence of that,” he said.

“I think you’ll see that some of our European friends are going to be curtailing their investment in China.”

Pointing out that Russia had been seeking weapons from China and North Korea, he added that Nato states were looking into a new policy to turn the West into an “industrial base” for munitions and to develop new weapons systems.

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. Chinese President Xi Jinping has maintained a close relationship with Russian 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.

• In photos: Kim Kardashian, Bieber and Rihanna at grand India wedding
• 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 at 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.

Pictures and videos of Kim Kardashian, who is in the city with her sister Khloé Kardashian, are being widely shared online.

Reports say the sisters have brought a team of stylists, including celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton, along with a group of producers to capture every detail of their trip.

Former Indian president Ram Nath Kovind, British High Commissioner to India Lindy Cameron and US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti are also in the city to attend the wedding.

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.

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”.

Guess who’s back, back again?

Eminem’s latest album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), has been released and is being met with mixed reviews by critics.

In the US rapper’s 12th album, his alter ego Slim Shady is killed off – the artwork shows Shady in a body bag, and in the music video for Tobey, Eminem takes a chainsaw to him.

Clash called the album “a mixed bag” and described it as “at once an effective piece of fan service, while also being a record that disappoints”.

“It doesn’t quite feel like an ending, but neither does it feel like a continuation,” Robin Murray wrote.

“A mixed, often muddled album, it features some of Eminem’s best rapping in a decade – those fast, skippy-yet-intricate flows will never fail to thrill – but his pen is often blunted.”

Ahead of the release, Eminem told fans this is a “conceptual album” and the songs should be listened to in order.

The 19 tracks include previously released singles Tobey and Houdini, as well as a sequel to his 1999 hit Guilty Conscience with Dr Dre.

Billboard ranked the latter song as one of the best on the new album and said “it’s not the original, but is a worthy second coming”.

“At one point, Slim Shady puts Marshall on blast for creating him as an alter-ego to stir up controversy and essentially be a shield to say jarring things that he didn’t really have the courage to stand on,” Michael Saponara wrote.

USA Today said the 51-year-old is a “lyrical pugilist throughout, except when he turns misty-eyed dad rapping about daughter Hailie Jade”.

His song Temporary starts with old recordings of the rapper and his daughter talking as a child.

Melissa Ruggieri said it was the most memorable song on the album “because it gives Eminem permission to drop the shtick and explore his vulnerability – which isn’t often apparent elsewhere on the album”.

Eminem calls on his 28-year-old daughter to “be strong” and that he will always be her rock.

On his track Fuel, Eminem references the multiple sexual assault allegations against fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.

“I’m like an R-A-P-E-R/I got so many S-As/S-As/Wait, he didn’t just spell the word rapper and leave out a ‘P’, did he?” the lyrics say.

Pitchfork said Eminem, real name Marshall Mathers III, “reckons with his controversies while taking pains to create new one”.

The track Antichrist “take pains to offend as crudely as possible” with references to pronouns, woke society and “the harrowing video of Diddy attacking his then-girlfriend Cassie in a hotel in 2016”.

Mr Combs, one of rap’s most successful moguls, apologised for his “inexcusable” actions shown in that video, and has denied all allegations of sexual assault.

Rescuers are searching for more than 60 missing people in Nepal after a massive landslide swept two buses into a river.

Some spoke of their terrifying ordeal, with one saying he was “thrown out of the window of the bus into the river”.

Only three people appeared to have survived the accident, which took place in the early hours of Friday.

Authorities said the landslide had been triggered by heavy rains.

Nepal, along with other parts of South Asia, is in the midst of the monsoon season and has seen heavy rainfall in recent weeks, triggering floods and landslides that have affected millions.

The accident took place at 03:30 local time (21:45 GMT Thursday) on Friday in Chitwan along the Narayanghat-Mugling highway, about 100km (60 miles) from the capital Kathmandu.

Survivor Nandan Das told the BBC’s Nepali Service that the bus had been on the road for about an hour and a half when it “started rolling down all of a sudden into the river… I felt like I was going to die”.

He said he managed to swim to safety even though it was “very dark at night… I found the river full of huge boulders and some foliage.

“We were chanting the name of God and swam and swam and swam. God saved us.

“I did not know if I was swimming out to the river or inward… but I came to the bank at last. Then I started climbing the slope.”

He said that he and another survivor reached the highway at the same time, and were shortly joined by a third person. They managed to get help from a driver, who called the police.

Another survivor, Jogishwar Raya, described the bus as “trembling and overturning four or five times before plunging into the river”.

He said he managed to swim out of the bus, but his family members were still missing.

“My son, daughter-in-law , grandson, and a granddaughter were on the same bus. Out of five family members, I was alone to survive; the rest vanished,” he said.

Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has called for all government agencies to join in the search and rescue operation.

Scores of people are estimated to have died this monsoon season, with key highways blocked and some bridges swept away by swollen rivers.

Authorities have urged residents in the south-east of the country to be on alert as the Koshi river, which courses through Nepal and India, is flowing above the danger level.

Nepal also often sees deadly crashes due to poorly maintained roads and reckless driving.

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”.

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.

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Celebrities from across the globe are arriving in Mumbai for the wedding of the youngest son of Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani.

Anant Ambani is expected to tie the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of Indian pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant, in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Mumbai city on Friday.

The wedding events began with parties and celebrations in March.

The months-long festivities have been attended by top Bollywood stars, musicians and business tycoons like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

On Friday, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former UK PM Tony Blair and Nigerian rapper Rema were among those who landed in India’s financial capital to attend the festivities.

The couple’s wedding celebrations are likely to continue over several days. Parties have been reportedly planned for Saturday and Sunday and a grand reception is scheduled for Monday.

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.

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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.”

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.

US actress Shelley Duvall, known for films like The Shining, Annie Hall and Nashville, has died at the age of 75.

Her partner Dan Gilroy confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter.

“My dear, sweet, wonderful life partner and friend left us. Too much suffering lately, now she’s free. Fly away, beautiful Shelley,” he said, according to the outlet.

She died in her sleep of complications from diabetes at her home in Texas, Gilroy said.

Duvall’s other credits included 1977 drama 3 Women, directed by Robert Altman, for which she won the Cannes Film Festival’s best actress award and was nominated for a Bafta.

Three years later, she starred as Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams in Altman’s musical version of Popeye.

But Duvall fell out of favour in Hollywood and was off screens for two decades, before making her comeback in 2023’s The Forest Hills.

With her large brown eyes and offbeat charisma, Duvall was a distinctive and compelling presence.

She began her career, and her association with Altman, in 1970 dark comedy Brewster McCloud, and the pair reunited for McCabe and Mrs Miller in 1971.

After filming her performance as a woman who falls for a 1930s bank robber in their next movie, Thieves Like Us, Altman told her: “I knew you were good, but I didn’t know you were great.”

She said that remark was “the reason I stuck with it and became an actress”.

The director stuck with her, once saying she “was able to swing all sides of the pendulum: charming, silly, sophisticated, pathetic, even beautiful”.

Altman cast her again in 1975’s Nashville, his satire of US society, politics and country music.

Their next collaboration, 3 Women, saw Duvall play a talkative, trend-following health spa attendant. The Guardian’s Anne Billson ranked it as her best role, and “quite simply one of the greatest performances of the 1970s”.

Meanwhile, also in 1977, Duvall memorably played Pam, a Rolling Stone reporter who went on a date with Woody Allen’s Alvy in Annie Hall.

Her best-known role was perhaps Wendy, the wife of Jack Nicholson’s terrifying hotel caretaker in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic The Shining.

Filming was an ordeal. “I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week,” she once recalled.

After that, Duvall’s film roles included Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits and Roxanne with Steve Martin.

She also set up her own production companies, and made and hosted beloved 1980s children’s TV show Faerie Tale Theatre.

Her acting roles diminished in the 1990s, with Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady the pick of the crop, and she dropped off the radar in 2002.

The New York Times attributed her apparent disappearance to the impact of a 1994 earthquake that damaged her Los Angeles home, and the stress of her brother having cancer.

Discussing her prolonged absence from the screen, she told the paper in May she had been the victim of a fickle film industry. “I was a star. I had leading roles. People think it’s just ageing, but it’s not. It’s violence,” she said.

Asked to explain, she said: “How would you feel if people were really nice, and then, suddenly, on a dime they turn on you?

“You would never believe it unless it happens to you. That’s why you get hurt, because you can’t really believe it’s true.”

Concerns about her health were raised when she appeared on the TV talk show Dr Phil in 2016 and told him: “I’m very sick. I need help.”

She also talked about receiving messages from a “shapeshifting” Robin Williams following his death, and talked about malevolent forces who were out to do her harm, the paper said.

Speaking about that period, Gilroy told the New York Times she had become “paranoid and just kind of delusional”.

Asked by the paper why she had agreed to return to the screen in The Forest Hills, she replied: “I wanted to act again. And then this guy kept calling, and so I wound up doing it.”

Novelist Nicole Flattery wrote in the Financial Times in 2023 that her return showed her magic had remained intact.

In an article dubbing her the “ultimate film star”, Flattery summed up her talent, writing: “She’s a master at playing characters who act happy when they’re sad, their daffiness masking depth.”

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.

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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

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.

In a press conference on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that he had discussions with other leaders about spelling out the consequences for China.

“China has to understand that if they are supplying Russia with information and capacity, working with North Korea and others to help Russia and [their] armament, that they’re not going to benefit economically as a consequence of that,” he said.

“I think you’ll see that some of our European friends are going to be curtailing their investment in China.”

Pointing out that Russia had been seeking weapons from China and North Korea, he added that Nato states were looking into a new policy to turn the West into an “industrial base” for munitions and to develop new weapons systems.

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. Chinese President Xi Jinping has maintained a close relationship with Russian 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.

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

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.

• In photos: Kim Kardashian, Bieber and Rihanna at grand India wedding
• 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 at 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.

Pictures and videos of Kim Kardashian, who is in the city with her sister Khloé Kardashian, are being widely shared online.

Reports say the sisters have brought a team of stylists, including celebrity hairstylist Chris Appleton, along with a group of producers to capture every detail of their trip.

Former Indian president Ram Nath Kovind, British High Commissioner to India Lindy Cameron and US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti are also in the city to attend the wedding.

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.

Western leaders have rallied round Joe Biden at the Nato summit, amid concerns about the US president’s age and ability to serve another term.

Calls are growing for Mr Biden to drop out of the presidential race this November, and his attempts to diminish fears about his re-election bid at the summit were marred by two serious gaffes.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Mr Biden was “in charge” and “clear on the issues he knows well”, while UK PM Sir Keir Starmer said he was “on good form”.

But Mr Biden’s first gaffe, in which he introduced Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky as President Putin, was ridiculed in the Russian media.

And later in a news conference – Mr Biden’s first unscripted public appearance since the debate – he referred to his “Vice-President Trump” when meaning to say Kamala Harris.

The US president has been under pressure to quit since a disastrous performance two weeks ago in a debate with his Republican rival in the upcoming elections, Donald Trump.

But throughout the summit, other Nato leaders have defended him and his ability to lead.

Mr Macron, speaking after Thursday’s White House dinner, said he had had a long discussion with Mr Biden during the meal, and appealed for understanding of his flaws.

“I saw him as always a president who is in charge, clear on the issues he knows well,” he said.

“We all make slips of the tongue sometimes. It has happened to me before, it will probably happen to me tomorrow.

“I would ask you to show the same leniency that should be shown between caring people.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also addressed the gaffes.

“Slips of the tongue happen, and if you always monitor everyone, you will find enough of them,” he said.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir said repeatedly during the summit that the US president had achieved much to be proud of there, and was “across all the detail”.

On Friday he added: “We’ve been through two days of this council and come to a very good outcome… And I think he should be given credit for that.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was a privilege and a pleasure to work with Mr Biden.

“[Biden’s] depth of experience, his thoughtfulness, his steadfastness on the greatest issues and challenges of our time is a credit to the work that we’re all doing together,” he said, quoted by CBC.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, seen as being close to former President Trump, said, quoted by AFP: “I talked with President Biden, and there is no doubt that everything is ok.”

Meanwhile Finnish President Alexander Stubb combined a defence of Mr Biden with fears about the atmosphere in the US elections.

“I have absolutely no concern about the capacity of the current president of the United States to lead his country and to lead our fight for Ukraine and to lead Nato,” he said, quoted by AFP.

“The only thing I’m worried about is that the political climate in the United States right now is too toxic, is very polarised, and that doesn’t leave enough room for a civilised and constructive debate.”

Not all Nato leaders were prepared to weigh in on behalf of Mr Biden, though.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán reportedly made almost no comments to the media in Washington.

Instead he left immediately after the end of the summit for Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump’s Florida residence, where the two men talked about the war in Ukraine.

“We discussed ways to make peace,” Mr Orbán said on social media. “The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”

But if leaders of allied countries have been unwilling to criticise the US president for his frailties, Moscow has been similarly restrained.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the gaffes were clearly slips of the tongue and “not our business, an internal matter for the USA”.

Not so the Russian media, which have been all over Mr Biden’s confusion of Mr Putin with Mr Zelensky.

Official Rossiya TV showed it at the top of its 9pm bulletin, saying that “America’s vassals pretended that they’d not noticed anything”.

NTV said Biden had never been so close to a fiasco and that his “latest slip of the tongue is worthy of an Oscar”.

And popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets ran an article headlined “Senile Leaders”, comparing Joe Biden to the elderly Communist leaders of the USSR.

“What’s more dangerous, a monkey with a grenade or a shaking hand on the nuclear button?” it asked.

Joe Biden’s press conference in which he insisted he was still fit to run for US president has failed to silence critics from his own party.

Three Democratic politicians joined the growing list calling on Mr Biden to drop out of the US presidential race.

Calls for the 81-year-old to step aside have escalated since he stumbled through a TV debate with Republican Donald Trump last month.

At an hour-long briefing taking reporters’ questions on Thursday night he was more steady and fluent but there were also gaffes.

He mistakenly referred to his deputy, Kamala Harris, as “Vice President Trump” when answering the first question.

Two hours earlier at a Nato event he introduced Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before correcting himself.

It means Mr Biden’s candidacy still remains in peril, with the possibility of more defections over the next few days.

Some donors including actor George Clooney have pulled their financial support, saying he is not competent to carry out another four-year term.

One Democratic fundraiser who wants Mr Biden to step down told the BBC that the chat among like-minded Biden sceptics was that the president had done OK at the news conference but not well enough to change minds.

A problem for Mr Biden going forward is that he will be under constant and intense scrutiny at every event.

Any slip or mistake will be seized on as evidence that he is not fit or capable enough to be running for a second term.

Shortly after he finished his press conference, Connecticut congressman Jim Himes posted on X praising Mr Biden’s record in public service, but calling on him to step away from the campaign.

The strongest candidate to confront the “threat” posed by Trump, he wrote, was not longer Joe Biden.

Illinois congressman Eric Sorensen also posted on social media that Mr Biden ran in 2020 “with the purpose of putting country over party. Today I am asking him to do that again”.

• Biden defiant but gaffes undermine fightback

California congressman Scott Peters was the third to speak out, saying the “stakes are high, and we are losing course”.

They bring the tally of Democratic politicians calling on Mr Biden to go to 19.

During the briefing, Biden insisted to reporters that he’s in the race to “complete the job”.

“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.”

Many of his supporters in Congress came out immediately after the news conference to echo his belief that he is the best candidate.

“We’ve got to stop the nitpicking and then focus on the work ahead. This guy has done it, he’s done it in the past,” said Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison.

US allies have also weighed in on Mr Biden’s side, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying he had been on “very good form” when they met face-to-face at the summit.

French president Emmanuel Macron called the mistakes just a slip of the tongue and that Mr Biden was on top of matters.

But Trump was quick to mock Mr Biden for his Kamala Harris mistake. “Great job, Joe!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Guess who’s back, back again?

Eminem’s latest album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), has been released and is being met with mixed reviews by critics.

In the US rapper’s 12th album, his alter ego Slim Shady is killed off – the artwork shows Shady in a body bag, and in the music video for Tobey, Eminem takes a chainsaw to him.

Clash called the album “a mixed bag” and described it as “at once an effective piece of fan service, while also being a record that disappoints”.

“It doesn’t quite feel like an ending, but neither does it feel like a continuation,” Robin Murray wrote.

“A mixed, often muddled album, it features some of Eminem’s best rapping in a decade – those fast, skippy-yet-intricate flows will never fail to thrill – but his pen is often blunted.”

Ahead of the release, Eminem told fans this is a “conceptual album” and the songs should be listened to in order.

The 19 tracks include previously released singles Tobey and Houdini, as well as a sequel to his 1999 hit Guilty Conscience with Dr Dre.

Billboard ranked the latter song as one of the best on the new album and said “it’s not the original, but is a worthy second coming”.

“At one point, Slim Shady puts Marshall on blast for creating him as an alter-ego to stir up controversy and essentially be a shield to say jarring things that he didn’t really have the courage to stand on,” Michael Saponara wrote.

USA Today said the 51-year-old is a “lyrical pugilist throughout, except when he turns misty-eyed dad rapping about daughter Hailie Jade”.

His song Temporary starts with old recordings of the rapper and his daughter talking as a child.

Melissa Ruggieri said it was the most memorable song on the album “because it gives Eminem permission to drop the shtick and explore his vulnerability – which isn’t often apparent elsewhere on the album”.

Eminem calls on his 28-year-old daughter to “be strong” and that he will always be her rock.

On his track Fuel, Eminem references the multiple sexual assault allegations against fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.

“I’m like an R-A-P-E-R/I got so many S-As/S-As/Wait, he didn’t just spell the word rapper and leave out a ‘P’, did he?” the lyrics say.

Pitchfork said Eminem, real name Marshall Mathers III, “reckons with his controversies while taking pains to create new one”.

The track Antichrist “take pains to offend as crudely as possible” with references to pronouns, woke society and “the harrowing video of Diddy attacking his then-girlfriend Cassie in a hotel in 2016”.

Mr Combs, one of rap’s most successful moguls, apologised for his “inexcusable” actions shown in that video, and has denied all allegations of sexual assault.

Celebrities from across the globe are arriving in Mumbai for the wedding of the youngest son of Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani.

Anant Ambani is expected to tie the knot with Radhika Merchant, daughter of Indian pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant, in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Mumbai city on Friday.

The wedding events began with parties and celebrations in March.

The months-long festivities have been attended by top Bollywood stars, musicians and business tycoons like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

On Friday, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, former UK PM Tony Blair and Nigerian rapper Rema were among those who landed in India’s financial capital to attend the festivities.

The couple’s wedding celebrations are likely to continue over several days. Parties have been reportedly planned for Saturday and Sunday and a grand reception is scheduled for Monday.

A man suspected of killing a mother and two daughters in a crossbow attack has been arrested on suspicion of murder.

Carol Hunt, 61, Hannah Hunt, 28, and Louise Hunt, 25, died at their home in Bushey, Hertfordshire, on Tuesday evening.

Kyle Clifford, 26, from Enfield in north London, was arrested on Thursday evening on suspicion of three counts of murder.

He was found wounded in a cemetery in Enfield on Wednesday and remained in hospital in a serious condition, police said.

The victims were the wife and two daughters of BBC commentator John Hunt.

Det Supt Rob Hall, from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Major Crime Unit, said: “Our thoughts remain with the victims’ family at this tragic time.

“The investigation is moving at pace and as a result, we have now arrested a man. Inquiries are continuing at this time.”

On Thursday, police said a crossbow had been recovered as part of the investigation.

Tributes to the victims have flooded in from friends and members of the sporting world.

Loreto College St Albans said it was “mourning the loss of two of our former students, Hannah & Louise, along with their mother, Carol.

“As a Loreto Community, they will always hold a place in our heart. May they rest in peace.”

On Thursday, more than 50 people attended a vigil at St James’s Church in Bushey to pay their respects.

Sally Golding, who knew Hannah Hunt as her beautician, described “a really, really lovely bubbly person with a great personality. She was a sweet girl, a very happy little soul”.

Lea Holloway, a longstanding friend of Carol Hunt, was in tears as she left the church.

“I’ll miss Carol like crazy,” she said. “I can’t believe this has happened. It’s the thing nightmares are made of.”

Jockeys at Kempton Park Racecourse wore black armbands to show support and a minute’s silence was held at Newmarket Racecourse.

In a statement, the British Horseracing Authority said: “The thoughts of everyone at the BHA are with John Hunt, his family and friends at this shocking and tragic time.

“It is impossible to comprehend the horror that has been inflicted upon them by this dreadful event.”

The Sky commentator Mike Cattermole said it was “hard to comprehend and process the shock and disgust of what happened to John Hunt and his family”.

He added: “John lived for his girls, they were the world to him.”