Businesses and services around the world are slowly recovering after a massive IT outage affected computer systems for hours on Thursday and Friday.

Businesses, banks, hospitals and airlines were among the worst-hit after cyber-security firm Crowdstrike issued a faulty software update which affected Microsoft Windows.

Crowdstrike’s CEO apologised for the disruption and said a fix had been issued, but admitted it could be “some time” before all systems were back up and running.

While some airline services are beginning to return to normal after thousands of flights were cancelled, operators expect some delays and cancellations to persist through the weekend.

Many businesses are now dealing with backlogs and missed orders that could take days to resolve.

Health services in Britain, Israel and Germany also suffered problems, with some operations cancelled.

The global chaos has sparked concern over the vulnerability of the world’s interconnected technologies, and the extent to which a single software glitch could have such widespread impact.

The issue began at 19:00 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running cybersecurity software CrowdStrike Falcon, according to Microsoft, though the full extent of the problem only became clear by Friday morning.

But by Friday evening, the problems were easing in many parts of the globe, with many airports saying that while there were still issues with check-in and payment systems, most flights were now running. Hong Kong International Airport has resumed normal operations, according to Chinese state media.

Meanwhile, JP Morgan Chase, the biggest bank in the US, said it is working to restore service to ATM machines.

The website Downdetector, which detects sites which may be having tech issues, showed fewer sites in the UK which were experiencing problems by the end of the day.

Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said on X that a defect was found “in a single content update for Windows hosts”.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” he told the NBC network.

“Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and it’ll be operational.

“It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover, but it is our mission… to make sure every customer is fully recovered.”

Microsoft has also said that several reboots may be required, with some users reporting that as many as 15 could be needed before the problem is fixed.

Also, tech experts say Crowdstrike’s fix will have to be applied separately to each and every device affected.

Questions are likely now to be raised about Crowdstrike’s influence as one of the largest operators in the cyber-security market and the wisdom of having such a crucial part of the industry controlled by just a small number of companies.

Crowdstrike’s shares fell by around 12% on Friday, at the expense of rivals SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks.

The problems were first noticed in Australia, and possibly felt most severely in the air travel industry.

Airports saw delays, with long queues as flights were cancelled or delayed, aircraft grounded and passengers stranded.

Some saw extra staff drafted in to check in passengers manually.

By 18:00 GMT, aviation data from Cirium suggested that more than 4,000 flights – or 3.9% of the total – had been cancelled so far on Friday, though the figure may also include flights cancelled for other reasons.

Payment systems, banking and healthcare providers around the world were affected.

It is thought the outage may also have a longer term effect as companies struggle to pay wages to staff, particularly where payments are made on a weekly basis.

Some railway companies warned of delays, and broadcasters Sky News and ABC Australia both experienced outages.

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There was little to indicate what had happened on the fifth floor of the Grand Hyatt Erawan in Bangkok until police officers opened the door.

No-one was heard to scream, or had rung for help. No-one had even made it to the door.

Even inside, there were apparently no signs of struggle – the untouched late lunch still laid out neatly on the table for the occupants to enjoy.

From outside of Room 502, the only clue to the horror inside the locked room was the fact the group were late checking out of the hotel.

And yet inside were six bodies, alongside tea cups laced with cyanide.

It didn’t take officers long to work out the occupants of the room had drunk the poisoned tea, or to find out who the apparent victims were.

But days after police revealed the grim discovery, big questions remain: why them – and who did it?

Four of the victims are Vietnamese nationals – Thi Nguyen Phuong, 46, her husband Hong Pham Thanh, 49, Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, 47, and Dinh Tran Phu, 37.

The other two are American citizens of Vietnamese origin – Sherine Chong, 56, and Dang Hung Van, 55.

According to investigators, Chong was believed to have borrowed 10 million baht ($280,000; £215,000) from husband and wife Hong Pham Thanh and Thi Nguyen Phuong to invest in a hospital building project in Japan. The couple, who owned a construction business, had apparently tried in vain to get their money back.

In fact, the matter was due to go to court in Japan in a matter of weeks.

On the face of it, this meeting appeared to be an attempt to discuss the issue in advance of the case.

Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan was there because Chong – who US media have said lived in Oakland, California – had asked her to act as her intermediary with the couple regarding the investment.

But how were the other two linked to the case?

Dinh Tran Phu – a successful make-up artist whose clientele includes movie stars, singers and beauty queens in Vietnam – was at the gathering working for Chong.

His father, speaking to BBC Vietnamese, emphasised the fact he had travelled to Thailand with his regular clients, not with strangers.

A close friend, meanwhile, said he knew both Thi Nguyen Phuong and Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, having introduced them to treatments at a friend’s spa in Da Nang, where he lived.

Dang Hung Van’s participation in the hotel suite meeting was not immediately clear.

Police said there was a seventh name in the hotel reservation, the sister of one of the six. That person returned to Vietnam from Thailand last week and police said she was not involved in the incident.

The group checked into the hotel separately over the weekend and were assigned five rooms – four on the seventh floor, and one on the fifth.

Chong checked into Room 502 on Sunday. The five others visited her in her suite that day, but they headed back to their respective rooms for the night.

Before noon on Monday, Dang Hung Van ordered six cups of tea while Dinh Tran Phu, the make-up artist, ordered fried rice from their respective rooms. They asked that it be delivered to Room 502 at 14:00 local time.

A few minutes before 14:00, Chong started receiving the food orders at Room 502. She was alone in the suite at that time.

Police said she refused the waiter’s offer to brew tea for her party. The waiter also found that she “spoke very little and was visibly under stress”.

The rest of the group started arriving soon after. The couple went in lugging a suitcase.

At 14:17, all six could be seen by the door before it was shut. From then on, there was no sign of movement from inside.

They had been scheduled to check out on Monday but failed to do so.

Police entered the room at 16:30 on Tuesday and found the six dead on the floor.

The initial investigation found that two appeared to have tried get to the suite’s door, but failed to reach it in time.

All the bodies bore signs of cyanide poisoning, which can – in certain doses – kill within minutes. Their lips and nails had turned dark purple indicating a lack of oxygen, while their internal organs turned “blood red”, which is another sign of cyanide poisoning.

Investigators say there is “no other cause” that would explain their deaths “except for cyanide”.

Further tests are being carried out to determine the “intensity” of the deadly chemical and to rule out any other toxins.

Cyanide starves the body’s cells of oxygen, which can induce heart attacks. Early symptoms include dizziness, shortness of breath and vomiting.

Its use in Thailand is heavily regulated and those found to have unauthorised access face up to two years in jail.

Police suspect that one of the dead was behind the poisoning and was driven by crushing debt – but have not said who.

According to Vietnamese outlet VN Express, investigators said Chong had been sued by all the other five over their failed investments.

The meeting in Bangkok was called to negotiate a settlement, but the attempt failed.

Police have sought a statement from the group’s tour guide in Bangkok, 35-year-old Phan Ngoc Vu.

The guide reportedly said that before she died, Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, the mediator, had asked someone to buy traditional medicine containing snake blood for her joint pains.

Then there are the two metal beverage containers that did not belong to the hotel found by police in the suite.

The containers were placed beside the cyanide-laced teacups, near the dining table.

What is certain is that officials want the matter resolved quickly.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has directed officials in Hanoi to co-ordinate closely with their Thai counterparts on the investigation.

As for Thai authorities, it couldn’t have come at a worse time for Thailand. It had just expanded visa-free entry to 93 countries to revive its tourism industry, a key economic pillar that has yet to fully recover from the pandemic.

Barely a year before, a 14-year-old boy shot dead two people at a luxury shopping mall, also in Bangkok.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin was with police on the scene at the Grand Hyatt on Tuesday night. He said there was no danger to public safety and that it was a private matter.

For the families left behind, the shock is palpable.

BBC Vietnamese got hold of the make-up artist’s mother, Tuy, on the phone, but she was sobbing so uncontrollably that she hung up after a short conversation. She said she thought her son was just on a routine work trip.

His father, Tran Dinh Dung, said in a separate interview that he did not notice anything strange with his son the last time he saw him.

The UN’s top court has said Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is against international law, in a landmark opinion.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Israel should stop settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and end its “illegal” occupation of those areas and the Gaza Strip as soon as possible.

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the court had made a “decision of lies”.

The court’s advisory opinion is not legally binding but still carries significant political weight. It marks the first time the ICJ has delivered a position on the legality of the 57-year occupation.

The ICJ, based at The Hague in the Netherlands, has been examining the issue since the beginning of last year, at the request of the UN General Assembly.

The court was specifically asked to give its view on Israel’s policies and practices towards the Palestinians, and on the legal status of the occupation.

Delivering the court’s findings, ICJ President Nawaf Salam said it had found that “Israel’s… continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal.”

“The State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible,” he said.

He said Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 did not bring Israel’s occupation of that area to an end because it still exercises effective control over it.

The court also said Israel should evacuate all of its settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and pay reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by the occupation.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967. The court said the settlements were illegal. Israel has consistently disputed that they are against international law.

The ICJ said Israel’s “policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, which it said was against international law, adding that Israel was “not entitled to sovereignty” over any part of the occupied territories.

Israel claims sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem, the eastern half of which it captured in the 1967 Middle East war. It considers the city its indivisible capital – something which is not accepted by the vast majority of the international community.

Among its other far-reaching conclusions, the court said Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied territories constituted “systemic discrimination based on, inter alia, race, religion or ethnic origin”. It also said Israel had illegally exploited the Palestinians’ natural resources and violated their right to self-determination.

The court also advised states to avoid any actions, including providing aid or assistance, that would maintain the current situation.

Israel’s prime minister swiftly issued a blunt statement rejecting what the court had determined.

“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land – not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, nor in our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria” (the West Bank), Mr Netanyahu said in a statement.

“No decision of lies in The Hague will distort this historical truth, and similarly, the legality of Israeli settlements in all parts of our homeland cannot be disputed.”

But the court’s findings were welcomed by the Palestinians.

Hussein Al Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Palestinians’ main umbrella group, called it “a historic victory for the rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination. And the collapse and defeat of the Judaization project through confiscation, settlement, displacement, and racist practices against a people under occupation.

“The international community must respect the opinion of international justice and force Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories,” he said.

The court’s findings will now go to the UN General Assembly, which will decide how to respond, including the option of adopting a resolution. That would be significant and could constitute a catalyst for negotiations and set the legal parameters for a future negotiated settlement.

This case is separate from another active case brought to the ICJ by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in the war in Gaza.

US President Joe Biden is looking forward to “getting back on the campaign trail next week”, fortifying his commitment to stick in the race as more Democrats on Friday called for him to step aside as the party nominee.

“The stakes are high, and the choice is clear. Together, we will win,” he said.

His statement appeared to be in response to the conflicting reports that Mr Biden’s inner circle is discussing the beleaguered president’s future and whether he will remain in the race.

Over the last several weeks, Mr Biden has been caught in a whirlwind of political pressure to step down: Calls from leaders within his own party to withdraw from the race, a loss of big-ticket donors and the added pressure that his decision could cost Democrats control of Congress.

At least a dozen Democratic lawmakers have called for him to step aside on Friday alone, and Vice-President Kamala Harris – considered the top choice to replace Mr Biden – was tasked with comforting worried donors on a Friday afternoon call.

Ms Harris said that she believed “in my heart of hearts” that “we are going to win this election”, an individual who listened to the conversation told the BBC.

“We know which candidate in this election puts the American people first: Our president, Joe Biden,” she added.

Earlier in the day, Mr Biden’s re-election campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon also attempted to push back on speculation that the president would withdraw in an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe

“Absolutely, the president’s in this race,” she said when asked about Mr Biden’s plans.

She described him as “more committed than ever to beat Donald Trump” and said he’s the “best person” to take on the former president.

In his statement, the president referenced former President Trump’s Republican National Convention speech to say he will continue “exposing the threat” of the former president while “making the case” for his record.

“Donald Trump’s dark vision for the future is not who we are as Americans. Together, as a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the ballot box,” he said.

As the conflict played on on Friday, the president was under quarantine at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. He tested positive for Covid-19 while traveling in Las Vegas earlier this week. Mr Biden is experiencing “mild symptoms”, the White House said.

Since his poor debate performance last month, Mr Biden has insisted he will continue to run, though his perspective on what it would take for him to step down as the Democratic nominee has evolved.

First telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos “only the Lord Almighty” would make him stand down, Mr Biden said this week during an interview with BET (Black Entertainment Television) that he would re-evaluate the campaign if a doctor told him he had a serious medical condition.

According to a campaign memo released on Friday, Mr Biden isn’t going anywhere.

“Joe Biden has made it more than clear: He’s in this race and he’s in it to win it,” according to the memo. “Moreover, he’s the presumptive nominee — there is no plan for an alternative nominee. In a few short weeks, Joe Biden will be the official nominee. It is high past time we stop fighting one another. The only person who wins when we fight is Donald Trump.”

Time is running out for Mr Biden to decide if he will step down.

The Democratic National Convention begins 19 August, but the Democratic National Committee is expected to meet virtually the first week of August to nominate Biden as the official party nominee to meet state ballot deadlines.

The DNC rules committee met on Friday morning to discuss the procedures for the virtual roll-call vote, which they intend to hold before 7 August.

When asked whether another candidate could challenge Mr Biden in the roll-call vote, the committee’s co-chair Leah Daughtry said that “any challenger would have to have the verified support of hundreds of delegates”.

With Mr Biden winning nearly all of the available delegates during the Democratic primary, that requirement would be nearly insurmountable.

Ms Daughtry noted that “such a challenge has never happened over the past half century of competitive primaries”.

The pressure continues to build, however.

On Friday, Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich, of New Mexico, became the third Democrat in the upper chamber to call for Biden to step aside.

“By passing the torch, he would secure his legacy as one of our nation’s greatest leaders and allow us to united behind a candidate who can best defeat Donald Trump and safeguard the future of our democracy,” he wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

His statement follows that of Democratic Senator Jon Tester, of Montana, who called on Biden to end his re-election bid on Thursday.

“While I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term,” Mr Tester wrote in a statement on X.

In the House, Congressman Jim Costa, a Democrat from California, also called for him to withdraw on Thursday.

Democratic congressmen Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Chuy Garcia of Illinois and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin released a joint message on Friday saying “the most responsible and patriotic thing” Biden could do is “step aside as our nominee”.

“With great admiration for you personally, sincere respect for your decades of public service and patriotic leadership, and deep appreciation for everything we have accomplished together during your presidency, it is now time for you to pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders,” they wrote in the joint statement.

Illinois Democratic congressman Sean Casten wrote in the Chicago Tribune on Friday that he doesn’t think the president can defeat former US President Donald Trump.

“It is with a heavy heart and much personal reflection that I am therefore calling on Biden to pass the torch to a new generation,” he wrote.

Other members of the House joined the calls for the president to step aside on Friday, including Zoe Lofgren of California, Kathy Castor of Florida, Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky, Greg Landsman of Ohio and Betty McCollum of Minnesota.

Reports this week suggested senior Democratic leaders are leaning in the same direction.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have all reportedly expressed concerns during private conversations with Mr Biden about his candidacy. In public statements, Ms Pelosi’s staff insisted her comments have been misrepresented and Mr Jeffries affirmed his support for Mr Biden.

Former President Barack Obama, Mr Biden’s previous running mate, has reportedly said Mr Biden’s chances of winning the election have greatly diminished.

Lawmakers haven’t been the only ones turning their backs to Biden. Big name donors – including actor George Clooney and Disney family heiress Abigail Disney – have closed their wallets.

Despite the defectors, some are sticking by his side.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most influential progressive voices in the House, has supported Biden over the last few weeks. She broadcast live on Instagram on Friday morning and spoke about the risks of entering the convention without Biden as the presumptive nominee, including potential legal challenges and ballot access deadlines.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which has about 40 members, and the 60-member Congressional Black Caucus, have both met with the president and also indicated their support for his re-election bid.

How do you assess the impact of the Covid pandemic on a population?

One way is by examining life expectancy, or the average number of years a person can expect to live.

A team of 10 researchers from the UK, the US and Europe have studied the mortality impacts of the pandemic in India by sex, social group and age. Their peer-reviewed paper has been published in Science Advances, a US journal.

They found that life expectancy at birth in India was 2.6 years lower and mortality was 17% higher in 2020 compared to 2019. This implied 1.19 million excess deaths in 2020. Excess deaths are a simple measure of how many more people are dying than expected, compared with previous years.

The researchers of the new study say life expectancy declines in India were larger and affected a younger age profile compared to high-income countries.

They found that mortality rose among all age groups, but compared to high-income countries, the increase was particularly pronounced in younger age groups, leading to larger declines in life expectancy.

The researchers also found something which was more worrying.

For one, females experienced a life expectancy decline of one year greater than males. This contrasts with patterns in most other countries and may be due to gender inequality, say the researchers from University of Oxford, University of California, Berkeley and Paris School of Economics, among others.

Also, marginalised social groups – Muslims, Dalits, and tribespeople – in India saw larger declines in life expectancy compared to privileged upper caste people, exacerbating existing disparities.

The researchers agree that before Covid, these groups already had significant disadvantages in life expectancy. The pandemic worsened these disparities, with declines comparable to or greater than those seen among Native Americans, Blacks, and Hispanics in the US in 2020, the study says.

“These findings uncover large and unequal mortality impacts during the pandemic in the world’s most populous country,” Sangita Vyas, of CUNY Hunter College and one of the researchers, told me.

More than 4.7 million people in India – nearly 10 times higher than official records suggest – are thought to have died because of Covid, according to a 2022 World Health Organization (WHO) report. India’s government rejected the figure, saying the methodology was flawed.

To be sure, the latest study looked at deaths from all causes, not just deaths from Covid. “For that reason we can’t conclude that women in India were more likely to die of Covid than men,” says Ms Vyas. “What we can conclude is that the increase in mortality from all causes was greater for women than men”.

The researchers believe these patterns partly stem from gender inequality.

Previous research shows Indian households spend less on healthcare for females compared to males, a disparity which likely worsened during the pandemic. Fewer females appear in India’s official Covid-19 case data, despite surveys showing similar infection rates among males and females.

Furthermore, severe disruptions to maternal healthcare and livelihoods due to lockdowns likely contributed to these trends.

How did the researchers come to these findings? They surveyed data of more than 765,000 people – a sample size that accurately reflects the diversity and distribution of a quarter of India’s population – to identify patterns missed by incomplete data and disease surveillance.

India’s National Family Health Survey 5 collected high quality data on recent household deaths and socio-economic characteristics. This allowed researchers to analyse age, sex, and group-specific mortality patterns. They compared mortality in 2019 and 2020 using data from the same households interviewed in 2021.

The researchers believe more research is necessary to explore why females in India experienced higher excess deaths than males, why excess mortality affected younger age groups more in India compared to other countries, and why Muslims saw significant declines in life expectancy compared to other social groups.

“These patterns likely resulted from disparities in healthcare access and underlying health, differing impacts of lockdowns on public health and livelihoods, and increased discrimination against marginalised groups,” says Ms Vyas.

Authorities in Bangladesh have imposed a nationwide curfew, after further rioting in the capital Dhaka left an additional 35 people dead.

Days of violence have been sparked by students calls for the government to axe a rule reserving scores of public jobs for the families of veterans of the country’s independence war in 1971.

The prime minister’s office announced the curfew after an attack on the Narsingdi prison on Friday saw hundreds of inmates released.

Government Press Secretary Naeemul Islam Khan said the army would be deployed to the streets in a bid to restore order.

“The government has decided to impose a curfew and deploy the military in aid of the civilian authorities,” he said in a statement.

Some 67 people have now died since violence broke out – although the exact toll is difficult to assess due in part to an almost complete communications shutdown, with mobile internet and telephone lines reportedly down.

Bus and train services have reportedly also been halted, while photos from Dhaka show large numbers of police in riot gear on the streets.

Schools and universities across Bangladesh have also been shut until further notice.

But this has done little to stop the protesters, who vowed to continue with their own “Complete Shutdown”, which has seen them blockade roads across the city.

On Friday, students chanting “merit, merit” and “we won’t let the blood that has been shed of our brothers go in vain” were joined by a number of parents outside Dhaka university.

The students are arguing that the quota system is discriminatory, and are asking for recruitment based on merit. Critics say the system unfairly benefits the families of pro-government groups who support Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who won her fourth straight election in January.

A march organised by Islamist parties was met with tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades.

Protestors also stormed the Narsingdi district jail on Friday, where several hundred inmates were reported to have escaped onto the streets. Multiple witnesses confirmed the incident to BBC Bangla.

The main opposition Bangladesh National Party has also called for protest, with the exiled acting chairman Tarique Rahman asking people to support “these tender-hearted students” in a post on Twitter.

The party said one of its senior leaders, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, had been taken into custody. Police did not give any reasons for Mr Rizvi’s arrest.

Attempts to end the protests with talks have so far failed.

Law Minister Anisul Haque told BBC Bangla the government was open to discussing the issues: “I’m sure they are also discussing whether they will come to the talks or not.”

But student Nahid Iqbal told the BBC on Thursday they would not consider joining the talks at present.

“The government has killed so many people in a day that we cannot join any discussions in the current circumstances.”

Earlier, Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Shafiqul Islam told the BBC that authorities had decided to ban rallies in the city in order to protect lives and property following Thursday’s violence.

Separately, the police confirmed to BBC Bangla that two people had died on Friday.

Police said 100 officers had been injured on Thursday, while a government minister said several vehicles parked outside government buildings were set on fire.

The clashes have also not been confined to Dhaka, with 26 districts reporting incidents.

The protesters who occupied and set light to the state broadcaster BTV had left by Friday morning, although the channel had not started broadcasting again.

A senior reporter told BBC Bangla the newsroom, studio and canteen had all been damaged in Thursday’s fire.

Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa cannot forget the dead body he saw just metres from the summit of Mount Lhotse in the Himalayas more than a decade ago.

The Nepali was working as a guide for a German climber trying to scale the world’s fourth highest mountain in May 2012. The body blocking their path was thought to be Milan Sedlacek, a Czech mountaineer who’d perished just a few days earlier.

Mr Sherpa was curious why the Czech climber had died so close to the top. One of the gloves on the frozen corpse was missing.

“The bare hand might have slipped away from the rope,” the guide says. “He might have been killed after losing his balance and crashing onto the rock.”

The body stayed where it was – and every climber scaling Mount Lhotse thereafter had to step past it.

Mr Sherpa, 46, had no idea then that he would return 12 years later to retrieve the climber’s body, as part of a team of a dozen military personnel and 18 sherpas deployed by the Nepali army to clean up the high Himalayas.

There have been more than 300 deaths in the Everest region since records of mountain climbing there began a century ago, and many of these bodies remain. The death toll has kept increasing: eight people have been killed so far this year; and 18 died in 2023, according to Nepal’s tourism department.

The government first launched the clean-up campaign in 2019, which included removing some bodies of dead climbers. But this year was the first time that authorities set a goal to retrieve five bodies from the so-called “death zone”, above an altitude of 8,000m (26,247 feet).

In the end the team – who subsisted on water, chocolate and sattu, a mixture of chickpea, barley and wheat flour – retrieved four bodies.

One skeleton and 11 tonnes of rubbish were removed at lower attitudes after a 54-day operation that ended on 5 June.

“Nepal has received a bad name for the garbage and dead bodies which have polluted the Himalayas on a grave scale,” Major Aditya Karki, the leader of this year’s operation, told BBC Nepali.

The campaign also aims to improve safety for the climbers.

Maj Karki says many have been startled by the sight of bodies – last year, one mountaineer could not move for half an hour after seeing a dead body on the way to Mount Everest.

Many people cannot afford to retrieve the bodies of relatives who have died on mountains in Nepal. Even if they have the financial means, most private companies refuse to help get bodies from the death zone because it is too dangerous.

The military allocated five million rupees ($37,400; £29,000) this year to retrieve each body. Twelve people are needed to lower a body from 8,000m, with each needing four cylinders of oxygen. One cylinder costs more than $400, meaning that $20,000 is needed for oxygen alone.

Every year, there is only about a 15-day window during which climbers can ascend and descend from 8,000 metres, as the winds slow down during the transition between wind cycles. In the death zone, the wind speed often exceeds 100 km per hour.

After locating the bodies, the team mostly worked after nightfall because they did not want to disturb other mountaineers. In the Everest region, which also consists of Lhotse and Nuptse, there is only one single ladder and ropeway for people climbing up and down from base camp.

“It was very tough to bring back the bodies from the death zone,” Mr Sherpa says. “I vomited sour water many times. Others kept coughing and others got headaches because we spent hours and hours at very high altitude.”

At 8,000m, even strong Sherpas can carry only up to 25kg (55 pounds), less than 30% of their capacity at lower altitudes.

The body near the summit of Mount Lhotse, which stands at 8,516m, was discoloured after exposure to the sun and snow for 12 years. Half of the body was buried in snow, Mr Sherpa says.

All four climbers’ bodies retrieved were found in the same position as they had died. Their frozen state meant their limbs could not be moved, making transportation even more difficult.

Nepali law states that all bodies have to remain in the best condition before they are returned to authorities – any damage could result in penalties.

The clean-up team arranged a roping system to bring the bodies down gradually, because pushing them from behind or pulling them from in front was not possible. Sometimes, the bodies became stuck in the rocky, icy terrain, and pulling them out again was a laborious task.

It took 24 hours non-stop to bring the body presumed to belong to the Czech climber to the nearest camp, which is just about 3.5km away, Mr Sherpa says. The team then spent another 13 hours getting the body down to another lower camp.

Next stop for the bodies was a journey to Kathmandu by helicopter, but the crew was stuck in the town of Namche for five days because of bad weather. They arrived in the capital safely on 4 June.

The four bodies and the skeleton have been kept at a hospital in Kathmandu.

The army has found identification documents on two bodies – Czech climber Milan Sedlacek and American mountaineer Ronald Yearwood, who died in 2017. The Nepali government will be in communication with the respective embassies.

The process of identifying the other two bodies is ongoing.

Sherpa climbers and guides keep track of the locations and possible identities of lost climbers, so they have provided potential information on some of the bodies. They believe all the bodies belong to foreigners, but the government has not confirmed this.

About 100 sherpas have died on the Himalayas since records began, so many families have been waiting for years to perform the last Buddhist rites for their loved ones.

Authorities have said they will bury the bodies if no one comes to claim them three months after identification – regardless of whether the bodies belong to a foreigner or a Nepali.

Mr Sherpa first climbed in the Himalayas at the age of 20. In his career, he has scaled Everest three times and Lhotse five times.

“Mountaineers have got famous from climbing. The Himalayas have given us so many opportunities,” he says.

“By doing this special job of retrieving dead bodies, it’s my time to pay back to the Great Himalayas.”

Donald Trump took the stage on Thursday night at the Republican National Convention like a conquering hero. He had cheated death. His Democratic opponents were tearing themselves apart.

His loyalists, who now fill the ranks of his party, packed the Milwaukee arena and cheered enthusiastically throughout his hour-and-a-half speech.

He pledged to serve all Americans if elected then recounted, in a subdued, but almost messianic tone, his brush with a spray of bullets. Some delegates even wore bandages over their right ears like their injured political idol in tribute to him.

“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he said. “Over the last few days, many people have said it was a providential moment.” He spoke of dropping to the ground as bullets flew past him and how his supporters had “great sorrow on their faces”.

“When I rose, surrounded by Secret Service, the crowd was confused because they thought I was dead,” he said.

The unity message and its powerful delivery made for a unique convention speech and a remarkable Trump one. But the rest of his speech was more traditional convention fare.

Although he called for ending the “partisan witch hunts” against him, he avoided the extended forays into 2020 election denial that have at times dominated his rally speeches, and he mostly replaced his normal pointed attacks on individual opponents with calls for unity.

There was classic Trump in there too – dark and false claims, sometimes during extended improvisations.

Trump’s performance hinted that for all the talk of a changed man after the attempt on his life and for all the more organised, focused operation behind him, the former president is still inclined to veer off-script, even in the most momentous of occasions.

The question many Americans could be wondering now is which version of Trump will lead the country should he beat Democrat Joe Biden in November. Looking back at the last four days offers some clues.

The address, weakly delivered though it may have been, still represented the culmination of a remarkable stretch for the former president, starting with President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance in Atlanta three weeks ago that prompted an uprising in his Democratic Party.

Since then, the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump had broad immunity from criminal prosecution, a judge delayed sentencing for his New York conviction in a hush-money case and another judge entirely dismissed the case against him for mishandling national security documents.

Then he was nearly assassinated. The attempt on his life by a 20-year-old gunman left Trump’s face bloodied and provided the iconic image that was emblazoned on T-shirts and signs at the convention.

All of this meant he and his supporters converged on Milwaukee with a sense that their time had come.

For four slickly produced and relentlessly on-message evenings, the Republican party positioned itself as a welcoming place for all Americans and the former president as a uniting force who would return the nation to greatness.

While there were still partisan speakers throwing red meat to the crowd, they were largely limited to the early-evening slots, when fewer Americans were tuned in to the proceedings.

As the final hour each night arrived, the focus softened and a string of speakers described the former president in deeply personal terms.

• The Trump family: A guide to an American dynasty

It began on Monday, with Trump receiving an exuberant welcome as he entered the convention centre for his first public appearance since the shooting.

He sat in the VIP section of the building and watched as model and social media influencer Amber Rose defended him against accusations of racism: “Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re black, white, gay or straight.”

On Tuesday, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders recounted Trump hugging her young son at the White House while Lara Trump painted her father-in-law as “an amazing grandfather”.

Earlier that evening, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who had been one of Trump’s fiercest critics on the 2024 Republican primary campaign trail, was urging voters who didn’t support Trump “100% of the time” to back his re-election.

“When times are really tough, when he’s got everything to lose and nothing to gain,” Steve Witkoff, a friend of the former president, told the audience, “Donald Trump shows up, and he’s there for you.”

Trump’s first term in office was marked by sharp political divisions within American society. The day after he was inaugurated, millions marched through the streets of Washington in protest.

His attempts to ban nationals from a list of Muslim-majority countries caused chaos at American airports early in his presidency and border restrictions implemented later led to an outcry about crying children separated from their parents at detention centres.

Trump’s four years in office ended with him refusing to accept his defeat in the presidential election – denialism that culminated in the 6 January riot at the US Capitol, where thousands of his supporters attempted to block certification of President Biden’s victories.

He was denounced by many in his own party, and faced a second impeachment by the House of Representatives. Although he was acquitted in a Senate trial, seven Republicans broke ranks and voted for his conviction. After leaving office, the former president was indicted four times, found culpable for sexual assault by a civil court and convicted of fraud.

That was then, however, and here in Wisconsin – within the security bubble of the Republican National Convention – it was decidedly different now.

The overriding message from the Republicans this week was that those divisions and distractions are things of the past, and that the Trump that America sees today is not the one they might remember from his first White House tenure.

If the rest of the nation agrees, it would represent a remarkable comeback story or a collective act of political amnesia, depending on one’s perspective.

“I think that we really now are the party of unity and inclusiveness,” said Jennifer McGrath, a delegate from Las Vegas, Nevada. “We really are the place to be at this point.”

David Botkins, a member of the Virginian Republican Party’s State Central Committee, said he thought the assassination attempt had changed Trump and that he would be “different, better and more effective” in a second presidential term.

“I think the policies are going to be the same, the conservatism is going to be the same, but there may be a tenderness and a compassion and a gratitude and a respect for divine providence that will inform the tone with which he conducts himself as president for the next four years.”

As for those policies and proposals, the Republican convention offered scant details.

The first three nights of the convention each had a theme – the economy, safety and foreign policy. They formed a framework for the former president’s acceptance speech and offer a useful guide for the key points the party is seeking to emphasise in the campaign ahead.

While Trump only mentioned President Biden by name once, he noted that “this administration” was presiding over soaring inflation (which has now eased), knowing that economic concerns are the bread-and-butter of bids to oust an incumbent officeholder.

Crime and immigration, two issues on which Republicans joined at the hip all week, served as the centrepiece on “safety” night. Polls show that a majority of Americans now favour lowering immigration levels and support Trump’s call for removing millions of undocumented migrants residing in the US. During Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s speech, some convention attendees waved pre-printed signs reading “mass deportation now”.

Conflicts abroad were another prong of the Republican case against Mr Biden. In a particularly dramatic moment on Wednesday, families of six of the 13 US soldiers killed by a car bomb during the 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan took the stage to blame the current president for the deaths and claim that the president wasn’t fit to lead the nation’s military.

“With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness and chaos will be over,” Trump said in his speech.

And while there were more specific policy discussions in events held on the sidelines of the convention, they took place well away from prime-time network television cameras.

For instance, on Monday, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, hosted a “policy fest”, where former Trump administration officials and Republican politicians offered their views on topics like foreign policy, education, immigration, the economy and energy.

The Heritage Foundation is behind the 1,000-page Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump presidency, which has generated controversy, media attention and relentless attacks from Democrats – and many of the speakers defended their efforts to provide a detailed plan for a new Republican administration.

On Thursday, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita made it clear what he thought of these outside efforts, describing Project 2025 – which many officials from the first Trump administration are part of – as a “pain in the ass”.

“The issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about,” he said.

Eight years ago, when Donald Trump first ran for president, the Republican National Convention in Cleveland was a sometimes chaotic event, with then-establishment conservatives making last-ditch efforts to deny him the nomination.

Trump’s 2024 campaign is run by wily operatives, rather than political fringe characters, and they kept the convention participants on a tight script this week. The party, from the top to the grass-roots, has been fully remade in the former president’s image.

In 2016, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who finished second behind Trump in the primary voting, pointedly declined to endorse the winner, saying only that Republicans should vote their “conscience”. He was roundly booed.

This time around, he started his speech by saying “God bless Donald Trump” and went on to lavish the former president with praise.

Trump’s other Republican critics were nowhere to be found. His former vice-president, Mike Pence, spent the week on holiday in Montana. Senators like Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine stayed home. Former President George W Bush also kept his distance.

On Wednesday, it was Trump’s new vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance, who laid out the core tenets of this new, Trump-dominated Republican Party in his nomination acceptance speech.

“We won’t cater to Wall Street, we’ll commit to the working man,” he said. “We won’t import foreign labour, we’ll fight for American citizens. We won’t buy energy from countries that hate us, we’ll get it right here from American workers. We won’t sacrifice our supply chains to unlimited global trade, we’ll stamp every product ‘Made in the USA.’”

The political festivities in Milwaukee were Trumpism from start to finish – a carefully calibrated machine, promoting the party’s most popular agenda items and focusing criticism on one man, President Joe Biden.

But what if Republicans are going after the wrong guy? A growing number of Democrats have called on Mr Biden to be replaced as their presidential nominee and speculation is growing that he might actually listen.

The Democratic convention isn’t until the end of August, leaving time for the president to step aside either for his running mate, Kamala Harris, or for an open process to select another candidate.

On Thursday evening, the Trump campaign sought to highlight their candidate’s strength and vitality by giving him a raucous entrance, preceded by appearances by former wrestler Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Fighting Championship impresario Dana White and a performance by Kid Rock.

The campaign’s intention – to draw a contrast with Mr Biden’s perceived frailty and target younger male voters – was obvious.

That strategy may be less effective against Ms Harris or one of the more youthful Democratic governors who are mentioned as possible Biden successors.

But for the moment, the Republicans are riding high and optimistic about their victory in November, convinced that the former president’s run of good fortune is just getting started.

At least 11 people have died and more than 30 are missing after a highway bridge partially collapsed during torrential rains in northwest China.

The bridge over a river in Shaanxi province’s Shangluo city collapsed on Friday night due to a sudden downpour and flash floods, the provincial authority said.

Rescue teams have recovered several vehicles that fell into the river, with efforts still underway according to authorities.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged an “all out” effort to find those still missing.

The 11 dead were found in five cars that were pulled from the river below. It is thought 20 more vehicles plunged into the water, according to state media.

Video and images from Xinhua news agency shows a partially submerged section of the bridge with heavy river waters rushing around it.

According to Xinhua, officials sent 736 firefighters, 18 boats and 32 drones to the scene.

On Friday, at least five people were killed in flooding and mudslides in another part of the province.

Large parts of northern and central China have been battered since Tuesday by rains that have caused flooding and significant damage.

State media reported at least five people died and eight were missing after the rains sparked flooding and mudslides in Shaanxi’s Baoji city.

Vietnam’s long-serving leader Nguyen Phu Trong has died “after a period of illness”, marking the end of a political era.

The announcement came days after the government said he was stepping back to focus on his health and had handed duties to President To Lam.

As the general secretary of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party since 2011, and at one point also double-hatting as president, Mr Trong was seen as one of the country’s most powerful leaders in decades.

Besides overseeing the supercharged growth of Vietnam’s economy, the 80-year-old was known for his “blazing furnaces” anti-corruption campaign.

Mr Trong’s death comes at a time of political turbulence for Vietnam’s Communist leadership. In recent months three top leaders quit following unspecified accusations of wrongdoing.

According to an official statement released on Friday, Mr Trong died “due to old age and serious illness”.

It comes a day after the Vietnamese government said in a surprise announcement that Mr Trong needed time to “focus on active treatment” for an unspecified medical condition. It added that the president would take over Mr Trong’s duties in running the party’s central committee, politburo and secretariat.

On that same day, the government also awarded Mr Trong the Gold Star, the highest honour given in Vietnam, for contributions to the party and country.

Mr Trong was seen as recently as late June, when he welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin on a state visit.

But after that he failed to attend several events, including the official launch of a book compiling some of his speeches.

In recent years, there were several instances where he would disappear from the public eye for long stretches of time. In 2019, he was reported to have had a stroke.

Little would be said about these absences by the state, though Mr Trong occasionally acknowledged he had health and ageing issues. Observers say the state’s discretion over the health of party leaders and government officials is one way of portraying Vietnam as a stable nation under single-party rule.

In 2018, the country passed a law classifying top officials’ health as a state secret, prompting the already tightly-controlled local media to be even more cautious. Intense speculation over his health has long thrived on social media.

Observers say he leaves behind a deep but incomplete legacy. After rising to power in 2011 he stayed on as general secretary for a rare three terms. During this period he also acted as president from 2018 to 2021.

He saw the need to open up Vietnam’s economy – under his watch, the country’s GDP per capita more than doubled and Vietnam inked a series of free trade agreements with the West and Asian neighbours. Mr Trong was seen as more keen to engage the world than his predecessors, building relationships with US leaders as well as Mr Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

At the same time, he fervently clung on to his socialist ideals. “He was a career lifelong ideologue… he was a true believer, and I think that’s why in some ways relations between Vietnam and China have grown so close,” said Zachary M Abuza, a professor and Southeast Asia expert with the National War College in Washington DC.

“He always believed in making the party clean and relevant so that the party could live with the country for another 1,000 years – that’s his quote. So he saw the fate of the Vietnamese Communist party and the nation as bound together,” said Giang Nguyen, a visiting senior fellow with the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and former BBC Vietnamese editor.

Mr Trong launched his “blazing furnaces” campaign to root out corruption that deepened in tandem with Vietnam’s growth. Close to 200,000 officials are estimated to have been criminally charged or to have faced disciplinary action since then.

But there are few signs it has truly succeeded in stamping out the problem. The country still performs dismally in international corruption rankings. In recent months Vietnam has been rocked by one of its biggest fraud scandals ever, involving a staggering $44bn (£34bn) filched from banks.

The anti-corruption drive has been seen as sparking a critical shortage in the public service sector. It’s also been seen as contributing to instability within the Communist Party, where so many top officials have been purged – due to corruption or infighting – that very few are left as possible successors, particularly in the paramount political leadership team, the Politburo. Only two currently meet the conditions to inherit his post: Mr Lam and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

“The talent pool hasn’t been prepared by Mr Trong. It shows he couldn’t control the forces within the party anymore,” said Mr Nguyen.

Dr Abuza pointed out that the anti-corruption drive in many ways “served to delegitimise the party in ways that [Trong] didn’t expect, because it exposed just how sweeping corruption is at the highest level of the party”.

During his rule Vietnam also continued to tighten its control on human rights and freedom of speech. It has jailed or deported scores of dissidents, activists and bloggers, and passed draconian laws limiting the press and internet.

His death, and the question of succession that it poses, puts Vietnam in uncharted waters. For many Vietnamese, “we share the feeling of anxiety of the unknown”, said Mr Nguyen.

“It is the end of an era. That version of communism or socialism, the old times, it’s now gone. What’s next is going to be very difficult to foresee. The system is still there, but without that veneer of ideology and ideals.”

Cynthia “Cyn” Carranza meticulously scavenged for a shady parking spot in the car she called home.

The overnight custodian at Disneyland has to sleep during the day – a difficulty for anyone, let alone when you’re living in your car with two dogs. Ms Carranza says she makes $20.65 an hour (about £15.99) at the park but last summer, she couldn’t afford rent in this Southern California city where the average apartment can run more than $2,000 (about £1,550) a month.

Ms Carranza teared up as she recounted the struggles of that summer, including sneaking for showers in Disneyland’s costume department. She now shares a small apartment with her boyfriend, who also works at the park, but still makes barely enough to make ends meet.

“That’s not something that anybody should experience working a full-time job for a company like Disney,” she told the BBC.

Ms Carranza, like others who work at the park, detailed to the BBC the financial hardships that come with working at what’s supposed to be the “Happiest Place on Earth”. About 10,000 union workers at Disneyland – the first of 12 parks created around the globe – are threatening to strike over the wages and what they say are retaliatory anti-union practices.

Hundreds of workers protested outside the park this week, with an array of signs and pins showing Mickey Mouse’s gloved fist in defiance.

“Mickey would want fair pay,” workers chanted outside Disneyland near the park’s gates.

They voted almost unanimously to authorise strike action on Friday, just days before union contract negotiations for workers are set to resume.

While the vote does not mean a strike is imminent, it could set workers up to act quickly if negotiations sour. Authorisation also gives the unions leverage as talks with Disney management continue again next week.

The contract for cast members at Disneyland expired 16 June, and the current negotiations involves a coalition of unions that represent nearly 10,000 employees at the park, which includes everyone from those who work as characters and operate rides to sales, restaurant, and janitorial workers.

Union officials say about one in 10 Disneyland cast members have experienced homelessness while working at the park. A survey of employees showed 73% say they don’t make enough to cover basic expenses each month and about a third said they experienced housing insecurity within the last year.

“We’re the ones who make the magic,” says L Slaughter, a host at the Toontown-themed part of the park. “We need Disney to pay us a liveable wage.”

Ms Slaughter spent two years living in her car while working at the park. She now has a small apartment about an hour’s drive from Disneyland.

She spent a lot of that time trying to find a safe parking spot to sleep, she says, adding that staff are not allowed to sleep in the Disneyland parking lots.

“My rent just went up $200 and I won’t be able to make rent again,” she says.

Ms Slaughter makes $19.90 an hour – thanks to a minimum wage mandate passed by city voters in 2018. Disney unsuccessfully fought the wage hike, but workers say it’s still not enough to survive in Southern California.

A living wage calculator built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, says a single person with no children would need to be paid $30.48 an hour to afford to live near Disneyland in Orange County, which is about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Workers who talked to the BBC said they have kept their jobs at the park because they love the Disney brand, and they rely on the generous healthcare benefits and union-operated food bank, which some workers described as a saving-grace.

Disney says it is committed to negotiations with its “cast members” – the company’s term for employees who play princesses and pirates as well as the chefs or janitors who maintain the park.

“We respect and value our cast members and recognize the important role they play in creating happiness for our guests,” Disney said in a statement, adding that talks with the unions representing its workers will resume 22 July and they are committed to reaching a deal “that focuses on what matters most to our current cast members, helps us attract new cast, and positions Disneyland Resort for growth and the creation of more jobs”.

The last Disneyland strike was in 1984, and it lasted 22 days.

Ms Carranza described the back-breaking work she does nightly at the park – cleaning, polishing, repairing floors and sometimes installing carpets.

She said last summer living in her car was the lowest point in her life, and she credits her dogs with keeping her alive.

“I know that they’re the reason why I’m still here, why I didn’t let go,” she said. “There were times when I questioned what I was doing here and how I was going to get back on my feet.”

But even with the small studio apartment Ms Carranza now has, she says she’s still living paycheck-to-paycheck and sometimes can only afford to eat rice or noodles.

Although workers’ demands are economic, the vote to strike was called in response to complaints that workers were disciplined for wearing the Mickey badges and distributing union information in the park.

In June, the unions filed unfair labour practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Disney for “unlawful discipline, intimidation and surveillance of union members exercising their right to wear union buttons at work.”

Colleen Palmer, one of the negotiators from Local UFCW 324, has worked at Disneyland for nearly 37 years and makes almost $24 an hour as a “merchandise hostess”. She says she wore her union badge for less than half an hour before management told her to take it off.

Palmer says workers are responsible for the experience that customers enjoy at Disneyland, and that her loyalty and experience should be rewarded. She said workers believe the pay gap between the workers and the company’s executives is outrageous: Disney CEO Bob Iger’s compensation was $31.6 million in 2023 – hundreds of times the amount Disneyland cast members earn.

“It makes me wonder, why don’t you want to recognize me? Because I’m making you that money, so that you can buy that sports team now,” she said, referring to news that Mr Iger and his wife had taken over the LA women’s soccer team, Angel City Football Club.

The disparity between workers pay and management has been fuelling labour unrest in the United States. According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation rose 1,460 percent between 1978 and 2021.

Disneyland is a unique workplace. Many consider it a career, not a job, and workers are often also fans of the Disney brand – some call it the cult of Disney.

Workers get perks like free admission to Disney parks for their family and friends. But they also say Disney is not flexible when they have a family crisis or get sick. Many have second and third jobs that Disneyland’s unpredictable schedules make challenging to juggle.

For students and retirees working part-time, it can be a dream job, but it no longer provides a living wage for people in and around Anaheim, a wealthy city whose biggest employer is Disney, workers say.

“Without us, Disney would be like anywhere else,” says Morgan, who lived in motels around Disneyland for four years with his children and wanted to be identified by his middle name only.

The breakup of Morgan’s marriage caused him to lose his housing and cheap motels were all he could afford with his Disney wages. When his children were with their mother, he often slept outside and hid in shadows to avoid police or theft.

He now has a second full-time job as a recruiter – which he can do from home – and an apartment he can afford with the combined income.

Still, he takes pride in his job selling Disney merchandise and says every cast member takes the job seriously.

“It’s not the animatronics – it’s us. At least respect us enough to pay us a decent wage.”

A US police officer has been fired for saying that an Indian student’s life was of “limited value” after she died last year.

The Seattle Police Department said that officer Daniel Auderer’s comments about Jaahnavi Kandula’s death were “vile” and callous”, The Seattle Times reported.

Kandula, 23, was fatally struck down in January by another police vehicle while she was crossing a street near her university.

Daniel Auderer – who was responding to the incident – was recorded laughing and saying that she was a “regular person” and the city should “just write a cheque”.

The footage was captured on his body camera while he had made a call to a colleague.

“But she is dead,” the officer was heard saying before laughing. “No, it’s a regular person. Yeah, just write a cheque,” he said, before laughing again.

“Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26, anyway. She had limited value,” he added.

The video was widely circulated on social media and sparked outrage online.

On Wednesday, Seattle Police Department’s interim chief Sue Rahr announced the policeman’s termination through a department-wide email.

His actions had brought shame on the entire department and the police profession, she wrote.

Interim chief Rahr added that his “cruel and callous laughter” and the pain it had inflicted on Kandula’s family could not outweigh Daniel Auderer’s good reputation among his colleagues and his years of service to the community.

“For me to allow the officer to remain on our force would only bring further dishonour to the entire department. For that reason, I am going to terminate his employment,” she said.

Daniel Audered had been placed under investigation after the incident.

The Office of Police Accountability – the agency that investigates police misconduct – had recommended his termination for unprofessional conduct and showing bias in recorded statements, the Seattle Times reported.

Jaahnavi Kandula was a graduate student at Northeastern University in Seattle.

The officer who rammed her with his patrol vehicle was going at 74mph (119km/h) and she was thrown more than 100ft (30m), US media reports said.

At least 40 migrants have died after the boat they were travelling in caught fire off the northern coast of Haiti, a United Nations agency says.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says 41 others were rescued by the Haitian Coast Guard.

The vessel was travelling from Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos Islands, more than 220km (137 miles) away, the IOM said.

The exact cause of the fire is not yet clear, but a local official told Reuters that people on the boat were lighting candles in a ritual to ask for safe passage, leading gasoline-filled drums to catch fire.

The injured are receiving care provided by the IOM, and 11 of them were taken to the nearest hospital, the agency said.

Tens of thousands of people flee Haiti every year, escaping poverty, lawlessness and gang violence at home.

Rival armed groups took control of the capital, Port-au-Prince, earlier this year, forcing Prime Minister Ariel Henry to resign weeks later.

Grégoire Goodstein, IOM’s chief of mission in Haiti, said: “This devastating event highlights the risks faced by children, women and men migrating through irregular routes – demonstrating the crucial need for safe and legal pathways for migration.

“Haiti’s socio-economic situation is in agony. The extreme violence over the past months has only brought Haitians to resort to desperate measures even more.”

The lack of economic opportunities, a collapsing health system and school closures are pushing many to consider migration as the only way to survive, the IOM says.

Gang violence on average killed or injured more than one person per hour in the first three months of this year, according to UN data.

More than 86,000 migrants have been forcibly returned to Haiti by neighbouring countries this year, despite the rising violence, according to the IOM.

The Caribbean nation has seen an escalation of violence following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse three years ago.

Hundreds of Kenyan police arrived in Haiti this month as part of a mission to help Haitian police fight the gangs.

A massive tech failure has caused travel chaos around the world, with banking and healthcare services also badly hit.

Flights have been grounded because of the IT outage – a flaw which left many computers displaying blue error screens.

There were long queues, delays and flight cancellations at airports around the world, as passengers had to be manually checked in.

Cyber-security firm Crowdstrike has admitted that the problem was caused by an update to its antivirus software, which is designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks.

Microsoft has said it is taking “mitigation action” to deal with “the lingering impact” of the outage.

Here is a summary of what we know so far.

• Follow live updates on this story
• How a single update caused global havoc
• What are my rights if my flight is cancelled or delayed?
• GPs, pharmacies and airports hit by outage

This is still a little unclear.

Crowdstrike is known for producing antivirus software, intended to prevent hackers from causing this very type of disruption.

According to Crowdstrike boss George Kurtz, the issues are only impacting Windows PCs and no other operating systems, and were caused by a defect in a recent update.

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” he said.

“This is not a security incident or cyber-attack.”

What exactly was wrong with the update is yet to be revealed, but as a potential fix involves deleting a single file, it is possible that just one rogue file could be at the root of all the mayhem.

It could be some time.

Crowdstrike’s Mr Kurtz, speaking to NBC News, said it was the firm’s “mission” to make sure every one of its customers recovered completely from the outage.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies,” he said.

He has since told CNBC that while some systems can be fixed quickly, for others it “could be hours, could be a bit longer”.

Crowdstrike has issued its fix. But according to those in the know, it will have to be applied separately to each and every device affected.

Computers will require a manual reboot in safe mode – causing a massive headache for IT departments everywhere.

Something important to note here, is that personal devices like your home computer or mobile phone are unlikely to have been affected – this outage is impacting businesses.

Microsoft is advising clients to try a classic method to get things working – turning it off and on again – in some cases up to 15 times.

The tech giant said this has worked for some users of virtual machines – PCs where the computer is not in the same place as the screen.

“Several reboots (as many as 15 have been reported) may be required, but overall feedback is that reboots are an effective troubleshooting step at this stage,” it said.

It is also telling customers with more in-depth computing knowledge that they should delete a certain file – the same solution one CrowdStrike employee has been sharing on social media.

But this fix is intended for experts and IT professionals, not regular users.

The problems have emerged across the world, but were first noticed in Australia, and possibly felt most severely in the air travel industry, with more than 3,300 flights cancelled globally.

• UK airports saw delays, with long queues at London’s Stansted and Gatwick.
• Ryanair said it had been “forced to cancel a small number of flights today (19 July)” and advised passengers to log-on to their Ryanair account, once it was back online, to see what their options are.
• British Airways also cancelled several flights.
• Several US airlines, notably United, Delta and American Airlines, grounded their flights around the globe for much of Friday. Australian carriers Virgin Australia and Jetstar also had to delay or cancel flights.
• Airports in Tokyo, Amsterdam and Delhi were also impacted.

Meanwhile, the problems have also hit payment systems, banking and healthcare providers around the world.

Railway companies, including Britain’s biggest which runs Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern, warned passengers to expect delays.

In Alaska, the 911 emergency service was affected, while Sky News was off air for several hours on Friday morning, unable to broadcast.

The outage might also impact people getting paid on time.

Melanie Pizzey, head of the Global Payroll Association, told PA news agency that she’d been contacted by “numerous clients” who couldn’t access their payroll software.

She said the outage could mean firms are unable to process staff payments this week, but there may be a knock-on effect too.

“We could see a backlog with regard to processing payrolls for the coming month end, which may delay employees from receiving their monthly wage,” she said.

If you’re worried about your own, personal devices, we have some good news.

The software at the centre of this outage is generally used by businesses, which means that most people’s personal computers won’t be impacted.

That means if you’re wondering whether you need to delete a certain file to avoid your computer restarting constantly, the simple answer is no, you don’t.

It’s a reminder of the complexity of our modern digital infrastructure that Crowdstrike, a company that’s not exactly a household name, can be at the heart of such worldwide disarray.

The US firm, based in Austin, Texas, is a listed company on the US stock exchange, featuring in both the S&P 500 and the high-tech Nasdaq indexes.

Like a lot of modern technology companies, it hasn’t been around that long. It was founded a mere 13 years ago, but has grown to employ nearly 8,500 people.

As a provider of cyber-security services, it tends to get called in to deal with the aftermath of hack attacks.

It has been involved in investigations of several high-profile cyber-attacks, such as when Sony Pictures had its computer system hacked in 2014.

But this time, because of a flawed update to its software, a firm that is normally part of the solution to IT problems has instead caused one.

In its last earnings report, Crowdstrike declared a total of nearly 24,000 customers. That’s an indication not just of the size of the issue, but also the difficulties that could be involved in fixing it.

Each of those customers is a huge organisation in itself, so the number of individual computers affected is hard to estimate.

The boss of cyber-security firm Crowdstrike has admitted it could be “some time” before all systems are back up and running after an update from the company triggered a global IT outage.

Experts are warning that it could take days for big organisations to get back to normal.

Although there is now a software fix for the issue, the manual process required will take a huge amount of work, they said.

The global outage has led to thousands of flights being cancelled, while banking, healthcare and shops have all been affected.

The issue was caused when an update from Crowdstrike caused Microsoft systems to “blue screen” and crash.

The problem piece of software was sent out automatically to the firm’s customers overnight which is why so many were affected when they came into work on Friday morning.

It meant their computers could not be restarted.

Writing on X, Crowdstrike chief executive George Kurtz said: “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

In an interview on NBC’s Today Show in the US, Mr Kurtz said the company was “deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers”.

“Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and it’ll be operational,” he said, but added: “It could be some time for some systems that won’t automatically recover.”

The fix will not be automatic, but what the industry calls a “fingers on keyboards” solution.

Researcher Kevin Beaumont said: “As systems no longer start, impacted systems will need to be started in ‘Safe Mode’ to remove the faulty update.

“This is incredibly time consuming and will take organisations days to do at scale.”

Technical staff will need to go and reboot each and every computer affected, which could be a monumental task.

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Crowdstrike is one of the biggest and most trusted brands in cyber-security.

It has about 24,000 customers around the world and protects potentially hundreds of thousands of computers.

In a message sent to clients on Friday, Mr Kurtz said the outage was not a security or cyberattack but had been caused by a defect in a “content update”.

“As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again,” Mr Kurtz wrote.

The description of the problem as a “content update” suggests the overnight update was supposed to be small – not a major refresh of the cyber-security software.

It could have been something as innocuous as the changing of a font or logo on the software design.

That could potentially explain why the software was not as rigorously checked in the same way that a major update would have been. But it also poses the question: how could a small update do so much damage?

One struggling IT manager said the process to get computers back up and running is quick once an IT person is at the machine, but the problem is getting them to the machines.

The person, who wished to remain anonymous, is responsible for 4,000 computers in an education company and said his team were working flat out.

“We have managed to fix all of our servers using the command prompt as a workaround, but for many of our PCs, it’s not easy to do manually as we are spread out across five sites. Any PCs that are left switched on overnight are affected and we’re rebuilding them,” he said.

IT experts say this manual process will be particularly hard in large organisations with thousands of computers that are potentially under-resourced in IT.

Small and medium-sized businesses without dedicated IT teams or which outsource their IT issues might also struggle.

The larger, more resourced companies, like American Airlines, appear to be fixing the problems rapidly.

Interestingly it looks like many in the US might be less affected as computers that are potentially not yet switched on can be started up to download the corrected software instead of the bad version. But that might still involve a level of manual operation.

Mr Beaumont said that one of the world’s “highest impact IT incidents” was “caused by a cyber-security vendor”.

Ironically if a customer was affected by this it was because they followed all the usual advice that is issued by cyber-security experts – install the security updates when you receive them.

While some security companies in the past have accidentally sent out a dodgy software update, we’ve never seen one at this scale and this damaging.

While this incident has caused widespread disruption, the WannaCry cyber-attack in May 2017 was potentially worse.

That was a malicious cyber-attack that affected an old version of Microsoft Windows and spread automatically to any computer that had the old and unprotected Windows software.

It affected an estimated 300,000 computers in 150 different countries.

It hit the NHS for days, affecting doctors’ surgeries and hospitals around the country.

In that case it was an attack thought to be carried out by North Korea that got out of hand.

The NotPetya attack a month after that was eerily similar in method and damage.

In contrast, the outages on Friday are a mistake and not an attack.

As the global chaos subsides and systems continue to return online, the enormous IT outage which caused havoc around the world on Friday reveals a few uncomfortable truths about the foundations of our digital lives – and how fragile they might be.

The outage showed that even the platform of an enormous firm like Microsoft, with its deep pockets and huge investment in robust system security, could be knocked sideways by an accidental error in a software update issued by an independent cybersecurity company. And with catastrophic impact because Microsoft-powered computers are at the heart of so much of our tech infrastructure.

It shines a light on just how reliant we have become on that infrastructure, and how helpless we are as a result when something goes wrong that is beyond our control.

Ultimately, when these systems wobble, there is nothing you or I can do about it.

I watched an IT expert on the TV yesterday, whose advice for those caught up in the whirlwind was to “be patient”. Patience is the last thing many people felt at the time I’m sure, but honestly it was the only possible action for most of us.

The outage also demonstrated, wrote Owen Sayers in Computer Weekly, “the immense risk we face if we put all our eggs into one huge world-spanning basket”.

He was referring to the huge number of businesses, services and people who use a single IT provider. It is easy and convenient – but it also means there is no Plan B if that provider suddenly has a problem.

There is an old adage that convenience is the enemy of security, and this is the biggest example of that I have ever seen.

As a consumer, it is hard to avoid this dominance – if you shop in a store and pay with a card or your phone, you are relying on someone else’s tech to process your transaction smoothly. Increasingly, you are less likely to have a choice – a number of businesses no longer accept physical cash at all.

For small businesses, budgets are tight.

“In some of the cases, the single vendor is a choice due to cost,” says Alina Timofeeva from BCS, the Institute for IT.

“The rationale is that the vendor is so big and powerful that the companies do not anticipate it could go down.”

This makes sense, but is a larger number of smaller IT providers the solution?

You might not get the huge, seismic outages if fewer people are relying on them, but you are also introducing multiple systems with multiple potential weaknesses – which could make them easier to hack.

What happened on Friday was not a cyber attack, and Microsoft is quick to point out that the outage was not its fault, although questions clearly remain about exactly how the cyber security firm CrowdStrike’s disastrous Falcon update slipped through the net.

“There will be someone in CrowdStrike who will be in a lot of trouble right now for not getting this right,” observes Prof Victoria Baines, from Gresham College in London.

“And there will be a lot of people working this weekend.”

A love story between a white, heterosexual, working-class mechanic and a South Asian Muslim drag queen is shining a light on an underground LGBTQ+ subculture.

Feature film Unicorns takes the viewer to the heart of the highly secretive so-called “gaysian” scene – an amalgamation of the words gay and Asian – and introduces its glamorous drag queens.

“A lot of the queens are closeted and only have a certain number of hours on a weekend where they can actually be themselves, a lot use pseudonyms and have been ostracised from their families,” said Sally El Hosaini who co-directed the film with her partner James Krishna Floyd.

“On the surface [the gaysian scene is] extremely bright, very attractive… but underneath it’s actually a very gritty, real and quite a hardcore world,” added Floyd.

“They’re a minority within a minority… they’re getting attacked and rejected from all sides, from mainstream culture, from South Asian communities for the most part, from their religious communities for the most part and from the mainstream LGBTQ+ community as well.”

Floyd, who also wrote the screenplay, said he and El Hosaini – who is half Welsh and half Egyptian – were keen to explore “fluid identities”.

“For me personally as a half Indian, half English guy who has had sexually fluid experiences… mainstream culture is always putting all of us in very neat little boxes,” he said.

“I find that very frustrating and just so limiting.”

He said he had “always known about the gaysian scene” but was properly introduced to it by his friend Asifa Lahore, who in 2014 became the UK’s first Muslim drag queen to speak publicly about her work.

Lahore is a producer on the film.

“Everything in the film is based on either Asifa’s experiences, my own experiences or South Asian drag queens that I now know very well – it all comes from reality,” said Floyd.

Ashiq (played by Jason Patel) works in a shop by day but at night transforms into drag queen Aysha, dancing for a largely South Asian LGBTQ+ audience.

The love story begins when single father and mechanic Luke (played by Bohemian Rhapsody and former EastEnders actor Ben Hardy) mistakenly happens upon an underground club where Aysha is performing and they share a kiss before he realises she is a drag queen.

Patel, who plays Aysha, is not a real-life drag queen but many of the supporting cast are.

After a casting shout-out on social media El Hosaini and Floyd were sent audition tapes by a number of South Asian drag queens.

“A lot of those tapes were very moving,” said El Hosaini.

“Some of them were saying things like ‘I don’t even care if I get this role… the fact that this is being made about this kind of character and exists has made me feel seen’,” she said.

“Someone had recorded their tape in a bathroom and were talking very quietly because their family were in the house and and they didn’t want to be overheard.”

“It was another moment of just reminding us why we’re making this film,” added Floyd.

“If we were making this film for anyone, it was for the gaysian community… because there hasn’t been a film about them, certainly not a fictional feature film.”

Floyd and El Hosaini, who live in London and have a son together, first met when Floyd starred in El Hosaini’s directorial debut feature film My Brother the Devil.

He starred again in her second feature film The Swimmers.

Unicorns is Floyd’s directorial debut and the pair’s third time working together.

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“We first met in work, so we had that creative connection before our relationship,” said El Hosaini.

“When you do what we do and you’re so involved, we are each other’s rocks and support.”

She said with Floyd beginning work on Unicorns nine years ago, the project was “as old as our son, so actually it was like a child that had grown up in our family”.

“Us coming together to make it together just felt organic and felt like the right thing to do,” she added.

El Hosaini, whose mother is Welsh and father is Egyptian, was born in Swansea, raised in Cairo and returned to Wales at 16 to study at UWC Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Unicorns was supported by Ffilm Cymru Wales and will have a special screening at Green Man Festival in Powys next month.

“The industry has often seen my Egyptian side and seen me as Arab so I’ve been sent a lot of projects that always have an Arab angle,” said El Hosaini.

“But I’m equally as Welsh as I am Arab, it’s definitely in my bones, my blood and part of me and I think it’s just time until I do my Welsh projects.”

Floyd said they were both frustrated by the narrow range of stories that make it to cinema and wanted to correct that.

“This industry is not very kind to minorities and it certainly isn’t kind to minorities within minorities,” he said.

“There’s such an imbalance. How many films do we need to make about – and I can say this as a half-white man – privileged, white, middle-class, cis, heteronormative men? Do we need any more of those? No, we don’t.”

He said one of the great things about storytelling was it could “shine a bit of a light on those communities that we don’t really hear about”.

“There’s more that connects us than divides us,” added El Hosaini

Unicorns is in UK and Irish cinemas now.

How do you stage a music festival for 25,000 people when you’re under threat from a potential Russian missile attack?

That’s a question Vlad Yaremchuk has been trying to answer for the past few months.

He’s the programme director of Atlas United, Ukraine’s biggest music festival.

The event’s due to return this weekend for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

But it’s not quite business as usual – this year’s event has relocated to a shopping mall in case of an airstrike.

When Vlad speaks to BBC Newsbeat, Atlas has just been pushed back a week after a series of deadly missile attacks, including one that hit a children’s hospital.

He admits that there’s been a lot of stress in the lead-up to this year’s event, but he’s optimistic about it going ahead.

“To finally see people coming into the festival for the first time will be exciting,” he says.

“We’ve really missed that feeling.”

Since it began in 2015 Atlas, held in Ukrainian capital Kyiv, has hosted huge names such as Kasabian, The Chemical Brothers and Liam Gallagher.

Organising a big festival takes time, but Vlad says they only got the go-ahead for 2024’s event this spring.

“Normally for a festival of this size you would need a year or more to organise it,” he says.

“We didn’t even expect to have a chance to do a festival while the war is still happening.”

But, he adds: “The reality showed us that cultural events are still possible in wartime.”

Vlad says Atlas is expecting about 25,000 fans, crew and artists to be on site, while other events have only had a maximum of 10,000.

With all those people in one place, a potential air attack is a huge concern.

Vlad says the solution has been the brand new venue – two stages erected in the car park of a Kyiv shopping centre.

“It gives us a shelter which can fit more than 100,000 people,” says Vlad.

“There will be more than enough space to get everyone evacuated quickly — and we’re talking minutes.”

Vlad says it can be challenging to convince people – who are so used to hearing air-raid sirens – to head for a shelter when the alarm is raised.

But he says there’s a plan for that too – take the festival underground.

If the crowd does have to flee to safety Vlad says there’s “an entire stage” and a bar so the music can continue.

One thing that will be missing this year is international headliners.

Vlad says they were approached but most turned it down over safety concerns.

He says he understands the decision, but “seeing musicians playing in Russia right now really ticks me off”.

“That can be frustrating,” he says.

“But if people honestly gave it a thought and decided that’s not for them because they’re scared for their life, that’s fair.”

It does mean that more homegrown acts will get a chance to take some of the top slots on the bill.

That includes Vitalii and Marina from indie band Disappeared Completely.

“People need some joy in their lives, even through these hard times,” says Vitalii.

Marina says: “It’s always nice to gather together with people and to celebrate life itself.

“To just remember the joys of everyday life, because you might not have it tomorrow.

“Appreciate these moments and appreciate the people around you while you can.”

They also say that after years of attacks from the air, they’re no longer worried about performing outside.

“We got used to this. It sounds bad, because it’s war, and we could die. But life is going on so we need to adapt,” says Vitalii.

While a festival might seem like a chance to forget about the war for a day, Ukraine’s ongoing battle against Russia is reflected by Atlas United.

The festival hopes to raise at least €2m (£1.7m), with most being spent on drones to help soldiers on the front line.

And some Ukrainian acts who’ve been raising awareness abroad are due to return to perform in their home country.

Solo artist Shmiska, who now lives in Paris, says it’s important to come back for the festival.

“People sometimes just start to lose their hope. They start to lose their dreams,” she says.

“I think, as artists, it’s our job to give people this chance to feel again, to dream again.”

Shmiska performs across Europe and says she worries people are starting to forget about Ukraine.

So she’s aiming to make her big show in Kyiv memorable, with light shows and plenty of costume changes.

“It’s such a big opportunity to feel alive again,” she says.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.

South Africa parliament appears to have entered a new era – one of political maturity.

The atmosphere was remarkably different from what had gone before – no interruptions, no chaos and no scuffles, as President Cyril Ramaphosa laid out plans for the first time since the coalition government took office.

This was a result of the African National Congress (ANC) failing to secure more than 50% of the vote for the first time in the democratic era.

Former President Jacob Zuma – who leads the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party but was barred from running as an MP just before May’s election – snubbed the invitation to attend Thursday’s sitting.

With the parliament now open, the MK – a party founded less than a year ago – was recognised as the official opposition.

Its leader of house, disgraced former Justice John Hlophe, had promised not to engage in petty politics.

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Also, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – who have a reputation for disrupting, heckling and brawling in parliament – had promised to change, with party leader Julius Malema saying the EFF would be a constructive opposition.

Members of the Democratic Alliance (DA) – formerly South Africa’s official opposition but now part of the coalition government – nodded and clapped during an hour-long speech as the ANC’s President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the top priorities.

These included rapid, inclusive economic growth, job creation and tackling the high cost of basic goods.

Mr Ramaphosa’s humbled ANC had streamed into parliament with the least number of members since it came to power 30 years ago.

After losing its parliamentary majority, the ANC formed an initially shaky coalition with nine other political parties. Mr Ramaphosa’s address followed the coalition government’s first cabinet meeting since the vote was held.

That meeting “underscored the determination of all members of the Government of National Unity to work together to advance the interests of all South Africans”, he told parliament.

The priorities he has announced fuse mostly ANC policies with some concessions made to accommodate the concerns of the DA, South Africa’s second-largest party and the ANC’s long-time rival.

The pro-free market DA is ideologically at odds with the ANC’s social welfare traditions, and seen by many as catering to the interests of the white minority, which it denies.

In his address, Mr Ramaphosa firmly stated economic growth must “support the empowerment of black South Africans and women and those who in the past had been relegated to the fringes of the economy”.

The government, which is backed by 70% of the MPs, promises to make “massive” investments in infrastructure and turn the whole country “into a construction site”.

The second area of focus will be to expand the basket of essential food items exempt from the VAT sales tax, in order to address the high cost of living.

This is an initiative that the DA had been lobbying for in an effort to eliminate poverty, TK Pooe, a senior researcher at the Wits School of Governance, told the BBC.

Another part-concession, the ANC’s plan to launch compulsory universal healthcare for all, will now proceed subject to consultation with stakeholders. The DA and private medical insurance groups had threatened legal action, arguing that the scheme violates the right to choose a service provider.

“Court will be the last resort,” DA leader and Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen told journalists outside parliament.

“We are in government now and have a forum in which we can negotiate.” He welcomed Mr Ramaphosa’s speech.

New sports minister Gayton McKenzie was also pleased, saying the address was Mr Ramaphosa’s “best” ever.

However, John Trollip from Action SA, a political party that is not part of the new government, said the president’s address was thin on credibility and sounded like lots of previous speeches.

The EFF’s Mr Malema told national broadcaster SABC that “it’s very clear that the president has got no plan to transform South Africa for the better”.

But Mr Pooe said what the president did not explicitly mention – foreign policy and the ANC’s ties to Gaza and Russia – is equally important as the priorities he outlined.

“It’ll be interesting to see how now the statements about Israel and Russia might become a bit more muted to accommodate the many voices in the room,” he said, in reference to the DA’s support of Israel.

The MK’s John Hlophe agreed.

“He didn’t address the issue of Palestine because the DA is watching him,” he said. Mr Hlophe added that the speech was “appalling” and silent on land reform without compensation – a central MK policy as well as a key issue nationally.

White people, who make up just 7% of the population, own the vast majority of farmland that is held by individuals.

There has long been a debate about whether the state should redistribute this land without paying its owners for it.

Mr Pooe believed the president’s speech did not over-promise.

“We are not expecting to see radical change and that might be a positive. [The speech said] these are the choke points holding the country back: energy, infrastructure local government and this is what is going to be addressed,” he said.

“If the grand coalition can stick to those things and then allow private actors to come in on the other matters the better for South Africa.”

Perhaps deliberately, the opening of parliament coincided with the birthday of the country’s first democratically elected President, Nelson Mandela, who at the time symbolised hope and renewal for a nation in crisis.

Thursday might not have recaptured that hope entirely. But Mr Ramaphosa said the unity government would “seek to build consensus on issues we don’t agree on”.

He acknowledged that they would have to work hard to reach this consensus.

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“If Greece is the cradle of the Olympics, Paris represents its home.”

So begins a somewhat partisan account of the city’s long association with the Games, published ahead of its failed bid (to London) for 2012.

Paris, wrote the author hopefully, is where the Olympic movement “rediscovered its vigour after an interminable historical amnesia,” and where there took place “so many important steps in its modern-day growth.”

Step one was the founding congress of the International Olympic Committee, chaired by the French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin at Sorbonne university in June 1894.

And then came steps two and three: the second and eighth Olympic Games, both organised in the French capital.

Today there are still traces of both those Games. Here and there, if you look, their “legacy” is still very much alive.

Exhibit one is the magnificent vélodrome in the Bois de Vincennes known as the Cipale (short for Municipale), which continues in use 124 years after the first Paris Games.

Cycling was one of the most popular sports back in 1900, but the Cipale was also used for gymnastics, football, rugby … and cricket.

It was on this hallowed turf that the (until now) only ever Olympic cricket match took place – between England and France.

England won – but that still means France is the title holder of the Olympic silver. That will presumably end in 2028 when cricket returns for Los Angeles – but who knows?!

There have been renovations at La Cipale over the years but apart from the roof, the viewing stand is unchanged.

So is the concrete track with its raised curves at either end, and there – forgotten behind the bushes in the corner – the original urinals, the relief of generations of hard-pressed cycling fans!

The 1900 Games were strange ones, and are only just accepted today as part of the Olympic canon.

Talking of cannons, one of the unusual events was artillery firing. There were also boules, fishing, crossbow-firing, barrel-rolling and long-distance ballooning. The winner of that one landed near Kyiv.

The difficulty was that the Games took place at exactly the same time as the Paris World Fair, and many people – including competitors – thought the sports were part of the World Fair.

But they served an important purpose in establishing – after the first Greek edition in 1896 – that the Games were to be international, and not forever Hellene.

And they helped advance the growing idea that sports were something to be taken seriously, and not just a frivolous pastime.

The work of the French scientist Etienne Jules Marey was significant in this regard. Famous for his photographic studies of sportsmen in action, he persuaded many 1900 athletes to perform at his outdoor studio (under what is now Court 1 at Roland-Garros).

Less brilliantly, he also sent round an anthropological questionnaire to Olympic participants seeking elucidation on such vital points as: the colour of their beards; the physical strength of their grandfathers; and whether they’d been fed as babies on breast or bottle.

The 1900 Games were the first to see the participation – in golf, tennis, sailing and croquet – of (a few) women. By 1924, the sports of swimming, diving and fencing had been added, and 135 women took part.

The main legacy of the 1924 Games is the Colombes stadium in the north-western Paris suburbs, where the opening ceremony and much of the subsequent sporting action were staged.

The stadium – built on a former horse-racing track – went on to have a famed life, becoming for much of the last century France’s pre-eminent football and rugby venue, before being superseded by the Parc des Princes and then the Stade de France.

Today it is very much still standing – and will be used in these Olympics as the venue for field hockey events.

“For French people who love sport, Colombes is a place full of emotion,” says sports historian Mickael Delepine. “So many famous people have run and kicked and tackled here. It is full of ghosts.”

For British sports fans, the ghosts are of sprinters Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell who won the golds here that were later immortalised in the film Chariots of Fire.

The film faithfully recreated the stadium at a venue in the Wirral, Merseyside. In Colombes, the track is exactly where it was 100 years ago, overlooked by the same iron stand.

The1924 Games were the first to take advantage of advances in communication – and winning athletes for the first time became household names. The Flying Finns Paavo Nurmi and Ville Ritola dominated middle-and long-distance racing, and long-jumper William de Hart-Hubbard was the first black man to win an event.

Colombes also saw victory for the Uruguayan football team – setting up its triumph at the first World Cup on home turf in 1930. And there was a famously dirty rugby final between the USA and France, whose violence contributed to the game being excluded from future Olympics. (The USA won).

The 1924 Olympics were also the first to display the Olympic motto – Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger); and the first to use a 50-metre swimming pool with lanes painted on the bottom.

Among the heroes availing themselves of this innovation was one Johnny Weissmuller – later to find fame as cinema’s Tarzan.

It all happened at the purpose-built Tourelles swimming pool in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. A century on the pool is still there, and in use as a practice venue for today’s Olympic stars.

Cynthia “Cyn” Carranza meticulously scavenged for a shady parking spot in the car she called home.

The overnight custodian at Disneyland has to sleep during the day – a difficulty for anyone, let alone when you’re living in your car with two dogs. Ms Carranza says she makes $20.65 an hour (about £15.99) at the park but last summer, she couldn’t afford rent in this Southern California city where the average apartment can run more than $2,000 (about £1,550) a month.

Ms Carranza teared up as she recounted the struggles of that summer, including sneaking for showers in Disneyland’s costume department. She now shares a small apartment with her boyfriend, who also works at the park, but still makes barely enough to make ends meet.

“That’s not something that anybody should experience working a full-time job for a company like Disney,” she told the BBC.

Ms Carranza, like others who work at the park, detailed to the BBC the financial hardships that come with working at what’s supposed to be the “Happiest Place on Earth”. About 10,000 union workers at Disneyland – the first of 12 parks created around the globe – are threatening to strike over the wages and what they say are retaliatory anti-union practices.

Hundreds of workers protested outside the park this week, with an array of signs and pins showing Mickey Mouse’s gloved fist in defiance.

“Mickey would want fair pay,” workers chanted outside Disneyland near the park’s gates.

They voted almost unanimously to authorise strike action on Friday, just days before union contract negotiations for workers are set to resume.

While the vote does not mean a strike is imminent, it could set workers up to act quickly if negotiations sour. Authorisation also gives the unions leverage as talks with Disney management continue again next week.

The contract for cast members at Disneyland expired 16 June, and the current negotiations involves a coalition of unions that represent nearly 10,000 employees at the park, which includes everyone from those who work as characters and operate rides to sales, restaurant, and janitorial workers.

Union officials say about one in 10 Disneyland cast members have experienced homelessness while working at the park. A survey of employees showed 73% say they don’t make enough to cover basic expenses each month and about a third said they experienced housing insecurity within the last year.

“We’re the ones who make the magic,” says L Slaughter, a host at the Toontown-themed part of the park. “We need Disney to pay us a liveable wage.”

Ms Slaughter spent two years living in her car while working at the park. She now has a small apartment about an hour’s drive from Disneyland.

She spent a lot of that time trying to find a safe parking spot to sleep, she says, adding that staff are not allowed to sleep in the Disneyland parking lots.

“My rent just went up $200 and I won’t be able to make rent again,” she says.

Ms Slaughter makes $19.90 an hour – thanks to a minimum wage mandate passed by city voters in 2018. Disney unsuccessfully fought the wage hike, but workers say it’s still not enough to survive in Southern California.

A living wage calculator built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, says a single person with no children would need to be paid $30.48 an hour to afford to live near Disneyland in Orange County, which is about 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Workers who talked to the BBC said they have kept their jobs at the park because they love the Disney brand, and they rely on the generous healthcare benefits and union-operated food bank, which some workers described as a saving-grace.

Disney says it is committed to negotiations with its “cast members” – the company’s term for employees who play princesses and pirates as well as the chefs or janitors who maintain the park.

“We respect and value our cast members and recognize the important role they play in creating happiness for our guests,” Disney said in a statement, adding that talks with the unions representing its workers will resume 22 July and they are committed to reaching a deal “that focuses on what matters most to our current cast members, helps us attract new cast, and positions Disneyland Resort for growth and the creation of more jobs”.

The last Disneyland strike was in 1984, and it lasted 22 days.

Ms Carranza described the back-breaking work she does nightly at the park – cleaning, polishing, repairing floors and sometimes installing carpets.

She said last summer living in her car was the lowest point in her life, and she credits her dogs with keeping her alive.

“I know that they’re the reason why I’m still here, why I didn’t let go,” she said. “There were times when I questioned what I was doing here and how I was going to get back on my feet.”

But even with the small studio apartment Ms Carranza now has, she says she’s still living paycheck-to-paycheck and sometimes can only afford to eat rice or noodles.

Although workers’ demands are economic, the vote to strike was called in response to complaints that workers were disciplined for wearing the Mickey badges and distributing union information in the park.

In June, the unions filed unfair labour practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Disney for “unlawful discipline, intimidation and surveillance of union members exercising their right to wear union buttons at work.”

Colleen Palmer, one of the negotiators from Local UFCW 324, has worked at Disneyland for nearly 37 years and makes almost $24 an hour as a “merchandise hostess”. She says she wore her union badge for less than half an hour before management told her to take it off.

Palmer says workers are responsible for the experience that customers enjoy at Disneyland, and that her loyalty and experience should be rewarded. She said workers believe the pay gap between the workers and the company’s executives is outrageous: Disney CEO Bob Iger’s compensation was $31.6 million in 2023 – hundreds of times the amount Disneyland cast members earn.

“It makes me wonder, why don’t you want to recognize me? Because I’m making you that money, so that you can buy that sports team now,” she said, referring to news that Mr Iger and his wife had taken over the LA women’s soccer team, Angel City Football Club.

The disparity between workers pay and management has been fuelling labour unrest in the United States. According to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation rose 1,460 percent between 1978 and 2021.

Disneyland is a unique workplace. Many consider it a career, not a job, and workers are often also fans of the Disney brand – some call it the cult of Disney.

Workers get perks like free admission to Disney parks for their family and friends. But they also say Disney is not flexible when they have a family crisis or get sick. Many have second and third jobs that Disneyland’s unpredictable schedules make challenging to juggle.

For students and retirees working part-time, it can be a dream job, but it no longer provides a living wage for people in and around Anaheim, a wealthy city whose biggest employer is Disney, workers say.

“Without us, Disney would be like anywhere else,” says Morgan, who lived in motels around Disneyland for four years with his children and wanted to be identified by his middle name only.

The breakup of Morgan’s marriage caused him to lose his housing and cheap motels were all he could afford with his Disney wages. When his children were with their mother, he often slept outside and hid in shadows to avoid police or theft.

He now has a second full-time job as a recruiter – which he can do from home – and an apartment he can afford with the combined income.

Still, he takes pride in his job selling Disney merchandise and says every cast member takes the job seriously.

“It’s not the animatronics – it’s us. At least respect us enough to pay us a decent wage.”

Donald Trump’s elusive wife Melania has appeared in public for the first time since the former president narrowly missed an assassin’s bullet.

Wearing Republican red she walked, alone, into the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee accompanied by classical music – a marked contrast from the country music anthems and rock ballads we’ve been hearing all week.

Glossy and glamorous, she looked more like she was walking down a catwalk than into a political convention. She seemed as inscrutable and distant as ever.

She joined him on stage after his lengthy acceptance speech, walking to the podium just before balloons rained down on thousands in the crowd. Donald Trump greeted her with a hug and the pair shared a kiss on the cheek.

He then grabbed her hand and walked across the stage as other members of the Trump family joined them.

Ever since her husband was first elected in 2016, Melania Trump has broken all the rules of normal American presidential politics.

In the White House during Trump’s first term, she was a reclusive figure compared to other first ladies, focusing on a narrow set of interests. The US national archives descibes her as having been an “ambassador for kindness” and an advocate for children’s issues.

And since her husband left office, she has refused to be seen by her husband’s side on many occasions when the public would expect her to be present.

She wasn’t there when he had his mugshot taken in Atlanta. She wasn’t there in New York when he became the first former president to be convicted of a crime. And she wasn’t there when he officially won his party’s presidential nomination, for the third time, on Monday.

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“Melania does what Melania wants,” said Mary Jordan, who wrote The Art of her Deal, a biography on the former first lady. “She is fiercely independent and won’t do something just because other people do it. She doesn’t feel any obligation to do it.”

We are now all accustomed to the fact that she doesn’t turn up at many of Donald Trump’s events, but on Monday, when he walked into the arena here in Milwaukee to a roaring welcome, greeted like a Messiah after his survival of the assassination attempt, her absence felt particularly obvious.

It was certainly noticed by the Republicans gathered here, but that didn’t mean they weren’t excited for her appearance, when it finally came.

Melania is the most enigmatic first lady in modern history and we rarely hear what she thinks.

An exception was the lengthy statement she released after the shooting targeting her husband, which read as though she may have dictated it directly.

“A monster who recognized my husband as an inhuman political machine attempted to ring out Donald’s passion – his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration,” she said.

“The core facets of my husband’s life – his human side – were buried below the political machine. Donald, the generous and caring man who I have been with through the best of times and the worst of times.”

It is traditional at party conventions for the candidate’s spouse to give a speech and tell heavily-scripted anecdotes about family life.

On Wednesday evening, Usha Vance – the wife of Trump’s newly-minted running mate JD Vance – did just that. She called her husband a “meat and potatoes” man, but – in an apparent sign of his devotion – said he now cooked her Indian vegetarian food.

And while Donald Trump’s oldest son Don Jr, middle son Eric, daughter-in-law Lara and granddaughter Kai have all spoken at this convention, Melania has declined the opportunity to speak. She very clearly does not do anything she does not want to do.

When she did introduce her husband at the 2016 convention when he first ran for president – things went horribly wrong.

She was criticised for plagiarising the speech Michelle Obama gave in 2008 when she introduced her husband Barack at the Democratic convention. Melania’s speechwriter later accepted the blame.

First ladies are always heavily scrutinised for the image they project, the causes they adopt, and the clothes they wear.

But Melania Trump is the first who was previously a professional model. She looks fabulous in photographs and is well aware of the power of her image. By offering so few photo opportunities, she makes each one infinitely more powerful.

“She is very savvy and has cultivated the mystery woman mystique by going underground and then when she does come out, it’s a much bigger deal,” says Ms Jordan.

“She doesn’t appear very often, but she does show up when Donald Trump really needs her.”

After Saturday’s attempt on his life, Melania felt MIA. But on Thursday night, as she slowly walked the stairs to the VIP section, paused at the top and waved to all corners of the arena, she showed her mastery of the power of an image.

Her absence may, at times, be her strength.

Speeding along a road in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, Fariba Hashimi rises out of the saddle of her £15,000 bike and works the pedals even harder to close the gap between her and her sister, Yulduz, a few metres up ahead.

Training rides like this are the last steps on a journey that began with the two siblings from rural Afghanistan racing in disguise on borrowed bikes, before having to escape when the Taliban came to power.

Now they’re on their way to the Olympic Games in Paris. And, despite a Taliban ruling banning women from sport, they will compete under their country’s flag.

In a world where many elite athletes take up sport almost as soon as they can walk, Fariba, 21, and Yulduz, 24, came late to cycling.

They grew up in Faryab, one of the most remote and conservative provinces in Afghanistan, where it was practically unheard of to see women on bicycles.

Fariba was 14 and Yulduz 17 when they saw an advert for a local cycle race and decided to take part.

There were two problems; they didn’t have a bike and they didn’t know how to ride.

The sisters borrowed a neighbour’s bike one afternoon. After a few hours, they felt they had got the hang of it.

Their next challenge was to avoid their family finding out what they were doing because of the stigma around women taking part in sport in conservative areas of Afghanistan.

The sisters used false names and covered themselves up, wearing big baggy clothing, large headscarves and sunglasses so people didn’t recognise them.

Race day dawned, and incredibly the sisters came first and second.

“It felt amazing,” says Fariba. “I felt like a bird who could fly.”

They kept on entering races and kept on winning until their parents eventually found out when they saw pictures of them in the local media.

“They were upset at first. They asked me to stop cycling,” Fariba says. “But I didn’t give up. I secretly continued,” she smiles.

It didn’t come without dangers – people tried to hit them with cars or rickshaws as they rode or threw stones at them as they cycled past.

“People were abusive. All I wanted to do was win races,” says Yulduz.

And the situation was about to get worse.

In 2021, four years after the sisters started riding, the Taliban retook control of the country and clamped down on women’s rights, restricting their access to education and limiting how they could travel. They also banned women from taking part in sport.

Yulduz and Fariba had dreamed of one day competing in the Olympics. Now they knew if they wanted to race at all they had to leave Afghanistan.

Using contacts in the cycling community they managed to secure seats on an Italian evacuation flight, along with three teammates.

Once in Italy, the women joined a cycling team and got proper coaching for the first time.

“Back in Afghanistan, we didn’t have professional training,” says Yulduz. “All we used to do was take our bikes and ride.”

But leaving their homeland and family was not easy.

“The biggest thing for me is to be away from my mother,” says Fariba. “I never thought that because of cycling I would be separated from my brothers and sisters.”

“I’ve sacrificed a lot.”

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan also threw into doubt whether the country would even be allowed to compete at the Olympics.

National Olympic Committees are supposed to select athletes for the Games without any government interference.

As the Taliban’s ban on women playing sport breaks this rule, by preventing women being chosen for Afghanistan’s team, it led to calls for the country to be banned from the Olympics – as it had been when the militant group was last in power.

But the International Olympic Committee wanted to find a way to allow Afghan women to compete at the Games.

Behind the scenes talks took place between the heads of Afghan sporting bodies, including some now living in exile, about putting together a special team to represent the country in Paris.

As time ticked by, and Paris 2024 got ever closer, it looked as if no Afghan athletes would be at the Games.

Then, in June, International Olympic Committee announced that it had arranged for a special gender-equal team representing Afghanistan to go the Paris Olympics. It would be made up of three women and three men. And both the sisters are among them.

“This was a big surprise for both of us,” says Fariba.

“We always dreamt of taking part in the Olympic Games, this is our dream come true,” Yulduz adds.

“Despite all the rights that were taken from us we can show that we can achieve great success, we will be able to represent 20 million Afghan women.”

The IOC say no Taliban officials will be allowed to attend Paris 2024.

The sisters are preparing for the Olympic road race event while riding for a development team run and funded by the UCI and based at the World Cycling Centre, an ultra-modern facility in the Swiss town of Aigle.

The elite facilities are a world away from the dusty roads in Afghanistan where Yulduz and Fariba first taught themselves to cycle.

But their spirit remains the same.

“We are each other’s strength – I support her and she supports me,” says Yulduz.

“Our achievement belongs to Afghanistan,” adds Fariba. “This belongs to Afghanistan women. I am going to the Olympics because of them.”

To his fans, he’s the “African king” – an international star and the first black African to win a Tour de France stage.

Biniam Girmay did that not only once but three times this year at road cycling’s premier event. Barring an accident, the 24-year-old looks set to win the green jersey on Sunday – a prize awarded to the best sprinter over the gruelling three-week competition.

But Girmay’s journey to the top has been riddled with obstacles – he has battled culture shocks, Europe’s visa procedures and the loneliness of being thousands of miles away from his wife and young daughter.

Now, he is embracing his role as a hero in his home country – Eritrea – and an inspiration for cyclists across Africa as a whole.

Many believe Girmay’s success will spark change in an overwhelmingly white sport – in this year’s Tour de France he is the only black rider in the whole peloton of 176 riders.

Girmay – or Bini to his loved ones and fans – was born and raised in Eritrea, a small East African country with a population of around 3.7 million.

Unusually, Girmay was never a champion of Asmara – the capital city he grew up in – or Eritrea. Instead, he appeared quite suddenly on the international stage after being scouted by cycling’s global governing body, the UCI.

Girmay told Eritrean media earlier this year that it is easier to win at the Tour de France than to be an Eritrean champion. This is because despite its tiny population, the country has a wealth of talented cyclists, many of whom have won medals in global and continental races.

Cycling is one of Eritrea’s most popular sports, a pastime picked up during decades of Italian colonial rule.

It is a source of pride for many Eritreans, whose country usually only makes global headlines for its border conflicts and a human rights record considered to be poor by rights organisations, but fiercely defended by the government.

Girmay’s dreams of becoming a cyclist were sparked by his cousin, African champion Meron Teshome.

The cycling obsession extends further into his family – his younger brother is now a professional rider and his father, a carpenter, used to watch the Tour de France on TV with Girmay every year.

This is My Moment, a documentary charting his rise, shows an elderly female relative telling him: “When I was young no-one could beat me, not even you!”

At 12 years old, Girmay won his first mountain bike competition and as a teenager he was selected to represent Eritrea as a junior in the African Championships.

While there, he caught the eye of a UCI scout.

They invited him to train at the organisation’s World Cycling Centre (WCC), an elite Swiss facility that hosts young athletes from countries where there may not be so many opportunities for development.

In 2018, at the age of 17, Girmay quit school and left home for Switzerland.

The transition was tough, he had no friends or family nearby and was hit by a huge culture shock.

“It was tough to prepare Bini; he had to change a lot of things: his lifestyle, his routines,” Jean-Jacques Henry, head of talent detection at the WCC, recalled as Girmay prepared for the 2023 Tour de France.

“It was too cold for him when he arrived in July. For us, it was warm. He didn’t like cobblestones [which riders of Girmay’s ilk often tackle] and he didn’t understand tactics.”

But he believed he would overcome these issues and realise his dream. He even took up English classes so he would not have to use a translator in media interviews when he eventually turned pro.

Sure enough, in 2020, Girmay was scooped up by French team Delko.

While training in France, he began planning his wedding with Saliem, his partner back in Eritrea.

But the 2020 coronavirus outbreak scuppered his plans to return home – and also left him unable to compete in Europe as several races got cancelled.

The following year, Girmay took another blow. Delko had gone bust, leaving the young cyclist without a team.

He was, however, able to travel back to Asmara and marry Saliem.

She later gave birth to a baby girl, but Girmay could not stick around for long as he had been signed by Belgian-based team Intermarché–Wanty.

Securing a visa to continue his cycling odyssey was not easy – This Is My Moment documents the new father struggling to reach numerous visa application centres and embassies while in Asmara.

Eventually, he managed to acquire a long-term visa, which he holds to this day. However, as per its requirements, Girmay has to leave Europe’s Schengen zone of 29 countries every three months. He usually goes back to Asmara.

In 2022, the cyclist began his history-making streak.

At Belgium’s Gent-Wevelgem, he became the first African to win a one-day classic race. Girmay was part of a four-rider breakaway in the last 30km and sprinted to victory with 250m to go.

“Veni… vidi… Bini!” an ecstatic British commentator boomed as zoomed past finish line. The phrase, a play on the Latin for “I came, I saw, I conquered”, has become somewhat of slogan among his fans and the media.

As a sprinter, Girmay accelerates quickly towards the end of the race, embarking on a ferocious dash to the finish line.

He is rarity – as a mountainous country Eritrea mostly produces “climbers”, cyclists who race especially well on steep inclines.

Girmay topped his Gent-Wevelgem victory with another history-making stage win at Giro d’ Italia, which after the Tour de France is cycling’s second biggest Grand Tour race.

Celebrations were cut short when Girmay was taken to hospital – he had accidentally popped a prosecco cork in his eye on the winners’ podium.

He made a quick recovery, but without his wife and daughter around, he still struggled to enjoy his win.

Despite this homesickness, Girmay battled on. His wife and daughter eventually moved to French city of Nice – and will be waiting for him after the Tour ends on Sunday.

Also watching closely, will be cycling fans back in Eritrea.

After his third stage victory at the Tour, people spilled out onto the streets in Asmara, waving the national flag and dancing to a soundtrack of celebratory car horns.

Eritrean fans often turn up to support Girmay away from home too – at the 2023 Tour de Suisse one fan told the BBC: “He is an African king. We are proud. Eritrea is known for some bad things like war, now it is different.”

Girmay also represents the wider continent, Mani Arthur, who runs the Black Cyclists Network and has competed for Ghana, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa podcast last week.

“We don’t really see many black riders, especially from Africa, competing in the Tour de France,” he said.

“So to see Girmay not only be competing but to also win a much coveted stage is incredible. He’s proven himself to be amongst the best riders in the world.”

Eritrean cycling coach Aklilu Haile, who has known Girmay for a decade, believes his success can have a big impact.

“Sometimes cycling seems like it’s for white people only, but now he teaches us that cycling is for all the world,” he said.

Following the Tour de France, Girmay will take on this summer’s Olympics in Paris. He hopes to win a gold medal but this is unlikely – he is the only road cyclist representing Eritrea and therefore will not have anyone to lead him out in the peleton to secure a space for his sprint.

He also has high hopes for next year’s World Championships in Rwanda, the country in which he was first scouted by the UCI.

For many, a Girmay victory in Rwanda have huge significance.

Cycling fans from across the world would witness an African rider whizzing past a finish line on African soil, before being enveloped into a crowd flying the green, blue and yellow of the Eritrean flag.

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A selection of striking news photographs taken around the world this week.

An Italian journalist has been ordered to pay Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni damages of €5,000 (£4,210) over social media posts making fun of her height.

A judge ruled that two tweets by Giulia Cortese, who was also handed a suspended fine of €1,200, were defamatory and amounted to “body shaming”.

It followed an exchange in which Ms Cortese described Ms Meloni as a “little woman” and told her: “I can’t even see you.”

Reacting to the verdict, Ms Cortese said the Italian government had a “serious problem with freedom of expression and journalistic dissent”.

The pair first clashed in October 2021, when Ms Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy party was still in opposition, after Ms Cortese posted a mocked-up image of Ms Meloni on X, formerly Twitter.

Ms Meloni was seen in the image standing in front of a bookshelf on to which a framed photo of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had been artificially added.

In a post on Facebook, Ms Meloni said the image was of “unique gravity” and that she would be taking legal action.

Later the same day, Mr Cortese said she had deleted the image after realising it was fake, but accused Ms Meloni of creating a “media pillory” against her and said the Facebook post showed that she was a “little woman”.

She later said in a separate post: “You don’t scare me, Giorgia Meloni. After all, you’re only 1.2m [3ft 9in] tall. I can’t even see you.”

Ms Meloni’s height is reported in Italian media to be 1.63m (5ft 3in).

Ms Cortese was cleared for posting the initial image but convicted over the later tweets.

She has the option to appeal but has not yet confirmed whether she will do so.

Ms Meloni’s lawyer said she would donate any money she received to charity.

Responding to the verdict on X, Ms Cortese wrote: “Italy’s government has a serious problem with freedom of expression and journalistic dissent.

“This country seems to get closer to [Viktor] Orbán’s Hungary: these are bad times for independent journalists and opinion leaders. Let’s hope for better days ahead. We won’t give up!”

She later added that she was “Italian and proud to be” but that “we deserve better than this appalling and shameful government”.

A man has been killed and at least eight people injured in a drone attack in central Tel Aviv, Israel.

A block of flats was hit by what an Israeli military official said was an Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which had been modified to fly long distance.

The Houthi movement in Yemen – over 1,000 miles (1,600km) away – said it carried out the attack, and vowed to stage more. Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said an initial investigation pointed to the attack having originated in Yemen.

If the Houthis are responsible, it would mark a significant escalation in their attacks on Israel which began in the wake of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which was triggered by the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October.

Until now, almost all Houthi missiles and drones fired towards Israel have been intercepted. None are known to have reached Tel Aviv.

The Israeli military official said its defence forces had detected the incoming drone but had not tried to shoot it down because of “human error”.

Dramatic video filmed from the beach, said to capture the moment of the attack, appears to show a drone flying in over the Mediterranean Sea and buzzing loudly. It flies over buildings before disappearing, followed by a huge explosion moments later.

Pictures from the scene of the blast, near a branch of the US embassy, show a building with its windows blown out, and damaged cars and debris on the street below.

Local media named the man who was killed as Yevgeny Ferder, 50, who moved to Israel from Belarus two years ago.

The attack happened at 03:12 (00:12 GMT) and the explosion was heard for several miles around.

The Times of Israel news site quoted the Israeli Air Force as saying the incident “shouldn’t have happened”, and that it took full responsibility for the failure to prevent it.

Senior military correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, Yonah Jeremy Bob, said “The Israeli defense establishment is in a state of complete shock” over the attack.

“Though the writing was on the wall, no one saw it coming from a couple thousand kilometers away,” he wrote.

Following the incident, Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant held a security briefing with the country’s security chiefs.

“The defense establishment is working to reinforce all defense mechanisms and will bring to justice anyone who harms the State of Israel,” Mr Gallant said afterwards.

He hinted at possible retaliation, saying they had discussed “intelligence and operational activities required against those responsible for the attack”.

A military spokesman for the Houthis, Yahya Saree, said the strike had been conducted with a new drone capable of bypassing interception systems.

He declared Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial capital, “an unsafe area,” and said it “will be a primary target within the range of our weapons”.

The Israeli military said it was increasing air patrols, while Tel Aviv’s mayor said the city was on high alert, local media reported.

Alon, a local resident, told Haaretz newspaper that when the blast happened “the whole building shook.”

“My neighbours’ windows shattered, so I was sure something had hit the building. It was only when I went outside that I realised that several buildings had been damaged.”

The incident also came after the Israeli military confirmed it had killed a senior commander of the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire across the border since Hezbollah launched rockets a day after Israel began its military offensive on Gaza in response to Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel.

Hezbollah and the Houthis, which are both backed by Iran, say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford posted a video online with a message for his Canadian province.

It seemed like a typical innocuous political advertisement – Mr Ford sporting a casual black polo shirt and a blue apron, standing at a barbecue grilling burgers, cans of beer at hand.

“It’s summertime in Ontario,” the premier said, beaming into the camera.

Instead, the video was a shot across the bow, with the premier launching an interactive map of local breweries, wineries and distilleries.

It was a strategic move in the midst of liquor labour dispute that has snarled summer alcohol sales in Canada’s most populous province.

For the first time in its history, Ontario’s liquor retailer is on strike. The battle has shone a spotlight on the province’s peculiar and, some say, outdated liquor control system.

On 5 July, the more than 9,000 employees of the provincially-owned Liquor Board of Ontario (LCBO) walked off the job after negotiations for a new collective agreement between their union and Mr Ford’s government fell apart. The LCBO then shuttered all its 650 stores for at least two weeks.

This week, the Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU) returned to the bargaining table with the province. But talks resumed after another salvo from Mr Ford: the premier has promised to accelerate plans to put canned cocktails in privately-run retailers – the primary sticking point for the union.

For a brief moment on Friday, it seemed the dispute was resolved, after the union representing LCBO workers announced that a tentative deal had been reached that would reopen liquor stores in a few days.

But it backtracked during a scheduled news conference with reporters that lasted just two minutes, during which they claimed that Mr Ford’s government had refused to sign their return-to-work order.

“We were prepared to come here to announce a deal,” said union spokesperson Katie Arnup. “We do not have a deal. The strike continues.”

Soon after, the LCBO told its side of the story: It accused the workers’ union of negotiating in “bad faith”, saying it introduced new demands around money that should have been dealt with at the bargaining table. It also vowed to file an unfair labour complaint against the union, signalling that the fight is not yet over.

The LCBOs scattered through Ontario today – generally well-stocked, clean and some consumers will argue, overpriced – are the product of a nearly century-old decision that gave the Crown corporation control over the distribution and sale of liquor in the province.

For years, the whole system maintained distinctive traces of temperance-era policy.

Customers were required to obtain a separate liquor permit before placing an order with a clerk, who could deny any order they believed was too large. Alcohol was not openly displayed. Stores were hidden away from main streets, and purchases were packed away in discrete paper bags.

Slowly, starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the LCBO evolved into a more consumer-friendly operation, now with wine tasting and free drink samples and a glossy LCBO-branded food and drink magazine. (Though self-service, which allows customers to grab their preferred alcohol directly off store shelves, was only fully phased in by the late 1980s).

Ontarians could get beer from the brewer consortium-owned The Beer Store and, later, in the 1990s, Ontario-made wine from The Wine Rack, owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

But for the most part the LCBO has enjoyed an iron-clad monopoly on Ontario alcohol sales.

As most other provinces, like Alberta, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island, moved to liberalise their liquor sales and allow for privately-run stores, Ontario stayed mostly the same.

In 2015, things started to shift. The first grocery stores in Ontario were authorised to sell six-packs of beer – a change described at the time as the biggest shake-up to alcohol sales since Prohibition.

“It was one small purchase for a politician, one giant leap for Ontario beer consumers,” read one article in the Toronto Star of the very first grocery store beer purchase by then Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Today, 450 grocery stores across the province are licensed to sell beer, wine and cider.

So amid the strike, Ontarians are not facing an entirely dry summer. They can still place limited LCBO delivery orders online, and purchase wine, beer and cider from some stores.

A bigger change is now around the corner.

Starting this month, convenience stores, big-box stores and grocers will all be eligible to sell wine, beer, cider and ready-to-drink cocktails like hard seltzers.

OPSEU says pre-made cocktails pose an existential crisis to their business.

“This is our line in the sand and we are making history,” said president JP Hornick on the first day of the strike.

“We are here today because of the Ford government’s plan to try and expand privatisation of alcohol sales… That puts every Ontarian at risk.”

And, OPSEU says, the change threatens the C$2.5bn ($1.83bn; £1.42bn) LCBO sales net for provincial coffers.

But Mr Ford argues the plan will give small businesses a shot at the market while still leaving the LCBO with a considerable competitive advantage.

Under the new plan, the LCBO remains the only retailer of high-alcohol spirits like gin and whisky, as well as the only wholesaler and primary distributor of alcohol in Ontario.

“Keep in mind when, when you’re the wholesaler, that’s where you make money,” the premier said last week.

The proposal also gives Mr Ford a chance to deliver on a pledge in time for the next election, currently scheduled for 2026.

“He campaigned on this,” said Walid Hejazi at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

“It’s a winning issue for the Conservatives,” added Mr Hejazi, who noted he worked as a consultant for the LCBO about 15 years ago.

“The province is proposing a strategy that will lower the price I have to pay and make it more convenient… who doesn’t want cheaper alcohol and more convenience?”

Another problem for the LCBO is that the sting of their strike has been dulled considerably by the small amount of liquor liberalisation the province already has.

Ontarians, for the most part, are not up in arms, with access to alcohol at hundreds of wineries, grocery stores and beer stores that remain open.

“What if you went on strike and hardly anyone noticed?” read the first line of a Globe and Mail editorial.

Public polling has seemed to reflect the ambivalence, with just 15% of Ontarians saying they have been personally affected by the strike.

(A tourism industry group says the strike is affecting the operations of 35% of poll respondents in the sector due to limited product availability and slow fulfillment).

But they aren’t necessarily on Team Ford, either. An internal poll by Mr Ford’s government indicates that while many support liquor liberalisation, a little over half back the strike action.

Many Ontarians did, however, take notice of the Conservative premier’s interactive alcohol retail map, which may have annoyed more voters than the shuttered stores.

The province’s efforts to unveil an alcohol-finder soon after the strike began raised questions about the government’s priorities, with one resident suggesting a better use would be a map of family doctors that are accepting new patients.

Dr Adil Shamji, a provincial Liberal politician, said he “routinely” gets calls from constituents for help finding doctors, childcare or affordable housing.

“Never, including after this strike, have I had people calling my office asking for help in finding booze,” he said.

Dr Shamji said he wants both sides to get back to get a deal done, one with protections for the LCBO.

For his part, Mr Ford says he is ready to keep negotiating but on canned cocktails at least, he is not budging.

“If they want to negotiate over [ready-to-drink beverages], the deal’s off. I’m gonna repeat that: that ship has sailed,” he said.

Former North Korean diplomat Tae Yong-ho has been named the new leader of South Korea’s presidential advisory council on unification.

This makes him the highest-ranking defector among the thousands who have resettled in the South – and the first to be given a vice-ministerial job.

Tae, 62, was Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom before he fled to South Korea in 2016.

Pyongyang has denounced him as “human scum” and accused him of embezzling state funds and other crimes.

Mr Tae became the first former North Korean to win a seat in South Korea’s 2020 National Assembly.

He failed to secure a second term in parliamentary elections in April, but in his new role, he will be be advising South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office on peaceful Korean unification.

“He is the right person to help establish a peaceful unification policy based on liberal democracy and garner support from home and abroad,” the presidential office said on Thursday.

Born in Pyongyang in 1962, Mr Tae entered the foreign service at the age of 27 and spent almost 30 years working under three generations of the ruling Kim dynasty.

He said in earlier statements that he left North Korea because he did not want his children to have “miserable lives”. He also cited disgust with Kim Jong Un’s regime and expressed admiration for South Korea’s democracy.

In a memoir published this year, Mr Tae wrote about the excesses of the North Korean elite and the depths of the personality cult built around the Kims.

Since his defection, he has advocated for the use of “soft power” to weaken the Kim regime and called for prisoner swaps between the North and the South.

Tensions between the Koreas have risen over the past few months, with Seoul resuming propaganda broadcasts towards the North on Friday, in response to Pyongyang floating thousands of trash-carrying balloons into the South.

Reports based on satellite imagery also suggest that North Korea may be strengthening its military presence and building walls along its border with the South.

As of December last year, some 34,000 individuals have defected from the North to the South, according to estimates from Seoul’s Unification Ministry.

Many do so by crossing into China and then to South Korea. In South Korea, they automatically receive citizenship and are given some resettlement money.

Earlier this week, Seoul’s spy agency cofirmed another high-profile defection of a former diplomat most recently stationed in Cuba.

Local reports identified the man as 52-year-old Ri Il Kyu and quoted him as saying that he fled because of “disillusionment with the North Korean regime and a bleak future”.

“Every North Korean thinks at least once about living in South Korea,” the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted him as saying.

Last Sunday, South Korea marked its very first North Korean Defectors’ Day, during which Mr Yoon Suk Yeol promised better financial support for defectors and tax incentives for companies that hire them.

China-born actress Cheng Pei-pei, who starred in Oscar-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has died in San Francisco at the age of 78.

A pioneer of martial arts roles for female actors, Cheng became a major performer in action films after she starred in Come Drink with Me by King Hu in 1966. The film achieved critical acclaim and won Cheng international attention.

After moving to the US she inspired a new generation of directors from East Asia to Hollywood to make female-driven swordplay films.

Cheng’s family said she had been privately battling a neurodegenerative brain disease with symptoms similar to Parkinson’s since 2019 and passed away on Wednesday.

“Our mom wanted to be remembered by how she was: the legendary Queen of Martial Arts… a versatile, award-winning actress whose film and television career spanned over six decades, not only in Asia but internationally as well,” her family wrote on Facebook.

Born in Shanghai in 1946, Cheng moved to Hong Kong in 1962 and soon won acclaim as an actor with the release of Come Drink with Me. The film is considered one of the best examples of “wuxia” films – a period movie genre celebrating legendary martial artists from ancient China.

In the film she played the role of Golden Swallow, the sister of an important leader who was kidnapped by a band of thugs. A kung-fu master, her character was dispatched to rescue her brother.

The film, selected as the Hong Kong entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 39th Academy Awards, launched her career at the age of 19.

Coupled with its 1968 sequel, Golden Swallow, the role saw Cheng win scores of parts in martial arts films as a fearless swordswoman.

Her character went on to establish the motif of the lone female assassin, sent out to seek revenge. The genre would heavily influence Quentin Tarantino’s box office hits, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2.

Cheng moved to California in the early 1970s and played dozens of roles as an iconic action heroine during the golden age of Hong Kong martial arts films.

Her biggest role came in 2000, in director Ang Lee’s wuxia-inspired Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where she played the villain, Jade Fox. It was one of the first mainstream martial arts films to feature a female lead.

The film became a global hit, winning 10 Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture. It earned $128 million at the North American box office and won Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, as well as at the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs.

It became the first foreign-language film to gross more than $100 million worldwide.

Her final role was in the live-action Disney version of “Mulan” in 2020, where she played as the matchmaker to the eponymous heroine.

Her Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon co-star Michelle Yeoh hailed Cheng in a message posted to Instagram. “We will miss your kindness and shining talent,” she wrote.

After her illness was diagnosed five years ago, Cheng chose not to make her condition public and instead spent time with her four children and grandchildren.

Her family said she had requested that instead of flowers, donations be made to the Brain Support Network (BSN) where she donated her brain.

A collection of 3,404 eggs have been seized in Australia after a European operation into the illegal bird trade.

Investigators discovered the haul – believed to be worth A$400,000 to A$500,000 (£207,000 – £259,000) – at a property in Granton, Tasmania on 9 July.

The eggs had been blown – or hollowed out – meaning they only had ornamental value.

A 62-year-old man was being investigated but no arrests had been made, according to officials.

Environmental and wildlife crime has become one of the world’s largest and most profitable crime sectors and continues to grow as it pushes many species to the brink of extinction.

It is expected that the Australian suspect will appear in court at a later date for offences in contravention of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999.

“[The man] is alleged to have been involved in the collection and harvesting of bird eggs from the wild and trading of both Australian native and CITES-listed bird eggs with people overseas,” a spokesperson from the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) said.

CITES-listed means a species is listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international agreement between governments that aims to protect endangered plants and animals from international trade.

Analysis of the eggs is now underway to confirm what species they belong to, but they are believed to include rare and threatened species facing a high extinction risk.

Investigators believe they include eggs from the forty-spotted pardalote, which is found only on Tasmania’s Bruny Island, the swift parrot and the shy albatross.

The eggs in this collection were all blown or hollowed eggs, meaning the egg white and yolk had been removed.

In 2023, European authorities launched an investigation in relation to the illegal harvesting, collecting, trading, buying and selling of bird eggs within Europe and internationally.

A number of search warrants were undertaken resulting in the seizure of over 56,000 eggs.

CITES estimates international wildlife trade is worth billions of dollars – ranging from live animals, to products derived from them.

More than 40,000 species are covered by the agreement, with more than 180 countries agreeing, including Australia.

Tasmanian ecologist Dr Sally Bryant told ABC News that egg collecting “was probably happening more than any of us realise”.

She said: “We are well aware of these sorts of activities, but they’re very, very outdated — they are morally, ethically, legally corrupt.”

Collections of this size were put together by “skilled operators” over “many years”, she added.

The interference of threatened and migratory birds can carry a penalty of seven years imprisonment, a fine of A$138,600 or both.

The export of Australian native specimens, including eggs, and the export or import of specimens, including eggs, on the CITES list has a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, a fine A$330,000, or both.

The possession of CITES-listed specimens, including eggs, can carry a penalty of five years imprisonment, a fine of A$330,000 or both.

Tanya Plibersek, Minister for the Environment and Water, said: “Illegal trafficking and wildlife crime is fast becoming a threat for many of our species that are already at risk of extinction.

“We have to stamp out this terrible trade which sees our native animals captured in the Aussie bush and sent overseas to be sold.”

There was little to indicate what had happened on the fifth floor of the Grand Hyatt Erawan in Bangkok until police officers opened the door.

No-one was heard to scream, or had rung for help. No-one had even made it to the door.

Even inside, there were apparently no signs of struggle – the untouched late lunch still laid out neatly on the table for the occupants to enjoy.

From outside of Room 502, the only clue to the horror inside the locked room was the fact the group were late checking out of the hotel.

And yet inside were six bodies, alongside tea cups laced with cyanide.

It didn’t take officers long to work out the occupants of the room had drunk the poisoned tea, or to find out who the apparent victims were.

But days after police revealed the grim discovery, big questions remain: why them – and who did it?

Four of the victims are Vietnamese nationals – Thi Nguyen Phuong, 46, her husband Hong Pham Thanh, 49, Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, 47, and Dinh Tran Phu, 37.

The other two are American citizens of Vietnamese origin – Sherine Chong, 56, and Dang Hung Van, 55.

According to investigators, Chong was believed to have borrowed 10 million baht ($280,000; £215,000) from husband and wife Hong Pham Thanh and Thi Nguyen Phuong to invest in a hospital building project in Japan. The couple, who owned a construction business, had apparently tried in vain to get their money back.

In fact, the matter was due to go to court in Japan in a matter of weeks.

On the face of it, this meeting appeared to be an attempt to discuss the issue in advance of the case.

Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan was there because Chong – who US media have said lived in Oakland, California – had asked her to act as her intermediary with the couple regarding the investment.

But how were the other two linked to the case?

Dinh Tran Phu – a successful make-up artist whose clientele includes movie stars, singers and beauty queens in Vietnam – was at the gathering working for Chong.

His father, speaking to BBC Vietnamese, emphasised the fact he had travelled to Thailand with his regular clients, not with strangers.

A close friend, meanwhile, said he knew both Thi Nguyen Phuong and Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, having introduced them to treatments at a friend’s spa in Da Nang, where he lived.

Dang Hung Van’s participation in the hotel suite meeting was not immediately clear.

Police said there was a seventh name in the hotel reservation, the sister of one of the six. That person returned to Vietnam from Thailand last week and police said she was not involved in the incident.

The group checked into the hotel separately over the weekend and were assigned five rooms – four on the seventh floor, and one on the fifth.

Chong checked into Room 502 on Sunday. The five others visited her in her suite that day, but they headed back to their respective rooms for the night.

Before noon on Monday, Dang Hung Van ordered six cups of tea while Dinh Tran Phu, the make-up artist, ordered fried rice from their respective rooms. They asked that it be delivered to Room 502 at 14:00 local time.

A few minutes before 14:00, Chong started receiving the food orders at Room 502. She was alone in the suite at that time.

Police said she refused the waiter’s offer to brew tea for her party. The waiter also found that she “spoke very little and was visibly under stress”.

The rest of the group started arriving soon after. The couple went in lugging a suitcase.

At 14:17, all six could be seen by the door before it was shut. From then on, there was no sign of movement from inside.

They had been scheduled to check out on Monday but failed to do so.

Police entered the room at 16:30 on Tuesday and found the six dead on the floor.

The initial investigation found that two appeared to have tried get to the suite’s door, but failed to reach it in time.

All the bodies bore signs of cyanide poisoning, which can – in certain doses – kill within minutes. Their lips and nails had turned dark purple indicating a lack of oxygen, while their internal organs turned “blood red”, which is another sign of cyanide poisoning.

Investigators say there is “no other cause” that would explain their deaths “except for cyanide”.

Further tests are being carried out to determine the “intensity” of the deadly chemical and to rule out any other toxins.

Cyanide starves the body’s cells of oxygen, which can induce heart attacks. Early symptoms include dizziness, shortness of breath and vomiting.

Its use in Thailand is heavily regulated and those found to have unauthorised access face up to two years in jail.

Police suspect that one of the dead was behind the poisoning and was driven by crushing debt – but have not said who.

According to Vietnamese outlet VN Express, investigators said Chong had been sued by all the other five over their failed investments.

The meeting in Bangkok was called to negotiate a settlement, but the attempt failed.

Police have sought a statement from the group’s tour guide in Bangkok, 35-year-old Phan Ngoc Vu.

The guide reportedly said that before she died, Thi Nguyen Phuong Lan, the mediator, had asked someone to buy traditional medicine containing snake blood for her joint pains.

Then there are the two metal beverage containers that did not belong to the hotel found by police in the suite.

The containers were placed beside the cyanide-laced teacups, near the dining table.

What is certain is that officials want the matter resolved quickly.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has directed officials in Hanoi to co-ordinate closely with their Thai counterparts on the investigation.

As for Thai authorities, it couldn’t have come at a worse time for Thailand. It had just expanded visa-free entry to 93 countries to revive its tourism industry, a key economic pillar that has yet to fully recover from the pandemic.

Barely a year before, a 14-year-old boy shot dead two people at a luxury shopping mall, also in Bangkok.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin was with police on the scene at the Grand Hyatt on Tuesday night. He said there was no danger to public safety and that it was a private matter.

For the families left behind, the shock is palpable.

BBC Vietnamese got hold of the make-up artist’s mother, Tuy, on the phone, but she was sobbing so uncontrollably that she hung up after a short conversation. She said she thought her son was just on a routine work trip.

His father, Tran Dinh Dung, said in a separate interview that he did not notice anything strange with his son the last time he saw him.

Businesses and services around the world are slowly recovering after a massive IT outage affected computer systems for hours on Thursday and Friday.

Businesses, banks, hospitals and airlines were among the worst-hit after cyber-security firm Crowdstrike issued a faulty software update which affected Microsoft Windows.

Crowdstrike’s CEO apologised for the disruption and said a fix had been issued, but admitted it could be “some time” before all systems were back up and running.

While some airline services are beginning to return to normal after thousands of flights were cancelled, operators expect some delays and cancellations to persist through the weekend.

Many businesses are now dealing with backlogs and missed orders that could take days to resolve.

Health services in Britain, Israel and Germany also suffered problems, with some operations cancelled.

The global chaos has sparked concern over the vulnerability of the world’s interconnected technologies, and the extent to which a single software glitch could have such widespread impact.

The issue began at 19:00 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running cybersecurity software CrowdStrike Falcon, according to Microsoft, though the full extent of the problem only became clear by Friday morning.

But by Friday evening, the problems were easing in many parts of the globe, with many airports saying that while there were still issues with check-in and payment systems, most flights were now running. Hong Kong International Airport has resumed normal operations, according to Chinese state media.

Meanwhile, JP Morgan Chase, the biggest bank in the US, said it is working to restore service to ATM machines.

The website Downdetector, which detects sites which may be having tech issues, showed fewer sites in the UK which were experiencing problems by the end of the day.

Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said on X that a defect was found “in a single content update for Windows hosts”.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our company,” he told the NBC network.

“Many of the customers are rebooting the system and it’s coming up and it’ll be operational.

“It could be some time for some systems that just automatically won’t recover, but it is our mission… to make sure every customer is fully recovered.”

Microsoft has also said that several reboots may be required, with some users reporting that as many as 15 could be needed before the problem is fixed.

Also, tech experts say Crowdstrike’s fix will have to be applied separately to each and every device affected.

Questions are likely now to be raised about Crowdstrike’s influence as one of the largest operators in the cyber-security market and the wisdom of having such a crucial part of the industry controlled by just a small number of companies.

Crowdstrike’s shares fell by around 12% on Friday, at the expense of rivals SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks.

The problems were first noticed in Australia, and possibly felt most severely in the air travel industry.

Airports saw delays, with long queues as flights were cancelled or delayed, aircraft grounded and passengers stranded.

Some saw extra staff drafted in to check in passengers manually.

By 18:00 GMT, aviation data from Cirium suggested that more than 4,000 flights – or 3.9% of the total – had been cancelled so far on Friday, though the figure may also include flights cancelled for other reasons.

Payment systems, banking and healthcare providers around the world were affected.

It is thought the outage may also have a longer term effect as companies struggle to pay wages to staff, particularly where payments are made on a weekly basis.

Some railway companies warned of delays, and broadcasters Sky News and ABC Australia both experienced outages.

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Tshiring Jangbu Sherpa cannot forget the dead body he saw just metres from the summit of Mount Lhotse in the Himalayas more than a decade ago.

The Nepali was working as a guide for a German climber trying to scale the world’s fourth highest mountain in May 2012. The body blocking their path was thought to be Milan Sedlacek, a Czech mountaineer who’d perished just a few days earlier.

Mr Sherpa was curious why the Czech climber had died so close to the top. One of the gloves on the frozen corpse was missing.

“The bare hand might have slipped away from the rope,” the guide says. “He might have been killed after losing his balance and crashing onto the rock.”

The body stayed where it was – and every climber scaling Mount Lhotse thereafter had to step past it.

Mr Sherpa, 46, had no idea then that he would return 12 years later to retrieve the climber’s body, as part of a team of a dozen military personnel and 18 sherpas deployed by the Nepali army to clean up the high Himalayas.

There have been more than 300 deaths in the Everest region since records of mountain climbing there began a century ago, and many of these bodies remain. The death toll has kept increasing: eight people have been killed so far this year; and 18 died in 2023, according to Nepal’s tourism department.

The government first launched the clean-up campaign in 2019, which included removing some bodies of dead climbers. But this year was the first time that authorities set a goal to retrieve five bodies from the so-called “death zone”, above an altitude of 8,000m (26,247 feet).

In the end the team – who subsisted on water, chocolate and sattu, a mixture of chickpea, barley and wheat flour – retrieved four bodies.

One skeleton and 11 tonnes of rubbish were removed at lower attitudes after a 54-day operation that ended on 5 June.

“Nepal has received a bad name for the garbage and dead bodies which have polluted the Himalayas on a grave scale,” Major Aditya Karki, the leader of this year’s operation, told BBC Nepali.

The campaign also aims to improve safety for the climbers.

Maj Karki says many have been startled by the sight of bodies – last year, one mountaineer could not move for half an hour after seeing a dead body on the way to Mount Everest.

Many people cannot afford to retrieve the bodies of relatives who have died on mountains in Nepal. Even if they have the financial means, most private companies refuse to help get bodies from the death zone because it is too dangerous.

The military allocated five million rupees ($37,400; £29,000) this year to retrieve each body. Twelve people are needed to lower a body from 8,000m, with each needing four cylinders of oxygen. One cylinder costs more than $400, meaning that $20,000 is needed for oxygen alone.

Every year, there is only about a 15-day window during which climbers can ascend and descend from 8,000 metres, as the winds slow down during the transition between wind cycles. In the death zone, the wind speed often exceeds 100 km per hour.

After locating the bodies, the team mostly worked after nightfall because they did not want to disturb other mountaineers. In the Everest region, which also consists of Lhotse and Nuptse, there is only one single ladder and ropeway for people climbing up and down from base camp.

“It was very tough to bring back the bodies from the death zone,” Mr Sherpa says. “I vomited sour water many times. Others kept coughing and others got headaches because we spent hours and hours at very high altitude.”

At 8,000m, even strong Sherpas can carry only up to 25kg (55 pounds), less than 30% of their capacity at lower altitudes.

The body near the summit of Mount Lhotse, which stands at 8,516m, was discoloured after exposure to the sun and snow for 12 years. Half of the body was buried in snow, Mr Sherpa says.

All four climbers’ bodies retrieved were found in the same position as they had died. Their frozen state meant their limbs could not be moved, making transportation even more difficult.

Nepali law states that all bodies have to remain in the best condition before they are returned to authorities – any damage could result in penalties.

The clean-up team arranged a roping system to bring the bodies down gradually, because pushing them from behind or pulling them from in front was not possible. Sometimes, the bodies became stuck in the rocky, icy terrain, and pulling them out again was a laborious task.

It took 24 hours non-stop to bring the body presumed to belong to the Czech climber to the nearest camp, which is just about 3.5km away, Mr Sherpa says. The team then spent another 13 hours getting the body down to another lower camp.

Next stop for the bodies was a journey to Kathmandu by helicopter, but the crew was stuck in the town of Namche for five days because of bad weather. They arrived in the capital safely on 4 June.

The four bodies and the skeleton have been kept at a hospital in Kathmandu.

The army has found identification documents on two bodies – Czech climber Milan Sedlacek and American mountaineer Ronald Yearwood, who died in 2017. The Nepali government will be in communication with the respective embassies.

The process of identifying the other two bodies is ongoing.

Sherpa climbers and guides keep track of the locations and possible identities of lost climbers, so they have provided potential information on some of the bodies. They believe all the bodies belong to foreigners, but the government has not confirmed this.

About 100 sherpas have died on the Himalayas since records began, so many families have been waiting for years to perform the last Buddhist rites for their loved ones.

Authorities have said they will bury the bodies if no one comes to claim them three months after identification – regardless of whether the bodies belong to a foreigner or a Nepali.

Mr Sherpa first climbed in the Himalayas at the age of 20. In his career, he has scaled Everest three times and Lhotse five times.

“Mountaineers have got famous from climbing. The Himalayas have given us so many opportunities,” he says.

“By doing this special job of retrieving dead bodies, it’s my time to pay back to the Great Himalayas.”

A massive tech failure has caused travel chaos around the world, with banking and healthcare services also badly hit.

Flights have been grounded because of the IT outage – a flaw which left many computers displaying blue error screens.

There were long queues, delays and flight cancellations at airports around the world, as passengers had to be manually checked in.

Cyber-security firm Crowdstrike has admitted that the problem was caused by an update to its antivirus software, which is designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from malicious attacks.

Microsoft has said it is taking “mitigation action” to deal with “the lingering impact” of the outage.

Here is a summary of what we know so far.

• Follow live updates on this story
• How a single update caused global havoc
• What are my rights if my flight is cancelled or delayed?
• GPs, pharmacies and airports hit by outage

This is still a little unclear.

Crowdstrike is known for producing antivirus software, intended to prevent hackers from causing this very type of disruption.

According to Crowdstrike boss George Kurtz, the issues are only impacting Windows PCs and no other operating systems, and were caused by a defect in a recent update.

“The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” he said.

“This is not a security incident or cyber-attack.”

What exactly was wrong with the update is yet to be revealed, but as a potential fix involves deleting a single file, it is possible that just one rogue file could be at the root of all the mayhem.

It could be some time.

Crowdstrike’s Mr Kurtz, speaking to NBC News, said it was the firm’s “mission” to make sure every one of its customers recovered completely from the outage.

“We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this, including our companies,” he said.

He has since told CNBC that while some systems can be fixed quickly, for others it “could be hours, could be a bit longer”.

Crowdstrike has issued its fix. But according to those in the know, it will have to be applied separately to each and every device affected.

Computers will require a manual reboot in safe mode – causing a massive headache for IT departments everywhere.

Something important to note here, is that personal devices like your home computer or mobile phone are unlikely to have been affected – this outage is impacting businesses.

Microsoft is advising clients to try a classic method to get things working – turning it off and on again – in some cases up to 15 times.

The tech giant said this has worked for some users of virtual machines – PCs where the computer is not in the same place as the screen.

“Several reboots (as many as 15 have been reported) may be required, but overall feedback is that reboots are an effective troubleshooting step at this stage,” it said.

It is also telling customers with more in-depth computing knowledge that they should delete a certain file – the same solution one CrowdStrike employee has been sharing on social media.

But this fix is intended for experts and IT professionals, not regular users.

The problems have emerged across the world, but were first noticed in Australia, and possibly felt most severely in the air travel industry, with more than 3,300 flights cancelled globally.

• UK airports saw delays, with long queues at London’s Stansted and Gatwick.
• Ryanair said it had been “forced to cancel a small number of flights today (19 July)” and advised passengers to log-on to their Ryanair account, once it was back online, to see what their options are.
• British Airways also cancelled several flights.
• Several US airlines, notably United, Delta and American Airlines, grounded their flights around the globe for much of Friday. Australian carriers Virgin Australia and Jetstar also had to delay or cancel flights.
• Airports in Tokyo, Amsterdam and Delhi were also impacted.

Meanwhile, the problems have also hit payment systems, banking and healthcare providers around the world.

Railway companies, including Britain’s biggest which runs Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern, warned passengers to expect delays.

In Alaska, the 911 emergency service was affected, while Sky News was off air for several hours on Friday morning, unable to broadcast.

The outage might also impact people getting paid on time.

Melanie Pizzey, head of the Global Payroll Association, told PA news agency that she’d been contacted by “numerous clients” who couldn’t access their payroll software.

She said the outage could mean firms are unable to process staff payments this week, but there may be a knock-on effect too.

“We could see a backlog with regard to processing payrolls for the coming month end, which may delay employees from receiving their monthly wage,” she said.

If you’re worried about your own, personal devices, we have some good news.

The software at the centre of this outage is generally used by businesses, which means that most people’s personal computers won’t be impacted.

That means if you’re wondering whether you need to delete a certain file to avoid your computer restarting constantly, the simple answer is no, you don’t.

It’s a reminder of the complexity of our modern digital infrastructure that Crowdstrike, a company that’s not exactly a household name, can be at the heart of such worldwide disarray.

The US firm, based in Austin, Texas, is a listed company on the US stock exchange, featuring in both the S&P 500 and the high-tech Nasdaq indexes.

Like a lot of modern technology companies, it hasn’t been around that long. It was founded a mere 13 years ago, but has grown to employ nearly 8,500 people.

As a provider of cyber-security services, it tends to get called in to deal with the aftermath of hack attacks.

It has been involved in investigations of several high-profile cyber-attacks, such as when Sony Pictures had its computer system hacked in 2014.

But this time, because of a flawed update to its software, a firm that is normally part of the solution to IT problems has instead caused one.

In its last earnings report, Crowdstrike declared a total of nearly 24,000 customers. That’s an indication not just of the size of the issue, but also the difficulties that could be involved in fixing it.

Each of those customers is a huge organisation in itself, so the number of individual computers affected is hard to estimate.

US President Joe Biden is looking forward to “getting back on the campaign trail next week”, fortifying his commitment to stick in the race as more Democrats on Friday called for him to step aside as the party nominee.

“The stakes are high, and the choice is clear. Together, we will win,” he said.

His statement appeared to be in response to the conflicting reports that Mr Biden’s inner circle is discussing the beleaguered president’s future and whether he will remain in the race.

Over the last several weeks, Mr Biden has been caught in a whirlwind of political pressure to step down: Calls from leaders within his own party to withdraw from the race, a loss of big-ticket donors and the added pressure that his decision could cost Democrats control of Congress.

At least a dozen Democratic lawmakers have called for him to step aside on Friday alone, and Vice-President Kamala Harris – considered the top choice to replace Mr Biden – was tasked with comforting worried donors on a Friday afternoon call.

Ms Harris said that she believed “in my heart of hearts” that “we are going to win this election”, an individual who listened to the conversation told the BBC.

“We know which candidate in this election puts the American people first: Our president, Joe Biden,” she added.

Earlier in the day, Mr Biden’s re-election campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon also attempted to push back on speculation that the president would withdraw in an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe

“Absolutely, the president’s in this race,” she said when asked about Mr Biden’s plans.

She described him as “more committed than ever to beat Donald Trump” and said he’s the “best person” to take on the former president.

In his statement, the president referenced former President Trump’s Republican National Convention speech to say he will continue “exposing the threat” of the former president while “making the case” for his record.

“Donald Trump’s dark vision for the future is not who we are as Americans. Together, as a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the ballot box,” he said.

As the conflict played on on Friday, the president was under quarantine at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. He tested positive for Covid-19 while traveling in Las Vegas earlier this week. Mr Biden is experiencing “mild symptoms”, the White House said.

Since his poor debate performance last month, Mr Biden has insisted he will continue to run, though his perspective on what it would take for him to step down as the Democratic nominee has evolved.

First telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos “only the Lord Almighty” would make him stand down, Mr Biden said this week during an interview with BET (Black Entertainment Television) that he would re-evaluate the campaign if a doctor told him he had a serious medical condition.

According to a campaign memo released on Friday, Mr Biden isn’t going anywhere.

“Joe Biden has made it more than clear: He’s in this race and he’s in it to win it,” according to the memo. “Moreover, he’s the presumptive nominee — there is no plan for an alternative nominee. In a few short weeks, Joe Biden will be the official nominee. It is high past time we stop fighting one another. The only person who wins when we fight is Donald Trump.”

Time is running out for Mr Biden to decide if he will step down.

The Democratic National Convention begins 19 August, but the Democratic National Committee is expected to meet virtually the first week of August to nominate Biden as the official party nominee to meet state ballot deadlines.

The DNC rules committee met on Friday morning to discuss the procedures for the virtual roll-call vote, which they intend to hold before 7 August.

When asked whether another candidate could challenge Mr Biden in the roll-call vote, the committee’s co-chair Leah Daughtry said that “any challenger would have to have the verified support of hundreds of delegates”.

With Mr Biden winning nearly all of the available delegates during the Democratic primary, that requirement would be nearly insurmountable.

Ms Daughtry noted that “such a challenge has never happened over the past half century of competitive primaries”.

The pressure continues to build, however.

On Friday, Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich, of New Mexico, became the third Democrat in the upper chamber to call for Biden to step aside.

“By passing the torch, he would secure his legacy as one of our nation’s greatest leaders and allow us to united behind a candidate who can best defeat Donald Trump and safeguard the future of our democracy,” he wrote in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

His statement follows that of Democratic Senator Jon Tester, of Montana, who called on Biden to end his re-election bid on Thursday.

“While I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term,” Mr Tester wrote in a statement on X.

In the House, Congressman Jim Costa, a Democrat from California, also called for him to withdraw on Thursday.

Democratic congressmen Jared Huffman of California, Marc Veasey of Texas, Chuy Garcia of Illinois and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin released a joint message on Friday saying “the most responsible and patriotic thing” Biden could do is “step aside as our nominee”.

“With great admiration for you personally, sincere respect for your decades of public service and patriotic leadership, and deep appreciation for everything we have accomplished together during your presidency, it is now time for you to pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders,” they wrote in the joint statement.

Illinois Democratic congressman Sean Casten wrote in the Chicago Tribune on Friday that he doesn’t think the president can defeat former US President Donald Trump.

“It is with a heavy heart and much personal reflection that I am therefore calling on Biden to pass the torch to a new generation,” he wrote.

Other members of the House joined the calls for the president to step aside on Friday, including Zoe Lofgren of California, Kathy Castor of Florida, Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky, Greg Landsman of Ohio and Betty McCollum of Minnesota.

Reports this week suggested senior Democratic leaders are leaning in the same direction.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have all reportedly expressed concerns during private conversations with Mr Biden about his candidacy. In public statements, Ms Pelosi’s staff insisted her comments have been misrepresented and Mr Jeffries affirmed his support for Mr Biden.

Former President Barack Obama, Mr Biden’s previous running mate, has reportedly said Mr Biden’s chances of winning the election have greatly diminished.

Lawmakers haven’t been the only ones turning their backs to Biden. Big name donors – including actor George Clooney and Disney family heiress Abigail Disney – have closed their wallets.

Despite the defectors, some are sticking by his side.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most influential progressive voices in the House, has supported Biden over the last few weeks. She broadcast live on Instagram on Friday morning and spoke about the risks of entering the convention without Biden as the presumptive nominee, including potential legal challenges and ballot access deadlines.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which has about 40 members, and the 60-member Congressional Black Caucus, have both met with the president and also indicated their support for his re-election bid.

The UN’s top court has said Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is against international law, in a landmark opinion.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Israel should stop settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and end its “illegal” occupation of those areas and the Gaza Strip as soon as possible.

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the court had made a “decision of lies”.

The court’s advisory opinion is not legally binding but still carries significant political weight. It marks the first time the ICJ has delivered a position on the legality of the 57-year occupation.

The ICJ, based at The Hague in the Netherlands, has been examining the issue since the beginning of last year, at the request of the UN General Assembly.

The court was specifically asked to give its view on Israel’s policies and practices towards the Palestinians, and on the legal status of the occupation.

Delivering the court’s findings, ICJ President Nawaf Salam said it had found that “Israel’s… continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal.”

“The State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible,” he said.

He said Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 did not bring Israel’s occupation of that area to an end because it still exercises effective control over it.

The court also said Israel should evacuate all of its settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and pay reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by the occupation.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967. The court said the settlements were illegal. Israel has consistently disputed that they are against international law.

The ICJ said Israel’s “policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, which it said was against international law, adding that Israel was “not entitled to sovereignty” over any part of the occupied territories.

Israel claims sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem, the eastern half of which it captured in the 1967 Middle East war. It considers the city its indivisible capital – something which is not accepted by the vast majority of the international community.

Among its other far-reaching conclusions, the court said Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in the occupied territories constituted “systemic discrimination based on, inter alia, race, religion or ethnic origin”. It also said Israel had illegally exploited the Palestinians’ natural resources and violated their right to self-determination.

The court also advised states to avoid any actions, including providing aid or assistance, that would maintain the current situation.

Israel’s prime minister swiftly issued a blunt statement rejecting what the court had determined.

“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land – not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, nor in our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria” (the West Bank), Mr Netanyahu said in a statement.

“No decision of lies in The Hague will distort this historical truth, and similarly, the legality of Israeli settlements in all parts of our homeland cannot be disputed.”

But the court’s findings were welcomed by the Palestinians.

Hussein Al Sheikh, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Palestinians’ main umbrella group, called it “a historic victory for the rights of the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination. And the collapse and defeat of the Judaization project through confiscation, settlement, displacement, and racist practices against a people under occupation.

“The international community must respect the opinion of international justice and force Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories,” he said.

The court’s findings will now go to the UN General Assembly, which will decide how to respond, including the option of adopting a resolution. That would be significant and could constitute a catalyst for negotiations and set the legal parameters for a future negotiated settlement.

This case is separate from another active case brought to the ICJ by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in the war in Gaza.

Authorities in Bangladesh have imposed a nationwide curfew, after further rioting in the capital Dhaka left an additional 35 people dead.

Days of violence have been sparked by students calls for the government to axe a rule reserving scores of public jobs for the families of veterans of the country’s independence war in 1971.

The prime minister’s office announced the curfew after an attack on the Narsingdi prison on Friday saw hundreds of inmates released.

Government Press Secretary Naeemul Islam Khan said the army would be deployed to the streets in a bid to restore order.

“The government has decided to impose a curfew and deploy the military in aid of the civilian authorities,” he said in a statement.

Some 67 people have now died since violence broke out – although the exact toll is difficult to assess due in part to an almost complete communications shutdown, with mobile internet and telephone lines reportedly down.

Bus and train services have reportedly also been halted, while photos from Dhaka show large numbers of police in riot gear on the streets.

Schools and universities across Bangladesh have also been shut until further notice.

But this has done little to stop the protesters, who vowed to continue with their own “Complete Shutdown”, which has seen them blockade roads across the city.

On Friday, students chanting “merit, merit” and “we won’t let the blood that has been shed of our brothers go in vain” were joined by a number of parents outside Dhaka university.

The students are arguing that the quota system is discriminatory, and are asking for recruitment based on merit. Critics say the system unfairly benefits the families of pro-government groups who support Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who won her fourth straight election in January.

A march organised by Islamist parties was met with tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades.

Protestors also stormed the Narsingdi district jail on Friday, where several hundred inmates were reported to have escaped onto the streets. Multiple witnesses confirmed the incident to BBC Bangla.

The main opposition Bangladesh National Party has also called for protest, with the exiled acting chairman Tarique Rahman asking people to support “these tender-hearted students” in a post on Twitter.

The party said one of its senior leaders, Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed, had been taken into custody. Police did not give any reasons for Mr Rizvi’s arrest.

Attempts to end the protests with talks have so far failed.

Law Minister Anisul Haque told BBC Bangla the government was open to discussing the issues: “I’m sure they are also discussing whether they will come to the talks or not.”

But student Nahid Iqbal told the BBC on Thursday they would not consider joining the talks at present.

“The government has killed so many people in a day that we cannot join any discussions in the current circumstances.”

Earlier, Dhaka Metropolitan Police Commissioner Shafiqul Islam told the BBC that authorities had decided to ban rallies in the city in order to protect lives and property following Thursday’s violence.

Separately, the police confirmed to BBC Bangla that two people had died on Friday.

Police said 100 officers had been injured on Thursday, while a government minister said several vehicles parked outside government buildings were set on fire.

The clashes have also not been confined to Dhaka, with 26 districts reporting incidents.

The protesters who occupied and set light to the state broadcaster BTV had left by Friday morning, although the channel had not started broadcasting again.

A senior reporter told BBC Bangla the newsroom, studio and canteen had all been damaged in Thursday’s fire.

Disruption to flights is expected to continue across the UK after massive outages hit computer systems globally on Friday.

Airports have said their systems are working again but that journeys could still be affected by delays and cancellations into the weekend.

A number of airports have said passengers should continue to check for potential disruption affecting their flights before they travel.

The outages came on one of the busiest days of the year, with many schools in England and Wales having broken up for summer this week.

GPs, pharmacies, banks, payment systems, and train services were also affected.

The problems were caused by a faulty software update for Microsoft Windows issued by cyber-security firm Crowdstrike.

London Gatwick said its system were “operating as normal” but that “some delays and cancellations will however continue this evening and over the weekend”.

Manchester Airport, where check-in was for a period on Friday being carried out out manually, said its check-in systems were up and running but that flights “may still be subject to delays and cancellations”.

Belfast International said it was operating as normal but that “we recommend passengers keep in contact with their airlines”.

As of Friday evening, 338 flights in and out of the UK – 167 departures and 171 arrivals – had been cancelled, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Simon Calder, travel correspondent for the Independent, said the passengers he had spoken to at airports were “absolutely despondent”.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Saturday, he said the ordeal was “horrible” for those hoping to travel in and out of the UK.

“There are 50,000 British travellers waking up this morning where they didn’t expect to be,” he added.

Delayed and cancelled flights can often have knock-on effects beyond the initial disruption because planes and crews are not where they had been scheduled to be.

On the rail network, National Rail said the issue was no longer affecting operators, though some operators are still advising customers to check their journey before travelling.

The outages meant several retailers – including Morrisons and Waitrose – were unable to take card payments for the part of the day, while TV channel Sky News was briefly off air.

GPs struggled to access their records systems, which include online bookings. Pharmacy services, such as access to prescriptions, have also been affected.

In a social media post on Friday, Crowdstrike CEO George Kurtz said he was “deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption” caused by the outages, though stressed that they were not the result of a security breach or cyber attack.

He later told the company’s customers in an open letter: “You have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

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Donald Trump took the stage on Thursday night at the Republican National Convention like a conquering hero. He had cheated death. His Democratic opponents were tearing themselves apart.

His loyalists, who now fill the ranks of his party, packed the Milwaukee arena and cheered enthusiastically throughout his hour-and-a-half speech.

He pledged to serve all Americans if elected then recounted, in a subdued, but almost messianic tone, his brush with a spray of bullets. Some delegates even wore bandages over their right ears like their injured political idol in tribute to him.

“I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” he said. “Over the last few days, many people have said it was a providential moment.” He spoke of dropping to the ground as bullets flew past him and how his supporters had “great sorrow on their faces”.

“When I rose, surrounded by Secret Service, the crowd was confused because they thought I was dead,” he said.

The unity message and its powerful delivery made for a unique convention speech and a remarkable Trump one. But the rest of his speech was more traditional convention fare.

Although he called for ending the “partisan witch hunts” against him, he avoided the extended forays into 2020 election denial that have at times dominated his rally speeches, and he mostly replaced his normal pointed attacks on individual opponents with calls for unity.

There was classic Trump in there too – dark and false claims, sometimes during extended improvisations.

Trump’s performance hinted that for all the talk of a changed man after the attempt on his life and for all the more organised, focused operation behind him, the former president is still inclined to veer off-script, even in the most momentous of occasions.

The question many Americans could be wondering now is which version of Trump will lead the country should he beat Democrat Joe Biden in November. Looking back at the last four days offers some clues.

The address, weakly delivered though it may have been, still represented the culmination of a remarkable stretch for the former president, starting with President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance in Atlanta three weeks ago that prompted an uprising in his Democratic Party.

Since then, the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump had broad immunity from criminal prosecution, a judge delayed sentencing for his New York conviction in a hush-money case and another judge entirely dismissed the case against him for mishandling national security documents.

Then he was nearly assassinated. The attempt on his life by a 20-year-old gunman left Trump’s face bloodied and provided the iconic image that was emblazoned on T-shirts and signs at the convention.

All of this meant he and his supporters converged on Milwaukee with a sense that their time had come.

For four slickly produced and relentlessly on-message evenings, the Republican party positioned itself as a welcoming place for all Americans and the former president as a uniting force who would return the nation to greatness.

While there were still partisan speakers throwing red meat to the crowd, they were largely limited to the early-evening slots, when fewer Americans were tuned in to the proceedings.

As the final hour each night arrived, the focus softened and a string of speakers described the former president in deeply personal terms.

• The Trump family: A guide to an American dynasty

It began on Monday, with Trump receiving an exuberant welcome as he entered the convention centre for his first public appearance since the shooting.

He sat in the VIP section of the building and watched as model and social media influencer Amber Rose defended him against accusations of racism: “Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re black, white, gay or straight.”

On Tuesday, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders recounted Trump hugging her young son at the White House while Lara Trump painted her father-in-law as “an amazing grandfather”.

Earlier that evening, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who had been one of Trump’s fiercest critics on the 2024 Republican primary campaign trail, was urging voters who didn’t support Trump “100% of the time” to back his re-election.

“When times are really tough, when he’s got everything to lose and nothing to gain,” Steve Witkoff, a friend of the former president, told the audience, “Donald Trump shows up, and he’s there for you.”

Trump’s first term in office was marked by sharp political divisions within American society. The day after he was inaugurated, millions marched through the streets of Washington in protest.

His attempts to ban nationals from a list of Muslim-majority countries caused chaos at American airports early in his presidency and border restrictions implemented later led to an outcry about crying children separated from their parents at detention centres.

Trump’s four years in office ended with him refusing to accept his defeat in the presidential election – denialism that culminated in the 6 January riot at the US Capitol, where thousands of his supporters attempted to block certification of President Biden’s victories.

He was denounced by many in his own party, and faced a second impeachment by the House of Representatives. Although he was acquitted in a Senate trial, seven Republicans broke ranks and voted for his conviction. After leaving office, the former president was indicted four times, found culpable for sexual assault by a civil court and convicted of fraud.

That was then, however, and here in Wisconsin – within the security bubble of the Republican National Convention – it was decidedly different now.

The overriding message from the Republicans this week was that those divisions and distractions are things of the past, and that the Trump that America sees today is not the one they might remember from his first White House tenure.

If the rest of the nation agrees, it would represent a remarkable comeback story or a collective act of political amnesia, depending on one’s perspective.

“I think that we really now are the party of unity and inclusiveness,” said Jennifer McGrath, a delegate from Las Vegas, Nevada. “We really are the place to be at this point.”

David Botkins, a member of the Virginian Republican Party’s State Central Committee, said he thought the assassination attempt had changed Trump and that he would be “different, better and more effective” in a second presidential term.

“I think the policies are going to be the same, the conservatism is going to be the same, but there may be a tenderness and a compassion and a gratitude and a respect for divine providence that will inform the tone with which he conducts himself as president for the next four years.”

As for those policies and proposals, the Republican convention offered scant details.

The first three nights of the convention each had a theme – the economy, safety and foreign policy. They formed a framework for the former president’s acceptance speech and offer a useful guide for the key points the party is seeking to emphasise in the campaign ahead.

While Trump only mentioned President Biden by name once, he noted that “this administration” was presiding over soaring inflation (which has now eased), knowing that economic concerns are the bread-and-butter of bids to oust an incumbent officeholder.

Crime and immigration, two issues on which Republicans joined at the hip all week, served as the centrepiece on “safety” night. Polls show that a majority of Americans now favour lowering immigration levels and support Trump’s call for removing millions of undocumented migrants residing in the US. During Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s speech, some convention attendees waved pre-printed signs reading “mass deportation now”.

Conflicts abroad were another prong of the Republican case against Mr Biden. In a particularly dramatic moment on Wednesday, families of six of the 13 US soldiers killed by a car bomb during the 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan took the stage to blame the current president for the deaths and claim that the president wasn’t fit to lead the nation’s military.

“With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness and chaos will be over,” Trump said in his speech.

And while there were more specific policy discussions in events held on the sidelines of the convention, they took place well away from prime-time network television cameras.

For instance, on Monday, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, hosted a “policy fest”, where former Trump administration officials and Republican politicians offered their views on topics like foreign policy, education, immigration, the economy and energy.

The Heritage Foundation is behind the 1,000-page Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump presidency, which has generated controversy, media attention and relentless attacks from Democrats – and many of the speakers defended their efforts to provide a detailed plan for a new Republican administration.

On Thursday, Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita made it clear what he thought of these outside efforts, describing Project 2025 – which many officials from the first Trump administration are part of – as a “pain in the ass”.

“The issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about,” he said.

Eight years ago, when Donald Trump first ran for president, the Republican National Convention in Cleveland was a sometimes chaotic event, with then-establishment conservatives making last-ditch efforts to deny him the nomination.

Trump’s 2024 campaign is run by wily operatives, rather than political fringe characters, and they kept the convention participants on a tight script this week. The party, from the top to the grass-roots, has been fully remade in the former president’s image.

In 2016, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who finished second behind Trump in the primary voting, pointedly declined to endorse the winner, saying only that Republicans should vote their “conscience”. He was roundly booed.

This time around, he started his speech by saying “God bless Donald Trump” and went on to lavish the former president with praise.

Trump’s other Republican critics were nowhere to be found. His former vice-president, Mike Pence, spent the week on holiday in Montana. Senators like Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine stayed home. Former President George W Bush also kept his distance.

On Wednesday, it was Trump’s new vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance, who laid out the core tenets of this new, Trump-dominated Republican Party in his nomination acceptance speech.

“We won’t cater to Wall Street, we’ll commit to the working man,” he said. “We won’t import foreign labour, we’ll fight for American citizens. We won’t buy energy from countries that hate us, we’ll get it right here from American workers. We won’t sacrifice our supply chains to unlimited global trade, we’ll stamp every product ‘Made in the USA.’”

The political festivities in Milwaukee were Trumpism from start to finish – a carefully calibrated machine, promoting the party’s most popular agenda items and focusing criticism on one man, President Joe Biden.

But what if Republicans are going after the wrong guy? A growing number of Democrats have called on Mr Biden to be replaced as their presidential nominee and speculation is growing that he might actually listen.

The Democratic convention isn’t until the end of August, leaving time for the president to step aside either for his running mate, Kamala Harris, or for an open process to select another candidate.

On Thursday evening, the Trump campaign sought to highlight their candidate’s strength and vitality by giving him a raucous entrance, preceded by appearances by former wrestler Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Fighting Championship impresario Dana White and a performance by Kid Rock.

The campaign’s intention – to draw a contrast with Mr Biden’s perceived frailty and target younger male voters – was obvious.

That strategy may be less effective against Ms Harris or one of the more youthful Democratic governors who are mentioned as possible Biden successors.

But for the moment, the Republicans are riding high and optimistic about their victory in November, convinced that the former president’s run of good fortune is just getting started.

Last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford posted a video online with a message for his Canadian province.

It seemed like a typical innocuous political advertisement – Mr Ford sporting a casual black polo shirt and a blue apron, standing at a barbecue grilling burgers, cans of beer at hand.

“It’s summertime in Ontario,” the premier said, beaming into the camera.

Instead, the video was a shot across the bow, with the premier launching an interactive map of local breweries, wineries and distilleries.

It was a strategic move in the midst of liquor labour dispute that has snarled summer alcohol sales in Canada’s most populous province.

For the first time in its history, Ontario’s liquor retailer is on strike. The battle has shone a spotlight on the province’s peculiar and, some say, outdated liquor control system.

On 5 July, the more than 9,000 employees of the provincially-owned Liquor Board of Ontario (LCBO) walked off the job after negotiations for a new collective agreement between their union and Mr Ford’s government fell apart. The LCBO then shuttered all its 650 stores for at least two weeks.

This week, the Ontario Public Services Employees Union (OPSEU) returned to the bargaining table with the province. But talks resumed after another salvo from Mr Ford: the premier has promised to accelerate plans to put canned cocktails in privately-run retailers – the primary sticking point for the union.

For a brief moment on Friday, it seemed the dispute was resolved, after the union representing LCBO workers announced that a tentative deal had been reached that would reopen liquor stores in a few days.

But it backtracked during a scheduled news conference with reporters that lasted just two minutes, during which they claimed that Mr Ford’s government had refused to sign their return-to-work order.

“We were prepared to come here to announce a deal,” said union spokesperson Katie Arnup. “We do not have a deal. The strike continues.”

Soon after, the LCBO told its side of the story: It accused the workers’ union of negotiating in “bad faith”, saying it introduced new demands around money that should have been dealt with at the bargaining table. It also vowed to file an unfair labour complaint against the union, signalling that the fight is not yet over.

The LCBOs scattered through Ontario today – generally well-stocked, clean and some consumers will argue, overpriced – are the product of a nearly century-old decision that gave the Crown corporation control over the distribution and sale of liquor in the province.

For years, the whole system maintained distinctive traces of temperance-era policy.

Customers were required to obtain a separate liquor permit before placing an order with a clerk, who could deny any order they believed was too large. Alcohol was not openly displayed. Stores were hidden away from main streets, and purchases were packed away in discrete paper bags.

Slowly, starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the LCBO evolved into a more consumer-friendly operation, now with wine tasting and free drink samples and a glossy LCBO-branded food and drink magazine. (Though self-service, which allows customers to grab their preferred alcohol directly off store shelves, was only fully phased in by the late 1980s).

Ontarians could get beer from the brewer consortium-owned The Beer Store and, later, in the 1990s, Ontario-made wine from The Wine Rack, owned by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

But for the most part the LCBO has enjoyed an iron-clad monopoly on Ontario alcohol sales.

As most other provinces, like Alberta, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island, moved to liberalise their liquor sales and allow for privately-run stores, Ontario stayed mostly the same.

In 2015, things started to shift. The first grocery stores in Ontario were authorised to sell six-packs of beer – a change described at the time as the biggest shake-up to alcohol sales since Prohibition.

“It was one small purchase for a politician, one giant leap for Ontario beer consumers,” read one article in the Toronto Star of the very first grocery store beer purchase by then Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Today, 450 grocery stores across the province are licensed to sell beer, wine and cider.

So amid the strike, Ontarians are not facing an entirely dry summer. They can still place limited LCBO delivery orders online, and purchase wine, beer and cider from some stores.

A bigger change is now around the corner.

Starting this month, convenience stores, big-box stores and grocers will all be eligible to sell wine, beer, cider and ready-to-drink cocktails like hard seltzers.

OPSEU says pre-made cocktails pose an existential crisis to their business.

“This is our line in the sand and we are making history,” said president JP Hornick on the first day of the strike.

“We are here today because of the Ford government’s plan to try and expand privatisation of alcohol sales… That puts every Ontarian at risk.”

And, OPSEU says, the change threatens the C$2.5bn ($1.83bn; £1.42bn) LCBO sales net for provincial coffers.

But Mr Ford argues the plan will give small businesses a shot at the market while still leaving the LCBO with a considerable competitive advantage.

Under the new plan, the LCBO remains the only retailer of high-alcohol spirits like gin and whisky, as well as the only wholesaler and primary distributor of alcohol in Ontario.

“Keep in mind when, when you’re the wholesaler, that’s where you make money,” the premier said last week.

The proposal also gives Mr Ford a chance to deliver on a pledge in time for the next election, currently scheduled for 2026.

“He campaigned on this,” said Walid Hejazi at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

“It’s a winning issue for the Conservatives,” added Mr Hejazi, who noted he worked as a consultant for the LCBO about 15 years ago.

“The province is proposing a strategy that will lower the price I have to pay and make it more convenient… who doesn’t want cheaper alcohol and more convenience?”

Another problem for the LCBO is that the sting of their strike has been dulled considerably by the small amount of liquor liberalisation the province already has.

Ontarians, for the most part, are not up in arms, with access to alcohol at hundreds of wineries, grocery stores and beer stores that remain open.

“What if you went on strike and hardly anyone noticed?” read the first line of a Globe and Mail editorial.

Public polling has seemed to reflect the ambivalence, with just 15% of Ontarians saying they have been personally affected by the strike.

(A tourism industry group says the strike is affecting the operations of 35% of poll respondents in the sector due to limited product availability and slow fulfillment).

But they aren’t necessarily on Team Ford, either. An internal poll by Mr Ford’s government indicates that while many support liquor liberalisation, a little over half back the strike action.

Many Ontarians did, however, take notice of the Conservative premier’s interactive alcohol retail map, which may have annoyed more voters than the shuttered stores.

The province’s efforts to unveil an alcohol-finder soon after the strike began raised questions about the government’s priorities, with one resident suggesting a better use would be a map of family doctors that are accepting new patients.

Dr Adil Shamji, a provincial Liberal politician, said he “routinely” gets calls from constituents for help finding doctors, childcare or affordable housing.

“Never, including after this strike, have I had people calling my office asking for help in finding booze,” he said.

Dr Shamji said he wants both sides to get back to get a deal done, one with protections for the LCBO.

For his part, Mr Ford says he is ready to keep negotiating but on canned cocktails at least, he is not budging.

“If they want to negotiate over [ready-to-drink beverages], the deal’s off. I’m gonna repeat that: that ship has sailed,” he said.