Vice-President Kamala Harris has secured the support of a majority of Democratic delegates to become the party’s nominee for president.

A survey by the Associated Press on Monday evening said she had received the endorsement of more than the 1,976 delegates needed to win the nomination in the first round of voting.

That means Ms Harris is on course to be crowned the party’s standard bearer and take on Republican Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.

It becomes official when party delegates hold a roll call vote ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago.

Delegates are people who are selected to represent their electoral area. Their pledges of support are non-binding until the vote but unlikely to change.

No-one has publicly stepped forward to challenge Ms Harris since President Joe Biden left the race on Sunday.

He found himself under mounting pressure from senior members of his party following his stumbling debate performance against Trump.

If the total holds between now and when delegates cast their votes, scheduled to take place from 1-7 August, Ms Harris would formally clinch the party’s nomination.

The survey by AP is an indication of the groundswell of support for Ms Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday.

Since Mr Biden’s announcement, millions of dollars in donations have poured into her campaign and leading Democrats have lined up to support her bid as the Democratic nominee.

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• Harris raises record $81m since Biden exit

Speaking to staff at her campaign’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday evening, Ms Harris had Trump in her sights.

Referring to her early career as a prosecutor in California who took on predators and fraudsters, she added: “I know Donald Trump’s type.”

She said the Biden-Harris campaign had always been about two different versions of the future of the country – theirs and Trump’s.

“One focuses on the future, the other focuses on the past,” she said. “Donald Trump wants to take our country backwards… we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”

She also noted Mr Biden’s accomplishments, saying her time serving as his vice-president was “one of the greatest honours of my life”.

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• Who could be Kamala Harris’s running mate?
• What Biden quitting means for Harris, the Democrats and Trump

Before Ms Harris took to the stage, Mr Biden made his first comments since dropping out of the 2024 election via phone call while isolating after contracting Covid-19.

He thanked aides and told them to “embrace” Ms Harris because “she’s the best”.

“I know yesterday’s news was surprising and hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do,” Mr Biden told them.

He vowed to remain fully engaged in the campaign because democracy was at stake.

Meanwhile Trump’s new running mate, Senator JD Vance, attacked both Ms Harris and Mr Biden while campaigning in Virginia.

“History will remember Joe Biden as not just a quitter, which he is, but as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States of America,” he said.

“But my friends, Kamala Harris is a million times worse and everybody knows it. She signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures, and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president.”

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

China will gradually raise its statutory retirement age in the next five years to try to cope with its ageing population and buckling pension system.

Life expectancy in the country has now risen above the United States, to 78 years, from just 36 years at the time of the Communist revolution in 1949.

But China’s retirement age remains one of the lowest in the world – at 60 for men, 55 for women in white-collar jobs and 50 for working-class women.

The plan to raise retirement ages is part of a series of resolutions adopted last week at a five-yearly top-level Communist party meeting, known as the Third Plenum.

“In line with the principle of voluntary participation with appropriate flexibility, we will advance reform to gradually raise the statutory retirement age in a prudent and orderly manner,” the party’s central committee said in a key policy document highlighting the reforms.

It did not specify how much the age of retirement would be raised and by when, but a China Pension Development Report released at the end of 2023 wrote that “65 years old may be the final result after adjustment”.

The plan has been on the cards for a few years, as China’s pension budget dwindles.

The state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in 2019 that the country’s main state pension fund will run out of money by 2035 – and that was an estimate before the Covid-19 pandemic, which hit China’s economy hard.

At the same time, the country’s huge population has fallen for a second consecutive year in 2023 as the birth rate continues to decline.

The state-run Global Times newspaper quoted demographers in China saying that the plan to raise the age of retirement highlights “voluntariness” and “flexibility”, which shows that the authorities acknowledge there is no one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to retirement.

However the plan has drawn some scepticism on the Chinese internet.

“Those who wish to retire early are burnt out from their laborious jobs, but those who are in comfortable, lucrative roles will not choose to retire. What kind of jobs will the younger generation end up with?” one user wrote on Weibo, an X-like platform.

Some said a delayed retirement would only mean delayed access to their pensions. “There is no guarantee that you would still have a job before the statutory retrement age,” one user wrote.

The World Health Organization is “extremely worried” about the possibility of an outbreak of the highly infectious polio virus in Gaza after traces were found in wastewater.

Dr Ayadil Saparbekov, head of the WHO’s team in the Palestinian territories, told reporters that a risk assessment was being implemented and that in the meantime health workers in Gaza were providing protection advice to the 2.3 million population.

But, he added, it would be “very difficult” for people to follow it, given the breakdown of water and sanitation services.

Traces of polio – which is spread through faecal matter – were found in sewage samples collected from two different sites in Gaza a month ago, indicating that the virus may be circulating.

No associated paralytic cases have been recorded so far. But the Israeli military said on Sunday that it had begun vaccinating its soldiers.

The WHO and the UN children’s agency (Unicef) believe a mass vaccination campaign may be needed in Gaza.

However, the repeated delays for aid workers and humanitarian supplies getting into Gaza, and huge security risks moving around the territory, mean an effective campaign will be very challenging.

The Israeli military said it was working with various organisations to deliver vaccines to Palestinians in Gaza. About 300,000 vaccines had been sent to the territory since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas in October, it added.

Polio is caused by a virus which spreads easily through contact with the faeces of an infected person, or less commonly through droplets when they cough or sneeze. It can cause paralysis and, in extreme cases, death.

The WHO says immunisation rates in Gaza and the occupied West Bank were optimal before the conflict. Polio vaccine coverage was estimated at 99% in 2022, although it had declined to 89% last year, according to the latest data.

But, according to the UN agency, the “decimation” of Gaza health system – with only 16 out of the territory’s 36 hospitals partially functional – as well as the “lack of security, access obstruction, constant population displacement, shortages of medical supplies, poor quality of water and weakened sanitation” have contributed to reduce immunisation rates and increase the risk of diseases spreading.

Dr Saparbekov said many people were living in shelters with just one toilet for 600 people, and had little access to safe drinking water.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry warned last Thursday of a “health catastrophe” in response to the detection of polio in what it said was wastewater flowing “between displacement camp tents and in inhabited areas”.

The WHO has stressed that a ceasefire is essential to allow an effective response.

Eight Israeli public health professors made the same appeal in an op-ed published in the Haaretz newspaper on Tuesday, warning that those at greatest risk were Palestinian and Israeli infants who have not completed their required vaccinations.

“We know what needs to be done. It must be done for the sake of all residents of the region. This is not about politics. This is about health and life,” they wrote.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has ordered the shutdown of a sprawling network of online casinos that have been linked to a slew of criminal activities.

Known locally as Pogos, short for Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, these online casinos largely cater to players in mainland China, where gambling is illegal.

But they have also increasingly been found to have been used as a cover for illicit activities, from telephone scams to human trafficking.

They flourished under Mr Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who pushed for friendly ties with China during his term.

In his annual address to parliament on Monday, Mr Marcos called for the “desecration of our country [to] stop”.

“Disguising as legitimate entities, their operations have ventured into illicit areas furthest from gaming such as financial scamming, money laundering, prostitution, human trafficking, kidnapping, brutal torture, even murder,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Philippines’ gaming regulator said it would cancel the licenses of Pogos and wind down the sector by the end of the year.

The Pogo industry is made up of over 400 licensed and unlicensed outfits, employing 40,000 people directly and indirectly, according to government estimates.

The industry brings in an estimated 166.5bn pesos ($2.9bn; £2.2bn) of revenue a year, factoring in tax and gaming revenues – lower than its estimated economic costs of 266bn pesos annually.

The BBC has reached out businesses and employees connected to Pogos, but they have declined to comment.

The alleged link between Pogos and criminal rings came under national spotlight recently after a Pogo in a small town was found to have been a front for a scam centre.

The mayor of the town, Alice Guo, is accused of being a spy for China and is currently believed to be in hiding.

Pogos have also been linked to clandestine hospitals, with authorities saying such hospitals were offering their services to those working in such online casinos, offering plastic surgery services to fugitives and scam centre workers to help them evade arrest.

Since taking over from Mr Duterte, Mr Marcos has reversed Manila’s pivot to China and moved closer to the US, the Philippines’ historic ally.

Some analysts say the ban could also be viewed by some as another attempt to further distance the Philippines from China.

Both countries are currently locked in a territorial dispute over the South China Sea, with tensions increasingly escalating in recent months.

“Pogos’ presence has ceased to be a mere law and order problem. It has been linked to China’s creeping ‘occupation’ of the Philippines for ordinary Filipinos,” Jean Encinas-Franco, a professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman told the BBC.

She added that Mr Marcos’ move will also be seen as a “rebuke to the open Pogo policy of the previous administration”, which could drum up his approval ratings ahead of a crucial mid-term election in 2025.

Locally, the ban has been cheered as being good for business.

Philippines Trade Secretary Alferdo Pascual told local media that it makes the country “more attractive to those who are seeking leisure… because Pogo creates a bad impression, resulting in violence”.

George Barcelon, the chairman of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Pogos is a business “that brings in the kind of people we don’t want. It endangers the moral fibre of our nation”.

Rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have signed a declaration agreeing to form an interim “national reconciliation government” for the occupied West Bank and Gaza after the war with Israel, in a meeting brokered by China, China’s foreign minister and Hamas officials have said.

Representatives from the groups, along with 12 other Palestinian factions, pledged to work for unity after three days of talks in Beijing.

It is the latest of several reconciliation deals Hamas and Fatah have agreed on in their long fractured relationship, none of which have yet led to the end of the schism.

Israel has also ruled out a role for Hamas or Fatah in governing Gaza after the end of hostilities there.

The deep split began in 2007 when Hamas became the sole ruler in Gaza after violently ejecting Fatah from the territory. This came after Palestinian President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Hamas-led unity government formed when Hamas won national elections the year before.

Since then, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority has been left in charge of only parts of the West Bank.

Hamas has lost control in Gaza since the war with Israel began on 7 October with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, in which it killed about 1,200 people and took 251 others back to Gaza as hostages. More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as a result of the Israeli offensive, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

In a statement posted on Telegram, Hamas spokesman Hossam Badran said the declaration was an “additional positive step on the path to achieving Palestinian national unity”.

He said the groups were in agreement on “Palestinian demands relating to ending the war… which are: a ceasefire, complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, relief and reconstruction.”

He said “the most important” part of what was agreed was to form a Palestinian national consensus government “that would manage the affairs of our people in Gaza and the West Bank, supervise reconstruction, and prepare the conditions for elections”.

The declaration is in effect an expression of intent as there are major obstacles to making such an agreement work. Fatah has yet to comment on it, though its representative Mahmoud al-Aloul thanked China for its support of the Palestinian cause following the announcement.

Israel, which has vowed to destroy Hamas before it will end the war, swiftly dismissed the Beijing declaration.

“Instead of rejecting terrorism, Mahmoud Abbas embraces the murderers and rapists of Hamas, revealing his true face,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X.

“In reality, this won’t happen because Hamas’s rule will be crushed, and Abbas will be watching Gaza from afar. Israel’s security will remain solely in Israel’s hands.”

But the lack of success of past deals has not deterred China, which wants to broker peace in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict and sees Palestinian unity as key to that outcome. Beijing previously hosted talks between Hamas and Fatah in April.

“China and Palestine are trustworthy brothers and good partners,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Tuesday, adding that China would “work tirelessly with all relevant parties” towards unity and reconciliation.

“Reconciliation is an internal matter for the Palestinian factions, but at the same time, it cannot be achieved without the support of the international community,” said foreign minister Wang Yi after the declaration was signed, in remarks reported by Reuters news agency.

He also outlined a three-step plan to address the Gaza war: promoting a lasting ceasefire; upholding the “principle of Palestinians governing Palestine”; and recognising the state of Palestine as part of a two-state solution and giving them full UN membership.

China’s support of Palestinian causes stretches back to the era of Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong, who sent weapons to Palestinians in support for so-called “national liberation” movements around the world. Mao even compared Israel to Taiwan – both backed by the US – as bases of Western imperialism.

In their remarks on the latest conflict, Chinese officials and even President Xi Jinping have stressed the need for an independent Palestinian state. Mr Xi has also sent his top diplomats to the Middle East for talks and recently hosted Arab leaders for a conference in Beijing.

The conflict has also erupted at a time when China has ambitions to play a more direct role in international politics and has presented itself as a better suitor for the world than the US. Last year it brokered a deal between Middle East rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia to restore ties for the first time since 2016.

Since then, it has promoted a vision of a Chinese-led world order while criticising what it sees as the failures of US “hegemonic” leadership.

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has presented her coalition government’s first budget after a slim election victory saw the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lose its outright majority in parliament.

The new spending plan has replaced a stop-gap interim budget that came into effect from 1 April.

The budget announcements clearly indicate a shift in priorities for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new dispensation, with ramped up allocations for rural development, skilling, jobs and agriculture.

Here are the six key takeaways from India’s budget:

The budget increased tax on long-term capital gains on all financial and non-financial assets to 12.5% from 10%. Assets held for over a year are considered long term.

Short-term capital gains will now be taxed at 20% instead of 15%.

The budget has also increased the securities transaction tax on derivatives trading.

This was widely expected, with the Economic Survey released a day earlier raising red flags about rising speculation and growing participation of retail investors in Indian equity markets.

Ms Sitharaman has announced three new schemes to address India’s chronic employment challenge that will cost the government 2tn rupees ($24bn; £18.5bn) over the next five years.

First-time job entrants in the formal sector will receive a direct cash transfer equivalent to their monthly salary (or up to a maximum of 15,000 rupees) in addition to their first month’s pay.

Additionally, two more programmes have been announced to boost manufacturing jobs through which the government will provide employment-linked incentives to both employees and employers.

The country’s burgeoning start-up ecosystem will have something to cheer about, with an angel tax levied on capital raised by private companies now abolished.

Minor tweaks were also announced to personal income taxes, with expected savings of up to 17,500 rupees ($209; £162) in outgo for people who opt for the new tax regime.

Corporate tax on foreign companies has also been reduced from 40% to 35% to promote investments.

The budget sought to satisfy spending demands from the BJP’s two key regional allies – Janata Dal (United) of the northern state of Bihar and Telugu Desam Party of southern Andhra Pradesh state – which hold 28 seats in India’s lower house.

The finance minister announced financial support of 150bn rupees for the development of Andhra Pradesh’s capital, with a promise for more money in the coming years.

A slew of new airport, road and power projects were sanctioned in Bihar.

The budget has set a new, reduced target for its fiscal deficit – the amount by which spending exceeds revenue – at 4.9% for this financial year, below the 5.1% announced earlier.

The number is closely watched by ratings agencies and has a direct bearing on interest rates.

A significant dividend payout of more than $25bn from the country’s central bank has enabled the government to reduce its deficit without cutting expenditure significantly.

The outlay on state-led capital expenditure on infrastructure creation has remained unchanged from the $134bn announced in the interim budget.

“However, it is clear the focus has now become more diversified to other areas like employment, small businesses and social welfare,” said Shubhada Rao, economist and founder of QuantEco Research.

The budget is clearly more redistributive in nature, she added, and while there’s not necessarily “more direct cash in the hands of people”, announcements such as salary credits to new employees and minor tax tweaks could improve disposable incomes.

India’s finance ministry expects the economy to grow between 6.5% and 7% in the financial year ending March 2025 – lower than 8.2% last year and below forecasts from the central bank as well as multilateral bodies like the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borell, has stripped Hungary of the right to host the next meeting of foreign and defence ministers over its stance on the war in Ukraine.

It comes weeks after Hungary assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, a role in which it would normally host the event, and amid anger over a meeting Prime Minister Viktor Orban held with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this month.

Mr Borrell said Hungary’s actions should have consequences and that “we have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal”.

Hungary described the move as “completely childish”.

Every six months, under each new council presidency, the EU’s foreign and defence ministers hold informal meetings to discuss the biggest global issues facing the bloc.

The next set of meetings will take place on 28-30 August and were to be held in Budapest, but on Monday Mr Borrell announced they would instead take place in Brussels.

Citing comments made after the meeting with Mr Putin in which Mr Orban accused the EU of having a “pro-war policy”, Mr Borrell told reporters: “If you want to talk about the war party, talk about Putin.

“I can say that all member states – with one single exception – are very much critical about this behaviour.

“I think it was… appropriate to show this feeling and to call for the next foreign and defence council meetings in Brussels.”

Of the 26 other countries in the EU, only Slovakia has backed Hungary in the dispute.

However. Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel, told reporters that he would go to Budapest because a boycott would be “nonsense”. Mr Bettel felt that it was better to tell the Hungarians the EU was unhappy with their actions as “ignoring or not choosing dialogue would be a mistake”.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski proposed that the August meeting should take place in western Ukraine, but that idea was blocked by Budapest.

Responding to Mr Borrell’s decision, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on Facebook: “What a fantastic response they have come up with.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it feels like being in a kindergarten.”

Mr Orban’s meeting with Mr Putin came as part of what he described as a “peace mission” – launched days after Hungary assumed the council presidency – that also saw him visiting the leaders of Ukraine and China, as well as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the US.

The trip sparked condemnation from leaders across the EU, with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen describing it as “nothing but an appeasement mission”.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Mr Orban had “no mandate to negotiate or discuss on behalf of the EU”, while Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the trip sent “the wrong signal to the outside world and is an insult to the Ukrainian people’s fight for their freedom”.

The episode is one of numerous occasions since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on which Hungary has been at odds with most of the rest of the EU about the appropriate response.

After winning re-election in April 2022, just months after the invasion, Mr Orban told a crowd of supporters that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was among the people he would have to “battle” in his fourth term.

Last year, he repeatedly used Hungary’s veto to delay a €50bn (£42bn) package of non-military financial aid to Ukraine.

French police are investigating after an Australian woman said she was raped by five men in in central Paris.

The 25-year-old woman took refuge in a kebab shop in the Pigalle district on Saturday morning with her dress partially torn off, local media reported.

No arrests have yet been made but prosecutors confirmed officers are treating the investigation as “gang rape”.

The incident happened just days before the opening of the 2024 Olympics in the French capital.

According to French newspaper Le Parisien, restaurant owners called for help when they saw the woman’s state.

She was looked after by firefighters following the alleged assault and was later taken to Bichat hospital to be examined by medical professionals.

The Paris Prosecutor’s Office said police were investigating the allegations and that CCTV footage was being looked at.

“The investigation into the charge of gang rape likely to have been committed on the night of 19 to 20 July has been entrusted to the second judicial police district,” it said.

There is currently a huge police presence on the ground in Paris in order to maintain the safety of those in the city during the Olympics, which begin on Friday.

Officers have been patrolling in big numbers since last week in Paris, with armed guards around the River Seine.

Several security zones have also been set up around the city with Paris split into zones.

Anyone wishing to enter certain zones, including the Eiffel Tower, will have to apply for a special games pass on a platform run by police.

A contestant on a US survival reality show killed and ate a protected bird in New Zealand while filming the series, according to local media reports.

The show called Race to Survive, sees contestants largely having to hunt their own food. It filmed its second season in New Zealand.

The bird, a weka, has become extinct over large parts of New Zealand- and is a fully protected species.

The contestant and his teammate were both disqualified from the race as a result.

Contestant Spencer ‘Corry’ Jones was aware he was breaking the rule when he killed and ate the bird, according to news site Radio New Zealand, citing a clip from the show.

In the clip, he was seen to have apologised, saying he made a “foolish” mistake and they “didn’t prepare for the hunger”.

“What I did disrespected New Zealand, and I’m sorry,” he said.

Mr Jones, along with his teammate Oliver Dev, were both disqualified in the eighth episode of the series.

New Zealand’s Department of Conservation said they were alerted by a representative of the production company – US-based Original Productions – shortly after the incident occurred.

Officials conducted an investigation and issued the company and the participant written warnings, citing “unusual group dynamic situation” such as fatigue and significant hunger of the cast members.

“Nonetheless, killing and eating a native protected species in this matter is unacceptable and the company is ‘on notice’ about the need for its programme participants to adhere to conservation legislation,” Dylan Swain, team lead of investigations for the department, said in a statement to 1News.

BBC News has asked Mr Jones and Original Productions for comment.

An iconic large flightless bird, the weka is famous for its feisty and curious personality.

It has become extinct over large tracts of the mainland as a result of changing climatic conditions and rising predator numbers. But they can also be legally hunted on some islands in the country.

A protected species under the Wildlife Act 1953, the maximum penalty for hurting the bird could be either two years imprisonment or a fine of NZD $100,000 ($59,545; £47,467).

Two top executives at Japanese drugmaker Kobayashi Pharmaceutical are stepping down as an investigation continues into 80 deaths that could be linked to some of its products.

The company says president Akihiro Kobayashi and chairman Kazumasa Kobayashi, both members of the firm’s founding family, have resigned.

The decision was made “to clarify executive responsibility” over the issue involving its beni kōji fermented rice products, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical said.

In March, the company recalled five of its products, saying it had received reports of kidney problems from customers.

The company began an investigation after a doctor alerted them to reported health problems in January. It also opened a hotline for customers seeking advice.

Affected customers reported symptoms such as changes in the colour of their urine, swelling in their limbs and fatigue.

Kobayashi Pharmaceutical later said it had found a potentially toxic acid produced by the mould at one of its factories.

Separately, the company’s board of directors said it would “pray for those who died and offer condolences to the bereaved families.”

“We would also like to once again deeply apologise to our customers and business partners,” the statement added.

The company’s head of sustainability policy Satoshi Yamane will be its new president.

Akihiro Kobayashi, who has said he wants to take responsibility for any harm done to customers, will remain at the company to deal with any compensation arrangements.

Beni kōji is rice fermented with monascus purpureus, a species of reddish-purple mould. While advertised as a health supplement for high cholesterol and blood pressure, it is also widely used as a traditional dye for food products.

Sharks off the coast of Brazil have tested positive for cocaine, scientists say.

Marine biologists tested 13 Brazilian sharpnose sharks taken from the shores near Rio de Janeiro and found they tested for high levels of cocaine in their muscles and livers.

The concentrations were as much as 100 times higher than previously reported for other aquatic creatures.

The research, carried out by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, is the first to find the presence of cocaine in sharks.

Experts believe the cocaine is making its way into the waters via illegal labs where the drug is manufactured or through excrement of drug users.

Packs of cocaine lost or dumped by traffickers at sea could also be a source, though this is less likely, researchers say.

Sara Novais, a marine eco-toxicologist at the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre of the Polytechnic University of Leiria, told Science magazine that the findings are “very important and potentially worrying”.

All females in the study were pregnant, but the consequences of cocaine exposure for the foetuses are unknown, experts say.

Further research is required to ascertain whether cocaine is changing the behaviour of the sharks.

However, previous research has shown that drugs were likely to have similar effects on animals as they do on humans.

Last year, chemical compounds including benzoylecgonine, which is produced by the liver after cocaine use, were found in seawater samples collected off the south coast of England.

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has blamed her political opponents for the deadly unrest in the country, adding she was “forced” to impose a curfew for public safety.

“We will lift the curfew whenever the situation gets better,” she said on Monday in a meeting with business leaders in the capital Dhaka.

Security forces are accused of excessive force against student protesters, in which more than 150 people have been killed in the past week. Police have arrested over 1,000 people, including several senior opposition leaders.

Ms Hasina’s comments came a day after Bangladesh’s top court scrapped most of the quotas on government jobs, meeting a key demand of protesters. The rallies have sparked one of the deadliest outbreaks of violence in the country for years and escalated into calls for Ms Hasina to quit.

Ms Hasina has blamed the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Jamaat-e-Islami and their student wings for the violence, saying her government will work to “suppress these militants and create a better environment”.

Political analysts see the unrest as an unprecedented test for one of Asia’s most powerful women.

Ms Hasina, 76, secured her fourth straight term as prime minister in January, in a controversial election boycotted by the country’s main opposition parties.

“The over-politicisation of the spirit of the liberation war by Sheikh Hasina and her party, the denial of basic voting rights to citizens year after year, and the dictatorial nature of her regime have angered a large section of society,” said Mubashar Hasan, a research fellow at the University of Oslo who studies authoritarianism in Asia.

“Unfortunately, she never became the prime minister for everyone in the country. Instead, she remained the leader of just one group,” he told BBC Bangla.

Before Sunday’s court decision, Bangladesh reserved about 30% of its high-paying government jobs for relatives of those who fought in Bangladesh’s war for independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The court ruled that 93% of roles would now be filled on merit.

Ms Hasina is the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Her government abolished the reservation in 2018, following protests. But a court ordered the authorities to reinstate the quotas in June, triggered fresh unrest.

The protests by mostly university students began about two weeks ago. They say the system unfairly benefits the children of pro-government groups and they have called for it to be replaced with merit-based recruitment.

Ms Hasina initially dismissed the protestors’ concerns, which analysts say exacerbated the unrest. On 14 July, she continued to justify the quota system by reinforcing the divide between the descendants of pro-liberation and anti-liberation forces.

“Why do [the protesters] have so much resentment towards the freedom fighters? If the grandchildren of the freedom fighters don’t get quota benefits, should the grandchildren of Razakars get the benefit?” she said at a press conference.

The Razakars – a derogatory label in Bangladesh – refer to a paramilitary force made up of Bangladeshis who fought on the side of Pakistan during the 1971 war. The group is also accused of heinous crimes during the conflict, which saw atrocities committed on all sides.

Ms Hasina’s comments galvanised even more protesters within hours. Thousands of students took to the streets of Dhaka that night protesting against the prime minister’s remarks.

Over the next few days, many more held rallies across the country. Numerous fires were lit across the country, including at the state broadcaster BTV.

More than 1,000 people have also been arrested in the past two weeks, which saw authorities calling in the military and imposing a nationwide curfew.

The country’s mobile internet and text message services have been suspended for at least five days in an attempt to quell the protests.

Some student leaders have vowed to continue protesting to demand justice for protesters killed and detained in recent days. They are also seeking the resignation of government ministers and an apology from Ms Hasina.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the US this week under pressure to end the Gaza war, from both Israelis and the US administration. How might the political turbulence in Washington shape the trip and future relations?

Mr Netanyahu is set to meet Joe Biden – if the president has recovered from Covid-19 – and address a joint session of Congress, the only foreign leader to do so for a fourth time.

The trip offers him a platform for a reset with Washington after months of tensions over his hardline approach to the war, and an opportunity to try and convince Israelis that he hasn’t undermined relations with their most important ally.

But it is overshadowed by President Biden’s decision not to seek re-election, highlighting political uncertainties about Israel’s next partner in the White House and possibly eclipsing some of the attention on Mr Netanyahu’s visit.

The prime minister got a lot of unwelcome attention in Israel until the moment he boarded the plane.

A drumbeat of protests demanded that he stay home and focus on a ceasefire deal with Hamas to free Israeli hostages.

“Until he has signed the deal that’s on the table, I do not see how he picks up and flies across the Atlantic to address the American political chaos,” said Lee Siegel, one of the family members who has come out to demonstrate. His 65-year-old brother Keith is a captive in Gaza.

The trip is a political move, he added, unless Mr Netanyahu stops being a “hurdle” and signs the ceasefire agreement.

Mr Siegel reflected a widespread view that Mr Netanyahu is slow-rolling the process for his own political reasons, roiling his negotiators when he recently threw new conditions into talks that seemed to be making progress.

The prime minister has been accused of bowing to pressure from two far-right cabinet ministers who’ve threatened to bring down his government if he makes concessions to Hamas.

These perceptions have added to frustrations in the White House, which announced the latest formula for talks and had been expressing optimism an agreement could be achieved.

Mr Biden remains one of the most pro-Israel presidents to sit in the Oval Office, a self-declared Zionist who’s been lauded by Israelis for his support and empathy, cemented by his flight to Israel just days after the Hamas attacks on 7 October.

But since then, he’s grown alarmed at the cost of Mr Netanyahu’s demand for a “total victory” against Hamas in Gaza.

The administration is frustrated with the Israeli prime minister for rejecting a post war solution that involves pursuing a Palestinian state.

It’s angry with him for resisting appeals to do more to protect Palestinian civilians and increase the flow of aid to them. It’s facing a domestic backlash over the mounting death toll in Gaza. And it’s worried that the conflict is spreading to the region.

As Joe Biden’s presidency weakened in the swirl of controversy over his abilities, analysts said there might be less room for him to keep up the pressure on the Israeli prime minister.

But Mr Biden’s decision to drop out of the race could actually have strengthened his hand, says Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister and a critic of Mr Netanyahu.

“He is not a lame duck in regard to foreign policy, in a way he’s more independent (because) he doesn’t have to take into account any impact on the voters,” Mr Barak told the BBC.

“With regard to Israel probably he feels more of a free hand to do what really needs to be done.”

Mr Barak believes it was a mistake for Congress to invite Mr Netanyahu to speak, saying that many Israelis blame him for policy failures that allowed the Hamas attack to happen, and three out of four want him to resign.

“The man does not represent Israel,” he said. “He lost the trust of Israelis…And it kind of sends a wrong signal to Israelis, probably a wrong signal to Netanyahu himself, when the American Congress invites him to appear as if he is saving us.”

Whatever politics he may be playing, Mr Netanyahu insists military pressure must continue because it has significantly weakened Hamas after a series of strikes against the military leadership.

In comments before departing Israel, he suggested that would be the tone of his meeting with President Biden.

“It will also be an opportunity to discuss with him how to advance in the months ahead the goals that are important for both our countries,” he said, “achieving the release of all our hostages, defeating Hamas, confronting the terror axis of Iran and its proxies and ensuring that all Israel’s citizens return safely to their homes in the north and in the south.”

He’s expected to bring the same message to congress, “seeking to anchor the bipartisan support that is so important to Israel”.

The reality is that Mr Netanyahu’s policies have dented that bipartisan support. The Republicans are rallying around him, but criticism from Democrats has grown.

The Democratic Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer caused a small earthquake in Washington recently when he stood up in the chambers and said Mr Netanyahu was one of the obstacles standing in the way of a lasting peace with Palestinians.

“I hope the prime minister understands the anxiety of many members in congress and addresses them,” the former US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, told the BBC at the weekend. He’d been addressing one of the many rallies demanding a hostage release.

That includes “on humanitarian issues and to articulate that this fight isn’t with the Palestinian people, it’s with Hamas.”

It’s a message that Kamala Harris would repeat if she were to become the Democratic nominee. There’d be no change in US policy: a commitment to Israel’s security while pushing for an end to the Gaza conflict and a plan for the Day After embedded in a regional peace with Arab states.

But there might be a difference in tone.

Ms Harris does not share Mr Biden’s long history with and emotional ties to Israel. She’s from a different generation and “could more closely align with the sentiments of younger elements of the Democratic party,” says Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East.

“That’s a stance more likely to include restrictions on weapons, on munitions from the United States for use in Gaza,” he said.

Mr Netanyahu could very well use the visit to steer the conversation from the controversy over Gaza to the threat from Iran, a topic with which he’s far more comfortable, especially after the recent escalation with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But his main audience will be domestic, says Tal Shalev, the diplomatic correspondent at Israel’s Walla News.

He wants to revive his image as “Mr America,” she says, the man who can best present Israel to the US, and to restore his image which was shattered by the October 7 attacks.

“When he goes to the US and speaks in front of Congress and [has] a meeting in the White House, for his electoral base, it’s the old Bibi is back again,” she says, referring to the prime minister by his nickname. “This is not the failed Bibi who was responsible for the seventh of October. This is the old Bibi who goes to the Congress and gets the standing ovations.”

It also gives him an opportunity to pursue connections with the former President Donald Trump at a time of great political flux in Washington.

“Netanyahu wants President Trump to win,” she says, “And he wants to make sure that he and President Trump are on good terms before the election.”

There is a widespread view that Mr. Netanyahu is playing for time, hoping for a Trump win that might ease some of the pressure he’s been facing from the Biden administration.

“There is a near-universal perception that Netanyahu is eager for a Trump victory, under the assumption that he will then be able to do whatever he wants,” writes Michael Koplow of Israel’s Policy Forum.

“No Biden pressuring him on a ceasefire or on West Bank settlements and settler violence… There are many reasons to doubt this reading of the landscape under a Trump restoration, but Netanyahu likely subscribes to it.”

The question is whether that pressure from Biden will ease as he steps away from the presidential race, or whether he will in fact use his remaining months in office to focus on achieving an end to the Gaza war.

On Tuesday, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s coalition government will present its first federal budget following a narrow election victory.

A weakened Mr Modi, reliant for the first time on coalition partners, is widely expected to usher in a reset in his spending policies, while maintaining fiscal prudence.

Analysts suggest the new government may need to focus more sharply on the rural majority, who have not benefitted as much as the wealthy from the country’s rapidly growing GDP.

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The fact that this is Mr Modi’s third term will preoccupy him with thoughts of leaving a lasting legacy and may “tempt” him to do something about economic prosperity for the masses, says Rathin Roy, a former member of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council.

“It is the one area where his legacy will say he has conspicuously failed in the past.”

In the 10 years that he’s been in power, Mr Modi has poured billions of dollars into state funded infrastructure, building sea bridges and expressways. He’s also undertaken tax cuts for big corporations and launched subsidy schemes to incentivise exports-focused manufacturing.

India’s shaky macro economy has stabilised and its stock markets have soared.

But so have inequality and rural distress.

BMW cars have logged their highest sales ever in the first half of this year even as overall consumption growth has been the lowest in two decades.

Wages have stagnated, household savings have dropped and well-paying jobs remain out of reach for most Indians.

India’s regional imbalances are also stark. A majority of the country lives in northern and eastern India where per capita incomes are lower than Nepal, and health, mortality and life expectancy worse than Burkina Faso, according to Mr Roy.

Nine in 10 economists now say chronic joblessness is the biggest challenge confronting Modi 3.0. A post-election survey shows seven in 10 Indians support taxing the super-rich and eight in 10 economists believe growth has not been inclusive.

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Travelling through northern India’s agrarian heartland, the fate of its rural majority sticks out in sharp contrast with those living in its cities.

Muzaffarnagar in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh is barely a few hours away from the Indian capital, Delhi. Barring the state-of-the-art highway that cuts through the expansive open fields, it feels like a region that’s been largely bypassed by the country’s shiny economic boom.

Sushil Pal’s family has tilled the plains of Behra Asa village for generations. It’s hard toil that hardly pays anymore, he told the BBC.

Mr Pal didn’t vote for Mr Modi’s party this time despite supporting it in the previous two elections. The prime minister’s promise to double farm incomes, he says, has remained just that – a promise.

“My income has gone down. The costs for inputs and labour have gone up but not for my crop,” Mr Pal said. “They only marginally increased procurement prices for cane before the elections.

“All the money I make goes in paying school and college fees for my sons. One is an engineer but hasn’t had a job for two years,” he said.

Down the road from his field, an export-focused furniture workshop has seen its turnover drop by 80% in the past five years as global orders dried up following a post-Covid sales bump.

Rajneesh Tyagi, the owner, said he would have liked to sell locally to mitigate the lull overseas, but continuing rural distress means there’s no demand for his products.

“The farm economy is down and the biggest problem in growing local demand is high debt among the farmers and unemployment,” he added. “They have no capacity to buy anything”.

Mr Tyagi’s business represents a wide universe of micro enterprises that form the backbone of India’s economy. India Ratings, a credit ratings agency, estimates 6.3 million enterprises have shut down between 2015 and 2023, costing 16 million informal jobs.

In contrast, profits reported by India’s 5,000 listed companies rose sharply by 187% between 2018 and 2023, spruced up in part because of tax cuts, according to commentator Vivek Kaul.

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Bridging such gaping divides between the formal and informal parts of the economy and bringing prosperity to India’s villages will be the biggest challenges for Mr Modi as he embarks on a third term in office.

His first post-election budget may see a “tilt” towards welfarism though not necessarily a pivot away from more capital spending on big infrastructure projects, economists at Goldman Sachs said in a note.

A larger-than-expected dividend transfer from the central bank (0.3% of GDP) will enable the government to boost welfare spending and maintain capex, with a focus on rural economy and job creation, says the Wall Street bank.

Even those who manage money for some of India’s wealthiest concur with this view.

Rajesh Saluja, CEO and managing director of ASK Private Wealth, says poverty reduction will most likely be on the government’s budget agenda and it can be done “without upsetting the fiscal math”, given the strong revenues and tax collections.

But economists warn more cash handouts are a poor substitute for real reform-led development. About 800 million Indians already live on free grain and some states spend close to 10% of their revenues on welfare schemes.

The budget will have to lay out a vision for how the government plans to put millions into the workforce and create earning potential.

“The reduced footprint of the unorganised sector has implications for employment generation. Therefore, a judicious mix of policy which allows coexistence of both formal and informal sectors needs to be pursued in the interim,” says Sunil Kumar Sinha, principal economist at India Ratings.

India should also incentivise low-end, labour intensive manufacturing in sectors such as textiles and agri-food processing to address its massive domestic demand, Mr Roy says.

Economists at India’s largest bank SBI have suggested extending production-linked incentives Mr Modi has offered to exports-oriented sectors to small enterprises.

“So far, when we think of manufacturing, we are thinking of posh people. We are thinking of supercomputers. We are thinking of getting Apple to come and make a few iPhones here,” Mr Roy said.

“These are not things that 70% of India’s population consumes. We should produce in India what 70% of India’s population wants to consume. If I’m able to make 200-rupee ($2.4, £1.8) shirts in this country and not let that import demand leak to Bangladesh and Vietnam, it will boost manufacturing.”

Kamala Harris has overhauled her campaign’s online presence by embracing a social media trend inspired by pop star Charli XCX’s Brat album cover.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has scattered references to the album across her campaign’s account, renaming her profile Kamala HQ.

Her rebrand comes as Charli showed her support by tweeting “kamala IS brat” shortly after President Joe Biden announced he was stepping out of the race for the White House and endorsed his vice-president.

By Monday morning, Ms Harris had seized on Charli’s backing – with the account sporting a new lime green photo in the style of the Brat album cover.

Brat is the name of Charli’s sixth studio album and her tweet about Vice-President Harris received almost nine million views in just four hours.

The album’s artwork is a lime green square with the word brat written in the middle in a low resolution Arial font.

Charli told the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast that brat is a concept that represents a person who might have “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”.

It has been deemed by some pop critics as a rejection of the “clean girl” aesthetic popularised on TikTok, which spurned a groomed ideal of femininity, and instead embraces more hedonistic and rebellious attitudes.

“You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things some times,” Charli explained on social media.

“Who feels like herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”

The #bratsummer trend has nearly one million posts on TikTok and the lime green theme has been used by thousands of individuals and businesses.

In recent weeks – as pressure to drop out of the race grew on President Biden following several public errors – supporters of Ms Harris have been producing videos that combine clips of her speaking with songs from Charli’s album.

One of the most recent viral videos shows Ms Harris telling a story about her mother during a White House event in 2023.

She said: “My mother used to – she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’

“You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

Supporters of the vice-president are now posting memes of coconut trees.

Kamala HQ’s X account has also started to repost memes (which often feature a recognisable image or video clip, paired with a witty caption or phrase) and swear words.

In other words, Ms Harris is very much appealing to younger voters who now, thanks in part to Charli XCX, see her as the “cool girl” option.

On Sunday, just hours after Joe Biden announced that he was stepping down from the 2024 presidential race and would be endorsing Harris, the campaign officially filed to alter its name.

Reflecting the change, the Biden-Harris campaign page on X implemented its new branding.

It was previously called Biden-Harris HQ and had leant heavily into internet memes about President Joe Biden.

New documents filed with the Federal Election Commission stated that the campaign would be known as ‘Harris for President’ and that Ms Harris would be conducting business as a presidential, not vice-presidential, candidate.

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Scientists have discovered “dark oxygen” being produced in the deep ocean, apparently by lumps of metal on the seafloor.

About half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean. But, before this discovery, it was understood that it was made by marine plants photosynthesising – something that requires sunlight.

Here, at depths of 5km, where no sunlight can penetrate, the oxygen appears to be produced by naturally occurring metallic “nodules” which split seawater – H2O – into hydrogen and oxygen.

Several mining companies have plans to collect these nodules, which marine scientists fear could disrupt the newly discovered process – and damage any marine life that depends on the oxygen they make.

“I first saw this in 2013 – an enormous amount of oxygen being produced at the seafloor in complete darkness,” explains lead researcher Prof Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science. “I just ignored it, because I’d been taught – you only get oxygen through photosynthesis.

“Eventually, I realised that for years I’d been ignoring this potentially huge discovery,” he told BBC News.

He and his colleagues carried out their research in an area of the deep sea between Hawaii and Mexico – part of a vast swathe of seafloor that is covered with these metal nodules. The nodules form when dissolved metals in seawater collect on fragments of shell – or other debris. It’s a process that takes millions of years.

And because these nodules contain metals like lithium, cobalt and copper – all of which are needed to make batteries – many mining companies are developing technology to collect them and bring them to the surface.

But Prof Sweetman says the dark oxygen they make could also support life on the seafloor. And his discovery, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, raises new concerns about the risks of proposed deep-sea mining ventures.

The scientists worked out that the metal nodules are able to make oxygen precisely because they act like batteries.

“If you put a battery into seawater, it starts fizzing,” explained Prof Sweetman. “That’s because the electric current is actually splitting seawater into oxygen and hydrogen [which are the bubbles]. We think that’s happening with these nodules in their natural state.”

“It’s like a battery in a torch,” he added. “You put one battery in, it doesn’t light up. You put two in and you’ve got enough voltage to light up the torch. So when the nodules are sitting at the seafloor in contact with one another, they’re working in unison – like multiple batteries.”

The researchers put this theory to the test in the lab, collecting and studying the potato-sized metal nodules. Their experiments measured the voltages on the surface of each metallic lump – essentially the strength of the electric current. They found it to be almost equal to the voltage in a typical AA-sized battery.

This means, they say, that the nodules sitting on the seabed could generate electric currents large enough to split, or electrolyse, molecules of seawater.

The researchers think the same process – battery-powered oxygen production that requires no light and no biological process – could be happening on other moons and planets, creating oxygen-rich environments where life could thrive.

The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, where the discovery was made, is a site already being explored by a number of seabed mining companies, which are developing technology to collect the nodules and bring them to a ship at the surface.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has warned that this seabed mining could “result in the destruction of life and the seabed habitat in the mined areas”.

More than 800 marine scientists from 44 countries have signed a petition highlighting the environmental risks and calling for a pause on mining activity.

New species are being discovered in the deep ocean all the time – it is often said that we know more about the surface of the Moon than we do about the deep sea. And this discovery suggests that the nodules themselves could be providing the oxygen to support life there.

Prof Murray Roberts, a marine biologist from the Univerisity of Edinburgh is one of the scientists who signed the seabed mining petition. “There’s already overwhelming evidence that strip mining deep-sea nodule fields will destroy ecosystems we barely understand,” he told BBC News.

“Because these fields cover such huge areas of our planet it would be crazy to press ahead with deep-sea mining knowing they may be a significant source of oxygen production.”

Prof Sweetman added: “I don’t see this study as something that will put an end to mining.

“[But] we need to explore it in greater detail and we need to use this information and the data we gather in future if we are going to go into the deep ocean and mine it in the most environmentally friendly way possible.”

Hear on this story on the 5 Questions On podcast on BBC Sounds

Within seconds of shots ringing out at Donald Trump’s campaign rally in western Pennsylvania, at least five protective agents in dark suits, white shirts and sunglasses sprinted into view. They leapt on stage where Trump stood, throwing themselves on top of him and shielding him from view, before ushering him into a waiting car.

It looked like a picture of bravery, and of rigorous training. And yet, the near-miss that preceded the heroic scene is deemed by some to have been the worst security breach since the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

“It was a failed mission,” said Cheryl Tyler, a former Secret Service special agent and training instructor for the service. “It’s unacceptable.”

President Joe Biden on Sunday called for an “independent review” of security measures at the rally. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said Congress would conduct its own investigation into any “lapses” in security. And Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, has been called to testify before lawmakers at a hearing on Monday.

But experts say last week’s episode will bring fresh scrutiny to the agency’s history, too, which includes a sometimes spotty record of mishaps and scandals that have risked the reputation of the presidents’ protectors.

The Secret Service is tasked with a high-stakes and so-called zero-fail mission: to safeguard the US president, past presidents, presidential candidates and their families, at all costs.

“The training is not easy. It’s rigorous and it’s long,” said Ms Tyler, who was the first black female agent assigned to a president’s protective service. “It’s not a 9 to 5 job. It is a lifestyle. It is a dedication to this country.”

Since the 1968 assassination of Robert F Kennedy, who was shot and killed in the midst of his presidential campaign, the service has delivered on that high-stakes mission, she said. Those years of success allowed the agents to somewhat fade from view as only a quiet, stoic presence somewhere along the perimeter.

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“It’s almost as if you can forget about them when they’re doing their job,” said Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, who is writing a book on failed presidential assassination attempts. “But the Secret Service’s mistakes? Everyone learns about them.”

And the agency has had its fair share of those.

Beginning around 2011, the Secret Service suffered a series of lapses, ranging from the embarrassing to the downright alarming.

In November that year, a man named Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired multiple shots from a semi-automatic rifle at the White House – meant to be one of the most closely-guarded properties in the world. And yet, the Secret Service was unaware for several days that at least seven bullets had hit the residence, while then-President Barack Obama’s daughter slept inside.

In 2014, there was another major breach at the White House. Armed with a knife, Army veteran Omar Gonzalez jumped a fence onto the grounds and entered the White House through the front door and ran through much of the main floor before being tackled by an agent.

A year later, in 2015, a drunk Secret Service agent drove a car through the White House compound, hitting a security barricade. In an unfortunate coincidence, security on the grounds had been on high-alert after someone had placed a package on the premises, and claimed it was a bomb. The drunk agent drove within inches of the suspicious package, according to a congressional report.

And in another infamous episode from April 2012, reports emerged that several agents had solicited prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, ahead of then-President Barack Obama’s visit.

Prostitution is legal in certain pockets of the country, but the incident – which reportedly followed a long night of heavy drinking – raised security and clearance concerns. It also added to the growing impression of the agency as a raucous fraternity, experts said.

A subsequent investigation by the House Oversight Committee found an email from a senior supervisor to 54 employees that his motto for the trip was “una mas cervesa por favor” – or, “one more beer, please”. After an investigation, 10 agents were relieved from duty, with their security clearances revoked.

By 2015, a House Oversight Committee report on the agency had declared it as being in crisis.

“The incidents that we saw seemed like they were symptomatic of much larger problems at the Secret Service,” the report read.

“Wheels up, ring off”, was reportedly a running joke in the agency, meaning that on foreign assignments, marriage and other commitments were left behind at home.

The atmosphere was demoralising for those agents who did work hard, according to the report. “For people who are serious about national security, about protection, [that reputation] is so embarrassing.”

Experts say the attempted assassination of Donald Trump will force a reckoning.

Ms Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, said ahead of the hearing that she would cooperate fully with any congressional or independent review into her agency.

Director Cheatle “knows she’s going to be grilled”, said Ms Tyler, the former agent. “Records will be pulled, training records will be pulled, shooting records will be pulled, personnel actions will be pulled… They’re going to look at every single thing.”

And the agency will be forced to reform, Ms Tyler said.

“Will it be in the headlines of the newspaper? No, because they’re not going to tell you. But there will be changes.”

The path for Vice-President Kamala Harris to secure the Democratic presidential nomination is clearing.

That may end up being the easy part. The most formidable challenge – defeating Republican nominee Donald Trump in November – is still to come. Her elevation to the top of ticket would bring new strengths for the Democrats, but it also exposes weaknesses that were less of a concern with Mr Biden.

According to recent polls, Ms Harris trails the former president slightly – a roughly similar position to the one Mr Biden found himself in before his historic announcement. But there may be more room for those numbers to shift as we move from a hypothetical matchup to a very real one.

For at least a moment, Democrats have a jolt of energy after more than three weeks of intense hand-wringing over the president’s fitness and ability to sustain his campaign.

All of Ms Harris’s leading potential rivals for the nomination have endorsed her, as has former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – who remains one of the most influential players in Democratic politics.

This is, still, shaping up to be a tight race in November – a condition that reflects deep partisan trenches in American politics and the distaste many voters have for Trump as a candidate.

The vice-president’s primary challenge – and opportunity – will be to capitalise on this Trump aversion, attract centrist voters in key swing states and energise the Democratic base, which was in the past few weeks swinging towards despair, to match the enthusiasm many on the right hold for the former president.

This renewed sense of Democratic presidential enthusiasm comes with a dollar sign attached. According to the Harris campaign, the vice-president raised more than $80m (£62m) in new donations in the 24 hours since Mr Biden’s announcement – the biggest one-day total of any candidate this election cycle. That, along with the nearly $100m she inherits from the Biden-Harris fundraising coffers, gives her a firm financial footing for the campaign to come.

Ms Harris, if she becomes the nominee, also defuses one of the most effective attacks the Republicans have levelled against their opponent: his age.

For months, the Trump campaign has been pounding Mr Biden for being feeble and easily confused – characterisations that were reinforced for many Americans after the president’s halting debate performance four weeks ago.

The vice-president, at age 59, will be a more energetic campaigner and able to make a more coherent case for her party. She could also turn the 78-year-old Trump’s age against him, as he would become the oldest person ever elected president.

Ms Harris may also be able to shore up support from black voters, who polls indicate had been drifting away from Mr Biden in recent months. If she can combine that with more backing from other minorities and younger voters – Barack Obama’s winning coalition from 2008 and 2012 – it could help her gain ground against Trump in the handful of swing states that will decide this year’s election.

Her background as a prosecutor could also burnish tough-on-crime credentials. While her law-enforcement resume was a liability when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019 – and led to derisive “Kamala is a cop” attacks from the left – it could help her in a campaign against Trump.

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The vice-president has also been the administration’s point person on abortion, which has proven to be one of the most potent issues for motivating the Democratic base in recent elections. Mr Biden, by contrast, sometimes had been a reluctant advocate on the issue, hampered by a past record of supporting some limits on the procedure.

“I think she reminds suburban women across the country, particularly in those battleground states, of what’s at stake with reproductive rights,” former New York congressman Steve Israel, who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the BBC’s Americast podcast.

“We have established a fundamental reset in the campaign.”

For all Harris’s potential strengths, there is a reason why some Democrats were initially reluctant to push Mr Biden to step aside, given that his running mate would be the clear successor.

Despite generating Democratic enthusiasm on the subject of abortion, Ms Harris’s record as vice-president has been mixed. Early in the administration, she was set the task of addressing the root causes of the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border. A number of missteps and misstatements – including a ham-handed June 2021 interview with NBC News presenter Lester Holt – damaged her standing and opened her to conservative attacks.

Republicans are already condemning her as the president’s “border czar”, attempting to make her the face of what public opinion polls have found is the Biden administration’s unpopular immigration policies.

“Immigration is a soft spot for Democrats in those battleground areas,” Mr Israel said. “This is a very salient issue for voters living in those suburbs, fairly or unfairly. They believe that our immigration system is not managed strongly enough.”

The Trump campaign will also try to turn the vice-president’s prosecutorial background against her – both by highlighting the former president’s record of enacting criminal justice reform and by attacking her past prosecutorial and parole decisions.

Another Harris vulnerability is her chequered track record as a candidate. In her 2016 Senate bid, she faced only token opposition from Republicans in deeply Democratic California.

Her one solo run for national office – a bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – ended in ruins. While she surged early, a combination of fumbled interviews, a lack of clearly defined vision and a poorly managed campaign led her to drop out before even the earliest primary contests.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for Ms Harris is that, unlike the president, she is not the incumbent. While she might have the opportunity to distance herself from some of the more unpopular elements of Mr Biden’s record, she also does not have the luxury of being a known quantity for voters.

Expect a furious effort by Republicans to paint Ms Harris as too untested and too risky to be president. In effect, Trump now has a greater claim to being the only proven commodity.

The vice-president has a chance, in the days ahead, to make a new first impression with the American public. If she stumbles out of the gate, it could open the door to an extended power struggle that stretches into the Democrat’s national convention in late August. They could end up with the party uniting behind a different candidate – or tearing itself apart.

As the past four weeks have shown, fortunes in the White House race can shift quickly and permanently. Ms Harris has punched her ticket to the biggest stage in American politics – now she has to show she can compete.

BBC analysis has uncovered the extent of damage caused by nine months of fighting between the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel.

Satellite photos, radar imagery and records of military activity show that entire communities have been displaced, with thousands of buildings and large swathes of open land damaged on the border between Israel and Lebanon.

Both sides have so far stopped short of all-out war, but evidence shows that near daily attacks have left communities in both Israel and Lebanon devastated.

The current fighting began when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli positions, which the group said was in solidarity with the Palestinians, a day after the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war. Israel’s military offensive on Gaza was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Data gathered by the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled) and analysed by the BBC suggest both sides together carried out a combined 7,491 cross-border attacks between 8 October 2023 and 5 July 2024. These figures indicated that Israel has carried out around five times as many as Hezbollah.

The UN says the attacks have forced more than 90,000 people in Lebanon from their homes, with around 100 civilians and 366 Hezbollah fighters killed in Israeli strikes.

In Israel, officials say 60,000 civilians have had to abandon their homes and 33 people have been killed, including 10 civilians, because of attacks by Hezbollah.

Analysis reveals more than 60% of the border communities in Lebanon have suffered some kind of damage as a result of Israeli air and artillery strikes. As of 10 July, more than 3,200 buildings may have suffered damage.

The findings were put together by Corey Scher of City University of New York Graduate Center. They are based on comparisons of two separate images, revealing changes in the height or structure of buildings which suggests damage.

The towns of Aita el Shaab, Kfar Kila and Blida appear to have been among the worst affected.

Aita el Shaab has been extensively hit, with at least 299 attacks since October, according to Acled.

Buildings along the main road of the town, including restaurants and shops have particularly suffered damage.

The BBC spoke to the mayor of Aita el Shaab, who described the town “as if it was hit by an earthquake”.

Majed Tehini said 17 people from the town have been killed in the Israeli strikes, including two civilians.

He left Aita el Shaab with his family immediately after the hostilities started in October last year, but he said he returned almost every fortnight, mainly to attend funerals.

“Every time I visit, I feel it has changed. The sight of the destruction is just terrible,” he told the BBC.

“The houses of Aita have become mere structures. The destroyed ones have been reduced to rubble. Those still standing are uninhabitable”, he added.

Mr Tehini recalled seeing the town destroyed in the past, mainly in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, but he says the bombs have caused much bigger destruction this time.

He explained that all the infrastructure has been damaged, including the electrical grid and the water supply system.

“Our house is still standing. But it’s just by appearance. It’s all ruined”. he added

More than 200 attacks targeted Kfar Kila, damaging several supermarkets and service shops in the central area of the town, according to Acled

Blida town has also been hit at least 130 times since October, damaging several buildings as well as a pharmacy, according to Acled.

The damage has been focused on the central part of the town where the main services, shops and facilities are located.

Dr Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow for Middle East security at Rusi said Israel is targeting towns in the border area because these are areas where it says Hezbollah is deeply entrenched.

“Israel believes that they have sufficient documented evidence that there are a network for fortifications and tunnels in the vicinity of homes.”

She said Israel is targeting this area to send a message to Hezbollah that they “should not be there”, but believes Hezbollah would find it unthinkable to evacuate.

“The US has been trying to find a middle ground, such as getting Hezbollah to withdraw four miles from the border. Hezbollah has rejected this.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC it has carried out strikes against military targets to “remove the threat posed by Hezbollah to Israel, its citizens, and their homes”.

Across the border, buildings in northern Israel have also been destroyed by strikes from the other side.

Israeli media has reported more than 1000 buildings have been damaged since October. The IDF and the Israeli Ministry of Defence were contacted, but did not want to comment.

But it’s the destruction of land which has been significant here.

The BBC has used data supplied by Dr He Yin at Kent State University to examine the amount of land damaged by the huge wildfires that have been sparked by the cross-border attacks.

Dr Yin processed data from publicly available satellite images filmed in near-infrared and shortwave infrared (which are outside the visible spectrum) to identify areas that are suspected to have been burned.

This was checked against satellite photographs and local news reports.

Huge amounts of land have been burnt in both countries, but the BBC estimates that Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights have been hit hardest, with around 55 sq km (21 sq miles) of land affected, compared to 40 sq km for Lebanon.

Some recent estimates by Israel’s Nature and Park Authority have put this figure as high as 87 sq km.

The pattern of damage shows that many of the areas burnt are set back from the border, which reflects the use of large numbers of unguided weapons by Hezbollah. These have been fired at civilian areas and military bases which aren’t immediately next to the frontier. If Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome system detects that missiles will not land in populated areas, it does not intercept, leaving the missiles to land in the open.

It results in extensive damage to agricultural land, farmland and forests. Dr Ozcelik said that’s intentional on the part of Hezbollah.

“You could attribute the fires to the types of weapons that are being used but part of that story is that Hezbollah seeks to create chaos and a level of insecurity among the Israeli population which creates a pressure point on the Israeli government.”

The scale of evacuation is “unheard of in the Israeli context,” Dr Ozcelik added.

The scale of the damage is illustrated by images of the settlement of Katzrin in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A huge swathe of burnt land, larger than the settlement itself, appeared after a barrage of rocket fire in early June.

About 20 miles (30km) to the north east, lives Tzahi Gabay, a farmer and a member of the local response team.

He is one of the few Israelis to remain in the border area. His wife and two children, aged 5 and 7, fled their town of Kfar Yuval, which lies just metres from the frontier, and have been living in a small hotel room for the past nine months. Mr Gabay sees them only once a week.

He has seen first-hand the fires that have been devastating huge areas of northern Israel.

“Fearing the rocket attacks, people neglected the vegetation and it dried up during the spring. Every UAV [drone], rocket or missile that was fired immediately ignited enormous fires in the Galilee. The entire area was burning. We had to fight the flames, to put out the fires, to prevent greater damage to our fields, to our businesses”, he added.

The fires are not the only danger.

His neighbours, Barak and Mira Ayalon, were killed in January. They were having lunch in the kitchen when a missile blasted through their living-room wall.

Mr Gabay has known the family for years.

“We grew up together. Removing their bodies in that condition… People I knew well… It wasn’t easy,” he sighs.

While a small number of his town’s residents have stayed to keep their fruit trees alive, around 90% have evacuated, knowing theirs may never produce another harvest.

Hezbollah did not respond to a request for comment. But its leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Wednesday that the Israeli “persistence in targeting civilians” would push the group’s fighters to target new “settlements” with missiles and warned Israel that its tanks would be destroyed if they crossed into Lebanon.

And in a televised address on 10 July, he reiterated a vow to suspend his organisation’s attacks if a ceasefire is reached between Israel and Hamas.

Most of the 40 sq km of land estimated by the BBC to have been affected by fire in Lebanon is close to or adjacent to the security barrier between the two countries.

Lebanese Agriculture Minister Abbas Hajj Hassan told the BBC that 55 towns across the border line were affected by the fires caused by Israel.

He accused Israel of using white phosphorous among other ammunition and of wanting to render the area barren and abandoned.

White phosphorous is a chemical substance that ignites immediately on contact with oxygen. It sticks to skin and clothing and can even burn through bone.

The international campaign group, Human Rights Watch, has verified the use of white phosphorus over several populated areas in southern Lebanon, including al-Bustan.

It says Israel’s use of white phosphorus is “unlawfully indiscriminate in populated areas”.

The IDF disputes this, saying the use of white phosphorus shells to create a smokescreen “is lawful under international law”. It says these shells are not used in densely populated areas “with certain exceptions”.

According to the Acled data, the intensity of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah has not reduced since 8 October, with even a slight increase in the number of attacks between both sides in recent months.

Dr Ozcelik said there are concerns that any further escalation in fighting could trigger an all-out war, which could even draw Iran into a direct confrontation with Israel in defence of Hezbollah.

But, in a note of optimism, she said she believes both Israel and Hezbollah are trying to avoid that eventuality.

“Both sides are being quite calibrated in their approach across the border to avoid a misfire or a human error or a miscalculation.”

Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson agreed late in life to sell his entire archive of personal and political papers to help fund his care, according to documents released by the National Archives.

Lord Wilson initially planned to sell the collection to McMaster University in Canada for £212,500 – about £700,000 in today’s money.

He was suffering from Alzheimer’s and required “continuing care, the costs of which are heavy and will increase”, according to one document.

However, the proposal to sell the papers abroad prompted alarm among senior officials in Margaret Thatcher’s government.

In early January 1990, the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robin Butler wrote to another official, alerting her that Lord Wilson’s former secretary, Lady Marcia Falkender, was “orchestrating a proposal” to set up an archive for the former prime minister’s papers in Canada.

Part of the proceeds would support Lord and Lady Wilson who were “now not well off”, as reported to Sir Robin by his predecessor Lord Armstrong.

There was “no enthusiasm” for the sale among officials in the Cabinet Office, according to the files, with one pointing out that Lord Wilson’s papers were still subject to the so-called 30-year rule.

Government papers are transferred to the National Archives, but remain closed to the public for a period of time before being eligible for release – 30 years in the 1980s, although that has since been shortened to 20 years.

Episodes from Wilson’s times could still have been sensitive at the time of the proposed sale. Only a few years earlier, Mrs Thatcher had tried to stop the publication of a book claiming MI5 plotted against the Labour PM.

Had the Wilson papers been sent to Canada, the 30-year rule could not have been enforced, according to officials.

McMaster University wanted the archive to include papers from Lord Wilson’s time at Number 10. The Labour leader had served two terms as prime minister, from 1964 to 1970 and then between 1974 and 1976.

Sir Robin thought it would cause “public disquiet” if the papers left the country. Andrew Turnbull, Mrs Thatcher’s principal private secretary, said he was unhappy with the “politics/morality” of such an idea.

“Although these are formally Lord Wilson’s private papers”. he wrote in March 1990, “they are part of our history, and, it will be said, they are not really his to ‘sell off'”.

He said if Lord Wilson required additional care in his old age, the Labour and Trade Union movement should support him.

Nonetheless, that summer the cabinet secretary explored ways to support Lord and Lady Wilson. He wrote that “the case of a former prime minister fallen on hard times in this way seems a very sad one”.

He was told the “special funds” available to the current prime minister could not help. He then tried the Parliamentary Pension Scheme, to see if its Hardship Fund could assist. A government briefing note also suggested raising the pension for former prime ministers.

However, the rise proposed was just £5,000 per year.

Lord Armstrong had been helping Lady Falkender. In November 1990 she told him the Wilsons were “delighted” to hear of the pension rise, which would “clearly help in their day-to-day lives”.

But the sum was “not in any way comparable” to that being offered by the Canadian university.

Lord Armstrong had suggested it would be “unseemly” for the papers to leave the country.

Lady Falkender responded: “There has been too much suffering of one kind or another for ‘seemliness’ or ‘unseemliness’ to enter into it any more.”

She said the money from the papers would be “helpful” just as the sale of “a house, a piece of art, or a diamond brooch might be”.

The Cabinet Office was told there was no legal obstacle to the sale.

But by July 1991, an alternative solution had been reached. The Trustees of the Wilson Archive had found anonymous donors, who would fund the Bodleian Library in Oxford buying the papers.

The money would go to the trust set up for the Wilsons’ benefit.

They would stay in the UK – and in a secure location. Before then, Lord Wilson had been storing his archive in the basement of the National Car Parks building in central London, thanks to the company chairman, one of his “loyal supporters”.

Lord Wilson died in 1995, aged 79.

Like humans, wild chimpanzees engage in snappy, turn-taking conversations, where they wait just a fraction of a second for their turn to ‘speak’.

The animals communicate mostly with gestures including hand movements and facial expressions.

Scientists who studied their chats in detail found that they took “fast-paced turns” when they exchanged information and also occasionally interrupted one another.

The revelation suggests “deep evolutionary similarities [with humans] in how face-to-face conversations are structured,” Prof Cat Hobaiter from the University of St Andrews told BBC News.

The findings are published in the journal Current Biology.

This fast turn-taking is a hallmark of human conversation, explained Prof Hobaiter, who studies primate communication. “We all take around 200 milliseconds between turns and show some interesting small cultural variations. Some cultures are ‘fast talkers’.”

A millisecond is a thousandth of a second.

One 2009 linguistics study timed these differences – showing that, on average, Japanese speakers took seven milliseconds to respond while Danish speakers took about 470 milliseconds to intervene.

By examining thousands of instances of wild chimpanzees communicating with each other, Prof Hobaiter and her colleagues were able to time the animals’ conversations.

“It’s amazing to see how close the chimpanzee and human timings were,” she said.

Chimps had a bigger range in their conversational timings. “The gaps ranged from interrupting the signaller 1,600 milliseconds before they finished their gesture, to taking 8,600 milliseconds to respond,” explained Prof Hobaiter.

“This could be because the chimps were in a natural setting, so they could express a wider range of behaviour – sometimes interrupting each other and other times taking a long time to respond.”

As part of investigating the evolutionary origins of communication, the researchers have spent decades observing and recording the behaviour of five communities of wild chimpanzees in the forests of Uganda and Tanzania.

They have logged and translated more than 8,000 gestures from over 250 individual animals.

Lead researcher Dr Gal Badihi, also at the University of St Andrews, explained that gestures allowed the chimpanzees to avoid conflict and coordinate with each other.

“So one chimpanzee could gesture to another that they want food, and the other might give them food or, if they feel less generous, respond by gesturing for them to go away.

“They might come to an agreement about how or where to groom. It’s fascinating, and done in just a few short gesture exchanges.”

He said that future studies looking at communication in other primate species more distantly related to us will give us a more complete evolutionary picture of why we adopted this fast turn-taking chat.

“It will be a great way to better understand when and why our conversational rules evolved,” he said.

Abdul “Duke” Fakir, the last surviving member of beloved Motown group The Four Tops, has passed away at the age of 88.

He died at his home in Detroit from heart failure, his family confirmed on Monday.

The Four Tops became one of the best-known bands of the Motown era after forming in the late 1950s.

The group is known for classic hits such as Reach Out I’ll Be There, Baby I Need Your Loving and I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch).

“Our hearts are heavy as we mourn the loss of a trailblazer, icon and music legend who, through his 70-year music career, touched the lives of so many as he continued to tour until the end of 2023, and officially retired this year,” his family said in a statement.

“As the last living founding member of the iconic The Four Tops music group, we find solace in Duke’s legacy living on through his music for generations to come.”

The four members of the group, Fakir, Levi Stubbs, Renaldo “Obie” Benson and Lawrence Payton formed in the late 1950s but did not find success until the early 1960s.

They continued to play together as a group until Payton’s death in 1997. Benson and Stubbs died in 2005 and 2008, respectively.

When they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, artist Stevie Wonder praised their skills.

“The things I love about them the most – they are very professional, they have fun with what they do, they are very loving, they have always been gentlemen,” he said.

Fakir, the child of Ethiopian and Bangladeshi immigrants, lived in Detroit his entire life and grew up in a dangerous neighbourhood there, according to the Associated Press.

“[O]nce we started singing, our whole perspective of life changed,” Fakir said in a 2022 interview with The Detroit News.

“We just started looking at the beauty of life and travelling and being able to sing to the world and making people happy.”

Speaking to the Detroit Free Press, singer Smokey Robinson addressed the death of his longtime friend.

“My brother, I really hate to have to say goodbye, but you’ve been called home by the Father to once again join Lawrence, Obie and Levi and make more of the heavenly music you guys made while here,” Robinson said.

“I’m going to miss you, my brother.”

In 2022, Fakir released a memoir, I’ll Be There: My Life With the Four Tops.

He is survived by his wife, six children, 13 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

French police are investigating after an Australian woman said she was raped by five men in in central Paris.

The 25-year-old woman took refuge in a kebab shop in the Pigalle district on Saturday morning with her dress partially torn off, local media reported.

No arrests have yet been made but prosecutors confirmed officers are treating the investigation as “gang rape”.

The incident happened just days before the opening of the 2024 Olympics in the French capital.

According to French newspaper Le Parisien, restaurant owners called for help when they saw the woman’s state.

She was looked after by firefighters following the alleged assault and was later taken to Bichat hospital to be examined by medical professionals.

The Paris Prosecutor’s Office said police were investigating the allegations and that CCTV footage was being looked at.

“The investigation into the charge of gang rape likely to have been committed on the night of 19 to 20 July has been entrusted to the second judicial police district,” it said.

There is currently a huge police presence on the ground in Paris in order to maintain the safety of those in the city during the Olympics, which begin on Friday.

Officers have been patrolling in big numbers since last week in Paris, with armed guards around the River Seine.

Several security zones have also been set up around the city with Paris split into zones.

Anyone wishing to enter certain zones, including the Eiffel Tower, will have to apply for a special games pass on a platform run by police.

Vice-President Kamala Harris has secured the support of a majority of Democratic delegates to become the party’s nominee for president.

A survey by the Associated Press on Monday evening said she had received the endorsement of more than the 1,976 delegates needed to win the nomination in the first round of voting.

That means Ms Harris is on course to be crowned the party’s standard bearer and take on Republican Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.

It becomes official when party delegates hold a roll call vote ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago.

Delegates are people who are selected to represent their electoral area. Their pledges of support are non-binding until the vote but unlikely to change.

No-one has publicly stepped forward to challenge Ms Harris since President Joe Biden left the race on Sunday.

He found himself under mounting pressure from senior members of his party following his stumbling debate performance against Trump.

If the total holds between now and when delegates cast their votes, scheduled to take place from 1-7 August, Ms Harris would formally clinch the party’s nomination.

The survey by AP is an indication of the groundswell of support for Ms Harris after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday.

Since Mr Biden’s announcement, millions of dollars in donations have poured into her campaign and leading Democrats have lined up to support her bid as the Democratic nominee.

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Speaking to staff at her campaign’s headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday evening, Ms Harris had Trump in her sights.

Referring to her early career as a prosecutor in California who took on predators and fraudsters, she added: “I know Donald Trump’s type.”

She said the Biden-Harris campaign had always been about two different versions of the future of the country – theirs and Trump’s.

“One focuses on the future, the other focuses on the past,” she said. “Donald Trump wants to take our country backwards… we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”

She also noted Mr Biden’s accomplishments, saying her time serving as his vice-president was “one of the greatest honours of my life”.

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Before Ms Harris took to the stage, Mr Biden made his first comments since dropping out of the 2024 election via phone call while isolating after contracting Covid-19.

He thanked aides and told them to “embrace” Ms Harris because “she’s the best”.

“I know yesterday’s news was surprising and hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do,” Mr Biden told them.

He vowed to remain fully engaged in the campaign because democracy was at stake.

Meanwhile Trump’s new running mate, Senator JD Vance, attacked both Ms Harris and Mr Biden while campaigning in Virginia.

“History will remember Joe Biden as not just a quitter, which he is, but as one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States of America,” he said.

“But my friends, Kamala Harris is a million times worse and everybody knows it. She signed up for every single one of Joe Biden’s failures, and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president.”

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China will gradually raise its statutory retirement age in the next five years to try to cope with its ageing population and buckling pension system.

Life expectancy in the country has now risen above the United States, to 78 years, from just 36 years at the time of the Communist revolution in 1949.

But China’s retirement age remains one of the lowest in the world – at 60 for men, 55 for women in white-collar jobs and 50 for working-class women.

The plan to raise retirement ages is part of a series of resolutions adopted last week at a five-yearly top-level Communist party meeting, known as the Third Plenum.

“In line with the principle of voluntary participation with appropriate flexibility, we will advance reform to gradually raise the statutory retirement age in a prudent and orderly manner,” the party’s central committee said in a key policy document highlighting the reforms.

It did not specify how much the age of retirement would be raised and by when, but a China Pension Development Report released at the end of 2023 wrote that “65 years old may be the final result after adjustment”.

The plan has been on the cards for a few years, as China’s pension budget dwindles.

The state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in 2019 that the country’s main state pension fund will run out of money by 2035 – and that was an estimate before the Covid-19 pandemic, which hit China’s economy hard.

At the same time, the country’s huge population has fallen for a second consecutive year in 2023 as the birth rate continues to decline.

The state-run Global Times newspaper quoted demographers in China saying that the plan to raise the age of retirement highlights “voluntariness” and “flexibility”, which shows that the authorities acknowledge there is no one-size-fits-all policy when it comes to retirement.

However the plan has drawn some scepticism on the Chinese internet.

“Those who wish to retire early are burnt out from their laborious jobs, but those who are in comfortable, lucrative roles will not choose to retire. What kind of jobs will the younger generation end up with?” one user wrote on Weibo, an X-like platform.

Some said a delayed retirement would only mean delayed access to their pensions. “There is no guarantee that you would still have a job before the statutory retrement age,” one user wrote.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borell, has stripped Hungary of the right to host the next meeting of foreign and defence ministers over its stance on the war in Ukraine.

It comes weeks after Hungary assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, a role in which it would normally host the event, and amid anger over a meeting Prime Minister Viktor Orban held with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this month.

Mr Borrell said Hungary’s actions should have consequences and that “we have to send a signal, even if it is a symbolic signal”.

Hungary described the move as “completely childish”.

Every six months, under each new council presidency, the EU’s foreign and defence ministers hold informal meetings to discuss the biggest global issues facing the bloc.

The next set of meetings will take place on 28-30 August and were to be held in Budapest, but on Monday Mr Borrell announced they would instead take place in Brussels.

Citing comments made after the meeting with Mr Putin in which Mr Orban accused the EU of having a “pro-war policy”, Mr Borrell told reporters: “If you want to talk about the war party, talk about Putin.

“I can say that all member states – with one single exception – are very much critical about this behaviour.

“I think it was… appropriate to show this feeling and to call for the next foreign and defence council meetings in Brussels.”

Of the 26 other countries in the EU, only Slovakia has backed Hungary in the dispute.

However. Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel, told reporters that he would go to Budapest because a boycott would be “nonsense”. Mr Bettel felt that it was better to tell the Hungarians the EU was unhappy with their actions as “ignoring or not choosing dialogue would be a mistake”.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski proposed that the August meeting should take place in western Ukraine, but that idea was blocked by Budapest.

Responding to Mr Borrell’s decision, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on Facebook: “What a fantastic response they have come up with.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it feels like being in a kindergarten.”

Mr Orban’s meeting with Mr Putin came as part of what he described as a “peace mission” – launched days after Hungary assumed the council presidency – that also saw him visiting the leaders of Ukraine and China, as well as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the US.

The trip sparked condemnation from leaders across the EU, with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen describing it as “nothing but an appeasement mission”.

Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said Mr Orban had “no mandate to negotiate or discuss on behalf of the EU”, while Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the trip sent “the wrong signal to the outside world and is an insult to the Ukrainian people’s fight for their freedom”.

The episode is one of numerous occasions since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on which Hungary has been at odds with most of the rest of the EU about the appropriate response.

After winning re-election in April 2022, just months after the invasion, Mr Orban told a crowd of supporters that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was among the people he would have to “battle” in his fourth term.

Last year, he repeatedly used Hungary’s veto to delay a €50bn (£42bn) package of non-military financial aid to Ukraine.

The path for Vice-President Kamala Harris to secure the Democratic presidential nomination is clearing.

That may end up being the easy part. The most formidable challenge – defeating Republican nominee Donald Trump in November – is still to come. Her elevation to the top of ticket would bring new strengths for the Democrats, but it also exposes weaknesses that were less of a concern with Mr Biden.

According to recent polls, Ms Harris trails the former president slightly – a roughly similar position to the one Mr Biden found himself in before his historic announcement. But there may be more room for those numbers to shift as we move from a hypothetical matchup to a very real one.

For at least a moment, Democrats have a jolt of energy after more than three weeks of intense hand-wringing over the president’s fitness and ability to sustain his campaign.

All of Ms Harris’s leading potential rivals for the nomination have endorsed her, as has former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – who remains one of the most influential players in Democratic politics.

This is, still, shaping up to be a tight race in November – a condition that reflects deep partisan trenches in American politics and the distaste many voters have for Trump as a candidate.

The vice-president’s primary challenge – and opportunity – will be to capitalise on this Trump aversion, attract centrist voters in key swing states and energise the Democratic base, which was in the past few weeks swinging towards despair, to match the enthusiasm many on the right hold for the former president.

This renewed sense of Democratic presidential enthusiasm comes with a dollar sign attached. According to the Harris campaign, the vice-president raised more than $80m (£62m) in new donations in the 24 hours since Mr Biden’s announcement – the biggest one-day total of any candidate this election cycle. That, along with the nearly $100m she inherits from the Biden-Harris fundraising coffers, gives her a firm financial footing for the campaign to come.

Ms Harris, if she becomes the nominee, also defuses one of the most effective attacks the Republicans have levelled against their opponent: his age.

For months, the Trump campaign has been pounding Mr Biden for being feeble and easily confused – characterisations that were reinforced for many Americans after the president’s halting debate performance four weeks ago.

The vice-president, at age 59, will be a more energetic campaigner and able to make a more coherent case for her party. She could also turn the 78-year-old Trump’s age against him, as he would become the oldest person ever elected president.

Ms Harris may also be able to shore up support from black voters, who polls indicate had been drifting away from Mr Biden in recent months. If she can combine that with more backing from other minorities and younger voters – Barack Obama’s winning coalition from 2008 and 2012 – it could help her gain ground against Trump in the handful of swing states that will decide this year’s election.

Her background as a prosecutor could also burnish tough-on-crime credentials. While her law-enforcement resume was a liability when she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019 – and led to derisive “Kamala is a cop” attacks from the left – it could help her in a campaign against Trump.

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• Who could be Kamala Harris’s running mate?
• What happens next in US election?
• What Biden quitting means for Harris, the Democrats and Trump

The vice-president has also been the administration’s point person on abortion, which has proven to be one of the most potent issues for motivating the Democratic base in recent elections. Mr Biden, by contrast, sometimes had been a reluctant advocate on the issue, hampered by a past record of supporting some limits on the procedure.

“I think she reminds suburban women across the country, particularly in those battleground states, of what’s at stake with reproductive rights,” former New York congressman Steve Israel, who headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the BBC’s Americast podcast.

“We have established a fundamental reset in the campaign.”

For all Harris’s potential strengths, there is a reason why some Democrats were initially reluctant to push Mr Biden to step aside, given that his running mate would be the clear successor.

Despite generating Democratic enthusiasm on the subject of abortion, Ms Harris’s record as vice-president has been mixed. Early in the administration, she was set the task of addressing the root causes of the migration crisis at the US-Mexico border. A number of missteps and misstatements – including a ham-handed June 2021 interview with NBC News presenter Lester Holt – damaged her standing and opened her to conservative attacks.

Republicans are already condemning her as the president’s “border czar”, attempting to make her the face of what public opinion polls have found is the Biden administration’s unpopular immigration policies.

“Immigration is a soft spot for Democrats in those battleground areas,” Mr Israel said. “This is a very salient issue for voters living in those suburbs, fairly or unfairly. They believe that our immigration system is not managed strongly enough.”

The Trump campaign will also try to turn the vice-president’s prosecutorial background against her – both by highlighting the former president’s record of enacting criminal justice reform and by attacking her past prosecutorial and parole decisions.

Another Harris vulnerability is her chequered track record as a candidate. In her 2016 Senate bid, she faced only token opposition from Republicans in deeply Democratic California.

Her one solo run for national office – a bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – ended in ruins. While she surged early, a combination of fumbled interviews, a lack of clearly defined vision and a poorly managed campaign led her to drop out before even the earliest primary contests.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for Ms Harris is that, unlike the president, she is not the incumbent. While she might have the opportunity to distance herself from some of the more unpopular elements of Mr Biden’s record, she also does not have the luxury of being a known quantity for voters.

Expect a furious effort by Republicans to paint Ms Harris as too untested and too risky to be president. In effect, Trump now has a greater claim to being the only proven commodity.

The vice-president has a chance, in the days ahead, to make a new first impression with the American public. If she stumbles out of the gate, it could open the door to an extended power struggle that stretches into the Democrat’s national convention in late August. They could end up with the party uniting behind a different candidate – or tearing itself apart.

As the past four weeks have shown, fortunes in the White House race can shift quickly and permanently. Ms Harris has punched her ticket to the biggest stage in American politics – now she has to show she can compete.

Sharks off the coast of Brazil have tested positive for cocaine, scientists say.

Marine biologists tested 13 Brazilian sharpnose sharks taken from the shores near Rio de Janeiro and found they tested for high levels of cocaine in their muscles and livers.

The concentrations were as much as 100 times higher than previously reported for other aquatic creatures.

The research, carried out by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, is the first to find the presence of cocaine in sharks.

Experts believe the cocaine is making its way into the waters via illegal labs where the drug is manufactured or through excrement of drug users.

Packs of cocaine lost or dumped by traffickers at sea could also be a source, though this is less likely, researchers say.

Sara Novais, a marine eco-toxicologist at the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre of the Polytechnic University of Leiria, told Science magazine that the findings are “very important and potentially worrying”.

All females in the study were pregnant, but the consequences of cocaine exposure for the foetuses are unknown, experts say.

Further research is required to ascertain whether cocaine is changing the behaviour of the sharks.

However, previous research has shown that drugs were likely to have similar effects on animals as they do on humans.

Last year, chemical compounds including benzoylecgonine, which is produced by the liver after cocaine use, were found in seawater samples collected off the south coast of England.

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has presented her coalition government’s first budget after a slim election victory saw the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lose its outright majority in parliament.

The new spending plan has replaced a stop-gap interim budget that came into effect from 1 April.

The budget announcements clearly indicate a shift in priorities for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new dispensation, with ramped up allocations for rural development, skilling, jobs and agriculture.

Here are the six key takeaways from India’s budget:

The budget increased tax on long-term capital gains on all financial and non-financial assets to 12.5% from 10%. Assets held for over a year are considered long term.

Short-term capital gains will now be taxed at 20% instead of 15%.

The budget has also increased the securities transaction tax on derivatives trading.

This was widely expected, with the Economic Survey released a day earlier raising red flags about rising speculation and growing participation of retail investors in Indian equity markets.

Ms Sitharaman has announced three new schemes to address India’s chronic employment challenge that will cost the government 2tn rupees ($24bn; £18.5bn) over the next five years.

First-time job entrants in the formal sector will receive a direct cash transfer equivalent to their monthly salary (or up to a maximum of 15,000 rupees) in addition to their first month’s pay.

Additionally, two more programmes have been announced to boost manufacturing jobs through which the government will provide employment-linked incentives to both employees and employers.

The country’s burgeoning start-up ecosystem will have something to cheer about, with an angel tax levied on capital raised by private companies now abolished.

Minor tweaks were also announced to personal income taxes, with expected savings of up to 17,500 rupees ($209; £162) in outgo for people who opt for the new tax regime.

Corporate tax on foreign companies has also been reduced from 40% to 35% to promote investments.

The budget sought to satisfy spending demands from the BJP’s two key regional allies – Janata Dal (United) of the northern state of Bihar and Telugu Desam Party of southern Andhra Pradesh state – which hold 28 seats in India’s lower house.

The finance minister announced financial support of 150bn rupees for the development of Andhra Pradesh’s capital, with a promise for more money in the coming years.

A slew of new airport, road and power projects were sanctioned in Bihar.

The budget has set a new, reduced target for its fiscal deficit – the amount by which spending exceeds revenue – at 4.9% for this financial year, below the 5.1% announced earlier.

The number is closely watched by ratings agencies and has a direct bearing on interest rates.

A significant dividend payout of more than $25bn from the country’s central bank has enabled the government to reduce its deficit without cutting expenditure significantly.

The outlay on state-led capital expenditure on infrastructure creation has remained unchanged from the $134bn announced in the interim budget.

“However, it is clear the focus has now become more diversified to other areas like employment, small businesses and social welfare,” said Shubhada Rao, economist and founder of QuantEco Research.

The budget is clearly more redistributive in nature, she added, and while there’s not necessarily “more direct cash in the hands of people”, announcements such as salary credits to new employees and minor tax tweaks could improve disposable incomes.

India’s finance ministry expects the economy to grow between 6.5% and 7% in the financial year ending March 2025 – lower than 8.2% last year and below forecasts from the central bank as well as multilateral bodies like the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Development Bank.

Illinois police have released bodycam footage that shows the chaotic moments that led to the fatal shooting of a woman who had called 911 to report a suspected intruder at her home.

The killing of Sonya Massey, 36, over Independence Day weekend has led to criminal charges against one of the officers who responded to her home, and has drawn condemnation from President Joe Biden.

Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson has been fired from the police force and charged with murder and official misconduct.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. As of Monday, he was being held without bond.

On Monday, Illinois State Police released bodycam footage that shows the officers shouting at Ms Massey to put down a pot of boiling water as they point their pistols at her.

The incident in the early hours of 6 July began when Ms Massey called police to her home in Springfield, 200 miles (320km) south of Chicago, to report that she believed someone had broken into her property.

Deputies followed her inside when Ms Massey entered her home, and watched as she searched for her identification.

In the video, Mr Grayson sees a pot sitting on a stove, gestures towards it and says, “we don’t need a fire while we’re here”.

Ms Massey walks to the stove to remove the pot. She and Mr Grayson appear to laugh over her pot of “steaming hot water,” before she twice says: “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

“You better [expletive] not or I swear to God I’ll [expletive] shoot you in your [expletive] face,” Mr Grayson says. He then draws his pistol as he shouts for her to drop the pot.

“OK, I’m sorry,” Ms Massey is heard saying before she ducks.

After shooting her, the officer says: “What else do we do? I’m not taking hot [expletive] boiling water to the [expletive] face.”

On Monday, the Sangamon County State’s Attorney’s Office said Mr Grayson was not justified in his use of force on Ms Massey.

In a statement, President Biden said he was “heartbroken” for her family.

“Sonya Massey, a beloved mother, friend, daughter, and young Black woman, should be alive today,” he said.

“Sonya’s death at the hands of a responding officer reminds us that all too often Black Americans face fears for their safety in ways many of the rest of us do not.”

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul called the footage of the shooting “horrific” in a statement on Monday.

“As the community reacts to the release of the footage, I urge calm as this matter works its way through the criminal justice system,” Mr Raoul said.

Lawyers for Ms Massey’s family have commended prosecutors for their swift action against Mr Grayson.

Lawyer Benjamin Crump said the footage “is going to shock the conscience of America”.

“It is that senseless, that unnecessary, that unjustifiable, that unconstitutional,” he said.

A contestant on a US survival reality show killed and ate a protected bird in New Zealand while filming the series, according to local media reports.

The show called Race to Survive, sees contestants largely having to hunt their own food. It filmed its second season in New Zealand.

The bird, a weka, has become extinct over large parts of New Zealand- and is a fully protected species.

The contestant and his teammate were both disqualified from the race as a result.

Contestant Spencer ‘Corry’ Jones was aware he was breaking the rule when he killed and ate the bird, according to news site Radio New Zealand, citing a clip from the show.

In the clip, he was seen to have apologised, saying he made a “foolish” mistake and they “didn’t prepare for the hunger”.

“What I did disrespected New Zealand, and I’m sorry,” he said.

Mr Jones, along with his teammate Oliver Dev, were both disqualified in the eighth episode of the series.

New Zealand’s Department of Conservation said they were alerted by a representative of the production company – US-based Original Productions – shortly after the incident occurred.

Officials conducted an investigation and issued the company and the participant written warnings, citing “unusual group dynamic situation” such as fatigue and significant hunger of the cast members.

“Nonetheless, killing and eating a native protected species in this matter is unacceptable and the company is ‘on notice’ about the need for its programme participants to adhere to conservation legislation,” Dylan Swain, team lead of investigations for the department, said in a statement to 1News.

BBC News has asked Mr Jones and Original Productions for comment.

An iconic large flightless bird, the weka is famous for its feisty and curious personality.

It has become extinct over large tracts of the mainland as a result of changing climatic conditions and rising predator numbers. But they can also be legally hunted on some islands in the country.

A protected species under the Wildlife Act 1953, the maximum penalty for hurting the bird could be either two years imprisonment or a fine of NZD $100,000 ($59,545; £47,467).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the US this week under pressure to end the Gaza war, from both Israelis and the US administration. How might the political turbulence in Washington shape the trip and future relations?

Mr Netanyahu is set to meet Joe Biden – if the president has recovered from Covid-19 – and address a joint session of Congress, the only foreign leader to do so for a fourth time.

The trip offers him a platform for a reset with Washington after months of tensions over his hardline approach to the war, and an opportunity to try and convince Israelis that he hasn’t undermined relations with their most important ally.

But it is overshadowed by President Biden’s decision not to seek re-election, highlighting political uncertainties about Israel’s next partner in the White House and possibly eclipsing some of the attention on Mr Netanyahu’s visit.

The prime minister got a lot of unwelcome attention in Israel until the moment he boarded the plane.

A drumbeat of protests demanded that he stay home and focus on a ceasefire deal with Hamas to free Israeli hostages.

“Until he has signed the deal that’s on the table, I do not see how he picks up and flies across the Atlantic to address the American political chaos,” said Lee Siegel, one of the family members who has come out to demonstrate. His 65-year-old brother Keith is a captive in Gaza.

The trip is a political move, he added, unless Mr Netanyahu stops being a “hurdle” and signs the ceasefire agreement.

Mr Siegel reflected a widespread view that Mr Netanyahu is slow-rolling the process for his own political reasons, roiling his negotiators when he recently threw new conditions into talks that seemed to be making progress.

The prime minister has been accused of bowing to pressure from two far-right cabinet ministers who’ve threatened to bring down his government if he makes concessions to Hamas.

These perceptions have added to frustrations in the White House, which announced the latest formula for talks and had been expressing optimism an agreement could be achieved.

Mr Biden remains one of the most pro-Israel presidents to sit in the Oval Office, a self-declared Zionist who’s been lauded by Israelis for his support and empathy, cemented by his flight to Israel just days after the Hamas attacks on 7 October.

But since then, he’s grown alarmed at the cost of Mr Netanyahu’s demand for a “total victory” against Hamas in Gaza.

The administration is frustrated with the Israeli prime minister for rejecting a post war solution that involves pursuing a Palestinian state.

It’s angry with him for resisting appeals to do more to protect Palestinian civilians and increase the flow of aid to them. It’s facing a domestic backlash over the mounting death toll in Gaza. And it’s worried that the conflict is spreading to the region.

As Joe Biden’s presidency weakened in the swirl of controversy over his abilities, analysts said there might be less room for him to keep up the pressure on the Israeli prime minister.

But Mr Biden’s decision to drop out of the race could actually have strengthened his hand, says Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister and a critic of Mr Netanyahu.

“He is not a lame duck in regard to foreign policy, in a way he’s more independent (because) he doesn’t have to take into account any impact on the voters,” Mr Barak told the BBC.

“With regard to Israel probably he feels more of a free hand to do what really needs to be done.”

Mr Barak believes it was a mistake for Congress to invite Mr Netanyahu to speak, saying that many Israelis blame him for policy failures that allowed the Hamas attack to happen, and three out of four want him to resign.

“The man does not represent Israel,” he said. “He lost the trust of Israelis…And it kind of sends a wrong signal to Israelis, probably a wrong signal to Netanyahu himself, when the American Congress invites him to appear as if he is saving us.”

Whatever politics he may be playing, Mr Netanyahu insists military pressure must continue because it has significantly weakened Hamas after a series of strikes against the military leadership.

In comments before departing Israel, he suggested that would be the tone of his meeting with President Biden.

“It will also be an opportunity to discuss with him how to advance in the months ahead the goals that are important for both our countries,” he said, “achieving the release of all our hostages, defeating Hamas, confronting the terror axis of Iran and its proxies and ensuring that all Israel’s citizens return safely to their homes in the north and in the south.”

He’s expected to bring the same message to congress, “seeking to anchor the bipartisan support that is so important to Israel”.

The reality is that Mr Netanyahu’s policies have dented that bipartisan support. The Republicans are rallying around him, but criticism from Democrats has grown.

The Democratic Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer caused a small earthquake in Washington recently when he stood up in the chambers and said Mr Netanyahu was one of the obstacles standing in the way of a lasting peace with Palestinians.

“I hope the prime minister understands the anxiety of many members in congress and addresses them,” the former US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, told the BBC at the weekend. He’d been addressing one of the many rallies demanding a hostage release.

That includes “on humanitarian issues and to articulate that this fight isn’t with the Palestinian people, it’s with Hamas.”

It’s a message that Kamala Harris would repeat if she were to become the Democratic nominee. There’d be no change in US policy: a commitment to Israel’s security while pushing for an end to the Gaza conflict and a plan for the Day After embedded in a regional peace with Arab states.

But there might be a difference in tone.

Ms Harris does not share Mr Biden’s long history with and emotional ties to Israel. She’s from a different generation and “could more closely align with the sentiments of younger elements of the Democratic party,” says Mick Mulroy, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East.

“That’s a stance more likely to include restrictions on weapons, on munitions from the United States for use in Gaza,” he said.

Mr Netanyahu could very well use the visit to steer the conversation from the controversy over Gaza to the threat from Iran, a topic with which he’s far more comfortable, especially after the recent escalation with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But his main audience will be domestic, says Tal Shalev, the diplomatic correspondent at Israel’s Walla News.

He wants to revive his image as “Mr America,” she says, the man who can best present Israel to the US, and to restore his image which was shattered by the October 7 attacks.

“When he goes to the US and speaks in front of Congress and [has] a meeting in the White House, for his electoral base, it’s the old Bibi is back again,” she says, referring to the prime minister by his nickname. “This is not the failed Bibi who was responsible for the seventh of October. This is the old Bibi who goes to the Congress and gets the standing ovations.”

It also gives him an opportunity to pursue connections with the former President Donald Trump at a time of great political flux in Washington.

“Netanyahu wants President Trump to win,” she says, “And he wants to make sure that he and President Trump are on good terms before the election.”

There is a widespread view that Mr. Netanyahu is playing for time, hoping for a Trump win that might ease some of the pressure he’s been facing from the Biden administration.

“There is a near-universal perception that Netanyahu is eager for a Trump victory, under the assumption that he will then be able to do whatever he wants,” writes Michael Koplow of Israel’s Policy Forum.

“No Biden pressuring him on a ceasefire or on West Bank settlements and settler violence… There are many reasons to doubt this reading of the landscape under a Trump restoration, but Netanyahu likely subscribes to it.”

The question is whether that pressure from Biden will ease as he steps away from the presidential race, or whether he will in fact use his remaining months in office to focus on achieving an end to the Gaza war.