Polls are starting to close in Venezuela’s presidential election, in which the governing socialist PSUV party’s Nicolás Maduro is seeking a third term in office.

Polling stations were scheduled to shut at 18:00 local time (23:00 BST), but they have to remain open if people are still queuing to cast their vote.

Mr Maduro’s main challenger is Edmundo González, a former diplomat who has the backing of a coalition of opposition parties.

The opposition called on supporters to keep vigil at polling stations in order to verify the counting process in the “decisive hours” after closing, amid widespread fears the PSUV would attempt to steal the vote.

Opinion polls have suggested Mr González has a wide lead over the incumbent.

This was reflected in the queue at one polling station in Petare, a poor neighbourhood of Caracas, where many people said they were voting for change.

Since he assumed the presidency in 2013, Mr Maduro has presided over an economic collapse, during which GDP shrank by 70% and more than 7.7 million people fled the country in search of a better life.

“This government has had all the opportunities to make Venezuela a great country, but instead we have misery,” voter Hector Emilio D’Avilia told the BBC.

One woman, Adriana Arreaza, said through tears that she just wanted “decent salaries for teachers and doctors, quality of life for the elderly and the youth, and a change for our country”.

As Mr Maduro’s 2018 re-election was widely dismissed as neither free nor fair, there is concern that the result of this election could be tampered with, should it not go his way.

Opponents of the president have overcome many hurdles in the run-up to the election, not least the fact that their chosen candidate, María Corina Machado, was banned from running for office.

Ms Machado, who has remained at the forefront of the opposition campaign, reminded voters that the counting process was legally meant to be public.

She called on “all Venezuelans to remain at their polling stations… keeping a vigil”.

A community leader, Katiuska Camargo, told the BBC that the people of Venezuela were determined that the government “leave power immediately”.

“There’s been outrage after outrage. Violations of human rights, extrajudicial executions, excessive emigration.”

The PSUV has been in power in Venezuela for the past 25 years – first under the late Hugo Chávez, then under his hand-picked successor, Mr Maduro.

Under their leadership, the PSUV has gained control not just of the executive and the legislative, but also of much of the judiciary.

The party has a core of loyal supporters who praise the “benefits” they say it has brought them.

Felix García said the Maduro government had provided “help for people like me with disabilities”.

Mr Maduro has said he intends to win the election “by hook or by crook” and has warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) – the body which organises the election and announces the official result – is dominated by government loyalists.

Its president, Elvis Amoroso, is a close personal ally of Mr Maduro.

Venezuela has the world’s biggest oil reserves, but its oil output has plummeted under President Maduro – the result of a combination of lack of investment, mismanagement and oil sanctions.

A lifting of the oil sanctions – imposed by the US in order to exert pressure on Mr Maduro following the 2018 presidential election – could have repercussions on the price of oil globally.

Voting in Venezuela is electronic. Voters punch in a button assigned to their preferred candidate on a voting machine.

The electronic results are sent to the CNE headquarters, but the voting machine also prints out a paper receipt which is then placed in a ballot box.

By law, parties are allowed to send witnesses to the count of these paper receipts carried out at each polling station.

It will be these tallies which the opposition will be monitoring to see if they square with the results announced by the CNE.

At the University of Haifa, less than 50km (30 miles) from Israel’s border with Lebanon, they’re taking no chances.

The morning after a rocket fell on a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children and teenagers, the university authorities announced that all staff based above the fifth floor in the 30-storey building should work from home. The fear is growing that they’re in the line of fire from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“In the last war with Hezbollah in 2006, their weapons reached Haifa”, Esther Parpara, a member of staff from the university told me. “This is a dangerous moment. Parents are helping police and guards to patrol kindergartens. I’m avoiding crowded places. We don’t seek war – but Hezbollah want to destroy Israel and the Jewish people, so can we just let them do that without defending ourselves?”

Cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon has grown steadily since 8 October, when Hezbollah fired rockets and shells at Israeli sites in solidarity with the Hamas attack on Israel a day earlier. Both groups call for the destruction of the Israeli state.

Frequent attacks by Hezbollah have struck northern Israel and the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria during the 1967 war and annexed in 1981. Israel has launched air strikes and missiles into southern Lebanon and beyond, including an overnight wave of attacks apparently in response to the rocket fire on Saturday.

The tit-for-tat strikes since October have killed more than 450 people in Lebanon – around 100 of them civilians – while Israel says 23 civilians and 17 soldiers have been killed. The skirmishes had been relatively contained, suggesting both sides were aiming to avoid a head-on confrontation.

• Follow live coverage
• Thousands mourn children killed in Golan Heights strike
• Lebanon fears dangerous new phase in Hezbollah-Israel fighting

But now the question is how far Israel will go in response to Saturday’s tragedy, the biggest single loss of life in the cross-border attacks since October.

Thousands lined the streets of the town to mourn the young victims, holding flowers and photos as they crowded beside the small white coffins. Hezbollah says it did not fire the deadly rocket, but the Israeli government insists that’s a lie. Following the strike, the Lebanese militants are said to have pre-emptively cleared out some key sites in the south of the country and the eastern Bekaa valley in the anticipation of a large-scale Israeli attack.

Israel’s prime minister returned early from the US to chair a security cabinet meeting, amid calls to hit back hard. Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that Hezbollah will “pay a heavy price which it has not paid up to now”.

Israel Katz, the foreign minister, said Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, should “pay with his head”, while the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, warned Israel was approaching all-out war with Hezbollah.

But Israel knows that the price of such a war with the Lebanese militant group could be devastating – for both sides.

Hezbollah is the strongest non-state actor in the region, with an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles in its arsenal. It is Iran’s most important proxy in the Middle East – and an attack by Israel could draw in Tehran, which warned Israel that any “new adventures” in Lebanon could lead to “unforeseen consequences”.

And Israeli troops are still stretched in Gaza. Opening up another military front as their munitions run low could simply be unfeasible.

On the other hand, some 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from the border region with Lebanon over the past few months – and many are demanding that their government neutralise the threat from Hezbollah.

And Mr Netanyahu, whose popularity at home is plummeting, is doing all he can for his political survival. Critics claim he is prolonging the war in Gaza by adding ever more stringent demands on Hamas for a ceasefire deal, knowing that once the fighting stops there, he could face an early election and the end of his career.

The fear is that weakened and under pressure from far-right bellicose ministers, he may now be tempted to expand the fight into Lebanon in part for domestic political aims.

This is a perilous moment. And while the international calls for restraint from both sides grow louder, this tinderbox region waits to see if the Golan Heights rocket will spark an inferno.

In the islands of Andamans straddling India’s east coast, a species of frogs mate and lay their eggs while upside down, a new study has found.

Both the male and female Charles Darwin frogs position themselves upside down on the walls of tree cavities, with their bodies entirely out of water, scientists from India and the US say in their paper. Hatchlings drop into the water below and develop through a free-swimming tadpole stage.

“This is remarkable. Upside-down spawning is the most unique behaviour in this frog. No other frog is known to lay eggs on inner walls of tree holes in an upside-down posture with bodies completely outside water,” says SD Biju of the University of Delhi and currently a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

“This discovery is fundamental for understanding how this species interacts with its environments and which habitats are essential for its survival.”

Nearly all the world’s 7,708 frog species mate and spawn in water and other terrestrial habitats. They also use external fertilisation: the female lays eggs during mating, while the male releases sperm to fertilise them.

A team of Indian and American biologists from the University of Delhi, Zoological Survey of India, Harvard University, and the University of Minnesota camped for 55 nights over three years during the monsoon rains to study the secretive reproductive behaviour of tiny Charles Darwin frogs in the remote Andaman islands. Their peer-reviewed study appears in the latest issue of scientific journal Breviora.

The uniqueness of the species doesn’t end with how they mate – even their mating calls are different.

• India’s maverick ‘frog man’

Most frog calls are simple, single-type mating calls, though some species have complex calls with multiple types.

Researchers found that in their mating frenzy, the determined Charles Darwin males produce three types of “complex” calls to woo the females. When the “aggressive” calls fail to ward off competing males, they begin fighting – kicking and boxing, using hands and legs, and biting off body parts or even the entire head.

If the male successfully mounts a female, the bachelor males nearby may fight with the mating pair. They may even try to insert their head between the bodies of the pair to separate them, researchers found.

“In our observation these fights rarely lead to deaths. This was surprising considering the extent of aggression observed in this species, such as biting off body parts and even the entire head for long durations,” says Mr Biju, who led the study.

“Also, all these fights are taking place in a small tree cavity filled with small quantities of rainwater, unlike in most other species where fights are known to occur in larger open water bodies. It is amazing how frogs have evolved such unique strategies,” he adds.

The study suggests that upside-down mating behaviour evolved to prevent aggressive bachelor males from disrupting egg-laying by displacing the mating pair.

“This find is an example of the remarkable diversity of amphibians and reproductive behaviours that are still unknown to science, especially from unexplored regions in biodiversity hotspots of tropical Asia,” says James Hanken of Harvard University, who was part of the study.

The Charles Darwin frog, named after the famous naturalist, is endemic to a few islands in the Andaman islands and is not found anywhere else. It’s uncommon and restricted to specific forest habitats and listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) due to fragmented populations and habitat decline.

The scientists observed the frogs breeding in disturbed forests in artificial sites – from watered plastic sapling bags in neighbouring plant nurseries to rain-filled discarded containers left as trash at the edge of the forest.

“The frogs’ use of trash for breeding is both surprising and worrying. We now need to know its causes and long-term consequences, and devise ways to protect the natural breeding sites that are critical for survival of the species,” says Sonali Garg, a fellow at Harvard University who co-led the study.

The lack of adequate breeding sites due to habitat loss and competition for limited resources may be driving the frog to breed in such unnatural sites, say researchers.

Follow BBC India on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

As Simone Biles eyes up a chance at another Olympic medal, a row of A-list celebrities are watching on.

The seven-time medallist is one of the most high profile athletes at the Olympics, and her first performance in the artistic gymnastics on Sunday drew celebrities like it was Paris Fashion Week.

Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Tom Cruise, American Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and Snoop Dogg were in the crowd to watch the American gymnast.

Grande sat with Cynthia Erivo, the pair co-staring in their upcoming film Wicked. They were seen greeting Wintour, who was with Australian film director Baz Luhrmann.

Higher in the stands was singer Nick Jonas, seen chatting with singer John Legend and his wife, model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen. Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Chastain was also at Bercy Arena to watch Biles perform.

Biles is considered by many to be the GOAT of women’s gymnastics (the greatest of all time).

And her considerable medal haul (which includes four Olympic golds and 30 world championship medals) could have potentially been higher heading into the 2024 Olympics, if it wasn’t for her infamous case of the “twistys” at the Tokyo Games.

Biles was forced to pull out of several events at the Tokyo Olympics after suffering a disorientating mental block, and many wondered if she would compete again.

Her return to the Olympics stage is a major drawcard, and Biles rewarded the crowd with a dazzling performance.

• Biles dazzles on Olympics gymnastics return

She entered the Bercy Arena on Sunday to an eruption of cheers, with celebrities in the stands and a global television audience of millions.

An acrobatic beam routine came before an energetic floor programme that featured one of the five skills named after her. Then she delivered her big Biles II vault but decided not to attempt the new skill she is planning on uneven bars.

She scored a total of 59.566 to top the all-around standings with three sub-divisions still to go. It is hard to see that changing – that score would have won the last three World Championships.

• Top five stories from day two of Paris Olympics 2024

• Give him a medal! – unknown man dives in pool to rescue lost cap
• What’s happening and when at the Paris Olympics
• Paris Olympics 2024 medal table
• Top five stories from day one of Paris Olympics 2024

Since October, the near-daily cross-border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed militia and political movement in Lebanon, have killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands from their homes on both sides, raising fears that the relatively contained violence could escalate into an all-out conflict.

Amid the strikes and counter-strikes, however, there have been indications that they were trying to avoid a major confrontation. But miscalculation was always a risk, and Saturday’s attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, could have been that.

Israel accuses Hezbollah of carrying out the strike on a football pitch that killed at least 12 people, including children, the deadliest attack in the current hostilities, and has promised to respond.

“Israel will not overlook this murderous attack,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office. “Hezbollah will pay a heavy price which it has not paid up to now.”

Hezbollah denies being behind the attack.

Before the scale of the strike became clear, however, the group said it had targeted the Hermon Brigade with an Iranian-made Falaq missile, one of several attacks carried out on that day. The base, on the slopes of Mt Hermon, is about 3km (2miles) from where the explosion happened, raising the possibility that the missile missed its target.

Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said intelligence information indicated that the attack had been carried out by Hezbollah in Lebanon, describing the group’s denial as “a lie”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, too, said “every indication” was that the missile had been fired by Hezbollah, and that the US stood by “Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks”.

Lebanon, then, is waiting for a possible major Israeli reaction.

The strikes by Hezbollah started on 8 October, the day after the deadly Hamas attack on Israel, with the group saying they were in support for Palestinians in Gaza.

So far, more than 450 people have been reported killed in Lebanon, including about 350 Hezbollah fighters and at least 100 civilians. In Israel, 23 civilians and at least 17 soldiers have been killed.

In Lebanon, most of the Israeli attacks have hit the south, where villages are destroyed and deserted, and the eastern Bekaa Valey, two areas where Hezbollah operates. An Israeli campaign targeting places that, so far, have been untouched, including parts of the capital Beirut, could lead to a dangerous and unpredictable phase in their fighting.

Seen as a significantly more formidable foe than Hamas, Hezbollah has been preparing for another major conflict with Israel since their last one, in 2006, which inflicted heavy damage on both sides.

According to Western estimates, the group has about 150,000 rockets and missiles, which could overwhelm Israel’s sophisticated air defence systems. The arsenal also includes precision guided missiles capable of striking deep into Israeli territory.

Israeli authorities have repeatedly described the attacks by the group as unacceptable and are under growing pressure to act to allow the return of displaced residents to northern communities. Military officials have said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is still carrying out large operations against Hamas in Gaza, is ready to launch an offensive against Hezbollah, although details of what one might involve remain unclear.

• The latest in Gaza: Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 30 – health ministry

Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time Hezbollah leader, has repeatedly said the group does not want a full-scale war with Israel, but that it was ready for one. Last month, he said the group had deployed only a fraction of its weapons, and warned Israel that any war would be fought “without constraints or rules”. A major operation against the group could lead to the involvement of other Iranian-backed militias in the region that are part of what Tehran calls the “Axis of Resistance”.

Any war would have a devastating impact on both countries, but especially for Lebanon, which has been in a state of permanent crisis for more than half a decade.

The economy has collapsed, with 80% of the population estimated to be in poverty, and political disputes have blocked the election of a president for almost two years. The government has limited influence – if any – over Hezbollah, which, like Hamas, is considered a terrorist organisation by the UK, the US and others.

But a full-scale war is not inevitable.

Diplomats were trying to avert a major escalation in hostilities, and the Lebanese Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, told the BBC the authorities were “asking Hezbollah not to retaliate”.

The Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Oren Marmorstein, said the “only way” to prevent a conflict was to implement the United Nations Resolution 1701, approved to end the 2006 war. The text includes the withdrawal of armed groups from southern Lebanon, between the Litani river and the Blue Line, the unofficial frontier with Israel, but was never fully applied.

Now, Mr Marmorstein said, was the “very last minute” to prevent a war diplomatically.

Thousands of people gathered on Sunday for the funerals of children and young people killed in a rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as world leaders scrambled to contain the attack’s political fallout.

Members of the Druze community wept as they carried caskets through Majdal Shams, while some yelled in anger at government ministers there, Israeli media said.

The White House, meanwhile, said Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah carried out the attack, which killed 12. Israel has also accused it. Hezbollah denies it was responsible.

On Sunday, global leaders condemned the attack and moved to de-escalate tensions amid fears it could spark a war between Israel and Hezbollah.

In response to Saturday’s strike, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hit Hezbollah targets in Lebanese territory overnight, and Hezbollah struck two Israeli military bases on Sunday.

Cross-border fire between the two sides has escalated since Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli sites a day after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October. The Hamas attack triggered Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Hezbollah says it is acting in support of the Palestinians.

Saturday’s attack was the deadliest loss of life in and around Israel’s northern border since October.

The strike hit a football pitch in Majdal Shams, one of four towns in the Golan Heights where about 25,000 members of the Arabic-speaking Druze religious and ethnic group live.

Israel’s foreign ministry said 10 of the 12 victims were between the ages of 10 and 16, and has not released the ages of the other two victims.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed that Hezbollah would “pay a heavy price”, arrived in Israel on Sunday after cutting short his trip to the US. He planned to hold a meeting with his military chiefs to assess the situation and approve operational plans.

Hezbollah denied it had anything to do with the strike, but had earlier on Saturday claimed responsibility for four other attacks, including one on a military base around 3km (2 miles) away.

At a funeral in Majdal Shams on Sunday, weeping men wearing traditional red-topped white hats carried 10 of the white-covered caskets through packed streets, AFP reported. Women dressed in black abaya robes cried as they laid flowers on the caskets. Some mourners carried large photos of the dead children.

Fadi Mahmud, 48, told AFP that it was the first time Majdal Shams had experienced such a loss during the war.

“Our community is very close-knit. These children are like children of everybody in the village,” he was reported as saying.

Anger among the community also boiled over at the funeral, with some directing their rage at Israeli government officials who attended, the Times of Israel reported.

“Now you come here? Ten months you didn’t come!” a man wearing a military uniform was reported as shouting at Housing Minister Nir Barkat and Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman. His comments were met with applause.

“We’re tired of your promises!” another person reportedly yelled at Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

In a video posted on social media, hecklers surrounded Mr Smotrich, cursing and saying “we don’t want him!”, according to a Times of Israel translation.

Israeli media reported that a leader of the Druze community had asked in a letter that government ministers not attend the funeral to avoid turning the tragedy into a “political event”.

The Druze are part of an Arabic-speaking ethnic group based in Lebanon, Syria, the Golan Heights and northern Israel. In Israel, they have full citizenship rights and comprise about 1.5% of the population.

But most of those in the Golan have retained an allegiance to Syria. They can still study and work in Israel, though only those with citizenship can vote and serve in the army.

The vast majority of the international community does not recognise Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1981.

On Sunday, global leaders spoke out against the strike and cautioned against escalation, although they differed on who was responsible.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a post on X that the UK “condemns the strike in Golan Heights that has tragically claimed at least 12 lives” and Hezbollah “must cease their attacks”.

“We are deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation and destabilisation,” Secretary Lammy said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington backed Israel’s right to defend itself, while adding that “we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate”.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib told the BBC that he did not think Hezbollah carried out the attack, but added “it could be a mistake by the Israelis or by Hezbollah – I don’t know”.

The Lebanese government condemned the violence and called in a statement for a ceasefire on all fronts.

A surfer whose severed leg washed up on an Australian beach after it was bitten off by a shark has confirmed the limb has not been reattached.

Kai McKenzie, was surfing near Port Macquarie in New South Wales (NSW) last Tuesday, when what he describes as “the biggest shark I’ve ever seen” attacked him.

The 23-year-old managed to catch a wave into shore, where he was helped by an bystander who made a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding.

His leg washed up a short time later and was put on ice by locals, before being taken to hospital, where a medical team had hoped surgery may save it.

But on Monday, almost a week after the attack, Mr McKenzie posted a picture of himself in hospital and an update on social media.

“Spot something missing? Hahah,” the post was captioned.

Detailing the “crazy shark attack”, in an earlier Instagram post he said the outpouring of public support has “meant the absolute world”.

“To be here… to be able to hold my beautiful Eve and my family is everything to me,” he wrote.

He also thanked the public for the donations that have flooded into a GoFundMe page that was set up to help him with medical bills, which has taken in over A$165,000 ($108,000; £84,000).

“I’ll be back in that water in no time!” he added.

A spokesperson for the local health district where Mr McKenzie is receiving treatment would not comment on whether reattachment surgery had been attempted, citing patient privacy.

Authorities say Mr McKenzie – who is a sponsored surfer – was bitten by a 3m great white shark and owes his life to an off-duty police officer who used a dog leash to make a tourniquet for the injured leg.

Mr McKenzie was rushed to a local hospital, before being flown to a major trauma centre in Newcastle, some 200km (124 miles) away. His severed leg also made the long journey.

The keen surfer had only recently returned to the water after suffering a significant neck injury which forced him to take time off from the sport.

In a statement on Thursday, the McKenzie family thanked all of the “medical staff… bystanders and first responders” who had worked to save the surfer’s life.

While Australia has more shark attacks than any other country except the US, fatal attacks remain relatively rare.

Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni has vowed to “relaunch” relations with China as she began her first visit to Beijing since taking office.

Ms Meloni met Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the beginning of her five-day trip and signed a three-year plan to strengthen economic cooperation between the two nations.

It comes after Ms Meloni last year removed her country from President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

At the time, Rome said the massive Chinese investment scheme had failed to bring any benefits to Italy.

Ms Meloni described her trip as a “demonstration of the will to begin a new phase, to relaunch our bilateral cooperation”.

She also said the two countries have signed an agreement that aims to boost cooperation on electric vehicles and renewable energy.

In a statement released by his office, Premier Li said the two countries aim to increase “mutually beneficial cooperation between small and medium-sized enterprises in the fields of shipbuilding, aerospace, new energy, artificial intelligence.”

Italy was the only major Western nation to sign up to the BRI, one of China’s most ambitious trade and infrastructure projects.

The move was heavily criticised at the time by the US and some other major Western countries.

Since coming to office in 2022, Ms Meloni has sought to lead a more pro-Western and pro-Nato foreign policy than her predecessors.

Before withdrawing from the BRI, Ms Meloni had described the former government’s decision to join it as “a serious mistake”.

Under her leadership, Italy has moved to block a Chinese state-owned company from taking control of tyre making giant Pirelli.

Rome has also supported a recent move by the European Commission to impose tariffs of as much as 37.6% on electric vehicles imported from China.

Two-way trade between two countries reached 66.8 billion euros (£56.3 billion) last year, making China Italy’s largest non-EU trading partner after the US.

A group of scientists say they have found new evidence to back up their theory that complex life on Earth may have begun 1.5 billion years earlier than thought.

The team, working in Gabon, say they discovered evidence deep within rocks showing environmental conditions for animal life 2.1 billion years ago.

But they say the organisms were restricted to an inland sea, did not spread globally and eventually died out.

The ideas are a big departure from conventional thinking and not all scientists agree.

Most experts believe animal life began around 635 million years ago.

The research adds to an ongoing debate over whether so-far unexplained formations found in Franceville, Gabon are actually fossils or not.

The scientists looked at the rock around the formations to see if they showed evidence of containing nutrients like oxygen and phosphorus that could have supported life.

Professor Ernest Chi Fru at Cardiff University worked with an international team of scientists.

He told BBC News that, if his theory is correct, these life forms would have been similar to slime mould – a brainless single-cell organism that reproduces with spores.

But Professor Graham Shields at University College London, who was not involved in the research, says he had some reservations.

“I’m not against the idea that there were higher nutrients 2.1 billion years ago but I’m not convinced that this could lead to diversification to form complex life,” he said, suggesting more evidence was needed.

Prof Chi Fru said his work helped prove ideas about the processes that create life on Earth.

“We’re saying, look, there’s fossils here, there’s oxygen, it’s stimulated the appearance of the first complex living organisms,” he said.

“We see the same process as in the Cambrian period, 635 million years ago – it helps back that up. It helps us understand ultimately where we have all come from,” he added.

The first hint that complex life could have begun earlier than previously thought came about 10 years ago with the discovery of something called the Francevillian formation.

Prof Chi Fru and his colleagues said the formation was made up of fossils which pointed to evidence of life that could “wiggle” and move of its own accord.

The findings were not accepted by all scientists.

To find more evidence for their theories, Prof Chi Fru and his team have now analysed sediment cores drilled from the rock in Gabon.

The chemistry of the rock showed evidence that a “laboratory” for life was created just before the formation appeared.

They believe that the high levels of oxygen and phosphorus were made by two continental plates colliding under water, creating volcanic activity.

The collision cut off a section of water from the oceans, creating a “nutrient-rich shallow marine inland sea.”

Prof Chi Fru says this protected environment had the conditions to allow photosynthesis, leading to significant amounts of oxygen in the water.

“This would have provided sufficient energy to promote increases in body size and greater complex behaviour observed in primitive, simple animal-like life forms such as those found in the fossils from this period,” he said.

But he says that the isolated environment also led to the demise of the life forms because there were not enough new nutrients fed in to sustain a food supply.

PhD student Elias Rugen at the Natural History Museum, who was not involved in the research, agreed with some of the findings, saying it’s clear that “oceanic carbon, nitrogen, iron and phosphorus cycles were all doing something a little bit unprecedented at this point in Earth’s history.”

“There’s nothing to say that complex biological life couldn’t have emerged and thrived as far back as 2 billion years ago,” he said, but added that more evidence was needed to support the theories.

The findings are published in the scientific journal Precambrian Research.

Acclaimed Irish author, Edna O’Brien, has died at the age of 93.

Her literary agent, PFD, and publisher, Faber, said she died peacefully on Saturday after a long illness.

They said their thoughts were with her “family and friends, in particular her sons Marcus and Carlo”.

Born in rural County Clare in 1930, O’Brien found her education by nuns suffocating and moved to Dublin to escape, subsequently spending much of her life in London.

She published her first novel The Country Girls in 1960.

The ground-breaking account of two female friends and the portrayal of female sexuality scandalised Ireland.

The novel and her two subsequent stories, The Lonely Girl and Girls in Their Married Bliss were banned by the Irish government.

Some copies were even burnt, including in O’Brien’s home village.

But the books became huge successes and were credited with challenging traditional societal views.

O’Brien wrote more than 20 novels, as well as dramas and biographies.

Many of her novels detailed the struggles of women in a male dominated world.

The writer was also the recipient of numerous awards including the Pen Nabokov prize.

Ireland’s president, Michael D Higgins said he felt “great sorrow” and described O’Brien as a “fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed.

“Through that deeply insightful work, rich in humanity, Edna O’Brien was one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland in their different generations and played an important role in transforming the status of women across Irish society.

“While the beauty of her work was immediately recognised abroad, it is important to remember the hostile reaction it provoked among those who wished for the lived experience of women to remain far from the world of Irish literature, with her books shamefully banned upon their early publication.”

In 2020 Edna O’Brien told the Guardian newspaper that she had not had “that brilliant a life in many ways”.

She added: “It was quite difficult and that’s not said in self-pity but one thing that is true is that language and the mystery of language and the miracle of language has, as that lovely song Carrickfergus says, carried me over… the richness of great language.”

• Listen to 2015 interview O’Brien gave to the BBC as she published her novel, The Little Red Chairs

France’s national rail operator says it has finished repairing infrastructure damaged in a suspected coordinated arson attack on Friday.

State-owned SNCF said most trains were running as planned on Sunday and full service will resume on Monday.

Police are still searching for the perpetrators behind what French ministers and officials have described as “sabotage” designed to paralyse high-speed TGV lines running to and from Paris.

Hundreds of thousands of people were caught up in the resulting disruption, which came hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in the capital.

SNCF said staff have been working around the clock to manually repair fibre optic cables, which were targeted on the North, Brittany and South-West lines.

Rail workers foiled an attempt to destroy safety equipment on a fourth line.

On Sunday, the rail company said the main western line from Paris was operating almost as normal, while three out of four TGV trains were running on the northern line from Lille, with no delays expected.

SNCF said around 250,000 passengers were affected on Friday, while junior transport minister Patrice Vergriete estimated as many as 800,000 people could be impacted over three days.

Eurostar – which runs international services from London to Paris and uses a high-speed line in France – was also impacted. It said one in four of its trains would not run over the weekend.

Among those caught up in the disruption on Friday was Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who had planned to travel to the Games’ opening ceremony via train but was forced to fly instead.

He told the BBC: “I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t frustrating because it was, and for very many people it made travel so much harder.”

The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal investigation into what happened, which is being overseen by its organised crime office.

Robert Downey Jr is returning to the Marvel superhero world after five years – but not to the Iron Man role that launched the blockbuster franchise.

The actor will make his comeback as Dr Victor Von Doom, a prominent villain in the comic books that spawned the popular film series.

Downey Jr will appear in Avengers: Doomsday, which is due to be released in May 2026, and a further instalment titled Secret Wars a year later.

Stars joining the Marvel franchise were unveiled at the Comic Con event in San Diego.

Downey Jr appeared on stage concealed behind Doctor Doom’s iconic mask and green cloak before unveiling himself to fans.

Speaking to reporters, he said: “I like playing complicated characters.”

The 59-year-old was instrumental in launching the Marvel movie universe, starring in its first film Iron Man in 2008.

He last appeared in a Marvel film in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

The American actor won an Oscar for his role in Oppenheimer earlier this year.

Marvel is set to release a further three films in 2025 before Avengers returns to big screens.

Captain America: Brave New World will see Harrison Ford replace the late William Hurt as General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross.

Florence Pugh will take on a leading role in Thunderbolts, while Pedro Pascal will make his Marvel debut in The Fantastic 4: First Steps.

Disney’s Marvel movie series have generated $30bn (£23.3bn) in box office takings – the first franchise to do so – but profits have slowed in recent years.

However, the recent release of Deadpool & Wolverine, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, has offered the chance of a potential revival – making $96m on its opening day on Friday.

Last year, Marvel dropped actor Jonathan Majors – who played villain Kang the Conqueror – following his conviction for assaulting his girlfriend.

Twelve Libyan officials have received sentences ranging between nine and 27 years in prison for their role in catastrophic dam collapses that killed more than 4,000 people last September.

Entire neighbourhoods in the city of Derna were swept away, and evacuation efforts were botched.

The convicted officials were responsible for managing water resources and maintaining the dams.

They were charged with crimes including negligence, premeditated murder and wasting public money, Reuters reported.

Three of the defendants were also ordered to repay money obtained through illicit means, the public prosecutor’s office said. Four others put on trial were acquitted.

An international report in January said the dams gave way partly due to poor maintenance and governance during more than a decade of conflict in Libya.

A week after the disaster hit Derna, furious residents burnt down the mayor’s home as they demanded answers. The whole city council was dismissed.

In the days after the floods, residents told BBC Arabic that evacuation orders focused on the wrong part of Derna, that no sufficient provision was made for where evacuated people should shelter and that some of the stay-at-home orders and curfews contradicted each other.

Locals also told the BBC that some people who were evacuated from the seafront because of fears of rising sea levels were moved to more dangerous areas that later flooded.

The water was brought by Storm Daniel, resulting in more than 400mm of rain to parts of Libya’s north-east coast within a 24-hour period.

That is an extraordinary deluge of water for a region which usually sees about 1.5mm throughout the whole of September, as BBC Verify reported at the time.

Libya’s National Meteorological Centre said the rainfall set a new record.

Since the ousting of long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi, Libya has been divided by power struggles and currently has two governments – a UN-recognised one based in Tripoli, and another in the country’s east backed by warlord Gen Khalifa Haftar.

• In pictures: Why flood damage to Derna was so catastrophic
• South Africa police arrest Libyans at ‘illegal’ military camp
• At least 65 migrant bodies found in Libya mass grave

Olympic organisers have issued a “deep apology” after South Korea’s athletes were mistakenly introduced as North Korea at the opening ceremony in Paris.

As the excited, flag-waving team floated down the River Seine, both French and English announcers introduced them as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” – the official name of North Korea.

The same name was then used – correctly – when North Korea’s delegation sailed past.

The two Koreas have been divided since the end of World War Two, with tensions between the states further escalating recently.

The subtitle which ran across the bottom of the television broadcast showed the correct title, however.

The South Korean sports ministry said it planned to lodge a “strong complaint with France on a government level” over the embarrassing gaffe.

In a statement, the ministry expressed “regret over the announcement… where the South Korean delegation was introduced as the North Korean team.”

The statement added that the second vice sports minister, Jang Mi-ran, a 2008 Olympic weightlifting champion, had demanded a meeting with Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued an apology on its official Korean-language X account, saying: “We would like to offer a deep apology over the mistake that occurred in the introduction of the South Korean delegation during the opening ceremony.”

South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea, has 143 athletes in its Olympic team this year, competing across 21 sports.

North Korea has sent 16 athletes. This is the first time it has competed in the games since Rio 2016.

What do an Italian communist student of mime, a toddler with an eye for a ball and a comedian who jokes about nothing have in common?

They all went on to become members of a very select global club.

Miuccia Prada, Tiger Woods and Jerry Seinfeld are among about 2,800 people on the planet who are US-dollar billionaires.

But the list of super-rich is very international.

According to the American media firm Forbes, which tracks the fortunes of the world’s richest, the United States has 813 billionaires, China (including Hong Kong) is second with 473, and India is third with 200.

Good Bad Billionaire

The BBC World Service podcast Good Bad Billionaire is back. From celebs and CEOs to sport stars and tech titans, each episode looks at how some of the world’s billionaires made their fortunes. Presenters Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng consider their wealth, power, philanthropy and legacy, and whether they think they are good, bad or just incredibly rich.

Listen on BBC sounds

Or for audiences outside the UK click here

The size of these fortunes can be hard to comprehend. A billion is a huge number – to give an idea of scale, one million seconds is 11 days, but a billion is 32 years.

And for some, the very existence of billionaires is obscene.

Eighty-one of the world’s richest people – about a bus-full – have more combined wealth than the poorest four billion people in the world.

In a 2023 report on inequality, Oxfam concluded: “Every billionaire is a policy mistake. The very existence of booming billionaires and record profits, while most people face austerity, rising poverty, and a cost-of-living crisis, is evidence of an economic system that fails to deliver for humanity.”

That inequality has led to calls in many countries for taxes on absolute wealth rather than income. In the US, Democratic Party Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed a 2% tax on assets over $50m (£39m) and 3% on assets over $1bn (£778m).

But others argue the prospect of great wealth inspires creation and innovation that improves the lives of millions of people.

American economist Michael Strain argues we need more billionaires, not fewer, and cites Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus who found that about 2% of the returns from technological innovation go to the founders and inventors – the rest goes to society.

Strain calls billionaires “largely self-made innovators who have changed the way we live”. He cites examples such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer who revolutionised personal computing, legendary investor Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos who upended retail, and Elon Musk who disrupted the automotive industry and space commerce.

“None of them are ‘policy failures’,” he concludes. “Rather than wishing they did not exist, we should be thrilled that they do.”

Many billionaires also donate large sums to charity. Gates and Buffett developed “The Giving Pledge” – a commitment to give away over half one’s wealth over their lifetime.

Rapper, business mogul and billionaire Jay-Z, although not signed up to the pledge, offered this pithy defence of his wealth: “I can’t help the poor if I’m one of them. So I got rich and gave back. To me that’s the win-win.”

Billionaires don’t get rich in a vacuum. Their success also tells us something about ourselves.

It is hard to get very, very rich unless you are providing something that people either need, want or enjoy.

Whether it is the minimalist stylings of Prada, the Star Wars movies or TikTok, the billionaires we discuss on the podcast have changed the world to a greater or lesser degree – and the stories as to how they did it are compelling.

For example, the founders of Google tried to sell an early version of their search engine for $1m but there were no takers. Today Google is worth $2.3tn and cofounder Sergey Brin is personally worth $135bn – roughly the GDP of Morocco.

Maria Bianchi was a card-carrying communist in 1960s Italy studying mime at theatre school before she changed her name to Miuccia Prada.

India’s first self-made female billionaire, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, started out brewing beer before she hit gender bias and tried pharmaceuticals instead, becoming Asia’s biggest producer of insulin.

Jerry Seinfeld’s parents were both orphans and his father never hugged him. Perhaps one of the reasons that he and Larry David had a rule for the characters in their smash hit comedy Seinfeld: “No hugging and no learning.”

The individual success of these billionaires also often tells a tale of wider historical, political or technological trends.

Tech entrepreneur Jack Ma, who co-founded the Alibaba group, was the beneficiary of two powerful and simultaneous forces – the birth of online retail and China’s rising economic power and mass affluence.

Chuck Feeney, the man who invented duty-free shopping (and gave his entire fortune away) rode a wave of outbound Japanese tourism after World War Two.

There are the stories where luck played a part.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates happened to go to one of the very few schools in the US in the late 1960s that had a computer. While singer and business woman Rihanna got her break thanks to a chance audition with a record producer who happened to be on holiday in Barbados.

And let’s hear it for the parents.

Taylor Swift’s entire family moved from Pennsylvania to Nashville to further their teenage daughter’s career while Michael Jordan’s mum suggested he should “hear what Nike has to say” before signing a deal with either Adidas or Converse – paving the way for the most lucrative sports endorsement deal in history.

There are some “sliding doors” moments in these stories – small events that in retrospect changed the lives and the fortunes of these billionaires.

But when doors open, you have to walk through them, and if there is one common denominator it’s the energy, drive and commitment that these people have brought to their respective disciplines. Plus their desire to press on, when many would have checked out long ago.

My Good Bad Billionaire co-presenter Zing Tsjeng and I always joke that when we got to, say, $10m, you wouldn’t see us for dust – there would just be two revolving chairs as evidence I had gone fishing and she’d gone to yet another music festival.

I guess people like us will never make it big but we’ve been by turns fascinated, charmed, moved, appalled and terrified by those who have.

The scene around the football pitch here in Majdal Shams, where 12 children and young people died on Saturday, is quiet and deeply sombre.

There are plenty of people here – local Druze elders in their distinctive red and white turbans and baggy trousers, military officials, visiting government ministers and of course many journalists.

But conversations around the crater where the rocket landed are hushed, respectful.

A black flag flies at the spot where the rocket landed last night, gouging a shallow crater in the pitch and blowing out the metal fence around it. There are shrapnel holes everywhere.

Wreaths have just been laid. Many people are simply standing by the crater, taking in the scene, lost in thought.

In the corner of the pitch, someone has tried to remove the bloodstains on the astroturf, but with only limited success.

Outside the fence, bicycles and scooters lie scattered, all blackened from yesterday’s brief but devastating fireball.

There’s a bomb shelter metres away, but when the siren sounded last night, the children had mere seconds to respond. They had absolutely no chance.

Israel says the rocket was fired from Shebaa, a small village just a short distance away across the western flank of Mt Hermon, which towers over Majdal Shams.

Hezbollah disputes Israel’s claim, but around the time the rocket landed here, its media outlets announced that it had fired rockets towards an Israeli military base less than two miles from the football pitch.

This is a day of funerals for those who died here, most of them boys and girls between 10 and 16. Grief hangs heavy in the summer heat.

A voice is briefly raised, furious and urgent.

“How come there’s still a Beirut?” he cries. “We’ve had 10 months of our children living in fear.”

There’s a ripple of applause, but opinion here in this Druze minority town is divided on how forcefully Israel should respond. After almost 10 months of simmering conflict, the prospect of an all-out war scares many.

When Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s hardline finance minister, arrives, the crowd swells and the sense of anger mounts.

He’s accosted by angry locals. Some are demanding a decisive response against Hezbollah. Some accuse the government of abandoning the Golan Heights.

Mr Smotrich tries to offer his condolences, even to hug those around him. But it seems not everyone is interested in his sympathy.

In the middle of a large adjacent football pitch, 12 empty black chairs commemorate the lost.

Fighting back the tears, 26-year-old Ugarit Abu Assad, from nearby Buqata, says she fears a major escalation.

“I’m afraid of the consequences of all out war,” she says. “A lot of people are going to die.”

Walking around the steep streets of this mountain community, the sense of collective shock and mourning is overwhelming.

Small groups of men, women and children, all dressed in black, are moving around silently, from one grieving household to another.

Sometimes you catch sight of people hugging or wiping away each other’s tears.

Wahim, a teacher who knew many of the young victims, was utterly distraught, unsure whether to try to express his feelings or stay silent.

“This is a disaster. How do I even start,” he said, before apologising and dissolving into sobs.

Ivan Ebrahim pulled up a picture of his 10-year-old cousin, Milar Shaar, the youngest victim. A boy who loved football and gaming.

“He is the greatest kid here. Everybody loved him,” Ivan said.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to describe.”

“We haven’t slept since yesterday,” Milar’s uncle, Nassar Ebrahim tells me. “The whole town is in mourning.”

The people of Majdal Shams are used to the sound of rockets overhead, but Saturday’s attack took them all by surprise.

“I don’t think the government needs to respond,” Nassar says. “They need to end the war, so no-one dies on either side.”

The mood up here, away from the occasional angry outbursts down at the football pitch, is extremely subdued.

But this is a part of the world where hospitality runs deep.

A group of young men call us over, offering water thimbles of strong coffee.

They’re determined to stay put, despite the danger.

“We Druze don’t leave our homes,” one tells me, echoing a quiet defiance we encounter elsewhere.

When it comes to what happens next, they’re unanimous: they don’t want a wider war.

“The children here, the children in Lebanon, the children in Gaza. They don’t need more war,” another says.

Lhakpa Sherpa has a startling life story – to the outside world she holds the record for climbing Mount Everest a staggering 10 times, the most of any woman.

But behind the scenes, her personal life has been dangerous and fearful.

While conquering the world’s highest mountain, she says she was enduring domestic abuse from her husband – including during their 2004 descent from Everest.

Now based in America, she has raised three children, supporting them by working in a grocery store and as a cleaner.

Her life – on and off the mountain – has been made into a Netflix documentary, Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, directed by Lucy Walker.

Sherpa is proud of the film.

Eyes blazing, she tells the BBC: “I want to show people women can do it.”

What is perhaps surprising about her record-breaking climbs is that she does so with little training.

Climbing Everest can be fatal – there have been more than 300 deaths in the region since records of mountain climbing there began a century ago.

So it’s vital to be in peak condition.

In the film, we see Sherpa keep fit by walking in the Connecticut mountains. But she also carries on with her normal working life, out of necessity.

“You’re an exceptional athlete,” Walker tells Sherpa during our interview. “Very tall. Very strong.

“People underestimate it. It’s an unbelievable accomplishment that you can climb Everest from doing your day job.”

Sherpa responds: “I’m not good with being educated, but I’m very good with the mountains.”

Born in 1973 to yak farmers in the Nepalese Himalayas, she was one of 11 children.

Crucially, she was raised in an area where education for girls wasn’t a priority – she carried her brother to school for hours through the hills, but wasn’t allowed inside.

Things are now improving in Nepal – women’s literacy rocketed from 10% in 1981 to 70% by 2021.

But Sherpa’s lack of education left lasting consequences – she’s still unable to read.

Things people take for granted, like using a TV remote control, are difficult for her.

Her son Nima, born in the late 90s, and daughters Sunny, 22, and Shiny, 17, help bridge the gaps.

With no schooling, by the time she was 15, Sherpa was working as a porter on mountain expeditions – often as the only girl.

Through her climbing work she was able to avoid a traditional arranged marriage.

But life got difficult when she became pregnant after a brief relationship in Kathmandu.

An unmarried mother, she was too ashamed to return home.

Still climbing when she could, she met and fell for Romanian-US mountaineer and home-renovation contractor, George Dijmărescu.

He’d escaped Romania, under dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, by swimming across the Danube river.

Dijmărescu had already forged a new life in the US when he and Sherpa married in 2002, settling in Connecticut, where they went on to have Sunny and Shiny.

But the couple’s relationship fractured when Dijmărescu became violent, Sherpa says.

In 2004, this became apparent when they ascended Everest with a New England climbing group.

After reaching the summit they encountered bad weather.

Dijmărescu’s behaviour “took a turn almost immediately”, according to journalist Michael Kodas, who reported on the climb for a local paper.

Recalling it in the documentary, he says things around Dijmărescu got “hostile”.

Sherpa, who was in a tent with him, says on camera: “He look like thunder, look like bullet… George was yelling and he punch me.”

We then see multiple photographs taken by Kodas, of her lying unconscious afterwards.

The journalist says he witnessed Dijmărescu say “get this garbage out of here”, as he dragged his wife from the tent.

In the film, Sherpa describes being unconscious as an out-of-body experience.

“People’s voices turned to lots of birds. I saw my whole life. I fly near my mom’s house. I saw through everything… I felt ashamed of myself. I want to go die.”

Then she remembered her children, and says: “I’m not ready to die.”

Kodas included the violent incident in his 2008 book, High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in the Age of Greed.

Walker later persuaded him to release his film footage to her, including the raw tapes, calling it a “huge act of trust”.

“It’s such a difficult subject and people don’t sort of want to get involved, because it’s controversial… but I didn’t take no for an answer,” she tells the BBC.

Despite their relationship being damaged, they stayed together for several more years.

But she says she was admitted to hospital when Dijmărescu assaulted her again in 2012.

This was a turning point.

With the help of a social worker, Sherpa moved with the girls to a women’s refuge, where she started to rebuild her life.

The couple divorced in 2015, and in 2016 a court awarded Sherpa “sole legal custody of the girls”.

A report at the time, in OutsideOnline, said Dijmărescu received a six-month suspended sentence and a year of probation, after a conviction for breach of the peace.

He was found not guilty of second-degree assault because court documents stated she did not have a visible head injury.

Dijmărescu died in 2020 of cancer, but the trauma he left behind is tangible.

Sherpa found it really hard discussing their relationship for the documentary.

“I wish all the turmoil keep secret, I don’t want in my life it’s everybody know[ing],” she says.

But her son advised her to make the film with Walker, after researching her previous work.

The director says to Sherpa: “When you tell your story, you skipped bits, saying, ‘We’re not talking about these years’.

“And slowly, slowly, we go to the difficult things.

“It is very traumatic for you. You get very upset, you don’t sleep. It’s very intense.

“But actually, if you can share it, people love you more. Because when you let people know you have difficult times, other people, I think, connect much more now.”

Sunny and Shiny echo this.

They appear in the film, and found it “a bit overwhelming to watch at first, because of how vulnerable we were to have our whole life put on display”.

They agreed to take part because “the struggle we have been through as a family, and how we have used it to strengthen not weaken us, is such a crucial part of our mother’s story”.

Not surprisingly, Sherpa says life was tough after the trauma of her marriage.

“Oh my God, yeah, crying. I carry so much in my life. I work hard, I courage hard,” she says.

“Sometimes I say, ‘Why am I alive, why am I not dead, so many danger. Almost I’ve been in heaven, and come back. So difficult. But somehow I did it…

“Hurt woman is very tough. Does not give up easily. And I keep doing.”

Climbing is not only her passion – it’s also a healing process.

“My darkness I leave behind [on the mountain],” she says.

We see her begin her record-breaking 10th Everest ascent in 2022.

Whispering goodbye to Shiny, sleeping in a nearby tent in base camp, the climb begins at night, by torchlight.

This means her descent from the summit can take place in daylight.

It’s clear her daughters are proud of their mum.

Sherpa says she is creating a “better life” for her children in the US, including giving them an education.

“I really want changing my life, my daughters – I work hard,” she says.

She wants to earn her living with her own guiding company, and to find more sponsorship.

“I know the mountains, I wish I can share my expertise and experience with other people,” she says.

Sunny and Shiny add: “Women have started climbing big peaks and following our mom’s footsteps.”

It was early in the day, but already hot. As she wiped sweat from her brow, Chieko Kiriake searched for some shade. As she did so, there was a blinding light – it was like nothing the 15-year-old had ever experienced. It was 08:15 on 6 August 1945.

“It felt like the sun had fallen – and I grew dizzy,” she recalls.

The United States had just dropped an atomic bomb on Chieko’s home city of Hiroshima – the first time a nuclear weapon had ever been used in warfare. While Germany had surrendered in Europe, allied forces fighting in World War Two were still at war with Japan.

Chieko was a student, but like many older pupils, had been sent out to work in the factories during the war. She staggered to her school, carrying an injured friend on her back. Many of the students had been badly burnt. She rubbed old oil, found in the home economics classroom, onto their wounds.

“That was the only treatment we could give them. They died one after the next,” says Chieko.

“Us older students who survived were instructed by our teachers to dig a hole in the playground and I cremated [my classmates] with my own hands. I felt so awful for them.”

Chieko is now 94 years old. It is almost 80 years since the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and time is running out for the surviving victims – known as hibakusha in Japan – to tell their stories.

Many have lived with health problems, lost loved ones and been discriminated against because of the atomic attack. Now, they are sharing their experiences for a BBC Two film, documenting the past so it can act as a warning for the future.

After the sorrow, new life started to return to her city, says Chieko.

“People said the grass wouldn’t grow for 75 years,” she says, “but by the spring of the next year, the sparrows returned.”

In her lifetime, Chieko says she has been close to death many times but has come to believe she has been kept alive by the power of something great.

The majority of hibakusha alive today were children at the time of the bombings. As the hibakusha – which translates literally as “bomb-affected-people” – have grown older, global conflicts have intensified. To them, the risk of a nuclear escalation feels more real than ever.

“My body trembles and tears overflow,” says 86-year-old Michiko Kodama when she thinks about conflicts around the world today – such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war.

“We must not allow the hell of the atomic bombing to be recreated. I feel a sense of crisis.”

Michiko is a vocal campaigner for nuclear disarmament and says she speaks out so the voices of those who have died can be heard – and the testimonies passed on to the next generations.

“I think it is important to hear first-hand accounts of hibakusha who experienced the direct bombing,” she says.

Michiko had been at school – aged seven – when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

“Through the windows of my classroom, there was an intense light speeding towards us. It was yellow, orange, silver.”

She describes how the windows shattered and splintered across the classroom – the debris spraying everywhere “impaling the walls, desk, chairs”.

“The ceiling came crashing down. So I hid my body under the desk.”

After the blast, Michiko looked around the devastated room. In every direction she could see hands and legs trapped.

“I crawled from the classroom to the corridor and my friends were saying, ‘Help me’.”

When her father came to collect her, he carried her home on his back.

Black rain, “like mud”, fell from the sky, says Michiko. It was a mixture of radioactive material and residue from the explosion.

She has never been able to forget the journey home.

“It was a scene from hell,” says Michiko. “The people who were escaping towards us, most of their clothes had completely burned away and their flesh was melting.”

She recalls seeing one girl – all alone – about the same age as her. She was badly burnt.

“But her eyes were wide open,” says Michiko. “That girl’s eyes, they pierce me still. I can’t forget her. Even though 78 years have passed, she is seared into my mind and soul.”

Michiko wouldn’t be alive today if her family had remained in their old home. It was only 350m (0.21 miles) from the spot where the bomb exploded. About 20 days before, her family had moved house, just a few kilometres away – but that saved her life.

Estimates put the number of lost lives in Hiroshima, by the end of 1945, at about 140,000.

In Nagasaki, which was bombed by the US three days later, at least 74,000 were killed.

Sueichi Kido lived just 2km (1.24 miles) from the epicentre of the Nagasaki blast. Aged five at the time, he suffered burns to part of his face. His mother, who received more serious injuries, had protected him from the full impact of the blast.

“We hibakusha have never given up on our mission of preventing the creation of any more hibakusha,” says Sueichi, who is now 83 and recently travelled to New York to give a speech at the United Nations to warn of the dangers of nuclear weapons.

When he woke up after fainting from the impact of the blast, the first thing he remembers seeing was a red oil can. For years he thought it was that oil can that had caused the explosion and surrounding devastation.

His parents didn’t correct him, choosing to shield him from the fact it had been a nuclear attack – but whenever he mentioned it, they would cry.

Not all injuries were instantly visible. In the weeks and months after the blast, many people in both cities began to show symptoms of radiation poisoning – and there were increased levels of leukaemia and cancer.

For years, survivors have faced discrimination in society, particularly when it came to finding a partner.

“‘We do not want hibakusha blood to enter our family line,’ I was told,” says Michiko.

But later, she did marry and had two children.

She lost her mother, father and brothers to cancer. Her daughter died from the disease in 2011.

“I feel lonely, angry and scared, and I wonder if it may be my turn next,” she says.

Another bomb survivor, Kiyomi Iguro, was 19 when the bomb struck Nagasaki. She describes marrying into a distant relative’s family and having a miscarriage – which her mother-in-law attributed to the atomic bomb.

“‘Your future is scary.’ That’s what she told me.”

Kiyomi says she was instructed not to tell her neighbours that she had experienced the atomic bomb.

Since being interviewed for the documentary, Kiyomi has sadly died.

But, until she was 98, she would visit the Peace Park in Nagasaki and ring the bell at 11:02 – the time the bomb hit the city – to wish for peace.

Sueichi went on to teach Japanese history at university. Knowing he was a hibakusha cast a shadow on his identity, he says. But then he realised he was not a normal human being and felt a duty to speak out to save humankind.

“A sense that I was a special person was born in me,” says Sueichi.

It is something the hibakusha all feel that they share – an enduring determination to ensure the past never becomes the present.

Ahead of the Olympics, some Parisians were grumbling. Security issues and overcrowding had been among locals’ top concerns in the preceding weeks, which were also an immensely turbulent period in the country’s politics.

Making matters worse was Friday’s wave of co-ordinated arson attacks on the French railway network that ruined the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of people.

But a vibrant opening ceremony and an early flurry of French medals have started to make many in the city optimistic.

And as the rain clouds clear, some of the city’s residents say the sport is starting to bring France some much-needed togetherness.

• French rail repairs completed after arson attacks
• American gymnast Simone Biles draws A-list crowd
• Olympian sorry to wife for losing ring in the Seine

The morning after France snatched its first gold of the Games, the sun finally shone on a fan zone in the city’s 13th arrondissement, where couples and families lounged in deckchairs, watching a big screen.

A man named Max was jubilant after the French victory in the men’s rugby sevens. “I was very proud,” he said. “But I was always excited about the Olympics, even if some people are not.”

The tone of the sporting extravaganza so far was perhaps set by Friday’s ambitious opening ceremony, which seemed to surprise many locals in its smooth execution.

Director Thomas Jolly appeared to pre-empt the possibility of something going wrong, as one of the pre-filmed inserts showed torchbearer Zinedine Zidane on a broken-down metro train.

“I’m pretty sure that everybody who saw the ceremony changed their minds,” said Pierre, a cyclist who had been annoyed beforehand by the vast security lockdown.

“I was not very optimistic about the Olympics. I have to say that I was a little bit grumpy,” said a rugby fan named Vincent. “But now I find the ambience very cool.”

Spirits were undampened as the downpours that characterised the ceremony continued into the weekend. Cheers and spontaneous renditions of French national anthem La Marseillaise broke out from crowds who lined the streets to watch cyclists braving treacherous conditions in the time-trial competitions.

Curious locals perched on their upper-floor window ledges, or balanced themselves precariously on street furniture to get a good view. Police officers could not resist taking photos. Even delivery cyclists, evidently perplexed by the many road closures, paused to drink in the action.

For ice-cream seller Ludwig, who had set up stall on the Boulevard Saint-Germain as the competitors whizzed past, sales were faltering in the wet weather, but all that mattered was the “beautiful atmosphere” that the global sporting contest had brought.

And as French athletes notched up some early sporting successes, it started to look like the feelgood factor might last beyond the opening ceremony. Pedestrians poked their heads into bars to watch TV screens and applaud as some of the first medals rolled in.

The Games were proving an “incredible” display of French culture and togetherness, said two judo fans who had dressed up as beloved comic characters Asterix and Obelix.

Speaking outside the Champ de Mars Arena, Thomas-Felix and Sebastien said it was disappointing that that French competitor Luka Mkheidze was defeated in the final of the men’s 60kg contest, but at least they were surrounded by plenty of compatriots and could “all cry together”.

Some Parisians are pleased to see something other than politics starting to fill the headlines. For Caroline Loire, who is organising street theatre during the Games, the sport represents “a break”.

A matter of weeks ago, a hastily-formed left-wing coalition triumphed in the second round of the snap parliamentary election – after the far-right National Rally topped the polls in the first vote. France is now in the hands of a caretaker government, its future uncertain.

“[President] Macron wants us to forget all about the politics, but we won’t,” said Adrienne, an arts student who was excited to watch the Olympic table-tennis. “We will appreciate the sportsmen and sportswomen – but we won’t forget.”

Another man, Alexandre, was doubtful that the Games would have a long-term galvanising impact, but felt it was a good chance for France to “show what it can do”. That was important, he said, in light of Friday’s attack on the railways. “It’s a heavy situation,” he lamented.

Even if the Games do manage to distract many people for a time, the enthusiasm is far from universal.

“I’m not excited. I don’t think Paris is the right place for it,” said a student, Melissa, who suggested another city would have been better equipped to deal with the crowds.

There have been fears that the Parisian infrastructure could groan under the strain of so many visitors, but some of the most central streets and even its metro stations have felt eerily quiet – perhaps as a result of many locals abandoning the city for the summer.

On Saturday, some barriers remained on the Île Saint-Louis, an island in the Seine that was cordoned off for the opening ceremony. Footfall seemed relatively low.

Some businesses that were open said it remained to be seen whether an influx of Olympic tourists would make up for the lost trade. The Games were good news for France, but “not good for business”, said one restaurateur, gesturing at a row of empty tables.

Further south, spectators and Games delegates were starting to seek out the bars and cafes of the Latin Quarter – although one Greek outlet named Olympie was conspicuously closed.

“I don’t care that the Olympics is in Paris,” said one bistro-owner, Jean-Louis, who was hustling for passing customers.

“This is just a view of France, but it’s not reality,” he said of the Games. He said poverty was a more important issue for millions of people. After all, he said, “the Olympic Games don’t give me something to eat”.

Venezuela’s battered economy is one of the key battlegrounds in Sunday’s presidential election, with President Nicolás Maduro hoping to convince voters that the country has turned the corner after years of strife.

Thanks to his recent efforts to push down the cost of living, the outlook is slightly rosier. In February, Venezuela finally said goodbye to the rampant hyperinflation that had seen price rises peak at more than 400,000% a year in 2019.

Now annual inflation is more manageable, but still high at about 50%.

Mr Maduro has been keen to take credit for the fall, saying it shows that he has “the correct policies”.

Unfortunately, however, those policies have done little or nothing to tackle the economy’s underlying structural problems – chiefly, its historic dependence on oil, to the detriment of other sectors.

“Since it was discovered in the country in the 1920s, oil has taken Venezuela on an exhilarating but dangerous boom-and-bust ride,” as the US Council on Foreign Relations think tank puts it.

Now opponents of President Maduro are pinning their hopes of economic revival on a change of leader, and a new beginning under his electoral rival, Edmundo González.

“An opposition victory would lead to a renewed opening of Venezuela’s trade and financial ties with the rest of the world,” says Jason Tuvey, deputy chief emerging markets economist at Capital Economics.

That would also mean the end of US economic sanctions imposed after Mr Maduro’s victory in the 2018 presidential election, which was widely dismissed as neither free nor fair.

These have made it difficult for state-run oil company PDVSA to sell its crude oil internationally, forcing it to resort to black market deals at big discounts.

But Mr Tuvey cautions that reversing the economic collapse of the past decade will be a tall order, given the enormous investment needed to raise oil production and with peak oil demand approaching.

“Venezuela’s economy can never get back to where it was 15 to 20 years ago,” he tells the BBC. “It will be starting by and large from square one.”

Venezuela’s 25-year-old Bolivarian Revolution – the name that the late President Hugo Chávez gave to his political movement – promised many things, but has failed to deliver what the country arguably most needed: a broad-based economy.

Instead of diversifying away from the oil industry, the governments of Chávez and Mr Maduro doubled down on Venezuela’s mineral wealth.

Paying little heed to the future, they treated PDVSA as a cash cow, milking its funds to finance social spending on housing, healthcare and transport.

But at the same time, they neglected to invest in maintaining the level of oil production, which has plummeted in recent years – partly, but not solely, as a result of US sanctions.

These problems were already evident when President Chávez died in 2013, but have grown worse on his successor’s watch.

“Under Chávez, Venezuela was able to ride on the coat-tails of an oil boom, up until the global financial crisis,” Mr Tuvey says.

“Fifteen to 20 years ago, Venezuela was a major oil producer. It used to produce three-and-a-half million barrels a day, along the lines of some of the smaller Gulf states.

“Now the oil sector has been completely hollowed out, and it produces less than a million barrels a day.”

GDP declined rapidly, down by 70% since 2013. But Mr Maduro resorted to compensating for lower oil prices by printing money to fund spending, resulting in the runaway inflation which the country has only recently curbed.

Economic hardship has taken its toll on the Venezuelan population, with more than 7.7 million people fleeing in search of a better life – about a quarter of the population.

But for those left behind, there have been signs of improvement. While the bolívar is still the official currency, an informal dollarisation has taken place, with US greenbacks increasingly the payment method of choice in retail transactions – at least, for those who have access to them.

That has stabilised the economy – but it has brought with it a social cost.

Residents in the capital, Caracas, now find themselves subject to a two-tier economy. While US dollars are fuelling a consumption boom in high-end shops and restaurants, those paid in bolívars feel increasingly excluded.

One symbolic event that highlighted these changes was Colombian reggaeton superstar Karol G’s recent appearance in Caracas as part of her current world tour.

Few major artists perform in Venezuela these days, but she had no trouble selling out two nights in March at the 50,000-capacity Estadio Monumental, despite ticket prices ranging from $30 to $500 (£23 to £390).

At the same time, according to Caracas-based consultancy Ecoanalítica, about 65% of Venezuelans earn less than $100 a month, while only eight or nine million of the country’s 28 million people can be seen as consumers with actual purchasing power.

“Those with a very close connection to the regime or to PDVSA have been barely affected by all this,” says Mr Tuvey.

As well as the need to raise living standards and reduce inequality, another big economic challenge for Venezuela is what to do about its massive foreign debt.

The country owes an estimated $150bn to bondholders and other foreign creditors. It has been in partial default since 2017, and although Mr Maduro has repeatedly promised talks on a restructuring, none have yet taken place.

The issue has been complicated by the fact that some of the bonds were issued by PDVSA using the company’s US refiner, Citgo, as collateral. As a result, bondholders have been able to pursue the issue through the New York courts.

Bruno Gennari, emerging markets strategist at investment bank KNG Securities, tells the BBC that because the US does not recognise Mr Maduro as president after the 2018 election, this leaves Venezuela with a “legitimacy crisis”.

This means that whoever wins Sunday’s election would have to be acceptable to Washington if a US-approved debt restructuring is to take place.

Mr Gennari does not rule out that the US “could turn a blind eye” if Mr Maduro wins the election under dubious conditions, but he believes that is rather unlikely.

“This election will have a sizeable impact on Venezuela’s future. If restructuring can go ahead, we could see the beginning of a very complex recovery process,” says Mr Gennari.

Once the richest country in South America, Venezuela now has a possible path back to stability – but whatever happens, its economic glory days are firmly behind it.

Many Norwegians are feeling guilty, according to Elisabeth Oxfeldt.

The professor of Scandinavian literature at Oslo University says wealthy Norwegians are increasingly contrasting their comfortable lives with those of people who are struggling, particularly overseas.

“We’ve seen the emergence of a narrative of guilt about people’s privileged lives in a world where others are suffering,” she says.

Thanks to its significant oil reserves, the largest in Europe after Russia’s, Norway is one of the world’s richest countries.

The strength of its economy, as measured per member of its population, is almost twice that of the UK, and bigger even than that of the US.

Norway even runs a budget surplus – its national income exceeds its expenditure. This is in marked contrast to most other nations, including the UK, which have to borrow money to cover their budget deficits.

Prof Oxfeldt is an expert on how Scandinavian books, films and TV series reflect the wider culture of their time. She says she increasingly sees these mediums explore Norway’s wealth guilt.

“By looking at contemporary literature, films and TV series, I found that the contrast between the happy, fortunate or privileged self and the suffering ‘other’ brought about feelings of guilt, unease, discomfort or shame.

“Not everyone feels guilty, but many do,” adds Prof Oxfeldt, who has coined the phrase “Scan guilt”.

Plots featured in recent Norwegian dramas include members of the “leisure class” who rely on services provided by migrant workers who reside in bedsits in their basements. Or women who realise that they have achieved gender equality in the workplace by relying on low-paid au pairs from poor countries to care for their children, says Prof Oxfeldt.

Life has a habit of imitating art. In March, the Norwegian government said it put a stop to granting work permits for au pairs from the developing world. Tabloid newspaper VG had dubbed the practice “west end slavery”.

The Norwegian people’s guilt trips have also been egged on by a variety of people and organisations eager to question whether Norway’s wealth is based on ethical practices.

In January this year, The Financial Times published a special report that uncovered how fish oil made from ground whole fish caught off the coast of Mauritiania in Africa was used as feed by Norway’s extensive salmon farms.

The farmed Norwegian fish, which is sold by major retailers in Europe, “is harming food security in western Africa”, the paper said.

Environmental pressure group Feedback Global insisted that “the Norwegian salmon industry’s voracious appetite for wild fish is driving loss of livelihoods and malnutrition in West Africa, creating a new type of food colonialism”.

The Norwegian government responded that it wanted “to ensure sustainable feed”, and was working towards “increased use of local and more sustainable raw materials”.

Indeed, Norway says it is eager to drive a transition to a green economy, so ensuring aquaculture is sustainable will be essential as the petroleum sector is scaled back to make way for a so-called “green shift”.

This should free up finance, technology and labour for perhaps more future-proof maritime sectors, such as offshore solar and wind power, and algae production for food and medicine.

But, for now at least, this will not be enough to silence vocal critics of Norway’s lucrative petroleum industry. Climate campaigners object to continued drilling for oil and gas. Other critics say that Norway is far too reliant upon its oil earnings.

On the one hand, thanks to the oil and gas-based wealth, Norway’s working hours tend to be shorter than most comparable economies, its worker rights stronger, and its welfare system more generous.

Unsurprisingly, Norway has long been one of the happiest in the world, according to the World Happiness Report. It is currently in seventh place.

But on the other hand, reasons Børre Tosterud, an investor and retired hotelier, Norway’s “utter reliance on oil earnings” has resulted in an excessively large government budget, an inflated public sector, and a shortage of labour that holds back the private sector.

“It’s not sustainable,” he insists.

Norway has always looked to the oceans for buoyancy. The seas have been a source of food and energy, a place of work and a generator of wealth for centuries. Yet it was only in the late 1960s when discoveries of oil and gas helped turn around the fortunes of this previously relatively underdeveloped nation.

Since then, most of Norway’s vast oil earnings have been invested internationally by Norges Bank Investment Management, which is part of Norway’s central bank.

Its main investment fund, Government Pension Fund Global, otherwise known as “the oil fund”, has assets worth about 19,000bn kroner ($1,719bn, £1,332bn).

Norway’s oil export earnings surged following Russia’s 2022 invasion. Critics claimed the country was profiteering from the war, or at least failing to share enough of its sudden windfall with the victims of the aggression that had caused it.

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre dismissed accusations of war profiteering, countering that Norway was able supply to much needed energy to Europe during a time of crisis.

He also points out that Norway has been one of Ukraine’s biggest financial supporters, and as such is arguably punching above its weight, given that Norway’s population is only 5.5 million.

Jan Ludvig Andreassen, chief economist at Eika Group, an alliance of independent Norwegian banks, says that Norwegians have “become much richer than we had expected”.

Yet at the same time, he says that after a period of high interest rates and painful inflation, partly caused by a historically weak krone, which makes imported goods and services expensive, ordinary Norwegians don’t feel rich.

Norway is also a world-leading donor of overseas humanitarian aid.

“I think Norwegians are generous contributors to good causes,” observes Prof Oxfeldt.

However, pointing to Norway’s additional oil exports that have come about as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, Mr Andreassen says that Norway’s charitable donations “are small fry relative to the extra earnings arising from war and suffering”. This is a view echoed by Mr Tosterud.

But do they agree with Prof Oxfeldt that many Norwegians feel guilty? “Not really, except perhaps in some circles such as the environmental movement,” says Mr Andreassen.

Mr Tosterud agrees. “I don’t have any sense of guilt, and neither do I think it is widespread in Norway.”

A baby bat has been returned to its home in the Highlands after hiding away in a couple’s holiday luggage.

It was discovered by Alex O’Neill when he arrived back in Glasgow, after he and his partner stayed at a cottage on Kinlochmoidart Estate in Lochailort.

The tiny bat, which has been named Raspberry, survived tucked away for four hours on the 150 mile (240km) road trip last week.

After being handed into the care of a bat expert, Raspberry was helped back to full health and released in the Highlands on Saturday evening.

Alex told BBC Scotland News that he found the bat after he felt something moving in his bag while unpacking.

He said: “We see bats here in Glasgow sometimes. Lochailort has a lot of them so it wasn’t likely to freak me out.

“I took it out, threw something over it keep it dark, and then looked on Google for what to do with a bat.

“It was calm, it wasn’t agitated or anything. It was just a case of dropping a tea towel on it and scooping it up to look after it.”

Alex contacted the Bat Conservation Trust who put him in contact with expert Tracey Jolliffe – a microbiologist and former vet nurse.

Tracey, who named the bat Raspberry, said it was an inexperienced flyer and likely became disoriented which led it into the suitcase.

She added: “Raspberry was a juvenile on the point of her first proper flight. It’s relatively common for them to get into trouble at that point.

“She was a bit skinny and in a bit of a bad way at first, but fine after a few days of feeding her up.”

Tracey allowed Raspberry go on test flights around her ceiling to make sure it would be capable of taking to the skies again.

She appealed on social media for anyone who could help transport Rasperry back to the Highlands.

The Darlington family from Wrexham- who were visiting Glasgow on their way north – were able to take Raspberry part of the way to Strontian in Lochaber.

Raspberry was then passed to countryside ranger Eilidh-Ann Philips who took her back to Kinlochmoidart Estate.

Raspberry was quickly joined by other bats from the roost when she was released at dusk on Saturday.

Sarah Winnington-Ingram, who runs the estate, said she cannot remember an animal ever stowing away with a visitor.

She added: “It’s quite unusual. There is a lot of wildlife up here and people see bats all the time, but not like that.

“I’ve never even seen a bat in the cottage before either. It’s great to see it back home safely.”

Supratim Bhattacharjee has been named overall winner of this year’s Mangrove Photography Awards for his image of a young girl in the aftermath of a devastating storm in Frazerganj, Sundarbans, India.

Run by the Mangrove Action Project, the competition – now in its 10th year – aims to show the relationships between wildlife, coastal communities and mangrove forests, as well as the fragility of these unique ecosystems, both above and below the waterline.

Mr Bhattacharjee’s winning image, called Sinking Sundarbans, shows Pallavi standing in front of her home and tea shop, which has been destroyed by the sea during a storm.

“I observed her strong face and calm nature during that devastating period,” said Mr Bhattacharjee.

“Children are the ones that suffer the most.”

Nestled in the Bay of Bengal, the Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest in the world.

“[The winning] image raises a thousand questions, whilst connecting you to the girl’s heart,” said competition judge Dhritiman Mukherjee.

“Her vulnerability exposes the full impact of climate change and sea level rise experienced by many coastal communities.”

Mangroves are an important protection against climate change, with one acre (4,000sq m) of mangrove forest absorbing nearly the same amount of carbon dioxide as an acre of Amazon rainforest.

The forests also protect coastlines from eroding, as intense storms grow more frequent.

“Conservation as a story, is a complicated one,” said another of the judges, Morgan Heim.

“Photography has the ability to help us receive and feel close to those stories no matter our language. Every time I look at this kind of photography, I think, there’s still hope.”

Fellow judge Christian Ziegler added: “[In the competition] were many fascinating stories about life in the mangroves, ranging from scientific insights to restoration of the ecosystem and the difficult conditions people face.”

Here are a selection of winning images from seven competition categories, with descriptions by the photographers.

Men, women and children, wearing sarongs and traditional headgear, collect mud from a mangrove forest in Kedonganan village, just outside the town of Denpasar in Bali, Indonesia.

They cover themselves as part of a purification ritual called Mebuug Buugan, where people pray for gratitude and earth’s fertility.

The Sundarbans archipelago spans the borders of India and Bangladesh… [and] is known for its rich forest resources, which locals rely on for income.

But rampant deforestation coupled with worsening storms has intensified food and water scarcity, diminished agriculture productivity and soil quality, and turned local communities into climate refugees.

This tranquil scene invites contemplation as the gentle flow of water navigates its course through the heart of the mangrove forest.

The intertwining roots of the trees form intricate patterns, creating a natural tapestry that harmonises with the fluidity of the water.

On the rugged coast of Neil island (Shaheed Dweep) in the Andaman Islands archipelago, the tide recedes far away from the shore and exposes an extremely sharp rocky reef.

Mud-ring feeding is a unique fishing behaviour employed by bottlenose dolphins living in the shallows of the mangrove-lined bays of Florida Bay and a few other locations in the Caribbean.

On finding a school of mullet, a dolphin from the pod encircles the fish kicking up the sediments with its tail, which corrals the fish into an ever tightening spiral-shaped silty plume.

The dolphins have a remarkable ability to know where the fish are going to jump and will snatch them from the air as they try to make their escape.

In the last 40 years, Banderas Bay has lost more than 80% of its wetlands to urban expansion.

This crocodile sanctuary is a non-profit organisation located next to a small lagoon. The surrounding area has been taken over by shopping centres, hotels and condos.

Due to repeated tropical cyclones and sea level rise in the Bay of Bengal, river embankments have become broken by high tides across the Sundarbans, West Bengal, India.

As a result, homes and farms have flooded, fisheries have become destroyed by seawater, and people have been forced to migrate.

This villager has lost all his household belongings in the flood.

The male horseshoe crab tightly grasps onto the back of the female, on a mission of reproduction.

They move with the rising tide, searching for a suitable place to lay their eggs. But when they reach the mangroves, they become entangled in a huge ghost net.

If no one rescues them in time, they will eventually die from prolonged exposure.

In Hong Kong and throughout Asia, abandoned fishing nets wash ashore and in mangrove forests, entangling many creatures.

A turtle gracefully navigates the mangroves’ labyrinthine roots, seeking refuge for the night.

At high tide, the water engulfs the roots and transforms the space into a haven for marine life seeking shelter and safety.

Mangroves act as a natural filter that can remove most pollutants before they reach the ocean.

Soil and mangrove biomass have a significant capacity to store carbon from the atmosphere, helping to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the air.

The complex roots of mangroves also help bind soil and sediment, reduce erosion, and protect against damage from waves and currents.

In Demak Regency, Indonesia, the coastline has been severely eroded, and mangroves that once protected the coast have been cut down and replaced by aquaculture ponds. As a result, the sea is literally swallowing people’s homes.

[Demak’s residents] have realised the only solution is to restore the ecosystem by replanting the mangroves that have been cut down.

With the cutting of mangrove trees, it is increasingly difficult to fish, catch crabs, and protect against climate change and violent cyclones in the regions.

Bôndy, a private company working in ecosystem restoration, collaborates with local communities to restore mangroves at a rural commune in Majunga, Madagascar.

Together, always with a smile and in good spirits, they traverse the mangroves to revive vast stretches of isolated land.

I wanted to capture more than just this young saltwater crocodile when I encountered it at low tide in the mangroves.

I used the multiple exposure mode in my camera to superimpose layers onto my image of the croc’s eye, to capture more of the scene without sacrificing detail of the eye.

The image gives off a slightly unsettling feeling, such as what one may experience in a mangrove, unknowing of what predators may be lurking nearby, hidden by the dense network of the mangrove.

John Anderson, best known for his role as referee on the TV series Gladiators, has died aged 92.

The Scottish sports coach appeared in the game show’s original ITV run, which aired from 1992 to 2000, and its short-lived 2008 revamp on Sky.

He lent his voice to the famous catch-phrase: “Contender, ready! Gladiator, ready!”

He also coached more than 100 Olympic athletes, including former 5,000m world-record holder David Moorcroft.

“I can’t speak highly enough of John,” said Mr Moorcroft. Speaking to Athletics Weekly, he added that the Glaswegian coach had “just got the best out of people”.

“I’m certain that I would never have been a decent athlete if it wasn’t for John,” he said.

A statement from the show, quoted by the Press Association, said: “We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of our beloved referee, John Anderson, at the age of 92.

“Our hearts go out to his friends and family. John will forever be remembered as the iconic voice that brought us ‘Gladiators Ready! Contenders Ready!’.”

Former professional football referee Mark Clattenburg, who took over as referee for the current BBC incarnation of Gladiators earlier this year, said Mr Anderson had had “one of the most iconic voices”.

In a social media post, he said: “I had the most difficult task to follow him in the new series of Gladiators and watching him keep the Gladiators within the rules will always be with me.”

Speaking to the BBC when he first took on his Gladiators role, Mr Clattenburg said: “When I watched the show back in the ’90s everyone knew who the referee was – John Anderson.

“To get the call to say I was going to be the new referee on Gladiators was such an amazing thing and probably one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.”

Mr Anderson also served as the head coach for the Amateur Athletics Association of England and Scottish national coach.

He trained dozens of Olympians, including Sheila Carey, Liz McColgan and Judy Simpson, who appeared on Gladiators as Nightshade in the 1990s.

He was inducted into the Coaching Hall of Fame in 2002.

Olympic sprinter Jennifer Stoute, known as Rebel on Gladiators, wrote on social media: “He was the best. He knew how to make us laugh and get mad too. Best memories.”

The Conservative leadership contest is under way, with nominations now open.

Rishi Sunak officially stood down after leading the Tories to their worst performance at a general election, but is staying on as acting leader until his replacement is chosen.

That person will be the sixth Tory leader in less than eight and a half years.

Each candidate needs the support of at least 10 MPs to get on to the ballot, including a proposer and seconder. MPs can nominate only one candidate per voting round.

This is a much lower bar than during the last leadership election in 2022, when hopefuls needed the backing of 100 MPs. Mr Sunak was the only one to enter the race with that level of support, and so became the party leader.

There are currently 121 Tory MPs but those who are also whips, or sit on the executive of the backbench 1922 committee, cannot nominate a candidate.

Therefore a maximum of 10 candidates could meet the threshold, though the eventual number is likely to be lower.

A three-month campaign will begin when nominations close on 29 July.

When Parliament returns from summer recess in early September, a number of rounds of voting among Conservative MPs will reduce the field to an expected four leadership hopefuls.

In each round, the candidate who finishes last will be eliminated.

‘Beauty parade’

The final four will be given a chance to speak directly to Conservative members at the party’s conference between 29 September and 2 October.

Precise details of this “beauty parade” have yet to be announced.

After the conference, the remaining candidates will be reduced to two in a final round of voting by MPs and those two will be put to a ballot of party members.

Party members’ vote

If two candidates remain at the end of these ballots of MPs , members of the Conservative Party will choose the next leader in a vote in the days leading up to 31 October.

Party members will make their choice via secure online voting, though this system has previously been criticised for its susceptibility to hackers and rogue state interference.

In recent years, party members have tended to pick the more right-wing candidate of the final two. In the first of the 2022 leadership elections, Mr Sunak consistently won more support from MPs than Liz Truss during each round until party members had their say.

To be eligible to vote, party members must have been active for 90 days before the ballot closes and must have been party members when nominations opened.

New leader chosen

The new leader of the Conservative Party will be announced on 2 November – at which point Mr Sunak will hand over the reins.

The winner will become the official leader of the opposition and the figurehead of the Conservatives’ efforts to rebuild the party.

So far, five MPs have announced they will run: shadow home secretary James Cleverly, former Home Secretary Dame Priti Patel, shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat, ex-Housing Secretary and immigration minister Robert Jenrick, shadow work and pensions secretary Mel Stride, and shadow housing, communities and local government secretary Kemi Badenoch.

Shadow health secretary Victoria Atkins ruled herself out of the race. Announcing her decision in a social media post, she said she wanted to help the next leader “rebuild and renew our party”. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she had also decided not to run for leader as “most of the MPs disagree with my diagnosis and prescription”.

At the University of Haifa, less than 50km (30 miles) from Israel’s border with Lebanon, they’re taking no chances.

The morning after a rocket fell on a football field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing 12 children and teenagers, the university authorities announced that all staff based above the fifth floor in the 30-storey building should work from home. The fear is growing that they’re in the line of fire from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“In the last war with Hezbollah in 2006, their weapons reached Haifa”, Esther Parpara, a member of staff from the university told me. “This is a dangerous moment. Parents are helping police and guards to patrol kindergartens. I’m avoiding crowded places. We don’t seek war – but Hezbollah want to destroy Israel and the Jewish people, so can we just let them do that without defending ourselves?”

Cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon has grown steadily since 8 October, when Hezbollah fired rockets and shells at Israeli sites in solidarity with the Hamas attack on Israel a day earlier. Both groups call for the destruction of the Israeli state.

Frequent attacks by Hezbollah have struck northern Israel and the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria during the 1967 war and annexed in 1981. Israel has launched air strikes and missiles into southern Lebanon and beyond, including an overnight wave of attacks apparently in response to the rocket fire on Saturday.

The tit-for-tat strikes since October have killed more than 450 people in Lebanon – around 100 of them civilians – while Israel says 23 civilians and 17 soldiers have been killed. The skirmishes had been relatively contained, suggesting both sides were aiming to avoid a head-on confrontation.

• Follow live coverage
• Thousands mourn children killed in Golan Heights strike
• Lebanon fears dangerous new phase in Hezbollah-Israel fighting

But now the question is how far Israel will go in response to Saturday’s tragedy, the biggest single loss of life in the cross-border attacks since October.

Thousands lined the streets of the town to mourn the young victims, holding flowers and photos as they crowded beside the small white coffins. Hezbollah says it did not fire the deadly rocket, but the Israeli government insists that’s a lie. Following the strike, the Lebanese militants are said to have pre-emptively cleared out some key sites in the south of the country and the eastern Bekaa valley in the anticipation of a large-scale Israeli attack.

Israel’s prime minister returned early from the US to chair a security cabinet meeting, amid calls to hit back hard. Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that Hezbollah will “pay a heavy price which it has not paid up to now”.

Israel Katz, the foreign minister, said Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, should “pay with his head”, while the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, warned Israel was approaching all-out war with Hezbollah.

But Israel knows that the price of such a war with the Lebanese militant group could be devastating – for both sides.

Hezbollah is the strongest non-state actor in the region, with an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles in its arsenal. It is Iran’s most important proxy in the Middle East – and an attack by Israel could draw in Tehran, which warned Israel that any “new adventures” in Lebanon could lead to “unforeseen consequences”.

And Israeli troops are still stretched in Gaza. Opening up another military front as their munitions run low could simply be unfeasible.

On the other hand, some 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from the border region with Lebanon over the past few months – and many are demanding that their government neutralise the threat from Hezbollah.

And Mr Netanyahu, whose popularity at home is plummeting, is doing all he can for his political survival. Critics claim he is prolonging the war in Gaza by adding ever more stringent demands on Hamas for a ceasefire deal, knowing that once the fighting stops there, he could face an early election and the end of his career.

The fear is that weakened and under pressure from far-right bellicose ministers, he may now be tempted to expand the fight into Lebanon in part for domestic political aims.

This is a perilous moment. And while the international calls for restraint from both sides grow louder, this tinderbox region waits to see if the Golan Heights rocket will spark an inferno.

Polls are starting to close in Venezuela’s presidential election, in which the governing socialist PSUV party’s Nicolás Maduro is seeking a third term in office.

Polling stations were scheduled to shut at 18:00 local time (23:00 BST), but they have to remain open if people are still queuing to cast their vote.

Mr Maduro’s main challenger is Edmundo González, a former diplomat who has the backing of a coalition of opposition parties.

The opposition called on supporters to keep vigil at polling stations in order to verify the counting process in the “decisive hours” after closing, amid widespread fears the PSUV would attempt to steal the vote.

Opinion polls have suggested Mr González has a wide lead over the incumbent.

This was reflected in the queue at one polling station in Petare, a poor neighbourhood of Caracas, where many people said they were voting for change.

Since he assumed the presidency in 2013, Mr Maduro has presided over an economic collapse, during which GDP shrank by 70% and more than 7.7 million people fled the country in search of a better life.

“This government has had all the opportunities to make Venezuela a great country, but instead we have misery,” voter Hector Emilio D’Avilia told the BBC.

One woman, Adriana Arreaza, said through tears that she just wanted “decent salaries for teachers and doctors, quality of life for the elderly and the youth, and a change for our country”.

As Mr Maduro’s 2018 re-election was widely dismissed as neither free nor fair, there is concern that the result of this election could be tampered with, should it not go his way.

Opponents of the president have overcome many hurdles in the run-up to the election, not least the fact that their chosen candidate, María Corina Machado, was banned from running for office.

Ms Machado, who has remained at the forefront of the opposition campaign, reminded voters that the counting process was legally meant to be public.

She called on “all Venezuelans to remain at their polling stations… keeping a vigil”.

A community leader, Katiuska Camargo, told the BBC that the people of Venezuela were determined that the government “leave power immediately”.

“There’s been outrage after outrage. Violations of human rights, extrajudicial executions, excessive emigration.”

The PSUV has been in power in Venezuela for the past 25 years – first under the late Hugo Chávez, then under his hand-picked successor, Mr Maduro.

Under their leadership, the PSUV has gained control not just of the executive and the legislative, but also of much of the judiciary.

The party has a core of loyal supporters who praise the “benefits” they say it has brought them.

Felix García said the Maduro government had provided “help for people like me with disabilities”.

Mr Maduro has said he intends to win the election “by hook or by crook” and has warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) – the body which organises the election and announces the official result – is dominated by government loyalists.

Its president, Elvis Amoroso, is a close personal ally of Mr Maduro.

Venezuela has the world’s biggest oil reserves, but its oil output has plummeted under President Maduro – the result of a combination of lack of investment, mismanagement and oil sanctions.

A lifting of the oil sanctions – imposed by the US in order to exert pressure on Mr Maduro following the 2018 presidential election – could have repercussions on the price of oil globally.

Voting in Venezuela is electronic. Voters punch in a button assigned to their preferred candidate on a voting machine.

The electronic results are sent to the CNE headquarters, but the voting machine also prints out a paper receipt which is then placed in a ballot box.

By law, parties are allowed to send witnesses to the count of these paper receipts carried out at each polling station.

It will be these tallies which the opposition will be monitoring to see if they square with the results announced by the CNE.

A surfer whose severed leg washed up on an Australian beach after it was bitten off by a shark has confirmed the limb has not been reattached.

Kai McKenzie, was surfing near Port Macquarie in New South Wales (NSW) last Tuesday, when what he describes as “the biggest shark I’ve ever seen” attacked him.

The 23-year-old managed to catch a wave into shore, where he was helped by an bystander who made a makeshift tourniquet to stem the bleeding.

His leg washed up a short time later and was put on ice by locals, before being taken to hospital, where a medical team had hoped surgery may save it.

But on Monday, almost a week after the attack, Mr McKenzie posted a picture of himself in hospital and an update on social media.

“Spot something missing? Hahah,” the post was captioned.

Detailing the “crazy shark attack”, in an earlier Instagram post he said the outpouring of public support has “meant the absolute world”.

“To be here… to be able to hold my beautiful Eve and my family is everything to me,” he wrote.

He also thanked the public for the donations that have flooded into a GoFundMe page that was set up to help him with medical bills, which has taken in over A$165,000 ($108,000; £84,000).

“I’ll be back in that water in no time!” he added.

A spokesperson for the local health district where Mr McKenzie is receiving treatment would not comment on whether reattachment surgery had been attempted, citing patient privacy.

Authorities say Mr McKenzie – who is a sponsored surfer – was bitten by a 3m great white shark and owes his life to an off-duty police officer who used a dog leash to make a tourniquet for the injured leg.

Mr McKenzie was rushed to a local hospital, before being flown to a major trauma centre in Newcastle, some 200km (124 miles) away. His severed leg also made the long journey.

The keen surfer had only recently returned to the water after suffering a significant neck injury which forced him to take time off from the sport.

In a statement on Thursday, the McKenzie family thanked all of the “medical staff… bystanders and first responders” who had worked to save the surfer’s life.

While Australia has more shark attacks than any other country except the US, fatal attacks remain relatively rare.

Thousands of people gathered on Sunday for the funerals of children and young people killed in a rocket strike in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, as world leaders scrambled to contain the attack’s political fallout.

Members of the Druze community wept as they carried caskets through Majdal Shams, while some yelled in anger at government ministers there, Israeli media said.

The White House, meanwhile, said Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah carried out the attack, which killed 12. Israel has also accused it. Hezbollah denies it was responsible.

On Sunday, global leaders condemned the attack and moved to de-escalate tensions amid fears it could spark a war between Israel and Hezbollah.

In response to Saturday’s strike, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hit Hezbollah targets in Lebanese territory overnight, and Hezbollah struck two Israeli military bases on Sunday.

Cross-border fire between the two sides has escalated since Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli sites a day after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October. The Hamas attack triggered Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Hezbollah says it is acting in support of the Palestinians.

Saturday’s attack was the deadliest loss of life in and around Israel’s northern border since October.

The strike hit a football pitch in Majdal Shams, one of four towns in the Golan Heights where about 25,000 members of the Arabic-speaking Druze religious and ethnic group live.

Israel’s foreign ministry said 10 of the 12 victims were between the ages of 10 and 16, and has not released the ages of the other two victims.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed that Hezbollah would “pay a heavy price”, arrived in Israel on Sunday after cutting short his trip to the US. He planned to hold a meeting with his military chiefs to assess the situation and approve operational plans.

Hezbollah denied it had anything to do with the strike, but had earlier on Saturday claimed responsibility for four other attacks, including one on a military base around 3km (2 miles) away.

At a funeral in Majdal Shams on Sunday, weeping men wearing traditional red-topped white hats carried 10 of the white-covered caskets through packed streets, AFP reported. Women dressed in black abaya robes cried as they laid flowers on the caskets. Some mourners carried large photos of the dead children.

Fadi Mahmud, 48, told AFP that it was the first time Majdal Shams had experienced such a loss during the war.

“Our community is very close-knit. These children are like children of everybody in the village,” he was reported as saying.

Anger among the community also boiled over at the funeral, with some directing their rage at Israeli government officials who attended, the Times of Israel reported.

“Now you come here? Ten months you didn’t come!” a man wearing a military uniform was reported as shouting at Housing Minister Nir Barkat and Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman. His comments were met with applause.

“We’re tired of your promises!” another person reportedly yelled at Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

In a video posted on social media, hecklers surrounded Mr Smotrich, cursing and saying “we don’t want him!”, according to a Times of Israel translation.

Israeli media reported that a leader of the Druze community had asked in a letter that government ministers not attend the funeral to avoid turning the tragedy into a “political event”.

The Druze are part of an Arabic-speaking ethnic group based in Lebanon, Syria, the Golan Heights and northern Israel. In Israel, they have full citizenship rights and comprise about 1.5% of the population.

But most of those in the Golan have retained an allegiance to Syria. They can still study and work in Israel, though only those with citizenship can vote and serve in the army.

The vast majority of the international community does not recognise Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1981.

On Sunday, global leaders spoke out against the strike and cautioned against escalation, although they differed on who was responsible.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a post on X that the UK “condemns the strike in Golan Heights that has tragically claimed at least 12 lives” and Hezbollah “must cease their attacks”.

“We are deeply concerned about the risk of further escalation and destabilisation,” Secretary Lammy said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington backed Israel’s right to defend itself, while adding that “we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate”.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib told the BBC that he did not think Hezbollah carried out the attack, but added “it could be a mistake by the Israelis or by Hezbollah – I don’t know”.

The Lebanese government condemned the violence and called in a statement for a ceasefire on all fronts.

As Simone Biles eyes up a chance at another Olympic medal, a row of A-list celebrities are watching on.

The seven-time medallist is one of the most high profile athletes at the Olympics, and her first performance in the artistic gymnastics on Sunday drew celebrities like it was Paris Fashion Week.

Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Tom Cruise, American Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and Snoop Dogg were in the crowd to watch the American gymnast.

Grande sat with Cynthia Erivo, the pair co-staring in their upcoming film Wicked. They were seen greeting Wintour, who was with Australian film director Baz Luhrmann.

Higher in the stands was singer Nick Jonas, seen chatting with singer John Legend and his wife, model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen. Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Chastain was also at Bercy Arena to watch Biles perform.

Biles is considered by many to be the GOAT of women’s gymnastics (the greatest of all time).

And her considerable medal haul (which includes four Olympic golds and 30 world championship medals) could have potentially been higher heading into the 2024 Olympics, if it wasn’t for her infamous case of the “twistys” at the Tokyo Games.

Biles was forced to pull out of several events at the Tokyo Olympics after suffering a disorientating mental block, and many wondered if she would compete again.

Her return to the Olympics stage is a major drawcard, and Biles rewarded the crowd with a dazzling performance.

• Biles dazzles on Olympics gymnastics return

She entered the Bercy Arena on Sunday to an eruption of cheers, with celebrities in the stands and a global television audience of millions.

An acrobatic beam routine came before an energetic floor programme that featured one of the five skills named after her. Then she delivered her big Biles II vault but decided not to attempt the new skill she is planning on uneven bars.

She scored a total of 59.566 to top the all-around standings with three sub-divisions still to go. It is hard to see that changing – that score would have won the last three World Championships.

• Top five stories from day two of Paris Olympics 2024

• Give him a medal! – unknown man dives in pool to rescue lost cap
• What’s happening and when at the Paris Olympics
• Paris Olympics 2024 medal table
• Top five stories from day one of Paris Olympics 2024

Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni has vowed to “relaunch” relations with China as she began her first visit to Beijing since taking office.

Ms Meloni met Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the beginning of her five-day trip and signed a three-year plan to strengthen economic cooperation between the two nations.

It comes after Ms Meloni last year removed her country from President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

At the time, Rome said the massive Chinese investment scheme had failed to bring any benefits to Italy.

Ms Meloni described her trip as a “demonstration of the will to begin a new phase, to relaunch our bilateral cooperation”.

She also said the two countries have signed an agreement that aims to boost cooperation on electric vehicles and renewable energy.

In a statement released by his office, Premier Li said the two countries aim to increase “mutually beneficial cooperation between small and medium-sized enterprises in the fields of shipbuilding, aerospace, new energy, artificial intelligence.”

Italy was the only major Western nation to sign up to the BRI, one of China’s most ambitious trade and infrastructure projects.

The move was heavily criticised at the time by the US and some other major Western countries.

Since coming to office in 2022, Ms Meloni has sought to lead a more pro-Western and pro-Nato foreign policy than her predecessors.

Before withdrawing from the BRI, Ms Meloni had described the former government’s decision to join it as “a serious mistake”.

Under her leadership, Italy has moved to block a Chinese state-owned company from taking control of tyre making giant Pirelli.

Rome has also supported a recent move by the European Commission to impose tariffs of as much as 37.6% on electric vehicles imported from China.

Two-way trade between two countries reached 66.8 billion euros (£56.3 billion) last year, making China Italy’s largest non-EU trading partner after the US.

Since October, the near-daily cross-border attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the powerful Iranian-backed militia and political movement in Lebanon, have killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands from their homes on both sides, raising fears that the relatively contained violence could escalate into an all-out conflict.

Amid the strikes and counter-strikes, however, there have been indications that they were trying to avoid a major confrontation. But miscalculation was always a risk, and Saturday’s attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, could have been that.

Israel accuses Hezbollah of carrying out the strike on a football pitch that killed at least 12 people, including children, the deadliest attack in the current hostilities, and has promised to respond.

“Israel will not overlook this murderous attack,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office. “Hezbollah will pay a heavy price which it has not paid up to now.”

Hezbollah denies being behind the attack.

Before the scale of the strike became clear, however, the group said it had targeted the Hermon Brigade with an Iranian-made Falaq missile, one of several attacks carried out on that day. The base, on the slopes of Mt Hermon, is about 3km (2miles) from where the explosion happened, raising the possibility that the missile missed its target.

Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said intelligence information indicated that the attack had been carried out by Hezbollah in Lebanon, describing the group’s denial as “a lie”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, too, said “every indication” was that the missile had been fired by Hezbollah, and that the US stood by “Israel’s right to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks”.

Lebanon, then, is waiting for a possible major Israeli reaction.

The strikes by Hezbollah started on 8 October, the day after the deadly Hamas attack on Israel, with the group saying they were in support for Palestinians in Gaza.

So far, more than 450 people have been reported killed in Lebanon, including about 350 Hezbollah fighters and at least 100 civilians. In Israel, 23 civilians and at least 17 soldiers have been killed.

In Lebanon, most of the Israeli attacks have hit the south, where villages are destroyed and deserted, and the eastern Bekaa Valey, two areas where Hezbollah operates. An Israeli campaign targeting places that, so far, have been untouched, including parts of the capital Beirut, could lead to a dangerous and unpredictable phase in their fighting.

Seen as a significantly more formidable foe than Hamas, Hezbollah has been preparing for another major conflict with Israel since their last one, in 2006, which inflicted heavy damage on both sides.

According to Western estimates, the group has about 150,000 rockets and missiles, which could overwhelm Israel’s sophisticated air defence systems. The arsenal also includes precision guided missiles capable of striking deep into Israeli territory.

Israeli authorities have repeatedly described the attacks by the group as unacceptable and are under growing pressure to act to allow the return of displaced residents to northern communities. Military officials have said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is still carrying out large operations against Hamas in Gaza, is ready to launch an offensive against Hezbollah, although details of what one might involve remain unclear.

• The latest in Gaza: Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 30 – health ministry

Hassan Nasrallah, the long-time Hezbollah leader, has repeatedly said the group does not want a full-scale war with Israel, but that it was ready for one. Last month, he said the group had deployed only a fraction of its weapons, and warned Israel that any war would be fought “without constraints or rules”. A major operation against the group could lead to the involvement of other Iranian-backed militias in the region that are part of what Tehran calls the “Axis of Resistance”.

Any war would have a devastating impact on both countries, but especially for Lebanon, which has been in a state of permanent crisis for more than half a decade.

The economy has collapsed, with 80% of the population estimated to be in poverty, and political disputes have blocked the election of a president for almost two years. The government has limited influence – if any – over Hezbollah, which, like Hamas, is considered a terrorist organisation by the UK, the US and others.

But a full-scale war is not inevitable.

Diplomats were trying to avert a major escalation in hostilities, and the Lebanese Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, told the BBC the authorities were “asking Hezbollah not to retaliate”.

The Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Oren Marmorstein, said the “only way” to prevent a conflict was to implement the United Nations Resolution 1701, approved to end the 2006 war. The text includes the withdrawal of armed groups from southern Lebanon, between the Litani river and the Blue Line, the unofficial frontier with Israel, but was never fully applied.

Now, Mr Marmorstein said, was the “very last minute” to prevent a war diplomatically.

A woman who was seriously injured after being attacked while out walking her dog has died in hospital, police said.

Anita Rose, 57, was found unconscious on a track in Brantham, Suffolk, on Wednesday.

She died in Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge on Sunday morning.

Police said a man from the Ipswich area, who had already been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, had now been re-arrested on suspicion of murder.

Ms Rose was found on the track, between the railway line and a sewage works, by a member of the public at about 06:25 BST on Wednesday.

It was believed she had left home at about 05:00 to walk her springer spaniel Bruce in the village, which is on the River Stour estuary on the Essex-Suffolk border.

Police were called to the track off Rectory Lane by ambulance paramedics shortly after 08:00.

A 45-year-old man who has been re-arrested was being questioned at Martlesham Heath Investigation Centre.

Suffolk Police said a 37-year-old woman had also been arrested on Saturday on suspicion of handling stolen goods.

The force said Ms Rose’s mobile phone that had been missing had now been located and recovered.

The distinctive pink jacket that she was wearing was still missing.

Det Supt Mike Brown said Ms Rose’s family continued to be “supported by specially trained officers”.

“The investigation to establish the full circumstances surrounding the offence continues, as do inquiries to establish the cause of death,” he said.

“I can now confirm that the scene has been lifted on Rectory Lane.”

He said house-to-house inquiries had been taking place and he appealed for anyone with useful information from CCTV or doorbell cameras to get in touch.

Ms Rose was a mother of six and grandma to 13 and had a long-term partner, a family statement issued via police said.

“Our mum was well known and loved in the community,” the family said.

“She was brutally taken from us devastatingly too early, and we have been robbed of so much time with her.

“Someone somewhere must know something, and we urge them to come forward.

“We want to thank everyone for their love and support.

“All we ask is for everyone to cherish their time with their family and loved ones.”

What do an Italian communist student of mime, a toddler with an eye for a ball and a comedian who jokes about nothing have in common?

They all went on to become members of a very select global club.

Miuccia Prada, Tiger Woods and Jerry Seinfeld are among about 2,800 people on the planet who are US-dollar billionaires.

But the list of super-rich is very international.

According to the American media firm Forbes, which tracks the fortunes of the world’s richest, the United States has 813 billionaires, China (including Hong Kong) is second with 473, and India is third with 200.

Good Bad Billionaire

The BBC World Service podcast Good Bad Billionaire is back. From celebs and CEOs to sport stars and tech titans, each episode looks at how some of the world’s billionaires made their fortunes. Presenters Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng consider their wealth, power, philanthropy and legacy, and whether they think they are good, bad or just incredibly rich.

Listen on BBC sounds

Or for audiences outside the UK click here

The size of these fortunes can be hard to comprehend. A billion is a huge number – to give an idea of scale, one million seconds is 11 days, but a billion is 32 years.

And for some, the very existence of billionaires is obscene.

Eighty-one of the world’s richest people – about a bus-full – have more combined wealth than the poorest four billion people in the world.

In a 2023 report on inequality, Oxfam concluded: “Every billionaire is a policy mistake. The very existence of booming billionaires and record profits, while most people face austerity, rising poverty, and a cost-of-living crisis, is evidence of an economic system that fails to deliver for humanity.”

That inequality has led to calls in many countries for taxes on absolute wealth rather than income. In the US, Democratic Party Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed a 2% tax on assets over $50m (£39m) and 3% on assets over $1bn (£778m).

But others argue the prospect of great wealth inspires creation and innovation that improves the lives of millions of people.

American economist Michael Strain argues we need more billionaires, not fewer, and cites Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus who found that about 2% of the returns from technological innovation go to the founders and inventors – the rest goes to society.

Strain calls billionaires “largely self-made innovators who have changed the way we live”. He cites examples such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer who revolutionised personal computing, legendary investor Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos who upended retail, and Elon Musk who disrupted the automotive industry and space commerce.

“None of them are ‘policy failures’,” he concludes. “Rather than wishing they did not exist, we should be thrilled that they do.”

Many billionaires also donate large sums to charity. Gates and Buffett developed “The Giving Pledge” – a commitment to give away over half one’s wealth over their lifetime.

Rapper, business mogul and billionaire Jay-Z, although not signed up to the pledge, offered this pithy defence of his wealth: “I can’t help the poor if I’m one of them. So I got rich and gave back. To me that’s the win-win.”

Billionaires don’t get rich in a vacuum. Their success also tells us something about ourselves.

It is hard to get very, very rich unless you are providing something that people either need, want or enjoy.

Whether it is the minimalist stylings of Prada, the Star Wars movies or TikTok, the billionaires we discuss on the podcast have changed the world to a greater or lesser degree – and the stories as to how they did it are compelling.

For example, the founders of Google tried to sell an early version of their search engine for $1m but there were no takers. Today Google is worth $2.3tn and cofounder Sergey Brin is personally worth $135bn – roughly the GDP of Morocco.

Maria Bianchi was a card-carrying communist in 1960s Italy studying mime at theatre school before she changed her name to Miuccia Prada.

India’s first self-made female billionaire, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, started out brewing beer before she hit gender bias and tried pharmaceuticals instead, becoming Asia’s biggest producer of insulin.

Jerry Seinfeld’s parents were both orphans and his father never hugged him. Perhaps one of the reasons that he and Larry David had a rule for the characters in their smash hit comedy Seinfeld: “No hugging and no learning.”

The individual success of these billionaires also often tells a tale of wider historical, political or technological trends.

Tech entrepreneur Jack Ma, who co-founded the Alibaba group, was the beneficiary of two powerful and simultaneous forces – the birth of online retail and China’s rising economic power and mass affluence.

Chuck Feeney, the man who invented duty-free shopping (and gave his entire fortune away) rode a wave of outbound Japanese tourism after World War Two.

There are the stories where luck played a part.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates happened to go to one of the very few schools in the US in the late 1960s that had a computer. While singer and business woman Rihanna got her break thanks to a chance audition with a record producer who happened to be on holiday in Barbados.

And let’s hear it for the parents.

Taylor Swift’s entire family moved from Pennsylvania to Nashville to further their teenage daughter’s career while Michael Jordan’s mum suggested he should “hear what Nike has to say” before signing a deal with either Adidas or Converse – paving the way for the most lucrative sports endorsement deal in history.

There are some “sliding doors” moments in these stories – small events that in retrospect changed the lives and the fortunes of these billionaires.

But when doors open, you have to walk through them, and if there is one common denominator it’s the energy, drive and commitment that these people have brought to their respective disciplines. Plus their desire to press on, when many would have checked out long ago.

My Good Bad Billionaire co-presenter Zing Tsjeng and I always joke that when we got to, say, $10m, you wouldn’t see us for dust – there would just be two revolving chairs as evidence I had gone fishing and she’d gone to yet another music festival.

I guess people like us will never make it big but we’ve been by turns fascinated, charmed, moved, appalled and terrified by those who have.

Robert Downey Jr is returning to the Marvel superhero world after five years – but not to the Iron Man role that launched the blockbuster franchise.

The actor will make his comeback as Dr Victor Von Doom, a prominent villain in the comic books that spawned the popular film series.

Downey Jr will appear in Avengers: Doomsday, which is due to be released in May 2026, and a further instalment titled Secret Wars a year later.

Stars joining the Marvel franchise were unveiled at the Comic Con event in San Diego.

Downey Jr appeared on stage concealed behind Doctor Doom’s iconic mask and green cloak before unveiling himself to fans.

Speaking to reporters, he said: “I like playing complicated characters.”

The 59-year-old was instrumental in launching the Marvel movie universe, starring in its first film Iron Man in 2008.

He last appeared in a Marvel film in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

The American actor won an Oscar for his role in Oppenheimer earlier this year.

Marvel is set to release a further three films in 2025 before Avengers returns to big screens.

Captain America: Brave New World will see Harrison Ford replace the late William Hurt as General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross.

Florence Pugh will take on a leading role in Thunderbolts, while Pedro Pascal will make his Marvel debut in The Fantastic 4: First Steps.

Disney’s Marvel movie series have generated $30bn (£23.3bn) in box office takings – the first franchise to do so – but profits have slowed in recent years.

However, the recent release of Deadpool & Wolverine, starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, has offered the chance of a potential revival – making $96m on its opening day on Friday.

Last year, Marvel dropped actor Jonathan Majors – who played villain Kang the Conqueror – following his conviction for assaulting his girlfriend.