Dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” by US prosecutors, alleged drug dealer Jasveen Sangha is one of five people who US officials say supplied ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry, exploiting his drug addiction for profit, and leading to his overdose death.

Ms Sangha now faces nine charges, including conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine resulting in death.

The American-British dual-national, who wore a Nirvana jumper for her court appearance, pleaded not guilty to the charges on Thursday.

Her bail request was denied by US officials and she will remain in custody until her trial in October.

The indictment alleges that Ms Sangha’s distribution of ketamine on 24 October 2023 caused Perry’s death.

Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It can distort perception of sight and sound and makes the user feel disconnected and not in control.

It is used as an injectable anaesthetic for humans and animals because it makes patients feel detached from their pain and environment.

The substance is supposed to be administered only by a physician, investigators say, and patients who have taken the drug should be monitored by a professional because of its possible harmful effects.

Ms Sangha is alleged to have supplied ketamine from her “stash house” since at least 2019.

Her North Hollywood home was a “drug-selling emporium”, Martin Estrada, the US attorney for California’s Central District, told a news conference on Thursday.

More than 80 vials of ketamine were allegedly found there in a search, along with thousands of pills that included methamphetamine, cocaine and Xanax.

The home, called the “Sangha Stash House” in the indictment, was where she is alleged to have packaged and distributed drugs.

She “only deal[s] with high end and celebs,” the indictment quoted her co-accused Erik Fleming as saying of Ms Sangha.

At the same time, she lived a jetsetter life which she shared widely on social media.

Ms Sangha is said to have mixed with celebrities socially as well, with one of her friends telling the Daily Mail she attended the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

Shortly after Perry’s overdose she posted pictures depicting her extravagant lifestyle, including parties and a trip to Japan and Mexico.

And the day before arrests were announced, her social media activity suggests she went to a hairdresser and dyed her hair purple.

The Instagram account where these posts were shared was confirmed as belonging to her by a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office Central District of California.

Prosecutors claim Ms Sangha came to supply ketamine to Perry after fellow defendant Dr Salvador Plasencia initially learned that the actor was interested in the drug. Dr Plasencia sourced it from Dr Mark Chavez, another defendant in the case who had previously operated a ketamine clinic.

They allege Dr Plasencia also taught Perry’s live-in assistant, co-accused Kenneth Iwamasa, how to inject Perry with ketamine.

Beginning in October 2023, Ms Sangha began supplying Mr Iwamasa with ketamine and prosecutors say she knew the ketamine she distributed could be deadly.

“These defendants cared more about profiting off of Mr Perry than caring for his well-being,” said Mr Estrada.

He also alleged that Ms Sangha was a “major source of supply for ketamine to others as well as Perry”.

If convicted of all charges in Perry’s case, Sangha would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment, the justice department says.

US authorities say they also uncovered Ms Sangha’s alleged connection to another overdose death, this time in 2019.

Court documents suggest she knew about the dangers of ketamine after selling it to a customer named Cody McLaury, who died of an overdose after buying the drug.

She was reported to have been contacted by one of his family members, who texted her saying: “The ketamine you sold my brother killed him. It’s listed as the cause of death.”

Days later Ms Sangha is said to have searched on Google: “Can ketamine be listed as a cause of death?”, according to investigators.

Authorities say Ms Sangha will face charges in that case.

Protests have intensified in India after a mob vandalised a hospital where a female trainee doctor was raped and murdered in West Bengal state.

The hospital was attacked on Wednesday during the massive Reclaim the Night march held in Kolkata city to protest against the brutal crime.

Smaller protests were also held in many other Indian cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) – the country’s largest grouping of doctors – has announced a nationwide strike of non-emergency services on Saturday.

Doctor’s associations in other cities and political parties in West Bengal have also planned marches on Friday and over the weekend to protest against the attack.

Tens of thousands of women across the state participated in the Reclaim the Night march on Wednesday night to demand “independence to live in freedom and without fear”.

Though the protests were largely peaceful, clashes erupted between the police and a small group of unidentified men who barged into the RG Kar Hospital – the site of the crime – and ransacked its emergency ward.

Videos circulated online showed the men smashing beds and equipment with sticks.

• Indian women lead night protests after doctor’s rape and murder

Protesters told the BBC that some doctors and hospital staff were injured in the attack. Some police vehicles were also damaged in the chaos and tear gas had to be used to disperse the crowd.

The Kolkata police have arrested 19 people in connection with the incident so far.

On Thursday, the IMA condemned the attack, calling it “hooliganism unleashed on protesting students” and announced the withdrawal of non-emergency services for 24 hours starting at 06:00 local time [00:30 GMT] on Saturday.

“Doctors, especially women, are vulnerable to violence because of the nature of the profession. It is for the authorities to provide for the safety of doctors inside hospitals and campuses,” the IMA said in a statement.

“The IMA requires the sympathy of the nation with the just cause of its doctors.”

The Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association (Forda) – another top doctors’ association – has also resumed its strike after calling it off on Tuesday.

The protest was called off after federal Health Minister JP Nadda assured its members that their demands – including a federal law to curb attacks on doctors – would be met.

The incident has also sparked a political blame game in West Bengal, with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accusing the governing Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) of orchestrating the attack.

The TMC has refuted the allegation and has blamed “political outsiders” for stoking the violence.

The rape of the 31-year-old female trainee doctor has shocked the country.

Her half-naked body bearing extensive injuries was discovered in a seminar hall last week. A hospital volunteer who worked at the hospital has been arrested in connection with the crime.

Since then, two more incidents of rape have made headlines in India.

In the northern state of Uttarakhand, a nurse was allegedly raped and killed while returning home from work. She had gone missing at the end of July and her body was found last week. Police have arrested a man from the western state of Rajasthan in connection with the crime.

Meanwhile, six people have been arrested in the northern state of Bihar for the alleged gang-rape and murder of a teenage Dalit girl. Her mutilated body was found near a pond in a village in Muzaffarpur district on Tuesday morning.

Fortnite, one of the world’s biggest video games, is available as a mobile phone app for the first time in four years.

It’s back, via the newly launched Epic Games Store, on Android phones worldwide – including the UK – but is only available for iPhone users in the EU.

This is because EU law requires Apple to allow third-party app stores on its devices – other parts of the world do not have comparable legislation.

The game was removed from mobile devices in 2020 following a payments row between Apple, Epic – who make the game – and Google, which operates Android.

Users will have to download an alternative app store before they can download Fortnite and the two other Epic games currently available.

Epic admits the process is “lengthy” and blames Apple and Google for “introducing intentionally poor-quality install experiences laden by multiple steps, confusing device settings, and scare screens.”

The BBC has approached Apple and Google for comment.

Android phones make up about 56% of of the UK market, according to Statcounter.

It comes as Fortnite launches its new season based around Marvel’s Doctor Doom.

New EU law came into force in March, which means that Apple has to allow alternative app stores on its devices.

However, those laws do not exist in other parts of the world, where apps can only be downloaded from Apple’s official App Store.

“Fortnite has been freed on iOS in Europe, thanks to the Digital Markets Act”, Epic boss Tim Sweeney said on X.

“Apple continues to block Fortnite from a billion players in the rest of the world, and the battle rages on to restore free market competition.”

Apple says this is mainly for security reasons.

However, Epic argues that it means Apple has a monopoly and can charge high rates – up to 30% commission on purchases – to app developers.

A similar commission is charged by Google when apps are downloaded through its Google Play store.

However, Google does allow alternative app stores on its Android devices.

Fortnite is free to play, but makes money by charging players for in-game purchases for items such as new skins or weapons.

It was removed from Apple and Google’s app stores in 2020 after Epic Games stopped paying the commission.

Currently, UK iPhone users cannot download Fortnite, however they can play on a browser.

The Guardian reports Epic Games wants to bring the Fortnite app back to UK iPhones in late 2025.

“Unless Apple and Google manage to lobby the UK government that they should be able to continue blocking competition, we should be able to move on that by the end of next year,” Tim Sweeney told them.

New competition law was passed in May, which could pave the way for alternative app stores on iPhones.

“The fight is far from over, but this is tangible progress for developers and consumers who can begin to benefit from competition and choice,” Mr Sweeney said in a press release.

Epic Games has also made Rocket League: Sideswipe and Fall Guys available on mobile.

Travellers should consider getting vaccinated against mpox if they will be visting affected areas in Africa, new advice says.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has updated its recommendations in response to outbreaks of a new strain of the virus. Other continents, including Europe, can expect some cases too, it says.

ECDC says the risk of it spreading everywhere is low, despite the World Health Organization recently declaring the mpox situation a global emergency.

The disease – formerly known as monkeypox – can be passed on by close contact with anyone with the infection.

Those who have been vaccinated against mpox in the past might only need one-top up dose, rather than two shots.

Booster vaccine doses are typically recommended every two to 10 years if a person remains at continued risk for exposure.

Mpox has killed at least 450 people in the DRC in recent months, linked to a new type or Clade called 1b.

Mpox can be passed on from person to person through:

• any close physical contact with mpox blisters or scabs (including during sexual contact, kissing, cuddling or holding hands)
• touching clothing, bedding or towels used by someone with mpox
• the coughs or sneezes of a person with mpox when they’re close to you

It causes flu-like symptoms, skin lesions and can be fatal for some.

• What is mpox and how is it spread?
• Mpox: What does the new strain mean for you?

Experts say there is still a lot to learn about 1b, but it may be spreading more easily, causing more serious disease.

Pamela Rendi-Wagner from the ECDC said: “As a result of the rapid spread of this outbreak in Africa, ECDC has increasd the level of risk for the general population in the EU/EEA and travellers to affected areas. Due to the close links between Europe and Africa we must be prepared for more imported Clade 1 cases.”

Currently, there are no cases of Clade 1b mpox confirmed in the UK but experts say cases can spread if international action is not taken.

A case of mpox has also been detected in Sweden after a person became infected during a stay in an area of Africa where the disease is spreading.

The ECDC recommends that public health authorities plan and prepare for quick detection of any more cases that may reach Europe.

A previous mpox public health emergency, declared in 2022, was caused by a different, milder strain called Clade 2.

Despite having effective vaccines against mpox, too few doses are currently getting to where they are needed most.

A police sniper potentially saved lives by shooting the rifle of Donald Trump’s would-be assassin and knocking him down, an investigation says.

According to a report by Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins, the sniper’s bullet damaged Thomas Matthew Crooks’s gun and disrupted his aim after he took his first shots in Butler, Pennsylvania. Moments later, a Secret Service sniper killed him.

The report comes as the Secret Service temporarily reassigns some bodyguards from President Joe Biden to Trump, according to US media.

Trump will also be given bulletproof glass protection to allow him to resume outdoor rallies.

The former president did not have the protection during his 13 July rally in Butler when a bullet nearly hit him squarely in the head.

Mr Higgins’ report said a Butler SWAT operator was the first to fire at Trump’s assassin – from 100 yards away.

The congressman said the sniper “ran towards the threat, running to a clear shot position directly into the line of fire”.

Then, in a single shot, he fired at the gunman and hit part of his rifle, the report said.

This knocked the gunman off his position temporarily, but, “after just a few seconds”, he “popped back up” before he was fatally shot by a Secret Service sharpshooter.

Crooks killed one crowd member and critically injured two others in the attack.

Security levels around the former president have increased since then.

The transfer of Secret Service agents is due to threats against Trump, 78, and made possible by the reduced travel schedule of Mr Biden after he dropped out of the election race, according to a report in The New York Times.

The reassigned officers were responsible for either travelling with Mr Biden, or going in advance of him to set up security measures at an event, a source told the newspaper.

Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, resigned on 23 July following a hearing at the US House of Representatives about the assassination attempt.

Politicians on the House Oversight Committee criticised the lack of information in her answers to their questions regarding security planning and how officers responded to reports of the gunman’s suspicious behaviour prior to the shooting.

Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper team after he fired eight bullets in Mr Trump’s direction from a rooftop just outside the rally’s security perimeter.

The FBI is currently investigating the protection failure and political leaders in the US Congress have also started inquiries.

How the Secret Service failed Donald Trump

Americast gets the inside track on presidential security at the highest levels from Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department for Homeland Security, who served during the Trump presidency.

Listen now on BBC Sounds

Paetongtarn Shinawatra brings a fresh, young face, and yet another member of the powerful Shinawatra clan, to the country’s top job.

She is the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed former PM who returned to Thailand last August after 15 years in exile.

The 37-year-old is also the youngest prime minister in Thailand’s history, and only the second woman – the first was her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra.

Known in Thailand by her nickname Ung Ing, Ms Paetongtarn has become a very familiar figure here since leading her party, Pheu Thai, in the general election last year. She proved a popular campaigner, speaking at rallies up to the last month of pregnancy with her second child.

However her family, in particular her mother Potjaman, who is still a powerful figure in Pheu Thai, did not want her to become prime minister, fearing she would be vulnerable to the kinds of legal interventions which forced both Ms Yingluck and Mr Thaksin into exile.

But the unexpected court ruling that brought down the premiership of Srettha Thavisin earlier this week forced the family’s hand. Aside from Mr Srettha, Pheu Thai had just two other registered PM candidates eligible to replace him; Ms Paetongtarn was one, the other an elderly former prosecutor who the party’s MPs believed did not have the energy or charisma to lead them into the next election, expected in three years time.

Ms Paetongtarn’s main experience has been working in the Shinawatra-owned Rende hotel group. She was not expected to go into politics, and only joined the Pheu Thai party in 2021.

In taking on the job of prime minister, she is entering a political minefield.

She describes herself as a compassionate capitalist, a social liberal who fully supports Thailand’s new equal marriage law.

But the phrase most people will remember her using is “daddy’s girl”. No matter what she does in government, she will always be presumed to be acting under the instruction of her father. And Mr Thaksin remains a very divisive figure.

His return from exile a year ago was the outcome of a grand bargain with powerful conservative forces. They include the military, which deposed two Shinawatra governments in coups, and groups close to the monarchy, which have opposed Mr Thaksin for more than two decades.

The stunning success of the reformist Move Forward party in last year’s election, pushing Pheu Thai and the Shinawatra clan into second place for the first time, forced conservatives, whose parties fared even worse, to recalibrate.

With Move Forward pushing for reform of the lese majetse law and the powers of the military, Pheu Thai, whose free-spending populism is now being copied by many other parties, was no longer the main threat.

So Pheu Thai was allowed to cobble together a coalition of 11 parties, many of them long-term enemies of Mr Thaksin, to keep Move Forward out.

But the mistrust of Mr Thaksin never went away.

The unstated condition of his return, and the royal pardon given to him by King Vajiralongkorn, was that he would keep a low profile and, as he had promised from exile, spend his time with his grandchildren.

Officially Mr Thaksin is not even a member of Pheu Thai. But even in exile Mr Thaksin constantly interfered, often to the detriment of his party. He is still presumed to be the Pheu Thai’s main financial backer. And since being released on parole earlier this year he has been both visible and vocal at party events.

Some have accused Mr Thaksin of pushing for Mr Srettha’s cabinet appointment of a lawyer who was convicted in 2008 of trying to bribe a supreme court judge with a shopping bag full of cash.

Back then the judge had been about to rule on a criminal case against Mr Thaksin.

On Wednesday the constitutional court, known for repeatedly ruling against the Shinawatra clan, found that appointment was unethical and sufficient grounds for dismissing Mr Srettha. The ruling is being interpreted in Thailand as a warning to Mr Thaksin to rein in his ambitions.

He was also charged earlier this year with lese majeste, over comments he made nine years ago in exile – a case with potentially serious consequences which may hang over him for years.

All of this makes Ms Paetongtarn’s job even more difficult. Pheu Thai’s past success was built on its reputation for driving the economy, and improving the living standards of poorer Thais.

But Thailand’s economy is now being held back by long-term structural challenges – and they are unresponsive to the populist measures tried by previous Shinawatra-led governments.

The party’s signature policy in the last election – a one-time payment of 10,000 baht ($284; £221) via a digital wallet to most of the population – has run into opposition from the central bank and others over its cost to the public purse.

The party has little else in its policy arsenal to lift its political fortunes over the next three years. It will also face constant and effective opposition from the reformist Move Forward Party, now reconstituted as the People’s Party, after being dissolved by the constitutional court last week.

And Pheu Thai finds itself in a coalition where for the first time it’s share of seats is less than half. Its conservative political partners also have little incentive to see a Pheu Thai-led administration achieve enough success to start rebuilding its once-formidable support base among voters.

All four of the last Shinawatra-led governments were ousted before the end of their elected terms by constitutional court rulings or military coups.

Ms Paetongtarn will be hoping to break that dismal record, but given the unending turmoil in Thai politics the odds do not look good.

A senator in the Philippines has come under fire online after he asked in parliament whether husbands have “sexual rights” to their wives.

Robin Padilla, a former actor, posed the query to a prominent human rights lawyer, who was invited as a resource person to a hearing on sexual harassment in the entertainment industry.

He also asks what husbands should do if they are “in the mood” and their wives are not – to which lawyer Lorna Kapunan replies that they can “watch Netflix”.

Mr Padilla, one of the country’s most popular celebrities, ran for office in 2022 where he emerged as the country’s top senatorial candidate.

Mr Padilla, who is leading a Senate probe into complaints of sexual harrassments and abuse in the media industry, made the comments in a hearing on Thursday.

Speaking to Ms Kapunan, he asks if a husband can ask his wife for sex if he is “in the mood” and she is not.

“What if your wife does not want to? Is there no other way for husbands? If you look to other women, you might get sued,” Mr Padilla said in Tagalog.

Ms Kapunan said in such circumstances, husbands should instead “seek counselling, pray or watch Netflix”.

He then adds that some husbands feel that their wives are there to “serve” them, to which Ms Kapunan responds that it is “not the wife’s obligation to serve her husband”.

Mr Padilla’s comments sparked a barrage of online comments, with one calling him “disgusting”.

One comment on X said: “So does that make wives their husband’s personal sex workers?”

“Husbands do not have ‘sexual rights’ over their wives. Women have equal rights and free will. No means no. It’s all about respect,” said prominent human rights lawyer Jose Manuel Diokno in a post on X.

Another X user said Mr Padilla’s comments serves as an argument to finally legalise divorce in the country.

Eight in 10 of the Philippines’ 110 million people are Catholic, which deeply influences views on marriage and family. It is the only country in the world, aside from the Vatican, where divorce is illegal.

Mr Padilla is one of the country’s most popular celebrities. He rose to fame with Robinhood playboy roles in the 1990s before becoming an actor.

He was later convicted for illegal posession of firearms and was sentenced to eight years in jail before being pardoned. Afterwards, he resumed his movie and television career and became much loved for turning his life around.

His wife Mariel Padilla, a Filipino-born American, is also an actress and model in the Philippines.

In 2022, Mr Padilla decided to run for public office and topped the 2022 senatorial elections with 26 million votes, which gives him a platform to seek higher office.

A kindergarten teacher in Taiwan has been sentenced to 28 years in jail for more than 200 sexual offences against children, in a case that has seen widespread rage across the island.

The Taipei District Court judge said the man – named as Mao by the court – committed “vicious” crimes which resulted in “severe physical and mental trauma” to six children, who were all under seven.

The case has been in the spotlight for weeks as anger grew over the scale of Mao’s crimes and the authorities’ initial handling of them.

Many pointed out that Mao was not suspended after an initial report in 2022, which potentially resulted in more children becoming victims.

Warning: Some readers may find the details of this report upsetting

He was arrested in July 2023 after more parents filed complaints against him.

“If the local government could have done a better job in 2022, there wouldn’t be the tragedy in 2023,” MP Lin Yueh-chin says.

The parents also complained about a lack of transparency during the investigation process, saying they had been denied access to the CCTV footage and the investigation reports.

Mao was suspended and barred from teaching last year. The kindergarten’s license was also revoked.

On Friday, Mao was convicted of a series of crimes – including rape and forcing children to take sexually explicit videos.

Investigations are ongoing into a number of other allegations made by parents.

According to court documents, Mao committed the crimes while working at a private kindergarten in the capital, Taipei.

The 30-year-old, who holds a college degree in social work, had been working at the pre-school since September 2021.

He was in charge of managing CCTV, assisting in teaching, picking up and dropping off the children and supervising during lunch breaks.

“The number of victims was large, the crime was vicious, the victims suffered severe physical and mental trauma, and the accused’s attitude after committing the crimes was awful,” the judge said.

The public were horrified by the details exposed by the media early this year.

The first complaint against Mao reportedly dates back to July 2022. But the case was dropped after an investigation by Taipei city’s education investigation and prosecutors failed to find any evidence.

Despite warnings in multiple parent message groups, it wasn’t until a year later that more parents reported him to the police.

The full extent of his crimes was only revealed after relatives asked for the confiscation of Mao’s phone, according to Legislator Lin Yueh-chin, who has been supporting the parents with their legal cases. Authorities later found more than 600 private videos of children.

Taipei’s Mayor, Chiang Wan-an apologised to the public in July.

The Duke of Sussex has said the spread of false information via AI and social media means “we are no longer debating facts” during a four-day visit to Colombia.

Prince Harry, along with the Duchess of Sussex, arrived in the country on Thursday and was hosted by Vice-President Francia Márquez, who invited the couple after watching a Netflix series about their lives.

They spent their first day visiting a school in capital Bogotá to talk to teenagers about the impact of social media and speaking at a summit on digital responsibility staged in part by their Archewell Foundation.

“What happens online within a matter of minutes transfers to the streets. People are acting on information that isn’t true,” the duke said.

The Sussexes, who have faced their own attacks on social media, have not confirmed who is funding the trip – which is neither a state visit nor an official royal event.

But they are being given a full security detail – something they no longer enjoy in the UK after stepping down as working royals in 2020.

The duke said a lot of people were “scared and uncertain” about the possible impact of AI and that “education and awareness” would be key to tackling misinformation.

“It comes down to all of us to be able to spot the true from the fake,” he said.

“In an ideal world those with positions of influence would take more responsibility. We are no longer debating facts.

“For as long as people are allowed to spread lies, abuse, harass, then social cohesion as we know it has completely broken down.”

Ms Márquez, who hosted the couple at her official residence, described the Sussexes’ trip as a “very special visit”.

She said that, as well as its focus on cyber issues, she wanted it to help build bridges and promote women’s leadership in Colombia.

Meghan and Ms Márquez were pictured embracing as they warmly greeted each other, while the vice-president grasped Harry’s hands when they were introduced.

The California-based couple are expected to spend time in the Cartagena and Cali areas during their trip.

The tour, which appears to be similar in many ways to an official royal visit, is the Sussexes’ second this year, after their three-day visit to Nigeria in May.

A wreck discovered off the Aberdeenshire coast is believed to be a lost Royal Navy warship sunk by a torpedo during World War One.

HMS Hawke was discovered by a team of divers about 70 miles east of Fraserburgh earlier this week in “remarkable” condition.

More than 500 of the ship’s crew died when it was attacked by a German U-boat in October 1914.

The ship caught fire and, following an explosion, sank in less than eight minutes with just 70 sailors surviving.

It is hoped that the wreckage will be formally identified by the Royal Navy in the coming weeks.

The wreckage was found by the Lost in Waters Deep group – which searches for shipwrecks to remember wartime losses in Scottish waters.

HMS Hawke, a 387ft (118m) long and 60ft (18m) wide Edgar-class protected cruiser, was first launched in 1891.

In 1911, it was badly damaged in a collision in the Solent with the Titanic’s sister ship, RMS Olympic.

When World War One broke out Hawke was deployed to the 10th Cruiser Squadron and took part in blockade duties between Shetland and Norway.

In October 1914, the squadron deployed further south in the North Sea as part of efforts to stop German warships from attacking troop convoys from Canada.

On 15 October 1914, the squadron was on patrol off the coast of Aberdeen when HMS Hawke was struck by a single torpedo from German submarine U-9

This major attack in the early stages of the war was an early indication of the Royal Navy’s vulnerability to German U-boats, even in the north of Scotland.

The wreck, the last resting place of 524 sailors, was located on 12 August, 360ft (110m) below the surface.

Steve Mortimer, a diver who is working alongside the Lost in Waters Deep project, told BBC Scotland that finding the location of HMS Hawke took a lot of hard work.

The team’s research involved going back to data from the time such as the U-boat commander’s day journal which gave an indication of where it had been when it fired the torpedo.

They also looked at the logs of other Navy cruisers which had “exchanged post” with HMS Hawke just before it was sunk, giving them a general area for where the ship might lie.

Another piece of data was an “obstruction” on the seabed reported by Scottish fisheries in the 1980s.

The dive ship investigated the obstruction site but found nothing.

However, just a kilometre away they found a huge shipwreck.

“It took years of research but the actual time on the ground was just a few hours,” Mr Mortimer said.

He said HMS Hawke had clearly deteriorated after a century on the seabed but it was still in remarkable condition.

“Lots of the decking is still in place – teak decking,” he said.

“There is a wonderful captain’s walkway around the back of the stern. There’s loads of guns because obviously she was a warship.

“There’s lots of Royal Navy crockery. It is fascinating. She clearly was taken completely by surprise because lots of the portholes are still open.”

Mr Mortimer said the area of the sea that the ship was in has few nutrients, which means the wreck has not been eaten away by organisms.

He said: “You can look into the portholes and see rooms with artefacts – teacups, bowls and plates just there on the floor.

“It’s a really remarkable time capsule.”

A Palestinian man was shot dead as dozens of Israeli settlers attacked a village in the north of the occupied West Bank overnight, setting fire to houses and cars, Palestinian officials say.

The settlers – some wearing masks – also threw rocks and Molotov cocktails in the village of Jit, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, adding that one was arrested.

The Palestinian health ministry said Rashid Sedda, 22, was killed by gunfire from the settlers and another man was seriously wounded in what it condemned as an act of “organised state terrorism”. The IDF said it was looking into the reports of a fatality.

Israel’s prime minister said he viewed the incident with “utmost severity”.

It is the latest in the series of attacks by extremist settlers on Palestinian villages in the West Bank, where there has been a spike in violence since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land the Palestinians want as part of a future state – in the 1967 Middle East war.

The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Footage shared on social media showed cars and houses ablaze following the deadly rampage in Jit on Thursday night.

As he inspected the damage to his home on Friday morning, Ibrahim al-Seda told the BBC he had been sitting outside his home with relatives after the sunset Maghrib prayer when he heard a crash.

“We looked out and saw seven, eight, maybe 10 settlers. Two cars were set on fire,” he said. “My children ran outside, and we grabbed the hose to try to put out the fire on the cars. But the water wasn’t enough; we couldn’t extinguish the flames. Then they started throwing rocks from above.”

“The people from the town came to defend us and our neighbourhood. Then more settlers arrived, this time armed. They started shooting.”

He added: “Young men who were defending us from above the wall threw stones to protect themselves. We were outnumbered. There were probably around 100 settlers by the end. The people who were down below had to run away because they couldn’t stand against the gunfire.

“The settlers took control of the area. They set two more cars on fire and prevented us from going outside because they would shoot anyone who tried.”

Mr Seda said Israeli soldiers arrived “about an hour later” and that they fired shots into the air but “didn’t intervene much at that point just to stop what was going on”.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics had treated a Palestinian villager who was shot in the chest and rushed him to the Rafida Government Hospital in the nearby city of Nablus, where his condition was described as critical, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa. Rashid Sedda’s body was also taken there.

In a statement, the IDF said its forces and Border Police officers were despatched to the village “within minutes” of receiving reports of violence. They fired into the air to disperse the crowds and “remove[d] the Israeli civilians”, it added. One person was arrested and transferred to the police for questioning, it added.

The IDF said it had opened a joint investigation with the Shin Bet domestic security service and the police following what it called “this serious incident”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that he took “seriously the riots that took place this evening” and promised that “those responsible for any criminal act will be caught and prosecuted”.

President Isaac Herzog wrote in a post on X: “This is an extreme minority that harms the law-abiding community of settlers and the settlement as a whole and in the name and status of Israel in the world during a particularly sensitive and difficult period.

The US, Israel’s main ally, also issued a condemnation, saying that such attacks on Palestinian civilians were “unacceptable and must stop”.

“Israeli authorities must take measures to protect all communities from harm, this includes intervening to stop such violence, and holding all perpetrators of such violence to account,” a National Security Council spokesperson said.

Palestinian analyst and former Palestinian Authority spokeswoman Nour Odeh told the BBC that such attacks happened “on a daily basis”.

“These condemnations [by Israeli leaders] are viewed as performative by the Palestinian public, because the track record is [that] the investigations go nowhere, nobody is prosecuted, nobody is held to account, and these settlers can count on the full support of members of the government to protect them.”

The UN said on Wednesday that it had recorded around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 7 October. About 120 of those attacks led to people being killed or injured, and 1,000 led to property damage.

It also said a total of 594 Palestinians – members of armed groups, attackers and civilians – were killed in conflict-related incidents across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, over the same period. At least 577 were killed by Israeli forces and 10 by settlers, it added.

Fifteen Israelis, including nine security forces personnel and five settlers, were also killed by Palestinians in the West Bank, while another 10 Israelis were killed in attacks in Israel by Palestinians from the West Bank, according to the UN.

An army chaplain has been stabbed several times during an attack at Renmore Barracks in County Galway.

Fr Paul Murphy, who is in his 50s, was taken to University Hospital Galway and his injuries are described as serious but not life-threatening.

In a Facebook post, the chaplain with the Irish Defence Forces thanked the public for their prayers and said he was awaiting surgery.

Gardaí (Irish police) said a teenage boy was restrained by soldiers and then arrested. They also said a terror motivation was one line of enquiry.

The special detective unit is involved in the investigation.

“At this time it is not believed this incident is part of a wider conspiracy,” police added.

The Defence Forces said shots were fired by personnel during the incident.

“Soldiers on duty responded to the immediate threat with appropriate force to ensure the safety of personnel and secure the area,” they said.

“The assailant was quickly detained and handed over to An Garda Síochána.

“The injured Defence Forces member was provided with immediate first aid at the scene before being transported to hospital for further treatment.”

Members of the Garda’s armed support unit were also sent to the incident on Thursday night.

Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Simon Harris has described the incident as “shocking”.

“My thoughts are with the member of the Defence Forces in hospital. I want to thank the Defence Forces and gardaí for their action and response,” he said.

Tánaiste (Irish deputy prime minister) and Minister for Defence Micheál Martin condemned the attack.

“I commend the members of the Defence Forces on duty at the time, whose intervention was critical.

“Our thoughts are with the Defence Forces member injured in the attack.”

Justice Minister Helen McEntee said her “first thoughts are with Fr Paul Murphy” and she wished him a speedy recovery.

“I would also like to pay tribute to the members of the Defence Forces who intervened bravely at the scene,” she added.

Bishop of Galway the Right Reverend Michael Duignan said news of the assault was “deeply shocking and upsetting”.

He said he would pray for the injured man’s full recovery as well as for his family, army colleagues and medical personnel.

Calls to denounce “die hard” Taiwanese secessionists, a tipline to report them and punishments that include the death penalty for “ringleaders” – Beijing’s familiar rhetoric against Taiwan is turning dangerously real.

The democratically-governed island has grown used to China’s claims. Even the planes and ships that test its defences have become a routine provocation. But the recent moves to criminalise support for it are unnerving Taiwanese who live and work in China, and those back home.

“I am currently planning to speed up my departure,” a Taiwanese businesswoman based in China said – this was soon after the Supreme Court ushered in changes allowing life imprisonment and even the death penalty for those guilty of advocating for Taiwanese independence.

“I don’t think that is making a mountain out of a molehill. The line is now very unclear,” says Prof Chen Yu-Jie, a legal scholar at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office was quick to assure the 23 million Taiwanese that this is not targeted at them, but at an “extremely small number of hard-line independence activists”. The “vast majority of Taiwanese compatriots have nothing to fear,” the office said.

But wary Taiwanese say they don’t want to test that claim. The BBC has spoken to several Taiwanese who live and work in China who said they were either planning to leave soon or had already left. Few were willing to be interviewed on record; none wanted to be named.

“Any statement you make now could be misinterpreted and you could be reported. Even before this new law China was already encouraging people to report on others,” the businesswoman said.

That was made official last week when Chinese authorities launched a website identifying Taiwanese public figures deemed “die hard” separatists. The site included an email address where people could send “clues and crimes” about those who had been named, or anyone else they suspected.

Scholars believe Beijing hopes to emulate the success of Hong Kong’s national security laws, which it said were necessary for stability – but they have crushed the city’s pro-democracy movement as former lawmakers, activists and ordinary citizens critical of the government have been jailed under them.

By making pro-Taiwanese sentiments a matter of national security, Beijing hopes to “cut off the movement’s ties with the outside world and to divide society in Taiwan between those who support Taiwan independence and those who do not”, Prof Chen says.

She believes the guidance from the Supreme Court will almost certainly result in prosecutions of some Taiwanese living in China.

“This opinion has been sent to all levels of law enforcement nationwide. So this is a way of saying to them – we want to see more cases like this being prosecuted, so go and find one.”

“We must be even more cautious,” said a Taiwanese man based in Macau. He said he had always been prepared for threats, but the new legal guidance had made his friends “express concern” about his future in the Chinese city.

“In recent years, patriotic education has become prevalent in Macau, with more assertive statements on Taiwan creating a more tense atmosphere compared to pre-pandemic times,” he added.

Taiwan, which has powerful allies in the US, the EU and Japan, rejects Beijing’s plans for “reunification” – but fears have been growing that China’s Xi Jinping has sped up the timeline to take the island, an avowed goal of the Chinese Communist Party.

For more than 30 years Taiwanese companies – iPhone-maker Foxconn, advanced chips giant TSMC and electronics behemoth Acer – have played a key role in China’s growth. The prosperity also brought Taiwanese from across the strait who were in search of jobs and brighter prospects.

“I absolutely loved Shanghai when I first moved there. It felt so much bigger, more exciting, more cosmopolitan than Taipei,” says Zoe Chu*. She spent more than a decade in Shanghai managing foreign musicians who were in high demand from clubs and venues in cities across China.

This was the mid-2000s when China was booming, drawing money and people from across the globe. Shanghai was at the heart of it – bigger, shinier and trendier than any other Chinese city.

“My Shanghainese friends were dismissive of Beijing. They called it the big northern village,” Ms Chu recalls. “Shanghai was the place to be. It had the best restaurants, the best nightclubs, the coolest people. I felt like such a country bumpkin, but I learned fast.”

By the end of that decade – in 2009 – more than 400,000 Taiwanese lived in China. By 2022, that number had plummeted to 177,000, according to official figures from Taiwan.

“China had changed,” says Ms Chu, who left Shanghai in 2019. She now works for a medical company in Taipei and has no plans to return.

“I am Taiwanese,” she explains. “It’s no longer safe for us there.”

The Taiwanese exodus has been driven by the same things that have pushed huge numbers of foreigners to leave China – a sluggish economy, growing hostility between Beijing and Washington and, most of all, the sudden and sweeping lockdowns during the Covid pandemic.

But Taiwanese in China have also been worried because the government doesn’t see them as “foreigners”, which makes them especially vulnerable to state repression.

Senior Taiwanese officials have told the BBC that 15 Taiwanese nationals are currently being held in China for various alleged crimes, “including violations of the anti-secession law”.

In 2019, China jailed a Taiwanese businessman for espionage after he was caught taking photos of police officers in Shenzen – a charge he denied. He was only released last year. In April 2023, China confirmed that it had arrested a Taiwan-based publisher for “endangering national security”. He still remains in custody.

Amy Hsu*, who once lived and worked in China, says she is now scared to even visit because of her job. After returning to Taiwan, she began volunteering at an NGO which helped people who had fled Hong Kong to settle in Taiwan.

“It is definitely more dangerous for me now,” she says. “In 2018, they began using surveillance cameras to fine people for jaywalking and the system could identify your face and send the fine directly to your address.”

She says the extent of surveillance disturbed her – and she worries it can be used to go after even visitors, especially those on a list of potential offenders.

“Oh I am definitely on the list. I am a hardline pro-independence [guy] with lots of ideas,” chuckles Robert Tsao, a 77-year-old tech billionaire, who founded one of Taiwan’s largest chip-makers, United Micro-electronics Corporation (UMC).

Mr Tsao was born in Beijing, but today he supports Taiwan independence and avoids not just China, but also Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand and even Singapore.

Mr Tsao was not always hostile to China. He was one of the first Taiwanese investors to set up advanced chip-making factories in China. But he says the crackdown in Hong Kong changed his mind: “It was so free and vibrant and now it’s gone. And they want to do the same to us here.”

“This new ruling is actually helping people like me,” he says. He believes it will backfire, increasing the resolve of Taiwanese people to resist China.

“They say the new law will only affect a few hard-line independence supporters like me, but so many Taiwanese people either support independence or the status quo [keep things as they are], which is the same thing, so we have all become criminals.”

Among the details that emerged on Thursday about the death of actor Matthew Perry was that the Friends star had been undergoing ketamine infusion therapy.

The coroner concluded that the treatment – which is offered both in the US and the UK – was not responsible for Perry’s death due to ketamine, which prosecutors allege was supplied to him illicitly.

Five people including two doctors, Perry’s assistant and an alleged drug dealer have been charged for providing the drug outside of his treatment regimen.

Perry, 54, had been open about his history of substance misuse, and prosecutors say the accused profited from his addictive tendencies.

Ketamine is an anaesthetic that can be used to treat depression, anxiety and pain in a medical setting.

However, it also has dissociative effects – meaning it can distort perceptions of sight, sound and time, as well as producing calming and relaxing effects. This means it is also used illicitly.

According to addiction advice service Talk to Frank, Ketamine can increase a person’s heart rate and blood pressure, and can leave users confused and agitated – which may cause them to hurt themselves without realising.

Chronic ketamine use has been linked to liver damage, as well as causing bladder problems such as incontinence.

Ketamine is used to treat depression in cases where traditional anti-depressants have not been effective.

Dr Rajalingam Yadhu, a consultant at the Royal Free Hospital in London who also runs Save Minds, a ketamine infusion therapy clinic, told the BBC that the patients he treats have long-term depression and have usually tried a minimum of seven different medications without seeing an improvement.

“These are people who have actually tried everything in life, [are] extremely suicidal – and given the chance, would kill themselves.”

The treatment has also been used by high-profile individuals. As well as Perry, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has said he has been given ketamine to treat depression.

In an interview with CNN in March, the X and Tesla owner said the drug was “helpful for getting one out of the negative frame of mind”.

Ketamine infusion therapy works by giving the drug intravenously in smaller doses than those used for anaesthesia.

“For depression, you use a lower dose than you use for chronic pain, a really lower dose than patients receive as anaesthetics,” says Dr Mario Juruena, a psychiatrist at King’s College London who specialises in treatment-resistant mental disorders.

Ketamine acts faster than traditional anti-depressants – but its effects also wear off quicker.

“It has a short half-life, so the time that the patients have the effect is quite short at some points,” Dr Juruena told the BBC, stressing the importance of monitoring patients’ mental state for relapse back into depression.

Dr Yadhu says that, unlike other mainstream anti-depressants, ketamine has been found to affect nerves that use the chemical glutamate to interact. Glutamate is the most abundant neurotransmitter in the nervous system.

Experts are researching why it might help some patients but not others.

Dr Juruena told the BBC that more than 60% of patients responded well to ketamine treatment – but said this was usually while taking other anti-depressants or alongside psychotherapy.

Both cautioned that people could still experience negative side-effects from taking ketamine, even when overseen by a medical professional – though Dr Juruena said this happened less often because of the lower dosage.

Dr Yadhu says that while many of his patients’ experiences were positive, some were unpleasant and could bring back bad memories.

He also says he does not treat people showing addictive tendencies with ketamine – though some doctors are exploring it as a treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.

Receiving ketamine in an “infusion” – ie through an IV drip – is not the only way of treating people with ketamine, however.

Dr Juruena says it can also be given through an injection, a nasal spray or as a capsule.

Experts say the dosage of ketamine given in infusion treatment has to be of a precise and small amount to have anti-depressant effects.

But a post-mortem examination found Perry’s blood contained a high concentration of ketamine and that he had died of the “acute effects” of the drug.

The medical examiner also found his last ketamine infusion therapy session had taken place more than a week before his death – by which time the drug would have worn off.

They said the levels of ketamine in Perry’s body when he died were also of a far higher dosage.

Prosecutors alleged that Perry’s assistant had given him at least 27 shots of ketamine in the four days before his death.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the mpox outbreaks in parts of Africa a public health emergency of international concern.

The highly contagious disease – formerly known as monkeypox – has killed at least 450 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mpox is caused by a virus in the same family as smallpox but is usually much less harmful.

It was originally transmitted from animals to humans but now also passes between humans.

Initial symptoms include fever, headaches, swellings, back pain and aching muscles.

Once the fever breaks, a rash can develop. It often begins on the face before spreading to other parts of the body, most commonly the palms of the hands and soles of the feet.

The rash, which can be extremely itchy or painful, changes and goes through different stages before finally forming a scab, which later falls off. It can cause scarring.

The infection can clear up on its own and lasts between 14 and 21 days.

But in some cases it is fatal, particularly for vulnerable groups including small children.

Serious cases can see lesions attack the whole of the body, especially the mouth, eyes and genitals.

Mpox is most common in remote villages in the tropical rainforests of West and Central Africa, in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), where it has been seen for many years.

In these regions, there are thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths from the disease annually, with children under 15 worst affected.

There are currently a number of different outbreaks happening simultaneously – mainly in the DRC and neighbouring countries.

The disease has recently been seen in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya, where it is not normally endemic.

There are broadly two main types of mpox – Clade 1, which is often more serious, and Clade 2.

The Clade 1 virus – that has for decades caused sporadic outbreaks in DRC – is spreading.

Some forms of Clade 1 seem to be affecting children more than adults.

There is also real concern because many people infected in the last year have had a relatively new and more severe type of mpox known as Clade 1b.

Experts say there is a lot to learn about the Clade 1b but it may be spreading more easily, causing more serious disease.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says there were more than 14,500 mpox infections and over 450 deaths from mpox between the start of 2024 and the end of July. That is a 160% increase in infections and a 19% increase in deaths compared with the same period in 2023.

A previous mpox public health emergency, declared in 2022, was caused by the relatively mild Clade 2.

It spread to nearly 100 countries which do not normally see the virus, including some in Europe and Asia, but was brought under control by vaccinating vulnerable groups.

Mpox spreads from person to person through close contact with someone who is infected – including through sex, skin-to-skin contact and talking or breathing close to the ill person.

The virus can enter the body through broken skin, the respiratory tract or through the eyes, nose or mouth.

It can also be spread through touching objects which have been contaminated by the virus, such as bedding, clothing and towels.

Close contact with infected animals, such as monkeys, rats and squirrels, is another route.

During the global outbreak in 2022, the virus spread mostly through sexual contact.

The current outbreaks in DR Congo are being driven by sexual contact and by other forms of close contact.

It has been found in other vulnerable communities, including young children.

Anyone who has close contact with someone with symptoms can catch the virus, including health workers and family members.

Sexual contact between infected adults is thought to be one of the reasons cases are rising.

Experts are studying the situation to understand more about who is most at risk.

Young children may be among groups who are particularly vulnerable because their immune systems are still developing and many in the region have poor nutrition, making it harder to fight off disease.

Some experts suggest younger children may be at risk because of the way they play and interact with each other closely.

They will also not have had access to the smallpox vaccine, discontinued more than four decades ago, that may offer older people some protection.

Anyone with a weakened immune system may also be more prone to the disease and there is concern pregnant women may be at greater risk.

Advice is to avoid close contact with anyone with mpox and clean your hands with soap and water if the virus is in your community.

Those who have mpox should isolate from others until all their lesions have disappeared.

Condoms should be used as a precaution when having sex for 12 weeks after recovery, the WHO says.

Vaccines exist but only people at risk or who have been in close contact with an infected person are usually able to have it.

There is real worry that there is not enough funding for vaccines to reach all those in need.

The WHO has recently asked drug manufacturers to put forward their mpox vaccines for emergency use, even if those vaccines have not been formally approved.

Now that the Africa CDC has declared a continent-wide public health emergency, it is hoped that governments will be better able to co-ordinate their response and potentially increase the flow of medical supplies and aid into affected areas.

Without global action there is real concern the current outbreak could spread beyond the continent.

A cluster of Scottish islands could help solve one of our planet’s greatest mysteries, scientists say.

The Garvellach islands off the west coast of Scotland are the best record of Earth entering its biggest ever ice age around 720 million years ago, researchers have discovered.

The big freeze, which covered nearly all the globe in two phases for 80 million years, is known as “Snowball Earth”, after which the first animal life emerged.

Clues hidden in rocks about the freeze have been wiped out everywhere – except in the Garvellachs. Researchers hope the islands will tell us why Earth went into such an extreme icy state for so long and why it was necessary for complex life to emerge.

Layers of rock can be thought of as pages of a history book – with each layer containing details of the Earth’s condition in the distant past.

But the critical period leading up to Snowball Earth was thought to be missing because the rock layers were eroded by the big freeze. 

Now a new study by researchers at University College, London, has revealed that the Garvellachs somehow escaped unscathed. It may be the only place on Earth to have a detailed record of how the Earth entered one of the most catastrophic periods in its history – as well as what happened when the first animal life emerged when the snowball thawed hundreds of millions of years ago.

Back then Scotland was in a completely different place because the continents have moved over time. It was south of the Earth’s equator and had a tropical climate, until it and the rest of the planet became engulfed in ice.

“We capture that moment of entering an ice age in Scotland that is missing in all other localities in the world,” Prof Graham Shields of University College London, who led the research, told BBC News.

“Millions of critical years are missing in other places because of glacial erosion – but it is all there in the layers of rock in the Garvellachs.”

The islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland are uninhabited, apart from a team of scientists working out of the main island’s solitary building, although there are also the ruins of a 6th Century Celtic monastery.

The breakthrough was made by Prof Shield’s PhD student, Elias Rugen, whose results have been published in the Journal of the Geological Society of London. Elias is the first to date the rock layers and identify them as from the critical period that is missing from all other rock formations in all other parts of the world.

His discovery puts the Garvellachs in line for one of the biggest accolades in science: the golden spike hammered in at locations identified as the best record of planet-changing geological moments – though to ward off thieves the spike is not actually made of gold.

Elias has taken many of the judges of the golden spike, formally known as members of the “Cryogenian sub-commission”, several times to the rock faces to press his case.

The next stage is to allow the wider geological community to voice any objections or to come up with a better candidate. If there are none, then the spike could be hammered in next year.

The prize would raise the scientific profile of the location and attract further research funding.

If it does earn the prize it would delight the man who first identified the significance of the formation as a young researcher 60 years ago, Dr Tony Spencer.

“There are about fifty places in where we could choose for this golden spike,”he told BBC News, “but this is the one where the rocks are thickest and the sedimentation is the most continuous.

“So it appears to preserve the very earliest point in time when there is a record of this particular ice age.”

Vice-President Kamala Harris has had to speedily re-introduce herself to US voters, who are now having to size her up as a potential commander-in-chief, instead of Joe Biden’s deputy.

And during the biggest moment of Ms Harris’s career so far – the Democratic convention in Chicago – they will also get to know the family members who will stand beside her, as well as those who helped her get there.

Unlike her rival Donald Trump, Ms Harris has only been married once and is a step-parent. Here’s a look at her big, modern family.

Ms Harris met her now-husband, Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff in 2013, while she was serving as California’s attorney general. They were married the following year. Since then Mr Emhoff, 59, has stuck close to his wife’s side as she has risen in the ranks of US politics.

In 2020, when Ms Harris made history as the first black and South Asian woman to become vice-president, Mr Emhoff made history too as the first husband of an American president or vice-president, as well as the first Jewish spouse of a vice-president.

He left his law firm that year to focus full-time on his role as “second gentleman”, a position that has pulled him out of relative obscurity. He is now known as an enthusiastic champion for Democratic party causes and Ms Harris’s most loyal surrogate on the campaign trail.

The vice-president’s marriage made her a step-mother to Cole and Ella, the two children Mr Emhoff shares with his first wife, Kerstin Emhoff.

Ms Harris has said often that of all her many titles, being “Momala” – the term coined by Cole and Ella – is the most important. That affection seems to go both ways – Cole and Ella, now 30 and 25, respectively, have been vocal supporters of Ms Harris.

“The world’s greatest step-mother”, was Ella’s introduction during the 2020 Democratic convention. “You’re a rock, not just for our dad, but for three generations of our big, blended family.”

Cole, who graduated from Colorado College in 2017, has followed his father into the entertainment industry, with jobs at talent agency WME and, later, Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B.

Ella, who graduated from Parsons School of Design in New York City, signed with IMG Models in 2021 and walked in shows for high-fashion brands like Balenciaga and Proenza Schouler. She’s also an artist and a prolific knitter, who launched the knitwear brand and club Soft Hands in 2021.

Cole and Ella’s mom, Kerstin, has – perhaps unexpectedly – gone out of her way to speak warmly and positively of Ms Harris. Recently, Kerstin came to Ms Harris’s defence when JD Vance’s “childless cat lady” comments resurfaced.

“For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,” Kerstin said in a statement to CNN. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”

• The many identities of the first woman vice-president
• Doug Emhoff: The first ‘second dude’ in the White House

Kerstin, the founder and CEO of production company Prettybird, even provided her creative expertise and connections to the 2020 campaign.

“They were like, ‘The ex-wife wants to do what?'” Kerstin said to Marie Claire in 2020.

Kamala Harris is known to be very close to her only sibling and younger sister, Maya Harris. After their parents’ divorce, the two girls were primarily raised by their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, in Berkeley California.

Like her older sister, Maya pursued a career in law, graduating from Stanford University law school in 1992. She worked as a litigator and taught law classes before joining the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, where she became executive director in 2006.

Maya, 57, eventually shifted to politics, serving as a senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton on her 2016 presidential campaign. She then served as campaign chair to her sister’s failed 2020 bid for Democratic nominee, before becoming a surrogate for the Biden-Harris ticket.

Maya’s only child, Meena, followed the Harris family tradition by graduating from law school. Meena advised her “Aunty” Kamala through the early stages of her political careers, as she moved through positions at elite Silicon Valley companies like Uber, Facebook and Slack.

Beginning in 2017, the mother of two launched Phenomenal, a media and merchandising company that focuses on projects led by women and other underrepresented groups.

But Meena’s career is still linked in some ways to her aunt’s.

In June 2020, she published a children’s book about her aunt and mother called “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea”. And after Mr Biden selected Ms Harris as his running mate, Phenomenal began selling “Vice President Aunty” sweatshirts.

Husband to Maya, step-father to Meena, Tony West is another accomplished member of the Harris clan, and another lawyer.

A graduate of Stanford law (where he met Maya and her then-toddler daughter), Mr West has worked at high levels of the private and public sector. He was associate attorney general under President Barack Obama and worked as general counsel of PepsiCo.

Mr West is now the chief legal officer of Uber, but he’s also emerged as a key advisor to his sister-in-law’s campaign.

Uber said this month he would take a leave of absence to devote himself to Team Harris.

“I have always believed family comes first,” Mr West said in a statement. “So I’ve decided to dedicate myself full-time to supporting my family and my sister-in-law on the campaign trail.”

Although Dr Shyamala Gopalan died before she could see her daughter run for president, Kamala and Maya Harris say their scientist mother inspired both of their careers.

“My mother was the first person to tell me that my thoughts and experiences mattered,” Ms Harris wrote on Facebook in 2022. “My mother would often say to me: ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things. Make sure you are not the last.'”

Ms Gopalan, who died in 2009, moved to the US from India at age 19 to study science, going on to work as a breast cancer researcher.

Her activism in the civil rights movement led her to her future husband: economist and Jamaican immigrant Donald Harris. Ms Harris has credited her mother with raising both her and Maya and her current relationship with her father is unclear.

If he’s re-elected president, Donald Trump has promised the mass deportation of people who do not have legal permission to be in the United States.

While his campaign has given various answers as to how many could be removed, his vice-presidential nominee JD Vance gave one figure during an interview to ABC News this week.

“Let’s start with one million,” he said. “That’s where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there.”

But even as it has formed a key plank of the Trump platform – with signs at his rallies reading “Mass Deportations Now!” – experts say there are significant legal and practical challenges to expelling so many people.

Immigration advocates have warned that the human cost of deportations would also be significant, with families torn apart and raids taking place in communities and workplaces across the US.

The latest figures from the Department of Homeland Security and Pew Research indicate that there are around 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US, a number that has remained relatively stable since 2005.

Most are long-term residents – nearly four-fifths have been in the country for more than a decade.

Immigrants who are in the country without legal status have the right to due process, including a court hearing before their removal. A drastic increase in deportations would likely entail a large expansion in the immigration court system, which has been beset by backlogs.

Most immigrants already in the country enter into the deportation system not through encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents but through local law enforcement.

However, many of the country’s largest cities and counties have passed laws restricting local police co-operation with Ice.

The Trump campaign has pledged to take action against these “sanctuary cities”, but America’s patchwork of local, state and federal laws further complicates the picture.

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, or MPI, said that co-operation between Ice and local officials would be a “critical” aspect of any mass deportation programme.

“It’s much easier for Ice to pick someone up from a jail if local law enforcement co-operates, instead of having to go look for them,” she said.

As an example, Ms Bush-Joseph pointed to an early August declaration from the sheriff’s offices of Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach counties, in which they said they would not deploy deputies to help any mass deportation plan.

“There are many others who would not co-operate with a Trump mass deportation plan,” she said. “That makes it so much harder.”

Any mass deportation programme is also likely to be almost immediately met with a flurry of legal challenges from immigration and human rights activists.

A 2022 Supreme Court ruling, however, means that courts cannot issue injunctions on immigration enforcement policies – meaning they would continue even as the challenges work their way through the legal system.

If a US administration was able to legally move ahead with plans for mass deportations, authorities would still have to contend with enormous logistical challenges.

During the Biden administration, deportation efforts have focused on migrants recently detained at the border. Migrants deported from further inland in the US, from areas not located near the border, are, overwhelmingly, those with criminal histories or deemed national security threats.

Controversial raids on worksites that were carried out during the Trump administration were suspended in 2021.

Deportations of people arrested in the US interior – as opposed to those at the border – have hovered at below 100,000 for a decade, after peaking at over 230,000 during the early years of the Obama administration.

“To raise that, in a single year, up to a million would require a massive infusion of resources that likely don’t exist,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told the BBC.

For one, experts are doubtful that Ice’s 20,000 agents and support personnel would be enough to find and track down even a fraction of the figures being touted by the Trump campaign.

Mr Reichlin-Melnick added that the deportation process is long and complicated and only begins with the identification and arrest of an undocumented migrant.

After that, detainees would need to be housed or placed on an “alternative to detention” programme before they are brought before an immigration judge, in a system with a years-long backlog.

Only then are detainees removed from the US, a process that requires diplomatic co-operation from the receiving country.

“In each of those areas, Ice simply does not have the capacity to process millions of people,” Mr Reichlin-Melnick said.

Trump has said he would involve the National Guard or other US military forces to help with deportations.

Historically, the US military’s role in immigration matters has been limited to support functions at the US-Mexico border.

Aside from the use of the military and “using local law enforcement”, Trump has offered few specifics on how such a mass deportation plan could be carried out.

In an interview with Time magazine earlier this year, the former president said only that he would “not rule out” building new migrant detention facilities, and that he would move to give police immunity from prosecution from “the liberal groups or the progressive groups”.

He added that there could also be incentives for state and local police departments to participate, and that those who do not “won’t partake in the riches”.

“We have to do this,” he said. “This is not a sustainable problem for our country.”

The BBC has contacted the Trump campaign for additional comment.

Eric Ruark, the director of research at NumbersUSA – an organisation that advocates for tighter immigration controls – said that any deportation programme from the interior would only be effective if coupled with increased border enforcement.

“That has to be the priority. You’re going to make very little progress in the interior if that’s not the case,” he said. “That’s what keeps people showing up.”

Additionally, Mr Ruark said that a crackdown on companies that hire undocumented migrants would also be necessary.

“They’re coming for jobs,” he said. “And they’re getting those jobs because interior enforcement has basically been dismantled.”

Experts estimate that the total bill for one million or more deportations would run into tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Ice budget for transportation and deportation in 2023 was $420m (£327m). In that year the agency deported slightly more than 140,000 people.

Thousands of immigrants would be detained while awaiting court hearings or deportations, and the Trump campaign has envisioned building large encampments to house them all.

The number of removal flights would also need to be dramatically expanded, possibly requiring military aircraft to augment current capacity.

Just a small expansion in any of these areas could result in significant costs.

“Even a minor change is in the tens of millions, or hundreds of millions,” Mr Reichlin-Melnick said. “A significant change is in the tens or hundreds of millions.”

Those costs would be in addition to the expense of other border enforcement efforts that Trump has promised: continuing work on a southern US border wall, a naval blockade to prevent fentanyl entering the country, and moving thousands of troops to the border.

Adam Isacson, a migration and border expert from the Washington Office on Latin America, said that “nightmarish images” of mass deportations could also cost a potential Trump administration politically from a public relations standpoint.

“Every community in the US would see people they know and love put on buses,” Mr Isacson said.

“You’d have some very painful images on TV of crying children, and families,” he added. “All of that is incredibly bad press. It’s family separation, but on steroids.”

Under the four years of the previous Trump administration, around 1.5 million people were deported, both from the border and the US interior.

The Biden administration – which had deported about 1.1 million people up to February 2024 – is on track to match that, statistics show.

During the two terms of the Obama administration – when Mr Biden was vice-president – more than three million people were deported, leading some immigration reform advocates to dub Barack Obama the “deporter-in-chief”.

The only historical comparison to a mass deportation programme came in 1954, when as many as 1.3 million people were deported as part of Operation Wetback, named after a derogatory slur then commonly used against Mexican people.

That figure is disputed by historians, however.

The programme, under President Dwight Eisenhower, ran into considerable public opposition – partly because some US citizens were also deported – as well as a lack of funding. It was largely discontinued by 1955.

Immigration experts say that the earlier operation’s focus on Mexican nationals and lack of due process makes it incomparable to what a modern-day mass deportation programme would look like.

“Those [deported in the 1950s] were single, Mexican men,” said MPI’s Kathleen Bush-Joseph.

“Now, the vast majority of people coming between ports of entry are from places that are not Mexico, or even northern Central America. It makes it so much harder to return them,” she added.

“Those are not comparable situations.”

Police have identified two murder suspects thought to have been involved in the death of a miner whose remains were discovered more than 50 years after he went missing.

Alfred Swinscoe’s remains were found in a field on farmland in Nottinghamshire last April, after the father of six was last seen drinking at a pub on 27 January 1967.

Work on Mr Swinscoe’s bones has found he sustained a “significant” stab injury and blunt force trauma, and police say he died with a broken hand.

Now officers have identified two suspects, both of whom are no longer alive.

Nottinghamshire Police launched a murder inquiry following the discovery of the remains, later confirmed as belonging to the 54-year-old.

They were found off Coxmoor Road in Sutton-in-Ashfield, on 26 April, when digging work was being carried out on farmland.

Officers believe Mr Swinscoe – who was last seen at the former Pinxton Miners Arms in Derbyshire – was murdered and then buried in a grave between 4ft (1.2m) and 6ft (1.8m) deep.

Police said since the remains were found, scientists had carried out “extensive” work on Mr Swinscoe’s bones to determine a cause of death.

It is thought Mr Swinscoe could have sustained his broken hand while fighting his attacker or attackers off.

One of the suspects had a history of violence, police added.

Some of the injuries the suspect had inflicted on another man he was convicted of assaulting in April 1966, were similar to those found on Mr Swinscoe.

As some of the bones were missing, experts believe it was “highly likely” Mr Swinscoe was killed at a different location, and then moved to where his remains were found “at a much later date”.

Mr Swinscoe’s grandson, Russell Lowbridge, told the BBC he recognised the former miner’s sock that was found with the remains.

“Finding out he was murdered was a shock. It took some sinking in,” Mr Lowbridge said. “It’s all a bit disturbing and upsetting.

“Anybody that knew anything, they’ve kept it a secret. It would be wonderful if [people] did come forward – it would help put our minds at rest.

“It will always haunt us; we’ll always be left wondering. We have got some closure, but not full closure. There are still questions to be answered.”

Since the age of 14, Mr Swinscoe had worked at Langton Colliery as a “cutter”, known for operating a machine that cut large chunks of coal out of the coal face for others to then break down.

He had the nickname “Sparrow”, and was also known as “Champion Pigeon Man of Pinxton”, due to his love of pigeon racing.

Four of his six children are still alive and he has a number of grandchildren.

It is believed Mr Swinscoe was drinking with his two sons and friends on the night of his disappearance.

He was last seen giving money to son Gary to buy a round, and then left to use the outside toilet.

Mr Lowbridge previously told the BBC that the disappearance had “tormented” Gary, who died in 2012 “never knowing what happened to his dad”.

Detectives believe a vehicle would have been used in the killing, as it was “some distance” between the pub and where Mr Swinscoe was buried.

They added it “would have been rare” to own a car in the village of Pinxton in 1967.

Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin said many of the people who were with Mr Swinscoe at the time he went missing were no longer alive, adding “we may never get the full picture” of what happened.

“That certainly hasn’t stifled our determination to investigate this crime and leave no stone unturned to find his killer or killers,” he said.

“We will continue to investigate this crime and continue to look at all new and existing avenues available to us.”

Mr Swincoe’s cause of death will be determined by a pathologist ahead of an inquest.

Police are continuing to appeal for information, with Mr Swinscoe’s final movements recreated as part of a BBC Crimewatch appeal in October.

The family held a small funeral for Mr Swinscoe in Sutton-in-Ashfield in January.

The service – arranged by A Wass Funeral Directors – was officiated by Stephen Blakeley, a celebrity celebrant who was known for playing PC Younger in the television series Heartbeat.

“He did a nice talk about grandad for us and it was lovely,” Mr Lowbridge said.

“It’s good to have him back home buried properly with his family and we feel content that he’s not lost any more.”

Thailand’s parliament has picked Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of billionaire tycoon and former leader Thaksin, as prime minister.

At 37, she will be the country’s youngest PM and the second woman in the post, after her aunt Yingluck.

Her selection comes just two days after former PM Srettha Thavisin was dismissed by a constitutional court. Both are from the Pheu Thai Party, which came second at the 2023 election but formed a ruling coalition.

Ms Paetongtarn faces the difficult task of reviving Thailand’s stalled economy and avoiding the military coups and court interventions which have deposed four previous administrations led by her party.

“I really hope that I can make people feel confident that we can build opportunities and to improve the qualify of life and to empower all Thais,” Ms Paetongtarn told reporters after the vote on Friday.

She was visibly overwhelmed, saying her hands were trembling from excitement.

She acknowledged that she is “neither the best, nor the most talented one in the room”.

“But I always think I have a strong will and I have a good team… My team is strong, experienced, determined and we share the same ideas. That’s something I value highly,” she said.

Ms Paetongtarn, who received 319 endorsement and 145 against votes, is the fourth member of the Shinawatra clan to become prime minister in the past two decades.

The other three, including her father Thaksin and aunt Yingluck, were deposed by military coups or constitutional court rulings.

The same court dismissed Mr Thavisin on Wednesday for appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who was once jailed.

On Friday, Ms Paetongtarn said she was “confused” and “very sad” to learn about Mr Srettha’s dismissal.

She decided it was “about time to do something for the party and for the country” after speaking to him and to her family, she said.

She added that Mr Thaksin called to encourage her to “do your best” and said he is glad to still be able to see her take on the job in his old age.

Educated at elite schools in Thailand and at university in the UK, she spent some years working at the Shinawatra family’s Rende hotel group, where her husband serves as deputy chief investment officer.

She joined Pheu Thai in 2021 and was appointed party leader in October 2023.

Ms Paetongtarn’s appointment brings fresh energy to Thailand’s top leadership. Members of Pheu Thai may also be holding out hope that she can help revive the party’s political fortunes.

Mr Thaksin first became prime minister in 2001, but his second term in office ended abruptly after his government was deposed by a military coup in 2006. He returned to Thailand after 15 years in exile last October, hours before Mr Srettha was voted prime minister.

He was allowed to return as part of a grand bargain with his old conservative enemies, who are now in coalition with Pheu Thai.

In June, he was charged with insulting the monarchy. He is the most high-profile figure to face charges under Thailand’s notorious lese majeste law, which has been used against political dissidents.

Wednesday’s ruling to dismiss Mr Srettha is also being widely interpreted as a warning to Mr Thaksin, who still dominates Pheu Thai, to rein in his ambitions.

Mr Thaksin’ sister, Ms Yingluck, won a landslide in the 2011 election, but she too was later disqualified by the courts, and her government ousted by a second coup. She is now living in exile.

Ms Paetongtarn led Pheu Thai’s campaign in last year’s election, when she was in the final stages of her pregnancy, which won her many admirers.

“I think after eight years the people want better politics, better solutions for the country than just coup d’etats,” she told the BBC at the time. “They are seeking policies that will help their lives.”

The election winner, Move Forward, was prevented from forming the government by the military-appointed senate – which paved the way for a Pheu Thai-led coalition with Mr Srettha as PM.

Earlier this month, the consitutional court dissolved Move Forward and banned 11 of its leaders from politicis for a decade.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli military action in Gaza since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

That number – 40,005 on Thursday – equates to about 1.7% of the 2.3 million population of the territory – another sobering indication of the human cost of the war.

Alongside the fatalities, satellite image analysis suggests nearly 60% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the war.

In the past few months, the southern city of Rafah has suffered the most damage, imagery shows.

The ministry’s figures for the number of people killed do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

However, its breakdown of identified reported fatalities says a majority are children, women or elderly people.

This month, Israel’s military told the BBC that more than 15,000 terrorists had been killed during the war.

International journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza independently, so are unable to verify figures from either side.

In the past, figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) were widely used in times of conflict and seen as reliable by the UN and international institutions.

It only counted deaths registered in hospitals with these entered in a centralised system along with names, identity numbers and other details.

However, by late last year the MoH was unable to function effectively with overflowing mortuaries, fighting in and around hospitals and poor internet and phone connectivity.

The Hamas Government Media Office (GMO) in Gaza began publishing numbers of deaths including reports given in “reliable media”.

UN agencies started to incorporate this into their data breakdowns as well as MoH figures when updates were available.

More recently, Gaza’s MoH has begun to incorporate those reported as killed in the war including by family members online in its overall tally.

However, it also counts separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total number killed.

The UN now quotes these figures, with officials attributing them and stressing that their Gaza teams cannot independently verify them due to the conditions on the ground and the high volume of fatalities.

Israel has consistently questioned the credibility of the information. In May, the Foreign Minister Israel Katz described it as “fake data from a terrorist organisation”.

• BBC Verify: How Gaza death recording has changed

Several experts have said the actual number of people killed as a direct result of the war in Gaza is likely to be far higher, with local officials estimating that about 10,000 bodies remain under the rubble of buildings hit by Israeli air strikes.

Ali Ashraf Ata Gheith, 15, told the BBC he spent two months digging his dead family from the wreckage of their bombed-out home.

His mother, father, brother and two sisters were killed when it was hit by a strike. Ali was in the building too, but survived after being trapped under the rubble for seven hours.

After he got out, he began trying to retrieve the bodies of his family.

“I could see my father under the rubble but I couldn’t extract him at first because he was under two columns of cement, and the ceiling would have collapsed. He decomposed in front of my eyes,” he said.

Even with a halt in fighting, researchers point out that in addition to the number of people killed as a direct result of the war, many more could die from indirect causes, such as disease and hunger.

Ultimately when the war ends, efforts to recover bodies and trace the missing should allow a clearer idea to emerge of the number killed, including a figure for combatants. The UN and rights groups, as well as the Israeli military, can be expected to carry out their own investigations.

Satellite image analysis suggests that around 59.3% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the war.

The damage analysis, carried out by Corey Scher of City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, compares images to reveal sudden changes in the height or structure of buildings.

The southern city of Rafah has sustained the highest rise in damaged buildings since March, according to the expert analysis.

The majority of the destruction came after Israel launched an offensive on the city on 6 May. The military says that taking control of the area and eliminating the remaining Hamas battalions is crucial to achieving its war aims.

In satellite imagery analysed by BBC Verify, large swathes of the city can be seen to be left in ruins – particularly around the border with Egypt and neighbourhoods to the north and south.

Social media videos verified by the BBC and footage shared by Israel’s military shows that areas across Rafah have been damaged or destroyed by aerial bombardment as well as demolition by Israeli forces on the ground.

In the image below we see a large section of cleared buildings immediately adjacent to the border.

Satellite imagery shows land has been cleared along the so-called Philadelphi corridor – a buffer zone along the 14km (9-mile) border with Egypt.

BBC Verify’s analysis of the imagery showed Israeli military vehicles in several areas where building clearance had taken place along the corridor. This includes a small neighbourhood located where the border meets the coast which was flattened within a month of the Rafah operation starting.

On the ground footage filmed by an Israeli soldier also showed that an observation tower was later built in the area.

The operation has also destroyed key Rafah landmarks which includes the border crossing, several major mosques and the city’s main market.

On 7 May, videos verified by the BBC showed Israeli tanks crushing a “Welcome to Gaza” sign at the Rafah border crossing.

Video posted on the same date also showed damage to the blue dome of the Abrar mosque. Satellite imagery captured subsequently showed the building was later destroyed.

In another social media video shared on 27 June, roads and green lawns that once centred around Rafah’s famous Al-Najma roundabout were now churned up, with nearby buildings heavily damaged.

The war began when thousands of Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Hong Kong is celebrating the birth of twin giant pandas by its beloved Ying Ying, who is a first-time mum.

The birth is a “true rarity” as their mother is the oldest giant panda on record to give birth for the first time.

Ying Ying delivered the cubs on Thursday, one day before her 19th birthday. If she were a human, she would be the equivalent of a 57-year-old.

A photo of the twins – a male and a female – has received over a thousand congratulatory comments on Facebook.

The cubs are currently “very fragile and need time to stabilise” under 24-hour intensive care, according to their caretakers.

“We are all looking forward to meet the giant panda cubs. Please wait a few months patiently to make their debut and officially meet everyone!” Ocean Park Hong Kong said.

Of Ying Ying’s twins, the female cub appears to be more fragile because her body temperature is lower and her cries are weaker compared to her brother, the park operator said.

She weighs just 122g.

Ying Ying was “understandably nervous” during birth and spent most of the time lying and twisting on the ground, Ocean Park said.

Giant pandas are notoriously reluctant to mate. Ying Ying and the twins’ father, Le Le, have been housed at Ocean Park since 2007, when they were gifted to Hong Kong by Beijing. They mated successfully in March.

China’s long-term conservation effort has reversed the population decline of giant pandas. They are now considered a vulnerable species and no longer endangered.

Aside from serving as theme park attractions, pandas have also figured in China’s diplomatic efforts.

Sweden’s public health agency has recorded what it says is the first case of a more dangerous type of mpox outside the African continent.

The person became infected during a stay in an area of Africa where there is currently a major outbreak of mpox Clade 1, the agency said.

The news comes just hours after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the outbreak of mpox in parts of Africa was now a public health emergency of international concern.

At least 450 people died during an initial outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the disease has since spread to areas of Central and East Africa.

According to Olivia Wigzell, the acting head of the Swedish public health agency, the infected person had sought care in the Stockholm area and the fact that they were receiving treatment in Sweden did not mean there was a risk to the broader population.

“The affected person has also been infected during a stay in an area of Africa where there is a large outbreak of mpox Clade 1,” she told a news conference.

Mpox, which was previously known as monkeypox, is transmitted through close contact, such as sex, skin-to-skin contact and talking or breathing close to another person.

It causes flu-like symptoms, skin lesions and can be fatal, with four in 100 cases leading to death. It is most common in the tropical rainforests of West and Central Africa and there are thousands of infections every year.

There are currently a number of outbreaks of mpox that are taking place simultaneously and they are partly fuelled by the newer and more serious type of Clade 1b, identified in September last year.

There are two types of Clade 1 and the Swedish case has been identified as Clade 1b. Since mpox Clade 1b was first witnessed in Democratic Republic of Congo there have been confirmed cases in Burundi, Kenya and Rwanda, before the new case identified in Sweden.

While Clade 2 did cause a public health emergency in 2022, it was relatively mild and some 300 cases have already been identified in Sweden.

WHO/Europe said it was actively engaging with Sweden’s health authorities on “how best to manage the first confirmed case of mpox Clade 1b”.

It urged other countries to act quickly and transparently like Sweden, as there were likely to be further “imported cases of Clade 1 in the European region over the coming days and weeks”.

The Swedish public health agency said the more dangerous outbreak was likely to be linked to “a higher rise of a more severe course of disease and higher mortality”.

Dr Jonas Albarnaz, who specialises in pox viruses at the Pirbright Institute, said the first case outside of Africa was concerning as it meant the spread “might be larger than we knew yesterday”.

Dr Brian Ferguson, Associate Professor of Immunology at the University of Cambridge agreed it was “clearly a concerning development” but unsurprising given the severity and spread of the outbreak in Africa.

The WHO hopes its latest declaration, that mpox is a public health emergency of international concern, will trigger greater support to the areas most affected.

Vaccines are available, for those at greatest risk or who have been in close contact with an infected person, but many experts worry there are not enough jabs or funding to get them to the people who need them most.

The mortality rate from the Clade 1b variant in Sweden will not be as high as that seen in parts of Africa, because of the high quality of healthcare in Europe.

However, Dr Ferguson said there would likely be further cases in Europe and other parts of the world “as there are currently no mechanisms in place to stop imported cases of mpox happening”.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said symptoms usually appeared 6-13 days after infection, through fevers and headaches, rashes or sores and muscle ache.

Most people experienced mild to moderate symptoms followed by a full recovery, but immuno-compromised individuals were at greater risk.

While news of the first case outside Africa may cause alarm, it was to be expected.

As other disease outbreaks have shown, swift international action can help stop the disease spreading further.

Dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” by US prosecutors, alleged drug dealer Jasveen Sangha is one of five people who US officials say supplied ketamine to Friends star Matthew Perry, exploiting his drug addiction for profit, and leading to his overdose death.

Ms Sangha now faces nine charges, including conspiracy to distribute ketamine and distribution of ketamine resulting in death.

The American-British dual-national, who wore a Nirvana jumper for her court appearance, pleaded not guilty to the charges on Thursday.

Her bail request was denied by US officials and she will remain in custody until her trial in October.

The indictment alleges that Ms Sangha’s distribution of ketamine on 24 October 2023 caused Perry’s death.

Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). It can distort perception of sight and sound and makes the user feel disconnected and not in control.

It is used as an injectable anaesthetic for humans and animals because it makes patients feel detached from their pain and environment.

The substance is supposed to be administered only by a physician, investigators say, and patients who have taken the drug should be monitored by a professional because of its possible harmful effects.

Ms Sangha is alleged to have supplied ketamine from her “stash house” since at least 2019.

Her North Hollywood home was a “drug-selling emporium”, Martin Estrada, the US attorney for California’s Central District, told a news conference on Thursday.

More than 80 vials of ketamine were allegedly found there in a search, along with thousands of pills that included methamphetamine, cocaine and Xanax.

The home, called the “Sangha Stash House” in the indictment, was where she is alleged to have packaged and distributed drugs.

She “only deal[s] with high end and celebs,” the indictment quoted her co-accused Erik Fleming as saying of Ms Sangha.

At the same time, she lived a jetsetter life which she shared widely on social media.

Ms Sangha is said to have mixed with celebrities socially as well, with one of her friends telling the Daily Mail she attended the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

Shortly after Perry’s overdose she posted pictures depicting her extravagant lifestyle, including parties and a trip to Japan and Mexico.

And the day before arrests were announced, her social media activity suggests she went to a hairdresser and dyed her hair purple.

The Instagram account where these posts were shared was confirmed as belonging to her by a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office Central District of California.

Prosecutors claim Ms Sangha came to supply ketamine to Perry after fellow defendant Dr Salvador Plasencia initially learned that the actor was interested in the drug. Dr Plasencia sourced it from Dr Mark Chavez, another defendant in the case who had previously operated a ketamine clinic.

They allege Dr Plasencia also taught Perry’s live-in assistant, co-accused Kenneth Iwamasa, how to inject Perry with ketamine.

Beginning in October 2023, Ms Sangha began supplying Mr Iwamasa with ketamine and prosecutors say she knew the ketamine she distributed could be deadly.

“These defendants cared more about profiting off of Mr Perry than caring for his well-being,” said Mr Estrada.

He also alleged that Ms Sangha was a “major source of supply for ketamine to others as well as Perry”.

If convicted of all charges in Perry’s case, Sangha would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment, the justice department says.

US authorities say they also uncovered Ms Sangha’s alleged connection to another overdose death, this time in 2019.

Court documents suggest she knew about the dangers of ketamine after selling it to a customer named Cody McLaury, who died of an overdose after buying the drug.

She was reported to have been contacted by one of his family members, who texted her saying: “The ketamine you sold my brother killed him. It’s listed as the cause of death.”

Days later Ms Sangha is said to have searched on Google: “Can ketamine be listed as a cause of death?”, according to investigators.

Authorities say Ms Sangha will face charges in that case.

Travellers should consider getting vaccinated against mpox if they will be visting affected areas in Africa, new advice says.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has updated its recommendations in response to outbreaks of a new strain of the virus. Other continents, including Europe, can expect some cases too, it says.

ECDC says the risk of it spreading everywhere is low, despite the World Health Organization recently declaring the mpox situation a global emergency.

The disease – formerly known as monkeypox – can be passed on by close contact with anyone with the infection.

Those who have been vaccinated against mpox in the past might only need one-top up dose, rather than two shots.

Booster vaccine doses are typically recommended every two to 10 years if a person remains at continued risk for exposure.

Mpox has killed at least 450 people in the DRC in recent months, linked to a new type or Clade called 1b.

Mpox can be passed on from person to person through:

• any close physical contact with mpox blisters or scabs (including during sexual contact, kissing, cuddling or holding hands)
• touching clothing, bedding or towels used by someone with mpox
• the coughs or sneezes of a person with mpox when they’re close to you

It causes flu-like symptoms, skin lesions and can be fatal for some.

• What is mpox and how is it spread?
• Mpox: What does the new strain mean for you?

Experts say there is still a lot to learn about 1b, but it may be spreading more easily, causing more serious disease.

Pamela Rendi-Wagner from the ECDC said: “As a result of the rapid spread of this outbreak in Africa, ECDC has increasd the level of risk for the general population in the EU/EEA and travellers to affected areas. Due to the close links between Europe and Africa we must be prepared for more imported Clade 1 cases.”

Currently, there are no cases of Clade 1b mpox confirmed in the UK but experts say cases can spread if international action is not taken.

A case of mpox has also been detected in Sweden after a person became infected during a stay in an area of Africa where the disease is spreading.

The ECDC recommends that public health authorities plan and prepare for quick detection of any more cases that may reach Europe.

A previous mpox public health emergency, declared in 2022, was caused by a different, milder strain called Clade 2.

Despite having effective vaccines against mpox, too few doses are currently getting to where they are needed most.

Early on Friday morning, a 31-year-old female trainee doctor retired to sleep in a seminar hall after a gruelling day at one of India’s oldest hospitals.

It was the last time she was seen alive.

The next morning, her colleagues discovered her half-naked body on the podium, bearing extensive injuries. Police later arrested a hospital volunteer worker in connection with what they say is a case of rape and murder at Kolkata’s 138-year-old RG Kar Medical College.

Tens of thousands of women in Kolkata and across West Bengal state are expected to participate in a ‘Reclaim the Night’ march at midnight on Wednesday, demanding the “independence to live in freedom and without fear”. The march takes place just before India’s Independence Day on Thursday. Outraged doctors have struck work both in the city and across India, demanding a strict federal law to protect them.

The tragic incident has again cast a spotlight on the violence against doctors and nurses in the country. Reports of doctors, regardless of gender, being assaulted by patients and their relatives have gained widespread attention. Women – who make up nearly 30% of India’s doctors and 80% of the nursing staff – are more vulnerable than their male colleagues.

The crime in the Kolkata hospital last week exposed the alarming security risks faced by the medical staff in many of India’s state-run health facilities.

At RG Kar Hospital, which sees over 3,500 patients daily, the overworked trainee doctors – some working up to 36 hours straight – had no designated rest rooms, forcing them to seek rest in a third-floor seminar room.

Reports indicate that the arrested suspect, a volunteer worker with a troubled past, had unrestricted access to the ward and was captured on CCTV. Police allege that no background checks were conducted on the volunteer.

“The hospital has always been our first home; we only go home to rest. We never imagined it could be this unsafe. Now, after this incident, we’re terrified,” says Madhuparna Nandi, a junior doctor at Kolkata’s 76-year-old National Medical College.

Dr Nandi’s own journey highlights how female doctors in India’s government hospitals have become resigned to working in conditions that compromise their security.

At her hospital, where she is a resident in gynaecology and obstetrics, there are no designated rest rooms and separate toilets for female doctors.

“I use the patients’ or the nurses’ toilets if they allow me. When I work late, I sometimes sleep in an empty patient bed in the ward or in a cramped waiting room with a bed and basin,” Dr Nandi told me.

She says she feels insecure even in the room where she rests after 24-hour shifts that start with outpatient duty and continue through ward rounds and maternity rooms.

One night in 2021, during the peak of the Covid pandemic, some men barged into her room and woke her by touching her, demanding, “Get up, get up. See our patient.”

“I was completely shaken by the incident. But we never imagined it would come to a point where a doctor could be raped and murdered in the hospital,” Dr Nandi says.

What happened on Friday was not an isolated incident. The most shocking case remains that of Aruna Shanbaug, a nurse at a prominent Mumbai hospital, who was left in a persistent vegetative state after being raped and strangled by a ward attendant in 1973. She died in 2015, after 42 years of severe brain damage and paralysis. More recently, in Kerala, Vandana Das, a 23-year-old medical intern, was fatally stabbed with surgical scissors by a drunken patient last year.

In overcrowded government hospitals with unrestricted access, doctors often face mob fury from patients’ relatives after a death or over demands for immediate treatment. Kamna Kakkar, an anaesthetist, remembers a harrowing incident during a night shift in an intensive care unit (ICU) during the pandemic in 2021 at her hospital in Haryana in northern India.

“I was the lone doctor in the ICU when three men, flaunting a politician’s name, forced their way in, demanding a much in-demand controlled drug. I gave in to protect myself, knowing the safety of my patients was at stake,” Dr Kakkar told me.

Namrata Mitra, a Kolkata-based pathologist who studied at the RG Kar Medical College, says her doctor father would often accompany her to work because she felt unsafe.

“During my on-call duty, I took my father with me. Everyone laughed, but I had to sleep in a room tucked away in a long, dark corridor with a locked iron gate that only the nurse could open if a patient arrived,” Dr Mitra wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend.

“I’m not ashamed to admit I was scared. What if someone from the ward – an attendant, or even a patient – tried something? I took advantage of the fact that my father was a doctor, but not everyone has that privilege.”

When she was working in a public health centre in a district in West Bengal, Dr Mitra spent nights in a dilapidated one-storey building that served as the doctor’s hostel.

“From dusk, a group of boys would gather around the house, making lewd comments as we went in and out for emergencies. They would ask us to check their blood pressure as an excuse to touch us and they would peek through the broken bathroom windows,” she wrote.

Years later, during an emergency shift at a government hospital, “a group of drunk men passed by me, creating a ruckus, and one of them even groped me”, Dr Mitra said. “When I tried to complain, I found the police officers dozing off with their guns in hand.”

Things have worsened over the years, says Saraswati Datta Bodhak, a pharmacologist at a government hospital in West Bengal’s Bankura district. “Both my daughters are young doctors and they tell me that hospital campuses in the state are overrun by anti-social elements, drunks and touts,” she says. Dr Bodhak recalls seeing a man with a gun roaming around a top government hospital in Kolkata during a visit.

India lacks a stringent federal law to protect healthcare workers. Although 25 states have some laws to prevent violence against them, convictions are “almost non-existent”, RV Asokan, president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), an organisation of doctors, told me. A 2015 survey by IMA found that 75% of doctors in India have faced some form of violence at work. “Security in hospitals is almost absent,” he says. “One reason is that nobody thinks of hospitals as conflict zones.”

Some states like Haryana have deployed private bouncers to strengthen security at government hospitals. In 2022, the federal government asked the states to deploy trained security forces for sensitive hospitals, install CCTV cameras, set up quick reaction teams, restrict entry to “undesirable individuals” and file complaints against offenders. Nothing much has happened, clearly.

Even the protesting doctors don’t seem to be very hopeful. “Nothing will change… The expectation will be that doctors should work round the clock and endure abuse as a norm,” says Dr Mitra. It is a disheartening thought.

A police sniper potentially saved lives by shooting the rifle of Donald Trump’s would-be assassin and knocking him down, an investigation says.

According to a report by Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins, the sniper’s bullet damaged Thomas Matthew Crooks’s gun and disrupted his aim after he took his first shots in Butler, Pennsylvania. Moments later, a Secret Service sniper killed him.

The report comes as the Secret Service temporarily reassigns some bodyguards from President Joe Biden to Trump, according to US media.

Trump will also be given bulletproof glass protection to allow him to resume outdoor rallies.

The former president did not have the protection during his 13 July rally in Butler when a bullet nearly hit him squarely in the head.

Mr Higgins’ report said a Butler SWAT operator was the first to fire at Trump’s assassin – from 100 yards away.

The congressman said the sniper “ran towards the threat, running to a clear shot position directly into the line of fire”.

Then, in a single shot, he fired at the gunman and hit part of his rifle, the report said.

This knocked the gunman off his position temporarily, but, “after just a few seconds”, he “popped back up” before he was fatally shot by a Secret Service sharpshooter.

Crooks killed one crowd member and critically injured two others in the attack.

Security levels around the former president have increased since then.

The transfer of Secret Service agents is due to threats against Trump, 78, and made possible by the reduced travel schedule of Mr Biden after he dropped out of the election race, according to a report in The New York Times.

The reassigned officers were responsible for either travelling with Mr Biden, or going in advance of him to set up security measures at an event, a source told the newspaper.

Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, resigned on 23 July following a hearing at the US House of Representatives about the assassination attempt.

Politicians on the House Oversight Committee criticised the lack of information in her answers to their questions regarding security planning and how officers responded to reports of the gunman’s suspicious behaviour prior to the shooting.

Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper team after he fired eight bullets in Mr Trump’s direction from a rooftop just outside the rally’s security perimeter.

The FBI is currently investigating the protection failure and political leaders in the US Congress have also started inquiries.

How the Secret Service failed Donald Trump

Americast gets the inside track on presidential security at the highest levels from Miles Taylor, a former chief of staff at the Department for Homeland Security, who served during the Trump presidency.

Listen now on BBC Sounds

Vice-President Kamala Harris has had to speedily re-introduce herself to US voters, who are now having to size her up as a potential commander-in-chief, instead of Joe Biden’s deputy.

And during the biggest moment of Ms Harris’s career so far – the Democratic convention in Chicago – they will also get to know the family members who will stand beside her, as well as those who helped her get there.

Unlike her rival Donald Trump, Ms Harris has only been married once and is a step-parent. Here’s a look at her big, modern family.

Ms Harris met her now-husband, Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff in 2013, while she was serving as California’s attorney general. They were married the following year. Since then Mr Emhoff, 59, has stuck close to his wife’s side as she has risen in the ranks of US politics.

In 2020, when Ms Harris made history as the first black and South Asian woman to become vice-president, Mr Emhoff made history too as the first husband of an American president or vice-president, as well as the first Jewish spouse of a vice-president.

He left his law firm that year to focus full-time on his role as “second gentleman”, a position that has pulled him out of relative obscurity. He is now known as an enthusiastic champion for Democratic party causes and Ms Harris’s most loyal surrogate on the campaign trail.

The vice-president’s marriage made her a step-mother to Cole and Ella, the two children Mr Emhoff shares with his first wife, Kerstin Emhoff.

Ms Harris has said often that of all her many titles, being “Momala” – the term coined by Cole and Ella – is the most important. That affection seems to go both ways – Cole and Ella, now 30 and 25, respectively, have been vocal supporters of Ms Harris.

“The world’s greatest step-mother”, was Ella’s introduction during the 2020 Democratic convention. “You’re a rock, not just for our dad, but for three generations of our big, blended family.”

Cole, who graduated from Colorado College in 2017, has followed his father into the entertainment industry, with jobs at talent agency WME and, later, Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B.

Ella, who graduated from Parsons School of Design in New York City, signed with IMG Models in 2021 and walked in shows for high-fashion brands like Balenciaga and Proenza Schouler. She’s also an artist and a prolific knitter, who launched the knitwear brand and club Soft Hands in 2021.

Cole and Ella’s mom, Kerstin, has – perhaps unexpectedly – gone out of her way to speak warmly and positively of Ms Harris. Recently, Kerstin came to Ms Harris’s defence when JD Vance’s “childless cat lady” comments resurfaced.

“For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I,” Kerstin said in a statement to CNN. “She is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective, and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”

• The many identities of the first woman vice-president
• Doug Emhoff: The first ‘second dude’ in the White House

Kerstin, the founder and CEO of production company Prettybird, even provided her creative expertise and connections to the 2020 campaign.

“They were like, ‘The ex-wife wants to do what?'” Kerstin said to Marie Claire in 2020.

Kamala Harris is known to be very close to her only sibling and younger sister, Maya Harris. After their parents’ divorce, the two girls were primarily raised by their mother, Shyamala Gopalan, in Berkeley California.

Like her older sister, Maya pursued a career in law, graduating from Stanford University law school in 1992. She worked as a litigator and taught law classes before joining the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, where she became executive director in 2006.

Maya, 57, eventually shifted to politics, serving as a senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton on her 2016 presidential campaign. She then served as campaign chair to her sister’s failed 2020 bid for Democratic nominee, before becoming a surrogate for the Biden-Harris ticket.

Maya’s only child, Meena, followed the Harris family tradition by graduating from law school. Meena advised her “Aunty” Kamala through the early stages of her political careers, as she moved through positions at elite Silicon Valley companies like Uber, Facebook and Slack.

Beginning in 2017, the mother of two launched Phenomenal, a media and merchandising company that focuses on projects led by women and other underrepresented groups.

But Meena’s career is still linked in some ways to her aunt’s.

In June 2020, she published a children’s book about her aunt and mother called “Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea”. And after Mr Biden selected Ms Harris as his running mate, Phenomenal began selling “Vice President Aunty” sweatshirts.

Husband to Maya, step-father to Meena, Tony West is another accomplished member of the Harris clan, and another lawyer.

A graduate of Stanford law (where he met Maya and her then-toddler daughter), Mr West has worked at high levels of the private and public sector. He was associate attorney general under President Barack Obama and worked as general counsel of PepsiCo.

Mr West is now the chief legal officer of Uber, but he’s also emerged as a key advisor to his sister-in-law’s campaign.

Uber said this month he would take a leave of absence to devote himself to Team Harris.

“I have always believed family comes first,” Mr West said in a statement. “So I’ve decided to dedicate myself full-time to supporting my family and my sister-in-law on the campaign trail.”

Although Dr Shyamala Gopalan died before she could see her daughter run for president, Kamala and Maya Harris say their scientist mother inspired both of their careers.

“My mother was the first person to tell me that my thoughts and experiences mattered,” Ms Harris wrote on Facebook in 2022. “My mother would often say to me: ‘Kamala, you may be the first to do many things. Make sure you are not the last.'”

Ms Gopalan, who died in 2009, moved to the US from India at age 19 to study science, going on to work as a breast cancer researcher.

Her activism in the civil rights movement led her to her future husband: economist and Jamaican immigrant Donald Harris. Ms Harris has credited her mother with raising both her and Maya and her current relationship with her father is unclear.

A senator in the Philippines has come under fire online after he asked in parliament whether husbands have “sexual rights” to their wives.

Robin Padilla, a former actor, posed the query to a prominent human rights lawyer, who was invited as a resource person to a hearing on sexual harassment in the entertainment industry.

He also asks what husbands should do if they are “in the mood” and their wives are not – to which lawyer Lorna Kapunan replies that they can “watch Netflix”.

Mr Padilla, one of the country’s most popular celebrities, ran for office in 2022 where he emerged as the country’s top senatorial candidate.

Mr Padilla, who is leading a Senate probe into complaints of sexual harrassments and abuse in the media industry, made the comments in a hearing on Thursday.

Speaking to Ms Kapunan, he asks if a husband can ask his wife for sex if he is “in the mood” and she is not.

“What if your wife does not want to? Is there no other way for husbands? If you look to other women, you might get sued,” Mr Padilla said in Tagalog.

Ms Kapunan said in such circumstances, husbands should instead “seek counselling, pray or watch Netflix”.

He then adds that some husbands feel that their wives are there to “serve” them, to which Ms Kapunan responds that it is “not the wife’s obligation to serve her husband”.

Mr Padilla’s comments sparked a barrage of online comments, with one calling him “disgusting”.

One comment on X said: “So does that make wives their husband’s personal sex workers?”

“Husbands do not have ‘sexual rights’ over their wives. Women have equal rights and free will. No means no. It’s all about respect,” said prominent human rights lawyer Jose Manuel Diokno in a post on X.

Another X user said Mr Padilla’s comments serves as an argument to finally legalise divorce in the country.

Eight in 10 of the Philippines’ 110 million people are Catholic, which deeply influences views on marriage and family. It is the only country in the world, aside from the Vatican, where divorce is illegal.

Mr Padilla is one of the country’s most popular celebrities. He rose to fame with Robinhood playboy roles in the 1990s before becoming an actor.

He was later convicted for illegal posession of firearms and was sentenced to eight years in jail before being pardoned. Afterwards, he resumed his movie and television career and became much loved for turning his life around.

His wife Mariel Padilla, a Filipino-born American, is also an actress and model in the Philippines.

In 2022, Mr Padilla decided to run for public office and topped the 2022 senatorial elections with 26 million votes, which gives him a platform to seek higher office.

The Duke of Sussex has said the spread of false information via AI and social media means “we are no longer debating facts” during a four-day visit to Colombia.

Prince Harry, along with the Duchess of Sussex, arrived in the country on Thursday and was hosted by Vice-President Francia Márquez, who invited the couple after watching a Netflix series about their lives.

They spent their first day visiting a school in capital Bogotá to talk to teenagers about the impact of social media and speaking at a summit on digital responsibility staged in part by their Archewell Foundation.

“What happens online within a matter of minutes transfers to the streets. People are acting on information that isn’t true,” the duke said.

The Sussexes, who have faced their own attacks on social media, have not confirmed who is funding the trip – which is neither a state visit nor an official royal event.

But they are being given a full security detail – something they no longer enjoy in the UK after stepping down as working royals in 2020.

The duke said a lot of people were “scared and uncertain” about the possible impact of AI and that “education and awareness” would be key to tackling misinformation.

“It comes down to all of us to be able to spot the true from the fake,” he said.

“In an ideal world those with positions of influence would take more responsibility. We are no longer debating facts.

“For as long as people are allowed to spread lies, abuse, harass, then social cohesion as we know it has completely broken down.”

Ms Márquez, who hosted the couple at her official residence, described the Sussexes’ trip as a “very special visit”.

She said that, as well as its focus on cyber issues, she wanted it to help build bridges and promote women’s leadership in Colombia.

Meghan and Ms Márquez were pictured embracing as they warmly greeted each other, while the vice-president grasped Harry’s hands when they were introduced.

The California-based couple are expected to spend time in the Cartagena and Cali areas during their trip.

The tour, which appears to be similar in many ways to an official royal visit, is the Sussexes’ second this year, after their three-day visit to Nigeria in May.

Protests have intensified in India after a mob vandalised a hospital where a female trainee doctor was raped and murdered in West Bengal state.

The hospital was attacked on Wednesday during the massive Reclaim the Night march held in Kolkata city to protest against the brutal crime.

Smaller protests were also held in many other Indian cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) – the country’s largest grouping of doctors – has announced a nationwide strike of non-emergency services on Saturday.

Doctor’s associations in other cities and political parties in West Bengal have also planned marches on Friday and over the weekend to protest against the attack.

Tens of thousands of women across the state participated in the Reclaim the Night march on Wednesday night to demand “independence to live in freedom and without fear”.

Though the protests were largely peaceful, clashes erupted between the police and a small group of unidentified men who barged into the RG Kar Hospital – the site of the crime – and ransacked its emergency ward.

Videos circulated online showed the men smashing beds and equipment with sticks.

• Indian women lead night protests after doctor’s rape and murder

Protesters told the BBC that some doctors and hospital staff were injured in the attack. Some police vehicles were also damaged in the chaos and tear gas had to be used to disperse the crowd.

The Kolkata police have arrested 19 people in connection with the incident so far.

On Thursday, the IMA condemned the attack, calling it “hooliganism unleashed on protesting students” and announced the withdrawal of non-emergency services for 24 hours starting at 06:00 local time [00:30 GMT] on Saturday.

“Doctors, especially women, are vulnerable to violence because of the nature of the profession. It is for the authorities to provide for the safety of doctors inside hospitals and campuses,” the IMA said in a statement.

“The IMA requires the sympathy of the nation with the just cause of its doctors.”

The Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association (Forda) – another top doctors’ association – has also resumed its strike after calling it off on Tuesday.

The protest was called off after federal Health Minister JP Nadda assured its members that their demands – including a federal law to curb attacks on doctors – would be met.

The incident has also sparked a political blame game in West Bengal, with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accusing the governing Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) of orchestrating the attack.

The TMC has refuted the allegation and has blamed “political outsiders” for stoking the violence.

The rape of the 31-year-old female trainee doctor has shocked the country.

Her half-naked body bearing extensive injuries was discovered in a seminar hall last week. A hospital volunteer who worked at the hospital has been arrested in connection with the crime.

Since then, two more incidents of rape have made headlines in India.

In the northern state of Uttarakhand, a nurse was allegedly raped and killed while returning home from work. She had gone missing at the end of July and her body was found last week. Police have arrested a man from the western state of Rajasthan in connection with the crime.

Meanwhile, six people have been arrested in the northern state of Bihar for the alleged gang-rape and murder of a teenage Dalit girl. Her mutilated body was found near a pond in a village in Muzaffarpur district on Tuesday morning.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra brings a fresh, young face, and yet another member of the powerful Shinawatra clan, to the country’s top job.

She is the daughter of Thaksin Shinawatra, the deposed former PM who returned to Thailand last August after 15 years in exile.

The 37-year-old is also the youngest prime minister in Thailand’s history, and only the second woman – the first was her aunt Yingluck Shinawatra.

Known in Thailand by her nickname Ung Ing, Ms Paetongtarn has become a very familiar figure here since leading her party, Pheu Thai, in the general election last year. She proved a popular campaigner, speaking at rallies up to the last month of pregnancy with her second child.

However her family, in particular her mother Potjaman, who is still a powerful figure in Pheu Thai, did not want her to become prime minister, fearing she would be vulnerable to the kinds of legal interventions which forced both Ms Yingluck and Mr Thaksin into exile.

But the unexpected court ruling that brought down the premiership of Srettha Thavisin earlier this week forced the family’s hand. Aside from Mr Srettha, Pheu Thai had just two other registered PM candidates eligible to replace him; Ms Paetongtarn was one, the other an elderly former prosecutor who the party’s MPs believed did not have the energy or charisma to lead them into the next election, expected in three years time.

Ms Paetongtarn’s main experience has been working in the Shinawatra-owned Rende hotel group. She was not expected to go into politics, and only joined the Pheu Thai party in 2021.

In taking on the job of prime minister, she is entering a political minefield.

She describes herself as a compassionate capitalist, a social liberal who fully supports Thailand’s new equal marriage law.

But the phrase most people will remember her using is “daddy’s girl”. No matter what she does in government, she will always be presumed to be acting under the instruction of her father. And Mr Thaksin remains a very divisive figure.

His return from exile a year ago was the outcome of a grand bargain with powerful conservative forces. They include the military, which deposed two Shinawatra governments in coups, and groups close to the monarchy, which have opposed Mr Thaksin for more than two decades.

The stunning success of the reformist Move Forward party in last year’s election, pushing Pheu Thai and the Shinawatra clan into second place for the first time, forced conservatives, whose parties fared even worse, to recalibrate.

With Move Forward pushing for reform of the lese majetse law and the powers of the military, Pheu Thai, whose free-spending populism is now being copied by many other parties, was no longer the main threat.

So Pheu Thai was allowed to cobble together a coalition of 11 parties, many of them long-term enemies of Mr Thaksin, to keep Move Forward out.

But the mistrust of Mr Thaksin never went away.

The unstated condition of his return, and the royal pardon given to him by King Vajiralongkorn, was that he would keep a low profile and, as he had promised from exile, spend his time with his grandchildren.

Officially Mr Thaksin is not even a member of Pheu Thai. But even in exile Mr Thaksin constantly interfered, often to the detriment of his party. He is still presumed to be the Pheu Thai’s main financial backer. And since being released on parole earlier this year he has been both visible and vocal at party events.

Some have accused Mr Thaksin of pushing for Mr Srettha’s cabinet appointment of a lawyer who was convicted in 2008 of trying to bribe a supreme court judge with a shopping bag full of cash.

Back then the judge had been about to rule on a criminal case against Mr Thaksin.

On Wednesday the constitutional court, known for repeatedly ruling against the Shinawatra clan, found that appointment was unethical and sufficient grounds for dismissing Mr Srettha. The ruling is being interpreted in Thailand as a warning to Mr Thaksin to rein in his ambitions.

He was also charged earlier this year with lese majeste, over comments he made nine years ago in exile – a case with potentially serious consequences which may hang over him for years.

All of this makes Ms Paetongtarn’s job even more difficult. Pheu Thai’s past success was built on its reputation for driving the economy, and improving the living standards of poorer Thais.

But Thailand’s economy is now being held back by long-term structural challenges – and they are unresponsive to the populist measures tried by previous Shinawatra-led governments.

The party’s signature policy in the last election – a one-time payment of 10,000 baht ($284; £221) via a digital wallet to most of the population – has run into opposition from the central bank and others over its cost to the public purse.

The party has little else in its policy arsenal to lift its political fortunes over the next three years. It will also face constant and effective opposition from the reformist Move Forward Party, now reconstituted as the People’s Party, after being dissolved by the constitutional court last week.

And Pheu Thai finds itself in a coalition where for the first time it’s share of seats is less than half. Its conservative political partners also have little incentive to see a Pheu Thai-led administration achieve enough success to start rebuilding its once-formidable support base among voters.

All four of the last Shinawatra-led governments were ousted before the end of their elected terms by constitutional court rulings or military coups.

Ms Paetongtarn will be hoping to break that dismal record, but given the unending turmoil in Thai politics the odds do not look good.

Tens of thousands of women in West Bengal state marched through the streets on Wednesday night in protest against the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at a state-run hospital in Kolkata last week.

The Reclaim the Night march was the culmination of nearly a week of frenzied protests ignited by the brutal killing of the 31-year-old at the RG Kar Medical College last Friday.

After a gruelling 36-hour shift, she had fallen asleep in a seminar room due to the lack of a designated rest area.

The next morning, her colleagues discovered her half-naked body on the podium, bearing extensive injuries. A hospital volunteer worker has been arrested in connection with the crime.

Responding to calls on social media, women from all walks of life marched across Kolkata city and throughout the state on a rainy Wednesday night.

Though protests were largely peaceful, they were marred by clashes between the police and a small group of unidentified men who barged into the RG Kar Hospital, the site of the doctor’s murder, and ransacked the emergency department.

Police fired tear gas to disperse the unruly crowd. Some police vehicles were also damaged.

Smaller protests were also held in many other Indian cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

In Kolkata, women marched resolutely, holding placards of protest, their faces illuminated by the glow of mobile phones, candlelight and flaming torches. Some carried India’s flags. They were joined by men, both young and elderly.

During the marches and at many gatherings near a university, theatre hall and bus terminus, they stood united, holding hands as the humid air echoed with loud and powerful chants of “we want justice”. Protesters blew conch shells – the sound is considered auspicious.

At the stroke of midnight, as India completed 77 years of Independence, the soundscape of protest changed.

The air filled with a spontaneous chorus of the national anthem. Then it began raining, but the protesters walked in the rain, or holding umbrellas over their head.

“We have never seen anything like this before in the city, such a huge gathering of women marching at night,” a reporter belonging to a news network said.

It was a night of barely concealed rage and frustration.

A woman, who joined the march well after midnight with her 13-year-old daughter said: “Let her see whether a mass protest can set things right. Let her become aware of her rights”.

“Women have no respect!” said another. “Our worth is less than cows and goats.”

“When do we get our independence? How long do we have to wait to work without fear? Another 50 years?” asked a student.

Sanchari Mukherjee, editor of a digital magazine, said she marched with thousands of others from a bus terminus in Jadavpur, undeterred by the rain.

She met “people of all ages, from all classes, the well-to-do, the middle class and the poor”.

“I saw an elderly couple, the husband helping the woman to walk,” she said.

“One family brought their little girl along, perhaps so the memory of this event would be etched in her mind – how her parents stood up against injustice, and how she, too, can protest one day.”

Ms Mukherjee said the entire city seemed awake as the marchers passed by illuminated homes, with people peering out of windows and crowding verandahs to watch.

“They may not have participated but they were with us in spirit,” she said.

“‘We want justice’ had become the anthem of the march, and it didn’t feel like just a slogan,” Ms Mukherjee said.

“It felt like every young woman was deeply hurt and determined, frustrated that they still face these issues in 2024.”

Ms Mukherjee added that she had to walk a few miles to join the march because the streets were gridlocked late at night.

“I was instantly swept up in a sea of people heading to the protest site. There was no excitement, just a stoic determination to create an event which would become a symbol for the times to come.”

The protests have been fuelled by anger over local authorities’ handling of the young trainee doctor’s rape and murder.

Police later arrested a hospital volunteer worker in connection with what they said was a case of rape and murder.

But there have been accusations of cover-up and negligence. The case has since been transferred from local police to the federal Central Bureau of Investigation.

Despite scant resources, Kolkata’s Reclaim the Night march appeared to have been meticulously organised. In an advisory, organisers welcomed women and people from marginalised sexual and gender identities to the march.

“Men are welcome as allies and observers,” the advisory added.

They also emphasised that politicians were not welcome and requested that no party flags be brought to the protest.

It was not the first time that a Reclaim the Night march has been staged in India.

Inspired by similar marches elsewhere in the world by women to assert their rights to walk in public areas without fear, a march was held in 1978 in Bombay (now Mumbai) in protest against the rape of a woman on the street.

Blank Noise, a community-based art project and activist collective, has organised several midnight walks in Delhi to encourage women to assert their right to walk freely at night.

But in terms of scale, the Kolkata march, echoed by smaller ones across other cities, stands as the largest yet.

“We seized the night. We’ve never seen anything like this in the city. This is unprecedented. I hope it wakes up the authorities,” said Chaitali Sen, a protester.