Israel has said it carried out a wave of pre-emptive strikes across southern Lebanon to thwart a large-scale rocket and drone attack by Hezbollah.

Jets destroyed thousands of the Iran-backed armed group’s rocket launchers on Sunday morning, Israel’s military said. Hezbollah and its Amal allies said three fighters had been killed.

Hezbollah said it had still managed to fire 320 rockets and drones at Israel in retaliation for the assassination of a senior commander. According to Israel’s military, one Israeli navy soldier was killed.

The US says it is working to avoid any further escalation after 10 months of hostilities that have raised fears of an all-out war.

There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the day after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on 7 October.

There was no breakthrough at the latest round of US-backed Gaza peace talks in Cairo.

Before leaving, Hamas said it rejected new Israeli conditions and accused Israel of backtracking on promises. Israel denies changing its demands since a last round of talks in early July.

Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the Palestinian group, which is also backed by Iran. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK and other countries.

Since October, more than 560 people have been reported killed by Lebanon’s health ministry, the vast majority of them Hezbollah fighters, while 26 civilians and 23 soldiers have been killed in Israel, according to authorities.

The UN says almost 200,000 people have also been displaced on both sides of the border.

Israel’s attack on Hezbollah at around 04:30 (01:30 GMT) on Sunday was its biggest since the full-scale war between them in 2006.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said about 100 fighter jets had “struck and destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels” in more than 40 areas of southern Lebanon.

The strikes went ahead after “extensive preparation” for a large-scale aerial attack by Hezbollah was detected, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli aircraft had struck Beaufort Castle, the Bir Kalb area, and the outskirts of the towns of Ain Qana, Kfar Fila, Louaizeh, Bsalia, Kfar Melki, Sajd and Sarba.

A resident of the town of Zibqeen said it had “felt like the apocalypse”.

• What is Hezbollah?

One person was killed in a drone strike on a car in Khiam, the Lebanese ministry of public health said. The Amal movement said one of its fighters from the village had been killed.

The ministry also said an Israeli attack on the village of Tiri had killed two people. Hezbollah confirmed the deaths of two fighters from nearby Haris, without providing any details.

“What happened today is not the end of the story,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting.

As well as destroying short-range rockets, Mr Netanyahu said, the IDF intercepted all of the drones which Hezbollah had “launched at a strategic target in the centre of the country”.

“[Sheikh Hassan] Nasrallah in Beirut and [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei in Tehran need to know that this is an additional step in changing the situation in the north,” he warned the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he had told dozens of his counterparts worldwide that Israel did “not seek a full-scale war” but would “do whatever it takes to protect our citizens”.

Not long after the Israeli strikes, Hezbollah said it had targeted and hit 11 Israeli military facilities in Israel and the occupied Golan Heights with more than 320 Katyusha rockets.

It described the barrage as a response to the assassination of senior military commander Fuad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut on 30 July.

The group said the operation had been “completed and accomplished” and it dismissed as “empty” Israel’s statements that its strikes on Sunday had thwarted a larger attack.

Video footage showed explosions in the sky as incoming rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system.

Later, the IDF announced that an Israeli Navy soldier had fallen “during combat in northern Israel”, without providing further details.

Israeli media say he was killed in an incident involving a Hezbollah drone and an Iron Dome interceptor in the vicinity of a Dvora patrol boat, about 4km from the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address on Sunday evening that the group had targeted a military intelligence base about 110km (68 miles) into Israeli territory, which was only 1.5km (0.9 miles) away from Tel Aviv.

He said Hezbollah had been able to carry out its attack as planned, and all drones had been launched successfully, entering Israeli airspace, according to a Reuters translation.

He warned that the group would respond again if the results were deemed to be not enough.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati – whose government has little influence over Hezbollah – said he was “holding a series of contacts with Lebanon’s friends to stop the escalation”.

He called for a halt to the “Israeli aggression” and the implementation of the UN Security Council resolution which ended the 2006 war.

Mr Mikati also emphasised Lebanon’s support for international efforts to broker a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the hope was that the latest fighting would not lead to a regional war.

The US sees an agreement as key to de-escalating tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border because Hezbollah has said it will only stop the hostilities once the fighting in Gaza ends.

This morning’s exchange of strikes between Israel and Hezbollah appears to be a significant escalation.

The Israeli military says around 100 fighter jets carried out what it described as pre-emptive strikes on Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon on Sunday morning. Hezbollah later fired rockets and missiles into northern Israel.

If that 100 figure is correct, it would be the largest Israeli attack on Lebanon since the full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Israel’s strikes happened at around 04:30 local time (01:30 GMT), and it said that Hezbollah was planning a large-scale attack half an hour later, at 05:00 local time.

According to reporting by the New York Times, quoting an anonymous Israeli intelligence official, this included rocket strikes on Tel Aviv, the country’s biggest city, deep inside central Israel.

In the end Hezbollah said it had fired more than 300 rockets and missiles targeting military facilities in northern Israel, where air raid sirens have been sounding.

Across the region, the fear is this latest escalation could once again lead to all-out war.

• FOLLOW LIVE: Latest updates after strikes from Israel and Hezbollah

In a statement, Hezbollah said this was the first phase of its response to the Israeli assassination of a senior commander Fouad Shukr in a strike in Beirut on 30 July.

It is widely believed Israel was behind the assassination of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in a strike in the Iranian capital Tehran the following day.

Ever since, the region has been waiting for a response from both Hezbollah and Iran.

From Iran, it is yet to come.

But this appears to be Hezbollah’s first significant retaliation.

For weeks now diplomats have been working to try to avoid the crisis in Gaza escalating into a wider regional conflict.

The United States has warned the ongoing failure to agree a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas could see those diplomatic efforts fail.

But despite intense US pressure, talks to establish a ceasefire deal for Gaza after more than 10 months of war have led to nothing.

Israel’s military says it is ready to fight a war on two fronts: in Gaza and on its northern border with Lebanon.

But Hezbollah is a far more formidable force than Hamas.

It’s estimated it has around 150,000 rockets, some capable of reaching targets across Israel.

Its fighters, some of whom have fought in the war in Syria, are well trained and better equipped than those of Hamas.

Almost a year into the conflict in Gaza, some question whether there is appetite in Israel for another war.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli army reservists have been called up to fight in Gaza, often serving several tours.

But many Israelis, especially those from the north, say Hezbollah needs to be dealt with.

Tens of thousands of people living there have been evacuated from their homes since the start of the war in Gaza. Many have lost their businesses.

In southern Lebanon too, tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes because of fears of Israeli strikes.

Hezbollah, for now, has said it has concluded the first phase of its retaliation for the killing of Fouad Shukr.

Its strikes on Israel this morning appear to have caused relatively little damage and there have been few casualties on either side.

Israel believes it successfully thwarted a major Hezbollah attack.

The question becomes: will we now see a return to the more routine cross-border “tit for tat” that has been going on since the start of the war in Gaza last October?

Or could today’s violence escalate into something far more dangerous?

Israeli and Hezbollah leaders say they do not want another full-scale war. But both sides say they are ready for it.

Messaging app Telegram has said its CEO Pavel Durov, who was detained in France on Saturday, has “nothing to hide”.

Mr Durov was arrested at an airport north of Paris under a warrant for offences related to the app, according to officials.

The investigation is reportedly about insufficient moderation, with Mr Durov accused of failing to take steps to curb criminal uses of Telegram. The app is accused of failure to co-operate with law enforcement over drug trafficking, child sexual content and fraud.

Telegram said in a statement that “its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving”.

“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the app said.

Telegram said Mr Durov travels in Europe frequently and added that it abides by European Union laws, including the Digital Services Act, which aims to ensure a safe and accountable online environment.

“Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information,” the app’s statement read.

“We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation. Telegram is with you all.”

Judicial sources quoted by AFP news agency say Mr Durov’s detention was extended on Sunday and could last as long as 96 hours.

Pavel Durov, 39, was born in Russia and now lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based. He holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France.

Telegram is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states.

The app was banned in Russia in 2018, after a previous refusal by him to hand over user data. The ban was reversed in 2021.

Telegram is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.

Mr Durov founded Telegram in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he sold.

Russia still regards Mr Durov as a Russian citizen. Its foreign ministry said the Russian embassy to France had “immediately taken the steps required in such cases to clarify the situation around the Russian citizen, despite not having received a request from the businessman’s representatives”.

Then embassy itself said it was seeking to “clarify the reasons for the detention and to provide for the protection of Mr Durov’s rights and facilitate consular access”.

It added that the French authorities had not been co-operating with Russian officials.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova posted on Telegram asking whether Western human rights NGOs would be silent on Mr Durov’s arrest, after they criticised Russia’s decision to “create obstacles” to the work of Telegram in Russia in 2018.

Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which critics have argued makes it easier for misinformation to spread, and for users to share conspiracist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic, or terror-related content.

In the UK, the app was scrutinised for hosting far-right channels that were instrumental in organising the violent disorder in English cities earlier this month.

Telegram did remove some groups, but overall its system of moderating extremist and illegal content is significantly weaker than that of other social media companies and messenger apps, say cybersecurity experts.

If he is still alive, José Duval Mata is trapped in a living nightmare.

For more than two years, the 26-year-old tractor driver has been in prison in El Salvador, accused of “gang association”, even though the country’s legal system has twice ordered his immediate release.

Despite two judges’ clearly worded decisions in his favour, Mr Mata still languishes inside one of the toughest prisons in the world: El Salvador’s notorious Cecot, a super-max facility for the “confinement of terrorists”.

The BBC has repeatedly brought the case to the attention of the Salvadorean government – including directly to the public prosecutor’s office, the security ministry, the vice-president, and President Nayib Bukele himself earlier this year.

Despite several assurances the authorities would investigate, no action has been taken to date.

It is a tale of Kafkaesque proportions.

In April 2022, Mr Mata was on his way home in the dusty rural community of La Noria when he was stopped by troops who had entered his village as part of President Bukele’s nationwide crackdown on the country’s powerful street gangs.

With a raft of constitutional rights suspended under an emergency decree called the State of Exception, police and troops can detain anyone suspected of gang affiliation without due legal process.

Around 70,000 people have been arrested in two years including some 3,000 children, many with no discernible link to gang activity, says the New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch.

Despite Mr Mata’s protestations that he had never been in or worked for a gang, the troops detained him for “illicit association” – a catch-all term used under the State of Exception to round people up.

His mother, Marcela Alvarado, hasn’t seen or heard from her son since that day.

“The police told me I needed to bring evidence to prove his innocence, so I gathered up his high school diploma, the deeds to his land, his repayment receipts on his bank loan, a declaration from his employer as to his good character,” she explains, showing the BBC the documents, which experts say almost no Salvadorean gang member would possess.

Her efforts were in vain.

José Duval was tried alongside more than 350 other inmates in a mass trial which lasted just minutes. He was sentenced to an initial six months, which has since been extended indefinitely.

Marcela still cries at the memory. But things were about to get far worse.

José Duval was briefly freed after a judge ordered his immediate release in September 2022.

However, he was then rearrested at the doors of the prison – on the same charges – as he waited for his family to come and pick him up.

Rearrests of prisoners at the prison gates “are arbitrary actions… illegal detentions and cases of double jeopardy,” says Noah Bullock, the executive director of El Salvador’s leading human rights NGO, Cristosal.

Nevertheless, he says, the practice has been widespread under the State of Exception.

In June 2023, a second judge confirmed the earlier decision to free Mr Mata. Yet, more than a year later, he remains behind bars and Marcela’s increasingly desperate requests for information have fallen on deaf ears.

José Duval’s family has now lodged his case with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

A source inside the Salvadorean public prosecutor’s office has told the BBC they could see “no legal justification or any clear explanation” for the young man’s continued detention.

Throughout the ordeal, Marcela faithfully took a food parcel each week to the Izalco prison where her son was housed – a plastic bag filled with “cornflakes, oatmeal, bread and cookies”, she said, to help sustain José Duval beyond his meagre prison rations.

When she delivered a food bag in June of last year, guards told her that he had been transferred from the penitentiary some weeks earlier.

Her worst fears had been realised.

José Duval was now inside the Cecot – the Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism – a maximum-security jail which is the cornerstone of Mr Bukele’s anti-gang policy.

Mr Bukele’s supporters hail the facility as evidence of his iron fist on gang crime.

Its critics consider it a black hole of human rights and one of the harshest prisons in the world.

President Bukele has often said the inmates will not see “a ray of sunshine” and receive the most basic rations of cold rice and tortillas.

Images of shaven-headed and heavily tattooed inmates being transferred into the facility were widely published by the Bukele government.

Mr Bukele has repeatedly defended the State of Exception and the Cecot for changing the face of security in El Salvador.

Numerous “no-go” areas and gang-controlled neighbourhoods are indeed back under the control of the security forces, and entire communities say they no longer live in fear.

As such, the crackdown is hugely popular. Millions in El Salvador are eternally grateful to their young, media-savvy leader for tackling the gang problem with swift and ruthless force.

In February, President Nayib Bukele was re-elected in a landslide, securing around 90% of the vote.

At a news conference, I asked him if in his second term he would focus on freeing those who had been unjustly detained.

President Bukele launched into a long answer attacking his critics, particularly those from abroad, arguing that there had been high-profile miscarriages of justice in the United Kingdom.

His security forces had only made, he said, “a couple of mistakes” and some 7,000 people had already been released.

The crackdown had restored calm to El Salvador’s streets and that was the most important thing, he insisted.

I told him specifics about José Duval Mata’s case and, following the news conference, his team asked me for copies of the judges’ release orders. A few days later, a member of his inner circle requested the information a second time, this time in digital format, which I again provided to them.

Over the following weeks, the BBC repeatedly chased up the Bukele administration and I have spoken directly to the vice-president, Félix Ulloa, on several occasions about the case.

Over a year ago, he told the BBC that Mr Mata was just days away from being set free.

Mr Ulloa said he hoped that, once out of prison, the media would portray José Duval Mata as an “emblematic case of due process”.

In fact, at that point, he was being transferred to the Cecot without his family’s knowledge.

Earlier this year, after months of requests, the BBC did gain access to the Cecot but we were not permitted to speak to the inmates or ask officials about specific cases.

Meanwhile, Marcela has had no proof of life or formal confirmation of her son’s welfare in over two years. Unsurprisingly, it has often crossed her mind that José Duval might have died in prison.

“I used to think about it non-stop”, she tells me from her tiny patch of land in La Noria. “I was obsessed with the idea, I felt completely desperate. All I would do is cry.”

Now, she says, she’s just clinging to the hope that her son is still alive and will eventually be released.

“I’m placing my trust in God. It’s all I can do.”

A British national who was working in eastern Ukraine as part of a Reuters news team was killed in a missile strike on a hotel on Saturday, the agency has confirmed.

Safety advisor Ryan Evans was one of six Reuters employees staying at the Hotel Sapphire in the city of Kramatorsk – which is under Ukrainian control but near the front line – when it was hit.

Ukrainian authorities said the hotel was struck by a Russian missile. Russia has not commented.

In a statement, a Reuters spokesperson said the agency had been “devastated” to learn of Mr Evans’s death.

“We are urgently seeking more information about the attack, including by working with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and we are supporting our colleagues and their families,” it said.

“We send our deepest condolences and thoughts to Ryan’s family and loved ones. Ryan has helped so many of our journalists cover events around the world; we will miss him terribly.”

It added that two other members of the team had been hospitalised by the strike and that one of them was being treated for serious injuries.

The National Police of Ukraine said earlier that the body of a 40-year-old British man was recovered from the rubble of a hotel at 18:35 local time (16:35 BST) on Sunday after a 19-hour search.

Writing on Telegram, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky sent his “condolences to [the] family and friends” of the man killed.

“This is the daily Russian terror that continues,” he said.

Earlier, Reuters released footage showing parts of the hotel completely destroyed by the strike, with firefighters attempting to pick through the rubble.

The Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office wrote in a statement that the hotel had likely been hit with a short-range Iskander-M missile.

Kramatorsk is only about 20km (12 miles) from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, and has come under regular attacks, with civilians killed, including celebrated Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina.

The Russian military has been making slow but steady advances in the east in recent months, with Ukraine’s recent offensive into Russia seen as an attempt to draw troops away from the eastern front line.

Archer Sheetal Devi picks up her bow, loads an arrow and carefully aims at her target, about 50m (164ft) away, with a look of immense focus on her face.

So does her opponent, who is playing a practice game with her at a training academy in India.

The difference is that Devi is seated on a chair. She raises the bow with her right leg, pulls back the string using her right shoulder and releases the arrow using the strength of her jaw.

What never changes throughout this process is Devi’s calm demeanour.

The 17-year-old from Jammu district was born with phocomelia, a rare congenital disorder, making her the world’s first – and only active – female archer to compete without arms.

The Asian Para Games gold medallist is now gearing up for the Paralympics, which begin on 28 August in Paris.

“I am inspired to win the gold,” Devi said. “Whenever I see the medals I have won [until now], I feel inspired to win more. I have only just started.”

Around 4,400 athletes from across the world will take part in 22 sports at the Paralympics this year.

Archery has been a part of the Games since the inaugural edition in 1960. While countries such as Great Britain, USA and South Korea have dominated the medal count, India has accounted for a solitary bronze medal across 17 editions.

Para-archers are grouped into categories depending on the severity of their impairment.

The distances they have to shoot also differ based on the classification system, which then determines whether an archer can use assistive devices such as wheelchairs and release aids.

Archers competing in the W1 category are wheelchair users with impairment in at least three out of the four limbs with either a clear loss of muscle strength, coordination or range of movement.

Those competing in the open category have an impairment in either the top or bottom half or one side of their bodies and use a wheelchair, or have a balance impairment and shoot standing or resting on a stool. Competitors use either recurve or compound bows, depending on the event.

Devi is currently ranked first in the world in the compound open women’s category.

In 2023, she won a silver at the Para-Archery World Championship, which helped her qualify for the Paris Games.

At Paris, she will face tough competition from opponents including world number three Jane Karla Gogel and the reigning World Championship winner Oznur Cure.

But those who know her say she was destined to play the sport – and win.

“Sheetal [Devi] did not choose archery, archery chose Sheetal,” says Abhilasha Chaudhary, one of Devi’s two national coaches.

Born in a small village to a farming family, Devi had not seen a bow and arrow till she was 15.

The turning point came in 2022 when she visited the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board sports complex in Jammu’s Katra – about 200km (124 miles) from home – on the recommendation of an acquaintance.

There, she met Chaudhary and her other coach, Kuldeep Vedwan, who introduced her to the world of archery. She soon shifted to a training camp in Katra city.

The coaches said they were fascinated by Devi’s grit.

The challenge was monumental, but their vision – to make the most of the strength in Devi’s legs and upper body – eventually prevailed.

Devi said the strength came from years of using her feet for most activities, including writing and climbing trees with her friends.

Yet, her decision to try a career in archery did not come without its doubts.

“I felt this was impossible,” she said. “My legs used to ache a lot but somehow I did it.”

In her low moments, Devi would take inspiration from American archer Matt Stutzman, who famously shoots with his feet using a customised device.

Devi’s family could not afford a similar machine, so her coach Vedwan took it upon himself to create a bow for her.

He used locally-sourced materials and customised it as per her needs at a local forge shop.

The gear includes an upper-body strap made from materials used in bag belts and a small instrument which Devi holds in her mouth to help release the arrow.

The real challenge, however, was to figure out how to use more than just her legs to form a well-rounded, sustainable technique.

“We had to manage how to balance the strength in her legs, modify it and use it technically,” Chaudhary explains. “Devi has strong legs but we had to figure out how she would use her back to shoot.”

The trio then committed to a measured training routine, which began with Devi using a rubber band or TheraBand instead of a bow, to aim at targets placed at just a 5m distance.

As her confidence grew, so did the level of difficulty, and within just four months of starting out, she began to use a proper bow and hit targets at a 50m distance, the competition standard for the compound open category.

Within just two years, Devi went from learning to simply shoot an arrow at small distances to hitting six 10s in a row in the final of the women’s individual compound event at the Asian Para Games in 2023 to win the gold medal.

For context, 10 is the maximum number of points a player can win for a single shot by hitting the bullseye on the target board.

“Even when I shoot a nine, I’m only thinking about how I can convert that into a 10 on the next shot,” Devi said.

It’s not just about hard work – there were also sacrifices along the way.

Devi said she hasn’t gone home even once since she moved to Katra two years ago to train.

She now plans to return only after the Paralympics end, “hopefully with a medal”.

Either way, she is determined to give her best shot.

“I believe that no one has any limitations, it’s just about wanting something enough and working as hard as you can,” she said.

“If I can do it, anyone else can.”

A “right to disconnect” rule has come into effect in Australia, offering relief to people who feel forced to take calls or read messages from employers after they finish their day’s work.

The new law allows employees to ignore communications after hours if they choose to, without fear of being punished by their bosses.

A survey published last year estimated that Australians worked on average two hundred and eighty one hours of unpaid overtime annually.

More than 20 countries, mainly in Europe and Latin America, have similar rules.

The law does not ban employers from contacting workers after hours.

Instead, it gives staff the right not to reply unless their refusal is deemed unreasonable.

Under the rules, employers and employees should try to resolve disputes among themselves. If that is unsuccessful in finding a resolution Australia’s Fair Work Commission (FWC) can step in.

The FWC can then order the employer to stop contacting the employee after hours.

If it finds an employee’s refusal to respond is unreasonable it can order them to reply.

Failure to comply with FWC orders can result in fines of up to A$19,000 ($12,897; £9,762) for an employee or up to A$94,000 for a company.

Organisations representing workers have welcomed the move.

It “will empower workers to refuse unreasonable out-of-hours work contact and enabling greater work-life balance”, The Australian Council of Trade Unions said.

A workplace expert told BBC News that the new rules would also help employers.

“Any organisation that has staff who have better rest and who have better work-life-balance are going to have staff who are less likely to have sick days, less likely to leave the organisation”, said John Hopkins from Swinburne University of Technology.

“Anything that benefits the employee, has benefits for the employer as well.”

However, there was a mixed reaction to the new law from employees.

“I think it’s actually really important that we have laws like this,” advertising industry worker, Rachel Abdelnour, told Reuters.

“We spend so much of our time connected to our phones, connected to our emails all day, and I think that it’s really hard to switch off as it is.”

Others, however, do not feel the new rules will make much of a difference to them.

“I think it’s an excellent idea. I hope it catches on. I doubt it’ll catch on in our industry, to tell the truth though,” David Brennan, a worker in the financial industry, told the news agency,

“We’re well paid, we’re expected to deliver, and we feel we have to deliver 24 hours a day.”

Emergency workers in south Iceland are working by hand to try to rescue two foreign tourists missing after ice collapsed during a visit to a glacier, police say.

First responders received a call just before 15:00 (Iceland observes GMT) on Sunday about the collapse in the Breidamerkurjökull glacier.

The two missing were among 25 people visiting an ice cave along with a guide. Two people were seriously injured in the incident.

“The conditions are very difficult on the ground,” said local police chief Sveinn Kristján Rúnarsson. “It’s in the glacier. It’s hard to get equipment there… It’s bad. Everything is being done by hand.”

Local news outlets reported that 200 people were working on the rescue operation which would continue into the night.

Speaking on Icelandic TV, Chief Superintendent Rúnarsson said police had been unable to contact the two missing people.

“So we don’t know what the situation is but two others who were freed are badly injured,” he added.

While the conditions were “difficult”, the weather was “fair”, he said.

Confirming that all those involved were foreign tourists, he said there was nothing to suggest that the trip to the cave should not have taken place.

“Ice cave tours happen almost the whole year,” he said

“These are experienced and powerful mountain guides who run these trips. It’s always possible to be unlucky. I trust these people to assess the situation – when it’s safe or not safe to go, and good work has been done there over time. This is a living land, so anything can happen.”

The police chief was quoted as saying that people had been standing in a ravine between cave mouths when an ice wall collapsed.

Breidamerkurjökull is a glacial tongue which extends from the Vatnajökull glacier to the Jökulsárlón lagoon. The glacial tongue is famed for its ice caves, with groups offering tours.

German authorities have identified the man who confessed to a mass knife attack as a suspected member of the Islamic State group (IS).

Prosecutors named the man as Issa Al H, omitting his surname because of Germany’s privacy laws. The 26-year-old had given himself up and admitted to the stabbings, police said.

Three people were killed and another eight injured during Friday’s attack in the city of Solingen, during a festival to celebrate its 650-year history.

On Saturday, IS claimed that it was behind the attack.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz had described it as an “horrific act”.

Those killed were two men aged 56 and 67, and a 56-year-old woman, officials said. Four of those wounded are still in a serious condition. All of the victims were stabbed in the neck, police said.

“The man we’ve really been looking for the whole day has just been taken into custody,” Herbert Reul, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, told ARD public TV late on Saturday.

Germany’s Bild and Spiegel news websites reported that the suspect surrendered himself in dirty blood-stained clothes.

Issa Al H is under investigation for murder, attempted murder and “strong suspicions of belonging to a terrorist group abroad”, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

He is a Syrian national, police and prosecutors confirmed, and German media reported that he arrived in the country in December 2022, after leaving war-torn Syria.

Bild reported that special task force (SEK) officers stormed a refugee centre that the suspect was associated with, detaining another person there.

Police also arrested a 15-year-old boy who is alleged to have known about the attack in advance.

The refugee centre is located about 300m (984ft) from Fronhof – Solingen’s central market square where the attack happened – according to Bild.

Solingen – a city famous for its steel industry – has about 160,000 inhabitants. It lies about 25km (15 miles) east of Düsseldorf.

The city’s authorities asked people to leave the Fronhof area after the attack at about 22:00 local time (21:00 BST) on Friday.

The planned three-day celebrations of the city anniversary – for which about 75,000 people had been expected – were cancelled.

Solingen Mayor Tim Kurzbach later said that “all of us in Solingen are in shock, horror and great sadness.

“It breaks my heart that an attack has happened in our city. I have tears in my eyes when I think of those we’ve lost.

“I pray for all those still fighting for their lives. Also my greatest sympathy for all those who had to experience this, these images must have been horrific.”

People have been bringing flowers and candles to the site of the stabbing that shocked the entire country.

Players from Germany’s top Bundesliga football league wore black armbands during Saturday’s matches.

The attack may fuel an already fraught debate about immigration and asylum in Germany.

It comes ahead of key regional elections in the country’s east next week, where the far right is eyeing gains.

“There is no room for error,” says Isak Rockström. “Where we are now, the only help we could get would be from the few Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers that are patrolling the whole Canadian Arctic.”

For the past two months, Isak, 26, and his brother Alex, 25, have been battling the freezing elements of the Arctic Circle together.

They have sailed through the treacherous, sometimes alien landscape of the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, gathering fresh data about climate change in the region.

They have faced brushes with icebergs and severe gales around Iceland.

One “tricky situation”, as Isak stoically puts it, came the day before they spoke to the BBC. While navigating a fjord, they were caught by 52mph (84kph) winds coming off the nearby mountains, dragging them towards the shore.

“The wind was so strong that with the engine on, we weren’t going anywhere,” he recalls.

Off Devon Island, the largest uninhabited island in the world, they risked running aground due to the area being poorly charted.

They had to quickly turn the other sails so the wind worked in their favour, and “take some things apart and do some jerry-rigging” to get the main sail down, Alex says.

But Isak says “the most challenging ocean crossing of my life” was the long stint around Greenland through thick fog and ice up the Davis Strait.

He says it felt like they were “trudging on and on… through either gales or fog”.

“Then one day the fog slightly lightened up and there was this little tunnel through the cloud cover in the distance – and we finally actually saw Greenland. And it was just a nice confirmation that we weren’t going crazy.”

Only a handful of crews successfully navigate this passage every year, and these brothers are among the youngest to ever attempt it.

The BBC is interviewing them part-way through the trip as they approach one of its most challenging sections – one they are both fearing and anticipating.

Since beginning in Norway in June, the crew of the Abel Tasman have already sailed around Iceland and Greenland, before entering the unaccommodating waters that run between northernmost Canada and the Arctic.

They hope to reach the finishing line in Nome, Alaska by early October.

Skipper Isak is a year older than Canadian Jeff MacInnis was when he completed it in 1988, aged 25. MacInnis is thought to be the youngest person to have successfully sailed the passage.

But they are seasoned sailors – they sailed from Stockholm in Sweden to the western coast of Mexico in 2019.

As captain and first mate, they say piloting their 75-foot schooner has only strengthened their brotherly bond, with their small expedition team serving as an adoptive family.

“I don’t think we’re going to get any closer than we are now,” says Isak.

Alex adds: “I think we really know exactly how the other one works, and we don’t step on each other’s toes.”

Alex says that despite the peril of the journey, he has wanted to traverse the Northwest Passage for a long time. He has been intrigued by maps of the region and tales of previous expeditions, and is aware that it is likely to change due to climate change.

He recalls sailing one night, off the coast of Greenland, that he says will stay with him for the rest of his life.

“We were in the midnight sun, slowly slaloming through huge icebergs, and the light was just incredible when it shone over the icebergs… That was just really beautiful.”

Isak took more convincing before making the trip. What persuaded him was that “it’s one of the few expeditions left that really takes on the character of an expedition”, mixing danger and isolation, he says.

Keith Tuffley, the expedition’s overall leader – who quit his job at Citibank to be on the trip and owns the Abel Tasman – has become somewhat of a surrogate father to the Rockströms.

The Rockströms’ real father, Johan, is the Swedish climate scientist who has helped to develop the concept of climate tipping points, when particular large-scale environmental changes are thought to become self-perpetuating and irreversible beyond a certain threshold.

Part of the aim of the expedition is to highlight how climate change is increasing the risks of reaching these tipping points, particularly some systems in the Arctic Circle.

Multiple studies have suggested that parts of the Greenland ice sheet would become much more vulnerable to runaway melting if global warming reached 1.5-2C above pre-industrial levels. However, the precise positions of such tipping points are very uncertain, and a full-scale collapse would likely take many thousands of years.

The Rockströms have lived on the Abel Tasman while studying climate physics at the University of Bergen, balancing their studies with expeditions.

While much of the data they are gathering will have to be sent back to laboratories for analysis, Alex says the raw figures from seawater measurements they have already taken suggest the waters around Greenland are colder and less salty than before – a sign of ice sheet melting.

Prof David Thornalley, an ocean and climate scientist at University College London, explains that, over time, the influx of freshwater flowing off the Greenland ice sheet is likely to weaken the main current that runs the length of the Atlantic and has a major influence on the climate.

The melting of the ice sheet also raises global sea levels, increasing the risks of coastal flooding.

As well as potentially affecting the balance of the marine ecosystem, Prof Thornalley says melting ice might also produce a feedback process, “whereby the meltwater causes the ocean circulation changes, which leads to warmer waters reaching glaciers that flow into the ocean, thus causing faster melting and retreat of the glacier”.

Alex hopes the data they gather along the Northwest Passage will be significant.

“I think it’s very easy to underestimate the value of the data that can be collected from a sailing yacht like this… The big ships, the big icebreakers, are so limited in where they can go.”

The crew of the Abel Tasman still have a long and challenging way to go.

“Where we are now is one of those points along the trip that, from day one, we’re kind of fearing and very hopefully anticipating, because it’s… the start of the really challenging part,” says Isak.

Tuffley, the expedition’s leader, says that while melting Arctic ice was making it easier for a boat to move through the Northwest Passage, the icebergs this process was creating were making the journey more “unpredictable”.

At times, their surroundings appear completely alien.

“It looks like Mars,” says Keith of where they are anchored, in Devon Island.

“It is desolate, it’s rugged. It’s got this red, iron ore type of tinge to it.”

Aside from a handful of walruses and polar bears, the crew are entirely alone.

An area of farmland in County Louth is to be examined for the remains of Captain Robert Nairac, who was abducted and murdered by the IRA while working undercover.

It is the first search for his remains since he was shot and secretly buried in May 1977.

The search has been organised by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains (ICLVR).

It said it has “sufficient credible information” to begin a search of private land in the Faughart area near Dundalk.

Capt Nairac, 29, was abducted from a pub at Dromintee in South Armagh.

He was then taken across the Irish border to Flurry Bridge, where he was beaten and shot dead.

The location of his remains has remained a mystery.

In recent years, there has been a number of appeals for information made by the ICLVR.

It was established by the British and Irish governments in 1999 to find the Disappeared – 17 individuals murdered by republicans during the Troubles and secretly buried.

The remains of 13 victims have been found to date.

The ICLVR’S lead investigator, Jon Hill, said: “Robert Nairac is one of the highest profile Disappeared and yet his case is one in which we have had very little to go on.

“We believe that we do now have sufficient credible information to warrant a search.”

The precise location has not been disclosed.

Mr Hill added that “neither the landowner nor the tenant” have any connection to the decision to search the location.

The area is said to be less than one acre in size.

Mr Hill continued: “We are not time-limited but given the relatively small area I do not anticipate a protracted search period of many months.

“The Nairac family have been told that a search is about to commence and we will of course keep them informed of any developments.

“I am not going to put a number on the degree of confidence that we have that we will find his remains but if they are there we have the skills, ability and experience to find them.”

Kenny Donaldson, director of the South East Fermanagh Foundation, said the “murder and disappearance of Captain Robert Nairac remains a talking point in almost every home across south Armagh and indeed much further afield”.

“At the heart of all of this is a grieving family who have been defied their basic right to have Robert’s remains and to progress a Christian burial,” he added.

“We pray that the new information which has come forward turns out to be credible.”

The search location is within a wider area of significant archaeological interest.

The Hill of Faughart has been identified as a 14th century battle site.

The ICLVR said it has the co-operation of the National Monuments Service.

The commission has previously dismissed rumours that Capt Nairac’s body was disposed of in a meat processing plant.

It also described claims he had been involved in a number of terrorists incidents, such as the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, as “wild allegations”.

Listen to Assume Nothing: The secret search for Captain Nairac on BBC Sounds here.

The world’s oldest living man has declared he has no “special secrets” to pass on about his longevity as he celebrated turning 112.

John Tinniswood, who was born in Liverpool on 26 August 1912, told the Guinness World Records he had “no idea at all” why he had lived so long.

The lifelong Liverpool fan, who lives at a care home in Southport, became the world’s oldest living man in April when 114-year-old Juan Vicente Pérez Mora died.

He said he had been “quite active as a youngster” and did “a lot of walking”, but believed he was “no different” to anyone else, adding: “You either live long or you live short and you can’t do much about it.”

Mr Tinniswood, who was born the year the Titanic sank, said he would be taking turning 112 “in my stride like anything else”.

“Why I’ve lived that long, I have no idea at all,” he said. “I can’t think of any special secrets I have.

“I was quite active as a youngster, I did a lot of walking… whether that had something to do with it, I don’t know.

“But to me, I’m no different. No different at all.”

Mr Tinniswood was born 20 years after his favourite football club Liverpool was founded and has lived through all but two of the Reds’ 66 top flight trophies, having missed the first two league titles in 1901 and 1906.

He was two at the outbreak of World War One and had just celebrated his 27th birthday when World War Two began.

He served in an administrative role for the Army Pay Corps, locating stranded soldiers and organising food supplies, and is now the world’s oldest surviving male WWII veteran.

He met his wife, Blodwen, at a dance in Liverpool, and they married in 1942.

Their daughter Susan was born in 1943 and the couple enjoyed 44 years together before Mrs Tinniswood died in 1986.

After WWII, he worked as an accountant for Shell and BP before retiring in 1972.

He said that beyond eating a portion of fish and chips every Friday, he did not follow any particular regime.

“I eat what they give me and so does everybody else,” he said. “I don’t have a special diet.”

Since turning 100 in 2012, he has received an annual birthday card from the monarch – first from the late Queen Elizabeth II, who was his junior by almost 14 years, and then from King Charles III.

Asked whether he thought the world had changed much since his childhood, he said it was “no better in my opinion, or hardly any better, than it was then”.

“Probably in some places it is, but in other places it’s worse,” he added.

The oldest man ever was Jiroemon Kimura from Japan, who lived to the age of 116 years 54 days and died in 2013.

The world’s oldest living woman, and oldest living person, is Japan’s 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka.

Anthony Fauci, the face of the US government’s response to the Covid pandemic, is recovering at home after being hospitalised with West Nile virus.

The immunologist and former chief medical adviser to the president was hospitalised with the mosquito-borne disease around 11 days ago and had fever, chills and fatigue.

He left hospital earlier in the week and is expected to make a full recovery, the BBC’s US media partner CBS reports.

Dr Fauci, 83, told CBS that he likely contracted the virus from a mosquito bite in his garden.

Most people infected with West Nile virus do not feel sick, but around one in five develop symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US public health agency.

The virus spreads to humans when mosquitoes bite infected birds and then subsequently bite humans, the CDC says.

There is currently no vaccine for virus. It can be fatal in rare cases.

Dr Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, retired from public service in 2022.

He has previously said that he and his family receive death threats and now require round-the-clock security.

He has faced criticism from some over his handling of the Covid pandemic.

The leading immunologist was hauled in front of Congress earlier in the year by Republican politicians over accusations he attempted to obscure indirect US funding of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab in China some believe could be linked to the emergence of Covid-19.

Dr Fauci described the allegations as false, and said they were politically motivated due to his public disagreements with former President Donald Trump at the height of the pandemic.

Along with all Ukrainians celebrating their Independence Day, 19-year-old student Yuliia Vyshnivska had been warned of an increased threat of Russian strikes.

But it had not stopped her and hundreds of others making their way up to an exposed rooftop for an open-air musical display of defiance in the heart of Kyiv.

“I heard on the radio the Americans were warning that the Russians will bomb you today, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, they want to kill us’,” she said, as the setting sun illuminated the patterns of her traditional outfit, the vyshyvanka.

“But we’re used to it and know we live in this dangerous situation, so we are not scared.”

As a dozen orchestral musicians, clad in black, pumped out high-octane takes on classic Ukrainian tunes, I mentioned one thing that is different from their last two Independence Days at war: Ukraine has now entered and taken Russian territory.

“When we saw this news from Kursk, from Russian region, it was an amazing event. It’s like a miracle for us. We are so happy with it,” Ms Vyshnivska said.

She said the fate that Russians on the border were now suffering, displaced and in danger, was a natural consequence of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine two and a half years ago.

“From that moment on we started hating them and now… we want to kill them. And it’s awful. I understand that it’s not okay for humans to say this, but we hate them, and we can’t think in any other way because they want to kill us.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky, who attended a number of Independence Day events in the capital, gave a pre-recorded address from the Sumy region – just across the border from the newly gained Russian territory.

“Russia waged war on us. It violated not only sovereign borders, but also the limits of cruelty and common sense,” he told his people.

“It was endlessly seeking one thing: to destroy us. And what the enemy brought to our land has now returned to its home.”

Nearly three weeks into the Kursk incursion, Ukraine has consolidated much of the Russian land it seized rapidly in the surprise operation.

An estimated 10,000 elite Ukrainian troops burst across the border on 6 August, taking more ground in a matter of days than Russia had won in Ukraine so far this year.

Since the operation began, the BBC has kept in touch with one of the Ukrainian fighters now in Russia.

In his latest messages to us, Serhiy – a pseudonym – revealed that the situation was tougher now.

“Russia has gotten stronger. We see this in the number of strikes by drones, artillery, and aviation. Their sabotage and reconnaissance groups began to operate too,” he wrote.

All meant the Ukrainians were taking more casualties, he said.

“At the beginning of the operation, we were on the rise. We had minimal losses. Now, because of the Russians’ firepower, we are losing a lot of guys. Moreover, the Russians here are fighting for their land, just as we are fighting for ours.”

Serhiy says his earlier elation is giving way to some scepticism.

“Many of us do not understand the meaning of this operation. It’s one thing to fight for Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. It’s a different matter for the Kursk region, which we don’t need.”

President Zelensky had said the Kursk operation aimed to capture Russian soldiers – which led to a prisoner swap and the release of 115 Ukrainians on Saturday – among other goals he could not disclose.

He had also said the operation was a preventative strike to deter Russian attacks towards Sumy.

Despite the sense of justice and retribution the Kursk incursion has brought, it remains a risky strategy for Kyiv.

The rapid gains must be considered alongside losses in the east of Ukraine, where Russia continues to make ground in a grinding battle.

Moscow’s troops are drawing nearer to the city of Pokrovsk, which was home to around 60,000 before the fighting.

It is the biggest city in the Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control and is an important hub for the defending forces.

“It’s a really difficult situation,” 23-year-old Nazar Voytenkov, a former TV journalist who is now a volunteer with the 33rd Mechanised Brigade defending Pokrovsk, told us on a crackly phone line.

I asked if he was aware of Russians troops being diverted to defend their own soil.

“No, no, I don’t feel that. I think Russians have a big resource of troops in the Kursk region and elsewhere in Russia, and they’re using them in this operation that the Ukrainian forces started.”

I asked if it had relieved any pressure on Ukrainian troops in the area – a key hope of Kyiv’s.

“I don’t feel like it’s become easier. We still have enemies in all directions and just last week, they tried again to approach,” he explained.

“They used approximately 10 armoured vehicles and infantry to capture our positions, but we made a nice defence. We won this battle, and now we wait for their next fight. So no, they’re still here.”

This weekend’s celebrations were undoubtedly invigorated by the recent success on Russian soil, but Ukraine’s path to next year’s Independence Day is no clearer and remains lined with danger and uncertainty.

“This is just a monotonous, monotonous genocide,” Oleksandr Mykhed, one of Ukraine’s leading authors, declared quietly.

We met him in a cavernous exhibition building that used to house a museum to Lenin. He had just finished a lecture on his new book, which examines how the country’s great classical writers would consider the latest Russian invasion.

You would be hard pressed to find a better location to symbolise Ukraine’s evolution since becoming independent in 1991 and its determination not to be dragged back into Moscow’s orbit.

Of the Russians, Mr Mykhed said: “They want each and every missile strike to be called ‘another missile strike’. They want the whole world to get used to it and to make it routine, to make it ordinary. So that it would be the ‘ordinary genocide’.”

I asked him what hope Ukrainians could cling to as they endured the coming 12 months until their next Independence Day.

“This is time for a clear understanding of what the true patriotism is. And we know what it is like,” he said.

His argument was that despite the mental and physical scars and deep collective grief, everyone had a duty to be strong and ensure Ukraine’s survival.

“You might be tired for sure, everything might be depressed, but still – you have to save your country,” the Ukrainian author said.

An anthropomorphic monkey and a campaign against “feminist propaganda” set the video gaming community alight this week, following the release of the most successful Chinese title of all time.

Many players were furious after the company behind Black Myth: Wukong sent them a list of topics to avoid while livestreaming the game, including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

Still, within 24 hours of its release on Tuesday, it became the second most-played game ever on streaming platform Steam, garnering more than 2.1 million concurrent players and selling more than 4.5 million copies.

The game, based on the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, is being seen as a rare example of popular media broadcasting Chinese stories on an international stage.

Black Myth: Wukong is a single-player action game where players take on the role of “the Destined One”- an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural powers.

The Destined One is based on the character of Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, a key character in Journey to the West.

That novel, considered one of the greats of Chinese literature, draws heavily from Chinese mythology as well as Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore.

It has inspired hundreds of international films, TV shows and cartoons, including the popular Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z and the 2008 Chinese-American fantasy film The Forbidden Kingdom.

First announced via a hugely popular teaser trailer in August 2020, Black Myth launched on Tuesday after four years of anticipation.

It is the Chinese video game industry’s first AAA release – a title typically given to big-budget games from major companies.

High-end graphics, sophisticated game design and hot-blooded hype have all contributed to its success – as well as the size of China’s gaming community, which is the largest in the world.

“It’s not just a Chinese game targeting the Chinese market or the Chinese-speaking world,” Haiqing Yu, a professor at Australia’s RMIT University, whose research specialises in the sociopolitical and economic impact of China’s digital media, told the BBC.

“Players all over the world [are playing] a game that has a Chinese cultural factor.”

This has become a huge source of national pride in the country.

The Department of Culture and Tourism in Shanxi Province, an area that includes many locations and set pieces featured in the game, released a video on Tuesday that showcased the real-world attractions, triggering a surge in tourism dubbed “Wukong Travel”.

Videos posted on TikTok in the wake of Black Myth’s release show tourists flooding temples and shrines featured in the game, in what one X user characterised as a “successful example of cultural rediscovery”.

Niko Partners, a company that researches and analyses video games markets and consumers in Asia, similarly pointed out that Black Myth “helps showcase Chinese mythology, traditions, culture and real-life locations in China to the world”.

Ahead of Black Myth’s release, some content creators and streamers revealed that a company affiliated with its developer had sent them a list of topics to avoid talking about while livestreaming the game: including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

While it is not clear what was precisely meant by “feminist propaganda”, a widely circulated report by video game publication IGN in November alleged a history of sexist and inappropriate behaviour from employees of Game Science, the studio behind Black Myth.

Other topics designated as “Don’ts” in the document, which has been widely shared on social media and YouTube, included politics, Covid-19, and China’s video game industry policies.

The directive, which was sent out by co-publisher Hero Games, has stoked controversy outside China.

Multiple content creators refused to review the game, claiming its developers were trying to censor discussion and stifle freedom of speech.

Others chose to directly defy the warnings.

One creator with the username Moonmoon launched a Twitch stream of Black Myth titled “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is a Real Country) Feminism Propaganda”. Another streamer, Rui Zhong, discussed China’s one-child policy on camera while playing the game.

On Thursday, Chinese social media platform Weibo banned 138 users who were deemed to be violating its guidelines when discussing Black Myth.

According to an article on the state-run Global Times news site, a number of the banned Weibo users were “deviating from discussing the game itself but instead using it as a platform for spreading ‘gender opposition,’ ‘personal attacks’, and other irrational comments”.

While the controversy has attracted a lot of attention in international media and online, it has not really dented or detracted from Black Myth’s overwhelmingly positive reception.

The game made $53m in presales alone, with another 4.5 million copies sold within 24 hours of its release. Within the same timeframe it broke the record for the most-played single-player title ever released on Steam.

On platforms like Weibo, Reddit and YouTube, and elsewhere, reams of comments are celebrating the game’s success. Many suggest that the fallout from the controversies surrounding the game’s release has been overblown.

Ms Yu agreed, describing Black Myth as an “industry and overall market success”.

“When it comes to Chinese digital media and communication platforms, of course people cannot avoid talking about censorship,” she said. “Black Myth is… an example of how to tell the Chinese story well, and how to expand Chinese cultural influence globally. I don’t see any censorship there.”

She also pointed out that apparent attempts to steer or censor what reviewers said were unlikely to have come from Chinese officials themselves. More likely, Ms Yu suggested, is that the list of “Dos” and “Don’ts” came from a company that was trying to keep itself out of trouble.

“The company issues their notification so if anybody from the central government comes to have a chat with the company, the company can say, ‘look, I already told them. I can’t stop people from saying what they want to say.’

“They have basically, to use the colloquial term, covered their own ass,” she concluded. “I view it as a politically correct gesture to the Chinese censors, rather than a real directive coming from the top down.”

Fish and chips is a British family favourite equally enjoyed around the table on a Friday night or out of the paper on an often overcast beach.

But the deep fried delicacy has seen the biggest price increase of some of the UK’s most popular takeaways, according to new figures.

The average price for a portion of fish and chips rose more than 50% to nearly £10 in the five years to July – while the cost of a kebab went up 44% and pizza 30%.

Chip shop owners cite a “perfect storm” of costs in recent years, including soaring energy bills, tariffs on seafood imports and extreme weather hammering potato harvests.

This all means a family of four won’t get much change out of a £50 note once they’ve forked out for their tea and added some mushy peas and cans of pop.

“I’ve never known an onslaught of pressures in terms of costs going up,” said Jon Long, of Long John’s Fish and Chips in Dorset.

Jon is the third generation of his family in the trade and his daughter Emma has recently taken the helm of the business.

He added: “I’d like to think we’ll see a fifth generation but I’m not sure.”

Fish and chips has been a staple on the menus of British families for decades, so much so that supplies of the two ingredients were protected during both world wars.

But according to Jon, a combination of increased energy and labour costs, sanctions on Russian seafood due to the invasion of Ukraine, and poor potato harvests, have forced fish and chip shops to raise their prices.

The average price of takeaway fish and chips was £9.88 in July this year, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). That was up by 52% compared with £6.48 in July 2019.

While the ONS says the figures are estimates, it suggests the cost of a fish supper has gone up more in percentage terms than that for pizza, or an Indian or Chinese main course.

“We’ve had the perfect storm of events in terms of cost pressures,” said Jon.

“It’s not a cheap meal anymore. I think it’s still good value but it has become more expensive.”

In March 2022, the UK government announced a 35% tariff on Russian seafood imports in response to the invasion of Ukraine, at a time when food prices across the UK were rising at the fastest rate in more than a decade.

More recently, extreme weather conditions have hit potato harvests.

Cedric Porter, a potato market expert, said the rise in spud prices had been “dramatic”.

He added: “We’ve seen very high potato prices because of a small crop last year, and there’s been a small crop across the whole of Europe.”

Prices paid to UK farmers for potatoes have shot up over the last two years, according to the latest figures from the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs’ Agricultural Price Index (API).

Angela Cartwright, owner of Kingfisher Fish Bar in Salford, previously told BBC Breakfast that potato prices were “extortionate”.

She said: “People think that fish and chips is a cheap meal and it just isn’t. People are prepared to pay £15-20 for a pizza but they’re not prepared to pay it for a portion of fish and chips.”

Jon said the current economic climate was the “toughest set of conditions” he had faced in his 30-plus years in the business.

“More and more pubs, hotels, chip shops, bakers and other businesses are shutting down due to crippling costs,” he said.

For Jon, the main challenge remains his energy costs, especially standing charges, which are a daily fixed fee paid to energy suppliers for being connected to the system, regardless of how much gas or electricity a business uses.

He said the amount these charges had increased since 2021 was “outrageous”, adding that the energy regulator Ofgem had failed to protect small businesses from the increases.

A spokesperson for Ofgem said it had introduced new rules to ensure businesses get fairer treatment, more support resolving disputes, and greater transparency on fees charged by energy brokers.

They added: “We know high energy bills continue to be a challenge for many businesses. We are working closely with government and industry to understand the range of issues non-domestic customers face, and where the powers we have to tackle them could be stronger.”

The government said it was right to impose tariffs on imports of Russian fish, as well as other exports from the country.

A statement said local takeaways were “essential to thriving, vibrant communities” and support would be developed which included reforming business rates.

Until midnight last Sunday, Matteo Cannia was sitting out on a bench overlooking the sea in Porticello. It was too hot to sleep.

The 78-year-old, a fisherman since the age of 10, saw the first flashes of lightning. “I heard the thunder and the wind and decided to go home,” he told me.

“As the storm grew, everyone woke. Water was coming into my friend’s house.”

At about 04:15 local time, Fabio Cefalù – a fisherman who had been due to go out that wild Monday morning but, like others, decided against it – suddenly saw a flare go up.

He changed his mind and went out to sea to find out what was going on – and discovered only cushions and floating planks of wood.

A luxury super yacht called the Bayesian, moored only a few hundred metres away, had already sunk.

It all happened in a 16-minute window of disaster, chaos and torment, which catapulted a sleepy Sicilian fishing port to the centre of world news.

All but seven of the 22 people on board the Bayesian – 12 passengers and 10 crew – had scrambled into a life raft as the yacht began to capsize. The others never made it out.

Charlotte Golunski, a British woman, was thrown into the water with her one-year-old daughter, Sophie. She told of clutching her baby in the air with all her strength to keep her from drowning. “It was all black around me,” she said, “and the only thing I could hear were the screams of others.”

She, her baby, and her husband James were among those rescued by a nearby sailing boat captain. Trapped inside the sinking Bayesian was her colleague Mike Lynch – one of the UK’s top tech entrepreneurs, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”.

Mr Lynch had brought together family, friends and colleagues for an idyllic holiday on his luxury boat: a sumptuous 56-metre (184ft) sailing yacht that won design awards and had the world’s tallest aluminium mast.

In June, he was acquitted after a lengthy trial in the US on charges that he had fraudulently inflated the value of his company, Autonomy, before selling it to Hewlett Packard in 2011. The trip was planned as a celebration of freedom to mark his rehabilitation in public opinion.

Three days after the yacht went down, his body was retrieved by divers from the wreckage.

A day later, the body of his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, who was due to begin studying at the University of Oxford next month, was recovered.

Among the others who died were the president of the investment bank Morgan Stanley, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy; Mr Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda; and the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas. Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, survived.

The family has released a statement talking of their “unspeakable grief”, adding they are “devastated and in shock”.

How the super yacht sank so quickly while other smaller vessels nearby survived the storm undamaged has dumbfounded experts.

In a press conference this weekend – the first public statement by officials since the disaster – local prosecutors said they had begun an investigation into potential crimes of manslaughter and negligent shipwreck.

The region’s state prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio told reporters that while the probe was at a very early stage and nobody specific was being investigated, there were “many possibilities for culpability. It could be just the captain. It could be the whole crew… we are absolutely not ruling anything out”.

A small team of British marine investigators has also been sent to Sicily to work with their Italian counterparts.

Prosecutors said that they now believed a downburst was the weather phenomenon that hit the ship: a localised, powerful wind that descends from a thunderstorm and spreads unpredictably.

That contradicted previous reports that had identified the cause as a waterspout, or mini tornado at sea.

Either way, it’s clear extreme weather played a major role.

Much of the focus for the investigation team is of course on the conduct of the captain, 51-year-old James Cutfield from New Zealand. He survived, along with eight of his crew, and is being questioned.

“We didn’t see it coming,” he told Italian media, alluding to the storm, in his only public comment so far.

The problem is: plenty of others did. Violent winds and rain were forecast, following days of searing heat. The head of the company that built the Bayesian, Giovanni Costantino, told me he was convinced there had been a litany of errors on board.

“At the back of the boat, a hatch must have been left open,” he said, “but also perhaps a side entrance for water to have poured inside.

“Before the storm, the captain should have closed every opening, lifted anchor, turned on the engine, pointed into the wind and lowered the keel.”

A keel is a large, fin-like part of the boat that protrudes from its base.

“That would have stabilised the vessel, they would have been able to traverse the storm and continue their cruise in comfort,” he said.

Rescuers instead found the wreckage of the Bayesian 50 metres underwater with its almost 10-metre-long keel raised.

Had it been deployed, it could have helped counter the wind buffeting the Bayesian’s 75-metre high aluminium mast and kept the ship stable. But without it, experts told the newspaper La Repubblica that gusts of 100 kilometres an hour (62mph) would have been enough to capsize the ship – and Monday’s storm far exceeded that.

“The Bayesian was a model for many other vessels because of its stability and exceptionally high performance,” Mr Costantino said. “There was absolutely no problem with it. If water hadn’t surged in, it was unsinkable.”

He told me there were 16 minutes between the power going out on the ship at 03:56 – showing that water was flooding areas with electrical circuits – and the GPS signal being lost, indicating the moment it sank.

That period, along with any measures taken to mitigate the extreme weather, will be pored over by investigators, particularly once they locate the vessel’s black box recorder.

Rino Casilli, one of Sicily’s top ship surveyors, similarly believes that errors may have made the yacht vulnerable to the extreme weather.

“There should have been two members of the crew taking turns to be on watch overnight, given the storm warning,” he told me as he took me out on his boat – around a third of the size of the Bayesian. “And it should have been moored in the harbour, not out at sea.”

Prosecutors say they believe one person was on watch in the cockpit that night.

From Casilli’s sailing boat, we gained rare access to the spot where the Bayesian went down.

Around us, an Italian police vessel circulated, warning us back. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity among divers, as other rescue vessels arrived.

We didn’t know at the time – but they had just located more bodies.

It was an intensely challenging operation for the teams to recover those trapped in the wreckage. Given its depth, at 50 metres underwater, each diver was allowed 10 minutes down before resurfacing for their safety – 120 dives in total. They were assisted by remote control vehicles that could operate on the seabed for far longer.

In this weekend’s press conference, rescuers said the passengers trapped inside during the sinking took refuge in cabins on the ship’s left side, where the last air bubbles formed.

Five of the bodies were found in the first cabin on the left, they said, while the last body – confirmed as Hannah Lynch – was in the third cabin on the left side.

Access for the emergency teams was extremely difficult since the yacht remained largely intact with its furniture obstructing entry.

The coastguard compared it to an “18-storey building full of water”. When Ms Lynch’s body was brought ashore emergency workers on the port applauded their colleagues.

All seven of the dead have been transported to a mortuary for post-mortems.

Rescuers will now need to decide whether – and how – to salvage the wreckage, which would undoubtedly offer vital clues as to what happened. But bringing the Bayesian to the surface could take six to eight weeks and cost 15 million euros (£12.7m) by some estimates.

While the divers’ painstaking work to recover the dead has ended, the investigators’ painful hunt for answers has only begun.

They and the survivors are hunkered down in a hotel close to Porticello, which is strictly off-limits to journalists. Security guards promptly asked us to leave.

Solving the enigma of what happened to the Bayesian will be crucial not only to help loved ones of the victims reach some sort of closure, but also for the maritime industry to draw conclusions.

The brother of James Cutfield, the captain, said he was a “well-respected” sailor who had worked on boats his whole life. Did the experienced sailor somehow make a series of catastrophic errors? The trade union Nautilus, which represents seafarers and captains, called for restraint in passing judgement on the Bayesian’s crew.

“Any attempt to question their conduct without the full facts is not only unfair but also harmful to the process of uncovering the truth and learning any lessons from this tragedy,” it said.

The world’s media has begun to leave Porticello, which is gradually returning to the tranquillity of its pre-Bayesian era. Stray cats roam among the old fishing boats, and children play as their families eat out at the few seaside restaurants.

But what has happened over the past week has stunned and scarred many here.

“Last Sunday night, we saw the end of the world in Porticello,” said resident Maria Vizzo. “We’ve never seen something like this. Everyone here is shocked – and everyone is crying.”

Having a pet crocodile in the backyard sounds like a far-fetched Australian fable – like riding kangaroos to school or the existence of drop bears.

But in the Northern Territory (NT), it’s a reality.

And Trevor Sullivan has 11 of the reptiles sharing his tropical home in Batchelor, about an hour south of Darwin.

Among them is Big Jack, who is named after a Jack in the Box toy due to his alarming propensity for lunging. Despite his antics, the giant predator is adored, having joined Mr Sullivan’s household as a hatchling the same day his daughter was born 22 years ago.

“He’s been part of our family ever since… [my daughter] refers to him as brother.”

Also on the 80-acre property is Cricket, still a tiny critter, and Shah, who – at the complete other end of the scale – is more than a century old and has truly lived a life.

“He’s possibly seen two world wars and maybe federation in Australia [in 1901],” Mr Sullivan says of the 4.7m (15.4ft) beast.

He claims Shah once killed a man, has been used for scientific research, was almost poisoned to death at a bird park, and lost half his bottom jaw in a fight at a Queensland crocodile farm, all before joining Mr Sullivan a few years ago.

The 60-year-old lights up as he tells the BBC about his crocodiles: “There’s nothing like them… crocodiles are the Harley Davidson of pets.”

But as the famously quirky region heads to the polls on Saturday, the right to own a pet croc has turned into a somewhat unlikely – and very Territory – election issue.

The cost of living, housing and crime are the prime concerns for many voters, but Mr Sullivan is one of scores left heartbroken after the governing Labor Party moved to ban crocodiles as pets.

It is one of the last places in the country the practice is allowed, but the government says they’re concerned for the wellbeing of both humans and the reptiles. The Country Liberal Party opposition, however, has pledged its support for the practice and has promised a review of the “rushed” decision if elected.

About 250,000 people call the NT home, but relatively few of them own crocodiles. The environment minister’s office said they could not provide a figure because the government is in election caretaker mode, but previous estimates have put the number of permit holders at around 100.

Many of the captive crocs are raised from hatchlings, others rehomed from farms or after causing trouble in the wild.

Regulations have long dictated strict conditions about where, and under what conditions, the animals can be kept. For example, hatchlings can only live in urban areas until they are 60cm long – usually about a year old – at which point they must be handed over to authorities or moved to a property outside the town limits.

Under those rules, however, owners were not required to have any special training or knowledge to keep the beasts.

Tom Hayes says owning – or “saving” – a crocodile is part of the Territory’s appeal, and one of the factors which drew his young family to the Darwin region, from Queensland, earlier this year.

The 40-year-old grew up taking trips to the NT with his dad, fishing in the Mary River alongside giant crocodiles, instilling a love of predators and, eventually, a dream to have his own one day.

“I’m not just some dude that wants a crocodile [for] when I’m having a barbecue with my mates on the weekend,” the tattooist and self-styled conservationist told the BBC.

“I wanted to have somewhere I could bring these poor old buggers and they could just live their lives out – happy, fed… not having to worry about people shooting them.”

He was in process of adopting a mega croc when the NT government announced it would not be issuing any new permits to keep the reptiles as pets.

It has left Mr Hayes reeling and the crocodile he’d hoped to rescue at risk of being put down.

NT Environment Minister Kate Worden said the decision was made “after public consultation” and “taking into account personal safety and animal welfare concerns”.

Existing permits will remain valid, but transfers of permits will not be allowed.

“Let’s remember they are an apex predator and probably not one that’s best kept for captivity,” Ms Worden told reporters, adding that there were instances of crocodiles attacking their owners in the region.

The new rules bring the NT in in line with every other state and territory in Australia – except, oddly, Victoria, which is well outside of the comfortable climate of a saltwater crocodile.

Animal activists, who had been pushing for the change, say it’s a big win.

While some of the people keeping crocodiles “may have good intentions”, no wild animal can have its needs fully met in captivity, argues Olivia Charlton, from World Animal Protection.

“There is no way to replicate the space and freedom these crocodiles would have in the wild, particularly given they live for up to 70 years,” she said in a statement.

Charles Giliam, from the RSPCA NT, said the dangerous nature of crocodiles also made it extremely hard for authorities to regulate the program and ensure the reptiles had an acceptable standard of living and medical care.

“I only know one vet who’s prepared to work with crocodiles,” he said, as an example.

But croc owners say they had no idea the change was coming and are distressed over what may now happen to their pets.

“I don’t think you spend many nights on the couch watching TV, snuggling with your four-and-a-half-meter crocodile… but there’s still that emotional attachment,” Mr Hayes says.

They accuse the government of hiding the change in a broader Crocodile Management Plan to avoid doing true consultation on the issue.

The opposition environment spokeswoman Jo Hersey said “the [Country Liberal Party] supports the rights of Territorians to own crocs as pets under a permit system” and has promised the party will look at the rules if elected.

Both Mr Hayes and Mr Sullivan said there is broad support for greater training and education requirements for permit holders.

But they say the reptiles are surprisingly easy to care for – and reject arguments that keeping them as pets is harmful.

“In the wild, they have a stretch of territory and they then have to fight to keep it. They’re forever hunting for food, forever chasing off their enemies or trying to keep their girlfriend sorted and life’s pretty tough going,” Mr Sullivan says.

“In captivity, if they got a good enclosure, plenty of water, sunlight, a bit of shade, and food on a regular basis, they just love it.

“I have a river running through my property and I actually have wild crocs always trying to get in and join my mob.”

The decision to end the practice is particularly bad timing for Mr Sullivan. He listed his home and his menagerie for sale last year, so he could join his partner in New Zealand.

“It is a bit like a Willy Wonka story – I want some young kids, of the right nature, to take on a property full of wildlife.”

But that’s left him with a quandary that belongs in a maths textbook: If you have 80 acres and 11 crocodiles on the market, but zero permits available to transfer, what’s the answer?

There is “not a chance” he’ll euthanise his crocs, he says. “I’ll have to stay on the property until I die, or until something else changes.”

His hope is resting on the election of a CLP government on Saturday, adding he thinks it is an issue which will galvanise voters.

But Mr Hayes, on the other hand, hopes it isn’t. There are greater issues at play which should decide votes, he explains, and he is optimistic that both parties will come to see sense anyway.

“Whoever’s in needs to really look at it… It’s an attack on the Territory way of life.”

Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Yasmin Rufo. Please don’t leave a message as I won’t listen to it or call you back.

Unfortunately that isn’t my answerphone message but do I, along with most Gen Z and millennials, wish it was? Absolutely.

A recent survey found a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never answer the phone – respondents say they ignore the ringing, respond via text or search the number online if they don’t recognise it.

The Uswitch survey of 2,000 people also found that nearly 70% of 18-34s prefer a text to a phone call.

For older generations, talking on the phone is normal – my parents spent their teenage years fighting with their siblings over the landline in the corridor only to then have their entire family listen in to their conversations.

In contrast, my teenage years were spent texting.

From the moment I received my pink flip Nokia on my 13th birthday, I was obsessed with texting.

I would spend every evening after school formulating 60-character texts to my friends, removing every unnecessary space and vowel until the message resembled jumbled up consonants even GCHQ would struggle to decipher.

After all, when it costs 10p a text there was no way I was going to spill over to 61 characters.

In 2009, phone calls on my mobile would have cost a fortune.

“We didn’t give you this phone so you could gossip with your friends all evening,” my parents would remind me as they looked through my monthly phone bill.

And so a generation of texters were born: mobile phone calls were for emergencies and the landline was used infrequently to speak to your grandparents.

Dr Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist, explains that because young people didn’t develop the habit of speaking on the phone, “it now feels weird as it’s not the norm”.

This can make young people fear the worst when their phone starts ringing (or silently lighting up because no-one under the age of 35 has a loud ringtone).

More than half of the young people who responded in the Uswitch survey admitted that they thought an unexpected call means bad news.

Psychotherapist Eloise Skinner explains that anxiety around calls comes from “an association with something bad – a sense of foreboding or dread”.

“As our lives get busier and working schedules more unpredictable, we have less time to call a friend simply to catch up. Phone calls, then, become reserved for the important news in our lives, which can often be complicated and difficult.”

“It’s exactly that,” says 26-year-old Jack Longley, adding that he also never responds to unknown numbers as “it’s either scammers or cold callers”.

“It’s easier to just ignore the calls instead of sifting through to find out which ones are legitimate.”

But not speaking on the phone doesn’t mean young people aren’t in touch with their friends – our group chats ping throughout the day with a mixture of banal messages, memes, gossip and, more recently, voice notes.

Many of these conversations now take place on social media, particularly on Instagram and Snapchat where it’s easier to send images and memes alongside texts.

While we all agree that phone calling is a big no-no, the use of voice notes has split the younger generations.

In the Uswitch survey, 37% of 18-34s say voice notes are their preference of communication. In comparison, only 1% of 35 to 54-year-olds prefer voice messages over a call.

“A voice note is just like talking on the phone but better,” says Susie Jones, a 19-year-old student. “You get the benefits of hearing your friend’s voice but comes with no pressures so it’s a more polite way of communicating”.

But for me, listening to a five-minute voice note from a friend updating me about their life is painful – they get side-tracked, every second word is “like” or “uhm” and the whole story could have been told in a couple of text messages.

Both texts and voice notes allow young people to participate in conversations at their own pace and allows them to give more thoughtful and considered responses.

But to what extent does phone call phobia in your personal life start affecting your work life?

Henry Nelson-Case is a 31-year-old lawyer and content creator whose series of “overwhelmed millennial” videos are painfully relatable – sketches include the angst of sending a company-wide email, politely refusing to work overtime and of course, one about an employee doing anything to avoid a phone call.

He says “it’s the anxiety associated with real-time conversations, potential awkwardness, not having the answers and the pressure to respond immediately,” that makes him hate talking on the phone.

“Phone calls are more exposing and require a higher level of intimacy whereas messaging is detached and allows you to connect without feeling vulnerable or exposed,” explains Dr Touroni.

Dunja Relic, a 27-year-old lawyer, says she steers clear of workplace calls because “they can be time consuming and set you back on your tasks”.

Skinner describes this as the ‘this could have been an email’ sentiment.

“There’s a growing sense of protection over our time and calling someone requires the recipient to pause their day and dedicate attention to the conversation – a difficult thing for multitaskers to do.”

James Holton, a 64-year-old business owner, says his younger employees rarely respond to phone calls and “either have a default message that says their busy or they put my number on diverted calls, so the call never goes through”.

“They always have an excuse up their sleeves, with the most common being that my phone is silent, so I never saw it and forgot to call you later.”

He says he has definitely had to adapt after he noticed “a visible communication gap” and “if employees are more comfortable with texts, then it’s my responsibility to respect that choice”.

But, with a preference for non-verbal communication and a tendency to work from home, are we losing the ability for unscheduled and informal conversations?

Skinner says if the current trend continues then “we might lose a sense of closeness or connection”.

“When we communicate verbally we feel more aligned, emotionally, professionally or personally,” she continues. “This connection can lead to a greater sense of fulfilment, especially in the workplace.”

Ciara Brodie, a 25-year-old supermarket area manager, bucks the trend and says she “loves and appreciates when my seniors at work call me”.

“It’s more thoughtful than a text because it requires a certain amount of effort, so you really know that your manager values your input.”

She especially likes talking to colleagues over the phone on days she works from home as “it can be solitary, so it’s nice to stay connected”.

While some people may say this new communication trend is further proof of us being “generation snowflake”, it’s actually far from that.

Instead, it’s about adapting. No doubt 25 years ago people were resistant from switching from fax to email, but the change has made communication far more efficient.

Perhaps now it’s time to recognise the power of text and just as we ditched the fax machine in the 1990s, we can leave the dreaded phone calls behind in 2024.

While the US and Russia were busy finalising the biggest exchange of prisoners since the Cold War, a gifted but little-known Russian pianist was dying in silence in jail.

Pavel Kushnir had protested repeatedly against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and began a hunger strike soon after his arrest in May, later refusing water too.

He died, slowly and without publicity, on 28 July – four days before a group of better-known dissidents were swapped for Kremlin spies, sleeper agents and killers imprisoned in the West.

After his lonely death, at a pre-trial detention centre in Birobidzhan in Russia’s Far East, the 39-year-old was mourned by only 11 people at his cremation.

Svetlana Kaverzina, an independent politician in Siberia, said no-one had tried to talk him out of sacrificing himself because they hadn’t been aware what was happening.

“We couldn’t chip in and send him a lawyer – we didn’t know,” she wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “He was alone.”

The YouTube channel where Kushnir published four anti-war videos had only five subscribers when he was arrested.

His “Foreign Agent Mulder” posts were a reference to a character in the US TV series, the X Files, which was popular in Russia in the 1990s, and also to a Russian law that allows people considered politically suspect to be declared “foreign agents”. In one clip Kushnir even appears with a hand-drawn FBI badge.

His final film, released in January, addressed the 2022 massacre of civilians by Russian troops in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv.

A few months later, a Telegram channel close to the secret services, Operational Reports, posted a video showing masked men leading Kushnir into a white minivan.

It added that a criminal case had been opened, accusing him of making a public call to engage in terrorist activity, which is punishable by up to seven years in jail.

Nothing more was heard until 2 August, when the human rights activist Olga Romanova and the pianist’s friend, Olga Shkrygunova, revealed his death in an article published by online news organisation Vot Tak.

His 79-year-old mother, Irina Levina, later confirmed her son had died.

Kushnir was born in Tambov, central Russia, where his father Mikhail was a pianist and educator, and his mother a music school teacher.

He started playing piano at the age of two and, at just 17, gave a remarkable two-and-a-half-hour concert featuring the 24 preludes and fugues by composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

Later that year, he was admitted to the Moscow Conservatory, where classmate Julia Wertman says he cultivated a “dissident image”, often wearing a shabby coat and black clothes, with a half-litre bottle of vodka sticking out of a pocket.

Asked in a 2005 interview what composition he would never perform, he replied: “The Russian national anthem.”

After graduation, Shkrygunova says Kushnir deliberately took jobs in smaller cities, believing he would have more musical and personal freedom outside Moscow.

He moved to Yekaterinburg, then Kursk, and spent three years in Kurgan, a city to the east of the Ural mountains, before he lost his job at the philharmonic orchestra there in 2022.

Shkrygunova does not know exactly why he was dismissed, but adds: “This was a cog that didn’t fit any machine, and it had been that way since his childhood.”

After four months without a job, he became a soloist with the Birobidzhan Philharmonic, telling local television: “If I’m not imprisoned, drafted into the army, or fired, then I hope to spend the next 12 years with you.”

Kushnir spent his free time protesting against the war.

In emails to friends he described sticking posters around Birobidzhan at night, with slogans angrily denouncing the draft, and describing Vladimir Putin as a fascist.

He also began staging hunger strikes: first for 20 days in the spring of 2023, then for three months later that year.

Shkrygunova says Kushnir knew the danger he was putting himself in.

“It was his solitary protest,” she says. “An act by someone who didn’t know what else he could do.”

She tried to convince him to leave Russia, or at least to perform in Berlin, where she now lives. But they never managed to arrange the trip.

In late March, Kushnir spoke to Shkrygunova for the last time, telling her he felt like he was being watched and that he “kept seeing the same person”.

“Whatever happens, happens: I’m doing this for a reason,” he added.

Birobidzhan City Court records contain no information about a criminal case against him, though there is a record of a non-criminal case of “petty hooliganism” submitted on 20 June.

On 19 July, Kushnir was fined an unknown amount, but it is unclear whether he attended the hearing.

The court then sent him a copy of the verdict, but it was returned on 30 July with the note “not possible to deliver”.

By then, of course, Kushnir was already dead.

The independent news site, Mediazona, spoke to someone who saw him shortly before he died.

They described him as “like a skeleton”, who by mid-July could barely walk and was “in very poor condition”.

The official cause of death was “dilated cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure”.

The FSB and the Birobidzhan Court did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment. The regional head of Russia’s prison service, Vasily Mikhaylenko, told Mediazona he knew nothing about the case.

After Kushnir’s death, his mother told another independent news organisation, Okno, that she had tried and failed to influence her son.

“I certainly wanted him to conduct himself in a quieter way and stay out of politics altogether.

“I am very sorry that he gave up his life, apparently for nothing at all.”

But Shkrygunova disagrees, saying that Kushnir knew all along that he was risking his life so that he could express his anti-war views.

“He understood there might have been another way,” Shkrygunova adds.

“But by the time he had realised it, there was no turning back. He knew he was going to go all the way – so it wouldn’t turn out to be a wasted effort.”

In death, Kushnir has attracted more attention than he ever received in his lifetime.

A book he wrote in 2014 has quickly been republished in Germany.

Grace Chatto, a member of Grammy-award-winning electronic music group Clean Bandit who studied with Kushnir at the Moscow Conservatory, wrote an emotional tribute on Instagram to her “gentle and funny” friend.

And 22 leading classical musicians including Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle and Martha Argerich wrote an open letter to remember a “remarkable artist” they had never met.

Although Kushnir’s YouTube channel had single-figure subscribers in his lifetime, his most popular clip has now been viewed more than 22,000 times.

“This message is for Blake Lively. Hi Blake. I’m a domestic violence survivor and my heart honestly just broke for the domestic violence community because in this movie, you represented us.”

In a TikTok video that’s been viewed four million times, US woman Ashley Paige launched a blistering attack on the Hollywood actor for how she’s promoted her latest film, It Ends With Us, an adaptation of a novel about a woman experiencing domestic abuse.

Critics say it’s been promoted like a romance film, that its one-minute trailer doesn’t adequately disclose the abuse storyline, and that instead of advocacy on the red carpet, Lively has highlighted fashion and florals.

Ms Paige accuses Lively of promoting it like it’s “the sequel to Barbie”.

Lively’s comments during sometimes clumsy promotional interviews have also led to discussion about how to properly talk about victims – and about how survivors of domestic abuse relate to what they’ve been through.

The film is an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel. Lively plays a florist named Lily Bloom who falls head over heels for a surgeon; their romance is exciting and intense, before it turns abusive. The story features several graphically violent scenes, including one of attempted rape.

Lively – the Gossip Girl soap icon turned screen star – is perhaps one of the most marketable actors of the past decade. A Met Gala fixture, besties with Taylor Swift, she and husband Ryan Reynolds are one of Hollywood’s power couples; moguls with their own production company and several off-screen businesses selling their All-American appeal.

Ms Paige, who lives in Colorado with her young daughter, is a survivor of abuse herself who now campaigns on the issue.

“My life story is very reminiscent of [Lively’s character] Lily Bloom’s,” she told the BBC. “I had a daughter with my abuser and we ran.”

But she bristles at how Lively has spoken about the character.

Lively has described Lily as both a “survivor” and a “victim”, and has said “while they are huge labels, these are not her identity”.

“She defines herself and I think it’s deeply empowering that no one else can define you,” she told the BBC at the London premiere in August.

At the New York premiere, when asked about what she would say to survivors, she said: “You are so much more than just a survivor or just a victim. While that is a huge thing, you are a person of multitudes, and what someone has done to you doesn’t define you. You define you.”

But Ms Paige is offended by the idea that she is “more” than a victim. Her trauma isn’t just something she can neatly lock away, she says.

“It has shaped my identity. It shapes the way I communicate. It shapes the way I perceive the world… It shapes everything,” she said.

“And so although it’s not our identity, it permeates every aspect of who we are, because we’re never the same after that.”

On TikTok, US trauma therapist Maddie Spear also shared a video explaining why Lively’s rhetoric was troubling to some.

“While I love the positivity in promoting light and life, oftentimes trauma survivors are told to just make light of their story… and I feel like [Lively’s] actions are doing just that. Her actions are continuing to make victims feel like their story is too heavy to even talk about,” she said in the clip.

In an opinion piece in US magazine Glamour, titled “The Problem with the More Than A Victim Discourse”, writer Kathleen Wash says: “I’m sure it wasn’t her intention, but… saying someone is ‘more than just a survivor’ or ‘more than just a victim’ implies that there’s something bad about identifying as a victim in the first place”.

And a spokesperson for the charity Solace Women’s Aid told the BBC: “While likely not [Lively’s] intention, this sentiment could reinforce some of the shame victims feel about the continuing impact of abuse or make them feel they must just move on from this experience.”

But there is no uniform view on this among those who’ve experienced abuse, say domestic abuse organisations.

Many survivors do relate to Lively’s optimistic message that they are not defined by their trauma, they say.

What might have amplified the anger around Lively’s comments, however, is the view that she has minimised the topic through the film’s wider branding.

Online, video edits have proliferated of Lively’s more blithe responses to questions about her character. In one red carpet video she answers a question about victimhood by joking about her neoprene floral outfit: “You can go deep sea diving in it.”

Another clip that’s gone viral – a promotional video put out on the film’s Instagram page – has Lively encouraging people to watch the film, by saying: “Grab your girls and wear your florals!”

During the press tour, the actor has also promoted her multiple off-screen businesses: a new hair care line and her brand of alcoholic drinks.

Studies show significant links between alcohol and domestic violence. But her drinks business Betty Booze has promoted cocktail recipes inspired by the film’s characters – including the abuser, Ryle.

Ms Paige calls this “wildly inappropriate”.

She says the worst failing of the film is its marketing, which she characterises as misleading.

It’s a view backed by the charity Women’s Aid, which says that “despite domestic abuse being a key theme of the film, much of the marketing has ignored this and viewers have not been warned about the potentially distressing content”.

The US-based National Domestic Violence Hotline says more than one in three (35.6%) of women and one in four men (28.5%) have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates one in five adults have experienced domestic abuse – one in four women and one in seven men.

Ms Paige says that immediately after the film’s US premiere, her TikTok feed was full of videos of shell-shocked survivors.

“You watched It Ends With Us and it all came back. The guilt, the shame, the anger, the love-bombing, the fear,” one person wrote.

Another said: “Yeah I went and saw this today, left with a PTSD attack. Was not prepared to see my life play out in front of me.”

“I’m still trying to recover from the movie. Took me right back,” was another comment.

Domestic abuse organisations say that, on the whole, representing abusive situations in popular culture should be done sensitively.

“When making any kind of media about violence against women and girls, the potential impact on survivors should be front and centre in every aspect of its development,” Andrea Simon from the UK-based End Violence against Women Coalition told the BBC earlier this week.

Lively stressed in an earlier interview with BBC News that she and all others on the film felt the “responsibility of servicing the people that care so much about the source material”.

And last week, seemingly in response to the growing criticism, Lively posted her first message of the press tour on social media, linking to domestic abuse phone hotlines and charities.

She also shared the BBC news article about her comments at the UK premiere, and BBC News has approached her for further comment.

Her co-star Brandon Sklenar this week also spoke out about what he saw as the vilification of Lively.

He said: “There isn’t a single person involved in the making of this film that was not aware of the responsibility we had in making this.”

A landmark report into problems faced by women in the Malayalam-language film industry has revealed the deep rot in one of India’s most popular film hubs.

The findings of the three-member panel are pretty damning.

The 290-page report – parts of which have been redacted to hide identities of survivors and those accused of wrongdoing – says the industry is dominated by “a mafia of powerful men” and that “sexual harassment of women is rampant”.

Headed by a former judge of the Kerala High Court and set up by the state government in 2017, the Hema committee details the abysmal working conditions on sets – including a lack of toilets and changing rooms for junior artists, no food and water for them, poor pay and no accommodation or transport facilities.

“There are no toilets, so women have to go in the bushes or behind thick trees. During their periods, not being able to change their sanitary napkins for long hours and holding urine for long causes physical discomfort and makes them sick, in some cases needing hospitalisation,” it says.

The report, which was submitted to the government in December 2019, was made public only this week after nearly five years of delay and multiple legal challenges by members of the film industry.

The panel was set up in the aftermath of the horrific sexual assault on a leading actress in the film industry. Bhavana Menon, who has worked in more than 80 films in southern Indian languages and won a number of prestigious awards, was assaulted by a group of men while travelling from Thrissur to Kochi in February 2017.

Her assault made headlines, especially after Dileep, one of the Malayalam-language film industry’s biggest actors and Menon’s co-star in half a dozen films, was named as an accused and charged with criminal conspiracy. He denied the charges, but was arrested and held in custody for three months before being released on bail. The case continues to be heard in court.

Indian law bars identification of survivors of sexual assault, but it was known from the start that it was Ms Menon who had been assaulted. In 2022, she waived her anonymity in a post on Instagram and in an interview to the BBC.

A few months after the attack on Ms Menon, Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) – a group formed by some of her colleagues in a film industry known for its variety of successful mainstream and critically acclaimed films – petitioned the government, seeking swift action in the case and also to address the problems faced by women in cinema.

In the report, retired Justice K Hema says the WCC told her that “women are being silenced as the prestige of the film industry needs to be upheld”.

The panel interviewed several dozen men and women, including artists, producers, directors, scriptwriters, cinematographers, hairstylists, makeup artists and costume designers, and “gathered evidence including video and audio clips and WhatsApp messages”.

Describing sexual harassment as the “worst evil” women in cinema face, the report said the panellists saw evidence that “sexual harassment remains shockingly rampant” and that “it goes on unchecked and uncontrolled”.

The industry “is controlled by a group of male actors, producers, distributors, exhibitors and directors who have gained enormous fame and wealth” and they were among the perpetrators, it added.

“Men in industry make open demands for sex without any qualms as if it’s their birthright. Women are left with very little options but to oblige – or reject at the cost of their long awaited dream of pursuing cinema as their profession.

“The experiences of many women are really shocking and of such gravity that they have not disclosed the details even to their close family members.”

Many of the people the panel approached were initially reluctant to speak because “they were afraid they would lose their jobs”.

“In the beginning, we found their fear strange but as our study progressed we realised it was well-founded. We are concerned about their and their close relatives’ safety.”

The report, the WCC says, has vindicated its stand. “For years, we have been saying that there is a systemic problem in the industry. Sexual harassment is just one of them. This report proves it,” Beena Paul, an award-winning editor and one of the founding members of the WCC, told the BBC.

“We were always told that we were troublemakers [for raising such issues]. This report proves that it [the condition] is far worse than what even we thought,” she said.

Members of the WCC say they have faced difficulty in getting work since they began demanding better working conditions on film sets. “People don’t like the fact that we are asking questions. So, quite a few members have faced difficult situations,” Ms Paul says.

The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA), a top industry body which counts superstars like Mohanlal and Mamooty among its members, denied the accusations. Its general secretary Siddique disagreed that there was a small, powerful group that controlled the industry.

He also denied that sexual harassment was rampant in the industry and said that most of the complaints they received were about the delay or a lack of payment for workers. He said conditions for women had improved on film sets in the past five years and all facilities were now available to them.

In the week since its release, the report has created ripples in the state, with activists and prominent opposition leaders demanding action against those accused of wrongdoing.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said if any woman who testified before the committee came forward to file a complaint, the government would take action. “No matter how big they are, they will be brought before the law,” he said.

On Thursday, a public interest petition was filed in the Kerala High Court, seeking initiation of criminal proceedings against those accused in the report.

The court ordered the government to submit a copy of the report and the judges said they would decide if criminal action needed to be taken once they had read it.

Allegations of harassment and abuse in films are not new in India – in 2018, the #MeToo movement hit the country’s most popular film industry Bollywood after actress Tanushree Dutta accused veteran actor Nana Patekar of behaving inappropriately towards her on a film set in 2008. Patekar denied the allegations.

Ms Dutta, who has since claimed that she has been denied work, described the Hema committee report as “useless”, adding that earlier reports about making workplaces safer for women had not helped.

Parvathy Thiruvothu, an award-winning actress and a key member of the WCC, however, told Asianet news channel that she considered the release of the report “a victory”.

“It’s opened up a door for big changes within the industry,” she said.

Jeo Baby, director of The Great Indian Kitchen, a critically-acclaimed film that examines the patriarchal structure within the family, told the BBC that while gender issues remain a concern, change is under way in the industry. “This is the right time to correct this. The film industry has to fight this together.”

The report, which has made several recommendations to make the industry a safe place for women, says their inquiry and recommendations are not to find fault with any individual, but “an earnest attempt to ennoble a profession so that it becomes a viable career option for aspiring artists and technicians, both male and female”.

“Hopefully filmmaking will become so safe that parents can send their daughters and sons to the profession with the same confidence and sense of security as they send their children to an engineering firm or a college,” it adds.

Read more:

• India arrests after actress says she was abducted and raped
• Bhavana Menon breaks silence on sexual assault
• #MeToo: Why sexual harassment is a reality in Bollywood
• Sex harassment claims shake top India dance academy

Israel has said it carried out a wave of pre-emptive strikes across southern Lebanon to thwart a large-scale rocket and drone attack by Hezbollah.

Jets destroyed thousands of the Iran-backed armed group’s rocket launchers on Sunday morning, Israel’s military said. Hezbollah and its Amal allies said three fighters had been killed.

Hezbollah said it had still managed to fire 320 rockets and drones at Israel in retaliation for the assassination of a senior commander. According to Israel’s military, one Israeli navy soldier was killed.

The US says it is working to avoid any further escalation after 10 months of hostilities that have raised fears of an all-out war.

There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the day after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on 7 October.

There was no breakthrough at the latest round of US-backed Gaza peace talks in Cairo.

Before leaving, Hamas said it rejected new Israeli conditions and accused Israel of backtracking on promises. Israel denies changing its demands since a last round of talks in early July.

Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the Palestinian group, which is also backed by Iran. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK and other countries.

Since October, more than 560 people have been reported killed by Lebanon’s health ministry, the vast majority of them Hezbollah fighters, while 26 civilians and 23 soldiers have been killed in Israel, according to authorities.

The UN says almost 200,000 people have also been displaced on both sides of the border.

Israel’s attack on Hezbollah at around 04:30 (01:30 GMT) on Sunday was its biggest since the full-scale war between them in 2006.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said about 100 fighter jets had “struck and destroyed thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels” in more than 40 areas of southern Lebanon.

The strikes went ahead after “extensive preparation” for a large-scale aerial attack by Hezbollah was detected, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli aircraft had struck Beaufort Castle, the Bir Kalb area, and the outskirts of the towns of Ain Qana, Kfar Fila, Louaizeh, Bsalia, Kfar Melki, Sajd and Sarba.

A resident of the town of Zibqeen said it had “felt like the apocalypse”.

• What is Hezbollah?

One person was killed in a drone strike on a car in Khiam, the Lebanese ministry of public health said. The Amal movement said one of its fighters from the village had been killed.

The ministry also said an Israeli attack on the village of Tiri had killed two people. Hezbollah confirmed the deaths of two fighters from nearby Haris, without providing any details.

“What happened today is not the end of the story,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting.

As well as destroying short-range rockets, Mr Netanyahu said, the IDF intercepted all of the drones which Hezbollah had “launched at a strategic target in the centre of the country”.

“[Sheikh Hassan] Nasrallah in Beirut and [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei in Tehran need to know that this is an additional step in changing the situation in the north,” he warned the leaders of Hezbollah and Iran.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he had told dozens of his counterparts worldwide that Israel did “not seek a full-scale war” but would “do whatever it takes to protect our citizens”.

Not long after the Israeli strikes, Hezbollah said it had targeted and hit 11 Israeli military facilities in Israel and the occupied Golan Heights with more than 320 Katyusha rockets.

It described the barrage as a response to the assassination of senior military commander Fuad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut on 30 July.

The group said the operation had been “completed and accomplished” and it dismissed as “empty” Israel’s statements that its strikes on Sunday had thwarted a larger attack.

Video footage showed explosions in the sky as incoming rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defence system.

Later, the IDF announced that an Israeli Navy soldier had fallen “during combat in northern Israel”, without providing further details.

Israeli media say he was killed in an incident involving a Hezbollah drone and an Iron Dome interceptor in the vicinity of a Dvora patrol boat, about 4km from the Lebanese border.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address on Sunday evening that the group had targeted a military intelligence base about 110km (68 miles) into Israeli territory, which was only 1.5km (0.9 miles) away from Tel Aviv.

He said Hezbollah had been able to carry out its attack as planned, and all drones had been launched successfully, entering Israeli airspace, according to a Reuters translation.

He warned that the group would respond again if the results were deemed to be not enough.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati – whose government has little influence over Hezbollah – said he was “holding a series of contacts with Lebanon’s friends to stop the escalation”.

He called for a halt to the “Israeli aggression” and the implementation of the UN Security Council resolution which ended the 2006 war.

Mr Mikati also emphasised Lebanon’s support for international efforts to broker a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the hope was that the latest fighting would not lead to a regional war.

The US sees an agreement as key to de-escalating tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border because Hezbollah has said it will only stop the hostilities once the fighting in Gaza ends.

The world’s oldest living man has declared he has no “special secrets” to pass on about his longevity as he celebrated turning 112.

John Tinniswood, who was born in Liverpool on 26 August 1912, told the Guinness World Records he had “no idea at all” why he had lived so long.

The lifelong Liverpool fan, who lives at a care home in Southport, became the world’s oldest living man in April when 114-year-old Juan Vicente Pérez Mora died.

He said he had been “quite active as a youngster” and did “a lot of walking”, but believed he was “no different” to anyone else, adding: “You either live long or you live short and you can’t do much about it.”

Mr Tinniswood, who was born the year the Titanic sank, said he would be taking turning 112 “in my stride like anything else”.

“Why I’ve lived that long, I have no idea at all,” he said. “I can’t think of any special secrets I have.

“I was quite active as a youngster, I did a lot of walking… whether that had something to do with it, I don’t know.

“But to me, I’m no different. No different at all.”

Mr Tinniswood was born 20 years after his favourite football club Liverpool was founded and has lived through all but two of the Reds’ 66 top flight trophies, having missed the first two league titles in 1901 and 1906.

He was two at the outbreak of World War One and had just celebrated his 27th birthday when World War Two began.

He served in an administrative role for the Army Pay Corps, locating stranded soldiers and organising food supplies, and is now the world’s oldest surviving male WWII veteran.

He met his wife, Blodwen, at a dance in Liverpool, and they married in 1942.

Their daughter Susan was born in 1943 and the couple enjoyed 44 years together before Mrs Tinniswood died in 1986.

After WWII, he worked as an accountant for Shell and BP before retiring in 1972.

He said that beyond eating a portion of fish and chips every Friday, he did not follow any particular regime.

“I eat what they give me and so does everybody else,” he said. “I don’t have a special diet.”

Since turning 100 in 2012, he has received an annual birthday card from the monarch – first from the late Queen Elizabeth II, who was his junior by almost 14 years, and then from King Charles III.

Asked whether he thought the world had changed much since his childhood, he said it was “no better in my opinion, or hardly any better, than it was then”.

“Probably in some places it is, but in other places it’s worse,” he added.

The oldest man ever was Jiroemon Kimura from Japan, who lived to the age of 116 years 54 days and died in 2013.

The world’s oldest living woman, and oldest living person, is Japan’s 116-year-old Tomiko Itooka.

A “right to disconnect” rule has come into effect in Australia, offering relief to people who feel forced to take calls or read messages from employers after they finish their day’s work.

The new law allows employees to ignore communications after hours if they choose to, without fear of being punished by their bosses.

A survey published last year estimated that Australians worked on average two hundred and eighty one hours of unpaid overtime annually.

More than 20 countries, mainly in Europe and Latin America, have similar rules.

The law does not ban employers from contacting workers after hours.

Instead, it gives staff the right not to reply unless their refusal is deemed unreasonable.

Under the rules, employers and employees should try to resolve disputes among themselves. If that is unsuccessful in finding a resolution Australia’s Fair Work Commission (FWC) can step in.

The FWC can then order the employer to stop contacting the employee after hours.

If it finds an employee’s refusal to respond is unreasonable it can order them to reply.

Failure to comply with FWC orders can result in fines of up to A$19,000 ($12,897; £9,762) for an employee or up to A$94,000 for a company.

Organisations representing workers have welcomed the move.

It “will empower workers to refuse unreasonable out-of-hours work contact and enabling greater work-life balance”, The Australian Council of Trade Unions said.

A workplace expert told BBC News that the new rules would also help employers.

“Any organisation that has staff who have better rest and who have better work-life-balance are going to have staff who are less likely to have sick days, less likely to leave the organisation”, said John Hopkins from Swinburne University of Technology.

“Anything that benefits the employee, has benefits for the employer as well.”

However, there was a mixed reaction to the new law from employees.

“I think it’s actually really important that we have laws like this,” advertising industry worker, Rachel Abdelnour, told Reuters.

“We spend so much of our time connected to our phones, connected to our emails all day, and I think that it’s really hard to switch off as it is.”

Others, however, do not feel the new rules will make much of a difference to them.

“I think it’s an excellent idea. I hope it catches on. I doubt it’ll catch on in our industry, to tell the truth though,” David Brennan, a worker in the financial industry, told the news agency,

“We’re well paid, we’re expected to deliver, and we feel we have to deliver 24 hours a day.”

Emergency workers in south Iceland are working by hand to try to rescue two foreign tourists missing after ice collapsed during a visit to a glacier, police say.

First responders received a call just before 15:00 (Iceland observes GMT) on Sunday about the collapse in the Breidamerkurjökull glacier.

The two missing were among 25 people visiting an ice cave along with a guide. Two people were seriously injured in the incident.

“The conditions are very difficult on the ground,” said local police chief Sveinn Kristján Rúnarsson. “It’s in the glacier. It’s hard to get equipment there… It’s bad. Everything is being done by hand.”

Local news outlets reported that 200 people were working on the rescue operation which would continue into the night.

Speaking on Icelandic TV, Chief Superintendent Rúnarsson said police had been unable to contact the two missing people.

“So we don’t know what the situation is but two others who were freed are badly injured,” he added.

While the conditions were “difficult”, the weather was “fair”, he said.

Confirming that all those involved were foreign tourists, he said there was nothing to suggest that the trip to the cave should not have taken place.

“Ice cave tours happen almost the whole year,” he said

“These are experienced and powerful mountain guides who run these trips. It’s always possible to be unlucky. I trust these people to assess the situation – when it’s safe or not safe to go, and good work has been done there over time. This is a living land, so anything can happen.”

The police chief was quoted as saying that people had been standing in a ravine between cave mouths when an ice wall collapsed.

Breidamerkurjökull is a glacial tongue which extends from the Vatnajökull glacier to the Jökulsárlón lagoon. The glacial tongue is famed for its ice caves, with groups offering tours.

A British national who was working in eastern Ukraine as part of a Reuters news team was killed in a missile strike on a hotel on Saturday, the agency has confirmed.

Safety advisor Ryan Evans was one of six Reuters employees staying at the Hotel Sapphire in the city of Kramatorsk – which is under Ukrainian control but near the front line – when it was hit.

Ukrainian authorities said the hotel was struck by a Russian missile. Russia has not commented.

In a statement, a Reuters spokesperson said the agency had been “devastated” to learn of Mr Evans’s death.

“We are urgently seeking more information about the attack, including by working with the authorities in Kramatorsk, and we are supporting our colleagues and their families,” it said.

“We send our deepest condolences and thoughts to Ryan’s family and loved ones. Ryan has helped so many of our journalists cover events around the world; we will miss him terribly.”

It added that two other members of the team had been hospitalised by the strike and that one of them was being treated for serious injuries.

The National Police of Ukraine said earlier that the body of a 40-year-old British man was recovered from the rubble of a hotel at 18:35 local time (16:35 BST) on Sunday after a 19-hour search.

Writing on Telegram, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky sent his “condolences to [the] family and friends” of the man killed.

“This is the daily Russian terror that continues,” he said.

Earlier, Reuters released footage showing parts of the hotel completely destroyed by the strike, with firefighters attempting to pick through the rubble.

The Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office wrote in a statement that the hotel had likely been hit with a short-range Iskander-M missile.

Kramatorsk is only about 20km (12 miles) from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, and has come under regular attacks, with civilians killed, including celebrated Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina.

The Russian military has been making slow but steady advances in the east in recent months, with Ukraine’s recent offensive into Russia seen as an attempt to draw troops away from the eastern front line.

An anthropomorphic monkey and a campaign against “feminist propaganda” set the video gaming community alight this week, following the release of the most successful Chinese title of all time.

Many players were furious after the company behind Black Myth: Wukong sent them a list of topics to avoid while livestreaming the game, including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

Still, within 24 hours of its release on Tuesday, it became the second most-played game ever on streaming platform Steam, garnering more than 2.1 million concurrent players and selling more than 4.5 million copies.

The game, based on the classic 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, is being seen as a rare example of popular media broadcasting Chinese stories on an international stage.

Black Myth: Wukong is a single-player action game where players take on the role of “the Destined One”- an anthropomorphic monkey with supernatural powers.

The Destined One is based on the character of Sun Wukong, or the Monkey King, a key character in Journey to the West.

That novel, considered one of the greats of Chinese literature, draws heavily from Chinese mythology as well as Confucianism, Taoist and Buddhist folklore.

It has inspired hundreds of international films, TV shows and cartoons, including the popular Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z and the 2008 Chinese-American fantasy film The Forbidden Kingdom.

First announced via a hugely popular teaser trailer in August 2020, Black Myth launched on Tuesday after four years of anticipation.

It is the Chinese video game industry’s first AAA release – a title typically given to big-budget games from major companies.

High-end graphics, sophisticated game design and hot-blooded hype have all contributed to its success – as well as the size of China’s gaming community, which is the largest in the world.

“It’s not just a Chinese game targeting the Chinese market or the Chinese-speaking world,” Haiqing Yu, a professor at Australia’s RMIT University, whose research specialises in the sociopolitical and economic impact of China’s digital media, told the BBC.

“Players all over the world [are playing] a game that has a Chinese cultural factor.”

This has become a huge source of national pride in the country.

The Department of Culture and Tourism in Shanxi Province, an area that includes many locations and set pieces featured in the game, released a video on Tuesday that showcased the real-world attractions, triggering a surge in tourism dubbed “Wukong Travel”.

Videos posted on TikTok in the wake of Black Myth’s release show tourists flooding temples and shrines featured in the game, in what one X user characterised as a “successful example of cultural rediscovery”.

Niko Partners, a company that researches and analyses video games markets and consumers in Asia, similarly pointed out that Black Myth “helps showcase Chinese mythology, traditions, culture and real-life locations in China to the world”.

Ahead of Black Myth’s release, some content creators and streamers revealed that a company affiliated with its developer had sent them a list of topics to avoid talking about while livestreaming the game: including “feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse”.

While it is not clear what was precisely meant by “feminist propaganda”, a widely circulated report by video game publication IGN in November alleged a history of sexist and inappropriate behaviour from employees of Game Science, the studio behind Black Myth.

Other topics designated as “Don’ts” in the document, which has been widely shared on social media and YouTube, included politics, Covid-19, and China’s video game industry policies.

The directive, which was sent out by co-publisher Hero Games, has stoked controversy outside China.

Multiple content creators refused to review the game, claiming its developers were trying to censor discussion and stifle freedom of speech.

Others chose to directly defy the warnings.

One creator with the username Moonmoon launched a Twitch stream of Black Myth titled “Covid-19 Isolation Taiwan (Is a Real Country) Feminism Propaganda”. Another streamer, Rui Zhong, discussed China’s one-child policy on camera while playing the game.

On Thursday, Chinese social media platform Weibo banned 138 users who were deemed to be violating its guidelines when discussing Black Myth.

According to an article on the state-run Global Times news site, a number of the banned Weibo users were “deviating from discussing the game itself but instead using it as a platform for spreading ‘gender opposition,’ ‘personal attacks’, and other irrational comments”.

While the controversy has attracted a lot of attention in international media and online, it has not really dented or detracted from Black Myth’s overwhelmingly positive reception.

The game made $53m in presales alone, with another 4.5 million copies sold within 24 hours of its release. Within the same timeframe it broke the record for the most-played single-player title ever released on Steam.

On platforms like Weibo, Reddit and YouTube, and elsewhere, reams of comments are celebrating the game’s success. Many suggest that the fallout from the controversies surrounding the game’s release has been overblown.

Ms Yu agreed, describing Black Myth as an “industry and overall market success”.

“When it comes to Chinese digital media and communication platforms, of course people cannot avoid talking about censorship,” she said. “Black Myth is… an example of how to tell the Chinese story well, and how to expand Chinese cultural influence globally. I don’t see any censorship there.”

She also pointed out that apparent attempts to steer or censor what reviewers said were unlikely to have come from Chinese officials themselves. More likely, Ms Yu suggested, is that the list of “Dos” and “Don’ts” came from a company that was trying to keep itself out of trouble.

“The company issues their notification so if anybody from the central government comes to have a chat with the company, the company can say, ‘look, I already told them. I can’t stop people from saying what they want to say.’

“They have basically, to use the colloquial term, covered their own ass,” she concluded. “I view it as a politically correct gesture to the Chinese censors, rather than a real directive coming from the top down.”

Messaging app Telegram has said its CEO Pavel Durov, who was detained in France on Saturday, has “nothing to hide”.

Mr Durov was arrested at an airport north of Paris under a warrant for offences related to the app, according to officials.

The investigation is reportedly about insufficient moderation, with Mr Durov accused of failing to take steps to curb criminal uses of Telegram. The app is accused of failure to co-operate with law enforcement over drug trafficking, child sexual content and fraud.

Telegram said in a statement that “its moderation is within industry standards and constantly improving”.

“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” the app said.

Telegram said Mr Durov travels in Europe frequently and added that it abides by European Union laws, including the Digital Services Act, which aims to ensure a safe and accountable online environment.

“Almost a billion users globally use Telegram as means of communication and as a source of vital information,” the app’s statement read.

“We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation. Telegram is with you all.”

Judicial sources quoted by AFP news agency say Mr Durov’s detention was extended on Sunday and could last as long as 96 hours.

Pavel Durov, 39, was born in Russia and now lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based. He holds citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France.

Telegram is particularly popular in Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union states.

The app was banned in Russia in 2018, after a previous refusal by him to hand over user data. The ban was reversed in 2021.

Telegram is ranked as one of the major social media platforms after Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Wechat.

Mr Durov founded Telegram in 2013. He left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with government demands to shut down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he sold.

Russia still regards Mr Durov as a Russian citizen. Its foreign ministry said the Russian embassy to France had “immediately taken the steps required in such cases to clarify the situation around the Russian citizen, despite not having received a request from the businessman’s representatives”.

Then embassy itself said it was seeking to “clarify the reasons for the detention and to provide for the protection of Mr Durov’s rights and facilitate consular access”.

It added that the French authorities had not been co-operating with Russian officials.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova posted on Telegram asking whether Western human rights NGOs would be silent on Mr Durov’s arrest, after they criticised Russia’s decision to “create obstacles” to the work of Telegram in Russia in 2018.

Telegram allows groups of up to 200,000 members, which critics have argued makes it easier for misinformation to spread, and for users to share conspiracist, neo-Nazi, paedophilic, or terror-related content.

In the UK, the app was scrutinised for hosting far-right channels that were instrumental in organising the violent disorder in English cities earlier this month.

Telegram did remove some groups, but overall its system of moderating extremist and illegal content is significantly weaker than that of other social media companies and messenger apps, say cybersecurity experts.

An area of farmland in County Louth is to be examined for the remains of Captain Robert Nairac, who was abducted and murdered by the IRA while working undercover.

It is the first search for his remains since he was shot and secretly buried in May 1977.

The search has been organised by the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains (ICLVR).

It said it has “sufficient credible information” to begin a search of private land in the Faughart area near Dundalk.

Capt Nairac, 29, was abducted from a pub at Dromintee in South Armagh.

He was then taken across the Irish border to Flurry Bridge, where he was beaten and shot dead.

The location of his remains has remained a mystery.

In recent years, there has been a number of appeals for information made by the ICLVR.

It was established by the British and Irish governments in 1999 to find the Disappeared – 17 individuals murdered by republicans during the Troubles and secretly buried.

The remains of 13 victims have been found to date.

The ICLVR’S lead investigator, Jon Hill, said: “Robert Nairac is one of the highest profile Disappeared and yet his case is one in which we have had very little to go on.

“We believe that we do now have sufficient credible information to warrant a search.”

The precise location has not been disclosed.

Mr Hill added that “neither the landowner nor the tenant” have any connection to the decision to search the location.

The area is said to be less than one acre in size.

Mr Hill continued: “We are not time-limited but given the relatively small area I do not anticipate a protracted search period of many months.

“The Nairac family have been told that a search is about to commence and we will of course keep them informed of any developments.

“I am not going to put a number on the degree of confidence that we have that we will find his remains but if they are there we have the skills, ability and experience to find them.”

Kenny Donaldson, director of the South East Fermanagh Foundation, said the “murder and disappearance of Captain Robert Nairac remains a talking point in almost every home across south Armagh and indeed much further afield”.

“At the heart of all of this is a grieving family who have been defied their basic right to have Robert’s remains and to progress a Christian burial,” he added.

“We pray that the new information which has come forward turns out to be credible.”

The search location is within a wider area of significant archaeological interest.

The Hill of Faughart has been identified as a 14th century battle site.

The ICLVR said it has the co-operation of the National Monuments Service.

The commission has previously dismissed rumours that Capt Nairac’s body was disposed of in a meat processing plant.

It also described claims he had been involved in a number of terrorists incidents, such as the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, as “wild allegations”.

Listen to Assume Nothing: The secret search for Captain Nairac on BBC Sounds here.

German authorities have identified the man who confessed to a mass knife attack as a suspected member of the Islamic State group (IS).

Prosecutors named the man as Issa Al H, omitting his surname because of Germany’s privacy laws. The 26-year-old had given himself up and admitted to the stabbings, police said.

Three people were killed and another eight injured during Friday’s attack in the city of Solingen, during a festival to celebrate its 650-year history.

On Saturday, IS claimed that it was behind the attack.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz had described it as an “horrific act”.

Those killed were two men aged 56 and 67, and a 56-year-old woman, officials said. Four of those wounded are still in a serious condition. All of the victims were stabbed in the neck, police said.

“The man we’ve really been looking for the whole day has just been taken into custody,” Herbert Reul, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, told ARD public TV late on Saturday.

Germany’s Bild and Spiegel news websites reported that the suspect surrendered himself in dirty blood-stained clothes.

Issa Al H is under investigation for murder, attempted murder and “strong suspicions of belonging to a terrorist group abroad”, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

He is a Syrian national, police and prosecutors confirmed, and German media reported that he arrived in the country in December 2022, after leaving war-torn Syria.

Bild reported that special task force (SEK) officers stormed a refugee centre that the suspect was associated with, detaining another person there.

Police also arrested a 15-year-old boy who is alleged to have known about the attack in advance.

The refugee centre is located about 300m (984ft) from Fronhof – Solingen’s central market square where the attack happened – according to Bild.

Solingen – a city famous for its steel industry – has about 160,000 inhabitants. It lies about 25km (15 miles) east of Düsseldorf.

The city’s authorities asked people to leave the Fronhof area after the attack at about 22:00 local time (21:00 BST) on Friday.

The planned three-day celebrations of the city anniversary – for which about 75,000 people had been expected – were cancelled.

Solingen Mayor Tim Kurzbach later said that “all of us in Solingen are in shock, horror and great sadness.

“It breaks my heart that an attack has happened in our city. I have tears in my eyes when I think of those we’ve lost.

“I pray for all those still fighting for their lives. Also my greatest sympathy for all those who had to experience this, these images must have been horrific.”

People have been bringing flowers and candles to the site of the stabbing that shocked the entire country.

Players from Germany’s top Bundesliga football league wore black armbands during Saturday’s matches.

The attack may fuel an already fraught debate about immigration and asylum in Germany.

It comes ahead of key regional elections in the country’s east next week, where the far right is eyeing gains.

Archer Sheetal Devi picks up her bow, loads an arrow and carefully aims at her target, about 50m (164ft) away, with a look of immense focus on her face.

So does her opponent, who is playing a practice game with her at a training academy in India.

The difference is that Devi is seated on a chair. She raises the bow with her right leg, pulls back the string using her right shoulder and releases the arrow using the strength of her jaw.

What never changes throughout this process is Devi’s calm demeanour.

The 17-year-old from Jammu district was born with phocomelia, a rare congenital disorder, making her the world’s first – and only active – female archer to compete without arms.

The Asian Para Games gold medallist is now gearing up for the Paralympics, which begin on 28 August in Paris.

“I am inspired to win the gold,” Devi said. “Whenever I see the medals I have won [until now], I feel inspired to win more. I have only just started.”

Around 4,400 athletes from across the world will take part in 22 sports at the Paralympics this year.

Archery has been a part of the Games since the inaugural edition in 1960. While countries such as Great Britain, USA and South Korea have dominated the medal count, India has accounted for a solitary bronze medal across 17 editions.

Para-archers are grouped into categories depending on the severity of their impairment.

The distances they have to shoot also differ based on the classification system, which then determines whether an archer can use assistive devices such as wheelchairs and release aids.

Archers competing in the W1 category are wheelchair users with impairment in at least three out of the four limbs with either a clear loss of muscle strength, coordination or range of movement.

Those competing in the open category have an impairment in either the top or bottom half or one side of their bodies and use a wheelchair, or have a balance impairment and shoot standing or resting on a stool. Competitors use either recurve or compound bows, depending on the event.

Devi is currently ranked first in the world in the compound open women’s category.

In 2023, she won a silver at the Para-Archery World Championship, which helped her qualify for the Paris Games.

At Paris, she will face tough competition from opponents including world number three Jane Karla Gogel and the reigning World Championship winner Oznur Cure.

But those who know her say she was destined to play the sport – and win.

“Sheetal [Devi] did not choose archery, archery chose Sheetal,” says Abhilasha Chaudhary, one of Devi’s two national coaches.

Born in a small village to a farming family, Devi had not seen a bow and arrow till she was 15.

The turning point came in 2022 when she visited the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board sports complex in Jammu’s Katra – about 200km (124 miles) from home – on the recommendation of an acquaintance.

There, she met Chaudhary and her other coach, Kuldeep Vedwan, who introduced her to the world of archery. She soon shifted to a training camp in Katra city.

The coaches said they were fascinated by Devi’s grit.

The challenge was monumental, but their vision – to make the most of the strength in Devi’s legs and upper body – eventually prevailed.

Devi said the strength came from years of using her feet for most activities, including writing and climbing trees with her friends.

Yet, her decision to try a career in archery did not come without its doubts.

“I felt this was impossible,” she said. “My legs used to ache a lot but somehow I did it.”

In her low moments, Devi would take inspiration from American archer Matt Stutzman, who famously shoots with his feet using a customised device.

Devi’s family could not afford a similar machine, so her coach Vedwan took it upon himself to create a bow for her.

He used locally-sourced materials and customised it as per her needs at a local forge shop.

The gear includes an upper-body strap made from materials used in bag belts and a small instrument which Devi holds in her mouth to help release the arrow.

The real challenge, however, was to figure out how to use more than just her legs to form a well-rounded, sustainable technique.

“We had to manage how to balance the strength in her legs, modify it and use it technically,” Chaudhary explains. “Devi has strong legs but we had to figure out how she would use her back to shoot.”

The trio then committed to a measured training routine, which began with Devi using a rubber band or TheraBand instead of a bow, to aim at targets placed at just a 5m distance.

As her confidence grew, so did the level of difficulty, and within just four months of starting out, she began to use a proper bow and hit targets at a 50m distance, the competition standard for the compound open category.

Within just two years, Devi went from learning to simply shoot an arrow at small distances to hitting six 10s in a row in the final of the women’s individual compound event at the Asian Para Games in 2023 to win the gold medal.

For context, 10 is the maximum number of points a player can win for a single shot by hitting the bullseye on the target board.

“Even when I shoot a nine, I’m only thinking about how I can convert that into a 10 on the next shot,” Devi said.

It’s not just about hard work – there were also sacrifices along the way.

Devi said she hasn’t gone home even once since she moved to Katra two years ago to train.

She now plans to return only after the Paralympics end, “hopefully with a medal”.

Either way, she is determined to give her best shot.

“I believe that no one has any limitations, it’s just about wanting something enough and working as hard as you can,” she said.

“If I can do it, anyone else can.”