US prosecutors have issued new charges against former President Donald Trump for his alleged attempts to interfere in the 2020 election after he lost to Joe Biden.

They are in response to a US Supreme Court ruling last month that said presidents enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts while in office.

The revised indictment lays out the same four criminal counts against Trump, but they now relate to his status as a political candidate rather than a sitting president.

Trump has denied the election interference allegations, though he has maintained his claim – without evidence – that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The new indictment, brought by Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith, leaves in place the four crimes Trump is accused of committing: Conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.

Trump has previously pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The former president’s personal lawyer – Todd Blanche – referred the BBC to the Trump campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the new indictment was “an effort to resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt” and “distract the American People” from the election.

He called for it to be “dismissed IMMEDIATELY”.

A source close to Trump’s legal team told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that the new indictment “was not a surprise”.

“This is what the government is supposed to do based on what the Supreme Court did,” the source said. “It doesn’t change our position that we believe Smith’s case is flawed and it should be dismissed.”

The new charging document – which was slimmed down from 45 to 36 pages – re-works the language of the allegations and refines the ways it argues that the former president allegedly committed these crimes to comport with the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

For example, the new indictment drops the claim that Trump tried to pressure justice department officials to work to overturn his defeat. The high court ruled that Trump’s direction to justice officials was not illegal.

The special counsel’s office explained the reason for the new indictment in a statement on Tuesday.

“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v. United States,” the office said.

The justice department declined to comment further.

The new charging document argues that Trump acted as a private citizen – and not as president – when he undertook the alleged scheme to sway the election.

“The Defendant had no official responsibilities related to the certification proceeding, but he did have a personal interest as a candidate in being named the winner of the election,” reads one new line in the indictment.

Another new line refers to a lawsuit filed by his campaign in Georgia. The old language said the suit was “filed in his name”, but the new indictment says it was “filed in his capacity as a candidate for president”.

The new indictment also appears to have removed the charges against Jeffrey Clark – a former justice department official who played a key role in the so-called fake electors scheme, according to prosecutors.

The fake electors scheme was an attempt to interfere in the Electoral College system that decides presidential elections. It centred on an attempt to persuade Republican-controlled state legislatures in seven states to select Republican electors or not name any electors in states that Mr Biden won.

The falsified certificates were then transferred to the US Senate in an effort to have their votes counted in the place of the real electors, and overturn Mr Biden’s win.

Mr Clark was not named in either indictment, but has been identified in the media through public records.

The new indictment leaves in place several key allegations against Trump, including that he attempted to persuade Vice-President Mike Pence to obstruct Mr Biden’s election certification.

In last month’s Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that any conversations between Trump and Mr Pence would probably fall under the category of official acts.

“Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution,” he wrote, adding that it remains to be seen whether the government can rebut “that presumption of immunity”.

The new indictment shows that Mr Smith interpreted the US Supreme Court ruling to mean that his case could still move forward, said Daniel Charles Richman, a constitutional law expert at Columbia Law School.

But whether it would satisfy the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity framework remains unclear, the law professor said, as “the Court was painfully vague as to what private conduct done by a president can be charged criminally”.

The new indictment would not necessarily expedite the case, either, Mr Richman told the BBC. He doubted that it would be heard before the election.

The CBS News source close to Trump’s legal team said that the former president’s lawyers would ask for more time to prepare for the case. They said it would likely delay the start of the trial if the judge agrees.

This case came together after Mr Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022 to oversee two federal investigations into Trump: The election interference case and another case accusing the ex-president of taking classified documents back to his Florida home after leaving office.

On Monday, Mr Smith’s team appealed against a Florida judge’s decision to dismiss the confidential documents case.

“The district court deviated from binding Supreme Court precedent, misconstrued the statutes that authorised the special counsel’s appointment, and took inadequate account of the longstanding history of Attorney General appointments of special counsels,” the special counsel’s team wrote in their appeal.

Both cases face uncertain futures after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last month.

If Trump defeats Democrat Kamala Harris, he is widely expected to order the justice department to drop all the federal charges that he faces.

A new flashpoint has emerged in the ongoing maritime dispute between China and the Philippines, with both countries clashing over yet another spot in the South China Sea.

Both China and the Philippines have staked their claims on various islands and zones in the Sea – their dispute increasingly escalating over the years with more vessel collisions, scuffles, and allegations of armed threats.

But last week, things came to a head when Beijing and Manila’s vessels collided near the Sabina Shoal- both accusing the other of ramming them on purpose.

The shoal, claimed by China as Xianbin Jiao and as Escoda Shoal by the Philippines, is located some 75 nautical miles from the Philippines’ west coast and 630 nautical miles from China.

On 19 August, several Chinese and Philippine vessels collided near the shoal in the disputed Spratly Islands – an area rich in oil and gas, which has been claimed by both countries for years.

The Chinese coast guard said that the Philippine vessel “deliberately collided” into them, while the Philippines said the Chinese vessels were conducting “aggressive manoeuvres”.

A second round of collisions took place on Sunday, with both sides once again blaming each other. Several other countries including the UK, Japan, Australia and South Korea, as well as the EU, have criticised China’s actions.

On Monday, the Philippines said 40 Chinese ships prevented two of their boats from conducting a “humanitarian mission” to restock the Teresa Magbuana, a Philippine coast guard ship deployed months earlier to the shoal.

The Philippines suspects China is attempting to reclaim land at Sabina Shoal. It has pointed to underwater mounds of crushed coral on Sabina’s sandbars, which its coast guard filmed, saying Beijing is using that material to expand the shoal. Chinese state media has called such accusations “groundless”.

Authorities sent the Teresa Magbuana to Sabina in April as part of a prolonged presence they plan to maintain at the shoal. Manila sees it as key to their efforts to explore the Spratlys for oil and gas.

China meanwhile sees the presence of the Teresa Magbuana as evidence of the Philippines’ intentions to occupy the shoal.

A recent commentary by Chinese state news outlet Xinhua pointed to a decrepit World War Two era ship grounded by the Philippines in 1999 on the Second Thomas Shoal, known in Chinese as the Ren’ai Jiao.

A handful of soldiers are still stationed there and require regular rations. For years, the ship has been a source of constant friction between both countries, with China routinely attempting to block re-supply missions to the ship.

“25 years on, it is still there. Clearly, the Philippines is attempting to repeat this scenario at Xianbin Jiao,” said the commentary.

“China will never be deceived by the Philippines again.”

There has been a string of dangerous encounters in recent months as the two sides sought to enforce their claims on disputed reefs and outcrops, including the Second Thomas Shoal and the Scarborough Shoal.

The collisions usually arise from the cat-and-mouse games the boats engage in, as they attempt to chase the other side away.

China has increasingly blasted powerful water cannon and lasers at Philippine ships, with the Filipinos also accusing the Chinese of boarding their boats, leading to scuffles, as well as confiscating items and puncturing their inflatable vessels.

One of the latest accusations from Manila was that Chinese coast guard personnel armed with knives, spears and swords boarded one of their military ships and threatened their soldiers.

“We are struggling against a more powerful adversary,” the Philippines defence chief Gilberto Teodoro said on Tuesday, while appealing to the international community to issue “a strong call out against China”.

So far there have been no fatalities, though the Philippines says several of its soldiers have sustained injuries. But President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has warned that any Filipino deaths resulting from China’s actions would be considered an “act of war”.

Observers worry their dispute could eventually spark a larger confrontation in the South China Sea.

A previous attempt by the Philippines to get the United Nations to arbitrate ended with the decision that China had no lawful claims within its so-called nine dash line, the boundary it uses to claim a large swathe of the South China Sea. Beijing has refused to recognise the ruling.

But in recent weeks both countries have made an attempt to de-escalate the immediate conflicts out at sea.

Last month they agreed to allow the Philippines to restock the outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal with food, supplies and personnel. Since then this has taken place with no reported clashes.

The incidents at Sabina Shoal however raise the question of whether such détentes are effective when the dispute can simply shift to a new site.

Jake Sullivan has been welcomed to China on his first visit as US national security adviser. He will hold talks with Foreign Minister Wang Yi as the two countries try to stabilise relations.

Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang have met four times over 16 months in Vienna, Malta, Washington and Bangkok. Their last meeting in January was shortly after a high-stakes summit between Presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden that sought to reset frosty ties.

This week’s talks – scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday – signal that China is still a priority for the Biden administration, even as the retiring president enters his final months in office.

Both Mr Sullivan and Mr Wang have already acknowledged a need to find common ground after disagreements between their nations.

Could another presidential summit be on the cards?

The White House is trying not to explicitly link Mr Sullivan’s trip to the US presidential election. But it’s hard to ignore the timing.

If Mr Sullivan is able to lay the groundwork for a final Biden-Xi summit, his trip would tie up the ends of the US president’s most consequential – and fraught – foreign policy relationship.

US and Chinese diplomats always acknowledge that talks between Washington and Beijing are never easy. And there is a lot to talk about.

With the unexpected turn the US election has taken with Biden bowing out in favour of Kamala Harris, China is watching closely for what the next presidency might have in store.

Donald Trump has made it clear he will raise tariffs further on Chinese goods, potentially deepening the trade war he kicked off in 2019.

While Mr Biden’s administration saw merit in diplomacy, he didn’t reverse Trump-era tariffs and has added more – in May he announced steep duties on Chinese-made electric cars, solar panels, and steel.

Mr Biden has also strengthened alliances across Asia to combat China’s rising influence and beefed up Washington’s military presence – which, in turn, has rattled Beijing.

So far, the Harris campaign has not given many clues about how she plans to manage the relationship with China.

And the White House has made clear that Mr Sullivan’s visit is meant to continue the work of the Biden administration, rather than set the tone for the next president.

But China is likely looking ahead anyway.

Beijing will use this opportunity with Mr Sullivan to clarify its own priorities. It will hope that all parties in America are listening – China’s ministry of foreign affairs has described this as a “critical juncture” between the world’s two biggest economies.

For China, the red line is and always will be Taiwan. It claims the self-governing island and has repeatedly said it will not tolerate any signs that Washington is encouraging Taiwanese independence.

High-profile diplomatic visits, such as a controversial one by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2022, or recognition of Taiwan’s elections or its elected leaders, fall into that category.

Chinese state media has said Beijing will focus on expressing grave concerns, stating its position, and making serious demands on matters such as the “Taiwan question”.

China will also have some strong words for Mr Sullivan on trade. Beijing has described US tariffs on Chinese goods as “unreasonable” and has urged Washington to “stop politicising and securitising economic and trade issues” and “take more measures to facilitate people-to-people exchanges between the two countries”.

When he came to power, Mr Biden wanted to set ties with China on an even keel after what he saw as the chaos and unpredictability of the Trump White House.

His administration has wanted to “responsibly manage” rivalry with Beijing; to demonstrate American power and competition with China through stealth not bravado.

But that strategy has been upended amid the turbulence of events.

Last year, crisis engulfed the direct relationship when an American fighter jet shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over US territory.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have further sharpened the tone.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing in April with a warning – Washington would act if China did not stop supplying Russia with microchips and machine parts to build weapons used in its war in Ukraine.

He accused his Chinese counterparts of “helping to fuel the biggest threat” to European security since the Cold War.

His warning materialised with a raft of sanctions on Chinese firms over their alleged support of the Russian military.

This is a tricky subject that China keeps trying to bat away, but Washington is insistent, and Mr Sullivan is likely to bring it up again.

China’s increasing assertiveness in Asia has also made the US wary of the impact of those ties further afield – particularly with Iran, which allies itself with Moscow and also arms Israel’s adversaries.

Finally, in America, there is the devastating domestic impact of Chinese-manufactured “pre-cursor” chemicals to make synthetic opioids like fentanyl, overdoses of which are killing more Americans than ever and the crisis has laid waste to entire towns.

Last year’s summit between Mr Biden and Mr Xi in San Fransisco was meant to make progress on these issues.

Since then, despite the tariffs and the stern rhetoric, Washington and Beijing have acknowledged their differences – and reports of the two sides striking a deal on curbing fentanyl production are a good sign.

In April, when the BBC accompanied US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his visit to Shanghai and Beijing, the public elements of some of his meetings with senior Chinese officials felt like a steely stand-off.

It was a show of diplomatic strength meant for each side’s domestic audience. And this will undoubtedly be a part of Mr Sullivan’s trip too, as he tries to bolster Mr Biden’s diplomacy in the waning months of his presidency.

But these meetings serve another fundamental purpose – face-to-face time between two rival, inter-dependent economies as they battle mutual distrust and try to probe each other’s real intentions.

It seems that Jake Sullivan’s previous meetings with Wang Yi have quietly laid the groundwork for what both sides call “stable relations”.

In a recent speech at the Council of Foreign Relations in Washington, Mr Sullivan said that he and Mr Wang had “increasingly gotten to the point of setting aside the talking points and really having strategic conversations”.

He described the character of those conversations as “direct”, including one on the war in Ukraine.

“Both of us left feeling that we didn’t agree or see eye-to-eye on everything but that there was a lot of work to carry forward.”

A predator posing as a famous teenage YouTuber who blackmailed hundreds of girls around the globe into performing sex acts on camera has been jailed for 17 years in Australia.

Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed pleaded guilty to 119 charges, relating to 286 people from 20 countries, including the UK, the US, Japan and France. Two-thirds of his victims were aged under 16.

A Perth court heard the 29-year-old coerced them into a cycle of increasingly extreme abuse by threatening to send explicit messages and images of them to their loved ones.

Australian authorities say it is “one of the worst sextortion cases” in history.

“The callous disregard this man had for his victims around the world and their distress, humiliation and fear make it one of the most horrific sextortion cases prosecuted in Australia,” said Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner David McLean.

“This type of online exploitation and abuse is devastating and causes lifelong trauma.”

When handing down her sentence on Tuesday, Judge Amanda Burrows said Rasheed’s offence was of such magnitude there was “no comparable case” in the country, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Pretending to be a 15-year-old American internet star, Rasheed would strike up a conversation with his targets, before involving them in discussions about sexual fantasies.

He threatened to send their responses to friends and family unless they performed a series of escalating, “degrading” sex acts – which at times included family pets and other children in their home.

The court heard Rasheed had been involved in misogynistic “incel” communities online, and on several occasions had invited other people – in one case as many as 98 – to watch the distressing acts on a livestream.

Many of the children being extorted told him they were suicidal – one even sent images of self-harm. But Rasheed continued his blackmail despite their “obvious distress” and “extreme fear”, the judge said, according to the ABC.

He was caught after Australian authorities were contacted by Interpol and US investigators, and charged in 2020 after a police raid on his home.

Rasheed is already serving a five-year prison term for sexually abusing a 14-year-old twice in his car at a Perth park.

The court heard he was engaged in a sex offenders treatment program but Rasheed still represented a high risk of reoffending. He will be eligible to apply for parole in August 2033.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his troops’ incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is part of a “victory plan” that he will present to US President Joe Biden next month.

Speaking at a forum on Tuesday, President Zelensky said the success of the plan would depend on President Biden and on whether the US would give Ukraine “what is in this plan or not, [and] whether we will be free to use this plan, or not”.

“It may sound too ambitious for some, but it is an important plan for us,” he added, saying that he would also show the plan to both US presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

A number of Ukrainian troops made an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in early August, and Russia has so far seemingly been unable to repel them.

Speaking at the same forum, Ukraine’s Kyiv’s top military commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Ukraine now controls 1,294 sq km (500 sq miles) of Russian territory and 100 settlements – although these figures have not been verified by the BBC.

Gen Syrskyi said Ukraine had no intention of holding on to the territory and that one motivation for the incursion was to distract Russia’s forces away from their own offensive in eastern Ukraine. Russia is seeking to capture the town of Pokrovsk, which is an important hub and home to a key railway station.

President Zelensky also revealed that Ukraine had recently carried out the first successful test of a domestically-produced ballistic missile. He congratulated his country’s defence industry, but declined to share any more details of the missile.

Although Ukraine has already used some ballistic missiles against Russia that were provided by the US, it has been working to develop the domestic production of military hardware to diminish its dependency on Western aid.

However, for now, Ukraine mostly relies on military supplies from abroad to fight Russia and repel its attacks. At the forum, President Zelensky said that Ukraine had used some newly arrived F-16 fighter jets sent by Western countries in order to intercept some of the missiles fired by Russia in recent days – but that the country would need more jets.

For the past two nights, Russia has pummelled Ukraine with a barrage of drone and missile attacks which have left several people dead and caused blackouts in various areas of the country.

Such attacks show that Moscow has no intention to stop the war, President Zelensky said: “When they want [peace talks], they don’t launch 230 air strikes.”

Since the Kursk incursion, however, Russia has signalled it will not engage in any peace talks with Ukraine.

“The topic of negotiations at the moment has pretty much lost its relevance,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

Police in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata have fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of protesters demanding justice for the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at a state-run hospital earlier this month.

The discovery of the body of the 31-year-old sparked nationwide outrage over the crisis of violence against women.

On Tuesday, thousands marched to a government building in Kolkata, demanding the resignation of West Bengal’s Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee.

A hospital volunteer has been arrested in connection with the crime, which has now been handed over to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) after criticism of the local police’s slow progress.

The protesters chanted slogans and clashed with police, who used batons to disperse the crowd.

Namita Ghosh, a college student at the protest, told news agency AFP the crowd intended to “protest peacefully” before the baton charge.

A senior police official, speaking anonymously, said at least 100 protesters were arrested for “creating violence”.

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A series of protests have taken place since the killing on 9 August. The largest saw tens of thousands of women across West Bengal participating in the Reclaim the Night march on 14 August to demand “independence to live in freedom and without fear”.

But since then, some of the protests have escalated into chaotic political rallies, with police clashing with ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) demonstrators angry at the state government.

The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi but an opposition party in West Bengal, has accused Ms Banerjee’s government of fostering an unsafe environment for women, which they claim enabled crimes like the doctor’s murder.

Her half-naked body bearing extensive injuries was discovered in a seminar hall at RG Kar Medical College, where she had reportedly gone to rest during her shift.

India’s Supreme Court has said the incident had “shocked the conscience of the nation” and criticised authorities for their handling of the investigation.

Ms Banerjee’s government has announced a slew of measures for women’s safety at workplaces, including designated retiring rooms and CCTV-monitored “safe zones” at state-run hospitals.

More incidents of rape have made headlines in India since the woman’s death and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that “monstrous behaviour against women should be severely and quickly punished”.

The Israeli military says commandos have rescued from an underground tunnel in Gaza a Bedouin Arab hostage who was kidnapped by Hamas during the 7 October attack on Israel.

Kaid Farhan Elkadi, 52, was rescued in a “complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet domestic security service, according to a statement.

No further details could be published “due to considerations of the safety of our hostages, the security of our forces, and national security”, it said.

Mr Elkadi – the eighth hostage rescued by Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza – is in a stable condition in hospital, where he is undergoing examinations.

Photographs released by the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba showed him speaking to members of his family while sitting in a hospital armchair.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that he managed to escape his captors before being rescued, and that the soldiers attempted to understand whether he had been held with other hostages.

Mr Elkadi’s brother, Hatam, told Haaretz that he was “a little thin”.

“We told him that everything is fine and that everyone is waiting for him outside,” he said.

“We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. We hope that all hostages will get this moment, that they will all experience the same excitement and joy,” he added. “May all the hostages return, and may all the families feel this feeling.”

Mr Elkadi, a father of 11 and grandfather of one, is from a Bedouin village in the Rahat area of the Negev desert.

He worked for many years as a security guard at Kibbutz Magen, close to the Israel-Gaza border, where he was abducted 10 months ago.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a video announcement that he could not go into many details about the operation in which he was freed.

But he added that he could “share that Israeli commandos rescued [him] from an underground tunnel, following accurate intelligence”.

Footage released by the IDF showed Mr Elkadi sitting down, smiling and speaking to soldiers, including the commander of the 162nd Division, moments after his rescue.

A senior Israeli military official confirmed that troops were operating in “a complex underground system where hostages were suspected to be held”.

Mr Elkadi was alone in the tunnel when he was found by Israeli troops when he was rescued, the official added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had congratulated Mr Elkadi in a telephone call and told him that all Israelis were moved by the news.

“We are working relentlessly to return all of our hostages,” the statement quoted Mr Netanyahu as saying.

“We are doing this in two main ways: negotiations and rescue operations. The two of these together require our military presence on the ground, and constant military pressure.”

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum described the rescue as “miraculous”.

But it stressed that “military operations alone cannot free the remaining hostages who have suffered 326 days of abuse and terror”, and that “a negotiated deal is the only way forward”.

“We urgently call on the international community to maintain pressure on Hamas to accept the proposed deal and release all hostages.”

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 40,430 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 104 hostages still being held, including 34 who are presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Indirect talks have continued in Cairo in recent days, but so far there has been no sign of a breakthrough over key sticking points. They include Mr Netanyahu’s demand that Israel keep troops along Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Hamas has rejected.

Two other Bedouin Arabs – Yousef Zyadna and his son, Hamza – are among the remaining hostages who are still alive, while the body of a third, Mhamad el-Atrash, is still being held by Hamas.

Another Bedouin, Hisham al-Sayed, has been held captive in Gaza since 2015.

An oil tanker which was attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the Red Sea last week is still on fire and may be leaking oil, the US Pentagon says.

Attempts to salvage the Greek-owned and flagged MV Sounion have been thwarted by the Houthis, who have threatened more attacks, the Pentagon adds.

The ship is carrying more than 150,000 tonnes – or one million barrels – of crude oil, and a major spill has the potential to be among the largest from a ship in recorded history.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who control much of Yemen, say they have been attacking ships in the Red Sea for 10 months in support of the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

They have reportedly sunk two ships and killed at least two crew members in that time.

They have claimed – often falsely – that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

The Sounion was first hit by gunfire from two small boats last Wednesday, then struck by three unidentified projectiles, which sparked a fire and left it without engine power, the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) office said.

Its 25 crew members were rescued by a European warship a day later and transported to Djibouti.

The oil tanker was later attacked again – the Houthis posted a video purportedly showing them setting it on fire.

A US State Department statement on Saturday expressed concern about the attacks on the Sounion. It warned of a possible spill of oil four times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which released 257,000 barrels off the coast of Alaska.

On Tuesday Pentagon spokesman Maj-Gen Patrick Ryder said two tugs had been sent to salvage the stricken vessel but the Houthis had threatened to attack them as well.

He said the US was working with partners in the region to try to mitigate any potential environmental impact.

A 3,500-year-old jar has been accidentally smashed into pieces by a four-year-old boy during a trip to a museum in Israel.

The Hecht Museum in Haifa told the BBC the crockery dated back to the Bronze Age between 2200 and 1500BC – and was a rare artefact because it was so intact.

It had been on display near the entrance of the museum without glass, as the museum believes there is “special charm” in showing archaeological finds “without obstructions”.

The boy’s father, Alex, said his son “pulled the jar slightly” because he was “curious about what was inside”, causing it to fall.

Alex also said he was “in shock” to see his son next to the smashed jar and at first thought “it wasn’t my child that did it”.

However, after calming the boy down he spoke to the security guard, Alex told the BBC.

The Hecht Museum said the child has been invited back to the exhibition with his family for an organised tour after the incident happened a few days ago.

“There are instances where display items are intentionally damaged, and such cases are treated with great severity, including involving the police,” Lihi Laszlo from the museum told the BBC.

“In this case, however, this was not the situation. The jar was accidentally damaged by a young child visiting the museum, and the response will be accordingly.”

A specialist in conservation has also been appointed to restore the jar, and it will be returned to its spot “in a short time”.

The boy’s father Alex said they will feel “relieved” to see the jar restored but added they are “sorry” because “it will no longer be the same item”.

The museum told the BBC that “whenever possible, items are displayed without barriers or glass walls”.

And “despite the rare incident” the museum said it intends to continue this tradition.

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The jar was most likely originally intended to be used to carry local supplies, such as wine and olive oil.

It predates the time of the Biblical King David and King Solomon and is characteristic of the Canaan region on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

Similar items of pottery found during archaeological digs are usually broken or incomplete when unearthed, making this intact jar “an impressive find” when it was discovered, the museum added.

The Hecht Museum is in the grounds of the University of Haifa in northern Israel and collects items of archaeology and art.

Vice-President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz – the Democratic ticket for US president – have agreed to their first joint interview.

The two politicians will sit-down with CNN in Georgia for an interview that airs Thursday at 21:00 EDT (02:00 BST).

It will be the candidates’ first in-depth on-the-record conversation with a reporter since President Joe Biden exited the race and endorsed Ms Harris as his replacement more than five weeks ago.

Since the vice-president moved to the top of the ticket, Republicans have criticised her for appearing to avoid the press and accused her of leaving voters in the dark on her presidential plans.

The interview will be Ms Harris and Mr Walz’s first big test as running mates, and it provides an opportunity for them to quiet that criticism. It also fufills a vow the vice-president made to schedule a sit-down before the end of the month.

It follows the pair’s high-profile speeches at the star-studded Democratic National Convention in Chicago – a slickly produced and well-scripted party celebration – and Ms Harris will continue on to a bus tour of the battleground state of Georgia after the interview.

It will be one of the few opportunities for voters nationwide to hear more detail about the Harris-Walz campaign’s policy positions before election day, which is only 70 days away.

Republicans – as well as members of the media – have grown louder about the campaign’s few concrete policy positions or interviews during Ms Harris’s truncated and unprecedented run for president.

It has opened her campaign up to chiding remarks and insults from her opponents.

Trump said during a recent press conference at Mar-a-Lago that Ms Harris “can’t do an interview” because she was “barely competent”.

Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has scolded the media and Ms Harris for her press avoidance. He said earlier this month that it was “shameful” that Ms Harris had not “taken a single real question from a reporter”.

“She (Harris) is taking a basement strategy of running from reporters instead of getting in front of them and answering tough questions about her record and letting the American people know who she is.”

Mr Vance has frequently noted that both he and Trump have held multiple interviews and press conferences, often facing “hostile questions” from the press.

Vice-President Harris – who has enjoyed a campaign that has ridden high on “good vibes” thus far – has avoided some of the gaffes and blunders that the Republican ticket has suffered in front of the press, however.

That could be the point, as she had a few bad experiences with the press in her first two years as vice-president.

A poor interview in 2021 with NBC’s Lester Holt on immigration and the US southern border seemed to particularly have led to a limit of her press engagement thereafter.

It remains to be seen what effect this interview may have on Ms Harris’s campaign, as multiple national opinion polls show her leading Trump ahead of the November presidential election.

A Farleigh Dickinson University poll released last week suggest Ms Harris is beating Trump nationally by seven points, 50 percent to 43 percent.

It is a stark reversal of fortunes for Democrats, who were beginning to fall behind Republicans in multiple races when Mr Biden was the nominee.

Polls frequently indicated the president trailing his predecessor by several points as well.

In the Palestinian village of Battir, where ancient terraces are irrigated by a natural spring, life carries on as it has for centuries.

Part of a Unesco World Heritage site, Battir is known for its olive groves and vineyards. But now it is the latest flashpoint over settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has approved a new Jewish settlement here, taking away privately owned land for new settler houses and new outposts have been set up without even Israeli authorisation.

“They are stealing our land to build their dreams on our catastrophe,” says Ghassan Olyan, whose property is among that seized.

Unesco says it is concerned by the settlers’ plans around Battir, but the village is far from an isolated example. All settlements are seen as illegal under international law, although Israel disagrees.

“They are not caring about the international law, or local law, and even God’s law,” Mr Olyan says.

Last week, Israel’s domestic intelligence chief Ronen Bar wrote to ministers warning that Jewish extremists in the West Bank were carrying out acts of “terror” against Palestinians and causing “indescribable damage” to the country.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, there has been an acceleration in settlement growth in the occupied West Bank.

Extremists in Israel’s government boast that these changes will prevent an independent Palestinian state from ever being created.

There are fears, too, that they seek to prolong the war in Gaza to suit their goals.

Yonatan Mizrahi from Peace Now, an Israeli organisation that monitors settlement growth, says Jewish extremists in the West Bank are exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation, and making it harder than ever to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

He believes a “mix of rage and fear” in Israeli society after the 7 October attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed is driving settlers to seize more land, with fewer people questioning them.

A June survey by the Pew Research Center suggested that 40% of Israelis believed settlements made the country safer, up from 27% in 2013. Meanwhile, 35% of people polled said that the settlements hurt Israel’s security, down from 42%.

Mr Mizrahi worries that Jewish extremists in the West Bank are exacerbating an already tense and volatile situation, making it harder than ever to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. “I think it’s extremely dangerous,” he says. “It’s increasing the hate on both sides.”

Since the outbreak of the war, settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank has surged.

It had already been on the rise, but in the past 10 months the UN has documented around 1,270 attacks, compared with 856 in all of 2022.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, during the same period Israeli settler harassment has forced Palestinians out of at least 18 villages in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory between Israel and Jordan that was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and has been occupied ever since.

Between 7 October and August 2024, 589 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank – at least 570 by Israeli forces and at least 11 by settlers, according to the UN. They include some said to have been planning attacks as well as unarmed civilians. In the same period, Palestinians killed five settlers and nine members of Israel’s security forces.

This week, a Palestinian man aged 40 was reportedly shot dead after settlers and Israeli soldiers entered Wadi al-Rahhel, near Bethlehem. The Israeli military said stones had previously been thrown at an Israeli vehicle nearby.

Last month, a 22-year-old Palestinian man was killed when dozens of settlers rampaged through the village of Jit, prompting international condemnation. Israeli security forces have made four arrests and have described the incident as a “severe terror event”.

But the track record in such cases is one of virtual impunity. Israeli civil rights group Yesh Din found that, between 2005 and 2023, just 3% of official investigations into settler violence ended in a conviction.

In the letter by Ronen Bar, which was leaked to Israeli media, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service said that radical settlers were emboldened by light-handed law enforcement.

Settlers live in exclusively Jewish communities set up in parts of the West Bank.

Many settlements have the legal support of the Israeli government; others, known as outposts, and often as simple as caravans and corrugated iron sheds, are illegal even under Israeli law. But extremists build them regardless in a bid to seize more land.

In July, when the UN’s top court found for the first time that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was illegal, it said the country should halt all settlement activity and withdraw as soon as possible.

Israel’s Western allies have repeatedly described settlements as an obstacle to peace. Israel rejected the finding, saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”

Now there are fears that extremists are working to make settlements in the West Bank irreversible.

They have rapidly expanded their control over the territory, with the support of the most far-right government in Israel’s history. These extremists are advancing annexation plans in the West Bank and also openly call for settling Gaza once the war is over. Settlers now serve at the heart of Israel’s government, in key ministries.

At the very time that world leaders opposed to settlements are voicing renewed enthusiasm for a two-state solution – a long-hoped for peace plan that would create a separate Palestinian state – Israeli religious nationalists, who believe all these lands rightfully belong to Israel, are vowing to make the dream of an independent Palestinian state impossible.

Analysts think this is why some politicians are refusing to accept any ceasefire deal.

“The reason they don’t want to end the conflict or go into a hostage deal is because they believe that Israel should keep on fighting until it can reach a point where it can stay inside Gaza,” says Tal Schneider, political correspondent for The Times of Israel.

“They think for the long term their ideology is more righteous,” she adds. “This is their own logic.”

Israeli authorities, meanwhile, have announced plans for five new settlements, including the one in Battir, and declared a record area of land, at least 23 sq km, for the state. This means Israel considers it Israeli land, regardless of whether it is in the occupied Palestinian territories, or privately owned by Palestinians, or both, and Palestinians are prevented from using it.

By changing facts on the ground, as the settlers describe it, they hope to move enough Israelis on to the land and build enough on it to make their presence irreversible. Their long-term hope is that Israel formally annexes the land.

Outside state-sanctioned land seizures, extremists have also rapidly established settlement outposts.

In one by al-Qanoub, north of Hebron, satellite images showed new caravans and roads had appeared in the months since the start of the war. Meanwhile, an entire Palestinian community has been forced off the land.

We drove to al-Qanoub with Ibrahim Shalalda, 50, and his 80-year-old uncle Mohammed, who told us their homes had been destroyed by settlers last November.

As we approached, an extremist settler blocked the road with his car.

Armed Israelis soon arrived. The group – some Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers, with insignia on their uniforms and one identified as a settlement security officer – stopped us for checks.

The settlement guard forced the two Palestinian farmers from the car and searched them. After two hours, the IDF soldiers dispersed the settlers and allowed the BBC car to leave.

Israel began settling the West Bank soon after capturing it from Jordan and occupying it more than five decades ago. Successive governments since then have allowed creeping settlement expansion.

Today, an estimated three million Palestinians live on the land – excluding Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem – alongside about half a million Jewish Israelis in more than 130 settlements.

But a prominent far-right government figure who took office in 2022 is promising to double the number of settlers to a million.

Bezalel Smotrich believes that Jews have a God-given right to these lands. He heads one of two far-right, pro-settler parties that veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought into his governing coalition after the 2022 elections returned him to power.

Mr Smotrich serves as finance minister but also has a post in the defence ministry, which has allowed him to make sweeping changes to Israeli policies in the West Bank.

He has massively invested state finances in settlements, including new roads and infrastructure. But he has also created a new bureaucracy, taking powers from the military, to fast-track settler construction.

In secretly recorded remarks to supporters, Mr Smotrich boasted that he was working towards “changing the DNA” of the system and for de facto annexation that would be “easier to swallow in the international and legal context”.

Religious nationalists have sat on the fringes of Israeli politics for decades.

But their ideology has slowly become more popular. In the 2022 election, these parties took 13 seats in the 120-seat Israeli parliament and became kingmakers in Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.

During the war, Bezalel Smotrich and fellow radical Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s national security minister, have repeatedly made comments stoking social division and provoking Israel’s Western allies.

After Israel’s military arrested reservists accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee, Mr Ben Gvir said it was “shameful” for Israel to arrest “our best heroes”. This month, Mr Smotrich suggested it might be “justified and moral” to starve Gazans.

But it is in the West Bank and Gaza that the far right seeks to make permanent changes. “This is a group of Israelis who have been against any type of compromise with the Palestinians or Israel’s other Arab neighbours,” says Anshel Pfeffer, a veteran Israeli journalist and correspondent for The Economist.

And with the war in Gaza, the far right sees a fresh opportunity. Mr Smotrich has called for Palestinian residents to leave, making way for Israelis who could “make the desert bloom”.

Although Mr Netanyahu has ruled out restoring Jewish settlements in Gaza, he remains beholden to far-right parties who threaten to collapse his coalition if he signs a “reckless” ceasefire deal to bring home Israeli hostages currently held by Hamas.

The logic of the extremists may be one that only a minority of Israelis follow. But it is helping to prolong the war, and dramatically transforming the landscape of the West Bank – causing long-term damage to chances of peace.

Like so many in Australia, Sam grew up in a community where having a punt was synonymous with sport.

“Our friends, our family would ask ‘Oh who are you betting on this week?’ That was the normal conversation that occurred,” his sister Amy – who is not using her real name – says.

Looking back, she blames that normalisation of gambling – the way it crept into their home and baked itself into social interactions – for her brother’s addiction, and for the suffering he endured before taking his life.

“It just destroyed him physically and emotionally,” she explains. “We tried everything. We were a close family, but we obviously didn’t know how bad it was – it crushed him.”

Amy is one of dozens who came forward to testify in a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry into the impacts of gambling in Australia – which wagers more per capita than any other country.

The probe found that there were “few safeguards” to protect those battling addiction and recommended 31 reforms to avoid “grooming” a new generation of children to gamble, starting with a three-year phased ban on advertising.

Now, pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – both externally and from within his party – to act, with polling suggesting a majority of people support the move.

But the government has signalled it may instead opt for a cap to limit advertising. It has cited the role gambling ad revenue plays in propping up the nation’s ailing free-to-air broadcasters, as well as warnings from wagering companies that a ban could drive consumers offshore.

Doing so would result in huge tax losses on Australian betting platforms which currently fund “vital services”, the peak body representing the industry says.

The debate has spurred accusations that corporate interests are standing in the way of common-sense reform.

It has also spotlighted the deep-rooted links between sport, gambling, and entertainment in Australia.

Betting occupies a unique space in Australian culture.

In the 1980s, it became the first country to deregulate its gambling industry, making it possible for slot machines – once only permitted inside casinos – to expand into licensed pubs and clubs.

Today, Australia is home to roughly 0.33% of the world’s population, but a fifth of all “pokies”- the colloquial term used for the machines.

The last two decades have also seen an explosion in the popularity of online betting, particularly when it comes to sport. Estimates show Australians are spending approximately A$25bn ($16.8bn; £12.9bn) on legal wagers each year – with 38% of the population gambling weekly.

Experts argue that sophisticated marketing has aided that boom, while sponsorship deals, partnerships, and kickbacks given to prevalent sporting bodies, have helped legitimise the industry

Sean – not his real name – has been gambling legally, and often obsessively, for more than 18 years. He was introduced by a friend to sports betting as a teenager, and from there, things snowballed. “Some days I couldn’t sleep unless I knew that I had a bet on. It got to the point where I was betting on sports I’d never seen in countries I’d never heard of,” he told the BBC.

Now 36 and seeking help from sponsors, he doesn’t like to keep tabs on what feels like a lifetime of losses, but he puts the total figure in the ballpark of A$2m.

He says the relationship breakdowns and years of isolation are harder to quantify: “If I never gambled, I would be married with kids right now”.

One academic paper found that like Sean, 90% of Australian adults and roughly three-quarters of children aged eight to 16 years see betting as a “normal part of sport”. Advocates like Martin Thomas argue this is evidence that the practice “has seeped into every corner of society”.

“Our kids know just as much about the odds on a game and multi bets as they do their favourite players,” he tells the BBC.

In Amy’s view, as well as making it harder for people of all ages to escape gambling, that normalisation has created a dangerous subtext: that any adverse impacts – such as debt or addiction – are the fault of the individual, not the system.

“To go and watch a sporting event and see it saturated with betting advertising, you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m the problem. Because everyone does this’, you know what I mean?

“That’s what my brother thought.”

Like many advocates, she wants to see gambling reframed as a major public health issue rather than a recreational pursuit, given surveys have shown that nearly half of those engaging in the practice are at risk of, or already experience, its associated harms – such as financial hardship, family violence, depression, and suicide.

Research suggests that a prohibition on advertising could be the first step in achieving that aim. And advocates say there’s a well-trodden path the government could follow. Mr Thomas cites Australia’s decision to ban tobacco adverts in 1992 – which has been credited with dramatically reducing smoking rates – as proof of what’s possible.

But while Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has described the “saturation of gambling advertising” as “untenable”, he’s yet to commit to a course of action.

Instead, he has pointed to his government’s other initiatives when questioned – such as banning credit card use in online wagering and creating a register for people to exclude themselves from betting sites. At times, he’s also framed gambling as an age-old problem.

“[This] has been an issue in our society I suspect, since man and woman walked, and had a bet on who could ride the horse the fastest or who could run from rock to rock, probably before there were buildings,” he told parliament on Wednesday.

The peak body representing Australia’s wagering companies has described a blanket ban as “a step too far” and thrown its weight behind the government’s proposed cap – which would limit ads online and during general TV programming.

“By doing this, the expectations of the community to see less advertising would be met, while also maintaining the crucial support to sporting codes and local broadcasters,” Responsible Wagering Australia’s CEO Kai Cantwell said in a statement.

But Dr Andrew Hughes, a lecturer in marketing at The Australian National University, has cast doubt over how crucial that financial support is – given that Nielsen data shows that the lion’s share of ad money the nation’s broadcasters take in comes from a range of other sectors, rather than betting platforms.

And independent senators, like David Pocock, have criticised the logic of using money from wagering to prop up the media.

“Journalism is incredibly important, but it shouldn’t be dependent on flogging products we know are harmful, and which cause addiction, personal issues, family breakdowns, and in some cases, suicide,” he told the BBC.

“The government should have the imagination to look at other ways of plugging that gap.”

Mr Pocock is one of several senators to publicly question whether betting companies and the industries they finance, are interfering with policy decisions – citing their extensive lobbying efforts and history of large political donations.

Last week, he joined 20 parliamentarians from across the political spectrum to sign an open letter backing a prohibition on advertising, while also calling for a free vote on the issue to allow MPs in Mr Albanese’s party to cross the floor, without facing repercussions.

Several medical bodies have also thrown their support behind a ban, as has an expert panel appointed by the government to probe how to bring down rates of domestic violence in Australia – adding to the mounting pressure Mr Albanese is facing.

The government already runs warnings on gambling advertisements reminding people of the risks.

But Sean says it does little to deter those caught in the crosshairs of addiction.

“I know the house always wins, but every time I’m ready to have a punt that all goes out the window,” he explains. “I start thinking I’m about to pull off that one win that’s going to take me away from everything. That win that’s going to get everything back.”

Although nothing has been finalised and Mr Albanese’s cabinet is still weighing its options, for Amy, the debate itself has become too “insensitive” to follow.

She can’t comprehend what the hold-up is and wants answers.

“Anyone who understands this issue would without a doubt agree to a full advertising ban – that’s what the evidence says,” she tells the BBC. “It feels like these lobbyists own the government… We’re dangling this dangerous product in front of everyone and normalising it, and the worst-case scenario is what happened to us.

“My family – they’ll never recover. It’s not something that you recover from.”

“Burn Gaza now, nothing less!” When the deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, posted this comment on X in November, the platform blocked him and asked him to delete it.

Nissim Vaturi did as they asked, and his account has since been reactivated, but he did not apologise. His comment is one of many controversial remarks that have been made by some high-profile Israelis as the country’s armed forces carry out air strikes and ground operations in Gaza, in response to Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October.

On the day of the attacks, he had posted: “Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth.”

That post, which is still visible on X, was cited in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in which South Africa alleges Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, in the Gaza war. Israel has called the case “wholly unfounded” and based on “biased and false claims”.

As part of an interim judgement in January, the ICJ ruled that Israel must prevent public statements inciting genocide. Although the court does not have the power to enforce this, Israel agreed to submit a report detailing the action it had taken to investigate and prosecute possible instances of incitement. The court confirmed that the report was received in February, but has not made its contents public.

Some legal experts believe Israel is not doing enough to investigate potential cases. “Israelis who incite genocide or use genocidal rhetoric are immune from prosecution,” says Israeli human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard.

Proving incitement to genocide, which is a crime under international and Israeli law, is difficult. Genocide is defined as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. But distinguishing between inciting genocide and inciting violence or racism – and what could be considered free speech – can be complex.

The BBC has looked at several pronouncements made since the ICJ’s order to see if they could break the ruling and consulted legal experts for their assessment. And although this judgement was directed at Israel, we have also examined language used by some Hamas officials who have made speeches about repeating their attack of 7 October.

A pro-Palestinian human rights organisation made up of a network of experts and researchers around the world who monitor the conflict, Law for Palestine, has looked at cases where it believes Israeli officials and other public figures have incited genocide. Its list includes some statements by Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Mr Ben-Gvir has been advocating a policy to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza, saying Israelis should settle there.

He leads an ultranationalist party which is widely criticised for espousing racially discriminatory, anti-Arab policies. He has previous convictions from an Israeli court – which date from before he entered government – for inciting racism and supporting terrorism.

Two days after the ICJ ruling in January, he advocated a policy to encourage Palestinians to leave Gaza and replace them with Israeli settlers. He said that to avoid a repeat of Hamas’s attack on Israel “we need to return home and control the territory [Gaza]… encouraging migration and giving the death penalty to terrorists”, proposing that any emigration should be voluntary.

“We consider the calling to displacement of the Gaza population as part of the ethnic cleansing that is ongoing in Gaza,” says Law for Palestine’s founder, Ihsan Adel. He believes those calls should be considered incitement to genocide, and that genocide is happening – an accusation Israel denies.

Not everyone agrees with his assessment, though. “I’m definitely not going to defend such statements, but they do not rise to the level of genocide,” says Anne Herzberg, a legal adviser at NGO Monitor, which reports on international NGO activity from a pro-Israel perspective.

Neither Mr Ben-Gvir nor Mr Vaturi responded to BBC requests for comment.

The link between what politicians say and what Israeli soldiers say was a core part of South Africa’s case at the ICJ.

In a YouTube video from late 2023, a group of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers can be heard chanting: “Occupy, expel and settle.” And soldiers have made other videos since the ICJ ruling in January mocking and celebrating the destruction of Gaza.

The IDF told us that it examines reports of videos online and that if a criminal offence is suspected, the military police investigate and “in some of the examined cases, it is concluded that the expression or behaviour of the soldiers in the footage is inappropriate, and it is handled accordingly”.

The spotlight has also fallen on Israel’s religious leaders. Rabbi Eliyahu Mali attracted attention after he gave a talk in March at a conference for Israel’s Zionist yeshivas – Jewish religious schools with a strong belief in the State of Israel. Rabbi Mali is the head of a yeshiva that is part of a network that receives funding from Israel‘s Ministry of Defence. Its students mix Torah study with military service.

He described the talk as being about the “treatment of the civilian population in Gaza during the war”.

A clip of it was shared online. After citing a 12th Century Jewish scholar on holy wars, Rabbi Mali said: “[And if so] the basic rule that we have when we are fighting a mitzvah war, in this case Gaza, according to the scriptures, ‘You shall not let a soul remain alive,’ the explanation is very clear – if you don’t kill them, they will kill you.”

In Judaism, a mitzvah war is one which includes defending Jewish life and sovereignty and is considered obligatory as opposed to one of choice.

We contacted Rabbi Mali and a response, sent on his behalf, said that his words had been “grossly misrepresented by excerpts being taken out of context”.

It said that he had set out what the position was in ancient times but that he had “made it very clear that anyone following the Biblical commandment today would be causing the army and the nation extreme harm” and that under national law “it is forbidden to harm the civilian population from a child to an old man”.

We watched the full talk and on a few occasions he reminded the audience of those points, including in the conclusion, and also saying at the start: “You need to do exactly what the army orders say.”

However, during the talk, he specifically mentioned the people of Gaza saying: “I think there is a difference between the civilian population in other places and the civilian population in Gaza,” adding an unsubstantiated claim that “95% to 98% are interested in our demise, that’s a majority, that’s stupefying.”

When an audience member asked about babies he replied: ”The same… The Torah is saying: ‘You shall not let a soul remain alive’… Today he’s a baby, tomorrow he’s a boy, tomorrow he’s a warrior.”

In the talk, the rabbi also recounted what he said to his son, who went to fight after the 7 October attacks. He said he should “kill everything that moves”. He explained his position by adding that his son’s commander had told him the same thing and that he instructed his son to ”listen to the commander’s orders”.

Later, he reiterated that he did not expect soldiers to do what was laid out in the Torah. He said that if the laws of the state contradicted the laws of the Torah, it was the state law that should be followed and “the laws of the state only want to kill the terrorists and not the civilian population”.

Eitay Mack, a lawyer from the Israeli group Tag Meir that campaigns against racism and discrimination, says he has asked police to investigate the rabbi on suspicion of incitement to commit genocide, violence and terrorism.

He says he is still waiting to hear if the investigation he requested will be carried out.

Another claim made by South Africa at the ICJ hearing was about “genocidal messages being routinely broadcast – without censure or sanction – in Israeli media”.

In February, on the right-wing Channel 14, journalist Yaki Adamker said: “The Gazans, as far as I am concerned, can starve to death. What do I care about them?”

In April, an Israeli journalist on the most-watched channel in the country, Channel 12, Yehuda Schlesinger, echoed similar sentiments, saying: “There are no innocents in the Gaza Strip, there aren’t. They voted for Hamas, they want Hamas.”

For Anne Herzberg, from NGO Monitor, this may show “a disturbing lack of empathy for people in Gaza and what they’re going through,” but “it’s not calling for genocide”.

The BBC contacted both broadcasters but received no response. Yehuda Schlesinger replied, highlighting the atrocities of 7 October.

When it comes to whether the authorities should regulate what is broadcast more tightly, Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard warns that “regulators, which is the state, have to make sure that public broadcasting is not exploited” by people making provocative comments.

While the ICJ ruling on preventing inciting genocide was directed at Israel, Hamas has also been accused of making statements with “genocidal intent”.

“The annihilationist language of Hamas’s charter is repeated regularly by its leaders,” says Tal Becker, legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

In 2021, Yahya Sinwar, who has just become the overall leader of Hamas said: “We support the elimination of Israel through jihad and armed struggle, this is our doctrine.”

And, more recently, some Hamas officials have claimed they want to repeat the 7 October attacks, during which about 1,200 people were killed – mostly civilians – and 251 were taken hostage.

In November, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, Ghazi Hamad, said: “We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again.”

Around the same time, Hamas leader abroad, Khaled Mashaal, said that 7 October “opened a highway towards eliminating Israel”.

Hamas did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Many want to see the group – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the US, UK, EU and other countries – held to account.

“It’s quite clear that they do have genocidal intent, and we hear very little about investigating Hamas, and I think that’s a real missing piece in this entire conflict,” says Anne Herzberg from NGO Monitor.

The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese – whose own criticisms of Israeli actions have been strongly contested, in particular in Israel and the United States – agrees Hamas leaders should be held accountable. But she says: “When assessing genocide, one is to look at the words spoken by leaders, but also the capacity to commit genocide, which Hamas per se doesn’t seem to have.”

Unlike Israel, Hamas cannot be taken to the ICJ because it is not a state. However a different body, the International Criminal Court (ICC), can hold individuals to account. In May its prosecutor applied for arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh (Haniyeh has since been killed in Iran and Israel says it killed Deif in Gaza) for crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He also sought warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Both Hamas and Israel reacted with outrage.

As for what Israeli authorities are doing to prevent and prosecute people suspected of inciting violence, the country’s attorney general and state attorney have acknowledged that any statements calling for intentional harm to civilians “may amount to a criminal offence, including the offence of incitement”. Just before the ICJ hearing in January they said that several cases were being examined.

Recently however, Haaretz reported that the state prosecutor recommended that no criminal investigations be opened against senior public figures, including ministers and members of Knesset, who have “called to harm civilians in the Gaza Strip”. The final decision rests with the attorney general.

The BBC contacted Israel’s state attorney, police commissioner and Ministry of Justice for comment. Only the Ministry of Justice replied, saying they have to balance “the constitutional right to freedom of speech… while safeguarding against harmful incitement”. They added: “Law enforcement authorities constantly act to curtail incitement offences, and these efforts have been prioritised by Israel’s attorney general in recent months.”

And as the ICJ continues to work toward a final ruling in its case, people continue to die – since October more than 40,000 Palestinians are reported to have been killed in Gaza, according to its Hamas-run health ministry.

When Zakia Rafiqi, 26, heard that Laila Majnu, a 2018 Bollywood film, was being re-released in cinemas this month, she knew she had to watch it again.

“In 2018, I was among a handful of people in the cinema. This time, there were many more people. A lot of them were laughing and crying,” says Ms Rafiqi, who went with her sister to a cinema in Delhi.

Ms Rafiqi says she has an “emotional connect” with the film, a tragic love story set in Indian-administered Kashmir, where she is from.

“It’s good to see a piece of home on the big screen. When they are driving through the streets of Kashmir, you feel you are there,” she says.

Laila Majnu, written by popular filmmaker Imtiaz Ali, barely made a mark at the box office when it was first released, but did good business on its second run. It is one among dozens of Indian films – some made more than two decades ago – which are getting a new lease of life as people flock to watch them on the big screen.

India’s film industry, like others across the world, has seen ups and downs since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered cinemas for months and led many to turn to streaming services. It is yet to return to its former glory.

“This year has been particularly bad for new [Bollywood] releases,” says trade analyst Komal Nahta.

The industry – dominated by Hindi-language Bollywood – is now churning out films more regularly, but it’s common to hear people say they will wait for a film to stream on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video instead of going to cinemas.

Some films do break through – Stree 2, a Hindi horror-comedy currently playing in cinemas, has earned close to four billion rupees ($47.6m; £36.1m) domestically so far to become the year’s biggest Bollywood hit. In terms of overall earnings, it is second only to Kalki 2898 AD, a “pan-Indian” film which featured some of the country’s biggest stars. But these are rare bright spots for an industry which has seen highly anticipated films with big stars fare miserably at the box office this year.

There’s no doubt that India’s film industry is continuing to see a churn as viewing habits shift – the top 10 films so far this year include three from the southern state of Kerala, where budgets are comparatively small.

• The southern Indian films winning on Bollywood’s turf
• Why Bollywood’s big films are flopping at the box office

So it’s not surprising that both film distributors and viewers are turning to the comfort of the familiar. A look at the list of films being released again shows there’s no clear formula behind the choices.

Bollywood re-releases this year are across a range of genres. The 1990s seem to be a favourite decade with much-loved rom-coms Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and Hum Aapke Hain Koun and action thrillers Main Khiladi Tu Anari and Baazigar getting a second outing. More recent hits – musical Rockstar (2011), buddy film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011) and rom-com Jab We Met (2007) – have also brought people back to cinemas.

Analysts say the biggest surprise was the success of Laila Majnu. The film’s makers have said they were particularly happy that viewers in Kashmir could watch it as cinema halls reopened there in 2022 after more than two decades.

“The film has finally recovered its cost or at least minimised its losses,” says Mr Nahta, who adds that this will spur others to see if their films could also benefit from a re-release.

Taran Adarsh, a Bollywood analyst, says these re-releases are making up for a lack of new films and lacklustre box-office performances.

The re-releases have little to no promotion, with posters simply popping up on ticket booking sites or circulating on social media. “It’s driven purely by nostalgia or an audience’s love for a film that already has a cult following,” says Mr Adarsh.

In Tamil and Telugu, the re-releases have been more star-driven. Recent videos show fans of Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi dancing to a hit song from his 2002 hit Indra in cinemas. Pawan Kalyan’s Gabbar Singh (2012) is set to release next week. In Tamil, Vijay’s Ghilli (2004) ran to packed halls in April.

“It’s usually the film of a superstar whose star may have just been rising 20 years ago or a film that was already a hit,” says Sreedhar Pillai, an analyst who tracks the southern film industries. “It has to be driven by nostalgia and have a connection with an actor who is a big star today.”

Malayalam superstar Mohanlal has two such films – Devadoothan (2000) and Manichithrathazhu (1993) – currently running in cinemas in Kerala. Coincidentally, both are horror films.

Devadoothan, an eerie film with beautiful songs which flopped when it first released, has been running to packed cinemas for more than a month.

Mr Pillai says that Manichithrathazhu, a cult classic which broke box-office records when it first released, is probably the biggest “success story” among re-releases in southern India.

“It’s an iconic film. A huge blockbuster when it was released, and now it’s also getting the young audience,” he says.

Sometimes, the prospect of a sequel can drive interest in the first film.

Last year, the 2001 film Gadar: Ek Prem Katha had another successful run in cinemas after its sequel Gadar 2 became a massive hit, says Mr Nahta.

But the re-release of Kamal Haasan’s Indian this year did not see similar success because its sequel Indian 2 did not perform well, he adds.

So why are people paying to watch older films that are easily available on streaming platforms?

“You simply can’t compare the experience of watching a film online with watching it in theatres and that is what audiences are turning out for,” Mr Adarsh says.

Shruti Zende agrees. The 30-year-old from Pune city in Maharashtra state has watched a couple of re-releases since last year.

“Instead of watching the film for its storyline, it becomes a group experience where you’re watching with people who really like the movie,” she says, adding that people start reacting before a scene or dialogue because “they know what’s coming up”.

She is now looking forward to watching Telugu superstar Nagarjuna’s 2004 film Mass on the big screen this week.

But her final verdict on re-releases will give hope to beleaguered filmmakers.

“I may watch one or two re-releases a year,” she says. “But after that I’d still want to watch a new film.”

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are set to square off in their first presidential debate next month, but the campaigns are still warring over logistics – namely relating to the microphones.

Trump’s campaign is pushing for the microphones to be muted when it is the other person’s turn to speak. This is a rule that was originally requested by Joe Biden when he was the Democratic candidate.

Trump’s team ultimately agreed to the request – which was an apparent effort by Biden’s campaign to limit interruptions. (The pair’s chaotic first 2020 debate was marred by constant interruptions, with Mr Biden eventually snapping at his rival: “Will you shut up, man?”)

Some analysts say the Trump campaign’s eagerness to keep the muting rule in place for the Harris debate on 10 September may be due to the positive reception he received for what was a more reserved performance than many had anticipated against Mr Biden in June. In practice, it made interruptions impossible.

The former president, however, appears less concerned by the rule and to some extent even undermined his own team’s statements calling for it to remain in place. “[It] doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather have [the microphones] probably on,” he said on Monday.

“But the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted,” he added.

Trump posted on social media Tuesday afternoon that he has “reached an agreement” with ABC for the 10 September debate. He did not mention mics in the post, but said again that the “Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate”, which included muted mics in its rules.

He also accused the network in the post of being “unfair”, but also said his team was assured that the debate would be “fair and equitable”.

It was not clear Tuesday whether the Harris campaign had signed off on the terms Trump said he agreed to with ABC.

The Harris campaign wants to shift the agreed rules with just two weeks to go so that both candidates’ microphones will be unmuted for the entire debate. What do they think they could gain from this change?

More generally, they believe it has the potential to show viewers a more unfiltered, even ill-tempered, Trump who would be audible throughout the entire time Ms Harris is speaking.

“Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own,” a statement from Harris’s spokesman said.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• ANALYSIS: Three ways Trump will try to end Harris honeymoon
• EXPLAINER: Where the election could be won and lost
• KAMALA HARRIS: The many identities of the first female vice-president

“The reason she’s saying to unmute the mics is because Trump is uncontrolled,” Ameshia Cross, a Democratic strategist and political analyst, told the BBC.

Ms Cross said Trump’s rallies and Truth Social posts, where he has launched repeated personal attacks against Ms Harris, offer examples of how he may approach the looming debate on ABC News.

Those attacks “turn off voters” particularly women voters, voters of colour and young voters, Ms Cross said.

Strategists have also suggested Trump’s insults may turn off crucial undecided voters. “One of the ways to win over swing voters is not by personal attacks,” Kevin Madden, a longtime Republican strategist, told the New York Times. “By nature, they don’t love partisan politics.”

If Trump’s microphone is unmuted while Harris is speaking, the likelihood of an audible insult or interruption ramps up. And the Harris campaign may feel a more aggressive Trump who is able to interrupt at will could benefit them by turning off these swing voters.

This matters in an election that will be decided by a relatively small group of undecided voters in a handful of battleground states such as Pennsylvania, where the debate is being held.

“He’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts and… I think the [Harris] campaign would want viewers to hear [that],” a person familiar with the debate negotiations told Politico this week.

The Trump campaign, according to reports, are eager for their candidate to focus on the key issues and not on personal attacks. One ally who speaks to the former president every week recently told the BBC’s Katty Kay that Trump will win in November if he sticks to talking about the economy, the border and crime.

It is fair to assume that if the candidates are only audible during their allotted answer time, then the debate is more likely to focus on the issues, as the Trump campaign wants, and not tense clashes and heated exchanges which would be possible with live mics.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist, told the BBC that he believes the Harris campaign’s effort to unmute the microphones is an attempt to move the debate away from the issues and into the arena of grabby viral moments.

“They’re not sure they can win on the issues so what they’re looking for is any way possible to have a viral moment,” he said.

Ms Harris has had these moments in the past. During the 2020 vice-presidential debate between then-vice-president Mike Pence and Ms Harris, a clip of her pushing back on an interruption was widely shared. “I’m speaking, Mr Vice-President,” she said.

Mr O’Connell said the Trump campaign should continue to aggressively push for the muted microphones because those are the rules the Democratic campaign originally came up with. He said the message should be: “We let you write the rules, we are sticking with the same rules.”

Ms Cross, however, suggested the Harris campaign is calling Trump’s bluff and has the upper hand. “If he does not want them unmuted, he’s going to look weak, like he cannot control himself,” she said.

While Ms Cross said Trump was trying to “weasel” his way out of the debate by attacking the network, Mr O’Connell said the Republican nominee would show up regardless for what is set to be a major moment.

“The 10 September debate could be the most consequential moment between now and election day,” he said.

A Barbie-branded phone has been launched in the UK and Europe with the aim – its makers say – of helping young people take a break from their smartphones.

It is a very pink and fundamentally very basic device, with no front camera, only one game and very limited access to the internet.

Manufacturer HMD, which also makes phones for Nokia, says it’s trying to tap into what it calls a “surge” of people wanting a smaller “digital impact” on their lives.

But others say that would be better achieved by teaching people how to use their devices in a healthier and more controlled way.

There are growing calls from parents and campaigners to limit the time children spend on smartphones, or even ban the devices completely.

Their concerns range from the suspicion children will end up with shorter attention spans, to the fear that they might be exposed to harmful or illegal content.

Some schools are taking action, perhaps most eye-catchingly the UK’s best known fee-paying school, Eton College. It is providing some of its pupils with “brick” phones – also sometimes called feature phones – which can only send and receive texts and calls.

It says it wants to “balance the benefits and challenges that technology brings to schools.”

And this week mobile network EE waded into the debate by advising parents not to allow their under-11s smartphones at all.

Lars Silberbauer, a senior executive at HMD, says it is these trends his firm is responding to.

“We’ve seen this surge which started in the US coming to Europe, that more and more people actually want to not be having a digital experience all the time,” he said.

Some may be sceptical about how truly noble Mr Silberbauer’s motives are – and he did concede he would “love” to be able to incorporate a messaging platform like WhatsApp into the Barbie phone.

But I spent a day using it and, for now, there is little doubt that as a digital detox it was certainly effective because of its very limited functionality.

It is mirror-fronted flip phone and has no app store or touch screen. I had no social media at all, and the phone can not receive anything more advanced than SMS messages.

That means no text messages with “read receipts” or the function to see when someone is typing. It is the default setting on many smartphones – so I didn’t get many text messages either.

Even with predictive text enabled I found the numbers and letters keypad much slower than a touchscreen keyboard and as a result I ended up calling more people than usual, which perhaps was no bad thing.

And I discovered there are only so many times you can play the retro Nokia game Snake, even when it’s called Malibu Snake and it’s pink.

But the handset certainly attracted a lot of attention, especially from girls and young women, as I walked around Glasgow city centre with it.

There is of course the danger that instead of being pestered for a smartphone, parents will find themselves being pestered for a piece of Barbie merchandise – which may be just as unwelcome.

The phone has a launch price of £99 in the UK – twice what you would pay for a non-branded Nokia feature phone. There are plenty of other phones on the market that offer the same limited functionality, but without any kind of big corporate tie in.

“I’d imagine quite a few people will be tempted to buy it as a bit of fun, but in reality, everyone is so dependent on their smartphones that anything more than the odd day of detox will be a stretch,” says Ben Wood, a phone expert who has his own museum of devices released over the years.

Nonetheless, he says, there is a market for what are sometimes called “dumbphones”. His firm, CCS Insight, estimates that around 400,000 will be sold in the UK this year.

“That’s an attractive niche for a company like HMD”, he says.

Some experts suggest that withdrawing smartphones is no real solution – they are woven into our lives, after all – and instead children need to be taught how to use them in a healthy and safe way.

“What we should be doing instead is thinking about, how do we build really good, really long term, sustainable digital literacy skills in that generation,” says Pete Etchells, professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa university, who has written extensively about the issue of screen time.

“I think we could all be better at using our phones in a healthier and more resilient way,” he said.

HMD is also working on a separate project, a new device which it is designing in collaboration with parents. It says more than 1,000 people have signed up to work on it so far.

And Mr Silberbaum concedes that the resulting handset may well end up being something that sits somewhere between a dumbphone and a smartphone.

“Do I want the smartphone with all the bells and whistles, or do I want to have something that can actually help me have a more considered approach to digital? That’s the choice we want to deliver,” he said.

Eight weeks, hundreds of competitors across multiple events and a multi-million pound prize pot – but this wasn’t any sports tournament.

Luke Bennett is coming home from the first Esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia as a world champion.

Not only that, the 19-year-old from Bromsgrove in Worcestershire is also returning £100,000 richer after bagging the top prize in sim racing (short for simulated racing).

“It’s pretty surreal,” Luke tells BBC Newsbeat. But now he’s hoping he has a chance to make it properly real with a career in motorsport.

Luke’s part of Team Redline – an offshoot of Red Bull’s F1 team which boasts Belgian-Dutch racing driver Max Verstappen among its alumni.

“It’s just like racing a car in real life,” Luke says of sim racing. “But on a computer.”

The team was founded more than 20 years ago but Luke says people are still surprised when he talks about what he does.

He says people are shocked when he tells them about the prize money involved.

“It shows it’s getting bigger and bigger and it can be a career for some people.”

Team Redline dominated at the Esports World Cup, never finishing outside of the top four once in the grand finals of the tournament.

“It’s been a rough few months,” says Luke. “Every day – practice, practice, practice.

“All that weight has been lifted off our shoulders now.”

Luke isn’t just fast on the virtual track. He says his career is moving at top speed as well.

“I started driving with just a £100 steering wheel on the desk and having a bit of fun,” he says.

Not long after, fellow competitors noticed his potential and his parents helped him buy a better simulator.

“That’s when things really took off,” he says.

“I joined Team Redline and after that it’s just been up and up and up until this point right now.”

Esports tournaments are still “quite niche and quite new,” he says.

“It’s not been long since all this prize money started coming through and all these big competitions started so there’s not many stories of people going all the way.”

In that sense, he’s a pioneer, admitting “the future is a bit uncertain” for esports champions.

But as uncertain as it might be, the industry received another boost last month when it was announced from next year there would also be an Olympic Esports Games.

Like the Esports World Cup, the Games will be held in Saudi Arabia as part of a 12-year partnership between the Kingdom and the International Olympics Committee.

Before the World Cup, players, streamers and fans were divided by the decision for it to be hosted in the Arab country – which also funded the prize pot – due to its record on human rights.

Homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia and it has faced criticism over its stance on LGBT relationships as well as lack of rights for women.

Critics condemned it as “sportswashing” but the decision was defended by organisers who told Newsbeat no-one would face discrimination at the event.

Luke says the country was “a really cool setting” for the event and now has his eye on winning more tournaments and making it to the Olympics – something he says would be “unbelievable”.

“I think I’d find it a bit weird calling myself an Olympian because I really don’t feel like one,” he says.

“But it’s something that would be very cool.

“The dream is still the same – we may be world champions but there’s always more.

“We want to be world champions in everything, so we’ll keep going.”

And if he can be a pioneer in an online esports career, Luke sees no reason he can’t be a pioneer offline too.

“I hope one day to get into the real world of motorsport,” he says.

“I see more and more people get a way in through sim racing now, and hopefully that does happen.

“If not, I’ve got plenty of time to decide what I want to do as I’m still only 19.”

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

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets bowing to what he calls pressure from the Biden administration to “censor” content on Facebook and Instagram during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a letter sent to a US House committee chair, he said some material – including humour and satire – was taken down in 2021 under pressure from senior officials.

The White House has defended its actions, saying it encouraged “responsible actions to protect public health and safety”.

Mr Zuckerberg also said his firm briefly “demoted” content relating to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, ahead of the 2020 election, after the FBI warned of “a potential Russian disinformation” operation.

It later became clear that this content was not part of such an operation, Mr Zuckerberg said, and it should not have been temporarily taken down.

Mr Zuckerberg did not give further detail about the actions he regretted during the pandemic. At that time, his business removed posts for a variety of reasons.

Mr Zuckerberg said the decisions made were the decisions of his business, but that the “government pressure was wrong”.

He continued: “We made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”

Mr Zuckerberg said he and Meta would be ready to “push back” if something similar happened in the future.

His letter was addressed to Jim Jordan, the chair of the House judiciary committee, which has been investigating content moderation on online platforms. Republicans said the letter was a “big win for free speech“.

In a statement issued to the website Politico, the White House stood by its actions.

It said: “Our position has been clear and consistent: we believe tech companies and other private actors should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people, while making independent choices about the information they present.”

Mr Zuckerberg’s comments on Hunter Biden refer to the story of a laptop that was abandoned by the president’s son at a repair shop in Delaware – as first reported by the New York Post.

The newspaper claimed emails found on the computer suggested his business abroad had influenced US foreign policy while his father was vice-president.

The president and his family have denied any wrongdoing.

The story became a notable right-wing talking point in the US, and a point of contention as some social media platforms censored the content.

Mr Zuckerberg said the story was temporarily demoted on his platforms while going through a fact-check – after a warning from the FBI of a potential Russian disinformation operation, and “in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story,” Mr Zuckerberg wrote.

“We’ve changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Mr Zuckerberg also said he did not plan to make any more contributions to supporting electoral infrastructure.

In 2020, he donated $400m (£302m) via his philanthropic Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which was intended to help government offices conduct the election during the pandemic.

However, misinformation spread rapidly on social media accusing Mr Zuckerberg of effectively using a loophole to skirt maximum donation limits in a bid to get Mr Biden elected.

Mr Zuckerberg said his donations “were designed to be non-partisan”.

“Still, despite the analyses I’ve seen showing otherwise, I know that some people believe this work benefited one party over the other.

“My goal is to be neutral and not play a role on way or another – or to even appear to be playing a role – so I don’t plan on making a similar contribution this cycle.”

Government officials in Brazil say they suspect “criminals” are behind a record number of fires which have devastated large swathes of São Paulo state.

The head of Brazil’s National Office for Protection and Civil Defence, Wolnei Wolff, said 99.9% of the blazes in the state had been caused by human action.

He said there had been no lightning strikes or downed high voltage cables which would account for the large amount of blazes.

Four people have been arrested.

Environment Minister Marina Silva called the situation “unusual”, saying her team had not seen so many fires ignite in far-flung locations at the same time.

Officials have not said what the motive of those setting the fires may have been, but said the fact they had broken out simultaneously in different parts of the state indicated they had been set on purpose.

Data from the space agency Inpe suggests the number of fires burning in São Paulo in the month of August has been higher than in any August since it started collecting data in 1998.

The agency has registered 5,281 so far this month, compared with 1,104 in the same period last year.

Two people have died and more than 20,000 hectares have been destroyed. Large sugarcane fields are among those razed to the ground.

São Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas said high temperatures, strong winds and low humidity meant the flames had spread particularly quickly.

Several cities, including São Paulo and the capital, Brasilia, were engulfed in acrid smoke over the weekend.

He added that firefighters had managed to extinguish the fires as of Monday but said 48 municipalities would remain on maximum alert to prevent new blazes from breaking out.

Authorities in Pakistan have dropped a case against a man who was arrested last week in relation to disinformation thought to have fuelled the recent UK riots.

Police said they could not find evidence that Farhan Asif was the originator of the news and so were not continuing with the case.

Leaving a Lahore court on Monday, Mr Asif declined to answer the BBC’s questions.

Unrest broke out in England and Northern Ireland earlier this month, after disinformation spread about the name and identity of the alleged perpetrator of a stabbing attack in Southport in which three young girls died.

A BBC investigation had linked Mr Asif to a website called Channel3Now, which posted an article that included a false name for the alleged attacker, and wrongly suggested he was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat last year.

The article was shared widely on social media and quickly went viral.

In Monday’s court session, police said that Mr Asif was a freelancer at a private channel and that they found he had shared news by a different social media account in the UK.

After UK police had refuted the false information he had shared, Mr Asif deleted the post and issued an apology on Channel3now for sharing the news, police said.

The judge asked Mr Asif a rhetorical question about whether he now realised he should be careful about the information he shares online.

BBC Verify previously tracked down several people linked to Channel3Now and questioned someone who claimed to be “management” at the site.

That person told the BBC that the publication of the false name “shouldn’t have happened, but it was an error, not intentional”.

False information about the attacker spread online after three young girls were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on 29 July.

Violent disorder then broke out in Southport before spreading to towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland, fuelled by misinformation, the far-right and anti-immigration sentiment.

In the past three weeks, more than 500 people have been charged in relation to the disorder and at least 170 sentenced, many being sent to jail.

Japan has accused a Chinese spy plane of breaching its airspace, in what would be the first known instance of such a direct violation.

Japan scrambled fighter jets after a Y-9 surveillance plane “violated the territorial airspace” of Danjo Islands for about two minutes at 11:29 local time Monday (02:29 GMT).

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary called the breach “utterly unacceptable” and summoned a Chinese embassy official in Tokyo in protest.

The incident comes as tensions rise in the region, where China competes for influence against the US and its allies, including Japan.

Japanese authorities issued “notifications and warnings” to the Chinese aircraft during Monday’s incursion, but no weapons such as flare guns were used, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Nonetheless, the incident has stoked concern.

The Japanese government said it had contacted Beijing through diplomatic channels to lodge a strong protest over the incursion and demand the prevention of such breaches in the future.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said they had “no intention of invading the airspace of any country” and that relevant departments were still trying to understand the situation, reported Reuters.

Tokyo also recently flagged the presence of Chinese ships in the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are claimed by China and which Beijing calls the Diaoyus.

The islands, which are uninhabited but potentially possess oil and gas reserves, are one of several sources of tension between Beijing and its neighbours – most of whom are American allies.

Another is Japan’s Okinawa island, which is home to the largest US military installation in the Asia-Pacific region. There are also American troops stationed in Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea.

“This latest incursion may seem alarming as China tends not to venture directly into Japanese airspace,” Professor Ian Chong, a Chinese foreign policy expert at the National University of Singapore, told the BBC.

“Although it is consistent with China’s behaviour as regards Taiwan and the Philippines in recent years.”

In a single day last month, Taiwan’s defence ministry reported 66 incursions by Chinese military aircraft across the so-called ‘median line’ – an informal border between the two sides in the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing does not recognise the median line and, according to Taiwan, its planes have breached it hundreds of times in the past two years.

The Philippines, meanwhile, recently called China the “greatest disrupter of peace” in South East Asia.

Those comments followed a clash in a disputed part of the South China Sea on Sunday, over what Manila said was a resupply mission for fishermen.

“We have to expect these kinds of behaviour from China because this is a struggle,” said Philippines Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro.

“We have to be ready to anticipate and to get used to these kinds of acts of China which are patently illegal, as we have repeatedly said,” he told reporters on Monday.

The US national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, is in Beijing this week for talks with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi.

The two sides will discuss their differences over several flashpoints in the region and across the world.

“Washington probably will be looking at ways to avoid uncontrolled escalation, although this proposition can be difficult to put into practice,” said Professor Chong.

Canada says it will impose a 100% tariff on imports of China-made electric vehicles (EV) after similar announcements by the US and European Union.

The country also plans to impose a 25% duty on Chinese steel and aluminium.

Canada and its Western allies accuse China of subsidising its EV industry, giving its car makers an unfair advantage.

China has called the move “trade protectionism” which “violates World Trade Organization rules”.

“We are transforming Canada’s automotive sector to be a global leader in building the vehicles of tomorrow, but actors like China have chosen to give themselves an unfair advantage in the global marketplace”, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canada’s duties on Chinese EVs are due to come into effect on 1 October, while those on steel and aluminium will be implemented from 15 October.

A Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesperson said Canada’s actions “seriously undermine the global economic system, and economic and trade rules”.

“China urges the Canadian side to immediately correct its erroneous practices,” they added.

China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, behind the US.

In May, the US said it would quadruple its tariffs on imports of Chinese EVs to 100%.

That was followed by the EU, which announced plans to impose duties on China-made EVs of up to 36.3%.

Canada’s tariffs on Chinese EVs will include those made by Tesla at its Shanghai factory.

“Tesla will almost certainly be lobbying the Canadian government to get some leeway on these tariffs, as they have already with Europe,” said Mark Rainford, a China-based car industry commentator.

“If they fail at mitigating the tariff enough, they’ll likely look at switching their Canadian imports to either the US or European factories since Canada is their 6th largest market this year and thus not insignificant.”

Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment from BBC News.

Earlier this month, the EU cut its planned extra tariff on China-made Teslas by more than half, after further investigations requested by Elon Musk’s car maker.

Chinese car brands are still not a common sight in Canada but some, like BYD, have taken steps to enter the country’s market.

China is the world’s largest manufacturer of EVs and its car makers have quickly gained a significant share of the global market.

Meanwhile, Canada has struck deals worth billions of dollars with major European car makers, as it tries to become a key part of the global EV industry.

Donald Trump has appointed Robert F Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard to his transition team, days after the two former Democrats endorsed his campaign.

Ms Gabbard is a former congresswoman and military veteran who ran to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2020, before distancing herself from the party.

Mr Kennedy initially launched a bid to win the Democratic nomination this time around, but later ran as an independent before dropping out and endorsing Trump.

Meanwhile, more than 200 Republicans who served under previous presidents and party leaders have given their backing to Trump’s rival, Kamala Harris.

In an open letter, former staffers for George HW Bush and George W Bush, and Senators John McCain and Mitt Romney said another Trump administration would endanger American democracy.

The Republicans wrote: “Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov Walz. That’s to be expected.

“The alternative, however, is simply untenable.”

The Trump campaign said Ms Gabbard and Mr Kennedy would serve as honorary transition team co-chairs, along with Trump’s sons and running mate JD Vance.

Presidential transition teams kick into action when a candidate is elected. They help select political appointees and set priorities for the incoming administration.

Trump senior advisor Brian Hughes said that the endorsements of the two former Democrats show how the campaign was earning support “across partisan lines”.

“We look forward to having their powerful voices on the team as we work to restore America’s greatness,” he said in a statement.

On Monday, Trump welcomed Ms Gabbard, 43, to a stage in Detroit, in the key swing state of Michigan.

Ms Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress from 2013 to 2021, quit the Democratic Party in 2022, complaining of its “wokeness”.

She appeared alongside Trump to commemorate US service personnel killed in an attack in Afghanistan three years prior, using it as an opportunity to criticise the Biden administration.

Thirteen US service members and more than 100 Afghans were killed during the suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

The incident occurred as American troops made a chaotic withdrawal from the country, and the Taliban returned to power.

Ms Gabbard made frequent criticisms of US military interventionism during her time in Congress.

Appearing at Monday’s event in Michigan, Ms Gabbard said she was appealing to Democrats, Republicans and independents alike to pick Trump at the ballot box in November – saying it was a matter of “saving our country and serving the people”.

Her official backing of Trump marks the culmination of a remarkable political journey over the last decade that began on the progressive left of the Democratic Party.

She was the first Hindu member of the US Congress, going on to serve as vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee – before resigning to endorse the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.

When Ms Gabbard ran for president in 2020, she championed liberal issues like government-run healthcare, free college tuition and gun control.

But Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee that year, and went on to win the presidency. Ms Gabbard endorsed him, but quit the party two years later.

She has since staked out conservative views on issues including abortion and transgender rights, and has become a regular and outspoken guest on Fox News. She has also been accused of spreading “promoting Russian propaganda” by officials in Ukraine.

By early 2024, she was singing the praises of Mr Biden’s rival, Trump, who will this time compete for the White House against Ms Harris.

In the subsequent months, it was even speculated that Ms Gabbard could be in the frame as Trump’s potential running mate for November – a role that ultimately went to Mr Vance.

Mr Kennedy ended his independent presidential campaign on Friday and endorsed Trump, appearing alongside him at a rally in Arizona.

The former president’s allies have criticised both Mr Kennedy and Mr Gabbard over the years.

Only four months ago, Trump called Mr Kennedy a “Radical Left Lunatic” who was “far more liberal than anyone running as a Democrat”.

The two former Democrats are also known for being staunch environmentalists.

Trump has promised to ramp up US fossil fuel production and regularly uses the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!” at his rallies.

Top Democrats were quick to dismiss the endorsements from Ms Gabbard and Mr Kennedy.

“Rather than focusing on earning the support of hardworking Americans, Trump is more fixated on winning the backing of extremists like Gabbard and RFK Jr — and they’ll do nothing but weigh down his sinking ship of a campaign,” the party’s Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd said in a statement.

• SIMPLE GUIDE: Everything you need to know about the vote
• SWING STATES: Where might the election be won and lost?
• ANALYSIS: How Trump is trying to end the Harris honeymoon
• VOTERS: What they make of Tim Walz as Harris’s VP pick

US prosecutors have issued new charges against former President Donald Trump for his alleged attempts to interfere in the 2020 election after he lost to Joe Biden.

They are in response to a US Supreme Court ruling last month that said presidents enjoy broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts while in office.

The revised indictment lays out the same four criminal counts against Trump, but they now relate to his status as a political candidate rather than a sitting president.

Trump has denied the election interference allegations, though he has maintained his claim – without evidence – that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The new indictment, brought by Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith, leaves in place the four crimes Trump is accused of committing: Conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.

Trump has previously pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The former president’s personal lawyer – Todd Blanche – referred the BBC to the Trump campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the new indictment was “an effort to resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt” and “distract the American People” from the election.

He called for it to be “dismissed IMMEDIATELY”.

A source close to Trump’s legal team told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that the new indictment “was not a surprise”.

“This is what the government is supposed to do based on what the Supreme Court did,” the source said. “It doesn’t change our position that we believe Smith’s case is flawed and it should be dismissed.”

The new charging document – which was slimmed down from 45 to 36 pages – re-works the language of the allegations and refines the ways it argues that the former president allegedly committed these crimes to comport with the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity.

For example, the new indictment drops the claim that Trump tried to pressure justice department officials to work to overturn his defeat. The high court ruled that Trump’s direction to justice officials was not illegal.

The special counsel’s office explained the reason for the new indictment in a statement on Tuesday.

“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v. United States,” the office said.

The justice department declined to comment further.

The new charging document argues that Trump acted as a private citizen – and not as president – when he undertook the alleged scheme to sway the election.

“The Defendant had no official responsibilities related to the certification proceeding, but he did have a personal interest as a candidate in being named the winner of the election,” reads one new line in the indictment.

Another new line refers to a lawsuit filed by his campaign in Georgia. The old language said the suit was “filed in his name”, but the new indictment says it was “filed in his capacity as a candidate for president”.

The new indictment also appears to have removed the charges against Jeffrey Clark – a former justice department official who played a key role in the so-called fake electors scheme, according to prosecutors.

The fake electors scheme was an attempt to interfere in the Electoral College system that decides presidential elections. It centred on an attempt to persuade Republican-controlled state legislatures in seven states to select Republican electors or not name any electors in states that Mr Biden won.

The falsified certificates were then transferred to the US Senate in an effort to have their votes counted in the place of the real electors, and overturn Mr Biden’s win.

Mr Clark was not named in either indictment, but has been identified in the media through public records.

The new indictment leaves in place several key allegations against Trump, including that he attempted to persuade Vice-President Mike Pence to obstruct Mr Biden’s election certification.

In last month’s Supreme Court ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that any conversations between Trump and Mr Pence would probably fall under the category of official acts.

“Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution,” he wrote, adding that it remains to be seen whether the government can rebut “that presumption of immunity”.

The new indictment shows that Mr Smith interpreted the US Supreme Court ruling to mean that his case could still move forward, said Daniel Charles Richman, a constitutional law expert at Columbia Law School.

But whether it would satisfy the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity framework remains unclear, the law professor said, as “the Court was painfully vague as to what private conduct done by a president can be charged criminally”.

The new indictment would not necessarily expedite the case, either, Mr Richman told the BBC. He doubted that it would be heard before the election.

The CBS News source close to Trump’s legal team said that the former president’s lawyers would ask for more time to prepare for the case. They said it would likely delay the start of the trial if the judge agrees.

This case came together after Mr Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022 to oversee two federal investigations into Trump: The election interference case and another case accusing the ex-president of taking classified documents back to his Florida home after leaving office.

On Monday, Mr Smith’s team appealed against a Florida judge’s decision to dismiss the confidential documents case.

“The district court deviated from binding Supreme Court precedent, misconstrued the statutes that authorised the special counsel’s appointment, and took inadequate account of the longstanding history of Attorney General appointments of special counsels,” the special counsel’s team wrote in their appeal.

Both cases face uncertain futures after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last month.

If Trump defeats Democrat Kamala Harris, he is widely expected to order the justice department to drop all the federal charges that he faces.

A predator posing as a famous teenage YouTuber who blackmailed hundreds of girls around the globe into performing sex acts on camera has been jailed for 17 years in Australia.

Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed pleaded guilty to 119 charges, relating to 286 people from 20 countries, including the UK, the US, Japan and France. Two-thirds of his victims were aged under 16.

A Perth court heard the 29-year-old coerced them into a cycle of increasingly extreme abuse by threatening to send explicit messages and images of them to their loved ones.

Australian authorities say it is “one of the worst sextortion cases” in history.

“The callous disregard this man had for his victims around the world and their distress, humiliation and fear make it one of the most horrific sextortion cases prosecuted in Australia,” said Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner David McLean.

“This type of online exploitation and abuse is devastating and causes lifelong trauma.”

When handing down her sentence on Tuesday, Judge Amanda Burrows said Rasheed’s offence was of such magnitude there was “no comparable case” in the country, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Pretending to be a 15-year-old American internet star, Rasheed would strike up a conversation with his targets, before involving them in discussions about sexual fantasies.

He threatened to send their responses to friends and family unless they performed a series of escalating, “degrading” sex acts – which at times included family pets and other children in their home.

The court heard Rasheed had been involved in misogynistic “incel” communities online, and on several occasions had invited other people – in one case as many as 98 – to watch the distressing acts on a livestream.

Many of the children being extorted told him they were suicidal – one even sent images of self-harm. But Rasheed continued his blackmail despite their “obvious distress” and “extreme fear”, the judge said, according to the ABC.

He was caught after Australian authorities were contacted by Interpol and US investigators, and charged in 2020 after a police raid on his home.

Rasheed is already serving a five-year prison term for sexually abusing a 14-year-old twice in his car at a Perth park.

The court heard he was engaged in a sex offenders treatment program but Rasheed still represented a high risk of reoffending. He will be eligible to apply for parole in August 2033.

A 3,500-year-old jar has been accidentally smashed into pieces by a four-year-old boy during a trip to a museum in Israel.

The Hecht Museum in Haifa told the BBC the crockery dated back to the Bronze Age between 2200 and 1500BC – and was a rare artefact because it was so intact.

It had been on display near the entrance of the museum without glass, as the museum believes there is “special charm” in showing archaeological finds “without obstructions”.

The boy’s father, Alex, said his son “pulled the jar slightly” because he was “curious about what was inside”, causing it to fall.

Alex also said he was “in shock” to see his son next to the smashed jar and at first thought “it wasn’t my child that did it”.

However, after calming the boy down he spoke to the security guard, Alex told the BBC.

The Hecht Museum said the child has been invited back to the exhibition with his family for an organised tour after the incident happened a few days ago.

“There are instances where display items are intentionally damaged, and such cases are treated with great severity, including involving the police,” Lihi Laszlo from the museum told the BBC.

“In this case, however, this was not the situation. The jar was accidentally damaged by a young child visiting the museum, and the response will be accordingly.”

A specialist in conservation has also been appointed to restore the jar, and it will be returned to its spot “in a short time”.

The boy’s father Alex said they will feel “relieved” to see the jar restored but added they are “sorry” because “it will no longer be the same item”.

The museum told the BBC that “whenever possible, items are displayed without barriers or glass walls”.

And “despite the rare incident” the museum said it intends to continue this tradition.

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The jar was most likely originally intended to be used to carry local supplies, such as wine and olive oil.

It predates the time of the Biblical King David and King Solomon and is characteristic of the Canaan region on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

Similar items of pottery found during archaeological digs are usually broken or incomplete when unearthed, making this intact jar “an impressive find” when it was discovered, the museum added.

The Hecht Museum is in the grounds of the University of Haifa in northern Israel and collects items of archaeology and art.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are set to square off in their first presidential debate next month, but the campaigns are still warring over logistics – namely relating to the microphones.

Trump’s campaign is pushing for the microphones to be muted when it is the other person’s turn to speak. This is a rule that was originally requested by Joe Biden when he was the Democratic candidate.

Trump’s team ultimately agreed to the request – which was an apparent effort by Biden’s campaign to limit interruptions. (The pair’s chaotic first 2020 debate was marred by constant interruptions, with Mr Biden eventually snapping at his rival: “Will you shut up, man?”)

Some analysts say the Trump campaign’s eagerness to keep the muting rule in place for the Harris debate on 10 September may be due to the positive reception he received for what was a more reserved performance than many had anticipated against Mr Biden in June. In practice, it made interruptions impossible.

The former president, however, appears less concerned by the rule and to some extent even undermined his own team’s statements calling for it to remain in place. “[It] doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather have [the microphones] probably on,” he said on Monday.

“But the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted,” he added.

Trump posted on social media Tuesday afternoon that he has “reached an agreement” with ABC for the 10 September debate. He did not mention mics in the post, but said again that the “Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate”, which included muted mics in its rules.

He also accused the network in the post of being “unfair”, but also said his team was assured that the debate would be “fair and equitable”.

It was not clear Tuesday whether the Harris campaign had signed off on the terms Trump said he agreed to with ABC.

The Harris campaign wants to shift the agreed rules with just two weeks to go so that both candidates’ microphones will be unmuted for the entire debate. What do they think they could gain from this change?

More generally, they believe it has the potential to show viewers a more unfiltered, even ill-tempered, Trump who would be audible throughout the entire time Ms Harris is speaking.

“Our understanding is that Trump’s handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don’t think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own,” a statement from Harris’s spokesman said.

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“The reason she’s saying to unmute the mics is because Trump is uncontrolled,” Ameshia Cross, a Democratic strategist and political analyst, told the BBC.

Ms Cross said Trump’s rallies and Truth Social posts, where he has launched repeated personal attacks against Ms Harris, offer examples of how he may approach the looming debate on ABC News.

Those attacks “turn off voters” particularly women voters, voters of colour and young voters, Ms Cross said.

Strategists have also suggested Trump’s insults may turn off crucial undecided voters. “One of the ways to win over swing voters is not by personal attacks,” Kevin Madden, a longtime Republican strategist, told the New York Times. “By nature, they don’t love partisan politics.”

If Trump’s microphone is unmuted while Harris is speaking, the likelihood of an audible insult or interruption ramps up. And the Harris campaign may feel a more aggressive Trump who is able to interrupt at will could benefit them by turning off these swing voters.

This matters in an election that will be decided by a relatively small group of undecided voters in a handful of battleground states such as Pennsylvania, where the debate is being held.

“He’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts and… I think the [Harris] campaign would want viewers to hear [that],” a person familiar with the debate negotiations told Politico this week.

The Trump campaign, according to reports, are eager for their candidate to focus on the key issues and not on personal attacks. One ally who speaks to the former president every week recently told the BBC’s Katty Kay that Trump will win in November if he sticks to talking about the economy, the border and crime.

It is fair to assume that if the candidates are only audible during their allotted answer time, then the debate is more likely to focus on the issues, as the Trump campaign wants, and not tense clashes and heated exchanges which would be possible with live mics.

Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist, told the BBC that he believes the Harris campaign’s effort to unmute the microphones is an attempt to move the debate away from the issues and into the arena of grabby viral moments.

“They’re not sure they can win on the issues so what they’re looking for is any way possible to have a viral moment,” he said.

Ms Harris has had these moments in the past. During the 2020 vice-presidential debate between then-vice-president Mike Pence and Ms Harris, a clip of her pushing back on an interruption was widely shared. “I’m speaking, Mr Vice-President,” she said.

Mr O’Connell said the Trump campaign should continue to aggressively push for the muted microphones because those are the rules the Democratic campaign originally came up with. He said the message should be: “We let you write the rules, we are sticking with the same rules.”

Ms Cross, however, suggested the Harris campaign is calling Trump’s bluff and has the upper hand. “If he does not want them unmuted, he’s going to look weak, like he cannot control himself,” she said.

While Ms Cross said Trump was trying to “weasel” his way out of the debate by attacking the network, Mr O’Connell said the Republican nominee would show up regardless for what is set to be a major moment.

“The 10 September debate could be the most consequential moment between now and election day,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his troops’ incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is part of a “victory plan” that he will present to US President Joe Biden next month.

Speaking at a forum on Tuesday, President Zelensky said the success of the plan would depend on President Biden and on whether the US would give Ukraine “what is in this plan or not, [and] whether we will be free to use this plan, or not”.

“It may sound too ambitious for some, but it is an important plan for us,” he added, saying that he would also show the plan to both US presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

A number of Ukrainian troops made an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in early August, and Russia has so far seemingly been unable to repel them.

Speaking at the same forum, Ukraine’s Kyiv’s top military commander, Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Ukraine now controls 1,294 sq km (500 sq miles) of Russian territory and 100 settlements – although these figures have not been verified by the BBC.

Gen Syrskyi said Ukraine had no intention of holding on to the territory and that one motivation for the incursion was to distract Russia’s forces away from their own offensive in eastern Ukraine. Russia is seeking to capture the town of Pokrovsk, which is an important hub and home to a key railway station.

President Zelensky also revealed that Ukraine had recently carried out the first successful test of a domestically-produced ballistic missile. He congratulated his country’s defence industry, but declined to share any more details of the missile.

Although Ukraine has already used some ballistic missiles against Russia that were provided by the US, it has been working to develop the domestic production of military hardware to diminish its dependency on Western aid.

However, for now, Ukraine mostly relies on military supplies from abroad to fight Russia and repel its attacks. At the forum, President Zelensky said that Ukraine had used some newly arrived F-16 fighter jets sent by Western countries in order to intercept some of the missiles fired by Russia in recent days – but that the country would need more jets.

For the past two nights, Russia has pummelled Ukraine with a barrage of drone and missile attacks which have left several people dead and caused blackouts in various areas of the country.

Such attacks show that Moscow has no intention to stop the war, President Zelensky said: “When they want [peace talks], they don’t launch 230 air strikes.”

Since the Kursk incursion, however, Russia has signalled it will not engage in any peace talks with Ukraine.

“The topic of negotiations at the moment has pretty much lost its relevance,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

The Israeli military says commandos have rescued from an underground tunnel in Gaza a Bedouin Arab hostage who was kidnapped by Hamas during the 7 October attack on Israel.

Kaid Farhan Elkadi, 52, was rescued in a “complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet domestic security service, according to a statement.

No further details could be published “due to considerations of the safety of our hostages, the security of our forces, and national security”, it said.

Mr Elkadi – the eighth hostage rescued by Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza – is in a stable condition in hospital, where he is undergoing examinations.

Photographs released by the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba showed him speaking to members of his family while sitting in a hospital armchair.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that he managed to escape his captors before being rescued, and that the soldiers attempted to understand whether he had been held with other hostages.

Mr Elkadi’s brother, Hatam, told Haaretz that he was “a little thin”.

“We told him that everything is fine and that everyone is waiting for him outside,” he said.

“We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. We hope that all hostages will get this moment, that they will all experience the same excitement and joy,” he added. “May all the hostages return, and may all the families feel this feeling.”

Mr Elkadi, a father of 11 and grandfather of one, is from a Bedouin village in the Rahat area of the Negev desert.

He worked for many years as a security guard at Kibbutz Magen, close to the Israel-Gaza border, where he was abducted 10 months ago.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a video announcement that he could not go into many details about the operation in which he was freed.

But he added that he could “share that Israeli commandos rescued [him] from an underground tunnel, following accurate intelligence”.

Footage released by the IDF showed Mr Elkadi sitting down, smiling and speaking to soldiers, including the commander of the 162nd Division, moments after his rescue.

A senior Israeli military official confirmed that troops were operating in “a complex underground system where hostages were suspected to be held”.

Mr Elkadi was alone in the tunnel when he was found by Israeli troops when he was rescued, the official added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had congratulated Mr Elkadi in a telephone call and told him that all Israelis were moved by the news.

“We are working relentlessly to return all of our hostages,” the statement quoted Mr Netanyahu as saying.

“We are doing this in two main ways: negotiations and rescue operations. The two of these together require our military presence on the ground, and constant military pressure.”

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum described the rescue as “miraculous”.

But it stressed that “military operations alone cannot free the remaining hostages who have suffered 326 days of abuse and terror”, and that “a negotiated deal is the only way forward”.

“We urgently call on the international community to maintain pressure on Hamas to accept the proposed deal and release all hostages.”

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 40,430 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 104 hostages still being held, including 34 who are presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Indirect talks have continued in Cairo in recent days, but so far there has been no sign of a breakthrough over key sticking points. They include Mr Netanyahu’s demand that Israel keep troops along Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Hamas has rejected.

Two other Bedouin Arabs – Yousef Zyadna and his son, Hamza – are among the remaining hostages who are still alive, while the body of a third, Mhamad el-Atrash, is still being held by Hamas.

Another Bedouin, Hisham al-Sayed, has been held captive in Gaza since 2015.

Vice-President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz – the Democratic ticket for US president – have agreed to their first joint interview.

The two politicians will sit-down with CNN in Georgia for an interview that airs Thursday at 21:00 EDT (02:00 BST).

It will be the candidates’ first in-depth on-the-record conversation with a reporter since President Joe Biden exited the race and endorsed Ms Harris as his replacement more than five weeks ago.

Since the vice-president moved to the top of the ticket, Republicans have criticised her for appearing to avoid the press and accused her of leaving voters in the dark on her presidential plans.

The interview will be Ms Harris and Mr Walz’s first big test as running mates, and it provides an opportunity for them to quiet that criticism. It also fufills a vow the vice-president made to schedule a sit-down before the end of the month.

It follows the pair’s high-profile speeches at the star-studded Democratic National Convention in Chicago – a slickly produced and well-scripted party celebration – and Ms Harris will continue on to a bus tour of the battleground state of Georgia after the interview.

It will be one of the few opportunities for voters nationwide to hear more detail about the Harris-Walz campaign’s policy positions before election day, which is only 70 days away.

Republicans – as well as members of the media – have grown louder about the campaign’s few concrete policy positions or interviews during Ms Harris’s truncated and unprecedented run for president.

It has opened her campaign up to chiding remarks and insults from her opponents.

Trump said during a recent press conference at Mar-a-Lago that Ms Harris “can’t do an interview” because she was “barely competent”.

Ohio Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, has scolded the media and Ms Harris for her press avoidance. He said earlier this month that it was “shameful” that Ms Harris had not “taken a single real question from a reporter”.

“She (Harris) is taking a basement strategy of running from reporters instead of getting in front of them and answering tough questions about her record and letting the American people know who she is.”

Mr Vance has frequently noted that both he and Trump have held multiple interviews and press conferences, often facing “hostile questions” from the press.

Vice-President Harris – who has enjoyed a campaign that has ridden high on “good vibes” thus far – has avoided some of the gaffes and blunders that the Republican ticket has suffered in front of the press, however.

That could be the point, as she had a few bad experiences with the press in her first two years as vice-president.

A poor interview in 2021 with NBC’s Lester Holt on immigration and the US southern border seemed to particularly have led to a limit of her press engagement thereafter.

It remains to be seen what effect this interview may have on Ms Harris’s campaign, as multiple national opinion polls show her leading Trump ahead of the November presidential election.

A Farleigh Dickinson University poll released last week suggest Ms Harris is beating Trump nationally by seven points, 50 percent to 43 percent.

It is a stark reversal of fortunes for Democrats, who were beginning to fall behind Republicans in multiple races when Mr Biden was the nominee.

Polls frequently indicated the president trailing his predecessor by several points as well.

Two Delta Air Lines workers have been killed and one has been seriously injured after an accident at an airline maintenance facility in Atlanta.

The workers were servicing a Delta plane at the airline’s wheel and brake shop at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport shortly after 05:00 local time Tuesday.

It’s not clear how the incident occurred.

Local medical authorities identified the dead men as Mirko Marweg, 58, and Luis Aldarondo, 37. The name of the injured person was not released.

In a statement, the airline said: “The Delta family is heartbroken at the loss of two team members and the injury of another following an incident this morning at the Atlanta Technical Operations Maintenance facility.

“We are now working with local authorities and conducting a full investigation to determine what happened.”

Delta said the injured worker was receiving medical care.

The incident involved wheel components that were being disassembled and were not attached to the aircraft, the airline said in a statement.

No cause was identified, and Delta said an investigation was ongoing.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was “aware of the event and is in communication with the airline”.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a union that represents many airline industry workers, called for an investigation into the deaths. Delta’s workforce is largely not part of the union, CBS reports.

“We stand in unity with Delta workers during this difficult time and we call on Delta and the relevant authorities to quickly launch a thorough investigation into how this happened,” the union said in a statement.

With few details, local authorities expressed support for the victims and their families.

Airport officials called it a “tragic incident”.

“I offer my deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased Delta employees,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said in a statement posted online. “My thoughts are also with those who were injured, and I hope for their swift and full recovery.”

The aircraft arrived in Atlanta from Las Vegas on Sunday, according to online flight records.

The incident does not appear to have affected air traffic at the airport on Tuesday.

Delta is headquartered in Atlanta. Hartsfield-Jackson airport is the world’s busiest in terms of passenger numbers.

An oil tanker which was attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the Red Sea last week is still on fire and may be leaking oil, the US Pentagon says.

Attempts to salvage the Greek-owned and flagged MV Sounion have been thwarted by the Houthis, who have threatened more attacks, the Pentagon adds.

The ship is carrying more than 150,000 tonnes – or one million barrels – of crude oil, and a major spill has the potential to be among the largest from a ship in recorded history.

The Iran-backed Houthis, who control much of Yemen, say they have been attacking ships in the Red Sea for 10 months in support of the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

They have reportedly sunk two ships and killed at least two crew members in that time.

They have claimed – often falsely – that they are targeting ships only linked to Israel, the US or the UK.

The Sounion was first hit by gunfire from two small boats last Wednesday, then struck by three unidentified projectiles, which sparked a fire and left it without engine power, the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) office said.

Its 25 crew members were rescued by a European warship a day later and transported to Djibouti.

The oil tanker was later attacked again – the Houthis posted a video purportedly showing them setting it on fire.

A US State Department statement on Saturday expressed concern about the attacks on the Sounion. It warned of a possible spill of oil four times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which released 257,000 barrels off the coast of Alaska.

On Tuesday Pentagon spokesman Maj-Gen Patrick Ryder said two tugs had been sent to salvage the stricken vessel but the Houthis had threatened to attack them as well.

He said the US was working with partners in the region to try to mitigate any potential environmental impact.

A new flashpoint has emerged in the ongoing maritime dispute between China and the Philippines, with both countries clashing over yet another spot in the South China Sea.

Both China and the Philippines have staked their claims on various islands and zones in the Sea – their dispute increasingly escalating over the years with more vessel collisions, scuffles, and allegations of armed threats.

But last week, things came to a head when Beijing and Manila’s vessels collided near the Sabina Shoal- both accusing the other of ramming them on purpose.

The shoal, claimed by China as Xianbin Jiao and as Escoda Shoal by the Philippines, is located some 75 nautical miles from the Philippines’ west coast and 630 nautical miles from China.

On 19 August, several Chinese and Philippine vessels collided near the shoal in the disputed Spratly Islands – an area rich in oil and gas, which has been claimed by both countries for years.

The Chinese coast guard said that the Philippine vessel “deliberately collided” into them, while the Philippines said the Chinese vessels were conducting “aggressive manoeuvres”.

A second round of collisions took place on Sunday, with both sides once again blaming each other. Several other countries including the UK, Japan, Australia and South Korea, as well as the EU, have criticised China’s actions.

On Monday, the Philippines said 40 Chinese ships prevented two of their boats from conducting a “humanitarian mission” to restock the Teresa Magbuana, a Philippine coast guard ship deployed months earlier to the shoal.

The Philippines suspects China is attempting to reclaim land at Sabina Shoal. It has pointed to underwater mounds of crushed coral on Sabina’s sandbars, which its coast guard filmed, saying Beijing is using that material to expand the shoal. Chinese state media has called such accusations “groundless”.

Authorities sent the Teresa Magbuana to Sabina in April as part of a prolonged presence they plan to maintain at the shoal. Manila sees it as key to their efforts to explore the Spratlys for oil and gas.

China meanwhile sees the presence of the Teresa Magbuana as evidence of the Philippines’ intentions to occupy the shoal.

A recent commentary by Chinese state news outlet Xinhua pointed to a decrepit World War Two era ship grounded by the Philippines in 1999 on the Second Thomas Shoal, known in Chinese as the Ren’ai Jiao.

A handful of soldiers are still stationed there and require regular rations. For years, the ship has been a source of constant friction between both countries, with China routinely attempting to block re-supply missions to the ship.

“25 years on, it is still there. Clearly, the Philippines is attempting to repeat this scenario at Xianbin Jiao,” said the commentary.

“China will never be deceived by the Philippines again.”

There has been a string of dangerous encounters in recent months as the two sides sought to enforce their claims on disputed reefs and outcrops, including the Second Thomas Shoal and the Scarborough Shoal.

The collisions usually arise from the cat-and-mouse games the boats engage in, as they attempt to chase the other side away.

China has increasingly blasted powerful water cannon and lasers at Philippine ships, with the Filipinos also accusing the Chinese of boarding their boats, leading to scuffles, as well as confiscating items and puncturing their inflatable vessels.

One of the latest accusations from Manila was that Chinese coast guard personnel armed with knives, spears and swords boarded one of their military ships and threatened their soldiers.

“We are struggling against a more powerful adversary,” the Philippines defence chief Gilberto Teodoro said on Tuesday, while appealing to the international community to issue “a strong call out against China”.

So far there have been no fatalities, though the Philippines says several of its soldiers have sustained injuries. But President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has warned that any Filipino deaths resulting from China’s actions would be considered an “act of war”.

Observers worry their dispute could eventually spark a larger confrontation in the South China Sea.

A previous attempt by the Philippines to get the United Nations to arbitrate ended with the decision that China had no lawful claims within its so-called nine dash line, the boundary it uses to claim a large swathe of the South China Sea. Beijing has refused to recognise the ruling.

But in recent weeks both countries have made an attempt to de-escalate the immediate conflicts out at sea.

Last month they agreed to allow the Philippines to restock the outpost in the Second Thomas Shoal with food, supplies and personnel. Since then this has taken place with no reported clashes.

The incidents at Sabina Shoal however raise the question of whether such détentes are effective when the dispute can simply shift to a new site.