Millions of tyres being sent from the UK to India for recycling are actually being “cooked” in makeshift furnaces causing serious health problems and huge environmental damage, the BBC has discovered.

The majority of the UK’s exported waste tyres are sold into the Indian black market, and this is well known within the industry, BBC File on 4 Investigates has been told.

“I don’t imagine there’s anybody in the industry that doesn’t know it’s happening,” says Elliot Mason, owner of one of the biggest tyre recycling plants in the UK.

Campaigners and many of those in the industry – including the Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) – say the government knows the UK is one of the worst offenders for exporting waste tyres for use in this way.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has told us it has strict controls on exporting waste tyres, including unlimited fines and jail time.

When drivers get their tyres changed, garages charge a small recycling fee – it can vary, but it is normally about £3-6 for each end-of-life tyre.

This should guarantee that they are recycled – either in the UK or abroad – at facilities like Elliot Mason’s Rubber World, in Rushden, Northampton.

His facility has repurposed tyres into tiny rubber crumbs since 1996. Rubber crumb is often used as flooring for equestrian centres and children’s playgrounds.

The UK ends up with about 50 million waste tyres (nearly 700,000 tonnes) in need of recycling every year and around half of those are exported to India – according to official figures – where they should end up in recycling plants.

Before tyres leave the UK they are compressed into huge rubber cubes known as “bales”.

“The pretence is that baled tyres are being sent to India and then shredded and granulated in a factory very similar to ours,” explains Mr Mason.

However, some 70% of tyres imported by India from the UK and the rest of the world end up in makeshift industrial plants, where they are subjected to what amounts to an extreme form of cooking, the TRA estimates.

In an oxygen-free environment, in temperatures of about 500C, a process known as pyrolysis takes place. Steel and small amounts of oil are extracted, as well as carbon black – a powder or pellet that can be used in various industries.

The pyrolysis plants – often in rural backwaters – are akin to homemade pressure cookers and produce dangerous gases and chemicals.

UK tyres are ending up in these Indian pyrolysis plants, despite legitimate official paperwork stating they are headed for legal Indian recycling centres.

Together with SourceMaterial – a non-profit journalism group – we wanted to follow the long journey UK tyres make. Trackers were hidden in shipments of tyres to India by an industry insider.

The shipments went on an eight-week journey and eventually arrived in an Indian port, before being driven 800 miles cross-country, to a cluster of soot-covered compounds beside a small village.

Drone footage, taken in India and shared with the BBC, showed the tyres reaching a compound – where thousands were waiting to be thrown into huge furnaces to undergo pyrolysis.

BBC File on 4 Investigates approached one of the companies operating in the compound. It confirmed it was processing some imported tyres but said what it was doing wasn’t dangerous or illegal.

There are up to 2,000 pyrolysis plants in India, an environmental lawyer in India told the BBC. Some are licensed by the authorities but around half are unlicensed and therefore illegal, he said.

At a different cluster of makeshift plants in Wada, just outside Mumbai, a team from BBC Indian Languages saw soot, dying vegetation and polluted waterways around the sites. Villagers complained of persistent coughs and eye problems.

“We want these companies moved from our village,” one witness told us, “otherwise we will not be able to breathe freely.”

Scientists at Imperial College London told the BBC plant workers continually exposed to the atmospheric pollutants produced by pyrolysis, were at risk of respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological diseases and certain types of cancer.

At the site the BBC visited in Wada, two women and two children were killed in January when there was an explosion at one of the plants. It had been processing European-sourced tyres.

The BBC approached the owners of the plant where the explosion happened but they haven’t responded.

Following the blast, a public meeting was held and a minister for the district of Wada promised that the local government would take action. Seven pyrolysis plants have since been shut down by the authorities.

The Indian government has also been approached for comment.

Many UK businesses will bale tyres and send them to India because it is more profitable and investing in shredding machinery is expensive, according to Mr Mason.

But he says he isn’t prepared to do this himself because he has a duty of care to make sure his company’s waste is going to the right place – and it is very difficult to track where tyre bales end up.

Bigger businesses, like Rubber World, have tightly regulated environmental permits and are inspected regularly. But smaller operators can apply for an exemption and trade and lawfully export more easily.

This is called a T8 exemption and allows these businesses to store and process up to 40 tonnes of car tyres a week.

But many traders told the BBC that they exported volumes of tyres in excess of the permitted limit, meaning they would have been exporting more tyres than they should.

The BBC was tipped off about several of these companies and teamed up with an industry insider who posed as a broker with a contract to sell waste tyres to India.

Four of the six dealers we contacted said they processed large numbers of waste tyres.

One told us he had exported 10 shipping containers that week – about 250 tonnes of tyres, more than five times his permitted limit.

Another dealer first showed us paperwork which suggested his tyres were baled and sent to India for recycling which would have been allowed – but he then admitted he knew they were going to India for pyrolysis. The Indian government has made it illegal for imported tyres to be used for pyrolysis.

“There are plenty of companies [that do it]… 90% of English people [are] doing this business,” he told us, adding that he cannot control what happens when tyres arrive in India.

When we asked if he had concerns about the health of those people living and working near the pyrolysis plants he responded: “These issues are international. Brother, we can’t do anything… I’m not a health minister.”

Defra told the BBC that the UK government is considering reforms on waste exemptions.

“This government is committed to transitioning to a circular economy, moving to a future where we keep our resources in use for longer while protecting our natural environment,” a spokesperson said.

In 2021, Australia banned exports of baled tyres after auditors checked to see where they were really ending up. Lina Goodman, the CEO of Tyre Stewardship Australia, told the BBC that “100% of the material was not going to the destinations that were on the paperwork”.

Fighting Dirty founder Georgia Elliott-Smith says sending tyres from the UK to India for pyrolysis is a “massive unrecognised problem” which the UK government should deal with. She wants tyres redefined as “hazardous waste”.

A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country’s largest-ever payout in a criminal case.

Iwao Hakamata, 89, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, his boss’s wife and their two children, but was acquitted last year after a retrial.

Mr Hakamata’s lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention – which made him the world’s longest-serving death row inmate – took a toll on his mental health.

Judge Kunii Koshi, who granted the request on Monday, agreed that he had suffered “extremely severe” mental and physical pain.

The Japanese government will pay Mr Hakamata’s financial compensation, in what local media is widely reporting as the biggest payout for a criminal case in the country’s history.

Mr Hakamata’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas.

He was granted a rare retrial and released from prison in 2014, amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction.

Last September, hundreds of people gathered at a court in Shizuoka, a city on Japan’s south coast, where a judge handed down the acquittal – to loud cheers of “banzai”, or “hurray” in Japanese.

Mr Hakamata, however, was unfit to attend the hearing. He was exempted from all prior hearings because of his deteriorated mental state.

He had lived under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since being granted a retrial and released from prison in 2014. Hideko had fought for decades to clear her brother’s name.

Mr Hakamata was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his boss, his boss’ wife and their two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Mr Hakamata of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Mr Hakamata initially denied doing so, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession, following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968 he was sentenced to death.

For years, Mr Hakamata’s lawyers had argued that DNA recovered from the victims’ clothes did not match his, and alleged that the evidence was planted.

Although he was granted a retrial in 2014, prolonged legal proceedings meant it took until last October for the retrial to begin.

The case has raised questions about Japan’s justice system, including the time taken for a retrial and the allegations of forced confessions.

Washington DC is still digesting a serious security breach at the heart of the Trump administration.

It’s the story of how a journalist – the Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg – was added to a Signal platform messaging group which apparently included Vice-President JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, in addition to National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

The topic being discussed was attacking the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen.

Goldberg said he had seen classified military plans for the strikes, including weapons packages, targets and timing, two hours before the bombs struck.

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On the military action, Goldberg reported that the account named JD Vance wrote: “I think we are making a mistake.”

The vice-president said targeting Houthi forces that are attacking vessels in the Suez Canal serves European interests more than the US, because Europe has more trade running through the canal.

Vance added that his boss was perhaps unaware of how US action could help Europe.

“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance said. “There’s a further risk that we see moderate to severe spike in oil prices.”

The vice-president went on to say, according to Goldberg, he would support the consensus but would prefer to delay it by a month.

• US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen’s Houthis

Goldberg reported in his article that spokesman for JD Vance had later sent him a statement underlining that Trump and Vance had had “subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement”.

Since coming to power, Trump has castigated his European Nato allies, urged them to increase defence spending and generally insisted that Europe needs to take responsibility for protecting its own interests.

Arguments over why the US could – and should – carry out the military strike against the Houthis did not sway Vance.

He said to the defence secretary, “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

Hegseth reciprocated:

“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

A group member, only identified as “SM” suggested that after the strike, the US should “make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return”.

“If Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what?” he asked.

“If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return,” the user continues.

According to Goldberg, the US national security chief posted three emojis after the strike: “a fist, an American flag, and fire”.

The Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, responded with five emojis, Goldberg said: “two hands-praying, a flexed bicep, and two American flags”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles voiced messages of support, he said.

“I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance said as updates on the strikes were given.

Two others members added prayer emojis, Goldberg reported.

To Vance’s concerns that the action may be seen as going against Trump’s message on Europe, the US defence secretary wrote:

“VP: I understand your concerns – and fully support you raising w/ POTUS [Trump]. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out (economy, Ukraine peace, Gaza, etc).

“I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”

The Trump administration has consistently blamed Joe Biden for being too lenient with Iran.

Goldberg said he got an unsolicited invitation on the Signal messaging platform on 11 March by an account named Michael Waltz, and was then added to the group chat about Yemen two days later.

The president was not part of this group, but Trump’s closest collaborators were.

Goldberg initially thought this was a hoax, but soon realised it was real.

The whole issue is adding pressure on the national security adviser, with Democrats in the House and Senate calling for an urgent inquiry.

When asked on Monday about the whole incident, Trump said he didn’t know anything, but he has stood by Waltz.

The defence secretary has also said no secrets were revealed.

“Nobody was texting war plans,” he told journalists.

A court in Japan has ordered the disbandment of the controversial Unification Church, which came under scrutiny after the shock killing of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.

The alleged assassin had confessed that he held a grievance against Abe because of the ex-leader’s ties with the church – he blamed the church for bankrupting his family.

Japan’s education and culture ministry sought the church’s dissolution and accused it of manipulating followers into making huge donations and other financial sacrifices.

But the church, more popularly known as the “Moonies”, argued that the donations were part of legitimate religious activities. It can appeal to overturn Tuesday’s ruling.

The order handed down by a Tokyo district court will strip the church of its tax-exempt status and require it to liquidate its assets, but it will still be allowed to operate in Japan.

During their investigation, authorities found that the church coerced followers into buying expensive items by exploiting fears about their spiritual well-being.

They interviewed nearly 200 people who said they were victimised by the church.

The Unification Church, which was started in South Korea, has established a presence in Japan since the 1960s. The name “Moonies” was derived from the name of its founder, Sun Myung Moon.

It has drawn controversy even before Abe’s assassination for teaching that marriage is central to spiritual salvation. It is known for holding mass wedding ceremonies involving thousands of couples.

Since 2023, some 200 former believers who said they were forced to donate to the group have demanded compensations amounting to 5.7 billion yen ($38.5m) in total, according their lawyers.

Investigations following Abe’s assassination revealed close ties between the secretive sect and many conservative ruling-party lawmakers, leading to the resignation of four ministers.

An internal investigation by former prime minister Fumio Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party found that 179 of its 379 lawmakers had interacted with the Unification Church.

The relationships ranged from attending church events to accepting donations and receiving election support.

The revelations about the extent and level of involvement of the controversial church and the LDP shocked the nation.

The US has removed millions of dollars in bounties from senior members of the Haqqani militant network in Afghanistan, including one on its leader Sirajuddin Haqqani who is also the Taliban government’s interior minister.

It is a significant move given that the Haqqani network is accused of carrying out some of the most high-profile and deadly attacks in Afghanistan during the US-led war in the country, including attacks on the American and Indian embassies, and NATO forces.

Currently, the network is a key part of the Taliban government, which has controlled Afghanistan since foreign troops withdrew from the country in 2021, following a deal struck between the US and the Taliban during President Trump’s first term.

The move to lift the bounties comes weeks into President Trump’s second term, and just days after US officials met with the Taliban government in Kabul to secure the release of an American tourist, detained since 2022.

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A US state department spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that “there is no current reward” for Sirajuddin Haqqani, his brother Abdul Aziz Haqqani and brother-in-law Yahya Haqqani, but they remain ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorists and the Haqqani Network remains designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization”.

An FBI webpage, which on Monday showed a $10 million dollar bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani, has now been updated to remove the reward offer.

Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani told the BBC that the lifting of bounties “was a result of continued diplomatic efforts” by his government. “It is a good step and this shows our new interaction with the world and particularly with the United States. They (the US delegation) told us they want to increase positive interaction and confidence building between us,” he added.

On Saturday, a US delegation including hostage envoy Adam Boehler and former envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad met with the Taliban government’s foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and other Taliban officials in Kabul. Afterwards, US national George Glezmann, detained in December 2022 while visiting Afghanistan as a tourist, was released by the Taliban government.

It is unclear if lifting the bounties was a part of the negotiations.

Founded by Sirajuddin Haqqani’s father, Jalaluddin Haqqani in the 1980s, the Haqqani network started out as a CIA-backed anti-Soviet outfit operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it grew into one of the most feared anti-Western militant organisations in the region.

• Taliban frees US man held in Afghanistan for two years
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The group allied with the Taliban when they first took power in Afghanistan in 1996. Jalaluddin Haqqani died of a prolonged illness in 2018.

Currently, Sirajuddin Haqqani is emerging as a power centre in Afghanistan’s Taliban government, as rifts between him and the Taliban’s supreme leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada grow.

Members of the Taliban government have told the BBC that the issue of women’s education is a key point of disagreement between the two sides.

The Haqqanis have sought to project themselves as more moderate, galvanising support among people in the country who are frustrated by the supreme leader’s intransigence on women’s education.

The dropping of bounties by the US government is evidence that its stature is also growing externally, among parts of the international community keen to engage with the Taliban.

Four people, including the grandparents of Emile Soleil, have been arrested over the two-year-old’s disappearance and death in the French Alps in July 2023.

The two other people arrested on suspicion of voluntary homicide and concealment of a corpse are adult children of Emile’s grandparents, prosecutors said in a statement.

The grandparents’ lawyer, Isabelle Colombani, told AFP on Tuesday morning that she had no comment, having “only just heard” about the development.

Last year, some of the toddler’s bones and clothes were found by a hiker near the home of Emile’s maternal grandparents in the French Alps, where the boy had gone missing the previous summer.

But prosecutors at the time said that the remains offered no further clues as to the cause of Emile’s death, adding that it could have been as a result of “a fall, manslaughter or murder”.

Tuesday’s sudden twist, in a case that seemed to have gone cold, made headlines in France, where the search for Emile has been extensively covered by the media. When the toddler disappeared, dozens of journalists flocked to Haut-Vernet, often outnumbering the 25 residents of the tiny Alpine hamlet.

The last sighting of Emile had been on 8 July 2023, when two neighbours saw him walking by himself on the only street in the village.

Police were alerted by his grandmother shortly afterwards. Hundreds of people joined police, sniffer dogs and the military in a search the following day.

Initially, French reports focused on Emile’s grandfather – but his lawyer said that she hoped investigators would not “waste too much time on him to the detriment of other lines of inquiry”.

Emile’s remains were found days after police summoned 17 people – including members of Emile’s family, neighbours and witnesses – to reconstruct the final moments before the boy disappeared.

The toddler’s funeral took place in February this year. Soon after, his maternal grandparents said that “silence had made space for truth” and that they could no longer “live without answers”.

“We have had 19 months without a single certainty. We need to understand, we need to know,” they said.

In a statement, Aix-en-Provence chief prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon said that Tuesday’s arrests were the result of investigations carried out over recent months, and that police were examining “several spots in the area”.

French media reported on Tuesday that the grandparents’ home in the Provence region was being searched and that police had seized one of their vehicles.

In France, people can be placed under arrest for questioning while police investigate whether they may have been involved in a crime. It does not mean legal proceedings will necessarily be started against them.

A Sudanese war monitor has accused the military of killing hundreds of people in an air strike on a market in the country’s western Darfur region.

The Emergency Lawyers group – which documents abuses by both sides in Sudan’s civil war that erupted in April 2023 – said the bombing of Tur’rah market was a “horrific massacre” that had also left hundreds injured.

Videos posted on social media – some by the army’s rival the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group that controls much of Darfur – showed the smoking ruins of market stalls and bodies charred beyond recognition.

A military spokesperson denied targeting civilians, saying it only attacked legitimate hostile targets.

Both the Sudanese armed forces and RSF have repeatedly been accused of shelling civilian areas.

The RSF has deployed drones in Darfur, but the army has the warplanes – and regularly strikes RSF positions across the region.

The BBC has not been able to confirm the death toll or the exact date of the attack on the market, which is located about 35km (21 miles) north of the army-held city of el-Fasher.

A Darfur activist group – the Darfur Initiative for Justice and Peace – said it happened on Monday and called it the “deadliest single bombing since the beginning of the war”.

Civilian deaths in bombing and shelling attacks have intensified in recent months with the escalation of fighting in the country’s brutal civil conflict.

Some 12 million Sudanese people have fled their homes since war broke out – that is equivalent to Belgium or Tunisia’s entire population.

Famine has taken hold and starvation is widespread, the UN says, with over half the country experiencing “high levels of acute food insecurity”.

Estimates vary, but it is said that at least 150,000 people have been killed by the fighting.

The RSF has denied evidence that it is committing a genocide in Darfur, including the murder of thousands of civilians, and the rape of non-Arab women as a means of “ethnic cleansing”.

According the UN, Sudan is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

• The gravedigger ‘too busy to sleep’ as Khartoum fighting rages
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A man who fell into a large sinkhole in South Korea’s capital Seoul has been found dead, according to the local fire department.

The man was riding his motorbike in the Gangdong district when the road caved in at about 18:30 local time (09:30 GMT) on Monday.

Rescuers found his body underground on Tuesday morning around 11:00 local time, about 50m (164ft) from where he had fallen in.

A car driver was also injured in the incident, which has gone viral on South Korean social media.

A dashcam video widely circulating online appears to show the moment the road caved in near a traffic junction. It shows the motorcyclist falling into the hole, while a car travelling in front of him narrowly escapes it.

Earlier on Tuesday, rescuers found a mobile phone and the motorcycle in the hole which is 20m wide and 20m deep, according to local media.

The man, said to be in his 30s, has yet to be named by authorities.

Kim Chang-seop, head of Gangdong fire station said at an earlier briefing that there were 2,000 tons of soil and water mixed inside the hole.

Authorities have yet to reveal the cause of the sinkhole.

A report recently submitted to the Seoul city government showed that 223 sinkholes occurred in the city in the past decade.

These were caused by poor infrastructure management, ageing or damaged pipes, long-term subsidence and accidents caused by excavation work.

In January, a truck driver went missing after his vehicle fell into a sinkhole at a junction in the Japanese city of Yashio.

Last August, a search for a woman who disappeared into a pavement sinkhole in Kuala Lumpur’s city centre was called off after a week.

One of the most common reasons for a sinkhole is when rocks like limestone or chalk break down. Sometimes this process can happen gradually, where the depression becomes larger over time.

In other instances, the limestone sits below another layer of rock, which means that as it gets dissolved there are no immediate signs at the surface.

The overlying rock, sometimes clay or sandstone, will then suddenly collapse into the depression beneath – this is called a collapse sinkhole.

But human activities such as excavation works can also accelerate the formation of sinkholes or cause the ground to collapse in a similar way.

Popular Indian comedian Kunal Kamra has refused to apologise after jokes he made during a stand-up show angered supporters of a top politician in Maharashtra state.

Clips of the jokes – some of them were directed at the state’s Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde – had gone viral.

Members of the Shiv Sena party, which is led by Shinde, vandalised the hotel in Mumbai – the capital of Maharashtra – where the show was held.

A police case was also registered against Kamra and politicians from the state’s ruling coalition have asked him to apologise.

In a statement released on Monday night, Kamra said he would “co-operate with the police and courts for any lawful action” taken against him.

“But will the law be fairly and equally deployed against those who have decided that vandalism is the appropriate response to being offended by a joke?” he added.

Police arrested 12 people for the vandalism at the hotel, which housed a comedy club where the show was filmed. They were later released on bail.

As the controversy raged, Shinde said he did not support the vandalism, but added that “the other person should also maintain a certain standard”.

“There is freedom of expression. We understand satire. But there should be a limit,” he told BBC Marathi.

Kamra is a well-known name in the Indian comedy scene, with his political satire and stand-up shows getting millions of views on social media.

In his latest show – called Naya Bharat (New India) – Kamra refers to Shinde’s 2022 defection from the Shiv Sena party which triggered a major political crisis in the state.

The move led to a split in the Shiv Sena – India’s Election Commission later recognised Shinde’s group as the “real” Shiv Sena. The party is now part of the governing coalition in Maharashtra along with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Nationalist Congress Party.

In the show, Kamra sang a parody of a Bollywood song where he indirectly referred to Shinde as a traitor, outraging his supporters.

It’s not clear when the show was filmed at the hotel but the reactions this week were swift.

After Shiv Sena workers ransacked the venue, the studio Habitat – which often hosted stand-up comedy shows – said it was shutting down until it figured out “the best way to provide a platform for free expression without putting ourselves and our property in jeopardy”.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Mumbai’s civic authorities, also demolished some structures at the hotel, citing alleged building violations.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is from the BJP, criticised Kamra, asking him to apologise. “None of us are against freedom of speech. We support satire or even political satire and we do not paint it differently,” he said.

Both he and Shinde accused Kamra of speaking on behalf of the opposition.

A lawmaker from Shinde’s party also said in a video that Shiv Sena workers would pursue Kamra across the country and he would be forced to leave India.

In his statement, Kamra said he would not “hide under [his] bed”, waiting for the outrage to die down.

“As far as I know, it is not against the law to poke fun at our leaders and the circus that is our political system,” he said.

Opposition leaders have supported Kamra.

Uddhav Thackeray, chief of Shinde’s former party – the Shiv Sena (UBT) – said Kamra had not done anything wrong.

“He stated the facts and voiced the public opinion,” he added.

Indian comedians have often faced legal action over comments and jokes. In 2021, Munawar Faruqui spent days in jail after being accused of hurting Hindu religious sentiments in jokes that – it turned out – he didn’t actually crack.

Actor and comedian Vir Das also faced outrage and police complaints after a show in the US where he described India as a country of two sides where people “worship women during the day but gang rape them at night”.

A Palestinian Oscar winner has been attacked by Israeli settlers, activists who witnessed the event say, before being detained by the Israeli military.

Hamdan Ballal, who co-directed No Other Land, had his house in the Israeli-occupied West Bank surrounded by settlers during an attack on Monday, the activists said.

His co-director Yuval Abraham said Mr Ballal was beaten by settlers then taken by soldiers while in an ambulance. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said no Palestinian had been detained from an ambulance. Mr Abraham said on Tuesday afternoon that Mr Ballal had been freed.

The IDF said three Palestinians and an Israeli had been detained on suspicion of “rock hurling” at security forces.

The five activists from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence group (CJNV) said they had gone to the village to document the incident and had come under attack themselves, with settlers smashing their car windows, and punching and hitting them with sticks.

Earlier, an activist who was at the scene told the BBC the three detained Palestinians, including Mr Ballal, were injured in the settler attack and had been held at an Israeli police station in the West Bank.

They are suspected of throwing stones and injuring a young settler shepherd and were interrogated, the activist said, adding that they had access to a lawyer.

The attack began at about 18:00 (16:00 GMT) on Monday, when around a dozen masked settlers mounted an attack in the village of Susya, according to the activists.

Mr Ballal’s house is reported to have been surrounded by the settlers.

Yuval Abraham, the Israeli director who won the Oscar this month alongside Mr Ballal, said people had been injured and properties destroyed in the attack.

The activist who spoke to the BBC said they had complained to the Israeli soldiers that they were under attack.

They said the army initially watched the attack, then approached only as the assault on the car was ending.

The soldiers then refused to pursue the settlers, leaving them free to attack houses on the other side of the hill, the activist said.

The IDF confirmed that soldiers and police had arrived to disperse the confrontation.

They said rocks had been “hurled” at security forces.

“In response, the forces apprehended three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at them, as well as an Israeli civilian involved in the violent confrontation,” the IDF said.

“The detainees were taken for further questioning by the Israel Police. An Israeli citizen was injured in the incident and was evacuated to receive medical treatment.”

No Other Land – which picked up best documentary at the 97th Academy Awards – follows the fight over Masafer Yatta, a community of about 20 villages, and the friendship between Adra and Abraham.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. Israeli settlements in the territory are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

They have expanded over the past 55 years, becoming a focal point for violence and conflicting claims over land.

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, settler violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank has surged.

China has released five staff members of US due diligence firm Mintz Group, two years after they were detained as part of a crackdown on consulting firms working with foreign businesses.

Their detention in March 2023 came at a time of heightened suspicion of foreign espionage in China and kicked off a wave of raids on consultancy firms such as Bain & Company and Capvision Partners.

“We are grateful to the Chinese authorities that our former colleagues can now be home with their families,” Mintz Group said in a statement.

Their release comes at the conclusion of a business forum in Beijing attended by dozens of top foreign executives, including Apple’s Tim Cook and Pfizer’s Albert Bourla.

China has been trying to revive foreign investment in its sluggish economy. Government data released in February showed that foreign direct investments plunged 99% in the last three years.

At the forum on Sunday, Vice Premier He Lifeng reassured business leaders of the country’s “unswerving” commitment in “welcoming multinational corporations and sharing development opportunities [with them]”.

Mintz Group noted that all five employees who were released are Chinese nationals.

They were detained by China’s public security bureau after a raid of the company’s Beijing office in March 2023.

Mintz Group said at that time that it did not receive any official legal notice about the raid.

Chinese authorities have not commented on the detentions and the subsequent release.

Later in 2023, Mintz Group was fined $1.5 million for doing “unapproved statistical work”. By the time, the company had closed all its offices in mainland China and Hong Kong.

Reuters news agency had reported on the company’s involvement in examining the possible use of forced labour in supply chains linked to China’s Xinjiang region.

In early 2022, residents of the rural Philippine town of Bamban, north of Manila, gathered for the mayoral campaign rally of a plucky young woman named Alice Leal Guo.

Supporters dressed in pink – their candidate’s favourite colour – chattered in anticipation of her arrival.

Then came the low thudding of a helicopter rotor, prompting cheers from the crowd. Sitting in the cockpit, Guo – in a pink shirt and a pilot’s headset – flashed a smile, waving down at her supporters.

As the helicopter touched down, the crowd broke into a chant: “A-lice Guo! A-lice Guo!”

At 31, Guo’s star was rising: with promises of generous subsidies and economic development, all delivered in her signature brassy, upbeat tone, she had galvanised a following in the town which would see her become its first female mayor.

But few of those cheering could have predicted that less than three years later, Guo would be behind bars, facing charges of human trafficking and allegations that she was a Chinese spy.

Her downfall began with a police raid that uncovered a compound where a giant scam operation was being run from just behind her office. But as the authorities delved deeper, and Guo struggled to answer basic queries about her past, a perplexing question emerged: who really is Alice Guo?

Guo says she came to local politics from the pig-farming business, having managed her family’s commercial piggery for several years.

The career change would have required deep pockets – and when quizzed about her campaign finances much later, Guo said it was friends and acquaintances in the pig-farming business who had supported her mayoral bid.

But Guo also had connections to a number of wealthy Chinese businesspeople. Little is known about them, but some have subsequently been convicted of money-laundering, and now also face charges of human trafficking alongside Guo.

Her campaign focused on her sunny persona. On stage at one event, Guo told her audience: “For our team, rule number one is: Do no harm! No harm is allowed, we should just spread love, love, love!”

Such cheerful platitudes would carry a taint of irony, in retrospect, when authorities exposed the harm and suffering they alleged had been inflicted under Guo’s watch.

But upon taking office in June 2022, she brought the youthful, bright-eyed energy of her campaign into Bamban Municipal Hall, painting it pink and decorating the outside of the building with flowers.

“Alice was beautiful, she was kind and she was helpful to other women,” said Priscilla May Aban, 31, who runs a vegetable stall in the town. She told the BBC that she had voted for Guo precisely because she was a woman, adding that as mayor, Guo had arranged cleaning jobs for women of the town.

Guo was widely regarded as a caring and empathetic leader, judging by conversations the BBC had with several residents of Bamban. Miah Mejia, the daughter of one of Alice’s political allies, claimed that she had given a free scholarship to every local household. Another interviewee told us he hadn’t received a college scholarship but had been given a cash subsidy for his school fees.

An emotional Francisco Flores, 75, said, “She’s helped a lot of poor people here in Bamban, giving medicines and the way she is with people, you’d never see a problem.”

He proudly mentioned the arrival of a McDonald’s and a branch of the Philippine fast-food chain Jollibee during Guo’s tenure.

Online, pro-Guo social media accounts portrayed her as a progressive young mayor presiding over a pink-tinted wonderland of parades, buffalo races and concerts.

A year-and-half into her mayoralty, however, this carefully crafted image began to crumble.

In February 2024, Philippine police received a report about a Vietnamese national who had escaped from the captivity of Zun Yuan Technology Incorporated, a company operating out of a walled compound in Bamban.

On the evening of 12 March, police officers and soldiers gathered nearby to plan a raid on the site, located just a minute’s walk from Guo’s office in the Municipal Hall.

One officer who was there, Marvin de la Paz of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC), told the BBC that around midnight, police informants sent word that people were leaving the compound in buses.

Suspecting that their plans for a raid had been leaked, Mr de la Paz and his colleagues raced straight for the compound. On the way, they saw people fleeing in the other direction, and some officers in the convoy had to peel off and chase them down. When they arrived at the site, they found one of the largest scam hubs ever uncovered in the Philippines, containing 36 buildings and spanning almost 20 acres.

“We were amazed,” Mr de la Paz said, “That was our first time seeing such a grandiose entrance [to a scam compound]… Somehow you feel like you’re small in this compound.”

It later emerged that the compound was built on land which Guo had previously owned – and that, as mayor, she had granted Zun Yuan a business permit. Her name also appeared on an electricity bill found at the site.

Alice Guo’s lawyers did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Zun Yuan was purportedly an online gambling and entertainment company, which held a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (Pogo) licence – accreditation that previously allowed such entities to operate legally in the Philippines.

A relaxation in gambling regulations under ex-President Rodrigo Duterte in 2017 led to a surge of Pogo-driven business activity. But many scam syndicates also found Pogo licences useful for masking their criminal operations – and PAOCC told the BBC they found evidence that Zun Yuan was running “pig-butchering” scams from its office in the compound.

Pig-butchering is a con where scammers take time to build trust with victims by posing as lovers or prospective business partners, then trick them into investing their money into fraudulent schemes.

When shown around the compound by PAOCC officers earlier this month, the BBC found, in a deserted employee dormitory, training scripts on how to scam targets.

“I want to create my own financial empire,” a scripted character – a female crypto expert at an international bank – says to her target, before flattering him and encouraging him to share his dreams. She is told to put her target on hold while pretending to “cash in on a trade” – only to declare, moments later, that she had made a killing. She then asks whether he himself knows how to trade, setting him up for the transfer of money that would soon follow.

This is just one of the many ways in which these compounds swindle billions of dollars around the world. Typically run by Chinese organised crime groups across South East Asia, they are staffed by a mixture of willing employees and trafficked victims who are forced to scam.

According to de la Paz, he and his colleagues found more than 300 foreign nationals in the Bamban compound, many of them working there against their will.

Punishments for disobedient or underperforming workers ranged from beatings to the banal: the BBC was shown a notebook from the compound, in which a worker had copied out the phrase, “I will meet my targets tomorrow”, hundreds of times in Chinese.

Enclosed by walls topped with barbed wire, the workers’ area of the compound was its own self-contained world, featuring a basketball court, supermarket and restaurants. Employees lived in rooms of six, each with a balcony equipped with a toilet and shower.

Their bosses meanwhile lived in a separate gated enclave, says de la Paz, who showed the BBC one of the villas there.

A marble-clad living room featured a high-end entertainment system, security monitor and ornate hardwood furniture. Behind the house was a swimming pool, beside which was a staircase that led down into what were supposedly escape tunnels, now flooded with water.

By the time security forces stormed the Bamban compound on the evening of 12 March 2024, some of these scam bosses had already eluded capture.

But the raid signalled a shift in the political climate.

In June 2022, just as Guo was being sworn in as mayor, Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential term had ended.

His successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, soon began facing calls for a ban on Pogo businesses. Many across Philippine society sounded the alarm about the criminality that often lurked within, despite the millions they brought in as revenue. Their biggest customers were rich Chinese, which led to concerns about foreign influence as Marcos, unlike his predecessor, courted Washington over Beijing.

When the raid in Bamban happened, it exposed a dark underbelly of the Philippines – and the two worlds of Alice Guo – the pink office from where she had sought a political career and the scam compound, which suggested far murkier ambitions – collapsed in on one another.

Guo had been a relatively unknown name in the Philippines until last May when she was called to appear before the Senate to explain her links to the scam compound.

Almost overnight, she became a meme. When she told senators she had grown up on a family farm, it brought swift ridicule from Filipinos who said she was too glamorous for the countryside. She became notorious for her inconsistent, vague comments, as well as her claims to have forgotten basic details of her early life, leading social media to nickname her “my amnesia girl”.

Guo said she’d had a secluded childhood as the child of a Chinese father and Filipino mother – but could not remember where in the Philippines her family home had been.

At one point, a senator said to her: “Please mayor, a little more candour than you have shown so far in answering some of the important questions.”

She told sceptical senators that she had sold her stake in the land before becoming mayor, and that the issuance of a business permit to Zun Yuan had been a mere administrative measure.

Suspicion mounted when, during the hearings, a court in Singapore convicted two of Guo’s Chinese former business partners in the Philippines of money-laundering.

Then, last July, despite the intense public interest in her case, Guo managed to slip through the travel restrictions imposed on her and escape to Indonesia. A few months later, she was re-arrested and returned to the Philippines.

It was also in July that Philippine investigators made a breakthrough. Guo’s fingerprints were found to match those on file for a girl from China named Guo Hua Ping, who had arrived in the Philippines alongside her mother, also Chinese, in the early 2000s.

This revelation sparked another line of inquiry in the Senate: the idea that Guo might be a spy, exercising influence or gathering intelligence for the Chinese state. The idea spread quickly among the watching public, dominating public discussion of the case.

Jaye Bekema – a senior officer on the staff of Risa Hontiveros, one of the senators who probed potential links between scam syndicates and Chinese intelligence – says the possibility that Guo was a spy warranted an investigation.

“I think there should be some clarity as to what a spy means,” Ms Bekema said, while stressing that there is no conclusive proof of Guo being a spy.

“I am more likely to believe that she didn’t plan to be a spy, but that she was tapped to be one [by the Chinese government] because of her criminal connections and her influence on local politics and the local government.”

In many ways, Guo had become a victim of her own success. The career she chose and the limelight she worked hard to attract meant that she was fully exposed to public scrutiny when China-Philippines relations soured under Marcos.

As political rhetoric escalated and tensions between the two countries spiralled, not least of all in the South China Sea, the young mayor found herself in the crosshairs of espionage accusations.

Others, however, are more sceptical of the allegation. The Chinese state and Guo would have made strange bedfellows, according to Teresita Ang See, a civic leader in the Chinese-Filipino community.

“What can she spy on in a place like [Bamban]? It’s in central Luzon, it’s not near any of the sensitive establishments. Why use her? She’s very visible, she flaunts her lifestyle. The last person you would use as a spy would be a person like Alice Guo,” says Ang See.

But those who led the questioning against Guo, such as Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, say that it’s more complicated than that.

“Transnational criminals working around the region know how to tap into… I’ll call it local talent to penetrate our society, whether through politics or business,” he explains.

Either way, Guo’s case shed light on the Philippine state’s vulnerability to being corrupted and co-opted by criminal groups abusing Pogo licences.

In mid-2024, President Marcos declared a blanket ban on all Pogos, citing their widespread abuse by organised crime.

Gatchalian says that the investigation into Alice Guo helped drive this change.

“Because of it, there was a groundswell of people really clamouring for a ban,” he tells the BBC. “And that’s when the president officially banned Pogos.”

Since then, Philippine police have raided scores of scam hubs across the country. But given how influential the syndicates have become, there are concerns that leaks within the security forces and government institutions are allowing criminals to evade capture, according to Mr de la Paz.

Ms Bekema says she feels certain that some candidates in the upcoming national elections are still being financed with Pogo money, while Ang See says that serving police officers have been found working for the criminal syndicates.

In Bamban, concerns about state infiltration seem far from people’s minds.

The streets are decked with brightly-coloured campaign posters for the upcoming municipal elections. The Municipal Hall has been whitewashed, and the flowers have been removed.

Guo is currently on trial in six separate cases, potentially facing decades in prison, and has been barred from running for public office again. She has pleaded not guilty to human trafficking charges.

Yet many still treasure the memory of their embattled ex-mayor.

One of those currently standing for Bamban councillor is Miah Mejia’s father, Fortunato, a garrulous 69-year-old, who also ran in 2022 as a member of Alice’s party, although he lost. He even featured in one of her publicity videos at the time.

He says that the people of Bamban had taken a chance by electing Guo, but that she had good connections to Chinese investors and had delivered on all her promises to the townspeople.

He is also indifferent to the Senate’s evidence that Guo was not a Filipino.

“That’s what they’ve been showing, but we still don’t believe it because we don’t care whether she’s Filipino or not,” he says. “What’s important is whether or not she helps us.”

Mr Mejia is adamant that the Alice Guo he knew would not have been involved in human trafficking.

“Never, ever would she do something like that,” he says, flatly. “I know she has a heart. She fears the Lord.”

Dr Alan Borthwick, softly spoken in his blazer and tie, looks every bit the typical historian.

But this archivist has spent the past 30 years solving a mystery.

How did thousands of historical documents that belong in Scotland’s national archives end up across the Atlantic Ocean in Canada?

The answer is that they were stolen. By one man. With a particular interest in stamps.

Dr Borthwick explains that “panic” first set in when a National Records of Scotland (NRS) employee attended an auction in London in 1994.

They discovered that 200 of the items up for sale belonged to NRS.

These should have been safely in Scotland’s archives, not being offloaded to the highest bidder via a bang of the auctioneer’s gavel.

NRS can date back all their archive users to 1847. After some cross referencing, Dr Borthwick and his team realised that the auction items all linked back to one person – Prof David Stirling Macmillan.

Prof Macmillan was born in 1925 and was from Girvan, Ayrshire. He served in the Royal Navy during World War Two and studied history at the University of Glasgow.

His right to use the national archives had been revoked in 1980 when he was caught removing a document. Staff assumed this was a one-off.

But the truth was that Prof Macmillan had been helping himself since 1949.

The 200 items that turned up in the London auction were the tip of the iceberg.

Now National Records of Scotland are revealing the scale of his thefts. And the odd nature of them.

Prof Macmillan wasn’t pinching documents that were worth a lot of money, or even those that were particularly historically significant.

The archives include letters from Robert Burns and Mary Queen of Scots. But these weren’t his targets.

The contents of many of the letters he took are mundane, perhaps even boring.

But a lifelong interest in stamps and postmarks seem to have led to him taking letters that caught his eye. Including documents dating back to 1637.

One example was a letter from a Scot who’d moved to the island of Madeira, off the north west coast of Africa. In 1813 they wrote to a friend with some news and gossip. Not exactly explosive stuff.

And yet Prof Macmillan ripped it out of the book it was stored in and pocketed it.

We can’t be certain about the motivations involved, but the interesting postmark and wax seal on the document are thought to be what tempted the professor.

The thief went to great lengths to cover his tracks.

He would remove reference numbers from documents and sometimes replace what he had taken with forgeries.

Ironically, Prof Macmillan was himself a professional archivist. He held that role at the University of Sydney and even placed an appeal for historical papers in the university newspaper.

The man who spent years stealing documents stressed they would be “properly looked after” and bemoaned the fact the so much of history had been “destroyed or lost”.

The academic moved to Trent University in Canada in 1968 and spent 20 years teaching history, though he still seems to have made annual visits to Scotland’s archives. He died in 1987, leaving no immediate family.

Much of his collection then found its way into the archives of Trent University, where they remained for some time. They were catalogued and descriptions were put online.

In 2012. Dr Alan Borthwick was still trying to track down what had been taken. He realised that thousands of the Trent University items rightly belonged to NRS and other UK institutions.

Dr Borthwick was dispatched to North America to investigate.

He says he was amazed by the “sheer quantity of documents” he found that had been stolen by Prof Macmillan.

The chief executive of NRS, Alison Byrne, echoes this. She described the scale of Prof Macmillan’s thefts as “unprecedented”.

She only took up her role six months ago, and was appalled when she was filled in on the situation.

Securing the return of these documents was one thing. But finding their rightful home was arguably the bigger task.

For decades, Dr Borthwick and his team have been “piecing together the jigsaw”, undertaking the painstaking process of finding the correct place for all of these stolen items.

For context, National Records of Scotland are the custodians of 38 million documents.

They have 50 miles (80km) of shelving – enough to stretch from Edinburgh to Glasgow.

Their archives are all about precision – every document has an exact home that makes locating it straightforward.

The team wanted to get each item that Prof Macmillan had taken brought back to its rightful place.

Fortunately, NRS “daybooks” show what he was signing out of the archives. But his attempts to cover his tracks and remove identifying marks complicated the challenge.

Now National Records of Scotland say they have got almost everything back where it should be, ready to be pored over by a new generation of historians.

But, for Dr Borthwick, how does it feel to know that a fellow archivist so egregiously abused the trust that was put in him?

The historian labels it “a kick in the teeth”. He’s been trying to undo the damage done by Prof Macmillan for almost all of his working life.

That time could have been spent on other historical projects.

But Dr Borthwick reflects that there’s a “sense of satisfaction” in solving the mystery of the missing documents.

Documents that, these days, are kept under the watchful eye of CCTV.

The roar of the Zambezi is deafening as millions of gallons of water crash over rocks and tumble down rapids.

But there’s another sound cutting through the trees of the Zambian bush – the unmistakable high-pitched whine of a bitcoin mine.

“It’s the sound of money!” says a smiling Philip Walton as he surveys the shipping container with 120 computers busily crunching through complex calculations that verify bitcoin transactions.

In exchange they are automatically rewarded bitcoin by the network.

We’re in the far north-western tip of Zambia near the border with the DRC, and of all the bitcoin mines I’ve visited – this one is the strangest.

Water and electronic equipment don’t usually mix well but it’s precisely the proximity to the river that’s drawn bitcoiners here.

Philip’s mine is plugged directly into a hydro-electric power plant that channels some of the Zambezi’s torrent through enormous turbines to generate continuous, clean electricity.

More importantly for bitcoin mining – it’s cheap.

So cheap it made business sense for Philip’s Kenya-based company Gridless to drag its shipping container full of delicate bitcoin mining computers across bumpy narrow roads 14 hours from the nearest major city to set up here.

Each machine makes about $5 (£3.90) a day. More if the price of coins is high, less if it drops.

Occasionally Philip glances down at his smart watch – the home screen showing the ever-changing squiggly line of bitcoin’s dollar value.

At the moment it’s around $80,000 a coin, but Philip says they can make a profit even when the value of the bitcoin goes low thanks to the cheap electricity on the site and the partnership they have with the energy company.

“We recognised that in order to get better mining economics we needed to partner with the power company here and give them a revenue share. And so the reason we’re willing to come out here somewhere so remote is it allows us to effectively get cheaper power,” he says.

Zengamina hydro-power plant is huge but technically it’s a mini grid – a standalone island of power for the local community.

It was built in the early 2000s thanks to $3m raised from charity donations.

British-Zambian Daniel Rea runs the site after his missionary family led the building project, primarily to power the local hospital.

Now it provides power for around 15,000 people in the local area but the project hasn’t been able to make ends meet because of slow take-up from the community.

Allowing the bitcoiners to set up shop here has been transformational to the business.

“Every day we were wasting over half of the energy we could generate which also meant we’re not earning from that to meet our operating expenses. We needed a major user of power in the area and that’s where the game-changing partnership with Gridless came in,” Daniel says.

The bitcoin mine now accounts for around 30% of the plant’s revenue allowing them to keep the prices down for the local town.

Bitcoin and its economics are of course far from the minds of the people in Zengamina.

The town itself is a few miles from the plant and comprises not much more than a few dozen shed-like buildings peppering a cross roads.

Only one shop has a fridge and a dozen kids crowd around a communal computer taking turns to choose a song to blare out, causing adults to wince as they go about their day.

Although the hydro-electric plant came online in 2007, it took a few more years to connect it to the local town, and then more time to connect individual homes and businesses.

So, some people like barber Damian are still enjoying the novelty of getting wired up only a year and a half ago.

“Until I got power I had nothing and couldn’t do anything. When I got power I bought everything at the same time.”

He’s not joking. At night his tiny barber shop is a beacon of power with a TV playing music videos, strings of Christmas lights and the buzz of his hair clipper. Like moths, young people hang out in his barber shop like a youth hostel.

“Getting power has changed my life,” he smiles. “The money I’m earning now from the barbershop is helping me pay for school fees again.”

Embracing electricity is very much a business decision for Damian. At home he shares one light bulb between the two rooms that make up the small house.

Elsewhere in the town sisters Tumba and Lucy Machayi sit on the crossroads watching the world go by.

Like many young people, they’re glued to their phones.

“Before the town got power, it was basically just the bush,” says Lucy.

The little electricity they had used to come from small solar panels, they say.

“No fridge, no TV, no mobile phone network,” says Tumba.

“Electricity completely changed the lives of people here,” Lucy adds.

“We can charge our phones, we have network. We can communicate with each other.”

Not many people here know or care about the bitcoin mine that’s played a part in helping the hydro-plant keep things going.

But soon they’ll watch as that container once again rattles its way through the town on its way to another location.

Zengamina Hydro has secured a large investment to help them expand to more villages and join up to the national grid.

Soon the excess energy the mine was harvesting will be sold back to the national grid and mining bitcoin will no longer be profitable at Zengamina.

Phillip and team are sanguine about this and insist this is good news. They will have had a successful few years here and ultimately they are happy to have helped Zengamina. And made a tidy profit in bitcoin of course.

The company says there are plenty of places with so-called stranded energy that they can plonk their bitcoin mine next to.

Gridless already has six sites like this in three different African countries.

North of Zengamina another bitcoin mine slurps up excess energy from a hydro-electric plant run by Virunga National Park in the Congo. It’s helping to fund conservation projects, the park says.

But Gridless now plans an ambitious next move – to build their own hydro-plants from scratch to mine for bitcoin and bring electricity to rural areas.

The company’s co-founder Janet Maingi says the company is busy raising tens of millions of dollars for the project.

They’re focusing on so-called run-of-river hydroelectric models like at Zengamina and the continent has an abundance of “untapped hydro potential” she says.

“A consumer-driven, adaptive energy model is essential for scalable, affordable, and sustainable energy access that meets the needs of African communities,” she explains.

The company is not a charity and believes that ensuring long-term economic viability for developers and investors can only be done through bitcoin.

Finding locations for a new plant or to tap into existing ones is the easy part though.

The company still faces resistance from some authorities and companies which see bitcoin as an energy-greedy and selfish use of electricity that might otherwise be used by rural people.

But the company insists that the incentive is always to sell to the highest buyer and that will always, they say, be the local community.

History tells us that without incentives or rules in place, bitcoin mining at scale can put strain on public energy grids. In Kazakhstan in 2020-2021 a mining boom increased energy usage in the country by 7% before the government clamped down and clipped the wings of the burgeoning industry.

In the US – bitcoin mining’s new mecca – conflicts between miners, locals and residents have been common when electricity is in high demand.

Authorities have created agreements with some mining giants to ensure that they power down their warehouses chock full of computers at times when the grid needs balancing.

For example, Greenidge gas power plant in New York which was renovated to mine bitcoin was mandated to power down mining in January to supply electricity to the grid during a cold snap.

Agreements like these will need to be widespread if President Donald Trump’s ambition for bitcoin to be “mined, minted and made in the USA” is to be achieved.

The environmental impact of the industry is also a major concern. It’s estimated that bitcoin mining uses as much energy as a small country like Poland.

But according to researchers at Cambridge University which does annual estimates on bitcoin’s energy usage, there is a shift taking place to a more sustainable energy mix.

Set ups like this Zengamina are a tiny part of the overall mining picture.

But they are also a rare example of a controversial industry creating much more than just digital coins.

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD has reported annual revenue for 2024 that has leapfrogged rival Tesla.

The Shenzhen-based firm says revenue rose by 29% to come in at 777 billion yuan ($107bn; £83bn), boosted by sales of its hybrid vehicles. This topped the $97.7bn reported by Elon Musk’s Tesla.

BYD has also just launched a lower-priced car to rival Tesla’s Model 3, which has long been the top selling EV in China.

It comes as Tesla faces a backlash around the world over Musk’s ties to US President Donald Trump, while Chinese carmakers have been hit with tariffs in Western countries.

BYD sold around the same number of EVs as Tesla last year – 1.76 million compared to 1.79 million, respectively.

But when sales of the Chinese company’s hybrid cars are taken into account it is much bigger, selling a record 4.3 million vehicles globally in 2024.

On Sunday, BYD announced a new model to take on Tesla.

Its Qin L model has a starting price in China of 119,800 yuan, while a basic version of Tesla’s Model 3 is priced at 235,500 yuan.

It comes as Chinese consumers are cutting spending in the face of economic challenges, including a property crisis, slowing growth, and high local government debt.

Last week, BYD’s founder Wang Chuanfu announced new battery charging technology, which he said could charge an EV in five minutes.

That compares with around 15 minutes to charge a Tesla using its supercharger system.

In February, BYD announced that its so-called “God’s Eye” advanced driver-assistance technology would be available free in all its models.

Shares in the firm, which is backed by veteran US investor Warren Buffett, have jumped by more than 50% so far this year.

A backlash against Musk and his carmaker has gathered momentum since he was appointed head of the Trump administration’s Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been tasked with slashing federal government spending.

Musk has also intervened in politics abroad, including giving his backing to far-right party Alternative für Deutschland ahead of Germany’s parliamentary election and criticising UK politicians such as Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Meanwhile, China’s EV manufacturers have been targeted with tariffs in large parts of the world, including the US and the European Union.

On 24 March 2020, India announced its first Covid lockdown, just as the world stood on the brink of a global pandemic that would claim millions of lives.

India’s already fragile healthcare system collapsed under the pandemic’s weight.

The WHO estimated over 4.7 million Covid deaths in India – nearly 10 times the official count – but the government rejected the figure, citing flaws in the methodology.

Five years later, BBC India journalists reflect on their experiences recounting how, at times, they became part of the story they were covering.

Soutik Biswas, BBC News

It was the summer of 2021.

I woke up to the frantic voice of a school teacher. Her 46-year-old husband had been battling Covid in a Delhi hospital, where oxygen was as scarce as hope.

Here we go again, I thought, dread creeping in. India was trapped in the deadly grip of a lethal second wave of infections, with Delhi at its heart. And it was just another day in a city where breathing itself had become a privilege.

We scrambled for help, making calls, sending SOS messages, hoping someone might have a lead.

Her voice shook as she told us her husband’s oxygen levels had dipped to 58. It should have been 92 or higher. He was slipping, but she clung to the small comfort that it had climbed to 62. He was still conscious, still speaking. For now.

But how long could this last? I wondered. How many more lives would be lost because the basics – oxygen, beds, medicine – were beyond reach? This wasn’t supposed to happen in 2021. Not here.

The woman called back. The hospital didn’t even have an oxygen flow meter, she said. She had to find one herself.

We reached out again. Phones buzzed, tweets flew into the void, hoping someone would see us. Finally, a device was located – a small victory in a sea of despair. The oxygen would flow. For now.

The numbers didn’t lie, though.

A report from the same hospital told of a 40-year-old man who died waiting for a bed. He found a stretcher, at least, the report helpfully added. That was where we were now: grateful for a place to lay the dead.

In the face of this, oxygen was a commodity. So were medicines, in short supply and hoarded by those who could pay. People were dying because they couldn’t breathe, and the city choked on its own apathy.

This was a war. It felt like a war. And we were losing it.

Yogita Limaye, BBC News

“Balaji, why are you lying like this,” screamed a woman outside Delhi’s GTB hospital, shaking her unconscious brother who was lying on a stretcher.

Minutes later, her brother, the father of two children, died, waiting outside a hospital before he was even seen by a doctor.

I will never forget her cry.

Around her, families pleaded at the door of the hospital to get a doctor to come and see their loved ones.

They were among hundreds of pleas for help we heard over the weeks we reported on how the second wave of Covid, which began in March 2021, brought a nation to its knees.

It was as though people had been left to tackle a vicious pandemic on their own – going from hospital to hospital searching for beds and oxygen.

The second wave had not come without warning, but India’s government, which had declared victory over the disease two months earlier, was caught unprepared by the resurgence.

In the ICU of a major hospital, I saw the head doctor pace up and down, making one phone call after another frantically searching for supplies of oxygen.

“There’s just one hour of supply left. Reduce the oxygen we’re supplying to our patients to the lowest levels needed to ensure all organs continue to function properly,” he instructed his deputy, his face tense.

I distinctly remember the heat and fumes from 37 funeral pyres burning simultaneously under the April sun at a Delhi crematorium.

People sat in shock – not yet feeling the grief and anger that would come – seemingly stunned into silence by the frightening speed at which Covid ravaged the capital.

Our work messaging groups buzzed all the time with news of yet another colleague desperately needing a hospital bed for a loved one.

No-one was untouched by it.

In Pune, my father was recovering from a Covid-related heart attack he’d suffered a month earlier.

Back in my hometown Mumbai, one of my closest friends lay critical on a ventilator in hospital.

After five weeks in ICU, miraculously, he recovered. But my father’s heart never did, and a year later, he suffered a fatal heart attack, leaving a permanent hole in our lives.

Covid-19 will always be the most difficult story I’ve ever covered.

Vikas Pandey, BBC News

Covering the pandemic was the hardest assignment of my life because it’s a story that literally came home.

Friends, relatives and neighbours called every day, asking for help procuring oxygen cylinders, hospital beds and even essential medicines. I interviewed several grieving families at that time.

Yet, a few incidents have remained etched in my memory.

In 2021, I reported Altuf Shamsi’s story, which sums up the unimaginable pain millions went through.

His pregnant wife and father were both infected with the virus and admitted to different hospitals in Delhi. He knew me through a friend and called to ask if I could help him find another doctor after the hospital where his dad was admitted told him that chances of survival were zero. While he was speaking to me, he got another call from his wife’s doctor who said they were running out of oxygen for her.

He lost his father first and later texted me: “I was looking at his body, while reading SOS messages from Rehab’s [his wife] hospital for oxygen.”

A few days later, he lost his wife too after she gave birth to their daughter.

The two other incidents came closer to home than anything else.

A relative deteriorated very fast after being admitted to a hospital.

He was put on a ventilator and doctors gave a bleak prognosis. One of them advised trying an experimental drug that had shown some results in the UK.

I tweeted and called everybody I thought could help. It’s hard to put that frustration into words – he was sinking with each passing hour but the drug that could potentially save him was nowhere to be found.

A kind doctor helped us with one injection but we needed three more. Then someone read my tweet and reached out – she had procured three vials for her father but he died before he could be given the doses. I took her help and my relative survived.

But a cousin did not. He was admitted to the same hospital. His oxygen levels were dipping every hour and he needed to be put on a ventilator, but the hospital didn’t have any free.

I made calls the whole night.

The next morning, the hospital ran out of oxygen, leading to many deaths, including his. He left behind his wife and two young children. I still wonder if there was something more I could have done.

Geeta Pandey, BBC News

The morning after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a hard lockdown, I headed out to Delhi’s main bus station. The only people out on the streets were police and paramilitaries, deployed to ensure people stayed indoors.

The bus station was deserted. A few hundred metres away, I met men, women and children who were looking for ways to reach home, hundreds of miles away. Over the next few days, those numbers swelled into millions as people desperately tried to find a way to be with their families and loved ones.

As the virus made its way over the next few months, and the capital city – along with the rest of the country – remained under a strict shutdown, tragedy lurked at every corner.

We feared stepping out and we feared staying in.

All hopes – including mine – were pinned on a vaccine that scientists across the globe were racing to develop.

I had last visited my mother, bedridden in our ancestral village 450 miles (724km) from Delhi, in January 2020, just a couple of months before the lockdown. My mother, like millions of other people, didn’t really understand what Covid was – the disease that had suddenly disrupted their lives.

Every time I called, she had only one question: “When will you visit?” The fear that I could carry the virus to her at a time when she was most vulnerable kept me away.

On 16 January 2021, I was at Max hospital in Delhi when India rolled out the world’s biggest vaccination drive, promising to vaccinate all the adults in the country of 1.4 billion people. Doctors and medical staff there described it as a “new dawn”. Some told me they would visit their families as soon as they received their second doses.

I called my mother and told her that I will get my vaccine and visit her soon. But a week later, she was gone.

Anagha Pathak, BBC Marathi

A few days after India announced the lockdown, I was travelling to the border of Maharashtra state to document the impact of the restrictions.

It was three in the morning as I drove along the eerily empty Mumbai-Agra highway. My hometown of Nashik looked unrecognisable.

Instead of traffic, migrant workers filled the road, walking back home, stranded and out of work. Among them was a young couple from Uttar Pradesh. They had worked as labourers in Mumbai. The wife, still in her early 20s, was pregnant. They had hoped to catch a ride on a truck, but that didn’t happen. By the time they reached Nashik, they had run out of food, water and money.

I will never forget seeing the pregnant woman, her fragile body walking under the scorching sun. I had never felt more helpless. Covid protocols prevented me from offering them a ride. All I could do was give them some water and snacks, while documenting their journey.

A few miles ahead, around 300 people waited for a government bus to take them to the state border. But it was nowhere in sight. After making some calls, two buses finally arrived – still not enough. But I made sure the couple got on the one heading towards Madhya Pradesh state, where they were supposed to catch another bus.

I followed them in my car and waited for some time for them to catch their next bus. It never came.

Eventually, I left. I had an assignment to finish.

Five years have passed, and I still wonder: Did the woman make it home? Did she survive? I don’t know her name, but I still remember her weary eyes and fragile body.

US President Donald Trump has been gifted a new portrait from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin – while trashing an existing painting of him as “truly the worst”.

The new portrait has not been shown publicly. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described it as a “personal gift”, adding that only Putin himself could disclose further details.

Meanwhile, Trump took to Truth Social to criticise an earlier picture of him that hung in the Colorado State Capitol building until it was removed on Monday.

The US president has paid close attention to cultivating his image, and made headlines in January by unveiling an official portrait that was variously described by critics as serious or ominous.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed receipt of the new work from Moscow, saying he had been asked to transport it back to Washington.

He described the work as a painting – a “beautiful portrait” by a “leading Russian artist” – but gave no further critique. Trump was “clearly touched by it”, he added.

The gift was confirmed by Peskov, as American and Russian negotiators again sat down for talks in Saudi Arabia as part of Trump’s drive to end the war in Ukraine.

The gift highlights the diplomatic thaw between the two nations after Trump returned to the White House in January.

In an interview, Witkoff – who met Putin 10 days ago – said the Russian president had been “gracious”. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year.

That attempt on Trump’s life – which took place during a rally in Pennsylvania – gave rise to perhaps the most iconic image of him ever produced.

AP photographer Evan Vucci caught the moment that Trump, with a bloody ear, held up a defiant fist and told supporters to “fight, fight, fight”. That image was further mythologised by Trump, who used it to adorn the cover of a book.

• Decoding Donald Trump’s new official portrait
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• Dramatic images from rally at which Trump survived assassination effort

Trump is yet to publicly comment on the image that was sent by Putin – but he left no doubt of the kind of portraiture he liked and disliked when delivering his views on the Colorado image.

The painting, which was presented to the building in 2019, was “purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before”, he wrote on Truth Social on Monday morning.

That was unlike the same artist’s depiction of Barack Obama, Trump wrote. Offering rare praise for his predecessor, Trump said Obama looked “wonderful” in his own portrait by the same artist, English-born Sarah Boardman.

Trump reportedly lost up to 30lb (13.6kg) during last year’s presidential campaign. He told reporters he had been “so busy” he had not “been able to eat very much”.

The Republican also used the portrait to make a political point – describing Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, as “radical” and “extremely weak on crime”.

But the portrait had nothing to do with Polis, US media pointed out. It was instead the result of a crowdfunding campaign that was launched by a Republican. The portrait was reportedly commissioned to fill an empty space that had briefly been filled with an image of Vladimir Putin by a prankster.

Following the backlash, a committee of leaders from both parties ordered the painting removed on Monday afternoon, according to a spokesman for Colorado’s House Democrats. It will be kept in a secure location “until further notice”.

The BBC has contacted Ms Boardman for comment. Discussing her work with the Colorado Times Recorder in 2019, she acknowledged that there would “always be anger at a president from one side or the other. It is human nature.”

Another portrait artist told the BBC he “would have painted things slightly differently”, but that presidential portraits were nuanced, and he had sympathy for the artist.

Robert Anderson, who created the official portrait of President George W Bush which hangs in the US National Portrait Gallery, said viewers tended to bring “baggage” depending on their feelings about the painting’s subject.

For that reason, the reaction to an artwork often had “very little to do with the quality of art”, he said.

Of Trump, Mr Anderson said: “I think it would be very difficult to paint him because he has a particular impression of himself which might be very different to that of many others – probably at least half of the country.”

A spokesman for Polis told 9News said the governor was “surprised to learn the president of the United States is an aficionado of our Colorado State Capitol and its artwork”.

The statement continued: “We appreciate the president and everyone’s interest in our capitol building and are always looking for any opportunity to improve our visitor experience.”

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD has reported annual revenue for 2024 that has leapfrogged rival Tesla.

The Shenzhen-based firm says revenue rose by 29% to come in at 777 billion yuan ($107bn; £83bn), boosted by sales of its hybrid vehicles. This topped the $97.7bn reported by Elon Musk’s Tesla.

BYD has also just launched a lower-priced car to rival Tesla’s Model 3, which has long been the top selling EV in China.

It comes as Tesla faces a backlash around the world over Musk’s ties to US President Donald Trump, while Chinese carmakers have been hit with tariffs in Western countries.

BYD sold around the same number of EVs as Tesla last year – 1.76 million compared to 1.79 million, respectively.

But when sales of the Chinese company’s hybrid cars are taken into account it is much bigger, selling a record 4.3 million vehicles globally in 2024.

On Sunday, BYD announced a new model to take on Tesla.

Its Qin L model has a starting price in China of 119,800 yuan, while a basic version of Tesla’s Model 3 is priced at 235,500 yuan.

It comes as Chinese consumers are cutting spending in the face of economic challenges, including a property crisis, slowing growth, and high local government debt.

Last week, BYD’s founder Wang Chuanfu announced new battery charging technology, which he said could charge an EV in five minutes.

That compares with around 15 minutes to charge a Tesla using its supercharger system.

In February, BYD announced that its so-called “God’s Eye” advanced driver-assistance technology would be available free in all its models.

Shares in the firm, which is backed by veteran US investor Warren Buffett, have jumped by more than 50% so far this year.

A backlash against Musk and his carmaker has gathered momentum since he was appointed head of the Trump administration’s Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been tasked with slashing federal government spending.

Musk has also intervened in politics abroad, including giving his backing to far-right party Alternative für Deutschland ahead of Germany’s parliamentary election and criticising UK politicians such as Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Meanwhile, China’s EV manufacturers have been targeted with tariffs in large parts of the world, including the US and the European Union.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has blamed opposition parties for provoking a “movement of violence” as protests in the country continued for a sixth night.

Unrest began in Istanbul last Wednesday when the city’s Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu – Erdogan’s main political rival – was detained on corruption charges.

Imamoglu said the allegations against him were politically motivated, a claim Erdogan has denied.

Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party’s (CHP), which announced Imamoglu as its presidential candidate on Sunday, said the demonstrations will end on Tuesday, without saying what the next steps would be.

Erdogan has labelled the demonstrations “evil” and blamed the opposition for “disturbing the peace of our citizens with provocations”.

Speaking from Ankara, Turkey’s capital, Erdogan called for the protests to end and said that “instead of responding to allegations”, opposition parties had “made the most vile and unlawful statements in our political history for [the past] five days”.

On Monday, vehicles carrying water cannons were seen close to the city hall, though protests appeared to be largely peaceful with no repeat of the fierce clashes seen on Sunday.

Lydia, one of the demonstrators, told AFP that the Turkish authorities were “hunting us like pests”, adding: “They sprayed pepper spray on us like insecticides.”

Young people – many of whom may not know any other government than this one under Erdogan – have played an important role in the protests.

They have differing political views and do not appear to be affiliated with a particular political movement at the protests. They are rallying against the government, but they do not hesitate to criticise the opposition as well.

Asked if she is afraid of the potential repercussions of demonstrating, one woman told the BBC: “There is nothing left to lose.”

Another, a 25-year-old woman who attended Sunday’s protest, said she was afraid before – “but now I’m just angry”.

In figures released before Monday evening’s gatherings, the Turkish government said 1,133 people had been arrested since the protests began.

With the CHP apparently ending its rallies in Istanbul, it is unclear if other spontaneous protests will continue.

CHP leader Ozgur Ozel spoke to the thousands gathered on Monday night, telling the crowd that the demonstration was “an act of defiance against fascism”.

Ozel said he would visit Imamoglu in jail in Silivri on Tuesday. He added that the CHP would appeal for him to be released pending trial, and for his trial to be shown live on state broadcaster TRT.

• Why are people protesting in Turkey?
• Turkey protests are about far more than fate of Istanbul’s mayor

Imamoglu was confirmed as the CHP’s candidate for Turkey’s 2028 presidential election on Monday, despite being in custody. The selection vote was symbolic as he had been the only person running.

He had spent the previous night in jail after being formally arrested and charged with “establishing and managing a criminal organisation, taking bribes, extortion, unlawfully recording personal data and rigging a tender”. He was also suspended from his post as mayor.

Prosecutors had also accused him of “aiding an armed terrorist organisation”, but this was not included in the charges.

Before he was detained, Istanbul University said it was revoking Imamoglu’s degree. If upheld, it would throw his presidential run into question, as the Turkish constitution requires presidents to have completed higher education.

In a post on X over the weekend, Imamoglu said he would “never bow” and criticised his arrest as a “black stain on our democracy”.

His wife, Dilek Kaya Imamoglu, told demonstrators outside Istanbul’s city hall that the “injustice” her husband faced had “struck a chord with every conscience”.

Much of the protesters’ anger is directed at Erdogan and his government.

“I don’t know what he did 20 years ago, but nowadays, he is just a dictator,” Irmak, a 22-year-old university student, told the BBC World Service at a demonstration in the Sarachane area of Istanbul.

Irmak and her friends, Ozge and Elif, said they had activated the location sharing feature on their phones, as they fear being detained by police.

These demonstrations have been the largest in Turkey since the Gezi protests of 2013, which began in Istanbul over the demolition of a local park.

They have been largely peaceful, but on Sunday police officers fired water cannons and used pepper spray as clashes unfolded.

“We are the fruits of the trees of the Gezis,” Irmak said. “We are here to protect democracy. It’s not just about Ekrem Imamoglu – it’s about Turkey’s democracy.”

Imamoglu was one of more than 100 people detained last week as part of an investigation. Others arrested included politicians, journalists and businessmen.

“We are not accepting this injustice,” Mustafa, among the protesters, told the BBC. “We want democracy and we want our friends back because Imomoglu is not the only one behind the bars right now.”

He added: “We want to re-establish democracy in this country and we want to save the republic from this authoritarian populist regime. And for the short term, we just want our mayor back, we want our friends back.”

Imamoglu’s arrest does not prevent his candidacy or election as president, but he will not be able to run if he is convicted of any of the charges against him.

The opposition mayor is seen as one of the most formidable rivals of Erdogan, who has held office in Turkey for 22 years as both prime minister and president.

Erdogan’s term in office is due to expire in 2028, and under the current rules, he cannot stand again – but he could call an early election or try to change the constitution to allow him to remain in power for longer.

Turkey’s Ministry of Justice has criticised those connecting Erdogan to the arrests, and insisted on its judicial independence.

South Korean carmaking giant Hyundai has unveiled $21bn (£16.3bn) of investment in the US just days before President Donald Trump is set to impose new tariffs on trading partners.

The plan includes a new $5.8bn steel plant in the southern state of Louisiana.

Hyundai also said it will expand its American vehicle production and invest billions of dollars in new technology including autonomous driving and artificial intelligence (AI).

“This investment is a clear demonstration that tariffs very strongly work,” Trump said during the event at the White House on Monday.

He added that more tariffs on vehicle imports are likely to be announced this week.

Hyundai said the new steelmaking facility will produce more than 2.7 million metric tons of steel a year and create more than 1,400 jobs.

It is expected to make steel for Hyundai’s plants in Alabama and Georgia.

The announcement also included plans to invest $9bn to boost the firm’s production in the US to 1.2 million vehicles a year by 2028.

Hyundai also said it had earmarked $6bn to expand partnerships with US firms to develop technologies including self-driving vehicles, robotics and AI.

On Wednesday, Hyundai Motor is set to hold an opening ceremony for a new $7.59bn car and battery factory in Georgia.

It already has a manufacturing facility in Alabama and its affiliate Kia has a factory in Georgia.

When fully operational, the three plants will have capacity to make a million vehicles a year, the company said.

Hyundai also said it would buy $3bn worth of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US.

Since Trump’s return to power several companies have announced plans to make major investments in the US.

But some of the announcements have been reiterations of previously publicised plans.

During the Biden administration, Hyundai said it would invest about $10bn in new technology by 2025.

The latest announcement came a little over a week before 2 April, when Trump has said he will impose reciprocal tariffs on countries around the world.

The new round of import taxes could potentially target Hyundai’s home country South Korea, which has a large trade surplus with the US.

Last month, Trump ordered a 25% import tax on all steel and aluminium entering the US.

He also extended the levies to include hundreds of metal products from nuts and bolts to drinks cans.

In recent weeks, US carmakers, including General Motors and Ford, have been calling on the US president to exempt imports of cars and vehicle parts from new tariffs.

A classic car owned by the late French rock star Johnny Hallyday before he lost it at poker has sold for €132,000 ($143,000; £110,000) at auction.

The Panther De Ville was given to him in 1975 by his then-wife, fellow singer Sylvie Vartan. Its custom-made fittings include mink seats, a gold disc on top of the grille and hubcaps carrying his initials.

French auction house Osenat told the BBC that the vehicle was bought by a French man for “a specific project, which he will discuss shortly”, and the buyer had to pay an additional buyer’s premium of €26,400.

Hallyday lost the car while playing poker with a friend in 1977.

Osenat told the BBC that Hallyday reportedly tried to buy the vehicle back from the owner, but was dissuaded from doing so by his manager who cited limited finances.

The Panther De Ville was a neo-classic luxury car with a 1930s-style design. It was produced in Britain from 1974 to 1985 and had a V12 Jaguar engine.

Hallyday’s yellow-and-black 1975 model was one of 69 classic cars sold by Osena in Fontainebleau, near Paris, on Monday. The auctioneers had expected the vehicle to fetch between between €55,000 and €80,000.

The gold disc is inscribed with Hallyday’s name. Vartan had it placed on top of the grille to celebrate the best-selling records he released in 1975.

Hallyday was a renowned car enthusiast. But within two years, he was forced to part with the vehicle after losing a poker at a friend’s home, Osenat’s Stéphane Pavot told the France Info website.

However the lucky winner preferred sportier models and later exchanged it for a Ferrari whose owner was a true fan of Hallyday’s, he added.

Vartan and Hallyday divorced in 1980.

Hallyday sold more than 110 million records and starred in a number of films over a career that spanned 57 years. He continued to tour until shortly before his death of lung cancer in 2017, aged 74.

A rare turtle stranded on the Welsh coast faces an unexpected obstacle to getting home – US President Donald Trump.

Rhossi washed up on Anglesey at the end of 2023 and has been slowly nursed back to health.

The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle is now fighting fit, and Anglesey Sea Zoo said Rhossi was ready to be released back into the wild off the coast of the US.

However, executive orders signed in the White House means international marine turtle conservation work is on hold for now, leaving Rhossi in limbo.

Kemp’s ridley turtles are critically endangered, with only about 7,000 females thought to exist.

They are native to the Gulf of Mexico, or Gulf of America as it is now known in the US, and must be released back into those waters.

In January, President Trump pressed pause on all foreign development assistance for at least three months.

In response, the federal conservation body, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), froze funding for several organisations, ordering some of the work it oversees to stop.

It included the work of the Marine Turtle Conservation Fund, which along with the wildlife service and other agencies, had been the key contacts for getting Rhossi home and then released into the Gulf of Mexico.

Then in February, more than 400 employees at the USFWS lost their jobs as part of President Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal government’s workforce.

Polling suggests cutting government spending has widespread support in the US.

Rhossi is the second Kemp’s ridley sea turtle Anglesey Sea Zoo has rescued, successfully repatriating one called Tally to Texas before it was released back into the wild in 2023.

“It is a huge problem – it’s very frustrating,” said Frankie Hobro, the owner and director of Anglesey Sea Zoo.

“Animal species don’t understand politics, they don’t understand boundaries and borders.

“We’d started to get a really successful repatriation regime in place.

“We thought we had things so they were running quite smoothly. We were going to fine-tune the process for future turtles.

“It’s very, very frustrating that’s been put on hold now really because of politics and this kind of sweeping decision and the far reaching affect it is having way beyond the states.”

The former director of USFWS said the impact on conservation projects was “heartbreaking”.

“I didn’t expect this administration to necessarily be friendly towards conservation. I have been surprised at the speed and the degree to which they have undermined decades of goodwill and work in the conservation sphere,” said Martha Williams.

She was the political pick to run the agency for four years under President Joe Biden, stepping down when Trump started his second term in the White House.

“International work involved so little money, you know in the big scheme of things, small grants with enormous impact – enormous impact to communities.”

She described the cuts to promised funding for projects such as marine turtle conservation as “cruel”.

But where does all this leave Rhossi?

Ms Williams said the message was “don’t give up”.

“Speak out – tell the stories, explain why this work is so important, and that it does impact people in a positive way,” she said.

Ms Hobro said she believed the zoo would find a way to get the turtle back home.

But as yet, they do not know when.

“We do have other options. We have the option possibly of working through Mexico, which is something we could do in the future and for future turtles,” she said.

“But that would be a shame because we’ve got these great relationships with these wonderful whole conservation programmes for the species in Texas and the people we’ve been working with.

“It’s a matter of finding out how long it’s going to be on hold for and making a decision as to whether we can still push that through or whether we have to restart from a different angle.”

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been approached for comment.

Washington DC is still digesting a serious security breach at the heart of the Trump administration.

It’s the story of how a journalist – the Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg – was added to a Signal platform messaging group which apparently included Vice-President JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, in addition to National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.

The topic being discussed was attacking the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen.

Goldberg said he had seen classified military plans for the strikes, including weapons packages, targets and timing, two hours before the bombs struck.

What are the main revelations in a nutshell?

• LIVE: Yemen strike secrets shared
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On the military action, Goldberg reported that the account named JD Vance wrote: “I think we are making a mistake.”

The vice-president said targeting Houthi forces that are attacking vessels in the Suez Canal serves European interests more than the US, because Europe has more trade running through the canal.

Vance added that his boss was perhaps unaware of how US action could help Europe.

“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance said. “There’s a further risk that we see moderate to severe spike in oil prices.”

The vice-president went on to say, according to Goldberg, he would support the consensus but would prefer to delay it by a month.

• US launches wave of air strikes on Yemen’s Houthis

Goldberg reported in his article that spokesman for JD Vance had later sent him a statement underlining that Trump and Vance had had “subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement”.

Since coming to power, Trump has castigated his European Nato allies, urged them to increase defence spending and generally insisted that Europe needs to take responsibility for protecting its own interests.

Arguments over why the US could – and should – carry out the military strike against the Houthis did not sway Vance.

He said to the defence secretary, “If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

Hegseth reciprocated:

“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.”

A group member, only identified as “SM” suggested that after the strike, the US should “make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return”.

“If Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what?” he asked.

“If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return,” the user continues.

According to Goldberg, the US national security chief posted three emojis after the strike: “a fist, an American flag, and fire”.

The Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, responded with five emojis, Goldberg said: “two hands-praying, a flexed bicep, and two American flags”.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles voiced messages of support, he said.

“I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance said as updates on the strikes were given.

Two others members added prayer emojis, Goldberg reported.

To Vance’s concerns that the action may be seen as going against Trump’s message on Europe, the US defence secretary wrote:

“VP: I understand your concerns – and fully support you raising w/ POTUS [Trump]. Important considerations, most of which are tough to know how they play out (economy, Ukraine peace, Gaza, etc).

“I think messaging is going to be tough no matter what – nobody knows who the Houthis are – which is why we would need to stay focused on: 1) Biden failed & 2) Iran funded.”

The Trump administration has consistently blamed Joe Biden for being too lenient with Iran.

Goldberg said he got an unsolicited invitation on the Signal messaging platform on 11 March by an account named Michael Waltz, and was then added to the group chat about Yemen two days later.

The president was not part of this group, but Trump’s closest collaborators were.

Goldberg initially thought this was a hoax, but soon realised it was real.

The whole issue is adding pressure on the national security adviser, with Democrats in the House and Senate calling for an urgent inquiry.

When asked on Monday about the whole incident, Trump said he didn’t know anything, but he has stood by Waltz.

The defence secretary has also said no secrets were revealed.

“Nobody was texting war plans,” he told journalists.

Four people, including the grandparents of Emile Soleil, have been arrested over the two-year-old’s disappearance and death in the French Alps in July 2023.

The two other people arrested on suspicion of voluntary homicide and concealment of a corpse are adult children of Emile’s grandparents, prosecutors said in a statement.

The grandparents’ lawyer, Isabelle Colombani, told AFP on Tuesday morning that she had no comment, having “only just heard” about the development.

Last year, some of the toddler’s bones and clothes were found by a hiker near the home of Emile’s maternal grandparents in the French Alps, where the boy had gone missing the previous summer.

But prosecutors at the time said that the remains offered no further clues as to the cause of Emile’s death, adding that it could have been as a result of “a fall, manslaughter or murder”.

Tuesday’s sudden twist, in a case that seemed to have gone cold, made headlines in France, where the search for Emile has been extensively covered by the media. When the toddler disappeared, dozens of journalists flocked to Haut-Vernet, often outnumbering the 25 residents of the tiny Alpine hamlet.

The last sighting of Emile had been on 8 July 2023, when two neighbours saw him walking by himself on the only street in the village.

Police were alerted by his grandmother shortly afterwards. Hundreds of people joined police, sniffer dogs and the military in a search the following day.

Initially, French reports focused on Emile’s grandfather – but his lawyer said that she hoped investigators would not “waste too much time on him to the detriment of other lines of inquiry”.

Emile’s remains were found days after police summoned 17 people – including members of Emile’s family, neighbours and witnesses – to reconstruct the final moments before the boy disappeared.

The toddler’s funeral took place in February this year. Soon after, his maternal grandparents said that “silence had made space for truth” and that they could no longer “live without answers”.

“We have had 19 months without a single certainty. We need to understand, we need to know,” they said.

In a statement, Aix-en-Provence chief prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon said that Tuesday’s arrests were the result of investigations carried out over recent months, and that police were examining “several spots in the area”.

French media reported on Tuesday that the grandparents’ home in the Provence region was being searched and that police had seized one of their vehicles.

In France, people can be placed under arrest for questioning while police investigate whether they may have been involved in a crime. It does not mean legal proceedings will necessarily be started against them.

A man who fell into a large sinkhole in South Korea’s capital Seoul has been found dead, according to the local fire department.

The man was riding his motorbike in the Gangdong district when the road caved in at about 18:30 local time (09:30 GMT) on Monday.

Rescuers found his body underground on Tuesday morning around 11:00 local time, about 50m (164ft) from where he had fallen in.

A car driver was also injured in the incident, which has gone viral on South Korean social media.

A dashcam video widely circulating online appears to show the moment the road caved in near a traffic junction. It shows the motorcyclist falling into the hole, while a car travelling in front of him narrowly escapes it.

Earlier on Tuesday, rescuers found a mobile phone and the motorcycle in the hole which is 20m wide and 20m deep, according to local media.

The man, said to be in his 30s, has yet to be named by authorities.

Kim Chang-seop, head of Gangdong fire station said at an earlier briefing that there were 2,000 tons of soil and water mixed inside the hole.

Authorities have yet to reveal the cause of the sinkhole.

A report recently submitted to the Seoul city government showed that 223 sinkholes occurred in the city in the past decade.

These were caused by poor infrastructure management, ageing or damaged pipes, long-term subsidence and accidents caused by excavation work.

In January, a truck driver went missing after his vehicle fell into a sinkhole at a junction in the Japanese city of Yashio.

Last August, a search for a woman who disappeared into a pavement sinkhole in Kuala Lumpur’s city centre was called off after a week.

One of the most common reasons for a sinkhole is when rocks like limestone or chalk break down. Sometimes this process can happen gradually, where the depression becomes larger over time.

In other instances, the limestone sits below another layer of rock, which means that as it gets dissolved there are no immediate signs at the surface.

The overlying rock, sometimes clay or sandstone, will then suddenly collapse into the depression beneath – this is called a collapse sinkhole.

But human activities such as excavation works can also accelerate the formation of sinkholes or cause the ground to collapse in a similar way.

A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country’s largest-ever payout in a criminal case.

Iwao Hakamata, 89, was found guilty in 1968 of killing his boss, his boss’s wife and their two children, but was acquitted last year after a retrial.

Mr Hakamata’s lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention – which made him the world’s longest-serving death row inmate – took a toll on his mental health.

Judge Kunii Koshi, who granted the request on Monday, agreed that he had suffered “extremely severe” mental and physical pain.

The Japanese government will pay Mr Hakamata’s financial compensation, in what local media is widely reporting as the biggest payout for a criminal case in the country’s history.

Mr Hakamata’s case is one of Japan’s longest and most famous legal sagas.

He was granted a rare retrial and released from prison in 2014, amid suspicions that investigators may have planted evidence that led to his conviction.

Last September, hundreds of people gathered at a court in Shizuoka, a city on Japan’s south coast, where a judge handed down the acquittal – to loud cheers of “banzai”, or “hurray” in Japanese.

Mr Hakamata, however, was unfit to attend the hearing. He was exempted from all prior hearings because of his deteriorated mental state.

He had lived under the care of his 91-year-old sister Hideko since being granted a retrial and released from prison in 2014. Hideko had fought for decades to clear her brother’s name.

Mr Hakamata was working at a miso processing plant in 1966 when the bodies of his boss, his boss’ wife and their two children were recovered from a fire at their home in Shizuoka, west of Tokyo. All four had been stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Mr Hakamata of murdering the family, setting fire to their home and stealing 200,000 yen in cash.

Mr Hakamata initially denied doing so, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession, following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.

In 1968 he was sentenced to death.

For years, Mr Hakamata’s lawyers had argued that DNA recovered from the victims’ clothes did not match his, and alleged that the evidence was planted.

Although he was granted a retrial in 2014, prolonged legal proceedings meant it took until last October for the retrial to begin.

The case has raised questions about Japan’s justice system, including the time taken for a retrial and the allegations of forced confessions.

Millions of tyres being sent from the UK to India for recycling are actually being “cooked” in makeshift furnaces causing serious health problems and huge environmental damage, the BBC has discovered.

The majority of the UK’s exported waste tyres are sold into the Indian black market, and this is well known within the industry, BBC File on 4 Investigates has been told.

“I don’t imagine there’s anybody in the industry that doesn’t know it’s happening,” says Elliot Mason, owner of one of the biggest tyre recycling plants in the UK.

Campaigners and many of those in the industry – including the Tyre Recovery Association (TRA) – say the government knows the UK is one of the worst offenders for exporting waste tyres for use in this way.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has told us it has strict controls on exporting waste tyres, including unlimited fines and jail time.

When drivers get their tyres changed, garages charge a small recycling fee – it can vary, but it is normally about £3-6 for each end-of-life tyre.

This should guarantee that they are recycled – either in the UK or abroad – at facilities like Elliot Mason’s Rubber World, in Rushden, Northampton.

His facility has repurposed tyres into tiny rubber crumbs since 1996. Rubber crumb is often used as flooring for equestrian centres and children’s playgrounds.

The UK ends up with about 50 million waste tyres (nearly 700,000 tonnes) in need of recycling every year and around half of those are exported to India – according to official figures – where they should end up in recycling plants.

Before tyres leave the UK they are compressed into huge rubber cubes known as “bales”.

“The pretence is that baled tyres are being sent to India and then shredded and granulated in a factory very similar to ours,” explains Mr Mason.

However, some 70% of tyres imported by India from the UK and the rest of the world end up in makeshift industrial plants, where they are subjected to what amounts to an extreme form of cooking, the TRA estimates.

In an oxygen-free environment, in temperatures of about 500C, a process known as pyrolysis takes place. Steel and small amounts of oil are extracted, as well as carbon black – a powder or pellet that can be used in various industries.

The pyrolysis plants – often in rural backwaters – are akin to homemade pressure cookers and produce dangerous gases and chemicals.

UK tyres are ending up in these Indian pyrolysis plants, despite legitimate official paperwork stating they are headed for legal Indian recycling centres.

Together with SourceMaterial – a non-profit journalism group – we wanted to follow the long journey UK tyres make. Trackers were hidden in shipments of tyres to India by an industry insider.

The shipments went on an eight-week journey and eventually arrived in an Indian port, before being driven 800 miles cross-country, to a cluster of soot-covered compounds beside a small village.

Drone footage, taken in India and shared with the BBC, showed the tyres reaching a compound – where thousands were waiting to be thrown into huge furnaces to undergo pyrolysis.

BBC File on 4 Investigates approached one of the companies operating in the compound. It confirmed it was processing some imported tyres but said what it was doing wasn’t dangerous or illegal.

There are up to 2,000 pyrolysis plants in India, an environmental lawyer in India told the BBC. Some are licensed by the authorities but around half are unlicensed and therefore illegal, he said.

At a different cluster of makeshift plants in Wada, just outside Mumbai, a team from BBC Indian Languages saw soot, dying vegetation and polluted waterways around the sites. Villagers complained of persistent coughs and eye problems.

“We want these companies moved from our village,” one witness told us, “otherwise we will not be able to breathe freely.”

Scientists at Imperial College London told the BBC plant workers continually exposed to the atmospheric pollutants produced by pyrolysis, were at risk of respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological diseases and certain types of cancer.

At the site the BBC visited in Wada, two women and two children were killed in January when there was an explosion at one of the plants. It had been processing European-sourced tyres.

The BBC approached the owners of the plant where the explosion happened but they haven’t responded.

Following the blast, a public meeting was held and a minister for the district of Wada promised that the local government would take action. Seven pyrolysis plants have since been shut down by the authorities.

The Indian government has also been approached for comment.

Many UK businesses will bale tyres and send them to India because it is more profitable and investing in shredding machinery is expensive, according to Mr Mason.

But he says he isn’t prepared to do this himself because he has a duty of care to make sure his company’s waste is going to the right place – and it is very difficult to track where tyre bales end up.

Bigger businesses, like Rubber World, have tightly regulated environmental permits and are inspected regularly. But smaller operators can apply for an exemption and trade and lawfully export more easily.

This is called a T8 exemption and allows these businesses to store and process up to 40 tonnes of car tyres a week.

But many traders told the BBC that they exported volumes of tyres in excess of the permitted limit, meaning they would have been exporting more tyres than they should.

The BBC was tipped off about several of these companies and teamed up with an industry insider who posed as a broker with a contract to sell waste tyres to India.

Four of the six dealers we contacted said they processed large numbers of waste tyres.

One told us he had exported 10 shipping containers that week – about 250 tonnes of tyres, more than five times his permitted limit.

Another dealer first showed us paperwork which suggested his tyres were baled and sent to India for recycling which would have been allowed – but he then admitted he knew they were going to India for pyrolysis. The Indian government has made it illegal for imported tyres to be used for pyrolysis.

“There are plenty of companies [that do it]… 90% of English people [are] doing this business,” he told us, adding that he cannot control what happens when tyres arrive in India.

When we asked if he had concerns about the health of those people living and working near the pyrolysis plants he responded: “These issues are international. Brother, we can’t do anything… I’m not a health minister.”

Defra told the BBC that the UK government is considering reforms on waste exemptions.

“This government is committed to transitioning to a circular economy, moving to a future where we keep our resources in use for longer while protecting our natural environment,” a spokesperson said.

In 2021, Australia banned exports of baled tyres after auditors checked to see where they were really ending up. Lina Goodman, the CEO of Tyre Stewardship Australia, told the BBC that “100% of the material was not going to the destinations that were on the paperwork”.

Fighting Dirty founder Georgia Elliott-Smith says sending tyres from the UK to India for pyrolysis is a “massive unrecognised problem” which the UK government should deal with. She wants tyres redefined as “hazardous waste”.

In early 2022, residents of the rural Philippine town of Bamban, north of Manila, gathered for the mayoral campaign rally of a plucky young woman named Alice Leal Guo.

Supporters dressed in pink – their candidate’s favourite colour – chattered in anticipation of her arrival.

Then came the low thudding of a helicopter rotor, prompting cheers from the crowd. Sitting in the cockpit, Guo – in a pink shirt and a pilot’s headset – flashed a smile, waving down at her supporters.

As the helicopter touched down, the crowd broke into a chant: “A-lice Guo! A-lice Guo!”

At 31, Guo’s star was rising: with promises of generous subsidies and economic development, all delivered in her signature brassy, upbeat tone, she had galvanised a following in the town which would see her become its first female mayor.

But few of those cheering could have predicted that less than three years later, Guo would be behind bars, facing charges of human trafficking and allegations that she was a Chinese spy.

Her downfall began with a police raid that uncovered a compound where a giant scam operation was being run from just behind her office. But as the authorities delved deeper, and Guo struggled to answer basic queries about her past, a perplexing question emerged: who really is Alice Guo?

Guo says she came to local politics from the pig-farming business, having managed her family’s commercial piggery for several years.

The career change would have required deep pockets – and when quizzed about her campaign finances much later, Guo said it was friends and acquaintances in the pig-farming business who had supported her mayoral bid.

But Guo also had connections to a number of wealthy Chinese businesspeople. Little is known about them, but some have subsequently been convicted of money-laundering, and now also face charges of human trafficking alongside Guo.

Her campaign focused on her sunny persona. On stage at one event, Guo told her audience: “For our team, rule number one is: Do no harm! No harm is allowed, we should just spread love, love, love!”

Such cheerful platitudes would carry a taint of irony, in retrospect, when authorities exposed the harm and suffering they alleged had been inflicted under Guo’s watch.

But upon taking office in June 2022, she brought the youthful, bright-eyed energy of her campaign into Bamban Municipal Hall, painting it pink and decorating the outside of the building with flowers.

“Alice was beautiful, she was kind and she was helpful to other women,” said Priscilla May Aban, 31, who runs a vegetable stall in the town. She told the BBC that she had voted for Guo precisely because she was a woman, adding that as mayor, Guo had arranged cleaning jobs for women of the town.

Guo was widely regarded as a caring and empathetic leader, judging by conversations the BBC had with several residents of Bamban. Miah Mejia, the daughter of one of Alice’s political allies, claimed that she had given a free scholarship to every local household. Another interviewee told us he hadn’t received a college scholarship but had been given a cash subsidy for his school fees.

An emotional Francisco Flores, 75, said, “She’s helped a lot of poor people here in Bamban, giving medicines and the way she is with people, you’d never see a problem.”

He proudly mentioned the arrival of a McDonald’s and a branch of the Philippine fast-food chain Jollibee during Guo’s tenure.

Online, pro-Guo social media accounts portrayed her as a progressive young mayor presiding over a pink-tinted wonderland of parades, buffalo races and concerts.

A year-and-half into her mayoralty, however, this carefully crafted image began to crumble.

In February 2024, Philippine police received a report about a Vietnamese national who had escaped from the captivity of Zun Yuan Technology Incorporated, a company operating out of a walled compound in Bamban.

On the evening of 12 March, police officers and soldiers gathered nearby to plan a raid on the site, located just a minute’s walk from Guo’s office in the Municipal Hall.

One officer who was there, Marvin de la Paz of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC), told the BBC that around midnight, police informants sent word that people were leaving the compound in buses.

Suspecting that their plans for a raid had been leaked, Mr de la Paz and his colleagues raced straight for the compound. On the way, they saw people fleeing in the other direction, and some officers in the convoy had to peel off and chase them down. When they arrived at the site, they found one of the largest scam hubs ever uncovered in the Philippines, containing 36 buildings and spanning almost 20 acres.

“We were amazed,” Mr de la Paz said, “That was our first time seeing such a grandiose entrance [to a scam compound]… Somehow you feel like you’re small in this compound.”

It later emerged that the compound was built on land which Guo had previously owned – and that, as mayor, she had granted Zun Yuan a business permit. Her name also appeared on an electricity bill found at the site.

Alice Guo’s lawyers did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Zun Yuan was purportedly an online gambling and entertainment company, which held a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (Pogo) licence – accreditation that previously allowed such entities to operate legally in the Philippines.

A relaxation in gambling regulations under ex-President Rodrigo Duterte in 2017 led to a surge of Pogo-driven business activity. But many scam syndicates also found Pogo licences useful for masking their criminal operations – and PAOCC told the BBC they found evidence that Zun Yuan was running “pig-butchering” scams from its office in the compound.

Pig-butchering is a con where scammers take time to build trust with victims by posing as lovers or prospective business partners, then trick them into investing their money into fraudulent schemes.

When shown around the compound by PAOCC officers earlier this month, the BBC found, in a deserted employee dormitory, training scripts on how to scam targets.

“I want to create my own financial empire,” a scripted character – a female crypto expert at an international bank – says to her target, before flattering him and encouraging him to share his dreams. She is told to put her target on hold while pretending to “cash in on a trade” – only to declare, moments later, that she had made a killing. She then asks whether he himself knows how to trade, setting him up for the transfer of money that would soon follow.

This is just one of the many ways in which these compounds swindle billions of dollars around the world. Typically run by Chinese organised crime groups across South East Asia, they are staffed by a mixture of willing employees and trafficked victims who are forced to scam.

According to de la Paz, he and his colleagues found more than 300 foreign nationals in the Bamban compound, many of them working there against their will.

Punishments for disobedient or underperforming workers ranged from beatings to the banal: the BBC was shown a notebook from the compound, in which a worker had copied out the phrase, “I will meet my targets tomorrow”, hundreds of times in Chinese.

Enclosed by walls topped with barbed wire, the workers’ area of the compound was its own self-contained world, featuring a basketball court, supermarket and restaurants. Employees lived in rooms of six, each with a balcony equipped with a toilet and shower.

Their bosses meanwhile lived in a separate gated enclave, says de la Paz, who showed the BBC one of the villas there.

A marble-clad living room featured a high-end entertainment system, security monitor and ornate hardwood furniture. Behind the house was a swimming pool, beside which was a staircase that led down into what were supposedly escape tunnels, now flooded with water.

By the time security forces stormed the Bamban compound on the evening of 12 March 2024, some of these scam bosses had already eluded capture.

But the raid signalled a shift in the political climate.

In June 2022, just as Guo was being sworn in as mayor, Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential term had ended.

His successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, soon began facing calls for a ban on Pogo businesses. Many across Philippine society sounded the alarm about the criminality that often lurked within, despite the millions they brought in as revenue. Their biggest customers were rich Chinese, which led to concerns about foreign influence as Marcos, unlike his predecessor, courted Washington over Beijing.

When the raid in Bamban happened, it exposed a dark underbelly of the Philippines – and the two worlds of Alice Guo – the pink office from where she had sought a political career and the scam compound, which suggested far murkier ambitions – collapsed in on one another.

Guo had been a relatively unknown name in the Philippines until last May when she was called to appear before the Senate to explain her links to the scam compound.

Almost overnight, she became a meme. When she told senators she had grown up on a family farm, it brought swift ridicule from Filipinos who said she was too glamorous for the countryside. She became notorious for her inconsistent, vague comments, as well as her claims to have forgotten basic details of her early life, leading social media to nickname her “my amnesia girl”.

Guo said she’d had a secluded childhood as the child of a Chinese father and Filipino mother – but could not remember where in the Philippines her family home had been.

At one point, a senator said to her: “Please mayor, a little more candour than you have shown so far in answering some of the important questions.”

She told sceptical senators that she had sold her stake in the land before becoming mayor, and that the issuance of a business permit to Zun Yuan had been a mere administrative measure.

Suspicion mounted when, during the hearings, a court in Singapore convicted two of Guo’s Chinese former business partners in the Philippines of money-laundering.

Then, last July, despite the intense public interest in her case, Guo managed to slip through the travel restrictions imposed on her and escape to Indonesia. A few months later, she was re-arrested and returned to the Philippines.

It was also in July that Philippine investigators made a breakthrough. Guo’s fingerprints were found to match those on file for a girl from China named Guo Hua Ping, who had arrived in the Philippines alongside her mother, also Chinese, in the early 2000s.

This revelation sparked another line of inquiry in the Senate: the idea that Guo might be a spy, exercising influence or gathering intelligence for the Chinese state. The idea spread quickly among the watching public, dominating public discussion of the case.

Jaye Bekema – a senior officer on the staff of Risa Hontiveros, one of the senators who probed potential links between scam syndicates and Chinese intelligence – says the possibility that Guo was a spy warranted an investigation.

“I think there should be some clarity as to what a spy means,” Ms Bekema said, while stressing that there is no conclusive proof of Guo being a spy.

“I am more likely to believe that she didn’t plan to be a spy, but that she was tapped to be one [by the Chinese government] because of her criminal connections and her influence on local politics and the local government.”

In many ways, Guo had become a victim of her own success. The career she chose and the limelight she worked hard to attract meant that she was fully exposed to public scrutiny when China-Philippines relations soured under Marcos.

As political rhetoric escalated and tensions between the two countries spiralled, not least of all in the South China Sea, the young mayor found herself in the crosshairs of espionage accusations.

Others, however, are more sceptical of the allegation. The Chinese state and Guo would have made strange bedfellows, according to Teresita Ang See, a civic leader in the Chinese-Filipino community.

“What can she spy on in a place like [Bamban]? It’s in central Luzon, it’s not near any of the sensitive establishments. Why use her? She’s very visible, she flaunts her lifestyle. The last person you would use as a spy would be a person like Alice Guo,” says Ang See.

But those who led the questioning against Guo, such as Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, say that it’s more complicated than that.

“Transnational criminals working around the region know how to tap into… I’ll call it local talent to penetrate our society, whether through politics or business,” he explains.

Either way, Guo’s case shed light on the Philippine state’s vulnerability to being corrupted and co-opted by criminal groups abusing Pogo licences.

In mid-2024, President Marcos declared a blanket ban on all Pogos, citing their widespread abuse by organised crime.

Gatchalian says that the investigation into Alice Guo helped drive this change.

“Because of it, there was a groundswell of people really clamouring for a ban,” he tells the BBC. “And that’s when the president officially banned Pogos.”

Since then, Philippine police have raided scores of scam hubs across the country. But given how influential the syndicates have become, there are concerns that leaks within the security forces and government institutions are allowing criminals to evade capture, according to Mr de la Paz.

Ms Bekema says she feels certain that some candidates in the upcoming national elections are still being financed with Pogo money, while Ang See says that serving police officers have been found working for the criminal syndicates.

In Bamban, concerns about state infiltration seem far from people’s minds.

The streets are decked with brightly-coloured campaign posters for the upcoming municipal elections. The Municipal Hall has been whitewashed, and the flowers have been removed.

Guo is currently on trial in six separate cases, potentially facing decades in prison, and has been barred from running for public office again. She has pleaded not guilty to human trafficking charges.

Yet many still treasure the memory of their embattled ex-mayor.

One of those currently standing for Bamban councillor is Miah Mejia’s father, Fortunato, a garrulous 69-year-old, who also ran in 2022 as a member of Alice’s party, although he lost. He even featured in one of her publicity videos at the time.

He says that the people of Bamban had taken a chance by electing Guo, but that she had good connections to Chinese investors and had delivered on all her promises to the townspeople.

He is also indifferent to the Senate’s evidence that Guo was not a Filipino.

“That’s what they’ve been showing, but we still don’t believe it because we don’t care whether she’s Filipino or not,” he says. “What’s important is whether or not she helps us.”

Mr Mejia is adamant that the Alice Guo he knew would not have been involved in human trafficking.

“Never, ever would she do something like that,” he says, flatly. “I know she has a heart. She fears the Lord.”

Golfer Tiger Woods has announced he is dating Vanessa Trump, the former daughter-in-law of US President Donald Trump.

Vanessa, 47, was married to Donald Trump Jr for 13 years. The pair, who have five children, divorced in 2018.

On Sunday, Woods, 49, posted pictures of Vanessa and himself on social media saying: “Love is in the air and life is better with you by my side! We look forward to our journey through life together.”

“At this time we would appreciate privacy for all those close to our hearts.”

It is unclear what prompted the public announcement, but rumours of their relationship had been reported in gossip magazines in recent weeks.

Woods, who has won 15 major championships, is known for being guarded about his personal life after exposure of his marital infidelities and sex scandals damaged his public standing in the 2000s and affected his playing career.

He admitted himself into a sex addiction rehab clinic, and went through an acrimonious split from his first wife Elin Nordegren months later after six years of marriage. The couple have two children together.

US media outlets report that Tiger Woods’ children attend the same school as Vanessa Trump’s.

As the former wife of Donald Trump’s eldest son, Vanessa had been a regular attendee at official events involving Trump’s extended family during his first term in office.

Woods, the former world number one, is also known to have played golf with President Trump on several occasions, including last month. Trump loves golf and owns more than a dozen courses.

In February, Woods attended a meeting with Trump and Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) heads at the White House about the future of the sport’s tournaments and current division with the Saudi Arabia-LIV league.

Woods wore his Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was bestowed on him by Trump in 2019 during the president’s first term.

Woods announced an achilles tendon injury earlier this month that has sidelined him from professional competition. He has not suggested a timeline for when he might return to the courses.

He has not competed in a PGA Tour event this season, following the death of his mother, Kultida, in February.

The new couple both have children who are junior golfers.

Kai Trump, 17, has announced her commitment to playing collegiate golf at the University of Miami in 2026.

She and Charlie Woods both played at a junior invite-only tournament in South Carolina last week.

Woods has previously announced relationships with World Cup champion ski racer Lindsey Vonn and Erica Herman, his former restaurant manager.

That relationship ended badly – Herman filed law suits against Woods and his trust in 2023, which she later withdrew.

A court in Japan has ordered the disbandment of the controversial Unification Church, which came under scrutiny after the shock killing of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.

The alleged assassin had confessed that he held a grievance against Abe because of the ex-leader’s ties with the church – he blamed the church for bankrupting his family.

Japan’s education and culture ministry sought the church’s dissolution and accused it of manipulating followers into making huge donations and other financial sacrifices.

But the church, more popularly known as the “Moonies”, argued that the donations were part of legitimate religious activities. It can appeal to overturn Tuesday’s ruling.

The order handed down by a Tokyo district court will strip the church of its tax-exempt status and require it to liquidate its assets, but it will still be allowed to operate in Japan.

During their investigation, authorities found that the church coerced followers into buying expensive items by exploiting fears about their spiritual well-being.

They interviewed nearly 200 people who said they were victimised by the church.

The Unification Church, which was started in South Korea, has established a presence in Japan since the 1960s. The name “Moonies” was derived from the name of its founder, Sun Myung Moon.

It has drawn controversy even before Abe’s assassination for teaching that marriage is central to spiritual salvation. It is known for holding mass wedding ceremonies involving thousands of couples.

Since 2023, some 200 former believers who said they were forced to donate to the group have demanded compensations amounting to 5.7 billion yen ($38.5m) in total, according their lawyers.

Investigations following Abe’s assassination revealed close ties between the secretive sect and many conservative ruling-party lawmakers, leading to the resignation of four ministers.

An internal investigation by former prime minister Fumio Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party found that 179 of its 379 lawmakers had interacted with the Unification Church.

The relationships ranged from attending church events to accepting donations and receiving election support.

The revelations about the extent and level of involvement of the controversial church and the LDP shocked the nation.

Two RAF engineers who broke a Paddington statue have been told by a judge they are the “antithesis” of everything the bear stands for.

Daniel Heath and William Lawrence, both 22 and based at RAF Odiham in Hampshire, each admitted an offence of criminal damage at Reading Magistrates’ Court.

The statue in Newbury, Berkshire, was damaged before being taken shortly after 02:00 GMT on 2 March.

The pair, who committed the offence while drunk on a night out, have been ordered to carry out unpaid work and each pay £2,725 to cover the cost of repairs.

On sentencing, district judge Sam Goozee said Paddington Bear was a “beloved cultural icon”.

“He represents kindness, tolerance and promotes integration and acceptance in our society,” he said.

“His famous label attached to his duffle coat says ‘please look after this bear’.

“On the night of the 2nd of March 2025, your actions were the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for.

“Your actions lacked respect and integrity, two values you should uphold as members of the armed forces.”

CCTV footage was shown in court in which Heath, of Oakhall Park, Thornton, near Bradford in West Yorkshire, and Lawrence, of John Street, Enderby, Leicestershire, could be seen stopping by the Paddington Bear statue on Northbrook Street and attempting to lift it off the bench.

The seam of the statue then broke off and the pair could be seen walking off with the broken half.

The judge said the men then took it in a taxi back to RAF Odiham.

Thames Valley Police confirmed the statue did appear for sale on Facebook marketplace, but did not investigate further as it was recovered from the boot of Lawrence’s car soon after.

Mr Goozee, who handed each of them a 12-month community order, said the pair had committed “an act of wanton vandalism”.

The defendants’ defence lawyer, Tom Brymer, told the court they were “extremely ashamed about their actions”.

“They are two men who are very different than what we see on the CCTV footage,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Royal Air Force said they were aware of the trial outcome, but any disciplinary action would be a private matter.

The statue was unveiled in Newbury – the home of Paddington’s creator Michael Bond – in October 2024.

Mr Goozee said this made the statue in the Berkshire town even more significant.

It was one of 23 placed across the UK as part of the Paddington Visits Trail.

In a statement read out by prosecutor Jaimie Renuka, CEO of Newbury Business Improvement District (BID) Trish Willetts said the remains of the statue had to be covered with a bin bag to prevent it from upsetting children.

The damaged statue was recovered but a date for its return has yet to be confirmed.

US President Donald Trump has been gifted a new portrait from his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin – while trashing an existing painting of him as “truly the worst”.

The new portrait has not been shown publicly. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described it as a “personal gift”, adding that only Putin himself could disclose further details.

Meanwhile, Trump took to Truth Social to criticise an earlier picture of him that hung in the Colorado State Capitol building until it was removed on Monday.

The US president has paid close attention to cultivating his image, and made headlines in January by unveiling an official portrait that was variously described by critics as serious or ominous.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff confirmed receipt of the new work from Moscow, saying he had been asked to transport it back to Washington.

He described the work as a painting – a “beautiful portrait” by a “leading Russian artist” – but gave no further critique. Trump was “clearly touched by it”, he added.

The gift was confirmed by Peskov, as American and Russian negotiators again sat down for talks in Saudi Arabia as part of Trump’s drive to end the war in Ukraine.

The gift highlights the diplomatic thaw between the two nations after Trump returned to the White House in January.

In an interview, Witkoff – who met Putin 10 days ago – said the Russian president had been “gracious”. Putin told him, he added, that he had prayed for Trump after an assassination attempt against him last year.

That attempt on Trump’s life – which took place during a rally in Pennsylvania – gave rise to perhaps the most iconic image of him ever produced.

AP photographer Evan Vucci caught the moment that Trump, with a bloody ear, held up a defiant fist and told supporters to “fight, fight, fight”. That image was further mythologised by Trump, who used it to adorn the cover of a book.

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Trump is yet to publicly comment on the image that was sent by Putin – but he left no doubt of the kind of portraiture he liked and disliked when delivering his views on the Colorado image.

The painting, which was presented to the building in 2019, was “purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before”, he wrote on Truth Social on Monday morning.

That was unlike the same artist’s depiction of Barack Obama, Trump wrote. Offering rare praise for his predecessor, Trump said Obama looked “wonderful” in his own portrait by the same artist, English-born Sarah Boardman.

Trump reportedly lost up to 30lb (13.6kg) during last year’s presidential campaign. He told reporters he had been “so busy” he had not “been able to eat very much”.

The Republican also used the portrait to make a political point – describing Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, as “radical” and “extremely weak on crime”.

But the portrait had nothing to do with Polis, US media pointed out. It was instead the result of a crowdfunding campaign that was launched by a Republican. The portrait was reportedly commissioned to fill an empty space that had briefly been filled with an image of Vladimir Putin by a prankster.

Following the backlash, a committee of leaders from both parties ordered the painting removed on Monday afternoon, according to a spokesman for Colorado’s House Democrats. It will be kept in a secure location “until further notice”.

The BBC has contacted Ms Boardman for comment. Discussing her work with the Colorado Times Recorder in 2019, she acknowledged that there would “always be anger at a president from one side or the other. It is human nature.”

Another portrait artist told the BBC he “would have painted things slightly differently”, but that presidential portraits were nuanced, and he had sympathy for the artist.

Robert Anderson, who created the official portrait of President George W Bush which hangs in the US National Portrait Gallery, said viewers tended to bring “baggage” depending on their feelings about the painting’s subject.

For that reason, the reaction to an artwork often had “very little to do with the quality of art”, he said.

Of Trump, Mr Anderson said: “I think it would be very difficult to paint him because he has a particular impression of himself which might be very different to that of many others – probably at least half of the country.”

A spokesman for Polis told 9News said the governor was “surprised to learn the president of the United States is an aficionado of our Colorado State Capitol and its artwork”.

The statement continued: “We appreciate the president and everyone’s interest in our capitol building and are always looking for any opportunity to improve our visitor experience.”