Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has said a new “intensified” offensive in Gaza will involve Israeli troops holding on to seized territory and significant displacement of the population.

Speaking after officials said Israel’s security cabinet had approved a plan for “conquering” the Gaza Strip and establishing a “sustained presence” there, Netanyahu posted a video on X in which he said Israeli soldiers would not go into Gaza, launch raids and then retreat.

“The intention is the opposite of that,” he said. “Population will be moved, for its own protection.”

Brig Gen Efi Dufferin, the chief Israeli military spokesperson, said in a statement shortly afterwards that Operation Gideon’s Chariots, as the new offensive has been named, would “include a wide-scale attack and the movement of the majority of the strip’s population, this is to protect them in an area sterile of Hamas. And continued airstrikes, elimination of terrorists, and dismantling of infrastructure.”

The plan, which was unanimously approved at a security cabinet meeting late on Sunday, goes beyond any aims so far outlined by Israel for its offensive in the devastated Palestinian territory and is likely to prompt deep international concern and fierce opposition.

“This will inevitably lead to countless more civilians killed and the further destruction of Gaza,” said a spokesperson for António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general. “Gaza is, and must remain, an integral part of a future Palestinian state.”

A spokesperson for the British Foreign Office said: “The UK does not support an expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Continued fighting is in nobody’s interests.”

After a fragile ceasefire collapsed in mid-March, Israel renewed its bombardment, with troops reinforcing kilometre-deep “buffer zones” along the perimeter of the territory and expanding their hold over much of the north and south of the strip.

In all, more than 70% of Gaza is under Israeli control or covered by orders issued by Israel telling Palestinian civilians to evacuate specific neighbourhoods.

On Sunday, the army chief, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, said the military was calling up tens of thousands of reservists to allow for conscripted regular troops to be deployed to Gaza for the new offensive.

Zamir has resisted calls by some Israeli ministers for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to take on the job of distributing aid in Gaza, which has been under a tight blockade by Israel for more than two months. Much of the 2.3 million population can no longer find enough to eat and the humanitarian system is close to collapse, aid officials in the territory have said.

Israeli officials told local media that ministers believed there was “currently enough food” in the territory, but that they approved “the possibility of a humanitarian distribution, if necessary, to prevent Hamas from taking control of the supplies and to destroy its governance capabilities”.

Israel says the blockade and intensified bombardments since mid-March are to put pressure on Hamas to release hostages held in Gaza. Militants in the territory still hold 58 hostages seized in Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 52,535 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry there.

The officials also said Netanyahu “continues to promote” a proposal made in January by Donald Trump to displace the millions of Palestinians living in Gaza to neighbouring countries such as Jordan or Egypt, to allow its reconstruction.

A “voluntary transfer programme for Gaza residents … will be part of the operation’s goals”, the senior security official said.

Israel’s military on Monday carried out a fresh round of airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen’s Red Sea city of Hodeida, a day after the Iranian-backed rebels launched a missile that hit Israel’s main airport.

The rebels’ media office said at least six strikes hit the crucial Hodeida port Monday afternoon. Other strikes hit a cement factory in the Bajil district in Hodeida province, the rebels said. Israeli media reported that dozens of Israeli air force took part in the operation.

Trump’s scheduled visit later this month to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE may provide an additional incentive to the Israeli government to conclude a new ceasefire deal and allow aid into Gaza. Trump, who recently said he wanted Netanyahu to be “good to Gaza”, is likely to come under pressure from his hosts to push Israel to make concessions to end the conflict.

Israeli military officials say seizing territory provides Israel with additional leverage in its negotiations with Hamas, and some observers suggest that the public announcement of the new offensive and plans for a longer-term presence in Gaza are merely aimed at putting pressure on the militant Islamist group.

Humanitarian organisations have unanimously rejected Israel’s plan to establish a limited number of aid distribution hubs run by private contractors and guarded by the IDF in southern Gaza.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Sunday accused Israel of trying to shut down the existing aid distribution system run by the UN and its humanitarian partners in order to impose its own supply system.

“[This] contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles … It is dangerous, driving civilians into militarised zones to collect rations, threatening lives … while further entrenching forced displacement,” OCHA said.

Hamas on Monday described the new Israeli framework for aid delivery in Gaza as “political blackmail” and blamed Israel for the war-ravaged territory’s “humanitarian catastrophe”.

In Israel, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Jerusalem while a coalition representing the majority of families of hostages held by Hamas, about half of whom are thought to be dead, condemned the planned new offensive as a threat the lives of hostages and Israeli soldiers.

Netanyahu’s governing coalition – and so his hold on power – depends heavily on the support of hardline rightwing parties that have long demanded the reoccupation and resettlement of Gaza, which Israel formally left in 2005. A new parliamentary session opened on Monday.

Israeli strikes across Gaza continued overnight and during Monday, killing at least 32 people in the territory, according to hospital staff. Strikes hit Gaza City, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and among the dead were eight women and children, according to staff at al-Shifa hospital, where the bodies were brought.

The announcement of Israel’s plan to launch imminently a new, expanded offensive in Gaza and to retain the territory it seized is a significant moment, at least in terms of public rhetoric.

Throughout the nearly 19-month war, Israeli troops have carried out large and frequently bloody operations that have covered all except central parts of Gaza, but they have largely restricted their permanent presence to a buffer zone about 1km deep along the devastated territory’s perimeter and two relatively narrow east-west corridors.

This now seems to have changed. Once “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” is under way, Israel will send its troops across much – if not all – of Gaza, and will seek to establish a “sustained presence” there, Israel officials said.

Israeli officials are also talking openly about the displacement of Palestinians to southern Gaza, and their potential “voluntary” displacement from the territory altogether to allow the implementation of the reconstruction plan announced by the US president, Donald Trump, in January. The far-right Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, told Israelis on Monday to embrace the word “occupation”.

All this will confirm many people’s long-held fears of Israel’s intentions in Gaza and prompt international outrage.

The idea of a major new offensive in Gaza has been discussed and debated within the government and the upper ranks of the military for some months. So why has Israel’s government announced this plan so loudly? And why now?

A key factor is the indirect talks being held with Hamas about a new ceasefire. The government of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hopes that the Israel Defense Forces’ call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, the threat of the new offensive and the prospect of Israel seizing swaths of territory will force Hamas’s leaders to make concessions.

If it fails to do so, then physical possession of terrain will offer useful leverage in future negotiations and allow Hamas to be squeezed further in the meantime. Israel’s twin war aims – to crush Hamas and free the 59 hostages it still holds – remain unchanged, though Netanyahu has signaled the former is the priority.

Trump is due to visit the Middle East in 10 days, and Israeli officials said the offensive would start after the leader of their country’s most important ally had enjoyed the hospitality of Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar. Images of destruction and death from Gaza would make the president’s stay that much more diplomatically delicate. In reality, the complex logistics necessary to move and mobilise additional troops in Israel is likely to mean an even longer delay.

Israel has also now gone public with its plan to allow some aid into Gaza, which has been brought to “the brink of catastrophe”, aid officials say, by two months of Israel’s tight blockade of food, fuel, medicine and everything else.

The scheme involves creating big distribution sites run by private contractors in the south of Gaza, to which vetted representatives of each Palestinian family would travel to pick up food parcels. Israeli troops would guard the bases, likely to be situated in a vast zone up to 5km wide now being cleared along the border with Egypt.

The scheme has been dismissed as unworkable, dangerous and potentially illegal under international law by leading humanitarian organisations. There has been no mention either of who might provide healthcare, sanitation, water, fuel and everything else necessary for life in the territory.

Policy papers outlining and advocating the imposition of a military administration on Gaza have been circulating among senior officials in Israel for more than a year. Netanyahu continues to dismiss out of hand the possibility of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises partial authority in the occupied West Bank, governing the territory. Nor has he outlined any other kind of future political settlement in Gaza. The likely result, should the new offensive go ahead, would be that Israeli troops end up the de facto rulers of much of Gaza and its 2.3 million inhabitants.

The Israeli prime minister also offers little to the majority of Israelis who call for a ceasefire deal to secure the release of the hostages. His coalition still depends heavily on the support of far-right parties who are very happy with the prospect of the new offensive and the prospect of a “sustained” Israeli presence in Gaza. Netanyahu now appears likely to remain in power for the 15 months or so until the next elections.

More than 1,200 people died, mostly civilians, in the Hamas surprise raid into Israel in 2023 that triggered the war, and about 250 were taken prisoner, of whom 58 remain in Gaza. More than 52,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died in the Israeli offensive there which followed.

On Monday – among all the outrage and enthusiasm generated by Operation Gideon’s Chariots – the announcement that Israel’s security cabinet had decided not to establish “at this time” a state commission of inquiry into the failures that allowed that attack to take place went almost unnoticed.

Any inquiry should wait until the war has ended, Netanyahu told Israelis.

Israel’s military has carried out a fresh round of airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen’s Red Sea city of Hodeida, a day after the Iranian-backed rebels launched a missile that hit Israel’s main airport.

The rebels’ media office said at least six strikes hit the crucial Hodeida port on Monday afternoon. Other strikes hit a cement factory in the Bajil district in Hodeida province, the rebels said. Israeli media reported that dozens of Israeli aircraft took part in the operation.

On Sunday, the Houthis launched a missile from Yemen that struck an access road near Israel’s main airport, briefly halting flights and commuter traffic. Four people were lightly injured. It was the first time a missile had struck the grounds of Israel’s airport since the start of the war.

The Houthis claimed that the strikes were a joint Israeli-American operation. However, a US defence official said Washington did not participate in the strikes, which were not part of Operation Rough Rider, the US military operation against the Houthis in Yemen to prevent them from targeting ships in the Red Sea. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.

However, the US military separately launched multiple strikes on the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, on Monday, according to another US official.

Nasruddin Amer, head of the Houthi media office, said the Israeli strikes would not deter the rebels, vowing that they will respond to the attack.

“The aggressive Zionist-American raids on civilian facilities will not affect our military operations against the Zionist enemy entity,” he said in a social media post.

He said the Houthis will escalate their attacks and won’t stop targeting shipping routes and Israel until it stops the war in Gaza.

The Houthis have targeted Israel throughout the war in solidarity with Palestinians, raising their profile at home and internationally as the last member of Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” capable of launching regular attacks on Israel. The US military under President Donald Trump has launched an intensified campaign of daily airstrikes targeting the Houthis since 15 March.

Houthi rebels have fired at Israel since the war with Gaza began on 7 October 2023. The missiles have mostly been intercepted, although some have penetrated Israel’s missile defence systems, causing damage. Israel has struck back against the rebels in Yemen.

The Israeli military said it targeted the Hodeida port on Monday because Houthi rebels were using it to receive weapons and military equipment from Iran.

The attack on Ben-Gurion international airport on Sunday came hours before Israeli cabinet ministers voted to expand the war in Gaza, including to seize the Gaza Strip and to stay in the Palestinian territory for an unspecified amount of time. While air traffic resumed after an hour, the attack could lead to cancellations of many airlines, which had recently resumed flights to Israel.

A Palestinian activist who appeared in a Louis Theroux documentary about settlers in the West Bank has reportedly had his home raided by Israeli soldiers.

Issa Amro, co-founder of the non-violent activist group Youth Against Settlements, shared videos on social media of confrontations with Israeli military at his home, and another of a group of Israeli settlers forcing entry to the property.

Posting on X, Amro said: “The soldiers raided my house today, they wanted revenge from me for participating in the BBC documentary ‘the settlers’, after the army left the settlers raided my house, they injured one activist and cut the tree, they stole tools and the garbage containers.”

Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council have said that the settlements have “no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law.”

Amro lives in Hebron, the capital of the West Bank’s largest governorate. In Louis Theroux’s documentary, The Settlers, Amro shows Theroux around the Israeli-occupied area of the city, home to about 35,000 Palestinians and 700 settlers protected by the Israeli military.

The documentary, which aired in April on BBC Two, shows Amro and Theroux being confronted by military as they walk around the area. When the pair are sworn at by a passing driver, Amro explains to Theroux: “You deserve a middle finger if you report about Palestinians.”

“By international law, the settlements are illegal,” Amro said in the documentary. “They don’t see us as equal human beings who deserve the same rights they do.”

In one of the videos posted on X, Amro challenges a group of balaclava-covered soldiers at his house, asking why they have their faces covered. One soldier replies: “You know exactly why.”

A Nobel peace prize nominee and one of the West Bank’s most prominent activists, Amro is best known for his work for Youth Against Settlements, which aims to end the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Theroux, posting on X, said: “@Issaamro who featured in The Settlers has posted videos of his latest harassment by settlers and soldiers. Our team has been in regular contact with him since the documentary and over the last 24 hours. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”

A spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces accused Amro of spreading “false information,” adding: “As the videos clearly show, the soldiers present on May 3 in the Hebron area were there to disperse the confrontation between Palestinian residents and Israeli civilians.”

US president Donald Trump announced his 100% tariff on films “coming into our country produced in foreign lands” one day after meeting with actor Jon Voight to discuss his proposals to bring film production back to the US – which only suggested that tariffs could be used “in certain limited circumstances”.

The Midnight Cowboy and Heat actor, who was appointed a “special ambassador” to Hollywood by Trump, has been meeting with studios, streamers, unions and guilds for months to develop a plan to lure film and television productions back to the US. Production companies often seek more cost-effective locations or tax incentives in other countries such as Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Hungary, Italy and Spain.

On the weekend Voight and his manager and film producer Steven Paul met with Trump at Mar-A-Lago to deliver his “comprehensive plan” – just before Trump stunned the international film industry with the idea of a 100% tariff on all films “coming into our country produced in foreign lands”.

Only the topline details of Voight’s proposal were revealed on Monday, but the only mention of tariffs in the plan was that they could be used “in certain limited circumstances” – in contrast with Trump’s sweeping announcement. His main proposals involve federal tax incentives, changes to tax codes, co-production treaties with other countries, and infrastructure subsidies for theater owners, and production and post-production companies.

Hollywood productions are often filmed in countries such as Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Hungary, Italy and Spain in order to take advantage of local tax incentives, talent pools and landscapes that look geographically similar enough to stand in for more expensive US locations.

In a statement on Monday Voight said the White House was now “reviewing” his proposals.

“The President loves the entertainment business and this country, and he will help us make Hollywood great again,” Voight said. “We look forward to working with the administration, the unions, studios, and streamers to help form a plan to keep our industry healthy and bring more productions back to America.”

The White House walked back on Trump’s announcement afterwards, saying that “no final decisions on foreign film tariffs have been made”.

Film production in Los Angeles has declined almost 40% over the last decade, according to FilmLA, but not all this business went overseas: other states such as New York and Georgia have long offered generous tax incentives to attract productions.

Reactions in Hollywood to Trump’s announcement have been varied, in the absence of detail; it remains unclear how it would be decided which films would qualify as “foreign”. Marvel’s new film Thunderbolts*, for instance, was mostly made in the US but included some shoots on location in Malaysia and a score recorded in London. The tariff would also not address the comparatively higher cost of shooting in the US.

US performers union Sag-Aftra seemed broadly positive, saying it “supports efforts to increase movie, television and streaming production in the US” and that it would “advocate for policies that strengthen our competitive position, accelerate economic growth and create good middle class jobs for American workers”.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) called for a “balanced federal response”, with IATSE’s international president Matthew Loeb saying the crew union had “recommended that the Trump administration implement a federal film production tax incentive and other domestic tax provisions to level the playing field for American workers”.

IATSE, however, also represents workers in Canada, with Loeb saying it would “continue to stand firm in our conviction that any eventual trade policy must do no harm to our Canadian members – nor the industry overall.”

Australia has reacted with trepidation: the country has attracted US tent pole productions via various rebates, including the federal government’s 30% rebate for big-budget film projects shot in Australia. Just under half of the A$1.7bn spent on screen production in Australia during 2023-24 was on international productions.

Australia’s arts minster, Tony Burke, said he was monitoring the situation closely.

“Nobody should be under any doubt that we will be standing up unequivocally for the rights of the Australian screen industry,” Burke said.

Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone were appointed by Trump to be “special ambassadors to Hollywood”, which the president has called a “great but very troubled place”.

The Trump administration will offer undocumented immigrants $1,000 to leave the US as part of its latest crackdown on immigration, drawing criticism for saying that participation in the program “may help preserve the option” for an individual to re-enter the US “legally in the future”.

“It is an incredibly cruel bit of deception for DHS [Department of Homeland Security] to be telling people that if they leave they ‘will maintain the ability to return to the US legally in the future’,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a social media post.

The White House meanwhile said it was “exploring all options” on protecting the US film industry, a day after Donald Trump triggered a drop in production company shares by announcing a 10% tariff on movies produced outside the US.

Here are the key stories at a glance:

Catching up? Here’s what happened on 4 May 2025.

A sharp exchange of statements over the weekend has heightened concerns in Mexico that Donald Trump may push for a US military presence in its territory to fight drug trafficking.

The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, sought to defuse the situation in her daily press conference on Monday, emphasising that communication between the two leaders had been “very good” so far.

But the episode underlined the fraught path that Sheinbaum is navigating, as she attempts to placate Trump and protect the US-Mexico trade relationship while also defending Mexican sovereignty.

On Saturday, Sheinbaum revealed she had rejected an offer from Trump during a call last week to send US troops into Mexico to help fight drug trafficking.

“I told him, ‘No, President Trump, our territory is inviolable, our sovereignty is inviolable,’” said Sheinbaum, adding that while the two countries can collaborate, “we will never accept the presence of the US army in our territory”.

Trump on Sunday confirmed he had made the offer to Sheinbaum, because the cartels “are horrible people that have been killing people left and right and have been – they’ve made a fortune on selling drugs and destroying our people”.

“The president of Mexico is a lovely woman, but she is so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight,” added Trump.

Despite the exchange over the weekend, the public relationship between Trump and Sheinbaum has been largely cordial, with many comparing Sheinbaum’s performance favourably against other world leaders who have clashed with the US president.

The US-Mexico relationship is complex and vastly important for both countries, spanning trade, migration and security.

Since returning to power in January, Trump has imposed various tariff schemes that have jeopardised the free trade agreement between the two countries and the near trillion dollars of trade a year that passes between them.

Trump directly linked some of those tariffs to reducing the movement of undocumented migrants and fentanyl across the border into the US, and Sheinbaum’s cabinet has been engaged in intense diplomatic efforts to persuade him to withdraw them.

Sheinbaum first sent 10,000 additional troops to the border, then Mexico sent 29 high-level organised crime operatives to face justice in the US, including Rafael Caro Quintero, the drug lord who was convicted of the murder of an undercover US Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985.

Meanwhile Sheinbaum has abandoned the hands-off security strategy of her predecessor and ally, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and ramped up direct confrontation of organised crime groups, with soaring arrests and seizures of drugs and guns.

“Trump has created a real pressure that’s forced Mexico to act,” said Will Freeman from the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based thinktank. “I think Sheinbaum wants to act anyway, but it’s made her job easier by putting this pressure behind her.

“I think Trump’s vision is that this is almost like an insurgency in Mexico,” added Freeman. “And if the Mexican military is not willing to fight it – and they do often seem to be less than willing to use their full force against the cartels – then the US should do it.”

But experts say it is unclear that greater military action would fundamentally address the problem of organised crime in Mexico.

“I think to really change the balance of power between organised crime and the state in Mexico, you need intelligence, you need accountability through the justice system, you need political will,” said Freeman.

Still, Trump has said that the US could use unilateral military action if Mexico does not do enough to dismantle the cartels.

Sheinbaum has warned that her country would not tolerate an “invasion” of its national sovereignty by US forces.

“But the Mexican government should not just assume that [unilateral military action] couldn’t happen, regardless of how bad an idea it would be on many levels,” said Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, from the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime, an NGO. “All scenarios should be planned for.”

Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, has suspended gold mining and announced a 12-hour curfew in Pataz, in the northern region, after criminals kidnapped and killed 13 gold mine workers.

A Peruvian gold mining company La Poderosa said on Sunday that the bodies of 13 contract workers from a local firm had been found by police inside one of the mine’s tunnels.

Boluarte told journalists on Monday that the “armed forces will take control of the area where La Poderosa operates”, but did not give further details about how the 30-day mining pause would be enforced.

The government response, which critics have called tardy and ineffective, comes amid outrage over the murder of the 13 men who had been held captive for more than a week by criminals believed linked to illegal mining. Police said the hostages were tortured and that video footage – allegedly recorded by the captors themselves – showed the miners were shot dead at point-blank range.

Illegal gold mining has surged in Peru, Latin America’s biggest producer of the precious metal, just as the international price peaked once more at around $3,500 per ounce. Meanwhile a crime wave has swept the country with unprecedented rises in racketeering and killing-for-hire. 2024 saw a record increase murder rates – a 35.9% increase in homicides compared with 2023.

“Illegal mining is the most lucrative criminal activity in the country,” said César Ipenza, an environmental lawyer. Illegal gold mining accounted for $9bn , or 60% of Peru’s total laundered assets between January 2014 and October 2024, according to the country’s Financial Intelligence Unit, dwarfing the next biggest sources of laundered assets.

Once confined to certain zones illegal gold mining has spread throughout the country since the Covid-19 pandemic. The gold-rich area where the mine is located in La Libertad region has been under a state of emergency for more than two years due to ongoing violence and unrest.

This massacre brings to 39 the number of artisanal miners and workers killed by criminal gangs in Pataz, the company La Poderosa Mining confirmed in a statement.

“The spiral of uncontrolled violence in Pataz is occurring despite the declaration of a state of emergency and the presence of a large police contingent which, unfortunately, has not been able to halt the deterioration of security conditions in the area,” the statement added.

In December, thousands of gold miners camped out in the downtown Lima and blocked the main highway to insist that the government maintain a registry of informal and illegal miners known as REINFO which protects them from prosecution.

A frantic search for two children presumed lost in the unforgiving and thickly forested lands of Nova Scotia has entered its fourth day as police in Atlantic Canada expand their search.

Nearly 150 searchers have braved rain and fog to track down Lily Sullivan, six, and Jack Sullivan, four, who were last seen on Friday around their home in Pictou county, 100 miles north-east of Halifax.

Their mother Malehya Brooks-Murray and stepfather, Daniel Martell, have told local media they were sleeping with their 16-month-old baby on Friday morning as the older children played in the house. But when they awoke later in the morning, the two children were gone.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police believe the pair, members of the Mi’kmaq First Nation community of Sipekne’katik, wandered off from their home and probably entered a heavily forested area.

Among the resources devoted to the effort have been dog teams with the heavy urban search and rescue team from Halifax, the region’s largest city, as well as thermal imaging cameras attached to drones. Police say their work has been “strategic and thorough” as they weigh any clues that might suggest a likely whereabouts for the children.

The search is also the first major undertaking by the Nova Scotia Guard, a newly formed a volunteer emergency organization meant to address shortfalls in the province’s response to crisis. In 2023, a flash flood killed four people, including three children – a tragedy that some residents believe could have been avoided by timely warnings sent by authorities.

Nova Scotia’s premier, Tim Houston, a resident of Pictou county, has visited the search headquarters alongside other local officials, to offer support for residents and searchers.

“People in Pictou County and across Nova Scotia are praying for a positive outcome for two missing children,” he said in a statement. “During this time of worry, please know that our first responders and volunteers are working tirelessly during this 24/7 operation.”

Foiled at times by inclement weather, more than a dozen search teams are in the field.

“Everybody in the community is concerned and worried, but we’re all hoping for the best here,” said Donald Parker, a municipal councillor with the municipality of Pictou county told CBC News. “It’s hard on the whole community … It’s incredibly tough.”

On social media, the Sipekne’katik chief, Michelle Glasgow, questioned the decision not to issue an Amber alert, used when a child is presumed abducted, and said the disappearance underscored the need for a national alerting system.

“Please help bring Jack and Lily home,” she wrote.

The Vatican has announced that it will cut the phone signal within the tiny city state during the conclave to elect a new pope – but this would not affect St Peter’s Square.

The office of the presidency of the Governorate of the Vatican City State said that “all the transmission systems of the telecommunications signal for mobile telephones present in the territory of the Vatican City State … will be deactivated” from 3pm on 7 May.

“The signal will be restored after the announcement of the election of the supreme pontiff,” it said in a statement.

But the deactivation will not cover St Peter’s Square, Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni told reporters.

Thousands of faithful are expected to gather in the square in front of St Peter’s Basilica to await the announcement of a successor to Pope Francis, who died on 21 April.

A total of 133 cardinals from across the globe will gather in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel on Wednesday to begin voting for a new head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

The election is carried out in utmost secrecy and the cardinals will be required to leave their mobile phones behind when they enter the conclave, Bruni said.

A charred scroll recovered from a Roman villa that was buried under ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago has been identified as the influential work of an ancient Greek philosopher.

Researchers discovered the title and author on the Herculaneum scroll after X-raying the carbonised papyrus and virtually unwrapping it on a computer, the first time such crucial details have been gleaned from the approach.

Traces of ink lettering visible in the X-ray images revealed the text to be part of a multi-volume work, On Vices, written by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus in the first century BC. The scroll is one of three from Herculaneum housed at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford.

“It’s the first scroll where the ink could just be seen on the scan,” said Dr Michael McOsker, a papyrologist at University College London, who is collaborating with researchers in Oxford to read the text. “Nobody knew what it was about. We didn’t even know if it had writing on.”

The scroll is one of hundreds found in the library of a luxury Roman villa thought to have been owned by Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. The villa was buried under ash and pumice when Herculaneum, near Naples, was destroyed along with Pompeii in the eruption of AD79.

Excavations in the 18th century recovered many of the ancient scrolls, most of which are held at the National Library of Naples. But the documents are so badly burnt that they crumble when researchers try to unroll them and the ink is unreadable on the carbonised papyrus.

The latest work builds on earlier breakthroughs from the Vesuvius Challenge, a global competition launched in 2023, which offers prizes for progress in reading the scrolls from 3D X-rays. Last year, a team of computer-savvy students shared the $700,000 (£527,350) grand prize for developing artificial intelligence software that enabled them to read 2,000 ancient Greek letters from another scroll.

The scroll from the Bodleian, named PHerc. 172, was scanned last July at Diamond, the UK’s national synchrotron facility in Oxfordshire. Unusually, some ink was visible in the X-ray images, with researchers spotting the ancient Greek word for “disgust” at least twice in the document.

Further work by Sean Johnson at the Vesuvius Challenge, and separately by Marcel Roth and Micha Nowak at the University of Würzburg, found the title and author of the text in the innermost section of the scroll, earning them the challenge’s $60,000 (£45,200) first title prize.

Alongside “On Vices” and “Philodemus”, a book number on the scroll may be an alpha, suggesting it could be the first instalment of the work. On Vices contains at least 10 books with others covering topics such as arrogance, greed, flattery and household management.

Before long, experts should know far more about the scrolls. Eighteen were scanned at Diamond in March and 20 more will be imaged at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble this week.

“We’re seeing evidence of ink in many of the new scrolls we’ve scanned but we haven’t converted that into coherent text yet,” said Dr Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, who co-founded the Vesuvius Challenge. “That’s our current bottleneck: converting the massive scan data into organised sections that are properly segmented, virtually flattened, and enhanced so that the evidence of ink can then be interpreted as actual text.”

McOsker said: “The pace is ramping up very quickly … All of the technological progress that’s been made on this has been in the last three to five years and on the timescales of classicists, that’s unbelievable. Everything we’re getting from the Herculaneum library is new to us.”