Vanuatu authorities are looking at revoking Andrew Tate’s citizenship after it was revealed that he acquired a golden passport at around the same time as his 2022 arrest in Romania for rape and human trafficking.

The self-described misogynist influencer acquired citizenship under a fast-track scheme for those who invest at least $130,000 (£96,000) in the tiny Pacific archipelago, according to an investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

The scheme has raised security concerns, and led the European Union to revoke Vanuatu’s visa-free privilege in late 2024.

A Vanuatu government spokesman said authorities were “definitely looking into” Tate’s citizenship.

“Once we have the files, definitely, the processes will be in place to revoke his citizenship,” Kiery Manassah told ABC News.

“The government does not want to encourage people of questionable backgrounds to be granted citizenship,” he added. “Those who are wanted by their countries or who are investigated by police authorities from overseas are not welcome to be part of the citizens of Vanuatu.”

Passports-for-sale or citizenship by investment schemes are a source of income for countries like Vanuatu. But they have also been abused by organised crime suspects, oligarchs and even intelligence agents, said Aubrey Belford, Pacific lead editor at OCCRP.

“It’s caused a lot of alarm because it’s one of those loopholes that allows people to get a new passport or even a new identity and be able to evade law enforcement,” Belford told ABC News.

Vanuatu granted Tate citizenship in December 2022. That same month, Tate and his brother Tristan were arrested in Romania and have since largely been under travel restrictions in the country.

Vanuatu does not have a formal extradition treaty with Romania.

It is unclear if Tristan Tate also acquired Vanuatu citizenship.

In recent years, Andrew Tate has built a massive online presence, including more than 10 million followers on X, sharing his lifestyle of fast cars, private jets and yachts.

He has also gained global notoriety for his views towards women, proudly proclaiming himself a “misogynist” and also using extreme language relating to acts of violence against women.

He has also been singled out for the effect he has had in spreading misogyny online among boys and young men by authorities in the UK.

The Tate brothers were both born in the US but moved to Luton in the UK with their mother after their parents divorced.

They have denied allegations of criminal wrongdoing.

Separately, the UK is seeking their extradition from Romania after they were charged in 2024 of rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking.

Lawyers for the brothers have said that they will return to the UK to face those charges, that stemmed from allegation between 2012 and 2015.

A Romanian court has ruled that the brothers could be extradited to the UK following the end of any trial there.

An Australian woman on trial for murder says she threw up the toxic mushroom meal which killed her relatives, after binge eating dessert.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to four charges – three of murder and one of attempted murder – over the beef Wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July 2023.

Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson deliberately served toxic death cap mushrooms, but only to her guests. Her defence team say the contaminated meal was a tragic accident, and argue it had made their client sick too.

Ms Patterson told the court she had only eaten a small part of lunch but later consumed two-thirds of a cake, before becoming “over-full” and vomiting.

Doctors have previously told the trial Ms Patterson did not have the same intense symptoms as the other people who’d eaten at her house.

On her third day of wide-ranging testimony, Ms Patterson also admitted she had lied about a cancer diagnosis – which prosecutors say she used to coax the guests to her house – instead of revealing she was actually planning to undergo weight-loss surgery.

She said she had dumped a food dehydrator and wiped her phone in the days after the incident out of fear of being blamed for her relative’s deaths, telling the court her estranged husband had accused her of poisoning them.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

A single lunch guest survived, 71-year-old local pastor Ian Wilkinson, after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The Victorian Supreme Court trial – which started almost six weeks ago – has heard from more than 50 witnesses, and attracted huge global attention.

In the Morwell courthouse, Ms Patterson gave a detailed account of the fatal lunch, saying she had invited her guests under the premise she wanted to talk about health issues.

The 14-member jury heard that Ms Patterson went through “quite a long process of trying to decide what to cook” for the lunch before choosing to make beef Wellington.

The dish – usually prepared with a long strip of fillet steak, wrapped in pastry and mushrooms – was something Ms Patterson’s mother made when she was a child, to mark special occasions, she said.

After deciding the mushrooms she’d prepared tasted “bland”, she said she’d added some dried ones – bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne months earlier – from a container in her pantry.

Asked if that container may have had other types of mushrooms in it, Ms Patterson, choking up, said: “Now I think there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had started hunting for mushrooms in locations close to her Leongatha home in 2020, and her long-standing love for fungi had expanded to include wild varieties as they had “more flavour”.

Ms Patterson told the jury she had served up the food when it was ready, and instructed her guests to grab a plate themselves as she finished preparing gravy.

There were no assigned seats or plates, she said.

Mr Wilkinson previously told the trial the guests had each been given grey plates while Ms Patterson had eaten off an orange one. Ms Patterson on Wednesday said she didn’t have any grey plates.

During the lunch, Ms Patterson recalled that she didn’t eat much of her food – “a quarter, a third, somewhere around there” – because she was busy talking.

She conceded she had told her guests she had cancer, but in court explained she told this lie to make sure she had help with childcare when she underwent gastric bypass surgery.

“I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I was going to have done. I was really embarrassed by it,” she said.

After the guests left, she cleaned up the kitchen and ate a slice of orange cake Gail had brought.

“[I ate] another piece of cake, and then another piece,” she said, before finishing the rest of the dessert.

“I felt sick… over-full so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.”

“After I’d done that, I felt better.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had secretly struggled with bulimia since her teens and was prone to regularly binge eating and vomiting after meals.

Ms Patterson told the court that she started to develop gastro-like symptoms hours after the lunch and took herself to hospital to “get some fluids” two days later. She was “shocked but confused” when medical staff asked if she could have eaten death cap mushrooms.

While in hospital for observation overnight, Ms Patterson said her former husband Simon asked her about a dehydrator she owned.

“Is that how you poisoned my parents?” she told the trial he’d said to her – something Mr Patterson denies.

After this encounter, she’d been “frantic”, Ms Patterson said, and upon being sent home had disposed of her food dehydrator at the local tip.

“I had made the meal and served it and people had got sick.”

“I was scared that they would blame me for it.”

The court also heard that Ms Patterson erased the data on one of her phones several times – including while police were searching her house – because she did not want detectives to see her photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator.

Ms Patterson will continue giving evidence on Thursday, before prosecutors will have the opportunity to cross-examine her.

Two Chinese nationals have been accused of smuggling a fungus into the US that officials describe as a “dangerous biological pathogen”.

Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, have been charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods, false statements, and visa fraud, the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced on Tuesday.

The complaint alleges Mr Liu tried to smuggle the fungus through Detroit airport so he could study it at a University of Michigan laboratory where his girlfriend, Ms Jian, worked.

The fungus called Fusarium graminearum can cause a disease in wheat, barley, maize and rice that can wipe out crops and lead to vomiting and liver damage if it gets into food.

The fungus is described in scientific literature as a “potential agroterrorism weapon”, according to the US Attorney’s Office, adding it is responsible for “billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.”

Officials further allege Ms Jian received funding from the Chinese government for her research on the pathogen in China. They also claim she is a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

United States Attorney Jerome F Gorgon Jr described the allegations as of the “gravest national security concerns”.

“These two aliens have been charged with smuggling a fungus that has been described as a ‘potential agroterrorism weapon’ into in the [sic] heartland of America, where they apparently intended to use a University of Michigan laboratory to further their scheme.”

The investigation was a joint effort between the FBI and US Customs and Border Protection.

Ms Jian is due to appear in court in Detroit, Michigan on Tuesday.

The BBC has reached out to the University of Michigan and the Chinese embassy in Washington DC for comment.

The charges come amid strained relations between the US and China, and just days after the Trump administration vowed to “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese nationals studying in the US.

Beijing also said Washington “severely violated” a trade truce reached in Geneva last month, when both countries lowered tariffs on goods imported from each other.

Earlier this week, a Chinese student at the University of Michigan was charged for illegally voting in the 2024 election.

The Duchess of Sussex has posted intimate family photos of Princess Lilibet to mark her fourth birthday.

Meghan shared a black-and-white snap of her cuddling her daughter, who is sitting on her lap, with the pair both sporting windswept hair, appearing to be on a boat.

The second image shows Meghan tenderly cradling the princess as a newborn following her birth in 2021.

Meghan wrote on Instagram: “Happy birthday to our beautiful girl! Four years ago today she came into our lives – and each day is brighter and better because of it.

“Thanks to all of those sending love and celebrating her special day!”

Meghan usually only shares photos of the princess pictured from behind to protect her privacy, but in the more recent photo you can see Lilibet’s eyes and top half of her face, with the bottom half covered by Meghan’s arms as she hugs her daughter.

The princess – the youngest child of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – was born on 4 June 2021, a year after her parents stepped back from being senior royals and moved to the US.

She became a princess when her grandfather the King became monarch.

The couple also share Prince Archie, aged six.

On Tuesday, Meghan said she wondered about launching a future business with her daughter as she chatted to Beyonce’s mother Tina Knowles on her podcast Confessions Of A Female Founder.

“I wonder if one day I’ll be in business with Lili and we’ll be building something,” the duchess said, with Knowles adding: “That’s the best.”

Last week, the duchess shared a clip of her and the princess beekeping in protective suits, writing: “Like mother, like daughter; she’s even wearing my gloves.”

Lilibet is named after her great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.

The nickname was coined when then-Princess Elizabeth was a toddler and could not pronounce her own name properly.

Her grandfather King George V would affectionately call her Lilibet, imitating her attempts to say her name. It stuck and came to be used by close relatives.

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It is hard to argue the UK exemption from the doubling of US tariffs on imported steel from 25 to 50% is not good news.

It was not a given that the UK would get this carve-out despite having done a deal on 8 May to reduce tariffs on the metals to zero.

That agreement is not yet in force, however, and speaking to steel industry leaders and government officials right up until Tuesday night’s announcement, their working assumption was that the UK would be in the same boat as everyone else – facing tariffs of 50% until that deal was finalised.

There was a palpable sense of relief from UK trade officials when the exemption was included in President Donald Trump’s latest executive order.

Up until that point, the UK government didn’t actually know whether it would receive special treatment. It found out the same time everyone else did, and managed to avoid what would have been a somewhat diplomatically embarrassing episode after hailing the tariff pact as “historic”.

Having said that there is now a new clock ticking. Tuesday’s announcement contained a provision that if the deal is not finalised by 9 July, the UK’s steel tariff rate would be hiked to 50%.

So now you have an uncertain period when businesses on both sides of the Atlantic don’t know if the tariff will be zero or 50% in five weeks’ time – which anecdotally is having a corrosive effect on business.

There is no reason to assume the deal won’t come into force. The government said that Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and US Trade Representative Jameson Grier agreed that both would work faster so customers in US and UK benefit from the agreement.

However, there is a second-order effect – that international steel earmarked for the US could now be diverted to the UK and create a glut of the metal and undercut domestic steelmakers.

The industry has been quick to voice such concerns and wants the government to implement barriers of its own to prevent that.

The UK exemption and ultimate deal is not a free lunch. The UK government agreed to cut tariffs cut on some US beef products and ethanol – a renewable fuel made from crops. It has created a crisis in the UK ethanol market, which in turn is a big customer of wheat farmers.

It is possible that UK efforts to protect these industries could be viewed by the US as backsliding on the deal they struck with the UK.

It’s a reminder that these deals have complex and sometimes underestimated knock on effects.

It’s less than 36 hours after a gangland double murder in a busy bar on the Costa Del Sol, and there is no sign of the Spanish police – apart from an occasional patrol car gliding by.

No cordon, no tape, no forensics in white suits, no officer guarding the front door of Monaghans Bar in Fuengirola.

According to a local cameraman, it was the same on Sunday afternoon – the day after Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jnr were gunned down.

In the homeland of the two men who had been shot dead, the case would be classed as a top level “category A” homicide with the bar sealed off and turned upside down for days afterwards.

This is Spain, not Scotland. But it must surely be wrong to assume the lack of a visible presence means a lack of interest from the Spanish National Police.

This part of the country is no stranger to violence linked to organised crime and this was the murder of two men in a public place.

They were shot dead in cold blood in a busy bar and bystanders could easily have been injured or killed.

The mayor of Fuengirola, Ana Mula, has been quoted as saying the police need more resources to deal with the shootings and the general threat of drug-related organised crime.

When I arrived late on Monday morning, Mongahans was the only place not open for business in the long strip of pubs and restaurants along the beachfront, where holidaymakers basked in the sun and swam in the sparkling sea.

Staff were inside but made it clear they didn’t want to talk about what had happened. The owners of neighbouring businesses felt the same way.

British tourists who’d been in Monaghans before the shooting described it as a friendly bar.

They said a group of Scottish men were watching the Champion’s League final in the pub before the shooting. They were boisterous but not behaving badly and Eddie Lyons Jnr and Ross Monaghan were with them.

Those men would have witnessed the horrifying murders of their friends.

A video filmed afterwards showed a Scottish man on the phone, saying “Someone’s got shot in the head.”

David Meddicks from Glasgow had left the bar with his wife a couple of hours before.

He recalled: “We went back to our hotel for food and later on at the reception of the hotel, two wee Spanish women ran in, shouting “bang, bang, bang, bang.”

“We looked and we could see the police and all the blue lights. We had been thinking of going back down for another drink and decided not to bother. So I’m quite glad I didn’t.”

An Englishman who been in the pub said: “We were there an hour before and walked back later and found out what happened.

“It made us want to go home, to be quite honest. You go away on holiday and you don’t expect this. Really frightening.”

Another tourist, Robert Sorman from Bathgate, said: “You’ve heard of the Costa Del Crime but you never expect it to happen when you’re here.”

An elite Costa Del Sol-based anti-drug and organised crime unit is heading the investigation, reporting to a local magistrate who is in charge of the inquiry overall.

The Spanish police have said very little in public so far and there has been no official confirmation of the identity of the two victims.

Reporters with experience of investigations in Spain say that’s not unusual and to be fair, police in Scotland rarely speak about ongoing inquiries into organised crime unless they absolutely have to.

The Spanish will be seeking the assistance of Police Scotland to get intelligence on the background of the two men, and it’s likely that Scottish detectives will be travelling to the Costa Del Sol at some point.

The UK’s National Crime Agency has full-time staff in Spain who will be facilitating such co-operation.

There is speculation that the shootings are linked to the ongoing gangland feud in central Scotland which has resulted in dozens of incidents, including alleged attempted murders, and more than 40 arrests.

Some of the people targeted in the violence are linked to the Daniels crime group – long-time rivals of another serious organised crime group, the Lyons family, of which Eddie Lyons Jnr and Ross Monaghan were members.

But their murders would represent a massive escalation in the level of violence compared to what has gone before.

The killings of two senior figures from the Scottish underworld in a bar in a foreign country is unprecedented.

It’s possible that it was unrelated to the feud; that something else lies behind it.

One thing’s certain; Police Scotland will be deeply concerned about revenge attacks and more bloodshed.

As one former officer put it: “This won’t go unavenged forever.”

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The sprawling city of Chongqing in southwestern China is an incredible sight. Built on mountainous terrain and crisscrossed by rivers, it is connected by vast elevated roads. Trains even run through some buildings.

TikTokers have begun documenting their commutes in the striking urban architecture, generating millions of likes and much hype.

But it is also where, on a somewhat quieter trip, mayors and their deputies from the UK recently visited – the largest British civic delegation to go there in history.

The whole trip, which took place in March, received substantial Chinese media coverage, despite flying more under the radar in the UK. The impression it left on some of the politicians who travelled there was vast.

“[The city is] what happens if you take the planning department and just say ‘yes’ to everything,” reflects Howard Dawber, deputy London mayor for business. “It’s just amazing.”

The group travelled to southern Chinese cities, spoke to Chinese mayors and met Chinese tech giants. So impressed was one deputy mayor that, on returning home, they bought a mobile phone from Chinese brand Honor (a stark contrast from the days the UK banned Huawei technology from its 5G networks, just a few years ago).

Roughly half-a-dozen deals were signed on the back of the trip. The West Midlands, for example, agreed to establish a new UK headquarters in Birmingham for Chinese energy company EcoFlow.

But the visit was as much about diplomacy as it was trade, says East Midlands deputy mayor Nadine Peatfield, who attended. “There was a real hunger and appetite to rekindle those relationships.”

To some, it was reminiscent of the “golden era” of UK-China relations, a time when then-Prime Minister David Cameron and Chinese President Xi Jinping shared a basket of fish and chips and a pint.

Those days have long felt far away. Political ties with China deteriorated under former UK Conservative Prime Ministers Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. The last UK prime minister to visit China was Theresa May, in 2018.

The recent delegation – and the talk of Sir Keir Starmer possibly visiting China later this year – all suggests a turning point in relations. But to what greater intent?

The course correction seemed to begin with the closed-door meeting between Sir Keir and Chinese President Xi in Brazil last November. The prime minister signalled that Britain would look to cooperate with China on climate change and business.

Since then, Labour’s cautious pursuit of China has primarily focused on the potential financial upsides.

In January, Chancellor Rachel Reeves co-chaired the first UK-China economic summit since 2019, in Beijing. Defending her trip, she said: “Choosing not to engage with China is no choice at all.”

Reeves claimed re-engagement with China could boost the UK economy by £1bn, with agreements worth £600m to the UK over the next five years — partially achieved through lifting barriers that restrict exports to China.

Soon after, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband resumed formal climate talks with China. Miliband said it would be “negligence” to future generations not to have dialogue with the country, given it is the world’s biggest carbon emitter.

Labour simply describes its approach as “grown-up”. But it all appears to be a marked shift from the last decade of UK-China relations.

During the so-called “golden era”, from 2010, the UK’s policy towards China was dominated by the Treasury, focusing on economic opportunities and appearing to cast almost all other issues, including human rights or security, aside.

By September 2023, however, Rishi Sunak said he was “acutely aware of the particular threat to our open and democratic way of life” posed by China.

Labour claimed in its manifesto that it would bring a “long-term and strategic approach”.

China has a near monopoly on extracting and refining rare earth minerals, which are critical to manufacturing many high-tech and green products. For example, car batteries are often reliant on lithium, while indium is a rare metal used for touch screens. This makes China a vital link in global supply chains.

“China’s influence is likely to continue to grow substantially globally, especially with the US starting to turn inwards,” says Dr William Matthews, a China specialist at Chatham House think tank.

“The world will become more Chinese, and whilst that is difficult for any Western government, there needs to be sensible engagement from the get-go.”

Andrew Cainey, a director of the UK National Committee on China, an educational non-profit organisation, says: “China has changed a lot since the Covid-19 pandemic. To have elected officials not having seen it, it’s a no brainer for them to get back on the ground”.

Certainly many in the UK’s China-watching community believe that contact is an essential condition to gain a clearer-eyed view of the opportunities posed by China, but also the challenges.

The opportunities, some experts say, are largely economic, climate and education-related. Or as Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College London, puts it: “China is producing information, analysis and ways of doing things that we can learn from”. He points to the intellectual, technological, AI, and life sciences opportunities.

Not engaging with China would be to ignore the realities of geopolitics in the 21st century, in Dr Matthew’s view, given that it is the world’s second largest economy. However he also believes that engagement comes with certain risks.

Charles Parton, who spent 22 years of his diplomatic career working in or on China, raises questions about the UK’s economic and national security.

For example, the government is reportedly weighing up proposals for a Chinese company to supply wind turbines for an offshore windfarm in the North Sea. Mr Parton warns against allowing China access to the national grid: “It wouldn’t be difficult in a time of high tension to say, ‘by the way, we can turn off all your wind farms'”.

But earlier this year, the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU issued a statement expressing concern over the “politicisation” of deals between wind developers in Europe and Chinese turbine suppliers.

James Sullivan, director of Cyber and Tech at defence think tank Rusi, notes there are also some questions around cyberspace. “China’s activities in cyberspace appear to be more strategically and politically focused compared to previous opportunistic activities,” he says.

As for defence, the UK’s recently published defence review describes China as a “sophisticated and persistent challenge”, with Chinese technology and its proliferation to other countries “already a leading challenge for the UK”.

Ken McCallum, MI5 director general, meanwhile, has previously warned of a sustained campaign on an “epic scale” of Chinese espionage abroad.

But Prof Brown pushes back on some concerns about espionage, saying some media narratives about this are a “fairytale”.

Beijing has always dismissed accusations of espionage as attempts to “smear” China.

Sir Keir and his team will no doubt be closely monitoring how this is all viewed by Washington DC.

Last month, President Donald Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro described Britain as “an all too compliant servant of Communist China”, urging the UK against deepening economic ties.

“When it comes to foreign policy towards China, America’s influence on policy will be quite substantive compared with say continental Europe,” says Dr Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China at Chatham House think tank.

Most analysts I speak to in both the UK and China are still clear on the need for the two countries to get back in the same room, even if they differ on where to draw the line: in which areas should Westminster cooperate and where should it stay clear.

These red lines have not yet been drawn, and experts say that without some kind of playbook, it is difficult for businesses and elected officials to know how to engage.

“You can only keep firefighting specific issues for so long without developing a systematic plan,” warns Mr Cainey.

Certain thorny issues have arisen, including Chinese investments in the UK. For example in April when the government seized control of British Steel from its former Chinese owner Jingye, to prevent it from being closed down, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds admitted that he would “look at a Chinese firm in a different way” when considering investment in the UK steel industry.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Lin Jian, warned that Labour should avoid “linking it to security issues, so as not to impact the confidence of Chinese enterprises in going to the UK”.

After Starmer met Xi last year, he said the government’s approach would be “rooted in the national interests of the UK”, but acknowledged areas of disagreement with China, including on human rights, Taiwan and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Securing the release of pro-democracy activist and British citizen Jimmy Lai from a Hong Kong prison is, he has said, a “priority” for the government.

Labour’s manifesto broadly pledged: “We will cooperate where we can, compete where we need to, and challenge where we must.”

What is still lacking, however, is the fine print. Asked about the British government’s longer-term strategy, Mr Parton replied: “No.10 doesn’t have a strategy.”

He tells me he has some specific advice: “Go with your eyes open,” he says. “But have a clear idea of what needs protecting, and a willingness to take some short-term financial hits to protect long-term national security.”

Labour has suggested that some clarity on their approach will be provided through the delayed China “audit”, a cross-government exercise launched last year, which will review the UK’s relations with China.

The audit is due to be published this month, but many doubt that it will resolve matters.

“If we see a visit from Starmer to Beijing, that will be an indication that the two sides have actually agreed with something, and that they would like to change and improve their bilateral relationship,” says Dr Yu.

But many people in Westminster remain China-sceptic.

And even if the audit helps Britain better define what it wants out of its relationship with China, the question remains, do MPs and businesses have the China-related expertise to get the best out of it?

According to Ruby Osman, China analyst at the Tony Blair Institute, there is an urgent need to build the UK’s China capabilities in a more holistic way, focusing on diversifying the UK’s points of contact with China.

“If we want to be in a position where we are not just listening to what Beijing and Washington want, there needs to be investment in the talent pipeline coming into government, but also think tanks and businesses who work with China,” she argues.

And if that’s the case, then irrespective of whether closer ties with China is viewed as a security threat, an economic opportunity, or something in between, the UK might be in a better position to engage with the country.

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Kenyan free-speech advocates and lawyers have condemned the prosecution of the author of an unauthorised biography of Kenyan President William Ruto’s daughter.

Charlene Ruto accused Webster Ochora Elijah of “misusing” her name by writing the book without first seeking permission from her.

On Tuesday, the author was arrested and charged with impersonation over the book titled Beyond the Name: Charlene Ruto and the Youth Uprising. He pleaded not guilty and was released on bail.

Ms Ruto told journalists that she had reported the matter to the police and was following legal procedures. She is listed as the complainant on the charge sheet.

The charge alleges that the accused published the book on or before 22 May, alongside others who are yet to be charged, with intention to defraud.

The president’s daughter has not complained about the contents of the book, just that it was written without her permission.

But critics say this is not illegal.

Politician and lawyer Willis Otieno said to “criminalise authorship” was misusing the “state machinery in defence of fragile egos”.

Literary critic Mbugua Ngunjiri said the author did “nothing wrong”, giving an example of an unauthorised biography of former President Uhuru Kenyatta, in 2014, where the “author did not need to consult”.

“A million writers can write ‘her book’ and it will be perfectly legal. The only time Charlene would be justified to go after the author is if he misrepresented her in any way,” he posted on Facebook.

The president’s daughter told journalists that there was a “bad culture” in Kenya “where we misuse people’s names and we get away with it and that is not right”.

She said the author had not sought permission from her and it did not matter whether the book was “positive” about her.

“The gentleman never came to me with a suggestion that he wants to write a book on my behalf and for me that is a misappropriate use of my name,” she said.

The self-published book, by a little-known author, aged 25, has not been widely distributed and there is not much publicly available information about its contents. It is not available online.

His legal team have argued that his work did not constitute a crime. Lawyer Kennedy Mong’are told local media that he had previously written books about public figures, including on veteran politician Raila Odinga and US President Donald Trump.

Another lawyer, Evan Ondieki, said that high-ranking government figures should expect public scrutiny and that the arrest undermined Kenya’s democratic values.

“You cannot be so thick-skinned that the use of your name or image becomes an offence,” he stated.

In April, a secondary school teacher was charged for impersonating another daughter of President Ruto, by pretending to be June Ruto on Facebook.

• The ‘tax collector’ president sparking Kenyan anger
• BBC identifies security forces who shot Kenya anti-tax protesters

Charlene Ruto is a high-profile figure who has in the past been likened to a version of Ivanka Trump, daughter of the US president.

She has often been a guest at public events, and in the past met leaders across the country and attended international forums.

In 2022, she denied that public money was being used to fund what she called the “Office of the First Daughter”.

The court case has amplified concerns about restrictions on free expression, particularly following the recent detention of software developer Rose Njeri.

Njeri was arrested on Friday for creating a tool that helped citizens oppose the government’s annual finance bill.

She was charged with cyber-crime and computer misuse on Tuesday and freed on bail until 20 June when the court will determine whether she will answer the charges.

She has since thanked Kenyans for raising their voices against her “ludicrous” arrest and detention.

• Outrage in Kenya over detention of software developer
• Why Kenya’s president has so many nicknames
• Historic first as president takes on Kenya’s online army
• New faces of protest – Kenya’s Gen Z anti-tax revolutionaries

The death of a 10-year-old rape victim in the eastern Indian state of Bihar after an alleged delay in medical treatment has sparked outrage in the country.

The girl died on Sunday morning at the state government-run Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) in the capital Patna.

Her uncle has alleged that the child’s condition worsened as she was kept waiting in an ambulance for around four hours on Saturday before being admitted to the hospital.

PMCH authorities have denied this, saying that claims of a delay in admission are “baseless”.

The girl’s death has made national headlines, with opposition leaders accusing the Bihar government – a coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal United (JD-U) – of gross mismanagement. The government has denied any negligence.

The girl is from the Dalit community, which is at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Dalits face widespread mistreatment in India despite laws in place to protect them.

Following the outrage, the National Human Rights Commission and National Commission for Women have criticised the incident and asked for the hospital’s role to be investigated.

Rape victims cannot be named under Indian law.

The girl was raped on 26 May, allegedly by a man who lived near her aunt’s house in Muzaffarpur. Police have arrested the man and are investigating the crime.

The girl went missing while she was playing outside her house. Her family members later found her lying injured near a road. Police officials have told reporters that she had several knife wounds.

She was first taken to a local hospital and then to the Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), around 85km (53 miles) from Patna.

Kumari Vibha, the superintendent of SKMCH, told BBC Hindi that the child had several injuries, including wounds on her chest and neck, but that her condition had stabilised. She was referred to PMCH as she needed reconstruction surgery on her windpipe, Ms Vibha said.

But at PMCH, the child’s uncle said, they faced a delay in admission while the child waited in the ambulance.

“They [the hospital staff] made us run around for four hours from one hospital department to another one,” he alleged. She was later admitted to the gynaecology department, he said.

The hospital has denied the allegations. IS Thakur, a top hospital official, said that the child’s family had initially admitted her to the paediatrics department but that she was sent to the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) department because of her injuries.

“Since we do not have an ICU in ENT, the child was shifted to the ICU of the gynaecology department,” he said, adding that the child was brought in an Advance Life Support ambulance, which is equipped to offer critical care.

“The allegations of a delay in getting a hospital bed are baseless,” Mr Thakur said.

The child’s plight began making news after a viral video showed members of the opposition Congress party arguing with hospital staff, demanding that she be admitted.

Opposition parties in the state have held several protests since the death.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the girl’s death was “extremely shameful” and demanded that strict action be taken against negligent officers.

“The rape victim waited for hours outside PMCH to be admitted… what is the use of the big buildings being built in the name of hospitals when there is chaos, corruption, misbehaviour, lack of resources and insensitivity all around?” the state’s main opposition party Rashtriya Janata Dal said on X.

Leaders of the BJP and JD(U) have denied any negligence. Anamika Singh Patel, a BJP spokesperson, called the girl’s death “unfortunate”.

“But I myself run a hospital and I know that getting a bed in a hospital is a process which takes time. People in our government are working responsibly,” she said.

The incident has also brought attention to the condition of Bihar’s medical infrastructure, months before the state assembly election is due to be held.

Last month, a patient at another government hospital in Patna said that a rat bit his toe while he was asleep. Hospital authorities had launched an investigation into the incident.

On Tuesday, in a scathing editorial titled Bihar’s Shame, the Times of India newspaper highlighted the sorry state of hospitals in the state. It referenced a recent report that found that only half of all ventilators in government hospitals were functional and that capital Patna had just one government doctor for 11,541 people. That ratio is much worse in rural areas.

The US Navy plans to remove the name of gay rights leader and Navy veteran Harvey Milk from one of its ships, and may change the titles of other vessels honouring civil rights leaders.

The plans were outlined in documents obtained by BBC’s US partner CBS News that show a timeline for when the renaming of USNS Harvey Milk would be shared with the public.

It comes during Pride Month in June, an annual commemoration of the LGBT community that coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall riots in 1969.

The directive also comes amid a broader movement by the Trump administration to curb programmes that promote diversity and inclusion across federal departments.

Sean Parnell, a spokesman for the Pentagon, told CBS on Tuesday that the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk is to realign the US military with the Trump administration’s goal of “re-establishing the warrior culture” in the armed forces.

The memo calls for Navy Secretary John Phelan to select a new name for the fleet oiler. That name change would then be communicated to other senior US Navy officials after a legal review.

It also outlines other vessels recommended for renaming, including the USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, named after the late liberal Supreme Court justice, and the USNS Harriet Tubman, named after the American slavery abolitionist.

Harvey Milk is known for being the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was assassinated 10 months after he was sworn in.

The push to rename the USNS Harvey Milk comes after a directive issued by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this year instructing US military personnel to stop hosting events tied to heritage or awareness months.

This directive banned resources and manpower from being used on events like Pride Month, Black History Month and Women’s History Month, citing concerns that they would undermine unity in the military.

US President Donald Trump also issued executive orders earlier this year that banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the government, and that made it official US policy to recognise two sexes, male and female.

Supporters of DEI programmes say they address historical underrepresentation and discrimination against certain groups, including racial minorities, but critics say such initiatives are themselves discriminatory.

The move to rename the Harvey Milk and other ships has been criticised by prominent Democrats, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

In a statement to CBS, Pelosi called the move a “vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American dream”.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X on Tuesday that Hegseth “should be ashamed of himself and reverse this immediately.”

Elon Musk-owned electric vehicle (EV) giant Tesla is “not interested in manufacturing in India”, the country’s heavy industries minister has said.

The remarks were made on Monday as the Indian government issued detailed guidelines for a scheme to promote EV manufacturing in the country.

This is the first time that India has publicly admitted that it has not been able to lure investment dollars from Musk, even after unveiling incentives for global EV giants last March.

Minister HD Kumaraswamy confirmed that Tesla would open two showrooms in India and have a retail presence.

“Mercedes Benz, Skoda-Volkswagen, Hyundai and Kia have shown interest [in manufacturing electric cars in India]. Tesla – we are not expecting from them,” Kumaraswamy said.

Another official told the Press Trust of India news agency that a Tesla representative had participated in the first round of stakeholder discussions for the manufacturing scheme but “was not part of the second and third round”.

The comments come on the back of US President Donald Trump saying in February that it would be “unfair” for the US if Tesla built a factory in India.

Over the years Tesla has had several rounds of negotiations to enter India.

• Can Tesla’s EVs win over India’s price-conscious buyers?

The company’s original plans to open a base were shelved in 2022 after the Indian government insisted that Tesla make cars locally. The carmaker had said it wanted to export to India first so that it could test demand.

In 2023, Musk said he was “trying to figure out the right timing” to invest in the Indian market.

Musk met Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this year in Washington DC where the two discussed the “immense potential” for collaboration in technology and innovation.

Last year India cut import taxes on EVs for global carmakers which committed to investing $500m (£369m) and starting local production within three years. This came after Musk complained that high import duties were preventing the carmaker from entering India.

But analysts say the Indian EV market may not be mature enough yet for Tesla to invest locally – EV sales still make up less than 3% of overall passenger vehicle sales in India, and locally made alternatives can cost half of what consumers will have to shell out for Tesla’s base model.

Charging infrastructure and local road conditions could be further deterrents.

India’s Tata Motors currently leads India’s EV market with over 60% market share. MG Motors – jointly owned by India’s JSW and a Chinese firm – is second at 22%.

Globally, Tesla has been facing growing competition from Chinese players such as BYD.

Its sales plummeted to their lowest level in three years in the first three months of 2025 after a backlash against Musk and his role in the Trump administration.

Musk announced his departure from his government role last week.

TikTok is preventing users searching for “skinnytok” – a hashtag which critics say directs people towards content which “idolises extreme thinness.”

Content associated with the hashtag includes videos showing people’s work-out routines or what they eat in a day.

TikTok said it had “blocked search results for #skinnytok since it has become linked to unhealthy weight loss content.”

People using the hashtag will now be redirected to mental health support resources instead.

Tom Quinn, from the eating disorder charity, Beat, welcomed the move saying “skinnytok” and related content could have “devastating” impacts on “struggling” people.

However, he stressed there was more to do.

“We know that users will very often find workarounds to content blocks and there will still be damaging content which isn’t shared under the “skinnytok” umbrella, which TikTok and other social media platforms must now address,” he told BBC News.

According to the US-based National Alliance for Eating Disorders, the skinnytok hashtag has more than half a million posts associated with it.

It says the hashtag includes content such as low-calorie recipes which on the face of it appear to promote healthy lifestyle advice.

But the organisation says, in reality, it “glorifies thinness and vilifies weight gain” and “promotes disordered eating behaviours.”

The trend has caused particular alarm in France, where experts have warned of how social media can push vulnerable young people towards developing eating disorders.

“The patients are completely indoctrinated — and my 45-minute weekly consultation is no match for spending hours every day on TikTok,” the nutritionist Carole Copti told the AFP news agency.

The blocking of the hashtag has been celebrated by France’s digital minister, who wrote on social media that “skinnytok is over” thanks to lobbying by European politicians.

In its statement, TikTok said it regularly reviewed its safety measures to “address evolving risks”.

“We continue to restrict videos from teen accounts and provide health experts and information in TikTok Search,” it added.

It is not the first time TikTok has been forced to take action over content which raised body image concerns.

In March, it blocked so-called “chubby filters” – a viral tool which made people appear overweight.

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South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae-myung, has secured a storming victory, but his honeymoon will barely last the day.

The former opposition leader is not getting to enjoy the two-month transition period usually afforded to new leaders, so they can build their team and nail down their vision for the country.

Instead he is entering office immediately, to fill the hole left by the impeachment of the former president, Yoon Suk Yeol, who last December tried and failed to bring the country under martial law.

In electing Lee, with almost 50% of the vote , South Koreans have vehemently rejected the military dictatorship that was almost forced upon them. Lee campaigned on the promise that he would strengthen South Korea’s democracy and unite the country, after a divisive and tumultuous six months.

But that will have to wait. First, he has a Donald Trump shaped crisis to avert.

In the coming months, Trump has the power to destabilise South Korea’s economy, its security, and its volatile relationship with North Korea.

South Koreans were dismayed when Trump slapped 25% tariffs on all Korean imports in April, after already hitting the country with aggressive tariffs on its core industries – steel and cars. They had assumed that being longstanding military allies from the days of the Korean War, and having a free-trade agreement with the US, would spare them.

If these tariffs take effect “they could trigger an economic crisis”, a seasoned advisor to Lee’s Democratic Party, Moon Chung-in, said.

Before Trump’s announcements, South Korea’s economy was already slowing down. The martial law chaos constricted it further. Then, in the first quarter of this year, it contracted. Fixing this has been voters’ number one demand, even above fixing their beleaguered democracy.

But without a president, talks with Trump have been on hold. They cannot be put off any longer.

And there is much more than South Korea’s economy at stake in these negotiations.

The US currently guarantees South Korea’s security by promising to come to its defence with both conventional and nuclear weapons were it to be attacked by its nuclear-armed neighbour, North Korea. As part of this deal there are 28,500 US troops stationed in the South.

Yet Trump has made clear he does not plan to differentiate between trade and security when negotiating with the country, signalling that Seoul is not pulling its weight in either area.

In a post on his Truth Social platform in April, Trump said that during initial tariff talks with South Korea he had “discussed payment for the big time military protection we provide”, calling it “beautiful and efficient one-stop shopping”.

This approach makes Seoul uniquely vulnerable.

Evans Revere, a former senior US diplomat based in Seoul, fears a crisis is coming. “For the first time in our lifetime we have a US president who does not feel a moral and strategic obligation towards Korea”.

In his first term as president, Trump questioned the value of having US forces stationed in Korea and threatened to withdraw them unless Seoul paid more to have them. It seems likely he will demand more money this time around.

Seoul may not want to pay more, but it can afford to. A bigger problem is that Trump’s calculations, and that of his defence department, seem to have changed. This is no longer just about the money. Washington’s top priority now in Asia is not just stopping North Korea attacking the South, it is also to contain China’s military ambitions in the region and against Taiwan.

Last year, a now-senior US defence official, Elbridge Colby, said that South Korea was going to have to take “overwhelming responsibility for its own self-defence against North Korea”, so the US could be ready to fight China.

One option is that the troops stationed here would switch their focus to constraining China. Another, touted by a couple of US defence officials last month, is that thousands of soldiers would be removed from the peninsula altogether and redeployed, and that Seoul’s military would also have to play a role in deterring Beijing.

Not only could this put South Korea in a dangerous military predicament, but it would also create a diplomatically difficult one.

President Lee, who historically has been sceptical of Korea’s alliance with the US, wants to use his presidency to improve relations with China, South Korea’s powerful neighbour and trading partner. He has stated several times that South Korea should stay out of a conflict between China and Taiwan.

“We must keep our distance from a China-Taiwan contingency. We can get along with both”, he said during a televised debate last month.

The political advisor Mr Moon, who once served as national security advisor, reiterated Lee’s concerns. “We are worried about America abandoning us, but at the same time we are worried about being entrapped in American strategy to contain and encircle China”, he said. “If the US threatens us, we can let [the forces] go”, he said.

For Mr Revere, the former US diplomat, this combination of Lee, Trump and China threatens to create “the perfect storm”. “The two leaders may find themselves on very different pages and that could be a recipe for a problematic relationship. If this plays out, it would undermine peace and stability in North East Asia”.

In Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un will no doubt be watching closely, keen to exploit the shifting ground. His nuclear weapons programme is more dangerous than ever, and nothing or no-one has been able to convince him to wind it down – including Donald Trump who, during his first term, was the first US president to ever meet a North Korean leader.

Since returning to office Trump has indicated he would like to resume talks with Kim, which ended without agreement in 2019. In Seoul, there is real concern that this time the pair could strike a deal that is very bad for South Korea.

The fear is that Trump would take an “America first” approach, and ask Kim to stop producing his intercontinental ballistic missiles that threaten the US mainland, without addressing the multiple short-range nuclear weapons pointed at Seoul. And in return, Kim could demand a high price.

Kim has far more leverage than he did in 2019. He has more nuclear warheads, his weapons are more advanced, and the sanctions that were supposed to put pressure on his regime have all but collapsed, thanks largely to Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader is providing Kim with economic and military support in return for North Korea’s help fighting the war in Ukraine.

This therefore gives Kim the cover to make more audacious requests of the US. He could ask Trump to accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, and agree to a deal that would reduce Pyongyang’s weapons count rather than get rid of them altogether. Another of his requests could likely be for the US to remove some of the security it provides South Korea, including the troops.

“North Korea is in the driver’s seat now. The only curveball is how much risk President Trump will take”, said Sydney Seiler, who was involved in the 2019 negotiations on the US side. “The idea there might be some sort of troop withdrawal [included in a deal] is really not that far-fetched”.

Mr Seiler stressed that the US would “not leave South Korea in the dust,” but advised South Korea’s new president to “establish a relationship with Trump early on”, and be clear they expect to be part of any process, if talks materialise.

The new president must move quickly on all fronts, added Mr Revere, arguing that Lee’s first homework assignment should be to come up with a list of 10 reasons why South Korea is an indispensable partner and why American dollars are being well spent; reasons that can convince a sceptical and transactional Trump.

One Ace card South Korea is hoping to play is its shipbuilding prowess. It builds more vessels than any other country bar China, which is now the world’s dominant ship builder and home to the largest naval fleet. This is a frightening prospect for the US whose own industry and navy are in decline.

Last month I visited South Korea’s flagship shipyard in Ulsan on the south coast – the largest in the world – where Hyundai Heavy Industries builds 40-50 new ships a year, including naval destroyers. Sturdy cranes slotted together sheets of metal, creating vessels the size of small villages.

Seoul is hoping it can use this expertise to build, repair and maintain warships for the US, and in the process convince Washington it is a valuable partner.

“US shipbuilding difficulties are affecting their national security”, said Jeong Woo Maan, head of strategy for Hyundai’s naval and ship unit. “This is one of the strongest cards we have to negotiate with”.

In his campaign for president, Lee Jae-myung declared he did not want to rush into any agreements with Trump. Now in office, he could quickly find himself without this luxury.

An Australian woman on trial for murder says she threw up the toxic mushroom meal which killed her relatives, after binge eating dessert.

Erin Patterson has pleaded not guilty to four charges – three of murder and one of attempted murder – over the beef Wellington lunch at her regional Victorian house in July 2023.

Prosecutors allege Ms Patterson deliberately served toxic death cap mushrooms, but only to her guests. Her defence team say the contaminated meal was a tragic accident, and argue it had made their client sick too.

Ms Patterson told the court she had only eaten a small part of lunch but later consumed two-thirds of a cake, before becoming “over-full” and vomiting.

Doctors have previously told the trial Ms Patterson did not have the same intense symptoms as the other people who’d eaten at her house.

On her third day of wide-ranging testimony, Ms Patterson also admitted she had lied about a cancer diagnosis – which prosecutors say she used to coax the guests to her house – instead of revealing she was actually planning to undergo weight-loss surgery.

She said she had dumped a food dehydrator and wiped her phone in the days after the incident out of fear of being blamed for her relative’s deaths, telling the court her estranged husband had accused her of poisoning them.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the meal, including Ms Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

A single lunch guest survived, 71-year-old local pastor Ian Wilkinson, after weeks of treatment in hospital.

The Victorian Supreme Court trial – which started almost six weeks ago – has heard from more than 50 witnesses, and attracted huge global attention.

In the Morwell courthouse, Ms Patterson gave a detailed account of the fatal lunch, saying she had invited her guests under the premise she wanted to talk about health issues.

The 14-member jury heard that Ms Patterson went through “quite a long process of trying to decide what to cook” for the lunch before choosing to make beef Wellington.

The dish – usually prepared with a long strip of fillet steak, wrapped in pastry and mushrooms – was something Ms Patterson’s mother made when she was a child, to mark special occasions, she said.

After deciding the mushrooms she’d prepared tasted “bland”, she said she’d added some dried ones – bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne months earlier – from a container in her pantry.

Asked if that container may have had other types of mushrooms in it, Ms Patterson, choking up, said: “Now I think there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had started hunting for mushrooms in locations close to her Leongatha home in 2020, and her long-standing love for fungi had expanded to include wild varieties as they had “more flavour”.

Ms Patterson told the jury she had served up the food when it was ready, and instructed her guests to grab a plate themselves as she finished preparing gravy.

There were no assigned seats or plates, she said.

Mr Wilkinson previously told the trial the guests had each been given grey plates while Ms Patterson had eaten off an orange one. Ms Patterson on Wednesday said she didn’t have any grey plates.

During the lunch, Ms Patterson recalled that she didn’t eat much of her food – “a quarter, a third, somewhere around there” – because she was busy talking.

She conceded she had told her guests she had cancer, but in court explained she told this lie to make sure she had help with childcare when she underwent gastric bypass surgery.

“I remember thinking I didn’t want to tell anybody what I was going to have done. I was really embarrassed by it,” she said.

After the guests left, she cleaned up the kitchen and ate a slice of orange cake Gail had brought.

“[I ate] another piece of cake, and then another piece,” she said, before finishing the rest of the dessert.

“I felt sick… over-full so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again.”

“After I’d done that, I felt better.”

Yesterday, the court heard that Ms Patterson had secretly struggled with bulimia since her teens and was prone to regularly binge eating and vomiting after meals.

Ms Patterson told the court that she started to develop gastro-like symptoms hours after the lunch and took herself to hospital to “get some fluids” two days later. She was “shocked but confused” when medical staff asked if she could have eaten death cap mushrooms.

While in hospital for observation overnight, Ms Patterson said her former husband Simon asked her about a dehydrator she owned.

“Is that how you poisoned my parents?” she told the trial he’d said to her – something Mr Patterson denies.

After this encounter, she’d been “frantic”, Ms Patterson said, and upon being sent home had disposed of her food dehydrator at the local tip.

“I had made the meal and served it and people had got sick.”

“I was scared that they would blame me for it.”

The court also heard that Ms Patterson erased the data on one of her phones several times – including while police were searching her house – because she did not want detectives to see her photos of mushrooms and the dehydrator.

Ms Patterson will continue giving evidence on Thursday, before prosecutors will have the opportunity to cross-examine her.

The Canadian government has proposed a bill to restrict some asylum claims and give authorities more power to halt the processing of immigration applications.

Canada’s immigration minister Lena Diab said the Strong Borders Act is meant to curb organised crime and the flow of illegal drugs and weapons, while boosting the “integrity” of the country’s immigration system.

It includes provisions that would give police more power to monitor Canada’s shared border with the US.

It could also bar those who have been in Canada for more than year from filing a claim for asylum. But critics said the bill, which seeks to expand authorities’ ability to open and inspect mail, would breach civil liberties.

The proposed legislation comes amid increasing pressure on Canada, which has historically been open to newcomers, to restrict immigration as the country deals with strained public services and a housing crisis.

The previous government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau relied on ambitious immigration targets to fuel economic growth, and oversaw a sharp increase in people entering Canada as temporary workers and students.

At the same time, Canada saw a spike in asylum claims, with applicants waiting up to two years for their case to be heard due to the backlog.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, who won April’s federal election, has promised to address Canada’s “unsustainable” immigration levels.

Under current law, refugees can claim asylum in Canada either when they arrive at a port of entry, like an airport, or when they are already in Canada, with no restrictions on how long they can be in the country before claiming asylum.

The new rules would bar asylum claims from those who have been in Canada for over a year, potentially making them subject to deportation.

They would also require people entering Canada from the US under the Safe Third Country Agreement – a long-standing deal requiring migrants to seek asylum in the first “safe” country they reach, whether it is the US or Canada – to file a claim in Canada within 14 days for it to be considered.

Those who fail to adhere to those deadlines would still be able to undergo a risk assessment that would determine whether their safety is at risk if they are sent away.

The law also gives the government power to outright suspend processing new applications “for matters of public health and national security.”

The wide-ranging 127-page measure would also expand the government’s power to open mail to advance a criminal investigation.

And it would introduce restrictions on cash transactions above C$10,000 ($7,300; £5,400) and cash deposits by one individual into another’s account.

Jenny Kwan, a member of parliament from the left-leaning New Democratic Party, said the bill “should be alarming to many Canadians”.

A big chunk of the new legislation deals with curbing the flow of fentanyl and illegal weapons across the US-Canada border – an issue that US President Donald Trump has used as justification for his tariffs on Canada.

Gary Anandasangaree, Canada’s public safety minister, said he would brief US border tsar Tom Homan on the new legislation.

He acknowledged that the law would address issues that have been “irritants for the US”, and that it would likely play into trade negotiations between Canada and the US.

But he added “it’s not exclusively about the United States”, and is also about securing Canada’s borders.

Some advocacy groups have criticised the new rules. The Migrant Rights Network called the proposed measures “immoral”, and said they “drastically restrict refugee protections and allow for mass deportations”.

The German city of Cologne is evacuating some 20,500 people from a large area in the city centre so experts can defuse three unexploded bombs from World War Two.

The American bombs were discovered on Monday in a shipyard in the Deutz neighbourhood, the city said in a statement.

Unexploded ordnance can still pose a danger and the city has sealed off the zone within a 1,000m (3,280ft) radius, in what it described as “the largest operation since the end of WW2”.

Homes, shops, hotels and schools have been told to evacuate, as well as a large hospital and major train station.

“If you refuse, we will escort you from your home – if necessary by force – along with the police,” the authorities said.

Residents were told if they refused to leave their homes after the evacuation began they could face expensive fines.

Some intensive care patients were helped out in ambulances from the Eduardus Hospital.

Finding bombs from World War Two is not unusual in German cities such as Cologne and Berlin, but the difference here is that these bombs are particularly large.

Germany’s bomb disposal service plans to diffuse the devices on Wednesday, but it can only be done once all residents in the densely populated area leave for their own safety, the city said.

The evacuation in the Old Town and Deutz neighbourhoods began with officials going door to door to tell people they must leave their homes.

Many of the city’s usually bustling streets were eerily deserted as shops, restaurants and businesses were told to stop operating during the day.

Cultural institutions including the Philharmonic Hall and many museums have been affected, as well as government buildings, 58 hotels, and nine schools.

Transport was severely disrupted, with all roads are closed in the area, many trains cancelled and the Messe/Deutz train station was closed from 08:00 local time (07:00BST).

The authorities have set up two drop-in centres for people who don’t have anywhere to go during the evacuation period.

Residents were told to “stay calm”, bring their ID and any essential medications, and to take care of their pets.

Cologne Bonn Airport said flights would continue as usual but travelling to the airport by train or road may be difficult.

For some people, the evacuation was more than a little inconvenient. Fifteen couples were scheduled to get married at Cologne’s historic town hall but the ceremonies were relocated to a location in another part of the city, local media reported.

• Are you in Cologne? Have you been evacuated? Tell us here

The BBC has rejected incorrect White House criticism of its Gaza coverage, describing a claim that it had taken down a story as “completely wrong”.

At Tuesday’s White House briefing President Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the BBC of taking “the word of Hamas” when reporting on the number of people killed in a shooting near an aid distribution site on Sunday.

She also claimed, wrongly, that the BBC had retracted a story.

“The claim the BBC took down a story after reviewing footage is completely wrong. We did not remove any story and we stand by our journalism,” the BBC said in a statement.

Karoline Leavitt criticised the BBC for changing the number of casualties in the story’s headline. The corporation said its coverage was updated with new figures throughout the day, which is “totally normal practice on any fast-moving news story”.

The numbers were “always clearly attributed, from the first figure of 15 from medics, through the 31 killed from the Hamas-run health ministry to the final Red Cross statement of ‘at least 21’ at their field hospital,” the statement said.

There are conflicting reports on what happened near an aid distribution centre in Rafah on Sunday.

Civilian witnesses, NGOs, and health officials said people were shot at while waiting for food at an aid distribution point. But the Israeli military said the reports were false, and denied that its troops fired at civilians near or within the site. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US and Israel-backed group which now runs the aid distribution, said the reports were “outright fabrications”.

Israel does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, into Gaza, making verifying what is happening in the territory difficult.

On Tuesday, there was a similar incident when local officials said Israeli forces fired at civilians as they attempted to collect aid, killing at least 27 people.

The IDF said its troops fired shots after identifying what it described as suspects who moved towards them “deviating from the designated access routes”.

The White House press secretary also accused the BBC of removing a story because it “couldn’t find any evidence of anything” – referring to a report by BBC Verify examining a viral video.

In its statement the BBC explained that this report on Monday, which examined the footage, found that “a viral video posted on social media was not linked to the aid distribution centre it claimed to show”. But the video did not run on BBC news channels, and did not inform its reporting.

“Conflating these two stories is simply misleading. It is vital to bring people the truth about what is happening in Gaza. International journalists are not currently allowed into Gaza and we would welcome the support of the White House in our call for immediate access,” the BBC’s statement added.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’ cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 54,470 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including 4,201 since Israel resumed its offensive on 18 March, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Aylo, the company which runs a number of pornographic websites, including Pornhub, is to stop operating in France from Wednesday.

It is in reaction to a French law requiring porn sites to take extra steps to verify their users’ ages.

An Aylo spokesperson said the law was a privacy risk and assessing people’s ages should be done at a device level.

Pornhub is the most visited porn site in the world – with France its second biggest market, after the US.

Aylo – and other providers of sexually explicit material – find themselves under increasing regulatory pressure worldwide.

The EU recently announced an investigation into whether Pornhub and other sites were doing enough to protect children.

Aylo has also pulled out of a number of US states, again over the issue of checking the ages of its users.

All sites offering sexually explicit material in the UK will soon also have to offer more robust “age assurance.”

Aylo, formerly Mindgeek, also runs sites such as Youporn and RedTube, which will also become unavailable to French customers.

It is owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners.

Their vice president for compliance, Solomon Friedman, called the French law “dangerous,” “potentially privacy-infringing” and “ineffective”.

“Google, Apple and Microsoft all have the capability built into their operating system to verify the age of the user at the operating system or device level,” he said on a video call reported by Agence France-Presse.

Another executive, Alex Kekesi, said the company was pro-age verification, but there were concerns over the privacy of users.

In some cases, users may have to enter credit cards or government ID details in order to prove their age.

French minister for gender equality, Aurore Bergé, wrote “au revoir” in response to the news that Pornhub was pulling out of France.

In a post on X [in French], she wrote: “There will be less violent, degrading and humiliating content accessible to minors in France.”

The UK has its own age verification law, with platforms required to have “robust” age checks by July, according to media regulator Ofcom.

These may include facial detection software which estimates a user’s age.

In April – in response to messaging platform Discord testing face scanning software – experts predicted it would be “the start of a bigger shift” in age checks in the UK, in which facial recognition tech played a bigger role.

BBC News has asked Aylo whether it will block its sites in the UK too when the laws come in.

In May, Ofcom announced it was investigating two pornography websites which had failed to detail how they were preventing children from accessing their platforms.

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