Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans for a new military push in the Gaza Strip have raised warnings from the army leadership, opposition from hostage families and concerns that more Palestinians will be killed. They also risk isolating his country even further.

Ahead of the security cabinet meeting where proposals to take over Gaza City were approved by an “absolute majority”, Netanyahu gave an interview to Fox News in which he said Israel intended to take full control of Gaza to assure Israel’s security, remove Hamas from power and enable the transfer of civilian governance to another party, without giving details.

But he suggested that Israel did not want to keep the territory.

“We don’t want to govern it,” Netanyahu said, in English. “We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces.”

He did not give details about possible arrangements or which countries could be involved; still, this was a rare indication of what he might be envisioning for a post-war Gaza.

For now, however, Netanyahu wants an expanded offensive that is likely to see the Israeli military, which says it controls about 75% of the territory, operating in Gaza City and the camps in the central part of the strip, where around one million Palestinians live and the hostages are thought to be held.

The potential operations, which could take months, would mean the mass displacement of people with the potential to worsen the humanitarian crisis there.

This could spark fresh condemnation from countries that have expressed anger over the situation in Gaza and urged Israel to end the nearly two-year war, which started as a response to the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023.

• LIVE: Security cabinet approved Gaza City plan

In a sign of major divergencies between the political and military leadership, the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, told Netanyahu that the full occupation of Gaza was “tantamount to walking into a trap”, according to reports in Israeli media.

Zamir, the reports said, warned that the offensive would endanger the lives of the 20 hostages who are believed to be alive as well as of soldiers, who are exhausted.

Many of the hostage families share those concerns, and say the only way to guarantee the release of the hostages is through a negotiated deal with Hamas.

According to the Maariv newspaper, the “prevailing assessment is that most and possibly all of the living hostages [will] die” during an expanded offensive, either killed by their captors or accidentally by Israeli soldiers.

Speculation over an expanded offensive have also exposed divergences between some of Israel’s international allies.

The British ambassador to Israel, Simon Walter, said the full occupation of Gaza would be a “huge mistake”, while also pushing back against US and Israeli allegations that a possible recognition of Palestinian statehood by the UK was a reward for Hamas.

Meanwhile, the US envoy, Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israel, said it was up to the Israeli government to decide whether to fully take over the Strip. “It’s not our job to tell them what they should or should not do,” he told CBS News, the BBC’s news partner in the US.

Netanyahu has, so far, failed to offer a vision for Gaza after the war apart from refusing to accept a governing role for the Palestinian Authority, the body that governs the occupied West Bank and recognises Israel.

Polls suggest most of the Israeli public favours a deal with Hamas for the release of the hostages and the end of the war.

Israeli leaders say Hamas, for now, is not interested in negotiating as, in their view, the group is feeling emboldened by the international pressure on Israel.

The threat of a full occupation could be part of a strategy to try to force the group into making concessions in stalled talks.

But many here believe that Netanyahu is prolonging the conflict to guarantee the survival of his coalition, which relies on the support of ultranationalist ministers who have threatened to quit the government if there is any deal with Hamas.

Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have also publicly defended expelling Palestinians from Gaza – which could amount to the forced displacement of civilians, a war crime – and resettling it with Jews.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.

The Hamas 7 October attacks on Israel killed about 1,200 people, while 251 were taken to Gaza as hostages.

France’s multi-billion euro mineral water companies are under the spotlight because of climate change and growing concerns about the industry’s environmental impact.

At issue is whether some world-famous brands, notably the iconic Perrier label, can even continue calling themselves “natural mineral water”.

A decision in the Perrier case is due in the coming months. It follows revelations in the French media about illicit filtration systems that have been widely used in the industry, apparently because of worries about water contamination, after years of drought linked to climate change.

“This really is our Water-gate,” says Stéphane Mandard, who has led investigations at Le Monde newspaper. “It’s a combination of industrial fraud and state collusion.”

“And now there is a real Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Perrier.”

According to hydrologist Emma Haziza, “the commercial model of the big producers has worked very well. But it is absolutely not sustainable at a time of global climate change”.

“When you have big brands that feel they have no choice but to treat their water – that means they know there is a problem with the quality.”

The story hit the headlines a year ago in France after an investigation by Le Monde and Radio France revealed that at least a third of mineral water sold in France had been illegally treated, either with ultra-violet light, carbon filters or ultra-fine micro-meshes commonly used to screen out bacteria.

The issue was not one of public health. The treated water was by definition safe to drink.

The problem was that under EU law, “natural mineral water” – which sells at a huge premium over tap water – is supposed to be unaltered between the underground source and the bottle. That is the whole point of it.

If brands like Evian, Vichy and Perrier have been so successful in France and around the world, it is thanks to an appealing image of mountain-sides, rushing streams, purity and health-giving minerals.

Admit filtering the water, and the industry risks breaking the market spell. Consumers might begin to ask what they’d been paying for.

Complicating matters for Perrier and its parent company Nestlé – as well as President Emmanuel Macron’s government – is the charge that executives and ministers conspired to keep the affair quiet, covered up reports of contamination, and re-wrote the rules so that Perrier could continue using micro-filtration.

In their investigations, Le Monde and Radio France alleged that the government considered the mineral water industry so strategic that it agreed to suppress damaging information. A senate inquiry into the affair accused the government of a “deliberate strategy” of “dissimulation”.

Responding to the allegations, the government has asked the European Commission to rule on what level of micro-filtration is permissible for “natural mineral water”. Aurelien Rousseau, who was head of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne’s cabinet at the time, admitted there had been an “error of appreciation” but insisted there was never any risk to public health.

Earlier this year, at the senate hearing into the industry, Nestlé’s CEO Laurent Freixe admitted that Perrier had indeed used illicit methods to treat its water.

But he also had another admission: that an official hydrologists’ report into the company’s historic site in the Gard department in southern France had recommended against renewing “natural mineral water” status for the company’s output.

It raises the possibility that for the first time in its 160-year history, Perrier water may soon not be labelled as what people assume it to be.

According to the hydrologist Emma Haziza, “the link to climate change and global warming is absolutely established”. And if Perrier is feeling the impact ahead of other companies, it is probably because its geographical location sets it apart.

Far from the remote mountain landscape you might imagine, Perrier’s water is pumped from deep aquifers in the coastal plain between Nîmes and Montpellier, a short drive from the Mediterranean. The area is populous, heavily-farmed, and very hot.

“There has been a big climatic shift since 2017,” says Haziza. “For five years there was a succession of droughts, which were particularly badly felt in the south.”

“All the aquifers were affected. This means not just the upper water-table, which is where everyday tap water comes from. We can now see that the deeper aquifers – which the companies thought were protected – are also being hit.

“The unforeseen is taking place. We are moving from a period in which companies could draw water from the deep aquifers and be sure they would be replenished, to a period in which it’s obvious the whole system cannot go on.”

The analysis made by Haziza and other hydrologists is that there is now a clear link between deeper and surface aquifers. Contaminants (farm chemicals or human waste) that drain off the land in the increasingly frequent flash floods, can now make their way into the lower aquifers.

At the same time, the effects of long-term drought and over-pumping mean these lower aquifers contain less volume, so any contamination will be more concentrated, the experts say.

“We can foresee that what has happened first at Perrier’s site will happen to other producers in the years to come. That’s why we need to move away from our current model of consumption,” says Haziza.

Last year at the Perrier site, three million bottles had to be destroyed because of a contamination. But the company insists that any problems are swiftly detected; and it disputes the claim that contaminants are entering the deep aquifers.

“We are pumping water from 130 metres underground, beneath layers of limestone,” says Perrier hydrologist Jérémie Pralong. “We are 100% convinced of the purity of the water. And its mineral make-up is constant.”

Perrier says there is no EU ruling that specifically bans micro-filtration. The relevant text simply says that nothing must be done to disinfect or alter the mineral make-up of the water. The argument is over at what measure of micro-filtration alteration begins.

The original Perrier source was first tapped by a local doctor in the 1860s, but it was under British management that the brand took off 50 years later.

St John Harmsworth – brother of newspaper magnates Lords Northcliffe and Rothermere – made Perrier a byword for mineral water across the British empire.

According to company lore, Harmsworth took inspiration for the bottles’ bulbous shape from the Indian clubs he used for exercise following a crippling car accident.

Today the bottling plant at Vergèze is still next to Harmsworth’s residence and the original source. The plant has been heavily automated. A rail track connects with the SNCF network to bring hundreds of millions of cans and bottles every year to Marseille for export.

The focus for the last year has been on a new brand: Maison Perrier. These energy and flavoured drinks are proving highly successful in France and around the world.

The advantage for Perrier is that the new beverages do not claim to be “natural mineral water”. They can be treated and filtered without difficulty.

Perrier says the new brand is part of the mix, and that it has no intention of abandoning its original Source Perrier natural mineral water. It has stopped the ultra-fine (0.2 micron) microfiltration, and now uses a 0.45 micron system which has been agreed with government.

It has applied for “natural mineral water” status for just two out of the five drilling wells it was using for Perrier mineral water. A decision is due later this year.

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An Australian politician and convicted rapist has resigned from parliament moments before he was to be kicked out, after losing a legal challenge to remain.

Gareth Ward, 44, was last month found guilty of sexually assaulting two young men, aged 18 and 24, between 2013 and 2015, and is now in custody pending sentencing.

Earlier this week, Ward launched a legal bid to stop the New South Wales (NSW) parliament from expelling him, but it was dismissed on Thursday after the court rejected arguments that the move was an “affront” to democracy.

Plans to expel him on Friday were thwarted when, less than two hours before a vote to remove him was due, Ward quit as the independent member for Kiama.

Ward’s resignation letter was received by parliament at 09:08 local time on Friday (00:08 GMT), shortly before a vote at 10:30 was due to expel him.

His resignation – which comes years after the sexual assault accusations first emerged – means Ward will no longer receive a parliamentary salary.

It also triggers a by-election in the south-coast NSW electorate Ward has held since 2011.

In 2021, Ward quit as a state government minister and left the Liberal Party, but refused to leave parliament and was re-elected in 2023.

During his legal challenge, Ward’s lawyers argued that attempts to kick him out of parliament before the appeals process was finished was “an affront to the foundations of representative democracy”.

NSW Premier Chris Minns told the media on Friday that Ward’s resignation “should have come earlier”.

“If you are convicted of some of the most serious charges – sexual assault in NSW – you can’t sit as a serving member of parliament drawing a parliamentary salary,” the Labor leader said.

“How can you represent your community from behind bars?”

Opposition leader Mark Speakman labelled Ward’s legal bid to stay in parliament “disgraceful”, and accused the former MP of “playing games” with the public and parliament.

Ward, due to be sentenced next month, has said he intends to appeal the guilty verdict.

Convicted triple-murderer Erin Patterson allegedly tried to repeatedly poison her husband, including with cookies she claimed their daughter had baked him, a court was told.

The Australian woman was last month found guilty of murdering three relatives – and attempting to kill another – with a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington.

The 50-year-old was originally charged with three counts of attempted murder against her estranged husband Simon Patterson, but these charges were dropped without explanation on the eve of her trial.

The details of the allegations, which Patterson denied, were suppressed to protect the proceedings, but can now be made public for the first time.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the lunch on 29 July 2023: Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

Local pastor Ian Wilkinson – Heather’s husband – recovered after weeks of treatment in hospital.

In lengthy pre-trial hearings last year, Mr Patterson had detailed what he suspected was a years-long campaign to kill him with tainted food – including one episode which had left him so ill he spent weeks in a coma and his family was twice told to say their goodbyes.

In a quiet moment during the early days of Patterson’s trial, her estranged husband choked up as he explained his sorrow to a near empty courtroom.

Mr Patterson’s parents and his aunt had been killed, and his uncle almost died too, after eating the toxic meal prepared by his wife. He had narrowly avoided the same fate, pulling out of the lunch gathering the day before.

“I have a lot to grieve,” he said to the judge, sitting in the witness box as the jury prepared to return from a break.

“The legal process has been very difficult… especially the way it’s progressed in terms of the charges relating to me and my evidence about that – or non-evidence now, I guess.”

“I’m sitting here, half thinking about the things I’m not allowed to talk about and… I don’t actually understand why. It seems bizarre to me, but it is what it is.”

What he wasn’t allowed to talk about – the elephant in the room throughout the trial – was his claim that Patterson had been trying to poison him long before the fatal lunch that destroyed his family on 29 July 2023.

Mr Patterson gave evidence during pre-trial hearings, which are a standard part of the court process and allow judges to determine what evidence is admissible – or allowed to be presented to a jury.

As the charges relating to Mr Patterson were dropped, his evidence on the matter was excluded from the raft of information presented at the nine-week trial this year.

But he had explained that, as far as he knows, it all began with a Tupperware container of Bolognese penne in November 2021.

Mr Patterson and his wife had separated in 2015 – though they still aren’t divorced – and he thought they remained on amicable terms.

Under questioning from Patterson’s lawyer, Mr Patterson confirmed he had noticed “nothing untoward” in their relationship at that point: “If by ‘nothing untoward’, you mean anything that would make me think she would try and kill me, correct.”

But after eating that meal, he began suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea, and spent a night in hospital.

“I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food. I did not give it too much thought,” he said in his police statement, according to The Age newspaper.

Months later, in May 2022, he fell ill again after eating a chicken korma curry prepared by Patterson on a camping trip in the rugged mountains and alpine scruff of Victoria’s High Country region.

“While Erin was preparing food I was getting the fire going so I didn’t watch her prepare it,” he told the court.

Within days, he was in a coma in a Melbourne hospital, and a large part of his bowel was surgically removed in a bid to save his life.

“My family were asked to come and say goodbye to me twice, as I was not expected to live,” he said in a 2022 Facebook post, reported by The South Gippsland Sentinel Times two years ago.

In September 2022, while visiting a stunning, isolated stretch of Victorian coastline, he would become desperately unwell again after eating a vegetable wrap.

At first, he felt nausea and diarrhoea coming on, the court heard, before his symptoms escalated. He started slurring his speech, gradually lost control of his muscles, and began “fitting”.

“By the end of the journey [to hospital], all I could move was my neck, my tongue and lips,” he told the court.

A family friend who was a doctor, Christopher Ford, suggested Mr Patterson start a food diary so they could try to figure out what was making him so sick.

“I couldn’t understand why these things kept on happening to him in such a way that he had essentially three near-death experiences,” Dr Ford told the court.

Mr Patterson returned to see him in February 2023, five months before the fatal lunch, revealing he’d come to believe his estranged wife was responsible.

He told Dr Ford about a batch of cookies supposedly baked by his daughter, which he feared were treats tainted – possibly with antifreeze chemicals – by his wife, who had called repeatedly to check whether he had eaten any.

The court would hear investigators never figured out what Patterson had allegedly been feeding him, though they suspected rat poison may have been used on at least one occasion, and had found a file on Patterson’s computer with information about the toxin.

After this discovery, Mr Patterson changed his medical power of attorney, removing his wife, and quietly told a handful of family members of his fears.

The court heard that his father Don Patterson responded diplomatically, but his sister Anna Terrington told the pre-trial hearings she had believed her brother, and was anxious when she learned about the lunch Patterson had planned.

Ms Terrington called her parents the night before to warn them.

“Dad said, ‘No, we’ll be ok’,” she said.

Five days later, she gathered in a Melbourne hospital chapel alongside her brother and other worried relatives. Down the hall, deteriorating in their beds, were Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

Ruth Dubois, the Wilkinsons’ daughter, told the pre-trial hearings Simon Patterson had assembled the group to tell them he suspected his previous grave illnesses were the work of his wife.

“[He said] he had stopped eating food than Erin had prepared, because he suspected Erin had been messing with it,” she said.

“He was really sorry that he hadn’t told our family before this… but he thought he was the only person she was targeting, and that they’d be safe.”

It was also revealed that Patterson had visited a local tip the afternoon of the lunch at her house, though it is unknown what, if anything, she disposed of there.

The jury heard that she had travelled to the same dump days after the lunch to get rid of a food dehydrator used to prepare the meal, but the judge ruled they couldn’t be told about the first visit.

Other bizarre evidence which was ultimately left out of the trial included a 2020 post to a poisons help forum on Facebook, in which Patterson claimed her cat had eaten some mushrooms under a tree and had vomited, alongside pictures of fungi.

Patterson had never owned a cat, prosecutors said, arguing the post was evidence of a long-standing interest in the poisonous properties of mushrooms.

On Friday, Justice Christopher Beale set down a sentencing hearing for 25 August, where those connected to the case will have the opportunity to give victim impact statements.

In Gurugram, an upscale suburb just outside Delhi, gleaming SUVs, futuristic skyscrapers and neat apartments stand in stark contrast to nearby mosquito swarms, trash heaps and tarpaulin shanties.

Inside the gated compounds live some of India’s richest, while in the slums nearby live poor migrant workers – mostly domestic helpers, garbage-pickers and daily-wage workers – who keep the affluence going.

Last month, local authorities rounded up hundreds of these workers, most of whom say they are Bengali-speaking Muslims from India’s West Bengal state, in a “verification” drive targeting illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

The suspects were detained and kept at “holding centres” where they were asked to provide documents to prove their citizenship. Many allege they were beaten and mistreated by police during the process. Police officials deny these allegations.

“I had my voter and national ID cards, but they told me they were fake. I spent six days not knowing my fate before I was finally released,” said Ather Ali Sheikh, a daily-wage worker, who has lived in the city for 15 years.

The action has left indelible scars on the social fabric of the city, which prides itself on its cosmopolitan culture. Hundreds of workers have fled overnight – abandoning jobs, homes and, in some cases, even families in their haste to escape.

“I still don’t understand why they suddenly came after me,” Mr Sheikh said. Behind him, his wife hurriedly packed their belongings – torn clothes, old utensils and school books – into flimsy boxes.

“Was it because of my language, my religion or because I am poor? ” Mr Sheikh continued, his face hardening with anger. “Why weren’t the rich Bengali residents held up?”

Police in Gurugram deny targeting any particular community. “Neither religion nor class has anything to do with the drive,” public relations officer Sandeep Kumar told the BBC.

He added that out of the 250 people picked up, only 10 have been identified as illegal migrants and will actually be deported.

“Everyone else was released. No one was mistreated at the centres. We have been completely fair and objective.”

Meanwhile, trepidation is being felt on other side of the city as well.

With no workers left, heaps of trash have been overflowing from public bins and dump yards on to the streets, inconveniencing residents.

“Our house help and her husband, who worked as a driver, both left and now we have no help,” said Tabassum Bano, who lives in one of the complexes.

Crackdowns on alleged illegal immigrants from Muslim-majority Bangladesh are not new in India. The countries are divided by a porous border 4,096km (2,545-mile) long, and have seen waves of movement of people on both sides.

But these efforts seem to have intensified under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

In recent months, hundreds of people, including a veteran Muslim officer of the Indian Army, have been arrested on suspicion of being illegal migrants.

In the north-eastern state of Assam, where the issue has been a potent flashpoint for decades, authorities have been “pushing back” hundreds of Bengali-Muslims into Bangladesh on suspicion of them being “illegal Bangladeshis”.

Deportations are also under way in Delhi, where some 700 people were picked up and flown out to border states in the last six months.

This has had a chilling impact on the marginalised community.

In Gurugram, a sense of shock prevailed over their dust-blanketed colonies.

“For years, we have cleaned and collected their garbage. Now we are being treated like it ourselves,” said Rauna Bibi.

A domestic help, Rauna’s husband had returned from West Bengal the same day the detentions began. When he heard about it, he was so terrified he left again – this time, without informing his wife.

“For three days, I wondered if he was picked up; whether he was even alive,” Rauna said. “When we finally spoke, he said he didn’t call because he did not want any trouble.”

But it was not her husband’s behaviour that bothered Rauna, or the fact that he was now jobless. It was the theft of her pride – and the comfort of belonging to a place – that hurt her the most, making her feel absurdly insignificant.

“Unlike poverty, I can’t fight this with my hard work,” she said. “If they pick us, I wouldn’t know how to survive. This slum, the work we do and the houses we clean – this is our entire life.”

Mr Kumar says the recent action is based on a home ministry notice from May that lays down new guidelines for deporting illegal immigrants.

Under the order, all states are required to set up a special task force along with holding centres to “detect, identify and deport/send back illegal immigrants settled from Bangladesh and Myanmar”.

Each person would be given 30 days to prove their citizenship, during which authorities would send their documents back to their home districts for verification.

If they fail to confirm the details, the suspects would be taken by the police “under proper escort, in groups as far as possible”, and handed over to the border forces for deportation.

Critics, however, have questioned the order, saying it does not specify the basis on which a person is made a suspect.

“On the face of it, it’s nothing other than the fact that you speak Bengali, have a Muslim name and live in shanty,” said Aakash Bhattacharya, of the national council of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions which advocates for workers’ rights.

What is worse is that none of the suspects are being given certificates confirming their citizenship had already been verified, he added.

“This means they can be put through the same process again, making them extremely vulnerable.”

Mr Kumar says the detentions in Gurugram were made on the basis of strong preliminary evidence.

“We checked their phones and found suspicious contacts from Bangladesh. Some of them also failed to answer questions about their ancestry during interrogation,” he said.

Suhas Chakma, a human rights worker, says that the policy is not necessarily religious-specific.

“The arrest of the Muslims appears to be more as they constitute about 95% of Bangladesh’s population,” he explained.

But for a country that has seen an influx of refugees for decades, India does need a wider refugee law to address many of these complex issues, he added.

For now, Bengali-Muslims are living with a deep sense of foreboding.

Many of them have been sleeping with documents tucked under the pillow in case misfortune strikes.

“We were already fighting the harsh reality of our lives. Now we have to fight this too,” said Rabi-ul-Hassan, a resident of Jai Hind camp, a massive slum located in one of the poshest corners of Delhi.

Three weeks ago, authorities cut off electricity in the area, instantly plunging some 400 people into darkness.

The action came after a court ruled that the slum-dwellers, who say they have lived there for generations, were squatting on private land.

“They did this even when the area is recognised as a legal slum by the city’s own urban planning organisation,” said Abhik Chimni, a lawyer who is challenging the order.

Since then residents have been in some kind of stupor, dazed, angry and tired. “The heat is unbearable. The food keeps rotting and the children don’t stop crying. At night, we try to sleep outside but then mosquitoes bite us,” said Baijan Bibi.

“I am so exhausted,” she continued, “that sometimes I wonder if it’s better to live in a holding centre. At least there will be a fan there, right?”

The US has doubled a reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to $50m (£37.2m), accusing him of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world”.

US President Donald Trump is a long-time critic of Maduro, who returned to office in January following an election marred by vote-rigging allegations. The results were widely rejected by the international community.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the US would double its already announced reward of $25m (£18.6m), and said Maduro was directly linked to drug smuggling operations.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said the new reward was “pathetic” and labelled it “political propaganda”.

“We’re not surprised, coming from whom it comes from,” Gil said, accusing Bondi of attempting a “desperate distraction” from headlines related to backlash over the handling of the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

During Trump’s first term, the US government charged Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials with a range of offences, including narco-terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking.

At the time, the US Department of Justice claimed Maduro had worked with the Colombian rebel group Farc to “use cocaine as a weapon to ‘flood’ the United States”.

In a video posted on X on Thursday, Bondi accused Maduro of coordinating with groups like Tren de Aragua – a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has declared a terrorist organisation – and the Sinaloa Cartel, a powerful criminal network based in Mexico.

She claimed the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had “seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates, with nearly seven tons linked to Maduro himself”.

Maduro has previously rejected US claims he has direct involvement in drug trafficking.

Bondi’s comments are an extension of long-running tensions between the US and Venezuelan government – but the attorney general did not provide any further indication over how the government envisioned the renewed appeal and cash incentive would yield results.

Maduro – who is leader of the United Socialist Party and succeeded Hugo Chavez in 2013 – has been repeatedly accused of repressing opposition groups and silencing dissent in Venezuela, including with the use of violence.

He weathered protests in the wake of last year’s contested election and has retained his grip on power.

But in June, Hugo Carvajal – formerly the head of Venezuela’s military intelligence – was convicted of several drug trafficking charges after being arrested in Madrid and put on trial in the US.

Carvajal had been a feared spymaster who went by the name El Pollo, or The Chicken, but fled Venezuela after calling on the army to back an opposition candidate and overthrow Maduro.

He initially denied the drug charges but later changed his plea to guilty, fuelling speculation he had cut a deal with US authorities for a lesser sentence in exchange for incriminating information about Maduro.

The UK and EU announced sanctions against Maduro’s government following his return to office earlier this year.

A new robot shop has opened in Beijing selling everything from mechanical butlers to human-like replicas of Albert Einstein.

More than 100 types of products will be on sale at Robot Mall, which launched in the Chinese capital on Friday. The store is one of the first in the country to sell humanoid and consumer-oriented robots.

The outlet has been compared to a car dealership as it offers services including sales, spare parts and maintenance.

China has invested heavily in the robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) as it looks to overcome challenges such as slowing economic growth and an ageing population.

“If robots are to enter thousands of households, relying solely on robotics companies is not enough,” Wang Yifan, a store director, told Reuters.

The robots on sale range in price from 2,000 yuan ($278, £207) to several million yuan.

Visitors will be able to interact with a wide range of robots, including dogs and chess players, organisers said.

There is also a separate section offering replacement parts and robot maintenance services.

Robot Mall is located next to a themed restaurant, where diners are served by robots and the food is cooked by mechanical chefs.

China has increasingly prioritised the robotics industry, with subsidies topping $20bn over the past year.

The Chinese government is also planning a 1 trillion yuan fund for AI and robotics start ups.

The opening of Robot Mall coincides with the start of the five-day World Robot Conference, which started in Beijing on Friday.

Chinese state media said this year’s event will see more than 1,500 exhibits from over 200 local and overseas robotic companies.

Beijing is also preparing to host the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games from 14 to 17 August.

Teams from more than 20 countries will compete in events including track and field, dance and football.

Actress Gina Carano has settled her lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm after she was fired from Star Wars franchise spin-off The Mandalorian.

She was dropped from the cast in 2021 following comments she made comparing being a Republican in the US to being a Jew during the Holocaust.

Ms Carano, a former MMA fighter who played Cara Dune in the Disney+ series, shared the news of the settlement on X, writing “I hope this brings some healing to the force.”

The agreement, which has not been made public, comes after her case gained support and funding from Elon Musk.

Ms Carano described the settlement as the “best outcome for all parties involved,” adding she was “excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter”.

She also thanked Musk, saying she’d never met the tech billionaire but he stepped in to do this “Good Samaritan deed for me in funding my lawsuit”.

“Yes, I’m smiling”, she signed off.

The actress originally sued for wrongful termination and sexual discrimination, claiming that two of her male co-stars had made similar posts and faced no penalty.

She had sought $75,000 (£60,000) in damages and to be recast in the popular series.

Lucasfilm had condemned her comments in 2021 for “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities”.

In a statement released since the settlement, the production company said that it looks forward to “identifying opportunities to work together”.

The company described Ms Carano as someone who “was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff. She worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect,” it added.

Ms Carano is a former mixed martial arts fighter and has faced pushback in the past for deriding mask-wearing policies during the Covid pandemic and making false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Italians have reacted with fury after the popular UK Good Food website published a recipe for a traditional Roman dish that did not include the correct original ingredients and appeared to belittle it as a quick eat.

Pasta cacio e pepe is a beloved Roman dish, renowned for being simple yet surprisingly challenging to make – so Good Food’s description of it as something that can be quickly whipped up for “a speedy lunch” irritated many.

The recipe also listed four ingredients – spaghetti, black pepper, parmesan and butter and suggested double cream as an option – when there should only be three: spaghetti, black pepper and pecorino cheese.

Such was the outrage that an association representing restaurants in Italy took the issue up with the British embassy in Rome.

Fiepet Confesercenti said it was “astonished” to see the recipe on such an esteemed British food site, which was owned by the BBC until 2024. Its president Claudio Pica said letters had been sent to Immediate Media, the site’s owner, and UK ambassador Edward Llewellyn.

Mr Pica said: “This iconic dish, traditionally from Rome and the Lazio region, has been a staple of Italian cuisine for years, so much so it has been replicated even beyond Italy’s borders.”

He regretted contradicting the British site, but clarified that “the original recipe for cacio e pepe excludes parmesan and butter. There are not four ingredients, but three: pasta, pepper and pecorino”.

The furore has been widely covered in Italian media, with a journalist at public broadcaster RAI saying: “We are always told, you are not as good as the BBC… and then they go and do this. Such a grave mistake. The suggestion of adding some cream gave me goosebumps.”

The Good Food food brand was owned by BBC Studios (the BBC’s commercial wing) until 2018, when it was sold to Immediate Media Co – with the BBC prefix being dropped from its name last year.

While some chefs may experiment with the dish, the main concern is that the website misled readers by presenting its version as the original.

Italians often mock foreigners for their interpretation of their recipes, but the indignation in this case is about something deeper: tampering with tradition.

Maurizio and Loredana run a hotel in central Rome – it’s been in their family for four generations.

“You can do all the variations in the world – but you cannot use the original Italian name for them, said Maurizio. “You cannot say it is cacio e pepe if you put butter, oil and cream in it. Then it becomes something else.”

He added: “You have to yield to Caesar that which is Caesar’s!”

Giorgio Eramo runs a fresh pasta restaurant near St Peter’s square – serving up cacio e pepe and other traditional pasta dishes.

“It’s terrible. It’s not cacio e pepe… What Good Food published, with butter and parmesan, is called ‘pasta Alfredo’. It’s another kind of pasta,” he said.

On his restaurant’s board of pastas, he offers cacio e pepe with lime – a variation. But he says that’s ok.

“It’s different, it’s for the summer, to make the pasta more fresh. But it doesn’t impact the tradition. It’s not like cream or butter. Lime is just a small change.”

Nicola, who runs a sandwich shop near the Vatican, took particular issue with the inclusion of cream.

“Cacio e pepe should not be made with cream; cream is for desserts. For heaven’s sake. Whoever uses cream does not know what cooking means.”

Italians often get angry when foreigners tinker with their food recipes – pizza with pineapple, cappuccino after midday or carbonara with cream, for example.

Eleonora, who works at a busy cafe in central Rome, thinks it is probably not necessary for Italians to get so angry about something like this, but understands why they do.

“Our tradition is based on food. So if you touch the only thing that we have, in all over the world… that can make us feel a bit sad.”

Good Food owners Immediate Media has been approached for comment.

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has unveiled the long-awaited latest version of its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, GPT-5, saying it can provide PhD-level expertise.

Billed as “smarter, faster, and more useful,” OpenAI co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman lauded the company’s new model as ushering in a new era of ChatGPT.

“I think having something like GPT-5 would be pretty much unimaginable at any previous time in human history,” he said ahead of Thursday’s launch.

GPT-5’s release and claims of its “PhD-level” abilities in areas such as coding and writing come as tech firms continue to compete to have the most advanced AI chatbot.

Elon Musk recently made similar claims of his own AI chatbot, Grok, which has been plugged into X (formerly Twitter).

During the launch of Grok’s latest iteration last month, Musk said it was “better than PhD level in everything” and called it the world’s “smartest AI”.

Meanwhile, Altman said OpenAI’s new model would suffer from fewer hallucinations – the phenomenon whereby large language models make up answers – and be less deceptive.

OpenAI is also pitching GPT-5 to coders as a proficient assistant, following a trend among major American AI developers, including Anthropic whose Claude Code targets the same market.

OpenAI has highlighted GPT-5’s ability to create software in its entirety and demonstrate better reasoning capabilities – with answers that show workings, logic and inference.

The company claims it has been trained to be more honest, provide users with more accurate responses and says that, overall, it feels more human.

According to Altman, the model is “significantly better” than its predecessors.

“GPT-3 sort of felt to me like talking to a high school student… 4 felt like you’re kind of talking to a college student,” he said in a briefing ahead of Thursday’s launch.

“GPT-5 is the first time that it really feels like talking to an expert in any topic, like a PhD-level expert.”

For Prof Carissa Véliz of the Institute for Ethics in AI, however, GPT-5’s launch may not be as significant as its marketing may suggest.

“These systems, as impressive as they are, haven’t been able to be really profitable,” she said, also noting that they can only mimic – rather than truly emulate – human reasoning abilities.

“There is a fear that we need to keep up the hype, or else the bubble might burst, and so it might be that it’s mostly marketing.”

One ethics expert said the launch of GPT-5 reinforced the growing gap between AI’s capabilities and our ability to govern it in the way the public expects.

“As these models become more capable, the need for comprehensive regulation becomes even more urgent,” said Gaia Marcus, Director of the Ada Lovelace Institute.

The BBC’s AI Correspondent Marc Cieslak gained exclusive access to GPT-5 before its official launch.

“Apart from minor cosmetic differences the experience was similar to using the older chatbot: give it tasks or ask it questions by typing a text prompt.

It’s now powered by what’s called a reasoning model which essentially means it thinks harder about solving problems, but this seems more like an evolution than revolution for the tech.”

GPT-5’s rollout also has implications for commercial enterprises concerned about the use of their content.

“As AI content becomes more convincing, we need to ask ourselves – are we protecting the people and creativity behind what we see every day?”, said Grant Farhall, chief product officer at Getty Images. “Authenticity matters – but it doesn’t come for free.”

Farhall said it was important to scrutinize exactly how AI models are being trained, and ensure that creators are being compensated if their work is being used.

The company will roll out the model to all users from Thursday.

In the coming days it will become a lot clearer whether it really is as good as Sam Altman claims it is.

Anthropic recently revoked OpenAI’s access to its application programming interface (API), claiming the company was violating its terms of service by using its coding tools ahead of GPT-5’s launch.

An OpenAI spokesperson said it was “industry standard” to evaluate other AI systems to assess their own progress and safety.

“While we respect Anthropic’s decision to cut off our API access, it’s disappointing considering our API remains available to them,” they added.

With a free tier for its new model, the company may be signalling a potential move away from the proprietary models that have previously dominated its offerings.

On Monday, OpenAI revealed it was making changes to promote a healthier relationship between users and ChatGPT.

In a blog post, it said: “AI can feel more responsive and personal than prior technologies, especially for vulnerable individuals experiencing mental or emotional distress.”

It said it would not give a definitive answer to questions such as, “Should I break up with my boyfriend?”

Instead, it would “help you think it through – asking questions, weighing pros and cons”, according to the blog post.

In May, OpenAI pulled a heavily-criticised update which made ChatGPT “overly flattering”, according to Sam Altman.

On a recent episode of OpenAI’s own podcast, Mr Altman said he was thinking about how people interact with his products.

“This is not all going to be good, there will still be problems,” he said.

“People will develop these somewhat problematic, or maybe very problematic, parasocial relationships [with AI]. Society will have to figure out new guardrails. But the upsides will be tremendous.”

Mr Altman is known to be a fan of the 2013 film Her, where a man develops a relationship with an AI companion.

In 2024, actress Scarlett Johansson, who voiced the AI companion in the film, said she was left “shocked” and “angered” after OpenAI launched a chatbot with an “eerily similar” voice to her own.

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The war in Ukraine, sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, shows no sign of abating.

In the east of Ukraine, Russia presses on in a grinding and bloody advance. Deadly aerial strikes are a nightly occurrence across the country, while Russia’s refineries and energy facilities come under regular attack from Kyiv’s drones.

It is against this backdrop that the Kremlin confirmed a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was being planned and due to take place soon. “I’m here to get [the war] over with,” the US leader said on Wednesday.

Three rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine held at his behest between May and July have failed to bring the two sides any closer to peace, and Trump may hope that taking the situation into his own hands could finally result in a ceasefire.

But the gulf between Kyiv and Moscow is so large that even Trump-mediated talks could make it difficult to bridge.

In a memorandum presented to the Ukrainians by Russia in June, Moscow outlined its maximalist demands for a “final settlement” of the conflict. They include the recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Ukrainian regions of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson as well as Ukraine agreeing to demilitarisation, neutrality, no foreign military involvement and new elections.

“The Russian side can frame this in a dozen different ways, creating the impression that Moscow is open to concessions and serious negotiation,” wrote Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya. “But the core position remains unchanged: Russia wants Kyiv to surrender.”

• Why did Putin’s Russia invade Ukraine?

Following a meeting between Putin and US envoy Steve Witkoff, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Washington had a better understanding of the conditions under which Russia would be prepared to end the war.

We don’t know if those conditions have changed. However, only last week Putin – likely referencing the memorandum – said Russia had made its goals known in June, and that those goals had stayed the same.

Therefore, despite the Kremlin agreeing to a Trump-Putin meeting, there is no reason to believe Moscow is ready to budge on its tough preconditions.

So why would Putin be agreeing to talks at this stage?

One possibility is that it hopes engaging in dialogue could fend off the secondary sanctions Trump has threatened to impose on Moscow’s trading partners as soon as Friday. The Kremlin may also feel it could convince Trump of the merits of its conditions to end the war.

At the start of his second term in office, Trump appeared to be more aligned with Russia than Ukraine, labelling Zelensky a “dictator” and suggesting he was to blame for the war with Russia.

Although he has since signalled his impatience with Putin – “he’s just tapping me along”, he said in April – Trump has also refused to say whether he felt the Russian leader had been lying to him over his readiness to move towards a ceasefire.

Whether because of personal affinity or an aligned worldview, Trump has been reluctant to ever fully condemn Putin for his actions.

When the two met in Helsinki in 2018 – during Trump’s first term as president – many were left stunned to see Trump side with the Kremlin over accusations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and take responsibility for the tense state of US-Russia relations.

It is perhaps partly to fend off the possibility of Trump being swayed by Putin that Kyiv wants to be involved in any ceasefire talks.

Through his envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump has also suggested holding a trilateral with Putin and Zelensky. But the Russian president has batted off these suggestions, saying the conditions for a meeting are still far off.

Now some in Ukraine are concerned a Trump-Putin meeting may result in the US president giving in to Putin’s demands.

Ukrainian MP Iryna Herashchenko said it was becoming evident that demands for territorial concessions by Ukraine would be made and added being absent from the negotiating table would be “very dangerous” for Kyiv.

“Ukraine is not afraid of meetings and expects the same bold approach from the Russian side,” Zelensky said on Thursday.

But the gulf between Russia and Ukraine remains.

And should the Kremlin eventually agree to a trilateral meeting, Moscow’s demands for a ceasefire have proven so intractable that it is unclear what bringing Zelensky and Putin face-to-face might achieve.

Follow the twists and turns of Trump’s second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher’s weekly US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

Twice a week, Ben Bradshaw drops his young son off at a Sydney childcare centre before heading off to work.

Like thousands of parents and carers across Australia, the 40-year-old had always been confident that the staff have his child’s best interests at heart.

But in recent months, that trust in the childcare system has been “eroded”, the father-of-two says, after several high-profile cases of alleged sexual and physical abuse at centres across Australia.

“It’s that old adage of cockroaches – if you see one in your house, there’s 10 that you don’t see. These are the ones that get caught. It’s more scary the ones that you can’t see,” he tells the BBC.

In the past few weeks, 2,000 children in Victoria have been urged to undergo infectious disease testing after a childcare worker was charged with the mass sexual abuse of babies; police have named a Sydney man who worked for 60 after-school-care providers and is accused of taking “explicit” images of children under his supervision; a Queensland woman has faced court over allegations she tortured a one-year-old boy; and another two workers in Sydney have been charged after a toddler was left covered in bruises.

It comes as the nation is still reeling from the crimes of childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith – dubbed “one of Australia’s worst paedophiles” – who was late last year sentenced to life in prison for raping and sexually abusing almost 70 girls.

The series of allegations have sparked panic and fear among parents, child safety advocates have demanded action to fix what they call a dangerously incompetent system, and politicians have promised reform to keep Australia’s most vulnerable safe.

“Some childcare centres are still safe, but the current childcare system is definitely not working to protect children or prioritise their safety,” says Hetty Johnston, a leading child protection advocate.

“It fails at every step.”

In recent years, there has been a nationwide push to give more children access to early childhood education and care, which research indicates has many positive long-term impacts.

Millions of dollars have been poured into the sector from federal and state governments, including funding to guarantee three days of childcare for low and middle-income families.

Such measures have prompted rapid growth in the sector, with a rush of new centres opening which has deepened a shortage of qualified staff.

The growth has led to “significant vulnerabilities”, says Prof Leah Bromfield, director of the Australian Centre for Child Protection.

“Whenever you grow something really quickly, that comes with risks,” she says, listing off a lack of regulation and monitoring, limited training for managers, and the disparate and casual nature of the workforce.

“You put all that together and you’ve created a weak system from the perspective of a predatory perpetrator… a system where it’s easier to infiltrate.”

In the wake of the Melbourne child sexual abuse case where Joshua Dale Brown was charged with 70 counts of abuse against eight babies, the federal government gave itself greater powers to strip funding from providers that breach quality and safety standards.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the measure was not designed to “shut down centres” but rather increase pressure for them to “raise standards”.

But Mr Bradshaw wants more. He says taking away funding from a centre “doesn’t stop the crime, it just punishes it”.

“You have to do things that are proactive in nature.”

The spate of alleged crimes have sparked a heated national conversation about how to better protect kids. Limiting the role of men in childcare is one of the most controversial suggestions.

There was a public call to ban men from certain tasks such as changing nappies and taking children to the toilet – though some warned this could place extra pressure on female staff.

“It’s not about banning male educators, but about providing families with agency and informed choice,” says Louise Edmonds, an advocate for child abuse survivors.

Brown’s case prompted G8 Education – who owned the centre where he worked – to introduce so-called “intimate care waivers”, giving parents and carers the opportunity to choose who carried out private and sensitive duties. It also pledged to install CCTV at all of its centres.

Ms Johnston – who founded child protection group Bravehearts – says these are natural responses, but cautioned that, though “men are definitely a higher risk”, women do abuse children too and offenders can do so in all kinds of settings.

“They are opportunistic… when others don’t pay attention, when they are distracted, complacent, disinterested or too trusting, they create ‘opportunities’ for offenders.”

Other practical measures centres could adopt to improve child safety include having two educators with direct line of sight of children at all times and getting rid of blind spots in centres – replacing solid doors with glass panes, eliminating windowless walls, and putting more mirrors up to create “incidental supervision”.

“It’s all about reducing opportunities for predators to isolate or conceal in nooks and crannies,” Ms Johnston says.

But massive system reform is also long overdue, experts say.

In 2017, more than 400 recommendations emerged from a years-long royal commission into child sex abuse in institutional settings – like churches, schools and childcare – but critics say progress has stalled on some of the most significant changes.

One of those outstanding recommendations, to be discussed by the country’s attorneys-general at a meeting this month, is to overhaul Australia’s checks on those who work with children.

Currently, each state and territory complete what is essentially a police check required for those who work alongside children, but they don’t share the information with each other. Advocates have called for a nationalised system, but some say the checks themselves don’t go far enough.

“It’s inconsistent, relies too heavily on prior convictions,” Ms Edmonds says.

For instance, many say, the system should capture red flags such as formal complaints, workplace warnings, police intelligence, and people identified as alleged abusers in confidential applications to the national redress scheme set up after the royal commission.

Casting a broader net is important, experts argue, as child abuse allegations can be difficult to stand up in court. Often the witnesses are young children, who are either non-verbal or have limited vocabulary, may struggle with memory, and often have a lack of situational understanding.

“Catching someone red-handed and being able to prove it beyond reasonable doubt is almost impossible,” Ms Johnston says.

That’s why Prof Bromfield is among those calling for a national registration scheme for the childcare sector – like those that exist for doctors or teachers. It would require workers to prove their qualifications, could provide a detailed work history, and would bind them all by a code of conduct.

Advocates argue the system could also capture many of the things the working- with-children checks currently do not.

“Often in child sexual abuse cases, when you look back, you see lots and lots of red flags,” Prof Bromfield says.

“There might be a pattern, but [at the moment] we just don’t see that because they are moving between states or between sectors or between providers.”

Mr Bradshaw says having access to more information about staff would help parents like him make informed decisions.

Childcare is a necessity for his family, he explains, as he works full-time and his wife, a high school teacher, works four days a week.

But often, there’s little detail about the childcare centre’s staff “beyond the pictures on the wall” of the teachers and educators, so parents often have to assess a provider “based on vibes”.

“It’s a bit of a blackbox and you’re bound because you need to have your kids in childcare so you can pay for living in a big city.”

That’s where greater education for parents is needed too, Prof Bromfield says, so they know what questions to ask and, in the worst-case scenarios, how to spot signs of grooming themselves.

Tips include enquiring about a provider’s child safety policies, asking about its staff turnover, and assessing the physical spaces for any visibility issues.

There also needs to be better, more regular training for managers in the sector on how to prevent and identify problematic behaviour or patterns, experts say.

For Prof Bromfield – who was part of the team which conducted the royal commission into child sex abuse – these are conversations she has been having for over a decade.

But she is hopeful the current crisis will shock Australia into taking greater action.

“Perhaps one of the things that will happen is there will be greater political will to prioritise safety for children,” Prof Bromfield says.

“The big lesson is that we can never rest on our laurels when it comes to children’s safety.

“Perpetrators just keep getting smarter, working around the systems we’ve got. We can’t forget the lessons of the past… and we can’t assume that this is a problem that’s gone away.”

In the popular Japanese anime One Piece, black flags bearing a skull with a straw hat are carried by a rowdy crew of pirates who have made it their mission to challenge a draconian regime and fight for freedom.

But in July, these emblems started popping up across Indonesia – along doorways, on the backs of cars, and painted on walls.

For many, they were a response to Indonesian leader Prabowo Subianto’s call for Indonesians to fly their national red and white flag ahead of the country’s Independence Day on 17 August.

Instead, some Indonesians chose to raise these pirate flags, known as Jolly Rogers, as a symbol of their discontent, with many criticising what they say is an increasingly centralised government led by Prabowo.

But the movement has not been well received by all. Earlier last week, the country’s Deputy House Speaker criticised the flag displays, calling it an “attempt to divide the nation”. Another lawmaker even suggested it could be treason.

One Piece, first published in 1997 as a manga by Eiichiro Oda, is one of the most popular franchises in the world. The manga has sold more than 520 million copies while the TV series has run for more than 1,100 episodes.

The series has a large and dedicated fan base in Indonesia, where Japanese anime is well loved.

In the same way the pirates in the series, led by their leader Monkey D Luffy, raise the Jolly Rogers as a symbol of freedom against their government, some Indonesian residents say raising the flag is a “symbol that we love this country, but don’t completely agree with its policies”.

The anime reflects the injustice and inequality that Indonesians experience, said Ali Maulana, a resident of Jayapura city in the Papua province.

“Even though this country is officially independent, many of us have not truly experienced that freedom in our daily lives,” he told BBC Indonesian.

For him and many others, the decision to fly the flag was a response to a speech given by President Prabowo in late July.

“Raise the red and white flag wherever you are. Red represents the blood shed for our independence, white represents the purity of our souls,” Prabowo had said.

Dendi Christanto, who owns the Wik Wiki apparel store in Central Java, said he has received “thousands of orders” for the flags following the president’s speech.

“Since the end of July, I received hundreds of orders a day from all over Indonesia,” Dendi told news outlet Jakarta Post.

Some top officials however, have been less than impressed.

Deputy House Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad, widely regarded as Prabowo’s right-hand man, described the movement as “a coordinated attempt to divide the nation”.

“We must collectively resist such actions,” he had said earlier last week.

Another lawmaker from the centre-right Golkar Party, Firman Soebagyo, suggested that displaying these flags could even amount to treason.

But on Tuesday, the country’s state secretary minister Prasetyo Hadi said the president himself had “no objection” to the flags as a form of “creative expression”.

“However, it should not be used to challenge or diminish the significance of the red and white flag. The two should not be placed side by side in a way that invites comparison or conflict,” his office said in a statement.

In Indonesia, there are no laws that restrict the display of fictional flags, but the law stipulates that if they are flown alongside the red-and-white national flags, the country’s flag must always be hoisted higher.

Police in the capital Jakarta have said they are “monitoring the use of non-national flags and symbols that don’t align with the spirit of nationalism, including pirate or fictional-themed flags”.

Indonesia’s hard-won democracy, the third largest in the world, has faced growing challenges in recent years.

Its popular former leader Joko Widodo rose to power as a promising democrat, but his one-of-us image lost some of its sheen towards the end of his second term, when he revived the death penalty for drug traffickers and appointed Prabowo, a controversial ex-general, as his defence minister.

Public frustration has intensified since Prabowo took over as president last October. In February, thousands took to the streets to protest budget cuts and legislative changes that would allow the military to take a bigger role in government.

“The red-and-white flags are too sacred for us to raise now,” said one user on Instagram, in a post that has been widely shared.

And while some lawmakers have criticised the display of the Jolly Rogers, others say they accept it as a form of public expression.

They are a way for people to “convey their expectations”, said Deputy Home Affairs Minister Bima Arya Sugiarto. “Such a form of expression is a natural phenomenon in a democracy.”

“This kind of symbolic action is better than street protests that could turn violent,” said Deddy Yevri Sitorus from the opposition Democratic Party of Struggle.

Because of One Piece’s popularity among Indonesians of all ages, the flags have offered a way to “raise awareness around political issues in a different and unique way”, said Dominique Nicky Fahrizal, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

And for some Indonesians, the government’s mixed response to the Jolly Roger underscores the symbol’s power.

“By treating a cartoon flag as a threat to national security, they have inadvertently validated the entire premise of the protest,” Farhan Rizqullah wrote on the Medium publishing platform.

“They have shown that the dream of Monkey D Luffy, the simple, unwavering desire to be free, is the one thing they truly fear.”

This week saw Donald Trump’s oft-threatened tariffs finally come into force, the US Coast Guard publish its report into the Titan submersible disaster, and two women denied an AirBnB booking because they were Welsh.

But how much attention did you pay to what else happened in the world over the past seven days?

Quiz collated by Ben Fell.

Fancy testing your memory? Try last week’s quiz, or have a go at something from the archives.

Cameroon’s constitutional council has upheld the decision by the country’s electoral body to exclude opposition leader Maurice Kamto from the 12 October presidential election.

While the firebrand political figure was sidelined, 92-year-old President Paul Biya whose candidacy also faced opposition, was cleared to run for what would be his eighth term in the oil-rich Central African nation.

If he were elected for another seven-year term, he could remain in power until he was almost 100.

Kamto was ruled out because a rival faction of the Manidem party which endorsed him presented another individual as a candidate, highlighting an internal squabble.

In his first public comments, Kamto on Thursday evening said the decision was “arbitrary” and taken for political reasons.

Of the 83 candidates who submitted their applications to the electoral body, only 12 have been approved.

The reasons given by Elections Cameroon (Elecam) for the disqualification of the 71 range from incomplete files, non-payment of the required deposit, to multiple candidacies from the same party.

Of all the contestants, six are seen as the main contenders:

1. Paul Biya

At 92, Paul Biya is the world’s oldest serving head of state. He has been in power for nearly 43 years since 1982. Biya leads the ruling CPDM party which dominates the political scene. He is widely considered the favourite, now that his main rival, Kamto, is out of the way.

The veteran politician has never lost an election since the return of multi-party politics in 1990. However, his victories have been marred by allegations of vote rigging – claims which his party and the government have continuously denied.

Announcing his intention to run, Biya said his eighth mandate would focus on the wellbeing of women and young people.

2. Bello Bouba Maigari

Bello Bouba Maigari, 78, is an experienced politician who hails from Cameroon’s vote-rich northern region.

He is the president of the National Union for Democracy and Progress (NUDP) party founded in 1990. He served in the governments of both of Cameroon’s presidents -Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya.

In fact, he was Biya’s first prime minister between 1982 and 1983. Since 1997, Maigari has forged an alliance with Biya’s CPDM party that helped the latter clinch significant votes from the north.

However, this political marriage ended in June following pressure from within his party to run independently.

While serving as Minister of State for Tourism and Leisure, Maigari announced his resignation and declared himself a candidate against Biya, who he also faced in the 1992 presidential election.

3. Issa Tchiroma Bakary

Another former Biya ally whose candidacy came as a surprise is 75-year-old Issa Tchiroma Bakary. Like Maigari, he is from the country’s north and has been influential in helping Biya secure the region’s votes.

After a 20-year stint in different government roles, Tchiroma finally pulled the plug on his time with the 92-year-old leader, resigning from his role as Minister of Employment and Vocational Training to announce his candidacy.

Tchiroma, who heads the Cameroon National Salvation Front (CNSF) party, criticised Biya’s governance style and hinged his presidential bid on a promise to overhaul the system, which he described as “suffocating”.

4. Cabral Libii

Cabral Libii, president of the Cameroon Party for National Reconciliation (PCRN), is a vibrant member of parliament who is making his second attempt at getting the country’s top job.

In 2018, he was the youngest of the nine presidential candidates, aged just 38, coming third with 6% of the vote.

Libii’s candidature in this year’s election was challenged by PCRN founder Robert Kona, who disputed the lawmaker’s legitimacy to lead the party.

However, the Constitutional Council rejected Kona’s petition and upheld the electoral body’s decision to allow Libii to stand.

5. Akere Muna

Akere Muna was a candidate in the 2018 presidential election but pulled out at the last minute and threw his weight behind Kamto. This time around, Muna, a staunch international anti-corruption lawyer, says he wants to challenge Biya himself.

The 72-year-old is from a family of politicians – his late father Solomon Tandeng Muna served as Prime Minister of West Cameroon after independence, Vice-President of the then Federal Republic of Cameroon and Speaker of the National Assembly.

As Speaker, Solomon Muna swore in Biya when he took over as president after Ahmadou Ahidjo resigned.

Muna is promising to rid the bilingual country of the corruption and bad governance that he says have soiled its image at the international scene.

6. Joshua Osih

Joshua Osih is jumping into the presidential race for the second time after his first attempt in 2018 proved futile.

He heads the Social Democratic Front (SDF) party, succeeding the iconic late opposition leader John Fru Ndi. The SDF used to be the country’s main opposition outfit, but its influence later dwindled, exacerbated by infighting and the expulsion of several party members in 2023.

Osih, 56, came fourth in the 2018 polls with 3%, but is hoping to defeat Biya through a promise of social and institutional reforms.

• Social media revamp by 92-year-old president struggles to woo young Cameroonians

For many decades, President Biya has succeeded in maintaining a firm grip on power, making it difficult for him to lose elections.

The decision of political heavyweights Bello Bouba Maigari and Issa Tchiroma Bakary to challenge him appeared to make life more difficult, but some analysts believe they do not pose a significant threat to Biya.

Dr Pippie Hugues, a policy analyst with Cameroonian think-tank Nkafu Policy Institute, argues that their alliance with the current regime lessens their credibility with opposition voters.

“Cameroonians need more than just a resignation to trust them,” he told the BBC. “Both have been with the system and watched the nation suffer.”

Dr Hugues further suggested that the two northern candidates might be part of a political plot staged by the regime.

However, ruling party officials have portrayed the rupture as genuine, acknowledging that the CPDM could struggle to obtain as many votes from the north as before.

Given Kamto’s exclusion, Biya’s strongest challenger in 2018, third-placed Libii could arguably claim to be his main threat this year.

Although he got just 6% of the vote, Libii’s political evolution since then has been praised.

He led his party to win five seats in parliament and seven local councils during the 2020 legislative and municipal elections. Since becoming a member of parliament in the process, he has challenged the government on key policy issues, promising sweeping changes if he takes over the reins of power.

However, Dr Hugues says Libii’s vision is opaque, citing Akere Muna as a more convincing candidate with a much clearer project for the nation of nearly 30 million people.

“Muna has a wealth of international experience and diplomatic character, and that is what the nation needs now,” he said, while praising the renowned lawyer’s five-year transition plan to “put the nation back on track”.

Historically, Cameroon’s opposition has been fragmented especially during elections, with analysts saying this has disadvantaged them.

Ahead of this year’s presidential election, there has been much talk about the need for the opposition to unite and harmonise strategies to take on Biya. But with each candidate prioritising their own interests, it remains unclear if most – let alone all – of them would work together, despite the risk this could help the president.

“It might be the end of their political careers, or their parties, if they don’t come together,” said civil society leader Felix Agbor Balla.

“Kamto and the others must look for someone in the opposition who can carry the baton – and they must put the nation first, rise above their personal ego to look for a consensual candidate that can give the CPDM a run on the 12th of October,” he told the BBC.

Dr Hugues agrees that Kamto should use his influence to drum up support for an opposition coalition since he is now out of the race.

He insists “change must not [only] come with him [Kamto], but change can come through him”.

Kamto did not address these calls on Thursday, but said: “I’m on my feet and will remain at your side. The struggle continues.”

Dr Hugues says that an opposition coalition is possible and made reference to a meeting attended by opposition figures on 2 August in Foumban town in the West region.

Prince Michael Ekosso, president of the United Socialist Democratic Party (USDP), who took part in the meeting, told the BBC the aim was to lay the groundwork for a “consensual candidate”.

While no specific candidate has been designated yet, the criteria for consideration were laid down.

“We want a figure who is going to be responding to the aspirations of Cameroonians, someone who is flexible to work with others, someone who is bilingual and able to mobilise other candidates and political actors,” Ekosso said.

In the 1992 presidential election, firebrand opposition leader John Fru Ndi was backed by the Union for Change, a coalition of political parties and civil society organisations.

Although he was not the only opposition candidate, analysts say the coalition helped him get 36% of the vote – just shy of Biya’s 40%.

That was the closest anyone has ever got to beating Biya. Fru Ndi even claimed victory, but the authorities rejected allegations of vote rigging and confirmed Biya as the winner.

Many believe if the opposition doesn’t band together as it did in 1992, Biya might have an easy ride to the presidency.

“He has the experience, the human resources and the system to his advantage,” says Dr Hugues.

• ‘Nowhere is safe’ – Cameroonians trapped between separatists and soldiers
• Art curator Koyo Kouoh dies at height of career
• The lawyer risking everything to defend LGBT rights
• Paul Biya: Cameroon’s ‘absentee president’

US President Donald Trump has said he plans to introduce 100% tariffs on semiconductor imports.

The tiny chips power a range of different devices and are integral to modern technology and the global economy.

While some semiconductor producers could be spared from the taxes, they may still impact the tech industry and could push up the price of some products.

• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?

Semiconductors have enabled a slew of modern devices – from smartphones and laptops to video game consoles, pacemakers and solar panels.

Sometimes referred to as microchips or integrated circuits, they are made from tiny fragments of raw materials, such as silicon.

Semiconductors, as the name suggests, can partially conduct electricity – alternating between doing so and acting as an insulator.

This allows them to be used as electronic switches, speaking the binary language of 0s and 1s that underpins computing.

• Semiconductors: How the humble chip changed everything

The UK, US, Europe and China rely heavily on Taiwan for semiconductors.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) provides over half of the world’s supply.

Founded in 1987 as the world’s first foundry – dedicated to producing semiconductors for device manufacturers – TSMC now makes them for tech giants like Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft.

It has also been caught up in so-called “chip wars” between the US and China. Each country has tried to slow or cut off the other’s access to essential components, materials and parts of supply chains as they race to develop the best tech.

Samsung Electronics in South Korea is the next biggest supplier.

Together with SK Hynix, it has established the country as one of the world’s biggest semiconductor hubs – particularly for the supply of memory chips.

• The secret sauce for Taiwan’s chip superstardom
• Why is the world investing so much in semiconductors?

One of the main aims of President Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs during his second term has been to encourage firms to manufacture more products in the US.

In April, the White House exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from tariffs, including 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports. The tech industry breathed a sigh of relief.

But in early August, Trump reiterated plans to impose tariffs on foreign semiconductors – saying he would introduce a 100% tax on chips from abroad.

He did not offer more details on the tariffs, but said companies could avoid them by investing in the US.

The country is already home to some companies that design, manufacture and sell processing chips, such as Intel and Texas Instruments.

But it wants to be home to more manufacturers, particularly those making the most advanced and in-demand products – many of which are based in Asia.

The President and members of his administration have also cited national security concerns about microchips being produced or sourced from elsewhere.

In theory, Trump’s threat to impose 100% tariffs on foreign-made chip imports would impact a wide range of chipmakers and the tech companies who depend on them for semiconductors – given most are based outside the US.

The effect of this could be seen in the form of delays, as companies rush to shift manufacturing to the US, or price rises for some electronics – if manufacturers look to pass the cost of tariffs on to consumers.

But Trump’s caveat that companies committing to manufacturing in the US would not face the levy means the largest semiconductor firms may avoid Trump’s tariffs.

The president said Apple, which sources its semiconductors from TSMC, will evade the 100% tariffs following its further $100bn investment in US manufacturing.

This prompted a 5% rise in TSMC’s share price on Thursday.

Meanwhile South Korean officials have said Samsung and SK Hynix will not face 100% tariffs due to their investment in new US chip fabrication plants.

• Tech manufacturing has powered Asia – now it’s a casualty of Trump’s tariffs

The US has spent colossal sums of money in recent years to try and boost domestic technology manufacturing.

Some semiconductor companies, such as TSMC, have already boosted their US presence in response to legislation under the previous administration.

The US Chips Act incentivised firms to move chips manufacturing in the US in return for funding awards.

The US government committed $6.6bn (£5bn) in awards to TSMC after it built a factory in Arizona.

But production at the site has previously faced delays due to a shortage of skilled workers – something that may present a wider challenge to increasing US-based semiconductor manufacturing.

TSMC reportedly only resolved its staff shortage by bringing thousands of workers over from Taiwan.

Shares of American footwear firm Crocs have plunged nearly 30% after it warned of a drop in sales as US shoppers rein in their spending.

The rubber clog maker says it expects revenue for the three months to the end of August to fall by about 10% compared with last year, saying that some shoppers are no longer visiting Crocs stores.

“We see the US consumer behaving cautiously around discretionary spending,” said the firm’s chief executive Andrew Rees.

The company’s share price is now at its lowest level for nearly three years after suffering the worst single-day drop in almost 15 years.

Crocs warned of a “concerning” second half of the year, due to the high cost of living and the potential impact of US President Donald Trump’s trade policies.

Its chief financial officer, Susan Healy, said Crocs would take a $40m (£29.8m) hit for the remainder of 2025 due to tariffs.

“I think we can over the medium-term mitigate the impact of tariffs. That will come from cost savings in our supply chain,” said Mr Rees.

The footwear maker also warned that it has seen “ample evidence” that a portion of its customer base is now “super cautious” with their spending.

“They’re not purchasing, they’re not even going to the stores, and we see traffic down,” Mr Rees said.

Crocs said it will continue to pull back on discounting its products, cautioning that this could have a further impact on sales.

Ahead of next year’s football World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, Mr Rees said consumers are “migrating back towards athletic” products.

His comments came after Crocs reported second quarter revenue of $1.1bn, a 3% rise compared to the same period last year.

The company also owns casual footwear brand HEYDUDE, following a $2.5bn takeover in late 2021.

Trials of a daily obesity pill have shown it can help patients lose around 12% of their body weight over 72 weeks.

The manufacturer, Eli Lilly, says the drug, which is not yet licensed, could be available next year.

The daily pill, called orforglipron, works by suppressing appetite and making you feel more full.

Preliminary results of a major trial show those on the highest dose lost an average of 12 kilos (nearly two stone) over 16 months but about one in 10 stopped taking the pills due to side effects, including nausea and vomiting.

In addition to weight loss, participants also benefited from reductions in cholesterol, blood fats and blood pressure.

Dr Kenneth Custer of Eli Lilly said the company was planning to submit the drug for licensing before the end of the year and preparing for a “global launch to address this urgent public health need”.

So where might this weight loss pill fit in to the blockbuster multi-billion pound market dominated by injectable drugs like Mounjaro, Wegovy and Ozempic?

The pill is much less effective than injectables.

The 12% weight loss achieved by those taking orforglipron compares to 22% weight loss for patients on Mounjaro, given by weekly injection. Both drugs are made by Eli Lilly.

Despite being less effective, there is likely to be a significant market for weight loss pills, as a needle-free means of cutting obesity levels.

Obesity experts hope the oral drug will be far cheaper than current injectables which would make it available to many more patients.

The full results of the trial will be presented next month at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting and published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Rival manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, also has an oral version of its injectable drug Wegovy which it has already submitted for approval in the US.

In trials, patients on the highest dose of the Novo Nordisk daily pill lost around 15% of their bodyweight after 64 weeks.

The Zambian government has dismissed claims of dangerous pollution in the Copperbelt mining region, following safety concerns raised by the US embassy.

On Wednesday, the US embassy issued a health alert, ordering the immediate withdrawal of its personnel in Kitwe town and nearby areas due to concerns of “widespread contamination of water and soil” linked to a February spill at the Sino-Metals mine.

The spill happened when a tailings dam, used to store toxic waste and heavy metals, collapsed into the Kafue River, a key drinking water source, following heavy rain.

The US embassy said there was new information that showed “the extent of hazardous and carcinogenic substances”.

It warned that beyond the “contaminated water and soil, contaminants from the spilled mine tailings may also become airborne, posing a health threat if inhaled”.

Zambia’s government spokesperson Cornelius Mweetwa hit back, saying the “laboratory results show that PH levels have returned to normal” in the area and the water was safe to drink.

Mweetwa said there were no longer any serious implications for public health, water safety, agriculture or the environment.

“There is, therefore, absolutely no need to press the ‘panic button’ today to alarm the nation and the international community.”

Sino-Metals Leach Zambia mine is a subsidiary of China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group, which is owned by the Chinese government.

The BBC has asked Sino-Metals for comment.

At the time of the spill, Sino-Metals pledged to compensate the affected communities and restore the environment.

The spill affected aquatic life as well as farmers who use the water to irrigate their crops.

Green Economy Minister Mike Mposha said the government had been proactive since February and was continuing to update the public, while affected communities have been compensated.

Minister of Water Development Collins Nzovu said the government has been constantly testing the water, and that it met World Health Organization standards.

Opposition Green Party leader Peter Sinkamba said the US embassy’s health alert was part of geopolitics.

He wondered why it had taken the embassy since February to issue the alert, while accusing it of keeping quiet on the lead poisoning in central Zambia that partly traces its roots to Western mining giants.

Centre for Environment Justice executive director Maggie Mapalo Mwape told the BBC the pollution was a national disaster that demands immediate and concrete action to mitigate its effects and prevent future occurrences.

She called for decisive action to address this environmental crisis and protect the rights and wellbeing of Zambian citizens.

Six people have been killed after a light aircraft belonging to a medical charity crashed in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, according to a local official.

Charity Amref Flying Doctors said the Cessna plane took off from Wilson airport on Thursday afternoon and was en route to Hargeisa in Somalia when it crashed and burst into flames at a residential building in Nairobi’s Githurai area.

Kiambu County Commissioner Henry Wafula said four people on the plane were killed, including doctors, nurses and the pilot – as well as another two people on the ground, while two others were seriously injured.

Investigators have been despatched to the scene of the crash to establish its cause.

The plane lost both radio and radar contact with air traffic control just three minutes after take off, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority said.

There were four crew and Amref staff on board, the charity said.

“At this time, we are cooperating fully with relevant aviation authorities and emergency response teams to establish the facts surrounding the situation,” Amref CEO Stephen Gitau said in a statement.

The Kenya Defence Forces and the National Police Service have been deployed to the scene to conduct search and recovery operations.

Patricia Kombo, an eyewitness, told the BBC that she was in a cab with her friends heading to Githurai when they heard a loud bang and a red flash ahead of them.

“Before I could take my phone to record the flash was gone and smoke was billowing. We then heard people screaming and running and so we ended our trip.

“We then discovered it was a plane crash and saw the sunken hole the crash had created in the ground,” she said.

In a separate incident, a train and a bus collided at a railway crossing near Naivasha town, central Kenya, killing at least four people, according to Reuters news agency citing a Red Cross worker.

The Kenya Pipeline Company, whose bus was involved in the incident, said it was carrying staff finishing their morning shift at one of its training centres and that all injured staff had been taken to hospital for treatment.

Ex-Superman actor Dean Cain has announced he is planning to join the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.

In an interview on Wednesday, Cain, who is already a sworn law enforcement officer, said, “I will be sworn in as an ICE agent asap”.

It comes after he released a video encouraging members of the public to join following a recruitment drive by the agency, which is behind the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigrant deportation efforts.

Cain played the role of Superman between 1993 and 1997 in the TV series, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Cain has gone on to star in a number of other films and TV shows, and has also directed.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Cain would be sworn in as an “honorary ICE Officer” in the coming month.

“Superman is encouraging Americans to become real-life superheroes by answering their country’s call to join the brave men and women of ICE to help protect our communities to arrest the worst of the worst,” said DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

In late July, ICE announced it was aiming to recruit an additional 10,000 new personnel, doubling the agency’s headcount as it ramps up deportations across the country.

It is specifically hoping to recruit deportation officers, along with attorneys, criminal investigators, student visa adjudicators and other roles.

Speaking on Fox News on Wednesday, Cain said: “I put out a recruitment video yesterday – I’m actually a sworn deputy sheriff and a reserve police officer – I wasn’t part of ICE, but once I put that out there and you put a little blurb on your show, it went crazy”.

“So now I’ve spoken with some officials over at ICE, and I will be sworn in as an ICE agent asap.”

“People have to step up. I’m stepping up. Hopefully a whole bunch of other former officers, former ICE agents will step up, and we’ll meet those recruitment goals immediately and we’ll help protect this country,” Cain added.

US President Donald Trump has vowed to ramp up the pace of deportations from the US to one million per year.

Part of that effort has included increased immigration raids since Trump became president.

They have sparked protests in cities across the US, with critics calling the raids unlawful.

On 29 July, ICE announced it was offering recruitment bonuses of up to $50,000 (£37,700) and student loan help to Americans interested in helping with the Trump administration’s deportation drive.

As part of the recruitment drive, the DHS unveiled recruitment posters akin to those used during World War Two, with the words “America Needs You” and “Defend the Homeland” with images of Uncle Sam, US President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials.

By Wednesday the agency said it had received more than 80,000 applicants for the 10,000 positions. Speaking on Fox News, Noem said they had removed age limits for how old applicants could be.

ICE currently has 20,000 officers and support personnel, spread across the country at 400 offices.

The recruitment drive comes just weeks after Trump signed his sweeping spending bill into law.

The bill included more than $76bn allocated to ICE – almost 10 times what it had been receiving previously – and making it the highest funded federal law enforcement agency.

Almost a million more deaths than births were recorded in Japan last year, representing the steepest annual population decline since government surveys began in 1968.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has described the demographic crisis of Japan’s ageing population as a “quiet emergency”, pledging family-friendly policies such as free childcare and more flexible work hours.

But efforts to reverse the perennially low birth rates among Japanese women have so far made little impact.

New data released on Wednesday by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications showed the number of Japanese nationals fell by 908,574 in 2024.

Japan recorded 686,061 births – the lowest number since records began in 1899 – while nearly 1.6 million people died, meaning for every baby born, more than two people died.

It marks the 16th consecutive year of population decline with the squeeze being felt by the nation’s pension and healthcare systems.

The number of foreign residents reached a record high of 3.6 million people as of 1 January 2025, however, representing nearly 3% of Japan’s population.

The government has tentatively embraced foreign labour by launching a digital nomad visa and upskilling initiatives, but immigration remains politically fraught in the largely conservative country.

The overall population of the country declined by 0.44 percent from 2023 to about 124.3 million at the start of the year.

Elderly people aged 65 and over now make up nearly 30% of the population – the second-highest proportion in the world after Monaco, according to the World Bank. The working-age population, defined as those between 15 and 64, has dropped to about 60%.

A growing number of towns and villages are hollowing out, with nearly four million homes abandoned over the past two decades, government data released last year showed.

The government has spent years trying to increase birth rates with incentives ranging from housing subsidies to paid parental leave. But deep-rooted cultural and economic barriers remain.

High living costs, stagnant wages and a rigid work culture deter many young people from starting families. Women, in particular, face entrenched gender roles that often leave them with limited support as primary caregivers.

Japan’s fertility rate – the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime – has been low since the 1970s, so experts warn even dramatic improvements now would take decades to bear fruit.

Convicted triple-murderer Erin Patterson allegedly tried to repeatedly poison her husband, including with cookies she claimed their daughter had baked him, a court was told.

The Australian woman was last month found guilty of murdering three relatives – and attempting to kill another – with a toxic mushroom-laced beef Wellington.

The 50-year-old was originally charged with three counts of attempted murder against her estranged husband Simon Patterson, but these charges were dropped without explanation on the eve of her trial.

The details of the allegations, which Patterson denied, were suppressed to protect the proceedings, but can now be made public for the first time.

Three people died in hospital in the days after the lunch on 29 July 2023: Patterson’s former in-laws, Don Patterson, 70, and Gail Patterson, 70, as well as Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson, 66.

Local pastor Ian Wilkinson – Heather’s husband – recovered after weeks of treatment in hospital.

In lengthy pre-trial hearings last year, Mr Patterson had detailed what he suspected was a years-long campaign to kill him with tainted food – including one episode which had left him so ill he spent weeks in a coma and his family was twice told to say their goodbyes.

In a quiet moment during the early days of Patterson’s trial, her estranged husband choked up as he explained his sorrow to a near empty courtroom.

Mr Patterson’s parents and his aunt had been killed, and his uncle almost died too, after eating the toxic meal prepared by his wife. He had narrowly avoided the same fate, pulling out of the lunch gathering the day before.

“I have a lot to grieve,” he said to the judge, sitting in the witness box as the jury prepared to return from a break.

“The legal process has been very difficult… especially the way it’s progressed in terms of the charges relating to me and my evidence about that – or non-evidence now, I guess.”

“I’m sitting here, half thinking about the things I’m not allowed to talk about and… I don’t actually understand why. It seems bizarre to me, but it is what it is.”

What he wasn’t allowed to talk about – the elephant in the room throughout the trial – was his claim that Patterson had been trying to poison him long before the fatal lunch that destroyed his family on 29 July 2023.

Mr Patterson gave evidence during pre-trial hearings, which are a standard part of the court process and allow judges to determine what evidence is admissible – or allowed to be presented to a jury.

As the charges relating to Mr Patterson were dropped, his evidence on the matter was excluded from the raft of information presented at the nine-week trial this year.

But he had explained that, as far as he knows, it all began with a Tupperware container of Bolognese penne in November 2021.

Mr Patterson and his wife had separated in 2015 – though they still aren’t divorced – and he thought they remained on amicable terms.

Under questioning from Patterson’s lawyer, Mr Patterson confirmed he had noticed “nothing untoward” in their relationship at that point: “If by ‘nothing untoward’, you mean anything that would make me think she would try and kill me, correct.”

But after eating that meal, he began suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea, and spent a night in hospital.

“I had the idea I got sick from Erin’s food. I did not give it too much thought,” he said in his police statement, according to The Age newspaper.

Months later, in May 2022, he fell ill again after eating a chicken korma curry prepared by Patterson on a camping trip in the rugged mountains and alpine scruff of Victoria’s High Country region.

“While Erin was preparing food I was getting the fire going so I didn’t watch her prepare it,” he told the court.

Within days, he was in a coma in a Melbourne hospital, and a large part of his bowel was surgically removed in a bid to save his life.

“My family were asked to come and say goodbye to me twice, as I was not expected to live,” he said in a 2022 Facebook post, reported by The South Gippsland Sentinel Times two years ago.

In September 2022, while visiting a stunning, isolated stretch of Victorian coastline, he would become desperately unwell again after eating a vegetable wrap.

At first, he felt nausea and diarrhoea coming on, the court heard, before his symptoms escalated. He started slurring his speech, gradually lost control of his muscles, and began “fitting”.

“By the end of the journey [to hospital], all I could move was my neck, my tongue and lips,” he told the court.

A family friend who was a doctor, Christopher Ford, suggested Mr Patterson start a food diary so they could try to figure out what was making him so sick.

“I couldn’t understand why these things kept on happening to him in such a way that he had essentially three near-death experiences,” Dr Ford told the court.

Mr Patterson returned to see him in February 2023, five months before the fatal lunch, revealing he’d come to believe his estranged wife was responsible.

He told Dr Ford about a batch of cookies supposedly baked by his daughter, which he feared were treats tainted – possibly with antifreeze chemicals – by his wife, who had called repeatedly to check whether he had eaten any.

The court would hear investigators never figured out what Patterson had allegedly been feeding him, though they suspected rat poison may have been used on at least one occasion, and had found a file on Patterson’s computer with information about the toxin.

After this discovery, Mr Patterson changed his medical power of attorney, removing his wife, and quietly told a handful of family members of his fears.

The court heard that his father Don Patterson responded diplomatically, but his sister Anna Terrington told the pre-trial hearings she had believed her brother, and was anxious when she learned about the lunch Patterson had planned.

Ms Terrington called her parents the night before to warn them.

“Dad said, ‘No, we’ll be ok’,” she said.

Five days later, she gathered in a Melbourne hospital chapel alongside her brother and other worried relatives. Down the hall, deteriorating in their beds, were Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

Ruth Dubois, the Wilkinsons’ daughter, told the pre-trial hearings Simon Patterson had assembled the group to tell them he suspected his previous grave illnesses were the work of his wife.

“[He said] he had stopped eating food than Erin had prepared, because he suspected Erin had been messing with it,” she said.

“He was really sorry that he hadn’t told our family before this… but he thought he was the only person she was targeting, and that they’d be safe.”

It was also revealed that Patterson had visited a local tip the afternoon of the lunch at her house, though it is unknown what, if anything, she disposed of there.

The jury heard that she had travelled to the same dump days after the lunch to get rid of a food dehydrator used to prepare the meal, but the judge ruled they couldn’t be told about the first visit.

Other bizarre evidence which was ultimately left out of the trial included a 2020 post to a poisons help forum on Facebook, in which Patterson claimed her cat had eaten some mushrooms under a tree and had vomited, alongside pictures of fungi.

Patterson had never owned a cat, prosecutors said, arguing the post was evidence of a long-standing interest in the poisonous properties of mushrooms.

On Friday, Justice Christopher Beale set down a sentencing hearing for 25 August, where those connected to the case will have the opportunity to give victim impact statements.

France’s multi-billion euro mineral water companies are under the spotlight because of climate change and growing concerns about the industry’s environmental impact.

At issue is whether some world-famous brands, notably the iconic Perrier label, can even continue calling themselves “natural mineral water”.

A decision in the Perrier case is due in the coming months. It follows revelations in the French media about illicit filtration systems that have been widely used in the industry, apparently because of worries about water contamination, after years of drought linked to climate change.

“This really is our Water-gate,” says Stéphane Mandard, who has led investigations at Le Monde newspaper. “It’s a combination of industrial fraud and state collusion.”

“And now there is a real Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of Perrier.”

According to hydrologist Emma Haziza, “the commercial model of the big producers has worked very well. But it is absolutely not sustainable at a time of global climate change”.

“When you have big brands that feel they have no choice but to treat their water – that means they know there is a problem with the quality.”

The story hit the headlines a year ago in France after an investigation by Le Monde and Radio France revealed that at least a third of mineral water sold in France had been illegally treated, either with ultra-violet light, carbon filters or ultra-fine micro-meshes commonly used to screen out bacteria.

The issue was not one of public health. The treated water was by definition safe to drink.

The problem was that under EU law, “natural mineral water” – which sells at a huge premium over tap water – is supposed to be unaltered between the underground source and the bottle. That is the whole point of it.

If brands like Evian, Vichy and Perrier have been so successful in France and around the world, it is thanks to an appealing image of mountain-sides, rushing streams, purity and health-giving minerals.

Admit filtering the water, and the industry risks breaking the market spell. Consumers might begin to ask what they’d been paying for.

Complicating matters for Perrier and its parent company Nestlé – as well as President Emmanuel Macron’s government – is the charge that executives and ministers conspired to keep the affair quiet, covered up reports of contamination, and re-wrote the rules so that Perrier could continue using micro-filtration.

In their investigations, Le Monde and Radio France alleged that the government considered the mineral water industry so strategic that it agreed to suppress damaging information. A senate inquiry into the affair accused the government of a “deliberate strategy” of “dissimulation”.

Responding to the allegations, the government has asked the European Commission to rule on what level of micro-filtration is permissible for “natural mineral water”. Aurelien Rousseau, who was head of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne’s cabinet at the time, admitted there had been an “error of appreciation” but insisted there was never any risk to public health.

Earlier this year, at the senate hearing into the industry, Nestlé’s CEO Laurent Freixe admitted that Perrier had indeed used illicit methods to treat its water.

But he also had another admission: that an official hydrologists’ report into the company’s historic site in the Gard department in southern France had recommended against renewing “natural mineral water” status for the company’s output.

It raises the possibility that for the first time in its 160-year history, Perrier water may soon not be labelled as what people assume it to be.

According to the hydrologist Emma Haziza, “the link to climate change and global warming is absolutely established”. And if Perrier is feeling the impact ahead of other companies, it is probably because its geographical location sets it apart.

Far from the remote mountain landscape you might imagine, Perrier’s water is pumped from deep aquifers in the coastal plain between Nîmes and Montpellier, a short drive from the Mediterranean. The area is populous, heavily-farmed, and very hot.

“There has been a big climatic shift since 2017,” says Haziza. “For five years there was a succession of droughts, which were particularly badly felt in the south.”

“All the aquifers were affected. This means not just the upper water-table, which is where everyday tap water comes from. We can now see that the deeper aquifers – which the companies thought were protected – are also being hit.

“The unforeseen is taking place. We are moving from a period in which companies could draw water from the deep aquifers and be sure they would be replenished, to a period in which it’s obvious the whole system cannot go on.”

The analysis made by Haziza and other hydrologists is that there is now a clear link between deeper and surface aquifers. Contaminants (farm chemicals or human waste) that drain off the land in the increasingly frequent flash floods, can now make their way into the lower aquifers.

At the same time, the effects of long-term drought and over-pumping mean these lower aquifers contain less volume, so any contamination will be more concentrated, the experts say.

“We can foresee that what has happened first at Perrier’s site will happen to other producers in the years to come. That’s why we need to move away from our current model of consumption,” says Haziza.

Last year at the Perrier site, three million bottles had to be destroyed because of a contamination. But the company insists that any problems are swiftly detected; and it disputes the claim that contaminants are entering the deep aquifers.

“We are pumping water from 130 metres underground, beneath layers of limestone,” says Perrier hydrologist Jérémie Pralong. “We are 100% convinced of the purity of the water. And its mineral make-up is constant.”

Perrier says there is no EU ruling that specifically bans micro-filtration. The relevant text simply says that nothing must be done to disinfect or alter the mineral make-up of the water. The argument is over at what measure of micro-filtration alteration begins.

The original Perrier source was first tapped by a local doctor in the 1860s, but it was under British management that the brand took off 50 years later.

St John Harmsworth – brother of newspaper magnates Lords Northcliffe and Rothermere – made Perrier a byword for mineral water across the British empire.

According to company lore, Harmsworth took inspiration for the bottles’ bulbous shape from the Indian clubs he used for exercise following a crippling car accident.

Today the bottling plant at Vergèze is still next to Harmsworth’s residence and the original source. The plant has been heavily automated. A rail track connects with the SNCF network to bring hundreds of millions of cans and bottles every year to Marseille for export.

The focus for the last year has been on a new brand: Maison Perrier. These energy and flavoured drinks are proving highly successful in France and around the world.

The advantage for Perrier is that the new beverages do not claim to be “natural mineral water”. They can be treated and filtered without difficulty.

Perrier says the new brand is part of the mix, and that it has no intention of abandoning its original Source Perrier natural mineral water. It has stopped the ultra-fine (0.2 micron) microfiltration, and now uses a 0.45 micron system which has been agreed with government.

It has applied for “natural mineral water” status for just two out of the five drilling wells it was using for Perrier mineral water. A decision is due later this year.

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Actress Gina Carano has settled her lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm after she was fired from Star Wars franchise spin-off The Mandalorian.

She was dropped from the cast in 2021 following comments she made comparing being a Republican in the US to being a Jew during the Holocaust.

Ms Carano, a former MMA fighter who played Cara Dune in the Disney+ series, shared the news of the settlement on X, writing “I hope this brings some healing to the force.”

The agreement, which has not been made public, comes after her case gained support and funding from Elon Musk.

Ms Carano described the settlement as the “best outcome for all parties involved,” adding she was “excited to flip the page and move onto the next chapter”.

She also thanked Musk, saying she’d never met the tech billionaire but he stepped in to do this “Good Samaritan deed for me in funding my lawsuit”.

“Yes, I’m smiling”, she signed off.

The actress originally sued for wrongful termination and sexual discrimination, claiming that two of her male co-stars had made similar posts and faced no penalty.

She had sought $75,000 (£60,000) in damages and to be recast in the popular series.

Lucasfilm had condemned her comments in 2021 for “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities”.

In a statement released since the settlement, the production company said that it looks forward to “identifying opportunities to work together”.

The company described Ms Carano as someone who “was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff. She worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect,” it added.

Ms Carano is a former mixed martial arts fighter and has faced pushback in the past for deriding mask-wearing policies during the Covid pandemic and making false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 US presidential election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.

The body of a man missing for 28 years has been found in a melting glacier in Pakistan’s remote and mountainous Kohistan region.

A shepherd stumbled upon the body, which was remarkably well-preserved, with its clothing intact, in the so-called Lady Valley in the country’s east.

Along with the body was an ID card with the name Naseeruddin. Police were able to trace it to a man who disappeared in the area in June 1997 after falling into a glacier crack.

The region has seen decreased snowfall in recent years, exposing glaciers to direct sunlight, making them melt faster. Experts said the body’s discovery shows how changing climate has accelerated glacial melt.

“What I saw was unbelievable,” the shepherd who found the body, Omar Khan, told BBC Urdu. “The body was intact. The clothes were not even torn.”

As soon as police confirmed that it was Naseeruddin, locals began offering more information, Mr Khan added.

Naseeruddin had a wife and two children. He was travelling with his brother, Kathiruddin, on horseback on the day he went missing. Police said a family feud had forced the two men to leave their home.

Kathiruddin told BBC Urdu that they had arrived in the valley that morning, and sometime around afternoon, his brother stepped into a cave. When he did not return, Kathiruddin says he looked for him inside the cave – and went and got help from others in the area to search further. But they never found him.

When a human body falls into a glacier, the extreme cold freezes it fast, preventing decomposition, said Prof Muhammad Bilal, head of the Department of Environment at Comsats University Islamabad.

The body is then mummified due to a lack of moisture and oxygen in the glacier.

Italians have reacted with fury after the popular UK Good Food website published a recipe for a traditional Roman dish that did not include the correct original ingredients and appeared to belittle it as a quick eat.

Pasta cacio e pepe is a beloved Roman dish, renowned for being simple yet surprisingly challenging to make – so Good Food’s description of it as something that can be quickly whipped up for “a speedy lunch” irritated many.

The recipe also listed four ingredients – spaghetti, black pepper, parmesan and butter and suggested double cream as an option – when there should only be three: spaghetti, black pepper and pecorino cheese.

Such was the outrage that an association representing restaurants in Italy took the issue up with the British embassy in Rome.

Fiepet Confesercenti said it was “astonished” to see the recipe on such an esteemed British food site, which was owned by the BBC until 2024. Its president Claudio Pica said letters had been sent to Immediate Media, the site’s owner, and UK ambassador Edward Llewellyn.

Mr Pica said: “This iconic dish, traditionally from Rome and the Lazio region, has been a staple of Italian cuisine for years, so much so it has been replicated even beyond Italy’s borders.”

He regretted contradicting the British site, but clarified that “the original recipe for cacio e pepe excludes parmesan and butter. There are not four ingredients, but three: pasta, pepper and pecorino”.

The furore has been widely covered in Italian media, with a journalist at public broadcaster RAI saying: “We are always told, you are not as good as the BBC… and then they go and do this. Such a grave mistake. The suggestion of adding some cream gave me goosebumps.”

The Good Food food brand was owned by BBC Studios (the BBC’s commercial wing) until 2018, when it was sold to Immediate Media Co – with the BBC prefix being dropped from its name last year.

While some chefs may experiment with the dish, the main concern is that the website misled readers by presenting its version as the original.

Italians often mock foreigners for their interpretation of their recipes, but the indignation in this case is about something deeper: tampering with tradition.

Maurizio and Loredana run a hotel in central Rome – it’s been in their family for four generations.

“You can do all the variations in the world – but you cannot use the original Italian name for them, said Maurizio. “You cannot say it is cacio e pepe if you put butter, oil and cream in it. Then it becomes something else.”

He added: “You have to yield to Caesar that which is Caesar’s!”

Giorgio Eramo runs a fresh pasta restaurant near St Peter’s square – serving up cacio e pepe and other traditional pasta dishes.

“It’s terrible. It’s not cacio e pepe… What Good Food published, with butter and parmesan, is called ‘pasta Alfredo’. It’s another kind of pasta,” he said.

On his restaurant’s board of pastas, he offers cacio e pepe with lime – a variation. But he says that’s ok.

“It’s different, it’s for the summer, to make the pasta more fresh. But it doesn’t impact the tradition. It’s not like cream or butter. Lime is just a small change.”

Nicola, who runs a sandwich shop near the Vatican, took particular issue with the inclusion of cream.

“Cacio e pepe should not be made with cream; cream is for desserts. For heaven’s sake. Whoever uses cream does not know what cooking means.”

Italians often get angry when foreigners tinker with their food recipes – pizza with pineapple, cappuccino after midday or carbonara with cream, for example.

Eleonora, who works at a busy cafe in central Rome, thinks it is probably not necessary for Italians to get so angry about something like this, but understands why they do.

“Our tradition is based on food. So if you touch the only thing that we have, in all over the world… that can make us feel a bit sad.”

Good Food owners Immediate Media has been approached for comment.

In Gurugram, an upscale suburb just outside Delhi, gleaming SUVs, futuristic skyscrapers and neat apartments stand in stark contrast to nearby mosquito swarms, trash heaps and tarpaulin shanties.

Inside the gated compounds live some of India’s richest, while in the slums nearby live poor migrant workers – mostly domestic helpers, garbage-pickers and daily-wage workers – who keep the affluence going.

Last month, local authorities rounded up hundreds of these workers, most of whom say they are Bengali-speaking Muslims from India’s West Bengal state, in a “verification” drive targeting illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.

The suspects were detained and kept at “holding centres” where they were asked to provide documents to prove their citizenship. Many allege they were beaten and mistreated by police during the process. Police officials deny these allegations.

“I had my voter and national ID cards, but they told me they were fake. I spent six days not knowing my fate before I was finally released,” said Ather Ali Sheikh, a daily-wage worker, who has lived in the city for 15 years.

The action has left indelible scars on the social fabric of the city, which prides itself on its cosmopolitan culture. Hundreds of workers have fled overnight – abandoning jobs, homes and, in some cases, even families in their haste to escape.

“I still don’t understand why they suddenly came after me,” Mr Sheikh said. Behind him, his wife hurriedly packed their belongings – torn clothes, old utensils and school books – into flimsy boxes.

“Was it because of my language, my religion or because I am poor? ” Mr Sheikh continued, his face hardening with anger. “Why weren’t the rich Bengali residents held up?”

Police in Gurugram deny targeting any particular community. “Neither religion nor class has anything to do with the drive,” public relations officer Sandeep Kumar told the BBC.

He added that out of the 250 people picked up, only 10 have been identified as illegal migrants and will actually be deported.

“Everyone else was released. No one was mistreated at the centres. We have been completely fair and objective.”

Meanwhile, trepidation is being felt on other side of the city as well.

With no workers left, heaps of trash have been overflowing from public bins and dump yards on to the streets, inconveniencing residents.

“Our house help and her husband, who worked as a driver, both left and now we have no help,” said Tabassum Bano, who lives in one of the complexes.

Crackdowns on alleged illegal immigrants from Muslim-majority Bangladesh are not new in India. The countries are divided by a porous border 4,096km (2,545-mile) long, and have seen waves of movement of people on both sides.

But these efforts seem to have intensified under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

In recent months, hundreds of people, including a veteran Muslim officer of the Indian Army, have been arrested on suspicion of being illegal migrants.

In the north-eastern state of Assam, where the issue has been a potent flashpoint for decades, authorities have been “pushing back” hundreds of Bengali-Muslims into Bangladesh on suspicion of them being “illegal Bangladeshis”.

Deportations are also under way in Delhi, where some 700 people were picked up and flown out to border states in the last six months.

This has had a chilling impact on the marginalised community.

In Gurugram, a sense of shock prevailed over their dust-blanketed colonies.

“For years, we have cleaned and collected their garbage. Now we are being treated like it ourselves,” said Rauna Bibi.

A domestic help, Rauna’s husband had returned from West Bengal the same day the detentions began. When he heard about it, he was so terrified he left again – this time, without informing his wife.

“For three days, I wondered if he was picked up; whether he was even alive,” Rauna said. “When we finally spoke, he said he didn’t call because he did not want any trouble.”

But it was not her husband’s behaviour that bothered Rauna, or the fact that he was now jobless. It was the theft of her pride – and the comfort of belonging to a place – that hurt her the most, making her feel absurdly insignificant.

“Unlike poverty, I can’t fight this with my hard work,” she said. “If they pick us, I wouldn’t know how to survive. This slum, the work we do and the houses we clean – this is our entire life.”

Mr Kumar says the recent action is based on a home ministry notice from May that lays down new guidelines for deporting illegal immigrants.

Under the order, all states are required to set up a special task force along with holding centres to “detect, identify and deport/send back illegal immigrants settled from Bangladesh and Myanmar”.

Each person would be given 30 days to prove their citizenship, during which authorities would send their documents back to their home districts for verification.

If they fail to confirm the details, the suspects would be taken by the police “under proper escort, in groups as far as possible”, and handed over to the border forces for deportation.

Critics, however, have questioned the order, saying it does not specify the basis on which a person is made a suspect.

“On the face of it, it’s nothing other than the fact that you speak Bengali, have a Muslim name and live in shanty,” said Aakash Bhattacharya, of the national council of the All India Central Council of Trade Unions which advocates for workers’ rights.

What is worse is that none of the suspects are being given certificates confirming their citizenship had already been verified, he added.

“This means they can be put through the same process again, making them extremely vulnerable.”

Mr Kumar says the detentions in Gurugram were made on the basis of strong preliminary evidence.

“We checked their phones and found suspicious contacts from Bangladesh. Some of them also failed to answer questions about their ancestry during interrogation,” he said.

Suhas Chakma, a human rights worker, says that the policy is not necessarily religious-specific.

“The arrest of the Muslims appears to be more as they constitute about 95% of Bangladesh’s population,” he explained.

But for a country that has seen an influx of refugees for decades, India does need a wider refugee law to address many of these complex issues, he added.

For now, Bengali-Muslims are living with a deep sense of foreboding.

Many of them have been sleeping with documents tucked under the pillow in case misfortune strikes.

“We were already fighting the harsh reality of our lives. Now we have to fight this too,” said Rabi-ul-Hassan, a resident of Jai Hind camp, a massive slum located in one of the poshest corners of Delhi.

Three weeks ago, authorities cut off electricity in the area, instantly plunging some 400 people into darkness.

The action came after a court ruled that the slum-dwellers, who say they have lived there for generations, were squatting on private land.

“They did this even when the area is recognised as a legal slum by the city’s own urban planning organisation,” said Abhik Chimni, a lawyer who is challenging the order.

Since then residents have been in some kind of stupor, dazed, angry and tired. “The heat is unbearable. The food keeps rotting and the children don’t stop crying. At night, we try to sleep outside but then mosquitoes bite us,” said Baijan Bibi.

“I am so exhausted,” she continued, “that sometimes I wonder if it’s better to live in a holding centre. At least there will be a fan there, right?”

The US has doubled a reward for information leading to the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to $50m (£37.2m), accusing him of being “one of the largest narco-traffickers in the world”.

US President Donald Trump is a long-time critic of Maduro, who returned to office in January following an election marred by vote-rigging allegations. The results were widely rejected by the international community.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the US would double its already announced reward of $25m (£18.6m), and said Maduro was directly linked to drug smuggling operations.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said the new reward was “pathetic” and labelled it “political propaganda”.

“We’re not surprised, coming from whom it comes from,” Gil said, accusing Bondi of attempting a “desperate distraction” from headlines related to backlash over the handling of the case of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

During Trump’s first term, the US government charged Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials with a range of offences, including narco-terrorism, corruption and drug trafficking.

At the time, the US Department of Justice claimed Maduro had worked with the Colombian rebel group Farc to “use cocaine as a weapon to ‘flood’ the United States”.

In a video posted on X on Thursday, Bondi accused Maduro of coordinating with groups like Tren de Aragua – a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has declared a terrorist organisation – and the Sinaloa Cartel, a powerful criminal network based in Mexico.

She claimed the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had “seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates, with nearly seven tons linked to Maduro himself”.

Maduro has previously rejected US claims he has direct involvement in drug trafficking.

Bondi’s comments are an extension of long-running tensions between the US and Venezuelan government – but the attorney general did not provide any further indication over how the government envisioned the renewed appeal and cash incentive would yield results.

Maduro – who is leader of the United Socialist Party and succeeded Hugo Chavez in 2013 – has been repeatedly accused of repressing opposition groups and silencing dissent in Venezuela, including with the use of violence.

He weathered protests in the wake of last year’s contested election and has retained his grip on power.

But in June, Hugo Carvajal – formerly the head of Venezuela’s military intelligence – was convicted of several drug trafficking charges after being arrested in Madrid and put on trial in the US.

Carvajal had been a feared spymaster who went by the name El Pollo, or The Chicken, but fled Venezuela after calling on the army to back an opposition candidate and overthrow Maduro.

He initially denied the drug charges but later changed his plea to guilty, fuelling speculation he had cut a deal with US authorities for a lesser sentence in exchange for incriminating information about Maduro.

The UK and EU announced sanctions against Maduro’s government following his return to office earlier this year.

TV presenter Jay Blades has been charged with two counts of rape.

Mr Blades, best known for hosting BBC show The Repair Shop, will appear in court next Wednesday over the allegations, police said.

A West Mercia Police spokesperson said: “Jason Blades, 55, of Claverley in Shropshire, has been charged with two counts of rape.

“He is due to appear at Telford magistrates’ court on 13 August 2025.”

Meanwhile, Mr Blades appeared in court in Worcester via videolink alongside his legal team on Tuesday for a preliminary hearing in relation to a separate charge of controlling or coercive behaviour, which he has denied.

Mr Blades, who is on conditional bail in that case, spoke only to confirm his name during a short hearing.

Mr Blades became one of the best-known faces on British TV after The Repair Shop launched in 2017, with members of the public bringing their treasured possessions and heirlooms to be fixed.

It began in a daytime slot and then moved to primetime after it became a hit.

The show won a National Television Award in 2023, and also won a Bafta the same year for its royal special, in which the future King took a clock and a vase to the workshop.

He has also hosted Money for Nothing, Jay Blades’ Home Fix and Jay and Dom’s Home Fix, and in 2022 he fronted a documentary about learning to read at the age of 51.

He was honoured with an MBE in 2021.

Mr Blades stepped back from presenting The Repair Shop last year.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans for a new military push in the Gaza Strip have raised warnings from the army leadership, opposition from hostage families and concerns that more Palestinians will be killed. They also risk isolating his country even further.

Ahead of the security cabinet meeting where proposals to take over Gaza City were approved by an “absolute majority”, Netanyahu gave an interview to Fox News in which he said Israel intended to take full control of Gaza to assure Israel’s security, remove Hamas from power and enable the transfer of civilian governance to another party, without giving details.

But he suggested that Israel did not want to keep the territory.

“We don’t want to govern it,” Netanyahu said, in English. “We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces.”

He did not give details about possible arrangements or which countries could be involved; still, this was a rare indication of what he might be envisioning for a post-war Gaza.

For now, however, Netanyahu wants an expanded offensive that is likely to see the Israeli military, which says it controls about 75% of the territory, operating in Gaza City and the camps in the central part of the strip, where around one million Palestinians live and the hostages are thought to be held.

The potential operations, which could take months, would mean the mass displacement of people with the potential to worsen the humanitarian crisis there.

This could spark fresh condemnation from countries that have expressed anger over the situation in Gaza and urged Israel to end the nearly two-year war, which started as a response to the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023.

• LIVE: Security cabinet approved Gaza City plan

In a sign of major divergencies between the political and military leadership, the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, told Netanyahu that the full occupation of Gaza was “tantamount to walking into a trap”, according to reports in Israeli media.

Zamir, the reports said, warned that the offensive would endanger the lives of the 20 hostages who are believed to be alive as well as of soldiers, who are exhausted.

Many of the hostage families share those concerns, and say the only way to guarantee the release of the hostages is through a negotiated deal with Hamas.

According to the Maariv newspaper, the “prevailing assessment is that most and possibly all of the living hostages [will] die” during an expanded offensive, either killed by their captors or accidentally by Israeli soldiers.

Speculation over an expanded offensive have also exposed divergences between some of Israel’s international allies.

The British ambassador to Israel, Simon Walter, said the full occupation of Gaza would be a “huge mistake”, while also pushing back against US and Israeli allegations that a possible recognition of Palestinian statehood by the UK was a reward for Hamas.

Meanwhile, the US envoy, Mike Huckabee, a staunch supporter of Israel, said it was up to the Israeli government to decide whether to fully take over the Strip. “It’s not our job to tell them what they should or should not do,” he told CBS News, the BBC’s news partner in the US.

Netanyahu has, so far, failed to offer a vision for Gaza after the war apart from refusing to accept a governing role for the Palestinian Authority, the body that governs the occupied West Bank and recognises Israel.

Polls suggest most of the Israeli public favours a deal with Hamas for the release of the hostages and the end of the war.

Israeli leaders say Hamas, for now, is not interested in negotiating as, in their view, the group is feeling emboldened by the international pressure on Israel.

The threat of a full occupation could be part of a strategy to try to force the group into making concessions in stalled talks.

But many here believe that Netanyahu is prolonging the conflict to guarantee the survival of his coalition, which relies on the support of ultranationalist ministers who have threatened to quit the government if there is any deal with Hamas.

Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have also publicly defended expelling Palestinians from Gaza – which could amount to the forced displacement of civilians, a war crime – and resettling it with Jews.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.

The Hamas 7 October attacks on Israel killed about 1,200 people, while 251 were taken to Gaza as hostages.

A new robot shop has opened in Beijing selling everything from mechanical butlers to human-like replicas of Albert Einstein.

More than 100 types of products will be on sale at Robot Mall, which launched in the Chinese capital on Friday. The store is one of the first in the country to sell humanoid and consumer-oriented robots.

The outlet has been compared to a car dealership as it offers services including sales, spare parts and maintenance.

China has invested heavily in the robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) as it looks to overcome challenges such as slowing economic growth and an ageing population.

“If robots are to enter thousands of households, relying solely on robotics companies is not enough,” Wang Yifan, a store director, told Reuters.

The robots on sale range in price from 2,000 yuan ($278, £207) to several million yuan.

Visitors will be able to interact with a wide range of robots, including dogs and chess players, organisers said.

There is also a separate section offering replacement parts and robot maintenance services.

Robot Mall is located next to a themed restaurant, where diners are served by robots and the food is cooked by mechanical chefs.

China has increasingly prioritised the robotics industry, with subsidies topping $20bn over the past year.

The Chinese government is also planning a 1 trillion yuan fund for AI and robotics start ups.

The opening of Robot Mall coincides with the start of the five-day World Robot Conference, which started in Beijing on Friday.

Chinese state media said this year’s event will see more than 1,500 exhibits from over 200 local and overseas robotic companies.

Beijing is also preparing to host the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games from 14 to 17 August.

Teams from more than 20 countries will compete in events including track and field, dance and football.