Thousands of North Koreans are being sent to work in slave-like conditions in Russia to fill a huge labour shortage exacerbated by Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the BBC has learned.

Moscow has repeatedly turned to Pyongyang to help it fight the war, using its missiles, artillery shells and its soldiers.

Now, with many of Russia’s men either killed or tied up fighting – or having fled the country – South Korean intelligence officials have told the BBC that Moscow is increasingly relying on North Korean labourers.

We interviewed six North Korean workers who have fled Russia since the start of the war, along with government officials, researchers and those helping to rescue the labourers.

They detailed how the men are subjected to “abysmal” working conditions, and how the North Korean authorities are tightening their control over the workers to stop them escaping.

One of the workers, Jin, told the BBC that when he landed in Russia’s Far East, he was chaperoned from the airport to a construction site by a North Korean security agent, who ordered him not to talk to anyone or look at anything.

“The outside world is our enemy,” the agent told him. He was put straight to work building high-rise apartment blocks for more than 18 hours a day, he said.

All six workers we spoke to described the same punishing workdays – waking at 6am and being forced to build high-rise apartments until 2am the next morning, with just two days off a year.

We have changed their names to protect them.

“Waking up was terrifying, realising you had to repeat the same day over again,” said another construction worker, Tae, who managed to escape Russia last year. Tae recalled how his hands would seize up in the morning, unable to open, paralysed from the previous day’s work.

“Some people would leave their post to sleep in the day, or fall asleep standing up, but the supervisors would find them and beat them. It was truly like we were dying,” said another of the workers, Chan.

“The conditions are truly abysmal,” said Kang Dong-wan, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-A University who has travelled to Russia multiple times to interview North Korean labourers.

“The workers are exposed to very dangerous situations. At night the lights are turned out and they work in the dark, with little safety equipment.”

The escapees told us that the workers are confined to their construction sites day and night, where they are watched by agents from North Korea’s state security department. They sleep in dirty, overcrowded shipping containers, infested with bugs, or on the floor of unfinished apartment blocks, with tarps pulled over the door frames to try to keep out the cold.

One labourer, Nam, said he once fell four metres off his building site and “smashed up” his face, leaving him unable to work. Even then his supervisors would not let him leave the site to visit a hospital.

In the past, tens of thousands of North Koreans worked in Russia earning millions of pounds a year for the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, and his cash-strapped regime. Then in 2019, the UN banned countries from using these workers in an attempt to cut off Kim’s funds and stop him building nuclear weapons, meaning most were sent home.

But last year more than 10,000 labourers were sent to Russia, according to a South Korean intelligence official speaking to the BBC on the condition of anonymity. They told us that even more were expected to arrive this year, with Pyongyang possibly dispatching more than 50,000 workers in total.

The sudden influx means North Korean workers are now “everywhere in Russia,” the official added. While most are working on large-scale construction projects, others have been assigned to clothing factories and IT centres, they said, in violation of the UN sanctions banning the use of North Korean labour.

Russian government figures show that more than 13,000 North Koreans entered the country in 2024, a 12-fold increase from the previous year. Nearly 8,000 of them entered on student visas but, according to the intelligence official and experts, this is a tactic used by Russia to bypass the UN ban.

In June, a senior Russian official, Sergei Shoigu, admitted for the first time that 5,000 North Koreans would be sent to rebuild Kursk, a Russian region seized by Ukrainian forces last year but who have since been pushed back.

The South Korean official told us it was also “highly likely” some North Koreans would soon be deployed to work on reconstruction projects in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

“Russia is suffering a severe labour shortage right now and North Koreans offer the perfect solution. They are cheap, hard-working and don’t get into trouble,” said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a renowned expert in North Korea-Russia relations.

These overseas construction jobs are highly coveted in North Korea as they promise to pay better than the work at home. Most workers go hoping to escape poverty and be able to buy a house for their family or start a business when they return. Only the most trusted men are selected after being rigorously vetted, and they must leave their families behind.

But the bulk of their earnings is sent straight to the North Korean state as “loyalty fees”. The remaining fraction – usually between $100-200 (£74-£149) a month – is marked down on a ledger. The workers only receive this money when they return home – a recent tactic, experts say, to stop them running away.

Once the men realise the reality of the harsh work and lack of pay, it can be shattering. Tae said he was “ashamed” when he learnt that other construction workers from central Asia were being paid five times more than him for a third of the work. “I felt like I was in a labour camp; a prison without bars,” he said.

The labourer Jin still bristles when he remembers how the other workers would call them slaves. “You are not men, just machines that can speak,” they jeered. At one point, Jin’s manager told him he might not receive any money when he returned to North Korea because the state needed it instead. It was then he decided to risk his life to escape.

Tae made the decision to defect after watching YouTube videos showing how much workers in South Korea were paid. One night, he packed his belongings into a bin liner, stuffed a blanket under his bed sheets to make it look as if he was still sleeping, and crept out of his construction site. He hailed a taxi and travelled thousands of kilometres across the country to meet a lawyer who helped arrange his journey on to Seoul.

In recent years, a small number of workers have been able to orchestrate their escapes using forbidden second-hand smartphones, bought by saving the small daily allowance they received for cigarettes and alcohol.

In an attempt to prevent these escapes, multiple sources have told us that the North Korean authorities are now cracking down on workers’ already limited freedom.

According to Prof Kang from Dong-A University, one way the regime has tried to control the workers over the last year is by subjecting them to more frequent ideological training and self-criticism sessions, in which they are forced to declare their loyalty to Kim Jong Un and log their failings.

Rare opportunities to leave construction sites have also been cut. “The workers used to go out in groups once a month, but recently these trips have reduced to almost zero,” Prof Kang added.

Kim Seung-chul, a Seoul-based activist who helps rescue North Korean workers from Russia, said these outings were being more tightly controlled. “They used to be allowed to leave in pairs, but since 2023 they have had to travel in groups of five and are monitored more intensely.”

In this climate, fewer workers are managing to escape. The South Korean government told us the number of North Koreans making it out of Russia each year and arriving in Seoul had halved since 2022 – from around 20 a year to just 10.

Mr Lankov, the expert in North Korea-Russia relations, said the crackdowns were likely in preparation for many more workers arriving.

“These workers will be the lasting legacy of Kim and Putin’s wartime friendship,” he said, arguing the workers would continue arriving long after the war had ended, and the deployment of soldiers and weapons had ceased.

It’s the bilateral summit every European leader wants to be at.

And for good reason. On Friday, Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

Territorial concessions are likely to be discussed, and Europe (not least Ukraine) doesn’t want its borders to be redrawn through force.

But, as things stand, there are no invites for the country being invaded, nor the continent it sits in.

“Brace ourselves for some pretty outrageous Russian demands,” warns Lord Simon McDonald, a former head of the UK Foreign Office.

“It will be theatrical,” he adds. “Putin is going to ask for things that nobody else would concede – with the possible exception of Donald Trump.”

• Trump says he will try to get back territory for Ukraine in talks with Putin

President Zelensky has said he won’t agree to the giving up of any land, or even freezing the conflict along the current front lines.

His argument is that it won’t slow a Russian war machine that has waged a full-scale war for more than three and a half years. Concessions, he claims, would only speed it up.

“It’s clear Putin wants a photo with the most influential people on Earth, which is President Trump, and he wants sanctions to be postponed, which he’ll probably get,” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, tells me.

“The question is, what is success for the US in the meeting?” she asks. “If President Zelensky is there, it would be a clear success.”

But if Ukraine’s leader isn’t at the Alaskan table, how might the Kremlin’s proposals be challenged?

“He could go,” said the US president on that possibility. But Kyiv and Europe want it to go from a “maybe” to a “yes”.

Adding to their anxiety is the one-on-one format being a Kremlin idea the White House agreed to.

Brussels’ European Quarter isn’t its usual flurry of political activity during August, but these US-Russia talks have changed that.

On Monday, Kallas hosted a virtual meeting of foreign ministers where they called for an unconditional ceasefire before any deal. New sanctions for Moscow were announced as well.

I asked Kallas what she thought Donald Trump meant by suggesting some land could be swapped.

“We have to ask President Trump,” she says. “But it is clear an aggressor can’t be awarded for aggression. Otherwise, we will just see more aggression around the world because it pays off.”

Europe is trying to do two things: rally around Ukraine, as well as muscle in on this American-led peace process.

Whether or not Zelensky does make the trip, the door for Europe has firmly remained shut since Trump retook office at the start of the year.

At the time his envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said the bloc wouldn’t be involved in any peace talks. It’s a position the Europeans have been unable to change through diplomacy.

Their relationship with the US has still improved, not least with significant increases in their defence spending. But Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, believes they need a more central role.

“This is a matter of existential European security interest,” he explains.

“We appreciate Trump’s efforts but we’ll be taking our own decision in Europe too.

“A simple ceasefire would not resolve the problem.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has secured a remote sit down between European leaders, as well as Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, this Wednesday.

They hope to be consulted on America’s plan to end Russia’s invasion, but ex-UK Foreign Office head Lord McDonald would be surprised to see a last-minute European invite for Friday.

“The end will be as protracted as the war has been long,” he warned.

“The meeting is a milestone, but it doesn’t actually mean it will lead anywhere.”

A Chinese man has pleaded guilty in a US district court to exporting around 850 protected turtles wrapped in socks and falsely labelled as toys, the US Department of Justice said.

Between August 2023 and November 2024, Wei Qiang Lin exported to Hong Kong more than 200 parcels containing the turtles, according to a Justice Department statement on Monday.

The boxes packed with the turtles had been labelled as “containing ‘plastic animal toys’, among other things”, the authorities said.

Lin primarily shipped eastern box turtles and three-toed box turtles. Both species are native to the US and highly prized by some pet owners.

The turtles have unique markings on their shells, and are seen as a status symbol in China where they are often kept as pets.

US authorities estimated that Lin’s seized turtles had a combined market value of $1.4m (£1m). He was caught when the animals were intercepted by law enforcement during one border inspection.

Both species, which were smuggled in large quantities in the 1990s, are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Trade of the turtles can only be authorised with export permits or re-export certificates.

The eastern box turtle is also deemed vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Besides the turtles, Lin also exported 11 other parcels filled with reptiles, including venomous snakes, according to the Justice Department.

Lin, who is set to be sentenced on 23 December, faces up to five years in prison.

In March, another Chinese national was sentenced to 30 months in prison for smuggling more than 2,000 eastern box turtles.

The animals were also wrapped in socks and packed in boxes, which were labelled as containing almonds and chocolate cookies.

US authorities estimated at the time that each turtle could have been sold for $2,000 (£1,500).

The US and China have extended their trade truce for another 90 days, just hours before the world’s two biggest economies were set to hike tariffs on each other.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to continue the truce until 10 November, while Beijing also announced it would extend its tariffs pause.

It means the US will hold its levy on Chinese imports at 30%, while China will keep a 10% tariff on American goods.

Washington had threatened tariffs as high as 145% on Chinese goods earlier this year, with Beijing hitting back with 125% duties on US shipments. The rates for both countries were scaled back after a round of trade talks held in Geneva in May.

The latest truce extension will give more time for further negotiations about “remedying trade imbalances” and “unfair trade practices”, the White House said.

It cited a trade deficit of nearly $300bn (£223bn) with China in 2024 – the largest among any of its trading partner.

The talks will also aim to increase access for US exporters to China and address national security and economic issues, the statement said.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington said: “Win-win cooperation between China and the United States is the right path; suppression and containment will lead nowhere.”

In the statement, China also called on the US to lift its “unreasonable” trade restrictions, work together to benefit companies on both sides and maintain the stability of global semiconductor production.

A return of higher duties would have risked further trade turmoil and uncertainty amid worries about the effect of tariffs on prices and the economy.

But one US business owner told the BBC that the extension just means further uncertainty.

“There’s no way to plan for the future of the business,” said Beth Benike, founder of Busy Baby.

“Since I have no idea what the tariff is actually going to end up being I have no control or idea about the pricing that’s going to work for my business.”

Trade tensions between the US and China reached fever pitch in April, after Trump unveiled sweeping new tariffs on goods from countries around the world, with China facing some of the highest levies.

Beijing retaliated with tariffs of its own, sparking a tit-for-tat fight that saw tariffs soar into the triple digits and nearly shut down trade between the two countries.

The two sides had agreed to set aside some of those measures in May.

That agreement left Chinese goods entering the US facing an additional 30% tariff compared with the start of the year, with US goods facing a new 10% tariff in China.

The two sides remain in discussions about issues including access to China’s rare earths, its purchases of Russian oil, and US curbs on sales of advanced technology, including chips to China.

Trump recently relaxed some of those export restrictions, allowing firms such as AMD and Nvidia to resume sales of certain chips to firms in China in exchange for sharing 15% of their revenues with the US government.

The US is also pushing for the spin-off of TikTok from its Chinese owner ByteDance, a move that has been opposed by Beijing.

Earlier on Monday in remarks to reporters, Trump did not commit to extending the truce but said dealings had been going “nicely”. A day earlier he called on Beijing to increase its purchases of US soybeans.

Even with the truce, trade flows between the countries have been hit this year, with US government figures showing US imports of Chinese goods in June cut nearly in half compared with June 2024.

In the first six months of the year, the US imported $165bn (£130bn) worth of goods from China, down by about 15% from the same time last year. American exports to China fell roughly 20% year-on-year for the same period.

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.

Australia’s prime minister has accused his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu of being “in denial” over the consequences of the war in Gaza.

Anthony Albanese on Monday announced his country would recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September, following similar moves by the UK, France and Canada.

Albanese said frustration with the Israeli government had played a role in the move, saying Australians “want to see the killing and the cycle of violence stop”.

Israel, under increasing pressure to end the war in Gaza, has said recognising a Palestinian state “rewards terrorism” and Netanyahu called the decision taken by Australia and other allies “shameful”.

Netanyahu and his government have been facing growing condemnation over reports of starvation in Gaza.

Five people have died from malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including one child, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, bringing the total number of malnutrition deaths to 222 – including 101 children.

Israel denies there is starvation in Gaza and has accused UN agencies of not picking up aid at the borders and delivering it. The UN has rejected this, saying it faces obstacles and delays while collecting aid from Israeli-controlled border zones.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday, Albanese said he had spoken to PM Netanyahu last Thursday to inform him of Australia’s decision.

“The stopping of aid that we’ve seen and then the loss of life that we’re seeing around those aid distribution points, where people queuing for food and water are losing their lives, is just completely unacceptable. And we have said that,” he said.

“I spoke with PM Netanyahu. He again reiterated to me what he has said publicly as well, which is to be in denial about the consequences that are occurring for innocent people.”

Albanese had earlier said the decision to recognise a Palestinian state was made after receiving commitments from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, that Hamas would play no role in any future state

The move has drawn a mixed response in Australia, with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry calling it a “betrayal”, and some Palestinian activists saying it doesn’t go far enough.

Right-leaning opposition leader Sussan Ley said the decision was “disrespectful” to the US, a key Australian ally.

Earlier this month, a pro-Palestinian protest drew at least 90,000 supporters who walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge, a day after a court ruling allowed the demonstration to happen.

Netanyahu said in a press conference over the weekend that it was “shameful” for countries including Australia to recognise a Palestinian state.

“They know what they would do if, right next to Melbourne or right next to Sydney, you had this horrific attack. I think you would do at least what we’re doing.”

More than 61,000 people have been killed as a result of Israel’s military campaign since 7 October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel launched the offensive in response to the Hamas-led attack on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Nepal will make 97 of its Himalayan mountains free to climb for the next two years in a bid to boost tourism in some of its more remote areas.

It comes as permit fees to summit Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, during peak season will go up to $15,000 (£11,170) from September – the first increase in nearly a decade.

Nepal’s tourism department said it hopes the initiative will highlight the country’s “unexplored tourism products and destinations”.

Mountaineering generates a significant source of revenue for Nepal, which is home to eight of the world’s 10 tallest mountains. Climbing fees brought in $5.9m last year, with Everest accounting for more than three quarters of that.

The peaks for which fees will be waived are located in Nepal’s Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces, standing between 5,970m (19,590 ft) and 7,132m high.

Both provinces, located in the far-western region of Nepal, are among the country’s poorest and least developed provinces.

“Despite their breathtaking beauty, the number of tourists and mountaineers here is very low as access is so difficult. We hope the new provision will help,” said Himal Gautam, director of Nepal’s Tourism Department.

“They can create jobs, generate income, and strengthen the local economy,” he said, as reported by The Kathmandu Post.

But it is unclear if authorities have plans to improve infrastructure and connectivity to these remote areas – and how well communities in these areas might cope with an influx of climbers, if the free-to-climb initiative does take off.

Climbers have historically shown little interest in these 97 remote peaks – only 68 of them have ventured there in the last two years. In contrast, some 421 climbing permits were issued for Everest in 2024 alone.

Everest, the world’s highest peak at over 8,849m, has in recent years been plagued by overcrowding, environmental concerns and a series of fatal climbing attempts.

In April 2024, Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered the government to limit the number of mountaineering permits issued for Everest and several other peaks, saying that the mountains’ capacity “must be respected”.

In January this year, authorities announced a 36% mark-up in permit fees. For those attempting the summit outside the peak April to May season, it will now cost $7,500 to climb Everest during September to November and $3,750 during December to February.

Nepal’s parliament is also debating a new law that will require anyone wanting to scale Everest to have first summited a mountain over 7,000m in the country.

This makes the peaks in Karnali and Sudurpaschim “ideal training grounds”, according to The Kathmandu Post.

What does it mean to live in exile?

“When we were in school, our teachers used to say that there is an ‘R’ on our forehead – meaning refugees,” says Tibetan writer-activist Tenzin Tsundue.

Mr Tsundue is one of around 70,000 Tibetans living in India, spread across 35 designated settlements.

In 1959, thousands of Tibetans fled after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Following their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, they crossed treacherous Himalayan passes and reached India, where they were accepted as refugees on humanitarian grounds and because of shared religious and cultural ties.

But living, or even being born, in India doesn’t make them Indians, says Mr Tsundue.

Tibetans in India live on renewable registration certificates issued every five years. Those born here can apply for passports if a parent was born in India between 1950 and 1987 – but must surrender the certificate to do so. Many hesitate, as it’s closely tied to their Tibetan identity.

In July, as the Dalai Lama turned 90, thousands of Tibetan Buddhists gathered in Dharamshala – a quiet town nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The town serves as the headquarters of Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) – the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Even as they prayed for their leader’s long life, many like Mr Tsundue found themselves reflecting on the uncertainty of living in exile.

The emotional weight of displacement, the legal limbo of statelessness and geopolitics around the Dalai Lama hung heavy on the birthday celebrations.

• Thousands turn out to mark Dalai Lama’s 90 birthday

Tibetans continued migrating to India for decades after 1959, fleeing China’s tightening grip on their homeland.

Dawa Sangbo, 85, reached Dharamshala in 1970 after a gruelling seven-day trek through Nepal. “We ran at night and hid by day,” he recalls.

With no place to stay in India, he survived by living in a tent for 12 years and selling spices in villages near Dharamshala. He now lives with his son and wife in a neighbourhood largely inhabited by Tibetans.

For many like Mr Sangbo, fleeing to India may have provided security – but they still yearn for their homeland.

“A home is a home, after all,” says Pasang Gyalpo, who fled Tibet to Nepal before settling in India in 1990.

Five years later, Mr Gyalpo bribed Nepalese guards and slipped into Tibet to bring his family to India. But Chinese police chased him soon after arrival, forcing him to flee. His family remains in Tibet.

“They are in their homeland, I am in a foreign land. What else can I feel but pain?” he asks.

For younger Tibetans like Mr Tsunde, who are born in India, the pain is more existential.

“The trauma for us is not that we lost our land,” he says. “It’s that we were not born in Tibet and don’t have the right to live in Tibet. It is also this great sense of deprivation that something so very essential of our land, culture, and language has been taken away from us.”

Lobsang Yangtso, a researcher on Tibet and Himalayan regions, explains that being stateless means lacking a sense of belonging.

“It’s painful,” she says. “I have lived all my life here [in India] but I still feel homeless.”

Tibetans in exile are grateful to India for refuge but lament their lack of rights – they cannot vote, own property or easily travel abroad without an Indian passport.

“We have the IC [an official travel document] which is given by the Indian government as an identity certificate,” says Phurbu Dolma. But airport immigration staff often don’t recognise it.

Dorjee Phuntsok, a Tibetan born in India, pointed out that many corporate jobs in India often require Indian passports. “Without one, we miss out on many opportunities.”

• Who is the Dalai Lama and why does he live in exile?

In recent years, thousands of Tibetans in India have emigrated to Western countries using the IC, which some nations accept for visa applications.

Many have left on student or work visas, resettled in countries like the US and Canada, or gone abroad on sponsorships from religious and humanitarian groups.

Penpa Tsering, the president of the CTA, believes that the reason is mainly economic. “Dollars and euros go further than what’s available here,” he says.

But for some like Thupten Wangchuk, 36, who crossed over to India as an eight-year-old, the motivation is more personal.

“For [almost] 30 long years, I haven’t met my parents and relatives. I’ve no one here,” he says. “The sole reason I want to go to a Western country is that I can become a citizen there. Then I can apply for a visa and go into Tibet to visit my parents.”

Some Tibetans acknowledge the need to be pragmatic given the geopolitical pulls and pressures.

“If you ask any Tibetan, they’ll say they want to go back,” says Kunchok Migmar, a CTA official. “But right now, there is no freedom in Tibet. No one wants to go back just to be beaten by the Chinese.”

The latest flashpoint emerged days before the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday. He said his successor would be chosen by a trust under his office – a move China rejected, insisting it would decide under its law. Beijing called the succession issue a “thorn” in its ties with India.

India’s official stance is that it “does not take any position concerning beliefs and practices of faith and religion”. Notably, two senior ministers of the Indian government shared the stage with Dalai Lama on his birthday.

The Dalai Lama’s announcement that he would have a successor brought relief among Tibetans. But there is uncertainty over what his death could mean for the Tibetan movement.

“If we prepare ourselves well from now, when His Holiness is alive and [if] the future leaders who will follow us can continue the same momentum, then I think it should not affect us as much as people think it could,” says Mr Tsering.

His optimism is not shared by all Tibetans.

“It’s thanks to the current Dalai Lama that we have these opportunities and resources,” says Mr Phuntsok. He adds many Tibetans fear that after his passing, the community may lose the long-standing support that has sustained them.

Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl, after an intense 24 hours of speculation from fans.

Rumours began on Monday morning, when the singer’s marketing team posted a carousel of 12 photos with the caption “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era…”

In the hours that followed, her boyfriend Travis Kelce confirmed that she would be a guest on his podcast New Heights and Swift’s official website began a countdown to 00:12 ET (05:12 BST).

The pop star’s 11th album The Tortured Poets Department, released last year, broke the Spotify record for being the most-streamed album in a day.

The title of the album was announced on social media with a clip from Kelce’s podcast, and simultaneously made available for pre-order on Swift’s official website.

Fans who pre-ordered the album received a message which said it would ship before 13 October, but that “this is not the release date”.

The official release date for the new music is yet to be confirmed.

After years of headlines during her record-breaking Eras tour, Swift appeared to have a relatively quiet start to 2025.

In May this year, it was announced that she had bought back the rights to her first six albums, ending a long-running and highly publicised battle over the ownership of her music.

After her original masters sold, she vowed to re-record all six albums, which became known as “Taylor’s Versions”. To date, she has re-released four of the original six.

Swift announced her purchase of her original masters with a heartfelt letter to fans, where she wrote that the final two albums would “have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right.”

The singer wrapped up the Eras tour in December 2024, after playing 149 shows in 53 cities.

In the UK alone, she played to almost 1.2 million people, including eight nights at Wembley Stadium. The tour generated an estimated £1bn for the country’s economy, and was the catalyst for Swift officially claiming billionaire status.

The star also has a suite of awards to her name; she has been named Artist of the Decade by the American Music Awards, is the most awarded artist of all time at MTV’s Video Music Awards and has won 14 Grammys, including an unprecedented four Album of the Year awards.

World-famous coral reefs along Western Australia’s (WA) coast have suffered the worst bleaching on record after the state’s “longest, largest and most intense” marine heatwave, scientists say.

Between last August and this May, warmer water temperatures led to significant heat stress on the reefs, causing many of the coral to expel the algae which gives them life and colour – a process called bleaching, which is often fatal.

The damage – which will take months to assess – spans 1,500km (932 miles) and includes areas previously unscathed by climate change.

Coral reefs worldwide have been suffering from a two-year-long global coral bleaching event, due to record high ocean temperatures.

Eight weeks of heat stress is usually enough to kill coral, and early estimates showed many WA reefs suffered between 15 and 30, said Australia’s marine science agency.

“The length and intensity of the heat stress, and its footprint across multiple regions, is something we’ve never seen before on most of the reefs in Western Australia,” James Gilmour, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims), said.

In a new report, the Aims researchers found the 2024-25 season was the “most severe coral bleaching on record” for WA coral reefs across both the northwestern and central reefs.

“Areas which had given us hope because they’d rarely or not bleached before – like the Rowley Shoals, north Kimberley and Ningaloo – have been hit hard this time. Finally, climate heating has caught up with these reefs,” he said.

Ningaloo Reef is a World Heritage-listed site, just like the Great Barrier Reef on Australia’s east coast which has itself suffered from major coral bleaching in recent years.

Last week, a new report revealed the Great Barrier Reef – the world’s largest coral system stretching over 2,300km (1,429 miles) – experienced its biggest decline in coral in almost four decades.

Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the coral damage at Ningaloo “underlines the need for Australia and the world to take urgent action, including reaching net zero emissions”.

Climate change means bleaching events are becoming more frequent, more intense and more widespread, which Dr Gilmore says gives coral reefs – which need 10 to 15 years to recover – little time to bounce back.

“Climate change caused by carbon emissions remains the greatest threat to our coral reefs, and all reefs globally,” he said.

The UN has previously warned that even if the world limits global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, between 70 and 90% of the world’s tropical coral reefs will die.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

Golden, the breakout song from animated film KPop Demon Hunters, has clinched the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 – bagging yet another record for the Netflix summer flick.

The film, about K-pop girl band Huntr/x who uses music to protect humans from demons, has become Netflix’s most-watched animated film since its release in June.

It is the ninth song associated with K-pop to take the top spot on the Hot 100 – and the first by female singers.

The upbeat hit clocked nearly 32 million official streams in the first week of August, according to Billboard.

“Unlike other animated films, where songs are often added as a filler or commercial hook, the music here was woven into the narrative in a way that enhanced it rather than distracted,” Maggie Kang, the Korean-Canadian co-director of the film, previously told the BBC.

Golden is not the only track from the movie that has achieved commercial success. Coming in at number eight on the Hot 100 is the song Your Idol by Saja Boys, the fictional rivals of Huntr/x.

Both Golden and Your Idol topped US Spotify charts in July shortly after the film’s release, beating real life K-pop bands BTS and Blackpink.

Earlier this month, Golden climbed to the number one spot in the Official UK Singles Chart – becoming only the second K-pop single to do so, after South Korean rapper Psy’s Gangnam Style in 2012.

Official Charts CEO Martin Talbot said that this represented “another landmark moment for the globally dominating South Korean genre”.

“For the many music fans who have been to their enormous concerts, bought their merch and streamed their iconic songs, this will forever be the summer of Oasis – but K-pop’s superstars are certainly giving the Gallaghers a run for their money,” he said.

The track, sung by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, debuted at number 81 on the Hot 100 on 5 July, before steadily climbing to the top of the chart.

Ejae, who also co-wrote the track, previously told BBC Newsbeat the team had known Golden would be a “banger” – though the song’s massive success still came as a surprise.

“It’s like I’m surfing for the first time and a big wave just came through,” she said.

The film Kpop Demon Hunters has also become a massive hit for Netflix, becoming its fourth-most watched movie of all time within weeks of its release.

US reports say the streaming platform is considering turning it into a franchise with several sequels, hoping to replicate the success of Disney’s Frozen.

President Donald Trump has said he will deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington DC and is taking control of its police department to fight crime.

At a press conference, he declared “Liberation Day” for the city and pledged to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse”.

However, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has said the city has “seen a huge decrease in crime” and that it was “at a 30-year violent crime low”.

BBC Verify looks at what the figures show about violent crime in the capital and how it compares to other cities in the US.

Trump’s executive order declaring “a crime emergency in the District of Columbia” mentions “rising violence in the capital”. In his press conference he made repeated references to crime being “out of control”.

But according to crime figures published by Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police (MPDC), violent offences fell after peaking in 2023 and in 2024 hit their lowest level in 30 years.

They are continuing to fall, according to preliminary data for 2025.

Violent crime overall is down 26% this year compared to the same point in 2024, and robbery is down 28%, according to the MPDC.

Trump and the DC Police Union have questioned the veracity of the city police department’s crime figures.

• Trump deploys National Guard to Washington DC and pledges crime crackdown

Violent crime is reported differently by the MPDC and the FBI – another major source of US crime statistics.

MPDC public data showed a 35% fall for 2024, while the FBI data showed a 9% drop.

So the figures agree that crime is falling in DC, but differ on the level of that decline.

The downward trend is “unmistakable and large”, according to Adam Gelb, the CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), a legal think tank.

“The numbers shift depending on what time period and what types of crime you examine,” said Mr Gelb.

“But overall there’s an unmistakable and large drop in violence since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking.”

Trump also claimed that “murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever” in Washington DC – adding that numbers “just go back 25 years”.

When we asked the White House the source for the figures, they said it was “numbers provided by the FBI”.

The homicide rate did spike in 2023 to around 40 per 100,000 residents – the highest rate in 20 years, according to FBI data.

However, that was not the highest ever recorded – it was significantly higher in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.

The homicide rate dropped in 2024 and this year it is down 12% on the same point last year, according to the MPDC.

Studies have suggested that the capital’s homicide rate is higher than average, when compared to other major US cities.

As of 11 August, there have been 99 homicides so far this year in Washington DC – including a 21-year-old congressional intern shot dead in crossfire, a case Trump referred to in his press conference.

The president also mentioned the case of a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) who was injured in an alleged attempted carjacking in the capital at the start of August.

Trump claimed “the number of carjackings has more than tripled” over the last five years.

So far this year, the MPDC has recorded 189 carjacking offences, down from 300 in the same period last year.

According to the CCJ, carjacking rose markedly from 2020 onward and spiked to a monthly peak of 140 reported incidents in June 2023.

Since July 2025, a citywide curfew has been in force for people under the age of 17 from 23:00 to 06:00.

It was introduced to combat juvenile crime – including carjacking – which often spikes in the summer months.

“The level of violence in the District remains mostly higher than the average of three dozen cities in our sample,” Mr Gelb from the CCJ told us.

“Although its downward trend is consistent with what we’re seeing in other large cities across the country,” he added.

The CCJ looks at crime rates across 30 large US cities.

Its analysis suggests that the homicide rate in DC fell 19% in the first half of this year (January-June 2025), compared with the same period last year.

This is a slightly larger fall than the 17% average decline across the cities in the CCJ’s study sample.

However, if you take the first six months of 2025 and compare it to the same period in 2019 – before the Covid-19 pandemic – it shows only a 3% fall in homicides.

Across the 30 cities in the study, that decrease was 14% over the same timeframe.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

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.

The UN’s human rights office has condemned a targeted Israeli attack that killed six journalists in Gaza, calling it a grave breach of international law.

Five Al Jazeera journalists, including correspondent Anas al-Sharif, were killed in an Israeli air strike on Sunday. Two others were killed, including a freelance journalist, the broadcaster said.

Israel’s military said it targeted Sharif, alleging he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas” – something Sharif denied. Israel provided little evidence.

The BBC understands Sharif did some work with a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current conflict.

In social media posts before his death, the journalist is heard criticising Hamas.

• Follow live – Israel kills prominent Al Jazeera journalist and four colleagues in targeted attack in Gaza

Media rights groups and countries including Qatar condemned the attack.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said the UK government was “gravely concerned” and called for an independent investigation.

Speaking to reporters, Starmer’s official spokesman said Israel should ensure journalists can work safely and report without fear.

The funerals of Sharif, fellow Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa took place on Monday following the targeted missile strike on their tent in Gaza City.

Mohammad al-Khaldi was named by medics at al-Shifa hospital as the sixth journalist who was killed during the strike, Reuters news agency reported. Another person was also killed in the attack, it said.

Streets in Gaza were thronged with crowds gathered for the funerals. Anas al-Sharif was a household name who had millions of followers online.

Reporters Without Borders, a media freedom group, strongly condemned what it called the assassination of Sharif.

The Foreign Press Association said it was outraged by the targeted killing. It said the Israeli military had repeatedly labelled Palestinian journalists “as militants, often without verifiable evidence”.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was appalled by the attack and that Israel had failed to provide evidence to back up its allegations against Sharif.

“Israel has a longstanding, documented pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without providing any credible proof,” the organisation added.

The Israeli military has suggested it has documents found in Gaza that confirmed Sharif belonged to Hamas.

It said these include “personnel rosters, lists of terrorist training courses, phone directories and salary documents”.

The only materials that have been released for publication are screenshots of spreadsheets apparently listing Hamas operatives from the northern Gaza Strip, noting injuries to Hamas operatives, and a section of what is said to be a phone directory for the armed group’s East Jabalia battalion.

The BBC cannot independently verify these documents, and has seen no evidence of Sharif having involvement in the current war or remaining an active member of Hamas.

No Israeli explanation has so far been given for the killing of the entire Al Jazeera news crew.

CPJ says at least 186 journalists have been killed since the start of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza in October 2023 – the deadliest period for journalists since it began recording such data in 1992.

“Israel must respect & protect all civilians, including journalists,” the UN Human Rights office said in a post on X. “We call for immediate, safe and unhindered access to Gaza for all journalists.”

Last month, the BBC and three other news agencies – Reuters, AP and AFP – issued a joint statement expressing “desperate concern” for journalists in the Gaza Strip, who they say are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families.

The Israeli government does not allow international news organisations, including the BBC, into Gaza to report freely, so many outlets rely on Gaza-based reporters for coverage.

Meanwhile in Gaza, five more people have died from malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including one child, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

This brings the total number of malnutrition deaths to 222, including 101 children, the health ministry said.

The UN’s humanitarian agency said on Friday that the amount of aid entering Gaza continues to be “far below the minimum required to meet people’s immense needs”. Last month, UN-backed global food security experts warned the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out”.

Israel has continued to deny there is starvation in Gaza and has accused UN agencies of not picking up aid at the borders and delivering it.

The UN’s humanitarian agency has said it continues to see impediments and delays as it tries to collect aid from Israeli-controlled border zones.

Israel launched its offensive in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Since then, 61,430 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israel’s military campaign, according to the health ministry.

Five Al Jazeera journalists were killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza City on Sunday – among them 28-year-old correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who had reported prominently on the war since its outset.

The other four Al Jazeera journalists killed were correspondent Mohammed Qreiqeh, and cameramen Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa, Al Jazeera said.

Two others were also killed, the broadcaster said. Hospital officials named Mohammed al-Khaldi, a local freelance journalist, as one of them.

The targeted attack on a tent used by journalists has drawn strong international condemnation including from the UN, Qatar where Al Jazeera is based, and media freedom groups.

Israel says Sharif was “the head of a Hamas terrorist cell” but has produced little evidence to support that. Sharif previously denied it, and Al Jazeera and media rights groups have rejected the allegation.

The BBC understands Sharif worked for a Hamas media team in Gaza before the current conflict.

In some of his social media posts before his death, the journalist can be heard criticising Hamas.

Committee for the Protection of Journalists CEO Jodie Ginsberg told the BBC there was no justification for Sharif’s killing.

“International law is very clear on this point that the only individuals who are legitimate targets during a war are active combatants. Having worked as a media advisor for Hamas, or indeed for Hamas currently, does not make you an active combatant”, she said.

“And nothing that the Israeli forces has produced so far in terms of evidence gives us any kind of assurance that he was even an active member of Hamas.”

Anas al-Sharif became one of Al Jazeera’s most prominent reporters in Gaza during the war.

Born in the densely populated Jabalia area in the north of the Strip, he worked for Al Jazeera for about two years, the broadcaster said.

“He worked for the whole length of the war inside Gaza reporting daily on the situation of people and the attacks which are committed in Gaza,” Salah Negm, director of news at Al Jazeera English, told the BBC.

Married with a four-year-old daughter, Sham, and a one-year-old son, Salah, he was separated from them for long stretches during the war while he continued to report from the north of the territory after refusing to follow Israeli evacuation orders.

A joint Instagram post on his official account along with his wife’s in January this year showed a picture of Sharif smiling with his two children. The caption said it was the first time he was meeting Salah, after 15 months of war.

Sharif appeared frequently in live broadcasts, reporting extensively on the situation in Gaza.

He reported on the targeting of his colleagues, including prominent Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and cameraman Rami al-Rifi, who were killed in 2024 in an air strike in Gaza City.

His father had already been killed in December 2023 when the family home was targeted in an Israeli strike. Hours before he himself was killed, he posted about an intense Israeli bombardment of Gaza City.

Mohamed Moawad, Al Jazeera’s managing editor, described him as the “only voice left in Gaza City” – which Israel now plans to militarily occupy.

Raed Fakih, input manager at Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language channel, told the BBC Sharif was “courageous, dedicated, and honest – that’s what made him successful as a journalist with hundreds of thousands of social media followers from all over the world”.

Fakih, who is in charge of the channel’s bureaux and correspondents, added: “His dedication took him to areas where no other reporter ventured to go, especially those that witnessed the worst massacres. His integrity kept him true to his message as a journalist.”

Fakih said he spoke to Sharif many times on the phone throughout the war.

“In our last conversations, he told me about the famine and starvation he was enduring, about how hard it is to survive with so little food,” he said.

“He felt he had no choice but to amplify the voice of the Gazans. He was living the same hardships they are living now, suffering from famine, mourning loved ones.

“His father was killed in an Israeli bombing. In that way, he was like all Gazans: carrying loss, pain, and resilience. And even in the face of death, he persisted, because this is a story that must be told.”

Mohammed Qreieh, 33, was a father of two from Gaza City, the Associated Press news agency reported. Like Sharif, he was separated from his family for months during the war as he reported from the front lines in northern Gaza, AP added.

Qreieh’s last live broadcast was on Sunday evening, minutes before he was targeted, Al Jazeera Arabic reported.

The Israeli military accused Sharif of posing as a journalist, saying he had “served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas” and was responsible for launching rocket attacks at Israelis – but it has produced little evidence to support these claims.

In a statement, the IDF said it had documents which “unequivocally prove” his “military affiliation” with Hamas, including “personnel rosters, lists of terrorist training courses, phone directories, and salary documents”.

It has publicly released some screenshots of spreadsheets apparently listing Hamas operatives from the northern Gaza Strip, noting injuries to Hamas operatives and a section of what is said to be a phone directory for the armed group’s East Jabalia battalion.

Israel had previously accused Sharif of being a member of Hamas’s military wing – something he and his employer strongly denied.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a media freedom group, said the allegations against him were “baseless” and called on the international community to intervene.

“Without strong action from the international community to stop the Israeli army… we’re likely to witness more such extrajudicial murders of media professionals,” RSF said.

Nearly 200 journalists have been killed in the war Israel launched in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 assault, according to RSF.

Fakih from Al Jazeera accused the Israeli military of fabricating stories about journalists before killing them, to “hide what [it] is committing in Gaza”. Israel has previously denied targeting journalists.

He described this as a “longstanding pattern” and referred to the Israeli military’s killing of veteran Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqla, who was shot in the head during an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank in 2022.

The Israeli military concluded that one of its soldiers probably killed her, but called her death unintentional. Al Jazeera said its evidence showed it was a “deliberate killing”.

“Here is a crucial fact: had Israel been held accountable for Shireen’s assassination, it would not have dared to kill 200 journalists in Gaza,” said Fakih.

Sharif knew he risked being targeted by Israel after its Arabic-language spokesman posted a video of him in July and accused him of being a member of Hamas’ military wing.

In a post published on his X account, which was prewritten in the event of his death, Sharif said he “gave every effort and all my strength to be a support and a voice for my people… Do not forget Gaza.”

Unusual. Quid pro quo. Unprecedented.

That is some of the reaction to news that two of the world’s tech giants will pay the US government 15% of their revenue from selling certain advanced chips to China. Industry watchers, former government advisers, policy makers and trade experts have been giving their views on the deal.

The news comes mere months after the Trump administration banned the sale of these chips to China, citing national security concerns.

That ban was lifted in mid-July. And now it seems the US government will go a step further – becoming a part of these American firms’ business with China.

And critics argue that is both confusing and worrying.

These advanced chips are largely used for artificial intelligence (AI) applications at a time when investors are betting that AI will transform the global economy.

Last month, Nvidia – which is the world’s leading chip firm – became the first company ever to hit $4tn (£3tn) in market value.

Nvidia developed the H20 chip, and AMD developed the MI308 chip, especially for the Chinese market.

They are less powerful and therefore cheaper than both companies’ flagship chips.

But developing them was the only option for accessing the significant Chinese market after the previous administration of President Joe Biden banned US companies from exporting the most advanced chips to China because of national security concerns.

Under Trump, even the less powerful, made-for-China chips were banned.

The resumption of sales to China is a boon for both Nvidia and AMD because China is such a big market. China’s investment in AI is expanding so rapidly that analysts expect it to grow to roughly $100bn this year – a nearly 50% jump compared with last year.

“Unprecedented… I don’t know what the word is, but it’s bad,” says trade expert Deborah Elms.

Other experts say no US company has ever done anything like this before.

But Trump did do something similar in June when he approved the takeover of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel. That included a so-called “golden share”, a rare practice in which the government takes a stake in a business.

In this case, the White House has not said how the agreement will be implemented – such as where this money would go, or how it would be used.

More importantly, what message does it send to other US companies that see China as a key market or supplier – from Apple and Tesla to the small furniture and toymakers? Is this a tax that firms will now face for doing business with China?

The 15% cut that Nvidia and AMD have agreed to is likely to hurt their bottom line, even if they earn substantial profits from sales to China.

Chip-makers plan their operations years in advance so this could dampen investor sentiment, which depends heavily on earnings and revenue projections.

But this deal may be a part of Trump’s ongoing tariff negotiations. Just last week, he threatened 100% tariffs on foreign-made chips unless those companies invested in the US.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick even said chips exports were being used in negotiations with China in return for access to rare-earth elements.

That part is still unclear.

A US official told Reuters that the White House did not believe the sale of H20 and equivalent chips would compromise national security – despite the fact they were previously banned on these grounds.

National security experts and some lawmakers have long voiced concerns about the US selling AI chips to China, saying that Beijing could use them to gain an advantage in AI, as well as in military applications.

But others have argued that restricting chip sales to China does not help because it spurs Chinese innovation and greater competition. Rather, they want China to rely on US tech.

The latter argument seems to have won – for now.

That may well be the result of intense lobbying from Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang. He met Trump at the White House last Wednesday, and it is thought that is when they agreed to this deal.

It was also Mr Huang’s efforts that led to the reversal of the April ban on H20 sales to China.

The agreement is something of a win for China because it does want these chips.

Analysts say leading tech companies including ByteDance, Tencent and DeepSeek bought H20s before the US cut off access in April.

And it is a win for the US government, with analysts Bernstein Research telling the BBC it could make up to $2bn from chip sales to China.

There could be a further victory for Washington, if this leads to a deal on rare-earth elements with Beijing, which currently has a monopoly over the critical minerals.

But critics of the deal say they are alarmed about how this reflects on the White House.

This “is a very different US environment from the one that we’ve had in the past,” says Ms Elms, the trade expert.

“I suppose, generously, you could call it the flexibility of the Trump White House in responding to requests.”

Vineet Sawant has spent the last two years navigating the streets of Mumbai on a scooter as a delivery driver.

“Being on the road is always very stressful and especially in cities like Mumbai,” he says.

But when he started out language barriers were an additional problem.

His first language is Marathi and Mr Sawant speaks “very little” English. “I can understand but it’s very difficult to read,” he explains.

That caused problems at his new job.

He said: “At first, it was difficult. Everything was in English, and I can understand some of it, but I’m more comfortable in Marathi. I used to ask other delivery guys to help me figure out what to do.”

His employer, Zepto, promises “India’s Fastest Online Grocery Delivery”. So having drivers struggling with delivery instructions was not ideal.

To smooth this process a year ago, Zepto partnered with Reverie Language Technologies to introduce an AI translation service for its drivers.

Since then its delivery drivers have been able to choose between six languages on the Zepto app.

“I don’t have to guess anymore,” says Mr Sawant.

“Earlier I would take more time to read and sometimes even made mistakes. Now if the customer writes ‘ring bell’, I get that instruction in Marathi. So, I don’t have to ask or check again. It’s all clear.”

Mr Sawant’s difficulties are common.

“India has 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects,” says Professor Pushpak Bhattacharyya, from IIT Mumbai, one of India’s leading experts in the use of AI in Indian languages.

“Without tech, that understands and speaks these languages, millions are excluded from the digital revolution – especially in education, governance, healthcare, and banking,” he points out.

The rollout of new generative AI systems, like ChatGPT, has made the task more urgent.

Vast amounts of data, like web pages, books or video transcripts are used to train an AI.

In widely spoken languages like Hindi and English that is relatively easy to get, but for others it is more difficult.

“The main challenge to create Indian language models is the availability of data. I’m talking about refined data. Coarse quality data, is available. But that data is not of very high quality, it needs filtering,” says Professor Bhattacharyya.

“The issue in India is for many Indian languages, especially tribal and regional dialects, this data simply doesn’t exist or is not digitised.”

Reverie Language Technologies is now deploying its AI-driven translation technology for a range of Indian companies.

Co-founder Vivekananda Pani says that while translation technology will make communication easier, there is “potential for less common dialects to be pushed aside”.

“The challenge will be to make sure that the amazing benefits of AI-driven language advancements don’t accidentally shrink the rich variety of human language.”

To help tackle the problem Professor Bhattacharyya has contributed to Bhashini, a government project to develop those high quality datasets needed to train an AI.

As well as the datasets, Bhashini has built AI language models and translation services in 22 languages.

Started in 2022, it’s a huge undertaking, but has already made a lot of progress.

Bhashini currently hosts 350 AI-based language models that have processed more than a billion tasks.

More than 50 government departments work with Bhashini, as well as 25 state governments.

For example Bhashini tech is used in multi-lingual chatbots for public services and to translate government schemes into local languages.

“Bhashini ensures India’s linguistic and cultural representation by building India-specific AI models rather than relying on global platforms,” says Amitabh Nag, CEO of Digital India, Bhashini Division.

He hopes that within the next two or three years rural users will have voice-enabled access to government services, financial tools and information systems in their native languages.

These India-focused datasets will hopefully one day give people developing AI-based models the tools to make it much easier to adapt them for the entire population.

Currently, designing any AI programme to deal with complex processes such as healthcare can be extremely challenging.

Kshitij Jadhav, an associate professor at the Koita Centre for Digital Health at IIT Mumbai, is working on an AI programme which would help people quit smoking.

He explains that people at different stages of the process need different advice and they usually need a well-trained human to make that assessment.

But there are a limited number of practitioners who can help, particularly those that can operate in multiple languages, so Professor Jadhav is hoping his AI model can bridge the gap.

The AI “will first identify the kind of conversation the person needs and accordingly will frame questions, show empathy, emotions,” says Professor Jadhav.

And all that, hopefully, will eventually be done in 22 languages. Initial experiments are underway in English and Hindi.

“It will be very customized, it will not be something just off the shelf,” he says.

Back on the streets of the city, Vineet Sawant has increased the number of parcels he delivers from ten to around 30 a day, helped in part by the translation function in the delivery app.

He thinks it will help more people like him.

“It makes us feel like we belong. Not everyone understands English. When the app speaks our language, we feel more confident, and we work better.”

No-one would want to work without getting a salary, or even worse – having to pay to be there.

Yet paying companies so you can pretend to work for them has become popular among young, unemployed adults in China. It has led to a growing number of such providers.

The development comes amid China’s sluggish economy and jobs market. Chinese youth unemployment remains stubbornly high, at more than 14%.

With real jobs increasingly hard to come by, some young adults would rather pay to go into an office than be just stuck at home.

Shui Zhou, 30, had a food business venture that failed in 2024. In April of this year, he started to pay 30 yuan ($4.20; £3.10) per day to go into a mock-up office run by a business called Pretend To Work Company, in the city of Dongguan, 114 km (71 miles) north of Hong Kong.

There he joins five “colleagues” who are doing the same thing.

“I feel very happy,” says Mr Zhou. “It’s like we’re working together as a group.”

Such operations are now appearing in major cities across China, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Kunming. More often they look like fully-functional offices, and are equipped with computers, internet access, meeting rooms, and tea rooms.

And rather than attendees just sitting around, they can use the computers to search for jobs, or to try to launch their own start-up businesses. Sometimes the daily fee, usually between 30 and 50 yuan, includes lunch, snacks and drinks.

Dr Christian Yao, a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Management in New Zealand, is an expert on the Chinese economy.

“The phenomenon of pretending to work is now very common,” he says. “Due to economic transformation and the mismatch between education and the job market, young people need these places to think about their next steps, or to do odd jobs as a transition.

“Pretend office companies are one of the transitional solutions.”

Mr Zhou came across the Pretend To Work Company while browsing social media site Xiaohongshu. He says he felt that the office environment would improve his self-discipline. He has now been there for more than three months.

Mr Zhou sent photos of the office to his parents, and he says they feel much more at ease about his lack of employment.

While attendees can arrive and leave whenever they want, Mr Zhou usually gets to the office between 8am and 9am. Sometimes he doesn’t leave until 11pm, only departing after the manager of the business has left.

He adds that the other people there are now like friends. He says that when someone is busy, such as job hunting, they work hard, but when they have free time they chat, joke about, and play games. And they often have dinner together after work.

Mr Zhou says that he likes this team building, and that he is much happier than before he joined.

In Shanghai, Xiaowen Tang rented a workstation at a pretend work company in Shanghai for a month earlier this year. The 23-year-old graduated from university last year and hasn’t found a full-time job yet.

Her university has an unwritten rule that students must sign an employment contract or provide proof of internship within one year of graduation; otherwise, they won’t receive a diploma.

She sent the office scene to the school as proof of her internship. In reality, she paid the daily fee, and sat in the office writing online novels to earn some pocket money.

“If you’re going to fake it, just fake it to the end,” says Ms Tang.

Dr Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, says that China’s pretending to work trend comes from a “sense of frustration and powerlessness” regarding a lack of job opportunities.

“Pretending to work is a shell that young people find for themselves, creating a slight distance from mainstream society and giving themselves a little space.”

The owner of the Pretend To Work Company in the city of Dongguan is 30-year-old Feiyu (a pseudonym). “What I’m selling isn’t a workstation, but the dignity of not being a useless person,” he says.

He himself has been unemployed in the past, after a previous retail business that he owned had to close during the Covid pandemic. “I was very depressed and a bit self-destructive,” he recalls. “You wanted to turn the tide, but you were powerless.”

In April of this year he started to advertise Pretend To Work, and within a month all the workstations were full. Would-be new joiners have to apply.

Feiyu say that 40% of customers are recent university graduates who come to take photos to prove their internship experience to their former tutors. While a small number of them come to help deal with pressure from their parents.

The other 60% are freelancers, many of whom are digital nomads, including those working for big ecommerce firms, and cyberspace writers. The average age is around 30, with the youngest being 25.

Officially, these workers are referred to as “flexible employment professionals”, a grouping that also includes ride-hailing and trucker drivers.

Over the longer term Feiyu says it is questionable whether the business will remain profitable. Instead he likes to view it more as a social experiment.

“It uses lies to maintain respectability, but it allows some people to find the truth,” he says. “If we only help users prolong their acting skills we are complicit in a gentle deception.

“Only by helping them transform their fake workplace into a real starting point can this social experiment truly live up to its promise.”

Mr Zhou is now spending most of his time improving his AI skills. He says he’s noticed that some companies are specifying proficiency in AI tools when recruiting. So he thinks gaining such AI skills “will make it easier” for him to find a full-time job.

It was two months into their relationship when Dr Caroline Muirhead’s new boyfriend confessed he had killed a man and left him in a shallow grave.

Alexander McKellar offered to take her to the spot where the body was buried – and her quick thinking was crucial in cracking a case which had baffled police for three years.

Caroline secretly dropped a can of Red Bull at the spot, in a remote estate in Argyll, then called police to tell them about the location.

The shallow grave contained the body of Tony Parsons, who had gone missing on a charity cycle ride three years earlier.

Tony’s son Mike said that without Caroline’s intervention, it was unlikely that his body would ever have been found – and expressed the family’s gratitude for what she had done.

The case is the subject of a new two-part documentary which reveals the twists and turns of the police investigation and the Parsons family’s long wait for justice.

Mike Parsons told BBC Scotland News that his dad was the kind of man who was always determined to complete any challenge he set himself.

Tony had previously been treated for prostate cancer and wanted to give something back.

So he planned a 104-mile charity cycle from Fort William to his home in Tillicoultry, setting off on Friday 29 September 2017 and cycling through the night.

Mike said his family started to become concerned when Tony had not contacted them by Saturday night.

“I actually texted him myself, with what is my dad and myself’s sense of humour, a simple text: ‘Are you still alive?’

“Looking back now, it’s not nice to know that was the very last thing I texted to him, knowing at this point he would have been passed away.”

Tony was subsequently reported missing, sparking a major search operation.

Police knew he passed through Glencoe Village at about 18:00 on Friday before going on to the Bridge of Orchy Hotel in Argyll.

The last known sighting of him was at the hotel at 23:30 that night, before he headed south on the A82 in the direction of Tyndrum.

As the days progressed, former police officer Mike and his family grew increasingly concerned about Tony.

“I knew the timescales that would be involved,” he said.

“The longer the days went on, I knew in my head that the chances of him being found alive would be pretty slim.

“But I basically had to convince my mum there was still a chance, and lying to somebody like that is not easy.”

Despite numerous public appeals including an appearance by Mike on Crimewatch, it seemed that Tony Parsons had vanished into thin air.

Then, in late 2020, police received a phone call that would change everything.

The female caller was distressed.

She said she had information about a crime that had been committed three years earlier at Bridge of Orchy.

It concerned a hit and run, the concealment of a body, and lying to police.

She said the victim’s name was Tony Parsons.

The caller was Dr Caroline Muirhead, the girlfriend of Alexander McKellar. Known as Sandy, he worked on a nearby estate with his twin brother Robert.

Police had spoken to the brothers after an anonymous letter in August 2018 said they were in the Bridge of Orchy Hotel the night Tony Parsons had vanished, but no further action was taken.

In June 2020, they were again questioned about Tony and confirmed being in the hotel with a hunting party that night. However, they said they had not seen the cyclist.

In November 2020, Caroline Muirhead and Alexander McKellar had been together for two months.

She asked her boyfriend if there was anything in his past which may affect their future together.

He told her he had hit Tony as he drove home from the hotel with his brother, but did not seek medical assistance.

It was later revealed that Tony’s injuries were so bad that he would only have survived for 20 or 30 minutes without help – but it was unlikely that he had died instantly.

The twins left the area and came back to the site in another car before taking Tony’s body to the Auch Estate, where they buried him.

Mike Parsons said: “What they did was inhumane and you wouldn’t do that to animals.

“They killed him by not seeking any medical treatment.”

After confessing to his girlfriend, Alexander McKellar led her to the shallow grave where Tony’s body had been buried.

Caroline secretly dropped a Red Bull can as a marker for the spot, before later calling police.

Mike Parsons said she had shown “remarkable foresight.”

“Being brutally honest, I’m not so sure if I was in the same situation I would have done and thought the same way.

“From my perspective, I have nothing but massive amounts of gratitude for that, because had she not done that and put herself into these positions, then we would never have found my dad’s body.”

Tony’s body was recovered from the grave in January 2021 after a two-day operation by specialist officers.

He was found to have suffered “catastrophic” rib, pelvic and spine fractures following the collision.

Tony’s funeral was held at Stirling Crematorium in April 2021.

The brothers were arrested and questioned twice by police, but were initially uncooperative, giving “no comment” interviews.

With the evidence against the twins mounting, police eventually charged the pair with murder.

In July 2023, shortly before their trial was due to begin at the High Court in Glasgow, Sandy McKellar admitted the reduced charge of culpable homicide.

His brother had his not guilty plea to murder accepted, but the pair both admitted attempting to defeat the ends of justice by covering up the crime.

Sandy McKellar was sentenced to 12 years in jail, while his brother was jailed for five years and three months.

Mike Parsons said that no sentence would ever be enough.

“They have left my mum without a husband and us without a father.”

Mike said he would like his dad was remembered for the good he did in his life, rather than the circumstances of his death.

“For me, he was a grumpy old dad who you had your run-ins with every now and then,” he says, smiling.

“But, I’d like people to remember him as just the guy who wanted to help everybody.”

Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.

World-famous coral reefs along Western Australia’s (WA) coast have suffered the worst bleaching on record after the state’s “longest, largest and most intense” marine heatwave, scientists say.

Between last August and this May, warmer water temperatures led to significant heat stress on the reefs, causing many of the coral to expel the algae which gives them life and colour – a process called bleaching, which is often fatal.

The damage – which will take months to assess – spans 1,500km (932 miles) and includes areas previously unscathed by climate change.

Coral reefs worldwide have been suffering from a two-year-long global coral bleaching event, due to record high ocean temperatures.

Eight weeks of heat stress is usually enough to kill coral, and early estimates showed many WA reefs suffered between 15 and 30, said Australia’s marine science agency.

“The length and intensity of the heat stress, and its footprint across multiple regions, is something we’ve never seen before on most of the reefs in Western Australia,” James Gilmour, from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims), said.

In a new report, the Aims researchers found the 2024-25 season was the “most severe coral bleaching on record” for WA coral reefs across both the northwestern and central reefs.

“Areas which had given us hope because they’d rarely or not bleached before – like the Rowley Shoals, north Kimberley and Ningaloo – have been hit hard this time. Finally, climate heating has caught up with these reefs,” he said.

Ningaloo Reef is a World Heritage-listed site, just like the Great Barrier Reef on Australia’s east coast which has itself suffered from major coral bleaching in recent years.

Last week, a new report revealed the Great Barrier Reef – the world’s largest coral system stretching over 2,300km (1,429 miles) – experienced its biggest decline in coral in almost four decades.

Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that the coral damage at Ningaloo “underlines the need for Australia and the world to take urgent action, including reaching net zero emissions”.

Climate change means bleaching events are becoming more frequent, more intense and more widespread, which Dr Gilmore says gives coral reefs – which need 10 to 15 years to recover – little time to bounce back.

“Climate change caused by carbon emissions remains the greatest threat to our coral reefs, and all reefs globally,” he said.

The UN has previously warned that even if the world limits global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, between 70 and 90% of the world’s tropical coral reefs will die.

Sign up for our Future Earth newsletter to keep up with the latest climate and environment stories with the BBC’s Justin Rowlatt. Outside the UK? Sign up to our international newsletter here.

India’s top court has ordered authorities in Delhi and its suburbs to move all stray dogs from streets to animal shelters.

The court expressed concerns over rising “menace of dog bites leading to rabies” and gave an eight-week deadline to officials to finish the task.

Delhi’s stray dog population is estimated at one million, with suburban Noida, Ghaziabad, and Gurugram also seeing a rise, municipal sources say.

India has millions of stray dogs and the country accounts for 36% of the total rabies-related deaths in the world, according to the World Health Organization.

• Do India’s stray dogs kill more people than terror attacks?

“Infants and young children, not at any cost, should fall prey to rabies. The action should inspire confidence that they can move freely without fear of being bitten by stray dogs,” legal news website Live Law quoted the court as saying on Monday.

The court took up the issue following reports of increasing dog bites in Delhi and other major cities.

The court directed that multiple shelters be established across Delhi and its suburbs, each capable of housing at least 5,000 dogs. These shelters should be equipped with sterilisation and vaccination facilities, as well as CCTV cameras.

The court ruled sterilised dogs must not be released in public areas, despite current rules requiring their return to the capture site.

It also ordered that a helpline should be set up within a week to report dog bites and rabies cases.

Animal welfare groups, however, have voiced strong concerns over the court’s directive. They said that the timeline set up by the court was unrealistic.

“Most Indian cities currently do not have even 1% of the capacity [needed] to rehabilitate stray dogs in shelters,” said Nilesh Bhanage, founder of PAWS, a prominent animal rights group.

“If the court and the authorities actually want to end the menace, they should focus on strengthening the implementation of the existing regulations to control dog population and rabies – they include vaccination, sterilisation and efficient garbage management.”

Government data shows that there were 3.7 million reported cases of dog bites across the country in 2024.

Activists say the true extent of rabies-related deaths is not fully known.

The World Health Organization says that “the true burden of rabies in India is not fully known; although as per available information, it causes 18,000-20,000 deaths every year”.

On the other hand, according to data submitted in the parliament by the Indian government, 54 rabies deaths were recorded in 2024, up from 50 in 2023.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced they are extending their deal for films and TV shows with Netflix.

This has been described as a “multi-year, first look deal”, which would give Netflix a first option on proposals from Prince Harry and Meghan’s Archewell production company.

It’s a looser arrangement than their previous deal – but it disproves claims that the Sussexes and Netflix are going to completely part company.

Meghan said that she and Harry were inspired by the partnership with Netflix to “create thoughtful content across genres that resonates globally, and celebrates our shared vision”.

It’s not known how many years the deal is set to last or what financial arrangement is attached. The previous deal, launched in 2020, was believed to be worth about $100m (£75m).

The announcement comes ahead of the second series of the cookery show, With Love, Meghan, being screened later this month.

Audience figures from Netflix showed the first series was not even in the streaming service’s top 300 most popular shows in the first half of 2025.

With Love, Meghan, a lifestyle series which showed Meghan cooking with celebrity friends, had 5.3 million views. In comparison, the most-watched programme on Netflix during that time was the drama Adolescence with 145 million views.

A previous Netflix documentary, Harry & Meghan, recounting the couple’s departure from their lives as “working royals”, had a bigger audience, with 23.4 million views following its launch in December 2022.

Archewell has also announced a special Christmas season edition of With Love, Meghan, which invites viewers to “join Meghan in Montecito for a magical holiday celebration”.

With Love, Meghan has been accompanied by a food and drink range, called As Ever, which includes rosé wine and jams.

And there will be a show on Netflix later this year, with Harry and Meghan as producers, called Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within, about an orphanage in Uganda being a beacon of hope in a situation “where the shadows of the HIV/Aids crisis linger”.

Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, said: “Harry and Meghan are influential voices whose stories resonate with audiences everywhere.

“The response to their work speaks for itself – Harry & Meghan gave viewers an intimate look into their lives and quickly became one of our most-watched documentary series.”

Sign up here to get the latest royal stories and analysis every week with our Royal Watch newsletter. Those outside the UK can sign up here.

US President Donald Trump has picked a conservative think tank economist to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), after firing its previous head following weaker-than-expected jobs data.

The president said he was nominating EJ Antoni, a federal budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, to be commissioner of the key economic institution.

“Our Economy is booming, and E.J. will ensure that the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE,” he posted on Truth Social.

Earlier in August Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, claiming she had “rigged” jobs figures to make him look bad, an accusation that drew sharp criticism from economists across the political spectrum.

The US Senate, which is controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, needs to confirm the appointment.

Antoni, who has a PhD in economics, has previously criticised the BLS, questioning its methodology and calling its statistics “phoney baloney”.

Last November, he said in a post on X that the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) “needs to take a chainsaw to the BLS”.

Influential Trump ally Steve Bannon had given his enthusiastic backing for Antoni to take over at the BLS.

The agency is currently led by Acting Commissioner Commissioner William Watrowski, who has worked there for decades.

McEntarfer was fired after BLS figures missed expectations in July, stoking alarm about Trump’s tariff policy.

The agency also lowered employment data for the previous two months in the largest such downward revision – apart from the Covid-era – since 1979.

Although the revisions were bigger than usual, it is normal for the initial monthly number to be changed as more data comes to light.

The unprecedented move sparked accusations that Trump was politicising economic data.

Willam Beach, who previously headed the agency during Trump’s first term, said the move set a “dangerous precedent”.

McEntarfer worked for the government for more than 20 years before being nominated by Biden to lead the BLS in 2023.

Antoni has worked as an economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank.

He has taught a variety of courses on labour economics, money and banking, according to the Heritage Foundation.

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.

Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has got engaged to his long-term partner Georgina Rodríguez.

She announced the news on social media alongside a picture of a large ring, writing “Yes I do. In this and in all my lives” in her native Spanish.

No further details have been shared. Ronaldo, who is the most followed person on Instagram, has not yet made a comment about their engagement.

The couple have been together for nine years, after they met at a Gucci shop in Madrid where Rodríguez was working. He was playing at the Spanish club Real Madrid at the time.

The Portugal and Al-Nassr player has five children in total, two of whom he shares with Rodríguez.

Their youngest daughter Bella was born in April 2022, alongside a baby boy who was stillborn.

Rodríguez has also helped to raise Ronaldo’s other three children.

The 31-year-old, who starred in her own Netflix reality show I Am Georgina, previously addressed speculation around her engagement status. On the programme, she said her friends were “always joking about the wedding.”

“Since Jennifer Lopez’s song ‘The Ring Or When’ came out, they started singing it to me. And well, this is not up to me,” she added.

Famous faces including Kim Kardashian have liked the engagement announcement on social media. Piers Morgan, who interviewed Ronaldo in 2022, wished them “as much success in their marriage as he’s had on the football pitch!”

Celebrity make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury commented that it was “fabulous news”. Lauren Sanchez-Bezos, who married Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in June, said she was “so happy” for the couple.

The family currently live in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, where the Ronaldo plays for Al-Nassr. He joined the club in December 2022 for a reported annual salary of £177m ($238m).

In June 2025, it was announced that the 40-year-old’s contract had been extended until 2027 after speculation that he was preparing to retire.

In a post on X, Ronaldo wrote: “A new chapter begins. Same passion, same dream. Let’s make history together.”

A US judge has ruled grand jury materials in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking case will remain sealed, saying that making them public “would not reveal new information of any consequence”.

The justice department had asked Judge Paul Engelmayer to unseal the documents, in an effort to assauge anger among President Donald Trump’s supporters over the decision not to release all federal files on Maxwell’s associate, deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for crimes tied to Epstein, opposed unsealing the materials.

The judge wrote it was important to protect the secrecy of grand juries, who decide whether to indict people accused of crimes.

There are special circumstances where that secrecy is broken, Judge Engelmayer wrote in his 31-page decision.

But he wrote that “applying the exception casually or promiscuously, as the government’s motion to unseal the summary-witness grand jury testimony here invites” would hurt the grand jury system. It could, he wrote, set a precedent where people do not believe the proceedings will be kept secret, which may discourage witnesses from testifying and jurors from focusing solely on the merits of the case.

He dismissed the government’s argument that much of the information given to the grand jury was made public during her trial, although he agreed that “a member of the public familiar with the Maxwell trial record who reviewed the grand jury materials…would thus learn next to nothing new”.

The materials “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor” and “do not discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s,” he wrote.

Maxwell, 63, was convicted in December 2019 and was recently moved from a Florida prison to a new minimum-security facility in Texas.

Last week, one of her accusers said outside the court in New York that she should stay in prison for the rest of her life.

The BBC has reached out to Maxwell’s lawyers for comment.

Last month, she was interviewed by justice department officials under the Trump administration’s directive to gather and release credible evidence relating to the Epstein case.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to release what are known as “The Epstein Files”. But this summer the justice department and FBI said they had concluded that Epstein did not keep a “client list” and that the justice department would not be making additional files public.

In response to the backlash, Trump said Bondi should release “whatever she thinks is credible”. Meanwhile, a congressional committee has sent a subpoena to the justice department related to federal investigations into the allegations against Epstein and Maxwell, which go back 20 years.

The president, who was friends with Epstein, has denied prior knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said that he and the financier, who died in federal custody while awaiting trial, fell out in the early 2000s.

Golden, the breakout song from animated film KPop Demon Hunters, has clinched the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 – bagging yet another record for the Netflix summer flick.

The film, about K-pop girl band Huntr/x who uses music to protect humans from demons, has become Netflix’s most-watched animated film since its release in June.

It is the ninth song associated with K-pop to take the top spot on the Hot 100 – and the first by female singers.

The upbeat hit clocked nearly 32 million official streams in the first week of August, according to Billboard.

“Unlike other animated films, where songs are often added as a filler or commercial hook, the music here was woven into the narrative in a way that enhanced it rather than distracted,” Maggie Kang, the Korean-Canadian co-director of the film, previously told the BBC.

Golden is not the only track from the movie that has achieved commercial success. Coming in at number eight on the Hot 100 is the song Your Idol by Saja Boys, the fictional rivals of Huntr/x.

Both Golden and Your Idol topped US Spotify charts in July shortly after the film’s release, beating real life K-pop bands BTS and Blackpink.

Earlier this month, Golden climbed to the number one spot in the Official UK Singles Chart – becoming only the second K-pop single to do so, after South Korean rapper Psy’s Gangnam Style in 2012.

Official Charts CEO Martin Talbot said that this represented “another landmark moment for the globally dominating South Korean genre”.

“For the many music fans who have been to their enormous concerts, bought their merch and streamed their iconic songs, this will forever be the summer of Oasis – but K-pop’s superstars are certainly giving the Gallaghers a run for their money,” he said.

The track, sung by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, debuted at number 81 on the Hot 100 on 5 July, before steadily climbing to the top of the chart.

Ejae, who also co-wrote the track, previously told BBC Newsbeat the team had known Golden would be a “banger” – though the song’s massive success still came as a surprise.

“It’s like I’m surfing for the first time and a big wave just came through,” she said.

The film Kpop Demon Hunters has also become a massive hit for Netflix, becoming its fourth-most watched movie of all time within weeks of its release.

US reports say the streaming platform is considering turning it into a franchise with several sequels, hoping to replicate the success of Disney’s Frozen.

Thousands of North Koreans are being sent to work in slave-like conditions in Russia to fill a huge labour shortage exacerbated by Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the BBC has learned.

Moscow has repeatedly turned to Pyongyang to help it fight the war, using its missiles, artillery shells and its soldiers.

Now, with many of Russia’s men either killed or tied up fighting – or having fled the country – South Korean intelligence officials have told the BBC that Moscow is increasingly relying on North Korean labourers.

We interviewed six North Korean workers who have fled Russia since the start of the war, along with government officials, researchers and those helping to rescue the labourers.

They detailed how the men are subjected to “abysmal” working conditions, and how the North Korean authorities are tightening their control over the workers to stop them escaping.

One of the workers, Jin, told the BBC that when he landed in Russia’s Far East, he was chaperoned from the airport to a construction site by a North Korean security agent, who ordered him not to talk to anyone or look at anything.

“The outside world is our enemy,” the agent told him. He was put straight to work building high-rise apartment blocks for more than 18 hours a day, he said.

All six workers we spoke to described the same punishing workdays – waking at 6am and being forced to build high-rise apartments until 2am the next morning, with just two days off a year.

We have changed their names to protect them.

“Waking up was terrifying, realising you had to repeat the same day over again,” said another construction worker, Tae, who managed to escape Russia last year. Tae recalled how his hands would seize up in the morning, unable to open, paralysed from the previous day’s work.

“Some people would leave their post to sleep in the day, or fall asleep standing up, but the supervisors would find them and beat them. It was truly like we were dying,” said another of the workers, Chan.

“The conditions are truly abysmal,” said Kang Dong-wan, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-A University who has travelled to Russia multiple times to interview North Korean labourers.

“The workers are exposed to very dangerous situations. At night the lights are turned out and they work in the dark, with little safety equipment.”

The escapees told us that the workers are confined to their construction sites day and night, where they are watched by agents from North Korea’s state security department. They sleep in dirty, overcrowded shipping containers, infested with bugs, or on the floor of unfinished apartment blocks, with tarps pulled over the door frames to try to keep out the cold.

One labourer, Nam, said he once fell four metres off his building site and “smashed up” his face, leaving him unable to work. Even then his supervisors would not let him leave the site to visit a hospital.

In the past, tens of thousands of North Koreans worked in Russia earning millions of pounds a year for the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, and his cash-strapped regime. Then in 2019, the UN banned countries from using these workers in an attempt to cut off Kim’s funds and stop him building nuclear weapons, meaning most were sent home.

But last year more than 10,000 labourers were sent to Russia, according to a South Korean intelligence official speaking to the BBC on the condition of anonymity. They told us that even more were expected to arrive this year, with Pyongyang possibly dispatching more than 50,000 workers in total.

The sudden influx means North Korean workers are now “everywhere in Russia,” the official added. While most are working on large-scale construction projects, others have been assigned to clothing factories and IT centres, they said, in violation of the UN sanctions banning the use of North Korean labour.

Russian government figures show that more than 13,000 North Koreans entered the country in 2024, a 12-fold increase from the previous year. Nearly 8,000 of them entered on student visas but, according to the intelligence official and experts, this is a tactic used by Russia to bypass the UN ban.

In June, a senior Russian official, Sergei Shoigu, admitted for the first time that 5,000 North Koreans would be sent to rebuild Kursk, a Russian region seized by Ukrainian forces last year but who have since been pushed back.

The South Korean official told us it was also “highly likely” some North Koreans would soon be deployed to work on reconstruction projects in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

“Russia is suffering a severe labour shortage right now and North Koreans offer the perfect solution. They are cheap, hard-working and don’t get into trouble,” said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and a renowned expert in North Korea-Russia relations.

These overseas construction jobs are highly coveted in North Korea as they promise to pay better than the work at home. Most workers go hoping to escape poverty and be able to buy a house for their family or start a business when they return. Only the most trusted men are selected after being rigorously vetted, and they must leave their families behind.

But the bulk of their earnings is sent straight to the North Korean state as “loyalty fees”. The remaining fraction – usually between $100-200 (£74-£149) a month – is marked down on a ledger. The workers only receive this money when they return home – a recent tactic, experts say, to stop them running away.

Once the men realise the reality of the harsh work and lack of pay, it can be shattering. Tae said he was “ashamed” when he learnt that other construction workers from central Asia were being paid five times more than him for a third of the work. “I felt like I was in a labour camp; a prison without bars,” he said.

The labourer Jin still bristles when he remembers how the other workers would call them slaves. “You are not men, just machines that can speak,” they jeered. At one point, Jin’s manager told him he might not receive any money when he returned to North Korea because the state needed it instead. It was then he decided to risk his life to escape.

Tae made the decision to defect after watching YouTube videos showing how much workers in South Korea were paid. One night, he packed his belongings into a bin liner, stuffed a blanket under his bed sheets to make it look as if he was still sleeping, and crept out of his construction site. He hailed a taxi and travelled thousands of kilometres across the country to meet a lawyer who helped arrange his journey on to Seoul.

In recent years, a small number of workers have been able to orchestrate their escapes using forbidden second-hand smartphones, bought by saving the small daily allowance they received for cigarettes and alcohol.

In an attempt to prevent these escapes, multiple sources have told us that the North Korean authorities are now cracking down on workers’ already limited freedom.

According to Prof Kang from Dong-A University, one way the regime has tried to control the workers over the last year is by subjecting them to more frequent ideological training and self-criticism sessions, in which they are forced to declare their loyalty to Kim Jong Un and log their failings.

Rare opportunities to leave construction sites have also been cut. “The workers used to go out in groups once a month, but recently these trips have reduced to almost zero,” Prof Kang added.

Kim Seung-chul, a Seoul-based activist who helps rescue North Korean workers from Russia, said these outings were being more tightly controlled. “They used to be allowed to leave in pairs, but since 2023 they have had to travel in groups of five and are monitored more intensely.”

In this climate, fewer workers are managing to escape. The South Korean government told us the number of North Koreans making it out of Russia each year and arriving in Seoul had halved since 2022 – from around 20 a year to just 10.

Mr Lankov, the expert in North Korea-Russia relations, said the crackdowns were likely in preparation for many more workers arriving.

“These workers will be the lasting legacy of Kim and Putin’s wartime friendship,” he said, arguing the workers would continue arriving long after the war had ended, and the deployment of soldiers and weapons had ceased.

It’s the bilateral summit every European leader wants to be at.

And for good reason. On Friday, Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.

Territorial concessions are likely to be discussed, and Europe (not least Ukraine) doesn’t want its borders to be redrawn through force.

But, as things stand, there are no invites for the country being invaded, nor the continent it sits in.

“Brace ourselves for some pretty outrageous Russian demands,” warns Lord Simon McDonald, a former head of the UK Foreign Office.

“It will be theatrical,” he adds. “Putin is going to ask for things that nobody else would concede – with the possible exception of Donald Trump.”

• Trump says he will try to get back territory for Ukraine in talks with Putin

President Zelensky has said he won’t agree to the giving up of any land, or even freezing the conflict along the current front lines.

His argument is that it won’t slow a Russian war machine that has waged a full-scale war for more than three and a half years. Concessions, he claims, would only speed it up.

“It’s clear Putin wants a photo with the most influential people on Earth, which is President Trump, and he wants sanctions to be postponed, which he’ll probably get,” the EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, tells me.

“The question is, what is success for the US in the meeting?” she asks. “If President Zelensky is there, it would be a clear success.”

But if Ukraine’s leader isn’t at the Alaskan table, how might the Kremlin’s proposals be challenged?

“He could go,” said the US president on that possibility. But Kyiv and Europe want it to go from a “maybe” to a “yes”.

Adding to their anxiety is the one-on-one format being a Kremlin idea the White House agreed to.

Brussels’ European Quarter isn’t its usual flurry of political activity during August, but these US-Russia talks have changed that.

On Monday, Kallas hosted a virtual meeting of foreign ministers where they called for an unconditional ceasefire before any deal. New sanctions for Moscow were announced as well.

I asked Kallas what she thought Donald Trump meant by suggesting some land could be swapped.

“We have to ask President Trump,” she says. “But it is clear an aggressor can’t be awarded for aggression. Otherwise, we will just see more aggression around the world because it pays off.”

Europe is trying to do two things: rally around Ukraine, as well as muscle in on this American-led peace process.

Whether or not Zelensky does make the trip, the door for Europe has firmly remained shut since Trump retook office at the start of the year.

At the time his envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said the bloc wouldn’t be involved in any peace talks. It’s a position the Europeans have been unable to change through diplomacy.

Their relationship with the US has still improved, not least with significant increases in their defence spending. But Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, believes they need a more central role.

“This is a matter of existential European security interest,” he explains.

“We appreciate Trump’s efforts but we’ll be taking our own decision in Europe too.

“A simple ceasefire would not resolve the problem.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has secured a remote sit down between European leaders, as well as Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, this Wednesday.

They hope to be consulted on America’s plan to end Russia’s invasion, but ex-UK Foreign Office head Lord McDonald would be surprised to see a last-minute European invite for Friday.

“The end will be as protracted as the war has been long,” he warned.

“The meeting is a milestone, but it doesn’t actually mean it will lead anywhere.”

Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl, after an intense 24 hours of speculation from fans.

Rumours began on Monday morning, when the singer’s marketing team posted a carousel of 12 photos with the caption “Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era…”

In the hours that followed, her boyfriend Travis Kelce confirmed that she would be a guest on his podcast New Heights and Swift’s official website began a countdown to 00:12 ET (05:12 BST).

The pop star’s 11th album The Tortured Poets Department, released last year, broke the Spotify record for being the most-streamed album in a day.

The title of the album was announced on social media with a clip from Kelce’s podcast, and simultaneously made available for pre-order on Swift’s official website.

Fans who pre-ordered the album received a message which said it would ship before 13 October, but that “this is not the release date”.

The official release date for the new music is yet to be confirmed.

After years of headlines during her record-breaking Eras tour, Swift appeared to have a relatively quiet start to 2025.

In May this year, it was announced that she had bought back the rights to her first six albums, ending a long-running and highly publicised battle over the ownership of her music.

After her original masters sold, she vowed to re-record all six albums, which became known as “Taylor’s Versions”. To date, she has re-released four of the original six.

Swift announced her purchase of her original masters with a heartfelt letter to fans, where she wrote that the final two albums would “have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right.”

The singer wrapped up the Eras tour in December 2024, after playing 149 shows in 53 cities.

In the UK alone, she played to almost 1.2 million people, including eight nights at Wembley Stadium. The tour generated an estimated £1bn for the country’s economy, and was the catalyst for Swift officially claiming billionaire status.

The star also has a suite of awards to her name; she has been named Artist of the Decade by the American Music Awards, is the most awarded artist of all time at MTV’s Video Music Awards and has won 14 Grammys, including an unprecedented four Album of the Year awards.

Australia’s prime minister has accused his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu of being “in denial” over the consequences of the war in Gaza.

Anthony Albanese on Monday announced his country would recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September, following similar moves by the UK, France and Canada.

Albanese said frustration with the Israeli government had played a role in the move, saying Australians “want to see the killing and the cycle of violence stop”.

Israel, under increasing pressure to end the war in Gaza, has said recognising a Palestinian state “rewards terrorism” and Netanyahu called the decision taken by Australia and other allies “shameful”.

Netanyahu and his government have been facing growing condemnation over reports of starvation in Gaza.

Five people have died from malnutrition in the past 24 hours, including one child, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, bringing the total number of malnutrition deaths to 222 – including 101 children.

Israel denies there is starvation in Gaza and has accused UN agencies of not picking up aid at the borders and delivering it. The UN has rejected this, saying it faces obstacles and delays while collecting aid from Israeli-controlled border zones.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday, Albanese said he had spoken to PM Netanyahu last Thursday to inform him of Australia’s decision.

“The stopping of aid that we’ve seen and then the loss of life that we’re seeing around those aid distribution points, where people queuing for food and water are losing their lives, is just completely unacceptable. And we have said that,” he said.

“I spoke with PM Netanyahu. He again reiterated to me what he has said publicly as well, which is to be in denial about the consequences that are occurring for innocent people.”

Albanese had earlier said the decision to recognise a Palestinian state was made after receiving commitments from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, that Hamas would play no role in any future state

The move has drawn a mixed response in Australia, with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry calling it a “betrayal”, and some Palestinian activists saying it doesn’t go far enough.

Right-leaning opposition leader Sussan Ley said the decision was “disrespectful” to the US, a key Australian ally.

Earlier this month, a pro-Palestinian protest drew at least 90,000 supporters who walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge, a day after a court ruling allowed the demonstration to happen.

Netanyahu said in a press conference over the weekend that it was “shameful” for countries including Australia to recognise a Palestinian state.

“They know what they would do if, right next to Melbourne or right next to Sydney, you had this horrific attack. I think you would do at least what we’re doing.”

More than 61,000 people have been killed as a result of Israel’s military campaign since 7 October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel launched the offensive in response to the Hamas-led attack on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

President Donald Trump has said he will deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Washington DC and is taking control of its police department to fight crime.

At a press conference, he declared “Liberation Day” for the city and pledged to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse”.

However, Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has said the city has “seen a huge decrease in crime” and that it was “at a 30-year violent crime low”.

BBC Verify looks at what the figures show about violent crime in the capital and how it compares to other cities in the US.

Trump’s executive order declaring “a crime emergency in the District of Columbia” mentions “rising violence in the capital”. In his press conference he made repeated references to crime being “out of control”.

But according to crime figures published by Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police (MPDC), violent offences fell after peaking in 2023 and in 2024 hit their lowest level in 30 years.

They are continuing to fall, according to preliminary data for 2025.

Violent crime overall is down 26% this year compared to the same point in 2024, and robbery is down 28%, according to the MPDC.

Trump and the DC Police Union have questioned the veracity of the city police department’s crime figures.

• Trump deploys National Guard to Washington DC and pledges crime crackdown

Violent crime is reported differently by the MPDC and the FBI – another major source of US crime statistics.

MPDC public data showed a 35% fall for 2024, while the FBI data showed a 9% drop.

So the figures agree that crime is falling in DC, but differ on the level of that decline.

The downward trend is “unmistakable and large”, according to Adam Gelb, the CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), a legal think tank.

“The numbers shift depending on what time period and what types of crime you examine,” said Mr Gelb.

“But overall there’s an unmistakable and large drop in violence since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking.”

Trump also claimed that “murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever” in Washington DC – adding that numbers “just go back 25 years”.

When we asked the White House the source for the figures, they said it was “numbers provided by the FBI”.

The homicide rate did spike in 2023 to around 40 per 100,000 residents – the highest rate in 20 years, according to FBI data.

However, that was not the highest ever recorded – it was significantly higher in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.

The homicide rate dropped in 2024 and this year it is down 12% on the same point last year, according to the MPDC.

Studies have suggested that the capital’s homicide rate is higher than average, when compared to other major US cities.

As of 11 August, there have been 99 homicides so far this year in Washington DC – including a 21-year-old congressional intern shot dead in crossfire, a case Trump referred to in his press conference.

The president also mentioned the case of a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) who was injured in an alleged attempted carjacking in the capital at the start of August.

Trump claimed “the number of carjackings has more than tripled” over the last five years.

So far this year, the MPDC has recorded 189 carjacking offences, down from 300 in the same period last year.

According to the CCJ, carjacking rose markedly from 2020 onward and spiked to a monthly peak of 140 reported incidents in June 2023.

Since July 2025, a citywide curfew has been in force for people under the age of 17 from 23:00 to 06:00.

It was introduced to combat juvenile crime – including carjacking – which often spikes in the summer months.

“The level of violence in the District remains mostly higher than the average of three dozen cities in our sample,” Mr Gelb from the CCJ told us.

“Although its downward trend is consistent with what we’re seeing in other large cities across the country,” he added.

The CCJ looks at crime rates across 30 large US cities.

Its analysis suggests that the homicide rate in DC fell 19% in the first half of this year (January-June 2025), compared with the same period last year.

This is a slightly larger fall than the 17% average decline across the cities in the CCJ’s study sample.

However, if you take the first six months of 2025 and compare it to the same period in 2019 – before the Covid-19 pandemic – it shows only a 3% fall in homicides.

Across the 30 cities in the study, that decrease was 14% over the same timeframe.

What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?

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.

Nepal will make 97 of its Himalayan mountains free to climb for the next two years in a bid to boost tourism in some of its more remote areas.

It comes as permit fees to summit Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, during peak season will go up to $15,000 (£11,170) from September – the first increase in nearly a decade.

Nepal’s tourism department said it hopes the initiative will highlight the country’s “unexplored tourism products and destinations”.

Mountaineering generates a significant source of revenue for Nepal, which is home to eight of the world’s 10 tallest mountains. Climbing fees brought in $5.9m last year, with Everest accounting for more than three quarters of that.

The peaks for which fees will be waived are located in Nepal’s Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces, standing between 5,970m (19,590 ft) and 7,132m high.

Both provinces, located in the far-western region of Nepal, are among the country’s poorest and least developed provinces.

“Despite their breathtaking beauty, the number of tourists and mountaineers here is very low as access is so difficult. We hope the new provision will help,” said Himal Gautam, director of Nepal’s Tourism Department.

“They can create jobs, generate income, and strengthen the local economy,” he said, as reported by The Kathmandu Post.

But it is unclear if authorities have plans to improve infrastructure and connectivity to these remote areas – and how well communities in these areas might cope with an influx of climbers, if the free-to-climb initiative does take off.

Climbers have historically shown little interest in these 97 remote peaks – only 68 of them have ventured there in the last two years. In contrast, some 421 climbing permits were issued for Everest in 2024 alone.

Everest, the world’s highest peak at over 8,849m, has in recent years been plagued by overcrowding, environmental concerns and a series of fatal climbing attempts.

In April 2024, Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered the government to limit the number of mountaineering permits issued for Everest and several other peaks, saying that the mountains’ capacity “must be respected”.

In January this year, authorities announced a 36% mark-up in permit fees. For those attempting the summit outside the peak April to May season, it will now cost $7,500 to climb Everest during September to November and $3,750 during December to February.

Nepal’s parliament is also debating a new law that will require anyone wanting to scale Everest to have first summited a mountain over 7,000m in the country.

This makes the peaks in Karnali and Sudurpaschim “ideal training grounds”, according to The Kathmandu Post.

The bones of a British man who died in a terrible accident in Antarctica in 1959 have been discovered in a melting glacier.

The remains were found in January by a Polish Antarctic expedition, alongside a wristwatch, a radio, and a pipe.

He has now been formally identified as Dennis “Tink” Bell, who fell into a crevasse aged 25 when working for the organisation that became the British Antarctic Survey.

“I had long given up on finding my brother. It is just remarkable, astonishing. I can’t get over it,” David Bell, 86, tells BBC News.

“Dennis was one of the many brave personnel who contributed to the early science and exploration of Antarctica under extraordinarily harsh conditions,” says Professor Dame Jane Francis, director of the British Antarctic Survey .

“Even though he was lost in 1959, his memory lived on among colleagues and in the legacy of polar research,” she adds.

It was David who answered the door in his family home in Harrow, London, in July 1959.

“The telegram boy said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you, but this is bad news’,” he says. He went upstairs to tell his parents.

“It was a horrendous moment,” he adds.

Talking to me from his home in Australia and sitting next to his wife Yvonne, David smiles as stories from his childhood in 1940s England spill out.

They are the memories of a younger sibling admiring a charming, adventurous big brother.

“Dennis was fantastic company. He was very amusing. The life and soul of wherever he happened to be,” David says.

“I still can’t get over this, but one evening when me, my mother and father came home from the cinema,” he says.

“And I have to say this in fairness to Dennis, he had put a newspaper down on the kitchen table, but on top of it, he’d taken a motorbike engine apart and it was all over the table,” he says.

“I can remember his style of dress, he always used to wear duffel coats. He was just an average sort of fellow who enjoyed life,” he adds.

Dennis Bell, nickednamed “Tink”, was born in 1934. He worked with the RAF and trained as a meteorologist, before joining the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey to work in Antarctica.

“He was obsessed with Scott’s diaries,” David says, referring to Captain Robert Scott who was one of the first men to reach the South Pole and died on an expedition in 1912.

Dennis went to Antarctica in 1958. He was stationed for a two-year assignment at Admiralty Bay, a small UK base with about 12 men on King George Island, which is roughly 120 kilometres (75 miles) off the northern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The British Antarctic Survey keeps meticulous records and its archivist Ieuan Hopkins has dug out detailed base camp reports about Dennis’s work and antics on the harsh and “ridiculously isolated” island.

Reading aloud, Mr Hopkins says: “He’s cheerful and industrious, with a mischievous sense of humour and fondness for practical jokes.”

Dennis’s job was to send up meteorological weather balloons and radio the reports to the UK every three hours, which involved firing up a generator in sub-zero conditions.

Described as the best cook in the hut, he was in charge of the food store over the winter when no supplies could reach them.

Antarctica felt even more cut off than it is today, with extremely limited contact with home. David recalls recording a Christmas message at BBC studios with his parents and sister Valerie to be sent to his brother.

He was best known for his love of the husky dogs used to pull sledges around the island, and he raised two litters of dogs.

He was also involved in surveying King George Island to produce some of the first mapping of the largely unexplored place.

It was on a surveying trip that the accident happened, a few weeks after his 25th birthday.

On 26 July 1959, in the deep Antarctic winter, Dennis and a man called Jeff Stokes left the base to climb and survey a glacier.

Accounts in the British Antarctic Survey records explain what happened next and the desperate attempts to rescue him.

The snow was deep and the dogs had started to show signs of tiredness. Dennis went on ahead alone to encourage them, but he wasn’t wearing his skis. Suddenly he disappeared into a crevasse, leaving a hole behind him.

According to the accounts, Jeff Stokes called into the depths and Dennis was able to shout back. He grabbed onto a rope that was lowered down. The dogs pulled on the rope and Dennis was hitched up to the lip of the hole.

But he had tied the rope onto his belt, perhaps because of the angle he lay in. As he reached the lip, the belt broke and he fell again. His friend called again, but this time Dennis didn’t reply.

“That’s a story I shall never get over,” says David.

The base camp reports about the accident are business-like.

“We heard from Jeff […] that yesterday Tink fell down a crevasse and was killed. We hope to return tomorrow, sea ice permitting,” it continues.

Mr Hopkins explains that another man, called Alan Sharman, had died weeks earlier, and the morale was very low.

“The sledge has got back. We heard the sad details. Jeff has badly bitten frostbitten hands. We are not taking any more risks to recover,” the report reads the day after the accident.

Reading the reports again, Mr Hopkins discovered that earlier in the season, it had been Dennis who’d made the coffin for Alan Sharman.

“My mother never really got over it. She couldn’t handle photographs of him and couldn’t talk about him,” David says.

He recalls that two men on Dennis’s base visited the family, bringing a sheepskin as a gesture.

“But there was no conclusion. There was no service; there was no anything. Just Dennis gone,” David says.

About 15 years ago, David was contacted by Rod Rhys Jones, chair of the British Antarctic Monument Trust.

Since 1944, 29 people have died working on British Antarctic Territory on scientific missions, according to the trust.

Rod was organising a voyage for relatives of some of the 29 to see the spectacular and remote place where their loved ones had lived and died.

David joined the expedition, called South 2015.

“The captain stopped at the locations and give four or five hoots of the siren,” he says.

The sea-ice was too thick for David to reach his brother’s hut on King George Island.

“But it was very, very moving. It lifted the pressure, a weight off my head, as it were,” he says.

It gave him a sense of closure.

“And I thought that would be it,” he says.

But on 29 January this year, a team of Polish researchers working from the Henryk Arctowski Polish Antarctic Station stumbled across something practically on their doorstep.

Dennis had been found.

Some bones were in the loose ice and rocks deposited at the foot of Ecology Glacier on King George Island. Others were found on the glacier surface.

The scientists explain that fresh snowfall was imminent, and they put down a GPS marker so their “fellow polar colleague” would not be lost again.

A team of scientists made up of Piotr Kittel, Paulina Borówka and Artur Ginter at University of Lodz, Dariusz Puczko at the Polish Academy of Sciences and fellow researcher Artur Adamek carefully rescued the remains in four trips.

It is a dangerous and unstable place, “criss-crossed with crevasses”, and with slopes of up to 45 degrees, according to the Polish team.

Climate change is causing dramatic changes to many Antarctic glaciers, including Ecology Glacier, which is undergoing intense melting.

“The place where Dennis was found is not the same as the place where he went missing,” the team explains.

“Glaciers, under the influence of gravity, move their mass of ice, and with it, Dennis made his journey,” they say.

Fragments of bamboo ski poles, remains of an oil lamp, glass containers for cosmetics, and fragments from military tents were also collected.

“Every effort was made to ensure that Dennis could return home,” the team say.

“It’s an opportunity to reassess the contribution these men made, and an opportunity to promote science and what we’ve done in the Antarctic over many decades,” adds Rod Rhys Jones.

David still seems overwhelmed by the news, and repeats how grateful he is to the Polish scientists.

“I’m just sad my parents never got to see this day,” he says.

David will soon visit England where he and his sister, Valerie, plan to finally put Dennis to rest.

“It’s wonderful; I’m going to meet my brother. You might say we shouldn’t be thrilled, but we are. He’s been found – he’s come home now.”

An illegal immigrant from El Salvador has been sentenced to life without parole for killing an American mother of five – in a case invoked by President Donald Trump to support his border security crackdown.

Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, was found guilty this year in the rape and murder of Rachel Morin, 37, on a hiking trail in Bel Air, Maryland, in August 2023.

He assaulted her, bludgeoned her head with rocks and strangled her before hiding her body in a drainage culvert, the court heard.

The killer was also linked to a 2023 home invasion in Los Angeles and is wanted in El Salvador for the murder of another woman, according to prosecutors.

He showed little emotion as he learned his fate on Monday.

Judge Yolanda Curtin sentenced him to life for the first-degree murder conviction, life for the rape charge, and an additional 40 years for a third-degree sex offence and kidnapping. He will serve the entire sentence in a Maryland prison.

He was arrested in June 2024 after a 10-month manhunt in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Arguably, Harford County has never seen a case or a defendant more deserving of every single day of the maximum sentences this court imposed,” prosecutor Alison Healey said outside the courthouse.

In a victim-impact statement before the sentence was handed down, the victim’s mother, Patty Morin, said: “The brutality of her murder will haunt us for the rest of our lives.”

Voice recordings of Ms Morin’s children, ranging in age from nine to 15, were played for the court.

In a message addressed to their mother, one of the children said: “Now I have to spend more time without you than I did with you.”

Rachel’s older brother, Michael Morin, told the court his Christian faith compelled him to offer the killer forgiveness.

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the killer illegally entered the US and was sent back across the US-Mexico border three times in 2023.

During last year’s White House election campaign, Trump held up Ms Morin’s killing and other so-called angel families – those with loved ones who have been killed by illegal immigrants – as he pledged to close the US-Mexico border.

Most studies indicate undocumented immigrants are not more likely to engage in criminality than American citizens.

The Morin family has supported Trump’s campaign for border security.

Michael Morin addressed the Republican National Convention last summer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

“Open borders are often portrayed as compassionate and virtuous, but there is nothing compassionate about allowing violent criminals into our country and robbing children of their mother,” he said.

In April, amid an escalating showdown between the president and the judiciary on immigration, the White House invited Ms Morin’s mother to address a media briefing.

Patty Morin shared graphic details of her daughter’s death.

No-one would want to work without getting a salary, or even worse – having to pay to be there.

Yet paying companies so you can pretend to work for them has become popular among young, unemployed adults in China. It has led to a growing number of such providers.

The development comes amid China’s sluggish economy and jobs market. Chinese youth unemployment remains stubbornly high, at more than 14%.

With real jobs increasingly hard to come by, some young adults would rather pay to go into an office than be just stuck at home.

Shui Zhou, 30, had a food business venture that failed in 2024. In April of this year, he started to pay 30 yuan ($4.20; £3.10) per day to go into a mock-up office run by a business called Pretend To Work Company, in the city of Dongguan, 114 km (71 miles) north of Hong Kong.

There he joins five “colleagues” who are doing the same thing.

“I feel very happy,” says Mr Zhou. “It’s like we’re working together as a group.”

Such operations are now appearing in major cities across China, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, and Kunming. More often they look like fully-functional offices, and are equipped with computers, internet access, meeting rooms, and tea rooms.

And rather than attendees just sitting around, they can use the computers to search for jobs, or to try to launch their own start-up businesses. Sometimes the daily fee, usually between 30 and 50 yuan, includes lunch, snacks and drinks.

Dr Christian Yao, a senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Management in New Zealand, is an expert on the Chinese economy.

“The phenomenon of pretending to work is now very common,” he says. “Due to economic transformation and the mismatch between education and the job market, young people need these places to think about their next steps, or to do odd jobs as a transition.

“Pretend office companies are one of the transitional solutions.”

Mr Zhou came across the Pretend To Work Company while browsing social media site Xiaohongshu. He says he felt that the office environment would improve his self-discipline. He has now been there for more than three months.

Mr Zhou sent photos of the office to his parents, and he says they feel much more at ease about his lack of employment.

While attendees can arrive and leave whenever they want, Mr Zhou usually gets to the office between 8am and 9am. Sometimes he doesn’t leave until 11pm, only departing after the manager of the business has left.

He adds that the other people there are now like friends. He says that when someone is busy, such as job hunting, they work hard, but when they have free time they chat, joke about, and play games. And they often have dinner together after work.

Mr Zhou says that he likes this team building, and that he is much happier than before he joined.

In Shanghai, Xiaowen Tang rented a workstation at a pretend work company in Shanghai for a month earlier this year. The 23-year-old graduated from university last year and hasn’t found a full-time job yet.

Her university has an unwritten rule that students must sign an employment contract or provide proof of internship within one year of graduation; otherwise, they won’t receive a diploma.

She sent the office scene to the school as proof of her internship. In reality, she paid the daily fee, and sat in the office writing online novels to earn some pocket money.

“If you’re going to fake it, just fake it to the end,” says Ms Tang.

Dr Biao Xiang, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, says that China’s pretending to work trend comes from a “sense of frustration and powerlessness” regarding a lack of job opportunities.

“Pretending to work is a shell that young people find for themselves, creating a slight distance from mainstream society and giving themselves a little space.”

The owner of the Pretend To Work Company in the city of Dongguan is 30-year-old Feiyu (a pseudonym). “What I’m selling isn’t a workstation, but the dignity of not being a useless person,” he says.

He himself has been unemployed in the past, after a previous retail business that he owned had to close during the Covid pandemic. “I was very depressed and a bit self-destructive,” he recalls. “You wanted to turn the tide, but you were powerless.”

In April of this year he started to advertise Pretend To Work, and within a month all the workstations were full. Would-be new joiners have to apply.

Feiyu say that 40% of customers are recent university graduates who come to take photos to prove their internship experience to their former tutors. While a small number of them come to help deal with pressure from their parents.

The other 60% are freelancers, many of whom are digital nomads, including those working for big ecommerce firms, and cyberspace writers. The average age is around 30, with the youngest being 25.

Officially, these workers are referred to as “flexible employment professionals”, a grouping that also includes ride-hailing and trucker drivers.

Over the longer term Feiyu says it is questionable whether the business will remain profitable. Instead he likes to view it more as a social experiment.

“It uses lies to maintain respectability, but it allows some people to find the truth,” he says. “If we only help users prolong their acting skills we are complicit in a gentle deception.

“Only by helping them transform their fake workplace into a real starting point can this social experiment truly live up to its promise.”

Mr Zhou is now spending most of his time improving his AI skills. He says he’s noticed that some companies are specifying proficiency in AI tools when recruiting. So he thinks gaining such AI skills “will make it easier” for him to find a full-time job.

Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo has got engaged to his long-term partner Georgina Rodríguez.

She announced the news on social media alongside a picture of a large ring, writing “Yes I do. In this and in all my lives” in her native Spanish.

No further details have been shared. Ronaldo, who is the most followed person on Instagram, has not yet made a comment about their engagement.

The couple have been together for nine years, after they met at a Gucci shop in Madrid where Rodríguez was working. He was playing at the Spanish club Real Madrid at the time.

The Portugal and Al-Nassr player has five children in total, two of whom he shares with Rodríguez.

Their youngest daughter Bella was born in April 2022, alongside a baby boy who was stillborn.

Rodríguez has also helped to raise Ronaldo’s other three children.

The 31-year-old, who starred in her own Netflix reality show I Am Georgina, previously addressed speculation around her engagement status. On the programme, she said her friends were “always joking about the wedding.”

“Since Jennifer Lopez’s song ‘The Ring Or When’ came out, they started singing it to me. And well, this is not up to me,” she added.

Famous faces including Kim Kardashian have liked the engagement announcement on social media. Piers Morgan, who interviewed Ronaldo in 2022, wished them “as much success in their marriage as he’s had on the football pitch!”

Celebrity make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury commented that it was “fabulous news”. Lauren Sanchez-Bezos, who married Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in June, said she was “so happy” for the couple.

The family currently live in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, where the Ronaldo plays for Al-Nassr. He joined the club in December 2022 for a reported annual salary of £177m ($238m).

In June 2025, it was announced that the 40-year-old’s contract had been extended until 2027 after speculation that he was preparing to retire.

In a post on X, Ronaldo wrote: “A new chapter begins. Same passion, same dream. Let’s make history together.”